I don't think the point is really that the subject matter is inherently sexist. I think the point is that it's crude humor, which men stereotypically enjoy and women stereotypically don't. I think if the project was named SHITS or PUS they'd have the same offended reaction. It's not sexist because it's male anatomy, it's sexist because it's crude and sophomoric.

Of course, one could reverse the argument and say that the offended people are the ones being sexist, because they're the ones applying the "women don't like crude humor" stereotype. What these people should be saying is "I am offended by this", not "My entire gender is offended by this."

And in that I'd agree with them. I'm a straight white mid-western American guy. I have a low threshold for this kind of humor. It's funny in small doses, but gets tiring awfully quick. I personally wouldn't want to be associated with a project where dick (or shit, or bodily fluid) jokes are a constant running gag. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be allowed to have a project like that, or that they're somehow creating a hostile environment for people like me. Just that if it were a persistent theme I'd move on and find another project more suited to me.

Now, for causing real problems, PSUs win by a landslide.

Yeah. I picked PSU not because I've had more die than some of the other parts, but when they do die it's often not obvious and it's a major pain in the ass to figure out. Fan bearings scream, you know they're dying, you go buy a new fan and that's the end of it. A power supply starts to go, and... Memory problems. Graphical glitches. Mysterious hard crashes. You have to try a bunch of other stuff before saying, well, maybe it's the power supply. One bad PSU is more problematic than half a dozen parts which have failed in obvious ways.

In some way most Americans CAN NOT vote until the final round. As an independent I am not sure I am allowed to vote in the primaries. We need open primaries.

The biggest problem with primaries is that every state has different rules for them. Some are open, some are restricted to members of that party, some let you vote in either primary but not both, etc. It's awful. And, as another AC responding to you has pointed out, primaries are artifacts of the political parties. Why should they allow anyone not in the party to vote? I'll take it a step further... Why should the state use public funds to support what is an internal party decision?

Another problem with primaries is that you end up with spoiler votes. Primaries might be good if everyone voted for the candidate they thought was best, and the winners moved on to the next round. That's not how they work, though. Open primaries are begging for people to game the system. You'll be happy if any of your party's candidates win, so you don't vote in your party's primary. You vote in the other party's primary and pick the biggest schmuck! That makes it easier for your party to win the general election.

So, my proposal... First, get rid of the notion of a candidate belonging to a party. They don't. The parties may *endorse* a candidate if they want. They may give money to a candidate's campaign. But they don't have exclusive rights to calling the candidate "theirs". This puts political parties in more of an advisory role, similar to the League of Women Voters (though they don't actually endorse any individual). And hey, if there's a centrist candidate that both parties like, both parties can endorse the same person. What a concept! This guy could be endorsed by the Democratic Party and the Teamsters Union and the Green Party and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. That guy could be endorsed by the Republican Party and the Teacher's Union and the Libertarian Party and the Society for Creative Anachronism. The parties hold no more sway over the candidates than any of the other groups.

Next, get rid of the primaries. Each party chooses which candidates to endorse however they see fit. If they want to have the party brass meet in a secret smoke filled room, that's fine by me. If they want to have a primary election by their own party members, that's fine too. But since it's purely a *party* decision *the party* can foot the bill for the election. No need to spend tax money printing ballots, setting up polling places, etc.

Lastly, take the little (R) and (D) designators off the names of all the candidates and politicians on CSPAN and the news channels. You have a Senator, not a (R) Senator or a (D) Senator. Just *a* Senator who's not beholden to the party machinery.

Marginalize the parties. At best they're just labels for the lazy, at worst they're obstructionist ideologues. Emphasize the actual candidates. Elect people who best represent your own views, not who best contort themselves to fit the preconceived (D) or (R) molds. It's a big country and we don't all fall into two strongly stereotyped camps.

Yeesh...I guess those of us who played Zork should be in a nursing home.

Man, can you imagine how AWESOME a Zork reboot would be? Think of what you could do with it these days. User-selectable fonts, boldface *and* italics, and... dare I dream?... SUB-PIXEL RENDERING! How spooky would it be when your torch goes out to have your text dim turn by turn until you're finally eaten by that grue! To have subtle changes in typeface be a clue in the maze of twisty passages, all alike? To bask in the awe-inspiring majesty of Flood Control Dam #3 as represented by 72pt text?

Damn, where's the Kickstarter page? I wanna pledge NOW!

Science is a really good methodology to get at the *truth* mainly by testing your hypothesis (scientific method).

No. Science is a really good methodology to get at a model approximating the truth. It's rare that new evidence completely invalidates a model, but it's common and expected that new evidence will necessitate refinements to a model. Science never gives us the *truth* about anything. It merely gives us a method to asymptotically approach the truth as new discoveries are made.

C++ templates are also Turing-complete at compile time.

When I tried learning a bit of LISP, the thing that struck me was that its metaprogramming language is also the runtime language, and I like that very much.

I'm not a Linux programmer so I may be out of date on this, but there isn't or wasn't a single C++ ABI on Linux between the various compilers. If the kernel used C++ for those interfaces it would potentially require that the kernal and all kernel modules were compiled with the same toolchain. Rolling their own implementation means the ABI is compatible across all the different compilers and compiler version with a side benefit of being able to write kernel modules in languages other than C/C++.

Until the public turns away from head-injury sports, they will be with us, and the aftermath of all those head injuries will be with us and our health care system for years to come.

Which is precisely why these matches should be fought to the death! It's a lot more exciting for the spectators, you almost never see anyone take a dive because they've been paid off by some gambling cartel, and there are no pesky lingering injuries. There are no downsides! Well, except for the loser I guess, but isn't that what losing is all about?

Living on Mars time is difficult when you're living on Earth and are subject to Earth's day/night cycle.

Exactly this. 24h40m days are exhausting when you're embedded in a 24h day/night cycle and have to mesh with others on that cycle. It's tough being out of phase with your surroundings. On Mars everyone else is on the same cycle you are, and the only contact you have with the 24h civilization has a significant time delay which makes real-time conversation impossible. Give it a few sols and you'll be right on track.

40 extra minutes of sleep per day... Not exhausting at all!

On the one hand, I know flash is bad and HTML5 is good. And even though advertising is bad it follows that advertising in HTML5 must be less bad than advertising in flash.

So, um... yay?

The premise reminds me of Unexploded Cow from Cheapass Games. There's a free print-it-yourself version and a $25 deluxe version.

Europe. Summer. 1997. You and your friends have discovered two problems with a common solution: mad cows in England and unexploded bombs in France.

You've decided to bring these two powderkegs together just to see what happens. And you wouldn't say "no" to a little money on the side.

So round up your herd, march them through France, and set them loose behind the Cordon Rouge. If you're lucky you'll come home rich before Greenpeace figures out what you're up to.

Either way, there's something magical about blowing up cows.

I used a transparent squid proxy with access control lists appropriate for the kid and intercepted and redirected DNS queries. (With more than one kid, I needed multiple acls, ymmv.) Initially I limited internet access to specific times and a whitelist and discussed what they were doing daily. Over time and with age and maturity, I relaxed the acl to just record what was being accessed and just reviewed their browsing with them when they made questionable choices.

Pretty much what I did. Block the kids' MAC addresses at the router so the only way to get to the net was through the squid proxy. I didn't filter anything, just recorded the URLs and emailed a daily summary to the kids, my wife, and me. Making a 13 yo boy discuss with his dad (or worse, his mom!) what he was doing on tentacle.hentai.com is generally sufficient to get them to become self-policing.

I had hoped that there would be the side-effect of getting them to learn about MAC spoofing or other techniques to get through the firewall, but no such luck. Either that or I taught them to be *really* sneaky about it. If it did teach them that much stealth I'll still count that as a valuable lesson in networking and security.

I read the paper and their premise seems to be that MINSETs can be browsable/searchable and good enough to let programmers figure out whether a given function is worth investigating further. Basically they're a better replacement for text search and class browsing.

I'm skeptical about that, especially looking at their examples, but I can't dismiss it outright. I think it might interact in a favourable way with metaprogramming techniques, whether C++ templates or Lisp macros, but that's just speculation.