I served on a jury in which DNA evidence was presented, along with the expert witness' estimation of probability that two random people would have the same number of matching points of comparison (DNA is only matched at a relatively small number of points in the strand).

In this case, however, there were many people present at the discovery of the object from which the DNA was taken for analysis. As it happens, several of these people were relatives (brother, mother) of the person the prosecution were trying to persuade us was the person that possessed (in legal terms) the object.

The question that I kept hoping the defense attorney would ask was "what are the probabilities of an erroneous match if the people are relatives, not just two random people off the street"? Unfortunately, he didn't.

As it happened, there were so many other peculiarities in this case as well as some pretty bizarre testimony from prosecution witnesses that we voted to acquit without making much of the DNA evidence.

I had a customer with a Drobo. They bought it as a backup device. In my experience it was quite terrible compared to stuffing a bunch of drives in a box and running FreeNas or something on it. The device itself is quite expensive, and we had lots of problems with it, and finally wound up relegating it to a 3rd tier backup role. Among the problems we had;
1. It takes a LONG time to rebuild. It took 3 days to rebuild after a drive failure, during which another drive failure would have caused complete data loss.
2. I/O performance was sub par. I don't remember the exact rates, but in our testing backups would take 3x as long to the Drobo as they would to a simple 1 tb USB drive.
3. We ran into issues with very large files (>50 gigabytes) which the filesystem it was formatted in supported without issue.
4. When we had a hardware failure in the device, which caused it to constantly fail a drive that independent testing showed was fine, and despite the customer purchasing the additional "Drobocare" extended warranty, between getting the run around from their support (who kept making the same suggestions over and over instead of escalating the case) it took over a month to get it replaced, and by the time it was done it would have been cheaper to throw it in the trash. I wouldn't want to rely on them for anything.

Overall it was a very negative experience. The only thing I could recommend them for would be for graphic artists or something that works solo and doesn't have the tech skills to set up a better solution.

640K of memory should be enough for anybody.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

--There, fixed that for you. ;)

Not going there on the disassembly right, but,

You have no right to photograph the prototype for commercial purposes.

Huh? He found it in a fucking public place! Of COURSE he has the right to photograph the fucking phone, this isn't the USSR!

Minor failures, sure, but I don't think I've ever heard of a shuttle performing an abort. In fact, I don't recall any successfully recovered in-flight catastrophe since Apollo 13. That said, that's probably because the crews do a good enough job that minor problems on the ground don't translate into major problems in flight.

Are you fucking retarded?

No, some cops might argue that. Lazy cops, incompetent cops. In this case, probably made-up strawman cops. But certainly not all cops. If that were true, then thefts would never be investigated. But we know that's just not true, because thefts are investigated daily.

But what are you trying to say, anyway? That cops should ignore all crime, because you've claimed that they've ignored some crimes related to you and your friends?

And then you've got places like Suffolk, VA which is the largest city in Virginia by area, but has only 80,000 people. It's almost all farmland, that happens to be incorporated.

I think the large sale figures are because they are trying (and perhaps succeeding) to engage the completely non-technical crowd that still has to/would like to use at least the Web in their lives.

Like my mom who has first seen PC at the age of 45 and never needed it, but now would want to Skype with me, being 2000km away. And no one around her can support (without payment) a PC. Add to that girlfriends/wives (some of them), posers, fan boys, uber consumers....I am damn sure the hype will not die out in a hurry.

I would still not buy it for my mom because it will be some time (if ever) until the OS is translated into my language (mom does not speak English). I hope they do it for Russian though - that will solve it for her.

I offered my wife to consider the iPad, but she disagrees with Apple about the pr0n thing and Steve's high moral horse (she reads /. sometimes).

I would love to be able to browse while in the sofa though, so I hope there will be many more and suited to every taste devices like this. And I hope the whole DRM thing will not spoil the book reading, music listening and movie watching experiences on said devices.

Netbook sales tend to go up around September, spike at December (Christmas), and then decline again until the next September. Most of this is due to people who use it for school (a useful purpose) rather than ones who rush out to buy a netbook just because it's brand-new.

Because the "lol Apples are for people that HAVE A LIFE" mentality is the most obnoxious thing to come out of the Apple vs. Everything else dichotomy.

You're missing a distinction. We're trying to make the point that Apple products are crap and Apple supremacy is wrong, we're not saying it's impossible or even improbable. We just wish people didn't fall for their bullshit.

Not a right bozo, merely a possibility. You are not constrained from doing anything with your property, program it with anything you like in any way you like. But if you want to sell it to others in their store you have to play by their rules. Get over it. Go play with YOUR property and stop bothering the rest of us that actually live in reality.

could get a little hairy.