So? I might be a shitty photographer, but I'm going to be less terrible with a better camera and smarter auto modes. I'm sure there's many ways I haven't taken full advantage of my computer, I've still upgraded it every so often. Phones advance at a fairly rapid pace even if users don't.

2015:

1965:

You're right, certain bits hasn't changed much...

Because disabled people are so looking for a DIY solution. I'll give you the one about cost, but aids for the disabled are usually sold or given away far under their actual cost due to ideal organizations, corporate PR, government aid and so on unless you're making a business specifically for the disabled.

Oh please, the open source community is 95% driven by scratching your own itch. Very few do any real effort to make it easier for other people to use in general, disabled or not. Which of course doesn't mean that we're heartless bastards, we do care that there are children starving in Africa and a blind guy who can't use your app. Just not enough to ever get around to it.

Yes, but it's usually not rocket surgery if you care enough to explore it. The few times I've dabbled in it I've found that often takes a lot of effort that doesn't benefit anyone but the disabled, the way a wheelchair user needs a ramp where a step works fine for everybody else. Or in other words, even if you know what you're doing it still takes time, that I certainly wouldn't want to spend on a hobby project.

The only way a marginal candidate is going to have any chance is if they announce early and get momentum, while the big names can afford to wait and campaign more intensively later.

1. Well large land animals are an important source of tourism. Tourism is a huge source of income for many poor countries in Africa, like for example it's 12% of the GDP in Kenya. Most governments want to protect them and is willing to accept aid, it's individuals that want to poach them for personal gain. Which basically means they'll take funding, equipment, personnel, anything you're willing to give really. Granted, they'll probably not care so much about CO2 emissions or whatever. Then again, neither do Americans.
2. The reason the poachers are being so successful is because they're well funded from abroad, they're not fighting against the poor man in the street but heavy criminals propped up by first world technology. We can do a lot to try cutting off this supply, catch the smuggling, prosecuting the buyers, tear down the organizations and so on. It's organized crime, just not in a shape we see much of in the western world.

And yet if I look at StatCounter's map function, showing the leading browser in each country Chrome leads in most of the world. IE only leads in Japan, South Korea, Swaziland (pop. 1.1mio), Greenland (pop. 55000) and Antarctica (5000 visitors). Firefox has a few strongholds like Germany, Indonesia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Iran and a bunch of countries in Africa, but the only place IE is ahead of Chrome in second place is Iran (pop. 78mio). With Chrome winning on walkover in Europe, South America, North America, Africa and Oceania and taking massive wins in China, India and Russia I don't see how any possible weighting of StatCounter's numbers would put IE on top.

I don't know how it is in the US, but here in Norway you can dial our equivalent of 911 from any cell phone, connecting to any tower in range regardless if it has service or even a SIM card and I assume landlines work on the same principle. That the service was "disconnected" just means they don't have any obligation to keep it working, but they're not going to block any 911 call ever, I don't know if there's a law but the bad publicity would be a disaster. So this is probably by design and a feature, not a bug but customer service was probably not aware of this.

They might not even have access to the raw call log, since their user interface probably revolves around services and calls tied to a service. After all how often do you have a phone line with no service dialing 911 - because that's the only place you can reach - then calling customer service complaining that the call came through? This was a 0.01% corner case and I'm not surprised they thought it "impossible" and had to escalate to someone with real knowledge of the inner workings of the physical network.

I can beat a dozen clueless developers, I can't beat a dozen people like myself. If you can there's something horribly wrong with your cooperation, communication and coordination skills. Most of us work on systems that are bigger than one man can build and maintain and if I tried to get my paws into every corner of the system I'd only be the whirlwind trashing things on my way through for the rest to clean up. I've reached my natural scope at the level of detail that I work, if I wanted to increase the width more I'd have to reduce the depth going into design and architecture rather than the finer points of making it work.

And the corollary to this is that if you play like range => bet, a good opponent will easily spot bet => range. Unlike chess where it always make sense to make the same play in the same position, it's crucial in poker to play the same hand in different ways. Of course you need to make the "correct" play most of the time, but it's when you set up a play where you have an unlikely hand like raising with garbage but hitting the flop or triple-barreling a monster your opponent thinks is a bluff that huge pots go your way.

This is particularly fun when you see bluff meet bluff and they both think "The only way I can win at this pot is to bet and bet big", you can have huge pots with total air and it's all about who blinks first while when you finally get the aces maybe you get no action whatsoever. They say it's about a 1/3 chance to hit something on the flop, that means in a two-way showdown 1/9 hands are something vs something, 4/9 will be something vs nothing and 5/9 nothing vs nothing. That means you'd better win quite a few of the hands where you don't hit the flop, if you just surrender them uncontested a pro will walk all over you.

One study != one sample. Each study should have enough cases to make it statistically significant. The problem is related to issues with the sample population or systematic flaws in what you're measuring. To bring it into the realm of physics, if we do a high school gravity experiment and ignore air resistance we can make as many tests as we like, check for measurement uncertainty in our clocks and whatnot and put up some confidence intervals that are still horribly wrong. It's very hard to isolate and experiment with one tiny aspect of the human psyche and most of the problem is the result is nothing but either a statistical fluke or quirk with the people tested that doesn't generalize to the general population.

It might not be all of it, but I'm pretty sure it's the end of it. Nobody settles half a case, particularly not when you bend over like this. The only reason Grooveshark would agree is if they got an exit opportunity where they could fold their hand and walk away from it, presumably because the other side's lawyers found there was nothing more to be gained from the company and piercing the corporate veil or pursuing criminal convictions wasn't possible or not worth it.

92% round-trip DC efficiency. Basically, if you put 100% DC power in, you get 92% DC power back. That's nice, but...

One AC/DC round trip costs 25% so if you get 100% AC power from the grid, convert to DC, store it in the battery and convert it back to AC for use as a drop-in replacement your total efficiency will be more like 0.75*0.92 = 69% efficiency. On the other hand if you have a DC source like solar panels, store it in this battery and use it to charge a DC sink like an electric car which is the ideal case you get 92% efficiency.

Has the fact that there's three major BSDs and one Linux been in BSD's favor? I have to pick an implementation and live with its bugs, either my machine is compromised or it's not. And those using other implementations will be hit with other bugs compromising their machines. Does it really provide any tangible benefit that not all of us are hit at the same time with the same bug, when we're all vulnerable some of the time? You divide the number of targets, but you also divide the number of developers and testers. For that matter, the eyes in "many eyes makes all bugs shallow" as well. And if you think the only true test is the test of time, the total value and exposure to the bad guys.

Am I supposed to swap browsers every time a vulnerability is found in Firefox/Chrome/Safari/IE? And wouldn't that quickly lead to a monoculture as a project dies every time it screws up big? Or if not, what exactly are the other implementations going to do for me? Software isn't like experimental physics where you want independent verification that if you try the same thing you get the same result. It's more like math where you need a formal proof that the code will always do what you intend for it to do and that it stands up under scrutiny.

We're not talking about something that must have a fail rate, if you get it right it's good. For example look at Apache and IIS, they're massively exposed yet there's very, very few exploits of significance. Okay so that's two not one implementation, but lack of diversity is mostly a problem when you have one bad product like java or flash that is a serial offender. Nobody has a problem with a monoculture that works and there's many of those. Don't allow crap in, code defensively, have reviews and fix the security bugs that get past you in a timely fashion and there won't be any need to reinvent the wheel.

The Greek economy is something like 2% of the EU. Germany could pay it all off alone and still be in the comfort zone. There was a time when it looked like many dominoes could fall, but Ireland, Portugal and Spain all seem to be on a slow recovery, Italy still gives grounds for concern. The reason they can't give in to Greece is because many countries have been responsible. Many countries have taken harsh steps to bring their budgets in line. The opposition against giving Greece special treatment is strong all the way from the rich countries to the other poor countries.