Whoops.... that should have included this link: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/12/safe_personal_c.html

Excellent summation. A more concise version can be found here, from whnce this quote comes:

I am regularly asked what average Internet users can do to ensure their security. My first answer is usually, "Nothing--you're screwed."

That's fine, but that means that you can't look at a reasonable diff prior to checkin, unless your diffing tools also do the inverse formatting on checking out the old version to diff against. This means every auto-formatting option has to be deterministic and reversible. It also means your code review tools have to support it. This quickly spirals into an every growing list of requirements that rapidly becomes much more onerous than simply following the fucking standard.

I imagine what the original poster was hoping for was something along the lines of tools that magically converted to and from the 'standard' convention to his local standard so that he can ignore the global standard. Unfortunately this isn't really feasible given the number of items in the typically development toolchain that would have to support this functionality.

As a result, I've [wasted] hundreds of hours in code reviews because [I couldn't follow instructions]

FTFY.

You're not countering my point. You're just being an asshole. My examples weren't meant to be illustrative, not definitive. Also, that is a suppressor, not a silencer. There is no gun you can shoot that makes a 'phut' noise and won't draw the attention of everyone in a 20 meter radius.

Yeah, a lot of people have misconceptions, which is often why there are expert witnesses to clarify issues that aren't commonly in the general body of knowledge. However, that doesn't mean that any knowledge not gleaned from an expert witness is forbidden.

You're expected to go into the juror room with your existing body of knowledge, plus the instructions, plus the evidence and present a verdict. The judge didn't clarify stuff because they're not allowed to unilaterally change the wording on the instructions, which have been agreed on by multiple parties. If you and or your jury decided that 'can't consider anything other than the evidence' as meaning a particular thing, well that's up to you and that jury. From http://www.osbar.org/public/jurorhandbook.htm:

Emphasis mine

That means you can't use the fact that you happen know the defendant is left handed, or that the company he works for is releasing a new thing next week (because you work for the company too). On the other hand, if you know that guns can't be fired underwater, or that silencers as presented in movies don't actually exist, and it's pertinent to the case, you can fucking well say so. You just can't look stuff up that you don't already know.

If he held a patent and it didn't come up in jury selection, well that's the fault of the lawyers. If it did come up in jury selection and he lied, I'd assume that would have a heavy impact on appeals, maybe even void the verdict. He'd probably get some jail time too. If it did come up in jury selection and he told the truth, it's up to the judge to decide if it constitutes bias (and they'll often base that off of asking the person if they feel they'd be biased) and it's up to the lawyers to decide if they want to use one of their limited number of juror exceptions.

Yes, I have served on a jury. The idea that you can only consider the evidence presented doesn't mean you have to operate in a vacuum. If someone's alibi hinged on their ability to fly like superman and the opposing side didn't present any evidence one way or another, are you unable to use your knowledge that people can't fly unassisted when deciding? No, that would be stupid. Jurors are assumed to have a basic level of understanding of the world in order to do their jobs, and further, the lawyers on both sides have ample opportunity to reject people on the basis of bias (caused by too much specific knowledge in a given domain, or for no stated reason at all).

You're not allowed to ferret out evidence related to the case at hand. That does not mean you can't use your own existing knowledge of a given domain. If a trial hinges on whether the earth is flat or round, but no evidence is presented at the trial showing one way or another, you can still use your knowledge that the earth is round. It's possible people will use domain 'knowledge' that is incorrect, the hope is that at least the prevailing knowledge on the topic is correct. If that's not the case, or you have a forceful personality pushing bad ideas, well, that's just a failing to jury trials.

So is the Epig 4G Sprint variant of the Galaxy S. I'd suggest Sprint made the changes to the form factor and placement of items because of concern over similarities to the iPhone, except that the Spring Galaxy S II variant doesn't have any of the changes that were on the Epig 4G. It's practically a reference model Galaxy S II.

One of my favorite authors, and I'm surprised he's not more widely read, although I feel his more recent work has gone a little off the rails. However, I wouldn't really call him 'under-appreciated'. His works tend to get included in a lot of collections, even if he doesn't have the notoriety of an Asimov, Heinlein, or Herbert.

They're not going to give out the source code AND it's not illegal for them not to do so. The GPL will either fall under copyright law, or general contract law, depending on whether you consider it to fall under Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the constitution or not. Either way, both sets of laws are superseded by national security concerns, which certainly would cover a cyberweapon developed by the US government. I would no more expect the US to release the details of this software than I would expect then to release all the details of a nuclear weapon if for some reason because the GPL somehow required it.

6.25% APR is a lot better than a lot of poor people can get. Yes, Microsoft charges extra for the service of offering a lower upfront cost and assuming the risk associated with hoping people don't break the 2 year commitment (pursuing ETF fees from people who break the contract isn't free, and its by no means anywhere near 100% effective). There's nothing to see here.