What do you mean? Corporate America isn't generally run by the best and the brightest. But in spite of that, considering that Microsoft was once so dominant there was no second place, I think Microsoft is imploding. It certainly hasn't done anything terribly innovative in a long time, and all it's done lately is to hand over the mobile market to Apple and Android, and manage to piss off the one set of insanely loyal customers it has left -- XBox fans.

So, yeah. I think the man is about as dumb as /. thinks he is.

His entire rant is a string of strawmen, ad hominems, non sequiturs, and question-begging. The problems he mentioned are all either social or political in nature. Otherwise, he's piling a lot of abuse and loaded words on people doing what they want to do: write programs.

The weird thing is, he identified the sources of the problems right in his rant. Single mothers living at or below the poverty line? The jobs they have don't pay well, are inflexible, and provide no relief for raising kids while trying to earn a living. Veterans waiting 8 months for medical attention? A processing system that is out-of-date and understaffed, and a health care system that has been gutted of funding.

What bright ideas are young software entrepreneurs are going to solve this? The software exist to make the VA more efficient, and it's not like you can just write a new piece of software and expect the government to make use of it (just like you can't do that for a big company).

These Big Problems don't have a software solution. He certainly didn't provide any ideas on how software might solve these Big Problems -- he just insisted on judging the career decisions of a group of people based on his preferences.

Fuck. That.

An old 16k Apple ][ in 1979, in a logging camp in Southeast Alaska. First integer BASIC, then Applesoft BASIC, then assembly via the Sweet16 mini-assembler. Then Pascal. Then I graduated and went to college and learned how to program.

And I wrote my "One Time, at computer camp...." a long time ago.

The official launch name will be Windows Apology.

I don't know about that. Everyone on /. seems to be a fuckin' critic, yet critics still have jobs.

Exactly. Epigenetics means the offspring inherits the factory as well as the blueprints. (Okay, DNA isn't really a blueprint per se, but it's not nearly as pithy to say "as well as the DNA templates which create RNA templates which are used to construct specific proteins.")

Fortunately, science works by correlating the predictions of hypotheses with observed reality. Also fortunately, the theory of evolution via natural selection doesn't predict evolving an intelligent life-form in a lab. It predicts many, many things that correlate strongly with observed reality, but that is not one of them.

If I'd said something as monumentally ignorant as your post, I'd be red in the face too.

I think you are confusing "is" with "ought."

So two years after CEPT approved working towards the SMS messaging standards 3 dudes who nobody ever heard of met and invented the standard.

Unless the two unnamed people in this story are Friedhelm Hillebrand and Bernard Ghillebaert it is a myth sold to a reporter.

Otherwise it's like the guy that copyrighted email.

It is a completely acceptable defense if you aren't on the losing side

Nice slut-shaming.

It doesn't matter if the plaintiff enjoys sex, or is flirty with some people, or anything else. If she was sexually harassed at work, she has a case. Her dress, her sexual conduct outside the office, and her general attitudes make no difference to the question of sexual harassment.

Nate Silver's use of statistics is geeky. Really. That's about all he talks about -- not politics, but statistics. (Well, and sports, but even there, he's all about the statistics.)

Bwah? 97.7%? I'm only seeing an 86.3% chance.

Or is the "Chance of winning" sidebar item incorrect?

10k? People are terrible at estimating the worth their stuff has. So that's probably closer to 2 or 3k (I'm not talking replacement cost I'm talking if we had to sell the stuff wholesale)

So we got the MRI and an aspirin covered at ER rate... congrats what are we getting for the rest of your bill?

Health insurance mandate protects the responsible part of the population from the irresponsible part that thinks they are invincible. Because right now we as a society are paying for the idiots that are using the ER as their general physician