Really, that's your ad campaign? "USA: It's not as bad as China or North Korea?"

You're just the spiritual successor to Steve Rogers there, aintcha?

Is that a common process? Granted, I've got only a very elementary (no pun intended) understanding of chemistry, but I remember Mr. Wizard often telling us in no uncertain terms that mixing bleach (chlorine) and ammonia was a Bad Thing (tm).

No kidding. These guys make breakfast cereal for chrissakes. If they want to openly express contempt for their customers like that, without any backlash, they need to get into game development.

Yes, I'm aware it looks like the committee was staffed with "idiots", that is, people whose expertise was necessary for the committee to function but wasn't technical. His job was to provide the technical expertise, and to make the committee aware of the technical implications of what they were deciding upon.

Oh I can assure you my opinion was made very loudly heard before hand. The problem is a mere techies opinion counts for nothing when the university counsel is saying that links must be approved at the highest level because of legal liability. (Ironically these days the opinion on this sort of thing tends to be that its better for the higher levels NOT to know, because of innocent-dissemination safe-harbor laws)

And once that policy was passed by the university senate, it had the force of government regulation, so I made sure the law was followed to the letter.

Not saying that Mann's beliefs about AGW are wrong, but that his behavior at various points has demonstrated a profound lack of and disregard for scientific openness.

Theres simply no evidence of this at all, and these ridiculously, and continuously disproven smears should show exactly why he's not particularly interested in people prying over his words hoping to find something, anything, they can misrepresent.

The way we are treating scientists such as mann whos research upsets the economic hegemony in 2014 really is borderline medieval.

This is the problem at the heart of climate science. The key details for models are not published,

Yes they are. Often with sourcecode , data and all.

Oftentimes commercial software and datasets can't be published publically but outside of that, climate science is something done out in the open for the most part.

If the "science" is so proved and plain, why hide the research?

Because scientists deserve better than constant harrassment from lunatics.

Also grammar point;- There is no scare-quotes around science.

Hopefully 11 billion worth of North koreas long suffering citizens not starving.

Well , ideally. More like 11 billion worth of NK's absurd army spending more on armaments. Alas.

And you don't think those changes are going to all be reviewed, then re-reviewed, then gone over with a dozen fine-toothed combs before anyone actually uses the new code in earnest?

It sounds like the OpenBSD people aren't the ones being stupid here.

A system that makes sure a failure doesn't occur a second time is better than nothing, but it's not as good as a system that makes sure the first failure doesn't happen. (Whether it's "good enough" depends on how acceptable it is to suffer that first failure)

Because often, what you can't see is as important as what you can. Imagination is important. Composition is important, and emotion is important.

Right, the thing is though theres more going on to depth of field than just "This part of the image in focus, and that part out of focus". I mean its definately a useful effect because it pretty much defines what part of the photo your supposed to be looking at, but good shallow DOF really is quite an amazing effect down well and terrible when done bad.

On my 50mm lens (I recomend a 50mm to ANYONE whos playing with SLRs. Its a cheap lens, handles great in low light and very easy to take attractive photos with) the depth of field also interacts with light so you see these great specks of light all through the background and other esoteric effects that really enhance the effect. If I just put the background out of focus with a blur, it'd be just.... well blury.
Finally its not a linear blur either. Some parts are more in focus than others and this adds to the effect because its how your eye does it too.

The test photo in the article just makes it look like someones put a lasso tool on the model, inverted it, then just done some sort of blur on the background. Its just not the same as the DOF on a real wide apearature camera.

Right, and IF my grandmother had testicles, she'd be my grandfather.

If there is a way for a finite amount of code to contain an infinite number of bugs, I don't see it. (Netscape Navigator excepted of course ;^))

Considering that a sizeable percentage of americans seem to count geology and cosmology and god knows what else under "evolution" (thanks to inbred creationist hicks calling the big bang an "evolution" theory, etc) , calling biogenesis evolution is probably a forgivable mistake to make

It would be interesting to see how much time the average gasoline-car owner spends refueling his car (including the time spent driving to and from the gas station, waiting in line, etc) vs the time the average electric-car owner spends waiting for his car to recharge. I wouldn't be surprised if the electric cars are already ahead in this respect, if only because they can "refuel" while their owners are asleep at night.

Centron, what am I talking about. I mean crestron.

This was back in the 1990s, so my memory is a bit hazy. Thing is, the screens where pretty damn good.

That said, I dug up an old one I had lying around (Pulled it out of a clients place during an update in around 2000 and said I could have it) and plugged it in recently, not quite as responsive as I remembered it being. I guess the ipads spoilt me a bit.