Is it possible to write code for the browser without using jQuery?

Yes, dammit, it is. 90% of Javascript use is Javascript abuse, and 90% of legitimate Javascript use doesn't need a fscking bloated framework. Stop it already, anyone with a clue is running some sort of script blocker and your page just isn't important enough to make them choose to open holes in it for you.

Now get off my lawn.

If science some day proves that people with blue eyes have faster reaction times than people with brown eyes, and we don't factor that into hiring decisions where reaction times can mean the difference between life and death...

...then you'd be doing the only sane thing. If you need people with quick reaction times, measure their fscking reaction times, not their eye color, even if there is some statistical relationship between eye color and reaction times.

If you need someone to be able to lift 100 pounds for some job, test their ability to lift 100 pounds, not their gender or their skin tone or anything else that may or may not have a statistical relationship to their ability to lift heavy loads.

The only sane and ethical path would be to ignore any such statistical relationships and test the relevant characteristics in each individual person.

You can't reviewed the claims either. Neither have the people objecting to the book. That's the point.

Uh, no. The point is that the people objecting to the book in this case are scientists who say that their research is being misrepresented by this fuckwit.

So, you are ripping someone else off...

A ripoff (or rip-off) is a bad financial transaction. Usually it refers to an incident in which a person is overcharged for something, or receives goods or services not of the standard expected for the price." There is no ripoff involved in copying and sharing information.

I see this as qualified good news. A power plant had a total meltdown but the world didn't end.

"The situation is far worse then we thought, but is didn't cause an apocalypse. Good news!" Riiiiight.

Maybe we can start to talk about nuclear risk more pragmatically.

Sure. The risk of fusion-as-we-know-it, including the unsolved problems of radioactive waste and weapons proliferation, are so high that, pragmatically, any sane society should abandon it as a dead end and put resources into renewables (including perhaps orbital photovoltaic), efficiency, and research into fusion and accelerator-based "energy amplifier" systems -- i.e., systems with a Big Red Switch you can flip to turn them off. It's only a romanticism with the Big Science of Splitting The Atom, a desire to normalize military nuclear technology, and the incredible profits can be made when the costs are externalized, that keeps the idea alive.

Now, if a group of consumers started a class action suit against Sony for this, I'd imagine their chances of winning would be much better.

Dude. You don't even have to RTFA, just RTFS. "A California man with nothing better to do has launched a class-action lawsuit..."

That's why FOSS tends to suck in those areas compared to the commercial stuff (where they actually pay technical writers, designers, marketers, etc.)

So, I take it you've never written commercial software? ;-) I'm pretty sure tech writers are the exception, not the rule. In 24 years of writing software, I've been in two jobs that had technical writers on staff. And one of those was an NSA/(D)ARPA research project where the government mandated big binders full of docs.

Is this where we set the bar of government interference in our private lives?

Commerce is not your "private life". It is the transfer of "property", something created by government fiat and enforced by government guns. And it in most cases is it the transfer of "property" to or from a corporation, an entity created by government fiat.

If it doesn't directly involve government issued land and resource deeds (the root of all physical property), copyright and patents and trademarks (the root of all so-called "intellectual property"), or corporate charters, and doesn't involve government-enforced contracts, then you can maybe complain about government interference in your "private life".

Plug your USB stick or disk or keyboard into the Pi, and if it reports that there's a new not-a-USB-stick/disk/keyboard, you know there's malware on the device.

So I'll make my malware pretend to be a plain old USB stick for the first N hours. Then it will simulate an unplug and replug itself in as a keyboard that types "format c:\ncat /dev/zero > /dev/sda\necho bwah hah hah!\n"

It's a basic principle that if an attacker can compromise your hardware, you're fscked. But it looks like the new part is that the malware can go viral, reprogramming USB devices. Whoever was careless enough to release a USB controller with firmware that can be arbitrarily reprogrammed from the host computer needs to be taken out and shot.

Who the hell buys/uses CD's anymore?

(raises hand)

My CD from the 80s (yes, I still have a few) and 90s and 00s didn't disappear. I buy CDs from bands at shows. (And usually rip them, eventually.) And doing business with the forms of Pure Concentrated Evil known to mankind as Apple and Amazon is not an option, so digital download options are limited.

Please point to the fascists riddling the current Ukrainian government.

Members of Svoboda, the neo-Nazi inspired party formerly known as the "Social-National Party of Ukraine", hold several government posts: Oleksandr Sych, Vice Prime Minister; Andriy Mokhnyk- Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources; Ihor Shvayka, Minister of Agriculture.

Svoboda is so far right that just three years ago there was a move to have the party banned nationwide: http://www.kyivpost.com/conten...

Keyboard phones sound good on paper but when people actually tried them the reality hit home.

Yes, and the reality is that if you are someone who works with text -- a programmer, a sysadmin, a writer -- a keyboard phone completely fscking rocks, putting a remote terminal/text editor device in your pocket. I can sit at the bar and work on an essay, or ssh in to the server at work for a quick bug fix or server restart. (Yes, it's nice to have a tablet or laptop or desktop but those don't fit into my pocket.) "Swipe" keyboards are useless. You can have my Epic 4G when you pry it from my cold dead hands...or replace it with another phone with a hardware keyboard. There is no substitute.

Russia is definitely, without a doubt or a question, the villain here.

Your statement assumes there is only one villain.

Russia is a villain. The U.S. is a villain. The current fascist-riddled Ukraine government is a villain. The prior authoritarian Ukraine government is a villain. And in the end, the ethnic Russians of Eastern Ukraine are fucked.

To be a real dick about it: Nobody moved your cheese, the cheese is simply no longer there.

Cheese, to extend the metaphor, does not simply disappear. If it's no longer there, someone moved it.

Fortunately, there's no shortage of free cheese in the form of torrents. The more the copyright cartel tightens its grip, the more content will slip through its fingers.

Uh, yeah, we can measure -1. The charge of an electron. The distance along the x-axis that I travel when I walk one meter west. The effect on a wave when it encounters an identical one 180 degrees out of phase.

Not at all. None of those things "are" -1. They are observable phenomena that we tag with the human invention, the word/concept, "-1". Mathematics is not an aspect of objective observable reality, it is a language that we have found useful for describing our observations.