though only if you identify the scope of the work. You need a bricklayer to build the house, but he needs to be educated if he's going to be the GC / project lead. Don't hire unskilled labor for a skilled position.

But it totally makes sense to hire basic codemonkeys for the grind work. You don't need a CS degree to maintain your site's javascript or write queries all day long.

specifically all the phishers and botnetters that register disposable domain names continuously. maybe that would at least be another thorn in their side?

"up to", that means "as long as our system is theoretically capable of 20gps, we can give you 1gbps without breaking any of the rules. enjoy your bits through our straw!"

That's one thing I'd change if I had the authority... new consumer protection law... "when advertising, you're not allowed to state any maximum possible customer value without also stating the minimum possible value using equal authority"

NaN is actually pretty simple to deal with using computers. If you use 16 bits to store a signed integer, you have 65,536 units to use. One of them needs to be 0, so you have an imbalance. -32768 to +32767 is common. But you can just use -32768 to represent NaN instead, and keep things slightly more tidy when handing overflows and underflows.

Then anytime NaN comes up at any point in the calculation or comparison, even when divided by or subtracted from itself, the result automatically equals NaN.

Nice and simple. Now go watch Numberphile and lose your afternoon watching all his other videos.

You'd think they would have to provide some sort of reason why this specific venue was chosen for this "dragnet" law enforcement. This isn't like license plate scanners where they're throwing them up all over the place on highways... this is a very specific deployment. If they're going to use the reason of "catching cell phone thieves" (which by itself seems to be a very trumped-up reason) you'd thing they would be expected to provide some justification, why they have any reasonable belief that any significant number of said theives are going to be there.

That reason could actually probably be dismantled now that they've announced they intend to BE there, any said thief would be very likely to avoid the venue as a result. So just based on that alone, they should be packing up?

It'd be like the police planning a raid on a local bar that had a track record of lots of underage drinkers. If news of the date/time of the raid gets out, it'd be pointless to go ahead as scheduled with the raid? If they went ahead with it even after being exposed, you'd have to assume that the "looking for undeage drinking" was just an excuse for the raid and there was some other specific reason that they didn't want to become public knowledge.

NASA scientists who think we can't move water to people

When you've got 10 units of water and 15 units of demand, you move the water, but that's 5 less for someone else. Califormia has a huge overdraw on their supply, and is already moving water in from other places, and isn't letting a drop leave to the south. (they're not too happy about california UNmoving their water, see how well "move the water" is working with the Rio)

This isn't a case of product sitting in a warehouse across the country collecting dust, it's a limited natural resource, and they're already drawing heavily from all the "easy" AND all the "not so easy" sources. Yes you can move the water, but you can be darn well sure they don't want to pay for that. That's a big part of the problem, there's too much red tape holding the cost of water down right now. If the price would rise with the scarcity of the resource as it really should, CA wouldn't be having this problem. But that wheel is broken, and the machine is dysfunctional as a result. And everyone's been livinng on borrowed time, like borrowing from the bank to prop up an unprofitable business, without actually fixing the business. That can't go on forever.

So much of CA's water is getting shipped out of state or evaporating due to their agriculture. That's where the whole "this is an arid state" thing comes into play. Sure you can move there and live there, but trying to grow thirsty fruit and nut trees there is just plain dumb, and SHOULD be uneconomical, but they aren't being charged for their water relative to the actual value of the resource, to keep it a viable business. All these farmers out there crying "this water shortage is going to put me out of business!", yeah, it is. And it SHOULD. You've been relying on a crutch for decades and now the crutch has rotted and collaped under your weight, and so you're going down. The politicians down there are more than willing to help keep you propped up, and have been doing so for decades, but now it comes down to basic physics - there's simply no water left for them to give you to keep you afloat. They'll bend over backwards to keep the industry going, but it just won't be enough, not anymore. You can keep your agriculture, but you're going to have to change what you're growing. A single walnut costs almost five galons of water to produce. Look at that walnut tree and tell me how many galons of water that takes. You just don't DO that in a location where water is scarce, unless you're an idiot or have a government that's being an idiot for you and giving it away. "Just move the water!" uhhh... how about "Just MOVE the TREE?!" It makes a lot more sense to plant a tree over there than to try to move all that water over HERE.

"We live in an arid and semi-arid state and we need to start acting that way." - Jay Famiglietti, a senior water scientist with Nasa.

"arid" is one step away from "desert". "Arid" basically means "deserts are the only dryer places on the planet". And unfortunately, a majority of the developed parts of california are in the arid portions of the state.

Though at the rate they're emptying their groundwater, it's going to start looking like a desert. Drilling is just borrowing water from tomorrow. Eventually that debt is going to cause them to bottom out, and the water supply is going to suddenly slip into a steeper dive and cause a lot of "shock damage" due to their not being willing to slow down their consumption gradually. It's like the famous athelete that retires and spends money like the bank is bottomless, and suddenly finds out he's almost broke. Should have put on the brakes a lot sooner, and now has to really clamp down to avoid complete disaster, but is in for one heck of a shock on lifestyle changes to come.

FWIW, the law very rarely supports "finders keepers losers weepers". The short story on that is that "physical posession does not prove or establish transfer of ownership". The only time that has a chance of winning is when the loser fails to establish they ever had ownership. But in this case, she gave it to them, and that 100% transfers ownership. Legally, they owe her nothing, and would be unlikely to lose in a court case.

Someone above cited big business as above this law, such as a "bank error in your favor" getting yoinked back. No, in that case when you sign the paperwork to set up the account, there will be specific wording in there saying you agree that bank errors are NOT in your favor and you will be legally obligated to return any cash withdrawn under those circumstances. The only difference here as far as the bank is concerned is they didn't stop you before you got money from them (unlke say, a bounced check) and so now there's a bit of additional burden to having go to after you to get the money back. (it usually doesn't work that way, so that just tends to get them wound up)

what's with this "RTM" term?

I'm going to have sooo much difficulty not auto-translating that to "RTFM" when I hear or read it...

there are a lot of them for sale, they're very cheap. http://www.ebay.com/itm/221602... is the first one I spotted. They usually run on four AA. That one even has a light in it, that's a feature mine doesn't. (but hey, mine was free)

I have a rechargeable battery bank, a bank that uses 4xAA drycells, and a few 12v-powered usb sources. The drycell one stays in my globebox with some AAs, as it can be "recharged" on short notice with a trip to any store. The rechargeable one is in my center console, to be grabbed if I need to recharge my phone. That one also has a simple little bright white LED light on it and makes a nice impromptu flashlight. (IMHO every battery bank should have this feature, look for it if you are shopping around, it also has a charge level indicator and can be switched off without unplugging the device, but alas only one USB port)

On the floor is one 7 port power station, that can supply two 2amp and 5 1amp ports off the truck's 12v power, good for rapid-charging high-demand things like tablets or other banks. Its daily duty is to power my GPS, a pair of USB speakers on my dash, and keep my iphone charged. Most of the "high power usb chargers" are garbage and a waste of money. This one's actually designed for it and speced to do the job. (http://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/USB-3.0/Hubs/7-Port-Dedicated-USB-Charging-Station~ST7CU35122)

I know several people that have those cheap usb-personal-fans and use a bank to run them, they keep them in their purse and pull them out when they're somewhere hot and want to cool off.

I'm also ordering two DC-DC converters shortly, one that steps down and one that steps up. It occurs to me that I can use the step-up to generate 12v etc from a 5v USB source, which may come in handy.

"Everyone trying to manipulate search results"

Though just because "everyone else is doing it" doesn't make it right. This particular one is just something more people would like to see action taken on.

(I won't shed a single tear for scientologists gettting a slashdot effect)

wait, didn't ISIS just claim responsibility for this?

There's nothing "free" about getting ads and spam thrown at you. If advertisement was free, they wouldn't charge you to do it.