Indeed, there is no silver bullet. But don't knock the agile movement for failing to deliver. Even Fred Brooks, in his latest book "The Design of Design", concludes that iterative development with intense user involvement (which are some of the core ideas in the Manifesto) is a better way to develop than a waterfall approach. In fact, iterative development goes way back to at least Boehm's spiral model, which he introduced in 1986. And even then it was probably not a new idea.

Why I don't like Twitter, apart from the reasons outlined in TFA, is that it is nothing more than a less capable, centralized RSS.

With RSS, I can subscribe to pretty much any type of content: blogs, search-results, news, you name it (the list is almost endless). The major thing here is that I can subscribe to any type of content using an RSS-reader of my choice, and RSS providers can use any tooling they choose. With Twitter, the type of content I can subscribe to is incredibly limited, and both myself and the authors are tied into a specific vendor (to boot: Twitter).

So I'm completely at a loss as to what the big deal with Twitter is.

Clearly this was a test run for an upcoming terrorist attack! If one downed pole can bring down a data center, imagine what 19 downed poles (the number of hijackers on 9/11) could do! It would destroy the economy and lead to famine in the land! Clearly, we need to restrict who can drive a car!! We need government tracking of all cars!!! Background checks for everybody requesting a drivers license!!!! A kill/switch on every vehicle!!!!! Its a dirty job, but someones gotta do it!

Well, I have an HTPC, but still I recently built and installed a DIY-version of the Squeezebox. Why? Because for listening to music an HTPC is a bit impractical (need to switch on TV, HTPC and Amp) and overkill (That's a full fledged PC used exclusively to play a dinky little FLAC/MP3). Also, it's nice to have an internet radio/alarm clock in your bedroom, or be able to distribute music throughout your home.

> That they're supposed to be smart, like you
> are, and therefore think the same things
> that you do?

No, but I did assume (apparently incorrectly) that people with a scientific/technical background have a desire to be informed and factual, to separate fact from hype, and to recognize when they have insufficient information to render judgement about something.

When this happened, it had already become clear that whatever was going on, these scientists did not fabricate or manipulate data in dubious ways as part of a grand conspiracy to keep funding for climate research flowing.

So yeah, I am disappointed that people I consider intelligent (and like it or not, having a degree does have some corellation to intelligence) ignored the aftermath, and have by now completely internalized the idea that these scientists acted in bad faith.

Sadly, a lot of damage is already done to the climate cause. The idea that these (and therefore, by extension, other) scientists are prone to manipulating their data to get the answers they want is now firmly entrenched in the public mind.

As an example, just he other day some colleagues of mine were discussing climate change, and when someone mentioned climategate, and how "those scientists" had tampered with their data, the response was a chorus of agreeing, everybody-know-THAT kind of nods. And these were all college/university graduates. Pretty depressing.

It always ticks me off when people talk about a piece of software as being "invented". One doesn't "invent" software. Software is designed, implemented, engineered, developed. All of those things, and more, but not "invented". Look it up in the dictionary.

On the contrary.

Especially BECAUSE NASA should focus its resources on those visionary missions does it make sense to shift to commercial partners for the initial launch part. Why? Because launching by itself is not all that interesting. There will never be a vehicle that will launch from Earth and fly to Mars in one go. The only sensible solution for manned deep-space missions is to develop pure space-vehicles, that never touch own on a solid surface. If NASA can simply purchase seats to LEO on a commercial launcher for its astronauts, this frees up a tremendous amount of resources it now spends on launchers to work on those deep-space vehicles.

Of course, this assumes there will be something to replace the moon-landing portion of Constellation. Since NASA is actually expected to get an increased budget in the next few years, despite a general budget-freeze in many departments, I have some hopes for this. They have to spend the money on something, after all.

I'm sure proportional fonts can be read faster than monospace fonts, but this is absolutely and completely irrelevant. In no way, shape or form is reading speed something that slows down developers.

The reason it's not widely used yet, and why it will not be widely used by individuals (a requirement for ENUM to become useful, IMHO), is because when registering an ENUM number costs EUR 45 signup fee + EUR 1.79/month, according to the website of one of the registrars that is currently contracted to sell ENUM numbers in the Netherlands.

I this on Facebook, and I can NOT confirm these claims. Nothing prevents me from setting the Search result privacy setting to "everyone" while setting my "About Me" privacy setting to "Friends Only", for example

Printers and scanners are excellent sources of scavenged parts for robot projects. They contain motors, stepper-motors, pulleys, belts, gears and all sorts of other useful bits.

The couple of times I looked into Gears, the main feature touted by Google was the ability to use your web apps when you're not connected to the internet. This was reason enough for me not to spend a lot of energy on Gears, as in practice, in this day and age, I never find a computer that is NOT connected to the internet.

So in short, I've never had a need for Gears.

Good point.

Even worse, contacts do not remain at the same spot on the retina. They move about a little bit with each eye-movement and blink. This is ok for a simple lens as long as the actual pupil remains fully covered, but for a screen it would be catastrophic. Imagine your monitor slamming down when you blink, and then slowly work its way back up (which is what a contact does).

I'm glad I'm not the only one wondering about this