Ahh, brushed aluminum laptops. Copying Macs is such a waste of tiem and effort. Almost everybody does this badly. I'm amazed that no one bothers to copy the older, popular Thinkpads, which are no longer available new.

Please mod this one up

If, upon reflection, after writing your joke, it falls flat, please consider not pressing the Submit button.

"Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software" by Richard Stallman: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html

This illustrates one of the key reasons software (that is, algorithms) shouldn't be patentable: the field moves so fast that 20-year patent protection isn't useful.

So what's your stance on RSA, one of the early software patents, which is still used everywhere?

She did a postdoc in applied mathematics and has a bachelors degree in engineering. Look at her resume.

You are a fucking idiot.

It may not be as stupid as you think, just naive. She even forgave the scammer, which I believe suggests he provided some great conversation and (fake) friendship. Remember guys, great conversation to women can be as good as a strip tease to men. Also, unless she spent all the money (it doesn't say), $300,000 to a 76 year old is not the same as $300,000 to a 26 year old. Any older person with that much spare money has all their needs taken care of, except for companionship, perhaps. The only obvious losers are her heirs, who should just get jobs anyway.

This sounds like bullshit. I could easily say, "I work with numerous white guys all day, and all of them are racist", even though I don't know the first thing about any of them.

All of you guys are lying. I've heard numerous white guys talk ad nauseum about numerous unqualified black people with all their advantages, for the past 30 years. 1) You probably work with 1 or 0 black people. 2) You all are complaining about the same black person you saw in a TV ad. 3) Your employers are cowards if they are afraid to fire (these hypothetical) incompetent black workers. Don't blame black people for this, even if it's just your imagination.

Frankly, R shouldn't be your first language, and probably not even your second.

R is not a general purpose programming language, even though you can write R programs. There are R programming courses (Johns Hopkins, Coursera), but you can get pretty far with using R as a statistical calculator, without ever writing a complete program (ala Octave or Matlab).

It's OK. Everyone knows he's just making up a random cause-effect scenario to support his argument. He thinks the number of black women with illegitimate children or alcohol/drug addiction in 1950s was so high that we had to "wait" for someone with a clean record. I know this offends the average Slashdot reader, but it's amazing how racial stereotypes cloud this guy's judgement. Drug addiction among black women in Alabama in the 1950s was practically nonexistent, while alcoholism was extremely rare for black women. And if you doubt this, you might at least agree that drug addiction/alcoholism/unwed children are much more common today than decades ago. The guy is projecting 1980s racial stereotypes decades into the past.

No it isn't. It's not destroying the industry. It just makes you upset. There is a difference. No "qualified" white guys are being laid off, so I'm sure you'll be OK.

In the end, many people will find that dropping a few buzzwords on their resume is easier than going into business for themselves.

I know Timothy is going to mod me down for this, but just go to soylentnews.org .