I can't wait to be able to get an @bigbrother email address.

Since the government can eat loses indefinitely, it's going to be fun to see people whine and complain and demand more taxes so their internet can reliably work.

Speaking of roads and public schools...

The XKCD plot just makes me see gold and white at different levels of brightness. But I did find this color illusion featuring yellow and blue. The dogs are actually the same color, which you see if you look at them individually through a small aperture
http://i.imgur.com/sh5NwCK.jpg

Make it pretty obvious that at some point your brain switches from wanting to see blue to wanting to see yellow based on the color context. It would appear some of us are slightly different in where transitions like that occur.

There are a few reasons. First, a federal solution makes sense because the problem is systemic throughout the nation. Further, these abuses of local/regional monopolies are happening at the hands of a handful of national companies. Finally, I don't think that local PUC's are able to understand and manage the issue at hand.

Those are *really* antiquated, but they're not government regulations. These government regulations are even more antiquated than the common carrier Title II regulations, and we (Americans) are still forced to live by them.

The rules have only been modified only twenty seven times in over 200 years.

Silly, antiquated regulations.

Yep, found that. Apparently a lot of Python programmers aren't aware of the """ thing because I've only ever seen the obnoxious escape character used.

And people keep harping on the forced indentation just like they keep harping on the lack of a start menu in Windows 8 because it's really annoying and adds nothing.

And exactly, it's the noobs that don't indent properly. I'd like the language to not force it so they can be spotted easily. Having to force the indentation issue tells you you're working with a lot of noobs.

All the Python I've seen used an escape character rather than the """ which is a pretty silly way of doing it. But at least it can be done.

C# uses @"

But no, it won't change my mind because forced indentation is a non-starter. It's just an aggravation that doesn't add anything.

"End" just reminds me too much of BASIC and Visual BASIC.

Forcing indentation and not having multi-line strings (without the need for escape characters) are the two biggest oversights of these hipster languages. C# finally realized that SQL is a big part of modern coding and you need multi-line strings to make inline queries readable. Not every query needs to be a stored proc and you often need to write inline queries to do what you want for testing before you kick it over to the DBA to make it a stored proc.

It's like MS releasing an operating system without a start menu.

It's incredibly annoying, completely unnecessary and not that difficult to implement.

DBA's do not appreciate having to remove your stupid escape characters rather than simply copying and pasting the query you wrote.

Forcing code indentation is a sign you're going to be working with a bunch of "coders" who took a weekend course and not actual software engineers.

If you need a language to force you to do what you should be doing and naturally do because of experience, then you're not very good at your job.

There are far more important things in software engineering than being a white space nazi. Something that "coders" don't understand and it shows in their languages of choice.

What's really pathetic about python is that while being obsessed with white space, it can't handle multi-line strings without escape characters. Derp. Indentation essential for readability. Being able to write SQL queries with proper indentation, not important.

It's not surprising that most things people like about these "hip" languages are things you can do (and actually do) in any other language if you're actually skilled. And doing them in the "hip" languages is no indication of skill level.

What does media exposure in America really do for them, though? Their base of power is over in the middle east. The only way they can possibly relish in our horrified reactions is if they open up access to American news media and the internet. That's the opposite of what they seem to want to do, however -- they are shutting down the internet and other outside sorces of information.

The way, I see it, these videos must be really for the benefit of their internal politics. They can't exactly brag that they've taken down an American aircraft carrier, but they can at least brag that they have done something horrific to an American hostage which paints them as having some kind of power.

An open media exchange would play to our advantage, not theirs. A world in which all the terrorists are posting their misdeeds on youtube and jeering us is a world where they are one or two clicks away from seeing how much more enjoyable our society is and hearing our counterpoints.

How do you to prevent your friends from posting the same information? Ordinarily, I wouldn't mind shouting from the rooftops that I am going to a party. I wouldn't even care if cops heard me. But if the cops are going to survey my friends' casual posts -- "Going to a party at Brent's!" -- and guarantee flashing lights out front once their algorithms pinpoint where it is, that a bit different. It's less like having a cop reading information you have put up on a flyer and more like the cops having wiretaps on all of your associates. Which would be fine, with a good reason and a court order. But I don't like the idea that by sharing our days in a normal way online we are all effectively spying on each other on law enforcement's behalf.

I don't think you understand, they want to stop storing explosives on ships. The ships will be carrying the explosives whether they are to be used or not. Will better diplomacy change how chemistry works? Unless you think a few stunning diplomats could render maintaining a defensive force unnecessary. In which case, you may want to check up on whether there are any other big military and/or economic powers with extra-territorial ambitions right now.

"Hey, you notice some odd grammar, word choice, and spelling variance in this code?"
"Oh yeah, must be Maxo-Texas. That's his anonymization software."

Do we really need to establish a cult of science in which the gods are displeased if we don't use enough syllables in our word for "guess"? The words can be used interchangably. A "scientific hypothesis" does often catch more suggestion of testable, derived predictions, but it's also frequently used in a more general sense, just as "guess" can be used in a more noble sense.

I am all about respecting the scientists who invest a lot of work, but the fact they've done a lot of work doesn't make them more likely to be correct in a discussion of novel facts. There's no way to assign a probability to it and say "There is a 25% chance this explanation is correct because of this much work we put into it." In any case, the work is in testing and verifying the hypothesis, which is the science part, not in coming up with it (although work put into testing does of course put the researcher in a position to make further hypotheses).

Anti-science folk should be ignored. We don't need to scheme and manipulate to make sure our presentation of science leaves them on the poorest footing to rebut us, because, unless they are using science, their rebuttal is irrelevant. IMHO science teaches us to be humble about we have to say. Acknowledging the fact there may be flaws and we can and should be proved wrong is the whole difference between science and wild speculation. I don't think we should be provoked into saying otherwise just to try to entice the crackpots to our side.

One of the beauties about 140 characters is you have to think about what you want to say and how you say it. Editing for brevity often makes it punchier and better phrased. Many are the occasion when I have written a joke or insight for facebook, modified it for twitter, and then posted the twitter version in both cases because the twitter version was just better.

300 characters is not almost as quick to read it is quite clearly twice as long to read. For me, that would mean that instead of having time to follow 100 people on twitter I would only be able to follow 50. (Another of the other main features of twitter is allowing followers to interact with popular figures with their fans which I imagine also benefits greatly from a terser format.)

Personally, I think twitter has the potential to be one of the social media that survives in the long term. Yes it has obvious limitations but I get much more bang for my buck reading those condensed updates than I do using any other media platform. Sometimes when life gets busy I will quit other sites but twitter remains perfectly manageable and useful. It's great for news, politics, humor, and interacting with relatively large numbers of people. If you have an essay you need to share, you can link to it.

Some examples of how much you can pack into “It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.” -- Albert Camus

By 98 to 1, U.S. Senate passes amendment saying climate change is real, not a hoax

Personally, when "the senate just voted" is linked to something in the summary, I would expect the link to tell me more about the outcome.