...only to be defeated by a hill in the road.

Every little bump one of these cars hits already is making me think they're flashing their high beams because the angle of the light that should be pointed at the road is now pointing in my eyes.

Making it even brighter? W...T...F...

Well, perhaps why are we still using text-only to code?

We're not.

However, we're also not burdening the compiler with all this crap anymore -- it is expected you load such resources on demand instead of including it with your code in order to keep the memory footprint reasonable (just imagine the intro movie of some big game being part of its base code).

It wasn't always that way. Assemblers would often have directives to directly include a file as binary as part of the code. C did away with that (although converters for binary files to something a C compiler can understand exist). More new fangled language like for example Java allow you to just include the resources in a zip file (jar file) and load them on demand with a very simple construct.

Maybe that was the case a few years ago. Now it is just the phone that only comes in size 6. Don't have size 6? Too bad.

Apple is "special" alright, just not in the way you think.

And this will make a return.

Kamikaze drones will win the next major air engagement, as they're cheap and there's no human cost involved if you lose one. I don't understand why countries even bother with the F-35 or anything similar. Build an expendable drone that can outfly anything with a human pilot in it -- can even make it stealth if you really want to bother with it.

Slashdot works with Javascript disabled.

Your turn.

Add one extra line at the top of a python script, identifying which "dialect" it is. If it's not there... then its 2.6. I know shell scripts already have a mechanism for that, but it kinda breaks down when new incompatible interpreters insist on using the same name.

More likely, they fear the $50 quad core android sticks with quite decent 3d specs that you can just plug into the back of your TV. Add a bluetooth controller, and game away.

Perhaps you should interview some of those dead people that crashed their car in a tree, and ask them if they swerved because an approaching car had too bright headlights.

Round up all those non-connected people and lock them up. Let's start with all those losers without a Facebook account.. you must have something to hide if you're not regularly posting stupid pictures there.

Who should receive the putative fruits of economic spying by the government? Private companies? Which ones? In exchange for what? Paid to who? How has that been working out for us?

Ehr, seriously? That's easy. Since paying money for laws is perfectly legal in the US, you give private companies those secrets. Which ones? The ones that pay you the most. In exchange for what? More money of course.

As for how it is working out for you -- it is not, but it is for that elite 1% that owns all those companies.

You got Choice B wrong.

It is:

Choice B: Live in a less free country that pretends to be less vulnerable to a surprise attack.

I only drove the getaway car...

There'd be no NSA if people actually valued conscience over a fat paycheck. They didn't know? Now they do, yet I don't see masses of people leaving / striking either and simply let the NSA collapse under its own weight.

This is an internal function (private) that is not part of the API, although there are many similar functions that take a from/to index.

Programming languages only have a convenient relation to English. Programmers will write "toIndex" and actually mean "uptoButNotIncludingIndex". The name acts as a reminder of what it is, but the real details are in the specification of the function (the javadoc) that comes with every public API in Java.

Anyway, I've found it is quite common to have the "end" index mean upto but not including the end index when dealing with 0 based lists. This is because a very common case, where you want to do something all the way to the end of the list, you can just use the "length" of such a list as the end index without having to substract one from it.

Yeah, you can play fair (run the 100m), or you can play dirty (disable everyone else). Then it is just a matter of what is the easier feat to accomplish... training to become the fastest 100m sprinter or training to become the best dirt thrower.

I have a suspicion that dirt throwing is much easier.

As well-established companies, who are actually making money out of selling software, I'd say they stand to lose much more when API's become copyrighted.