Actually, the graph you posted was quite cherry-picked, I moved the start date of each trend to the start of the indicated year or to the previous year (if it was already at the start of a year) and now they all show an upwards slope.

You're just playing games with the data.

The market for dev kits can't expand in time to meet consumer demand, nor would it be cost-effective to try to do so. It takes a lot of capital to ramp up to full consumer production capacities. And, any dev kit taken out of the hands of actual developers will tend to limit eventual dev support at launch time. It's crucial to get those devices into the hands of actual developers in order to ensure there is actual support for the product at launch time. There's no need to expand access to this particular product, because it's not a consumer product.

Very true, I didn't mean to imply they don't. All I'm saying is that blowing up a shopping mall is a page three story, while blowing up a 747 is a page one story - nothing more than that. I'd guess that airline bombings just play into an already existing fear of flight for many, so the psychological impact tends to be magnified beyond the simple fact of the incident.

As far as why the US hasn't been hit (I assume you're talking about shopping malls, because we've certainly been hit plenty of other ways) - I'd guess it's perhaps because most people that *would* like to do so would logistically have problems getting to the US along with their bombs. It could also be that any major terror campaign against the US would be likely to bring down the wrath of the US military / law enforcement against said organization and any supporters. It's hard to say, really.

Honestly, I find it hard to get into the mind of people who randomly kill and maim civilians, including innocent children, so who knows what they're thinking. I'm glad the US is relatively free of terrorism, but I wish the rest of the world didn't have to suffer at the hands of those animals either.

Change that to "major catastrophic accidents of large commercial planes". Keep in mind that those statistics you linked to include passenger vehicles with greater than six vehicles (i.e. short-hop puddle jumpers or private aircraft). If you only include larger passenger aircraft, the number of incidents would probably dramatically. Note that higher on the page is a summary of *major* incidents of note. As the article itself points out, the Malaysian Boeing 777 is the only major large airliner accident this year, and similar incidents occur only once every few years.

You neglect the primary reason for taking a plane down when there are bigger and softer targets available (shopping malls, theaters, huge lines at the airport) - the psychological impact. People are already, whether they want to admit it or not, slightly terrified of flying at a subconscious level. Hurtling through the air in an aluminum tube at 30,000 feet is insanely unnatural act, and everyone knows it, but we've made it as safe as reasonably possible. People want to feel as though everything that can be reasonably done is being done to prevent guns or bombs from being carried on board.

Terrorism is a political statement. You want your message to be heard as loudly as possible, and there's nothing like taking down a plane for doing that, since a plane going down unexpectedly is guaranteed to generate world-wide headlines.

Those nagging doubts? They're the manifestation of your political identity conflicting with the science.

And this is how you rationalize your refusal to accept the science. You use selective thinking to focus on minor issues while ignoring what should be the glaring obvious parts.

Are you referring to this? It seems like a rather minor bug.

Except that it hasn't been shown to be "nothing but statistical bullshit". I have yet to see a credible refutation of their claim that 97% of the published scientific articles that take a position on climate change support the consensus position that global warming is happening and driven by human activity. The argument that I'm assuming that you are referring to is the one made by Anthony Watts that they should not have excluded papers that do not discuss global climate change or global warming. However, it seems fair to me that when you are looking at positions taken on a issue to only look at papers which discuss the issue.

That's a very interesting interpretation of the IPCC report, but one that most people do not get after reading the report. I strongly suspect it is a result of more selective thinking. You place undue emphasis on minor details of the report like a decrease in confidence of the link between severe weather and global average temperature and the lower of the top end of reasonable climate sensitivity, while ignoring the increase in the bottom end of reasonable climate sensitivity to conlcude that the "position is weaker than ever" while I think unbiased readers generally come away with the impression that uncertainty has decreased (because both the upper and lower limits have tightened).

Personally, I didn't believe in global warming when I first heard about it in the 90s, but since then I have been convinced that it is true. My experience with so called "skeptics" like yourself has played no little part in that belief. I have found that the actual scientific proponents tends to have well researched and detailed explanations for why and how it's happening, but the so-called skeptics tend to have arguments based on emotion and finger-pointing. Time and again you, in particular, have disappointed me with claims that were poorly backed up. Invariably when I investigate your claims I find them to be blown out of proportion, mistaken, or referencing some kook's incomprehensible arguments*.

I could, in theory, be falling for the same blinded by personal ideology issue (in your case, I believe it is your libertarian political beliefs), but fortunately (in this case) I don't have many strong political beliefs, I don't identify strongly with greens, liberals, conservatives, libertarians, socialists or communists. So I'm inclined to believe that my personal views aren't filtering my view on this issue. Are you sure you can say the same?

* My personal favourite was when you linked to a kook who claimed the greenhouse effect didn't exist because greenhouses are encased in glass and the planet is not.

Slashdot needs to knock it off with these "Child genius is going to totally upstage all those stupid companies and make something amazing!" stories they run some time. The thing is, they are essentially never true and we as geeks should know better.

Smart kids often have the problem of thinking they know everything. They have the brains to be well above their peers at pretty much everything, and so have a confidence in their knowledge and intelligence, but lack the experience to understand the limitations of both in the larger world. Hence they'll think that they have found an "obvious" solution to a problem in the world that nobody else has managed to think of. I'm sure most of us felt like that at one time or another as children.

However, it turns out that smart kids become smart adults, and those smart adults get job making the thing we use, solving the problems we have, and so on. So, usually if there's something that hasn't been solved, the reason is that there is NOT a simple solution. There isn't something that a kid will just say "Oh look, here's a better way to do it." Rather it is a complex problem and thus the solutions are complex.

So Slashdot needs to quit with stories on shit like this unless there' something to back it up. A printer actually gets released based on this kids design? Ok that's a story. Some kid says he can do way better than anyone else? That's not a story. That is, to quote the Reapers, "A confidence borne of ignorance." It's not news.

Some people criticize any language that doesn't meet some sort of "purity" standard, but languages and programming standards evolve over time, but perhaps they haven't clearly thought through the alternatives. There are only three possibilities that I can see.

1) The language stagnates, stubbornly refusing to fix flaws or grow over time.
2) The language rejects old "mistakes" and breaks backward compatibility in order to change or add new features, fragmenting the community.
3) The language grows to incorporate new features while retaining backward compatibility, thus becoming "bloated" or "a mess".

Personally, I think option 3 is the most attractive option of the bunch, and, if I'm not mistaken, this seems to describe Perl fairly well (I'm more familiar with C++, which has a lot of similarities in the "old cruft and baggage" department).

Obviously, many newer languages have the benefit of design-wise hindsight, but new languages also have an uphill battle to carve out a proper ecosystem and prove to be a long-term viable programming candidate. Some programmers are attracted to new and shiny things (we all are to some degree), but for serious work, devs need a language that can be counted on as a workhorse.

That's been my impression of Python as well. Fragmentation and stagnation, despite some assurances to the contrary. Granted, impressions don't necessarily equate to reality, but there you go.

It feels like some language devs tend to discount the importance of backward-compatibility for developers, or the longevity of code in general. People complain about all the cruft of C++ (which it does have in spades, of course), but part of the enormous success of C++ was undoubtedly due to the refusal of the standards committee to impose wholesale incompatibilities upon the language, even when that would have made serious improvements, and of course, the original decision to make C++ compatible with C as a starting point. Had they done otherwise, the result likely would have been the stillbirth of the language or the later fragmentation or damn near stagnation you see in Python, where years after the release of 3.x, developers *still* are stuck on 2.x because of the compatibility issues.

No, really. So a big problem these days is people damaging their hearing from listening at excessive volumes on their portable devices. This is a real issue and is going to have some nasty effects as people age.

Part of the problem is just people wanting to listen too loud, but part of the problem is shitty earbuds. If you have shitty earbuds, that don't seal off outside noise well, don't sound good, and have poor power handling, it is more likely you drive them too loud to compensate. Also, the poor power handling means that when you do drive them, they start to clip and distort, which raises high frequency harmonics, which causes more damage.

Given what a big presence Apple has in the portable music market, their shitty earbuds are a real issue. It would go a ways to helping the situation if they'd include some earbuds that weren't worthless. They don't need to be great, just not worthless, properly designed.

There is lots on there. A big bit of content that'll do 60fps no problem is video games. Lots of channels that feature games in various forms. So they'll be able to show content at 60fps no issue.

Also many AVCHD cameras do 60fps these days. It is part of the AVCHD 2.0 spec, but some like Panasonic did it before the spec update. So a lot of individuals have cameras that'll shoot 60fps no issue, and if Youtube will take it, they can upload it as is.

We get to have cheat codes whenever we want and you can go shove your DLC up your ass. Just fire up a memory editor/debugger, CheatEngine being a free purpose designed one, and you are good to go.

The whole "selling cheat codes" thing is just so scummy. Particularly since I think it can lead to the "pay2win" mentality of "Maybe we should make this harder, so people need to give us money for cheats!"

Only if there's some kind of spec guarantee. If we have a contract where I promise to deliver a system of X spec to you for Y dollars then yes, I have to do that, or refund your money. However if I say "I'm trying to make a new system, here's the specs we are aiming for, want to invest?" You can't then get mad if it falls short, not everything ends up being the same from design to implementation (ask Intel with regards to NetBurst).

Ever have a look at your bank's investment notices? "Investment and insurance products: Are Not FDIC Insured, Are Not Bank Guaranteed, May Lose Value, Are Not Deposits, Are Not Insured by Any Federal Government Agency, Are Not a Condition to Any Banking Service or Activity." Investment carries a risk of lack of return. When you invest you may lose your money, including your principal.

Now, the people you invest with have a duty to do what they say, they can't just take your money and spend it on hookers and blow. However if they make a good faith effort and fail, well then sucks to be you. That is the risk you take. You can't get angry and sue them because they should have done it better.

So if you invested in bitcoin mining hardware and the company did indeed deliver said hardware, it just didn't end up being as good as you or they hoped, well you really don't have a case.