I only hope that formats like these drive production of more UHD displays, bringing their price down. I don't want to watch UHD movies. I want cheap, high-res monitors for my computers.

Of course, I didn't follow his reasoning one bit:

Using 10-bit color may end up limiting chroma sub-sampling to 4:2:0.

The two details are completely orthogonal to each other!

In any case, 4:2:0 at UHD gives you as much color information as 4:4:4 at HD. You'd have a very hard time noticing the chroma subsampling....

My favorite things to laugh at were:

• The do-it-yourself NECKpro home traction device
• The laser scalp-stimulating helmet, to help reverse hair loss.
• The giant wooden airplane propellers
• The wall-sized crossword puzzle

Well, among everything else in there. It seems that SkyMall has moved on from these favorites. But, they were reliable point-and-laugh items when I was flying regularly a few years ago.

Isn't that a common pattern, though? Spin off the few profit centers that are actually profitable, and then fold the rest of the business?

I learned programming in Microsoft BASIC, assembly language and a touch of Pascal, prior to reaching college. I don't use any of those languages now. (Ok, I still program in assembly language, but for different processors.)

As long as it's actual programming, with variables, data structures, and code to manipulate those things, then great! I don't really care if it's VB, Python, TCL, Lua, Perl, C++14, Delphi, Haskell, LISP, Erlang...

The real point is to open up the computer as a programmable device, and to get kids seeing the computer as something they can extend themselves with their own creativity. For that to happen, you want to choose a language that students can pick up quickly enough to see interesting results early on. You don't want their first meaningful program to come in the last weeks of a year-long class.

Interesting. I work in Texas also—and lived here full time since 1997—and I've found the environment at my employer to be very mature and inclusive, with women at all levels of the company. That includes my previous boss. When she retired (after 33 years at the company), she had risen to the rank "Fellow," which is a fairly high title at the company.

However, I don't know that the fact we're in Texas has all that much to do with it. One startup I interviewed with here definitely had a culture that was tilted in more the direction of a frathouse mentality, I think. They offered to take me to lunch at Hooters for an informal interview, and hinted they sometimes do lunch as more interesting places. *wink* *wink* I didn't join that company.

I see your point about my use of the term "rise". Overall, things have gotten more inclusive, not less. The specific moniker brogrammer is a recent one, and is perhaps more indicative of programming / development appealing to a wider range of personality types, including extroverted "bros", as opposed to shy and/or introverted geeks. Just the term itself is inherently gender biased.

Key word there: CONSENT. Harassment is inherently non-consensual.

"Everybody knows boys will be boys." Bullshit. Treating creepy, gross, harassing behavior as somehow normal, and that "everybody knows" it'll happen just perpetuates it. Not acceptable.

Read some of the horror stories from DEFCON 20. Whether or not you're there to get laid, none of that shit's acceptable, period.

The goal of diversity initiatives is to make the pool of qualified candidates more diverse. But it doesn't say anything about the differing attributes having anything to do with how qualified you are. Yes, diversity includes gender diversity. But, that has absolutely nothing to do with the (correct, but meaningless) assertion that people don't program with their genitals.

My statement was meant to be read as "We need more vaginas in here programming, as if vaginas have some role in the process of programming." They don't. And to suggest "diversity initiatives" imply that they do is a strawman.

And you know what? 30+ years will have been a pretty good run for "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu."

It sounds like your workplace is respectful, and that race and gender rightfully don't factor into your opinions of each others' work. It sounds like your workplace happens to be diverse, which helps keep everyone centered on what does matter (technical chops), as opposed to what doesn't (gender, race, age).

But what are your feelings on the rise of brogrammers? Sexual harassment at conferences? Companies with cultures that do fixate on gender / race / what-have-you? Typically these cultures arise when the population is too insular, too homogeneous.

Diversity isn't about saying "we need more vaginas in here programming." What an irrelevant strawman. Rather, it's about preventing the myopic echo chamber that can result when things are too homogeneous.

Right. But DerYeghiayan's testimony is just testimony, not factual evidence. The whole point of this cross examination is to discredit the testimony. Testimony doesn't rise to the same level as fact by default, as humans are unreliable. It's not the same as hard evidence or accepted facts that are undisputed in a case.

I have better memories of Win98 SE than Win95 OSR2. USB was actually stable, at least on my machine.

With WinXP, it finally was reasonable at SP2. Prior to that... glitch-tastic!

I'm currently using Win7 SP1 on my work laptop, configured to use the classic interface. To me, it's like WinXP SP5 or something. ;-) For the most part, nice and stable. Although the WiFi network detection is still slow, unreliable and occasionally requires reboots to work.

Haven't touched Win 8.x and don't plan to any sooner than necessary. I hope to skip it entirely, as I did with WinME and Vista.

The time lady!

At the tone the time will be One Fifty Nine and Forty Seconds. *BEEP* At the tone the time will be One Fifty Nine and Fifty Seconds. *BEEP* At the tone the time will be Two O'clock Exactly. *BEEP*