Back in the day, OpenIt! :) I think I even wrote some of that code. How times change, but ObjC still is the best damn mistake to ever happen in programming.

Pride is certainly one of them, and they spell it out in the promo. I have to hand it to the PR group at the UM that seem to have done a better job of actually finishing their project than the HPH have done to date. Setting up testing apps, fixtures are all great, but really what is the world is this going to do for practical aviation based on technology that is 100s of years old now? What is the economic and ecological footprint of this project? To achieve a goal, sure it is notable. But is it really worth it in the careers and advancement of education? I ask, wouldn't the money, time be better spent on more practical and useful applications? I say yes.

The current status quo can continue to grow, demand is ever higher every day. The source of freedom will be some other form of fuel, sun, electric, gas, hydrogen, whatever. However limited, the world will demand personal travel freedoms and markets resulting. Its just the way it will be, and the poor or unable to afford the costs will be in the bus watching others eating at the diner they just passed.

Today it would cost billions, and take years to do this. Just how far has the US come in flexible able engineering? It has gone backwards.

The 12C just keeps on using that wonderful notion of stacks. Makes life easy. Check out FORTH for those that want to do stacked computations and learn TIL work. Or Postscript as well.

Its really sad to read this type of article, in fact companies have now completely commoditized the human element of the business. Get the economy in such a dire strait allowing companies and the people they 'employ' to gladly accept the Orwellian aspects of today's employment options. Its a win win win. Government loves it because the average intelligence level of employment is dwindling, less intelligence where daily (yes, meant this way, a job is just a day away from being unemployment checks), employer loves it because they can get rid of dodos without much resistance making for a 'dynamic' business model and finally the employee loves it otherwise they'd be out on the street where they belong due to lack of education or ability. See, it does work well in America. The downsizing and sell off of America to the lowest bidder via the free system, unregulated and open to competition is now in full swing.

10 years ago it was confusing enough with what could be seen as reliable product APUs fro AMD with 1.4 ghz here, and 1.23 ghz there, name changes to meaningless marketing numbers and names. So, I'll stay ignorant and simply ignore these 'breakthrough' numbers and buy product instead of specifications.

be an issue. The problem is how poorly is the infrastructure designed and implemented to allow one moron one key stroke to cause such havoc? Apparently it is very weak and susceptible.

Unless your target is the side of a building. I'm betting that in 10000 shots from a big cannon type rifle (.50 cal or bigger?) the likelihood of a prone shooter hitting the head of a human like that of a fearless leader or not is going to be about none. I'm not worried about this being important for distance shooting like 2 miles. But .6 miles, it matters.

Until the day you can hold up a document in front of your iBhone camera and have it snap and convert that document with 99%+ accuracy and have spell and grammatical checking solve the other 1% accurately to 99% also, meaning 99.99% conversion is done properly in any language, the technology won't be tolerated by end users. That will take more as you say than Tesseract, as you so well pointed out. Google should stop whoring themselves as OpenSource focused and just do the right thing by purchasing outright and pushing to the open market the tech that exists. Then others will come in and make the move to do better, and the model of improved software continues.

Slashdot has become formula boring. Quite a long time ago. This is verifiable, and not meant as flamebait. If the mods would stop acting like scripts without some AI built in for content /. would be once again a viable worthwhile place to contribute on a regular basis, rather than drive-bye train wreck contribution.

where doing business at all in the US will require that all consumer data be stored and then anal-ized and offered to the Police State we now live. Its going to get really messy when the union itself stops producing KY to make the process just a little more painful than it already is... Withdraw-pleasure-center syndrome coming.

That is a good point, and the intent is/was good. However, it still sadly constitutes theft due leaving without payment. Now, leave and IOU might be different. It really depends on what kind of agreement you have with the establishment. If it was so tight you could leave and come back and pay in full later, likely you would know the owner and/or managers and call them or the police and have this whole thing settled in a matter of minutes (maybe 10-15). If you were that close to them, sticking around to pay in full would not be an issue, and strengthen the bond you have with your local grocer. My take on all of this is the people that took and didn't pay were thieves, knowingly taking without paying and thinking they would not get caught. Whether or not is an inconvenience that the registered were locked up or not is certainly not at all justification for what is right or wrong. If someone thinks stealing food from a store is justifiable at any level, for any reason, then we are moving to a third world model of rioting/looting thinking before the catastrophe even hits. Image what it will be like when folks are actually in need of food/services and the options are not even available (gasp, third world as usual).

Moving stuff around a store and not putting it back is just a hassle to the establishment, but not illegal. Changing price tags is illegal, intent to defraud. Leaving with groceries not paid is illegal, theft. Scanning one's own items, paying in full and leaving is perfectly cool. Not putting items back on the shelf is fine, a problem but not theft and not likely illegal unless the intent is to disrupt the establishments ability to conduct business. Then it would seem more of a civil matter for the court to take up and settle for loss of revenue of damages due to cost of restocking. I think it would be fine with a check as long as there was a way for the check-rite system to work without a cashier. As for the store shutting down and being an inconvenience to the shopper, the shopper does have a rite to file with the BBB (at least in the USA) and also blog online about the situation. In other countries, that may vary. A legal IOU signed is indeed a civil note and in most countries would be substantial evidence of the person's debt and recoverable. These are my views, some of sound and founded and others are speculative.

Taking anything in most societies without paying is theft, in some cases you lose a hand. In some you get people hoping you come back and do the right thing. The mechanism or justification of theft doesn't override the intent and in many cases the consequences. I wish people would stop trying to infer that somehow equipment, technology or something A, B or C is somehow responsible or justifies the actions of criminals.