Another thing that should be banned is one- or two-second yellow lights. At every intersection in my area (Chesterfield County, VA) where they've shortened the duration of a yellow light, accidents have spiked dramatically. The original reason for the implementation of such was so that more tickets could be written, but as usual, the PHB's in the county offices didn't acknowledge that costs for police, ambulances and fire-engines to respond to an accident scene would outweigh any additional revenue.

Sorry to reply to myself, but I have one thing to add: the person who maintains this blog should most certainly have a technical writing background.

Change-logs should be strictly for internal use! 1) Log entries will contain technical shorthand that is meaningless to novices. 2) Opening these logs up exposes the company to all kinds of liability. 3) Do you think most people want to wade through mostly trivial and redundant entries? The proper forum to introduce meaningful new features to the public is in a blog. It goes without saying that this blog should be actively maintained and have at least one person whose sole job is maintaining it and filtering information from the technical teams, packaging it for public consumption.

Why do we not hear more about nand2tetris.org and the wonderful work Mssrs Nisan and Schocken have done? They teach computing concepts from first principles, and in a way that's fun and engaging. I say this is perfect for introducing a gifted youngster to the wonderful world of computing.

I say 8.9" as opposed to the 7" so he can view pages using a larger font and have that extra 2" diagonally for more screen real estate. You can ditch the Mayday button and save $150 ($229 vs $379). If he has you, why would he need Mayday? :)

You dolts! It's the Flying Spaghetti Monster(tm)!

...there are armies of developing-world workers willing to solve these things for fractions of a penny per GOTCHA. If only we could align incentives properly to harm scammers and their armies of solvers, without being a pain in the arse for legitimate users.

Powell was the industry's boot-licker when he headed the FCC. Is anybody surprised by his stance?

Even worse, Knight will probably file an insurance claim, and then write off any deductible and premium hikes as a cost of doing business. Oh yeah, and pass those on as increased costs to any customers or clients. Nothing like double-dipping in case like this. I mean we can't pass by a golden opportunity to bugger tax-payers and clients, can we?

Mod parent up.

This is why I favour X Prizes to solve various challenges as opposed to an expanded patent regime. X Prizes also solve the pesky problem of some government bureaucrat picking someone s/he thinks will be a winner. When people say they disapprove of government subsidies because it promotes government picking winners, they're not completely accurate. When government picks the 'how' and 'who' of solving a problem rather than the 'what' (i.e., desired outcome), it's merely picking the party it believes will come out on top, based mostly on cronyism, must less so on some much-vaunted and usually exaggerated 'breakthrough' that is merely promising rather than actually solving the problem. With X Prizes, at least, the money can't be claimed until some party comes forward with a demonstrable (not merely claimed or promised) solution to said problem.

We must consider the distinct possibility that shoes-on-the-ground CIA operators and their handlers and analysts told Cheney through appropriate channels that there was no evidence of WMD's, but he didn't like that answer because he had vested interests in reality being the opposite -- so after the fact he could claim, 'Shucks, I guess there weren't any WMD's after all, but the doggone CIA fed me rubbish intelligence so blame them for getting us into that kerfuffle.' He had already made his money through the bombing and subsequent occupation and rebuilding, so he didn't give two shits about throwing the entire intelligence community under the bus.

I'm not saying that the CIA and other US intelligence bodies aren't completely rotten at the top, but when the (mostly) hard-working and honest people lower down in the hierarchy get blamed whole-cloth for policy failures, let's all take a step back and see whose agenda is most suspect.

Your rights end where mine begin. I guarantee you you're not as proficient a driver as you think you are. Nor am I, nor is anyone else.

...but to co-operate because GCHQ probably has a compiled a blackmail dossier full of juicy shit on him.

That's because of the cocaine residue. ;)

If mandatory take-back laws were passed and enforced, I think we'd quickly see manufacturers designing more reliable and durable products. Alas that Europe is so far ahead of 'Merkah in so many respects.