This issue pops up from time to time, and it's inevitable, if you think about it. As computers bec{a,o}me more available and more accessible to everyone, more people began producing some sort of code with 'easy' tools, churning out truckloads of low quality, unreliable and sometimes even dangerous software. There's not much you can do about it, aside from trying to be informed about the third party software you try to use. Well, it's not like professionals don't produce crap sw, but there's a world of difference there. All we can hope is that in time education will change to include enough general computing knowledge for everyone, that can at least provide some minimal required knowledge level to make further autonomous improvement of abilities easier.

"Well, whatever they want to label it as now it's still optional."

Well, it is, but there is a huge difference between pick and choose what driver update you want, and enabling or disabling all driver updates. The former is OK, the latter is bollocks.

"83 Internet access providers have joined Google to offer gigabit Internet access service (all priced in the $50-$150 per month range)."

Meanwhile, people still pay ~$40 for a 4mbit at&t line. There being lots of smaller regional players providing some service to a limited population doesn't mean crap in the more global view of how things are standing. Reality is, very many cties how only 1 to 3 choices, none of them really good, and absolutely none of them priced realistically. I don't care about statistics, when we can see the reality wit our own eyes.

I suppose DX hurts you when you're trying to create some custom sw processing the cam feeds. Well, I've been using Basler IPcams, processing their feeds in c++ using their SDK, without the need to use any DX. You might also take a look at Allied Vision IPcams, they are pretty good as well.

"Do you think the same would hold true in the U.S. if a similar program was started?"

I don't think so. Simply because at very many places public transportation is almost non-existent. Granted, I have first hand experience only from 3 states, and second hand reports from 3-4 more, but what I see is some big cities have a somewhat acceptable public transport system, but most of them don't have any, or if they do have some, they only cover some select routes, they run very rarely, and have very small capacity. Plus, even in places where coverage seems acceptable, like maybe SF, the system couldn't handle even an increase of 10-20% (and you have to really think about peak hours), let alone most of the population.

Let's face it, most US cities, regardless of size, simply weren't built with public transportation in mind - and keep in mind, that the larger the city, the longer and the more lines we need, and travel times can be really long. Also, building a good public transport system in a city or region that doesn't have it, or only has bus lines, would cost so much (think under and over ground metro lines, tram lines, trollies), everyone would run away when hearing the costs. Plus, lots of people wouldn't use it even if their lives depended on it.

I really wish all this racism and sexism debates would just stop. These days it's almost impossible to find any review of any movie that doesn't only deal with these topics, and only very few actually concentrate on whether the movie was any good from an artistic point of view. Most of the time I don't care if directors add or remove or change certain characters to fit the crowds newfound interest in recist and sexist topics, but only to the point where it still keeps the point of the movie and reflects the intentions of the writers. I find all these idiotically overcompensated angry and pointless rants and quarrels about gender and race bias issues (which, most of the time, seem simply made up) a real turnoff, driving me not to even try to read movie reviews for almost a year now. It seems that nowadays we've reached a point, where whatever the movie's topic and whaveter the cast, however good or bad it is, the only thing you can read about is whether there have been enough female and/or minority and/or etc characters in it. Well, I don't give a flying f*, until the movie is good, and I give the same amount of f* to all the idiotic opinion pieces about feminism, masculism, chauvinism, racism, sexism, whateverism.

"Whatever downsides it has, if such a design is adopted, ..."

Well, if such a design is adopted, all long haul flights would fly with empty economy sections if all people would be normal, which they are not. There are always enough people to accept everything like sheep, and the flights would go on.

But, I have a better idea. Make everyone take sleeping pills before boarding, then put handcuffs on them and hang them up on meathooks. Bet you could fit 3-4x people.

As things are going these days, demand for cruise ship tickets might just see a steady increase.

"and I wonder what other Slashdotters think, looking back on Win 3"

I was already well in my coding years when it came out. Seen it, used it, only thing I can say about it is good riddance. Would I care to elaborate? Not really. The only point of view from which the whole topic is somewhat interesting [for me] is software history. Oh, maybe a little bit of nostalgia of childhood comes attached, but with not much connection with Win3. Anyway, I'm not missing crap just because of some "good old times" feeling. They had to start somewhere, but I'm not sad it's long gone.

"the cost of maintaining any body of code over time is in maintenance"

No, really? The cost of maintaining is in maintenance? Well, now that's some earth shattering surprise.

Anyway, the intention was probably to say that maintaining is more costly than creating. However, since it says "any body of code" I'll just call it the deepest bullcrap. I've seen and heard lots of people talking out of their behinds over the years dismissing the effort going into creating some really nice algorithms and realizing them in applicable and useful code, simply thinking about the whole process as "coding" which is usually the easiest part. Also, maintenance costs a lot mostly when the coder monkeys hacking the code together were crap in the first place. Just stop paying outrageous amounts of money to idiots who put together unmaintainable code and then leave to another company to do this again and again, and by the time their code needs "maintenance" they're already gone and couldn't care less.

"Witeboards are racist. So are blackboards"

Well, in all the schools I've attended, the boards' colors were either green or black, and they were always called ...(wait for it)...boards, oh the surprise :)

Anyway, the starting post is BS. Boards (of any color :) ) are extremely helpful and useful. That doesn't mean they have to be 'analog', I've seen quite nice digital boards as well.

"I would go see ANY movie with Charlize Theron scampering about in leather."

Finally, the first comment that is worth replying to. I couldn't care less about the real or implied or forced or intended or unintended or inexistent or whatever message of a movie, I'd still go see it if Charlize Theron was in it (well, if she was still a woman and was played by herself, that is).

I'm getting really tired of such sexism-rerated blurbs. I'm tired of hearing and reading about some people's ideas about how to force an increase in the number of women in politics, in academia, wherever. I'm tired of these ideas mostly because most of them feel themselves forced, and very often drop over to the other side of overly positive discrimination horse. I'm tired of them, because most of them don't contribute and are worthless, or simply disregard the real world, trying to envision some half-assed gender-neutral utopia. All stupid crap.

I've spent now more than a decade in academia, and I've always had women colleagues, during msc, during phd, after phd. Not many, naturally (fairly typical CS/IT ratios), and even today from the 9 senior (young postdocs and "older" postdocs) in our lab onyl 2 are women - which I think is a fairly average ratio in our field. None of my earlier or current female colleaues/coworkers had such negative experiences as the blog post is about. That doesn't mean others didn't, but sometimes I have the feeling such stories are a bit overreacting and over-generalizing.

Personally, I wouldn't mind to see more women in scientific fields, but I couldn't care less if there weren't any either. I just never thought about such numbers as ratios as being an issue. It certainly never occurred to me - or anyone I've ever spoke about such topics - that women couldn't perform in our field, since I know from experience that they can, furthermore, most women I know - personally or because of their results and publications - in our field are really exceptional in their areas, very many of them are much better than me or some of my colleagues :)) And the ones I do know personally always seemed to be really motivated, since they want to show they can do more and better. Which, while is nice, it's really unnecessary, nobody I know would think they are inferior. Also, performance&results are important, gender is not.

So, tl;dr, sexism and gender issues: don't care.

Well, I might be alone with this opinion, but I really do like Spotify, and if they'd raise their yearly subscription fees with a few (I do mean a few) bucks, I wouldn't mind very much. I generally don't mind paying for stuff I like.

"- Comes with a mini IDE called PowerShell ISE for developing scripts"

No. A shell that has an IDE to aid formulating godforsaken scripts that mere mortals can't even remember. Just no.

"Zug, a student at the top-ranked Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, argues that a centerfold does not belong in the classroom"

So, I always knew the average american to be fairly prude - well, unless they are tweeting their nude behinds on a daily basis, 'cause that doesn't count, obviously - but this is crazy nuts. I've been in image processing research for the 15th year now, and Lena's face was among the very first test images I've ever saw. It was about 2 years later I found out where it's coming from, I smiled a bit, and went on with my work. As did hundreds and thousands of other image processing students before ad after me.

Well, until the the top-ranked Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology came along, 'cause well, there we can't tolerate such heresy. Heresy, I tell you! This just can't be! How dare one use the image of anice face as a test image, for decades nonetheless. Outrage, man, outrage.

Well, [most] idiots are funny :)