Eh? We have the technology to fire a missile from a ship floating in the ocean and hit a relatively small satellite orbiting the planet. I do not think it would be THAT much different to fire a missile from land to somewhere just past orbit and hit a relatively large object.

Are they the exact same problem with the exact same missiles, targets, and locations? No. Regardless, the problem of sending stuff accurately past planetary orbit is a solved one. The only question is how quickly can they do it within the new set of requirements.

It is not like that at all.

Or, you wandered the forest as a hunter and occasionally rob from the rich who might wander nearby. Of course, to assuage your feelings of guilt from robbing people, you might be tempted to redistribute some of your ill-gotten gains to the poor people in villages surrounding said forest. ;)

Hm. Not really.

Republicans and Democrats belong to the same party: The authoritarian and corrupt Pwned by Corporations party.
vs
Democrats and Democrats belong to the same party: The authoritarian and corrupt Pwned by Corporations party.

It just doesn't sound the same if you replace Republican with Democrat... but, I know what you were trying to imply. :)

Actually, C is indeed awesome for cross-platform compilability; however, try using libraries cross-platform. Nastiness.

For example, the crypt() function. Call it under Linux and call it under OpenBSD and see how that works out for you. Yes, it is possible. I am not even sure that is available in Windows.

Pure, ANSI standard C will compile under any platform. It is the details (libs) that kill you.

Ummm... you already know the answer to this since you work in Silly Valley currently: They will bring in more H1Bs since there will not be enough "qualified" workers locally. Heheh.

Au contraire mon frere. You seem to be under the delusion that reality actually matters. What Ford sees is that you are not buying a new car so each second hand sale is a direct loss to them. Apparently, figuring out that the second hand market enables certain people to buy more new cars than they normally would be able to is not part of their math. Same with CDs.

What you are describing is called an OTDR. Optical Time Domain Reflector IIRC.

There is not much risk if you know what you are doing since the OTDR is only used at the most "convenient" end rather than both ends. Just make your secondary cut further away from where the repair crews will do the initial measuring.

Most times, these thieves are working in the dark and do not take the time to check if it is fiber or not. They just cut and pull. I have seen numerous fibers cut despite being clearly labelled as 96 strand fiber.

Really, these thieves are so "bottom of the barrel" that I suspect they never learned how to read to begin with so even labeling it clearly would not help unless we all agreed upon a symbol that would glow in the dark and be visible on any random section.

Say what? Tax HFCS? Why not just remove the subsidy for corn? Hawaii would be much happier if that were the case. They have been economically disadvantaged since the 1970s because the corn lobby has been successful at getting subsidies large enough that manufacturing High Fructose Corn syrup is cheaper than just growing sugar cane.

I doubt you can find more than a very small handful of products that use cane sugar. I would be interested in seeing studies that prove your claims that cane sugar is bad for you when used in moderation. Do you have links handy as I am a busy person.

It sounds like you only know him through the colored lens of media. Try to keep a more open mind and perhaps try to see where he is coming from. I do not think I would like him or dislike him as a personal friend but I have honestly not seen anything wrong him... and that is saying a lot for a semi-public figure whom the masses are always trying to tear down to their level.

No matter what else you can say about him, he is a genuinely real person. You will know where you stand with him if you interact with him. I can personally appreciate that.

Honestly, it seems that you do not understand the model here. There actually are many competing versions of the kernel. Everyone voluntarily chooses to use the version that Linus has "blessed" but at any time, someone could, and some do, choose to use a different version "blessed" by someone else.

In short, there is nobody forcing anyone to use the Linus version. Everyone who chooses to do so, does so of their own free will. If Linus were to die tomorrow, there would be some confusion as some would choose one person's version and others would choose another, but eventually, the person who maintains a version that allows the largest amount of collaboration with the least amount of silliness will win. That is why Linus' version is still dominant.

That is also why it does not matter if Linus goes on vacation or is otherwise incapacitated for a while or permanently. It is a beautiful thing to see.

I wonder why there are so many articles busting a programmer's balls (only guys are coders apparently(wtf?!)) for not participating in code reuse.

Hell, if I had to go through all of those hoops during maintenance phase, which is most of the time spent on the project, I would reinvent the wheel every damned time.

But, whatever.

It is a shame that I used up all of my mod points already. You are +4 but your words and their meaning should be +5. I doubt many folks actually think about the consequences of all of this secrecy garbage.

Voluntary? Involuntary? When choices are forcibly removed through secrecy, it seems a lot like enslavement to me.

This is a bipartisan issue, but you brought up conservatives, so that is what I will address:

The conservatives are NOT conservatives. They call themselves that but they clearly are not. They have expanded the scope of government as much as the liberals and they have definitely NOT followed any philosophies expounded by the founding fathers. (No, not capitals, they were just people. Extremely respectable people but capitals would elevate them too far.)

In summary conservative, liberal, democrat, republican, etc. None of these are what they seem. Their outward appearance is purely manufactured. You have to look at their actions to see who they are and then not use words to label them as the words themselves have become corrupted.

Off the shelf? Really? Which shelves are these? Is there a nano-materials aisle at my local Wal-Mart? This sounds like an interesting place to shop. Where is it?