It was common knowledge that Saddam had chemical weapons as far back as the 80's. Bush and co were pushing a bogus "mushroom" line and worse still they knew they were doing it (although I think Powell may have been set up as a fall guy), that slide show at the UN made a lot of people (including me) angry, but to be fair Saddam was pretending he had them so maybe they did believe it, who's to say what a politician actually believes? - What Bush and co actually believed at the time we will never really know, but we are left with two unflattering explanations, either they were incompetent ideologues or despicable warmongers.

How do you suggest we help these sex slaves, carpet bomb their village? The west could wipe out ISIS in a week, faster if we used tactical nukes, the reason we don't do that is that we value the lives ISIS are so eager to sacrifice. Containing these arseholes to one patch of desert is the best we can do right now, they have bitten off way more than they can chew. We tried a ground army and it made things worse, we don't need to spill our own blood purging Saddam's generals from the desert, time is rapidly turning their own tribe against them.

In a historical sense ISIS may have actually done something useful, they concentrated the command and control of islamic extremists into one place and have united the Sunni's, Shiites, and Kurds in a fight against a common enemy. They are penned in on all sides by nations that are hostile towards them, they have no hope of expanding beyond Syria/Iraq (and possibly Afghanistan) via military means. What happens after ISIS is gone I don't know, but the idea of a caliphate where they are not in charge is scaring the shit out of all of the tribal leaders right now and may just force the three tribes to find a more civilised way of disagreeing.

This war is a muslim war, if we charge in now boots and all it will revert to a muslim vs the west war which is precisely what ISIS wants, they want us to try and root them out because they believe that would line up the tribes behind them (better the devil you know and all that). The best thing the west can do now is work with Russia to avoid falling into the old cold war pattern of fighting proxy wars using impoverished nations as their pawns. If the west and Russia start openly fighting for influence in the region, we are in a different and much more deadly ball park.

My lady friend is 51 and has been playing an MMO called "internet bridge" for well over a decade, there are some serious players, competitions offer good prize money, a high ranking player can actually make a decent living teaching others how to play well. She also enjoys "world of tanks" (no blood and guts), 20K+ battles under her belt. She's not upset because I won't play bridge, I'm not upset because she won't play StarCraft.

My lady friend also happens to have a PhD in marketing, the whole "controversy" is simply a marketing exercise so that people like my lady friend can identify with the label "gamer". However the way they have gone about trying to broaden the definition of "gamer" by associating it with adolescent "greifers" and throwing it overboard has blown up in their faces since the demographic you point to overwhelmingly interprets the whole thing as political correctness gone mad. Rather than broaden their audience they have divided it into two camps; people who play games, and people who claim the ability to read their minds....for a price.

I was taught OO was a design methodology, smalltalk was the only well-known implementation at the time, however it was made clear to us that most of the examples in K&R are also excellent examples of OO thinking. The fundamental dogmas of OO are encapsulation and reuse and this is a good thing when applied properly, the problem is that in the real world everything is interconnected and copy-paste-edit is often much more efficient in time/money than genuine reuse. Once you have generalized things to the point where the model is more complex than the subject of the model, then you have gone way too far. Personally I think the OO jargon just obfuscates some very simple and powerful design tools, it would have been more enlightening to reuse the existing engineering terminology and call it "modular design"

Watcom's (circa 1991) C++ compiler was simply their C compiler plus a layer of C macro's. Yes you read that correctly, the C++ language features were all implemented with C macros. I had to fight with the thing for two years, there was no other option for "PenOS". The GUI classes and other major chunks of the SDK were implemented with these macros, you could not just ignore them, nor could you avoid them with straight C workarounds.

Neat, but what's the problem? The code is valid in both languages and the output is correct in both cases.

Let's be honest, most software is a work of fiction.

Such as the specific value of NULL or NAN? - Why would you want to dictate that sort of thing in a standard?

Python 3.0 - QED.

I started developing software for a living in 1990, I used to teach C programming to second year engineering students. I'm not offended when someone displays their ignorance, and there's no shortage of arrogance in the software industry. Truth is, we all look at the code and think "surely there's a simpler way than this". Experience teaches you that there usually isn't.

Does shag pile carpet stop his air conditioner from working, not sure but it's worth thinking about. - Seriously, the sad part is that he is not simply ignorant, he's willfully ignorant.

Under a runaway GH scenario the Earth's limestone would ignite not longer after the oceans boil (assuming there's enough oxygen left for it to burn). H2O is a powerful GHG, the amount that can be held by the atmosphere depends solely on temperature and pressure. The Earth's water vapour content has risen by roughly 5% since 1980 due the the warmer climate, still a long way from evaporating completely but there is a point well below the boiling point of water where the oceans will evaporate. A point of no return for sure, but no human will witness it because we will be well and truly fucked long before we get there..

Believing that burning ALL fossil fuels would NOT result in a runaway GH is either wishful thinking or just plain ignorance. Science tells us that a runaway GH is the NATURAL fate of our planet and without our help will occur in about 500 million years from now. However if we put our minds to it we could accomplish the same thing in less than a 250yrs.

Yes there were times in the distant past when CO2 was ten times what it is now but there was also zero oxygen in the atmosphere for about 3.5 billion years, what's your point, do you really think we can't surpass pre-historic levels? There is also more carbon available on the Earth's surface today than a billion years ago, no pixies required, light elements such as carbon are still bleeding to the surface from the molten core via the actions of tectonic plates. These well studied scenarios are not the work of greenpeace, it is text book planetary science that we have known about for over half a century, had you done more thinking and less "criticising" you would already know that.

Coal and nuclear produce a flat supply curve, a modern city has a wavy demand curve. To meet the demand curve so-called "base load" power already pumps water up hill in off-peak, and uses gas turbines to make up the slack on-peak. In other words, the "complex grid" you say you need to match the demand curve already exists.

" your password recovery phrase will be the street you lived on in high school or the name of your first dog. This is not secure" if the email account it sends the password to has already been compromised.