Yep. It would be much cheaper/safer to buy a few thousand fake positive reviews to drown out the negative ones.

Cue a bunch of ISPs playing games with the definition of "normal conditions".

We already have Playboy models advising the public on medicine and Fundamentalist Christians in charge of the National Science Curriculum so hey, why not?

Because anybody who has any aptitude at all for CS has usually been called on to configure Grandma's router, that's why.

If they've never done that then be very suspicious of their claimed interest in computing. You might be dealing with a bullshitting hipster who decided yesterday that computing might be a "good career move". Until he decides it's too much like real work.

Fail.

A decent car mechanic might not know the building code by heart but he's probably unblocked a drain or two in his time simply because he's the sort of person that enjoys using tools to do stuff. If my mechanic could only do cars then I'd be suspicious of him.

If nothing else a potential employee should be interested in the job he's applying for. If you've got "CS grad" who don't know what an IP mask is then they clearly have no personal interest in computers and only took the degree because they thought it "might lead to a career". You can bet that sort of person will be in management within a couple of months (maybe at another company) and you'll be looking for yet another programmer to fill their place.

"The idea of programming as a semiskilled task, practiced by people with a few months' training, is dangerous. We wouldn't tolerate plumbers or accountants that poorly educated. We don't have as an aim that architecture (of buildings) and engineering (of bridges and trains) should become more accessible to people with progressively less training. Indeed, one serious problem is that currently, too many software developers are undereducated and undertrained. Obviously, we don't want our tools--including our programming languages--to be more complex than necessary. But one aim should be to make tools that will serve skilled professionals--not to lower the level of expressiveness to serve people who can hardly understand the problems, let alone express solutions. We can and do build tools that make simple tasks simple for more people, but let's not let most people loose on the infrastructure of our technical civilization or force the professionals to use only tools designed for amateurs." - Bjarne Stroustrup.

Really?

The last update to jQuery was to fix "a timing bug in iOS8 that causes mobile Safari to incorrectly report a 'length' on objects that don't have one."

Ref: https://github.com/jquery/jque...

You'd have known 'where to look' for that and been able to fix it, right?

"diarrhea water" is a specific term that can be tested and proven false. That makes it libel.

Stick to subjective things like 'taste' and you'll be fine. eg. You can say "Drink Coke because Pepsi tastes nasty!" with no problem.

Back to "shitware". That word isn't in the dictionary AFAIK so you ought to be fine calling your competitor's product "shitware".

"Potentially unwanted applications", the term used by Avira, is very conservative. I'm not surprised the judge tossed the case out and ordered freemium to pay costs.

Presumably Net Nanny never came to the attention of whatever fuckwit is in charge of freemium.com

This isn't about people's rights or the right to do legitimite business, it's about fuckwits who think it's perfectly OK to infest your PC with sluggish, personal-data-stealing crapware using whatever means they can legally get away with. Just so long as they can get a new car out of it, that's fine.

Me? I'm now thinking of registering my copy of Avira.

Isn't that the problem that BitTorrent solved a decade ago?

Seriously though, why all the flat colored squares? Somebody needs taking out the back for a good talking to.

Clue: It's not "clean", it's dull and uninspiring.

I have an even better idea! How about a condom that kills all known STDs while you're doing the deed. That's a much better idea than one that just changes color. It can have enzymes in it. I predict the whole STD thing will be history within a decade.

Please send my prize to the usual address...

Problem is: It's not the Dutch CO2 that's going to sink them. SO long as the USA, et. al. keep on producing CO@ at the current rate it won;t make a damn bit of difference what they do in a small country like that.

They know the USA isn't going to stop.

100% electric aircraft aren't viable yet but surely this tech could be used to supplement traditional aircraft, eg. as a take-off booster or whatever (taking off and climbing to cruising altitude takes a big chunk of the fuel). Even if it can only cut fuel by 5% overall on each flight it's still a big saving.

After takeoff the electric motors could be cut and then recharged by solar panels during the remainder of the flight.

There's nothing like an information-packed, high-definition video to start the day...