I think the other folks replying to you missed your point -- it's shame that the current republican party is such a mess, because a strong republican party with reasonable positions on issues would not be a bad thing, but instead would be a good alternative to the current democratic party -- which is not what it could be either, let's face it.

That may be true, but of the 20 republican candidates in the field those are probably the least electable ones when it comes to the general election.

Oh give it a rest. Do you think the first rockets carried satellites into space? Do you think the first airplane flew across the country? New tech doesn't start out as the end-all-be-all, it starts out as a baby step and people with higher aspirations improve upon it until it's something you never thought possible. Your attitude of "It's useless because it doesn't do what I imagined" is just ridiculous.

That would be fine with me, too! Anything that can help me determine what to actually expect.

It's probably because the field of glasswork is not inherently known to the public to be a particularly masculine nor feminine trade. When you tell people about it, I bet nobody has ever said "Isn't that something girls do?" The thing keeping a lot of women from STEM fields is not necessarily the environment within those fields, but let's face it, little girls are dressed in pink and given dolls from the moment they are born and are often ostracized if they want to play with traditionally male toys. Same with boys, they are dressed in blue and given sports toys or toy guns and if they play with dolls people treat them like outsiders. This lasts through their entire lives.

Just last week I was out to lunch with three other male coworkers. One of them said to another "What, did your sisters dress you up like a ballerina as a child?" -- They are in their 40s. This just goes to show you how far into life these stereotypes go.

The answer doesn't lie in making boys' toys more girly or girls' toys more boyish. We have to change how society thinks if we want to truly allow for equality in genders. As you can see from every single Slashdot thread on this topic, we have a long way to go, or perhaps we have the wrong goal.

it specifies that 5G networks should provide data speeds of up to 20Gbps -- 20 times faster than 4G

I just get so sick of marketing speak. "Up to" could mean anything here -- setting an upper limit of 20gbps is useless. Tell me what the average speed I can expect will be, at least then I can have some idea what I'll actually get.

Around here, it gets so humid in the summer that we had to swim to get to school.

Upstream both ways!

Yeah. You could probably replace the thing with a raspberry pi .... at each location ... with a custom controller card.. and another one to control them all... for about $5,000 $2M ? Someone's pork barrel overfloweth.

Well, you do have to find someone to do that work, and pay them, and also pay them to warranty their work when it inevitably breaks. Nothing costs just parts, you have to include labor and the example you just gave is all custom (which is exactly what they've got now, just with modern hardware). $2M may be too much but why don't you go submit your bid for $5k and let me know how that works out for you.

With the project already billions over budget and years behind schedule ... You probably wouldn't get on a plane these guys designed

Well if they were spending that time making sure their plane wouldn't fall apart in the air, then sure I would. One of the trends of today's society is that we aren't willing to wait for things. Especially when it comes to new tech and something as risky as a nuclear reactor, I want them to take their time and get it right. Hopefully that will mean the second one they build is put up much more quickly and safely.

Kudos to them for finding their flaws now, and not after a meltdown happens.

I'm with you. Unless he's primarily using that giant truck to make himself money, he's doing it wrong -- and even then if he's got a luxury pickup he's still doing it wrong, burning money up and down the road all the while complaining about how he'll never retire because gas costs so much. Thanks Obama. Want to really get some work done? Get a real work truck, not a fancy chromed up & decked out pickup. BTW the insurance will be cheaper, too.

As far as the question of whether you're truly insuring the driver or the car, it's actually both. If you buy an expensive sports car your insurance will be high no matter what your driving record says. Likewise if you drive a super-safe car your insurance will still be high if you've had several accidents in the recent past. I have to admit, if I were an insurance company I would want to consider both factors, too -- Who is driving it, and what are they driving?

I'm far from being a fan of insurance companies, but I still think the GP is barking up the wrong tree here.

One benefit of no-fault insurance is that when it's hard to determine who is at fault, or if both parties are partially at fault, you don't have to spend years in court pointing fingers. Instead, your hospital bills are paid in a reasonable amount of time. It's the same reason that no fault divorces follow. With fault cases, nobody really wins. I live in a no-fault state and while the auto insurance premiums are slightly higher, it's not that much higher. Certainly not enough higher to justify the increased stress over it that there seems to be in this thread. You'll spend more on blood pressure meds than you will additionally on no-fault insurance.

"Didn't get on front page of Slashdot soon enough"

A Library of Congress has many volumes.

"Every day we had shed-loads of treasure coming out of all the graves...." Holy shed, that's a lot of treasure.

I wonder how many Libraries of Congress worth of treasure they ended up with.

Learning how to manage software developers is exactly the same as learning to be a good manager in general. I manage software developers. I'm not perfect, I wouldn't even rate myself very high, but many of my employees have told me fairly often they appreciate what I do for them. They things they seem to appreciate are: being as transparent as possible, being interested in their personal interests and development, going to bat for them when they need something (new PC, training, etc), giving them honest and quick feedback both good and bad, and not being willing to place blame but instead just looking for solutions. None of those behaviors are specific to managing software developers, but instead are some things good managers do in general.

I was a software developer before this so while I'm not up to date on the tech they are currently using, I understand the types of struggles they face. That helps, although I'm fairly sure if I went tomorrow to manage a team of mechanical engineers that I could become effective fairly quickly in that role, too.

Don't get me wrong, I'm don't think I'm a great manager, but I have had one or two great managers and I'm trying to borrow the things I thought they did well and my employees seem to respond to that.