A few years ago, at the company I work for, we got a spec to build an interface that would send passwords, in the open, to a vendor. Several of us warned upper management of the foolishness of this idea, but despite multiple attempts to push back on this request, management insisted that the process be written this way, so that is what was done. Perhaps 64% of employees would stay quiet about a security breach because so many managers are universally, fucking stupid, and it is always dangerous to tell the emperor that he has no clothes.

After reading that summary I feel like a juggalo. "...F*cking magnonics, how do they work?.."

Patient: "Doctor, I get a sharp pain in my eye when I drink my tea."

Doctor: "Take the spoon out of the cup."

This is basically the same thing.

Of course it's lasted more than 90 days. That's because Opportunity never landed on Mars. All the images are created in a secret NASA location in Nevada.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go monitor the Jade Helm Texas takeover.

I was an early adopter of high-speed internet and got it through my cable company in 1996. I ran cat-5 cable through the house and put in a hub to network all our plain-vanilla desktops that I built from components. I then re-purposed an old 486 machine, using two network adapters and Linux to create a firewall so we could all share the same internet connection. All my daughter's middle school friends thought it was cool that she had her own PC with high speed internet. Although all the desktops disappeared years ago, and pretty much everything is wireless these days, my Apple TV still makes use of the old cat-5 cable which I ran to the living room.

What I'm hearing here is not a story about a potential software bug. I'm hearing about a serious design problem. An airplane should not be so reliant on software that it shut down if the software is not working.

I was in Naval aviation. The 1960's - era A-7's I worked on for most of my career had redundant systems. There was even an air-stream-driven generator that could be deployed in the event of engine failure that would not only supply electrical power, but provide a minimum amount of hydraulic power to critical systems so that the plane had a chance of safely landing.

I can't believe we're designing aircraft that can carry hundreds of people that lacks redundant systems and can literally fall out of the sky due to a simple software glitch. Have I read this wrong? Are they exaggerating the danger in this article?

Currently the internet is taking over television. Unfortunately this is a temporary situation. Once the telcoms, ISPs, etc get enough lobbying money funneled into congress, net neutrality will disappear and cable TV will be back in business bigger than ever. With their monopolies on internet access, ISPs will be able to control what you see, and when you see it; will be able to insert advertising wherever and whenever they want; and will be able to charge you an arm and a leg for it. The future of the internet is cable TV version 2.0.

I'm still registered as a Republican and I agree with this. Many years ago, when my daughter was little, I remember her picking up a discarded coke can and placing it in a trash bin at the park. A young man standing nearby said, in the kind of patronizing voice that some people use with children, "Yes, people should learn to recycle." I responded, "I would settle for them just throwning away their trash properly." My point being, that teaching recycling while people are just tossing trash around is putting the cart before the horse. Twenty years down the road, and the situation is worse than ever. I have actually witnessed people just open their car window and toss out the McDonald's bag without even slowing down. How can you expect people to understand something as complex as global warming when you can't even get them to put their garbage in the trash can?

Maybe a good start is to show Republicans that their vaunted mascot for their party, the elephant, is going extinct. They might deny global warming, but it's pretty hard for them to deny the fact that elephants are disappearing from the planet, mainly due to people. Maybe we could get them to see the disappearance of the elephants as a harbinger of their own loss of popularity. Perhaps if we could get the GOP to save their pachyderms, they could learn something important in the process.

Indeed. I recall what St. Nikolai Velimirovic said about death:

"Think of yourself as though you were dead, I say to myself, and you will not feel the coming of death. Blunt the barb of death during life, and when it comes it will not have the means to sting. Think of yourself every morning as a newborn miracle, and you will not feel old age. Do not wait for death to come, because death has indeed already come and has not left you. Its teeth are continually in your flesh. Whatever was living before your birth and whatever will survive your death--that even now is alive within you."

I don't think the super bowl statistic is meaningful. The only reason I watched the superbowl this year is because I was invited to a party in which the event was featured. I went to the party to socialize and have fun -- an endeavor in which I was successful. I didn't give a crap about either team and, in fact, do not even remember who was playing.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Wikipedia does have mobile-friendly pages. I don't understand what tfs is talking about.

Wouldn't these robots be heavily dependent on wireless communications of various sorts? Would jamming the communications disable them?

Buzz Aldren: "Epic? (yawn) Call me when she snaps one from the moon."

"...Blew out my flip flop. Stepped on a pop top. Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home..."

You couldn't write Margaritaville today.

The cop says it was the oddest reason he's seen for an assault, but this is Tulsa, and two rednecks going at it over Ford vs. Chevy pickups is nothing noteworthy there.