These laws are toothless. "Must answer within 20 days"... or what? With no one held immediately culpable, the law is precisely meaningless.

Heard of anyone going to jail for this?

Heard of anyone paying a fine for this?

Even heard of anyone losing their job for this?

Compare: If you don't do something the government desires you to do, there will be consequences.

This is just like the constitution: "Highest law in the land" -- violate it -- as SCOTUS and congress have done over and over -- and the consequences? Nothing.

Just so you taxpayers know your place. The laws aren't for the government. Those are just laws "for show." The real laws are just for you. Because, you know, they care about you.

My last phone was an Optimus V from Virgin... The only problems I had resulted from me rooting and installing a clean version of Android, so I can't blame LG. I would have kept it... it was a bit slow playing angry birds (not what I bought my phone for, though), but I could use it as a mobile hot spot. When I upgraded to a 4G phone, I lost that ability... and didn't want to root it after the earlier problems I'd experienced. But here's the thing: I didn't encounter bugs like the author describes. It worked the way it was supposed to. I didn't mind the camera wasn't all that, I didn't have keyboard problems (although it seems like you can install a third party keyboard app that should fix those problems... not that you should have to). I see a lot of complaining about the author of this article, but I think he raises some good points... I'm reminded of Bill Gates saying that people didn't care about bug fixes, they wanted new features!

Not good enough... we also traded in the minivan when the kids were a bit older, but our small SUVs only get around 23MPG... I'd traded in my 93 Civic that routinely got over 35MPG, now you don't even get that in a Civic or other small car without it being a hybrid or something... with very few exceptions. I may get a Mazda 3 or 6, though. They get upwards of 35.

I will say this, though, to actually contribute to the conversation about minivans... I had no problem driving one, and felt no stigma about it. All the people buying giant SUVs and justifying it because hey, once or twice a year they may buy a big box item and save on delivery! Or they need to carry a lot of passengers... Our Honda Odyssey carried 7 people a lot more comfortably than any SUV I've been in, and when you needed cargo space it was right up there with the big boys when you folded the rear seat down... even more than a lot of big SUVs; add decent towing capacity and overall better mileage, and the only reason for most people not to get one was the "stigma." Unless you're towing a yacht, or need to go off roading, a good (200hp+) minivan is a much more logical choice.

How many of us have tried to do something and wished we had (at least) a third hand?

I would pay a *lot* for a third hand, as I do a lot of my own construction work (building an interior into an old church we now live in.)

I can't even guess at the number of times I've had to wait until I had someone at my side to hold, turn, twist, drill, cut, brace, etc.

This stuff is great to hear. Love the idea of extra fingers.

Although it does put me strangely in mind of that scene in Heavy Metal where a robot, after having "done" a very sexy human female, spins his fingers around with a "whiiizzz", while commenting something on the order of "human woman love sex with mechanical assistance" lol

For most programmers, recursion seems to be a tool to completely -- but unpredictably -- blow out the stack. Cynical, I know, but that's been my experience.

Although I gotta tell ya, one of my favorite recursive things is a particular area fill routine for rectangular pixels. Simple and beautiful. Just elegant as all get out. Once I understood how it does what it does, it was like someone washed my mental windshield with Windex. That was a great day. :)

Yep. One of the things you discovered is that your school was one of the (many, many) schools that are horrible at teaching things, and in particular, math. Welcome to the real world. :)

So... how's your luck been in convincing employers (if you go that way) that your Coursera work is worthy of qualifying you for jobs?

I'm going to go with this:

The vast majority of programming is fairly simple manipulation of states and symbols, which are themselves a small subset of numbers. yes and no are 1 and 0, etc.

The way those manipulations work together quickly becomes very complex.

You can do a boatload of things with just that knowledge. Entire video games. Many types of process control and dedicated controllers. Most reasonable scripting jobs, most "webby" stuff, database stuff, etc.

But then adding some knowledge of math, in the purely technical sense, gives us more symbols to manipulate, and more ways to manipulate them, and this, like any major skills enhancement, definitely makes you a better programmer. Some mid-level math concepts -- very simple in nature, actually -- amplify what you can do so much it's just amazing.

I suspect -- I can't actually tell you because my math is only mediocre to fairly good, nor have I ever knowingly come in contact such a person -- that *really* advanced math skills combined with *really* advanced programming skills (which I can lay claim to) would combine to create a true monster programmer.

But...

I think there's something about the essentially concrete nature of programming, and the incredibly abstract nature of higher math, that makes these dual-facet powerhouses the rarest of the rare. In my experience -- admittedly, just one person's career -- serious math heads tend to be pretty lousy programmers. Lots of bugs, poor structure, little to no sensitivity to shortcuts and loading. Then really great programmers seem to be only sorta capable with math (although what they can do with what they have tends to be quite surprising.) Just an IMHO based on my experience. Something I've found interesting enough to contemplate many times. Having said that, I sure would like to meet Mr. or Ms. combination-o-both. :)

It's not artificial because of the details of the technical implementation, it's artificial because it's a scarcity that would not be expensive or difficult to resolve.

Yes, and it's artificial because Verizon made a deliberate choice not to resolve it (rather than it being unresolved only due to ignorance).

The US and the Netherlands are special cases.

I was under the impression that "the Ukraine" was a similar special case, in a way having nothing to do with whether it was a part of the USSR or an independent country.

Yep. The main selling point of "natural" gemstones these days is that the lab-made ones are "too perfect!"

You forgot about the other 545 people we also need to impeach. (One vice president, 9 supreme court justices, 100 senators, and 435 representatives.)

Since when was Obama a progressive? Sure, he campaigned as one, but his actions upon taking office revealed that to be a blatant lie.

The problem is that the FCC has limited regulatory power unless it reclassifies Internet access as a telecommunications service, which is considered the "nuclear option."

At this point, reclassification is exactly what pretty much every pro-net-neutrality group (and therefore, every citizen who uses their automated comment-submission systems) is asking the FCC to do.

For example... I worked with a woman who insisted on wearing what I considered *very* suggestive clothes to work just about every day. Personally I found her attire unprofessional and demeaning to women in general (and I'm a man), but to each their own. I know she got lots of attention from the males in the area who would often ask "Who is she?" and make it clear that they noticed her. The really sad part of this story is that she had HR on speed dial because she was always filing sexual harassment complaints. One guy told me that she made a cottage industry of sorts out of it. Using the treat of filing the complaint to try and get her way. But I ask you what did she expect to happen when she dressed like that? Ladies, dress modestly and professionally, It may be your right to wear what you want, but why put a spot light on the target or invite trouble.

The lesson I learn from this is that men should file sexual harassment claims against women who dress less than professionally as a preemptive strike.

It's not about numbers. And it's not about validity. It's about manufacturing PC/media panics and distracting the public from real problems by fomenting pointless opposition on non-issues.