After this little stunt, and if this trend continues in the future, I would be surprised if OO.o remained the office of choice in Ubuntu 11.04, or really any of the Linux distros who pride themselves on free software. Oracle is destroying its free-software products.

openSUSE and Ubuntu are switching to the LO codebase.

The "crane" is needed to hold the payload still until the balloon ascends to pull the flight train and the gondola payload vertical. The tension in the flight train at balloon release pulls the payload horizontally, fairly hard. The flight train is typically 1000 feet long! While you could secure the payload to a truck, gondolas aren't generally designed to handle transverse loads at the load point. You really don't want them to, either; there's often (comparatively delicate) momentum transfer units at the load point that allow accurate pointing of telescopes once at float altitude (~125,000 feet, or ~35 km). And once you build a structure to take the pressure off the gondola load point, you're generally back to a crane design again.

You can see pictures and movies of our experiment's launch last year from Fort Sumner, NM. The StratoCat site has some additional details about this flight and many others, including ours.

Catastrophic launches like this are really rare -- the CSBF team really do a fantastic job. It's really had to tell exactly what happened here, though fairly high winds were a complicating factor. It's very lucky for everyone involved that no one got hurt.

Condolences to the science team, and best wishes that they can pick up the pieces and fly again...

It just usually happens that because Game development is a field where the leaders are usually in it for the fun of creating games, they aren't going to give up their positions for a better job at another company.

If you started as a level designer in EA or Microsoft, I don't think you will ever get to lead designer, unless the current lead designer decides to create his own startup. He probably gets paid well enough, has a reasonable amount of job stability (because if it doesn't sell, blame the pirates), and enjoys what he is doing.

If he leaves, the borg company will purchase a smaller dev company and make their lead developer the new lead. It's not the first time it has happened.

I agree that its better, but it runs contrary to his statements. (And if I recall my tech stories correctly Apple is one of the reasons the HTML5 spec doesn't define codecs, convenient.)

I've often wondered why Dirac isn't more widely used, isn't it supposed to be patent unencumbered as well?

I see this as more of a property issue than anything, though I know that legal tack hasn't been taking with this case. The way I see it, the passwords or the more abstract concept of "access" is property of the organization. The network is property of the organization. By not returning the passwords or access under termination, he stole company property. Its like if you have a company car and get reassigned and don't turn in the keys. You've then stolen the keys, and prevented use of the car. Not doing something is just as active a thing as doing something when its done purposefully with the intent of blocking something. If he didn't do something because it was outside his responsibility and didn't see how it could cause much harm is one thing, but seeing a situation, and taking purposeful inaction with the purpose of preventing something else is in that case an action. Its perfectly criminal in many cases to NOT do something.

Supposing you want to run a program that I write, and I'm going to write it in exactly one language because it's just me and not a corporation with thousands of employees, and I'm not so in love with the Mac that I will write it to run only there.

Then what do you recommend I do in the face of "de-emphasized" Java?

Uh, perhaps the time spent in the course gives you some skills to make your own video game which you can use to impress people. It's not like you're just paying for a note from your teacher after 4 years of doing nothing.

"just do it, its your employer" isn't good enough.

I'm not sure why you think this, as that will land you (in jail in rare cases or) out of a job. It is expected that an employer has full control over what you do in your position (insofar as you are willing and able to do it or quit). This includes reversing policy or statements they have made at any time. If you want to sue them for attempting to coerce or asking you to do something illegal, that's an after-the-fact. Welcome to the real world.

Since the service that was denied "was the ability to administer the routers and switches of the FiberWAN" I figure that anyone who keeps me from getting to work on time in the morning by driving stupidly, or even a police officer who stops me along the way I can have them brought up on "Denial of Service" charges and maybe even making a tidy profit. Also I think Jason Chilton is an idiot.

I didn't realize that Mission Viejo was such a hot market... No one goes to The Shops except for locals. If MS really wanted to 'showcase' their products they could have chosen a much more high profile-venue. And there are plenty in OC: The Spectrum, South Coast, Fashion Island, or even The Block. Not to mention the fact that there is a Costco across the freeway and a Best Buy a mile up. I'm sure they'll be happy to 'introduce' consumers to Microsoft (as if MS needs an introduction anyway).

Considering that TFA suggests that this trojan silently downloads more programs, how would you know that you have completely eradicated the bugger?

The only real solution is to nuke and reinstall OS X.

If I had mod points I would label you a troll. Please do embellish your claims of Mac users being more 'affluent' and likely to pay for software. And let's not even get into the subject of 'quality' computers as I would beg to differ when it comes to Apple hardware.