A stupid user is a stupid user. Everyone is so quick to rush to the soapbox and preach how wonderful their platform of choice is and how awful the others are. I say rush to the box and preach how stupid people are. I say rush to the box and demand that basic computing security be taught to everyone just as proper hygiene and safe sex are. We do not need big brothers, we don't need walled gardens, we need people to know what the hell it is that they're doing with their electronics. Teach people to wash their damn hands, avoid disenfranchised Nigerians, stop opening random email attachments, and stop bloody installing apps that require access to your sensitive data.

Free Oracle (MySQL) may be a competitor to the "not for free" Oracle but I think it still provides value to the company. MySQL has name recognition and reputation, MariaDB is still working on building these. So long as MySQL is around MariaDB will have a harder time doing so and for that reason alone Oracle may well keep MySQL going.

It isn't just the immune system that it affects. It has been shown to decrease muscle strength--including the heart. It also readily reacts with the chlorine in household tap water to form chloroform, a recognized carcinogen.

You will have the very same abilities to surreptitiously monitor and record in real-time the private lives of citizens as you would with any smartphone and most other mobile devices. Data is stored in the cloud and open for government intrusion while providing the theater privacy and security. If you don't bungle your public show feigned concern you shouldn't have anything to worry about from the voters on this issue. Now go back to your hookers and blow and leave your fingers out of it.

Don't believe everything you watch on Fox News. It's only that way right now because the pot-smoking, crazy, hippie, pinko-liberals are running things.

In Minnesota, the yellows tend to be quick, but you are also not expected to stop unless it's safe to do so. If you enter the intersection on yellow, it doesn't matter if it changes red while you're in it. The folks waiting on the green are required to ensure the cross traffic has stopped before proceeding.

Depends. Where does the kid fit within the socioeconomic/racial food-chain?

States are allowed by the U.S. Constitution to be douche bags so long as they do not impinge upon interstate commerce or other federal juridictions. Florida has historically just been a bit douchier than most and this is simply an illustration of that.

Wait... Who were we talking about?

We must resist the products of the second law of thermodynamics. If that requires slapping Timothy around every now and then then that's what must be done.

What a strange euphemism.

Did I miss something? "The Voice," "American Idol," "America's Got Talent?" No statistics, no hardware, not even politics tangential to technology; nothing but a link to a couple paragraphs on a site for addle brained people whose concerns reach no further than the next amusement to distract them from realizing their own mediocrity.

What the hell Timothy? Have you lost your passion? Did you sell out? Fall on your head? ...

Sounds like a point defense system--for when all else fails. The targeting/tracking system need not be limited to the effective range of the laser.

It kind of depends upon what you need. Contests will find puzzle solvers, those that would work reasonably well doing research. Contests however, will not be very effective in finding the "big picture" folks that are needed to develop clean, robust architectures. I suspect they may well select against them. You will also almost certainly limit your applicants to college kids, and/or recent graduates looking to establish themselves not those that have already proven their abilities.

You do realize that the medium by which that content was distributed did not lend itself to near zero expense reproduction right? Analog to analog reproduction is inherently lossy. It costs as much (if not more) to photocopy a book and bind those pages into a new one as it does to just buy a legal distribution of the shelves. A product loses its inherent value the moment everyone that wants one can obtain a copy for near zero cost. For now this issue only troubles intellectual property. Soon it will affect tangible goods as well when what used to require a manufacturer can be had from a digital scan and a matter assembler.