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Prices that low hardly seem sustainable to me. Of that $14.50, Uber takes 20% immediately (correct me if I'm wrong, just Google'd it). Ten miles of fuel plus wear and tear on your vehicle will probably cost another $4 in this case. The driver ought to have commercial insurance (and if he doesn't then it's not sustainable), so we gotta subtract another... what, $1? I'm pulling that one out of the air TBH.

That leaves $6.60 for the driver. A reasonable time estimate might be 40 minutes for a 10 mile trip, given that traffic might be lousy and you gotta drive to your next fare. Maybe 30 minutes if everything goes smoothly. So unless your down time between fares is less than 10 minutes you'll be making less than minimum wage.

Can any commercial drives give more accurate estimates?

Sounds like it. The article says that this announcement applies to .NET Core, not the entire .NET framework. The .NET Core does not include WPF or WinForms at this time. Maybe they'll get there eventually...

The wording is a little confusing, though. They use the term ".NET Core Framework", which I assume refers to something less encompassing than the entire .NET framework, but honestly I can't tell for sure.

VS2013 Professional is currently available in the Microsoft Store for $499. No MSDN subscription required as far as I can tell.

Not entirely true. If your motherboard has dual-channel support then you'll definitely get a performance improvement (though maybe not a noticeable one outside of gaming) when you upgrade from 1 stick to 2 sticks of RAM, even if you can't use the extra capacity. Plenty of systems ship with only 1 stick installed.

Summary appears to be ripped verbatim from zerohedge. Or did it originate somewhere else? It'd be nice if people would cite their sources.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-18/dark-web-exposes-75000-bitcoin-based-bounty-bernankes-assassination

Despite his nigh-infinite power and goodness, there are a number of themes that can make a good Superman story interesting:

1) Superman can't save everyone. His character can be forced to make difficult decisions about how and where to apply his efforts, knowing that he can't be everywhere at once. I don't recall this plot device being used much in the movie. Yeah, there are lots of civilians getting killed, but that doesn't even seem to phase our hero. I don't recall any critical decision moments.

2) Superman can't save everyone, again. Despite his powers, there are some things he just can't fix. As the recent Wired review mentioned, this is why Jonathan Kent usually dies from a heart attack - that's something that Superman's powers cannot help. The movie doesn't pick up on this theme at all.

3) Superman may be _good_, but he doesn't have to be omniscient. Well-meaning application of his powers can result in unintended consequences, and his character can be forced to play clean up and also show a does of humility.

There are plenty of others. The character has spawned multiple television and comic book series, after all.

I didn't really enjoy this latest portrayal of Superman; it feels like the writers didn't understand his "good" nature and how to properly create _interesting_ conflict. An hour of Superman employing brute force (the one thing that he has no problem with) is just not compelling.

Unfortunately even if the military budget were cut to $0 we would still have a half-trillion dollar deficit. The elephants in the room are the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits that have already been promised to people, and which already total nearly 70% of federal tax revenues. Health care costs continue to rise faster than economic activity, and the number of beneficiaries of the programs will soon jump higher as more baby boomers retire. Unless we plan on spending 100% of federal tax revenues on these programs (which won't work for very long) something must be done to bring costs in line.

The article was pretty light on details. I wonder what the range is on this thing? Industrial terrorism could definitely be a concern.

The description makes it sound like the weapon is just a directed microwave gun, and missile part is only required to deliver the gun into range. If that's the case, what's to stop a group of terrorists from deploying such a weapon anywhere they like? Rent a hotel room near a target, construct the weapon, fire it out the window to silently disable electronics, and then escape while workers are still scrambling to figure out why all the PCs just went dark.

Heck, you might even be able to mount such a weapon in a van or truck; slide the door open for half a second to fire (nearly silent, of course) and then speed away before anyone even realizes what just happened.

The proposed back-up cameras are not supposed to take the place of existing mirrors. Rather, they are installed closer to the ground so that you can see what's behind you at a lower level than what's typically visible with the rear-view mirror (ie small children).

Have a look at the Spring Engine if you haven't already. There are a variety of RTS games, including some high-quality variants of Total Annihilation, which use the Spring Engine and allow for all sorts of client-side scripting through Lua. There are a variety of client-side lua "gadgets" that players have written already. You can move your units into custom formations by drawing lines or squiggles with the mouse; there are widgets to automate using air transports to ferry units between factories and rally points; there are even widgets to automatically alert the player when certain dangerous units are spotted. IIRC, someone was even working on a script for kiting with long-range units.

I imagine a scenario like the following:

Twenty years down the road, a close acquaintance of yours is murdered.

Fortunately, the police find some DNA at the scene! Unfortunately it's yours.

Fortunately that DNA sample you submitted to Berkeley was confidential! Unfortunately, a quick scan of the good 'ol police DNA database finds it anyway. Wonder how that happened?

Fortunately your name isn't associated with the sample! Unfortunately, since the victim didn't know anyone else who attended Berkeley, that's enough for the police to get a warrant for an official DNA sample.

Fortunately you didn't actually commit this crime, and mundane reasons easily explain the presence of your DNA! Unfortunately, someone once heard you say that you really didn't like the victim very much, and that statement combined with your DNA is enough for the brain-dead jury to convict you.

Standardized tests are another reason TI might want complete control over the operating system. If the operating system can be modified then sneaky students could hide all sorts of cheats inside the operating system. Forcing students to clear the memory of their calculators would no longer be sufficient to prevent cheating since information embedded in the OS would not be cleared.

One of the reasons that TI signs things is to provide a form of copy protection for the 3rd-party applications which are sold via the online store. The calculator operating system will not run a flash application for which it does not currently have a license. The operating system binary is signed so that you can't tamper with it in order to disable the copy-protection. A modified operating system could potentially run flash applications without a license.

As far as user-created software goes, TI doesn't really care what you run on the calculator. It's only non-free flash apps that concern them.