The government finally decided to care and used the one achilles heel of BitCoin...conversion to and from dollars. If BitCoin had some innate value, it wouldn't be a problem, but since it's primary use is as an exchange currency for dodging taxes and selling goods on the black market, this change is going to seriously impact the value of the currency.The government can't control BitCoin, but it can control US financial institutions and other companies that need to interact with those financial institutions.

We'll now see how well the BitCoin market can operate as a completely stand-alone entity.

As poorly written as GP's post was, it zeroed in on the most interesting thing that, at least for me, was said in the interview. When someone is as accomplished in so many areas as Mr Dyson is, it stands to reason that he'd have at least some insight into the educational process. And in both his response on his own education and in the one where he talked about his daughter's education, he indicated that he thought the success of both educational processes was due to a "benign neglect" which allowed the child to actively pursue education rather than having it imposed upon them.

I'm betting that this is true for a certain type of child...one who is curious and driven to learn and that many students don't fit into that category. But thinking back on my own education, I wonder how much more successful I would have been if I'd played a bigger role in shaping my curriculum rather than having it dictated by the schools I attended.

I'm only starting to let the idea marinate a bit, but I feel like there's got to be some way to incorporate this cooperative learning phenomenon where teachers get out of the way of students and simply make themselves available as resources rather than lecturing, dictating and otherwise trying to push information into the heads of students. If feels like a pull methodology would allow students to better learn at their own pace.

The tragedy is that Bush was able to derail his run for the presidency in 2000. He should have been president then, not in 2008. Our country would be in a much better state now if that had happened.

This is exactly why I chose other. Until you fix the process by which everything else gets fixed, attempting to fix everything else will be ineffective and actually make the situation worse.

HBO is the wrong place to start. All the comics there have some reputation from the clubs before they get on HBO. If he wants to move beyond RenFair performer, he should be trying to get his DVD in the hands of anyone who headlines their own comedy club shows. If one of them finds him funny, he might get a gig opening for someone with a bit more name recognition. The pay will be almost nil, but that's how people build their reputation to the point where HBO will pay any attention. Even then it's a bit of a long shot...the opening act from the show I saw this past Friday had already been on HBO.

Another option to explore...contact Netflix and offer the DVD royalty free for a year or so. If they accept it, urge anyone and everyone you meet to 5-star it in the hopes that it starts showing up as a suggestion to a wider audience.

But I wonder if his stuff isn't really that funny outside of the RenFair setting. In the context of a RenFair, that would be pretty funny because he's injecting humor into the scene that everyone is participating in. But outside of a RenFair setting, where people wear normal clothes and speak in their normal way, the humor won't play as well.

Why is Java still persisting with this notion that it should be a browser plugin? No one wants Java as a browser plugin and that's where the security vulnerabilities have been found. Meanwhile, in the area where Java is popular (the server and, to a lesser extent, desktop applications) and in need of the features that Java 8 was supposed to bring, these security problems are a secondary concern--there's very little need to worry about malicious code when you're not downloading it from an untrusted source.

It's time to retire Applets and Web Start entirely and leave Java to the things it's good at.

I don't give a rats ass about whether they're harmful or not...I'll cede the health argument entirely.

What I care about is that Monsanto is a despicable company that's attempting to fuck with our food supply for profit. The list of underhanded and downright unconscionable things that company has done is a mile long. I want labels on GMO products because I want to ensure that not one red cent I spend on food ends up supporting them. I want their leadership strung up by their entrails but, failing that, I want to do my part to limit their profits and, if enough people join me, put them out of business.

Once labels are mandatory, we can start campaigns to highlight their misdeeds and convince people to boycott their products. Currently, absent labels, such a boycott is impossible.

Like everything, it all depends on context. Bitch isn't universally sexist, but if it's said in reaction a reasonable action where a woman is asserting herself, it can be sexist. And it's almost universally sexist to refer negatively to a male as a bitch as it implies a lowering of stature through femininity.

For what it's worth, I don't believe that's the case here and I'm fine with people calling her a bitch, though I wouldn't do so myself and can see how others would find it inappropriate. She comes off as someone with a huge axe to grind and looking for even the slightest of provocations to push her agenda. She overreacted and deserves most of the blowback she's getting. Of all the behavior of everyone involved, hers is the only one I find malicious and reprehensible. The rest just showed bad judgment and/or were put in a no-win situation (read: the employers.)

The saddest part about this whole incident, to me, is how everyone is conflating 'sexual' with 'sexist'. From everything I've seen on the comments they were sexual, probably not safe for a work environment, but I don't see them as being sexist unless you buy into the puritanical, anti-sex agenda that tries to convince women that they can't enjoy sex as much as men. The undercurrent of this whole brouhaha is the culture that seeks to repress women and make them believe that they'll be branded 'sluts' or some other derogatory term if they actively pursue their sexual desires. Otherwise, why would they need to be protected from dirty-but-non-malicious jokes like the one in question? If the result of this incident is that women are over-protected, coddled or treated with "kid gloves" in the tech work environment, then we've all--women most of all--lost as a result.

There's been two things that have helped me immensely:

• 1. Replace your chair with an exercise ball. It will take a while before your abs/back can go the whole day, so you'll need to keep your chair until then.
• 2. Find an exercise that works your mind as well as your body. For me, it's rock climbing--specifically bouldering. Climbing involves a lot of problem solving. As you progress, you learn tools that help you solve the increasingly difficult problems. There's a lot of physics involved in bending your body and positioning it to maximize friction between hands/feet and the wall/holds. Regardless, the fact that the exercise keeps my mind active is what keeps me coming back in a way that exercises that turn my mind off never did.

It may not be laziness, but it's foolishness. You can save yourself a ton of time by pushing a lot of the selection criteria onto the applicant. Simply asking a couple of questions that require some thought or asking for a cover letter that meets certain criteria will allow you to immediately direct 700 of those 800 résumés to the circular file with a much higher degree of accuracy than a degree filter will have.

Given that the only candidate who would have addressed it in any capacity (Ron Paul) ran for his party's nomination, it's hard to argue with that. Also, before it was co-opted, the tea party identified as Republican while espousing Libertarian beliefs, so there's a reasonably large portion of the base that might also be amenable to addressing the issue.

Democrats like to think of themselves as more progressive, and, for the most part, I think they're correct, but on copyright issues, the Democrats have always been Hollywood's lackeys. Speaking as someone who votes Democrat most of the time, I'd have more hope of Republicans coming around on this issue than Democrats, if for no other reason than the last election proved that they were significantly out-of-touch with voters and it's pretty clear that copyright law is out-of-touch with reality given how many people download/share illegally (when millions of people break the law, it's usually the law that's broken, not the behavior.)

Believe it or not, when you get to the scale of, say, Google, you can make money off the employees and still offer service more cheaply than an in-house team. There are privacy issues to consider, but the economies of scale are definitely there that it can be cheaper.

And those service providers also don't hold the passwords for all the routers and servers hostage because of a dispute with their superiors and agree to give the passwords directly to the mayor only after being arrested. Isolated incident? Perhaps. But the author of the book was the mayor in that fiasco, so it makes sense that he'd feel the way he does about in-house IT.

I don't see why this is the case.

My ISP is small and can't afford to sell service at a loss. They serve only a limited area, but one where Comcast's service is no different than anywhere else. And yet this small company without large pockets can offer 200mbps symmetric service, though (*sob*) my building only has 100mbps installed (speed test result), for under $40/mo with no caps and no contracts. The only reason Comcast cannot offer similar service at a similar price is because they choose not to.

In rural areas, the situation might be different, but there's no excuse for gouging in areas where it is cheaper to serve just to keep things equal.

It's usually an indication of that, but not always. Experienced programmers can realize when they're actually dealing with a distinct usage scenario that just happens to be, at the moment, solved with the same block of code. Recognizing those situations and explicitly choosing not to reuse code will make your refactoring job considerably easier in the future and is most certainly an indication of a non-amateur.

The important part is that the reviewer is being sued. This is the way this stuff is supposed to work. Too often we see stories here on /. where the online service provider is being sued.

Kudos to the plaintiff in this case for not suing Yelp and Angie's List...regardless of who's in the right, the right two parties are in court.