Leonard McCoy is rolling over in his grave.

With that typo, I thought you were saying it was better than a witch somehow. I'm not sure how...witches are pretty cool.

All the secretive talk about this company's product reminds me a lot of the Segway launch.

Why would you even want that?! I would have nightmares for the rest of my life after playing that game in VR!

If you read the findings 2012 Canadian study carefully, you'll see that they could not rule out transmission due to droplets called fomites. This is a different mode of transmission than aerosol. The authors of the study suggested that further experiments would need to be conducted to rule out other factors. People have been routinely misinterpreting these findings. I urge anyone to read the "Discussion" section of the study in which this issue is clarified. http://www.nature.com/srep/201...

Honestly, I'm kind of surprised the powers that be let this one through.

And when I say "technical interview", I mean interviewing for a programming job at a web software agency.

Not sure I see your point here. I've conducted a number of technical interviews and resume content seemed to have very little to do with actual performance in the interview. We got one guy who was almost done with a Master's degree in Comp. Sci. and he was one of the worst interviews we ever had. On the other hand, one of our best interviews was with a guy who was working at a marketing firm and had studied linguistics. You really can't predict how an applicant will turn out from their credentials.

I majored in music and I've been working as a software developer for four years since I graduated. Of course, I did have a previous background in programming. I think good work experience and rapport during interviews goes a long way. However, I do sometimes get the impression that certain doors are closed to me since I don't have the degree.

Employees with STEM degrees might also believe (incorrectly) that they can do the job without learning anything new, which makes them less useful. Employees without STEM degrees may be less susceptible to this since it's clear to them that they've got a lot to learn. Not saying this is always the case, but I think it's a factor sometimes.

Hmm...I wonder if that explains the large meteor we saw break apart in the sky here in Boulder, Colorado recently.

Who created that petition? They should correct the grammar error in the first sentence. A comma is used where a period and new sentence would obviously have been a better choice. Of course, that's probably impossible at this point. For god's sake, why don't people proofread these things??

...if she hadn't responded to their threat with another threat, thereby escalating the situation?

It seems like, if you could describe the algorithm in a sufficiently low-level language like C, they shouldn't be asking you how many gates it would take. If they're the hardware manufacturer, they should know. Besides, there are too many factors that could influence the gate count depending on how the manufacturer decided to implement the adders, etc. None of these things seem like questions that programmers should be responsible for answering.

As far as college text books are concerned, it's a weird situation and I don't blame anyone who says they simply prefer a paper text book. Here's why. Have you ever tried to use the officially-sanctioned eBook solutions that are available on the market today? They're pathetic. Completely locked down with DRM and mired by bad interface design and usability. I bought an eBook for one of my classes at the beginning of the semester. I had thought to myself, "Hey, this could be great if it's like I imagine -- like downloading an eBook to my Kindle app on my iPad." Boy, was I mistaken. I had to download a half-backed piece of proprietary crap-ware in order to "read" my book. The user interface in this "app" (rhymes with "crap"?) was appalling. The interface was clunky and looked like it was thrown together in a single week. The pages were pixelated, not crisp like a PDF.

In the end, I resorted to _illegally_ downloading the books (as PDFs) I had just purchased legitimately on account of the inadequacies in the kosher versions. Ironically, now that I've gone through one semester being able to carry around my iPad (< two pounds) instead of paper text books (~ twenty pounds?), I would never -- not in a million years -- go back to paper text books. It's unfortunate that all these media corporations have been allowed to drag their feet so slowly in embracing new technologies and formats for delivering their content.