That's nice.

Isn't Oracle's table/column names still limited to 30 characters? I would think a modern, enterprise-worthy database could handle a bit more.

It's ok! I got you covered! Wait... crap!

Or, more specifically, Object Pascal. The work that Anders Hejlsberg did on Turbo Pascal and Delphi are very underrated, and conceptualized a lot of ideas that would bear fruit in C#.

Oracle != Microsoft

It's pretty obvious why Microsoft has been within the top few spots of the computing industry for so long. Beats the hell out of me how Oracle is still around.

There is no reason that we have to pick one and abandon work on the others. I don't see that the same resources go into solving more than one, except that the meteor and volcano problem have one solution in common - be on another planet when it happens.

The clathrate problem and nuclear war have the potential to end the human race while it is still on one planet, so we need to solve both of them ASAP.

I assume that the plane was rerouted on a pretty much direct route from where they were to Atlanta. They'd want to make sure that the airplane stayed over relatively unpopulated areas in the event of an explosion.

And if it strays off its assigned route? Do you really think they are going to shoot it down?

It's like a resume question from Evil Overlords, Inc. software division.

That is pretty much exactly the opposite of what he said.

Real gamers use swords and steam tunnels.

This "danger" keeps violent crime at less than 1/7 the level of UK, comparing New York to London (similar population, similar percentage of "bad" minorities, etc).

Where did you get that BS from? Fox News?

Hint, I think that you have the ratio the wrong way round.

It doesn't help that most VPNs are so easy to detect and block at the IP header level. PPTP depends on the GRE IP protocol (47), and L2TP is usually tunneled over IPSec, which depends on the ESP IP protocol (50). By using different protocol numbers in the IP headers, the designers of these protocols made it mindlessly easy to block them, and made them harder to support, because routers have to explicitly know how to handle those nonstandard protocol numbers.

The last time that I was in China (a couple of years ago), OpenVPN using non-standard ports to my private server was blocked. In the end, I ran OpenVPN over tcp/22 (yes, ugly and slow, but it worked). I don't understand why VPN's were blocked but not SSH. OpenVPN uses UDP (by default), so no obvious protocol numbers to block.

That assumes the bell had been drawing the same current that entire time. The bell used to ring, meaning it was drawing much more current then.

Competition is great. For the customer. For awhile. Not so good for the businesses that are competing. Perhaps you've heard of the term "dumping"? That's when a "competitor" can afford to sell below cost just to drive his competition out of business. Great for the customer, until the competition goes away and prices go back up.

We used to have a great small local magazine shop in this town. Borders moved in. They had books and magazines and a coffee shop and ... all in one place. The local shop was driven out of business. Bad for them. Then Borders lost the competition with B&N (and Amazon) and they have now gone away. It's an hour drive to the closest full-service shop. This competition turned out just great for the local shop, Borders, and the customers in this town, didn't it?

It wasn't competition from a direct competitor that drove Borders out of town, it was a technological revolution. Ask youself if you would be better off riding round in a horse-pulled buggy, or in a car. Your argument above applies directly.

But yeah, there are natural monopolies. That's why we have regulated utilities, such as PG&E.

The cable and phone companies benefitted from sweatheart deals to install their connections in cities, yet they would scream in outrage at the prospect of a new competitor getting a similar sweatheart deal to bring in service.