Wow. This has to be the best troll I have seen in years.

And yeah, I know, don't feed them, but +5 insightful? Sheeeeet

Indeed, the basic idea behind the patent system is sound. However, a software patent does not need to provide an actual working solution, all it needs to do is for someone to say: I reckon I could make something like this work. This, as opposed to a physical patent, which needs to describe an actual thing, and how it actually works.

Benefit to society from the "I reckon" patents: virtually non-existant

Speaking of common usage: you clearly have absolutely no clue what the term piker means, either in common or uncommon usage. Pretty much makes your rant meaningless.

Short answer: Postfix is awesome

Long answer: You can (and I have) set up postfix with clamav so any emails with virus laden payload is rejected at initial delivery time, and no, this is not having a bad SMTP server, a "550 - rejecting email containing a virus" is a perfectly cromulent response. And FWIW, you will get much better results using postgrey, clamav and DSPAM than you will ever get with amavis and spamassassin. Plus you can hook clamav in to the DSPAM queue, keeps your postfix configuration clean.

Glad I am not the only one thinking that, I've known people who breed Labradoodles all my life.

Of all the comments I have read, this is the one that holds water.

You want a society that leads in science, technology, innovation, then promote those qualities in your society. Clearly China has, and just as clearly the US has not. Nor does this disease of promoting anti-intellectualism restrict itself to the US, or indeed to the west. Knowledge, through education for all is what lifts societies up, ignorance breeds only the crippling of societies.

Do I see Fox News pontificators, or radical jihadist Imams, or indeed any authority that seeks to curtail independant thought and enforce a regimen of blind acceptance as being different in any meaningful way? No, they all seek to keep the masses in ignorance.

Education. REAL EDUCATION, not just what some turkey who got elected somewhere thinks is education, but education where those things taught as science can at the very least pass the most important test of any scientific hypothesis, falsifiability. Where history does not need to reflect the political bias of the current government. Where truth is valued over spin, and intellectual talent is valued over social or physical prowess.

Treasure your nerds, or join the barbarians.

This is true, however you can get the regional difference by going to the regional domain directly:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=adele

http://www.google.com/search?q=adele

For me (in Australia), I get slightly different results for those two links. That said, not one pirated song in either list, at least the first page.

I took the comment about pirated music results in the same spirit I took the rest of the article: witless prattle from someone who hasn't the slightest clue regarding their chosen subject matter.

And now I am hungry.

Mmmmmmm, politicious.

Good old Bad Astronomy, love that site.

Gotta say, looking up at the full moon right now, clear skies, and sure, nice full moon, nothing visibly spectacular at all, beyond being a massive lump of rock in the sky. Nothing breeds contempt like familiarity.

And I do so hope /. does not become Digg.

Sing it

Though the 7 slides in TFA contain almost no content at all, this was in fact one of the questions answered: yes, they now have a master password.

Honestly, if all you bring is outrage, then yes, you are an idiot. Climate science is not divided on this subject. This has been happening, and is happening increasingly: now. Because, you guessed it, of things we are doing to change this planet on a macro scale. No one cares if you don't like it. We only care if you have reproducible scientific experiments, or observations that have anything useful to add to the debate. And no, twonking on does not count as evidence.

Okay, hold it.

That evolution occurs, almost no one in biological sciences doubts. None of those who doubt have produced a single observation or hypothesis to contradict it, and are presumably sticking to their anti-evolutionary stance out of sheer cussedness.

Do we know everything about the mechanisms involved in the various processes that resulted in observed behaviour? No, and indeed that is a good thing. What a sad world it would be if we nerds with a need to figure out why no longer had any questions.

The situation with human originated climate change is basically the same. That it is happening, almost no scientist working in the field doubts, and again, presumably cussedness is the cause of lingering recalcitrance in the remainder, since we are talking about _science_. Reproducible experiments, peer review, testing of hypotheses with what scientists proudly can describe as rigour.

If you find all this big brain talk too confusing, please, whatever you do, don't abrogate your vote to some preacher or politician, please, trust solid, peer reviewed science. Base what you consider scientific fact on the consensus of the scientists in the field; your preacher or politician, who almost certainly has less scientific training than even you is unlikely to be a useful resource in this regard.

This is all exactly what TFA was raising, which is that there is a pervading attitude among many people that their "gut feeling" or other irrational causes are perceived as being legitimate reasons to doubt and indeed decry the results of reproducible scientific observations, and in much the same way, to consider an uninformed opinion to hold as much or even more than an informed one.

Not sure how well versed you are in the causes of the last dark age, but trust me, the insistence in a consensus of reality based upon decree rather than falsification and experimental confirmation was definitely the wrong path, and one we seem to have people wanting to drag the world down again.

The endless march toward what the GNOME devs think the "average user" wants continues unabated.

I should be shocked, but somehow I no longer can.

The side note in TFA about dconf made me cry a little, but only a little. Alas for the GNOME of old.

Pretty much what I remember of it too, bloody annoying thing that caused more problems than it fixed.

Sing it, sister!

The most horrible "framework" I have ever seen, and the worst "framework" code I have ever seen.

No clue about encapsulation. No clue about the object model at all. No clue about MVC. Core code that is random display, with inline SQL to make it look far less professional. There are reasons no one uses Cold Fusion anymore. This is just one of them.

Plus, if you find that tonk who wrote Drupal. Beat him with a typewriter until he says sorry.