There is a new design?

As far as I can tell, it looks the same way it has for years. I have the old mode setting turned on though. Even before Dice showed up all the javascript bullshit just made things suck. If only you could get the old-mode without actually logging in.

Muahahahaha.

Those are MY jellyfish. With with frikin laser beams attached to their heads.
Except the lasers fell off.... because have you ever tried attaching something to a jellyfish?

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Ah, jellyfish. This is one of my favourite up-and-coming ocean doomsday scenarios.

Consider:
- No hard parts, so unaffected by ocean acidification
- Perform well in anoxic (low oxygen) environments
- Eat everything
- Have almost no nutritional value of their own
- Can shrink when food resources are low, and simply eat less
- Few natural predators
- Some species are effectively immortal by way of reverting to earlier life stages

To a certain extent, it's a bit of a miracle that the oceans managed to ever keep them in check, but oxygenation of the oceans created whole ecosystems of creatures that could--as a group--effectively compete against jellyfish.

There's no one predator that we can release that will keep the jellyfish contained or under control. It takes whole ecosystems to combat a real jellyfish problem.

Here's a review of a book written by Dr. Lisa Gershwin (composer Gershwin's granddaughter, I believe) http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/sep/26/jellyfish-theyre-taking-over/?pagination=false

Fortunately, humans are adept at obliterating species if they can get a taste for them. Better acquire a taste for them quick.

Don't sell the standard virtual keyboard short. I use mine quite competently--I've written quite long emails on my iPhone when I've been of a mind to--and I have a colleague that can put the iPad on his lap and effectively touch-type with virtually no errors at nearly the same speed as he types on a normal keyboard. Autocorrect on all platforms is, by and large, good enough. We make fun of the corrections, but they're honestly a damn sight better than the brutality of text speak.

I agree with you. We can adapt.

This article at Stratechery has some interesting points about 'disruption' and being 'obsoletive'. http://stratechery.com/2013/obsoletive/

But a big part of the main thrust is that the iPhone reduced both the BlackBerry and the standard candybar phone to APPS. It wasn't necessary to have a whole device that did just phoning, or one that just did messaging, you could have a device that did a lot more than that.

The iPhone wasn't cheaper, but it WAS better. It was a general purpose device in a world that previously basically just had single-purpose devices.

Anyway, the article is worth a read.

Yes, that was clearly Snowden's goal. Social change, government by consent, he didn't even think about that hippy-dippy stuff.

No award is going to protect that girl from more attacks by the Taliban. They don't give a damn about what the west thinks about her, if anything they'll see it as a challenge - once again the west trying to attack their religion. But if the award goes to Snowden it makes it that much harder for the US to put him in prison.

If the US tried to put Mandela in prison for being a terrorist, the way SA did before he received the award, the political blow-back would be enormous.

Define "forward thinking." Microsoft has been paranoid against following the inevitable trajectory of all tech companies since day 1, and has invested heavily in all the right areas to prevent it from happening. But it still happened anyways. Maybe one day it will wither and die, but be lucky enough to be re-born as a different company that strikes gold in some new area, like Apple was (and countless other defunct tech companies attempting a similar strategy were not). But for now Microsoft is still making tons of money at being Microsoft.

That's the problem with this kind of award, it turns it into a contest which seems rather gauche. "Oh yeah, well this person got shot in the head, beat that!"

Isn't that as it should be, after working and saving all your life?

You ignored: "This wealth gap is now more than double what it was in 2005 and nearly five times the 10-to-1 disparity a quarter-century ago" even after you quoted it! Some disparity is desirable (since people bulk up savings for retirement) but why has it grown so fast and so large?

I can tell you this, my dad worked at a company extremely similar to where I work, and he is enjoying a retirement I will never have, at least without extreme sacrifice now which he did not do. He got a full pension and pre-medicare healthcare benefits - both things that my employer has cut since after I hired on here. I tell him about it and he's kind of surprised. I can't blame him personally. But in general old people are just cruising along assuming nothing has really changed and "what's the matter with kids these days" that they're racking up college debt and not settling down, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they're sucking up everything in sight just by honoring the promises they made to each other back when, while failing to set enough aside to pay for them.

From what I've read, there is a difference, and the Republicans are worse. There has been hysteria whipped up over supposed voter fraud, without any proof that it's a big problem. The Republicans are responsible for ramming through a bunch of laws requiring photo ID to vote. Democrats haven't done anything similar.

Photo IDs don't help much with fraud. All that really does is put more barriers between voters and the voting booth, as they know very well. They've erected other barriers, made people fill out more paperwork and do more legwork to "prove" their eligibility to vote, and they've done this disproportionately in Democratic leaning areas. They've arranged for fewer, older, slower, and more trouble prone voting machines in those areas, in hopes that the long lines would discourage Democratic voters. They've also tried scare tactics, such as a big billboard warning people that voting under a false identity is a felony. It's Jim Crow all over again.

Good info. 26 Mbps up would really open some options such as watching DVR content from home while on the road, or sending links to self-hosted video to family instead of youtube where they will get blocked for copyright infringement. I made my dad a video for his birthday and he never saw it because I put a beatles song behind it.

Well, it's known that they've ordered one specially designed...but I don't think that's built yet, and it seems more of an experimental "proof of concept" machine than something serious. Which is why I give factorization encryption 5 years. That's probably being a bit conservative, but they ARE looking. Of course, there may be roadblocks such that a decent quantum computer is actually impossible, but that's probably not the way to bet.

No. Largely right, but No.

A random one-time pad is secure until/unless the decoder gets his hands on a copy (Though you might want to encrypt a prime number of bits at a time. I'm not sure what happens if you encrypt chunks of characters.)

Also, public key encryption (say twofish, or even AES) is probably safe if you have a long enough key barring either a theoretical breakthrough in factorization of decent quantum computers. But you might be wise to not use the default parameters. (What you *should* use, I don't know. I'm not a cryptographer.) But say that it's good for five years as an estimate. Note that without that "theoretical breakthrough" or quantum computers, a decent key length will be safe for the lifetime of the universe...IF decent parameters are used.

If you're using a one-time pad, you don't need to secure the message, only the pad. But you need an out-of-band secure means to transfer the pad.

OTOH, if your computer has WiFi....well, the computer probably isn't secure. If it's connected to the internet, then it probably isn't secure. Etc. Message interception in transit is only one means of interception. Interception when/while/after decoding is another. And a trojan is an excellent way to intercept the message...though it needs to be a bit more targeted than just recording everybody's messages.

Narcc, I'd like to BUY your rock!

I can't think of anything worse for an economy than not paying people. The right thing to do would be to pay essential staff time and a half, and 'non-essential' staff, even if they didn't have to come in. Having that many people that have no money to spend that can't go out and get different jobs is brutal.

Also, just how 'non-essential' is this personel? If they're really not needed, shouldn't their absence be virtually unnoticeable? It clearly isn't, so they can't really be termed 'non-essential'.