I can't say for printers (but if they're PostScript, I'm sure generic drivers will work). However, for scanners, do take a look at VueScan. It's not all that expensive and the amount of scanners that are supported is staggering. It also works on Linux and OS X... Since I don't use Windows any more, but do have some speciality scanning devices (still on SCSI, so you can guess the age), VueScan on LInux did all I needed an more.

Because it's running in multiple worlds simultaneously? It's not just using 1's and 0's but superpositions of the two that are effectively in both states at once. Heh... I'm really don't understand this stuff, but the big deal about quantum computing is that it will make some previously intractable (e.g., non-polynomial) problems accessible to us. All problems in complexity class BQP become, essentially, polynomial on a quantum computer. If you've got enough qbits, among other things.

Seems to be how most companies are run, too.

...except without the blackjack, hookers or even a modicum of efficiency.

But in a world where school shootings are an extremely rare event—even to the point of being statistically non-existant ~.

FIFY.

You know how I know you watch a lot of TeeVee news and/or read Fox.com? Because you're all worked up over a non-existent crisis.

Except I wasn't talking about gas emissions from volcanoes.

I was talking about the basic frequency of volcanic and geologic activity. Let's just say "Earthquakes" so we can stay clear of preconceptions.

Earthquake frequency is steadily rising, and this, among the other non-emission related items indicated, are tightly linked to the climate change events we are experiencing today.

People are clinging to the belief that climate change MUST be our fault, and therefore is also within our power to fix.

It isn't.

As for reading about sun spots. . , I suggest you do some.

Never answer a question directly. Require your Padawan to ALWAYS ASK THE DUCK before they bother you. If the duck can't answer the question, then it is okay to ask you. If you don't know the answer, then YOU need to ask the duck. Learn this lesson, you must.

And you won't make it universal until you bake into a popular protocol that's easy to use, that doesn't require extensive setup or pay-to-play, and that doesn't allow the user to trust a suspicious connection. OpenSSH and bitcoin have probably done it best so far, and I'm not sure that's anywhere close enough for the general public.

Even then, I think we underestimate the arrogance of law... if you successfully made encryption universal, then laws would be passed to force decryption (5th be damned) or monitor the endpoints.

Preserving liberty ultimately requires activism and civil disobedience.

And if you're an embedded software developer and I ask you what some of the issues might be when using C++ on a resource-constrained embedded system, please don't get uppity, look at me like it's an impertinent question and shrug your shoulders as if it's me that's being unreasonable...

I'd love to work in that industry. Any openings in Luxembourg? ;-) 1MB of RAM still considered a luxury? I like challenges like that. Mean and lean data structures, if you can use them at all. Last time I did something fun like that was a CGI in C where I could not change anything on the target system (which was a big-ass server), but I had to do everything from scratch as the only thing I could assume were standard C libraries. Me, vi, my C compiler and valgrind. Hours of fun.

And "var" is terser than the average class/type name.

...which are implicit/ducked-typed. In a statically-typed system, you explicitly define the interface for the sake of the type system. To help it help you, so to speak.

Granted, this is more language specific, but most dynamic langs have evolved from being able to run as straight-line scripts with no nesting/front-matter. I was trying to list all of the things that make dynamics langs briefer in general... beyond casts. :-)

Don't forget (1) type declarations; (2) array initializers, (3) storage class identifiers; (4) interfaces; (5) generic types; (6) more verbose API's for reflection (and damn near everything else); and (7) mandatory class "container" for static methods, constants, and globals. And at the design level, there's even more opportunity for brevity since various cheats are available, such as defining classes and methods at runtime, etc.

Of course, that's talking in generalities. Static langs are doing more now to reduce verbage and copy some dynamic-language "feel". C# especially since it introduced local type inference, anonymous methods/closures, LINQ, and DLR...

Ok, for the array, that's weird... I've done my share of C and C++ programming and reading this I was like "I don't know what parametrised types are". So, I googled it and it seems you talk about templates. See, there... failed your interview already. I know about them, don't particularly like them because you never know who will maintain your code and this stuff isn't exactly simple.

Anyway, just wanted to say that.

There is a benefit that no one has mentioned yet: HFT can cause the market for a stock to oscillate out of control very, very quickly, and that oscillation can disrupt the trading in the stock. The "circuit breakers" the NYSE put in to damp out-of-control oscillations are pretty much defeated by HFT. Further, HFT disassociates the value of the stock itself from the perceived value created by short-term movement in the market, and so affects the capitalization of a company trying to do business. HFT is also a way to quick ruin, if the algorithms used are not tuned carefully enough -- and particularly if two trading algorithms get into harmonic resonance: think Galloping Gertie, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940.

One thing that everyone here who is making some variant of this argument is conveniently forgetting is the opposite end of what can happen. What if instead of bones his shovel had turned up gold lumps? Would the public get a cut if it was standing by with a check because of what might turn up? Is this the one man version of "socialize the cost, privatize the profit"?

It pretty much is BS... one tell-tale sign is the outer "wrapper" story explaining how he got the news. This is a common narrative crutch that lets an author "ease into" introducing his world. Instead of saying "I got a message and met my contact in the middle of the night", there is a slow, omnious build-up to the dramatic unveiling of the story's payload.

Then there the dialog... it's very tight, TV-like script with a lot of back-and-forth that reads punchy (“You don’t know jack") while chopping up the message into narrative-sized bites. There's even the obligatory recap that's followed by the journalist character saying "We know all this already." You see this type thing all the time in the movies: character A explains to character B some background info that the audience needs to know but that character B should already know; the author then papers over the narrative mismatch by having character B object to the unnecessary sharing.

The informant's pleading to "get the story out" is a very efficient mechanism: (1) it adds more drama, (2) it lends a sort of fake credibility to the unnamed informant, and (3) it simultaneously solicits the reader to take action/forward the story/whatever.

Hilariously, notice how the author promises more at the end... "My source provided additional information, but I am abiding by his wish to get this much out... Stay tuned." Four days later, he's forgotten about it and has move on to his next agit-prop piece.

Ow, sorry... For some reason it looked as if you replied to my comment. My mistake.