I've got several apps in the store. Most of the UI code is fully shared, and moderately adoptive to screen size. In a few places, I needed something special for one or the other.

My trick is that the 8.1 universal apps have two mainpage.xaml files (one for desktop, one for phone). I just make a shared UserControl. Each MainPage just has one object, which is the shared control

(BTW: I work at Microsoft, but not in the group that does XAML; my way works but that doesn't mean there isn't a better way)

It's called, "the general operations budget" I work for a big company; from on high we get general guidelines ("computers are expected to last xyz years" and "you have abc to spend on travel this year"). itt's up to the more lower-level people to decide how to portion it out.

In the FCC's case, congress has already given them money to inforce their regulations (and gave them the authority to make the regulations, but also gave them requirements like hainvg a certain number of public hearings). The FCC can then spend it on those things.

So you're in favor of government regulations for conduit? Because seriously, none of the existing companies are very willing to share their expensive conduit, and nobody will build it for "everyone" unless they can get some serious customers.

How's this for a counter-example? Orchestras used to have a ton of reasons why women were grossly under-represented -- they just weren't interested, they didn't have the skills, they didn't have the long-term ability -- whatever. But when orchestras started to have players audition behind curtains, suddenly a lot of talented women started getting hired.

Right now there are plenty of teachers who literally don't want women in their high-tech classes. This bill helps solve that problem, and doesn't let the teacher weasel their way out with cop-out answers.

Quote: "within their jurisdiction". That means that the court has ordered (in compliance with your rights) that certain data be discovered or turned over. Seriously, folks: the police do get to investigate crimes. If they need to look at your car (or, in 18th century terms, your horse), they get to.

I don't understand this modern "etiquette". Airline says have a recline button; it has exactly one function, and people are using it correctly. How can anyone then suggest that politeness requires that people should not recline their seats?

Actually, it is that hard. I needed some CR32032 batteries, and looked on Amazon. Guess what? There's a ton of sellers, claiming to sell from a ton of vendors. I'll guess that many of them will sell me a battery with the right physical and electrical form factor, but....

Which brands last longer?
Which sellers are selling official brands, and which are selling indistinguishable knockoffs?
Are the knockoffs actually worse?

Is something that looks more official and appears more reputable actually selling something better? Or am I paying for reputation and not actual quality?

How valid are the reviews? Are they astroturf? Does it matter? How can someone tell a good battery from a bad one, anyway, right after getting it. Are the just giving 5 stars because the batteries came quickly in nice packaging?

I think these are all reasonable questions, but I don't have an answer to any of them. I'm hoping that someone has done a real comparison, and can provide some kind of solid data.

Funny, I remember the same thing. And it's an old usage to -- I see from the Electric Interlocking Handbook (1913) at http://books.google.com/books?id=ZPINAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA93&dq=%2B%22buss%22+electric&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4kfUU4_2McW1iwKwyYHIBA&ved=0CFgQuwUwBg#v=onepage&q=%2B%22buss%22%20electric&f=false that it's been used in the industry.

What's the probabilitiy...
It's easily possible to idly speculate on answers:
Probability of life starting? On Earth, life started up pretty much right away. If it was unlikely, it's more likely to have started later, not earlier.

Probability of life becoming complex: low (ish). Out of roughly 5 billion years, 4 billion were spent on one-celled organisms

Probability of sentience: out of a metric buttload of species, we know of exactly one species with both sentience and high technology. That kind of indicates that's it's not so much a survival trait :-)

Tenure exists in the secondary education market because local school boards used to always fire teachers before they could qualify for their pension.

Actually, most of the comments I've seen about the OpenSSL code are immature, and show a lack of appreciation for the changes in the industry.

Like, remember that if-isupper-then-tolower code? Well, back in the day, tolower on most platforms would just bit-bang in a '1' bit. That will convert A to a, but also converts at-sign to back-tick. In "modern" toolchains, this doesn't happen any more; tolower is expected to handle all chars, and work correctly.

But -- as a developer, can you prove that every system that you're running on has a proper implementation of tolower? It's easy for me; I only work with one version of Visual Studio, and I can quickly prove that tolower work.

I've done code that works on multiple platforms. It used to be really, really gnarly: everything platform was always just a little bit different. And you get code that looks just like what I've seen in the snarky comments.

From TFA (2007): "Gore said that Arctic ice could be gone entirely in 34 years, and he made it seem like a really precise prediction"

OK, it's been 6 or 7 years since then. Would you say the artic ice is substantially less, substantially more, or about the same from then?

Hint: data at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicen...

Eyeballing the data, there's a ton of noise but there is a decent trend in there. And the data in the last 7 years doesn't look like it is violation of that trend, or the prediction voiced by Mr. Gore.