Gee. Europe started with that GSM thingy. They were doing cellular much better than the US with TDMA and CDMA. Universal handsets. No subsidy lock. Maybe they have limited resources so they use them better.

And yet you can walk around it now without damage. Unlike Fukushima or Pripyat...

Sex is no substitute for plot, dialogue or story line. If you don't think so, there's a whole genre out there waiting for you.

Yes, obviously there can be no defects in Apple software. If it's not working for you, hold it differently. Or restart.

I struggled with the answer to that question when George W. Bush was President.

I'm still struggling now.

Don't have a good answer.

No, that's not what I meant. The ignition switch fiasco is an example of a poor organizational culture getting people killed needlessly.

I'm talking about deaths that might happen during a normal development cycle of 3-6 months to identify the problem,develop, test and distribute a fix.

That is an unfortunate accident, and the injured should be fairly compensated. But not at a punitive level that the consumers of the technology would have to pay for, one way or another. The lawyers who advertise on local TV would be salivating at the chance to sue a company worth $Billions like Google in a local court.

This is why the self-driving car will take so long to develop.

If I fall asleep and hit your car and injure you, you will nick my insurance, probably up to the limit of my liability. If that is exceeded, you will probably stop there, or stop after putting me into bankruptcy.

Now, if the Google(r) Self Driving Car(tm) hits you, you will sue Google for $Billions. Especially if you find out that the car hit you because of a *known* bug. That will go over very well in the hands of a non-technical jury. All software ever written (even software for the Apollo Lunar Lander) has known bugs. No company can fix every bug *immediately*. They have to prioritize, write fix, test fix, distribute fix, etc. During that time, an accident could happen. In the current 'deep pockets' liability theory, the expected cost of these lawsuits would be more than the cost of developing the software and the cost of the sensors and hardware necessary to implement it.

Even if, on average, the Google(r) Self Driving Car(tm) is safer than driving yourself, unless something like the vaccine liability fund is implemented, then the car is a non-starter (pun intended). Which is a shame because 1) I want one and 2) it's likely to be safer than the Human Driven Car (tm).

The linked article is very poorly researched.

It gives the person's last (or first) name, but not the complete name. Just starts quoting by name in the middle.

Also, it lists Comcast by name but just says "employed by a large accounting firm". Looks like they could have spent five minutes more on research so we know who to blame.

Knuth considered it an art, not a science. Now, with offshoring, Visual Basic, etc., it's more of a blue-collar craft.

Most of the 36-bit architectures use one's complement notation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

Just as the defendant's lawyers are not interested in the truth, but only in getting their client off.

I wish our justice system was less like a football game and more an inquiry into facts.

Hate speech is just that. Speech. It should never be prohibited.

Universities and others that make hate speech a crime are violating the principle of free speech.

The other Arab countries don't want the Palestinians, despite all their talk of sovereignty.

Egypt guards the South boundary of Gaza. Jordan guards the East side of the West Bank. They won't let the Palestinians out.

In a rational world, Egypt and Jordan would annex the areas and take responsibility for subduing the people with rockets. But the area is so heavily settled it will be a net loss to anyone. So they just guard the perimeter - much better than America guards their Southern border.

Buzz Aldrin should have been the first man on the moon.

He's done much more to be an evangelist for space exploration than Neil ever did. It was almost impossible to get Neil out of his cocoon. We need someone making space exploration real and desirable to get funding.

Like the transcontinental railroad and the channel tunnel, both of which went bankrupt during or shortly after the build, the fiber will still be serving the homes 20 years out with higher speed bandwidth than they would have any other way. Build it and they will come.