Strang

It's not, and that's the problem. Printer ink prices and practices are universally reviled.

HDMI is also very unreliable in my experience. The sound on my tv cuts out randomly whenever viewing an HDMI source. And my monitor occasionally blacks out for a few seconds. Sometimes it doesn't come back on, or only displays colored static.

I suspect this has something to do with HDCP DRM, but I'm not sure if that's the case.

I thought the exact same thing. This article seems to be reinforcing the idea of a gold phone as a shallow spectacle.

What exactly is dismaying about the parent comment? You don't truly believe that the parent commenter believes it is "her own stupid fault that she died penniless of cancer," do you?

Please open your mind a little and please be more charitable in interpreting opposing points of view.

Agreed. I thought "Paradigm: Yes" was hilarious, but the Perl row has a few errors.

"Function Overloading" should be "N/A" for a language without subroutine signatures. Any Perl function can take any combination of arguments and decide what to do with them. This is used to create de facto function overloading.

"Method Pointers: No" is ridiculous. Perl has subroutine references, which includes methods. You can even use a method name string as a method reference if you need to.

Hmm, I guess I will degrade my account and flickr will lose a paying customer.

Seems like most users either a) are resigned to seeing ads on every website or b) have installed an ad-blocker. I don't see how paying for ad removal can generate much money.

I am genuinely confused. I am currently a Pro user. I'm happy paying $25/year for what I get.

Now, to get all the same benefits that I was getting for $25/year, I can just degrade to a free account? I guess this assumes that there are a lot of mobile users now and installing ad-blockers on mobile is much more difficult.

Still, what a strange decision.

Those graphs are terrible. Why bother comparing the USA's 95th-percentile prices to the average price of other countries? And why refuse to show any countries that are more expensive than the USA in any category? Very ham-fisted.

Yes, we are. Britain is not perfect, but it does not deserve to be lumped in with China as a "repressive nation."

In my opinion, this style of argument is not helpful. It reminds me of this quote:

"To say that the CIA and the KGB engage in similar practices is the equivalent of saying that the man who pushes an old lady into the path of a hurtling bus is not to be distinguished from the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of a hurtling bus: on the grounds that, after all, in both cases someone is pushing old ladies around." -William F. Buckley

Yes, China is a "repressive nation." Especially when it comes to technology, e.g., "The Great Firewall."

No, Britain is not a "repressive nation." The British government surely takes some repressive actions, but not to such a degree as to be labeled a repressive nation.

I don't think she is really whining; she's just using dry humor.

And she is raising an important point, and one that keeps recurring with Google: what do you do when their automated processes are not enough?

She should not have to edit Wikipedia to resolve this situation. That is not a reasonable expectation of anyone.

In fact, she chose the only solution that usually gets through to Google: blog/tweet about something and get enough exposure.

Shawshank's message is "Enjoy the journey"? Andy's "journey" includes rape, beatings, and solitary confinement. I don't see how you can find that message in the movie.

You make a very good point: between tariffs, subsidies, FDA and UDSA regulations, etc., the government has effectively shaped the US food industry into what it is today. However, that doesn't mean it would be a good idea to ban HFCS. But I agree we should stop subsidizing it.

> next article we'll see a comment proclaiming how "Big Grocery" prices unhealthy foods too low, so now it's their fault.

And here it comes: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01...

This is a backhanded attack on "Big Grocery." Wal-Mart is being "responsible" with an initiative "to offer more healthful foods and push its suppliers to do the same."

Of course, Wal-Mart's competitors can't afford to manhandle their suppliers at the same scale.

Then whose boat was it, lawfully?

You raise an interesting point, by the way. America is partly founded on the idea that laws do not create rights, but instead recognize natural rights. If this story is accurate and the DHS agent did not recognize his natural rights, that is an offense. But if the law did not recognize his natural rights, that is an even greater offense.

They absolutely did "steal" his boat, for some definition of the word "steal."

The DHS agent will not be charged with theft or larceny. But he was in lawful possession of a boat, someone with a gun ordered him off the boat, and he is no longer in possession of a boat.

They would no longer be able to sell it as a "straight bourbon." Cutting it with ethanol would create a "blended whiskey."

Three reasons.

1) They aren't my photos, they are my family's photos. My wife has her own user account and needs just as much access as I do. I'm sure there is some sort of "sharing" solution, but then you lose the convenience of having one location for "My Pictures", so what's the point?

2) C:\photos is a lot easier to type than C:\Users\xxx\Pictures. I much prefer typing to mouse navigation.

3) Windows will actually admit that C:\photos is a directory on a hard drive. If I navigate to "My Pictures", I get some pseudo-directory called Libraries > My Pictures.

Also, are you really so limited that you think there is only One Way to organize files on a hard drive, to the point that you feel the need to mock a stranger for choosing a different location on his hard drive for photos? I expect that snark on anonymous internet forums, but having it embedded in the operating system is another matter.

The federal government has no business in education. There is no feasible, informative way for a single organization to comprehensively evaluate the education of every K-12 student in America.

Education should between a student, his parents, teachers, and local administrators. Involving an army of faceless bureaucrats cannot possibly make anything better.

I know this is only tangentially related, but this has always annoyed me in Windows. For example, "My Pictures" does not contain my pictures. My photos are in c:\photos.

And it gets worse with every Windows release. The standard file dialog in Windows 7 is absolutely ridiculous. There is a tree on the left, with absolutely worthless (to me) entries: Desktop, Favorites, Recent Places, My Photos, My Documents, etc., etc. The actual hard drive navigation is at the very bottom, and usually requires scrolling.

A sane navigation tree would just be a list of volumes.

Take a moment and ask yourself why you felt this was necessary.

You are 1) missing out on a potentially useful resource and 2) exposing yourself as close-minded in response to a stranger's mention of his beliefs.

Dear Colleague,

Put the laptop/smartphone down. I'd rather you paid attention to the meeting instead of checking email/evernote/facebook. Even if you had the best intentions of taking notes for this meeting, I know how insidious notifications and instant updates can be. If you need to record a few items from this meeting you could jot a few notes down on a paper notebook. If I need to communicate something that is not easy to write down, like a long URL, I will make sure to email it to the meeting invite list, or even add it to the meeting description in our calendar.

And don't worry. I am not so self-important to assume that every nugget of information that I relate in this meeting needs to be captured immediately in some electronic vault of knowledge.

Is Rap Genius just a layer of fluff over a lyrics site? Are they using "commentary" and "criticism" of the lyrics to eke out a fair use claim?

But the only reason that Constitutional justification is even required for the individual mandate is that we have a Tenth Amendment. Again, you only see the Tenth Amendment as a tautology because you take it for granted. There is no guarantee or convention that nations govern themselves this way. In fact, most don't. (Including America, in practice.)

I don't see it as a new thing, depending on your definition of "new thing." I think the rolling back of federalism and the Tenth Amendment mostly dates to the beginning of the 20th century, with most of the heavy lifting handled by Wilson and FDR.

And although you are correct that prevailing interpretations of the Constitution allow for arbitrary Federal power, I don't believe that those interpretations are supported by the plain text nor by historical understanding of the Constitution.

The Progressive movement's attempts to circumvent federalism date to the beginning of the 20th century, so you can hardly cite a 1941 case to defend your assertion. That was four years after FDR's court packing scheme and eight years after the formation of the National Recovery Administration.

As far as I can tell, you only see the Tenth Amendment as a tautology because you take for granted the makeup and principles of the American government. It was not at all a given at the time that the Federal government would leave sovereignity to the states and only exercise certain defined powers. For example, it has largely ceased to do so today, in violation of the Tenth Amendment.

The Tenth Amendment is only now interpreted as a tautology for political convenience. The text reads:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Just because it is now ignored by our government doesn't make it a tautology. It's still the law of the land; it's just being willfully misinterpreted.

> The reason women don't go into these fields is because of the misogynistic culture.

That is quite an assertion. Surely you can see that there are many, many more factors than just this one, even if you discount "biological inclination"?