So essentially is this a memory increase from 2-bits to 8-bits per-cell that's still going to be binary, or does that mean we'll be moving to octodecimal data?

I think it's a positive change in either case.

Note, I didn't RTFA, yet.

My original comment was meant as a joke.

That said.
There are people working on autonomous drones.
This flying chainsaw is basically a chainsaw attached to a drone.
It's not a huge step to imagine some doofus thinking it would be a good idea to attach a chainsaw to an autonomous drone, for reasons. After all there was some doofus that thought attaching a chainsaw to a regular drone was a good idea.

I'm pretty sure all those companies developing autonomous cars are doing their damned best to secure them. They'll be sued into oblivion pretty quick if someone can demonstrate an easy method to hack these cars to go running people over. I think someone would have to be pretty dumb, or at least extremely dishonest, to think autonomous vehicles are going to pose any significant danger. There's no way they're going to release a car that's any MORE dangerous than existing manually driven cars.

Oh my sweet, sweet, summer child.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Viwwetf0gU

NOTE: I realize there's probably someone controlling this from a remote, which you see at one point, but it's a pretty small step for this to be automatized.

I mostly agree with you. I'd be happy to keep the temp around 62 deg F all the time. That's the coldest I can stand for long periods with just a sweater, wool socks and a blanket to cover my lap. Any colder and my face / hands freeze. I can't ware gloves while using my PC and have no desire to spend 8 months of the year wearing a face mask/scarf.

The compromise I made with the wife is having the heat on in the evening, when we're pretty much home for the night, and Saturday and Sunday. The programmables are just to make sure that she's not leaving the temperature up after we go to bed. I actually like being snuggled up in a warm bed and have the room colder, I sleep like a rock in the winter, but then when summer rolls around and we have those two or three weeks of 80+ deg F heat I can't sleep at all. We don't have an AC, it's only a few weeks out of the year it's ever that hot here. We're currently in the middle of the yearly heat wave here, it was 78 deg F last night when we went to bed. I use to live in North Carolina when I was a kid where it was way worse. It was almost the opposite, in the summer you kept the AC on and never left your house because it was over 100 deg F and you'd get heat stroke, in the winter you spent most of your time outside because the coldest it normally was for a few weeks out of the year was 40-50 degs F, nothing a decent jacket and long johns can't handle.

Story In Coming:

I remember one, shortly after we moved to NC from Canada, I got up late and had breakfast then went out to wait for the Bus. When the bus didn't come I walked to school thinking I'd missed it. The school was all locked up and I eventually went home. Turns out school had been canceled because of ice on the roads. All I saw was a few puddles, but no actual ice. I still get a chuckle thinking about it. Coming from Canada, it felt like school wasn't canceled here until you were up to your shoulders in snow.

I'm partly with you. I live in Canada and I have programmable thermostats. In the winter there's no reason to have the house at a human comfortable temperature all the time. The thermostats are set to 62 deg in the winter. We suffer the cold in the morning because we're only in the house long enough to have breakfast then we're out the door for the day, but the thermostats all kick in about 30 minutes before we get home to heat the house to 70 deg. Then they shut off about an hour before bed.

The reason this works well for us is because my wife loves to crank the heat to 75 degs, then never remembers to turn it off, which has costs us a fortune in the past. With the programmables she can still occasionally crank the heat, but the thermostat always readjusts automatically when the next trigger time kicks in. They're also easy enough to set to a constant temperature if we're going on vacation and then we can just hit the "run" button to put them back on their regular schedule when we get back.

Where I agree with you is, it's just a convenience. We could survive perfectly fine with the analog mercury thermostat. These are just easier so we don't always have to remember if they're on or off and the house is warm when we get home in the winter. In the summer I just flip the switches and turn them off altogether.

LOL, I was thinking the same. It seems like there are updates to something daily. Sometimes it feels like I just do updates and a few minutes later there are more.

Kind of funny because Canadian Walmart stores are also starting to boycott Visa for high fees.

But I don't get why this chip+pin thing is an issue in the states. In Canada all of our cards are chip+pin now, and have been for awhile. We're actually on the verge of going to NFC from phones using the MintChip application developed by the Canadain Mint. (I don't trust NFC and likely won't be using MintChip until it's an absolute necessity because there's no other options.)

I remember that as well. There were quite a few MP3 players that would play all kinds of different formats that were actually better quality than the iPods as I recall.

I just never thought of it before, although that's how I use to do some mixed tapes. I'd connect one tape player to another over the mic-head jacks so I could play on one while recording on the other. I even suggested it once to a guy that ask me how he could record a song he wanted for his wedding from YouTube and I suggested getting a double ended cable to connect the headphone to the microphone jack on his PC.

Never occurred to me until that comment that I could have connected a tape player to the PC, but I guess that's because I never had reason to do it. It was such a short time from when we switched from tapes to CDs to when Napster became available, then YouTube and now we have all kinds for services for getting music without the hassle of waiting for it to be played on the radio. You can listen to anything you want now whenever you feel like it.

You could record or download music to a laptop or a phone or even an MP3 player to take with you. MP3 players are dirt cheap now and can last a pretty long time. You could also get an expanded battery pack to take with you to have music for days. Maybe find an MP3 player with an SD slot on it, I know they exist. Then get a 32 GB SD, which are also cheap and will hold a ton of music, or splurge on a 256 GB SD for a shit ton of music. I'd just buy a bunch of smaller SDs though, two or three of them would probably hold more music than you could listen to in a week.

It was actually a lot easier to make mixed tapes than it was to make mixed CDs. Almost every tape player I think I've ever had had an input jack and a record button, or you could just record off the radio. I don't think you could easily record music from the radio with a CD player and you needed specialized hardware to get the radio to play on a PC... Although now that I think of it, you likely could have played from the speaker jack on a radio to the mic jack on a PC and recorded that way. Still would be easier to just hit record on the tape player though, and it's not like the radio doesn't play "popular" songs TO DEATH!!! If you missed it just wait ten minutes...

In fact screw recording the songs, by the time the radio stations got through with them you didn't want to ever hear them again anyway. So much better now with the internet, you get a huge variety (for free) and practically never have to listen to the same thing twice ever, unless you want too.

I don't frequently comment, but I thought I'd also chime in to say what a great job you're doing with this site. I like the look and feel as well as a lot of the features. The content is also pretty good, IMHO, and that's a real achievement give how few contributors you have.

Thanks Bryan and also to those that submit content for keeping this site going.

To be fair, I have no issue with watching trailers for new shows. It's a good way to keep up to date on what's coming out. I do think the best way to approach it is to have the trailer at the end of a show. That way if you've already seen it you can just start the next episode, if you're interested you can watch it, and it's not interrupting whatever you're currently watching. I don't like the idea of having the trailers at the beginning, there's only so many times I could see a trailer for Dare Devil before I'd get tired of it. And seeing as my wife and I watched six episodes of Glee yesterday, I'd get sick of it really quick.

I think that's actually kind of awesome. Sometimes I wish I hadn't given up playing back in 2008, then I remember how much time and money I poured in. It was a lot of fun, but at the end of the day I didn't have anything to show for it, which was just depressing.

Still kudos to those that stick to it, enjoying the game is what matters, congratulations.

You've put some amazing thought into your response, needless to say I actually agree with a lot of it. There's a lot of intresting information here I would love to examine, mainly who has been nominated in the past and for what. That would be the best way to tell if there's some significant gender bias going on.

I've been involved in a lot of debates about women in the IT industry over the last year and one thing that's come up that I'd like to find a way to examine is, is there a lack of women joining IT because the industry is actual hostile to them, or is it because it's perceived to be hostile to them.

The media picks up and amplifies cases where women are mistreated, which if I was a young girl I'd might see and say, "Nope I'm not spending my career working in a job pinned to the ground level by people that hate me". It's interesting that young women aren't even going to university for IT. When I was in university there were only four women in my graduating year, vs. ~50 men. I sit on a scholarship committee that gives to women going into IT and we only get like two applications a year. We've had years with zero applications.

Is this something we can change the preception of?

Sorry, I found the hall of fame website right after my last post

These are all the recipients, I can't figure out what years each of them won in:
http://cstmuseum.techno-science.ca/en/hall-of-fame/hall-of-fame-hall.php

This is the nominations page, it looks like nominations are open to anyone and they have guide lines post as to what the committee will accept:
http://cstmuseum.techno-science.ca/en/hall-of-fame/hall-of-fame-nominations.php

Ha, I won't say which one, but one of my old University profs actually sits on the committee.
http://cstmuseum.techno-science.ca/en/hall-of-fame/hall-of-fame-selection-committee.php

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not criticizing you for posting the story. I'm criticizing the CBC, and media in general, for creating an state of affairs that I CAN'T take this article at face value. If it's true, I'm pretty appalled as well.

Being skeptical doesn't mean I don't believe the story isn't a possibility, but it could be a women hasn't been nominated/won and award for a number of reasons, but the CBC is most likely just focusing on the gender side of things as a method to piss people off and generate clicks at the expense of the reputations of those that sit on the nomination committees. I highly doubt they all sit around tempeling their fingers scheming ways to keep women out while muttering, "Excellent", when a women doesn't win the nomination.

Instead of looking at whether women have been nominated in the last two years, I'd like to look at who was nominated and for what reason. Maybe, the nominations were fairly given out, but it just happens some people were more deserving and happened to be male. I tried to go look it up, but unfortunately Google is now full of articles parroting each other about the committee members that resigned. So I'll have to go back to it to investigate when I have more time.

That brings up another issue with media publications as well. One prints a faluty story with little fact or mostly incorrect facts and other publications jump on it and print the same stories without doing their own independent fact checking. By the time anyone knows there was something wrong with the original story it's reached critical mass and people are losing their minds about it. Then the original publication will make a small correction to the article, no ones the wiser, but the public's still calling for blood based off fault information.

Anyway, sorry for the rant, I didn't mean to seem like I was coming down on you for posting the article.

A couple years ago I would have believed this story, but the CBC has become a nest of agenda pushing click bait journalists who will take any opportunity to take a story and blow it out of proportions [1]. They have to feed the outrage culture to keep generating income. There are so many cases now of reporters knowing they're not reporting the truth, not just in CBC, but pushing it anyway, then apologizing later [2] or insisting in spite of actual evidence they've done nothing wrong.

I've seen so many reporters in the last year involved in scandals, pushing personal agendas and involved in conflicts of interest [3][4][5][6]. The media just wants things to get people angry and journalists will do whatever they can to get the "facts" that back whatever narrative they decide they're going to push.

Honestly I believe there's no such thing as a reliable source in the media anymore. If it's not coming directly from the horses mouth take it with salt. You can't even trust the sources I'm listing below.

Be skeptical.

[1] http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2014/11/cbc-breaches-multiple-journalistic-ethics-standards-to-smear-gamergate/
[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/31p2sz/success_entertainment_weekly_corrects_and/
[3] http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/10/26/cbc_fires_jian_ghomeshi_over_sex_allegations.html
[4] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/the-rolling-stone-rape-scandal-when-subjects-come-before-readers/article23820366/
[5] http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-what-went-wrong-20150405
[6] http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/global-tv-anchor-leslie-roberts-resigns-after-probe-finds-he-breached-conflict-of-interest-rules

I've been lurking a lot, but I wanted to pop in and offer congratulations. The sites come a long way. Keep up the great work.

Wait, what? Are you just talking about FFXIII?

I'm talking about the old-school games basically up to FFX

It's a very long running series, FFVII being one of my favorites.

Not a fan of FPS, but I love me a good RPG. Final Fantasy is my favorite series.

Binge leveling is the reason I quit WoW -_-

I use to play TOO much in university and had trouble keeping up with assignments and sleep. I swore I'd never go back... I'm pretty sure if I did my wife would leave me and I probably wouldn't even notice until I died of starvation. I get way too involved.

I'd like to say, "you have no idea", but you probably do... and it's sad all around.

If GamerGate wasn't being painted as a harassment campaign, we'd be even more effective, but just look at what Gawker did to Intel and other advertisers when they started pulling out, misogyny left and right. So other (smaller) advertisers, IMHO, may be waiting for things to die down before pulling out so they can't be linked to GamerGate as the reason for it. We have gotten a lot of big ones though, Mercedes, BMW, Nissan, Intel, Dyson, Kellogs, and the list goes on.

We also found out they listed advertisers and partners that didn't advertise or partner with them so we're working to have an FTC investigation launched (http://wiki.gamergate.me/index.php/Operation_UV), oh the joy ^_^

On top of Operation Disrespectful Nod we're working to have Google and Amazon adsense programs pulled (http://wiki.gamergate.me/index.php/Operation_Baby_Seal), we've compiled a whole host of ToS violations. It's quite spectacular.

I know I'm having a little too much fun with this, but it's one of the best games I think I've played in a long time. I know, sad v_v

Edit: I should have also thrown in the Dossier that was compiled by 8Chan. It's a very long boring read, but lots of great press information for if/when the mainstream realizes the harassment narrative is BS and they need information to parrot quickly to save face - http://press.gamergate.me/dossier/

I have to ask, who?

If you don't mind. I've been eating this stuff up. I find it a lot of fun ^_^

A lot of information is also available on 8Chan and r/KotakuInAction (subreddit). There are also facebook groups.

Lots of good info at
Http://gamergatefacts.com
Http://gamergate.me

If you want to look at some of the other cases of collusions collected or donate to one of the charities. Toys-for-tots is the one currently being pushed.

As it turns out it was my interruption of a quote in the article I linked.

"At the end of the pilot test period, WAM will analyze the data collected and use it to work with Twitter to better understand how gendered harassment functions on their platform, and to improve their responses to it."

This is a huge problem for us. No one will talk about the positive effect this issue has had. All the media wants to talk about is the harassment *a few* people are getting.

On top of that, there isn't any more evidence that the harassment is actually coming from member(s) of GamerGate than there is it's MRA or just some random joe. The only thing linking harassment to GamerGate are the women saying it is (Anita, Zoe, and Brianna) and the media agreeing with them. The same media GamerGate found to be corrupt and colluding via the GameJournoPro email list.

Watch Pakman's interview with Brianna, when he ask her how she knows the harassment was from GamerGate she accuses him of running a hit piece.

Members of GamerGate even tracked down one of Anita's harassers, Brazilian Game journalist who admitted to it, and she's done nothing except cover it up. She issued a DMCA take down of a YouTube video of the Gamer that recording the chat session. We had a mass report campaign to the FBI, but my understanding is they can't/won't do anything unless Anita reports it. This was another video someone posted http://youtu.be/B-MufQdCqfQ

It basically just gives WAM first crack at "harassment" cases. Volunteers working with WAM can then make it a priority case for twitter to deal with. I assume at the expense of any other issues reported to twitter.

So far though it's been effective in having non-harassing accounts like @nero and @RogueStarGamez temporarily suspended while twitter did a proper investigation.

There was a tweet circulating with the names of people the "anti" side wanted banned. @nero, @RogueStarGamez, @Sargon_of_Akkad, @Int_Aristocrat are a few I remember out of six or seven

Any idea how this tool collects the data?

I'm not really sure off the top of my head. I read it in a different article a few days ago. I'll see if I can track it down and get back to you.

One thing I would have liked is if you had of left my disclosure in there. I am a supporter and don't want to give the impression that I'm trying to hide that in anyway. Otherwise I think the updates are fine.

I'm a little shady on the WAM tool, it seems it's not only being abused, but it's also being used to collect data on "offenders". The problem being what some people consider harassment is really broad. I don't like the idea of a radical political organization (of any kind) collecting data on me, especially if the intention is to use it to label me has a harasser for just disagreeing politely with someone.

I'm just pleased you posted it at all ^_^

I think it's an important issue. I know GamerGate has a bad image at the moment, but honestly the people I'm follow are really great. We're all working really hard to try and get this mess cleared up, but it really seems the Gaming Media is just the tip of the ice burg. I really wasn't aware of how little research all media does until this cropped up.

Hopefully not to many supporters/opposition jump in on this and turn it in to a giant flame war ^_^

That seems to be one of the biggest issues here. People constantly claim GG is supporting harassment, but when you start to look at it... I mean just look what happened to Intel when they pulled ads for a perfectly logical reason, the behavior of Gamsutra and its editor, that was only minimally related to GG, which just pointed it out. Tons of articles painting them as supporting misogyny trying to get them to fall back in line.

It's not going to be long before the real truth is out in the open. These media sites are losing their ads and their readers. They're basically down on one knee now, it's only a matter of time before the other one hits the ground. I can't speak for others, but I'm personally using this as a way to gather names of companies not to do business with in the future. I'll support them if they can remain natural and keep quiet or the can stand up for GG.

Dell's off the list now too. George Reeves posted a rather nasty comparison of GG to ISIS, he's since deleted it.

I actually remember that popping up on /. I think. I read about it a few times before realizing it was a joke and went WTF... I've looked at it on Gitorious in the last week. Someone really put a lot of effort into it, there's a ton of documentation as well as sample programs. There was also a facebook page at one point.

Those guys were really committed.

I actually think that was what set the precedent for what happened with GamerGate here, and is my primary concern for using GitHub. All anyone has to do is claim your organization is misogynistic and BAM! nuked repo.

Update from my camp. almost all the devs are on board for moving off GitHub for our project. There are a few now claiming they'll leave the project if we do because they won't support a harassment campaign. The main admins are still want to take a "let's wait and see" approach because the think it'll just be a huge headache and want to hold out to see if GitHub rectifies the situation before expending the effort to either procure the assets to setup and internal Git server, which also has a lot of logistical issues, or to see if there's another service.

GamerGate moved to several different services. GitLab was one that invited them, then disabled the repo almost the next day because of the same issue with some anonymus nobody claiming it's a harassment against women campaign. There's an on going discussion with @GitLabHQ, which is citing the GamerGate controversy article on wikipedia. Despite there now being a disclaimer on the page that says "There maybe be some problems with this article". They were also told and pointed to the dispute resolution page where it's looking like the article might end up in mediation and I'm guessing a lot of the editors are really close to being topic ban for obvious bias and personal attacks.

So far Gitorious is the service that's looking like it's going to win out.

Anyone that's following GamerGate might also have noticed the media is starting to crack. We're starting to see more, "Journalists just need to have a dialog" articles that are starting to sound an awful lot like a half arsed apology. They're still factually incorrect, but I give it another two to three weeks and it'll be an all out apology, probably with a lot of "but" and without an admission of guilt that is.

This was posted in the Reddit thread I linked in the story. The original twitter account accusing GamerGate of being harassment admitted to literally lying to get the repo taken down.

Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/nexxylove/status/518203296784207872
Archived: https://archive.today/1vuWC

But no, it's not a big deal Github is playing favorites.

I'm in discussions with my organization now about moving to either another service or an internal Git server. Oddly enough I wasn't the one who brought it up, but more than half of over a hundred the devs are on board. The main admin is looking at it as though it'll be a huge headache. A few have voiced concerns about not supporting Github and how that might reflect on our organization and project.

Github isn't going to blog about using ideological reasoning to remove a repository on the basis of of it being a harassment campaign. Anyone that takes this at more than face value is going to see it's not a harassment campaign and Github devs are using personal agendas to make decisions on what stays and goes.

I'm a dev that uses Git as well and it seems pretty important to me, others think so too.

This is a good point, but I'd like to point out the GamerGate repository was "disabled", not deleted. I don't know exactly what that means, but I suspect it wasn't deleted altogether. I imagine when we finally get past the whole, "Gamer Gate is a hate movement" thing they could just reactivate the repository. Of couse by then it'll probably be pointless.

I disagree, I see pipedot as a place for us to not only read news, but to discuss it and share ideas. You might not like what others have to say, but when we start censoring some where do we draw the line. What if, just as example, Bryan is pro Gamer Gate and he doesn't like you bad mouthing it? Should you be banned? I don't think so. It comes down to what constitutes as "wrong" and who makes that decision. It shouldn't just be arbitrarily left up to an individual.

Gamer Gate isn't a hate campaign BTW, censorship of people talking about it is part of the reason it exists. Problem being the game media has the platform to say what they want and gamers are already an easy target to demonized. 4Chan, Reddit, all Game media forms pretty much banned and censor discussion of it. So there's no way to spread the message that the movement isn't actually harassing the people the media says it is. The Escapist was allowing discussion, after they updated their code of ethics because of the movement, but they were DDoS and had to drop the form. Twitter and Facebook are the only place now where people can talk and organize.

I submitted some incoherent rambling with lots of links to various things to Soylent and it was rejected... probably because I'm a terrible writer, I don't think they're trying to censor it.

The break down is there's a huge amount of positive along with the negatives going on and a lot of tangential things happening. Game media declared gamers dead. Gamers came together, conservatives, liberals, black, white, male, female, everything in between. Women and minorities formed #NotYourShield to stand up for cis-white-male gamers that were being demonized in the press. The Fine Young Capitalists raised $20,000 to get women into game development with Gamer Gates help. Wikipedia is having a huge editor war over the "Gamer Gate Controversy" page, and it's getting uglier by the day because most of the sources wiki uses are bias and basically reporting on and parroting each others bias articles. Anita Sarkeesian allegedly faked threats to herself to get in on the publicity, otherwise I have no idea why she keeps getting brought up as being harassed, She has nothing to do with anything, but 4Chan practically ripped itself apart when M00t banned discussion during the XOXO conference where he attended a talk by Anita Sarkeesian (can talk about CP and rape, not Gamer Gate). Julian Assange was on reddit and someone was shadow banned right in front of him for asking a question related to censorship of #GamerGate. Kickstarter Mighty Number 9 project's community manager banned people from their forums after they pledged hundreds of dollars for the project. People started a charge back campaign, and are actually getting money back. Several media sites revisited their code of ethics, only the Escapist to my knowledge made and significant changes. 8Chan was formed. Several new game sites sprung to life. Steam updated it's ToS so Curations (I think that's what they're called) have to disclose any monetary/personal connections. Intel pulled ads from Gamasutra. Linux dev threw a fit over it and refuses to update Linux kernel for Intel fixes. Git disabled the Gamer Gate repo.

Despite all that's already been accomplished people still think it's a hate campaign against Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian.

The article was about the fact that a large group of people trying to make a difference were using a public service, not violating ToS, and with a single tweet from someone opposing the group had the repository shut down. It has significant impact on software developers who use the service to host code for any number of projects that could be susceptible to a tweet from opposition or competition.

I apologize for the summary, It was tough for me to balance. I'm pro-Gamer Gate, but I didn't want this to be "about" Gamer Gate. It's tough to separate "Github developer deletes repository of alleged harassment campaign" without going on a huge rant bringing my personal Gamer Gate views into it. I tried to just give the relevant information and evidence that essentially a developer received a tweet and deleted a repo and tried to demonstrate he did this based on his personal agenda rather than based on any real facts that the repo supported a harassment campaign.

The fact that Git developers have and abuse that power is the issue here. I work on a MAJOR government project that's distributed all across the country, open for public use and development, with hundreds of of people working on it. I believe someone pays for it, I'm a just code monkey on the project so I don't know for sure. What's not to say that someone in the private sector doesn't like the competition from a free alternative and wants their for profit project to be the only one or have an edge. They tweet a dev at Github and say my project is a harassment campaign related to Gamer Gate and, without even looking at the contents of the project, Git just deletes it?

It's something we need to be conscious of and prepared for through methods like what you've mentioned and/or by using another central server, maybe setting up our own. It's important in the professional software development space.

This was exactly the point I was making. I do use Github, but if they can just disable my repos without any kind of process or warning. I think I'm better served to move to one of a half dozen other choices. I do support #GamerGate, Github is within their rights to do this, but I feel what's going on with #GamerGate shouldn't be being brought into the professional space. I.E. Linux and Git devs throwing hissy fits because they don't like Intel pulling ads from Gamasutra. Again, IMHO, that has less to do with #GamerGate and more to do with the editor at large, Leigh Alexander, being a raciest, sexist, douche that has no idea who her audience is or how to talk to them. Intel doesn't want to associate with that.

In the long run #GamerGate is not going to win, there is no winning in this situation, but they will come out on top. Mainly because the journalist are arrogant elitist who don't know when to shut their traps.

This was just posted as a response to inquirers about why the #GamerGate repo was disabled

So they're denouncing a consumer boycott as a hate campaign, it's totally not about it being something they disagre with. Nothing to see here move along.

I agree with that, there are lots of other central servers and it's easy enough to migrate, which is what #GamerGate did. Unfortunately I can't remember the site name. It is still a really crappy deal that one tweet to Jake was all it took to disable the repo with no warning or research involved.

My biggest concern is this 'consumer revolt' shouldn't be bleeding over into a professional space. Like with Matthew Garrett pitching a hissy fit, refusing to update the Linux kernel for Intel fixes (admittedly it's unpaid volunteer work so his choice) and acting like a child because he doesn't agree with Intel pulling ads from Gamasutra. I'm positive Intel isn't supporting #GamerGate, it's much more likely they don't want their product being associated with Leigh Alexander's behaviour (Editor at large of Gamasutra). Outside the "Gamers are over" article she wrote, she's excessively abusive, racists and sexist on twitter. That's what Intel doesn't want to be associated with. But "how dare they pull their ads! Muh soggy knees!!"

Apparently members from #GamerGate who were e-mailing Github support are alegedly getting doxxed. One user posted an open letter regarding information on him being gathered http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sce3fa

That was really kind of awesome...

If it was three or for anime articles in a row I might be inclined to agree with you, but one every now and then isn't an issue. I for one am an anime fan and thought this was a nice piece to skim over. You could have chosen to just not read it if you don't like anime. For a lot of us "geeks" anime has been a part of our lives since we were clacking away on our first keyboards.

BTW, I've really enjoyed the content coming out of the pipe for the last few days. Lots of great and interesting articles. I've noticed the comments are also increasing too. Keep it up.

Pretty much exactly that. I understand Oracle is business and is out to make money, and they do databases really well, but, "It's a trap!"

They get you in and locked into their stack of products then there's no getting out and they just suck the money and life right out of you all kinds of gotchas left and right.

I'm a Java developer for internal applications. There's nothing wrong with the language itself, but it's on its way out. Unfortunately there is too much instability when it comes to what people THINK Oracle is going to do with it. My corp. moved to java over a decade ago because it was free, available, cross platform and easy to learn. It looked like it would be supported well into the future. Then Oracle bought out Sun and now there's speculation that Oracle wants to split Java into "paid for" and "free" meaning there's a good chance anyone not paying for it are going to end up with an incomparable poorly supported version. Those doing the major development, like my company, will be forced into paying tens of thousands a year in licensing only to have to deal with supporting the people using our software under the "free" version. There's also the fear that Oracle will do what they do with their other products and split things out into separate modules with confusing license agreements. You'll end up needing everything and the licensing will be unclear. Make one bad decision, or include an unlicensed module you have access to, but aren't paying for, and Oracle will sue you into oblivion for licensing violations.

So of course with that expectation, we're planning for the worse case and have recently started training developers in several different languages to try and find one that might be a suitable replacement going forward. Ruby, Python and R our our top three choices at the moment. We're also looking at how difficult it'll be to provide software through web applications.

My in-laws just cut their satellite to save money. I finally managed to talk them into getting a SmartTV, which I ended up paying for because my wife owes them money for something I'm a little bitter about. I digress, I set it up for them over the weekend, Netflix built into the TV.

1) Press Red button on remote labeled Netflix
2) Pick movie/TV show
3) Stop calling me to ask why there's only static on the TV because you put it on channel 5 and the satellite box needs to be on channel 4, or why the VCR isn't playing because you've set the input to the DVD player... Seriously, you were doing this stuff for decades without my help before I married your daughter.

Even if the TV is off, pressing the Netflix button turns the TV on and goes right to Netflix.

For more technically inclined people I recommend getting a "dumb" TV, if you can, with an HDMI port and just plug a PC with wireless keyboard and mouse. I have that setup in my bedroom and it works great, also my wife can't figure out how to use it so I don't have fight with her over the remote. It's getting harder to find good quality TVs that don't have a smart feature now. The new TV in our living room, we just got a month ago, does have a smart TV feature, but when I replace my wife's laptop next year I'll be plugging that in instead. It'll make it a lot easier to watch our downloaded TV shows. The built-in media server client for SmartTVs is really hit or miss and takes a lot of fiddling with to get working. Media Server/Client from PC to PC is a snap, as long as you don't mind using a keyboard and/or mouse instead of a remote to control it. Plus built-in DVD/BlueRay, Netflix and internet. Internet is a nice feature because you can watch a lot of shows, or news in some cases, right from a networks website, which you can't do easily with a SmartTV's crappy built-in basic browser, at least not that I've found.

*face palm*

backups are a form of security

Two different forms of security, making backups will ensure you can retrieve that data if your primary source is lost/wrecked/stolen/whatever. The security John's arguing about is where and how that backup is kept safe from people it doesn't belong to. One type of security helps you if you lose the data, the other type of security helps keep others from stealing your data.

Not like life insurance in the least.

What I'd like to see in my life time is the return of cartridges.

Isn't that basically what USB thumb drives are? A little stick you can carry around and plug into a terminal. You can even store a whole OS on one and boot right from USB if you want to take your whole PC with you. The limit seems to be drive size (I have a 128 GB drive, which is pretty nice) rather than heat.