Of course they always attack the US. They interpret our radio signal broadcasts as vacation video brochures. The biggest conspiracy is that those movies aren't CG - they're actually taken live on site.

I thought that "UFO"s were chicken McNuggets? Oh, sorry, wrong "F."

I would expect that the writer is referring to a SQL design paradigm called "thor". After all, we have "COM" and "comical." "Rethorical" suggests an attempt to normalize thor relationships. The practices guide offers the image of smashing tables under a heavy blockish object tied by leather straps to a handle. Among the side effects are static discharges.

The Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon Institute had a long history of attempting to justify the application of "engineering" to software development through the Capability Maturity Model. The model recognized that software, as a developing discipline, lacked the "best practices" and "working methods" that allowed older engineering disciplines to create qualification exams. So the CMM codified management practices that would allow organizations to discover and document those practices and methods. This was all swept away in the internet craze and economies of scale driven by zero cost of distribution. Software engineering practices are the competitive advantage that keeps Microsoft and Google and Amazon in the money, and they are not likely to surrender them. This is evidenced by the surrender of IP to open source. It doesn't make a difference whether you can get the code if you don't have the discipline to do a thorough V&V of the product as a whole - nobody spending cash money is going to trust what you wrote. Where this has led, in the C# world, is to a steady drip of language features that allow coders to do their work faster. This manifests in (C#) attributes in the persistence framework and keywords that simplify threading and make properties behave like public (class) attributes . The upshot is that hackers can hack faster (including thinking of asynchronous processing as sequential logic) because Microsoft does the engineering behind the scenes to ensure that signals are produced and work-arounds available when something unexpected happens. The paradox that should be recognized is that the engineering is organized to allow most developers to avoid engineering. Except in control systems, time-to-market is king, and the APIs provided by the major players ensure that application failure results in lost business, and not consumer fraud. Eventually this will work its way out, because ultimately its engineering practices that allow IP to carry over from generation to generation. It's only those companies that do engineering that will survive the retirement of their lead developers.

Nice to know that Musk believes in God - er, I mean "The Architect." I hope that Musk has enough of a hold on reality to renounce the belief that he is "the One." Otherwise I'll be facing one day as he moans "It's not fair. It's not fair!"

Maxxx: Your extension of the "rubber sheet" metaphor is an valid way of visualizing the action of the cosmological constant. So I think that you're providing a useful analogy to explain its action, rather than suggesting an alternative. My own position regarding dark energy is rather more revolutionary, and motivated by a far simpler proposition. Dark Energy cannot be moving at all speeds in all directions. Since it interacts with regular matter, it therefore establishes a preferred reference frame. Einstein's theories of special and general relativity go out the window. So I think that physics has gone on a long detour since 1860, when the Michelson-Morley experiment was done. This was an experiment that sought for evidence of the "aluminiferous ether" - the medium in which light waves traveled - by measuring the change in the velocity of light as the earth circled the sun. It did not detect any change, and so physicists adopted the view that space was empty. But there's another explanation: the speed of sound does not vary as the earth circles the sun, because the air is entrained with the motion of the earth. Dark Energy must be entrained with matter and carried along with it as it moves. This allows a whole lot of interesting possibilities for explanation of general relativistic effects. Brian

The approach taken by superstring theorists is to add variables to represent motion in additional spatial dimensions. So while they cannot visualize in ten dimensions, by extension they can still calculate the behavior of particles moving in that many dimensions. The problem is to avoid topological defects such as magnetic monopoles (particles that emit a magnetic field at rest). This is an amusing point in relativity theory: we know that a charged particle in motion curves under the influence of a magnetic field. But what if we shift to a reference frame that moves along with the particle. If the particle is at rest in that frame, there is no velocity, and so no force exerted by the field. The answer is that the fields themselves are also altered by the change of reference frame: in the particle's rest frame, there is an electric field that cause it to accelerate. Similar things happen in General Relativity. One of the side effects in rolling up higher-dimensional spaces (to produce our three-dimensional reality) is that magnetic field lines can be forced into spatial rifts, which then appear as magnetic monopoles. A brilliant Indian mathematician "proved" (I'm not sure anybody understands the proof) that avoiding magnetic monopoles requires that the universe sit in ten or eleven spatial dimensions. That current theory opts for the "ten" option may have something to do with the seven seals in the Book of Revelation. I'm not aware of any theoretical reason for the choosing ten over eleven. Much as Gell-Mann named his model of particle zoology the "eight-fold way" as a reference to Buddhism, my paranoid brain is half-convinced that some theorist chose ten because at the "end of days" that would mean the seven "sealed" dimensions would open upon our return to the Godhead - matching the number of seals on the scroll opened by the lamb.

The title of the OP was abstract. While I don't lurk here enough to be able to suggest why "those specific people" don't follow the rules, in general rules create a context that allows those possessing a resource to devote themselves to its enjoyment, rather than to its defense. In general "street smart" people are experts at knowing how far the rules can be ignored before the system curbs their behavior. In the interim, they can have a lot of fun (and amass a fair amount of wealth) indulging their egos at our expense. So: thanks for your vigilance!

You mean that any longer I can't offer "Let's see what the old noodle can make of this"?

Having as a consultant tried to salvage two companies that had coded black holes inside their paper bags, and repeating the experience as an employee in a company managed by those that saw competence as a threat, I would have to agree that you learn a lot in suffering through the process of trying to save people from their mistakes. It's far more efficient than making all the mistakes yourself.

Well, given that coffee is typically self-serve, and kept at a distance in the brew machine, while we can buy snacks ready-to-eat and store them in our office - well, I think that the cost analysis leads to something much better than Snickers. Maybe a twenty minute nap in the afternoon? Then again, maybe all that wasted time is part of the process - getting us geeks out of our offices to engage in tribal bonding. You know - bowing to the magic filter, apportioning out the bleeding grounds, etc., etc.

I feel your pain, Joe, but recall that these forums are seen by many as venues for establishing reputation. Every time you post something, you're not simply asking for help, you're creating an opportunity for someone to score points.

It's worse than that. Having contemplated Rothko, my conclusion is that someone intended for the thing to cause eye pain.

In-casket video streaming?

After progressing from use of tools to engineering, I guess that in Darwinian terms you could say that homo sapiens sapiens has become a mathematical genus. It appears that we are about to be superseded by the boolean genus, however. Wait - did I miss something?

We can always learn how to write requirements. The machines need some kind of input. Even in the Matrix, it was "yes, we accept this reality." And when they decide to go off and explore the universe, they'll have no reason to concern themselves with this little ball of mud any longer - particularly as it's coated with light silicates. They might leave the depleted carcass to us.

I presume that the "Cancel" resumes the import of Sue, so at least if you do the non-obvious thing you'll immediately get a chance to do the obscure thing.

I wonder what the response would have been if "One Ring to Rule Them All" was resignified as a reference to a WWF Raw championship bout? Literate and/or liberal parents should recognize that when living in Kermit, they need to translate to the recognizable tokens of conceptual exchange.

I'm sorry. None of you are being sufficiently cosmic. So, just for the sake of the season: In Genesis, '6' is the number of man (the day man was created). '7' is the number of God. 6 x 7 = 42, so the answer is god elaborated as man: namely, the little baby Jesus!!!!! Merry Christmas, everyone!

I use multi-factor authentication. My finances are on my Surface Pro. I always run Quicken on an external monitor, and Quicken isn't smart enough to reposition the launch location when the monitor isn't connected. As for my passwords, they're all in Norton on my old laptop.