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Have you read You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier? I think you might like it. There is an entire section devoted to exactly what you just said, and how facebook essentially "removes the individuality" from its users.

At the same time he makes huge mental leaps that I completely disagree with (he said basically the same thing about open source/open culture) but there are several gems in the book.

Until we can forward a GV line to another GV line and do that 10-20 times, so that when the FBI/CIA/NSA is trying to trace a call the guy in the computer room keeps shouting "He's in Berlin! No wait, he's in Detroit! Now he's in Boston...the bastard is routing his call through multiple cities!" it will be useless to many.

In terms of hardware I think you are correct. However the Kindle doesn't just refer to the device. It's also an app available on Windows, Mac OS X, iPhone/iPad and will be release for Android soon as well.

Supposed B&N are going to release a Nook app, but it might be too little, too late.

I would recommend switching your major to math. You will likely get a lot more out of it and it will be more or less of equal value to a CS degree, especially considering your current knowledge of programming.

I once tried to cut a bike brake cable with a pair of diagonal cutters. It didn't work - and that thing is less than 1/8" in diameter (and is meant to be cut). The Kensington locks are made of thicker, strong cables and though still fairly flimsy, are going to require cable cutters to break.

In the end it's all about risk management - what's the probability that someone goes to a coffee shop specifically to steal a laptop and is armed with cable cutters? And if they have cable cutters, are they going to bother to use them to steal your laptop, or are they going to steal the laptop next to yours that's not locked up?

FWIW, I take my laptop into the bathroom with me.

I thought that was urban legend and that they just contain "natural flavor" which is unspecified and McDonald's is very tight-lipped about what it actually is (to the chagrin of vegetarians who would actually eat at McDonald's).

Last night I had a dream that I was telling a coworker he should use reinterpret_cast for something. But I'm not going to go bragging about it and I think it may be the only time I have ever actually dreamed about coding.

I think the problem I have with it is that a lot of it is about trying to out-geek other geeks. Like when someone says, "Oh yeah, well I'm so nerdy I dream about code!"

Most of the answers are exactly what I think is wrong with nerd/programming culture. Mostly it's people making dumb jokes, thinking they are clever and trying to pass it off as reality.

Answers like "I wish I could query a bar for the women with big boobs lol" just get under my skin.

That said, there are some good, honest answers in there. Counting from zero, thinking 256 is a round number, etc. are all habits carried from programming into the "real world" although I wouldn't call any of those bad.

The only one I saw that I would consider a bad habit is the guy who gets frustrated when people don't give him enough details during a conversation.

I have an unused sample pack, and it's definitely not two-part. I think it's just air-activated.

I like surprises! Looking forward to part 3...

Usually "inplace" means "in constant memory space." In other words, running the algorithm on an input of size N requires the same amount of memory as running the algorithm on an input of size M.

Yeah, I had almost exactly the same code. I'm sure most people did too. The only other "obvious" algorithm is the n^2 one.

They used to have a spoiler warning in movie articles but they got rid of it. I kind of liked it, but I suppose it made it seem less like an encyclopedia article and more like a forum post.

This will just replace one of the current searches whereas I want to add one. But I figured it out - in the searchplugins directory in the firefox install are a bunch of xml files. I added a new one with the relevant info and now "duck" is the keyword that maps to a duck duck go search.

Is there a way to add Duck Duck Go to the firefox search bar? I really like using keywords to launch searches (since I use VIMperator) but I can't seem to add arbitrary keywords to my knowledge.

That exact scenario happened to one of my former employers. We installed a server in a closet in this hallway. The hallway had no HVAC and the installation was in the winter (so the hallway was always very cold). I remember asking what we were going to do in the summer.

Eventually the summer came around and one morning the server was down. Fortunately there wasn't anything time-critical on the server, everything was backed up both on and off site and we got it up and running again a couple of hours.

It turned out that all we needed to do was cut a vent in the door and mount a box-fan to it.

He's already climbed 5 of the seven summits so why is this even an issue?

And no one is complaining. Trun was pointing out that it is unlikely that Netflix is going to switch to HTML5 video at the moment because there is no DRM available for it. The content providers won't go for it, the customers won't care.

"The United Arab Emirates (UAE) government issued a statement on Wednesday saying Mr Shahzad had been heading for Islamabad in Pakistan, and had been due to change planes in Dubai."

What's that old saying? "No one ever got fired for going with IBM."

I think it's best to treat C and C++ as separate languages. While you can certain compile (most) C programs with a C++ compiler in practice the way you code in C and the way you code in C++ is very different.

It won't cause injury but it's not exactly easy to jump into.

I had a job where the "core hours" were from noon to 5. Past that you had to work at least 8 hours a day. In practice this meant that everyone arrived at the office at noon.

I thought the policy was pretty good but I don't think it worked out that well for me. It meant I was at the office until at least 8pm every day, usually later.

I had a similar experience - from first phone call, to last (rejection) phone call was about 4 months.

Their actual interview process wasn't bad however. They never asked me any trick/puzzle questions. Everything was based on coding, algorithms and designs.

4 months, however, is inexcusable. If I was actively looking for a job at the time I would have given up on google long before they got back to me.

You obviously haven't interviewed at google. I had 6 technical interviews, 7 if you count the phone screening. From the day their recruiter called me to the day they called and said they weren't interested spanned about 3-4 months.

Among atheists the terms "gnostic atheist" and "agnostic atheist" are thrown around a lot. It's the different between a positive assertion and a lack of assertion, i.e. - "I believe there is no god" vs. "I don't believe in god."

(A)gnosticism has more to do with certainty than belief - someone who is gnostic is sure, someone who is agnostic is not sure. There are plenty of agnostic theists, as many religious people don't claim to be sure about the existence of god, but choose to believe or think it probable.

I'm always tempted to pick up Naked Came the Stranger whenever I'm at the bookstore, but I know I'll never read it. THAT book is truly the result of hacking the best seller list.

You're doing it backwards. The DVD is already copyrighted, so the copyright-ability of a tweet is irrelevant.

Here is one such case: http://www.scmagazineus.com/malware-to-blame-for-porn-on-sta...

I also recall a case of a teacher whose school computer had malware that ended up displaying porn in the classroom who was arrested and faced up to 40 years in jail. I'm pretty sure she was acquitted.