My only problem with underscores is that when I read them aloud in my head, I hear a longer pause than for a hyphen, so code with lots of underscores takes longer to read, or at least feels like it does.

I can just imagine receiving a link like this while I'm on a spotty WLAN, trying to load it, it not loading properly, refreshing, and having it be "expired".

Here are some tips that have worked for me:

* Keep the coffee machine in the bedroom. Before going to bed, load it up with water and coffee put the alarm clock next to it. Also have a cup and some milk next to it. Next morning, when the clock goes off, you're going to have to walk over there anyway so you might as well turn on the coffee machine. Now you can go back to dozing off but after a few minutes, the scent and prospect of the readily available coffee should make getting up much easier, plus you can sip the coffee in bed.

* Count to ten, and get up on ten.

* Take melatonin the night before to go to sleep on time in the first place.

* Log your sleeping hours to get an idea of what irregular or overlong sleep is costing you in terms of time.

Well, what fraction of cheap flights have crashed vs. normal flights?

Easyjet, Ryanair, Westjet - no accidents. Southwest had a jet overrun a landing and kill a passenger in a car outside the airport.

Compare this with KLM (worst accident ever), BA, Air France etc. And bear in mind that budget carriers operate the most 'dangerous' routes, short hop frequent take-off landing all weather - not the 'safest' transpacific long haul routes.

To be fair, Easyjet, Ryanair, Westjet, etc. don't handle nearly as many flights as KLM, BA, Air France, etc.

I find this USB stick distasteful. It's not mechanical, all the gears do nothing. The designer took parts that had a precise function and rearranged them into something useless for appearance's sake.

This is probably a weird reaction, but maybe other hackers felt the same way.

I agree entirely! I see a lot of 'steampunk' thinks like this pop up on the MAKE Magazine blog (and similar) and have always found it somewhat onanistic, despite the face-value beauty of some of the pieces.

In the end, I feel that form should follow function. Making something like this look like it should be functioning in ways that it never will perhaps just serves to outline its mundanity.

(Ooh err, I've probably gone and thought about it too much again.)

I feel much worse about it when car companies or furniture makers try to make one material look like another. Faux wood, faux leather, ect. I consider the steam punk aesthetic to be purely ornamental. That the ornaments may appear at first glance to have some practical purpose doesn't detract from the overall aesthetic for me.

I agree, and this is actually the problem I have with most steampunk sculpture.

Your reaction makes sense to me. I did cringe a little bit when I read that he took some of the parts from watches that were over 100 years old.

It still looked pretty cool, though. I'm curious to see what else could be done along these lines. The laptop patio11 posted looks incredible.

He probably meant "I had some watch parts almost 100 years old", not like a perfectly cared-for and functioning watch was dismantled for a USB stick.

It still looks better than most USB sticks out there, regardless of function.

No, it's not just you. Mrs Browl and I felt similar disappointment...as she said, he only had to get one wheel to move and then connect others. Which would still have been aesthetic rather than functional, but would have served the function of showing you it was alive.

Perhaps in version #4.

I felt the same way. Quick antidote here: http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/6278166_YCdn5

I agree. I think this cat and mouse armor is much more pleasing: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=649020

Even if flying cars were cheap and easy to make, would we want them? They're cool and amazing, but in real life they might be impractical.

So generally when talking about the future, maybe we predict inventions that make for cool easily understandable stories, instead useful or plausible inventions. That's why flying cars were predicted but the internet wasn't.

If you're not even going to be alive when the time of your prediction comes, why would you bother to think hard about it and make an odd, abstract, unfashionable prediction instead of a cool story about flying cars?

It was plagiarized, not pirated.

You're right, as the article makes clear, but "pirated" makes a better headline. :-)

So why is 'misery' in quotes? Are the workers bluffing?

Misery:a state of ill-being due to affliction or misfortune;

I don't think the problems workers face due to globalization are non-existent. I do think that they aren't unforeseen (which is the definition of misfortune). I would argue that as programmers, our skills become obsolete faster than those of factory workers in a particular industry. If we can foresee this and learn new programming languages, it should be possible for workers to do this as well.

In short I think any misery globalization brings is avoidable but it would take not just efforts by governments but also awareness on the part of individuals and a willingness to accept change.

Let average-so-far=a, count=c. When you add a new item x, the new average is: a = a + (x-a)/(c+1)