ScottBurson

11 ms·

91.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
The phrase "one person, one vote" is also the root of much mischief. While we certainly want everyone to have equal influence over the outcome, the fact is, in a race with more than two candidates, you're always voting for s
92.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
I think it is unfortunate that Instant Runoff Voting (commonly called Ranked-Choice Voting, though it is not the only system for counting ranked ballots) is getting all the buzz these days. Someone posted this link to a very nice explanati
93.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
Yes. As I've long said, C does not have arrays . It has pointers and notations for initializing memory, but it does not have arrays. There are actually two problems here. One is the absence of bounds checking. The other, which is
94.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
@notahacker was not talking about the original MCAS, but about the patch to it -- the modifications now under development to fix the problems.
95.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
Oh, I wouldn't do it publicly. The point would be to push back, in private discussions, against the argument that the result was not interesting enough to publish.
96.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
I guess the lesson is, when an advisor rejects your thesis idea, get them to put their reasons in writing.
97.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
My summary of the argument from memory was too brief and perhaps not entirely accurate. I encourage you to read the linked article.
98.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
That William Shakespeare existed is not an open question, but whether he actually wrote the works commonly attributed to him is still debated in some circles. Personally, I find the argument to the contrary quite compelling. Briefly: he ow
99.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
> When was the last time you saw an ICE with both a trunk and a frunk? Seconds ago -- there's one in my carport :-) (A 1993 Toyota MR2; it's mid-engine. The frunk is small, and completely filled by the spare tire and aftermar
100.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
RCV is an improvement on FPTP -- almost anything would be! -- but Approval Voting is even better. It is easier to implement (the ballot doesn't change at all, just the way it's counted), simpler for voters to understand (you just
101.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
I'm well aware of that -- except that an exponential is a straight line on a semi -log chart. But to people hearing the numbers, who aren't familiar with the phenomenon of exponential growth, a linear scale, despite being somewh
102.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
It's easy to be misled by the nature of exponential growth. In most people's vocabularies these days, the term seems to mean just "very fast", but correctly understood, it's more specific and more complex than that
103.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
The only way we'll get a viable third party is to change our voting system. Allowing a voter to vote for only one of several candidates locks us into a two-party system, because it requires the voter to vote against all but one cand
104.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
I still have a 24-faced hexaflexagon I made in 1975, using onionskin paper and an HP plotter. (Thinness and accuracy are critical for high-order flexagons.)
105.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
Very interesting analysis! I've also read that in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, the cities with the most stringent lockdowns were the ones whose economies recovered the fastest -- so your model has some empirical support.
106.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
> But what I am saying is that maybe the "reasoning" regarding what will happen without them isn't as much established fact as many people like to believe. I don't think anyone thought of it as established fact. But
107.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
I've always thought Slashdot's old moderation system was pretty well designed. It's been years since I've been there, but as I recall, there were several categories of upvote -- Interesting, Informative, and Funny come
108.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
The operative point is not how many have died — it's how many could die. If we gave up altogether on mask-wearing and social distancing, the numbers would get to be much larger. This is partly because the ratio of deaths to inf
109.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
> This usage predates mobile phones Indeed -- it dates back to the 1920s. At that time, phone numbers in the US started to be formed from a 2-letter exchange code followed by 5 (or sometimes 4) digits. For instance, "PEnnsylvania
110.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
I think of Prolog programs as collections of constraints . Now, a lot of people, when they hear the term "constraints", think of arithmetic inequalities. And indeed, there are "Constraint Logic Programming" extensions
111.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
Yes, this is what I was hoping the post would be about.
112.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
I've always preferred light-on-dark. I have my Emacs background set to #000060, with primary foreground #88FF88. Very soothing.
113.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
While I love to hate on the preprocessor -- and did so publicly once in The Unix Hater's Handbook (p. 211) -- item 4 is silly. The whole point of many macros is to circumvent referential transparency! This is true even in a langu
114.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
But it isn't for plain polyethylene (HDPE or LDPE). It's specifically for PET. I suggest "PET plastic bottles" in place of just "plastic".
115.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
Was it 3-D printed? I was going to say that it probably isn't PET, but a bit of Googling quickly turns up articles about people making houses out of recycled plastic. If that's what it is, it could well be PET.
116.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
Yeah, I saw it too. The hypothesis, as I recall, is that the more virions inhaled, the more likely some of them will get deep in the lungs where they can do the most damage.
117.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
"Once an outdoor cat, always an outdoor cat." That is true in many cases, but there are exceptions. One of my cats is a rescued feral -- he spent the first six months of his life outside, but has been an indoor cat (as all of mi
118.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
And "bell" in "bell curve" shouldn't be capitalized -- it's not someone's name, it's just that the curve has (somewhat) the shape of a bell.
119.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
> Around 200 million Americans will eventually get it, barring extraordinary events (like a vaccine arriving in 6 months). We cannot change this. This doesn't seem right to me. With social distancing now, and testing and tracing on
120.
by ScottBurson 6y ago
Horror story: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Designed-For-Reliability

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