The former is not treated as an axiom it is an axiom and as such it cannot be proven in any system. The latter can indeed be proven if you step outside of the bounds of algebra (which is a field of mathematics that covers addition) and into the bounds of set theory where we have a definition for 1 and a definition for 2 and a definition for the process of addition and using those three definitions we can indeed prove that 1 + 1 = 2. In algebra we would define the addition of our system such that 1 + 1 = 2 at which point it is treated as an axiom. To be clear there are systems where 1 + 1 != 2 (boolean algebra) but we can assume you knew that and were specifically discussing integer arithmetic.

At least in the USA utility companies while often technically not public are basically public entities and denying citizens a right to electricity (in the USA it's actually mandatory for the most part) would probably violate their charter. Now I understand that the GP may be from a different country with different laws but here at least that would be a violation of basic liberties.

Just an addition a book is typically on the order of tens of thousands of sentences why on earth would I remember a single sentence? Hell to remember the specific sentence that they chose to use would be a 1/10000 chance without perfect eidetic memory. So many things wrong with even thinking of this study it makes my brain want to explode.

Well I was going to post almost exactly this but I couldn't have worded it as well. I have hundreds of books in my brain but I don't remember a single sentence from most of them but I could usually give you a meaningful summary just from the name of the book (series excluded they tend to blend into a single summary to me).

I might have a better impression of comments if I had ever seen a good one but the code base I work in now is clean enough that they're often unnecessary but conspicuously absent when needed.

I find about 20-30 lines of code per function/method to be about right with descriptive naming you can gather the why from the context and the how from the code. It also allows you to skim the code for function names which if properly descriptive can be guessed at least approximately without prior knowledge. If your code goes above that 20-30 lines (for a good reason they do exist) then comments become more useful as delimiters. I am quite sure there are times my advice is not applicable but for most cases (50% + some epsilon > 0) refactoring would be the better option.

Sad fact is that every time I've wanted to see a comment in code there wasn't one and almost every comment I've ever seen in code referred to code that was no longer there or was in fact wrong (Save data to database set isDirty flag to true WTF???).

Comments are for poorly written (possibly due to compiler restraints or legacy code) or highly optimized code. Without either of those it should already read easily without the comments.

And the police are going to protect you? That's not their job and it never will be they're there to clean up the mess after you're already dead.

"somehow boiling water at a rapid boil cooks faster than a moderate one,"

What makes you think it doesn't?

"and of course are also facing severe population shortages"

It will be a long time before Japan faces population shortages... Their population is about half that of the US and they're all crammed into the area of California.

If it was always practiced like this feminism would always be a wonderful thing but it's not and it only takes one man hater to color someone's view of feminism.

Marriage does not end child support. And yes I agree the problem exists.

You say rubbish but can you tell me one thing you can do in C++ that you can't do in C?

Darned straight they'd spend all day at work on /. posting instead of working...

"Negative Reinforcement >> Positive Reinforcement" Two issues with this. 1) They are both instances of Negative Reinforcement. 2) Negative Reinforcement is less stable than Positive Reinforcement in that Negative Reinforcement gets the receiver to avoid the Negative Reinforcement while not necessarily moving towards the desired goal while Positive Reinforcement leads the receiver to seek more of it which means accomplishing the desired goal. Since Linus' goal was to avoid userland bugs then his response was indeed on the correct side whether or not one agrees with his wording. TL;DR If you want someone to do something use Positive Reinforcement if you want someone not to do something use Negative Reinforcement.