Look, give it up. He has statistics to prove you wrong. This is why all countries with strong gun-control laws are seething masses of crime and murder.

No, wait...

I'm saying that punching people in the street, whatever the reason, is a bad thing that we should want not to happen, if that's what you're asking, yes.

You, on the other hand, appear to be taking the kindergarten line of argument. "But... but... but he did it first!" Doesn't make it any better, I'm afraid.

The reality is that your analogy is bad. In the real world we can't make it impossible for anyone to punch someone else in the face. In terms of abuse of patents, we can do that - or at least make the penalty for doing so high enough to make it undesirable.

No need for a scorecard. As always, the patent lawyers are winning, and the consumers are losing.

This sort of shitty competition through litigation was vile when Apple did it to Samsung, and it's equally vile when Samsung do it to Apple. Showing more and more why we desperately need patent reform. I'm not even that concerned about the impact on Apple and Samsung - it's the smaller players who can be crushed by litigation like this that I've got more sympathy for.

Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.

Can't encourage that sort of thing, though - it would be security awareness training. And we know *that's* a waste of time.

That would be the 99.99% of us whose offices are never cleaned, have no windows, and have rigorous security preventing anyone who isn't cleared from entering the building?

Sorry, but your approach is inefficient. Since the system now requires users to choose passwords that aren't memorable (and probably to change them regularly as well) a large number of them will have them written down on post-it notes stuck to their monitors. That reduces the search space even more. :D

I recall the time they found those fossilized mosquitoes
And before long, they were cloning DNA
Now I'm being chased by some irate veloceraptors
Well, believe me... this has been one lousy day

Jurassic Park is frightning in the dark
All the dinosaurs are running wild
Someone shut the fence off in the rain
I admit it's kinda eerie
But this proves my chaos theory
And I don't think I'll be coming back again
Oh no

I cannot approve of this attraction
'Cause getting disemboweled always makes me kinda mad
A huge tyrannosaurus ate our lawer
Well, I suppose that proves... they're really not all bad

Jurassic Park is frightning in the dark
All the dinosaurs are running wild
Someone let T. Rex out of his pen
I'm afraid those things'll harm me
'Cause they sure don't act like Barney
And they think that I'm their dinner, not their friend
Oh no

Jurassic Park is frightning in the dark
All the dinosaurs are running wild
What a crummy weekend this has been
Well, this sure ain't no E-ticket
Think I'll tell them where to stick it
'Cause I'm never coming back this way again
Oh no... oh no

I wish I could determine pi
"Eureka!" cried the great inventor.
Christmas pudding, Christmas pie
To the problem's very center.

Twenty digits (omitting the 3, which everyone can remember anyway), and I find it very memorable.

Don't be foolish. Of course Steve Jobs didn't pick the wrong tablet size. If Jobs and reality are ever in conflict, reality is wrong.

In particular it isn't news to Linus. Which is how git got its name.

I can tell the difference between a constant and a variable, and I know whether to put an apostrophe in 'yours'. If your IQ really is slightly above average, then the average is pretty woeful these days, and I'm glad mine isn't down there.

Your 'easy peasy' solution isn't that easy peasy after all if you apply some thought to it, of course. Because you have to know what time period to calculate your k over, and as the overhead changes you're either going to end up with too long a period, in which case you'll still be calculating based on old data, or you're going to end up with too short a period in which case your progress bar will jerk around frantically as the load on the system varies.

The real answer is the one that you dismissed; it's impossible to create an accurate progress bar representing the time taken by an operation, because things that change that time can (and will) happen during the operation, which will leave you in an inaccurate state for some part of the operation, or lead to counter-intuitive behaviour of the progress bar. Given that, the goal of the developer shouldn't be to create an accurate progress bar; it should be to create one that gives the impression of being accurate enough or change the way progress is represented so that it doesn't give the misleading impression that it's about providing an accurate time to completion.

All these constants go out of the window if anything else starts accessing the drive as well, of course, and they're actually variable based on file system and a variety of other things.

The relevant questions were asked of the jury. Hogan gave misleading answers to those questions.

If the jury had found for Samsung on every point, despite Hogan's possible bias against Samsung and their position, of course there wouldn't be a basis to demand a new trial. A better question might be whether Apple would be demanding a new trial had an anti-Apple zealot made it onto the jury by concealing their past history with Apple and then browbeating the other jurors into ignoring and misinterpreting law in a way that favoured Samsung.

And I think we all know the answer to that one.

See, you're proving the point that being able to write more than 140 characters doesn't prevent you from being an irrational asshat with nothing useful to say. Everything you say in your first paragraph is inaccurate. Everything you say in your second paragraph is unsupported and subjective.

In what way does imposing a 140-character limit constitute 'dumbing down'? You haven't done anything to defend that view, which isn't supported by reality. Yes, some people write dumb things in 140 characters. But some people write dumb things in more than 140 characters. Limiting the space does at least force you to consider what you're saying, especially if your initial attempt runs to slightly more than 140 characters, as you have to decide what is redundant and what isn't.

The truth of it is as always that dumb people will say dumb things, and smart people will say smart things. The smart ones will use Twitter in ways where it's appropriate and other resources where Twitter isn't the right tool for the job. The dumb ones will make incoherent anonymous personal attacks on people on Slashdot, apparently.

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that Twitter is just for inanity, because unfortunately that's the majority content of the internet in general. But it can be useful, and the 140-character limit is not inherently dumbing down. And I suspect you know it, which is why you haven't defended that claim in the slightest and resorted to pitiful anonymous ad hominem.