Are you seriously implying that "real journalists" (i.e. those employed by a corporate news organisation) would never spread misinformation while claiming to be reporting facts?

Maybe once the market share gets low enough, these asshats can just don some thick-rimmed glasses and claim to be hipsters using thier BBs ironically.

*eyeroll*

Still not fixed. If the US has X guns/capita, and France has (X - 2.5X) guns/capita, then France has -1.5X guns/captia (i.e. negative guns/capita) which is clearly absurd.

If the US has 2.5 times more guns per capita than France, that does not mean that France has 2.5 times fewer than the US, it means that France has 72% fewer, or 0.7 times fewer.

(On the other hand, if the US has 2.5 times as many guns per capita than France, then France has 60% fewer, or 0.6 times fewer.)

If Y is 100% more than X, it does not mean that X is 100% less than Y, it is 50% less than Y. In the first instance, you're measuring % of X, and in the other you're measuring % of Y. As X and Y are different, N% of X and Y are different, even for the same N.

How are they going to install a security update to your kernel, or to the security update system, if they don't have the ability to run arbitrary code as root?

Well, we had it tough.

cfdisk /dev/hda && mkfs.xfs /dev/hda1 && mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/gentoo/ && chroot /mnt/gentoo/ && env-update && . /etc/profile && emerge sync && cd /usr/portage && scripts/bootsrap.sh && emerge system && emerge vim && vi /etc/fstab && emerge gentoo-dev-sources && cd /usr/src/linux && make menuconfig && make install modules_install && emerge gnome mozilla-firefox openoffice && emerge grub && cp /boot/grub/grub.conf.sample /boot/grub/grub.conf && vi /boot/grub/grub.conf && grub && init 6

(via bash.org)

So, what you're saying is, it's all three. Congratulations on writing many paragraphs without summarising the answer I was actually seeking. :-p

I realise that it's the possessive case of shit, but are we really talking about ownership? Does someone who "knows their shit" - i.e. is particularly knowledgable in an area of expertise - own their metaphorical fæces? Is knowledge something that can be owned? Seems like we're stretching the language to the point where it might actually sprain.

I also dispute your assertion that the apostrophe could be avoided while retaining meaning. "Knowing youre shit" is nonsensical, as "youre" is not a word. You have to parse it as either "you're" or "your", and the one that you choose dramatically changes the meaning of the sentence, as the pun demonstrates.

FWIW, the pun also works in my particular dialect of English called, um, English. English English? Ah - British English. Where "you're" and "your" sound almost identical in all UK accents I can think of, including (I think) Received Pronunciation.

Is it punctuation, spelling, or grammar which is the difference between knowing your shit, and knowing you're shit?

I cannot type "text file editor" to Linux CLI and have it launch nano or similar or at least display what the currently installed text file editors are.

Really?

$ update-alternatives --list editor
/bin/ed
/bin/nano
/usr/bin/emacs23
/usr/bin/vim.gtk
/usr/bin/vim.tiny

$ update-alternatives --config editor

  There are 5 choices for the alternative editor (providing /usr/bin/editor).

    Selection Path Priority Status
    0 /usr/bin/vim.gtk 50 auto mode
    1 /bin/ed -100 manual mode
    2 /bin/nano 40 manual mode
    3 /usr/bin/emacs23 0 manual mode
    4 /usr/bin/vim.gtk 50 manual mode
* 5 /usr/bin/vim.tiny 10 manual mode

Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:
$ editor --version
VIM - Vi IMproved 7.3 (2010 Aug 15, compiled Jun 7 2012 00:28:35)
Included patches: 1-547
$

I have to do a Google search to translate between what I want to do and CLI (google "Linux how to extract tar.bz2",

Why not "man tar"?

The first set of options listed shows you that "-c" is for "create" and "-x" is for extract. "-v" is the same as for many linux programs: "verbose", so that's not even needed, and should be easy to remember if you do want it. You don't need "-z" for extracting compressed archives, tar (at least recent versions) will figure that out from the filename. It will also figure out which type of compression to use for archive creation based on the filename if you use "-a" (still listed on the first screen of the man page) so you don't need to remember each of the different compression options.

Last, "-f" is for specifying the filename of the archive you're working on, instead of using the default stdin/stdout. Arguably "tar" should always take a filename and allow "-" for stdin/stdout, but if that was changed now then far too many existing things would break. :-(

So, Extract File:
$ tar -x -f filename.tar.bz2

Create (Automatic compression) File:
$ tar -c -a -f filename.tar.bz2 file*

In fact, Newton did this himself.

I recall a story of some mathematical puzzle or hypothesis which had been unsolved by a number of mathematicians for many years. It was brought to Newton's attention, whereupon over the course of a few days (maybe a weekend?) he invented a new branch of mathematics and solved the puzzle. He published his results anonymously, but no-one was fooled and immediately (if somewhat resignedly) congratulated Newton on his genius (again).

Can't remember the hypothesis or the resulting branch of mathematics though.

English - An Indo-European language closely related to the Romance, Germanic, Greek, Nordic and Gaelic languages, with extra loan words from almost every other culture they've invaded or been invaded by over the last 1800-odd years. :-)

The award is not for "contributions to the recording industry", it's for "significant contributions, other than performance, to the field of recording."

Steve Jobs' contributions to the "recording industry" may well have been negative or damaging, but they have nothing to do with the field of recording. They were entirely to do with content distribution, which is totally different.

(IANA sound engineer, but I know a few...)

The big problem is that the QR code to a human being is nothing more than "that little square with a bunch of strange blocks in it."

Are you sure? Wanna try some Snow Crash?

Yeah, I know.

But I didn't want to add too much more to the body of the post, or saddle it with footnotes which would have detracted from the ending.

On the other hand, I couldn't think of a better example to use. Except maybe the curvature of the Earth, but that'd feel like ripping off Asimov's "The Relativity of Wrong" essay. Any suggestions on a better example I could use next time? (Because it's not like posts like the GGPs aren't going to come up again)

Since the modern scientific method was invented approximately 400 years ago, not one single repeatable experiment has ever been devised, by anyone, anywhere, anywhen, which has been able to show an "irregularity" (truly random processes such as radioactive decay, quantum weirdness, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle notwithstanding)

Occam's razor. Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.

When Newton discovered his laws of motion, he was right to accept them. When the scientists who followed him for the next 300-odd years accepted them, they were right to do so. Even though he was eventually shown to be wrong by Einstein, until that point, no-one had any good reason not to accept those laws. However, as soon as Einsten came up with new data, came up with new theories, came up with new experiments, came up with new evidence and proved Newton wrong, then scientists changed how they saw motion.

Yes, scientists should always be aware that their theories might not be correct, that there may be an edge case they've not seen yet. But until someone's actually found it, the best you can do is go with what you've got. If an experiment ever comes along to show that the universe isn't regular, science will use that to show how the universe is not regular. Anyone who refuses to accept the new evidence will not be, to all intents and purposes, a scientist. And science might have to do a lot of work to probe the boundaries (if any) of that irregularity and work out how much it affects the millions of experiments and observations that have been done over the last few centuries.

But until that time comes along, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that the universe is regular. Because that's what every experiement ever done has ever shown.

Your black swan argument could just as well be a 10-headed sheep argument. So what if no-one's seen them? No-one's proven that there aren't 10-headed sheep. So it's an absurdity to say they don't exist!

Bollocks.

If you show me a 10-headed sheep, I'll believe you. Until then, it is so mind-bogglingly unlikely that such thing exists that they are not worth considering in any reasonable model of the universe, and you're just engaging in philosophical wankery, not science.

If the 2nd law of thermodynamics proves that evolution is impossible, because of a local decrease of entropy, then it also proves that life and growth is impossible, because those processes are equivalent local decreases of entropy within a closed system of globally increasing entropy, only on smaller timescales. Therefore, given that life is actually possible, this shows that either the 2nd law of thermodynamics is wrong, or that his understanding of a "closed system" is wrong.