Like the above person mentioned, you can use context to determine the correct meaning. 99% of the time, you can assume the person means the former. If you happen to be at Terminus, you can instead assume the latter.

It's just a way for mathematicians to get people to stop asking inane questions during the apocalypse.

"Can you estimate Pi?"
"Sure. Hand me that shotgun."

"Do you know Euler's Number offhand?"
"Of course. Hand me that bazooka."

"What's Pythagoras' constant?"
"Seriously? Do you see a tank around here?" Eventually you get left in peace.

Ok, even if I give you that you can cut with a push mower while pushing down with the exact amount of force to just keep the weight off the front wheels, cutting your lawn in a series of circles would mean you have to keep that downward force applied for the entire duration of cutting your lawn. And you'd still get dizzy. The only way that would be acceptable is if you had Yakety Sax playing in the background while you mow and stadium seating for the show.

If I was talking to her like a child I would have said, "That's neat" and patted her on the head. I say stuff that's ridiculous and my wife corrects me without talking to me like a child, and vice versa. We can even do it with a little ribbing like I did in this case without getting butt-hurt about it. I actually find it hilarious when it dawns on me that I have one of those, "Oh @#$%, I just said something really stupid and she caught me," moments and I'm glad I'm in a relationship where we can poke a bit of fun at each other and enjoy it.

Yeah, I was unclear about that too, but it was easier to point out how ridiculous it was the way I did rather than getting into acceleration and turning velocity vs. straight line velocity.

This reminded me of a story my wife told thinking it made her math teacher sound smart. She said that they sat down and figured out that it was most efficient to mow their lawn in a series of circles rather than in a rectangle or lines like most people do. I facepalmed and she asked me why.

I responded with something along the lines of, "I'm sure they figured out that mowing in circles is theoretically more efficient, except that most lawn mowers have a finite turn radius that makes it impractical and push mowers can't cut while turning since they have to be lifted."

"Also, people tend to get dizzy going in circles for more than a few seconds, so unless they employ a ballerina to do their lawn mowing, all they showed it why you don't ask a mathematician to solve an engineering problem."

That's what I was thinking. I'm not rain man and I know it to 6 significant digits off the top of my head, which is 6 9's accuracy. Most people estimate it at 3.14, which is still more accurate.

This just screams of mathematicians pretending to be engineers.

You mean they haven't closed their ports already?

I'd say that attempting to start it in the workplace on outdated machines with people who've likely been using the same OS for over a decade because they've never been upgraded is the wrong way to go about it. While it is a decent use case for Linux on the desktop, you're also setting it up for failure.

Showcasing it on decently modern machines and with users who (likely) aren't so entrenched to show that it's capable of competing with a modern OS, and THEN taking the, "Oh, and this will also run on that old crap hardware pretty decently" approach after would be better. Unfortunately that process should have started a year or more ago to be effective.

At this point I'd agree with most of the others above. Tell your boss he's better off shelling out to upgrade the computers rather than trying to keep the dead walking.

Honestly I thought of that (married with 2 young kids), but I still find the time to program, play video games and D&D. Hardware tinkering's just fallen off my radar, and I never thought that would happen.

Well, that's not it then. I'm 34. I work as a computer programmer at a college, so if you'd asked me 10 years ago if I'd be doing programming or hardware tinkering as a hobby I'd have said hardware tinkering, because I wouldn't think I'd have wanted to come home and program after a day at work of programming... but that's exactly what I do.

It's different programming mind you. I play around with a PHPBB forum coding a custom shoutbox and D&D dicebot for me and my friends to play with, or playing with smartphone apps as opposed to customizing/fixing HR and accounting software, but it's still programming.

I even had someone else build my last computer. Still custom and I spec'd it out myself, but just couldn't be bothered with actually assembling it myself.

My other option was time, since I'm now married with two young kids (2.5 and 4 months), but I still find the time to tinker with programming outside work so it's not strictly that either.

There was a time I would have jumped at playing with a Pi, and I did take a look into using it as a media device like he mentions in the article. I looked at what it was capable of and what I'd have to do to get it to do what I wanted vs. building a media PC around XBMC... and bought a Roku instead. I just couldn't be bothered. I still love tinkering with stuff programming-wise, but I've completely lost my ambition to tinker with hardware. Am I just old, or what?

Naw, they were playing musical chairs and he was left standing because he threw his.

It's not so much the thermal conductivity of the GPU->water vs. GPU->copper heatsink that's the direct benefit. It's using the water to carry the heat to a much larger radiator rather than having to have the heatsink directly on the GPU (which greatly limits its size).

I'd contend that raising someone from birth with the expectation that they've been raised to rule would almost guarantee an enormous ego.

Also, raising someone from birth to perform ANY job may get you someone who's better equipped to do that job. I'd expect it would likely also lead to a rather miserable person.