Nah, he's right.

I shouldn't have honked at that guy who drifted across the center while looking down, and just let him hit me.

Same for the folks who change lanes without looking; there's usually another car in the yet next lane to push me into for a cozy metallic sowdown . . .

hawk

In Nevada, this is actually a moving violation!

The only lawful use of a horn is as a safety warning, and waiting is not a safety issue.

One of my partners recently handled a ticket for someone who managed to get charged with this.

hawk

The mac's 68000 chip, though, was the same generation as the 8086.

Intel went from 8 to 16 bits, while motorola put 32 bits inside the 16 bit package at a time neither *had* a 32 bit bus available. They also indicated the expansion path (extra register length, etc.) that a fully flushed out 68k would have.

The 68k pushed what could be done, while the SX were deliberate limitations

That was approximately when the accounts became required for posting, and we complained about cookies. (well, those that caved in right away, some of us stubbornly held out and ended up with these high ids)

hawk

There was a crossover point in the vary late 90s. I started seeing things posted that I'd already read in the print version of the WSJ. Before that, you were likely to find things earlier here than any other single place.

hawk

Yeah, but the 3 digit IDs are suspect: you guys all caved instantly when taco insisted on cookies . . . some of us held out a while before caving. :)

hawk, who still blocks almost all cookies

I don't block ads.

I block things that blink or move, making text hard to read; things that try to track me; and things that make my browser sit idle.

I first starting doing this with junkbuster on a 486 when two pages (on my large for the time 17" screen) loaded so many blinky things that it brought the system to a crawl.

I'm fine with ads. I'm not ok with distractions, spying, or delays.

hawk

Physics has a several hundred year head start on Economics. In some ways, we're about where Newton was . . .

And we have older folks who haven't progressed what was taught when they were in grad school (e.g., Krugman). Samuelson observed that the field progresses "one funeral at a time."

And testing hypotheses in economics tends to take longer, and we aren't allowed to tinker with economies to take measurements, for some reason :) [Congress hating competition?]

hawk

About two thirds of things are within one standard deviation of the mean, 95% within two, and 99% in three.

This applies to all bell-shaped data, which is nearly (but not quite) all of it. Slightly broader rules (Chebyshev) apply to all data, regardless of distribution)

There is no similar statement for average deviation.

hawk

This gives us two possibilities:

1) You had a bad statistics professor, or
2) You shouldn't have received your passing grade.

hawk

And *you* seem to be under the impression that economists are "social scientists," or act similarly.

I have a B.S. in Physics, and my Ph.D. is jointly in Economics and Statistics--including classes taken in Pearson Hall (yes, the same Pearson--statistics as a field comes largely from the Iowa State Statistics Lab).

Again, with a Ph.D. in economics, I still don't understand what the so-called "social sciences" are--they seem to be primarily an claim to an exemption from the scientific method (which has a lot to do with economists not getting along with social scientists).

Mainstream modern economists are indeed scientists, although there are definite problems with gathering data.

hawk, aka dochawk

Won't this leave our *own* Australian coast undefended from rampaging icebergs!

hawk, scratching his head trying to figure out what the USCG is doing in Australia

I've driven in NYC, Boston, Chicago, SF, LA during the freeway shootings (which my observations suggested were largely justified), and San Diego.

I live in Las Vegas with bad drivers from all of the above in no predictable pattern.

The night I learned to drive, my father took me down the aptly named "Blood Alley" in San Jose.

There's only one place I'm afraid to drive: a Roman Catholic parking lot after Mass . . .

*shudder*

hawk

>Not really an earth-shattering concept...

A bulldozer dispenser, however . . . :)

hawk

Many years ago, long before 9/11 and the TSA, I was flying with my mac powerbook 180. I had difficulty with a security official whose instructions were to make every computer show a c: prompt . . .

hawk