If the prof is no longer available then they get a replacement. Courses are phased out very slowly, when a course is cancelled the intake is capped at zero but it hangs around in the system for up to ten years to deal with resit attempts.

Not at all - I work at a university where students cannot graduate with a failed course on their transcript. They must resit the course in a later year with the same teacher to earn credit. Ymmv

The only delay is unloading all those boxes of Half-life 3 off of the front.

Been there.

First student to offer proof they are the author gets a bare pass mark, the other three fail. If nobody offers proof then they get referred to the Disciplinary board (for expulsion). It's not quite a Prisoner's dilemma, but the expected payoff is close enough to push someone into action.

A lot of the value in your article is lost by trying to shoehorn "general purpose processors" into an argument about task-optimisation. The difference between properties relating to computational power and those relating to performance is really basic textbook stuff that we teach to undergraduates. Being able to run any program, and being able to run any program efficiently, is a difference taught in undergraduate architecture courses.

The parts of your article that are interesting and valuable would have been better served by a narrative that does not rely on a straw man. Cleanly separating the issue of power / performance and explaining that task-neutral optimisation is impossible would have been a better article, and one that would have been easier to write. There is a natural analogy with representation-bias in machine learning that would have provided more explanatory power without the unnecessary rhetoric. I know its the queue, but even so I am a little disappointed in your reviewers.

Indeed the addition of a 4th fix does not constrain the equations, I was thinking of a slightly different positioning system when I wrote that.

The 4th signal is not historically from a ground station: most GPS receivers will generate an estimated position with a low-accuracy warning on 3 fixes, but they expect 4 in order to generate a real estimate. That 4th signal is normally another satellite. I did look briefly for the difference in CEP-50 between 3 fixes and 4, but could not find a source. You have not linked to any previous discussion on this subject, or external references, so if you have numbers on what the real difference between 3 and 4 fixes is then they would be interesting.

Ground stations are used in d-GPS, but not only as an extra point of reference. As an known location they can be used to cancel errors in the satellites estimate of its position.

Actually basic geometry does not say that at all. The receiver does not get given an accurate distance to each satellite, instead it is an inacurrate relative difference in distance. The intersection between the three spheres is a 3d region rather than a point. The extra fix is required to constrain the equations to a single point. There is more info here.

The permanent fix is incredibly simple (not my idea, it was in a stand-up routine) :

Move the clocks 30 minutes. Stop. Don't ever change them again.

It would be good enough to stop most of the arguments.

Stagger is also a verb, as in to cause staggering. Specifically to cause doubt in one's own view and to leave one reeling in disbelief. Literally: that persons sheer stupidity (as demonstrated through their inability to detect sarcasm) is of such magnitude that I am starting to doubt the world around me, as previously my world view did not include people of such low intellect. The cognitive dissonance between that world view and this one has left me spinning and powerless to resist.

Hope this helps. Additional language lessons are available for the low low price of $1.99.

I would guess that it is part of a system survey. About this mac takes a snapshot of OS version / point release / software installed / modules active etc. Or it certainly does when you press More Info, but I guess it does it when you trigger the dialog. The cookie sounds like a GUID. Firing off both would allow them to build up a distribution of platforms that Yosemite is running on, similar to the Steam hardware survey. Can be useful for finding out how and where the code is used (i.e. in combination with which hardware / software). Would work better than a periodic push of the data from every machine, and it would bias the sample towards people having problems with their configuration (because that is when most people hit that menu item).

If you want to make the serious money, look into frozen concentrated orange juice futures.

You should have a slashbox on the right hand side with your user details and recent messages. I believe it's the default although it is possible that I turned it on long ago and forgot. Every reply to something that you have posted will appear as a message in the box. In particular old messages and new messages are distinguished by your browser colouring in visited links. The messages are in chronological order so you do not need to skim a whole story to check for replies in different branches. Makes things a bit easier.

Well I'm a mac user and I think that you'll find that I am quite superior to you in every way.

So basically what your saying is that unix has fixed the OS decay problem by removing the uninstall feature. Well that sounds reasonable :)

The solution to the other problems that you describe is not shrinkwrapped / easy. My latest attempt is a dual install with one partition for stable, one for unstable and a shared home. This allows disk snapshots of the not running system to allow primitive versioning and rollback.

The original didn't come with network access, but you can buy DHL for it.