Some of us like to learn useful concepts, not memorize things that are either useless or better handled by machines. I don't know most of the telephone numbers that I use with any regularity, and I consider that to be a good thing, not an indication of someone who doesn't want to learn.

It's easier to hit keys above the "home row" than it is to hit keys below it.

They might be different in theory; they are not in practice. In addition, in Objective-C, C, and C++, NULL is, in fact, (void *)0L. This is not something that is likely to *ever* change, given the absolutely enormous body of code that assumes that (!pointer) is identical to (pointer == NULL); this is not something limited to x86.

Also, char *pointer = 0; being anything other than 0 is rubbish. There are systems for which 0 can contain valid data, and therefore you must be able to assign 0 to a pointer.

Hmm, yes, that might be a better reading of his intention. That said, it's probably worth pointing out that 'nil' is used *far* more often than 'Nil'; few (if any) standard Cocoa APIs return Nil. The only time I've really seen it used is specifically to be placed into collections.

nil and NULL are identical; they're just casts of 0. The reason that you can send messages to nil is that the objc_msgSend() function (the runtime bit that does the actual message lookup and call on objects) does a NULL check for you and immediately returns 0 if you're messaging nil/NULL.

Sure they are. They're interested in low-hanging fruit, and this will catch a whole lot of it.

No. Data suggests that global warming is very real. Models suggest a certain future continued warming.

The two should not be confused. The historical record is not a model.

Not all of us, let me assure you.

The beginning of action in the EU to mandate a specific charger is what caused the mobile phone manufactures to agree on such a standard- they decided it would be in their interest to pick one they liked rather than having one forced upon them.

He fired shots during the standoff, as he reported in one of the status updates.

Well, the problem with that argument is that the exact same music player is present on the iPhone- so it's clear that this isn't just a "well, we're just a cell phone, how you can you expect us to play music well?" situation.

Uh, you should check the sales numbers on iPods before claiming that its a dead fad. It might be *dying* (the numbers are generally dropping year over year), but it's far from *dead*. The iPod is remarkably long-lived as far as tech gadgets are concerned, actually.

Oh, I'm not opposed to the briefing at all. I just think that the content needs to be reviewed in light of current society (eg, how to fasten a seat belt).

As for the exits: you don't need a briefing for that if you have any experience- you'll see them as you find your seat. Again, a new flyer could use to have them pointed out, but that's not the part of the briefing that I'd object to.

Err, that's not actually correct. 0.999... != .A, as you could transform any of those 9s (after the first) into an A to have a number between .999... and .A. This is like trying to say that 0.444... = 0.5, which is clearly wrong.

Also, the original comment mentioned "branches of mathematics", which is what I was curious. Hexadecimal is just a different base.

The problem with this argument is that it's clearly fallacious. I've never been on a flight where someone indicated that reading a hardcover book might be a danger, and yet it'd be far more dangerous as a projectile than my frankly damn light mp3 player.

This may be the rationalized argument that you use to convince yourself that electronics are still dangerous, but it's so full of holes as to not hold any water.

(Oh, and as a side note: You seem bitter about people not paying attention to the safety briefing. The issue is that it a) covers ridiculous things (who doesn't know how to put a seat belt on at this point!? And if they don't, you'll catch that by the pre-takeoff belt check) and b) is repeated verbatim on every single flight. I could probably give the thing as well as the flight attendants on most planes.)