What does "more homogenous" mean in this claim, and how is it relevant to the murder rate?

"Most murders were intraracial, with 84% of white homicide victims murdered by whites, and 93% of black victims murdered by blacks."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Homicide)

If that helps them repay you the money they owe you, then at the end you have your money back AND the car you wanted.

Disagree. The Apple return policy is intended precisely for people who are interested in the product but not sure they'll like it. It's nothing like deliberately buying something intending to return it after a specific event.

You'd think hindsight would be better than 20/20, really.

That's not "premature optimization", that's unsafe, bug-producing optimization, which is definitely wrong, but, again, is just not what Knuth was talking about in that statement. "Premature" in this context means "before you've profiled your code", not "before you're sure it's safe to add to your compiler".

Those man-page disclaimers are often there because some user complained that they couldn't get gcc to give them whatever super-optimized thing that was valid for their own program but not safe in general, so the gcc people said "ok, take it, but don't come back to us when it breaks code". If one of the built-in opt levels like -O3 turns those on, that's wrong. If it exists, but the user has to ask for it explicitly, well, the man page warning speaks truly.

It is certainly possible to write a simple, crappy compiler. In reality, optimizing compilers are, yes, complex, because users will not accept the simple, crappy compiler output, and getting the best possible output is hard. There are multiple optimization problems in any compiler, and some of them fight each other.

And that Knuth quote applies to users prematurely optimizing their specific source code before seeing where the time actually is; compiler people have to figure out how to optimize all code in the world with the same compiler. It just doesn't apply to that situation.

Ooh, I bet I know Connie's last name!

Which "cupcake business" is that? I found a couple of possible instances but both businesses are still there.

The name change is because "Spooks" is an old-fashioned racial slur in the US. By old-fashioned, I mean plenty of white people don't even know it exists, which doesn't mean black people don't know it exists. "MI-5" is certainly clearer, anyway.

I never say stuff like this, but: if they really want to be more like a 1980s family maybe these parents of a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old should be married? ..wait, I just read more of TFA. They moved into their current house BECAUSE it was built in the 1980s? Jesus. The father has a mullet, and so the kids.

Oh come on, this is some kind of trolling lifestyle.

Well, I'd say that "From who did you get that?" is still wrong, even with "whom" becoming less used. But "Who did you get that from?" -- which is the more-likely alternative -- sounds ok, vs "Whom did you get that from?", which I'd never say. (Which all runs into "don't end a sentence with a preposition", but that's another -- but related -- matter,)

Don't worry, you'll be losing your near-distance vision sooner than you think, and then you'll enjoy a nice big screen across the room from you.

NO. There are people who like to say this but it's crap. Usually there's a more explicit reference to Clarke's Third Law. But from Clarke's point, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" you can't conclude that "Any writing about magic is really writing about technology". Literary genres are a matter of tropes and reader expectations.

You mean like the fact that you can transfer your wireless number to a new carrier, because of government (FCC) control? That one worked out pretty good.

See the current Time-Warner Cable vs. CBS dispute to understand why that's not happening.