damn.
Sleepyhead am I

So, in the limit as T.S. Eliot --> ee cummings, please .

sorry

Ahhh, c'mon: the post you refer to most likely came from t.s.eliot.

Really -- someone suggests a computer program could identify when to laugh at a sitcom? When humans are likely to disagree rather strongly about which parts are the funniest? Heck, even Mycroft's first jokes were on the weak side of humor. It took a lot of coaching from the humans to get (his) jokes classy.

Make sure to wear your hyper-visor during the game!
(ok, that wasn't as funny as I'd hoped before i wrote it)

I've been waiting since, well, forever, for staropenlibre office's word processor to have a Draft or Galley mode (called "Normal" in Microsoft Word, or at least it was). Why in the world people think they should see the header, footer, and margins while writing and editing a document is beyond me.

That's one reason I would love to switch to LaTex all the way: the IDEs out there have one panel where you do your writing and editing, and a separate panel for viewing the fully rendered result when or if you want to.

Captain! They've broken our secret Starfleet code!

+1 sardonic

But doesn't address my serious point about application of statistical methods.

And you still got the song wrong. It goes "to know, know, know you, is to love, love, love you..." See? Ya gotta repeat twice (yeah I'm a grammar pedant: say it 3 times is repeating twice :-) ) .

Oddly enough, it doesn't matter whether you believe it or not. What matters is whether that's the same predictive model used for estimating lifetimes of RAID arrays, or a single drive for that matter. Since you want to compare the proposed new config directly with current paradigms, you have to use the same set of underlying assumptions.

Yeah, I have to agree (sadly) with that conclusion. I wanted to come up with a semi-magical coupling system that would "hand off" one counterweight&pulley system to another every 100 floors or so, and do so without requiring the car itself to stop, but I rather suspect the cost and safety requirements would make this well-nigh impossible.

Heck, we might just as well go for a vertical version of the Hyperloop .

There's a misconception going on here. Many satellites are "visible" in that they reflect a bunch of sunlight and we can see a bright point source.

At the same time, these satellites are not resolvable with the naked eye, meaning you cannot observe and structure or shape.

Dunno if you were joking or not, but that's exactly what it is. There are all sorts of principles of complementary apertures in optics; this one is perhaps the best known.

Now, in general use you do have to play some games to eliminate background light (as opposed to a pinhole camera, where light from elsewhere is blocked out), but in (dare I say it) Spaaaaaaace!! it'll be easier to set up the phase blocking stuff at the camera itself.

That's really sad. Not the implication of your statement, but that you might believe it in the slightest.
In an attempt to head off further comments in this subthread: you might as well be Hitler.

Not to mention good old politics in the bid-award process. A certain other corporation based in a certain town in upstate NY had build plenty of telescopes, same size, for orbit-based use, but because Security dammit!! and some cronyism on the side Hughes Optical got the contract. And screwed it up in an attempt to save cost.