When modern computers are on but idle, they consume a tiny amount of power. Remember the "Energy Star" campaign of the 90s? Yeah, we've had 20 years of advancements in that arena.

We all appreciate your yearning for a dark, cold, miserable life for the rest of us, though. Certainly, tax the fuck out of us some more, God knows we all have plenty of financial cushion for this kind of thing.

Really? Do you actually know Microsoft's track record and what they did? They singlehandedly held back the progress of computers, year after year, with disgusting, unethical tactics. That kind of reputation doesn't wear off easily. Are you one of the pro-MS consultants paid to post on sites like these? If so, good move posting anonymously so it can't be tracked back to you. If not, why are you writing about a mega-billion dollar corporation that can defend itself quite well?

The Atari was the best seller of an entire generation of consoles. It was enjoyed by millions and envied by millions more. Where'd you get the idea that people back then thought video games were dumb? This is backwards thinking, isn't it? Applying the standards of today to a time when different standards were in force.

I am not concerning myself with representations of mathematical values, except to show the parallels of why it works. IEEE 754 defines a positive and negative infinity, because it has a specific signed bit. Thus, it's easier to define a positive and negative infinity than to produce special code to handle "exceptions"... note also that IEEE 754 defines a positive and negative 0 separately. No, they really do.

My model is a theoretical one that hasn't reached mathematical consensus, and it likely never will. I just note that this is an argument for infinity being signless.

Can confirm this. I've been with Chinese people who went to have artifacts verified, and they've got the whole mass spectrometer (or whatever it is they use for solids) set up. There are tons of companies involved in verifying pricey things, because Chinese of all people are well aware the market is full of fakes.

Ah it doubles as a nice Chromebook!

"The use of anthropomorphic terminology when dealing with computing systems is a symptom of professional immaturity."
-- Edsger Dijkstra

Who wants to bet the person who posted this has never heard of Dijkstra? He invented the shortest path algorithm, structured programming, and was the first person to label GOTO as harmful. Professionally immature, indeed. I'd go farther and say incompetent.

Let's assume that the set of integers is Z_\inf. K? We can now define negative numbers as the 1's compliment of the number plus 1. 1 = 999...9998. then plus 1 = 999...9999. This plus 1 results in an infinite carry out, and the value 0. Awesome.

Now, let's look at 1/0, we see that from the right it's approaching \inf from the bottom, while we see that from the left, it's approaching \inf from the top. Now, at 0, obviously these two will be coincident, because we're working in Z_\inf, that value is the same value. Namely, -\inf = \inf. But that doesn't make sense, only 0 can be it's own negative!

But we've already known for a long time about Z_n where n is even, -(-128) in Z_256 is -128. -(-65536) in Z_2^16 = -65536. So, there's no trouble in making -\inf = \inf ...

Basically, 1/0 grows so fast that it manages to wrap around the entire infinite series of numbers. Which is exactly what it does...

Dude... you perhaps haven't heard, but computers run entirely upon theoretical mathematics... I know, it's popular to say it's engineering, rather than mathematics, but it's mathematics. It's always been mathematics.

Oh, you're the asshole who did that? I love how you totally ignored the fact that you made it not work for the large number of people who use VPNs. Somehow Google can keep a list of VPNs when it comes to spam, but that same list disappears suddenly when it's time to verify EMAIL LOGINS. And to make it all go away, I only have to give my phone number...which I don't care to reveal to Google as they are only going to abuse the information, either today or in the future. I appreciate the link to the support page that apparently only you knew.

I'd like to thank you for all the times I had my account disabled despite repeatedly clicking on "that was me". I'd like to especially endorse the "you will change your password, NOW!" screens that made me repeatedly change passwords, making me forget how to enter my password by memory and leading to that one time at the airport where I couldn't log in for the life of me. But hey, the information was just hanging out there, why not use it? amirite?

I've worked in anti-fraud before and one thing we always had was a "this user is not normal, do not disable the account for strange activity" flag. Too bad this blatantly obvious feature was not included (or publicized).

Yes, that was once true. 50 years ago, a liberal arts education was just that. Today, no.

Now liberal arts majors graduate knowing only that Plato and Aristotle were not worth listening to because of their skin color. It is a huge disservice not only to the worthless grads but to all of Western culture. I don't see it getting any better anytime soon.

Yeah, weird people eat that shit. There's a reason that you don't find liver and kidney on the menus at major restaurants. Let's completely ignore the fact that eating organ meats like chitterlings is a Southern (and therefore racist) thing. Try this: "Chitterlings must be soaked and rinsed thoroughly in several different cycles of cool water, and repeatedly picked clean by hand, removing extra fat and specks of faecal matter." MMM-mmm! Hungry yet?

Beyond the obvious ugly connotation of peasant food, we won't even go in to oysters or other filter feeders. Yuck...they concentrate heavy metals and other pollutants. Let's just not go there.

Sigh...once again, someone who doesn't know what "fascism" means is using the word wrong. For the millionth time.

Stop saying it. Seriously, just get the word out of your vocabulary.

Most, I hate the Sparta icon... it's white, with no contrast border... which makes everything that is assigned to it being the default program, show a white globe on a white background... it's like, "way to go, Microsoft!" followed by a slow clap.

"clean" "modern" design... which will never work decently on all backgrounds... you know... like good logos, and designs...

Yeah, LOL, "Director of Special Projects". That happened to a manager where I used to work. He asked me if I wanted to come work with him in his new department, and I said, "OH HELL NO." Two months later he was out of the company.