A slashdot article with the phrase "tiny nose robots" in the title. My life is complete.

I am not sure why you say it is "particularly useless". It's not appropriate for storing large amounts of raw data. It is probably the best electronic format for storing actual documents, that is, things like engineering reports and analysis that have to be rendered properly and are primarily intended to be read by a person. It's still not nearly as good/safe as actual paper but if your application cannot tolerate math symbols showing as random font-substituted garbage, then it's about the only game in town.

We pass data files as text or FORTRAN binary, not PDF. We archive engineering reports as PDF, TIFF scans - or, the best, actual paper in a file cabinet, which so far has proven far and away the most reliable. PDF is hardly immune to corruption issues itself, depending on how you do it, it ALSO attempts to OCR or somehow convert information into something, and invariably corrupts the document. If it's not searchable, fine, at least it is *correct*.

Right, it is more-or-less making images of each page. That's also the appeal of it, in that you don't ruin the formatting or render something incorrectly because you don't have a particular font, or some other local feature required to make something like WORD work. Even just the "font substitution" bug alone is enough to make people want to use PDF, and I haven't heard any better solution for archival documents.

We had a Platinum-level trouble ticket with MS for the font substitution issue, they concluded it was insoluble and that to keep our documents from getting corrupted, that we print it on paper, scan it as a TIFF, and save the TIFFS.

Aside from paper - which works fantastically well for this purpose, from the many examples I have at hand - I still don't see an answer that keeps searchable electronic documents intact over time and program version changes. And certainly not that are WYSIWYG when creating it in the first place. Various typesetting programs, - TeX and LaTex, formerly Runoff, etc, are just as prone to bit rot over version changes over many years/decades and also *torturous to use in the first place*.

Both of those things are the driving problem in digital music systems, there is nothing else. I am not sure what you mean by "transparent", all. repeat, all analog devices have significant limitations that do affect the results.

Its not just the DAC. The digital part is straightforward, and coming up with the equivalent voltage is not a critical problem. The critical problem is the filtering to remove the switching noise and the analog output drive circuit.

Of course they aren't! I have looked at it very closely and a road trip of any length (>500 miles) looks like kind of a nightmare. But every time I point that out, I get modded into oblivion.

Aside from everybody who knew the first thing about it? It was well-understood that recycling plastic was economically unfeasible from the second it was proposed.

No it isn't, nuclear reactors and power plants are pretty straightforward and similar to coal plants with the exception of the reactor. What costs are the unnecessary requirements, regulation, lawsuits, and everything else associated with it. All of which is the results of a bunch of know-nothing chicken littles that use every excuse to oppose it.

You have nailed it, nuclear has never been costly, it's fighting tooth and nail for years/decades with the stupid f'ing hippies who chain themselves across the gates and file one legal brief after another that costs something.

      You have to understand that 99% of the people involved in the "environmental movement" know absolutely nothing about the topic, and also, do not care one whit for any practical solution to supplying energy.

      They don't believe in supplying energy, they believe in rolling back any progress and living in an agricultural commune. The fact that this destroys modern society is the goal. Oh, and incidentally, 4ish billion people will also have to somehow "go" because that's about what the Earth can support with a basic algricultrual revolution economy. Naturally, being morons, they mostly dont realize that, and the few that do, don't care.

Great analysis, exactly what I have come to expect from the usual denizens here. Designing and qualifying a complex life-critical system like this can't be done using your sorts of script-kiddie and hobbyist garbage, it is a very exacting and demanding process, you can't just slap stuff in there and then expect it to control a weapons systemÂ

There is not nor will there ever be a "carbon tax" on companies, it is a tax on *consumers*, and not having that tax is a very good thing.

This is derived for a population size of infinity, in this cases, 150,000,000 might as well be infinity.

This is very simple, entry-level statistical theory. It;'s not just pulling things out of the air, it's mathematically true (under the assumptions of the derivation (like, normal distribution,etc). Stuff like this is not even a specialist type information, it's basic knowledge, in the same sense that you do not have to be an expert on planetary geology to know the earth is very roughly a ball.

        Brett

Yes, the good old days! Why not more stories about Natalie Portman, how the iPod is a second-rate knockoff, and where to buy generic versions of Mountain Dew Code Red and Cheetos? Or how to dehumidify your mom's basement?

Well, no. While there might be other issues, sampling "1000" (by which the probably mean 1100) out if a population >>1000 will get you about 3%, i,e, 1/sqrt(1100). That why many of similar polls use 1100 as a sample size.