As you have only been introduced to elementary math(s), you may not be aware that median is also an average. Half of programmers *are* below average using one of the three usual rivals for 'average'. It would be hard to use mean, as it's not clear that you could find a rating system for which using mean would make sense.

Of course, it's not clear that there is any sensible numeric rating scale for programmers, and it would be interesting to argue about what the modal average would be, but it's just a throwaway comment which doesn't need to be analysed in such depth. The meaning and sense of the comment is clear.

If you are going to play the role of overly pedantic nerd, at least do it correctly so you don't get laughed at.

Actually Oregon was getting high turnout decades before they switched to vote-by-mail. There was one study which showed that Oregon got increased turnout from vote-by-mail, but a more recent study was unable to replicate that. It showed that Oregon's increased turnout was due to a "novelty effect", but it has since disappeared (except for a very small effect in some small special elections).

Furthermore, Oregon's anti-fraud measures are inadequate (e.g., the handwriting analysis isn't done by fully trained people, and has never been subjected to third-party scrutiny). And the much-touted "ballot parties" -- where groups of friends get together and talk about the issues and then fill out and mail their ballots out together -- are a classic example of a violation of the secret ballot and peer pressure in voting. (And remember: this doesn't actually increase turnout.)

Vote-by-mail increases the risks, doesn't effect turnout, and removes the secret ballot. But at least it's cheaper, I guess?

I do agree that online voting increases the risks monumentally, though. Even the much-lauded Estonian system is fundamentally flawed.

Hmm. I am the person who created that Tumblr. I'm not trying to "debunk" anything. Just showing what it really is: sometimes it's nonsense, sometimes it's there's an amusing juxtaposition, sometimes it's a fun Easter Egg.

No, it should be 'median', not 'mean'... but see the comment by cusco also.

Tim Robinson, the man behind the Meccano construction you link to, is a trustee of the Plan 28 charity mentioned above.

You are quite correct that we have not built a single demo part. In the two years since I started talking about this project the following has happened:

1. Persuaded the Science Museum to digitize all of Babbage's plans and notebooks (this in itself was a non-trivial task involving a great deal of effort at all levels and they should be thanked for taking on the task).
2. Got the leading Babbage experts to join and work with me (Doron Swade who built the Difference Engine No. 2 and Tim Robinson)
3. Started a UK-based charity (again these things take time as there are legal requirements and the recruitment of a board of trustees)
4. Started research on the Babbage archive itself
5. Begun fund-raising.

No. 4 is non-trivial because there are literally thousands of pages of notes and > 230 large scale plans to decipher. Plus there's a hardware description language to work with. And the archive is not well documented. There are a number of different cross references that conflict with each other. I realize that all this stuff is boring and people would like to see an immediate result, but that's not going to happen. It's years of work to properly study this stuff and build a historically accurate machine.

Note that we have not proposed building the 1,000 memory location machine. That's far too much to demonstrate that it would work and would add to the cost and size. As for the number of parts, until we've deciphered all the plans and come up with a definitive plan that it's hard to answer but we believe there will be roughly 40,000 to 50,000 components to be made.

By "in the middle of" you mean "not yet in control of and had no power over," right?

You are correct that I care about the PR side of things. I need to because I need to raise a substantial amount of money.

But it's far from all PR. There's now a registered British charity with a board of trustees and the pre-eminent Babbage expert, Doron Swade, who built the Difference Engine No. 2 at the Science Museum is running the technical side of the project.

Study of the digitized plans has been underway since February and some first results will be announced this summer. We actively want to build a 3D working model in a tool like Autodesk.

So the timeline is:

1) Motorola brings up possible patent issues with Microsoft in Germany. For the moment we'll set aside if they're valid/invalid or if this is real or patent trolling. But Motorola said, "Hey, Microsoft, that's ours."

2) Possible phase of negotiations in Germany.

3) Microsoft doesn't like how the negotiations are going, so they sue Motorola in US court.

4) Motorola says "I don't think so" and sues Microsoft in German court for violation of German patent law.

5) US judge says "well Microsoft sued here first, so this is where international jurisdiction should reside."

So the lesson here is: regardless of the country of the dispute, and regardless of the merit of the patents, and regardless of how negotiations are going, and regardless of whether you're the plaintiff or defendant overseas, as long as you sue in US court first you can get a US judge to slam the brakes on any patent issues.

How is that reasonable?

Between 70 and 80%. That's a HUGE difference. That means that compared to the other computerized systems out there you're either totally awesome or really suck.

That's like saying, "I did a lap in a Formula 1 car, and I'm either 15 seconds ahead of last year's world champion, or I'm a minute behind the field."

You haven't done this before, have you?

[ Disclaimer: I work for Google. ]

I've been here for several years and I've never ever seen an interview schedule with 10 people. Are you including the recruiters, all the people you spoke to over the phone, all your interviewers, and the person who took you to lunch as "interviewers"? Did you interview here multiple times? Because nothing I've seen -- and I've done over 100 interviews here -- matches your description.

Nah, I haven't been arrested yet.

Or he could just stay with 3.6, like I have, which works perfectly NOW.

Choose between a thousand words or so for each word, and you have a password you can actually remember, with just as much entropy as the standard 8-digit random nonsense. Something like "original horse tuesday" or "memorable yacht Tasmania" is also much easier to remember than "r3!xp20.".

If you want more strength, then increase the number of words. Four words aren't much harder to remember than three.