ksmiley
However, I don't think the wind is a likely culprit. If the wind was strong enough to knock over a rock, it would also be strong enough to blow a lot of dust around. That would be very noticeable to anyone watching the rover's feed, and would surely have been mentioned in the article.
These may seem like contrived examples, but when you eliminate all outcomes that aren't self-consistent, it may be that _all_ the remaining possibilities are contrived. Probability gets weird when time travel is involved.
If 6 hour workers are 112.5% as productive per hour as 8 hour workers, then this turns out to be a good deal for Kellogg's.
Not that I consider that strategy cost-effective in general. For one thing, it's bad PR. (Unless you're some kind of wizard that can spin it like, "we're principled and don't let bullies walk all over us. That's why we hold people to their promises")
If you ask, "how do I use [library X] to draw a rounded rectangle?" on Stack Overflow, they will put your question on hold until you show code that demonstrates that you tried. This may be difficult for someone who has only just succeeded in getting the library to compile!
To continue the author's car analogy, Ms. Smith sits in the passenger seat while you try to drive to grandpa's house. When you fail to reach your destination and give up, Ms. Smith will tell you what you did wrong. But only if you made a non-trivial effort. If you ram into the living room while trying to exit the driveway, you'll only get a disapproving glare.
Your explanation is certainly possible, but it doesn't contradict the Linode explanation. You might say that the former is much more likely than the latter, but that doesn't rule linode out.
>> At the same time so upsetting that I am unable to completely read it all.
At first I interpreted this as, "[it is] so upsetting [because] I am unable to read it all". It makes it sound like you're complaining that the page didn't load all the way, or something. I had to read it a few times to understand what you meant. It could have been less ambiguous worded as, "At the same time, I am unable to completely read it all because it's so upsetting". If a reader misinterprets this sentence, the rest of the post becomes incomprehensible.
>> Time to Google if this is 'normal'
"this" is a bit vague here. What do you want to know is normal? Being upset by articles in general? Being upset by articles specifically about rare diseases? Being upset by this specific article?
>> Starts to Google.
Narration is the kind of thing I'd expect to see in a chat room, but not HN. It makes your tone much less formal, and some might see that as inappropriately flippant for a serious topic.
>> Does anyone else feel this way about this and other things?
"about this" is vague, again. The "and other things" clause makes this question so broad that it becomes tautological. "Does anyone else feel [upset] about [things that are upsetting]?"
4/3 * pi * r^3
Using Ceres as a benchmark for typical asteroid density, an asteroid of radius r has mass
[volume in meters^3] * 2077 kg/(m^3)
On the asteroid's surface, acceleration due to gravity is
[Gravitational constant] * [mass in kilograms] / (r in meters)^2
which simplifies to
(6.67384E-11 * 4/3 * pi * 2077 * r) m s^-2
If we mine on a 1km diameter asteroid, the dust we kick up will accelerate towards the surface at 2.9 * 10^-4 m/s^2. A dust cloud 10 meters high will settle in about five minutes.
Additionally, the presidency of the company changed hands from Thomas Watson Sr to Thomas Watson Jr around that time, and he may have been more progressive. He drafted the "company's first equal opportunity policy letter" in 1953.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM#1946.E2.80.93196...
How so? It's called the "autism _spectrum_", after all, so it's natural that there are varying levels of severity among those affected. Sheldon having high-functioning autism doesn't somehow invalidate anyone else from having more severe autism.
> That seriously offends me. It offends me on behalf of the mothers and fathers who are living with autistic children [...]
To me, this smells like a pre-emptive ad hominem against those with an opposing viewpoint. If you disagree with me, then you've offended me, you're disrespectful, you're ignorant. If you want to argue that Sheldon doesn't have autism, that's fine. But if you do, then keep in mind that part of your audience _does_ think he has autism. Why would you attack the people you're trying to convince?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence
[2] well, semi-nonsensical. If you ignore the plurality disagreement between subject "software" and verb "people", then "software people use" could be interpreted as "software occupies a purpose for which something may be employed", which is par for course in corporate buzzspeak.
> We will hire several (as many as possible, in fact) throughout the next few weeks only to show you, dear reader, the confidence we have in developers, we initially invited to be a part of our TaskForce!
First, what are you hiring several of? Is it implicitly referring to the "our guys" from the previous sentence? But then they aren't "your guys" yet, so I'm uncertain that's the intended meaning.
Also, the final clause confuses me. Who or what is being invited? Possible subjects are: "We", developers in general, the dear reader, the guys you will be hiring several of, or the guys from the previous sentence that are taking it from here. You could also mean you are "inviting confidence" by dogfooding.
Not that I agree with it, but I understand the interpretation. It's a fairly common view in the tech industry that you should get a new job every 18 months or else your skills will degrade.
Do you mean that the movie industry's coders have made DRM so un-intrusive that it's no longer an issue for consumers? Many would disagree with you there.
Do you mean that "pirate" coders have been able to circumvent all existing DRM techniques, so consumers can always get DRM-free movies if they seek them out? That may be true, but it's a continuing arms race with the movie industry, so it's not an ideal solution.
There was a study performed on young students, concerning their perception of STEM fields. Most respondents indicated that "techie" people are all white males in lab coats, and that the respondent wouldn't fit in well with that group. (Sorry, I don't have a link to the study. But I know I saw it in the last 8-12 months)
If more women are publicly visible in tech fields, then young people's perception of techie people will swing away from "homogenous white male group" towards a heterogeneous group that is necessarily less discriminatory. This should cause a corresponding increase in enrollment by non-white non-males who would otherwise have been dissuaded from joining.
Even the response to the problem is similar. Microsoft says, wait until the 2nd and the problem will resolve itself. Apple says, wait until the 7th and the problem will resolve itself.
[1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/156240/microsoft_zune_failure...
No, I object to the use of past tense there. I believe that "all there is" that is observable could eventually be explained by science. Of course, science in its current state is insufficient to explain all there is, as evidenced by all the things we can't explain. But nothing will remain inexplicable forever.
> Science is a philosophical subject, not the other way around.
That's reasonable. Really I'm just using science here as shorthand for "obtaining knowledge". If philosophers can come up with a good explanation of qualia and consciousness etc, without the use of test tubes or brain surgery, that will be fine with me.
(Disclaimer: I get my science facts from Wikipedia and xkcd)