swillden

11 ms·

1.
by swillden 17y ago
My only regret is their focus on "fair-weather" states, if they ever come to Wisconsin, I'll be the first in line. That and I'm waiting for the plug-in hybrid model. Actually, what I'd really like is a direct-drive diesel version, like t
2.
by swillden 17y ago
365! / ((365-60)! 365^60) = 0.0059 So it's about 1%, assuming uniform distribution of birthdays. Since they're not quite uniformly distributed, the actual odds of 60 people with no common birthdays is a little lower than that. However, giv
3.
by swillden 17y ago
With IBM it was a forgone conclusion that Solaris would have vanished IBM currently sells OS/390, OS/400 and AIX while also pushing Linux and only recently stopped selling OS/2. I think it's quite likely that Solaris would have just join
4.
by swillden 17y ago
Because rightly or wrongly the player feels like at different moments there are different probabilities that they will make the shot based on all sorts of things. That is certainly true... but does the player's feeling have anything to do
5.
by swillden 17y ago
I've recently come to the same conclusion, at least with my daughter. My wife and I seem to be able to exercise greater influence over my sons, but it's become clear that my daughter's peers exert vastly more influence over her than we can
6.
by swillden 17y ago
The same was true 100-150 years ago in the US. The US Army Infantry routinely marched 35-40 miles per day, seven days per week for weeks on end. The cavalry simply could not maintain that pace; it killed the horses.
7.
by swillden 17y ago
I think D&D gets the hack'n'slash reputation mostly because people start playing it when they're too young to really understand role playing. I play with my wife and kids, and I'd really like to push more roleplaying because that would
8.
by swillden 17y ago
What happens when two drowning people grab onto one another is that they both start trying to push the other down in order to push themselves up. The result is that both of them drown. One of the things any lifesaving class will teach you
9.
by swillden 17y ago
Could you assume a review was helpful because you saw that a user had read it and then purchased the item? Interesting idea. That would tend to "upvote" reviews that sell the product, pushing the negative (or even positive but ineffectua
10.
by swillden 18y ago
I've jokingly suggested for years that the right approach is to make your best estimate, then multiply by pi. Not only does it boost the estimate enough that you're likely to hit the target, it also adds a lot of bogus precision to the numb
11.
by swillden 18y ago
If your doctor treated you while drunk you'd also have grounds for a malpractice suit. Making more drugs legal doesn't change the dynamics of irresponsibility.
12.
by swillden 18y ago
Possibly. The ability to view/tweak the file in a text editor is something I find very convenient, but it's less important than consistency.
13.
by swillden 18y ago
No, the copying is illegal as well. It's just that copying without redistribution is typically both hard to catch and not worth the copyright holder's attention. At least, that's how it is in US law. Details at: http://www.copyright.gov/
14.
by swillden 18y ago
Another option: use mmap() and rewrite it in place, using ftruncate() if necessary to grow/shrink the file, and msync() to flush the changes. This is also risky because it could leave the file in an inconsistent, partially-modified state.
15.
by swillden 18y ago
I think an Bram errs when he thinks that his experience in studying and experimenting with merge algorithms gives him deeper insight than the apparent newcomer to the field, Linus. What he's missing is that Linus has spent a large part of n