Viewing profile — swillden

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…

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…

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 …

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…

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 daught…

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 mainta…

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 …

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 dr…

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 produ…

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 t…

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.

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.

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 h…

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 le…

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.…