> ...The ntpd algorithms discard sample offsets exceeding 128 ms, unless the interval during which no sample offset is less than 128 ms exceeds 900s. The first sample after that, no matter what the offset, steps the clock to the indicated time.

> This may on occasion cause the clock to be set backwards if the local clock time is more than 128 [m]s in the future relative to the server. In some applications, this behavior may be unacceptable.

Incorrect.

> I'm not sure if you've been keeping up with US news, but this isn't true, at least until it's decided in court. GM, John Deere, and Ford all have the opposite opinion[1][2][3]

> [1]http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2015/04/john-deere-and....

> [2]https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150421/23581430744/gm-sa....

> [3]http://news.boldride.com/2015/04/gm-wants-to-make-working-on....

> Not to mention I think it's currently illegal to Jailbreak an iPhone or root an Android, despite them being yours.

> I really do wish the US was as cut/dry as you make it seem, and I wish they cared about consumers more, but in reality, Companies get far more rights then we, as consumers, do.

For instance: parts that refuse to work unless all other parts return a handshake containing a copyrighted message.

False premise: you often cannot blow away the firmware, because it is either hard-coded, or signed.

And even when said premise is correct for a device, there are cases where the firmware inherently requires copyrighted material (For instance, requiring a (copyrighted) poem in a handshake).

No you cannot. You lose the single biggest benefit of enumerations - namely compile-time checking. (For instance: warning when a switch statement does not cover all cases.)

Try to do this in C#, and you'll see what I mean: http://snipplr.com/view/42422/the-planet-enum-example/. Either you end up with it being ~3x as verbose (if not more), or you lose the compile-time benefits, or both.

Also, the reason why said discussions are starting to "choke other threads like weeds" is because it is rather hard to have a discussion about something when one has to resort to increasingly-complex and quasi-legal methods (if not downright illegal in some places) just to read the content people are trying to have a discussion about.

It very much reminds me of an ostrich sticking its head in the sand - namely, that the response of a link aggregator to more and more of the links it aggregates disappearing is to say "no it's not, there are , now stop complaining".

It's not just now that should be worrying, it's the continuation of the trend. And a website as major as this within its domain is one of the few that has more than a snowball's chance in Hell to divert said trend, assuming it acts in a timely fashion. But this is just waiting around like a lobster in a pot of water being slowly heated.

I've seen applications that have 5 redundant caches, if not more (on-disk cache, OS cache, VM OS cache, stdlib cache, programmer-visible cache). And then you end up killing the actually-important caches (CPU caches, etc) from the amount of redundant copying required...

For two, declaring rules and then declaring that no-one is allowed to talk about said rules sets a very dangerous precedent.

For three, pretty darn ironic that both this and http://deathtobullshit.com/ are on the front page at the same time.

I find it really annoying that C# enums cannot have constructors and variables.

It's "just" that the only organisms on Earth that do so are microorganisms. Look at flagella.

But there's nothing inherent about rotary motion that is impossible for organics to do. It's "just" that there is no clear evolutionary path from something that relies on linear actuation to something that relies on rotary actuation.

(Also, note that there are pumps that are continuous that don't rely on rotary motion. Among other things, you can have two+ sacs, each with an inlet and outlet valve that can contract and expand. One expands while the other contracts, and vice versa. There's still some variation while the changeover happens - but this can be avoided if you have >2 sacs. Alternatively, there are peristaltic pumps that work continuously that can be implemented with only linear actuators. (As a bonus, this means that you don't need a centralized pump. You can integrate it into the blood vessels themselves.)

The bigger limitation tends to be respiratory, actually. Earth has only ~21% oxygen currently. You bump that up (causing all sorts of other problems), you can have faster and/or larger critters. Alternatively, you have more efficient lungs (Note that human-style lungs are relatively inefficient. Ideally you want air to flow in one direction through the lungs instead of alternating... Birds do that, IIRC.) and/or more efficient oxygen / CO2 transport in the blood. Red blood cells are not exactly efficient. (There was an Analog article at one point about diamond spheres for artificial red blood cells. A related article, https://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/Respirocytes3.html, says the following "In the absence of respiration or atmospheric oxygen, a fully-O2-charged augmentation dosage consisting of 9.54 x 10^14 respirocytes could provide tissue oxygen delivery and carbon dioxide removal for 12 minutes at peak exertion and 3.8 hours at rest even during cardiostasis" "A 1-liter augmentation dose increases blood O2 storage capacity 18,000%")

I just wish that HTML had a sane way to allow client-side preferences (Like, say, line height and width) to be expressed.

(As for the V8 engine, see https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list?can=1&q=Type=.... (Note that Google does not make severe recent bugs publicly available.))