MaxMorlock

...hmmm. Somehow I expected a blog entry about statistics. :-(

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_(statistics)

Would you please be so kind and explain in some more detail what you mean? Thank you!

You are really funny. You pretend to be the grown-up here and still write M$.

:-)

What hasn't been mentioned yet is that Kubrick was inspired by the short story "The Sentinel" by AC Clarke.

The monoliths in the short story are placed by intelligent beings through space, typically on moons of adjacent planets. The monoliths are sending signals home (wherever that is) once they are broken/destroyed/... This can only happen with nuclear power.

The idea was to have some kind of warning system when intelligence emerges somewhere in space since this new intelligent species needs to be able to leave their own planet AND they need to have discovered nuclear power.

(Disclaimer: I read the short story at least 10 years ago, and I hope I remember it correctly)

The 128-bit storage of ZFS reminds me a bit of TeX. As far as I can remember reading the TeX book, Don Knuth also wanted to play it safe. Internally, everything relies on integers (no floating point operations), and the smallest internal unit of measurement is less than the wavelength of light (don't remember the color ;-) ).

It is four weeks (minimum). Please check: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/burlg/__3.html

It is 24 working days and since Saturdays count as working days: 24 / 6 = 4

It is called "Bundesurlaubsgesetz" -- my translation: Federal Vacation Law.

Does anything like that exist somewhere else?

It reminds me somehow of "Deconstructing My Car at the Detroit Airport" by Howard S. Schwartz. Originally published in "Organization Studies" 1993, Vol. 14, pp. 279-281. Link to the pdf of the publisher: http://oss.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/14/2/279 But it also found elsewhere, e.g.: http://nzmera.orconhosting.net.nz/deconstr.html

I wonder how large the proportion of social scientists is who actually know that Python is a programming language. (I am a social scientist myself).

In my own experience, it is already pretty hard to teach them R.

Uranus and Neptune, the two outermost planets?

Still not used to the fact(?) that Pluto is not a planet anymore. :-/