bwhite

It's also possible that Mozy's "forgotten password" function "succeeds" without showing any error messages to the user if the user has been removed.

As the saying goes, if OSHA were in charge suppressors would be mandatory.

+1. My brain read Security Six. I think I suppressed a mediocre Single Six experience and foregrounded the delightfulness of the Security Six.

Sound suppression is largely a function of relatively slowly bleeding off the gas that results from combustion. There is not much powder in a 22lr (22 long-rifle) round, which is why it is easily suppressible. I can make no particular comment as to the frequency of their use by the best hit squads in the world.

The subject of the article was shot with a 22WMR (Winchester Magnum Rimfire) round. This round can use the same bullet as the 22lr round but contains lots more powder.

The velocity of the bullet leaving the barrel of the firearm depends on how fast the charge contained in the casing wants to push it and how much the barrel wants to slow it down due to friction. Almost all rifles barrels are between 16.5" and 24". For a average 22WMR round shooting an 40-grain (unit of mass) bullet out of a mid-length rifle barrel one would expect the bullet to leave the barrel at around 2000 feet/sec. The deceleration caused by friction can be altered by changing the exterior-most material of the bullet: a full metal jacket (usually lead totally encased by copper) is potentially slicker than a jacketed soft-point (only partially encased, with the tip exposed).

A Ruger Single Six is a type of handgun. The story describes a single-action revolver, which the Single Six is not, but let's ignore that. It comes in barrel lengths of 2.75", 4", and 6". Out of a 4" or 6" barrel, the 22WMR has about 1400-1600 feet/sec of velocity. This is roughly comparable with the upper (or hot) range for a 22lr fired out of a rifle barrel.

It's a signalling mechanism.

+1 to you for correcting my misunderstanding, though I stand by my comments about regulatory capture.

The oil spill goes on the list of recent events in which the government isolated an industry from downside and encouraged risk-taking. BP's legal liability is capped at $75 million by Federal law.

In the case in which an industry makes lots of money and/or that money is concentrated in the hands of a relatively small handful of players, the nearly inevitable result is regulatory capture. All the regulations in the world don't help when the legislature rubber-stamps laws written and endorsed by the industry. And enforcement is worthless when the regulators do not have sufficient experience to truly determine culpability.

This is an example of code that is unnecessarily O(n^2).

I am trying to imagine the mechanics of what a "no-bid" situation would look like. Presumably you mean that one of the market makers would have to take the other side of the trade, but the rules for MM entities stipulate that they have to provide liquidity within certain bounds, not at all times and at any cost. Even if there were truly no bids -- which didn't happen -- the market maker would never make the market at $0.01.

This is happening.

Nasdaq is breaking trades that occurred between 14:40 and 15:00 which executed at more than 60% away from the previous (consolidated) print price.

Mark Cuban nailed this early on: http://blogmaverick.com/2009/01/18/breaking-down-bernie-mado...

Holding the slide is not what prevents the hammer from falling. A semi-auto handgun with an exposed trigger that is placed out of battery has its trigger immobilized by mechanical linkage, regardless of the hammer's position.

Because of the way Glocks have their lug linkage, many will actually fire even when slightly out of battery. Knocking the slide back 1/10" and holding it there is probably not going to be sufficient to disengage the lug that prevents trigger pull.

Even if one could manage to pull the trigger with the gun significantly out of battery, I imagine that this would be a non-event with an exposed hammer because as you say, the hammer would fall onto the slide, not the pin. Still, firing out of battery would seem to be a function of the linkages, not striker-vs-exposed-hammer-ness.

A Glock will certainly fire with the slide immobilized. If the slide cannot move with respect to the frame the current round will not be ejected and the next round will not be chambered, but it will certainly fire the chambered round. It is not clear from "grab the whole barrel" what you were doing. Glock is like many (most?) semiautos in that the trigger cannot be pulled when the slide is not all the way forward, is that what you meant? That you could yank the slide out of battery and hold it there, thus preventing the trigger from being pulled?

If you intend to replicate your experiments in the future, you can explicitly seat a snap cap in the chamber and leave the magazine out (no mag safety on the Glock). That way you are still violating rules 2-4, but possibly not rule 1.

If he forgot to initial a box, John Stewart would have a laugh at his expense and it would underscore the notion that filing is complicated (and should be simplified). But that's about it.

The salient point here is that there is no right answer to even moderately complex tax filings. Ralph Nader did this experiment a while back. The same relatively simple tax filing was sent to something like two dozen IRS offices. Each one checked the filing and weighed in on the correctness of the form. Every office said that the filing was wrong but they all came up with different and widely varying figures for what the "correct" figure should be. I suspect a large part of the reason this guy uses a preparer (software in this case) is so that even if "errors" are discovered, he can plausibly claim that he did the best he could and can expect leniency. (Timothy Geithner, white courtesy phone please.) Think you can just ask the IRS for instruction and/or definitive rulings? They get it wrong, a lot. (http://www.treas.gov/tigta/auditreports/2005reports/20054014...)

Bignum hours and dollars are spent by individuals and corporations attempting to do taxes correctly. The time suck and opportunity costs are massive.

Spot on. At handgun distances (say under 20 meters) the issues of trigger control and grip are going to dominate the quality of the sights, as long as they are half decent.

Since good shooting practice is to focus on the front sight, thus rendering the rear sight fuzzy, that rear sight has to be useful while out of focus. Consider the classic Novak sight. The front sight is a rectangular post that fills the gap that is the rectangular notch of the rear sight. Also, the front sight post and two rear sight posts have colored (white or glow-in-the-dark) dots that form a 3-dot line that is parallel to the ground when aligned. This type of sight leverages our ability to spot horizontal lines, something that our vision/brain is very good at doing: lining up the top of front sight such that it is flush with the top of the rear sight and forming a proper 3-dot line that is in line with the ground. This type of sight is pretty accurate and permits fast acquisition.

It looks like the pointing-in of the rear sight to form the triangle is somewhat subtle. I am unconvinced that the headless triangle is sufficiently discernable whilst fuzzy. And it doesn't offer multiple cues like the Novak. And it seems like it would take longer to acquire a good sight picture.

Still, I could see how this would be very useful at relative fixed distances in the hands of a trained shooter.

Goldman does have excellent IT vs other big i-banks. (Well, now they're all bank holding companies since they wanted (or were compelled to want, depending on who is telling the story) to gain access to the Fed's discount window.)

But slang, their proprietary language, has a pretty mediocre reputation. Every strat I know there hates it; anecdotal, I know, but still. It is old -- in use for at least 15 years as far as I know -- and cripplingly slow both to develop in and run. From what I hear, where speed matters a fair bit of C++ and even some Erlang (!) are in production use.

Goldman is doing well because it is full of bright people who are very good at their jobs. Last spring/summer/fall, however, Goldman had lost vast piles of money, particularly in their Global Alpha fund. It is true that Goldman had started to go short on housing as early as late 2007; this is why they didn't get pummeled as badly as their big-bank cohorts.[1] The nice rebound is due to a variety of factors, not the least of which is that part about bright people who are good at their jobs, plus a general market rise, plus govt rent seeking (you better believe it), etc.

[1] The mortgage-related products whose implosion wiped out the market and many players are all short-term vehicles. Indeed, the problem was specifically that mortgages were not treated like old school bonds with a long maturity, but that the income stream from these mortgages was sliced and diced into a wide variety of CDOs with a dizzying number of tranches such that they could be securitized and treated as virtually short-term instruments.

If it were truly synthesized from scratch -- individual atoms plucked one by one from the air -- the answer to the question of whether or not it is kosher is mu (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/mu.html) as kosher is inapplicable to non-food items.

Even if the donor cells are from non-kosher animals, there is a modest body of responsa (case law) that seems to permit it. Some authorities permit the use of gelatin made from non-kosher animal bones, claiming that the end product is totally different in nature than the starting (non-kosher animal) product; and that creating the gelatin required putting the animal product into a state of total inedibility, thus removing it from the domain of kosher/non-kosher, notwithstanding its subsequent reconstitution into edible food. Vat-grown meat is supposed to be very similar if not identical to bio-meat, so it's unclear if these authorities would rule the same way for vat-grown pork as they do for pork-derived gelatin.

Even amongst sources who do not abide by the above ruling (and it appears a majority do not), there may yet be hope for the kosher cheeseburger. If the donor cells which are vat-cultured are from a kosher cow, the resulting food may not be considered meat (with respect to the prohibition of mixing meat and milk). Again, based on responsa regarding the gelatin question, gelatin made from kosher bones and hides is parve (neither meat nor dairy). However, these responsa seem to agree that one of the main arguments that this is so is because one stage of gelatin creation is processing the raw material into what is essentially non-food, thus eradicating its inherent "meatness" (but nothing can remove its applicability to the question of kosher). This may or may not be applicable to the case of vat-grown meat; however, if the process entails some cells being stripped away from the meat and/or pulverized into something inedible for a period of time, the resulting product may well be kosher but not considered meat. The only question left would be: american cheese or whiz?

My argument was about incentives. Better equipment would mean learning a new skill set (how to operate the new gear), being responsible for more productive activity per unit time (managing more flights per hour instead of wrestling with antiquated gear), and being downsized (need fewer people to manage the new gear). Tell me again what the incentives are for the union to adopt the new systems?

I don't think the union workers want to make their jobs harder, I think they have no reason at all to support using additional automation and technology to help do their jobs.

You haven't explained how government-run ATC is safer than private ATC, either inherently or de-facto. Did you watch the video? Canada has the second-busiest ATC system in the world and it's run by a private for-profit company. Do you think the US's ATC needs are so vastly different than those of Canada that there is nothing to be learned here?

Is your concern that the airlines would essentially capture the private firm and have it do their bidding? Require almost no dues from the airlines and push things too far such that safety is compromised? _Everything_ gets out. If there were a crash and it came to light that the airlines behaved this way they would be facing the mother of all lawsuits that would totally ruin their businesses.

The problem is that the incentives are all wrong.

The air traffic controllers represent a significant problem. The original union (since busted by Reagan) had an incentive to reduce work and increase pay, so they established conservative air separation rules, frequently made them even more conservative, and had regular slow-works. The union had an obvious incentive to fight against automation, too. (The current union isn't quite as bad. The incentives are the same, though.)

The USGOV has no obvious incentive to make the skies better. When flights go bad the people rail against the airlines, not the Feds. They also have the incentive to poorly fund the ATC system and use the money on other things that will give them more visible wins.

The airlines would like to upgrade their fleet but that's useless without ATC systems that can handle the new tech (like GPS). UPS finally bit the bullet and upgraded its planes and then paid for its main airport (in Kentucky) to be upgraded. I believe FedEx did the same (but in Tennessee).

A for-profit ATC system that was funded by mandated-minimum contributions from both general aviation and the airlines (both are already dinged to partially pay for the current ATC) would align the incentives properly. The airlines would be able to get more planes in the sky, packed tighter, and in more lanes. As new technology became available, they would use it. People would have much better flight experiences with fewer delays. USGOV would get to stop funding obsolete programs. And above all, the ATC company would have its incentives aligned with both the airlines and the people, since they'd get paid more if more flights were on time, etc. And the contract could be re-bid out every few years to ensure that the ATC firm doesn't let complacency reign.

Postulate two sets of people. Set A consists of those who regularly eat meat, deeply care about the origin of that meat, but care very little about the environmental impact of raising meat and are dismissive of any cruelty or health concerns. Set B consists of folks who are vegetarian or who avoid red meat because of health, environmental, and/or cruelty considerations.

I suspect almost all of set B would eat vat meat and that set B is larger than set A.

If the M1 Garand is C, the M14 has to be C++: similar in many respects but with better (ammo) encapsulation. Heh.

+1

Tax filings start in a couple months, the deadline is just about 5 months away. At best this is just a very temporary stopgap. If they can't cut the budget now and can't float a bond issue now what makes them think they'll be able to do so then?

"Forced, interest-free loan" is Orwellian. It's theft. Setting aside any moral considerations surrounding taxes, these words are the semantic equivalent of CA saying "We're taking your money now, like it or not, and hopefully we'll repay it in a few months." It's not a tax, it's not a fee, it's stealing and it's easy because of the whole notion of withholding. To stand against it would require that both employer and employee perform simultaneous disobedience that is sure to bring the wrath of the IRS.

If we really want to see rage against taxation we'd eliminate withholding and all taxes would be rolled into a single lump sum that the taxed would have to pay the week before election day.

I'll bow to nobody in my disdain for the AR platform as a battle rifle. Direct gas impingement blows; it is broken by design. I don't care that it eliminates a moving part, the right answer is gas-piston (like the AK) or even better, op-rod. This is the answer to those who claim that it is a perfectly fine rifle as long as it's properly cleaned: (1) sometimes life happens and you have to use a rifle that's in a state other than perfectly clean; and (2) even if it starts out as immaculate, use it long enough, eg in a situation in which the metal bits of the rifle are literally glowing white hot (as described in the NYT article) and you'll find yourself with a filthy rifle you just don't have the time to properly clean. Also, the gas tube can break, rendering the rifle almost entirely useless since the soft metal and lame plastic makes it a relatively poor club or lever.

Granted, the notion of the upper receiver being just another part makes it a nearly infinitely flexible system that supports a plethora of caliber options. This is it's main saving grace as a civilian rifle that is realistically not going to be subjected to the rigors of battle. There are lots of easily-swappable parts available and just about anyone can snap together some pieces that will still shoot quite tight. Of course, the military is standardized on the stock rifle and has stupidly chosen the 5.56mm poodleshooter round which is obviously heavier but has much worse terminal characteristics than the 7.62x51 NATO round. No wonder special forces and other units that can opt out of the rifle do so. Yes, it's partly done because they can but mostly because they really, really need to.

The AK-47 has much, much worse accuracy but has to be considered a better battle rifle because it is good enough in that department and is much sturdier and physically holds up better than the AR platform. The AK line harkens back to a time when battle rifles were battle rifles: the Garand, the Mauser, the Nagant, and Enfield (bolties all except the Garand) were real rifles and shot real ammo. John Moses Browning would be half-impressed and half-horrified at Stoner's creation.

Since this is HN, I'll make an analogy to a poorly designed and written web server. When you're not stressing it, it doesn't matter that you're doing something in O(n^2) when you should be doing it in O(1). But when push comes to shove, no amount of external patches (more bandwidth, more CPU) can disguise the fact that the software sucks.

Oh, and the SKS was designed by Simonov, not Kalashnikov.

Emulator? Oh, you must be using one of those newfangled windowing subsystems. Hm. It's a fad I tell you, just a passing fad.

(Actual answer: aterm for the transparency feature.)

This isn't right. China holds between 22-25% of US debt, which is a plurality, not close to a majority (http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt).

China has also indicated that it would prefer to buy less US debt, though it's unclear if this is posturing or not. Both countries are over each other's barrels, to mangle the metaphor. If you owe the bank $10,000 and you walk in and tell them you're struggling, they'll just look at you funny. If you owe the bank $10,000,000,000 dollars and you walk in and tell them you're struggling, you better believe they'll want to work with you. The USD makes up about 65% of foreign reserves (down from about a steady 70-ish% between 2001-2007). China doesn't keep buying USDs for fun. They buy them for profit, stability, and for preventing the appreciation of the yuan.

Awesome. Another great resource in this mold is the book The New Turing Omnibus by Dewdney.

"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." - Dijkstra

If politics were less important (more or less == "if government were smaller and less intrusive") it would be less interesting and submissions about it would crater.

It's the same reason why SCOTUS nominations are so contentious now. Previously the Supremes had both less power relative to the other two branches and far, far less power to actually impact the lives of regular folks.

Exchanges provide anonymity. How volatile would the market be if every time Soros or Buffet made a trade, a horde of followers-on tried to do the same thing.

They eliminate counterparty risk. If you sell some shares in exchange for $$, you get $$, period, even if the other party is broke.

They are centralized points at which the market can be regulated. How else can you discover insider trading?

They provide a market for every listed stock, whereas many thinly traded concerns would be essentially unpriceable for much of the day. Imagine what this would do to attempts to calculate risk, etc.

Market making can be and in fact already is done algorithmically, even on the NYSE. That issue is orthogonal to whether a security trades on an exchange or not.

Look to the FX or bond markets to see what happens without good, popular exchanges. These places are widely known to be rife with fraud, counterparty risk, and arbitrariness.

It's an age-cession, too. Overall teenage (16-19) employment is something like 24% now. For white teenagers it's now 21% (compare with an unemployment rate in the low to mid teens over the past 10 years) and 39% (!) for black teenagers (compare with unemployment rates in the high 20% and low 30% range over the past 10 years).

One of the aggravating reasons those figures are so high is that US employers were forced last month to raise wages for their least skilled/valuable employees.

Yes: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#concepts

Misfortunate Mary who worked full time last month and made $10k in salary and benefits gets fired but reports that she now works two hours/month at a local hot dog stand making a total of $20 is considered employed.

Lazy Larry who sat on his couch and drank beer last month (and every month before that, yea back unto age 15) reports that he is looking for work (but really, who is he kidding?) is considered unemployed.

Homemaker Helen neither has nor is seeking a job so she is not considered employed or unemployed; she is not part of the workforce.

Startup Sam quit his job to work feverishly on the Next Big Thing. He reports not being employed but also not looking so he too is not part of the workforce (per the BLS).

Definitions like these are one major reason why the household unemployment figures diverge from the official BLS figures.