tzmudzin

> The pressure from consumers is in the favor of slimmer, sleeker gadgets. This causes manufacturers to use production techniques that make repairing impossible.

How does that apply to the John Deere tractors or your next car?

Maybe I misunderstood your problem, but how about a relational DB model with:

- FEATURES table (~400k rows), primary key: Feature_ID

- SAMPLES table (tens of thousands), primary key: Sample_ID

- OCCURRENCE table (what you observed), with the fields Feature_ID, Sample_ID, Occurrence_Count.

This is pretty much a standard solution well proven in data warehousing...

That only works if:

1. Profits are capped.

2. The company cannot gauge or drop service to non-profitable customers.

Neither applies.

It is an acquired taste.

One needs to invest some time into the listening (and preferably: some music appreciation courses/ material) to start picking up the nuances. BTW -- the analogy with IT systems holds here. A layman will not appreciate the beauty behind some of the designs...

My personal experience with Bach as a beginning player is that a piece that sounds just fine becomes really interesting when you start playing it, and then at some point you get the extatic moment of enlightment... even if you still don't know it how Bach got there...

Law was invented specifically for this reason: to regulate behaviors into socially acceptable norms.

Yes, occasionally it may degenerate (as the patent trolls show), but a social issue should be solved with social/legal means, not technical ones.

Instead of going for legal crutches, why not follow the German example where explicit consent is needed for inclusion in such databases?

AFAIK Facebook had to turn the facial recognition off in the EU, specifically for this reason.

I share your craving for less noise, but:

- there's a whole lot of shades of grey between a hoax and a scientifically proven phenomenon.

- we don't need to be alarmed -- we can be just interested in something new and unusual.

Insufficient research to date does not mean the phenomenon doesn't exist or does not deserve attention.

P.S. This reminds me of the famous story about two economists walking down the street. One spots a $100 bill on the pavement and wants to pick it up. The other stops him saying: "that's just an illusion. If this were to happen, somebody would have picked it up already".

So should we forget the Holocaust and WWII because of Godwin?

Please note I've been very careful to put things into perspective here...

> I don't agree with Trump on a lot of things but I can respect someone who does what he says he'll do.

Adolf Hitler was also keeping his promise of eliminating the Jewish "problem" or the lack of the living space for the Germans. Does this increase your respect to him?

Of course this is overblown, and Trump is not Hitler. But we should learn our lessons rather than repeat the errors of the past.

... and that's when you learn to appreciate the allegedly outrageous German data protection laws.

Under those the whole operation of the site would be illegal unless the individuals reported on granted their explicit consent.

The interesting part is the relatively low ransom amount.

I understand it needs to be low enough to make payment an "attractive" option (at least compared to other means of recovery, if any...). But 200 USD is significantly less than the 500 USD ransom extorted from private PC users.

Should we conclude the extortionists expect the database content to be worth less to a company owning it than a private person is willing to pay for his/her pictures, music files and documents?

I agree with both, but these are normative statements, expressing what one expects to be right or moral. As these are based on belief systems, they may not be convincing to some of us in the forum.

There's plenty of positive reasons explaining why free market is NOT the right solution for health care, essentially boiling down to distorted incentives which lead to sub-optimal solutions.

I do not agree with your views. Apologies if I did not make myself clear here -- English is not my first language (or second.. or even third...)

Let me try to reword then:

1. Free market is NOT an appropriate solution for healthcare. There are plenty of reasons for this (assymetry of information, natural monopolies etc)

2. We can argue whether the US healthcare system is based on free market principles or not. It's exploding cost is however NOT driven by the lack of short-term personal incentives, but by the failure to link the amount billed to the true cost of the service rendered.

3. Every bill from a doctor you see is a very clear short-term incentive for keeping yourself healthy -- clearly more so than a $50 discount on your monthly insurance payment.

... except that the market for health services is anything but healthy in the US. That's BTW also a major reason for the exploding cost of the health care - the lack of personal short term incentives isn't.

> They're not WiFi connected so they won't be the attack vector for my network, and Z-Wave has a pretty good record for secure mesh networking. [...]

> Pairing my Echo to my Wink Hub now gives me complete voice control over the house.

And now you have an attack vector.

It's not unreasonable to expect that a device connected to the Internet should be patchable over the same connection.

As for the influence on other countries -- blocking their traffic is an effective way to convince them of the need to take action. For sure this still means temporary disruptions and maintenance cost for every operator, but it's part of the "cost of living" on the Net as long as the others don't catch up. Take it or leave it.

(yes, I am aware of the security risks of hijacking the updates, but it's still still a better control than no control at all)

Do you suggest the new government should be allowed to disrespect the obligations and commitments of the previous one, just because it's newly elected?

[Well, in a way, they are free to do so -- at the risk of losing every bit of credibility as a debtor... What Schäuble pointed out is: if you want more money, respect your obligations]

I agree this may be subjective, but aren't we crossing the line when the 'how' becomes more important than the 'what' (i.e. the purpose of the code?)

Following this principle code example 2 (i.e. Javascript after deduplication) would be the sweet spot. It fulfills the requirements without in the most obvious way, at a good level of abstraction (the requirements did not make any of the three pictures specific -- defining a separate function for each actually goes beyond the requirements, while obscuring the higher-level goal).

All of the subsequent examples focus on using the features of the platform rather than clearly showing the purpose of the code, i.e. unnecessarily obfuscate it.

If you want to prove a scientist wrong, present evidence to the contrary rather than personal innuendos and hypotheses / observations without proof.

> It kinda makes me miss Bush.

In which respect?

Wasn't the Bush administration guilty of a similar offense -- albeit on a much larger scale?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controv...

... just don't be surprised if you suddenly no longer understand how your systems work, and cannot change them. It's important to relate the advice to the size of the company and the type of the market you're operating in.

- Should startups with two-digit employee counts start doing this? Not necessarily. Will the lack of documented policies, processes and procedures stop them from growing at some point in time? Definitely.

- Will this help you in a boutique business delivering highly individual solutions? Possibly, bot not necessarily. Will it help serve a massive customer base and use efficiencies of scale? Definitely.

There's definitely a difference between bureaucratic waste and establishing a minimal set of meaningful policies, processes and procedures. Let's not dismiss the idea based on this confusion.

Beethoven would agree :-)

On a more serious note -- yes, but even this would become boring quickly despite the variations. This problem has been solved by:

- using different themes for different sections, or

- intertwining two or more such themes for contrast within the same section.

Prime examples of this approach are Beethoven piano sonatas.

For the general understanding please check "How Music Really Works" by Wayne Chase.

Given your instrument choice you might also be very well served by the "Music Theory / Harmony / ... for Computer Musicians" series by Michael Hewitt.

Aren't those patterns and structures just there to avoid the cognitive overload, while we're entertained by lesser variations?

(BTW, I believe we're overly simplifying by speaking of music as a single entity. All of the elements you mentioned are a foundation in more popular music, but good luck finding them in more modern or experimental genres.)

The cognitive effort to digest Schoenberg is different from that for a pop song. Still, you can progressively familiarize yourself with a genre, and relax on pieces that seemed hard and inaccessible earlier.

Correct. The commentary says it's equipped with 2 water pumps to remove whatever leaks through.

I guess that's German engineering for less-than-perfect road and maintenance conditions. I like the redundancy too!

As this sounded intriguing, here's a video I've found of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C26rJiOnKLk.

It appears the tank commander needs to guide the driver on directions, though...

True, but house ownership + mortgage (as opposed to rent) may be the only way to accumulate some wealth for a lot of people.

... and now Comcast will sue for posting this very code to Github. I am sure it is copyrighted...

And it does not matter that they pushed it down the throat of their paying customers...

I am a big fan of rules & regulations, but in cases like these I'm afraid as a society we play stupid games (... and win stupid prizes...)

> why did the US govt fail to properly test a car made by a foreign company ?

I propose that we focus on what's right to do rather than who gets the pie, so:

Why did the US govt fail to properly test a car that was destined for consumer use (regardless of company origin)?

> "Probably not even for data analysis."

Especially for data analysis (and not limited to it).