smitherfield

But are those systems responsible for all the I.T. problems that are plaguing the industry?[1] (I've been under the impression the issues were primarily with COBOL/mainframe systems, but wasn't aware Prolog was so widely used by airlines).

[1] https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=airline%20computer%20f...

The Amiga was '85. It did take a while for PC-compatibles, of course.

Why would values on the stack be garbage-collected at all? Do they mean scanning the stack for live references?

You still need to include the header for any of the following:

1. Constructors (or functions) with `initializer_list` parameters.

  template<typename T> struct S {
          vector<T> vec;

          S(initializer_list<T> il)
                  : vec(il) {}
  };

  for (int prime : {2, 3, 5, 7, 11})
           // ...

  const auto primes = {2, 3, 5, 7, 11};
  const initializer_list<int> primes2 =
          {13, 17, 19, 23, 29};

The iterator adapters[2] are still pretty useful and (I thought?) commonly used.

Also, the "range access" and (new for C++17) "container access" free functions are very useful for writing template code that works with both C arrays and STL-style containers, but they're defined in many other headers.

[1] Useful with variadic templates:

  [](auto&&... args) {
          for (auto &&arg : {args...})
                  // ...
  }

(Obviously, and hindsight is 20-20, hourly should've been the default).

If you're a "public figure" (and if more than one media org ran a story about some event involving you, the court will likely find that you are), then to win you need to prove not only that 1) the story was false, but also that 2) the journalist knew the story was false, prior to writing it, and 3) you suffered some material loss due to the story (e.g. being fired from your job).

In other words, journalists can publish speculation as fact (what we might call "lying"), so long as you can't prove they knew for certain it was false.

(In the very unlikely event you aren't found to be a public figure, you still need to prove the story was false and that you suffered a material loss, themselves pretty steep legal hurdles).

Or what edflsafoiewq said: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16721559

It is however trivial to write a version that works with distinct types, if that were really what you want.

  template<class L, class R>
  constexpr std::common_type_t<L, R> max(L l, R r) {return l < r ? r : l;}

    template<class T> constexpr T max(T l, T r) {return l < r ? r : l;}

That looks like an accurate description.

First of all, by the author's own admission, Rep. Schwab has never made any public statements regarding personal injury damages caps, and his only legislative action related to that subject is voting for a 2014 law which raised the damages cap. So claiming to be able to read his mind so as to justify a very nasty attack is quite uncalled for (IMO).

The Kansas Supreme Court upheld the damages cap 5-2 in 2012,[1] 2 years prior to the law raising the cap, so it's a real stretch (you might say a lie) to claim that law was passed "in order to head off the threat of the Kansas Supreme Court invalidating the whole damages cap scheme."

With respect to the concrete point the author raises, he's lying by omission. Economic damages (actual financial losses, no cap in Kansas) and non-economic damages ("pain and suffering," capped at $300k in Kansas) are two of the three types of damages that may be awarded in a civil case.

There are also punitive damages, which under Kansas law[2] are awarded when the jury finds "the defendant acted toward the plaintiff with willful conduct, wanton conduct, fraud or malice." Punitive damages are capped according to the formula

  (e) Except as provided
  by subsection (f), no
  award of exemplary or
  punitive damages
  pursuant to this section
  shall exceed the lesser
  of:

  	(1) The annual
  gross income earned by
  the defendant, as
  determined by the court
  based upon the
  defendant's highest
  gross annual income
  earned for any one of
  the five years
  immediately before the
  act for which such
  damages are awarded; or

  	(2) $5 million.

  (f) In lieu of the
  limitation provided by
  subsection (e), if the
  court finds that the
  profitability of the
  defendant's misconduct
  exceeds or is expected
  to exceed the limitation
  of subsection (e), the
  limitation on the amount
  of exemplary or punitive
  damages which the court
  may award shall be an
  amount equal to 1½ times
  the amount of profit
  which the defendant
  gained or is expected to
  gain as a result of the
  defendant's misconduct. 

Considering that the Schwab family could have brought lawsuits on behalf of multiple injured parties, on multiple grounds, and against multiple defendants, then hypothetically, under Kansas law, my conservative back-of-the-napkin estimate is the defendants might have faced punitive damages totaling over ten billion dollars. (Which is not to say that amount would be awarded, just that Kansas law allows for it).

Additionally, there are several good reasons I can think of, completely unrelated to Kansas statute, for the Schwab family to sue in Texas instead of Kansas.

First of all, and I don't know whether this is the case here, liability disclaimers (as might be printed on amusement part tickets) usually require that lawsuits be brought in the state where the company is headquartered. In that case, it would be faster to simply sue Schlitterbahn in Texas rather than waiting for Kansas courts to rule on the disclaimer's validity.

Second, Rep. Schwab is a well-known and controversial figure in Kansas. Many people (e.g. the author), potentially including jurors or (less likely, but hardly unheard of) judges, may have difficulty assessing the case in an objective and detached manner.

Third, Texas has an unusually difficult process[3] for obtaining discovery from Texas-based parties in an out-of-state lawsuit.

As for the question of the author's preferred policy outcome, I disagree. I agree that it makes sense in terms of incentives and fairness for there to be a high or no cap on economic (for the plaintiff's actual financial loss) and punitive (for clear misconduct by the defendant) damages, at least for this type of case. Non-economic damages are much more nebulous and tend to be awarded based on how sympathetic the jury finds the plaintiff.

The purpose of personal injury law is to punish (and so discourage) negligent behavior, according to the defendant's degree of culpability. It is not to provide financial windfalls to plaintiffs according to how sympathetic they are (which encourages lawsuits). Whether it's a photogenic 10-year-old, Honey Boo-Boo's mom or Charles Manson who dies has no bearing on the question of whether the defendant is culpable and if so to what degree.

Jurisdictions where non-economic damages aren't capped are where you most often get the sort of case where average people lose all their assets and income because a child / veteran / homecoming queen / father-of-five / judge's aunt slips and falls on their driveway. If the law gets in the feelings-based business of deciding whether bad things happened to good people, the inevitable result is injustice. The law's proper domain are the facts-based businesses of redressing objectively-definable wrongs and of finding out and punishing misconduct.

Accordingly, I'd consider it proper for non-economic damages to be capped at a relatively low level, as in Kansas. Unfortunate as it may be, the law should reflect that just because a bad thing happened to a good person doesn't mean there's a villain to punish.

[1] http://www.cjonline.com/news/2012-10-05/kansas-high-court-up...

[2] http://www.ksrevisor.org/statutes/chapters/ch60/060_037_0001...

[3] http://canteyhanger.com/blog/2015/04/28/securing-discovery-f...

[1] http://www.kansascity.com/news/article206886324.html

Perhaps in theory (emphasis on the perhaps, IANAL and neither is the author), but not in practice. Nvidia has a great deal of power over ATI, Asus etc. They have no power over Dell, much less Apple. Nvidia needs Dell and Apple far, far more than Dell or Apple needs Nvidia (they don't).

Nvidia and AMD are selling, if not identical products, then near enough for government work. If Dell decided to drop Nvidia from all their product lines, the impact on Dell would be negligible at worst, but it would be a catastrophe for Nvidia (while AMD would be making out like Scrooge McDuck). Apple? Nvidia sends Apple the corporate equivalent of drunken post-breakup apology voicemails (releasing Mac drivers for cards that aren't offered on Macs).

Nvidia's ability to enforce branding guidelines on Dell is nil. If Dell decided they'd rather brand "Nvidia" cards as "Dell GraphicsMaster 6000 SUX," Nvidia would have to roll with it.

>This is a poor argument; the same could be said for almost all control flow statements: if/else

It's technically possible to implement if/else (and loop conditions) with unconditional jumps and offsets, but for reasonable instruction sets (that support conditional jumps) they won't be "goto under the covers."