@asymetric - I am not an engineer, I don't know how a lot of these things work. Rather than critique, I would appreciate a better analogy that I can use in the future
HN tries to avoid that kind of rudeness, but it happens. Like I said, geeks can get bad habits from the locker-room culture online. You'll notice that your critic's posts are gradually fading to grey thanks to all the downvotes he's accumulating (established users get a downvote button).
