How Dare You Burst in Here?: Get a mop and wipe it up!

5 Reasons Why You Should Hear Christopher Monckton

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 08:10:00 PDT

Climate change is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Is the expense justified? Government policy should be based on credible science*. Thus it is important to know whether or not to support such policies.
All news sources in North Korea are state-controlled. Similarly, most of what you hear or read about Christopher Monckton is filtered through hostile media. You owe it to yourself to hear directly from the "original source".
Christopher Monckton is careful to include sources for all data that he quotes. Much of it comes directly from IPCC reports.
He attracts strange detractors to his meetings. None are willing to debate him publicly - or on broadcast media - but they attend purely to garner attention to themselves, or disrupt polite discourse. This makes for an amusing sideshow.
It's cheaper -- and better researched -- than listening to Al Gore.

Check him out for yourself. I did. Tour itinerary.

* "Credible science" is my term. It is science where all data (including confidence intervals), methodologies, and analysis algorithms are published so that independent researchers can confirm the results. The data presentation accurately represents the underlying measurements without resorting to dubious methods (such as carefully selecting time series ranges). The conclusions are scientific -- not political.

NuPeek - a local NuGet and Symbol Server for .NET

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 05:55:00 PST

Summary

Describes the benefits of a local NuGet and Symbol Server, and reviews NuPeek (Open Source).

1. What/Why?

A NuGet server is a repository for NuGet packages. The advantages of a local NuGet server are:

* Secure dispensing of proprietary content
* Local control of third party content (eg you choose when to upgrade open source packages)

A Symbol Server is a repository for debugging information (such as source files and pdb files), commonly distributed via symbol packages. As source, it is even more important to keep it in-house.

2. How?

NuPeek is an open source project, comprising a simple web site and a collection of tools. It assumes that you can generate .nupkg and .symbols.nupkg files for your assembly. (I do that during my TeamCity continuous integration builds.)

Using NuGet commandline, you PUSH your packages to your NuPeek website where it processes them and adds them to its repository folders.

NuPeek also exposes feeds to the stored packages and source. In Visual Studio you configure the Package Manager to point to your local NuGet feed, and use it to add assemblies and references in the usual way.

3. No binaries in source control

Merely commit the packages.config file. All your fellow developers, provided that they have also configured Visual Studio correctly, will receive the packages too. As will your build server. Even if the internet is down.

4. Debug into your packages

Similarly, you can configure Visual Studio to look for debugging symbols from your NuPeek symbol server. It is tricky to get it right, but once set up, you can set breakpoints and step right into the source code of your packaged assemblies -- even though those projects are no longer included in your solution!

This means faster solution loading, less memory consumption, and less "noise".

5. Where?

Download NuPeek from https://bitbucket.org/thinkbeforecoding/nupeek. Kudos to Jérémie Chassaing for writing NuPeek and making it OSS.

Survey Companies Cheating On Participants

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 12:12:00 PDT

There are various internet survey companies who pay their panels of members at below minimum wage to fill in online surveys.

The attraction to the public is a little pocket money. The survey company is attracted by the low cost -- far cheaper than paying staff to phone random telephone numbers. So a WIN-WIN situation.

Or is it?

For any survey, the company needs to know if it has reached its quota for each demographic sector, normally split by gender, age bracket, and location, and sometimes by other criteria, such as ethnic group, income, and survey-specific factors.

So, how are the companies cheating?

By asking actual survey questions, disguised as questions to filter out participants, before eliminating potential respondents. For example, I'd regard it as a reasonable filter question to ask about broadband v dialup internet. But to then ask which broadband company and which mobile phone company a person uses before the door is slammed shut...

Thank you for your interest.

We have reached our target number of participants and the survey is now closed.

There is normally no indication when the Actual survey questions begin. Nor any opportunity to comment on the filtering questions.

How is this cheating?

Because the survey company is gathering all the answers to these questions for free. There is no compensation for the time taken by participants to reach that point.

It is time for smarter survey companies.

Some companies maintain a detailed profile of participants to pre-filter surveys to better match their panelists. This is to be commended as it wastes less time. Companies should establish a reputation system to determine which participants on their panels are the most valuable -- across such metrics as Honesty (via consistency of answers), Availability (via speed of response), Intelligence (via comprehension of trickier concepts), and Suitability (as a measure of broadness of surveys for which they meet the filter conditions). I'm sure there are others.

With such an infrastructure, the survey companies would reject less participants, and gather higher quality data faster. They could afford to pay their quality panelists higher, attracting more people with quicker surveys (less mind-numbing filter questions) and more interesting surveys (aimed at a higher intelligence level).

Who will do it?

Best New Device for 2013?

Sun, 20 May 2012 15:22:00 PDT

What's the next must-have high tech device?

After the iTouch, and the iPad. Is it the iLick?

No.

Early indicators point to the TechStik.

It is early days, but this NZ-developed clean green sustainable device has the potential to spread around the world in no time. The uniquely-transparent entrepreneurial accounts of the genesis of this product, inviting would-be users' feedback offers opportunity to crowd source features and "user experience".

I think TechStik will particularly appeal to technology people with a sense of humour.

What do you think?

Disclosure: I have no past or present pecuniary interest in TechStik.

The Activists Are Crazy

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:56:00 PDT

Greenpeace started out well, with rational and effective campaigns to reduce whale killing and eliminate atmospheric nuclear testing. It didn't last long though, before they resorted to attacking things more for the sake of having a fund-raising "cause", rather a logical basis for argument.

This is the central theme of a very eye-opening book, Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout - The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist, by Patrick Moore, one of the early leaders of Greenpeace.

Here are selected quotes that stood out to me...

Solar Power and Forestry

Environmental activists place huge importance on solar panels made from aluminum, silicon and gallium arsenide when in fact the most important solar collectors are the leaves and needles of trees and other plants. (p197)

Dangers of Nuclear Power

U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics confirm that it is safer to work in a nuclear plant than it is to work in either real estate or financial services. A study of 54,000 nuclear workers conducted by Columbia University and published in 2004 found these workers had significantly fewer cancers, less disease, and lived longer than their counterparts in the general population. (p234)

Danger of Pesticides on Food

In the 1990s, the Cancer Research Institutes of the U.S. and Canada collaborated on a multi-year study of all scientific publications about the connection between cancer in humans and pesticide residues on food. They could not find a single piece of evidence connecting the two. (p273)

Climate Change

In one of the most surprising surveys taken, 121 U.S. television weather presenters, all members of the American Meterological Society, were asked their opinions on climate change in April 2010. Ninety-four percent of those surveyed were accredited meteorologists. When asked about the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's statement, "Most of the warming since 1950 is very likely human-induced," a full 50 percent either disagreed or strongly disagreed. Twenty-five percent were neutral and only 24 percent said they agreed or strongly agreed. (p334)

Ocean Acidification

"Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.179 to 8.104 (a change of -0.075)." One has to wonder how the pH of the ocean was measured to an accuracy of three decimal places in 1751 when the concept of pH was not introduced until 1909. (p361)

Personally, I enjoyed the book very much -- except for the parts that made me angry (mostly when parties in a dispute resort to "terminological inexactitudes", as Winston Churchill calls them.)

If you're interested in it, check out this excerpt.

Intolerable NZ Police Speed Tolerance

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:40:00 PDT

Regarding speeding tickets at 55 km/h:

The NZ Police will suffer from a severe loss of respect with this policy. Traffic in Auckland generally travels near 60 km/h in 50 km/h zones.

A better approach, if the Police are going to be so pedantic, is to raise the speed limits by 10 km/h, everywhere, and impose a zero tolerance. This would result in (nearly) all of us suddenly becoming law-abiding citizens, and puts the onus on the motorist to know if their speedometer reads high or low.

It might also reduce road rage by encouraging some of the drivers who favour 40 km/h to perhaps manage 50 km/h?

The current policy evokes disrespect: "the law is an ass".

Referendum on NZ Voting System

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 05:54:00 PST

No voting system is perfect.

FPP is definitely the worst option. Only swing voters in the "marginal" electorates influence which party governs. Everyone else is effectively disenfranchised.

MMP is better, but suffers from List candidates -- people who have never had the endorsement of the voters.

My recommendation is for STV. There are no List MPs. Instead, there are larger electorates with 3 - 7 MPs. So a typical electorate might end up with 2 National MPs, 2 Labour MPs & 1 minor party MP. Some argue that it is complicated to cast ranking votes. If this dissuades some people who find it too complicated, then I think this is a good thing, as raising the average IQ of voters might raise the average IQ of MPs!

Powershop Marketing promotes mass murderer

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 05:13:00 PDT

Che Guevara (born "Ernesto Lynch") was a Stalinist mass-murderer, but only in real life.

Che was a narcissist who boasted that “I have no house, wife, children, parents, or brothers; my friends are friends as long as they think like me, politically.”
Yet, this mercenary is the icon that Powershop uses to promote itself.

Why not go the whole hog and use images of Stalin? Or Hitler?

Or both?

It seems ironic that Powershop, a company presumably in business to make a profit, should use an image associated with anti-capitalism. If Powershop were to go bust, then all that money that I've paid in advance for future power will be squandered, and Powershop's name will be in the mud (with Bridgecorp and Hanover Finance) in the eyes of its customers.

So, what do you stand for, Powershop?

Police flashing lights make road safety worse

Tue, 03 May 2011 14:41:00 PDT

I'm not anti-Police. Not normally.

But I'd like to know why it is necessary to keep flashing red/blue lights going on a patrol car that has stopped to deal with a motorist on the Harbour Bridge approach, when both cars are completely out of harm's way in the construction zone mostly behind a barrier? What do the Police think that the flashing lights achieve, in that situation?

Allow me to elucidate what signal they send to other road users, travelling home in the dark, rush hour evening:

Police! I must slow down -- even if I am not exceeding the posted speed limit, and there is no danger of hitting any bystanders. (Why?)

Police! I must REALLY slow down, because I need something interesting to say to others in my household, and want to see if I can see any bodies.

Police! Oh no, I'd better slow way down to see if my brother/cousin/uncle/workmate has been caught driving while disqualified. Again.

While this is an unusual case, I'd like the Police to consider their procedures, and ask whether some lateral thinking by the officer involved -- or some direction from the motorway controllers who could see, if they were watching their monitors, the effect on traffic flows in both directions -- might have deduced that switching off the red/blue lights could actually improve the situation.

Earth Day 2011 - Brainstorming Exercise

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 16:24:00 PDT

So, the next Earth Day is April 22, 2011. Our company is going to promote it, and become known as a "green" company. Who would like to brainstorm ideas for how we can best tackle this?

We'd like you all to participate, but we quite understand if it's not your "thing". No pressure.

Legally we're not allowed to discriminate against you based on your skin pigmentation, your choice of deity or bonking partner, how many years you've been on this planet and such like...

But failing to bow to Gaia or say "Heil Gore!" or recite the IPCC creed -- each of those is a capital offence with immediate and explosive repercussions. (That way there is no nasty Employment Court aftermath.)

So we can count on you full cooperation and support? (Remember, we know where you live.)

[For the uninitiated, the above is my attempted satire. If you don't get it, you need to watch this video. Warning: gruesome scenes.]

And the best comment about it is from "Thegavster" at the Daily Telegraph:

If this has done anything for me, its scared me. It warns me that these
people may well advocate this sort of sanction if you don’t support
their cause and as such are no different from any other extremist apart
from the fact that they have strong support in high places. What it
has also done is made me even more determined to do everything I can to
stop them. In short it has actually had the opposite affect that they
had hoped. Come on people, its time we stood up and did something about
this plague!

Caliburn.Micro for Newbies Who Want to Write Clean WP7 Apps - Part 1: How to Configure a New Project With Folders

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 15:10:00 PDT

Caliburn.Micro is an MVVM framework aimed at XAML development (WPF4, SL4 and WP7). I'm particularly interested in it for the benefits it brings to WP7 (Win Phone 7) development:

minimal code-behind
minimal databinding
clean separation between views and view-models (making unit testing easier)
simplified navigation between views

(There are many more benefits, but they are more esoteric than my brain can assimilate for now.)

Much of the simplification is achieved by "convention over configuration".

This series of posts is my journey to understanding Caliburn.Micro for a real Win Phone 7 project. I am not a Caliburn.Micro ninja -- quite the opposite. I take my hat off to Rob Eisenberg for the framework he and his colleagues are creating. But, despite reading his documentation, and source code, I am a slow learner when it comes to putting into practical use. Thus, comments and corrections are encouraged!

So many introductory articles are "Hello World" apps that are TOO trivial. I want a VS2010 solution layout that I can use as a standard starting point for new apps, that encourages me to be a tidy coder.

Assumptions:

You have heard about Caliburn.Micro. (If not, read the Introductory Page)

You have obtained the source code. (Otherwise, I'll wait while you sort that out too. You need a certain level of determination to make this work!)

You have downloaded the RTM developer tools for WP7.

How to start a new Caliburn.Micro WP7 project in Visual Studio?

File-NewProject WindowsPhone7 app.

Add as an Existing Project your Caliburn.Micro WP7 source code project.

To your WP7 project add a Project Reference to the Caliburn.Micro project.

To your WP7 project add Model, Views and ViewModels folders.

Delete the default startup page, MainPage.xaml, as it's in the wrong place.

In the Views folder, create a new WP7 page as your startup screen and call it, say, ShellView.xaml.

In the ViewModels folder, create a new class and call it, say, ShellViewModel.cs. Inherit from a suitable Caliburn.Micro class, eg Screen.

Open the WMAppManifest.xml file in the Properties folder. Change the DefaultTask NavigationPage from MainPage.xaml to Views/ShellView.xaml.

Build the app and check that it runs the default page.

Add a Model folder to your project.

Now you have a tidy structure for your application, with separate folders for model, view and viewmodel files.

Important conventions to note so far:

a view can be located from a viewmodel via convention: the name of the view (ignoring the file extension) is the name of the viewmodel, but with all instances of the word "Model" removed. Eg, "ViewModels/ShellViewModel.cs" corresponds to the view, "Views/ShellView.xaml".

Coming up next (when I have time)...

Part 2. Navigating between views

High Profile Group Appeals For Laws Aimed At Reducing Teen Car Deaths

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 06:49:00 PDT

New laws banning the sale of high-powered cars to people under 20 are proposed by a pressure group, in response to the on-going wave of young drivers in fatal crashes.

Suggested changes include:
- prosecuting car dealers who sell new or used cars with engines over 1000cc to a person under 20.
- limiting the number of car dealerships in certain areas.
- controlling the opening hours of car dealerships.
- raising the price of cars to reduce demand.
- eliminating all car advertising.

Four knights, one dame, half an archbishop, numerous sports icons and a deceased tribal chief agreed to encourage the changes, because of the detrimental effect high-powered cars were having on life-expectancy in the 15-19 age bracket.

Dame Ethel said last night that her 30 years working in the law had inspired her, because of the effects she observed of cars on people.

"They have the capacity to ruin the lives of the person who spends all their time and money on mags, tints, exhausts and blow-off valves -- causing relationship breakdowns, and criminal offending."

Darwin Award curator, Dr Risket Eneway, declined to comment.

Best public service advertisement?

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:25:00 PDT

Road Safety ads in NZ tend to be gruesome, shocking and trying to scare us into changing our behaviour. Finally someone (Sussex county) have taken a different approach. With dramatically successful results.
Judge for yourselves... (3 million hits, currently).
HT: 37 Signals

Political ideologues v children's education

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:13:00 PST

A working group of MPs from National, ACT and the Maori Party has asked that parents of the 20 per cent worst performing and five per cent best performing students be given greater choice about how and where the child is educated and taking their Government funding with them.

ACT also released a much larger minority report which called for much greater freedom and choice for parents and children in the education sector.

Primary education sector union NZEI Te Riu Roa President Frances Nelson said the Government should ignore the ideologically-driven report which was a "convoluted mish-mash of ideas". "This would simply be a voucher system in disguise, driven by political ideology rather than what is best for children's learning," Ms Nelson said. [Emphasis added]

Question: who here is motivated by "children's learning" and who is succumbing to "political ideology"?

I submit that NZEI is vehemently opposed to anything that might give parents the ability to vote with their feet and put their children in the "best school" they can (based on their own assessment). This might lead to the identification of "worse schools" and underperforming members of the NZEI. Hardly a question of children's learning being the main motivator.

Fibre-To-The-Home Supported by Anti-Obesity Campaigners

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 06:09:00 PST

Sue Kedgeley, is lending her weight to the "Fibre to the Home" project. She believes that all NZers need healthy food, and complains that those in small towns and rural areas should not miss out on low-cost high-volume whole grains and legumes.

Parekura Horomia, never out-flanked, has partnered with his corporate sponsor, KFC, to launch a rival "Fat to the Home" initiative. He envisages large diameter tubes delivering goods (particularly edible goods) to disadvantaged South Auckland families that cannot afford their own car break-in kit. "Downloading 100 Megabites per second is chickenfeed", he says.

There is truth in the saying that the "highest calibre people are the biggest bores".

"If we lose freedom in America, we lose freedom everywhere"

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:31:00 PST

In a comment on my previous post, barf says:

kitty says "if we lose freedom in america, we lose freedom everywhere" that should send the NUT-JOB alarm bells ringing.

So, if USA succumbs to socialism and multi-culturalism and unilateral disarmament, and China decides to invade Australia, who is going to repel the invaders?

Europe won't. USA won't. We can't.

How can we keep freedom in the world... or at least the few parts that are still free?

Hitler did not invade Austria

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 11:29:00 PST

In 1938, Hitler did not annex Austria by military force.

According to a fascinating eye-witness report from Kitty Werthmann, 98% of Austrian's voted for Mr Hitler to rescue Austria from 33% unemployment, 25% inflation and 25% interest rates.

I highly recommend that you read it -- it is very eye-opening, not only from a historical perspective, but also because of the parallels to today.

Time for a true NZ flag

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:13:00 PST

John Ansell has created a poll with 6 suggestions for a new NZ flag, based on a fern design.

I argue that

We need ONE flag that represents New Zealand. Not a sports flag (A), or a Green party flag (B) or a semi-colonial flag (C), or a wide-screen sports flag (D) or a Maori flag (E).

But a NZ flag. Thus I vote for (F): the Land and Sea flag.

(Note: it is not necessary to represent all the different people in a flag. Eg Canada’s maple leaf does not pander to French and English and native people groups. The Swiss white cross on red does not pander to German, French, Italian and Romansch factions — it is just Swiss. Both are excellent flags. Similarly, we need a NEW ZEALAND flag.)

The alarmists are in denial

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:33:00 PST

I see signs of panic from George Monbiot. He admits that his side it losing the race to convince the public about Global Warming, but he is in denial (ironically) that it is about the science.

People are not as thick as his colleagues disparagingly assert ("room temperature IQs" maybe he means in degrees Kelvin?). We can see that the temperatures are flat or going down, even as CO2 levels keep rising. And the hyperbole from the alarmists is harming their own cause.

So he resorts to a straw man argument about old people.

Good grief. He should face facts.

Another hockey-stick graph debunking

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:19:00 PDT

Steve McIntyre was one of the two statisticians (with Ross McKitrick) who annihilated the Mann hockey stick graph.

Now he has done it again -- this time fisking the Briffa (2000) tree ring graphs that purport to show a "hockey stick" upturn in temperatures in the late 20th century. It turns out that Briffa et al were being highly selective of which trees to include and which to exclude. Couple that with their refusal to release their source data until finally forced to do so by a scientific journal. Now their deception is laid bare.

Full description is at Climate Audit. Intriguing layman explanation at comment #7. (Updated: thanks kiwitrc)

The question is: why would we waste billions on an ETS, when the "science" behind it is so shonky?

"Global Warming" is not about Temperature or CO2

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:05:00 PDT

I was invited by Sam in the comments on my previous posting to engage in a debate with him on the scientific aspects of global warming.
While I'm keen to do it, it isn't going to happen, due to other priorities.
Plus, I'm coming to the conclusion that the science is incidental to the issue. For many people who haven't seen through to the motives, they think that it's all about climate models, temperature records and the atmospheric concentration of one or two very minor greenhouse gases (water vapour, which comprises the vast bulk of greenhouse gases, is regarded as "untaxable" -- so it is ignored).
It is an ideological clash between those who want to change us (rather than the climate) and those who believe in freedom, markets, human ingenuity, and technical progress. It is a dispute about us, about people, about human society, about our values, about our habits, about our way of life. Temperature fluctuations are only an instrument, not a real object of interest for those who play that game.
The advocates of global warming alarmism ask for an almost unprecedented expansion of government intrusion, of government intervention into our lives and of government control over us. We are pushed into accepting rules about how to live, what to do, how to behave, what to consume, what to eat, how to travel. It is unacceptable. Radical, human freedom and prosperity endangering measures and policies owing to global warming are not necessary.
These are the words from last month of Václav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic.
That is why the ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) is such a bad idea.

Climate Change: NZ as a leader? No and Yes!

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 06:29:00 PDT

In the 1980's NZ led the world away from the brink regarding nuclear weapons and atmospheric nuclear testing, against the tide of the "big countries". We can do that again.

"Global warming" is not proven. There are tens of thousands of scientists who disagree with the IPCC and UN. Journalists are too lazy to read anything contrary to the official line. (Start with Air Con, if you want a layman's introduction.) As the global temperature continues to decline since 1998, eventually governments will realise that "global warming" is a myth, IPCC computer models are untrustworthy, and ETS is merely an opportunity for large-scale fraud.

With the Czechs, we can lead the world away from the brink of economic ruin caused by greenies.

Suggestion to journalists: find out what specific changes NZ would have to make to reach the Greenpeace target of 40% reduction from 1990. Then ask the public if they're willing to make those changes.

Pro-Choice - Really?

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:49:00 PDT

So many politically-active people call themselves "Pro-Choice".

What they are generally referring to is the choice for a mother to abort her baby. Or not.

Yet, coincidentally, it is mostly the very same "pro-choice" people who are denying parents the right to choose how to correct their own children.

(Note to potential commenters: if you cannot tell the difference between a smack and a punch, then don't bother commenting. I am tired of arguing with those who distort language on purpose.)

Open Letter to John Key re Anti-Smacking Referendum

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:51:00 PDT

Dear Mr Key

In April 2007, you wrote a letter to all parties in which you said:

"I simply believe it is bad law for Parliament to pass a piece of legislation outlawing an activity absolutely, and then expect the Police not to prosecute minor breaches."

After your unpopular u-turn to compromise with Labour and support a "bad law" (by your own definition), you, Sue Bradford and others are trying to diffuse the issue (by complaining about the question and claiming that the "law is working") and dismiss the result, even before we've voted.

A far more prudent stance would be for the government to announce that a majority "NO" vote would be regarded as a clear mandate to replace the "bad law" with the Chester Borrows' amendment that was proposed in 2007, but you lacked the numbers in Parliament to achieve. This would

avoid National inheriting the "Nanny State" mantle from Labour,
earn you kudos for listening to the public, and
remove from good parents the fear of State kidnapping of their children.

We're waiting to see if this is the first government that listens to the people (other than at election time).

Bitwise testing in C#

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:38:00 PDT

When an object has several properties that have only 2 possible states (eg ON/OFF, TRUE/FALSE, YES/NO, 1/0...), one option for storing this data is in the individual bits that make up an integer.

For example, the decimal number 6 can be expressed in binary as 110. This is made up of: 1x4 + 1x2 + 0x1 = 6.

Aside: I can see that this is useful when memory is extremely limited (eg embedded devices, portable devices), but personally I find this approach to be the antithesis of Clean Code, and try to avoid it. My preference is to have individual named boolean properties.

In order for me to remember how to test whether a particular bit is set, I'm posting this reminder:

[Test] public void Should_return_true_for_130_contains_128() { // this is asking, "for the decimal number 130, is the bit in the 128 position set"? Assert.IsTrue((130 & 128) == 128); } [Test] public void Should_return_false_for_130_contains_64() { // this is asking, "for the decimal number 130, is the bit in the 64 position set"? Assert.IsFalse((130 & 64) == 64); }