Duff

61 ms·

541.
by Duff 15y ago
New York in many ways is living off of past glories. There are two New Yorks... NYC and the rest of the state. The rest of New York is more like West Virginia. Read about places like Utica, Amsterdam, Jamestown and Binghamton. Buffalo is li
542.
by Duff 15y ago
He's forgetting that the computer industry reinvents everything on a 4-5 year cycle. "Throw out that mainframe, servers rock! ROI in 3 days!" "Physical servers... ha! Virtualize them on these here super-powerful 4-socket boxes and consolida
543.
by Duff 15y ago
The PC business model is a zombie right now. I work at a joint that rolled out about 12,000 PCs a year, every year. Since 2008? 2,000/year... mostly laptops to folks whose jobs have become more mobile. ALL of the good customer facing people
544.
by Duff 15y ago
Not surprising. Decent jobs where a lack of high school or college education is acceptable don't really exist anymore, and we use the checkmark of high school/no high school or college/no college as a screening device. I saw a posting for m
545.
by Duff 15y ago
I couldn't resist: "They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of loot
546.
by Duff 15y ago
Doesn't that pretty much invalidate the notion that the site is in fact a "leak" site? If I own the copyright, I'm not leaking, I'm releasing information! Maybe this is just a fancy new way for government officials to release phony "leaked"
547.
by Duff 15y ago
Folks seem to focus on the "quiet" more than the "professional". "Quiet professional" doesn't mean you sit by and watch your world go to pot. It doesn't mean that you remain silent either. It does mean that you don't spend your days hand-wa
548.
by Duff 15y ago
There's a difference between being productive and whining. The worst work environments always have people complaining about the same stuff, sometimes for years.
549.
by Duff 15y ago
Note that I'm not arguing in favor of coal by any stretch of the imagination. But, you can accurately quantify the risks of coal using current facts, because the direct effects of coal power are measurable. When you stop using coal, the eff
550.
by Duff 15y ago
Nope. Insurance companies explicitly exclude these type of events. That should tell you something -- insurance companies don't like open-ended, catastrophic risk.
551.
by Duff 15y ago
Where did you find statistics on deaths attributable to waste stored in holding ponds over the next few centuries? How did you roll that figure into the per-kilowatt death rate?
552.
by Duff 15y ago
That's a problem -- engineers are frequently frustrated with the public perception of nuclear because they focus on a single metric which is just one of many considerations.
553.
by Duff 15y ago
With most energy generation schemes, including nuclear, many costs and risks are externalized to a third party -- namely the taxpayer. I'm not familiar enough with the methodology to dispute it's finding regarding deaths, but I'd argue that
554.
by Duff 15y ago
I'd accept that nuclear can be safer, if I had any faith in the operational model for the plants. I live in Albany, NY about 80 miles from the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, a Mark 1 GE reactor whose operator has a history of bad practices,
555.
by Duff 15y ago
It's a great thing to say, because how can anyone argue about hiring the best people? The problem is, the statement is rhetorical, there is no "best" -- a superstar in a big bureaucratic organization might be someone who "gets" process and
556.
by Duff 15y ago
There is a masochist bent to many CS programs, where students are basically told that they need to "sink or swim", then get pushed into the water. I saw more than a few people just hit a wall and give up. I think that in general, women tend
557.
by Duff 15y ago
It's taking longer than anticipated to round up a big enough spontaneous crowd to cheer at the White House gates.
558.
by Duff 15y ago
When we asked this question in the context of the laptops at the big enterprise that I worked for, the response from Absolute was "most of our employees are ex-cops, so that isn't a problem".
559.
by Duff 15y ago
It's more like: Travelers who knew how to quickly get to Terminal X to take an airline that routed flights though <HUB B> instead of <HUB A> got home in time for Christmas. Those who didn't were locked out and slept in the a
560.
by Duff 15y ago
The point is that you don't ask a radical to moderate themselves and get a productive result -- it just isn't who they are. Likewise, if Buckley were alive, you probably would not have been successful at getting him to become a cheerleader
561.
by Duff 15y ago
The point here is that when you know that you're living with the Chaos Monkey, your systems become very fault tolerant. Living with a monkey does that. But even you don't embrace the concept, the Chaos Monkey is likely going to become a uni
562.
by Duff 15y ago
RMS is a man with deep seated principles -- a radical. He has a vision that is well thought out and extreme by most people's standards. We need radicals as a society, people who see the world in black and white bring needed clarity to those
563.
by Duff 15y ago
IIRC from previous posts on HN, you should correct that to read "Engineer of Reddit". They're an organization in flux, and when you're in that state, the priority is survival.
564.
by Duff 15y ago
I think the fear of Android eroding Apple's dominating market position, the mid-term fate of Steve Jobs and the dependence on consumer hardware sales makes some investors hesitant. Apple carries this aura that is amazing, and the stock is w
565.
by Duff 15y ago
At the end of the day, you need to make money. The question becomes: can you afford to be in the datacenter business? Executing well in operating a facility with significant scale means that you need to have folks working for you who have a
566.
by Duff 15y ago
The building analogy works. If you're in a highrise, no elevator service is going to impact your business. The back analogy works too. If you're an oil company, Goldman Sachs, AT&T or something similar, you have the bucks to pay someone
567.
by Duff 16y ago
How will encrypting my backup prevent someone with access to my phone from getting this information?
568.
by Duff 16y ago
I can definitely see both sides of the coin, but there isn't a neat or clean answer. The old telcos like Verizon, AT&T, etc see bandwidth as a limited resource that needs to be rationed. Companies like Google in Kansas City sees bandwid
569.
by Duff 16y ago
There are standards for stringing up wire. I'm pretty sure that there is a heavy jacket protecting the cable, which is sometimes attached to a metal wire. The alternatives aren't really viable. In most US cities, there aren't shared utility
570.
by Duff 16y ago
I watched Verizon string fiber optic cable on the pole in front of my home from my porch last week. The Time Warner fiber optics in my area are also riding on that same pole.

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