Duff

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151.
by Duff 15y ago
Americans don't elect scientists for a simple reason: scientists by their nature lack the skills necessary to succeed as a popular politician. Singapore isn't a democracy in the same sense as the US or Britain. China is a not a democracy at
152.
by Duff 15y ago
It's not obvious at all. The great mass of people believe earnestly that money or a big leader will fix all problems. Case in point: The current trend to use standardized test scores to give teachers an incentive to make students get better
153.
by Duff 15y ago
It was a great post, but I noticed that many folks here weren't getting it. It sounds cliche, but I knew alot about everything when I was an obnoxious 21 year old. Now as a grizzled 33 year old, I have a much better appreciation of what I d
154.
by Duff 15y ago
It depends on how you service your boxes, and how much whiz-bang crap is on the motherboard. If you rely on vendors to service the boxes, and use a vendor like IBM that likes to tweak the firmware of the boards, you're going to have alot of
155.
by Duff 15y ago
I think the university analogy is distracting from the real point. He's advocating a form of servant leadership, which is where the CEO/President/etc is perceived more like a steward than an autocrat. If you've ever worked for someone who h
156.
by Duff 15y ago
Amazon is expensive when you do an apples to apples comparison to other hosting options at a small scale. It's value starts to appear when you are operating at a scale high enough that you start hiring people to futz with servers. Enterpris
157.
by Duff 15y ago
I don't think your analogy works... there are different skill-sets. Maybe "I'm an excellent eater of hamburgers, but I'm horrible at forming patties and cooking." Building large systems means that you're a builder -- you can take raw materi
158.
by Duff 15y ago
They're looking for aberrant things that will lead them to compromising information. You get some leeway for the sins of the past -- provided that you disclose. If you state that you don't abuse alcohol or use drugs, but individuals associa
159.
by Duff 15y ago
The problem here is that everybody is wrong and everybody is right. There's no magic method that will help everyone learn everything. The answer is that we need to figure out the right mix of things, and empower students and teachers. My
160.
by Duff 15y ago
Not necessarily. For the season as a whole, you don't really care about individual contests -- you're just looking at beating the averages. For a playoff, things are different... you're in a match-up against a single team that is better tha
161.
by Duff 15y ago
Most bodyshops due hard-line negotiations with the employees. One particularly nasty one that I ran into would arbitrarily delay payment to employees for 90 or 120 days, unless the employees agreed to pay 10% for a weekly paycheck. The bad
162.
by Duff 15y ago
Chris Dodd is a crooked politician, and legislators of ilk are an malevolent force that is damaging american democracy. After publicly proclaiming that he would not be working as a lobbyist, he became the MPAA's lobbyist for $1.5M. As you c
163.
by Duff 15y ago
I always like to pass on hard-learned lessons about cars. After I bought the $750 spark plug wire kit, I decided to save money by doing the job myself. It turned out that spacing between the plug wires and the climate control blower motor w
164.
by Duff 15y ago
I'm not sure that I agree with everything here. Buy a used Benz - Luxury cars are great, until they aren't. Someone who doesn't realize what luxury car parts often cost will cry when they get a bill for a $750 spark plug wire kit. Craiglist
165.
by Duff 15y ago
It's not always a 50% co-pay. That will vary by state and by plan. I have pretty cheap & awful dental insurance, but wisdom teeth extraction was 100% covered. I think my only cost was the copay for anesthesia. Dental insurance is pretty
166.
by Duff 15y ago
WP7 is probably a good choice if you're a big Microsoft dev shop and are actively developing custom tools. I've been told that development for WP7 is pretty easy for existing .Net programmers. All of this is great news for the industry -- a
167.
by Duff 15y ago
The BlackBerry was also a "status symbol" for a long time. Big whoop. In the enterprise space, BlackBerry was the "best product" because it was manageable, easy to configure, easy to encrypt and reliable for it's purpose -- making phone cal
168.
by Duff 15y ago
I disagree. They are the best product, without a big price premium. We have a strong preference for Verizon at my place, due to the geography of our operating area vs. coverage. We have about 5,000 devices, and we started introducing Androi
169.
by Duff 15y ago
There is a broader audience on Slashdot.
170.
by Duff 15y ago
Nope. I'm saying that when you become part of a mob, you aren't reporting a story -- you are part of it. I got stuck in the middle of a performance of my local "occupy" movement's protest theater when walking home from work. The local polic
171.
by Duff 15y ago
Are you referring to bona-fide journalists, or the advocates with cameraphones? I got stuck in the middle of our local occupy grop as they broke up and did a spontaneous march through rush hour traffic when I was walking to the bus. The new
172.
by Duff 15y ago
This is a stunt that does more to take away from the legitmacy of Reporters Without Borders than anything else. If they dropped the US's press freemdom ranking because of the cozy relationships between government officials and mainstream me
173.
by Duff 15y ago
The question is... Why? If going to the moon is 75% less than it was in the Apollo days, that is cool, but what do we accomplish by going there?
174.
by Duff 15y ago
I picked up an OpenPGP card and reader a few months ago and love the technology. My only beef is that the reliability of the software that talks to the smartcards is awful on the Mac. Right now, it's definitely an approach to take if you ar
175.
by Duff 15y ago
That's kind of your problem. If you used an old email address, you wouldn't get e-bills either.
176.
by Duff 15y ago
Good point, but if you're too cool to keep receipts, you're probably being a cowboy in other areas of business.
177.
by Duff 15y ago
Nah, I'd say it has more to do with MS Office eliminating the need for typists in 1990 and companies replacing the personnel cost with a smaller licensing cost. I have a secretary. She is an awesome resource that helps my whole team get mor
178.
by Duff 15y ago
Here's an example of the phenomenon described above. From http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Records-detail-FBI-s... "A 26-page FBI affidavit indicates that prior to the 2008 raid, the investigation unearthed information that Sweeney
179.
by Duff 15y ago
There is a flip side to this: why should you have the ability to take the hard work of whomever came up with Mickey Mouse and take it in a direction that the creator doesn't like? Say you wrote an open source software package in 2004. Shoul
180.
by Duff 15y ago
I think the EFF is a great organization and advocate for individual rights. But their agenda is often at odds with the interests of the "industry".

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