Pitarou

53 ms·

481.
by Pitarou 13y ago
Heart transplants caused a lot of upset at first, because folk beliefs about the heart as the seat of the soul still lingered.
482.
by Pitarou 13y ago
Some people appear to be trying to use rational arguments to persuade me that I shouldn't feel creeped out. You'll fail. Rational arguments reach an entirely different part of my brain.
483.
by Pitarou 13y ago
Has anyone sat down and tried to itemise all the taboos this would break? I don't consider myself especially squeamish, bit this concept creeps the hell out of me!
484.
by Pitarou 13y ago
No, it doesn't stand at all. Forgive the brief reply, but I'm entering this on a smartphone. This is an important matter, and you clearly haven't got it yet. Think about it for a while. If, after some reflection, you still do
485.
by Pitarou 13y ago
Yes, they are. That, and the potential for tax evasion, of course.
486.
by Pitarou 13y ago
I guess Python was what showed him that there is a better way to design languages.
487.
by Pitarou 13y ago
Less pedantry, please. I told z3phyr enough to understand the role of asm.js. I'm sure z3phyr is smart enough to appreciate that my one-sentence summary is not the last word on compiler toolchains.
488.
by Pitarou 13y ago
I think you're missing the point. asm.js does not compete with languages like C++: it complements them. The traditional toolchain (greatly simplified) looks something like this: high-level language -> low-level language -> n
489.
by Pitarou 13y ago
True, but don't for get, IF IT LOOKS GOOD, MORE PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ IT. That's why, for instance, even with the driest of academic textbooks, they still spend a few extra dollars on a cover design.
490.
by Pitarou 13y ago
Yes, I know. I'm tarring all these formalisms with the same etymological brush.
491.
by Pitarou 13y ago
"an" or "a"? It's a long story. If you've never had to deal with this quaint piece of British pedantry, count yourself lucky. But you can still sometimes here BBC journalists who say "This is an historic
492.
by Pitarou 13y ago
Always wanted to study Forth! :-)
493.
by Pitarou 13y ago
I learnt an even better trick: don't use it. Or rather, only use it if you intend to go the whole hog and comply with all the pedantic, pseudo-latinate prescriptions of traditional formal English grammar. "It is I." "Bad
494.
by Pitarou 13y ago
I totally agree. It's great for entertainment value but further down the line, if there are other legal disagreements, this letter could come back to haunt.
495.
by Pitarou 13y ago
No pop-ups, but lots of weird Asynchronous loading going on in the background. I found that deleting the advert that's about halfway down the text from the DOM tree improved matters.
496.
by Pitarou 13y ago
I have four questions: 1. How widespread and flagrant is this kind of misconduct? Are BoA the black sheep, or just the worst of a bad bunch? 2. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but, at the time, was it reasonable for BoA to expect that they
497.
by Pitarou 13y ago
If we're talking about engineering problems, it isn't enough money. By modern standards, the R&D problem that John Harrison tackled was low-hanging fruit. Our modern R&D infrastructure, while far from perfect, would not ha
498.
by Pitarou 13y ago
> It's getting to the point where I'm reading papers on the subject in my spare time. Sorry to rain on your parade, but you've still got a way to go. You're an occasional jogger. A PhD is a marathon. Which isn'
499.
by Pitarou 13y ago
I've dealt with similar institutions before. They have to be seen to be playing by the rules, but they use every possible lie and excuse to wriggle out of their obligations. Here's how to beat them: * Understand that your relati
500.
by Pitarou 13y ago
Up to the point where she started talking about Master's degrees, I thought she was talking about Japan.
501.
by Pitarou 13y ago
That's pretty much what I had in mind as a "vertical cable car". Looks like somebody actually built one in ... um ... 1884!
502.
by Pitarou 13y ago
It must be a slow news day on Hacker News. Poorly researched. 60% garbage. Don't waste your time reading it. Their bewilderment over the Apple's cult-like success shows they don't really understand what's going on. The
503.
by Pitarou 13y ago
Check out this plan for the (pre-9/11) World Trade Center: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Trade_Center_Buildin... Roughly 1/4 of the area is taken up with elevators, stairwells, and so on. So here&#
504.
by Pitarou 13y ago
Y'all know that there's already a protocol designed exactly for doing this without hacking BitCoin, don't you? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping
505.
by Pitarou 13y ago
> Why this switch will be helpful? I was raised in Britain towards the end of the transition from imperial to metric units. I would NOT go back. So it worked for yardsticks. Why not clocks? > If I live in Europe (e.g.) and the sunrise
506.
by Pitarou 13y ago
This is a story about using the wrong tool for the job. The Japanese abacus is a powerful tool for addition and subtraction. As Feynman said, a skilled user can add faster than you write the numbers down. Even today, its excellent user inte
507.
by Pitarou 13y ago
It's an irrelevant remark from somebody who didn't read the article properly. Downvoting: - reduces the prominence of low quality content - encourages posters to avoid posting low quality content
508.
by Pitarou 13y ago
Now that's what I call obfuscation.
509.
by Pitarou 13y ago
Can someone explain to me why Microsoft is still fighting this battle?
510.
by Pitarou 13y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but their's a clear case for a class-action suit, isn't their?

More ›