billswift

15 ms·

91.
by billswift 14y ago
A few years ago, when Eric Raymond was complaining about proprietary GPS related "standards", http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=888 , I drew what I think is a useful distinction in a comment: An “unreleased standard” is not a standard, it’s a spe
92.
by billswift 14y ago
I've heard this said often enough, but most of the homeschoolers I actually know or know of indirectly are pretty lefty or libertarian. Most Christian extremists go to little private schools which are scattered all over the place.
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by billswift 14y ago
There is also ego-boos for "those in the know", especially those at the very top that make the policies. Never forget that companies are made of people, and people have their own goals and biases that don't necessarily benefit the company.
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by billswift 14y ago
And there is Feynman's point that it is less embarrassing to prove yourself wrong, especially if you can do it before you publish.
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by billswift 14y ago
This isn't anything but a repetition of the common claims about patents. He gives no evidence or no original interpretation of the commonly available evidence. This is nothing but argument by assertion; completely worthless. You'll have t
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by billswift 14y ago
Skill knowledge, such as programming or writing, takes time and practice. Deep skill knowledge, the ability to work on hard problems, requires that you practice working on hard problems. Studying the underlying knowledge that supports skill
97.
by billswift 14y ago
You're still a bit ambiguous, even after the edit. If you want the real fundamentals of programming, then you need discrete math, algorithms, and data structures; everything else is built on those foundations. Programming as a skill, you
98.
by billswift 14y ago
The best single rule I have found, useful for academic disciplines as well as internet forums is "Everybody overstates the accuracy, applicability, universality, precision, or other some other aspects of claims they have made." Anybody who
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by billswift 14y ago
>I can't imagine how much it would suck to be a judge. Judges obviously don't think having gross amounts of almost completely unaccountable power sucks, or they wouldn't be judges.
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by billswift 14y ago
No matter how brilliant someone is, they still only have limited time. Increased capabilities increases the options someone has within their available time. There is incredible diversity in the goals and the specific capabilities people b
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by billswift 14y ago
Before you get too wrapped up in the idea of "other valid fields for patents", you might check out some of those other fields. There is actually quite a bit of evidence against patents in many other fields as well, though the only link I h
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by billswift 14y ago
Actually most of the world, that has gotten rid of royalty, seems to be doing its best to bring back at least some of the trappings; for example, http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/07/21/presidential-transp...
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by billswift 14y ago
Except that once you start avoiding or ignoring them, it is never likely to become the "right time". Handling criticism appropriately is one of the most important skills any would be entrepreneur (or consultant or any other small business
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Obama: “If You’ve got a Business – You Didn’t Build That.”(ijreview.com)
5 points by billswift 14y ago|2 comments
105.
by billswift 14y ago
>An underlying premise of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange is that there’s tremendous amounts of knowledge tied up in “ordinary” people, and given an easy way to show it off and a little incentive they can make this knowledge available
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by billswift 14y ago
In fact, it isn't even completely true in Europe. Early Medieval serfs in Northern Europe also wore trousers, but rarely, if ever, rode. The major point, shared by your Chinese workers, is freedom of movement and aversion (in Northern Eur
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by billswift 14y ago
One big problem with Wikipedia, and the big cause of the ongoing deletionism controversy, is the divergent purposes of outside content creators and wikipedian editors. Most of the outside creators contribute out of direct interest in the su
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by billswift 14y ago
"Professional always means power." Frank Herbert Most specifically, the power to exclude competition, that is the sole real purpose of "professional licensing", whether medical, legal, engineering, or other. The "protecting the public" is
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by billswift 14y ago
I heard about someone back in the 1970s who replaced the barrel of an old .38 Special revolver with a piece of pipe (about an inch-and-a-half or 40 mm) and used .38 blank cartridges to shoot golf balls about a hundred yards.
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by billswift 14y ago
Since the compressed spring has stored energy the answer would be "Yes, but so little as to be completely unmeasurable." E=mc^2 applies to all energy and mass, but if you work the equation with sample energies, you will quickly discover th
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by billswift 14y ago
Two other articles linked in the OP about Nvidia and linux: Linus Torvalds Calls NVIDIA The Worst Company Ever, http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEyM... and, NVIDIA PR Responds To Torvalds' Harsh Words, http://www.
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Nvidia Loses Huge GPU Order Due To Linux Blob(phoronix.com)
2 points by billswift 14y ago|2 comments
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EPA requiring oil refiners to add hypothetical type of fuel(foxnews.com)
1 points by billswift 14y ago|1 comments
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by billswift 14y ago
This is the fourth time in less than 10 hours that this has been posted. At least the first three used the correct title. Here is the first post with comments, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4158865
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by billswift 14y ago
Hardin overstated his case, for much better and more nuanced treatments, go to Google Scholar and search for "Elinor Ostrom" "Tragedy of the commons". She won the 2009 Nobel in economics, largely for her work in how "the commons" really ar
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by billswift 14y ago
Already posted, with comments, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4158865
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by billswift 14y ago
>Less can be more. The better you understand, the pithier you can be. The one real weakness of this idea is communicating with others, if you don't share the same understanding you will lose parts of your audience. This is part of th
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by billswift 14y ago
>must include the vendor as a threat Or anyone who gets access to the vendor's database.
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by billswift 14y ago
Decent article about why DRM and other copy-proofing measures are poorly effective. Really bad title, both here and the original. Best quote: "The computer industry are not opposing your bill because they want to encourage copying, or beca
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by billswift 14y ago
Flagged; this is just self-posted political BS.

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