billybob

37 ms·

331.
by billybob 15y ago
Perception isn't reality. Incorrectly perceiving an oncoming car will prove this. There are perceptions and there are facts. This is true whether the facts are easily knowable or not, and extends as much to the existence of God and other su
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by billybob 15y ago
I wouldn't rule out an employer for this, but it's annoying. I use Ubuntu at home. As someone who will need to work with Ubuntu Server at work, I think that's a good thing for my employability. Using Microsoft Word in Ubuntu is not an optio
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by billybob 15y ago
And yet, having your format messed up is completely unnecessary . We have this format called PDF which exists solely to make the same document look the same for everybody. It works on every major platform and is supposed by lots of softwar
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by billybob 15y ago
This is a good point; I didn't notice this until I read this comment. Would have been interesting if the post had ended with "so from now on, we're going to use the Chaos Monkey."
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by billybob 15y ago
I like this analogy. I would say that culture is actually part of "do you like who you're working with," though. "I don't like the culture" is a way of saying "I don't like management" or "I don't like my peers." If your immediate peers are
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by billybob 15y ago
Not sure I agree. What indication do you have that this is a "strong trend" or that a significant number of users want this feature? Maybe they see that a small number of users would have a disproportionate impact on their service. Not supp
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by billybob 15y ago
"Or if you're working with something like video or CAD and constantly sending slightly changed multi-GB files around each time" If you were using version control, couldn't you push just the diffs?
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by billybob 15y ago
That had better apply to all services the same. If it applies to Netflix but not a competing service that the cable company has a part in, I call foul.
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by billybob 15y ago
"it's training the customer to use Netflix.com, which will ultimately become the front-stage for their business." Yes. It's telling that they didn't call it "MailFlix" or "DVDQueue"; they chose a name that focuses your attention on the inte
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by billybob 15y ago
Is that a fair comparison? The EU is still made of up sovereign countries with their own economic policies.
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by billybob 15y ago
Who is supposed to get motivated by foreign innovation American business people who want to help the US innovate? In that case, they are already motivated without being outcompeted. Foreigners? Why do they care about the US innovating? The
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by billybob 15y ago
TL;DR = "Innovate elsewhere, which will spur the U.S. to innovate."
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by billybob 15y ago
Good point. Although a your grocery shopping data, for example, wouldn't be as hard to replace; shop at a new store for 2 months and you've probably purchased all the same stuff again.
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by billybob 15y ago
Yeah. One of the nicest things, for me, about making software is that it lasts. It may become irrelevant, sure, but it doesn't rot, and you can make copies.
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by billybob 15y ago
As opposed to... what? Communist systems, where the government directly owns the businesses? Capitalist systems are the ones with the LEAST amount of involvement between government and business. Yes, those relationships are often still too
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by billybob 15y ago
Testimony in court had BETTER be paramount. If the NSA's secret orders can force court proceedings to be conducted falsely, we are in big trouble. Although, if I were in this situation, I would ask to speak with the judge privately.
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by billybob 15y ago
Motion parallax is the name for that effect. It is definitely a clue in perceiving 3 dimensions. Relative size is another clue: if you know roughly how big something is and it looks smaller, you can assume it's far away. Level of detail, in
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by billybob 15y ago
A valid question, but a counter-question is: which is more expensive: development time, or run time? The answer is usually (but not always) developer time.
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by billybob 15y ago
Oracle's Hudson CI was also forked to Jenkins CI and the original developers went with it. Anecdotally, I've had conversations with people who are looking into PostgreSQL as a MySQL alternative specifically because Oracle now owns MySQL and
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by billybob 15y ago
Better, but still hard to read, I think. If I want to compare the green bars for two countries, they don't sit side by side, because the sections under them are of varying heights. I think this would be more ideal: Country 1 Work :XXXXXXXXX
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by billybob 15y ago
I have heard speculation that the abundance of synonyms may originate with the Japanese language. I was told that in Japanese (which I don't speak), you might use a different word for "one" when saying "one cat" versus "one house" or "one c
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by billybob 15y ago
"...there will be a point in the future where the output of humanity in an hour will be greater than the sum total of all human knowledge prior to 2012" How much of that output is celebrity gossip and tweets about coffee and coverage of gad
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by billybob 15y ago
Although I would agree that "most books are not worth reading," some might disagree. But the fact remains that one has very limited time. So a more universal way to put it would be "you have to prioritize somehow." Ratings and "classic" sta
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by billybob 15y ago
C.S. Lewis had an interesting argument for why one should read old books: "Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that
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by billybob 15y ago
If no one will buy it for any price, yes. If no one will buy it for your current price, it may not be worthless, but it's worth less.
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by billybob 15y ago
"I don't have much respect for authority in the first place." Really? Let me ask you a few questions, then. When was the American Revolution? What are the electrically charged parts of an atom? How does central banking work? How do red bloo
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by billybob 16y ago
Yes, but you don't have to teach your child or dog how to like rewards or dislike punishment. Nor do you have to wire your children to empathize with others: asking "how would you feel if Timmy took YOUR toy?" is enough. Teaching a being wi
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by billybob 16y ago
This is a bit off-topic, but the fact that stringing or burying wire is necessary for ISPs is one of the arguments for net neutrality legislation. The networks rightly point out that they invested lots of money in their infrastructure, and
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by billybob 16y ago
Yes. When I first started using version control, the freedom to refactor and delete old code confidently was a thrill. These days, even a tiny, short-term project can get the benefit of version control; it's as simple as `git init`. There's
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by billybob 16y ago
"An interruption - no matter how short or slight - collapses that whole mental model in fragments on the floor. I literally have to re-build it before I can continue to work and that typically takes anywhere from 15 minutes to over an hour.

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