billybob

69 ms·

631.
by billybob 17y ago
Yeah, it would take a lot of trustworthy eyewitnesses, video evidence, etc to convince me of this claim. Having some measure of mental control over your heartbeat or body temperature is interesting; having your cells function long-term with
632.
by billybob 17y ago
So, to recap, legally being a person and being a person aren't, legally, the same.
633.
by billybob 17y ago
My take: Microsoft can't make a mobile OS that doesn't suck, so they want to leech income from those who can, using the power of Extremely Broad Software Patents. I don't see this as a story about new and interesting alliances of enemies. I
634.
by billybob 17y ago
This is all great - if you're already a programmer and decide to pursue a different career, but still like programming. Notice how weird that is? If you like programming, why are you doing something else? If you don't, why would you add pro
635.
by billybob 17y ago
:-) My smiley face is a depiction of the Muslim prophet Mohammed. Whom I, as a non-Muslim, do not consider a true prophet. Whose writings I consider to be partly plagarized from Jewish scripture. Disagree? Write your own comment.
636.
by billybob 17y ago
"Such delicate and tender social sensibilities we all suddenly have. As a Christian, people deliberately trying to offend me is merely part of the background noise of my life." Seconded. South Park's portrayals of Jesus are extremely offens
637.
by billybob 17y ago
Indenting? Heck yes. '=' will indent for you. You just have to give it a movement. =j means 'indent this line and the next' =% means 'indent to the matching brace' =/foo mean 'indent to the next occurrence of foo' 1G=G means 'go to the firs
638.
by billybob 17y ago
Exactly. Whenever we self-censor because of terrorist threats, we send the message that threats work. Threats will get you want you want. If we consistently replied with "we don't listen to threats; if you follow up, you'll be punished," th
639.
by billybob 17y ago
...with a headbutt!!
640.
by billybob 17y ago
Yeah. I think that a high desk plus a comfortable stool with arm rests would be perfect, and also cheap. If you really wanted to go crazy, you could probably hack apart an office chair to attach the top to a high stool base. I think I like
641.
by billybob 17y ago
"it sets up your brain for not-everything's-one-language pathways" Yep. Also, you get a good feel for difficult vs easy sentences. I only speak English and Spanish, but if someone from Russian or Korea or Bangladesh with minimal English ski
642.
by billybob 17y ago
I counter your anecdote with mine: I first studied Spanish in college and became fluent in it, in large part thanks to my classroom studies. Yes, I got practice with conversation partners and two studies abroad. But learning the vocabulary,
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by billybob 17y ago
Yeah, this statement specifically: "I’d wager close to 80.percent of kids taking foreign languages in high school do so because they have to." ...applies to any required high school subject you want to name.
644.
by billybob 17y ago
Now this is an interesting point. One application might be to develop your web app on a slow computer and a tiny screen; net books and mobile phones will have no trouble if you don't. Or you could just have a mobile phone sitting nearby, an
645.
by billybob 17y ago
Ha! Brilliant. Is the stool comfy?
646.
by billybob 17y ago
My reaction too. What's the cheapest, non-sucky option anybody has used?
647.
by billybob 17y ago
Oh yeah? Where I work, we have cotton candy and ferris wheels instead of email. (Yes, it's news to some of us.)
648.
by billybob 17y ago
I'm curious: is this not solved by a solid technical interview? I would have guessed that if someone impresses HR, you could find out if they really know their stuff by getting a KNOWN competent person to ask them lots of hard technical que
649.
by billybob 17y ago
Wow. Kinda makes me wonder if we should be using general-purpose computers for so many things. The anti-virus is kind of a major single point of failure for machines that need to do just a few specific things.
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by billybob 17y ago
I think it's interesting to consider computer viruses and biological pathogens in terms of "optimum harmfulness." A cold virus's best strategy, for example, is to keep you awake coughing so your immune system is weak, make you sneeze and co
651.
by billybob 17y ago
Yo dawg, I see you like lockin, so I put some lockin in your lockin so you can be locked in while you're locked in. Seriously, though - collaborate on documents via Facebook? I don't even load Facebook at work. It has no work value. It's li
652.
by billybob 17y ago
Those are good points and legitimate use cases. But if they have small hard drives, how did the guy in the story recover "tens of thousands of documents" from 3 copiers? Why would a copier need to be able to store that many pages? I mean, O
653.
by billybob 17y ago
It's WAAAAAY more than 60%, I assure you. If the HN crowd is surprised (like I am!), the millions of people who don't know a hard drive from a monitor have absolutely no idea. I'd guess that it's more like 99.999%.
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by billybob 17y ago
Why would there have to be a hard drive? I would have assumed there was enough RAM to do a job, and that powering down the copier would clear it. Who the heck needs the copier to remember their copying jobs long-term?
655.
by billybob 17y ago
This should be easy to fix with a 'configure my controller' option. They could let you choose which keys do what for their game, and maybe show the most common configurations as options before you make your own.
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by billybob 17y ago
That's because it's just so hard to mind-meld ourselves for collective thoughts like these.
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by billybob 17y ago
I imagine Apple's lawyers can shred that ruse. As an expert site, they knew exactly how likely it was that this was lost (near zero), and they knew they could profit from its clandestine possession. Whether they give it back afterward is im
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by billybob 17y ago
Right. Hardly anybody asks themselves "which is the Official Best Windows Computer?" Android is not a single, tightly-controlled product line. It's an OS. Buy whatever hardware you think you'd like to run it on. It's just a different approa
659.
by billybob 17y ago
This may vary with the field. I think it's true of say, web development, because the student could definitely work freelance and get both experience and money. But it might not be true of journalism, or law, etc. Although it's definitely tr
660.
by billybob 17y ago
"I think many interns would be happy if you paid them only a little money." Absolutely. As a college student, I would have been happy with a low wage; I didn't need to support myself with the internship income. But after working half the da

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