billybob

11 ms·

61.
by billybob 15y ago
>>>But then Comcast will come along and say, "Hey, here's a (mediocre) search and email service that we will bundle for 'free'!"<<< I don't know about you, but I would pay for Gmail in a heartbeat. It's a great servi
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by billybob 15y ago
I disagree. No site has a right to force me to look at ads. And I don't have a right to force them to provide a service. Their offer is "come here for free, and we're hoping you'll look at these ads." They could change their offer. They cou
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by billybob 15y ago
Side note: I hope "Boot to Gecko" won't be the official name of the OS. First, most users don't know what booting is or what Gecko is. Second, it will be awkward to use an imperative phrase as a noun. "This phone has Boot to Gecko." "Did yo
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by billybob 15y ago
GDP measures the output of workers. So this result states that by giving people money, you either enable them to work, or enable them to employ other people by spending that money. Presumably (I admit, TLDR) this conclusion comes from calcu
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by billybob 15y ago
If food stamps are paid for out of taxes, money isn't created, just redistributed. To clarify, are you saying that because we're borrowing to pay for these, we're effectively printing money, thereby causing inflation? Also: in terms of pure
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by billybob 15y ago
Is there no penalty for incorrectly claiming others' content? Perhaps the "guilty until proven innocent" mentality is justified by saying that there is so much infringement, that due process would always be 3 steps behind the uploaders. Eve
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by billybob 15y ago
TL;DR - "They flagged my video as containing their content, even though it doesn't, which means they get my ad revenue."
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by billybob 15y ago
This is how I perceive Spotify. I can't sign up for it because I deleted my FB account. FB as the only option makes me think they must want to datamine me as hard as possible.
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by billybob 15y ago
Funny, a missing semicolon was what convinced us to start lint-checking all our JS. We have a Rails app with multiple JS files. One of them ended with a statement like var foo = { /* object contents / } / no semicolon here */ This worked
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by billybob 15y ago
I think the bigger trend here is "internet protocols will win." We see it happening in telephony, television, music, and lots of other places. Brilliant engineering has gone into the IP stack, with modular support for every aspect of gettin
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by billybob 15y ago
"The vacation culture of Europe and the leveraged culture of the US are about to lose out to the thrifty workaholics of China" Whether the Chinese have a better work ethic than Americans, I don't know. I'm also unclear what you mean by "los
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by billybob 15y ago
A few months ago, when Gowolla got bought out, I thought sadly, "there goes that cool payments company." Apparently I was thinking of Dwolla. I'm not sure whether this says something about naming your company or just about me.
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by billybob 15y ago
While that's true, if I have to resort to a mailing list for an answer, I'm almost certain to later ask the question on a StackExchange site and answer it myself. It feels wonderful to take some information which it cost me days to find out
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by billybob 15y ago
Rubbish. "Barring other factors" is a qualification big enough to drive a tractor trailer through, filled with millions of counter-examples on both sides. Many fathers love their mate for life or at least decades. Many others abandon her be
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by billybob 15y ago
No doubt there is plenty of room to argue about the best system. But to say that our current system is COMPLETELY arbitrary, and that fairness is WHOLLY irrelevant to the discussion is dangerous hyperbole. It would certainly be unfair, even
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by billybob 15y ago
Infinity of dimensions, sure. But we're only talking about one of them: number of dollars of economic value you can create . Whether you're an above-average Scrabble player is irrelevant to a discussion about work and wages. Unless there
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by billybob 15y ago
Assuming that the laws are uniformly applied (which may not be true), they are irrelevant to the differences between people's incomes. If Person A invents hoverboards and everyone buys them, creating billions in economic value, and Person B
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by billybob 15y ago
A parody to show that nobody reads privacy agreements?
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by billybob 15y ago
In other news, cars are faster than trucks, so clearly there is no valid reason to drive a truck.
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by billybob 15y ago
That's nice, except I uninstalled Flash on my machine. It has an abysmal security history and I just don't need it that much.
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by billybob 15y ago
Facebook won't get shut down because it's too big, well-known, and rich. It's all the would-be competitors who will get shut down, because who cares about some no-name "pirate" site? Suddenly, we'll stop seeing new sites that allow user con
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by billybob 15y ago
Best quote: "The problem is caused by people who would like a little help spying on their friends. And in a genteel way, that’s what the social media offers. They get to surveil other people. In return for a little bit of the product, they
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by billybob 15y ago
I think we're using different definitions of "control fully." In my view, in order to control the encryption process fully, you must control the device doing the encryption. If you're using an OS with a keylogger, you DON'T have "end-to-end
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by billybob 15y ago
Exactly. Any backdoor comes with the possibility of use by other parties - hackers, foreign governments, etc. Which is why they are always unacceptable, even if you trust the US government (or whoever is asking for it), including everyone w
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by billybob 15y ago
You missed his point. If you have "any form of communication with end-to-end encryption that you control fully", that precludes "an OS-level keylogger".
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by billybob 15y ago
Can't see it. How about a nice <img> tag instead of a plugin?
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by billybob 15y ago
I share your peev. Stoves, cars, phones, algorithms, archeological discoveries, and economic theories are not sexy. A person who arouses sexual desire is sexy. Please, people. Find other adjectives for inanimate objects and abstractions.
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by billybob 15y ago
"Its a bit scary, in that it will force such conspiracies to become more complex (its an arms race after all)" I'd say rather that it will push smaller players out of this kind of corrupt business. If you can't sell the business to your unc
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by billybob 15y ago
"I would happily sacrifice my ability to make a living writing software if it meant that all software was FOSS." And I most certainly wouldn't. I use and contribute to open source, but I love development too much to do something else for a
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by billybob 15y ago
All the cool kids are pirating content by performing it live without permission.

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