dwheeler

70 ms·

691.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Yes, shrinkwrap EULAs have been upheld in the US as a contract. At the very least: ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996).
692.
by dwheeler 6y ago
I completely agree with you that this cannot possibly replace other measures such as masks, hygiene, and avoiding large indoor gatherings. Nor should it. I think there is an additional confusion though. This is really an exposure notificati
693.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Far more important than whether or not chess makes you smarter is... that teaching chess helps kids appreciate thinking ahead. This doesn't make them smarter per se, but it helps them realize that they should be using their smarts. Lea
694.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Thank you so much for the reference! I'm that David A. Wheeler. If anyone has questions about my work, just let me know. Here's how to contact me by email if you prefed: https://dwheeler.com/contactme.html
695.
by dwheeler 6y ago
I used to run my printer off my Apple II using the same kind of trick. Instead of having a separate card, I used the game IO socket and some machine code.
696.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Obviously a system can define a symbol like "/" as whatever it wants to. But then it isn't what many mathematicians would expect. The Metamath Proof Explorer defines "/" so it only has a value if the denom
697.
by dwheeler 6y ago
It's a stunningly beautiful work, but it also reminds me about the fragility of works. The original is badly damaged. Thankfully, we have this copy, and now that it's been recorded electronically in theory we will at least have th
698.
by dwheeler 6y ago
I agree, mechanisms are not always obvious. In the short term the only thing that matters is, "does it work?" If a larger study replicates the positive benefits of red light, well then, let's use it for that purpose!! But I
699.
by dwheeler 6y ago
This seems dubious. What in world would be the mechanism? On the other hand, I don't see the harm in doing this and it seems easy to replicate. Hopefully others will quickly try to replicate it, and if they do, try to figure out why.
700.
by dwheeler 6y ago
> If I gave you three APIs that all claimed to be REST, could you make more than a few definitive claims on how they're to be consumed? The article calls it out, but let's take something common like what HTTP verb to use when u
701.
by dwheeler 6y ago
The Linux Foundation's "Open Mainframe Project" has a free COBOL training course. More info here: https://www.openmainframeproject.org/projects/coboltrainingc...
702.
by dwheeler 6y ago
It's not misappropriated, it's evolved, just as most things are when others try to use them. Fielding had the notion that the HTTP idea of a few verbs, applied to arbitrary resources, was something to think more broadly about. Oth
703.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Not convinced. First, this analysis was done on Arch Linux, a source-based distribution. Since you know at compile time what your environment is, I would expect the benefits to be smaller. And of course, this means you're willing to do
704.
by dwheeler 6y ago
In the real world, impractical is the same as impossible. It's easy to enable a third party to read encrypted data, simply give them the key. That is not and never has been the problem. The problem is ensuring that only authorized uses
705.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Unfortunately, each key will be poorly protected, because each group will rationalize that "it would be impossible for someone to get all those keys" while someone gets all the keys. The US government couldn't even keep the m
706.
by dwheeler 6y ago
I don't buy the "we have GPT-3, therefore we may soon have artificial general intelligence" (AGI) notion. AGI might happen tomorrow; it might happen in decades, in centuries, or never. GPT-3 is basically a straightforward sca
707.
by dwheeler 6y ago
It's a cool presentation. Careful, however, this only teaches a specific variant of regexes (the PCRE ones). Those are common, but expressions like "\d" won't work in grep, sed, or many other tools. I wish it had noted
708.
by dwheeler 6y ago
I'd love to believe the premise of this article, but this seems easily falsified by the real world. China has become rich, and is becoming more so, and it is controlled by a small elite.
709.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Water is incredibly good at radiation shielding. An awesome description of this is here: https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
710.
by dwheeler 6y ago
But that is the problem: we are claiming that we "know" things are absolutely true, but we are using methods that are known to be inadequate for that purpose. Mathematicians are smart, but they are human. They make mistakes and mi
711.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Current mathematics is an untrustworthy flashlight. A claimed proof can be later found false, toppling all built on it. If we want illumination, we need better. The standard for proof acceptance should become formal verification. Mathematic
712.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Amazing, I had never heard of these things. There is a 1960 Popular Electronics article about them: https://www.rfcafe.com/references/popular-electronics/magnet...
713.
by dwheeler 6y ago
So what is the proposed alternative? It's fine to complain about a system, but it's not helpful unless you have a workable alternative instead.
714.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Some mathematicians think that human understanding of every step is critical. That doesn't actually make it critical. At one time it was very important to have humans weave cloth. Now we generally expect machines to do that. Computers
715.
by dwheeler 6y ago
I agree that there are mathematicians with this viewpoint. However, I argue that this viewpoint is obsolete and should no longer be acceptable. Sure, it's great if a proof can be clearly understood completely by human. But humans are f
716.
by dwheeler 6y ago
This is why we need to move away from depending on just humans to verify proofs. The goal shouldn't be "does a human fully understand the whole thing" but "is it proven to be true?" There are a number of computer-
717.
by dwheeler 6y ago
Interesting. Of course, generating diagrams from text isn't new. This especially reminds me of DOT as implemented by Graphviz and others, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOT_(graph_description_languag... ; DOT
718.
by dwheeler 6y ago
You're right, it is not controversial today that photographers have a copyright on their work. Which is why the monkey selfie is so important. In the monkey selfie case, a photographer did set up the equipment, which means that some of
719.
by dwheeler 6y ago
No, Brad Cox thought that the only way reuse could happen at scale would be via micropayments, which of the time he considered to be integral to the software IC idea: https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/brad-cox/ It turns
720.
by dwheeler 6y ago
I think we just have to talk about the "Monkey Selfie Copyright Dispute" (2011-2018) - details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput... While this case was partly about the questi

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