etfb

18 ms·

181.
by etfb 14y ago
A line is defined by two points. Doesn't matter how far away the other point is. When you're trying to convince someone of the existence of the line, that's how you do it.
182.
by etfb 14y ago
Until one morning they wake up and exclaim to their friends, with much more surprise: "Hey guys! Ti
183.
by etfb 14y ago
My lemonade stand is dependent on customers not stabbing me in the eye and leaving me to bleed out while they steal all my lemons. That's one end of a continuum. Where do you draw the line? And, more importantly, who gives any of us the
184.
by etfb 14y ago
My experience with laptops is moderately recent. I've mostly had Toshiba, and apart from the need to download drivers for wifi, ethernet and sometimes video, they've been fine. I had a Lenovo Thinkpad L512, and it was fine too and quite ro
185.
by etfb 14y ago
Sorry, but I don't feel like I need to be an expert in something before I can express an opinion about it. You're welcome to send a quick message to pg to get a refund on what you've paid to read my comment, if you disagree.
186.
by etfb 14y ago
I grew up with Pascal and its derivatives, so I have a strong sense of the aesthetic of programming languages. I can't take Go seriously, or bring myself to use it, because it appears to have no aesthetic sense at all. It's ugly! Strings
187.
by etfb 14y ago
They made it clear (I don't recall the wording) that knowledge I gained for myself while working -- from co-workers, from research done as a necessary part of solving problems, etc -- wasn't the issue; it was specifically knowledge about th
188.
by etfb 14y ago
In Australia, I worked for a company that had what amounted to a "we own all your brainz" clause in their contract. I queried it, and they modified it: they owned anything I produced using their hardware, during paid time (excluding lunch
189.
by etfb 14y ago
Only large and friendly, according to The Book.
190.
by etfb 14y ago
Meh. No. People who use the word that way are wrong, stupid and nasty. Cultural relativism doesn't get a look in. I award your argument zero points.
191.
by etfb 14y ago
I have to nitpick there. I suspect Einstein is actually famous for his Special and General Theories of Relativity, and for his amazing hair.
192.
by etfb 14y ago
Found the actual joke in Asimov's The Jokester at http://www.ippt.gov.pl/~vkoval/fantasy.html : "Johnson," he said, "came home unexpectedly from a business trip to find his wife in the arms of his best friend. He staggered back and said,
193.
by etfb 14y ago
Ted comes home early from work to discover his best friend in bed with his wife. "Frank," he cries. "I married her, so I have to! But why did you?" That rather old and tired joke (one of Isaac Asimov's, I believe) says how I feel about Lib
194.
by etfb 14y ago
"It's 1945. I sit in a Brooklyn kitchen, fascinated by an arrangement of cogs on black velvet. I am sixteen years old. It is 1985. I am on Mars. I am fifty six years old..." That's what the style of this article instantly reminded me of.
195.
by etfb 14y ago
I realised it must be Helvetica because of the "R". I reasoned thus: I am more familiar with Arial than Helvetica, and I'm sure I would have seen that "R" before if I were spending a lot of time with it because it's just so ugly , so since
196.
by etfb 14y ago
The perfectly round "O" was the giveaway for me. Helvetica just feels more "literal" to me, if that makes any sense, with its perfectly horizontal endings on "C" and "S" and "t", so the round "O" seemed more likely. Mattel nearly tripped
197.
by etfb 14y ago
TS;DR.
198.
by etfb 14y ago
You must be very busy, posting that comment on every single article that you don't care about. Gosh you're amazing!
199.
by etfb 14y ago
I was using the term in neither the mainstream nor the technical sense, but in the Dr Sam Beckett sense. Oh, boy!
200.
by etfb 14y ago
What's the difference between economists and homeopaths? At least there's evidence that water exists.
201.
by etfb 14y ago
We'll need either three or four quantum leaps in technology, or a sudden discovery that invalidates much of what we know about physics and/or cosmology, before even the Alpha Centauri planets become reachable. "Like it or not, for the mome
202.
by etfb 14y ago
Here's how it works. There are two kinds of people in the world: people who crave power, and people who don't. The people who don't aren't the problem. There are two kinds of power-craving people in the world: people who act on their cravi
203.
by etfb 14y ago
That's Stockholm Syndrome talking. You're standing up for evil. Be ashamed, and change your tune. Really.
204.
by etfb 14y ago
I don't think I've bookmarked anything in ages. I'd almost forgotten how! But that's seriously useful. Thanks to whoever is responsible.
205.
by etfb 14y ago
Maybe JWZ is right when he says the city of SF is clueless about business. It certainly seems to be clueless about the nighttime entertainment business, which is where his rants and his increasingly bad temper seem to come from.
206.
by etfb 14y ago
My suggestion (which is worth exactly what you paid for it) is this: find someone who has no contact with the IT world beyond, maybe , a passing familiarity with mobile phone apps and Google Mail. Tell them you want a one-sentence descrip
207.
by etfb 14y ago
He reckons a sentence like "Learnist is the mobile product for curating and following complete learning experience" is worth adding to an email? Good grief! I actually have less idea of what it is than I did before I read that, and I've
208.
by etfb 14y ago
There are quarterbacks in baseball now? Now I'm confused. (Seriously, though: let me just put in a plug for the Language Log ( http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/ ) which is full of juicy linguistic discussions. Worth it just for the eg
209.
by etfb 14y ago
That was a considerable number of years after the PC rewrote the personal computer market. I don't think the PS/2 was on their radar when they did what they did with the first PC.
210.
by etfb 14y ago
Yep, I'm more or less speaking from the viewpoint of the time. The received wisdom was that it was IBM's deliberate decision to allow clones that made the difference; nowadays we can see that this was only part of the story, but that origin

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