gamble

79 ms·

841.
by gamble 17y ago
The problem with PCs is not the existence of cheapo systems like this, but the absence of machines that compete with the Mac for industrial design and user experience. It doesn't seem to be possible to buy a PC that isn't butt-ugly and come
842.
by gamble 17y ago
We've seen this story before with Windows Mobile, and it doesn't end well. People who are bothered by the idea that their phone is running an older OS version should buy a Nexus One. Google has a motivation to ensure their flagship phone st
843.
by gamble 17y ago
I was/am in a similar situation. The rule of thumb financial advisors tend to use (and you should take any advice from them with a few grains of salt...) is to put around 10% of your portfolio into high-risk investments. The 'typical' route
844.
by gamble 17y ago
I've been taking my dog to daycare since she was six months old. She gets far more attention and exercise throughout the day than anyone with a day job or kids to watch could provide. And - though I'm biased =) - I don't think you could fin
845.
by gamble 17y ago
I don't believe that human beings will ever be able to exist independently of earth without radically more advanced technology, in every field. If you consider the amount of support the early American colonists required from Europe, despite
846.
by gamble 17y ago
I disagree. It's well-documented that Bush's advisors wanted a "Kennedy moment", and felt that a big announcement that Americans were returning to the moon would be good PR, even if it never panned out. Constellation was an incredibly cynic
847.
by gamble 17y ago
The problem for Google is that they're wholly dependent on their near-monopoly on Internet advertising, possibly the world's least rare commodity. (Can you imagine what a company that controlled a similar share of TV or print advertising
848.
by gamble 17y ago
NASA has two options: 1. Massive budget increases to fund missions to the moon and Mars. 2. Realign its goals to match the budget they have now. The Bush-era plan to return to the moon without actually paying for it was the worst of all wor
849.
by gamble 17y ago
I'm not a fan of the iPad, but at least it's a real product. Microsoft loves concepts, yet they almost never deliver. They're like an auto company that turns out beautiful concept cars for the trade shows that will never appear in a dealers
850.
by gamble 17y ago
Vancouver is an odd city for that. You can be in an upscale neighborhood, walk a couple of blocks in the wrong direction, and find yourself in an open-air drug market. Go another block and it's back to normal. OTOH, for sheer number of tran
851.
by gamble 17y ago
I agree in principle, but you have to take into consideration the fact that most of the risk in these decisions lies with the employee. Misjudge, and it will be a very unpleasant few months. As a rule of thumb, I would avoid giving more tha
852.
by gamble 17y ago
Having worked for (and left) a couple of startups, I'd be reluctant to follow his advice. Most entrepreneurs think of their companies as something between a beloved child and a religion. For some, quitting is like you declared their kid is
853.
by gamble 17y ago
How many internal corporate apps are serving millions of viewers?
854.
by gamble 17y ago
Conditions for almost everyone who's not a working-class white man have improved. But it doesn't change the fact that there is a large group of people who have done very poorly and tend to vote for people who pander to their grievances. The
855.
by gamble 17y ago
This too will pass. On the other hand, for certain groups the last thirty to forty years have been a long, slow slide from the top of the economic heap to the bottom. Specifically, conditions for white men without college degrees have gone
856.
by gamble 17y ago
Even if a startup was willing to sponsor you, having your immigration status contingent on the continued existence of a company that could go bankrupt with little notice doesn't seem like a good idea.
857.
by gamble 17y ago
The problem with the software industry is that it isn't productized. Probably the majority of programmers are working for internal corporate IT departments cranking out CRUD apps because the company mistakenly believes it's a precious, uniq
858.
by gamble 17y ago
The problem is not that libraries exist, but the incredible mental investment required to use them. Early libraries were just bundles of functions, but modern libraries are vast, complicated beasts that require years of experience to fully
859.
by gamble 17y ago
If you can taste the mercury, you're in trouble.
860.
by gamble 17y ago
Most of these categories are niches that the average person has some experience with and don't require specialized knowledge or connections to create a successful product. Most programmers don't know enough about non-programming fields to b
861.
by gamble 17y ago
Few districts are going to hire a teacher that's been laid off for poor performance, so if you fire a teacher you've essentially ended their career and kicked them to the curb with a worthless degree, no experience outside academia, and no
862.
by gamble 17y ago
These cafe laptop bans remind me of the infamous ban on snowboarding at the Deer Valley ski resort in Utah. (And seem to provoke a similar response, even though 99% of their competitors don't have bans) I suspect they're more about marketin
863.
by gamble 17y ago
#17 - "There's no legal risk in doing XYZ"
864.
by gamble 17y ago
The problem is that no one bothered to check whether the software worked when they removed the hardware. It's not a good thing that there was a bug in the first place, but proper procedures could easily have caught it before people were kil
865.
by gamble 17y ago
The Therac-25 was much more of a management and engineering failure than a technical problem, though. While the immediate cause of the deaths was a race condition in the software, it was only capable of causing harm because the hardware saf
866.
by gamble 17y ago
Edison was the Bill Gates of his age. Even today, plenty of people believe that Gates had a hand in programming Windows. His greatest success as a businessman was marketing himself as a proxy for GE to a public that wasn't accustomed to the
867.
by gamble 17y ago
I think it's just the size of the audience drawn in by a social news site. HN was an uncommonly polite place when it was first launched and largely populated by people with links to YC. I'd guess the vast majority were programmers or tech s
868.
by gamble 17y ago
James Randi is proved right again. Unfortunately, the retraction won't get a fraction of the coverage the original claims received, and we'll likely see this case brought up as 'evidence' in political arguments for years to come.
869.
by gamble 17y ago
Flash is bad enough. The last thing I need is another Flash, owned by Microsoft, and only used because Microsoft is paying everyone to push it on me.
870.
by gamble 17y ago
I'm happy with my Picoscope 2205. http://www.picotech.com/oscilloscope.html

More ›