gustavo_duarte

13 ms·

31.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
You mean 'just wants to listen to some music' _without paying for it_. Regarding the DMCA and fair use restrictions, I agree it's something we must fight against, but I don't think piracy is an effective way to go about it.
32.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
Can you give examples? I'm genuinely interested. Rosalind Franklin and DNA is about the only 'greatest discovery' I know of where I think credit wasn't given where it was due. Also, SW hasn't gotten anywhere near a 'greatest discovery', so
33.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
81 here. The (consumer) Internet came at the absolute perfect time for me. I had started programming pretty young, dabbled in electronics and other stuff, but had nobody around to share the passion with. So I abandoned computers and went to
34.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
Not to mention, you know, the bit about 'education' and 'refining your mind', which is supposed to be the purpose of the whole thing.
35.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
If you have never read it, I recommend checking out "The Psychology of Persuasion": http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Busine... It's a fascinating examination of persuasion. It covers selling, business, cults, authorit
36.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
Mathematica itself has a rich plugin (packages) model that extends it to particular domains. It's a very important part of the system, sort of like extensions make Firefox. Perhaps they'll open Alpha up in a similar way to help make it comp
37.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
He mentions that simply putting items in a series would generate comparisons, so I think you'd get what you want by taking out the / operator. (edited, no need for "vs.", just series seems to do the trick)
38.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
Whoah! I've used Mathematica a lot and I had high expectations for Wolfram Alpha, but this... was just incredible. Thank you so much for posting it. I wonder if they'd consider opening the system up for others to develop 'plug-ins' covering
39.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
Guaranteeing profit is not why patents exist in the first place. They exist "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." It is not about profit, but rather about overall progress and benefits for society at large. I think there's a
40.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
I think skmurphy understands the theory behind fractional art ownership but is simply skeptical such a market exists in practice. Is there an established market for shared art ownership (besides fractional donations for tax purposes)? If no
41.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
Seconded. Is there a list of local HN meetups anywhere? Or an informal process for announcing or setting one up?
42.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
The guy was slammed with 3 counts: for soliciting prostitution (misdemeanor), stealing time from work (felony), and 'unauthorized computer/network' use (ie, 'hacking', also felony). They thoroughly nailed him with a misdemeanor and a felony
43.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
It's not, and nobody has claimed it is, but I don't expect every city employee to behave sanely. I do have an expectation of sanity from the law however, which is broken when porn surfing becomes a felony under a law aimed at computer break
44.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
His stolen time is under a separate charge of 'theft in office'. So this $500, afaics, is specifically for the computer/network.
45.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
I'm not sure. In this case the law itself is insane, so the remedy may have to be legislative rather than judicial.
46.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
Incredible. From his appeal: "one count of unauthorized access to a computer, with a specification that the value of the property or services stolen was more than $500 and less than $5000, in violation of R.C. 2913.04(B), a fifth degree fe
47.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
Here's Marcus Ranum on Software Liability: Inviting Cockroaches to the Feast ( http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/l... )
48.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
Good point. I agree with your take on the trade offs, but it then becomes a matter of deciding how good or bad things really are. Since this applies beyond textbooks to the wider issue of school choice, I'll say 'school' below but 'textbook
49.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
It's not. It's grossly distorted by government interference, as explained in detail by the article.
50.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
It can't be exciting at all because the kids are fed this bland Frankenstein crap soup we just read about. But it _could_ be exciting. Bertrand Russel said this is his autobiography: "At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as
51.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
This was beautiful. I'd mention the Feynman Lectures on Physics too.
52.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
I have been spending my free time lately building what I hope will become a platform for collaboration on books and lengthier material. My immediate goal is to put out a free x86 internals / Linux kernel book, the embryo of which started a
53.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
Terminator is available via streaming on Netflix by the way, in case anybody wants to watch it right away. I know I will :P
54.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
Exactly. Ultimately the problem here is extreme centralization. I don't think something as subtle, elusive, and personal as education can be done well via an enormous bureaucracy. The plague of blandness, lack of inspiration and least-commo
55.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
Steve McConnell advocates a similar thing in Code Complete 2, which he calls Pseudocode Programming Process, PPP. The idea is that when first creating a method or function, you write out in comments what you're going to do in a 'why' level
56.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
Only Vim -> Perl is fully fleshed out right now. Doing it the other way would be fairly easy though because so much would be reused. Also, with the Vim regexes I had to worry about magicness and so on, the Perl stuff would parse easier.
57.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
From my look in the Vim sources, it would be tons of work to truly make it use pcre internally. But I think it wouldn't be hard to do a plugin that translates a pcre into a Vim regex, allowing you to search or replace using pcres. My code t
58.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
I've written an automated tool to convert Vim-style regexes to Perl-style. This is kind of a dramatic case as the dialect is very different, but it was a fun thing to write.
59.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
I'm all for private action, but you cannot take the government out of this issue. After all, whether to build the third runway in Heathrow is not a private decision. Likewise, it's hard for private parties to deal with externalities.
60.
by gustavo_duarte 17y ago
But he did say 'a few hours'. That sounds about right to me.

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