iwr

24 ms·

211.
by iwr 16y ago
Compare that to the rapid developments of post-war Germany, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, then post-1990: Poland, Hungary, The Czech Republic etc. We have to look at opportunity costs, not just raw improvements.
212.
by iwr 16y ago
The difference is that companies are voluntary associations of individuals. A government is a monopoly of force and justice; it can exert its authority even on those that have not explicitly (via a free contract) agreed to it.
213.
by iwr 16y ago
That may be the reason that large organizations are difficult to maintain. How many of the Fortune 500 companies today were still there 4 years ago? As an organization grows, it requires people in support structures that are less linked to
214.
by iwr 16y ago
What's an inerter?
215.
by iwr 16y ago
The inevitable failure happened not because of particular details that the central planners disregarded, but because there WERE planners in the first place. The market has a network-optimality aspect to it that a monolithic institution cann
216.
by iwr 16y ago
Would this system block websites at the IP level or at the DNS level? Doing it at the DNS level would mean you could roll your own DNS or use a non-US DNS provider. Doing it at the IP level would mean the ISP reverse-lookups IP addresses ba
217.
by iwr 16y ago
What exactly is a test bank? My money would be on the professor bluffing. Edit: OK, it could be possible to correlate results from the first test with the second one.
218.
by iwr 16y ago
Pretty much all arab-looking people will get special attention going through US Customs. I have a friend whose name is the same to someone on the no-fly list and he can't enter the US without serious hassle. It's no comfort that you can be
219.
by iwr 16y ago
This reminds me of an old episode of South Park. http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155014/learning-the-tr... "Feeling warm is a sign of the last stages of hypothermia"
220.
by iwr 16y ago
Maths is a self-consistent and closed system. From that point of view, the nature of axioms is irrelevant. You can have an unlimited kinds of axiomatic systems, each consistent and each explanatory in its own way. What is a theorem in one s
221.
by iwr 16y ago
You could sort of get a keyboard with an included USB hub and connect a mouse to it. Or better, get a monitor with a USB hub and just connect your peripherals to the monitor. If you want to go overboard, you can even get speakers and a netw
222.
by iwr 16y ago
Humans can live off the land just about anywhere on Earth, but with a Mars mission now, they would be wholly dependent for decades at the very least. For colonization to work, it must be self-sufficient nearly from day one. Otherwise, it wo
223.
by iwr 16y ago
Would it be possible to crank up the radiation (intensity or hardness) to peer deeper into the body?
224.
by iwr 16y ago
Certification will lead to the recognition of your product as an enterprise-ready technology, allowing interoperability and intercompatibilitization with all Oracle Java products and libraries. In today's complex and increasingly specialize
225.
by iwr 16y ago
"For now, I'm not going to support this in the parser as it appears to be a fairly dusty corner of the language. Maybe at some later date." And that is why this particular parser won't pass the Java TCKs.
226.
by iwr 16y ago
So what did NASA announce after all? Edit: Apparently, this: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/nov/HQ_10-299_CHANDRA.h... "Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have found evidence of the youngest black hole known to exist
227.
by iwr 16y ago
The maximum signal speed loss due to inclination would be sqrt(1+(1/refraction_index^2))-1, or around 20% for fiber described above. Although, in practice, the fiber would not be even close to its maximum angle. But potentially, a lower ref
228.
by iwr 16y ago
This is interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photonic-crystal_fiber
229.
by iwr 16y ago
"All subjects, except sex, are dull until somebody makes them interesting." Certainly, sex can be dull. Unfortunately, going into the specific anecdotes concerning the topic would make HN less work-safe and also damage the modesty thereof.
230.
by iwr 16y ago
Not an evil thing in itself. Putting all that content in one location has some value.
231.
by iwr 16y ago
I was just wondering if hair thin, hollow, reflective tubes could be made cheap enough for oceanic data cables. It would obviously be more expensive than regular fiber.
232.
by iwr 16y ago
The speed of light in optic fiber is about 66% of c. Is it feasible to just build a hollow reflective tube/waveguide?
233.
by iwr 16y ago
A small adage: the poor of yesterday are not necessarily the poor of today. Immigrants arriving in the US are usually at the bottom of the ladder. As long as the US receives immigrants, it will have a somewhat bottom-heavy income distributi
234.
by iwr 16y ago
One mitigating measure would be to use secure VPN. Traffic from the VPN to the destination would still be unencrypted, but would eliminate drive-by hackers.
235.
by iwr 16y ago
Could be a brown-dwarf-sized companion to our star, a possible answer for the relative scarcity of objects beyond 50 or so au.
236.
by iwr 16y ago
Do you have a real-life use scenario for this DB-FS paradigm?
237.
by iwr 16y ago
A natural monopoly doesn't need legal protections, it will continue to exist regardless. The very reason competition was banned was because it was possible.
238.
by iwr 16y ago
It became illegal because competitor operators were a threat to AT&T. The government made a deal with them by giving them legal protection, getting some political control in return. Even after the divestiture, the Baby Bells had prefere
239.
by iwr 16y ago
It would be interesting to use IAX2 instead of SIP. Unlike SIP, IAX(2) is transparent to NAT. NAT was one of the problems that Skype had to face, resorting to using routable clients to funnel traffic to clients behind NAT. Yes, IPv6 is righ
240.
by iwr 16y ago
How do you reconcile that with the fact that it was illegal to compete with AT&T? Once upon a time, Altavista was The Search and MySpace was The Social Network.

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