jaylevitt

13 ms·

91.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
No.. having founded a company is a decision made and re-made by historians. Steve Case was VP of Marketing when AOL was founded as Quantum Computer Services. As his role grew, early employees left, and time passed, he became the co-found
92.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
If you're writing code in any environment but an early-stage startup, the qualities it has when read by a human are ALSO the primary criteria.
93.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
Yep. I'm reminded of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which in 1993 was a GIANT step forward for gay rights (you should have seen the elation during the March on Washington). It worked so well, it moved the Overton window so far, that 19 years later
94.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
Sure, and Rails offers a similar syntax: User.select('x').where('name like ?', username) But if your language allows literal string interpolation (as Ruby does), what prevents you from doing this: query conn ("select x from users whe
95.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
I'm admittedly ignorant of any type system newer than C++. In a modern static language, how would you design Query such that any SQL injection is caught at compile-time? On the dynamic side, Rails (in Ruby) doesn't currently catch SQL inje
96.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
> He said "coke tasted better than pepsi" I think he actually said "coke tastes better than pepsi". That verb tense has very different implications.
97.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
But isn't it problematic that it compared real-world average unit tests with the best-available type system?
98.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
Of course you have access to historical data; you're on the Internet! And you're right - it's estimated to have dropped 13-15% in the past 30 years. http://www.awwa.org/files/Resources/Waterwiser/JAW0211rockaw...
99.
Ask HN: Leasing servers w/AWS Direct Connect?
7 points by jaylevitt 14y ago|6 comments
100.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
Their Returns Department charges a 15% restocking fee, return shipping unless you ask for a prepaid label, and original shipping unless you raise a fuss. What do you consider bottom notch?
101.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
Now you've heard of anybody else. I didn't have a horrible, traumatic, life-scarring experience, but I did have a bad one: * They advertised an item as a SAS/SATA RAID cage; I paid rush overnight shipping, only to discover it was actually
102.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
Wouldn't emergency brakes pretty much kill you if you're traveling a few thousand mph at the time?
103.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
In some US states, too; many of our states have a code modeled on the Uniform Commercial Code. In Massachusetts, at least, all items come with an implied warranty of merchantability and fitness for purpose, e.g. that it's worth selling and
104.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
Conversely... I know a guy who worked with a well-known startup founder, but he didn't list that founder as a reference, because he was sure he'd burned his bridges. Just so happened that the hiring manager had the founder on speed-dial.
105.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
If Swype was obvious in 2003, why weren't there multiple (or any?) slide-to-type QWERTY keyboards written for PalmOS or early Windows Mobile? I've owned PDAs since the Palm 5000 in early 1996, and I tried all the alternative keyboards, from
106.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
It's difficult to comparison-shop for features; Amazon reviews are now the definitive source of consumer opinion, but you have to sort of agglomerate your own set of W-X, X-Y, Y-Z and X-Z comparisons to see why people chose one over the oth
107.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
Doesn't any 22-year-old have 22 years of computer experience?
108.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
Random fun fact: Sanford Wallace once crashed AOL's mail server by sending mail that was allegedly from "howmuchwoodcouldawoodchuckchuckifawoodchuckcouldchuckwood.com".
109.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
And then there was the Commodore 1670, a 300/1200 bps modem with auto-answer. Not only "with" auto-answer; with auto-answer on by DEFAULT, with settings in RAM, and with a computer that you restarted by hitting the power switch. In an era
110.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
And if you don't report back, we'll still have a data point..
111.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
The confusion probably stems from the fact that the product manufacturer, Musion, repeatedly claims that they build "3D Holographic Projections", even though they're obviously neither 3D nor holographic: http://www.musion.co.uk/ This is t
112.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
Even if you were able to talk directly to the manager, you'd have been stuck. (I talked to a woman who claimed to be "manager of customer care and sales in North America", and she didn't even know how to work their systems.) There seems to
113.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
As the self-appointed permanent apologist for all things AOL, I declare that what Eric did is totally cool. Any work resources he used can be offset by our collective 24-hour work days from 1995-2000 - and we were denied Starbucks, wi-fi a
114.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
No. It wasn't a committee. It was specifically the new, MBA-credentialed "product marketing" person.
115.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
No, but (to me at least) it's MBA thinking. Technologists were thinking "How can we build something cool?" (An interactive mouse-driven sketchpad - over dialup in 1989.) Product folks were thinking "How can we build something great?" (Wha
116.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
I know how to mix live audio. Why can't I have a mixing board on my conference call?
117.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
"When I began my career in the late 80s and early 90s, MBAs ran most of the best new technology companies." Not exactly. By 1993, MBAs were already starting to turn AOL into the "how much can we milk you before you'll walk away?" behemoth i
118.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
That would be wonderful. Unfortunately, IdentityMap was disabled by default in 3.1 because it was incomplete, and it was pulled from 4.0 for a while due to lack of development: https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/5261 Though there is now
119.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
There used to be many model-caching plugins for Rails, but few if any made the transition to Rails 3. The record-cache gem looks interesting and flexible, though I haven't tried it: https://github.com/orslumen/record-cache
120.
by jaylevitt 14y ago
Maybe for his litigation skills? I'm sure there's a large legal team behind the scenes that includes IP experts, but "litigation" is its own field - most lawyers never see the inside of a courtroom. There's rhetoric, witness examination, ma

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