jballanc

94 ms·

901.
by jballanc 15y ago
Very well put! (I was going to mention that, in reality, it's all about everyone else who's watching, but I think you did a better job explaining it.) What's most interesting is that (based on anecdotal evidence), lost liberty and ridiculou
902.
by jballanc 15y ago
Right. What I meant was that all of the actual negotiations happened in secret. They had to, because of the doctrine. There's no shame in showing humility and even offering a friendly hand, but when the offer is made to your adversary, it i
903.
by jballanc 15y ago
I think it's pretty clear that Osama wanted the destruction of the US. There's an old adage from the cold war that "You cannot show weakness to the enemy." Study how the Cuban Missile Crisis was eventually resolved, and you'll see this doct
904.
by jballanc 15y ago
The iPhone anecdote is such an important one. Probably the most important lesson I learned working at Apple was: people don't remember that a feature was missing once you implement it, but they remember broken features long after you've f
905.
by jballanc 15y ago
While it's encouraging to see such a thorough debunking of the latest security theater technology, it's always been security theater... Allow me a few quick anecdotes: My family is friends with a gentleman who was a green beret medic during
906.
by jballanc 15y ago
To be more specific, this is the F0F1 Mitochondrial ATP Synthase. This protein is the reason that I decided to study biochemistry, but I have to say that this animation doesn't nearly do it justice. For one thing, the entire rotor/stator me
907.
by jballanc 15y ago
You think that's bad? Have you ever looked at the way the islands of the Aegean are divided between Greece and Turkey? There are a number of Greek islands that lie almost completely within bays of the Turkish mainland, and there are a numbe
908.
by jballanc 15y ago
Right. My experience is that usually it's two or three of the others + English that is spoken by most.
909.
by jballanc 15y ago
Switzerland officially recognizes four languages as national tongues (German, French, Italian, and Romansch), and my understanding is that it is relatively common for the Swiss to be tri- or quadrilingual.
910.
by jballanc 15y ago
I've been told that you cannot consider to have mastered a language until you dream in that language. Total immersion is likely the only thing that will get you over that plateau.
911.
by jballanc 15y ago
Certainly you can learn to distinguish languages even if you are raised monolingual, but that is a learned ability. You've still lost the innate ability that you were born with. Also, there's no reason you can't start your child young
912.
by jballanc 15y ago
Rather than the raw number, what amazed me was the variety of language families that he was proficient with. Just like you might be less impressed with someone who can program in Java, C and C++ than someone who can program in C, Lisp, and
913.
by jballanc 15y ago
I'm sorry, but you're wrong, and you're wrong. First, learning a language is far more involved than proper memorization techniques . Second, there is real evidence that being monolingual causes parts of your brain to atrophy. Seriously!
914.
by jballanc 15y ago
At what point does Kickstarter become a NGO stand-in for the more traditional Gov't grants that are continually being short-changed in budget battles and austerity measures? It will also be interesting to see how a move to "crowd-sourced" c
915.
by jballanc 15y ago
Your comment reminded me of when I used to work at Circuit City. One week, they decided to run a promotion: you would go to the Circuit City website, pick out and customize a computer. Then, you would print out a sheet with your order numbe
916.
by jballanc 15y ago
With 1-based indexing, length == last index. Does 0-based indexing have any advantage, beyond ability to do pointer arithmetic with indexes?
917.
by jballanc 15y ago
It bears mentioning: * 1903 - First manned, powered flight * 1927 - First New York to Paris flight * 1957 - First artificial satellite * 1962 - John Glen in space * 1969 - Man walks on Moon * 2012 - ... Now, I'm not trying to say anything a
918.
by jballanc 15y ago
There is a problem with online communities. Let's call it the problem of "false association". Humans have been forming communities for millennia. Inevitably, in these communities, there are bad apples. However, if there is a child molester
919.
by jballanc 15y ago
Pages from the very origin of the internet back in 1992 still work perfectly fine today Yeah, but none of my <marquee> tags work. Which is funny, because that was also a non-standard, browser-specific feature. If that element had
920.
by jballanc 15y ago
Code that you compiled on a machine 10 years ago is rather unlikely to still run on whatever machine you're using now. That's the way things go. Still, this is CSS's problem, not Compass's. If CSS had better abstraction abilities built in,
921.
by jballanc 15y ago
Um, that's kinda the point. I may not think calling someone "sexy" is sexist. I may think calling someone "Frank" is extremely offensive. It doesn't matter what I think! Concepts like "sexism" are based on social norms.
922.
by jballanc 15y ago
"Never attribute to malice..." Webkit Dev (speaking to Webkit Program Manager) -- Hey! I've figured out a way we can give divs rounded corners. Webkit PM -- That's cool, what do you call it? Webkit Dev -- Well, for the bottom right it's "bo
923.
by jballanc 15y ago
These tools are just the "compiler" in our analogy. You still need the "libc", which in this case would be something like Compass: http://compass-style.org/
924.
by jballanc 15y ago
Why did you have to, just now, create a dedicated account to say this if you honestly believed what you say?
925.
by jballanc 15y ago
How about this: Cut the unprofessional crap! The programming world is so used to breaking the norms, revolutionizing industries, and wearing T-shirts and sneakers to work that we forget, sometimes, that some aspects of "professionalism" act
926.
by jballanc 15y ago
But it isn't a mess. Finalized names are selected as part of the standardization process. That's exactly what TFA was saying: the standardization process works, but web developers are being exceptionally lazy. What you're asking for is th
927.
by jballanc 15y ago
If you honestly believe that a naming dispute could be resolved in 1 hour, then I'd wager you haven't been programming very long. As the famous saying goes -- "The two hardest things in programming are: naming, cache invalidation, and off-b
928.
by jballanc 15y ago
No, the real problem is that CSS (as it currently exists) has no means for abstraction. These approaches solve that. Take an analogy: in the not too distant past, some microprocessors had divide instructions, others did not, but you didn't
929.
by jballanc 15y ago
The real problem with CSS is that it hasn't evolved. Solutions like SASS/SCSS or LESS resolve this issue quite neatly. Instead of needing to know or look up the peculiar browser-specific declarations for things like border-radius, you simpl
930.
by jballanc 15y ago
If only it were this simple. The problem is that not only are these implementations not formalized, but also there is often dispute over how they should be standardized. Border radius, for example, is "-webkit-border-bottom-right-radius"

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