jcl

78 ms·

901.
by jcl 17y ago
This result was mentioned previously on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=783912 Apparently, not only are some new drugs failing to pass a test showing that they are more effective than placebos, but old drugs that previously passed
902.
by jcl 17y ago
Psychologically, there is a big, big difference between offering cash and offering almost anything else. In "Predictably Irrational", Dan Ariely ran an experiment where people were asked to perform a certain task, where each person was offe
903.
by jcl 17y ago
From the minutes of a GIMP developer conference meeting not too long ago: The user scenarios would be written down in advance. These scenarios should not be changed afterwards because it would lead to too much discussion. The goal is to cu
904.
by jcl 17y ago
From the blog post linked in the article: The news also revealed an interesting but previously rather anonymous group of people: multi-window zealots despising the idea of a single-window mode in their beloved multi-window application. I s
905.
by jcl 17y ago
I take it you don't like this new development? It is perhaps the most requested GIMP feature. Are you saying startups shouldn't listen to user feedback?
906.
by jcl 17y ago
That's a clever idea for another reason, too: Photoshop will not allow certain operations on pictures of money, highlighting a disadvantage of closed-source software. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Bank_Counterfeit_Deterr...
907.
by jcl 17y ago
On the other hand, I think the HN karma system has worked well to maintain focus in the site; lame attempts at humor get smacked hard, as do "+1" posts, coarse language, ad hominem arguments, etc. If the post rating were hidden, you wouldn
908.
by jcl 17y ago
Heh... I like the article introduction: Most breakthrough innovations make their greatest contributions when they become products people can buy. Here, Popular Mechanics awards the top 10 most brilliant gadgets, tools and toys that you can
909.
by jcl 17y ago
They also want online music stores to cough up fees for 30-second song previews. Surely such previews fall under "fair use"? They are excerpts of a larger work, unusable except to give an idea of how the whole piece sounds. And they don
910.
by jcl 17y ago
This is one of those SIGGRAPH papers that are like magic tricks -- unbelievable until you find out how they're done and what their limitations are. There are existing projects that pair an image composition function with a tagged image data
911.
by jcl 17y ago
Actually, I guess there is Typing of the Dead... Sadly, it's discontinued, and a used PC version now sells for more than the original price. There's a sequel, but it's unlikely to see a port to English. Kids are doomed to a zombie-free
912.
by jcl 17y ago
Someone is trying to create them: http://www.plotpatents.com/ Related Slashdot article: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/04/0239221
913.
by jcl 17y ago
We like to think we can reason about reason, but to some extent we are simply regurgitating prior knowledge, or trying some random combination of old concepts and getting lucky. If this were not the case, we wouldn't have had to wait until
914.
by jcl 17y ago
I don't buy the argument. You'd need to show not only that fake mopping-a-dirty-floor is somehow more imprinting than fake shooting-the-enemy, but also that mopping a dirty floor is a detrimental activity. Additionally, the game only glori
915.
by jcl 17y ago
It's interesting that they claim that piracy was largely responsible for an increase in sales... I wonder if this is more because people are using piracy to sample the games before they buy or because the pirating users are increasing the
916.
by jcl 17y ago
But who is to say what those 1.3M results will mean for future readers? The article's point is that "future history" may choose to interpret the Manhattan Project as some kind of myth. There's stuff in antiquity that is mentioned a lot, ye
917.
by jcl 17y ago
There are devices that do not ship with Android but can run it, like the OpenMoko Freerunner and numerous netbooks. So even if you assume that the license somehow trumps copyright, he could easily have been giving away the apps to people w
918.
by jcl 17y ago
For exactly the same reason as "dumping": It results in lower consumer prices in the short term, with less competition (and higher prices) in the long term. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_%28pricing_policy%29
919.
by jcl 17y ago
Any user, even with a carrier-locked phone, can download a file to his computer and use free utilities to install that on his phone. It's my understanding that the process is even easier than this. If you alter one option in the phone's
920.
by jcl 17y ago
Here's a fun article from Calvin Trillin about an upset in the 2008 barbecue rankings that placed the best to the east of Austin: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/24/081124fa_fact_...
921.
by jcl 17y ago
I'd guess that these items are on the list not because they are true or false, but simply because they are repeated a lot within the industry.
922.
by jcl 17y ago
The author titled his post "50 things I never need to hear at another conference". Presumably he feels he has heard this wisdom often enough to have internalized it.
923.
by jcl 17y ago
I wouldn't be too concerned... The number of people using Flashblock is vanishingly small, and their eyeballs are worth less for many products. Also, Flash cookies are more advertiser-friendly than browser cookies.
924.
by jcl 17y ago
I'm looking forward to the follow-up article about the Manhattan project, featuring "Robert Oppenheimer, the commie bombmaker".
925.
by jcl 17y ago
Yes, but it's also correct to say that he wrote a compiler. He is taking the assembly code you type in and translating it to machine code, then he's translating the machine code to JavaScript source, then executing that source directly. Tra
926.
by jcl 17y ago
These are the same guys who sold the hip university research project "ESP Game" to Google. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP_game
927.
by jcl 17y ago
I would guess that it's just good programming practice to feed a function the context in which it would normally be called -- which for the Math.max function is the Math namespace object. It probably makes no difference what context the Mat
928.
by jcl 17y ago
You can't link words. But any URLs will automatically be linked to themselves.
929.
by jcl 17y ago
Hmm? ;)
930.
by jcl 17y ago
Or perhaps display a page from the Kama Sutra? That ought to keep it out of the App Store. :)

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