jforman

20 ms·

151.
by jforman 14y ago
By continuing giving MIT access after the breach of contract/license agreement, does JSTOR still have a legal claim of Wire fraud? You're thinking in terms of a civil suit, where an aggrieved party sues to restore their property/rights/et
152.
by jforman 14y ago
The biggest problem with predatory lending is the salesmanship and opacity of terms that make the financial impact unclear to the person buying the loan. In this case we're talking about extremely savvy investors who were given an offer tha
153.
by jforman 14y ago
The strength of the correlation or its time-scale have no bearing on whether the correlation should be considered evidence of causation. The fatal flaw of a correlation is that it can be specious — it can appear to explain reality, but rea
154.
by jforman 14y ago
Plasmids are still commonly sent in the mail dried on paper. At least they were when I dropped out of my Ph.D. program a few years ago.
155.
by jforman 14y ago
The UX is so constrained that you had no choice other than to straight up copy: a) a control to hide the table of contents with a semi-transparent strip hover; b) a table of contents with a near-identical layout; c) a "next page" bumper wit
156.
by jforman 14y ago
This reading app has wonderful UX — my feedback is somewhat biased, admittedly, because it's ripped straight off from us (Inkling): http://tinyurl.com/inkling-frommers-france (yes, you have to create an account to view content, but it onl
157.
by jforman 14y ago
Why would the inability to write multi-threaded programs that are worth a damn be a troll talking point? It meaningfully lowers the appropriateness of using python for server code.
158.
by jforman 14y ago
I don't think your characterization is fair. Read this: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/highschools/Documents/met-fra... It's a reasonably enlightened approach to outcomes measurement that doesn't rely solely on high-stakes testing. They
159.
by jforman 14y ago
The Gates Foundation does a huge amount of research into education, making him a much better representative of the state of the art than people who have taken specific approaches to reform.
160.
by jforman 14y ago
a) No, in fact, I benefitted from the semester. I learned interesting things about, for example, the role of gift giving in society and what it means to be a social anthropologist. I don't regret the semester, but I do think I would have
161.
by jforman 14y ago
I suppose I should clarify: people generally interpret "do what interests you" as "study what you think you will enjoy studying" when they should really be asking themselves what they will enjoy doing as a career. Social anthropology was in
162.
by jforman 14y ago
"Do what interests you" is very common and very bad advice. I studied social anthropology for a semester because it "interested" me — but only in theory, not in practice. The computer science degree I eventually received has yielded a fa
163.
by jforman 15y ago
Somewhere, Richard Stallman is weeping.
164.
by jforman 15y ago
I was skeptical about the same argument. Both indexing and virus scanning are non-blocking processes that shouldn't impact page load time. And I'm not sure what he means when he says "for an end user on the web they could mean a few secon
165.
by jforman 15y ago
Yes, it's code for a source who is "on background" or of similar attribution status. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_sourcing under "Speaking terms."
166.
by jforman 15y ago
This is an incredibly depressing post. The discussion over educational reform has devolved into one side begging for teachers to stop being treated like cattle and the other saying, essentially, "if you cared about the kids, you'd be happy
167.
by jforman 15y ago
The conclusion ended up the same, but in the future you should consider normalizing against the size of the population you're drawing from. In this case, rather than "business undergrad CEOs vs. eng undergrad CEOs" you should have "business
168.
by jforman 15y ago
Zero-gravity, self-assembling, space-debris-katamari-satellite, then? I've got this.
169.
by jforman 15y ago
If that's the plan, I don't think you've reduced complexity by plotting a zero-gravity rendezvous with a cheeseburger
170.
by jforman 15y ago
"This satellite would self deploy/build itself at least partially to reduce weight..." ...I'm pretty sure you're not going to save much mass by soaking in a year of sunlight...
171.
by jforman 15y ago
Palantir is definitely True Neutral
172.
by jforman 15y ago
- Add a display that shows the current positions of both control sticks. Add an alarm when the two sticks are not within a certain margin of the each other, if both are engaged. Such as if one is full forward & the other is full back.
173.
by jforman 15y ago
Ironically enough, the refrigerator-ordering-ingredients thing was one of the talking points of Microsoft Home [1] when I worked there eight years ago... [1] http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/03/microsofts-home-of-the-fu...
174.
by jforman 15y ago
In many states, explicitly agreeing on consideration in the case of rescindment isn't required for a claim. In contract law, there's a doctrine called "promissory estoppel" (see http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/promissory_estoppel ) that bas
175.
by jforman 15y ago
The mechanisms of traditional genetics, which include (at a simplified level) random variation at the base-pair level, are extremely well understood. The impact of this potential new mechanism of inheritance is unknown, but it will only add
176.
by jforman 15y ago
I can't tell if you're joking or not, but just to be clear: traditional genetics' utility for explaining natural variation among individuals represents an enormous increase in scientific understanding, and is supported by tens of thousands
177.
by jforman 15y ago
Recent studies show there may actually be some limited transmission of epigenetic information: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/inheritan... Our understanding is still very limited, though. And yes, it is kind of ironic
178.
by jforman 15y ago
One of the common outcomes I've heard called for is a "separation of corporation and state," in response to what people feel is an outsized voice in the democratic process for corporations at the expense of individual citizens. The backlas
179.
by jforman 15y ago
"The article simply focused on osmosis to explain the process of dehydration at a cellular level (blood). In that, I'd say it was rather accurate." Cellular osmosis and dehydration have almost nothing to do with one another. The article is
180.
by jforman 15y ago
Yes, I read the article. "Do you suggest sea water is a remedy for dehydration. Or are you suggesting osmosis doesn't occur across cell membranes. Or maybe you're disputing the process of osmosis altogether and the transfer between varying

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