john_b

31 ms·

241.
by john_b 13y ago
> "This is the way we've always done it" is not a convincing argument. You're fighting a straw man; that isn't the argument. 1-based indexing is elegant for many mathematical uses. Technical computing often imp
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by john_b 13y ago
> What we need, Karpinski realized after struggling to build his network simulation tool, is a single language that does everything well. That wasn't quoted in the article, so I'm assuming it was the author's words, not
243.
by john_b 13y ago
> "Like invasions of privacy, rape, murder, bank robberies and traffic accidents will inevitably occur, no matter how hard we and our communities establish defenses against them." The crucial difference between invasions of p
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by john_b 13y ago
This and the levelling off of their revenue will probably increase shareholder calls for share buybacks, a dividend increase, or both.
245.
by john_b 13y ago
There is more subtlety in this case. The NSA has interpreted the law in a specific way which justifies their activities. If the Supreme Court later determines that interpretation is invalid, they most definitely can be convicted of a crim
246.
by john_b 13y ago
I don't think the parent was trying to absolve the NSA of responsibility, merely pointing out that its mission incentivizes it to collect as much data as it can. It's ultimately the responsibility of Congress to ensure that the NS
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by john_b 13y ago
So having the private communications of innocent people compromised as collateral damage to an investigation of a few bad people is ok now? They have servers full of communication logs and only a handful of people have been charged with cri
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by john_b 13y ago
Different courts have reached different conclusions on this matter. It will probably end up in the Supreme Court at one point. Until then, various three letter agencies will treat it as if it is legal and act as if they are immune from cons
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by john_b 13y ago
You're assuming the author wants to use Julia to build complex systems. Much of scientific computing has no need to do so, but is more concerned with discovering new knowledge and testing new ideas. Once the knowledge is gained, produc
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by john_b 13y ago
> "The part where Julia kicks in now is the point that Matlab has a lot of market ground, especially with engineers who are not extraordinarily passionate about programing. For some people the burden of learning another syntax is j
251.
by john_b 13y ago
The language may have been grating, but as someone who also comes from more of a scientific computing background, I read this as "I want a language to be a tool that I can use to solve scientific and engineering problems with minimal c
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by john_b 13y ago
Maybe he just wants it. Or maybe he finds Yale to be a good environment for learning. It might not be about need .
253.
by john_b 13y ago
There are libertarians who are very concerned with exactly these issues: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_libertarianism
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by john_b 13y ago
libertarians (little "l") in general are pretty good about this due to their inherent dislike of being labeled, caricatured, and stereotyped. Having many libertarian subtypes helps too. The downside is that, as others have pointed
255.
by john_b 13y ago
> "Really the problem is that there just aren't enough jobs for college grads, and the jobs that are available, employers naively put bars of experience, completely ignoring a mass of very competent workers." If your pre
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by john_b 13y ago
The major providers like to pretend that they're in a wonderful competitive market where, if only they were allowed to discriminate on traffic more, there would be more competition, prices would be lowered, and investment in infrastruc
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by john_b 13y ago
I'm not saying it's not prudent or useful, just that the NSA is framing their own malicious, self-interested actions as an innocent defensive program. Also, spying on viruses is very different than spying on people.
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by john_b 13y ago
> The NSA calls the effort an "active defence" Newspeak is real. Even if the NSA is telling the truth about this only being deployed against foreign targets, the scale of this effort is impressive.
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by john_b 13y ago
> If Dropbox accidentally destroyed just one person’s file, he said, it could erode the trust of all its users. “This is like the same sort of genre of problem as the code that you use to fly an airplane. Even if it’s a little bug, it’s
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by john_b 13y ago
The taxi union is actually used to having a monopoly on travel to the airport[1][2]. So they actually have been able to claim that exclusive right, as absurd as it seems, for a long time. [1] http://www.connexionfrance.com/p
261.
by john_b 13y ago
An airport is public infrastructure largely paid for by tax money collected from the citizenry. A McDs is a private business owned and operated privately. Even if the analogy were valid, if McDs employees on strike committed violence agains
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by john_b 13y ago
And limo drivers, public transport employees in any capacity, friends who give other friends rides... When you are the beneficiary of what would otherwise be called a protection racket if it weren't state sponsored, it's easy to b
263.
by john_b 13y ago
This is like McDonald's workers going on strike and attacking a Wendy's employee for going into work. You're saying that you're ok with someone being subjected to violence because he just did his job as he does every day
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by john_b 13y ago
Perhaps it doesn't happen in small towns, but French drivers attacking other French drivers doesn't strike me as a healthy sense of community.
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by john_b 13y ago
In general market regulations start out with good intentions, but the protection they afford specific groups eventually tends to seen as a sacred right by those groups. Especially after the first generation--those who could still remember a
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by john_b 13y ago
It seems like if anything resembling a normal, competitive market experienced the situation of "too many cabs" it would self correct quickly as the rates for individual drivers would plummet. Sitting in a line of 200 cabs for one
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by john_b 13y ago
This is true. I doubt that most Congressmen are able to see this obvious consequence in advance, but when the corporate lobbying picks up as a result they'll start to care.
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by john_b 13y ago
The first step to getting political attention (and therefore political respect) is to show that you are not a motley collection of individuals, but a large group capable of organizing. After that, you can meaningfully debate the merits of d
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by john_b 13y ago
Frankly, U.S. Congressmen don't care what foreigners think about U.S. surveillance policy. Foreigners aren't going to vote them out of office. I think the EFF, etc. are wise to focus their limited resources in ways that maximize t
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by john_b 13y ago
The whole point of Huxley's view was that all these hedonistic tendencies you describe can be used to control people, to box them into tiny little worlds of their own making and keep them safely there, no threat to the ruling powers. I

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