moss

8 ms·

31.
by moss 17y ago
Actually, strictly speaking, Copernicus's system has more epicycles that Ptolemy's (or at least no fewer, depending on how you work out the details of it). Copernicus's big win is getting rid of the equant, easily the most mathematically ug
32.
by moss 17y ago
I'd treat them the same way I do apps on other systems: I'd avoid ones that I was unfamiliar with or that came from an untrusted source, but if a general consensus developed that something was good, I'd go ahead and download it. Quality app
33.
by moss 17y ago
I meant to be excluding things like that when I said "about the outside world". But regardless of how you think of statements like that, there are all sorts of others: * The sun will come up tomorrow. * Nobody is plotting to have me killed.
34.
by moss 17y ago
Nothing we believe about the outside world is unassailably justified by logic alone. Even the surest statements (that the sun will come up tomorrow, for example) are based on a fallible interpretation of the evidence available at the time.
35.
by moss 17y ago
Regarding name-checking of Popper vs. Kuhn: Kuhn and Popper both make interesting observations about the development of science. However, Popper's observations are more directly applicable to the task of actually doing science. He gives a u
36.
by moss 17y ago
Happily, no. If you load up the address in street view, you'll see that she, like a few other people on that stretch of sidewalk, is just sunbathing. (And not naked, for that matter).
37.
by moss 17y ago
Some initial Googling finds one article putting malpractice claims at about half a percent of the total cost of health care in the U.S. ("The cost of defending U.S. malpractice claims is estimated at $6.5 billion in 2001, only 0.46 percent
38.
by moss 17y ago
But a big part of the system described there is about authenticating people as being registered voters, which is what extension said the prerequisite was for fair internet voting.
39.
by moss 18y ago
Ah, the misery of looking for burritos in Boston. I moved here from the Bay Area a couple of years ago. It's the best place I've ever lived, for all the reasons you mention--but no burritos. And yeah, then people add insult to injury by bri
40.
by moss 18y ago
I predict that this phenomenon will be connected with the fact that most people buy the same few bestsellers from Amazon and rent the same few big hits from Netflix, will be dubbed "The Fat Body", and will become the big meme of 2009.
41.
by moss 18y ago
Note that the article is from 2003.
42.
by moss 18y ago
Besides being angry, Zed is posting some very useful information. "The mutt of feed readers" isn't something I'm looking for right now, but for the handful of people who want it, it's a great thing to find.
43.
by moss 18y ago
It's good until you rewrite the function to use a different algorithm, but forget to update the comment. After that, it's a confusing contradiction that will slow down anyone who tries to read the code. If the code is genuinely hard to foll
44.
by moss 18y ago
Having used Dabble regularly for work, I'll note that there's still a lot of room for competitors there. It's had some serious performance problems in the past few months, to the point that I've seen people go out of their way to avoid open