mquander

51 ms·

451.
by mquander 15y ago
If you're turned off by that, then you're probably not going to like his other books. Snow Crash, in particular, is even further along the spectrum of self-indulgence and geek wish-fulfillment (although I personally like it for what it is.
452.
by mquander 15y ago
I'll get on board; I need to relearn this. Email in profile.
453.
by mquander 15y ago
You can bet that I downvoted the majority of it. (Although I upvoted your comment below about American exceptionalism regarding taxing the assets of expatriates, since afaik it's accurate and it's informative.)
454.
by mquander 15y ago
I downvoted you because, although I am sort of interested in potential government support for entrepreneurs, I have zero interest in reading an argument about whether countries have a right to tax their citizens. This is HN, not prisonplan
455.
by mquander 15y ago
The type system should make this standard. You should never be able to type a variable with a concrete type; only abstract interfaces. This way, extensibility is mandatory rather than a "best practice". I worry. Java has checked exceptio
456.
by mquander 15y ago
I agree with you. But I also think that it's important to have total confidence that the underlying fundamentals are there, that they are utterly deterministic, and that you can investigate them at your leisure. I've encountered programmer
457.
Ask HN: Can we get an option to "undead" comments?
3 points by mquander 15y ago|1 comments
458.
by mquander 15y ago
I wish we would leave the angry off-topic meta rants for the (frequent) meta threads. I don't think that the occasion of a single downvote requires a big immediate derail. I would personally find that to be a small improvement to what qua
459.
by mquander 15y ago
Perhaps the "next-gen e-learning platform" should load in less than twenty seconds and present a simple, non-interactive video and slideshow in such a way that I can use more than a sixth of my browser window looking at it, and without auto
460.
by mquander 15y ago
This problem is easy to solve. Downvote bad comments and bring in active moderators whose job is to message users that show a pattern of writing bad comments and help them do better. If the user doesn't improve over time, ban. There must
461.
by mquander 15y ago
They're objective in that people agree on them. All programmers would say that a more efficient or shorter or more reusable piece of code is better, notwithstanding other tradeoffs that it makes. My use of "objective" is to distinguish fro
462.
by mquander 15y ago
It's not that hard. There are lots of objective criteria you can apply to show that one piece of code is better than an alternative: it's more efficient, it's more extensible, it's more reusable, it's less lines of code, it's less prone to
463.
by mquander 15y ago
This is a hilarious remark: We are not like basketball players or musicians or chess masters where only the extremely gifted (who also work hard) can rise to the top of their craft. With few exceptions, we all can. I have no idea why, in
464.
by mquander 15y ago
No, it doesn't. Relevant conclusions about markets in a theoretical sense all depend on (from the link) "current prices...[reflecting]...information available in past prices," which isn't even approximately true in the real world; current
465.
by mquander 15y ago
I am a newbie when it comes to mobile things, so I was surprised when I saw that some streaming websites "weren't available on mobile" when I tried to access them on my tablet. I could understand if they wanted to sell me some premium acco
466.
by mquander 15y ago
It's entirely reasonable to think that the average consumer would be confused at the titles. Serious question: Is "reasonable" being used as some legal term of art here? Because I think it's a totally ridiculous idea that the average co
467.
by mquander 15y ago
I think the only reason there's a bunch of discussion that spreads across stories is because there are frequently duplicates that sit on the front page for ages. If they were quickly flagged off the front page, I doubt they would attract a
468.
by mquander 15y ago
Option not listed: I just flag anything that appears on the front page if another, better post about the same thing is also on the front page. If lots of people did this, then we would quickly wind up with exactly one post about a topic o
469.
by mquander 15y ago
I don't believe you're serious. Not only is that untrue (practically everyone is insecure in some way) but it's also a non sequitur; it's not the +1ers that suffer when their clicks don't count, it's their friends, who would otherwise bene
470.
by mquander 15y ago
Wow, I couldn't disagree more. "Intellectual Ventures on TAL" (the other submission) describes exactly what the link is. "When Patents Attack" communicates only that this is a link about patents.
471.
by mquander 15y ago
Does it really come as a shock that people prefer to protest the powers that are oppressing them and their friends, rather than the powers that are oppressing someone else on the other side of the planet?
472.
by mquander 15y ago
Oh, OK. I guess I agree with you then.
473.
by mquander 15y ago
Well, if it were that easy to come up with good assignments year-after-year that did a great job of aiding and testing the students' progress but weren't amenable to cheating, then we wouldn't have this problem.
474.
by mquander 15y ago
I hope it goes without saying that if a prospective student wants to learn how to "meet deadlines and get results", he should go get a job, not go to college. Going to college and cheating is both a destructive (it takes away time, resourc
475.
by mquander 15y ago
I choose to employ downvoting against people making absurd meta threads about downvotes.
476.
by mquander 15y ago
I get on the plane and sit next to a guy who avoids eye contact, does not respond to Hi and then starts praying, seemingly detached from the reality. Shall I just ignore this and refuse to be terrorized? Yeah, typically when I sit down on
477.
by mquander 15y ago
Jumping on this iPad bandwagon. My 90-year-old grandpa hasn't ever used a computer; he used an old Microsoft WebTV since about 1998 so that he could send and receive email and pictures, and the only other things he knew how to do with it w
478.
by mquander 15y ago
It's not what customers want! Customers don't have a clue. They trust the provider to look out for their interests, since they are not experts. Customers don't understand that receiving a password instead of a reset link means that someo
479.
by mquander 15y ago
I could understand this post if Zuckerberg had like a 2200 rating, or if he did an SRM last month at 4 in the morning, but what on Earth are we supposed to take away from this?
480.
by mquander 15y ago
That makes sense, since the installer has compressed its contents.

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