mtts

37 ms·

391.
by mtts 16y ago
He's still an employee, but he's no longer the CEO.
392.
by mtts 16y ago
"And socially how effective is charity relative to giving it to the market? I'm not sure, but it's open to debate." Generally speaking this is true, but if you look into the kind of charity work Bill Gates does, you'll find a lot of it is i
393.
by mtts 16y ago
It depends. Some Flemish dialects are nearly unintelligible for a speaker of standard Nothern Dutch, but standard Flemish and standard Nothern Dutch are fairly similar. Which isn't surprising because standard Nothern Dutch was heavily influ
394.
by mtts 16y ago
Microwave foil is a sturdier version of cling foil. Which is plastic, so perfectly safe to put in the microwave.
395.
by mtts 16y ago
-1 redundant. These are heros of mine as well. The major influence Heston Blumenthal has had in my (sparsely equipped kitchen) is this: fennel should be microwaved. Wrap the stuff in microwave foil and zap it five times for one minute (leav
396.
by mtts 16y ago
I'm under the impression that the amount of writing about other tech writers on Daring Fireball has increased during the last few months at the expense of writing about, well, tech. Which makes the site less pleasant to read for me. And in
397.
by mtts 16y ago
MSG is an essential nutrient. Glutamate (the G in MSG) is a component of protein rich foods, which we absolutely need to survive. That's why we have taste buds for it.
398.
by mtts 17y ago
Some more modern fiction seems to be less about life and people and more about language and writing. Some works by David Foster Wallace come to mind. In that case, the fiction works more like puzzles or brain teasers. Which we (as a cultu
399.
by mtts 17y ago
But fiction is not about "real history, geography and so forth", nor about "natural history" nor about "the military and military hardware etc". It's about human nature in general. Which is the reason why Jane Austen is still worth reading
400.
by mtts 17y ago
I understand that you (part of a small company, I presume) have a need to be found, but the author is in fact right when he says that blogging and tweeting by companies is really just advertising, nothing more and nothing less. Most people
401.
by mtts 17y ago
> > It allows free interpretation of scripture > Check > > demands difficult personal decisions > Not really. Haven't given up anything because of a difficult decision vim or emacs? KDE or Gnome? decisions, decisions
402.
by mtts 17y ago
If I read it correctly, you can s/DOS/Unix/ and it would still stand, so: no (DOS|Unix) "is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upo
403.
by mtts 17y ago
I was in college when it hit over here. Couldn't make head nor tails of it. It seemed like crap to me. Then again, I used to watch TMNT after school and to this day will maintain that it was actually quite funny, even though someone older t
404.
by mtts 17y ago
Yeah, but note I said it was a myth dreamed up in the romantic era, which would be around 1800 or so. People have been making art since way, way before that, and some of it is really quite good, despite the creators thinking of themselves p
405.
by mtts 17y ago
The sentiment is understandable. The myth of the starving artist suffering for his art was already (mostly) nonsense when it was dreamed up in the romantic era and it's high time, I think, that after two hundred years we start thinking abo
406.
by mtts 17y ago
It's "already obvious" because women do, in fact, go for attractive men (witness the swooning your wife or girlfriend does whenever there's a picture of George Clooney, Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp around). They find them sexually attractive, j
407.
by mtts 17y ago
I'm Dutch ;-) The government in the Netherlands fell because it was a terribly mismatched coalition to begin with and the issue of military intervention in Afghanistan was the last in a series of internal conflicts that made it unworkable.
408.
by mtts 17y ago
While I agree with you, I can also see where the accusations come from. The system works fine for day to day politics, but it breaks down horribly when decisive action needs to be taken. It's up to debate, of course, but if you think health
409.
by mtts 17y ago
Luckily, with the exception of some Swiss cantons that put issues to a plebiscite once in a while, democracy usually is governance as usual with the chance for the public to intervene once in a while when things get really out of hand.
410.
by mtts 17y ago
You're forgetting that if the Euro slides as a result of Greek mismanagement, oil, which is paid in dollars, becomes more expensive, resulting in a lowering of living standards throughout the European union.
411.
by mtts 17y ago
I do hope there was a tongue somewhere in your cheek when you wrote that.
412.
by mtts 17y ago
If anyone feels a populist fury that requires retribution against Wall Street then the course is clear: don't bail Greece out As a non-Greek European, however, I'd rather Greece was in fact bailed out because if Greece collapses, my own
413.
by mtts 17y ago
Since I snapped at your previous comment, it's only fair I try to respond to this rather more thoughtful one. I agree with your assessment that the story is about "about ambition, about art, about being misunderstood, and about greatness".
414.
by mtts 17y ago
My response was less than civil, yes. Your bringing Steve Jobs' "Always stay hungry" into it struck me as exceptionally shallow and myopic and since I happen to be a big fan of Kafka's work, more bile went into my response than would have b
415.
by mtts 17y ago
That would be stretching it, I think. If you read the context of the sentence "because I couldn't find the food I liked" you'll find it's not about desperation but about fame. The hunger artist says he has finally learned that he should not
416.
by mtts 17y ago
I'm well aware of the things you describe :-) And I was specifically talking about the Western European nobility between, say, 1000 - 1300 AD, a period when there were no outsiders invading Western Europe and it was the nobility itself that
417.
by mtts 17y ago
I would wager that Kafka has never been used for that because his work tends to concern itself with failure rather than with success. But I agree with you. More business types should read his work, if only to develop a more realistic outloo
418.
by mtts 17y ago
Read the story again, but this time without your myopic web startup goggles on. Because, really, those seem to have caused you to truly spectacularly misread what is essentially a story about loneliness as yet another piece of entrepeneuria
419.
by mtts 17y ago
Except that in the case of the middle ages, if there weren't any bloodthirsty "nobles" to begin with, "protection" wouldn't be necessary in the first place, so to me at seems at least in part not just the same structure as a protection rack
420.
by mtts 17y ago
"organized crime" pretty accurately describes other forms of government as well. Feudalism in medieval Europe, for example, was basically an extortion and protection racket.

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