prospero

39 ms·

361.
by prospero 18y ago
I looked up US defense spending since WWII, adjusted for inflation: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0904490.html One the one hand, you're right in that the spending never really dips below $250 billion, except from 1945-1950. On the other
362.
by prospero 18y ago
I'd argue that peacetime appropriations and a true arms race are separated by an order of magnitude. And now that Russia's gone and China's at least a decade out, a straightforward war's the only game in town.
363.
by prospero 18y ago
This is almost certainly true, but the transformation is going to take more than a few years. It's probably not a great idea to start a company today that burns money with current bandwidth costs, but would hypothetically thrive in a world
364.
by prospero 18y ago
I think it was meant to show that if you look beneath the inherited skill, you'll find a lifetime of hard work, just like with anyone else. Still, that's not what I'd call quality writing. I'm surprised it made it past the editor.
365.
by prospero 18y ago
I would argue that in preindustrial times the rich and the poor were on different sides of a subsistence level income. This was a huge distinction until recently, but in the present day Warren Buffet doesn't have a harem, nor does he have
366.
by prospero 18y ago
Money is a proxy for other evolutionary factors. Is there are a good reason to disagree with this? Yes, there is: wealth doesn't imply a greater number of offspring. Survival is a relatively low economic hurdle, as is raising and nurturi
367.
by prospero 18y ago
Money hasn't existed long enough for it to have any hand in human evolution. Social and economic Darwinism don't describe the real world, they describe how some people feel the real world should operate. Furthermore, the fact that inherited
368.
by prospero 18y ago
Intelligence is a capacity, not a trait. You don't get opportunities in life simply because you're smart, you get them because you've built upon your intelligence, applied it, and in some way proven yourself. Inherited wealth exists irres
369.
by prospero 18y ago
pets.com actually sold things
370.
by prospero 18y ago
Facebook: it'll be profitable when it's profitable.
371.
by prospero 18y ago
You'll notice that they didn't claim to have created some objective measure of beauty, they just mined information given to them by several hundred different people. There's obviously going to be some sort of sociological bias there. I've
372.
by prospero 18y ago
Facebook has funding from the venture capital arm of the CIA. I'm not aware of any (public) connection to the NSA.
373.
by prospero 18y ago
Non-conformity is only relative to the social and intellectual norms in your life. A sci-fi convention is essentially a huge collection of socially tone-deaf individuals, so of course they're going to be tolerant; there's no coherent metri
374.
by prospero 18y ago
In my mind the foosball tables and video games are a way of demonstrating that a company cares more about your actual productivity than whether you appear to be busy all hours of the day. The times when I'm really productive are more on th
375.
by prospero 18y ago
This most noticeable change will be the navigation bar being moved to the left-hand side of the page.
376.
by prospero 18y ago
This is a well-thought out response to my snarky one-line comment. That being said, for the casual users of social networks (who are the vast majority), would any of these things convince them to raise stakes and move over to your walled g
377.
by prospero 18y ago
You can start by explaining how this combination of features would be compelling enough to get users from any of these services to migrate to yours.
378.
by prospero 18y ago
Same exact position as Friday, minus the prospect of $700 billion. That's not a trivial difference.
379.
by prospero 18y ago
This seems like a riff on MTV Cribs, albeit not a very good one. It's the nature of the show to focus on the inconsequential toys and perks while ignoring the hard work that got them there. It's also de rigeur to try to seem cool by using
380.
by prospero 18y ago
I ran a few of his posts through a Markov chain filter. It's really not that far off from the original: In the Zero Sum Games, watching the torch pass from startup to cloudkeeper is an aggregation layer of microblogging service output
381.
by prospero 18y ago
I want to buy this man a copy of Strunk & White. Does he think the way he writes is a style, or does he just not care?
382.
by prospero 18y ago
Um, C?
383.
by prospero 18y ago
Out of all the submissions on the site, this is my favorite.
384.
by prospero 18y ago
C# is a Java-like language that uses the .NET runtime. Unlike Java, it has first-class functions. A dog is a four-legged animal that goes woof. A cow is like a dog, but it's larger, and goes moooooo.
385.
by prospero 18y ago
I don't buy that concision is power. This borders on a tautology, but expressiveness is power. Concision is part of that (a big part, even), but it's not everything. My only problem with Lisp is that it's exactly the sum of its parts - no
386.
by prospero 18y ago
Clarity and unambiguity aren't necessarily the same things. The human brain can handle huge amounts of ambiguity, and our spoken languages reflect this. A programming language is meant to be a bridge between our ambiguous thoughts and t
387.
by prospero 18y ago
Buy me a Macbook Air and enough alcohol, and I'm your man.
388.
by prospero 18y ago
"I see you've noticed my laptop. Most women do. They can't look away from its sleek contours and the power of its dual cores. If you want to touch it, I'll understand. Now, can I buy you a drink?"
389.
by prospero 18y ago
I agree, Half Life 2 is amazing. Like I said, Valve is a notable exception.
390.
by prospero 18y ago
I think it's unreasonable to expect that even a masterpiece (which Bioshock is not) would appeal to everyone. Any creative work's impact is measured by its appeal to its core audience, who are often people who live and breath the medium or

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