rvkennedy

24 ms·

61.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
It's a pity that the then Micro-soft did not have copy protection technology - if they had, they might never have established such a strong foothold in the market, and the history of computing would have been quite different.
62.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
The clue is in the name: the person who owns the "copyright" is the one who has the right to copy it. This has been the case since the Licensing of the Press Act of 1662, so we shouldn't be shocked by it. You can't transfer ownership of the
63.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
How about: no headphones, I can talk to you. 1 headphone, take it off: I require your full attention. 2 headphones, you're fired.
64.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
And yet, they're both selling dubious solutions to problems they've invented. What are the odds?
65.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
I think it's called a ticket because having the ticket is what lets you travel. Stealing tickets is illegal because if you have the ticket, you can travel. If you have to be the person who bought the ticket in order to travel, you don't nee
66.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
The two images represent the same doorway- one taken in 2007, the other in World War II, when Amsterdam was under German occupation.
67.
Shadows of the Past(flickr.com)
1 points by rvkennedy 14y ago|1 comments
68.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
Whoa there: Church and State!
69.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
I'd feel happier going along with this is the commercial relationship between hackdesign.org and the makers of the Objectified documentary was upfront and clear before sign-up for a putatively free course. There's nothing wrong with making
70.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
At the risk of engaging in humour on HN, when my computer starts to tell me "It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again", I will worry.
71.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
- as are c and c++. What gives?
72.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
You know why this is? Because there is no correct pronunciation in English for two consecutive consonants. Similarly, SQL is not pronounced "sequel", because it contains no vowels. TeX is not pronounced "teck" because there no letter chi in
73.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
I think "visiting a single page" means precisely one-click. Because once click takes you to the page. Any further action, even while you're on that same page, is an additional requirement, which is disallowed.
74.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
I think you underestimate the influence of Hayek, Friedman et al, whose moralistic market fetish has become the dominant ideology of Washington, London et al. For a more evidence-based approach, I'll go with Keynes' General Theory, which wo
75.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
While this is valuable information, it is all anecdotal: you're assuming that the incidents you experienced were due to electronic devices, but the FAA has never tested this, so it's a single datapoint where we don't even know how many (if
76.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
Spectroscopy can certainly help - but for me would bring to mind the various times putative signs of extraterrestrial life have been found - the Martian meteorites of 1996, or the current Mars rover "organic materials" findings - leading on
77.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
This is about a month old, and completely passed me by, though the oldest image is actually from 2004. Growing up, this is something I was told we would never, never see - planets are simply too small, too dim, and too far away. We were tol
78.
Exoplanets in Pictures(slate.com)
51 points by rvkennedy 14y ago|7 comments
79.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
There's no need to trust a comment, it simply tells you what the author was thinking, as best as s/he could express it. It's less imprecise than no comment at all. Suppose you have a very simple function that does something clear - reading
80.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
Why comments are important: they represent intention . A reasonable complex method can have a wide variety of inputs which the author can't be expected to have tested across the entire range of values. For example, if you have six boolean
81.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
" There is now (thanks to CERN's presence :-) a working group on reflection in C++. " A few years ago I built an entire framework for automatic reflection in C++ - it worked by querying the export table of the executable or library. Eventua
82.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
The main thing to be learned from this post is that the “Super 7’s Oz Lotto” is clearly a badly run lottery. If the expected return for a ticket is greater than the price, this lottery is losing money for the organizers. Perhaps this expl
83.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
I got an 11-inch Asus UX21E to replace my heavy, battery-hog 17-inch HP monster. I chose it for two reasons: 1. It's really, really light, I can carry it in one hand or in my Muji manbag. And it's a PC. 2. It's an i5, so while it's fast eno
84.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
Technology is the chief driver of social mores. In Franklin's time, too much sex would likely expose you to health hazards such as syphilis, or unwanted babies. Today, we have medicine and contraception that should minimize these risks. But
85.
Xkcd: All 786 known planets to scale(xkcd.com)
7 points by rvkennedy 14y ago|0 comments
86.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
It's about computation improving the rate of computational progress But computation doesn't improve the rate of computational progress. That's achieved by improvements in manufacturing. Computation does help a little , giving us better t
87.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
These are clearly supposed to be funny. People in diving suits fishing for birds? The school where books are ground up and electrified into pupils' heads? A serious attempt to predict the future is a rare thing indeed, even on the part of
88.
Google's Sparrow acquisition - a competitor's perspective(blog.comms.io)
4 points by rvkennedy 14y ago|1 comments
89.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
Comms (www.comms.io) is my project, it's a lightweight IMAP client for which Windows is the initial platform. The alpha is a few weeks off.
90.
by rvkennedy 14y ago
I guess I'd say It's valid if people weren't already aware of it. I wasn't aware of it, and I'm actually building it.

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