sethg

79 ms·

811.
by sethg 17y ago
IIRC the nationwide average for public schools is about $9K/student, and that includes areas where the cost of living is a lot lower than it is in NYC. So if they can actually get six-figure-salary teachers and still keep costs down to $10K
812.
by sethg 17y ago
I wonder if the "secure distributed persistent communication" protocol developed by the E folks could be used to implement a virtual world running on a network of clients. I.e., one central server would send a client some model of a room,
813.
by sethg 17y ago
I used to use blosxom for my blog, and the one thing that drove me away was comment handling. The comment plugin that was available (at the time) stored all comments concatenated together into one file, which meant that if you wanted to ta
814.
by sethg 17y ago
It is well-established in the law that First Amendment protections do not apply to obscene material--where "obscene" is not just "pornographic" but "sexually explicit in a really really gross way with no redeeming social value". There's a
815.
by sethg 17y ago
I don't see how "market value" is any more nebulous a concept than the "intrinsic value" people are mentioning elsewhere in this thread. Why is gold worth (google google...) $950 an ounce? Because there are lots of people who are willing
816.
by sethg 17y ago
I don't see any conundrum. I don't know what the actual IRS rules are, but common sense tells me that if I am paid with some commodity (dollar bills, silver coins, buckets of crude), then my income for tax purposes is the market value of
817.
by sethg 17y ago
...which is great, until you want to use one paradigm and you also want to take advantage of a certain library, and you discover that the library uses a completely different paradigm. Either you put up with an impedence mismatch between yo
818.
by sethg 17y ago
Robert Reed wrote a lovely SF novella, "Do I Know You?" (published in 1993), set on a space station where everybody has a brain implant that lets them look up basic biographical information about everyone they meet (at least, every other st
819.
by sethg 17y ago
I envy people like this.
820.
by sethg 17y ago
In the UK, the National Health Service pays doctors a flat fee per patient, so doctors have a powerful incentive not to provide treatment. On international measurements of how healthy the population is, the UK scores about as well as the
821.
by sethg 17y ago
How do you define "provocatively"? If a woman has large breasts, how would you have her dress (especially in hot weather) that you would not consider "provocative"?
822.
by sethg 17y ago
I don't know what the law is in other states, but in Massachusetts, if the car in front of you stops suddenly and you rear-end it, you are considered 100% at fault. (Unless you can prove that the other car stopped with the intent to cause
823.
by sethg 17y ago
Those are just rates for software developers paid through oDesk, not in the industry as a whole. Given that the oDesk developers are averaging under $30/hour ( http://www.odesk.com/community/oconomy/freelance_software_de... ), I don't thin
824.
by sethg 17y ago
Well, the folks at the gate told him he wasn't the first person who had had this problem. So somebody in the bowels of the corporation has discovered that this is not a one-off issue.
825.
by sethg 17y ago
At the AA annual shareholder meeting yesterday morning, Mr. Arpey said the company is "taking efforts to improve customer service". I think this is a shortsighted goal. AA should take efforts to improve the whole customer experience. Yes
826.
by sethg 17y ago
You may be right... Some of the pages I found from Googling claimed that the "plain view" exemption also applies to hearing, smell, etc., but I'm having trouble finding an actual citation. The closest thing I can find is Kyllo v. US , whe
827.
by sethg 17y ago
One of the exeptions to the "gotta get a warrant" rule in US constitutional law is the "plain view" exception--if the cops see a marijuana plant through your front window, they don't need a warrant to go busting in and seizing it. So if th
828.
by sethg 17y ago
Shared-hosting providers generally offer MySQL as part of their low-end packages, but not PostgreSQL (I assume this is because MySQL is easier to administer in a shared environment). So if you want your web app to use PostgreSQL, you have
829.
by sethg 17y ago
I hate coffee and I've been drinking tea for decades. Why aren't I a Web 2.0 zillionaire yet?
830.
by sethg 17y ago
I have this mental filter that I apply to all technohype. When I read someone saying "Invention X is going to change the way we do business forever! " it registers in my mind as "Invention X has some interesting consequences that will aff
831.
by sethg 17y ago
Yeah, most of those songs available for purchase would not have been available at all to most consumers in the pre-Internet era. With online shopping, small producers may not be dramatically better off (as some Long Tail hucksters woul
832.
by sethg 17y ago
I'm sure they WANT him to use they card I'm not.
833.
by sethg 17y ago
you can work 2h more per day because you don't have to wait for the bus It pays off if you already have the money up front to buy a car with, or if you have enough income before you buy the car that you qualify for a car loan. You can'
834.
by sethg 17y ago
Other countries put important scientific and cultural figures on their money. The Bank of England puts Darwin on its £10 note and is going to put Adam Smith on its £20. Why can't we do the same? Along with Ben Franklin we could have Herm
835.
by sethg 17y ago
I really like the idea of putting the Bill of Rights on the currency. "I'd like a small pizza and a medium Coke." "OK, [kaching] that'll be one search-and-seizure and one free-speech..."
836.
by sethg 17y ago
If employee tells boss "I feel my talents are not being used", the boss may have reasons not to pass that news up the chain to HR. Middle managers who are good at playing office politics don't like to reduce their own headcount.
837.
by sethg 17y ago
How do the trustees of this forest sell carbon sequestration? Do they just say "this forest sequesters a billion tons of carbon dioxide a year, and for $10/ton, we will associate those good works with your company's name"?
838.
Girls dominate Canada science fair; boys don't show up(theglobeandmail.com)
8 points by sethg 17y ago|14 comments
839.
by sethg 17y ago
$4,000 a month in alimony and child support. I'm glad my wife has promised that I'll only leave this marriage feet-first. ETA: whoops, I missed the part saying those were automatically deducted. Downmod me.
840.
by sethg 17y ago
I think the author's first mistake was not in taking out the subprime loan, but in entering a marriage without some kind of mutual understanding of how to manage the household finances. One of the first things my wife and I did, after get

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