sethg

31 ms·

241.
by sethg 15y ago
The OP quoted Spolsky mentioning “a feature... for dentists”. That’s one example of a vertical market. My last employer made a search engine specialized for geography: government agencies and energy companies (two other vertical markets) p
242.
by sethg 15y ago
While I think the whole bitcoin thing is profoundly silly, I don’t think the comparison with the hiring thread is fair. Bitcoins provoke discussion between people who think bitcoins are sticking it to The Man and people who think, well,
243.
by sethg 15y ago
I suspect the answer is some combination of (a) getting device drivers to work on highly specialized hardware in spite of extreme memory/CPU constraints; (b) developing a user interface (and the widget toolkit for developers to use, etc.) t
244.
by sethg 15y ago
In order for one person to be able to save (or invest), someone else has to be willing to borrow (or sell stock).
245.
by sethg 15y ago
in the current system, it's unfair that government (through tax law and control of force) mandates that you use a form of money that doesn't function well as a store of value The governors of the Federal Reserve are appointed by the Presi
246.
by sethg 15y ago
A poorly managed money system is one symptom of a government that is poorly managed, period, and living under a poorly managed government is always going to suck. If armed thugs loyal to the ruling party come to kick you off your land, ste
247.
by sethg 15y ago
If we experienced the full effect of deflation, then average wages would be falling, as well as the average prices for everything (not just for consumer electronics, which make up a very small percentage of the average person’s expendit
248.
by sethg 15y ago
“This University has invested profitably in real estate for the last thousand years!” “Yes, but the last thousand years may have been atypical.”
249.
by sethg 15y ago
I’m not going to look for an answer right now in that 642-page book, but I suspect that a significant fraction of poor people live in suburban or rural areas, where owning a car is an absolute necessity for holding a job, and owning two car
250.
by sethg 15y ago
This essay made me think: Lojban ( http://www.lojban.org/tiki/la+lojban.+mo ), among constructed languages, is the categorial language par excellence . Every word has a well-defined range of meaning; the grammar can be parsed by the same
251.
by sethg 15y ago
Who cares, in the long run, who won the most coins right now? In the long run, people with a lot of coins tend to get even more coins. I don’t see why I should participate in an “open and secure currency” that benefits people who let the
252.
by sethg 15y ago
Never mind the energy; think of the capital expenditure. If I have US$1,000 lying around, I could either put it in a mutual fund, getting a certain number of dollars per month (with which I could buy bitcoins), or I could buy a kick-ass GP
253.
by sethg 15y ago
“The value of the dollar” is a meaningless term. A dollar only has value relative to something else . And in that sense, if I want to know what the value of a dollar is, I just look at what I can buy with it. (I suppose if the governmen
254.
by sethg 15y ago
I was born in 1969. The US went off the gold standard when I was about two years old. I remember news reports of the rate of inflation going above 15%. I remember the economy being one of the reasons Carter lost the Presidency. I rememb
255.
by sethg 15y ago
Inflation is not a tax. Furthermore, a rise in the dollar-denominated price of gold is not inflation; inflation is a rise in the nominal price of things we actually buy .
256.
by sethg 15y ago
I don’t see why MS would do this—at least, not now. The MS-Nokia partnership agreement has just been finalized and it will be another year, at least, before the market can pass judgement on Nokia Winphones. So why would MS dump an eleven-
257.
by sethg 15y ago
Related: a 1984 paper by Knuth, “The Toilet Paper Problem”. http://www.jstor.org/pss/2322567
258.
by sethg 15y ago
A non-technical user of this hypothetical iOS app won’t be able to tell if the author had to do some clever algorithmic hacks to get an acceptable level of performance, or if s/he spent a whole day figuring out how to work around an undocum
259.
Why college is (usually) not a bubble(fastcompany.com)
2 points by sethg 15y ago|0 comments
260.
by sethg 15y ago
I would use a stronger term than “jerk” to describe that kind of behavior; I had in mind the sort of assholish behavior that some men exhibit among other men (e.g., the condescension described a few comments upthread). A man who treats wo
261.
by sethg 15y ago
Let me elaborate on my previous comment, then: In the absence of security countermeasures on the casino end, counting cards is not very difficult. You need to be able to do some mental arithmetic in a distraction-filled environment, and yo
262.
by sethg 15y ago
If you (where “you” can be an individual or a team) know how to count cards and are disciplined about following the technique, and you patronize a casino that doesn’t catch you, there is a slow leak of money from the casino’s pocket into yo
263.
by sethg 15y ago
I think men who are non-jerks are still socialized in how to interact with jerks . We understand that a certain number of guys are jerks and we have to deal with them anyway , so we learn how to shrug off the behavior or respond in kind,
264.
by sethg 15y ago
The other day I met a guy who belonged to the MIT card-counting team portrayed in the book Bringing Down the House . He mentioned that casino security departments are now looking up their patrons on Facebook: if five people show up at the
265.
by sethg 15y ago
Classic Usenet joke: a parody of the old-fashioned “MAKE MONEY FAST” email chain letter. http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/94q1/maketenure.html
266.
by sethg 15y ago
In your opinion, if there were no “under-the-table quid-pro-quo deal” giving Elop an incentive to make a deal with Microsoft, what would he (or another CEO) have done instead? The Nokia board fired the previous CEO because, well, his pet st
267.
by sethg 15y ago
I think that kind of multi-stage deal is common in large corporate transactions.
268.
by sethg 15y ago
Given the large number of people across both corporate bureaucracies that would be involved in negotiating the final deal (and in providing information that the negotiators would need), if they had tried to keep everything under wraps until
269.
by sethg 16y ago
But even if you’re coming up with new questions all the time, a child who has experience solving this kind of problem will be at an advantage over a child who has never tried it.
270.
by sethg 16y ago
I don’t think I am misremembering and I don’t think I was part of a study. This would have been around 1980, so the test was probably the WISC-R, which was published in 1974; maybe they got better about eliminating loaded questions in the

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