swombat

122 ms·

931.
by swombat 13y ago
I'm not trying to bully anyone. What's your better summary?
932.
by swombat 13y ago
That is not what I am advocating. Please read my other comment. I am worried that every time one of these arguments pop up, tptacek suddenly sprouts fifteen heads like a hydra and starts defending "the system". That worries me, be
933.
by swombat 13y ago
Re: "called our brain" - that was not actually meant to be an insult, but I can see how it could be read like that. I'll go and edit that out, as that was not the intention. Re: thinking methods - analytical thinking is not t
934.
by swombat 13y ago
Anyone who knows me knows I don't advise feeling your way through problems. However, when it comes to ethics, in the vast majority of cases, your gut judgement points in the right direction - at the very least in terms of deciding that
935.
by swombat 13y ago
Your comment is the one that was disingenuous. tedivm: blaming congress is an easy way out. Congress themselves have complained that the executive branch has been overstepping the boundaries it had set in secret. you: really? evidence? logn
936.
by swombat 13y ago
While most laws exist simultaneously in the distinct (and sometimes even contradictory) forms of statutes, rules, and operational norms, foreign intelligence laws start out by necessity with fuzzy statutory foundations, and end by necessit
937.
by swombat 13y ago
No, we can detect changes in blood flow, and we've posited that there's a correlation between this blood flow and brain activity, and found that that is consistent with the way the blood flows alter. This does not in any way rule
938.
by swombat 13y ago
Indeed! The hackers seem almost incompetent - until you remember that they were playing with both hands tied behind their back. A less scrupulous hacker would simply have broken into the flat by picking the lock, which would have resolved m
939.
by swombat 13y ago
To be fair, we have absolutely no idea how the human brain functions, and whether the analogy with silicon is relevant at all... Some have posited that consciousness is a function of a wave-like property of the entire brain, for example. Th
940.
by swombat 13y ago
Here ya go: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/british-police-may-h...
941.
by swombat 13y ago
Because it is far more clever than anything I could do in Excel. And it doesn't require me to duplicate information all over the place. I'd rather have just one master source of data that I do all the calculations on.
942.
by swombat 13y ago
I've built GrantTree's financial modelling (real time, to the penny) using a Ruby/Rails back end and FreeAgent for the transaction management. No Excel in sight. The only thing we use Excel for is client calculations and holi
943.
by swombat 13y ago
That's not how alliances and trust work. In this context, suspicion is a form of accusation - and it is wholly inappropriate and wrongful for the US to accuse Germany or France of plotting against it's national security interests.
944.
by swombat 13y ago
False. Startups may start out in an indefensible state, however, investors will expect you to build some kind of defences somewhere along the way. If it is impossible for your start-up to build such defences, you will become commoditised ra
945.
by swombat 13y ago
Why do artificial sweeteners make things worse? Are 2 little sweetener pills in my coffee really worse than two cubes of sugar?
946.
by swombat 13y ago
I've been happily low-carb for the last couple of years or so. It's worked great for me. Occasionally I relapse (hmm, chocolate), and every time I do for any substantial period, I see the effect on my weight. So long as I stick to
947.
by swombat 13y ago
My company is small (11 people, £1m turnover) and yet this book provided some solid data and insights to convince me that measurement-based management is very dangerous (which I was thinking about already, but I was lacking a solid explanat
948.
by swombat 13y ago
It doesn't sound capital efficient at all - instead they've got people deliberately milling about doing nothing while waiting for the "penalty window" to lapse. If anything, this is a brilliant example of how applying
949.
by swombat 13y ago
A single-line comment is not going on and on.
950.
by swombat 13y ago
All those acronyms are easily googleable. Not being a techie does not mean you get to be lazy about looking things up.
951.
by swombat 13y ago
What a demoralising (and grossly incorrect) way to look at work. If your work can be reduced to such an API, then I'd argue that you can be replaced with a script. Most jobs, however, even today, are far more complex than that. As a
952.
by swombat 13y ago
I think the NSA gave up the right to the "stupidity not malice" defence when they started planting HUMINT agents in large companies to deliberately insert backdoors into major companies' systems. Malice is there and is obviou
953.
by swombat 13y ago
Specie backed currency was not a better store of money, because the levels of redeemability of the paper notes were highly variable. Banks went bust all the time in those days, taking all your savings and all the currency and loans issued b
954.
by swombat 13y ago
Author should actually read about the history of money before making grand statements about what money is and isn't for, and what makes it good or bad. Statements about how inflation is "erosion of wealth" indicate a gross mi
955.
by swombat 13y ago
It's easy to be civil with those you agree with. A gentleman is a gentleman even in the gutter. It's when faced with those whose opinion is abhorrent to you that you get to show that you're civilised.
956.
by swombat 13y ago
I don't think anyone is suggesting that she was asking for it. However, from the report it is ambiguous whether she clearly stated "no" at any point (reminding him he's married may have been a clear no statement, but we
957.
by swombat 13y ago
Without wading into this pointless debate, the fact that this part of the story was in the shape of bullet points does not help lift the ambiguity... The bullet points seem to cover several minutes at least, if not a good half hour or longe
958.
by swombat 13y ago
You can't address every possible point from every possible opinion in every post. I find it borderline offensive that you find it borderline offensive that the GP missed out on the point you wanted to make while making other valid poin
959.
by swombat 13y ago
Welcome to America, where we read your private mail, track all your movements online, shoot your dogs, abuse you at the borders, put antibiotics in your food, bankrupt you when you get sick, throw you in jail with hardened criminals if you
960.
by swombat 13y ago
Important lesson of blogging: If there isn't someone out there spending their time to tell you you're an idiot, you're doing it wrong.

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