wladimir

95 ms·

391.
by wladimir 15y ago
Yes, we'd all like to live in the best of all worlds. But in any real-life scenario, there is a trade-off. Brute forcing all possible combinations and finding the best one (for your specific goal, or taking into account all externalities as
392.
by wladimir 15y ago
Nice initiative. Even though I trust the Wikimedia foundation, it is a single point of failure. It'd be a waste for all the information to disappear if somehow they stop, or become unreachable, either voluntarily or involuntarily. So, mir
393.
by wladimir 15y ago
Yes. There is an essential chasm there. Treating people like computers/code means you are a sociopath, and treating code like people means you won't get it to do anything. Code needs control, not empathy. We programmers are stuck in the mid
394.
by wladimir 15y ago
The fact that the internet can be almost entirely anonymous and unaccountable is something of a historical accident The best things in life are something of a historical accident. You can't plan for the good, unexpected stuff. That doesn'
395.
by wladimir 15y ago
They are spot-on. SOPA and PIPA are just part of the problem, symptoms of the problem, which is a particular brand of censorship spreading all over the world. It is by no means restricted to the US, and while defeating these laws is nice, t
396.
by wladimir 15y ago
Those are examples of problems that exist within the space of mathematics and number games we created for ourselves. Computers as we have them now are great for those. However, when interfacing to the real, non-exactly specified, incomplete
397.
by wladimir 15y ago
"Hypothesis: There is more to be gained intellectually by reading 10 novel synopses on Wikipedia that reading any one of the novels all the way through." That depends completely on what your goal is. What do you "gain intellectually" when k
398.
by wladimir 15y ago
Haha, you know you've entered a new cold war when they start saber-ratting about UFO's, aliens and flying saucers. Welcome to 1950.
399.
by wladimir 15y ago
I tend to agree, though this kind of reasoning followed through leads to very nasty conclusions. A fully automated world could eliminate most people, eventually, seeing them as parasites and freeloaders, but who would want to live in that?
400.
by wladimir 15y ago
I'm also not sure whether it can be called a "classical" quantum computer. On the other hand, the large corporate and government interest probably means that the devices are at least useful (or promising) for some kinds of computations. Eit
401.
by wladimir 15y ago
I agree. Being reactionary usually means you'll play second violin. Anti-SOPA, anti-PIPA, etc. Always the underdog in the narrative. It is useful to push back, but they will keep pushing this through our throat, and will advance inch by inc
402.
by wladimir 15y ago
As long as you don't try to do the actual file sharing over them. Those networks are not fast enough for file sharing, and apart from that it's also very antisocial to run bittorrent over them (as it clogs up the pipes for other users). Jus
403.
by wladimir 15y ago
Indeed. It's not about (power-hungry) programmers. Programmers are important right now because they make things possible, but in the end it's about humans connecting to humans in ways, and at a scale, never before possible. People are sud
404.
by wladimir 15y ago
Repetition is generally hated in the "DRY" techie world. After all, why repeat yourself when you can re-use. But the brain doesn't quite work that way. The message gets stronger when repeated. Of course, that can mean your internal annoyed
405.
by wladimir 15y ago
That's only a minute technical distinction. It is spyware, because the only way to prevent users from doing general purpose computing is to spy in them. Spying, in this case, is defined as "remote surveillance and control". For example, for
406.
by wladimir 15y ago
There are so many levels of abstraction between us and the physical world. We learn to be domesticated animals, not to survive in the wild (or even close to it). This abstraction is growing in complexity as time goes on. Ie, the distance be
407.
by wladimir 15y ago
I suppose it's great advice, though it does highlight the sad state of affairs at the moment. It is a game of musical chairs, and you need be sure to be in a seat every time the music stops. Make yourself or others redundant, and you make t
408.
by wladimir 15y ago
Is it me or does the link not work? Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to razor-qt.org
409.
by wladimir 15y ago
http://www.eclipsecolorthemes.org/ can do this.
410.
by wladimir 15y ago
Interesting! But would this be supercookie-proof? (site local storage, flash cookies, cache tokens, etc?)
411.
by wladimir 15y ago
I wonder too... There have been other times in history that scientists had the idea that science was almost complete, that there were just a few things left to sort out and we'd understand it all (such as around 1900 with mathematics). We m
412.
by wladimir 15y ago
A generalized, dynamic-language friendly bytecode to replace Javascript would be great. Please let me choose to use Python for client-side web without resorting to language cross-translation hacks. Find the commonalities between Ruby, Pytho
413.
by wladimir 15y ago
I have 630,000 hours alive before I will die from birth to death. About 200,000 of them remain. The clock is ticking right now. Each hour that passes is lost and will never ever be recovered. The time of talented individuals is best spent
414.
by wladimir 15y ago
Where do I sign up for the privilige of having members of the opposite sex fall all over themselves doing things for me in order to get my attention? Yes. I think we should drop this discussion as it is bound to turn into a stereotype-fes
415.
by wladimir 15y ago
I've always liked to have a browser in which each tab (or window, and then allow sharing between tabs) is isolated, like a separate profile in Firefox. No cookie sharing, no cache sharing, and block all other tricks to communicate and find
416.
by wladimir 15y ago
I'm not sure that you mean by "substantiate", but especially right-wing and Christian parties here in the Netherlands tend to look to the US as an example and are uncompromisingly loyal to them. For example, privatizing utilities, support i
417.
by wladimir 15y ago
I disagree. By "playing the game" you validate it. You throw good money after bad, and help subverting democracy even more by rewarding the corrupt. The only way I see out of this is when enough people refuse to play the game. And reward po
418.
by wladimir 15y ago
Agreed. It all went so fast that it is easy to forget where we came from, and the freedoms we lost in the name of "protecting freedom". What was considered paranoid tinfoil-hat-talk only five years ago is becoming harsh reality today.
419.
by wladimir 15y ago
The copyright lobby is certainly behind it, but I am sure that it runs much deeper. Copyright, in a way, is just an excuse, so that proponents can use reasoning that copyright creates jobs, incentives innovation, fights "immoral" stealing o
420.
by wladimir 15y ago
I also hope it will be less mad. USA govt has the tendency to be really extreme in some things (war on this, war on that), to the point of being neurotic, whereas European governments are generally more subtle and slower to jump on the band

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