zipdog

11 ms·

61.
by zipdog 15y ago
The most telling comment is this one: "Beyond was always a tremendously grand ambition as the advances required by the record labels and music publishers were substantial" .. because there were no tech advances required; the only 'grand amb
62.
by zipdog 15y ago
This might be relevant: In Scott Adams' The Dilbert Future (1997), he introduced the word confusopoly. The word is a portmanteau of confusion and monopoly (or rather oligopoly), defining it as "a group of companies with similar products who
63.
by zipdog 15y ago
If the money is used for re-election campaigns (which is what I've heard elsewhere) then why not cut out the middle-man? Instead of giving money to congresspeople with nio tech savvy to get re-elected, why not use the funds to get some tech
64.
by zipdog 15y ago
"the only way to gain ground is through propaganda, FUD, and sleazy underhanded maneuvers" Really? Browsers don't have to be neutral platforms that simply server a site's content to the best of their ability. FF long ago showed that with ex
65.
by zipdog 15y ago
A few years I heard a radio interview with a prominent rap artist (I forgot who) who said something like: There's some evidence around that the government does consider rap and hip-hop to be, in a variety of cases, a potential threat on th
66.
by zipdog 15y ago
I suspect legal reasons and the US's sue-happy culture are important factors. A scientific screening test puts the onus on the collection agency, so even 99.9% accuracy still risks a recipient getting infected and suing. Asking someone to s
67.
by zipdog 15y ago
Your suspicion is probably true, but the example in the essay was considering wasted time akin to poorly invested money. Losing a day to email/HN is like losing a few dollars on a horse race compared to sinking half your fortune into a diam
68.
by zipdog 15y ago
Sometimes I think the feeling of getting "basically nothing" done by the end of the day is not the right timeframe - there are projects that have gone on for weeks that ultimately were a complete waste of time. But while working through tho
69.
by zipdog 15y ago
Yes, in September this year the Swiss bank took the almost unprecedented step of announcing it would print currency at 'any amount' in order to maintain something like 1.2 with the Euro. Having a huge volume of money seeking safe haven in S
70.
by zipdog 15y ago
"31 of 34 directors surveyed (each of whom served on an average of six Fortune 200 boards) said they’d cut down a mature forest or release a dangerous, unregulated toxin into the environment in order to increase profits. Whatever they could
71.
by zipdog 15y ago
This law sounds so bad I don't see how it really even benefits the big media companies. It seems it could be abused in the other direction too... The summary suggets that Visa,etc have to comply with all requests in five days. And all you
72.
by zipdog 15y ago
Its interesting the shout-outs/cajoling they give to the media groups that visit
73.
by zipdog 15y ago
I agree it will continue. Although a true perpetual motion machine is impossible, there's no reason that a device couldn't produce seemingly unlimited energy. The total energy of a mass system is incredibly high. At some point (maybe a long
74.
by zipdog 15y ago
Indeed, even the US justice department only pays $16 ;) http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/sep/20/taxpayers-fo...
75.
by zipdog 15y ago
If you're more than 101 years old it won't let you play
76.
by zipdog 15y ago
At its heart, design is a risk, because it looks to create what isn't. Most businesses are focussed on improving what is. The unknown is unquantifiable, and doesn't fit well into a spreadsheet
77.
by zipdog 15y ago
Improving UI and UX for email is difficult because it's used in such a wide variety of ways by different people (or the same people at different times). Sometimes it's social, and replies and photos need a lot of space. Sometimes its a to-d
78.
by zipdog 15y ago
Well medicine's come with error bars, typically in the form of a doctor who determines whether the promised benefit plus risk is worthwhile for you. Often this is in conjunction with a consultation with the patient. So the general point tha
79.
by zipdog 15y ago
If you look backwards, people have always been quite happy to enjoy fairly simple games with a mild social component. I`m thinking of card games, boules/boche, dominoes. Everywhere I`ve been I`ve seen people spending an afternoon playing th
80.
by zipdog 15y ago
It's interesting that the Printing Press didn't make the list of previous revolutions, because I think this highlights two different ways of thinking about intelligence (and thus AI). We can either build AI systems that give us a correct an
81.
by zipdog 15y ago
I recently piped just the audio from a bunch of classic games to a group of people: every game was recognised quickly and spurred distinct memories of the games, though no-one had played any of them for years.
82.
by zipdog 15y ago
And yet, without all the efforts that went into alchemy (including Newton) we might have been delayed getting chemistry among other fields. (I've been reading Gleick's bio on Newton, and it makes a point about the impact that the 'fruitless
83.
by zipdog 15y ago
It's worth noting that the brain changes as we learn - for e.g. when we learn maths the brain's structure is altered in discernable ways: http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2011/june/math.html So quite possibly the data storage used by a person
84.
by zipdog 15y ago
I saw the sad news on another site and came here for confirmation: saw every single story was about Steve Jobs, and then reflected how appropriate it was. There's few people of the stature of Steve Jobs.
85.
by zipdog 15y ago
This is almost certainly not true for a lot of medical data (in Canada and Australia at least, don't know about the US). There was a rather interesting example in Queensland ~two years ago when govt. health sector payroll data (from an outg
86.
by zipdog 15y ago
This is one of the difficulties of Just In Time manufacturing
87.
by zipdog 15y ago
As I understand it, Einstein's work rests on there being a fundamental maximum 'speed' and it seemed to him as though the speed of photons was that limit, so 'speed of light' became synonymous with this maximum. But it doesn't necessarily h
88.
by zipdog 15y ago
The big improvement is the way 'cards' can be included in other cards? I think that has some interesting potential, particularly the way you can include a card open, closed, or just as a link (a summary option would be good too but I didn't
89.
by zipdog 15y ago
I agree the Coupon Code field is a taunt, but what if someone has a coupon code and has lost the url for the coupon-specific form, or just ended up at the main form anyway? That could be especially frustrating - to have the coupon and not s
90.
by zipdog 15y ago
The examples definitely help. The Civil Rights vote did it for me: * The South voted against it overwhelmingly. * Democrats voted for it (compared to Republicans) * But, because the Democrats had the majority of the Southern seats their ove

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