HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

Paul_Morgan

104 karma · joined July 21, 2008

Online Software, Builder's Square, The Price Club, FiestaMart, J. Jill, Staples and now YBP Library Services as a Senior Programmer Analyst.

Harcourt Assement, Phibro Refinery, WilTel, NyNex DPI, Geco-Prakla, Riviana Foods & CVS/Caremark as a Contract Programmer.

Most of my work has been in IBM minicomputer land on S34, S36, S38 and AS400/iSeries/i5/IBM i. I started my career after college supporting and enhancing a query language package on the S34. That also included PC programming for file transfers.

I'm fascinated by usability and what makes a great software user interface.

submissionscomments
Paul_Morgan··on Some REST best practices
I'd accept both singular and plural. At least redirect one to the other.
Paul_Morgan··on Scala: The Movie.
What? No Sound?
Paul_Morgan··on The Open-office Trap
Read Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace by Nikil Saval. Its a history of office layouts. I like the Cave and Commons described in the book.
Paul_Morgan··on The Secret Life of an Obsessive Airbnb Host
Any website that throws up a subscribe dialog box like this I'm going to avoid. (DR)
Paul_Morgan··on A MySQL database of everything
I'm getting a 404 on the github link.
Paul_Morgan··on Do It Yourself Whiteboard
I was looking at the http://masschallenge.org/ office space where they use ideapaint. They paint is very glossy with a bad glare from over head lighting. I couldn't see what was written on the ideapaint from the glare. It would probably be great with some softer overhead lighting.
Paul_Morgan··on Do It Yourself Whiteboard
I was going to call it bathroom paneling but they sell it under a different name now so your "Showerboard" is accurate.
Paul_Morgan··on Danger of Listening to Scientists
Danger of Listening to Michele Bachmann
Paul_Morgan··on Startup Investor Rankings
Isn't this just random noise? Just because your portfolio is doing better doesn't mean you know how to pick winners. It just means you're better at rolling dice.
Paul_Morgan··on Hacker News Refrigerator Magnets
When it breaks the back button I'm not going anywhere near this web page again.
Paul_Morgan··on Ask HN: Business Dying. Please Help.
You may be surprised at how open the local Costco warehouse manager would be to someone running a Satay stand outside the warehouse. They are always looking for stuff like this that will surprise and delight their customers.
Paul_Morgan··on Ask Valve employees: How well does the flat organization work?
I couldn't say. But it's implemented at the company headquarters and they are experimenting with it in the stores. They haven't gone back on their commitment to it. It's also been implemented at The Gap:

http://www.gorowe.com/2009/09/14/gap-goes-rowe/

FYI, this is just my opinion and doesn't represent the views of my employer.

Paul_Morgan··on Ask Valve employees: How well does the flat organization work?
Best Buy has something similar called ROWE:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROWE

The business measures performance instead of hours. At Valve the performance appears to be measured as 'shipped'.

I'd also guess that Gabe is practicing his own version of servant leadership:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership

Paul_Morgan··on Ask HN: How to license a database?
If it contains addresses and they are going to be marketing (mailing) to those addresses then salt the database with a few fake addresses under your control. If you see mail going to those addresses which wasn't part of your agreement with them you have grounds to sue. This is common practice in direct mail databases where you will rent a list for a limited number of mailings.
Paul_Morgan··on Scaling MySQL to 700 million inserts per day
Why no discussion of the disk drives supporting this database? The write performance dropped to 150 when the disk starts getting pounded as, up to that point, everything was in a memory buffer. Does the temporal partition spread the file over multiple drives? What's the capacity and theoretical throughput of the drives?
Paul_Morgan··on Ask HN: Is there a HIPAA for dummies for medical startups?
Go to the source: http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/index.htm...

It's not really that hard. Keep personal data secure when stored and encrypted when in transit.

Paul_Morgan··on Comprehensive List of the PHP Object Relational Mapping Tools and Frameworks.
I'd also like to know if any projects are making use of these ORM tools. Do these projects have any users?
Paul_Morgan··on Anatomy of a Miracle: US Airways Flight 1549
Some of the best non-fiction writing I've ever read. This has got to win some award.
Paul_Morgan··on Stonebraker: Send Relational DBMSs to the Home for Tired Software
he's also selling VoltDB (OLTP memory resident DBMS) and SciDB (Scientific Data).
Paul_Morgan··on The End of a DBMS Era (Might be Upon Us)
He's marketing his variations on the RDBMS - Vertica/C-Store, VoltDB & SciDB. Twelve years ago he was talking about Object Relational databases supplanting the RDBMS.
Paul_Morgan··on Ask HN: Should I give up?
I'd go back to developing the startup outside of work. Go get some contract work that will pay the bills and give you more time to develop the business on the side.
Paul_Morgan··on What is DoD using their supercomputers for?
Nuclear Explosion Simulations. If you have a nuclear weapon sitting in storage for thirty to sixty years will it still explode? Can't do real tests anymore by trying one out in Nevada.
Paul_Morgan··on My wife got an estimate on fixing her teeth: $12k post-insurance. Is there any alternative?
Not an urban legend. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_amalgam_controversy
Paul_Morgan··on Who's working on Obama's promise of electronic medical records in 5 years?
There are already some industry & government formats:

Prescriptions: http://www.ncpdp.org

Health Records: http://www.medicare.gov/PHR/Default.asp

Paul_Morgan··on How should I market this game?
How about also selling it for $1?
Paul_Morgan··on More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims
This is a minority report blog. It's just more Republican propaganda using the senate.gov source to give it credibility.