StrawberryFrog

> That's also not a problem you need to be a bank to solve. Mint and others are already doing a lot of innovation by pulling existing transaction data

Allowing 3rd parties access to your transaction history is a good idea?

Others come to mind:

Ravel's Bolero has a "huge build" at least in some versions: http://labs.echonest.com/loud/?songId=SOKNXIQ13134384E1B

Metallica's To Live Is to Die actually has quite a quick build http://labs.echonest.com/loud/?artist=&title=to+live+is+...

Godspeed you! Black Emperor's works are more ebb and flow than sustained build throughout the track http://labs.echonest.com/loud/?songId=SOJBUTX1311AFDAC27

Fun fact (possibly irrelevant, probably even true) an early example of that pattern is the river Thames that flows through London. It used to be pronounced like it's written, starting with a "Th". Then King George I took the throne in 1714. He was German, but from then onwards, the way that he said it (i.e. "Tems") was the right way. And still is.

http://www.lbc.co.uk/why-is-the-river-thames-so-called-7258

It says something about power that people still want to be treated like kings - whatever they do is automatically the right way for the courtiers and sycophants to copy.

And it says something about Steve Jobs that he would play on that on purpose.

A while loop isn't in itself an iterator. There's a difference between

  while(collection.Count > 0) 
  {
   collection.Delete(0);
  }

.. which is a working implementation of clear, though probably superfluous.

and...

  int i = 0;
  while(i < collection.Count) 
  {
   collection.Delete(i);
   i++;
  }

which does try to walk along the list and is broken.

Also, .Net has a specific exception to stop you modifying a collection while an enumerator is walking along it. Google for "Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute"

The devil is in the details, specifically in working out the probability of loss. The whole point is to know that a bit better than the other guy. See also: putting your trust in AAA rated mortgage-backed securities.

If Microsoft is all-in on JavaScript on the web and desktop, I guess that Google will have a very hard time convincing them to switch to Dart instead.

For me too. The black on dark brown does not make for good readability. Design - not impeccable after all.

I agree, source is better.

But. Flash isn't served as source, is it? And JS is often minified/obfuscated. Sure you can run that through a tool to get back the source (sans comments and long variable names) but you can do just that with MSIL bytecode too.

To be pedantic, it wouldn't be "application/csharp". By the time it's compiled to MSIL bytecode it doesn't matter if it was C#, VB, F# or whatever. "application/MSIL" is what I'd say.

I can imagine it, and I guess my browsers already have three VM/Runtimes in them (JavaScript, Flash, Silverlight) but it feels so inelegantly top-heavy to have lots more.

The article is specifically about generics in Java. I don't know Java generics, just the c# ones, so it's hard for me to say if the author is right about generics in java only or just wrong in general. Either way, a pointless article for this discussion.

"The Grouper algorithm mines your friend graph, ... and then sets you up with someone of the opposite sex whom you're not Facebook friends with"

... That is the ex that I don't want to see.

It's not an either/or thing. It's not good for Mr Avitable to repost his home address. And OKCupid's security and abuse processes are lacking.

Feynman only taught physics. Sal Khan teaches maths, astrophysics, economics, history, etc etc...

The potential for misinformation from someone who is teaching a subject that they are not an expert in, and have just "understood it quickly" is quite worrying. he has been criticised on this before, see http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?Doc_Id=2029

Economics is a lot like maths, and there is crossover so it's no surprise that he is good at both. But History is a different kind of subject.

If he is really irreplaceable, then there are severe limits on it. I hope and expect that even if Sal Khan is a trailblazer, others can do follow his example.

My question has always been - will Khan Academy lose relevance outside Sal Khan? He can't be an expert in everything. In order to scale, I'd expect that he'd have to be able to pick people who are great teachers and also domain experts.

Buyer's remorse.

> Vista (IMHO) had a rotten core ... I think W7 is arguably the best OS Microsoft has released

You are overly negative on Vista and overly positive in Win7. I think you fell for the hype. The differences between them are minor.

From TFA: "You know when you used to have no choice but to use Windows XP ... Well, you must remember, then, how annoying it was to have the same bugs and weird glitches happen over and over again;"

Nope .. I must have used a different Xp.

DOB + name is unique in most cases.

Which is why I deliberately give an incorrect DOB on most websites that want one.

> Generally, people may be offended as they pass by but there's no real harm done

Which reminds me of another quip: "you do not have the right to never be offended."

e.g if the street-corner preachers don't offend you, the atheist billboards will. Suck it up and move on.

> As for the second, I can't for the life of me figure out what it would mean

If I understand right, it's better phrased as "you do not have the right to have everything you say heard."

E.g.

Making a website about the God Thor: OK, saying whatever you like.

Preaching about Thor on a street-corner: questionable.

Waking up the neighbours early on Thursday to tell them about Thor: over the line. They don't want to hear it then.

If that caught on, the next logical step would be for more counterfeit gold coins to come into circulation. Do these businessmen have the energy to try to detect fraud in two kinds of currency? Especially as gold coin fraud doesn't have the same harsh legal penalties as counterfeiting paper money.

The original statement was "A real currency is widely accepted, gold is not". The following question was "Where is gold not accepted?"

My reply of "At the supermarket" is, I think, a succinct and correct response about the basic difference between currency and valuables. My local supermarket won't take US dollars either since I'm not in the USA. You know well enough that supermarkets in the USA do take dollars, and no supermarket anywhere takes gold (if you find one, let me know what it gives as change). The point still stands. If I'm wrong, I'd appreciate more information on why along with the down-votes.

Gold is not accepted at my local supermarket, and probably not yours either. They take cash or card, but not gold. You have to convert it into currency first. You can do this in any country if you know where to go, but you get the point - it's not as handy as paper money. Suppose you have a 1 ounce gold coin (worth USD 1882 today) and you owe your friend $100. You have the money, but how do you pay him? Do you file bits off the coin, or do you ask for change from $1882 ?

I mean "current" as in today, not historical. I didn't call it a currency, I said it was valuable. I agree that gold is entirely useless - you can't eat it, and it is unhandy; however the gold price today says that for all practical purposes, gold is very valuable right now. Probably because of lack of faith in paper fiat currency right now.

This may change; it may be a bubble that collapses if and when faith in paper fiat currency is restored (you could read that as gold filling a temporary but valuable role as a hedge against unstable currencies). Or new deposits of gold could be found; or new ways of extracting it could arise.

However the supply of gold is quite limited; it's not like diamond where the only difference between very expensive diamond and cheat-as-dirt coal is a detail of removing impurities and rearranging the atoms.

Good point. However, would you say that Dostoyevsky has tension and pacing? I raise him because Lem does, and to my mind, Lem reads more like Dostoyevsky than like Stephen King. How about Dickens or Victor Hugo?

I admit that I don't know enough (I fail at reading Dostoyevsky) but it is counted as great writing despite lacking in the pace that modern readers desire.

> the monetary value is merely historical

In theory, yes. However, the all-time high price that one can get for gold today is actual and current.

It's harder to tell how good an author's writing is when it's in translation. The Cyberiad's writing was absolutely fantastic IMHO. But I can't say if the Polish original was that good. Lem's longer, more serious novels don't sparkle like that, at least in the English translation.

That's near the heavy end.

Do you want to start at the heavy end or the light end? Solaris is heavy. The Cyberiad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad ) is light.

Main takeaway points:

1) The iPad is disruptive. Interesting evidence for that from HP, but the point is not surprising.

2) In order to be very successful, do something "disruptive, mind blowing, magical" (which the author hasn't thought of yet). No Duh.