a_a_r_o_n

The recent Honda hybrid battery debacle, and the woman who decided to opt out of the class action, chose small claims instead and kept more small claims winnings than she would have received from the class action, shows that small claims can be the more effective route. Notwithstanding appeals.

"I converted both my [pdf] book and my [pdf] copy of Objects on Rails to TXT files"

We need a terminal that can display graphics in place and still allow all the text tools to work exactly as they do today. I imagined reading a text-ized pdf, and having to bounce back and forth to the actual pdf to see the graphics, and that seems much more annoying to me than just reading the pdf.

paid, one time transaction to get someone set up with a blog and provider

Don't write off sbierwagen's comment as flippant. For this kind of thing, this will be more and more the future. I think.

I think a site that acts as a reseller/affiliate for pair.com, dropbox and the like, where all you do is set up someone's (new) domain, connect it to the storage provider, and provide an easy install of something jekyll-like and turnkey would be a good thing to try.

At first you'd only get people who are aware of the user-as-a-product issue with Google and other free providers, but as those providers are more widely recognized as problematic, the market will increase.

I don't want to install the client on my work computer, so it's nice to have the web site.

All that's true, but if you can then sell that customer a car every month or a date every month, bonus.

I've always like about:blank. It even comes with a friendly reminder. http://imgur.com/jRmfB

The guy was more right than the flat earthers, and his acting trumped any amount of right or wrong.

Size makes it impossible. If you've ever worked at a sizable company then you understand this, if not explicitly. The work of an employee becomes more and more to integrate with the machine, and less and less to think independently and innovatively. Follow the procedures. Know what forms are needed. Know who's buyoff is needed for what. Go to the break room when there's donuts celebrating the release of R145.8.

The best a large company can hope for is a skunkworks.

Any administration faced with the same question would do the same thing. They're the same.

Oh, gawd yes. Part of the fun of the world is that it's huge and surprising. Talk to your friends if you need a recommendation. Talk to a total stranger face to face if you need a recommendation.

"Am I the only person ..."

The answer to this is always no.

It's feedback from the community, to help you be more useful to the community. You get more karma when someone upvotes your comments and submissions; you get less karma when someone downvotes you. Downvotes tell you "this comment did not help the discussion."

What's the software service or app or tool that you most want to have, that would make the hair on the back of your neck stand up when you say "I built that?"

Build that. Or build a small piece of it. Or build a prototype of a small piece of it.

In other words, build something, anything, that makes you want to get up in the morning and skip school to work on it all day. (But don't skip school.)

Yup.

It's nice to be able to make ideas, instead of just having them.

I think we make too much of video games and movies.

They don't make us violent. We're already violent. That's why we buy them.

"We have met the enemy, and he is us."

"Public committing means a high level of responsibility and scrutiny, and it is the best motivator for any task."

It's the best motivator for some people for some tasks. People and tasks are infinitely varied.

"In our weekly meetings ..."

It's interesting to ask whether motivation works differently for public-ish work tasks versus private goals.

A movie at the theater and a movie in your living room are two different products.

It helps prevent in-breeding of articles.

Justice Dept. to Congress: Don’t Saddle 4th Amendment on Us

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/04/fourth-amendment-em...

"Fix campaign finance rules, elect better congresscritters, and repeal the DMCA."

Yeah, except it's Congress that makes those rules.

Given that vicious circle, how can that specific problem (campaign finance) realistically be fixed? "Vote them out" doesn't seem to work.

And it's the President's decision to allow or encourage his Justice Department to pursue the idea that email left on a server after six months is considered abandoned and therefore free game for the government to warrantlessly peruse. Like, you know, that 7G of email you have on gmail. Not his law, but he's using it, and certainly not trying to turn it back.

I wonder how many of his campaign supporters feel betrayed, and how many just give him a pass like Apple gets for Foxconn.

> Well on the other hand, one could also argue that when you put the trash on curb you give away any rights to it - which means that the trash becomes a public property that Feds have access to.

You could make that argument, but I'd disagree. Law enforcement can (should) only do what we the people allow.

Why? They're not searching it because it's randomly in the street, they're searching it because you are presumably interesting. If you're that interesting then there should be no problem getting a warrant.

The privacy issue here is whether you have the right to avoid specific scrutiny by the government. I think the government should either have to make their case, or GTFO. That's the myth we learned in Civics class anyway.

We don't let the government do things merely because they can.

Almost never.

I used to clear history, cookies, everything on browser restart.

I've let the water wash over me, and now I like typing things in the address bar and already being there, or being remembered like Norm when I visit a site again.

Rarely a site will piss me off and I'll go in and delete their cookies. I know they can feel it when I do that.

We're there now.

How many people lay out CPU circuits at Intel any more? Computer (using a CPU) does that.

How many people physically make chips at a foundry? "Robots" do that.

There are a lot of tasks in designing and building computers that can only be done with computers these days. Sure, someone runs them, and someone does some significant level of design, but the final designs and products are no longer possible without the very products that those efforts produce.

Lather, rinse, accelerate.

Can you produce something similar to what you've done, but new, with little to no referring to references?

Are you producing cooler things today than yesterday, according to some definition of cool?

Are you still discovering new things about Ruby/Rails (insert any technology here)?

Do you understand my questions? :-)

There's another point in there: just because you have a need for graphics doesn't mean you have a need for a graphics professional. Without Photoshop you needed a graphics professional for anything beyond a cardboard sign. Now you can do very well on your own, well beyond some definition of "good enough," before you need to pay a graphics professional.

Until the robots make the robots.

Where are you now, and how did you decide to get there?