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baltoo

203 karma · joined April 24, 2008

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baltoo··on How art invented humanity
tools as an artifact can be contraposed to art as artifact? the juxtaposition hints to a challenge of the article's claims about the dualities of art?
baltoo··on Slack's private GitHub code repositories stolen over holidays
They did. Or at least I got it
baltoo··on How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine
i assume they mean something along the lines of https://ghostintheshell.fandom.com/wiki/Autistic_mode
baltoo··on Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free
think you can email most researchers and get a copy. doesn't count as publishing
baltoo··on The Trouble with “Finding Your People” Online
Fascinating. I think I might be one of those of the older generation. Do you have any pointers to get to start to learn more about the modern progressives? I'd really like to learn more.
baltoo··on F-Secure has open-sourced its Sandboxed Execution Environment

    DH2. Responding to Tone.
baltoo··on Syrian war spurs first withdrawal from 'doomsday' Arctic seed vault
"Noone wants backup; They want restore."
baltoo··on The Linear Theory of Battleship
http://eis.ucsc.edu/StarCraftAICompetition
baltoo··on Google's Backdoor Access System into Gmail Accounts
You could check out https://countermail.com/.
baltoo··on Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The Men.
While trying to find the article I stumbled across Straight dope (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2831/was-pink-origi...), that claims that this idea might well be wrong. I does however, I think, speak out against the idea that pink-girly and blue-boyly is something known to be inherent.

Although I guess the thing I read earlier might well be wong, I'm still not that convinced that colors are that gender based by default.

baltoo··on Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The Men.
I actually remember reading, recently, that the color division is cultural. Point in fact is that around 1900 and earlier, if color had any meaning at all, it was reversed. Pink, being close to red, was manly. Blue, being close to violet, was womanly.

That the roles are globally reversed now could very well be indicative of a newish cultural shift that has nothing to do with nature, genes or suchlike.

baltoo··on The Programmer Dress Code
Somewhat, perhaps, more cumbersome, but very workable, is to hire yourself a personal shopper for a day. Those are available at all major cities.

That person will guide you throughout the day while you go out and buy the stuff society at large would like to see you wear. End the day with a visit to a, from them, suggested barber and you're set.

baltoo··on Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names
Aren't URI:s an attempt to encode this type of hydra-like schema?

Not that URI:s are that great for showing to humans, but if we added some visualizations template plug-in system for parts of it (similar to how many web servers map URLs to renderings of data resources).

Or is this kinda what you mean with templates?

baltoo··on The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Barefoot Running
I have a pair of Vibram Five Fingers and while my toes are rather normal it can be difficult when running off-trail. Grass keeps getting stuck between the toes and if you get tired and slow and then happen to glance a rock with the pinkie it can easily get too much grip and you can get a really nasty hit as the toe is wrung out-wise.

To get away from toe injuries I've looked at Terra Plana's Evo shoes (http://www.terraplana.com/evo-p-1263.html?colour=271).

They look like something that might be the thing. But I have not so far actually tested them.

If you're going to run more trail-running or the like then perhaps a pair of huaraches might be something for you (http://barefootted.com/shop/).

For me they have been a mixed blessing. I tend to sweat a lot from the feet and thus the airiness of the sandals are really good for me. But it's been hard to learn how to properly string them on longer runs and small mistakes makes it easy for my feet to get blisters.

baltoo··on Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear
Perhaps I'm misreading you, but this comes across to me like "if you don't have kids yourself you could not possibly understand". That is, I believe, a thoroughly wrong position to take about most anything in life.

Exposure to phenomena like "kids" is rather abundant in most societies. For parents as well as non-parents. Observation and analysis about how those phenomena processes seem to be behave can even sometimes be made more accurate by those not emotionally bound up in the here and now.

I believe there is no argumentative authority arising from the fact that one is or is not a parent.

To settle what might be an authority issue for you: I don't know about jdietrich, but I have kids and I mostly agree with him.

baltoo··on Pure Genius: Southwest Airlines Baggage Strategy
I've flown Ryanair several times and they routinely stop people from boarding with masses of carry-on. Really, if have a lot of stuff they'll tell you to go back to check-in and handle it there.

This truly seems to cost both aggravation and time - but perhaps only for the first time. I'd hazard a guess that only a few people, of each Ryanair flight, are rookies. Most people, when faced with harsh measures, really do learn quickly. Perhaps this is, overall and long-term, a cost efficient way to do business.

baltoo··on Barefoot Running
I feel that there seems to be a, albeit perhaps weak, correlation between hackers/geeks and some kinds of physical activity. Mostly I'm thinking of running and mountain climbing.

While of course I'm biased and base my observations upon the plural of anecdote, I still find this observation to hold true.

I could of course hazard some kind of guess to why, but more interestingly, I think, would be if there was any kind of non-anecdotal data covering this.

Has anyone heard/read about any evidence for or against this?

baltoo··on Canonical/Yahoo revenue deal; Yahoo is the new Ubuntu search default
I guess they use cookies, yes.

Personally I'm an opera fan, so I haven't tried getting it to work but a quick search brought up: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/51000, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12625 and https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11551 as plug-is. As for blocking cookies there are several options.

baltoo··on Canonical/Yahoo revenue deal; Yahoo is the new Ubuntu search default
I realize you probably already know this, and perhaps even don't need this, but I often use http://google.com/ncr. The "/ncr" bit ensures that no localization redirection is done.

(At least with regards to the language for the UI and search results. I don't know if advertising is adjusted.)

baltoo··on Google Redefines Disruption: The “Less Than Free” Business Model
Dunno, but from the top of my head: one-way streets, no-left-turn-allowed-here-signs, prolonged roadworks. Perhaps the map data doesn't even map up actual streets that well (does this road go over that one, or is it the other way around?).
baltoo··on Humans evolving 100 times faster than historical levels.
Status will always be defined by scarcity. Perhaps blue eyes where novel and scares, which could be enough?
baltoo··on Humans evolving 100 times faster than historical levels.
As I've heard it, the development of both blue eyes and blond hair is thought of as mainly being driven by sexual preferences, i.e. status of novelty.

Sexual preferences are pretty strong drivers and combined with periods of harsh environments (e.g. where either of the sexes die off early in life) can create really fast evolution.

baltoo··on Japanese aesthetic principles to change your thinking
Yes, but an honest question from a non-American: Isn't that much/more/most/greater/grander of "everything" rather than over-the-top?

Over-the-top, to me, implies a taking something to-the-extreme-and-then-some, and it's in this latter phase of and-then-some where the essence of over-the-top-ness is happening, because it requires something new to happen. Making a building just more tall isn't any "new" it's "only" much/more/most/greater/grander of the thing that's already there.

Not that scyscrapers aren't impressive or anything and they are new in the sense that such thing haven't always been around.

To me, Pulp fiction has something of over-the-top-ness, but Rambo never had.

baltoo··on Where to hide your money - advice from a burglar
In graphical design I've heard this being mentioned as the "Pink Elephant", i.e. "obvious misses" that the client can easily clank down on. This makes it easier to keep the integrity of the overall design.
baltoo··on Why Extreme Programming Fails
I was under the impression that while C3 wasn't finished when the project was terminated it was used productively after only two years.

Also, it the project replaced one that had tried to make something work for even longer, without producing anything working at all.

Also, I remember it that Kent Beck thought the projects ending had nothing to do with the performance of it.

baltoo··on 1% preferential access outweighs the cost of helping others
Isn't this very similar to a lot of (differently modelled) business propositions backing OSS?
baltoo··on Western internet censorship: The beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?
> You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem

- Edward's law

The problem, I think, is precisely the one you highlight:

> If only more people dared to put up servers

"Society" can make it so that it's "dangerous" (for given values) and, more importantly, uninteresting (for the masses) to use the new tech, and thus it remains a non-solved problem, which could herald a bleaker future.

baltoo··on Python switching to Mercurial
Mercurial is still better supported under Windows. Anecdotal evidence: compare the Eclipse plug-ins (under Windows) for git and hg. (And before there's flak about Eclipse: it is a widely used tool, under Windows at least).
baltoo··on What Colour are your bits?
Perphaps I'm misreading you, but isn't that directly against the main gist of the article. Historical events happened in a certain manner, there is no probability involved. It's all 1.

Presented with partially unknowns about historical events one can use different approaches to decide how to proceed, but when talking about law, most things revolve specifically not about what's probable, but what actually happened. There is no "probable". Isn't that the main point of the article?

It's quite easy, from a law perspective, to decide what to do when no sure about what actually happened: let the accused go.

For most of us, though, this is not the type of answer we're after, and that's one of the things the article is trying to make us understand: our perspectives are different.

Neither perspective is inherently inferiour.

baltoo··on What Colour are your bits?
From the FAQ: http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/creative/bonobo-conspiracy.php#stri...
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