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edmccaffrey

333 karma · joined May 13, 2009

ed@edmccaffrey.net
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edmccaffrey··on Salary negotiations for techies
No, it involves you and him telling the owner of the company how you have increased the amount of money he makes, and how keeping you will further increase what he makes.
edmccaffrey··on Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0)
There is, of course, an Emacs module for this protocol: http://emarsden.chez.com/downloads/coffee.el
edmccaffrey··on HN now serving a million page views on weekdays
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 is 24 orders of magnitude more than 1. Reddit isn't near that traffic yet.
edmccaffrey··on Show HN: PilarHQ, The Posterous of Customer Support
Lots of people not understanding what this is. Perhaps you could put up a help page.
edmccaffrey··on ASK HN: Becoming a hacker in one year
Sorry for the snark.

"no one gives a damn about my brilliant idea if I can't execute."

Tentative Schedule: Jan-Feb: not executing Mar-Apr: not executing May-Jun: not executing Jul-Aug: not executing Sep-Oct: not executing, Nov-Dec: Execute my brilliant idea

edmccaffrey··on A Comfy Helvetica frontpage for Hacker News
From his user settings page, the topcolor box.
edmccaffrey··on The state of the list
Stick your org-mode files in Dropbox and it syncs well. You can run Emacs from a flash drive, and Andriod and iOS devices have basic versions that sync multiple ways.
edmccaffrey··on Facebook-Goldman: Where Is the S.E.C.?
Except that's not the same kind of multiplier at all. I don't understand why you would make a comment without doing any research. I guess you're not an economist.
edmccaffrey··on Rare IBM M15 split ergonomic keyboard hits eBay, bids pass $1600
Neither the HHKB nor Realforce are mechanical, though. Topres are capacitive.
edmccaffrey··on Rare IBM M15 split ergonomic keyboard hits eBay, bids pass $1600
There are plenty of split mechanical keyboards similarly adjustable as the M15 for a couple hundred dollars. Mechanical switches aren't the same as IBM's buckling spring.

Maybe Unicomp will one day be able to afford new tooling.

edmccaffrey··on Android is a Viable Revenue Stream - Advanced Task Manager application
How can you say that the placebo effect doesn't work and then clam that water works, but only when it has a special label?

From your link: The preparation is derived from duck liver and heart, diluted to 200C—a ratio of one part duck offal to 100200 parts water.[2] This is such a high dilution that the final product likely contains not even one molecule of the original liver.

edmccaffrey··on Facebook using tagged photos for authentication
How can they use that for authentication if they don't already have the data to see if your answer is right?
edmccaffrey··on California license plates might go digital, show ads
I know that billboards and many other things already distract drivers, but another distraction that encourages them to get too close to be safe seems plain idiotic.
edmccaffrey··on The Enemy Within: What is Conficker's Botnet For?
And deploying it only requires someone who can import a library and follow instructions.
edmccaffrey··on Cuil relaunches as 'cpedia.' The results are not pretty.
You would expect something with a disambiguation page for your search, and a topic-specific page for what you are looking for would have relevant information on that topic, but:

http://www.cpedia.com/wiki?q=Haskell&disambig=Functional...

edmccaffrey··on iPad jailbreak after less than 24 hours
Not for two years; and please provide your data showing they were losing money because of banning modders, and not because they were keeping the price below what it costs to develop, market and produce the system in order to gain market penetration.
edmccaffrey··on Dropbox (YC 07) Thumbdrives
If you often use multiple computers for accessing various password-protected things (maybe as a system admin or just the occasional need of accessing something on another computer), then you could use a password manager that runs off of the flash drive and Dropbox portable to keep it synced with new passwords and password changes.

I have Keepass and Dropbox on my flash drive just in case I ever need to access something when using someone else's computer, without having to worry about keeping my password database up to date. Much easier than downloading Keepass on a computer that isn't mine--rude at best, not possible due to permissions at worst--and then downloading the database from the web access and cleaning up when I'm done.

It's helped me once or twice; not often, but the relatively small files on a multi-gig drive is worth it.

edmccaffrey··on Plurk’s official response to Microsoft’s apology
What an idiotic statement. A judge would look at the actual damages; launching the site for an extremely short time in a country that they are not allowed to operate in just couldn't have caused them much actual financial damage.

How much are the actual damages? Zero (what seems likely without more information) times whatever punitive multiplier you can think of isn't much at all.

I'd say they fully deserve to lose a legal battle that drains tons of money, so that MS can buy their then nearly-bankrupt company for pennies on the dollar, if they aren't smart enough to drop it when they have already benefited from the situation.

edmccaffrey··on Android No Longer Has The Competitive Advantage, GPS App On iPhone As Well
> Many of these phones that are being sold are the official, "Google branded" version.

This is support for my post--they are pushing the experience that provides the best access to their services.

> They make more money if you are using an Android device

Provide a source for what you are claiming as fact.

> Google Voice is getting investigated by the FTC.

Again, source needed. The FTC investigated the interlocking boards of Apple and Google, but that had nothing to do with Google Voice--it had to do with people serving on both boards.

The FCC is questioning Google about Voice blocking certain numbers, but that has nothing to do with Android or anti-trust issues. The FCC also sent letters asking about the Google Voice rejection on the iPhone, but, again, it had nothing to do with Android or anti-trust concerns on Google's behalf.

edmccaffrey··on Android No Longer Has The Competitive Advantage, GPS App On iPhone As Well
Google isn't doing it because of "anti-trust concerns."

Android isn't a competitor to the iPhone, because Google does not sell Android operating systems. Google sells services and ads, and the way to ensure that as many people as possible have access to them is by developing Android and putting them on every non-Android device with significant enough marketshare.

They make money if you use their services on an Android device; they make money if you use them on an iPhone.

It would be a nice bonus if Android ran all other smartphones out of the market, because having control of the market leader makes it easier to guarantee that everyone has access to their services, but that is not their aim.

edmccaffrey··on Boycott websites that send you email with your password in clear text
> Anybody sending you back your password in clear text is also storing it that way in their database

Incredibly ignorant statement. If it's encrypted in a reversible format then it's not cleartext. If it's being sent in a confirmation email, then it could even be stored as a one-way hash: password extracted from the form, inserted into email, hashed and stored (This is what WordPress, for example, does).

A case can be made against both of those procedures, but that is a separate issue from his statement being ignorant.

edmccaffrey··on [dead]
You'd be eating 25-100 cups of grapes to get the amount of resveratrol in that drink.

Capsules would seem the cheapest if you believe the claims.

edmccaffrey··on Hackintoshed: Life With My “MacBook Nano”
I couldn't find one that isn't widescreen on Dell's, HP's or Asus' website. Even the old Asus EEE PC 701 (the model that arguably started it all) is widescreen.
edmccaffrey··on I Wouldn't Hire a Programmer With No Interest in Programming Outside of Work
> I am not a lawyer, but I believe that judging a job candidate based on their outside-of-work activities would actually be considered discrimination and illegal.

Discrimination is legal except for the few specific cases outlined in the various civil rights, equal pay, and age discrimination acts. Might as well take two minutes to research before making these types of posts.

edmccaffrey··on Scientists Develop Nasal Spray That Improves Memory
> It definitely discredited the article and the scientists involved.

How can a statement by the editor of a journal who didn't have anything to do with the study beyond publishing it discredit the scientists that did the research? Guilt by association is well established as a logical fallacy.

edmccaffrey··on HN: share your unneeded Google Wave invites
ed@ my hn username .net

Thanks.

edmccaffrey··on Where's the CrunchPad?
> The $200-300 is exactly right price for this sort of gadget.

Not if the manufacturer wants to be profitable.

edmccaffrey··on Gadget Makers Can Find Thief, but Don’t Ask
Do you mean that the original owner puts it on the list when they are still in physical possession of it? If that's so, then will they still be able to connect to it?

If the person is blacklisting it only after they notice that it is missing, then it is too late. Under the aforementioned cirucmstances, it transfers ownership once it the bona fide customer buys it from someone, not once the bona fide customer tries to connect it. They could purchase it on eBay before the owner goes from thinking it is misplaced in their house to thinking it is stolen, and it becomes theirs as soon they pay, and then the victim blacklists a device that they no longer own while its still in transit. Even if the owner notices that it is gone before it is bought, they have no way of knowing if it has been sold yet, and neither does the manufacturer.

The legal issues are just too nebulous for these types of things to work.

The best that they can really do is keep track of what credit cards are used to activate phones or buy books on a Kindle, to trace it to the new legal owner, with a subpoena, who may be able to provide a lead to the thief or a reseller that the victim can go after for cash.

edmccaffrey··on Gadget Makers Can Find Thief, but Don’t Ask
> Isn't this a reasonable degree of customer service to expect in return?

No, it's not. It is possible that the victim in no longer the owner of the item, as odd as it may sound: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=810104

edmccaffrey··on Gadget Makers Can Find Thief, but Don’t Ask
Ownership laws in cases of stolen goods are ridiculously complicated.

In some cases in some juristictions, a bona fide purchaser can become the legal owner of stolen property (if they did not know it was stolen). The original owner can seek repayment from anyone involved in selling the item--even if they did not know it was stolen, or sold it after buying it--but sometimes they cannot take the item from the person who currently holds it.

For example, if the victim has their kindle stolen by a thief, and the thief sells it to an electronics store that buys items, and the store sells it to a customer, then (depending on jurisdictions, ect..) the customer is the legal owner of the item. The victim can go after the thief for the market value of the item. Or they can go after the store if they can prove that it sold their item, even if the store didn't know that it was stolen. In this case, the victim no longer has legal claim to the kindle, and has no legal authority to authorize Amazon to do anything to it.

With these complexities, and especially with items moving across jurisdictions, no manufacturer can ever be sure that the original owner is still the legal owner, and able to authorize bricking a device. The only option they have is to do nothing unless ordered by a court.

Apple's phone home is different because it is performing an action that was initiated by the owner while they were the legal owner. It would be a different story if they actively took action against a device after it left the possession of the victim.

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