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frederickf

45 karma · joined August 1, 2013

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frederickf··on REST was never about CRUD
I'd love to read some of his original comments. Do you remember any of the threads? Are those forums publicly available?
frederickf··on Nintendo Switch review: pure potential
To add to your point, several of those ideas were released before even the NES, by Nintendo!

Their portable Game and Watch series included buttons in the direction pad format and even a few folding duel screen models as early as 1982.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Game_%26_Watch_games

frederickf··on Most Americans will get a wrong or late diagnosis at least once in their lives
In my totally unauthoritative opinion the diagnostic process has been optimized to find the most likely cause as quickly as possible. This isn't a terrible strategy on the aggregate. It increase the overall likelihood that the most people will get the right diagnosis. But the trade-off is that some people will get the wrong diagnosis. The alternative would be for doctors to spend more time really digging into symptoms and tests to ensure they get it right the first time, every time, but then fewer people would get diagnosed.

This would be okay if doctors would accept the limitations of the system and admit when they don't know the correct diagnosis or are not sure. In that case they would say something like "This is the most likely diagnosis, but it doesn't meet your symptoms, you should seek a specialist" or something to that effect. I think what happens too often is that doctors confuse the most likely diagnosis with the correct diagnosis, possibly because they're unwilling to admit their fallibility.

frederickf··on 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
The Irving ISD Student Code of Conduct, which the principle alleges the student to have broken, can be downloaded at http://www.irvingisd.net/Page/5183.

I couldn't find anything in there prohibiting a clock or other non-communication related electronic devices. I didn't read every word so maybe I missed something.

I did find the following under the prohibited items section: "Any articles not generally considered to be weapons, including school supplies, when the principal or designee determines that a danger exists."

But that would seem to create a dilemma in this situation. If it was a bomb it wouldn't be covered by that stipulation, but if it was a clock then no reasonable person could consider it to be dangerous.

If we're being charitable we could assume the principled believed it was a bomb at the time, in which case it would have been covered by other stipulations in the code. But if that is the case then I would think the school should have been evacuated. I don't know if that happened or not.

Also, good lord, I don't ever remember having to sign something like that document (it's a 44 page document that reads like a contract) when I was in school. Is it even legally binding to have a minor sign that?

frederickf··on Google launches Uber rival RideWith
This sounds more like Lyft's "Line" service which connects driver and passengers going the same way on regular trips. I'm not familiar with Uber's offerings though so maybe they have a similar service?
frederickf··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2015)
Bazaarvoice

ONSITE in Austin, TX & San Francisco

We currently have full time openings for front end, back end, big data analytics, QA, DevOps, mobile (IOS) and tech writing.

We use a micro architecture approach and teams are encouraged to use whatever technology suits their needs. Mostly Java, Node and Python.

Go straight to the Jobs https://careers-bazaarvoice.icims.com/jobs/search?ss=1&searc...

Learn about the R&D team http://www.bazaarvoice.com/careers/research-and-development/ http://blog.developer.bazaarvoice.com/ https://twitter.com/BazaarvoiceDev

frederickf··on If PHP Were British
This article is very tongue-in-cheek. The title says PHP but you don't have to know PHP to appreciate the humor (or should I say "humour"). At least some of it applies to any C based language.
frederickf··on WinJS: The Windows Library for JavaScript
One advantage might be the ability to support multiple platforms. Using the technology group formerly knows as the "web stack" you could build a version of your app for windows desktop, ubuntu desktop, browser apps, mobile, and probably others.
frederickf··on Messaging App Jott Is Blowing Up Among Junior High and High Schoolers
I've never been on a family plan. On a family plan is it possible for parents to see information about the texts their kids send (or even the texts themselves)? If so, that might be a reason for kids to use this service.
frederickf··on Why PowerPoint should be banned
Whenever I see an article about banning PowerPoint I think of Peter Norvig's humorous PowerPoint rendition of the Gettysburg Address http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm
frederickf··on Why computer color is broken
Is there a reason the applications mentioned in this video do blurring in the way the video presents as incorrect?
frederickf··on Lenovo's Promise for a Cleaner, Safer PC
Really? According to this they have classified it as a "Man-in-the-Middle Attack"

http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/superfish

Are they elsewhere also still saying otherwise?

frederickf··on EFF Outlines Plan to Fix the Broken Patent System
Ideally from the perspective of the inventor :)

But that's an interesting idea. In that system how is the valuation of an innovation determined?

frederickf··on EFF Outlines Plan to Fix the Broken Patent System
This might be naive on my part but it seems like we could help the situation quite a bit, at least for software patents, by just reducing the amount of time for which new software patents are valid. It's simple, easy to understand and implement, more consistent with the speed at which the software market evolves, would reduce the perceived value of bogus patents making trolling less likely, free up technology sooner for everybody to benefit and still offer some protection to innovators.

Right now they're good for between 14 to 20 years (1) which seems too long to me. I'm not sure what the right number is, maybe between 5 - 10? Even that seems long, but then again I don't have anything innovations to patent so I'm probably biased.

(1) http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/312/how-long-are-...

frederickf··on Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox
Ug. I know how you feel. I've had success using https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...
frederickf··on A Designer's War on Misleading Parking Signs
Towards the bottom of the article is a picture titled "The road to a better, better parking sign" that shows various iterations of the design. It isn't very clear, but if you look closely at the two iterations on the right there are stripes added to the red specifically for color blind.

It's more clear on the designers blog: http://toparkornottopark.com/tagged/evolution

frederickf··on Google Isn’t Fixing Some Old Android Bugs
Regarding the Nexus one that's surprising and disappointing. I was under the impression that the Nexus line used vanilla android (no device manufacturer or service provider customizations) and would be update-able as long as the hardware could handle the new OS.
frederickf··on Behind Closed Doors, Ford, UPS, and Visa Push for Net Neutrality
But couldn't the government establish regulations like that even without net neutrality type rules/legislations?
frederickf··on FCC Questions AT&T: Explain Why Your Fiber-Optic Rollout Will Be Delayed
It could be that ATT is already charging consumers the maximum, or close to it, amount consumers will bear. In that case even with gigabit speeds the average consumer probably won't pay much more than their already paying. So, in the absence of competition to motivate them to improve their network they would have to find other revenue streams to justify the cost of installing a fiber-optic network. If they can't charge content providers to use a new faster network (or find some other way to increase their revue) then ATT won't want to build them.
frederickf··on FCC Questions AT&T: Explain Why Your Fiber-Optic Rollout Will Be Delayed
I had to abbreviate the title. The original is "FCC Questions AT&T: Explain Why Your Fiber-Optic High-Speed Internet Nationwide Rollout Will be Delayed"
frederickf··on Coding, Fast and Slow: Developers and the Psychology of Overconfidence (2013)
I agree. This can be problem. Even if they don't slap some crap together. They may in the end take just as long (or longer) than your estimate, but by that point nobody remembers who estimated what. Just that you were the pessimistic one who wasn't confident and they were the eager go getter who solved the hard problem.
frederickf··on Volvo Bets Its Future on Small, Turbocharged Engines
My current ride is a 1992 Volvo 740 Wagon. It only has 12 volts, 1 turbo, and 192,000 miles. In another twenty years from now maybe I'll upgrade to one of these fancy 3 turbo, 24 volts cars, but only if my current Volvo has stopped running ;)
frederickf··on 800 year old Magna Carta manuscript reveals its secrets
"In February 2015, the four manuscripts will be brought together for the first time in history for a special 3-day event, which will allow further academic study of them side by side..."

Maybe I'm being paranoid but it seems risky to bring the remaining four manuscripts together in one place.

frederickf··on Dremel Releases a Mass-Market 3D Printer
And it's not just the cost. Printing things has to be as easy as printing text which can still be annoying. Maybe someday there will be a sequel to Office Space in which they destroy a 3d-printer with the futuristic equivalent of baseball bats.
frederickf··on MasterCard-Branded National eID Card Launched in Nigeria
A corporate branded national ID card sounds like something out of a William Gibson novel.
frederickf··on The S in Rest
"I propose that we use use existing REST semantics for indicating state"

But there are no REST semantics for indicating state. REST is stateless: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch.... I think maybe he's conflating HTTP with REST.

This problem could be solved in a RESTful way by returning a resource that includes all the needed information. I understand he describes that as not being robust, but that doesn't mean it isn't RESTful. In fact fielding acknowledges this very trade-off:

"Like most architectural choices, the stateless constraint reflects a design trade-off. The disadvantage is that it may decrease network performance by increasing the repetitive data (per-interaction overhead) sent in a series of requests, since that data cannot be left on the server in a shared context."

Also, because REVAT URLs are randomly generated the server needs keep track of the resources being pointed to instead of being able to understand it from the semantics of the request. Which works fine right up until you have to scale your application to more than one server. Now you have to deal with the complexity of keeping a distributed system consistent - otherwise those REVAT URLs might sometimes return a 404 - or you're limited to a single centralized link server. These are both scenarios Fielding was trying to avoid by including statelessness as a constraint.

frederickf··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2014)
Bazaarvoice

Austin, San Francisco, New York

Bazaarvoice gives you all the tools you need to build and integrate our software into our client's web experiences. You'll build and innovate on the Bazaarvoice platform to create applications that will drive millions of conversations across the web.

Many positions including Web Developer, Software Engineer, Dev Ops, Big Data, Tech Writer, QA Automation and more.

* Deep links to Engineering jobs: http://keepaustinbazaar.com/

* Search all jobs: https://careers-bazaarvoice.icims.com/jobs/intro

* Career landing page: http://www.bazaarvoice.com/careers/

frederickf··on Disqus cracked – Security flaw reveals users’ e-mail addresses
I think the point isn't that the emails were exposed so much as the exposure of the emails allowed the identity of commentors to be revealed.
frederickf··on RFC 3514: evil flag introduced into IPv4 header
Here's your problem: This things set to evil.
frederickf··on Why You Should Never Use MongoDB
"demoralized tables" :)
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