hs

i have sites with hovering ajax and yes the performance can be slow (it's the ajax)

i don't like 'loading' message on every ajax call so what did i do? i pre-load every js and combine few images into one (not sprites due to dynamic nature) to reduce http request

in your case, it could be: sprite the shoe.jpg to watch.jpg to top.jpg sprite the pumps.jpg ... evening.jpg to middle-shoe.jpg sprite the first 6 shoes into down-shoe.jpg

so for these sprites: 1 + 4 + (10 + 6 + 6 + 4) = 31 files

or you can combine into one big file

the point is not to make user wait for the 'first impression' when (for example) s/he clicks handbags > baby

if s/he wants to click next after seeing the first items, then ajax call can be used (make it one file instead of six) but pre-load the prices into js (or <bad> put price into the file-name like shoe-2-59-49-99-29-39-79.jpg and parse -, map the prices </bad>) so you only need to call 1 instead of 2 or 6 or more http

i was reading "the china study" and there's a part about gene. a disease grows about 3% / year while population maybe <1%, conclusion? gene alone cannot possibly be responsible for the disease

so maybe it's better to compare degree_rate and billionaire_rate ... if #degree-holders grow by 10%/annum while #billionaires grow by 2%/annum then college alone cannot possibly be responsible for billionaire

ok, i'll say it ... college is overrated, over time degrees worth less due to supply/demand

it does not mean college 'enable' the 80% counterpart

i'm an asian and i am not in your category

my parents were born in 1930s, due to wwii they didn't even finish high school.

my father (even so my mom) was very poor, he worked for a while for relatives but later for his own. he's good in business -- none of his children amasses comparable wealth though; however, none takes (or forced to take) 'stable' route (everyone works for self)

they are very hands-off on education. all but one receives bachelor degree though. i picked the school i wanted to go and majored in engineering -- never was forced.

my grades were always low. each year, pincipal always called my mom to discuss it. grades were never important to our family anyway and she's happy that i passed each :D

maybe it's just my parents. they survived one of the most tumultous era and without schooling or external help managed to do extremely well

so perhaps they expect as much for the children shrug

--- from reading others in this thread, i got the impression that [highly academic] parents with stable income (linear growth, not exponential) tend to be pushy

maybe because the formula worked for them. that formula would have steered my parents into slavery (and very high chance that i now am plowing a field instead of hacking lisp)

http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000932.html

except that freedom with strings attached is not freedom

looks like i have to type more if i switch to ext; hence, no

tiled wm like ion3, wmii, dwm open new windows automatically maximized

no need to use mouse to scroll, move, resize, min, max window ... huge time saver

if someone pays for me: mac

if i have to buy myself: used pc for sale, install openbsd/ubuntu and i'm ready

but of course ...

no vim ... no work

if current java/python/perl/ruby and their goodies were used instead back then ... could Rover in moon be REPL-debugged miles away from earth? ... given the limitations of very low memory

i'm particularly curious about that one year learning from google

from gapingvoid: "10. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.

Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on an antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would SERIOUSLY surprise me."

i guess the same thing can be said for those who use aeron, multi monitor, big screens, etc

the true hacker will just shut up and code, even using crappy computer / resources

i still much prefer mplayer. it's more powerful, very cli & keyboard friendly

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/

needless to say, i have less issues playing movies & audios as compared to vlc

methink mine was in the 1000 range, zomg i'm doomed!

One Book to rule them all

let's not forget that russia is also part of asia

One Server to rule them all

"I have found everything could be picked up in a few weeks."

yes, business courses are really that easy

i took accounting course back then, the first couple weeks it didn't make sense (too simple). i thought a better way (aka ABC (activity based accounting)) which was covered weeks later

i sat on mba course later and most 'analysis' are too simplistic, mostly straight lines (remember 'beta' ?). complete waste of time.

i feel that business in general is easy and not much to learn so schools just teach everything for the sake of teaching.

out of the 1000 pages in many business textbooks, maybe only 100 pages are useful.

yes, functional languages because they're more mathematical

"When you see a GPL notice, you can feel warm fuzzy feelings of sharing certain beliefs with the authors about freedom and sharing."

this reminds me of this email conversation: http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/clisp/clisp/doc/...

especially: "I had to put CLISP under GPL because libreadline.a was something I wanted to use and I didn't want to write myself. libgmp.a is similar in this respect, and it may therefore help putting some new packages under GPL.

Building libgmp.a was just too hard work. Other people shouldn't get it for free."

do you want to have your success credited to an institution that bugs you for alumni donation every year?

isn't it much cooler to credit all to yourself (or startup) and pay no tax?

some cool people even have priviledge to say "i'm a college dropout" :D

thx for the gingery series link

i'm also interested in how-to-make-stuff-from-chemistry series (candle, soap, pulp, paper, ink, oil, nylon, plastic, etc) preferrably from the same author(s)

not necessarily from scratch (burn tree to get ash etc)

if you have links please post, thx

there's "do-nothing" technique from masanobu fukuoka http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka

he claimed his yield is the best in japan -- by weight

he could win the most nutritious award too if such category existed

maybe it's the 'secret weapon' for those startups

is there any data of #monitors used during early product development on various startups?

don't buy samsung (korean) ... unless you only use windows

i bought scx-4100 3 yrs ago, later on misteriously the mac driver (no scanner, printer only) disappeared from the site

the linux driver is also ugly, breaks security, dirty uninstall, etc ... such a pita

korean loves windows, so don't expect much for mac and linux from them

you save more bucks on product-creation-or-substitution than service ... let's call it "leverage"

cooking food is a good example, on average you can have leverage up to 10x over dining

generic drug is another, 2-50x leverage over branded one

chemistry ... up to 10000x -- i invested $3 for a kg of washing soda and citric acid (many use weaker base like baking soda and weaker acid like vinegar) which could last me a lifetime. now i rarely go to personal care (shampoo, soap, toothpaste) while at grocery

imagination ... up to infinity (free) -- coding, writing, entertain oneself, etc

changing oil is "service" ... as such, the leverage is low, 5x top

many say it's better to buy than make since you have to spend time making it yourself ... they conveniently forget that they too have to waste time buying (going to seller, making selection, putting order, waiting, paying, reordering)

dwm, dmenu, mrxvt, w3m, xzgf, vifm, mpg123, mplayer, vim, curl

perseverance ... you will have failures (bugs, disks, networks, customer complaints, etc)

now hn has orange, why not extend it further? like belt-color levels

say a new user is of white belt and can't post after s/he of age one week (then automatically get yellow belt and can post 1 post / day max) ... higher levels can post more per day

and maybe a penalty function like temporarily giving 1 day noprocrast for trolling

for plotting, matlab is a bit 'lower level' where you map a function over a range and then plot the list of return values

for linear algebra, matlab is more succinct, it has "'" transpose and "^-1" for inverse, so you can type x = A'(AA')^-1*b

wow, more reasons NOT to use microsoft products