jamesbkel

Indeed, I found this true in rural South Africa. Almost everyone carried a "dumb" phone since obviously, cell access is vastly desirable over landline in those sorts of areas. Additionally, it would often behoove local groups to team up and get a small solar generator. Both for the savings (even a small panel could provide much of their daily energy use) as well as for increased self-reliance from the "grid" (or, more like the "wire", if there was one).

This brings up some good points, but the title and structure are a bit misleading. For that who haven't read this yet, the middle section raises the reasons for Apple to acquire a carrier (most of which I thought were poor reasons, which almost caused me to stop reading). The author concludes with a rather coherent detailing of why it would in fact be silly for Apple to acquire a carrier (especially only US).

I certainly agree that the nature of games/gaming devices (especially portables) is changing, but I question whether it behooves Nintendo to be a follower.

I'm constantly annoyed by the fact that I can't use my Wii as a networked media interface to my TV and that it doesn't support HD. But I've never regretted purchasing the Wii, since there are so many games that are just plain fun, many with nearly unlimited replay ability (Wii Sports:Golf).

Much like Apple, Nintendo has a legacy of software-hardware tie-in. It's worked well and I can't see why they would easily cede the hardware aspect to Apple.

Definitely can relate to this situation (of your ex). It definitely can be a case of difficulty "judg[ing] how/when to jump in", I certainly am below-average on that measure.

However, a separate but related trait is that I often find myself internally running through several iterations of what I want to say, only to realize that by the time I've winnowed it down to the relevant info and am ready to speak, the conversation has moved on.

> does seeing violence around you make you more violent?

My guess is that amount of violence per se is not the issue. It probably is more closely related to the consequences of said violence: someone living in a war zone has a much greater appreciation for the negative outcomes of violence versus someone who has experienced purely the excitement element of violence.

That said, definitely agree that it's less "what" and more "how much".

I'm in the US, but find myself in the UK for some time every few months. While I'm not opposed to donations, I'd also love to see a tourist/business traveler guide covering establishments that were affected and would benefit from additional traffic.

I think that's true to some extent, but at least with a tweet the user is also commenting/providing some context for their audience. One of the issues with +1 is that it's not always clear to users how the +1 will be interpreted.

I could see this becoming very popular as a heart-rate etc. monitor at high-end gyms. Slap on a tattoo that will interface with whatever machines you use, then wash it off in the shower.

>ideally albums I have heard many times before

I find this to be true also.

Additionally, I've noticed that during the planning stage music is less helpful/possibly distracting. However, once I've more or less decided what to do and am focused more on implementation music can help me focus.

Agree with the lack of interesting uses for an exploited/modded Wii. I went the route of physical mod, really just as a side project to see if I could do it. Added an external hdd formatted to wbfs for storing games, installed a bunch of emulators and other software. Honestly, the only thing I still use is the hdd since it lets me keep the disks in the closet and to occasionally copy a friend's game. After about 2-3 weeks of messing around with some of the new stuff, the Wii has returned to it's original function: coming home from the bar and gambling on games of virtual golf.

Most of the Wii-based media "solutions" are more easily (and better) handled with an old laptop (or cheap new one) and a bluetooth dongle.

Quite true: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath

Actually, Istanbul can get a fair amount of snow precipitation during short periods of time, which is the main concern for obscuring traffic lights.

Completely agree. One of the main things I learned in my 20 or so years of classical piano playing was to focus on basics. In my haste I think I missed that thrust of the OP and also neglected to mention it in my response.

Agreed, should have specified that in my response.

I agree with the overall point here, but isn't this just the same as saying "practice" and/or "keep practicing, especially with those that are better than you"?

Well, I think the distinction is that the techniques were originally designed to improve the response to the state of, for example, shipping in Rotterdam. That is, the traders didn't particularly care if the shipping patterns were the most efficient possible, but that they were making the best trades based on observed patterns.

I believe the point of the article is that now these same techniques are being used to instruct the markets they were originally designed to simply monitor.

While I agree, it seems a reasonable compromise would be to default to online yet also allow a player to fork into offline mode.

Actually, as of 2011 all first class USPS postage is non-denominated. So anyone purchasing new stamps should be covered.

Depending on your country and postal service these are also known more generally as "non-denominated" or "non-value indicator" postage.

As much as I want to laugh (and maybe even cry) at this, it does bring up a good point. Not so much in the content, but the fact that it exists in the first place.

I imagine that for almost everyone on HN the "revelation" of this article is comically obvious. However, I have had countless clients who were interested in testing the waters for hosting or HPC work and were committed to sinking a lot of cash into in-house machines up front. I almost always suggest experimenting with AWS and then moving on from there. More than 1/2 of the time I get a bug-eyed look, not because they are skeptical of AWS, they just have no idea what it is.

I didn't mean to say that terrorists are gaining financially or that the "burn[t] money" goes to them. I'd be surprised if that's a real goal.

My point was that regardless of where the money ends up, if it's misappropriated then it's a waste.

This has always been one of my biggest issues with "counter-terrorism". If the costs of fighting terrorism outweigh the damage that a genuine terrorist group could inflict... who really wins?

As a US citizen, I don't doubt that some of our spending has directly stopped particular terrorist plots. However, my point for the past ~10 years has been: they [terrorists] are tricking us into burning money chasing them around the world. If we had invested a fraction of this to take care of people who have suffered from non-terrorist causes we would result with a net benefit.[1]

I want to reiterate that there undoubtedly threats to be addressed, but sometime I wish that politicians (and a fair amount of the general population) would leave the whack-a-mole terrorism game alone, take their (our) coin home and find something better to do.

[1] Admit, this is an assumption. But I don't think it's a huge leap.

I definitely agree with author's point about how A/C has shaped American life - not necessarily for the better and perhaps with significant downsides, most notably at a social level.

However, I feel like this section (which I consider beneficial without question) was glossed over.

And hubs of business and technology in hot regions of the globe, such as Dubai, may never have taken off... Computers throw off a lot of heat, too. The development of the entire IT industry might not have happened without cooling technologies first pioneered by air conditioning.

That said, I'm just as guilty as the next American. Living in Boston, there's not much I can do about avoiding snow, so at least I have the comfort of my A/C if it gets really bad in the summer. Though I do try to be responsible and limit use to primarily Air Conditioning (eliminating humidity) vs. Air Cooling unit.

[update] As a follow up for anyone in climates which experience hot days but cool nights: if you own a house with an attic, a whole-house fan is a great investment vs. central A/C. In a matter of minutes a whole-house fan can create massive delta temp if it's cool outside at night. It's actually quite shocking how effective it is.

If you're home all day then perhaps not for you, since the best use is to get home from work and turn it on around dusk, turn off overnight (I have a timer set on mine) and next day close up all the windows first thing before work.

Along with many of the flaws already adressed, the most relevant for me was "absolutely sure of" and also taking the words out of context. There were a good number of words that I was pretty sure I knew and had I read them in context would have been correct in my meaning and never given it a second thought.

I'm certain that if I took this same test using a base of 'novel in fulltext' vs. 'list of all unique words in the novel', my recog would be FAR better on the novel.

I never really used the service, so it's not a big deal for me, but the email subject could also have been a bit more descriptive than "Fridge Updates and Save your Data!".

I saw it about 30min ago and glossed over it since I interpreted that as "Fridge updates w/ new features, one of which is called 'Save Your Data!'".

Same here. I had another Lego enthusiast friend as a kid. Every time one of us got a new set we would do it individually then either trade sets or just let the other borrow it to do the same. Then it got thrown into the GIANT bucket of old Legos we used for our creative projects which we would work on together.

A couple of our creative projects were even put on display at some local libraries. That was a really satisfying experience as an 8-12 year old.

It was a few years ago so I forget the exact kit, but I too was at that store and pleasantly surprised to see an adult having fun with legos on the box. Especially since there were plenty of adults, myself included, having fun in the store.

Actually, there have been some serious issues with NetFlix mail causing problems for the USPS.

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/11/30/ne...

This is a bit outdated, but I couldn't find anything that indicates this problem has been fixed (if anyone is aware of that, please let me know).

Definitely agree that it's easy to burn through the good streaming material and hit a roadblock where it's only worth checking news additions. I think in addition to that, there are certain people that still go online on Sunday/Monday to order a physical DVD for the next weekend: namely my parents.

I got a Roku for them a few years ago to make it easier for them to stream. Last time I was there I noticed it was gone. When I asked about it they said that once they got a new TV they didn't really want to set it up and gave it to my sister (I didn't take any offense, and at least it's being used now).

I actually enjoyed it since it was a good reminder of how everyone has a threshold for the new/innovative/convenient vs. the familiar/comfortable.

Back in High School I wanted to get a bit of IS experience, so I volunteered in the IS dept of a nearby hospital. Turned out, my job was to format all 10-20K of the old Windows95 installation floppies they had sitting around (this was 2000-2001).

At first I almost just left. But the guys in the IS dept were actually really nice and let me use the spare parts they had just sitting around. I ended up making a setup with 3 screens, 3 towers and each tower with 4 floppy drives. Plus an extra tower & screen to browse the internet while I would swap disks in and out of the other three.

My hidden back corner behind all the ancient, noisy tape drive towers (it was a Hospital... need to be HIPPA compliant and anal about recouds) became the cool place to hang out and I ended up learning a mountain of information from those guys/gals.