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jsnx

93 karma · joined August 16, 2007

bearded unix guy in san francisco
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jsnx··on Should Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail block Facebook?
Technically speaking, the TOS allows Google to kick any user who gets their stuff from Facebook This would be bad for Facebook, but it would be bad for Google and Yahoo, too: they would anger their users by frustrating a reasonable use of their service. Those users might just take their email and leave.

Is the same true for Facebook? If you get kicked from Facebook, where else will you go? You might say "I'll just take my friends and start my own Facebook!", but you won't be able to unless you somehow got around their monitoring. (Not a difficult problem in principal, but tough for the non-savvy.)

Would a service that exports Facebook contacts be illegal? What about a piece of software that does so?

jsnx··on Web Playgrounds of the Very Young
These games are not about high quality rendering, and really can't be -- the computing environment they ship to is not homogeneous enough. Pirates of The Caribbean looks like Ocarina of Time.

While snazzy rendering won't really go anywhere with these games, server side physics just might -- you can control the platform, and as the games move from "pre-teen" to "young adult" you get into domains where realism (in the sense of convincing motion, compression of rubber objects and the like) can add a lot even without fancy rendering.

jsnx··on The world is not so flat, God of Visas edition
Is it good or bad for India when brighter people leave to go to the U.S.? I suppose they send money home, as most of their extended family remains in India.
jsnx··on Rails is a Ghetto... [NSFW for Language]
Some of us just keep our logs. If you keep the same computer for awhile, and leave the default logging on...
jsnx··on Jaron Lanier: "Long Live Closed-Source Software!"
Innovation is often understood to mean one of two different things -- pushing boundaries and changing the world, and filling a niche that no one else is filling. They are different things. I'm sad to say it, but I think the first kind is often rooted in dreamy hubris, and thus fails; while the second one -- which is all about a willingness to serve -- does not appeal to the pride of entrepreneurs and will always be in demand in consequence.

The pace of innovation in computing will never again match that of the sixties or seventies -- lots of stuff has been built, has proven its value and been recorded in the Book of Wisdom. Whenever you think, "I know, let's build a such-and-such...", nowadays, you can be pretty sure it's been done at least half a dozen times. We really should emphasize looking back, to learn from history -- now that there is some.

As far as I can tell, the only computing field that does a good job of that is system administration -- experience, mentors and an appreciation for the "old ways" make up an integral part of that discipline.

jsnx··on Jaron Lanier: "Long Live Closed-Source Software!"
Well, what if, by law, you had to ship the source when you ship the software? That's as much as any Open Source license demands.

Software As A Service remains completely protected -- would it be so bad if people who wanted to cash in had to offer services instead of products?

jsnx··on Jaron Lanier: "Long Live Closed-Source Software!"
Most software is not innovative, though -- and innovative software has rarely been incentivized correctly. (How much is Xerox making for inventing the Macintosh?)

The author is one of many criticizing Open Source for failing to kick UNIX out of the white room, the sort of thing that, in its scope, would definitely be one to millions.

jsnx··on How to Lose Your Job on Your Own Time, Thanks To Internet
Now we just need some way to watch the watchers...
jsnx··on Jaron Lanier: "Long Live Closed-Source Software!"
The author doesn't really seem to get what Linux does:

My guess is that a poorly encapsulated, communal gloop of organisms lost out to closely guarded species for the same reason that the Linux community didn't come up with the iPhone: Encapsulation serves a purpose.

Since when did Linus and friends come up with hardware? Does he mean the "community of people who rely on Linux as the core of their product offering?" -- would he then include Apple in the BSD community?

By his own criterion, Apple would be the perfect shop for OS innovation -- but I guess they just weren't feeling innovative that day and switched to FreeBSD instead. By doing so, they got the benefit of evolution -- not as snazzy as innovation, but something open source has excelled at for its long life.

jsnx··on Jaron Lanier: "Long Live Closed-Source Software!"
While there are papers about the problem of page rank, there is no paper describing the Page Rank.
jsnx··on Anti-intellectualism in American Culture
Being hostile to the college system is not the same thing as opposition to book learnin' in general. I always liked books -- I just don't like paying thousands of dollars to people who give me crappy books and make me listen to them talk for hours and hours a day. I suppose good college is not for suckers -- but when I say "college is for suckers" I mean most college is for suckers.
jsnx··on Anti-intellectualism in American Culture
So if I just buy the mortarboard, I don't need all that fancy book learnin'...
jsnx··on The world's most toxic value system
It would nice to know what exactly you disagree with, and why you disagree.
jsnx··on The world's most toxic value system
...anyone who thinks Japan's is a culture of Bushido does not know Japanese history. The Bushido code was written by samurai who never saw combat...

It was formalized in Tokugawa times, but goes back to the 9th century in Japan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushido) and bears a strong resemblance to the warrior ethic described in many Chinese folk tales. (These tales were collected, very late, into the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms).)

jsnx··on The world's most toxic value system
Both the code of Bushido and the less culturally specific "Texas Justice" mentioned in this article arose in similar circumstances -- cultures that are war-like, family-centric and deeply conservative. Bushido, however, likes to put on the face of self-censure, and therein lay the real difference.

Neither seppuku (suicide with a helper) nor harikari (the solo version) were matters of "killing yourself if you get super pissed and can't find anybody else to kill" (as per Real Ultimate Power). They were a means of averting the wrath of an indiscriminate government, which would punish your entire family if you failed to make up for your shame in the appropriate way. Of course, your family would not be happy about this -- the option of "do it yourself or your family gets it!" drives a wedge between the family and the individual, strengthening the position of the central government by a large margin.

With a government so strong that it can even make people kill themselves, who needs to go around enforcing one's honor by wildly killing people? The strength of the government encourages order, both discouraging revenge and the slights that lead to it. Disputes go through "official channels" and people have confidence in their resolution.

In lieu of "the rule of law", people are more inclined to take justice into their own hands. When there is no law to cover a certain trade or group, honor killing often reasserts itself. Consider Asian gang members in San Francisco who traffic in narcotics -- when one cheats another, they have no one to turn to for dispute resolution, so it's killing time!

So many things are bundled up in that article -- misogyny, honor killing, notions of honor, backwardness, privilege -- but it is important to acknowledge that "Texas Justice" (lolz) is present whenever the sheriff is absent, weak or corrupt. Take a bunch of "Enlightenment" people, put them out in the middle of nowhere with some guns and, voila, you've got Thar!

jsnx··on The world's most toxic value system
"In low tech warfare, the fiercest and most cohesive side wins..."

That is true of modern warfare, as well.

"If you have guns and your opponents have spears..."

Sure, in an extremely asymmetric war, the folks with the missiles can relax the fierceness a bit.

"Industrialization changed the balance."

As war becomes more about tools, the economic efficiency of the underlying society matters more. However, very early in history it was the case that he with the best toys wins. Swords were never cheap, nor was the time it took to learn to use them. The importance of technology in pre-industrial societies can be understood by the frequency and severity of arms control in China and Japan. A bunch of motivated peasants with hoes are in a bad place vis-a-vis a few gentlemen with swords and steeds.

jsnx··on Programmer/partner wanted
ph34r!
jsnx··on To the 40-something programmer asked to learn something new
Replace 'OO' with 'FP', and he could be my manager...
jsnx··on An Offer
I just found a room in a house in SF -- $900 covers utilities, internet, furnishings and rent. It's in the Mission, a well liked neighborhood.

An overlooked part of SF life is people who are sick of living in a city. They want to go to bed at a reasonable hour, know their neighbours and feel like a handshake can close a deal. I've never had to submit a credit report to a landlord.

However, most of my computer/finance friends (late twenties) have not had the same experience -- because of the company they keep. Do not hang out with other posh kids the time! They aren't much involved with the City and know little but the bars.

As far as a car goes, definitely don't bring one with you. On the few occasions when you need to drive, you can rent a car for a few hours (one service is called ZipCar, there are others) and then be done with it.

Food in SF is good -- as good as any city in the States, and some items (wines, of course, but also bread and cheeses and chipotles) have international renown.

jsnx··on An Offer
Rent usually includes wireless internet around here.
jsnx··on Ask YC: Are there *any* startups using ASP.NET?
I am definitely in sympathy with your three guys. Were they really convinced that "...any business idea that ran on .NET was a bad one." or just that it was Hell to work with .NET?

> It doesn't make much sense to me from a business standpoint.

It's really about quality of life. I tried using Windows for a spell, for XBox development -- I ended up running Linux under Moka5 for a userland, and then switching into Windows once in awhile to kick the XBox. Until I got that in place, I was miserable.

jsnx··on Ask YC: Are there *any* startups using ASP.NET?
Yeah, I really have to second this one. It's not just the UNIX/C universe, though -- it's the UNIX scripting universe. As a particular example, how do you tie your graphing software to your analysis software to your screen scraping software? You could try writing them all in Python -- or you could just use pipes and tie together GNU plot and wget with some custom filters in Python. It takes a few years to get confident with this stuff; but once you are, you will never write so little code :)
jsnx··on Hacker New UI issue with comment voting
Well, just don't vote me up for it...
jsnx··on Ask YC: What new technologies are you exploring?
Bourne shell, sed, awk, sort, uniq -- the UNIX utilities are worth your time to get to know well.

Filesystems -- how to write them, and what's out there already.

jsnx··on Hacker New UI issue with comment voting
Voting because you agree or disagree is a Bad Thing for a quality filter. Unfortunately, though, all these sites start off with a quality filter and end up with a demoralizing popularity contest. Voting should cost you something.
jsnx··on Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
Funny, this is happening in the states, too. I could copy-paste this paper and call it "Why I Am Not In School".
jsnx··on Innovative New Rails Host: Online IDE, Web Console, Instantly Live
This will make little apps -- restaurants, dance studios, newsletters -- insanely easy to build and deploy.

I doubt it will do much for bigger ones, though. Scalability, performance and QOS are matters of system administration -- precisely the matters that Heroku takes out of your hands.

jsnx··on Warning: Software Startups are Not as Easy as Everyone Says
For mnemonicsloth to make a strawman argument, he'd first have said something like "some people say <poor argument for $x>" and then go on "however, <picks apart argument>, so we know $x is false". Therein lies the fallacy -- a disproof of a proof of $x is not a disproof of $x.

In other words, it's not about presenting a person as a poor defender, it's about presenting a poor defense. Cutting straight to a person's worth as a commentator -- as mnemonicsloth did -- is argument "ad hominem" ("to the person").

jsnx··on Warning: Software Startups are Not as Easy as Everyone Says
Otherwise there wouldn't be tens of thousands...
jsnx··on Warning: Software Startups are Not as Easy as Everyone Says
Your use of 'strawman' is incorrect.
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