julio_the_squid

That's because the school system, and especially the social system embedded in it, fails us thoroughly. As far as I could tell, it's actually designed to discourage gifted children from realizing their potential.

I like this idea, but I'm not sure about the words upon a bit of reflection.

It seems like clicking "Uninsightful/Agree" is agreeing that I believe things that are uninsightful? I imagine that would be the least used option.

Insightful/Disagree seems like a contradiction. If someone has stated a conclusion that I think is wrong, how could I see those opinions as containing notable insights?

Sure, sounds fine! Why not make a normal website that isn't under the control of some greedy corporation? That's what the internet is for, to me.

Yeah, I saw it uses a few new elements. Still, you could accomplish the same effect without them, right? So it doesn't really require HTML5?

I suppose you could say it's 'brave', though, in the same way that trying to swindle someone and hoping they don't notice is brave.

Some good examples there, but in all it's rather brief. Surely there's more to jQuery 1.4?

I'm getting quite weary of hearing that this or that is HTML5, and then you view it and there's really nothing in particular that you couldn't do with HTML 4.1. Is there something special and brand new about showing a set of slides with Javascript with a poor interface? With all of this hype and mislabeling, average semi-technical people are becoming confused from here to Zaire about HTML5. The comments on say, TechCrunch prove this thoroughly every time the topic is mentioned.

That's funny, I often think of a similar maxim in the book "Groucho and Me" by Groucho Marx. Essentially, he said that in 1928-29, he knew it was time to get out of a certain stock once his taxi driver started talking about it.

It's a great book, you can find most of the text here : http://books.google.com/books?id=tFsnGr2SQJ0C&printsec=f... though I can't find the section about the cab driver. The whole part about the 1929 stock crash is great.

Well, that's no problem! Several executives from large companies in the business of selling my private information have recently informed us all that privacy is over-rated, doesn't exist anymore and if you even want it to exist, you're wrong.

As you may know, they send all of your contacts who aren't members messages saying '<person name> invited you to join their network on (linkedin|facebook|twitter)'. Sometimes they even mail to 'remind' you again a month or two later.

I don't think users necessarily realize these messages are being sent ostensibly on their behalf. In my view these large, successful companies are growing their user bases through spam.

My impression is that Jim Breyer has been running the show for a while.

Sure, this tactic is similar to my view of the situation in Arizona, or drug laws.

The tactic is to hold up an example that people can't disagree with as being 'bad', and claim you need new powers to fight this scourge. Illegal immigration is bad, so we need to be able to stop and search anyone at anytime in case they are undocumented. Drugs are bad, so we need to be able to tap phones and search houses without warrants, and set up checkpoints to screen anyone driving within 20 minutes of the Mexican border. And, child porn is bad, so we need to monitor all internet communications constantly to screen for it.

In each case, it's simply an excuse to grant unheard of powers to authorities, which they will then be sure to use for various other purposes which they didn't see fit to mention at the time. The actual solution to any of the problems used as the wedges don't resemble the proposed solutions, either.

I was referring to how Microsoft's own flagship sites has scripting errors in IE. I'm sure some part of MS still deals with IE6, and I understand why. Of course they encourage people to upgrade to IE8 when they can.

And actually... yes, I would prefer if some nimrod who is trying to install a copy of XP from 6 years ago has problems with it and understands that they need to run modern software to access the modern internet.

If Toyota was going to upgrade my car for free, as every browser is available for free, why would I have a problem with that?

I've noticed errors in IE 6 on Live.com and Bing, too. Silly that I spend all this time making our sites work with IE6, and Microsoft themselves have tossed it aside.

As for the general point, I couldn't agree more. I do think Microsoft has intentionally impeded the progress of the open web. They made it clear with the whole Netscape deal that shift away from desktop apps (i.e., win32) towards a system where one can access programs and accomplish tasks equally well on any desktop OS was something they sought to avoid. And why not? They essentially had an obligation to their shareholders to preserve their advantage.

One could see how their interests would be served by making web development more difficult.

Well, to put it in the most extreme example - if you were drinking pure formaldehyde that had an additive that made it taste just like a delicious lemonade, would you feel taht you had been tricked into thinking it tastes good?

Taste is supposed to identify healthy and needed substances vs. deleterious or poisonous substances, so when this is subverted artificially, it feels like a trick to me.

Given the amount of money that the agricultural corporations would be happy to throw in, and the public's demonstrated weakness for propaganda and inability to actually decide anything for themselves, I don't have much confidence in people coming to a reasonable, considered conclusion.

The differentiating factor for me is that it's just what I've used for 12 years and what I'm most productive in.

Serious Linux users use it because it's the only thing that fits the way they work. Linux has all the interface and programs I'm used to, so of course I'd be more likely to buy software for it than any other OS. What holds me back is that there isn't any software I need that I don't have...

A lot of people mention Dive into Python. I'm curious, what are the opinions out there regarding this online Python book?

http://homepage.mac.com/s_lott/books/python.html

I am relatively new to Python and wrote a Django app using string.format through and through. Then, I had to install it on our server... which apparently uses Python 2.4 and we can't upgrade at the moment. It all had to be changed to the printf style to be compatible... so, I think learning that is still relevant since it works in every Python version.

Agreed, I think anybody that has watched the history of major banks and their political chums for the past oh, 200 years or so, knows that this will amount to a slap on the hand, much less than they gained through their various activities of the sort, and will prove to be little deterrence or punishment.

I sure do hate it when people confuse shell environments such as Bash/ksh/etc with 'DOS'. I suppose people that don't want to use the command line at all don't understand, but there is a huge difference between a modern command line and one with no history where the cursor keys don't even work.

By definition, 'what you wish the iPad to have that it does not have' equals 'what the iPad is missing'.

If I expected it to operate as a razor and it could not while other similar devices did have that feature, then yes, I would say shaving capability was missing. That doesn't mean every irrelevant concept I can come up with would be called missing, though. 'Missing' is based on what one would expect, desire and can get elsewhere.

I tried that, too - QNX RTOS 4 or something like that. As an OS with a shell and a full GUI, it was quite impressive for the tiny binary!

I was surprised to see the woman that works for Microsoft Research talking about her iPhone, Mac and so on. Or is that not surprising?

It's not opt-in... At some point, every single outgoing article link you'd click on would come up in a frame with the Digg bar on top.

Sure, it's not as closed as Apple's systems. However, it's still not a real computer. I want a tablet that is just a laptop running a normal OS, with accommodations for a touch screen. There's no indication a ChromeOS tablet will be anything like that.

It's a strange world where this is the case, but Windows 7 is a lot more open than either ChromeOS or the iPad.7. hromeOS is similar to the iPad in that you're limited in your ability to install the software of your choice - does it even have native programs that you can install?. Isn't that like the complaint so many of us have about the iPad, that it doesn't have a full featured OS?

This is the second or third article I've read explaining load average, and sad to say I still can't explain it.

All I know is that when it's inexplicably over 3-4, you can't determine why as (no processes are using high CPU), and 1 in ten database queries are taking to 5 minutes, under normal load, that day will not be the best of your life. Well, what I've determined is that a full storage device, or overloaded i/o system for your disk, can produce very high load along with accompanying performance of doom.

06. Until they got large enough to sell out, they looked the other way regarding blatant copyright infringement, the source of 85% of YouTube's videos and traffic for the first few years.

(as noted in the recent trial proceedings with Viacom)

I approve, Duncan Idaho.

While it might be stretched to fit, no, this doesn't match the commonly accepted use of pretentious at all.