rudin

Let's see his angle for doing this:

From the contributor's website (http://lindsaar.net/about_mikel): "I am a Scientologist and work full time as a volunteer for non profit organizations. It keeps me alive and I really enjoy helping people. You can see some of the work I do at the DrugFacts website."

I find it funny that the probable lone Scientologist rails-contributer finds this more offensive (or at least annoying) than all the Christians involved.

First twitter and now a website?

Looking over the content on the site I was depressed by all the philanthropy and environmentalism. Not that these aren't good things but I think Bill has been so successful at building software and corporations that his time would be better used teaching people these things.

Imagine the articles and insight we could get if he would convert into someone like Paul Graham.

You could, but would it have any effect? I'd like to see okcupid doing some controlled experiments and see if stuff like changing the photo to look into the camera works or if people don't look into the camera for another reason that correlates negatively with attraction.

The aspect of "signalling" how biological animals act a certain way to show abilities (i.e. stick out chest for masculinity) is interesting because there is so much room for cheating. I wonder if we are hard wired in a sense to only signal the truth or if there is a arms race going on between the cheaters and the evaluaters.

If we take this as a question about how to interact with people in a cafe environment and not a banal question about the best kind of coffee then just order what you want. I once had a meeting with a boss who ordered a milkshake while wearing a suit.

"The meme idea is interesting, but it has been discussed elsewhere in more depth with less intention of starting a flamewar" - While this is true. Dawkins did INVENT the concept (or at least the name) meme so this article surely has relevance if you are interested in memes. I agree with you on his religion bashing. He created this concept mainly to attack religions by equating them with viruses. It is interesting though that he overplays the beneficial part of computer viruses while downplaying the beneficial part of religion. The line between parasite and symbiosis is fuzzy. Even organisms like dwarf tapeworms can help people by reducing allergies so surely religion has done some good.

The average life expectancy of a multinational corporation-Fortune 500 or its equivalent-is between 40 and 50 years and they have been around for 500 years or less (in their current form). Compare this with the time humans took to evolve. The vast time involved more than compensates for the slower rate of change.

My point is they are shifting the data arbitrarily. The Thordon data points are lower than both the Kelburn and Airport data points for the following reason: "Thorndon (closed 31 Dec 1927) has no overlap with Kelburn (opened 1 Jan 1928). For the purpose of illustration, we have applied the same offset to Thorndon as was calculated for the Airport." - i.e. they shifted it down as much as the Airport even though the Airport has a higher average temperature

Have a look at this. They "shift" the data so it is all on the same scale and create one graph. This is horrible science. They should be treating each temperature probe as a separate entity.

I am also dubious about the use of airports for temperature readings (Note this is a recent development). Airports can introduce a mini-UHI effect producing an artificially higher temperature.

http://www.niwa.co.nz/news-and-publications/news/all/niwa-co...

The lack of installation leads to another selling point of web apps. Security. Whenever I install something on my computer I instinctively flinch as I realize that I am handing over the keys to my car so to speak.

Maybe give vimperator a try. It is a plugin for firefox that gives it a vim feeling. I think you can write scripts for it too.

I was given some advice on this once:

Lie in bed at night (make sure it is dark so your eyes don't try to focus on anything). Do some eye exercises (up-down, left-right, generally just moving them around a bit) while your eyes are open. I think the rationale behind this is that when you stare at a screen not only are your eyes focusing at the same distance but they are not moving around as much as they should be. Don't know if this is scientific so caveat emptor etc.

"I know why you're here, d4ft. I know what you've been doing … why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit by your computer. You're looking for it. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when it found me, I realized I wasn't really looking for it. I was looking for an answer. It's the question that drives us, d4ft. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did."

"What is the ultimate keyboard?"

"The answer is out there, d4ft, and it's looking for you, and it will find you if you want it to"

Possibly this: A new teacher walks into a class and asks, "What is 3 + 5?". A child responds, "5 + 3 as addition is commutative".

I'm not so worried about the order children get taught mathematical subjects but whether they have a good teacher that encourages them to enjoy mathematics and learn how to problem solve.

I am always surprised by how the people in the entertainment industry are so driven and hardworking. People often over-emphasize the talent or luck part, e.g. his name "50 Cent" was acquired from a chance meeting with Eminem in the subway, but this is quite misleading.

Compare this piece of writing with:

"The Steve Martin Method" http://www.calnewport.com/blog/2008/02/01/the-steve-martin-m... "be so good they can't ignore you"

Jerry Seinfield's "Don't break the chain" http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-se... "the value of continual incremental progress"

The section "Your nerd has built an annoyingly efficient relevancy engine in his head." should be recast as "Expect social incompetence and rudeness from your nerd". This is not something people will accept or should accept. Nerds have to realize that when they do something like this they are performing a trade-off. As outcasts, they had to lower their need for social contact. The discrepancy between their lowered needs and the need of others is what causes these conflicts.

Going with the restaurant metaphor, it is a lot easier to get into profit if you have paying customers but they are losing you money, (Amazon) than if the customers are getting a free lunch. The scalability of the internet can really help with the first case while in the second it still isn't sure if you have a viable business model.

I have always admired my government (NZ) for its anti whaling and dolphin hunting stance but I suspect it gets all the government support due to our tourism interests. I see this problem being solved, among others, with PETA's (artificial) meat in a vat idea.

Linus: "Quite frankly, Sun is doomed. And it has nothing to do with their engineering practices or their coding style."

This was in 2001. How does one get such prophetic skills.

"an Internet connection unless I use Skype or watch lots of Youtube videos, in which case it gets throttled -- sorry, 'quality-ensured' -- down to a trickle"

I'd love if I could get an internet connection like this, provided it was substantially cheaper. Now you may think this is silly as why don't I just buy a lower data cap. The problem is I live with people with whom it is very hard to enforce any sane usage policy on. We go over our cap regularly. Now if I could "outsource" the enforcement to the ISP that would be different.