sfk

s/industry/echo chamber/

Greenspun claims that Gates had a $1000000 trust fund. It does not sound like middle class at all:

http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/

Chronically positive persons can be devastating, too, especially if the "negative" persons do all the actual work.

He can also fly Aeroflot. Highly unlikely to be ordered down by anyone.

I think having a dedicated TV with cable is optimal:

  1. Computers and Internet are for work (HN being an exception), TV is for
     entertainment. It makes sense to keep things separate, even physically
     separate.

  2. If I watch TV, I do *not* want to be bothered about thinking what to watch.
     I reserve these kinds of decisions for work or for things that actually
     matter.

  3. If another person makes the program for me, I'm likely to be exposed to
     interesting things that I would not have picked by myself.

"If we were talking about innovations that got more output from less energy, then holding output constant while lowering energy consumption would be what everyone hoped to see. Why should human capital be different?"

Wow. I'm not a Marxist, but perhaps this person may want to start by reading Marx' view about de-humanization in industrial production.

From what I've read, Ada can do this.

Germany is really a special case: Around 1990 the first world western part merged with the second world eastern part, while giving all citizens of the eastern part around 2/3rd (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) of the western level of social benefits.

It's a little like if the U.S. would merge with Mexico and give all Mexicans huge social benefits.

So I would be careful with an analysis why the economy has improved exactly. After all the regulated economy had worked fine in the West until 1990.

The website IS well designed! It is literally the only website I've seen this year which makes me want to purchase something!

Sure, more information would not hurt, but the overall style is perfect for the target audience.

In Europe customers have the right to return online purchases within one or two weeks. It is possible that a previous "customer" damaged the DVDs and returned them.

In that case, excellent online stores would sell the items in a separate category at a reduced price.

Efficient for whom? Starbucks and Mc Donalds sell worse and more expensive products than local places. Amazon is cheap, but I'm constantly getting damaged books (bent pages, water damage, single pages that are printed in light gray instead of black ...) and scratched DVDs. I've never seen any of this in a physical bookstore.

That, and for all we know, bitcoin was started by $FRIENDLY_GOV in the first place.

Sure, provided that you are independently rich.

Many European states (e.g. the Netherlands) have been surveillance states for a long time. People seem happy with it: As long as you live a standard life, get a mortgage, a house, children, pay taxes to support the ever growing police state, nothing will happen to you.

Wow. I wonder what low-life downvoted this entirely innocent comment. Now continue with this one, surely you'll manage -60, especially if you have a voting ring.

Quick, it will likely be the only accomplishment you'll achieve today, if not for the rest of your life.

Why would you take it off the front page? At the very least this is useful information about how the WOS works.

I'm always amazed that I hardly ever program in Lisp and yet these short snippets are more readable than any other language.

I think the ban should stay regardless of safety. One big issue here is noise and visual pollution.

I share your sentiment, and this quote (attributed to Margaret Thatcher) may be relevant:

"Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't."

LGTM, and your response time to "support" requests is certainly great! I'll leave my grumpy comment, so that the context does not get lost.

And a lot of sites survive just fine. I don't think "at least it loads" is something to be proud of, especially when the topic is performance.

And the website takes more than 30s to load...

Is it possible to prevent timing attacks, control secure wiping of memory etc. in Eiffel?

Comparing this voicing of disapproval to Mc Carthyism is completely disingenuous, and I'm surprised that you do not know better.

In the 1950s it was the government who harassed innocent citizens. You cannot escape the government, because it has absolute power.

What we are seeing here on the other hand is a peaceful protest of free citizens exercising their right to free speech.

Politicians should be held to extremely high moral standards, hence the outrage.

If you read the link you'll see that Knuth himself only wrote two letters to government officials. Most people do not have time to become full time activists, so a certain degree of inconsistency seems inevitable.

One reason may be that bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme.

Analyzing the copyrighted contents of third party non-Gmail users - who did not consent to such an analysis - for profit.

Is this the book that evolves a student-grading application over 300+ pages? If so, I honestly do not understand why people call this book concise.

If you know C already, the pace of the book is so slow that you'll lose interest.