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silentOpenon "Only 25% of the cell phone users had noticed the clown"

A major factor is the lack of context. When the people conversing are colocated, they share a context and their conversation respects their context. When the people conversing are talking over data pipes, they do not share context and their conversation subsequently does not respect the context.

For example, when I am a passenger in a car, I typically pause the conversation momentarily if the driver is trying to change lanes or exit the freeway. If I'm walking down the street with a friend, I might pause and stare at a clown instead of dumping a constant stream of audio into my friend's ear.

silentOpenon Bump Technologies (YC S09) Confirms Sequoia Funding, Reveals Roster Of Angels

Look at how bluetooth connectivity is handled and then tell me that the bump isn't an improvement.

It's a logical action for the result.

I do think it's funny that it requires a net connection and geo-data, though. Very clever on their part to become middleman and privy to all this data. Where's the version that runs over wifi or bluetooth?

silentOpenon The Applied Theory of writing bug-free code

Ok. Those languages do static typing incorrectly. Try a language that sports type inference. It isn't redundant. There isn't boilerplate. The type system is far more powerful than in Java or C# (polymorphic types, polymorphic variant types, algebraic types and constructors, functors, etc).

You owe it to yourself to learn these systems. In many cases, there are type-side symptoms of logic-side bugs. If Haskell's laziness and purity scare you, try OCaml -- it's fast and straightforward.

silentOpenon What happened to global warming?

How greatly does atmospheric CO2 dissolve into ocean water? What's the effective volume of water that CO2 will dissolve into? I assume that surface water will have more carbonic acid than deep water. What's the CO2 capacity function of water? As more CO2 goes into solution, it will get harder to put more into solution at the same temperature and pressure.

And then: what is the change in atmospheric CO2 levels in the past several centuries?

In all, I'm having a hard time believing that man-made atmospheric CO2 is creating biologically significant carbonic acid concentrations in ocean water near reefs.

[citation needed]

silentOpenon [dead]

Perhaps creative works should simply fall into the public domain after n years has passed?

Yes, perhaps we need something like copyright that expires... what's that? It does? Granting copyright monopoly "for a limited time" is in the US constitution? Interesting... let me give Disney a ring.

silentOpenon The Applied Theory of writing bug-free code

Have you written in anything from the ML family? I strongly recommend you take a look at OCaml or Haskell. I believe you will find that static typing, when done right, is immensely helpful.

silentOpenon Experiment: No Comment Scores

It's just an experiment. We should encourage pg to mess around all he wants -- it's his playground and we stand to benefit from experiments (and the downside isn't disastrous).

silentOpenon Why aeroplane wings aren't dimpled like golf balls

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Vortex_cooler

silentOpenon Messy Code is not Technical Debt

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/No_True_Scots...

silentOpenon Drilling a Square Hole (with a rotating bit)

That's only the Rouleaux bit. The article details a bit that produces sharp (vs. rounded) squares.

silentOpenon Co-routines as an alternative to state machines

That's a good point... mutual recursion lacks dynamism.

The lack of TCO or ability to do mutual recursion+TCO is really the fault of the language. If you have a state machine with a small number (<20) states, mutual recursion seems like a more natural fit (unless you have to have states determined at run-time).

silentOpenon Co-routines as an alternative to state machines

Why not use mutual recursion and TCO? The function with the program counter is the current state. Problem solved?

Mutable state is your enemy...

silentOpenon US Senate bill allows White House to disconnect private computers from Internet

Misuse: the shutdown switch or codes aren't properly secured and Foreign Enemy X shuts down your country's internet throwing it into chaos.

Introducing systemic weakness isn't the answer when you're trying to strengthen your network, strengthening your network is the answer.

silentOpenon Huge GSM flaw allows hackers to listen in on voice calls

Ah, yes. It is my understanding that there were governmental pressures to deploy a known-weak system.

silentOpenon Huge GSM flaw allows hackers to listen in on voice calls

I have first-hand knowledge that this exploit is currently in use in the Middle East and is purchasable from at least one American corporation. It must be assumed that intelligence agencies have had this capability for the entirety of the GSM deployment.

Base station security is a separate matter. Why do you think A5/1 influences that?

silentOpenon World faces hi-tech crunch as China eyes ban on rare metal exports

Need to do the nanotube thang first, though. We need materials with enough tensile strength to withstand the stress of a space elevator. Then you'll see space mining and solar collection.

silentOpenon Bug #48669: PHP now includes GOTO

http://barker.linguistics.fas.nyu.edu/Stuff/Iota/

silentOpenon Don't just howl with rage. Try an idea that does away with banks altogether.

They even admit as much in the article... the headline was crap but thems the times we live in :-(.

Think about a credit card company that makes a credit line marketplace... consumer banking will see major shifts in the next decade (wild predictions!).

silentOpenon Don't just howl with rage. Try an idea that does away with banks altogether.

This tiny slice is important. Disruption of industries starts at the bottom and the margins. Finance's lunch will be eaten by the internet or one of its successors sooner or later.

It could be argued that the mortgage market meltdown was only possible with modern computational and communication technology so in some sense, the disruption is already happening -- the i-banks couldn't keep their newly possible hyper-risk under control.

silentOpenon How to Eat on a Dollar a Day

Thanks for pointing this out. It did change my thinking on the term "social justice". To be fair, though, acknowledge that this specific topic (cheap food) is universally interesting and valuable regardless of the political ideology of the messenger.

silentOpenon Why AT&T Killed Google Voice

The only scarcity is in your cell, right now. In 99% of cells, txt messages are free as the signal time slices are going unused (no other texters, low signalling use). At, say, a rock concert, the wireless tubes might be crammed but that's why SMS doesn't have a latency (or delivery?!) guarantee. Also, a mobile base station could be set up at the concert to get more airwaves or there may not be enough voice channels.

So... txt messages are essentially free.

silentOpenon Cops Use Old Brink's Truck to Shame Suspects

Government CCTVs everywhere, now! Deterrence, hooray!

The Armadillo is somehow less offensive as its range is lower and it operates in a lower density area. On the flip side, the SkyTowers don't target anyone whereas the Armadillo is very targeted. Is it fair to publicly shame a person or group of people for a crime they are still presumed innocent of? What about mistakes? What about the police chief's daughter's boyfriend?

silentOpenon The Fall of Hacking

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

silentOpenon The Fall of Hacking

This brings up the interesting question of "natural genius".

World population for the last several centuries has exploded. Suppose 500 million people lived in Plato's time and there were 50 "natural geniuses". That means 1 per 10 million. Even disregarding technological or social progress and assuming linear scaling, that implies at least 650 "natural geniuses" today. Where are they? Who are they? The sheer number of most-capable individuals has grown enormously.

silentOpenon Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

That makes no sense to me. What does everything after the second sentence have to do with NaCl?

silentOpenon Deletionists slowing Wikipedia's growth

Hooray for subcultures of internet sites and factionalization! Computers have created a bunch of strange new semi-political beliefs.

"We believe that storage is essentially free and more information is almost always better."

"We believe that maintaining quality SnR is most important in group editing situations."

"We believe that fair use extends to sampling and remixing but copyright holders maintain most other control."

silentOpenon Self-Enforcing Protocols

This depends on the perfection of market information. If both participants can perfectly determine the value of their and their adversary's goods, no one can or will cheat.

So barter should work for metals traders but not cattle traders (but they have other problems...).

silentOpenon Self-Enforcing Protocols

Interesting idea but no parties in the protocol would be motivated to do that. This might be useful in a situation where a group entity exists that is approximately the same size as the division group -- e.g. an endowment, shared property, common business, or co-op.

silentOpenon Every line of code is a user interface

It seems like this really depends on the nature of the code... for gluey stuff slinging data this may be true. For most algorithmic tasks, the coarser module should be preferred.

silentOpenon Student Arrested for Jailbreaking Game Consoles

Hey, it's not as crazy as it sounds... DHS popped him so he was probably using the profits from modding to fund terrorism.

Don't question the government! They know better.