tomjen2

I wonder if he gets a wave invite instead?

Horrible spelling.

Not really - Bitbucket have gotten quite some of my money.

And yes I am considering chancing that, but mostly because I can't find a good mercurial client for windows.

Sometimes I really wish Vegans would shut up when the news fundamentally don't matter to them. They are about as relevant as Atheists in a Catholic mess.

The article never said we couldn't kill, only that we prefer being kind. Ever seen video of the US soldiers in Iraq petting the stray puppy?

There are people who don't care about others, but the most of them either never really grew up or they end up with psychological issues because of it.

Potentially they could change a lot even if they where acquired, since they could tip the balance of search and they would properly allow Microsoft to by them for $40 billion :)

Because it has been so abused.

I would not have much trouble with a patent on the concept of public/private keys, but patents today are too expensive to get, obscure to read and cover extremely simple material.

In addition software patents lasts way the equivalent of several hundred years because the field moves so fast, imagine that basic concept behind the steam engine was still patented today.

Why do I get the idea that this will end up like all the other government IT projects? Massively over budget, too late, full of bugs and too slow to actually do anything?

There is one big difference: we can reason about reason (meta reason), Eliza can't.

It is not a difference in degree, it is a difference in kind and seems to be unique to higher primates (you can learn a dog to do tricks, but it won't spend its time coming up with new tricks), one of the most interesting science videos I have ever seen is one where a bonobo learns to write a symbol that had been on a computer it used to express its emotions.

I concur, but it isn't going to do much good if he doesn't read English.

I think it does, and it theory that might be wrong in practice I haven't seen anybody succeed without a clear goal.

You think Stallman would get smacked down by Apple? They can't sue him, he doesn't own anything.

That would require the banks to have a brain. That isn't necessary when you have friends in Washington.

This is a very valid point and raised very well. It does not deserve these downmods.

If I get to rewrite it in Clojure, I would.

If there is something you really want, don't get sucked in to that "quality of life" thing, because people mistakenly take it to mean having a life full of material goods, including a good car while working at a job you hate.

What really brings you quality of life is doing what you love to do, and if that means not going to college then that is the route you should take.

But it is entirely beside the point: It sounds like your parents are scared about your future and don't want a "failure to launch" scenario, understandable but annoying given your situation, so you might want to talk to them about what you are going to do when you are not going to college (when they seem apprehensive, and they will, just tell them that if it doesn't work out you can always go to college "later").

Please don't make it intuitive, I know everybody says it should be but that assumes that all software is made to please the casual user. The best software is made to please the expert user, and makes them many times more powerful that the average user.

Did they reimburse you for the lost time? If not, you should sue them. That being to only thing companies care about.

He seems harsh, I would properly let the first student hand in his homework.

As for notes, that would end the moment math teachers used slides you could download after class. I wish more people would do that (in my experience only the math teachers do this, all my CS teachers don't).

Asking questions during the lecture is pretty good, but I wonder how you would prevent the students from feeling embarrassed because they could not answer?

While I can understand the appeal of a tablet (heck I want one) it never ceases to crack me up when I think that what got me hooked on computers initially was that it didn't matter that my handwriting sucked.

I wonder how useful these devices would be when even I can barely read my script?

It is properly a mix of the two things, that said it does seem strange to increase the rate since the other guy would have to pay.

You may be kidding, but you are right on both counts. Emacs is so much better when your control key is next to 'a'. Your hands prefer it when 'aoeu' is right under your left hand. You will prefer it when your colleagues can't figure out how to type on you computer.

You might have more luck if you try to datamine the incoming emails, they start to read your replies after a couple of mails.

In principle, but you could do things like making an upvote within a clique mean a lot less than an upvote to somebody you haven't agreed with in the past; give additional weight to people who often vote outside their own cliques (so as to reward those who have a more balanced view); letting stories initial weight depend on the previous balancedness of the source, optionally make it gain points fast if it gets upvotes from those who wouldn't normally upvote stories from that source. There are endless improvements that could be made. As a side effect you are likely to get more interesting discussions precisely because you go for the more "unusual" stories.

I am almost certain those exist, but I would think it would be more useful the other way around: consolidate all your email into on RSS feed.

Well not necessarily, though it will be hard.

What you basically need is an incredibly thick skin (you will be attacked from both sides of the political spectrum) and remove trolls/bad debaters with an iron fist.

As far as I can see, they take about 3 pounds to try it out.

If there is a 10% change that it will work, will 30 pounds be worth it to you?

To be fair, that is mostly because PG writes so much about him. Unless you have spend a long time on these boards, you properly wouldn't have heard of him either.

Anyone know how much they took as venture funding? If they only made $15-20m, then it can't be that much.

I wonder what TSA is going to do now. The public won't stand for anal-searches each time they are going to fly, but on the other hand they would have to appear to be doing something.