whye

I wanted to learn a little more about the company, so I clicked on the "about Mahalo" link at the bottom of most pages.

http://www.mahalo.com/mahalo

How many other web companies serve ads on their "about" page? It seems like a really odd thing to do.

Well, that's funny, I also worked in the amazon for several months at a time, away from the internet (in eastern ecuador). I can't say I missed it -- no, I couldn't browse the web, but I also didn't have to deal with email and cell phone calls about stupid stuff. In that sense it was quite liberating.

It gave me a new perspective on my online life, and how much time I used to waste on stupidity like Facebook, for instance.

why do the votes on this obscure website signify anything?

Most of them were in high school or junior high, and too busy being teenagers and worrying about the things teenagers normally worry about. All they are asking for is the same opportunity their parents had. You know, those people who actually were old to behave like responsible adults, old enough to vote, and actually did vote through all those costly initiatives and tax cuts that led this state to it's current dismal condition.

Compared to their parents, UC students today have to pay more, have to go deeper into debt, and to expect fewer services, and that's not their fault. Just be glad the UC system hasn't instituted the mandatory furloughs that the CSU system has, effectively shortening each semester by more than a week. College level education in this state is an utter mess. They have every right to be upset IMO, even if they are doing the silly protest and all that that college students always do.

> the authors wanted to design away some common developer errors, which average developer cannot overcome.

Even the best programmers make mistakes. When writing for an embedded platform, mistakes can be exponentially more costly and difficult to fix.

All I see is hand waving and misdirection, no facts. How disappointing.

"And yes, Java (and Windows) was designed to use low-skilled labor."

This is an assertion I've seen repeated many times, but never with anything to back it up. Do have any evidence for this, or is it just a feeling that you have? Based on what I've read, Java was designed for use in embedded systems like set top boxes, and the authors wanted to design away some common developer errors. An evolutionary biologist might say that Java was "pre-adapted" for use by low-skilled labor, but I don't think there is any indication that it was designed for it.

What's funny about it?

I'm not sure I'd describe them as healthy, exactly. They do place a strong emphasis on using good ingedients, but portion sizes are huge -- a chicken burrito is more than 1,000 calories.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21838237/?pg=6#TDY_20WorstFoods

Chipotle's specialty, San Francisco burritos, aren't Mexican, they are northern Californian :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_burrito

No. It is much, much more sophisticated than that. See this message by Mike Pall, LuaJIT's author for the details:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.lua.general/58908

On a computer, you have to also be concerned about error propagation and efficiency, and that can take what might be a very beautiful, simple solution on paper and explode it into a big ugly mess in code.

That doesn't mean it isn't fun, but it's a lot less clean than you might think.

I am 34, have used one at work for about one year, and love it.

I have used an exercise ball instead of a chair for the past year or so and really like it. I tend to have a lot of nervous energy, and being able to bounce on the ball while still seated at my desk help a lot, without having to get up, walk around, and getting too distracted from what I am doing. A couple of caveats, though: 1) You really do look pretty silly, especially if you bounce 2) Some people develop lower back problems when using a ball for long periods; be careful! 3) Office mates always seem to like stealing it and kicking it down the hallway (which is actually a lot of fun, but also annoying) and 3) If you had beans for dinner, beware, the ball tends to amplify sounds from down there :)

Toyota has had a long history with circular looms. Sakichi Toyoda invented the circular loom in 1906. The profits from his automatic loom business were used to start his son's automobile manufacturing company.

That is correct, but the game does use it for a lot more than just scripting.

ps: Lua, not LUA -- it's the Portuguese word for moon, not an acronym :)

Much of World of Warcraft's user interface is written in Lua, and I'm not sure I'd classify WoW as an obscure example.

This is a very neat idea, but the lack of support for latex, or any other way to create mathematical expressions is a bit of a letdown.

The first hard drive my father bought was 5mb. It connected to an Atari 800 through the Atari's 4 joystick ports. It's price was somewhere around $2000. That fact is utterly meaningless when comparing the price of HDs and SSDs (which are significantly more expensive than HDs) in the marketplace. Today.

Yes, I'm sure he's doing quite well, although I don't think it's a given that he measures his success by the size of his paycheck.

As far as a positive portrayal of an engineer -- I think it kind of undercuts the message to have an actor take his place in the commercial.

What I don't understand is why Intel didn't use the real Ajay in their ads. Here's someone who they are supposedly honoring as a rock star, and yet when it comes to the ads, instead of using him, they hire an actor. How big of an Intel star can you be, if you aren't good enough to appear on TV?

I'm not sure I'd be so smug.

http://edition.cnn.com/HEALTH/9611/01/e.coli.poisoning/

http://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/2006/september/

According to the article the bacteria can also contaminate surfaces in the kitchen. For instance, if you form hamburger patties on a cutting board, even if you wash the board with soap and water, there may still be live bacteria capable of infecting you on it.

For that reason, they recommend you also wash kitchen surfaces with a dilute bleach solution.

I don't think that's Craig Newark's metric for success.

How many Acorn offices did these guys actually visit in total? How many times were they able to get advice from Acorn staffers, and how many times were the filmers reported to authorities?

I totally agree that we need more investigations like this, and that this investigation certainly seems to have uncovered some interesting stuff, but I also get the feeling like there are some pieces from the story that are missing, and I wonder a little if that isn't maybe a general problem when these kinds of sting operations are carried out by activists with a strong political agenda.

if you are female.

It seem to me like you are trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. Trash collection, at least in major cities in the US, is done either by some branch of civic government (for example New York's Department of Sanitation), or by a private contractor, usually on a long term contract (Greenwaste Recovery in San Jose).

It's pretty far removed from what could be considered a free market. Yet it's not expensive (at least compared to things like phone service, water, or cable), its employees tend to be reasonably fairly compensated, and as you mentioned, it works. ...even if that reality might not be popular in libertarian circles.

If anything trash collection in Cairo sounds more like something approaching a free market than what large cities do in the states.

Just because a corporation is a person doesn't necessarily mean it's a US citizen. Maybe it should get deported? :)

You have it backwards.

prevalence of Klinefelter's syndrome (XXY male, with symptoms): 1 in 1000 men

prevalence of Transsexual men ("biological" men who identify as women): 1 in 30,000 to 1 in 4,500

(source: Wikipedia, but the references for these statistics appear to be in legitimate scientific publications)

Lua started out as a configuration language in 1993 and since then has evolved into a more general purpose language that is cleaner, yet more flexible and powerful. It has gotten much better with time.

for more information, see: The Evolution of Lua - http://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/~lhf/ftp/doc/hopl.pdf

San Jose's MLK library lets you bring drinks and food, with some restrictions. There is also a decent coffee shop on the ground floor. The down side is the large number of homeless hitting you up for money, the fragrant bathrooms, and some SJSU students who can be a little inconsiderate about noise / cell phones. Still, if you need a quiet place with internet to work, I'd recommend it.