Viewing profile — DirtyCalvinist

At least as of a few years ago, that's not quite true. I went back to school at 24, and because I had earned over 50% of my own income in the past year (100% in my case) and had no…

The folks at JetBrains must be a little annoyed at all the iOS devs who say that now that there's a decent tool for developing Android apps they'll give it a try. Android Studio lo…

I mean you have no right to an offense-free existence. Otherwise, claiming offense amounts to a heckler's veto, and is chilling and oppressive. You can be offended, and proclaim yo…

I actually thought of this after writing the above. It struck me than KeenIO is probably the sort of community where this wouldn't need to be explained. For better or worse, HN is.…

Interesting here is the automatic assumption that the company should agree with the criticism and apologize. Except for the gratuitous accusation of bad faith, the response is what…

This phenomenon is called pauperization. Many countries in Europe experienced it acutely during the early 19th century. People were allowed to starve back then until production shi…

Strictly speaking this is true. For a number of (perfectly rational and moral) reasons, women on average bring home less money than men. This statistic is not terribly good evidenc…

> In addition, while it is true that judgements of value cannot be reduced to judgements of facts (i.e. the "is-ought problem"), one must acknowledge that judgements of value must …

Electronic voting machines allow for easier customization of text for edge cases, like a need for higher contrast, larger print or another language. A good compromise, I think, wou…

There are different factors in different fields. The downsides of software patents far outweigh any upside for innovation and should be done away with. Same for business method pat…

It won't destroy all incentives to innovation. Hence the word 'monetary'. But if someone can make billions of dollars from innovating, that will certainly be a spur to do it, right…

This is one of those cases where the rights and interests of patent holders need to be balanced with the rights and interests of the public at large. Biotech crops are probably key…

I just tried it on the S3 test device here at work. No go on either putting it in a web page, or going through a QR code.

Does not the same problem exist with judges? Also, have a large enough pool and this becomes more difficult.

It seems to me that all this wrangling and instructing juries is an argument for having dedicated, technically and juridically trained jurists decide these cases.

From the standpoint of a mobile developer and a user of one of Samsung's 7" tablets, the 7" form factor is too big for phone apps to really feel right on it, and too small for the …

I once had a conversation with a Frenchman (in France) about how he had berated some poor American girl (also in France) for not knowing that Zurich was in Switzerland. I promptly …

It seems to me that being dictatorial and downright mean only works if you are right about whatever you've decided to be dictatorial about. So when Jobs dropped that iPod prototype…

In response to a Swedish economist noting that there was no poverty in Scandinavia, Milton Friedman once said that in America there was no poverty among Scandinavians either. Proba…

"Strangely though, in these experiments, people tend to readily and accurately agree on who the worst performers are, while failing to recognize the best performers." So we know in…

Nonetheless, companies would do well to remember that the first unions were formed not to demand higher pay, but to protect the worker from employer caprice and tyranny, and to lob…

Interestingly, "Fake" and not "Faux".

I'm wondering why Twitter would suspend those accounts. Does the French government exercise some power over them? https://twitter.com/#!/_nicolassarkozy is accessible, at least her…

I think your logic is a bit facile. If you want people to take your creations, that is not piracy, more or less by definition.