Viewing profile — OllieJones

It's been a while since Albert Einstein worked in the patent office, eh?

Another record label company is gone. The European regulators know more than the "golden ears" "mud for brains" record executives about emerging distribution channels.

The issue in IT doesn't arise around the Coke formula on Dropbox, unless Coke could somehow sue Dropbox for damages. The issue arises around large quantities of sensitive informati…

Wow! A great hack on hacker news! Thanks Erik. Don't let the griping grind you down.

Cool! The wall around another walled garden starts to crumble! How many years before the carriers themselves start using open source code in their infrastructure because it's more …

No, sir, it's not inappropriate. The cost of health care is a major cost to most businesses. Startups are lucky that the investors bear the cost; but it shows up as a major line it…

Here's a contrarian piece on the Chinese personal savings rate: no organized retirement benefits means all kinds of hiding of assets. http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2012/06/macr…

When I was a college student, I had my bikes stolen so often that I did two things: First, I started buying hot bikes cheap because, hey, legal bikes were expensive. Second, I wrap…

Investors annoyed that Zuckerberg's management beat them at their own game! Film at 10! Bankers didn't have to go out at $38. Investors didn't have to buy at $38. I should think th…

So, HN, here's a question about electro-ethics: Would this business of guessing whether a prospective customer will spend big money be more ethical if it were transparent -- that i…

Good on ya for putting yourself out there. Your blog could be interesting, especially if you can talk about programming projects that worked and didn't work for you. (Your hosting …

Atul Gawande (surgeon and writer for The New Yorker) has done some of what you mention. Read this. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/08/13/120813fa_fact_...

Great article, thank you. Librarians aren't as dumb as you make them out to be. Several times I've asked a librarian to locate a mis-shelved book I really needed, and they've alway…

Who's the most important person in your software development shop on any given day? The one you're interviewing. This person is, hopefully, your future. What's the most important p…

> Part of me wishes MS forced updates like these. > Sure it would probably break a few ancient > mission critical ActiveX apps, and > my god the outcry would be immense and furious…

There's lots of enterprisey stuff out there that only "supports" various versions of IE, and bounces out other makes and models of browser. HN folks may or may not see much of that…

Tobias wrapped up this fine post writing, the "gap [between developed and underdeveloped counties] will be, if it continues, a major fissure in a future America." WILL be? It alrea…

What about the page charge? Some of these journals charge the author (or her institution) by the page for papers they accept. They get ya coming and going. Nice racket. Check it ou…

It looks like a self-defeating practice of bad software development teams has hit the big time. The managers of the police department of New York City are, according to this newspa…

Careful, folks, it takes a while to transfer domains. The ones I transferred are still with Go Daddy. It's probably the same deal for wikipedia and stackoverflow.

It looks like the GoDaddy action worked pretty well to get the attention of the US congress. The judiciary committee has now concealed their list of supporters. http://judiciary.ho…

Maybe they just priced their IPO shares correctly for a change. When the share price doubles on the first day, it means the offering price was too low. That means Wall Street gets …

Gave it a try on W7/64 Chrome. I happen to live outside hipster nation, so it took a while to load stuff. It did OK at letting me know this was in progress, but it could have been …

> those Farmville character cutouts in the photo are possibly the creepiest thing in the universe. Second creepiest. How about the grinning ghoul standing next to them?

Nassim Taleb is making an argument about the structure of the banking system's risk management schemes. This is an attractive article for us to comment on because, doh, we'd like t…