Viewing profile — jimwhitson

Not only a losing battle, but one lost many centuries ago.

IANAL, but I think "knowledge ... a crime" means a particular crime, not a general category. So if you reasonably suspect that your work might be useful to criminals, that's not co…

The OED defines sarcasm as 'a sharp, bitter, or cutting expression or remark; a bitter gibe or taunt'. Irony is often used in a sarcastic remark, but it's generally the cheap sort …

Quite right, thank you.

In the UK, 'free-range' is a legal designation, as opposed to battery-farmed. To call eggs or poultry free-range, certain standards must be met - not very high standards, but enoug…

This has been my experience as well. Truly free-ranging hens give the best eggs, often almost up to the quality of ducks' eggs. Interestingly I find very little perceptible differe…

I'd call this person a technical writer, and it's a pretty tough job to fill. I have some experience in this area, so if you'd like to talk about options feel free to email me - ji…

By the GP's definition there are a lot of us hobby programmers. I used to write code to run on all kinds of weird servers, SPARCs, IBM POWER kit, ARM dev boards and so on - I hate …

Here's an example, but it's hardly scholarly: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/LessWrong . You're right that it doesn't get discussed much, I think largely because the explanatory mate…

All the comments have a 'reply' link for me - is it still broken for you?

Very interesting - I've had the 'you are x and I claim my five pounds' applied to me before, but the good captain is new to me. Having been to school an hour from Sevenoaks, I at f…

I'd also mention that it's in Leeds - even if I'd known the event was in the UK, I'd have assumed it was in London. Great to see this kind of thing in the North, keep up the good w…

I wouldn't buy this particular car, but that's because I detest microchips. In general I would - and do - pay money for products or features to decrease my chance of hurting other …

> Flexibility in a language leads to flexibility of the mind. The English language's incredible variety, massive vocabulary, and huge range of idioms is of great benefit to those t…

Although I broadly agree with your point about significant details, it's absolutely not the case that English 'isn't much of a problem'. English is an extraordinarily hard language…

I believe Ehrlich's tests for indoles, a family which includes tryptamines, but also lots of other things. Colour tests are never conclusive; increasingly persuasive results are us…

AIUI, the point is that a sane dose of LSD doesn't taste bitter, so if one rejects any bitter blotter then one would be erring on the side of caution - possibly rejecting perfectly…

Indeed, but where the downside is getting an unwanted dose of something like DOB it's advisable to err on the side of caution.

The first part of your message is a rather dangerous misconception. Many, many drugs can and have been dispensed on blotter paper, often as LSD mimics. For dozens of examples, see …

Very likely it's forbidden at some companies, but last time I left a job (IBM UK), DBANning all one's computers was a step on the official checklist. It seems to be a good idea for…

At IBM, we were very keen on what we called 'FFDC' - 'first- failure data capture'. This meant having enough layers of error-detection, ideally all the way down to the metal, so th…

I suspect they've done it deliberately, to avoid having a malware link on their site. With the link as given, a reader would have to consciously change the 'x' for a 'p' to visit i…

Had I but votes enough and time Thank you, Thomas, for saving me writing a much less eloquent comment along the same lines. As a startup founder way out in the wilderness, I'm ofte…

Grover's algorithm does indeed look rather like magic, but even better is the geometrical proof - WP's description looks good at a quick skim. In my (fairly limited) experience, th…