Viewing profile — mtomczak

How does refraining from collecting sales tax make Amazon look cheaper than Barnes and Noble? The sticker price doesn't factor in the sales tax; on an item-by-item comparison, the …

I wonder if there's correlation between below-average physical activity and insomnia? I assume that a lot of coders---by necessity of their task and the tools they use---spend most…

Thanks to the general availability and utilization of vaccines against smallpox and polio, massive improvements in sanitation and emergency response, and long-term cardiac therapy,…

My experience with the legal system has been limited to a handful of vehicular violations and one tour of jury duty. But from that limited perspective, I cannot see why the justice…

Is it possible that the difference between 1984 and the world into which we could be moving is that Big Brother recorded all motions and activities of the citizenry, but the revers…

I've heard this approach described as a failure continuation, and it's a good approach. It's much easier to do in a language that allows for easy creation of closures. Such a syste…

Property values are significantly lower in Pittsburgh, which makes property ownership easier. And the top-quality colleges in the city continue to graduate excellent candidates for…

Slightly off-topic, but if you're installing ODE on Windows, you're in for a world of hurt. I never had the chance to try any other dynamics packages that build on Windows, but I'd…

I'm sure I'll get accused of having no sense of humor, but I have to observe that from a usability standpoint, this is unhelpful. It gives me no clue as to what I've done wrong, it…

I think this is the flip-side of the startup coin that many people forget about. The quote from the article that stuck out most for met was "But most of all: nothing is more motiva…

There are similarities between Facebook and AOL. But one significant difference is the interface. AOL had a proprietary client to access its service network. It made sense at the t…

Interesting point. But if we aren't going to trust SSL, what should we trust for commerce over the Internet?

In the short run? Flash Player. If your browser doesn't support Flash, you are still getting a more fragmented web experience than the person running Windows XP on her $250 netbook…

I use my netbook mostly to write small web server applications in Ruby and Python. This device is not "for" me.

For the record (though as other commenters have pointed out, this rant on LabView is off-topic): LabView is a very successful tool that is used by many programmers in various field…

For his baby-momma to keep the baby in, of course.

I believe that I see your point, and I would agree that the verbosity of HTML leads to sharability, and that is a strength. But the verbosity is also one of its weaknesses for larg…

They are functions you can make up on the spot. That's usually the extent of my explanation. Surprisingly, most of the people I talk to assume that the "fancy" parts of closures (s…

Sounds like fun. I'll be in for that. How do we know where to find each other?

I can't help but wonder if it's a mistake to try and push widespread adoption of Linux distros in the desktop space. It's possible there's insufficient money to be made in that spa…

Sadly, I think the issues mentioned in this comment are exactly the point, primarily the last issue. Most desktop consumers using Windows and MacOS aren't used to dealing with a pr…

Yep. Working at a startup company in the city right now, in fact.

Not a bad article. But the article summary on HN is pretty much a lie; I'm pretty sure you can cure NS with various techniques, including blunt-force-trauma to the cranial region.

This news and Google Apps coming out of beta in the same day? I can't take all this sudden and drastic change!