Viewing profile — vgr

I do... when specific posts cross my radar. Good stuff. No longer keep up deterministically with anything via RSS/email though.

Tried this out a while back. Very cool to watch linux booting up in a browser. Weird how abstractions loop from low to high to low again. I imagine sysad types would find this a pr…

Don't quite recall, but I think it was from a book about cathedral builders or something. But I'll admit my knowledge of medieval guilds is largely superficial and drawn from books…

Interesting, thanks for clarifying. I assumed too quickly that journey in journeyman meant what it means to us today.

I wrote the original piece. You can contact me via my blog http://ribbonfarm.com

If you had your own iPhone app and knew how to market it properly, you wouldn't be at the mercy of Groupon's well-known strong-arm tactics in dealing with small businesses for inst…

In political science, a fairly well-known basic idea is that the two ways to dissent are exit and voice. Exit means you leave and go somewhere else, and was common in early politic…

It isn't an old guard thing. It is a personality and strengths thing. I am not particularly old guard (I am 37), and while I am about average in the technologies I do know, I suck …

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2011/11/groupon-deal-bu...

That's the gist of it, with one correction. The 10,000 hours bit is fine, the missing detail is how you count to 10,000 when there are no convenient external reference points. The …

True. That's why I took care to separate out the clinical cases as carefully as I could. The reverse is also true: people who can be helped by cognitive reframings may not find med…

Thanks. FWIW I am not a developer. I am a pointy-haired boss. My long-forgotten background is in aerospace engineering.

The short answer is: you get used to it, but it is not ideal or a particularly healthy work lifestyle. It has many of the same problems as solitary confinement within a prison. Sin…

Though I do that kind of cliffhanger stuff on occasion, that isn't the reason here. My "theory of Toby" merely requires a good deal of groundwork to be laid. And you're right on bo…

ah, I stand corrected. this is a hazy memory from a Reader's Digest condensed book I read 20 years ago titled "I captured Adolf Eichmann" ... can't seem to find a ref to it anywher…

Actually, I did spend a year (and parts of 2 summers) in Austin. I used to go for late night walks near my apartment, which was just off 183, well north, in strip-mall land. If you…

I think that nails it. There is an urge to demonstrate your success in everything you do, and some activities just aren't good mediums for showcasing how awesome you are.

I am pretty darn surprised that THIS post has gotten vastly more discussion than just about any of my ribbonfarm posts that's gotten on HN. A few quick adds, since I seem to have m…

I am sorry that part offended you, but I usually can, with pretty good accuracy. There are studies (see Robert Levine, "Geography of Time") that use normal walking pace as a very c…

That's one of the drivers, certainly, but there's many more forces. Check out Dan Pink's "Free Agent Nation" for more. It's a few years old by now, but still the best view of the o…

I think Morgan's figures may have excluded slaves. They weren't paid a paycheck either, so they fall in neither category.

I use 'what's your goal' as a conversation starter as well, but if it gets bogged down there, I start to tune out. I think you and I may differ in what we consider 'useful.' I don'…

I believe it is not a big picture/details distinction but an information-free vs. informational distinction. There can be insight questions that are very large scale. Pascal's "pro…

aargh, sorry... looks like I DID use my google account last time and selected the vgr handle. Sorry.

The 'different comm styles' ... I did not cite the reference, but there is a documentary about how Arab-Israeli conversations tend to break down badly even when both sides go in wi…