jimwhitson

6 ms·

1.
by jimwhitson 13y ago
Not only a losing battle, but one lost many centuries ago.
2.
by jimwhitson 13y 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 conspiracy, but as soon as one particular criminal tells you h
3.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 of irony - 'Well done, genius' in response to a stupid error
4.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
Quite right, thank you.
5.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 enough to exclude stacked-cage-based methods. We also have variou
6.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 difference between the eggs of different breeds (once cooked at lea
7.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 - jim@harundo.com.
8.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 to think how a non-hobby programmer would have approached th
9.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 material is dense and rather turgid, so would-be critics don't
10.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
All the comments have a 'reply' link for me - is it still broken for you?
11.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 first suspected someone who knows me, but thanks to google I
12.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 work.
13.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 people; I see this as a fundamental part of living in societ
14.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
> 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 that speak it (while also making it difficult to learn).
15.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 for a foreign learner: the grammar is idiosyncratic and sub
16.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 usually obtained by combining several different colour tests,
17.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 good LSD due to a bitter ink or paper, but avoiding the gre
18.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
Indeed, but where the downside is getting an unwanted dose of something like DOB it's advisable to err on the side of caution.
19.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 DEA Microgram bulletins passim ( http://www.justice.gov/dea/
20.
SportsLab: The Next Generation Football Playbook(indiegogo.com)
2 points by jimwhitson 14y ago|0 comments
21.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 any company that allows its employees to use work computers
22.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 that failures could be detected cleanly and logged before (pos
23.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 it, making it unlikely that anyone would do it accidentally.
24.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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 often equally amused and saddened by SV tales of woe. We must
25.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
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, this sort of geometrical thinking is the best way to understan
26.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
Would it be overly conspiratorial to suggest that the CIA and NSA are in fact interested in a large-scale implementation of Shor's algorithm? Perhaps I underestimate how much use intelligence agencies have for optimization...
27.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
Abstract/linear algebra. I enjoyed it thoroughly at university but it never seemed very useful in practice, until I had to deal with a complex problem of manipulating graphs. All of a sudden I found semi-ring homomorphisms coming in handy a
28.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
I've used Google's Merchant service to bill US customers and it worked very nicely for me.
29.
by jimwhitson 14y ago
Another one for the chorus of yesses. Single founders can and do build great businesses, but of course the dynamic can be rather different from a multi-founder firm. Although it's not a valley-style startup, I'm in the early stages of a sol
30.
Formal access control model defined in terms of application structure?(security.stackexchange.com)
1 points by jimwhitson 14y ago|0 comments

More ›