Dan Delany › Comments

"OK - I can see what you mean. However, I still disagree. De-obfuscation does not provide more evidence that infringement occurred, it simply implies that whoever did it likely knew they should not be doing it, which has (I believe) absolutely no legal implication." - Dan Delany

"Just because Javascript can be used for annoying purposes does not mean Javascript is, itself, annoying. It's just a way to execute code on the client side. CSS is not a true programming language. >>that's the argument that most people who hail on the side of JavaScript take... There is no holy war between Javascript and CSS, just like there are no carpenters who argue that a hammer is always better than a screwdriver. They are different tools with different purposes." - Dan Delany

"Maybe they're (also) counting down to the end of their code freeze? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn......" - Dan Delany

"Well, duh. If they were going to own up to it, they'd have done so by now." - Dan Delany

"Well, duh. If they were going to own up to it, they'd have done so by now." - Dan Delany

"Given the references to "boobs" and a "man in a raincoat", no." - Dan Delany

"First of all, F=MA is a law. Economics is a guess. Second of all, parent is not claiming that economists' predictions about the free market system do not apply to health care. He's saying that the field of microeconomics specifically predicts that in some scenarios, the free market system just doesn't work very well; that is, the market does not facilitate a scenario in which market participants efficiently distribute goods/services, and therefore do not benefit optimally from them. This is called market failure. Healthcare fits several of the criteria for a failing, nonefficient market. Namely: - Monopolistic competition.- Healthcare is a non-optional service.- Informational asymmetry - that is, doctors generally have more information about medicine, as well as about the specific medical state of their patient, than the patient does. For more information, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... [PDF]..." - Dan Delany

"I do." - Dan Delany

"I do." - Dan Delany

"Wolfram Alpha has a lot more to lose... Microsoft is a gigantic company. This has gotta be Wolfram's #1 revenue source now, and they needed it badly." - Dan Delany

"Agh, this is such a shortsighted opinion. Guess what: it's not done yet. That's what beta means. When it's done, you can have it for free. Until then, the system supports < demand, so you're gonna have to beg or know someone who knows someone. It's interesting to me that other company seems to have this problem: when a new startup has a closed beta, people tend to be excited that the company is innovating and testing a new system. When Google rolls out a beta, people get angry because they don't get to play with it yet. What's annoying to me is that some of the same people panning Wave for being useless are also criticizing the slow invite process: You can't say cake sucks, AND be pissed you can't have any yet! (note: this is not directed specifically at your comment, it's just something I've noticed in general.)" - Dan Delany

"> Apparently I was too abrasive, or not abrasive enough. Just the first one." - Dan Delany

"This is a clever example of one of the millions of things you could use wave for... And they didn't even get to the good part - Ideally, Wave D&D would have a robot extension which the DM could use to roll the die, calculate scores, etc. I could see wave spawning a whole genre of multiplayer, wave-moderated games which take advantage of the ability to move seamlessly between synchronous and asynchronous player communication. Another example where this could be applied: live fantasy football drafts." - Dan Delany

"I think the reason most people (including myself) found it hard to understand was the different colors - most tetris-like games involve matching similar colors. Once I understood that the colors represented size and nothing else, I got it almost instantly. I'd consider a slight redesign that removes color as a factor - or maybe make them all start out the same color." - Dan Delany

"PEOPLE. downvote != disagree." - Dan Delany

"That the USD is increasingly worthless in the world economy." - Dan Delany

"Unimpressed. By the title, I assumed they would make the case for some difference in the chicken's environment or the way the egg is processed before it's sold. "'As the contents of the egg contracts and the air cell enlarges, the shell becomes easier to peel,' the USDA Shell Eggs from Farm to Table fact sheet states. 'For this reason, older eggs make better candidates for hard cooking,'" ... "Statistics on the time it takes for an egg to go from hen to supermarket have not been calculated, a USDA representative told Wired.com, but there’s some reason to believe that new production techniques could be delivering eggs to markets faster." So this article is just saying that eggs sold today are more fresh? Not even that - they "could be" more fresh? This hardly seems newsworthy." - Dan Delany

"> minus the whole "no background apps" thing That's kind of a huge thing... and a great example of the kind of app innovation Apple could inspire by allowing background processes." - Dan Delany

"O rly? Monthly text messages sent: 2000 - 14.4 million 2005 - 9.8 billion 2008 - 110.4 billion Data: http://www.ctia.org/consume...... I don't think text messages are going to be "killed" by anything in the very near future." - Dan Delany

"If you think that was the extent of the article's point, you didn't read it." - Dan Delany

"> they're reviewing 8500 apps per week Yes, but the question is: what percentage of those are apps that have already been submitted and rejected, and are back for their 2nd (or 3rd or 4th...) time? Your analogy is a good one, but I think it breaks down when you're kicking a large percentage of people out of line, and none of them are leaving." - Dan Delany

"I don't agree at all. If Taco Bell implemented a policy limiting you to one taco at a time, rather than allowing you to handle all your (stomach-churning) food needs all at once, each order would take less time. They would even increase their "thoroughput" as measured by the # of orders filled per hour. But their line would be ridiculously long, because everyone would have to come back through again to finish their meal. Oh, and everyone would be pissed. Same deal here. No one (or almost no one) spends 2 months coding an iPhone app, only to just flat-out give up when it gets rejected. They fix the problem (or what they think is the problem after attempting to decipher Apple's rejection notice), and get back in line. By implementing this policy, Apple decreases their efficiency by adding managerial overhead - instead of one reviewer getting assigned one ticket once and handling three problems, those three problems are spread out over (I'm guessing) three different reviewers, which..." - Dan Delany

"So much of the commentary surrounding this contoversy is analogies & thought experiments, presumably because there's not a lot of precedent for cases exactly like this. So here's mine - Imagine that, next week, Apple releases a new service called iVoice that all but duplicates the functionality of Google Voice. Transcribes voicemail & e-mails it, provides a full web interface (probably integrated with MobileMe), and obviously integrates seamlessly into a new iPhone OS update. If this happened, would it be a significantly different issue than Windows packaging IE with an install, but not Netscape? Can you imagine the hell that would break loose if Windows decided to become an IE-only platform? I suppose the big difference is that they make the hardware too - but there's no way Dell could get away with making a hardware modification that prevented you from installing certain software. Does Apple really get to make all the rules here?" - Dan Delany

"You're only crazy if you don't stop in Boulder!" - Dan Delany

"I don't necessarily agree - sometimes restrictions and boundaries actually spur the imagination, and deadlines definitely keep one's ass in gear and productive. I took a photography class in college so I could get access to the darkroom - expecting to hate the assignments for 'boxing in' my artistic spirit. Instead, they just gave me ideas. All my favorite photos and prints were made in that class. Regardless, no one's restricting you to anything... This is a hacking contest, not a real job, so the choice to just not participate costs you nothing. To me, however, the challenge of building a cool app on a new & innovative API on a very short timeline sounds kind of intriguing actually." - Dan Delany

"> Lesson for engineers: build lots and lots of debugging hooks and panic buttons into your systems. You'll need them. Exactly... Especially when your hardware is 30 million miles away :) > I also find it amazing that as of now, the Mars rovers have been working for over 2000 sols. Me too, although when I looked it up, I found out that Spirit has been stuck in a patch of soft ground since May... NASA engineers have been testing plans on earth to get it unstuck. Photos here: http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery... (start at 5/1). Hopefully they're as good at debugging mud as they are at software!" - Dan Delany

"Somewhere that's not Chicago. Sorry, sad but true." - Dan Delany

"While I agree that their current privacy settings create complexity and "work," the solution to this problem is to refine the interface so that making privacy decisions is easier and more intuitive. This can maybe be done with the help of AI/NLP/image recognition ("It looks like you're smoking pot in this picture! Want Facebook to automatically make it private?"), or maybe they just need to explore some new UI design options. Regardless, the solution is not to get rid of the option altogether - the complexity exists because human relationships are complex and require complex systems to represent the nuances of interpersonal communication. It's like comparing the controls of a RC airplane to the cockpit of a 747: of course a jet has a ridiculously complex control system, it's a complex machine that's getting a lot of shit done at once. Any control you remove from a jet plane would certainly make it more "user-friendly," but it also becomes a less useful tool than it was before. >..." - Dan Delany

"Being forced to share everything may result in a different culture, but it's really just a less nuanced method of communication than what facebook allows. Facebook lets you to communicate more precisely what you want to say and exactly who you want to say it to. Quite simply, it's a more useful tool for people, which is what technology is at its core. Twitter will always be novel for introducing the short, sweet, live update to the world, but without expanding its featureset (which Facebook is, almost monthly), it will soon look like a toy." - Dan Delany

"Thanks, that's a great link... Best message in the thread is from Anthony Baxter @Google, about halfway down the page: "When I and other googlers have said 'there's no concrete client-serverprotocol', you can attach an unspoken 'yet' to that. We don't knowwhat it should look like in it's final form. On the other hand, wehave a fair idea about the requirements and needs of the federationprotocol, which is why we took at stab at writing that down first. "If anyone has ideas about what this should look like based on whatthey've seen so far, start a discussion on it. It's not necessary forGoogle to come down the mountain with a completed standard engraved instone. Or even in something softer, like soap."" - Dan Delany

"I really enjoyed taking AI and a Natural Language Processing class my senior year." - Dan Delany

"Yes, as long as they do so based solely on material, public information and report all transactions to the SEC. Obviously, this is nearly impossible to police." - Dan Delany