Maxwell Terry

"Source: http://ejohn.org/apps..." - Maxwell Terry

"In other words, the human body is built for adaptability." - Maxwell Terry

"Only with JS <1.7. Otherwise you get block scope by using 'let instead of 'var." - Maxwell Terry

"You'll get better performance with for (var i=0, l=myLinkCollection.length; i<l; i++) { }http://robertnyman.com/2008......" - Maxwell Terry

"You'll get better performance with for (var i=0, l=myLinkCollection.length; i<l; i++) { }http://robertnyman.com/2008......" - Maxwell Terry

"> The fact that a single, first-person consciousness exists is entirely objective. I wouldn't describe my consciousness as 'single or 'first-person. It often runs multiple threads, and by no means exclusively thinks of itself in the first-person. Additionally, it really doesn't identify with this body much more than, say, this house or computer. My consciousness isn't 'human any more than it's "ranch-style" or 'x86. Our language has already adopted inorganic technologies as extensions of ourselves (e.g. I say "I'll come over" which expands to "I'll come over in my car")." - Maxwell Terry

"Equating a religious group with an ethnic one is mistaken (like saying 'Arabs when 'Muslims is meant), regardless of whether anyone is offended." - Maxwell Terry

"You're right. I only meant niche in the case of Flickr, Delicious, and YouTube; Twitter and Facebook are specifically the brand. I edited my comment accordingly." - Maxwell Terry

"You're right. I only meant niche in the case of Flickr, Delicious, and YouTube; Twitter and Facebook are specifically the brand. I edited my comment accordingly." - Maxwell Terry

"But Facebook encourages/allows behavior that users will later regret. This will create negative feelings toward the brand by osmosis." - Maxwell Terry

"But Facebook encourages/allows behavior that users will later regret. This will create negative feelings toward the brand by osmosis." - Maxwell Terry

"You're talking about the past and present, I'm talking about the future. Facebook is Tyrannosaurus, Posterous is Eomaia." - Maxwell Terry

"I think they're symbiotic. Look at how the European colonization of the Americas coincided with the Renaissance. They only happened because of a few key technologies reaching a certain point of evolutionary maturity. You needed the square rig, pintle-and-gudgeon rudder, compass, star charts, oil paint, double entry accounting... (See http://www.youtube.com/watch...) We still have more problems to resolve (such as the finite nature of terrestrial resources) before all undesirable but necessary tasks are automated, and we can spend our lives entirely on art/science." - Maxwell Terry

"No. Like Flickr, Delicious, and YouTube, their niche/brand will be the death of them. Flickr can't diversify (at scale) beyond a photo sharing site, so they'll be killed by a service with really great photo sharing as one feature among many. Same with the Delicious = bookmarks mapping, and YouTube = videos. They'll all just be forgotten fads from the twenty-oughts. Our grandkids won't remember Facebook as well as we do the telegraph. Unless they let themselves get acquired, Posterous will wipe out every other sharing service. The brand will probably fade into the background though, and we'll all just have a "page." They seem very close to the platonic form of electronic posts already, how much more change will really happen? Posterous feels like a keyboard or humanoid or shark or Lisp." - Maxwell Terry

"No. Like Flickr, Delicious, and YouTube, their niche/brand will be the death of them. Flickr can't diversify (at scale) beyond a photo sharing site, so they'll be killed by a service with really great photo sharing as one feature among many. Same with the Delicious = bookmarks mapping, and YouTube = videos. They'll all just be forgotten fads from the twenty-oughts. Our grandkids won't... more... - Maxwell Terry

"Only if the circumstances of the abductions were random, which seems doubtful. If, say, a significant number of those kids were taken by strangers in cars who lured them over verbally, simply informing parents to push the "Don't talk to strangers" bit might alone prevent some future occurrences. Just because the number is small relative to the overall population size doesn't mean that there isn't some correlation between many of the incidents, on which some acceptable measures could be taken." - Maxwell Terry

"Only if they aren't profitable. Given the economic efficiency and execution speed of startups relative to freelancers/consultants and big organizations, it seems more likely they'll be the business class emerging victorious from the information revolution. It's what happened last time: those who built industrial tech that scaled beat both the cottage workers and the monarchs. Some of the industrial giants might survive the wake of the computer, but it will probably be the same way the crowns did the engine: in name (and static, material wealth) only. Eventually the most valuable asset of the New York Times will probably be the brand and real estate." - Maxwell Terry