george commented on
About FSK.
if you hate php so much why do you use wordpress
When did I say that I hated PHP? My negative experiences were with Rails, node.js, and Java.
Madz commented on
node.js Is VB6 - Does node.js Suck?.
Great article about people. However when it comes to node... Read this
Madz commented on node.js Is VB6 - Does node.js Suck?.
Great article about people. However when it comes to node… Read this http://nodejs.org/api/cluster.html#cluster_how_it_works
thetown commented on
Ron Paul's Competing Currencies Proposal - A Simple Way To Reintroduce Gold And Silver As Money.
The only way for commodity money to actually not suffer from the same flaw as the FRN system (issued as interest bearing debt) is to totally outlaw any abstract or symbolic representation of the commodity. This means no gold/silver certificates, checkbook money, accounting entries, electronic money or anything else other than the cold hard metal itself representing the commodity. The reason for this requirement is that there will develop again a fractional reserve ratio based on how much gold is stored on average in bank vaults, and how much the gold banksters can get away with issuing multiple duplicate representations of this same gold as interest bearing loans.
Also, the current banksters already control a huge portion of the gold. If gold's value is still allowed to float against the FRN as like a traded commodity, it can be cornered and its value tampered with.
If you require that the only legal representation of gold/silver is the physical metal itself, then that alleviates somewhat the fatal flaw of interesting bearing debt fiat creation, but only so much as the proportion of gold to FRN in the money supply. The FRN supply will always be a drag on the value of money.
I assume that the intent of "competing currencies" is to diminish and ultimately eliminate the ratio of FRN to gold money through the demonstration that tender issued as interest bearing debt will inevitably have less and less value compared to the commodity money. If this is the outcome, and the only valid representation of the commodity money is the commodity itself, then we will be left hoarding around and hiding gold everywhere, which is not feasible.
I believe the solution is for the state to issue fiat currency debt free, like greenbacks, in any of its current convenient representations, when required. Bill Still has laid out a couple of simple foundational rules for this:
1. Make it illegal for the state to borrow money
2. Make it illegal for banks to loan money they do not have (give the monopoly to create money back to congress)
I can understand people having a problem with state issued money though, but if it is issued interest free, then it is better than money issued as interest bearing debt by private corporations for their profit. The reason people don't trust the state to begin with is because it is controlled not by the people, but rather by the private financial bloc that issues our money currently. State issued money and full reserve lending would ideally marginalize these folks and make the state more legitimate.
The problem with metal-redeemable paper money is the legal tender laws that force people to accept it at par with metal. People are free to make fractional reserve deposits, as long as they're aware of the risk and the bank owners are personally liable for the losses.
Most of the "abuses" of various monetary systems can be tied to the State. That's legal tender laws. That's laws that protect fractional reserve bankers, such as limited liability and bank holidays.
thetown commented on
Do Disabled Veterans Deserve Respect?.
While i don't agree with how the US military is used, the disabled veterans should get a disability check. If you're going to argue that they shouldn't, then you should say that they shouldn't be paid a salary in the first place. If you become disabled in the line of any work, and part of the deal is that you get disability pay, then it's a no brainer, you should get it. It's the responsibility of the employer.
The real issue is whether taxpayer dollars should pay for basically what amounts to the private army of an unaccountable, imperalist corporate bloc, shielding their real motives behind fake reasons like "national security" and "the war on terror" and "freedom" and "democracy", using the media machine to scare the sheeple into believing the bs and joining and supporting the military in the first place.
It's immoral to receive a paycheck in exchange for committing crimes. Each individual soldier has limited options once he enlisted. It was a mistake to enlist. I have some sympathy for someone who was tricked.
A disability check isn't compensation for serious injury.
My main point is that a soldier is more of a professional criminal, than a hero.
thetown commented on Do Disabled Veterans Deserve Respect?.
A decently accurate definition of a state is an entity which has a monopoly on armed force. If this entity and its soldier has agreed that a check should be given in the case of disability, then that should be honored for that reason only.
I realize this validates the soldier's disability check in the narrowest possible terms. If we widen the issue even just a little, i find that i agree with everything you say.
The "state" which monopolizes this armed force purports to use it for the good of the people and pays its soldiers with the people's money, however the people (including the vast majority of the soldiers) are intentionally utterly misinformed about the motives for using the military.
I wholly agree that people should be accountable and more responsible for their knowledge generally about the "state" than what its mainstream media tells them, especially in this "age of information", and more specifically about what our military is used for if they are thinking about joining it or blindly waving the flag supporting it.
If people realized it was used mainly for corporate imperialism and all the official reasons for its use were lies and propaganda, they probably wouldn't want to join it or have any of their money used for it for any reason.
Even if there was widespread awareness of the evil of the State violence monopoly, there always will be a couple % of people who will eagerly commit crimes in exchange for a paycheck. However, it would be hard for the scam to continue if more people were aware.
commented on
Offensive Interview Programming Tests And Assignments.
What do you think of FizzBuzz?:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmers-program.html
From one of the comments: "Interestingly, the use of a technical test in interviews can actually work both ways. In my recent hunt for a new job I automatically turned down any vacancy where I was *not* given a technical test. My reasoning behind that is that I know *I* can program, but do I want to work with *other* programmers who haven't been tested?"
There's a difference between a whiteboard assignment or phone screen, and giving someone a project or homework assignment. I approve of brief whiteboard problems or technical phone questions. I don't approve of trivia questions, such as "What API function does X in language Y?", especially if it's something obscure. If it's a project or test that takes more than a few minutes, I'll pass.
I'll also provide code samples, if asked.
On the interview that prompted the post, the interviewer was pretty flagrantly trying to trick me into giving him free consulting. He took a few problems he couldn't solve, and turned them into interview questions.
John commented on
My Blogging Motivation Is Returning.
Cool just bookmarked your blog!
Mark commented on
Platinum Is More Expensive Than Gold Again.
Keeping in mind that objective costs of platinum mining are way higher than for gold.The fact that gold is more expensive than platinum tells me that gold is overpriced right now. Lots of people overpaid for gold during the crisis.
By that measure, gold is at most 20%-50% overpriced. (The historic platinum:gold ratio is 1.2 to 1.5.) Gold still should outperform the stock market. The best hedge is a variety of metals (gold, silver, platinum).
commented on
The Latest uTorrent (3.2.3) Is A Buggy POS (DIsk Overloaded 100% Bug).
Try qBittorrent.
I'm considering qBittorrent. It doesn't let you manage your per-torrent bandwidth as nicely as uTorrent.
misaki commented on
Baseball Statistical Fallacy - Value Over Replacement Player.
Hey again agorist!
I'm wondering what do you think about companies who use proprietary APIs.
Just kidding! I want to know what you think about companies who use such APIs and harass people who reverse/implement/include their support.
There's this company called NaturalPoint that does head pose tracking and harassed FreeTrack developers. But the cycle will once again repeat in the upcoming days.
Here's the full implementation: http://laggygamerz.com/npclient/
Here's a dude who competently documents their ongoing abuse: http://naturalpointofview.blogspot.se/p/trackir-anticompetition.html
Please, help us with it 'cause there's so much indifference.
PS Wonder how's mixie. Haven't seen her on my latest visit to onionnet. The server has been delinked as well.
-m.
Do you mean onionnet = Tor? I stopped using tor because it was ridiculously slow. Also, most of the Tor nodes are run by the NSA.
I briefly used Tor because I wanted to get some documents on the Zyprexa lawsuit, which were forbidden for distribution in the USA. It was easier to get the documents from a BitTorrent tracker located outside the USA.
I already wrote a post on a related subject. The short answer is "Don't build a business that is based on someone else's API, because they can cut you off at any time."
According to that post, he wrote an open source product that implements the same interface as the proprietary product. The company's legal customer agreements forbid that. They are putting technical changes in their product to frustrate people who try to use the open source interface.
Actually, this isn't what would happen in a free market. In a free market, the people would develop their own hardware instead of relying on this corporation. They would make their own software interface, so that they couldn't be sued.
If there's enough demand for it, they could make their own hardware. The GCW Zero made their own game hardware, with only a couple thousand people funding it through preorders and kickstarter.
If enough people are angry at this corporation, they probably could raise money to develop a competing product. That's more productive than raising money for a legal fight. If their business is incorporated with almost no assets, they might have nothing to lose even if their is a patent lawsuit, although they still could get sued directly as individuals. If sued as an individual, you should consider representing yourself instead of wasting money on a lawyer. The judge won't like it, but it might earn you some sympathy with a jury.
misaki commented on Baseball Statistical Fallacy - Value Over Replacement Player.
Hey again FSK. I didn't sign any EULA/NDA. Never owned the device. There might be problems with 'copyrighted strings' and the lookup table falling under 'anti-circumvention' laws.
We already have software that works without specialized hardware. Either a regular webcam capable of removing the infrared filter, or even a regular webcam.
The issue is software support. They refuse to deal with people who implement other protocols. So without implementing it there's little market penetration.
-m.
misaki commented on Baseball Statistical Fallacy - Value Over Replacement Player.
Our software is mixed MIT/X11 and GPL3, forgot to add. There are some blobs running in separate address space. It's distributed free of charge.
And TOR got new handshake code that builds a circuit faster. :)
-m.
Due to the way copyright law has been interpreted, implementing someone else's proprietary API could be considered infringement. If you're successful enough, the large corporation will try to use its legal muscle against you.
For software support, you'd have to target people who write flight simulator games and not the people who have the monopoly. If they explicitly refuse to deal with vendors who support competitors, that could be a violation of antitrust law, but you don't have the millions of dollars to waste on legal fees. If you want to build a legal case, start a flight simulator software business, and try to implement both their protocol and the open source one.
misaki commented on Baseball Statistical Fallacy - Value Over Replacement Player.
There's already some support, people seem to have begun violating the NDA. There's the DCS series on http://eagle.ru and ArmA II on http://bistudio.com.
But there are some titles that require memory modification in a running process, which give issues with regard to copy protection and 'anti-cheating' measures.
Damn rigid body dynamics is hard :P Due to the "education" system being broken where I live, doubt ever will write a flight sim :(
Wrote some image processing software that gives rotation and translation of a face, though. Even learned how to multiply a matrix by hand - 'first horizontal, second vertical'. Never learned of its significance with regard to linear equations, though.
You could try the Kahn academy, if you want to learn linear algebra.
If you're solving a system of linear equations, it has a shorthand representation as a matrix operation.