mmmurf

a JSON document confirming no use

That would be the better design. No need to overload an HTTP status code meant only to indicate transport status.

The world of the future is software. We're on the slow and exciting path of better and better digital representations of reality... everything from cheap orientation sensors to ADCs that were in the realm of science fiction a few years ago.

The same is gradually happening with things like batteries, motors, etc. Everything is becoming more standardized and more like software.

The current limitations have to do with both physics and engineering, and also software reliability, but those barriers are all receding. Solar Cell roof shingles are an idea likely had by many kindergarteners, but the genius has to do with making a longer-term bet and creating the financing to make it into a viable business in a world that rewards short-term results.

The important thing is that a Billionaire today can make a bigger impact than a superpower government could a decade ago. The glorification of the bygone era of massive infrastructure investment voiced by Thiel at the GOP convention can be alternately viewed as a wish that we had more Musks taking big gambles and a general cynicism about the tech elite who develop cults of personality after a single, largely luck-driven, often low-tech home run.

The Interstate highway system was a buildout that could happen because of the solving of coordination problems that had prevented escape from a local maximum. As governments lose relevance, it is up to the Musks of the world to usher in both the technological vision and the social coordination solutions.

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How would you define ideology? As a person's current set of beliefs? Or as a set of vehemently held beliefs?

Argument is the process of applying logic to a set of ideas. It is based on the premise that logic alone can yield insights and both participants try to use logic to point out fallacies in their opponent's arugment.

If you believe that ideology is someone's current set of beliefs, then ideology is not threatening, as you have a good shot of changing someone's ideology through logic and argumentation.

However, if you believe that ideology is a dogma that someone viciously clings to, then there is no reason to bother arguing, as it could never result in the person conceding a point or changing an opinion.

I the former definition applies to most intelligent people.

In my case, all of my beliefs are provisional. I don't know anything for certain, but I may still engage in argument. I won't necessarily preface the argument with an in-depth acknowledgement of all of the holes I see in the beliefs at hand. Instead, I will see how well they stand up to my opponent's assaults. After all, I've already admitted to myself that they have holes, so now before I abandon them I should give them one last stand to see how they do.

A successful argument is one in which a) I discover more holes, or b) I realize that something I thought was a hole isn't.

Logical argument is quite unlike javascript where there are obvious ways of empirically testing a result. In the more abstract areas of programming there are massive arguments (see LKML, etc.) because it is hard to simply empirically test the result... the concepts are abstract and interwoven, etc.

To read the arguments on LKML, one sees that they are more socratic, more focused on the abstractions and hence are more subject to "ideology" being used rather than simple assertions.

So if you dismimss "ideology" as necessarily uninformed, you are asserting your own "ideology" onto the discussion.

What is a non-ideological argument? Is it something like this?

Person 1: I can't be sure, but I think there is a chance that A

Person 2: I see. I agree that there is a chance that A, but I think there is a greater chance that B.

Person 1: We both make good points.

Person 2: Indeed.

While the above may be an abundantly mature way to address A and B, I find a spirited argument far more informative. For the same reason, I find that it's easier to learn about the nuances of a political issue by reading op-eds written from various perspectives than from reading one supposedly objective "news" article.

So because one cannot disprove X, then "the whole universe is X"?

No I didn't, which is why I asked the question I asked. I guess I didn't know that vmware made stuff other than virtual machine software.

Is there any reason to check this out? I've been using virtualbox for a while and can't think of any reason to stop.

You are correct. One example that makes it obvious:

Take 100 calories of lettuce (which is quite a lot).

Now take 100 calories of oil (which is not much at all).

Combine the two into a salad, which contains 200 calories and 50% of calories from fat.

+1 for #6. It's a great read. It would be fun to teach a high school history class around it.

Could also be measurement error...

He writes:

"Let me make my own point of view clear - it is that the only position tenable from a viewpoint of strict empiricism is that the existence or non-existence of God are equally un-disprovable."

So then why, if God exists and created humans and made humans rational, should anyone believe that God exists? Was rationality something God intended only that humans overcome? Or did he intend for us to use it some of the time? Most of the time? Not at all? The existence of rationality poses the biggest explanatory challenge to someone who views the poster's two options as being equally probable yet chooses to believe in God anyway.

I've found that "business" email is usually best expressed in a few sentences: Issue, suggestion, next step. Usually the next step is a formal discussion and decision.

In business you can't expect most people to read a multi-paragraph email, realize what their role in the decision is, and act on it.

Also, some of us have much higher mental bandwidth for email communications than average. So it's a good idea to start the "handshake" with a very simple communication and take it from there, regardless of how intelligent the recipient may be in other areas.

Well said -- I work from the home office much of the time. If I want to be around people I go to a coffee shop. Meanwhile, my schedule is flexible and my commute takes 3 seconds.

Also, I'm fortunate that I'm excited about what I'm working on and don't feel the need to sneak in scrabble and mute phone calls while screwing around on youtube.

Monit has been very useful to me as well.

I also use capistrano's command: "cap shell" to easily type the same command on all the servers.

Are you interested in a low pay situation? My startup doesn't have the revenue at present to pay you much, but you'd have a big hand in shaping the direction of the product and a friendly, happy atmosphere. And obviously we expect some revenue soon. Shoot me an email at gmail if you want to discuss.

The Libertarian party is a fringe party that is mostly concerned with hemp legalization. I know libertarians (small l) who vote for each major party some of the time.

The point of discussing libertarianism is to see the philosophical difference between someone who advocates personal freedom and economic freedom vs someone who doesn't.

I disagree with your premise that it's absolutism. Rand called herself a capitalist and Atlas Shrugged is simply Rand's argument about the morality of capitalism.

Notably, Atlas Shrugged is more of a treatise against crony capitalism than it is against socialism.

Your point references the correlation between capitalism and democracy.

One downside of a democracy is that special interests can gain power and distort the system to the benefit of the few rather than the many.

In Atlas Shrugged, Rand shows how corporate interests run amok can lead to very bad outcomes, and she creates a moral argument for capitalism -- as compared with crony capitalism.

The approach I'd use would be to find a problem he wants to solve, and teach him to solve it in a few languages.

One of the big "duh" moments when learning CS is when you realize that all languages consist of similar structures to let you get things done.

Not sure what his interests are, but I'd probably choose from:

Ruby or Python

Haskell or Lisp

Javascript

Maybe c or c++ too to remove the intimidation factor, even if it's just for Hello World.

After he can write simple 50-ish line programs in those three languages and knows a bit about how they work, zoom in on one of them and take things a bit deeper, and then a few weeks later zoom back out and see if he can "self-teach" himself those same concepts in the other languages.

This assumes he doesn't want to just jump in a build something for the web, in which case you have to decide how much HTML/dom/standards stuff to teach him (which is largely boring to newcomers) at the expense of doing some cooler programs.

Alternately, you might just want to use pygame and build a fun, playable game with him and not worry about too much theory until after he's having a lot of fun with it.

I think the comment does carry that implication, though it's not obvious to most people because they are looking for a messiah, benevolent dictator, wise group of elders, etc.

Your own views would be summarized as pragmatism, which I think is inevitably the way any policy gets implemented.

However the purpose of philosophy (which is what Atlas Shrugged is) is to enable the mind to think about a broad system of beliefs and their consequences logically, and to outline the purposes, goals, desired ends, etc.

The same could be said for the communist manifesto. I respect both works as solid philosophical texts, as they provide ample fuel for critical thinking about the issues.

What's interesting about the comment about "running the world" is that it does suggest a world view very biased toward central planning, and so it's hard to take any conclusion that follows from it as unbiased.

Many similar biases exist all over the place... the idea that wanting federal dollars to be spent on x implies support of x and not wanting federal dollars to be spent on it implies opposition to it is one example.

I wouldn't say that. Have you read any of Rand's books?

Your comment suggests that you believe the world needs to be "run" by a wise planner of some sort.

Note: Rand doesn't care how productive someone is, only that he/she attempts to actually be productive. Obviously there is great variation in how productive (in an absolute and economic sense) that individual humans can be. The point is that some people strive to produce while some strive to take power over others.

Superb comment!

Excellent point. There has been nothing remotely libertarian about the Bush administration.

The privatization plan would give the beneficiary ownership over the investment, so there is not a problem, it just means that the investment has longer to grow. Ideally someone doesn't just build up a pile of money and intend to die with $0, he/she intends to leave some to the next generation or to charity.

Well, you forgot about the way that benefits are systematically reduced and the retirement age is systematically increased. What about someone who worked hard in his 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s in hopes of retiring at 65 only to see the SS age be increased to 70? Is that security? No, that's a 5 year ripoff.

Now, the SS retirement age is GREATER THAN the average lifespan of African American citizens! You may consider that another "good in a sick sort of way" aspect of the program, but I don't.

You may be right, but the intent of the system doesn't really matter. When SS began the tax was 1%, now it's 12.5% and benefits have been decreasing every year.

Sadly, the planners didn't anticipate just how population trends would play out, and so the initial idea -- that everyone pays 1% and then no old folks have to worry about poverty if they choose to retire -- just doesn't quite work out any longer.

The trouble is that people can't really rely on social security for (guess what?) security!

Will congress increase the payroll tax to 30%? Will it decrease social security benefits drastically? Will it fund SS out of general revenue at the expense of other programs? Will American taxpayers decide that SS is worth a middle class income tax rate of 55%?

The answer to all of these things is the same: maybe.

But that's not security. Obama has wisely advocated converting SS into a welfare program, but that hasn't gotten much traction.

The point is, with population trends doing what they are, somthing has to give. When people running for office talk aobut "saving Social Security" they are not honest about the impending outcome of obvious demographic trends. Meanwhile, all of us pay 12.5% of every paycheck into something that will probably offer us ZERO security in retirement.

You're right it doesn't make any difference, but your point is irrelevant.

Social security is only as "sound" as the will of future taxpayers to pay the inevitably increased taxes required to keep it going, regardless of whether the money is borrowed, promised, set-aside, appropriated, recommended, etc.

Since its inception, social security benefits have been cut little by little to the point where middle class people must significantly supplement it with their own private investments to avoid poverty in retirement.

So there still may be something called "social security" in 20 or 30 or 50 years, but chances are it will bear little similarity to the program's initial inception or even to the program people think of it as today.

You also argue that the government should borrow money. Why not just tax today for what we spend today? Had we done that, Bush would never have been able to go to war in Iraq, the "trust fund" would not be in danger, etc.

Not to digress, however. The biggest threat to social security is that congress won't have the will to use the limited available tax revenue for the program, and the public won't want the drastically increased taxes.

Obama wisely suggested switching SS over to be a welfare program and funding it from general revenue, but the initial concept was that it's not welfare and so nobody should feel like they are on welfare when they receive their social security check. This is a fairly significant matter.

Well, the extreme case of non-upkeep is the vacant buildings in NYC, etc. When nobody can make a profit from a building, it gets abandoned. This isn't an overnight process. It starts by using a tarp on the roof instead of fixing the roof, and it ends when the building is abandoned and nobody has to pay any rent or fix any broken pipes, etc.

I agree that the public would rather "force evil landlords to do x" than achieve the social goal in a minimally economically distortionary way. It similar to how politicians give handouts to people who drive hybrid cars while at the same time fighting a hugely expensive war to prevent oil prices from increasing to the point where people would just buy electric cars because they were cheaper!