stuart78

For anybody who wants to check out more of his work without a trip to the comic shop, he just wrapped up a weekly series in The Guardian which ran for a year.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2014/sep/13/...

A bunch of cut up PDFs is a rather frustrating way to release something for free. That said, these galleries are pretty fantastic.

"2) Do more to cut costs, companywide. (“The most valuable long-term dollar to an organization with declining revenues is a dollar you don’t spend.”)"

This one worries me. I don't have better proposals to save the industry, but we keep redefining coverage to be less direct and less expensive and we all end up paying for this by being further removed from news as it happens.

As a digital-only subscriber, I find NYT's current subscription model bizarre. For the base ($20/mo) tier, I get access to web and iPad but not iPhone (which costs an additional $10). This structure means I use and value the service less, making me more likely to cancel. Feels like a business model that privileges their needs over their customer's experience. And as a result, I opine that it is not likely to meet their expectations. I'd rather see an attempt to broaden the subscription base by aggressively lowering the cost ($7.99) and aggressively expanding the entitlement (sub includes crossword, for example).

Salt Lake City's approach seems to be going pretty well [1]. On another note, naming these places 'Dignity' and 'Opportunity' seems, at least to my ear, to sap the residents of both. Why not give them more innocuous names?

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/22/home-free

I faced a similar dilemma when purchasing my (now) wife's engagement ring. We were both familiar w/ the con, but she likes the traditional ring, so I wanted to find a diamond I could live with. Ended up with a vintage diamond ring from the 1940s (original papers and all). I was happy to avoid a greater contribution to the insanity of the diamond trade and my wife loved that the ring had a story stretching back a couple of decades.

I fear that the browser itself will live forever. At least in my parent's basement where the PCs are like Mr. Burns' indestructibility: https://vimeo.com/96581518

So IE6 it is.

I'm generally a fan of anything to remove cars from the city center, it is really an improvement and transitions us from the inefficiency of single-occupant transportation to group movements. As you point out, it also introduces logistical complexities for downtown residents, but when everybody is in the same situation it is perhaps easier to build comprehensive solutions.

From that Wikipedia article: "Gator's end user license agreement attempts to disallow its manual removal by prohibiting "unauthorized means" of uninstallation."

Reading the word Gator really took me back in time. Never worked on that stuff, but it brought back the visceral pain of sitting down at a friend or inlaw's computer to find Gator or one of its peers installed. Each time the internal debate: to simply remove it, to try and explain why it is bad or simply to ignore...

They do make a couple of generic bins. ($0.61/brick on Amazon) and you can pick up clean lots on eBay. Though I've not seen it myself I'm also told you can buy from bins at the Lego stores.

I know what you mean though, as none of these yields exactly the set I'd prefer (lots of variety in very few colors).

The hacking part brought an unexpected smile of glee to my face.

That is a bummer, makes me wish I hadn't let the unread count from The Dish grow so large in recent months. Not too many writers who can argue so eloquently and respectfully on politics.

When I didn't agree with his perspective I always found it extremely useful to read an honest and solid argument against my own position. I think you can ask no more from a writer than to challenge your assumptions, improve your reasoning skills and help foster empathy for those with whom you disagree.

As the son of an architect, I must somewhat dispute this characterization. There are tremendous constraints in that craft which are sometimes parallel to those of software development.

Budget is the first constraint, which limits the available materials and determines material quality.

Components and building codes are a second. While the 'fun' part of building design might be the exteriors and arrangements, a tremendous amount of the effort goes into binding these 'physical APIs' in a standards-complaint manner.

Finally, there is physics. This brings with it the ultimate and unassailable set of constraints.

I know I'm being a bit silly, but my point is that all crafts have frustrations and constraints, and all professions have a high (and often hidden) tedium factor resulting from imperfect starting conditions. These do not actually constrain their ability to create works of physical, intellectual or aesthetic transcendency.

We are fairly quick to erase, forget or forgive the racism of white leaders, but seem to have a harder time doing so for those who oppose the majority's cultural status quo. I fear this has been used historically as a way to marginalize certain voices.

Certainly X is a complicated, difficult and contradictory figure, but also one who, through the autobiography, is able to capture a particular time and experience amazingly well.

I haven't read the book since high school, but the segment on conking stays vividly in my mind. It is a great example of one of those seemingly small details that X manages to use as mule to talk about larger issues of identity and assimilation.

I don't entirely disagree with your sentiment, but I think there is a fair distance between Zynga and its ilk and the unregulated penny stocks. Zynga has had trouble demonstrating much of a profitable plan, but every investment bears risk and I don't think investors should enter the market if they don't feel comfortable with the risk level. I avoided Zynga partially because I avoid tech debuts for the reasons you cite, but more importantly because I didn't trust the model. That said, I've been wrong on the market more than right.

This is a big test for IV, but I am uncertain that it will individually change the course of affairs for the general patent question. The second This American Life episode cited by Reuven includes a good indication of why. These cases seem often to be examined not on underlying principle, but on the direct evidence. The 'network update' patent from TAL was busted not because the patent itself was found to be ambiguous or over-broad but because its authorship was incorrectly assigned to only one of its 'inventors'. Super narrow and no principle other than "check your application more carefully next time".

In my opinion, this is how it should be. Courts should enforce the law, not change it (excepting the Supreme Court's right to reject the unconstitutional). For that, we need to work through Congress to modernize the definition of patents in respect to software.

These cases play an important role in that process, which is to create a body of guidance on how software patents are being used and how they are being challenged, for statutory reform and/or legal appeal.

[[As is probably obvious, I am not a lawyer, so I apologize for any legal inaccuracies in the above]]