frederickf's comments

frederickf | 7 years ago | on: REST was never about CRUD

I'd love to read some of his original comments. Do you remember any of the threads? Are those forums publicly available?

frederickf | 10 years ago | on: Most Americans will get a wrong or late diagnosis at least once in their lives

In my totally unauthoritative opinion the diagnostic process has been optimized to find the most likely cause as quickly as possible. This isn't a terrible strategy on the aggregate. It increase the overall likelihood that the most people will get the right diagnosis. But the trade-off is that some people will get the wrong diagnosis. The alternative would be for doctors to spend more time really digging into symptoms and tests to ensure they get it right the first time, every time, but then fewer people would get diagnosed.

This would be okay if doctors would accept the limitations of the system and admit when they don't know the correct diagnosis or are not sure. In that case they would say something like "This is the most likely diagnosis, but it doesn't meet your symptoms, you should seek a specialist" or something to that effect. I think what happens too often is that doctors confuse the most likely diagnosis with the correct diagnosis, possibly because they're unwilling to admit their fallibility.

frederickf | 10 years ago | on: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

The Irving ISD Student Code of Conduct, which the principle alleges the student to have broken, can be downloaded at http://www.irvingisd.net/Page/5183.

I couldn't find anything in there prohibiting a clock or other non-communication related electronic devices. I didn't read every word so maybe I missed something.

I did find the following under the prohibited items section: "Any articles not generally considered to be weapons, including school supplies, when the principal or designee determines that a danger exists."

But that would seem to create a dilemma in this situation. If it was a bomb it wouldn't be covered by that stipulation, but if it was a clock then no reasonable person could consider it to be dangerous.

If we're being charitable we could assume the principled believed it was a bomb at the time, in which case it would have been covered by other stipulations in the code. But if that is the case then I would think the school should have been evacuated. I don't know if that happened or not.

Also, good lord, I don't ever remember having to sign something like that document (it's a 44 page document that reads like a contract) when I was in school. Is it even legally binding to have a minor sign that?

frederickf | 10 years ago | on: Google launches Uber rival RideWith

This sounds more like Lyft's "Line" service which connects driver and passengers going the same way on regular trips. I'm not familiar with Uber's offerings though so maybe they have a similar service?

frederickf | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2015)

Bazaarvoice

ONSITE in Austin, TX & San Francisco

We currently have full time openings for front end, back end, big data analytics, QA, DevOps, mobile (IOS) and tech writing.

We use a micro architecture approach and teams are encouraged to use whatever technology suits their needs. Mostly Java, Node and Python.

Go straight to the Jobs https://careers-bazaarvoice.icims.com/jobs/search?ss=1&searc...

Learn about the R&D team http://www.bazaarvoice.com/careers/research-and-development/ http://blog.developer.bazaarvoice.com/ https://twitter.com/BazaarvoiceDev

frederickf | 10 years ago | on: If PHP Were British

This article is very tongue-in-cheek. The title says PHP but you don't have to know PHP to appreciate the humor (or should I say "humour"). At least some of it applies to any C based language.

frederickf | 10 years ago | on: WinJS: The Windows Library for JavaScript

One advantage might be the ability to support multiple platforms. Using the technology group formerly knows as the "web stack" you could build a version of your app for windows desktop, ubuntu desktop, browser apps, mobile, and probably others.

frederickf | 11 years ago | on: EFF Outlines Plan to Fix the Broken Patent System

This might be naive on my part but it seems like we could help the situation quite a bit, at least for software patents, by just reducing the amount of time for which new software patents are valid. It's simple, easy to understand and implement, more consistent with the speed at which the software market evolves, would reduce the perceived value of bogus patents making trolling less likely, free up technology sooner for everybody to benefit and still offer some protection to innovators.

Right now they're good for between 14 to 20 years (1) which seems too long to me. I'm not sure what the right number is, maybe between 5 - 10? Even that seems long, but then again I don't have anything innovations to patent so I'm probably biased.

(1) http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/312/how-long-are-...

frederickf | 11 years ago | on: Google Isn’t Fixing Some Old Android Bugs

Regarding the Nexus one that's surprising and disappointing. I was under the impression that the Nexus line used vanilla android (no device manufacturer or service provider customizations) and would be update-able as long as the hardware could handle the new OS.

frederickf | 11 years ago | on: FCC Questions AT&T: Explain Why Your Fiber-Optic Rollout Will Be Delayed

It could be that ATT is already charging consumers the maximum, or close to it, amount consumers will bear. In that case even with gigabit speeds the average consumer probably won't pay much more than their already paying. So, in the absence of competition to motivate them to improve their network they would have to find other revenue streams to justify the cost of installing a fiber-optic network. If they can't charge content providers to use a new faster network (or find some other way to increase their revue) then ATT won't want to build them.
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