Epistemology in everyday life

In school, (cough) years ago, I did a bit of epistemology. It’s the study of knowledge. It asks the questions “why do we know that?” and “how will we find that out?”. ..

Dear tech journalists: please announce a one-year, self-imposed Apple embargo

San Mateo county police, presumably at the bidding of Apple, broke open the front the door of the home of the editor of a technology blog and seized his property. This is in relation to Gizmodo’s revelation of what is presumed to be the next iPhone. ..

Dear Facebook: let us define the relationships

We’ve begun implementing some of Facebook’s Open Graph on Alikewise, my dating startup. By Dare Obasanjo’s definition, books are our main “social object”. ..

“No carry-on fees” simply means everyone pays carry-on fees

I can’t imagine why Congress is involved in this, but apparently it’s an outrage that airlines are charging fees for carry-on bags. ..

Entrepreneurship and health care

Some folks are putting forward theories that the new health bill will increase entrepreneurship in the US, as individuals are freed from reliance on large employers for health care. I think the theory is both wishful and unempirical. ..

The point at which your project becomes bigger than your head

I’ve seen it argued that a measure of a good programmer is the amount of “stuff” they can keep in their head at one time. ..

The artificial distinction between “content” and “delivery”

In the arguments over net neutrality, the discussion is often around “content” vs “delivery”. The concern is that the delivery people (ISPs) might cut off or otherwise extort the content people. Eg, what if Comcast slowed down YouTube so it could push its own video? ..

jQuery appears to be incompatible with IE9 preview

It would appear that jQuery (1.4.2) is not compatible with the new IE9 preview: ..

Don’t confuse syntax with reasoning

This article asks if programming is the new literacy: …we have in a sense returned to the Middle Ages or ancient Egypt, or even before. Then, if you needed to communicate your thoughts on paper, you couldn’t do it yourself. You had to hire a better-educated person — a scribe — who knew the writing code. Then, at the other end, you needed someone to read or decode it — unless, of course, you were “well educated,” that is, you had been taught to read and write and thus had become literate. ..

A few more reasons to use Progressive Enhancement

Progressive Enhancement is a methodology where a web application is developed in layers. Each layer works correctly on its own, and additional layers on top enhance the user experience. ..