Bingo.

I learned touch-typing on QWERTY in high-school in the '60's: the theory was that all college-bound students needed to type. At the time, I was disgusted, but put up with the course.

Fast forward forty years. Math, science, everything be damned: learning to touch type was the best course I ever had in preparation for a 35-year career in coding. Dvorak yadda yadda yadda: great, but none of my clients had Dvorak keyboards, so that would have been pointless. Is QWERTY the greatest ever? Perhaps not, but it works (particularly on modern, non-jamming machines) and it's what works in the normal workplace.

So: thank you QWERTY, and thank you, touch typing. I have a nice retirement today, thanks to my success in normal IT.

I've worked with NIST, and largely sorta respect 'em: yeah, they're bureaucrats and, yeah, they share some characteristics with the rest of the dumbocracy. On the other hand, they _do_ try, and I my impression has been, after working with other fed agencies, that they're better than most. But not perfect, and probably not as 'alert' (i.e. as guarded with development funds) as private corporations would be.

And, yeah: let's see the details on the fast ones. If they can be disproved, so much the better, but if good, they're math triumphs.

It's a nice -- but musically off the tracks -- idea. The problem is that music, and this is especially true of classical music where a single work can be recorded by scores of artists, is not just a matter of mechanically reproducing sound from notation; it's a matter of interpretation.

If this project succeeds in hiring excellent musicians, and if the resulting recordings bring rave reviews, that means that _one_ recording of, say, Beethoven's Ninth is open sourced, but it has no effect on the legitimate desire for other alternate performances. Yes, it does make one recording available to those who don't want to pay, though it does little to free the intellectual content of the work itself, because that intellectual content is derived from the original composer _and_ each interpreter.

Worse, if they produce something that is artistically uninteresting, even while a 'faithful' representation of the score, they've accomplished little.

Poutine is not abuse; it is apotheosis.

And Alfred Ely Beach built his own in 1870 Manhattan:

http://hoeffmeir.org/Richard_LeBlanc/Alfred_Beach.htm

Mind you, it was a one-block demo, rather than a working system, but you have to tip your hat to someone who built something like this in secret in such a high-density environment.

..."Unlike the other freaks on here, I do NOT like a work environment where I have zero privacy, where I get distracted every time someone walks by or a big crowd gathers around a neighboring engineer and has a loud conversation, and where I can't have a private phone conversation without everyone in my group hearing every word I say."

I generally agree -- over several decades, most of my projects were implemented by small groups, where personal space is important. Much to my surprise, however, I found that a group room worked very well on one large project. Mind you, the reason it worked may have been project specific, but for what it's worth:

It was a big integration project, with both infrastructure and application people needing immediate problem resolution -- about 30 developers total. We set up a LARGE conference room with a U of tables around three sides. There were a couple of tables in the front for meeting leaders (for the infrequent meetings and conference calls) and, just as importantly, extra stragglers.

The groups arranged themselves informally around the U, with related team members close to each other for quick-over-the-shoulder consultation, and with the other groups in easy reach for cross-disciplinary issues. There was little management 'interference' (though, of course, they checked in), 'cause they trusted the teams to work out the details.

Through many previous (and smaller) projects, I've preferred to work alone, and I was surprised at how well this worked out. We spent about three months at 10-12 hours a day (yes, five days a week, so we could decompress), and much to my eremitic amazement, even I felt that this arrangement worked very well for a project that was complex and reaching deadline.

Thoughts on arrangement: First, no close face-to-face stuff. We had about 20 feet between opposing sides of the U, so this was a non-issue. Secondly: no back-to-back (classroom style). This not only leads to looking-over-your-shoulder syndrome, but also a reduced face-to-face invitation for collaboration.

Since the original post is so brief, it's difficult to determine its intent. However, the usual intimation of such quotes is to imply that the 3/5ths valuation was immoral because slaves should have been counted fully, i.e., as 5/5ths.

But this is exactly counter to the various political goals of the time: the northern colonies, who were more generally against slavery (yes, there was still slavery in the North, but I'm describing averages) wanted the slaves to not be counted at all, while the southern colonies demanded that they count as a full person.

The reason? The census -- and it was only the census for which this definition was intended -- determined how many representatives each state could send to Washington. Northern, and sorta generally anti-slavery colonies, wanted to not count the slaves at all; if they're not fully-enfranchised citizens, why should the 'owners' get the Federal advantage of the extra legislative muscle that the extra census count would provide?

The southern colonies, on the other hand wanted slaves fully counted so as to maximize the pro-slavery clout that the South might exert through the additional members in the House of Representatives.

So, the old saw that evaluating slaves as "3/5ths human" is both a gross misrepresentation of the original intent (it had nothing to do with their status as human beings), and of the political impact of this count: the politically correct view would be to count them as zero, thereby depriving the slave-holding states of the census advantage.

You're right, of course, and I while I can't claim to be the international taste-setter, I have had some great pizzas over a great geographical area.

1) Naples is the home of pizza, and there are few pizza luxuries greater than the ethereally thin-crusted pizzas served here.
Tossed fresh, these pies are served within three minutes after ordering, after a scorching 900 degree turn in the oven.

I've had other good pizzas throughout Italy, but Naples is da bomb.

2) Manhattan is the beneficiary of the Italian diaspora, and boasts a number of coal-oven pizzerias. These serve pizzas with something of the same speed of their Neapolitan cousins, but have a flavor of their own.

3) Hannover Germany has many Gefulte pizza kiosks on the street that specialize in stuffed, fried calzones. Love 'em. I'm not so in love with the German predilection for pineapple on pizzas, however.

And so let's get on to some variations that pizza lover's love to hate:

4) Chicago Pizza (e.g. Uno and Gino's) Different and love 'em.

5) St. Louis Pizza (e.g. Imo's) The cheese is an acquired taste (which I've done), as is the sauce (which I haven't). Better versions are at Erios' and Nick and Elana's.