CurtMonash

57 ms·

601.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
So many of these proofs are of the form: 1. Assume the desired conclusion is false. 2. Make an error. 3. Derive a contradiction. And by the way, most mathematicians have made plenty of bad proofs. I told my thesis adviser I had a "proof" mo
602.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
As long as there is robust availability of hardware on which you can install your preferred software, why should EVERY bit of hardware offer that feature?
603.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
I don't think lack of personalization is a big problem. If I have something I like, I generally remember that well enough to order it next time. That fits with the general rule that personalization has a clearer, easier-to-prove benefits fo
604.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
"No price is too high" is always an incorrect statement, at least in the context of investing.
605.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
I took a nuclear engineering class in 1975. In essence we discussed three reactor design ideas: 1. Water, pressurized or otherwise. 2. Gas-cooled. 3. Molten-salt. The big problem with molten salt was that you sent it through a whole lot of
606.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
Three students were asked to evaluation the hypothesis "All odd numbers > 1 are prime." The math major replied "3 is prime. 5 is prime. 7 is prime. 9 is ... NOT prime. The hypothesis is false." The chemistry major replied "3 is prime. 5
607.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
The article & the associated comment thread have much to recommend them. But let's not glibly assume that "post-rigorous" ==> correct; much of economics can serve as a counterexample to that hypothesis. I got out of mathematics (des
608.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
His history is wrong. OO won in large part for a good reason -- it was a way of implementing, if not enforcing, modularity. One that people accepted, unlike LISP.
609.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
If we read this as an argument "And therefore MRv2/YARN will be important", it's not crazy. The Hadoop project itself is opening up to break its dependency on pure MapReduce. First out of the gate -- the Apache Hama folks, who I believe hav
610.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
1. One journalist at a time. Journalists often have very different integrity and biases than their employers. 2. I don't understand why you think you need to offer exclusives at all. So I don't really understand the question.
611.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
Your fist paragraph is good. The second one, as stated in my own comment to the main, I vigorously disagree with.
612.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
Here's a link with some of the reasons for my opinion: http://www.strategicmessaging.com/five-kinds-of-public-relat... (First time I've posted a link to Hacker News. I'm curious to see what happens ...)
613.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
This is appalling pabulum. It has no more to do with pitching a journalist successfully than wearing nice clothing to the interview has to do with getting a job. Every pitch should have dual goals: 1. Ideally, you'd like to get covered. 2.
614.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
That was the secret of Ronald Reagan's political success.
615.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
I was generally regarded as math prodigy. I got my first algebra book when I was 4 years old, and mastered the material quickly. I eventually got a mathematics PhD from Harvard when I was 19 years old. Traditional mathematics classrooms con
616.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
If a system has sufficiently crazy password rules, I'm sure to forget the password, and default to the password reset system.
617.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
When I was threatened with libel by Sybase, I jumped on the phone with the general counsels from Oracle and Computer Associates, and based on their "I'm not acting as your lawyer" general comments, handling things myself. The big difference
618.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
My quick reaction is to be confused about why X being unaffected by Y's longer memory would that Y is unaffected as well. In the zero-sum case, this would be obvious, but the whole point is that we're not in a zero-sum game.
619.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
It is often better to ask forgiveness rather than permission. Why not move the satellite first, litigate about the patent later? What this really sounds like is a case of somebody taking their lawyers much, much too seriously. Courts have t
620.
by CurtMonash 14y ago
TheNextWeb could have provided substantially the same article to its readers by block quoting with attribution rather than plagiarizing with attribution. Would that have been fair use? While a significant minority of people would say "No",
621.
by CurtMonash 15y ago
The article is clear on only one point, but it's not an explanation for his winning. That point is that if he loses $500K, he only has to pay $400K of it. I'm pretty sure that if you bet $100K a hand, and stop whenever you hit the first of
622.
by CurtMonash 15y ago
I saw exactly the same thing happen on Grand Cayman. At the end of the summer, Cayman Islands security found a pair of scissors in a girl's backpack that she'd evidently been traveling with all summer.