IsaacL

82 ms·

631.
by IsaacL 17y ago
Off-topic, but what's a zeroth order functional language? What are the other orders (something reqiring lambdas, closures, etc)? Google and Wikipedia didn't help.
632.
by IsaacL 17y ago
My personal opinion: no. Ideas like this (voice control as well) have been floating around for years, but I think they mainly appeal to the 'sci-fi movie' version of the future, and are not things that will achieve mass traction. Flailing a
633.
by IsaacL 17y ago
I am interested in starting a web business, and so could potentially apply to YC some day. However, I didn't know about this policy (used HN for ~4 months). I've read the rules for the site and most of pg's essays, so it's possible that I'm
634.
by IsaacL 17y ago
Agreed, though you make them sound a lot worse than they are. For me, getting contact lenses was one of the best things I ever did, and liked them as soon as I tried them on. I hadn't seen my own reflection without glasses from a distance i
635.
by IsaacL 17y ago
Thank you, I was going to make something similar. IANABS (I am not a Business Student) but I believe that a business model involves revenue streams. This kind of article might be a useful way of categorizing Web apps, but it's name sugges
636.
by IsaacL 17y ago
YES. This needs to be said more and more; to many in the West believe in the stereotyped image of China in the media, which prevents making any useful criticism of the countries actual problems. People like you who say otherwise tend to ge
637.
by IsaacL 17y ago
Thanks for the reply. Just looked up at Leeds on Wikipedia - I'd assumed it was a fairly mid-range institution (and so I thought there'd be other institutions the same or worse, but many which were better). Just found out it's in the Russel
638.
by IsaacL 17y ago
"For example, in a biology exam, a question asked whether you see with your eye, ears, nose or mouth -- " No it doesn't. The question is "which organ contains light receptors?", which although simple, does requires some knowledge of scienti
639.
by IsaacL 17y ago
Should be "The Decline and Fall of a British University". The only thing this article tells us is the quality of the students that study at Leeds. It's a bit of a stretch to extrapolate from experience of one department in one university
640.
by IsaacL 17y ago
By the way, have you noticed the keys at the 6th and 9th positions on the top row of your keyboard?
641.
by IsaacL 17y ago
He said in the article (may be a misquote) that he was the only one.
642.
by IsaacL 17y ago
That's really interesting.
643.
by IsaacL 17y ago
It's a cool story, but he's hardly the first to do it - I worked as a volunteer English teacher in Asia for 6 months, and did this with some of my senior classes - excuses for missing homework, being late for school, losing their notebook,
644.
by IsaacL 17y ago
I think 'startup' has (at least) two definitions: 1) any new business enterprise 2) a new business enterprise with high potential for growth, with an untested product/service So porn would be included in 1, but 2 is more for 'untested' mode
645.
by IsaacL 17y ago
That's what I was going to ask. Contributing to Open Source projects springs to mind, since you get involved in a community that can give you feedback, experience on a potentially very large, complicated project (which is very different to
646.
by IsaacL 17y ago
Yes, but are they using IE6? I'm actually writing this from a Chinese cyber cafe at the moment - one problem with a lot of these places is that IE6 is ubiquitous. According to the article, most Chinese use the net from home (I thought it wa
647.
by IsaacL 17y ago
2004! This article is 5 years old, and it's a reply to an article written in 2002!
648.
by IsaacL 17y ago
If anyone enjoyed Flatland, a similar back in the same vein is Planiverse, which takes the 2-dimensional world concept and fleshes it out with how physics, geology, weather, cosmology, biology, society and technology would work in such a wo
649.
by IsaacL 17y ago
Haha. I remember my Dad telling me that his Dad would never allow a TV in the house the whole time he was growing up - he used to read the TV listings in Radio Times (UK mag with both TV and radio schedules) so he could talk with his school
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by IsaacL 17y ago
The Web? I reckon you could hack a basic version in a weekend
651.
by IsaacL 17y ago
This might be part of it. I study at a UK university and it seems a lot of people expect to apply for a graduate placement at some blue-chip company when they finish their studies - starting up is rarely seen as an option. (Though I know a
652.
by IsaacL 17y ago
You're right that it's to do with the size of the market - 300 million potential customers is a huge amount of growing room. However, the UK has 60 million people, not 20 million (I thought you were talking about the adult population, but y
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by IsaacL 17y ago
Ha, good to see my friend Oo linked to on there (he's a Nigerian who studies at the University of Warwick, where he's been trying to build a startup community). According to him, in Nigeria, everyone knows that internet fraud (and politics)
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by IsaacL 17y ago
I remember finding the whole generations concept fascinating when I first heard about it, but I think this quote from the Wikipedia article sums up my misgivings about the concept : "Britney Spears is seen publicly as the female pop icon of
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by IsaacL 17y ago
"Twitter is very popular with young people, according to reports about young people by middle-aged people" - Onion. I have Twitter, but never use it, for the same reason I didn't have a Facebook account for a long time; very few people I kn
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by IsaacL 17y ago
"Presuming you could train yourself to sleep sufficiently better to work 5% better (in whatever units better is)" That's the thing, I know I wouldn't be able to presume that - trying something like this out would be an experiment for me, an
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by IsaacL 17y ago
Aaaaargh! Did the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers just call HTML a "Web programming language"? It's a common mistake, I know, but these guys should know better.
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by IsaacL 17y ago
This is an important issue, but the WSJ is a mainstream paper. This article doesn't go into an in-depth discussion of the technical issues, and it also assumes very little familiarity with the nature of Chinese Net Censorship (which is rath
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by IsaacL 17y ago
More like "it used to be". It now has one of the highest GDP/Capita rates in Europe. Actually, I just checked Wikipedia - it has the 6th highest GDP/c in the world .
660.
Ask HN: Best Rating System: Reddit-style or Amazon-style?
3 points by IsaacL 17y ago|3 comments

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