apl

38 ms·

331.
by apl 16y ago
I doubt it, given that Ruby has virtually no traction in NLP circles. That's also why all the good toolkits target other languages. However, "translating" Python examples into relatively idiomatic Ruby shouldn't too much of a problem if you
332.
by apl 16y ago
SMS and email are different. SMS costs $ per message. Email does not. In the Facebook UI, if you add a SMS user to an email thread, he will receive numerous SMSes from email users who don't realize that they're racking up his bill. Wait a
333.
by apl 16y ago
Does that mean Facebook will vanish completely over the next 10 years and turn into a punchline? Simplicity comes in different forms; I suspect that FB is actually aiming for the wrong kind in this case.
334.
by apl 16y ago
It doesn't. [EDIT: There isn't much more to say. The claim that (esp. natural) evolutionary processes strive for streamlined and optimal solutions is simply false, for various (even a priori ) reasons.]
335.
by apl 16y ago
You would, but it's slightly misleading to say that two dollars buy you an hour on a supercomputer. It buys you an hour on a tiny fraction of a supercomputer. Once you reach proper cluster size, you'll pay significantly more; maybe even mor
336.
by apl 16y ago
What about monetization? If it's ad-based, alright; however, in many cases the simple payment process offered by iTunes, for instance, is essential.
337.
by apl 16y ago
Sure, but I'm surprised by the "reversed" notation. Wouldn't it be fib 0 = 1 in Haskell? I just felt that this order works well for pattern matching functions, but not as well in other contexts. No CS background here, by the way; may
338.
by apl 16y ago
0 fib = 1 1 fib = 1 (n: Integer) fib := (n - 2) fib + (n - 1) fib Reading the first line as "For zero, 'fib' is 1" is surprisingly intuitive. Not sure if this translates to something like x = Object clone though. Mayb
339.
by apl 16y ago
I can't believe I have to say this, but this isn't a spoof, nor is it a silly idea. No, you obviously don't have to say that. It's the fact that they have a fancy website for a 20$ product that can be replaced by 3$ worth of stationery wi
340.
by apl 16y ago
For a minute, I thought it was a spoof. One problem though: It clearly needs a better name. I suspect paper.ly would do the job. Or papr . Then finding venture capital shouldn't be a problem.
341.
by apl 16y ago
It's an absolutely acceptable use of the verb "define." There's nothing about it that requires an animate subject.
342.
by apl 16y ago
Neat idea. But it's called "proc R astination." Please, please change the name. Otherwise, eyes will bleed.
343.
by apl 16y ago
Amusing - but a car with 2 passengers going at a conservative 30MPH is very different to a plane flying 9KM over the ground at 567MPH. You're right: building an automatic car is much harder. It's counterintuitive, but speed or altitude ar
344.
by apl 16y ago
Good idea: everybody loves Lua. But why oh why is the whole page built from tiny little Flash things? It looks ridiculous if Click2Flash (or similar) is installed. Unusable.
345.
by apl 16y ago
And thirdly, it just doesn't matter that much. You should be learning programming. Not <specific language> programming. That is precisely why it matters so much. There's a general misconception that somehow, programming languages
346.
by apl 16y ago
No, you aren't. Unfortunately, I must say. All those years taking Social Psychology courses haven't even made me immune to fascism! Seriously, though, reading some essential papers in the area is absolutely worthwhile. Replications of Milgr
347.
by apl 16y ago
It's mildly annoying. Unlike Fortran, JS doesn't desperately need a preprocessor language. Adding another layer of "abstraction" and some syntactic sugar will make the process of developing good JS needlessly complex and fragile.
348.
by apl 16y ago
Ridiculous programming language? Far from it. JavaScript is a fantastic language once you get to know it a little better.
349.
by apl 16y ago
I've always been surprised none of the "teachers" participating threatened to call the police. (I would probably have gotten arrested for assaulting the experimenter, myself.) You and 99% of all people hearing about the Milgram experiment
350.
by apl 16y ago
That's trivially true.
351.
by apl 16y ago
Interestingly, there's no way I could get experiments of this kind past the Ethics Board these days. I'm not quite sure if that's a good or a bad thing.
352.
by apl 16y ago
I'd have to read the paper, but statistical significance is determined by several factors - e.g., number of participants and so on. The drop could just be a fluke.
353.
by apl 16y ago
P.S. That was a nice black turtleneck you had on the other day. You should really consider wearing those more often. Well played, JR. [EDIT: Wait a minute: That classless hack makes a vacuous ad hominem attack his punchline, and I get v
354.
by apl 16y ago
At this point in computing history, your language needs a stronger raison d'être than "Python isn't statically typed, and C++ has awkward syntax!"; especially considering that 99% of all new languages never get off the ground. I'm virtually
355.
by apl 16y ago
Not what I'd call a shocker . Was anybody actually using them? OS X is a wonderful single-user-facing operating system, whether that user is a clueless consumer or a Unix-loving developer. But there's nothing that sets it apart as a server
356.
by apl 16y ago
Wow, do people really not get that? MySQL, including InnoDB, is dual-licensed, and has been for a while. So unless you want to package MySQL/InnoDB with a commercial product, nothing has changed. http://www.innodb.com/products/innodb/licen
357.
by apl 16y ago
Disturbing yet wonderful logo...
358.
by apl 16y ago
Yep, same with me. I do prefer Ruby, but it's just not feasible at the moment. Languages that get behind in a certain area enter a terribly vicious circle: There's no scientific community backing Ruby, so why would I develop something that'
359.
by apl 16y ago
In the end, it's all about the ecosystem. Perl wins for bioinformatics because there are boatloads of scientists already using it, with all the neat libraries and resources that brings. Equally, Python wins for, say, prototyping in robotics
360.
by apl 16y ago
Tech journalism at its worst, once more: 1) Of course the data is skewed! Please don't use a headline only to correctly question its content in the last sentence. 2) Fragmentation hits at two, largely orthogonal levels - there are different

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