bkovitz

12 ms·

61.
by bkovitz 17y ago
This idea of expressing interesting and useful things as mathematical operations sounds to me like it really gets to the essence of what we do. It not only gets the basic feel of our work across to a normal person very succinctly, it also g
62.
by bkovitz 17y ago
The term is just so damned vague. If I buy a stock and think the price will go down, is that "negative thinking"? If I'm miserable where I work, would it be "positive thinking" to tell myself that I like it there? My current understanding
63.
by bkovitz 17y ago
What is "positive thinking"?
64.
by bkovitz 17y ago
A long time ago, I was at a client's site, and had to write code at a dumb terminal in the middle of the sales floor (I said this was a long time ago). One of the salesmen walked by and saw me typing up a storm. Impressed, he said, "Is th
65.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Does that page commit the fallacy of "making a lot out of what we can measure, because we can measure it" or what? How about whether the message says something interesting? Something funny? Something that shows that you actually read the
66.
by bkovitz 17y ago
As I read the graph, it says, "Message length makes almost no difference, although very short messages are noticeably worse."
67.
by bkovitz 17y ago
It explains the mathematics describing drugs' passage into, through, and out of the body. There are lots of books about pharmacokinetics, but this one is notable for being so clear, direct, precise, and readable. It explains the main causa
68.
by bkovitz 17y ago
I haven't liked it as much as GEB . At times, it strikes me as too clever (puns and autobiographical digressions all over the place). It's definitely interesting and thought-provoking, though. With translation as its main topic (not so i
69.
by bkovitz 17y ago
I like these threads, not because I'm looking for book recommendations, but because finding out what people are reading gives me some insight both into the people and into publishing.
70.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Computational Pharmacokinetics by Anders Källén Secrets of Consulting by Gerald Weinberg Le Ton Beau de Marot by Douglas Hofstadter Born to Win by Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward
71.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Lots of people, even in their teens, but certainly by their early 20s, take almost a scientific interest in "clothes and carriage". These are the sorts of people who become business majors and read Maxim. Examples of the kinds of things th
72.
by bkovitz 17y ago
If what you're calling "depression" is caused by thinking, then it's not depression, at least in the clinical sense used in the article.
73.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Gerald Weinberg recently said something very interesting about non-makers and meetings: "When I walk a client's corridors, I frequently meet people on their way to meetings. Although these same people have told me that meetings are boring,
74.
by bkovitz 17y ago
And yet, still no example of a useful macro. In C++, you already have assignment. You don't need to roll your own.
75.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Yup. It's amateurish speculation. Some problems with the speculation, known to anyone who has read about or dealt with depression: * Difficulty concentrating is one of the symptoms of depression. You can't think. * Depression typically begi
76.
by bkovitz 17y ago
That's not depression. http://www.mhsanctuary.com/depression/dsm.htm
77.
by bkovitz 17y ago
What is a specific way in which you were misled? (Maybe you can save me from the same fate.)
78.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Is the second edition available for download?
79.
by bkovitz 17y ago
"For decades, those swells traversed the Pacific and smashed to rolling white breakers south of San Francisco. India’s best and brightest swept inland, helped turn a valley full of orchards to Silicon. And Silicon turned to gold, as baby-fa
80.
by bkovitz 17y ago
These problems get a lot of attention because people tend to whine loudly about them. But the vast majority of articles are not affected by them. Except possibly the learning curve. I think the fact that Wikipedia is just a little bit dif
81.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Wikimedia is in the black, but not rolling in money. Maybe it could be done, though. Here are the numbers: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f6/WMF_Mi...
82.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Indeed, growth is not the point. The point is to have a great encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to. Wikipedia has succeeded. I think the main reason for the slowdown in editing is obvious: the mission is basically accomplished.
83.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Yes. "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true. Editors
84.
by bkovitz 17y ago
In my C programming days, I used FSMs heavily. They enabled me to write code to handle extremely tricky, bug-prone problems of various kinds. I wrote them as static data with a tiny interpreter. They took almost no memory, they were super-
85.
by bkovitz 17y ago
What's stopping you?
86.
by bkovitz 17y ago
What a great exercise! It can be hard to think of what you really care about: starting that way often leads to trying to deduce what you "should" care about. What you hate, though, is easily accessible. Negative emotions are right in your
87.
by bkovitz 17y ago
I don't get it. Why do they need to close on a Friday night? There are a zillion DJs in San Francisco, and people often come to DNA Lounge just because it's DNA Lounge, without knowing what, if anything, special is planned that night.
88.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Indeed, these statistical surveys are telling you less than you already know. They might have heuristic value, though: you might not previously have looked through your own experience to see if durable goods or experiences brought you more
89.
by bkovitz 17y ago
No, it doesn't. It says that depression is a useful trait for ruminating over, and thereby solving, social dilemmas, not that the life is really as bleak as it seems when you're depressed.
90.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Don't get me wrong. I love speculation. Speculation drives science, and I don't think any interesting scientific idea can ever be conclusively "proven". Just, what's this article doing in SciAm? For an idea to get into SciAm is a big score

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