camccann

41 ms·

361.
by camccann 17y ago
A wind-driven land vehicle can tack just as well as a sailboat can, and possibly better. If memory serves me, in the fully general case, all that's required is an exploitable difference in velocity at the interface of two media (ground/air,
362.
by camccann 17y ago
A currency, to be practical, needs to meet the following four characteristics: Be relatively scarce, be durable, be divisible, and be impossible to counterfeit. But to actually be a currency, a resource still requires that people treat
363.
by camccann 17y ago
Hey, that's awesome, I hope it didn't sound like I was bashing you for neglecting it or anything. _why seemed to be superhumanly productive, so I wouldn't expect any one person to keep up his pace. I'm just happy to see that his projects we
364.
by camccann 17y ago
I think they were a great idea for a time when a product could be easily taken apart and reimplemented based on looking at its physical components. You've actually got it somewhat backwards--patents were in large part originally motivated
365.
by camccann 17y ago
pg is completely correct regarding "principled" arguments against software patents. There's no consistent way to assert "temporary property rights to ideas about physical devices are fine, but owning ideas about math is morally wrong". If y
366.
by camccann 17y ago
Hackety Hack, like all of _why's projects, got adopted by someone else after his departure: http://github.com/steveklabnik/hacketyhack/ Alas, it doesn't seem to be getting much activity.
367.
by camccann 17y ago
I think many people feel lost in coming up with legitimate answers. I suspect many people are completely uninterested in coming up with legitimate answers. They already have the answer they want, and look to science only as a source of
368.
by camccann 17y ago
Well, I was confused because getContents seems to be of type "IO String": http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/base/P... I can see why a lazy input stream could make things opaque even in a completely type-safe program, t
369.
by camccann 17y ago
Do you have any references for that? I looked through some Haskell documentation and didn't see anything warning about those functions being unsafe (although there does seem to be an unsafeHGetContents in System.IO.Unsafe). Is there's somet
370.
by camccann 17y ago
Speaking as someone who grew up surrounded by a Fox News target demographic (religious conservatives), I'll also note that many of them hated Fox's entertainment programming for undermining family values through violence, indecency, poor
371.
by camccann 17y ago
Seems to be a gross sense of entitlement amongst consumers if you ask me. It kills off quality content providers in favor or knee-jerk social media and mediocre content generated by algorithms to maximize SEO/SEM juju. The situation you d
372.
by camccann 17y ago
Been there, done that. "The [Michigan Keystone ICU Project] targeted a specific type of infection that ICU patients can get while in the hospital – catheter-related bloodstream infections. These infections are expensive and potentially let
373.
by camccann 17y ago
I know. "Pointless" acts of willpower are also a common theme in some religious traditions and martial arts, as well as things like what ellyagg mentioned earlier. I really expect there is something going on there, but I'd like to see pro
374.
by camccann 17y ago
The quick and dirty tricks suggested, none of which are particularly novel, are fine and probably good ideas for being more productive in the short term. But what about the long-term increase from using willpower? I would be very interest
375.
by camccann 17y ago
Okay, but that suggests wave function collapse is erroneous whereas many-worlds is more likely. Based on that alone you can see why I'd consider many-worlds silly. Also, I'd say anyone entertaining it as plausible or even likely is probabl
376.
by camccann 17y ago
I think it was more along the lines of "contempt for anyone who, when asked to write code to do something difficult that they're unfamiliar with, chooses to write very, very bad code instead of learning the bare minimum needed to do a pas
377.
by camccann 17y ago
Many-worlds isn't really a silly concept. It's one of several interpretations that are equally consistent with current experimental results, and it does have nice properties such as avoiding nondeterminism and nonlocality. It's also (in a w
378.
by camccann 17y ago
it seems to me that if the Higgs is offended about being observed and quantum-destroys the universes it is produced in You seem to be conflating the "Higgs production does something funny to suppress the amplitude of possible histories le
379.
by camccann 17y ago
For the benefit of anyone completely confused by this, it's in reference to the concept of "quantum suicide", associated with the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. The Wikipedia article explains the basic idea: http://en.wik
380.
by camccann 17y ago
But when I look at the Hacker New logo, I don't perceive photons of wavelength 590 nanometers bouncing off my retina--I pereceive the color orange. If you did perceive photons at 590nm that would be rather remarkable! More likely, you wou
381.
by camccann 17y ago
This method of computing successive terms of a polynomial actually has an interesting place in the history of computers; the basic principle is the same as that used by Charles Babbage's difference engine. Wikipedia article on the differenc
382.
by camccann 17y ago
No, of course it's an unfair comparison. But back in '98 people were using that OS, including a lot of not particularly "technical" folks. The point is that Linux today is substantially better than "good enough for regular people to use".
383.
by camccann 17y ago
From the data-is-not-the-plural-of-anecdote department: My sister co-founded and works full time at a small non-profit retail business with an extremely limited budget. Faced with a slowly-dying ancient Win98 laptop as her only computer and
384.
by camccann 17y ago
And ultimately, that's for the board and investors to decide/influence. Yes and no. The problem is, the executive is doing the work now , not in 5 or 10 years, and they're probably going to expect something for their efforts. If you dela
385.
by camccann 17y ago
And if their companies succeed I tend to suspect that this part is where many people start from before going to "bank execs are overpaid".
386.
by camccann 17y ago
Slideshows using Flash are one of the worst ideas ever. To spare everyone else the pain: /!\ Extended spoiler alert /!\ 10 (Tied): Gary D. Cohn, Goldman Sachs, Jon Winkelried, Goldman Sachs 9: Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman Sachs 8: Sanford
387.
by camccann 17y ago
For comparison purposes: http://www.uschamber.com/icw/reportcard/default -- Note that Vermont and New Hampshire both do very well overall. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_tax_levels -- Note that VT and NH are at opposite extremes of
388.
by camccann 17y ago
I doubt that the entire budget is dictated by direct-vote propositions. To abuse the analogy, the government could probably get its hands free if not for the left and right hands each being more interested in keeping each other tied up th
389.
by camccann 17y ago
Well, you can express it any way you like. Math is flexible that way! Note that from 4.8% to 5.3% is actually an increase by 10%, namely: 0.048 * 1.1 = 0.053, or 4.8% * 110% = 5.3%. I imagine you're looking at it and seeing the differenc
390.
by camccann 17y ago
Correct handling of dates and times in the general case (i.e, arbitrary time zones and arbitrary dates in the past, including calendar and time zone changes) is one of those things that I have tentatively filed under "too complicated for me

More ›