camccann

55 ms·

451.
by camccann 17y ago
Failing that, make as many assumptions as possible, but correct the failed ones in a reasonably short amount of time. Some minimal cost/benefit analysis on the assumption would also be good. As a corollary to this, try to arrange that any
452.
by camccann 17y ago
It's been said that IQ tests measure IQ, where IQ is defined as "that quantity which is measured by IQ tests". The interesting part is that, even defined in that rather circular manner, IQ can be consistently measured and compared between i
453.
by camccann 17y ago
Thank you, I forgot to mention that. Assuming the polywell design works as hoped, it is likely to be much smaller and cheaper for the same output than other fusion reactor designs. I've been interested for a while in the potential of IEC-ty
454.
by camccann 17y ago
Someday soon we're going to reach the end-game: ad-blocking will become ubiquitous in browsers, and this long, strange nightmare of "free" content and "zero marginal costs" will have to yield to the simple reality that content costs money
455.
by camccann 17y ago
For those not familiar with the Polywell design, it's a refinement of the slightly more well-known Farnsworth Fusor. The fusor design is surprisingly simple; small versions can be (and have been) constructed by hobbyists that will successfu
456.
by camccann 17y ago
Having not used any MS software for years outside of work and occasional troubleshooting for friends, this just doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Familiarity breeds contempt, I suppose, but for someone who could even consider doing this (
457.
by camccann 17y ago
Dr. Norvig is also one of the authors of a very well-regarded textbook on the current state of the AI field: http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/
458.
by camccann 17y ago
Yes, these are probably silly and/or harmful laws, but how is this article not just a political fluff piece? An article with more on how these kinds of laws might impact a startup and less political rhetoric would be both more interesting a
459.
by camccann 17y ago
More significantly, continuations are a strict superset of coroutines, so standard Python is actually less powerful in this regard than languages with full continuation support, which if memory serves me includes Ruby, Smalltalk, and Scheme
460.
by camccann 17y ago
Yeah, but what kind of activities were you involved with in the fraternity? Partying and athletics are active certainly, and enjoyable, but not creative . You want people who are motivated primarily to make things happen . As with what
461.
by camccann 17y ago
What really matters is being around people who are active and creative. The specifics of what they work on, a minor detail.
462.
by camccann 17y ago
Impressive. The world needs more people like this guy.
463.
by camccann 17y ago
More quibbling: The period inside the quotation marks isn't clear-cut. Standard American usage is punctuation inside the quotations and is a hold-over from practical considerations of typesetting. Standard British usage is punctuation insid
464.
by camccann 17y ago
"My girlfriend left me for being so goddamn pedantic all the time, and I could care less!" I wonder if there's an opportunity to be had in creating a dating site for linguistic pedants, purists, and grammar nazis. I'm thinking a required
465.
by camccann 17y ago
Assuming they didn't deliberately shuffle the ordering just to confound people like you. Your results look depressingly plausible, though, so I'm guessing not.
466.
by camccann 17y ago
Better that than type coercion!
467.
by camccann 17y ago
You are correct, it's not. In the simply-typed lambda calculus, generally recursive constructs (such as fixed-point combinators like our friend Y) do not have valid types and are not legal. Wikipedia has a nice article on it: http://en.wik
468.
by camccann 17y ago
I'm fairly certain that any sufficiently powerful type system would need to end up being a Turing-complete programming model in its own right, and since I've already got one of those (I'm writing my program in it) I generally pass on that
469.
by camccann 17y ago
I agree with you about the "interesting things", but those aren't the majority of things by a good margin. The overwhelming majority of code written today is likely limited primarily by I/O, such as waiting on user input, network speed, d
470.
by camccann 17y ago
Google's misstep is not in wanting to protect their brand; I don't think anyone would fault them for that. The faux pas is that they apparently took a heavy-handed, lawyer-oriented approach to it, sending a cease-and-desist letter to a popu
471.
by camccann 17y ago
Clearly, one of the higher-ups at Palm told the company they needed to find ways to surpass the iPhone's user experience, and forgot to specify "but only the good parts".
472.
by camccann 17y ago
OK, let's start with the fact that OP never defines "willpower", whatever that is and for which each of us probably has a different definition. The researcher in question studies kinesiology, in other words, exercise and physical health.
473.
by camccann 17y ago
These people work with polling and statistics Well, current evidence seems to suggest that maybe they don't, actually, work with polling and statistics...
474.
by camccann 17y ago
A completely closed, proprietary platform, with its own (probably incompatible with everything else) language, that advertises itself as being "easier" than other languages? People keep trying this sort of thing, and the result is almost al
475.
by camccann 17y ago
I don't know what the situation is in general, but when I was a teenager (not that long ago, though longer than I'd like), in the town where I lived most places wouldn't even consider hiring anyone under 18 because of legal issues. If you
476.
by camccann 17y ago
For weeks now, technology sites on the web have been filled with wailing and gnashing of teeth about Apple's inconsistent, ill-defined, arbitrary, bordering-on-schizophrenic process for approving/rejecting iPhone apps. What makes you think
477.
by camccann 17y ago
For anyone else who wasn't previously familiar with the acronym, GCD stands for Grand Central Dispatch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Dispatch
478.
by camccann 17y ago
This is an excellent illustration of a core principle of security: anything relying on "educate the user so that they know better" is doomed to failure.
479.
by camccann 17y ago
Yes, you're correct, that did sound more like linear types. I was trying for a simple description of why mutability can be regarded as an optimization/implementation detail given certain guarantees. That said, Haskell does allow more than j
480.
by camccann 17y ago
Unix was developed as a side result of a couple hackers wanting to play a game that wouldn't run well on the systems available, so they ported it to a new system and then wrote an OS for that system as well (because hey, why not). At the ti

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