camccann

13 ms·

61.
by camccann 17y ago
In my admittedly limited experience as an interested layman, it seems to have swung to an opposing extreme, if anything. I've come to associate plastering degrees and qualifications all over with someone being a borderline crackpot, while t
62.
by camccann 17y ago
Humor and social skills absolutely require brains, though. Social status games are what our brains are built for; abstract and analytic thinking may be the intellectual power behind the march of technology, but in all likelihood that's
63.
by camccann 17y ago
Well, given enough time, women will prefer men who provide more advantages to her children. Of course, "earning potential" actually doesn't matter much either, in a wealthy society where death from poverty is rare. Instead, look at the peop
64.
by camccann 17y ago
In theory, the information a Haskell compiler has available should allow it to make better optimizations. Things like drastic whole-program optimizations aren't viable in C because the compiler can't guarantee safety and doing the optimizat
65.
by camccann 17y ago
There's a very good point buried in this article: Technology-oriented startups tend to have some heavily skewed demographics, not just in gender, but in socioeconomic background, political leanings, tastes in entertainment, etc, and the kin
66.
by camccann 17y ago
"Challenges" is kind of subjective. GEB is really a bit fluffy (as I said in another comment here), and SICP is only challenging if you've never seen a functional language before. PLP is also not particularly challenging as such, but it is
67.
by camccann 17y ago
I read it when I was fairly young; I know I didn't fully grasp many of the concepts in the book, but it didn't feel "difficult". GEB's strength is also its weakness--it's engaging and inspiring, showing evocative connections between all man
68.
by camccann 17y ago
On the other hand, see here for continuations made complicated: http://okmij.org/ftp/Computation/Continuations.html
69.
by camccann 17y ago
I actually hide the dock in OS X; it just clutters things up. I do pretty much everything through Quicksilver, or just Finder/Terminal when I need to go poking around. In fact, I've gotten so used to doing it that way that I now use Gnome D
70.
by camccann 17y ago
I can't say I care for his proposed license. I recommend instead considering the WTFPL: http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/ The author of the WTFPL was the Debian Project Leader for a while and his site has a tribute to goatse. Make of that what yo
71.
by camccann 17y ago
A closed-form solution exists, so if you pretend that arithmetic is free, it's O(1)! Bignum multiplication is significantly slower than bignum addition; if memory serves me it ends up coming out that you're essentially stuck with O(n^2) no
72.
by camccann 17y ago
If anyone's wondering, the Y combinator gets mentioned on page 14, though only in passing. Didn't seem to mention fixed points in the section on representing proofs in lambda calculus, though. It can easily be observed that the type of Y is
73.
by camccann 17y ago
That was a nice thrashing of some of the silly numerology that seems to collect around the Fibonacci sequence/golden ratio. I do wonder why phi gets so much attention (pi as well), but e doesn't? My suspicion is that it's because logarithms
74.
by camccann 17y ago
Is there a fast-food equivalent to Apple? This is going to sound ridiculously clichéd, but could probably make a case for Starbucks. A lot their success came from having and marketing a consistent, stylized aesthetic, they got a lot of fl
75.
by camccann 17y ago
Or perhaps both?
76.
by camccann 17y ago
we don't have qualia and consciousness (it's just the illusion, that we have) An illusion experienced by whom? What's the difference between having an illusion of consciousness and having the real thing?
77.
by camccann 17y ago
I've never been able to figure out how this (and most other philosophical arguments against AI) don't apply just as well to individual neurons. Though I suppose if one wants to frame it as an argument that neither computers nor human brains
78.
by camccann 17y ago
For any Haskell users out there, the Edison library (see here: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~rdockins/edison/home/ ) provides implementations of various data structures based on what's described in Okasaki's thesis. I seem to recall a simi
79.
by camccann 17y ago
Functors are containers that can apply a function ("fmap") to their contents. (...) Monoids are even more generic -- they are something that has an "identity" and an "append" operation. Argh! Pet peeve time. Functors are not containers an
80.
by camccann 17y ago
It's said that an engineer is defined as someone who will spend 11 hours making a tool to solve in 1 hour a one-off problem that would have taken 10 hours to solve manually. (Of course, when the manual solution proves error-prone or the "on
81.
by camccann 17y ago
Seems like staying too close to the real line was a lot of the problem--spirals and asymmetric structures show up roughly in proportion to how imaginary the region in question is. That and a lot of time zooming toward what I think are Mis
82.
by camccann 17y ago
There's a popular misconception that science answers questions like "Why?" or "How?" But that's not the heart of it. Strip away the math and jargon and theories--all the messy details that make the engine of science turn--and it all comes d
83.
by camccann 17y ago
The evidence for evolution can stand on its own. You've never tried to talk to a Creationist, have you?
84.
by camccann 17y ago
I think expecting everyone who drives to be as knowledgeable as a NASCAR driver is foolish, just as I believe expecting everyone who has learned a behavior to adapt every time something subtle changes is too far. But I think it is fair to
85.
by camccann 17y ago
There's a scientific consensus on Newtonian mechanics, too, but no one bothers to mention it. It's also not relevant to any divisive political issues. If it were, you'd hear plenty about the consensus (in the negative sense, I guess, sinc
86.
by camccann 17y ago
Tch, show proper respect. That's "Sir Terry" to the likes of us. And I don't think "becoming an advocate" is perhaps worded strongly enough. A few choice quotes from something he previously wrote on the subject (the link in philk's comment)
87.
by camccann 17y ago
What's wrong with choosing an arbitrary reference point to be local. Choosing a non-inertial reference frame would be the problem. Relative velocities (including temporal velocity...) are essentially arbitrary, but acceleration is not; an
88.
by camccann 17y ago
Any suggestions? Flag content-free political junk. Ignore the rest. Don't take it personally. Submit interesting technology articles instead. And please don't contribute to the noise by complaining about it.
89.
by camccann 17y ago
It's mainly the math, I think, that I'll have "trouble" (actually have to study) with - not the programming. Have you considered finding a study partner for learning the math? Or a tutor--if you live near a university, you could probably
90.
by camccann 17y ago
In exactly the same way that lazy evaluation makes program flow easy to follow. Or perhaps in the same way that the internet makes sarcasm easily recognized, I suppose...

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