dandrews

21 ms·

181.
by dandrews 15y ago
You are correct: my use of the word "utility" was not very rigorous. Nevertheless a lot of people depend on Google, and if Google took themselves down capriciously it would demonstrate that they can't be counted on. Of course they have eve
182.
by dandrews 15y ago
Utilities cannot "go dark". The power company couldn't go dark to make a political point. The water and gas companies couldn't either. Google has acquired (for better or worse) utility status. Interrupting service to make a political poi
183.
by dandrews 15y ago
> you will scare away new comers. Especially Lisp new comers. I had some background in sundry Lisps, but my stumbling block was my lack of knowledge about the JVM and things Java. You really do need some experience in the ecosystem, el
184.
by dandrews 15y ago
Chris, I didn't see your post but probably would have flagged it as off-topic if I had seen it. I don't think it meets the on-topic criteria posted at http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html In general if it's not hacker-worthy ("grat
185.
by dandrews 15y ago
Anthony's Conj talk was pretty good all right. He looked completely at ease, and has a great deadpan delivery when he tells a small joke. Knows his stuff. He's grown in the last year, in lots of directions, and he is going to be a Force.
186.
by dandrews 15y ago
The short answer is no, STM is only a small (and some smart people suggest overrated) part of Clojure infrastructure. But the Deep Thinkers in the Clojure community feel your stack trace pain, and now that 1.3 is in the can it seems to me t
187.
by dandrews 15y ago
OpenJDK? "The Zing™ JVM is a full-featured JVM based on Sun HotSpot" according to http://www.azulsystems.com/products/zing/virtual-machine Edit: I upvoted you moonboots, thanks for the pointer below.
188.
by dandrews 15y ago
I am reminded why there are so few women in IT.
189.
by dandrews 15y ago
Indeed, Clojure's excellent Java interop gives me easy access to existing Java libraries. And because it runs on the JVM, I've been able to execute Clojure apps under z/OS (you know, the day job). I'd call Clojure's use of the JVM a win, n
190.
by dandrews 15y ago
Last year I wrote a fan letter of sorts to Professor McCracken, thanking him for his ForTran book, which I credited as my inspiration for what became my life work. (Ref: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1710523 ) He replied to my lett
191.
by dandrews 15y ago
He folded five times.
192.
by dandrews 15y ago
I chided the folks at Gandi for their "no bullshit" tagline, thinking it uncultured at best. They sent me a thoughtful response, saying that they'd weighed the possibility that it would be considered crude, but that it was a clear descri
193.
by dandrews 16y ago
Like the parent, I had an informal "pre-flight" inspection that I'd execute on my motor home on travel days. Hatches closed and locked, hoses and cables and steps and awning retracted and secured, ceiling vents closed, LP gas shut off, tir
194.
by dandrews 16y ago
I don't object so much to the word "science" in CS as I do about the word "computer". Edsger Dijkstra said: "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
195.
by dandrews 16y ago
I'm using Clojure for small personal projects, and a few toy applications at the office. ("The office" operates an IBM mainframe under z/OS -- sometimes this "write once run anywhere" stuff really works.) Before my infatuation with Clojure
196.
by dandrews 16y ago
I'm 58, doing arcane mainframe systems stuff, mostly in my sleep. Pays well and got the kids through college, but I've been doing it for a long time. The days are past when I could routinely wrap the clock on an interesting problem. If I
197.
by dandrews 16y ago
You're his nephew's roommate? Ask him "May I send you my resumé?" Seriously, I presume that his budget was large, but not inexhaustible. Ask him what he could have accomplished if he'd thrown more hardware/people at the problem.
198.
by dandrews 16y ago
Theater tech - light design. You knock yourself out for a couple of weeks, doing the day job in prime shift and then setting lights after hours, and you get a little burned out. But on opening night, when I'm sitting in the darkened contr
199.
by dandrews 16y ago
I remember a string of ads for minicomputer Fortran compilers, placed in Computerworld circa 1970. One manufacturer (might have been Data General) proudly stated that their compiler was "a pig", featuring long compile times but turning out
200.
by dandrews 16y ago
"... wide selection of technical books" - my experience is opposite, sorry. I've seen the number of technical books dwindle in the years I've patronized my local Borders store. Lots more emphasis these days on M'soft applications and Xyzz
201.
by dandrews 16y ago
Depended on the institution, but in general males were predominant in management and programmer positions. Operators were split about 50/50 at the places I worked, and I never met a male keypuncher. I/O control staff (who gathered input da
202.
by dandrews 16y ago
About a year ago a friend encouraged me to sign up for FB. "Facebook?" I grumbled, "Isn't that the New AOL?" My pal persisted, saying it really was a good way to keep up with what the kids were doing. So I signed up, found that indeed it
203.
by dandrews 16y ago
Xach: "*I really like getting together in space and time with other Lispers. An ideal future Lisp conference for me, personally, would … attract hundreds of cheerful and enthusiastic Lisp nerds…Navel-gazing and nostalgia would be at a minim
204.
by dandrews 16y ago
" ... we had to learn to make products the way the Japanese wanted products. We were assembling products in Singapore and sending them to Japan. And the first thing the customer saw when they opened the box was the manual, but the manual wa
205.
by dandrews 16y ago
Citing Gödel's incompleteness and Turing's incomputability, Gregory Chaitin says ( http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~chaitin/cordoba.html ) that "mathematics is different from physics, but maybe not as different as most people think". Perhaps C
206.
by dandrews 16y ago
As we all know by now, the launch system has its flaws (segmented solids and loosely insulated liquid tanks). The economics of Shuttle was grotesquely oversold, and satellites were limited to LEO because that was the service ceiling for th
207.
by dandrews 16y ago
There is no coasting or "snowball effect" - the Segway is not a freewheeling device. The wheels only do what the computers tell the motors to do.
208.
by dandrews 16y ago
You can't infer anything "intentional" here. I imagine he was close to the edge and he let it get away from him for whatever reason. Maybe he slipped in some loose gravel or mud, or his dog blocked one of the wheels, or he simply wasn't p
209.
by dandrews 16y ago
Earlier this year I wrote a fan letter to Daniel D. McCracken, crediting him for inspiring me: --- Some time in the mid-to-late-60s when I was a high school kiddie, I discovered to my dismay that I had succeeded in cleaning out my local pub
210.
by dandrews 16y ago
The Student as Nigger, Jerry Farber's collection of essays published circa 1970. Powerful, angry, and a product of its time (Farber was active in the civil rights movement), it exposed the university social dynamic in raw terms.

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