donaldc

19 ms·

181.
by donaldc 17y ago
My favorite parts of this blog announcement are the numerous comments requesting that google release the data on bittorrent. Google still has this option, if it ever actually wants to release the n-gram corpus to as wide an audience as po
182.
by donaldc 17y ago
I would suspect that one cause of uneasiness that some people have towards older people is due to the de facto age segregation practiced by much of this society up through the end of college. I know that I personally barely had any experien
183.
by donaldc 17y ago
The study didn't actually demonstrate that it can't be made up.
184.
by donaldc 17y ago
I don't think I've even worked less than 10 hour days in the last 6 years, and once burned through about 2000 hours in 4 months I hope you're getting paid a fortune, or better yet are working for yourself, because 2000 hours in 4 months i
185.
by donaldc 17y ago
I'm not convinced that computerworld is right about this. Generally, world-changing developments take such magazines by surprise.
186.
by donaldc 17y ago
From the article: The US government and the mass media selectively promote research that is favorable to the fish oil industry. I find this unlikely. The fish oil industry is not a giant industry on the order of the corn industry, or the
187.
by donaldc 17y ago
Not decided on whether change is accelerating, but a very significant improvement in my own life is the market availability of an automatic vacuum cleaner (i.e. Roomba). Much like the automatic dishwashers and clothes washers of yore, this
188.
by donaldc 17y ago
Some variation of this question comes up every couple of months. It's unfortunate that somehow many people get the message that they are not among the 'select' group of people who can learn new things. Especially since this belief often bec
189.
by donaldc 17y ago
My problem instead starts to be how much time I can continue to do programming for work. I'd assume you can continue until you no longer find it interesting...
190.
by donaldc 17y ago
Excellent point! That explains it...
191.
by donaldc 17y ago
Perhaps, but there doesn't seem to be any terribly good reason at this point not to always allow two children.
192.
by donaldc 17y ago
I've been wondering for a while now why China doesn't back off to a two-child policy. Most of the problems caused by the one-child policy would go away or be greatly eased, and yet the population would still attain stasis. I've put it down
193.
by donaldc 17y ago
Such is the power of institutional, organizational, and societal inertia.
194.
by donaldc 17y ago
Much of what makes redis differently useful from all the other database applications out there is based on the fact that it keeps all data in RAM. If you want a database that holds some data in memory and some on disk, there are dozens to c
195.
by donaldc 17y ago
His flagship heart hospital charges $2,000, on average, for open-heart surgery, compared with hospitals in the U.S. that are paid between $20,000 and $100,000, depending on the complexity of the surgery. At only $2000 (or even $5000), and
196.
by donaldc 17y ago
Record labels aren't any more or less evil than VC firms. This may or may not be true, but at this point I'd say that record labels are less necessary than VC firms.
197.
by donaldc 17y ago
Speed of critical thinking for simple questions like the $0.10 ad-click question probably is important. If someone can't figure out the answer to that one pretty fast, they're probably not going to successfully figure out really hard proble
198.
by donaldc 17y ago
To be fair, python 3 now has a complete, usable implementation, whereas perl 6 does not. That said, I very much like what I've seen/heard of perl 6, and will certainly learn it once it's production-ready.
199.
by donaldc 17y ago
The search market is large and lucrative enough that, no matter how uphill a battle it appears to be for a new search engine to establish a hold in it, there's likely to be a continual trickle of contenders being funded. That said, I would
200.
by donaldc 17y ago
My point is; is a family with 10 kids more likely to foster a Miles Davis, Ernest Hemingway, Obama, Reagan, whatever floats your boat, than a family with one or two? Unless the ten kids are near starvation or are very restricted in how th
201.
by donaldc 17y ago
There is undoubtedly some genetic evolution going on, but cultural evolution is much faster than genetic evolution, and will have a bigger impact much sooner. Reclusive groups, such as the Amish, that avoid modern society and maintain high
202.
by donaldc 17y ago
If the lifestyles you're speaking of involve a significantly higher-than-average birthrate, then they're almost by definition on the rise...
203.
by donaldc 17y ago
Perhaps Bram could devote his time to improving vim's scripting language.
204.
by donaldc 17y ago
You're thinking too defensively. Start by trying to get the jobs/internships you're really interested in. When it gets down to only a few months before you'll need a job, then begin to consider settling. Lining up a job in October that's
205.
by donaldc 17y ago
Except for some insular subcultures (such as the Amish, to give only one example among many). These subcultures are continuing exponential growth unabated, and eventually this will affect national and world fertility rate statistics. But su
206.
by donaldc 17y ago
The upshot: the people with the best insight into Facebook's valuation voted on what it's truly worth. And those people were heading for the exits. Employees taking part in the buyback could sell stock equal to the lesser of 25 percent o
207.
by donaldc 17y ago
Unless you're already nearing 65, in 20 to 40 years software will be in everything . I'm sure you'll be able to find something to do with your skills.
208.
by donaldc 17y ago
This is a good point. At the same time, I believe there are actual differences between businesses that affect their chance of success. So the trick is to separate the 'accidental' features of successful businesses that don't increase their
209.
by donaldc 17y ago
6K people is a rather small set from which to try and find like-minded people to do tech startups. Especially since most of these people presumably are either children or are adults having a fairly established life-pattern. Furthermore, the
210.
by donaldc 17y ago
Your fears are ones that one could have about any market. But in general, free markets seem to work better than any of the alternatives across a wide range of markets, and I really doubt that health care would prove an exception to this. It

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