jforman

25 ms·

211.
by jforman 16y ago
It's definitely not a duh (I got three years into a computational biology PhD before coming out to silicon valley). Prions are fundamentally different from other diseases in that they're very dumb. Both viruses and bacteria have enormously
212.
by jforman 16y ago
Ex-Microsoft here. It's been a while since I worked there, but my recollection is the same: blind, automated testing stripped of UI elements showed that Microsoft's search results were at parity to Google's in terms of relevance. People so
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by jforman 16y ago
This is a terrible article. His three main points: 1. "You find yourself writing lots of code to reinvent the wheels that SQL gives you for free, and before long you’ve unwittingly reinvented the relational database." NoSQL came about beca
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by jforman 16y ago
Just in time to vie for "most overhyped scientific headline of 2010." The paper, "Bimodal gene expression in noncooperative regulatory systems" (available at http://www.pnas.org/content/107/51/22096.full ), addresses the question of how ba
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by jforman 16y ago
The problem is that the people who are doing it to become a professor are playing a game that is stacked against them. And if/when you lose that game you're well behind your peers in opportunity cost (see my other post). I know several bri
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by jforman 16y ago
The answer to "why not?" is pretty simple: opportunity cost. I spent three years in a computational biology PhD program before getting an e-mail from a college friend looking for people to join a new startup (where I am now a co-founder).
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by jforman 16y ago
I wouldn't call enforcing consistency in a primary interaction mode "silly." There would be a considerable increase in cognitive load if a user had to parse what they're seeing every time a keyboard appears. You'd benefit the tail (e.g.,
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by jforman 16y ago
We're (Inkling) successfully using Cassandra in production to store most of our data. I wrote the first version of our data store modeled off of FriendFeed's architecture (back when we were five people). There is an excellent blog post abo
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by jforman 16y ago
I'd call S3 super-reliable rather than somewhat-reliable: "Amazon S3 is designed to provide 99.999999999% durability of objects over a given year. This durability level corresponds to an average annual expected loss of 0.000000001% of objec
220.
by jforman 16y ago
If the designers you work with prefer "pretty" over "usable," then you should find better designers. I've worked with plenty who do not fit this tunnel-vision visual designer stereotype. The article is based on a false dichotomy that's par
221.
by jforman 16y ago
Obviousness tests derive entirely from the federal courts. The law (35 USC 103) itself is rather concise ( http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/appxl_35... ): A patent will not be granted if the differences between the subj
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by jforman 16y ago
The H1B process has gotten considerably more difficult in recent years. We've had two very frustrating rejections recently.
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by jforman 16y ago
Spoken languages affect our thought patterns: http://www.newsweek.com/2009/07/08/what-s-in-a-word.html It seems a natural extension that computing languages affect our logical thought patterns. In college, I took a class on intelligence t
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by jforman 16y ago
That's a big assumption to make, considering plenty of deals break down at the last minute for one reason or another. There's a large gap between a term sheet and a final, signed contract.
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by jforman 16y ago
p-values are calculated in many different ways, not always using the binomial distribution (of the p-values I've claimed, very few have used the binomial distribution)
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by jforman 16y ago
As a 29-year old Harvard (College) grad, I agree that "what you've done outside of an academic environment" is more important than the prestige of the degree itself. However, I've been surprised that the prestige of the degree has continue
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by jforman 16y ago
Technically evolution does not require survival of the fittest or mutation. Evolution is merely the change in allelic frequency in a population over time. Without selective pressure (i.e., "survival of the fittest") you can still have evol
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by jforman 16y ago
This would make for an excellent college entrance essay :)
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by jforman 16y ago
"His talk, like most of his talks, was read from concealed tele-prompters and delivered in that somewhat annoying, tinny manner of his that both advertised Microsoft more than necessary and slightly exaggerated his own accomplishments." ...
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by jforman 16y ago
The platform was actually designed to be device agnostic - the content is expressed in X(HT)ML. The iPad is our first target device because Apple did tablets right. You'll have to wait to see what comes next :)