marciovm123

14 ms·

91.
by marciovm123 17y ago
"political issues in these countries are the root of the problem" well, it's political-economical-cultural, you can't really isolate one like that. I'm not advocating Gates giving money to those governments, so they chose what to spend on.
92.
by marciovm123 17y ago
That's definitely what he hopes for.
93.
by marciovm123 17y ago
how does the productivity of a place increase if someone previously doing something productive is now forced to stop doing that to spend time and resources taking care of someone else?
94.
by marciovm123 17y ago
I would much rather have Gates spend his money on clean energy research or infrastructure projects. This sort of spending tugs at the heart strings but unfortunately it can actually be quite counter-productive at improving the lives of peo
95.
by marciovm123 17y ago
"...or are you really aiming to become a glorified consumer gimmicks firm?" priceless
96.
by marciovm123 17y ago
Genetic approaches will get you whatever you design them to do - in cell biology, we call that "you get what you evolve for". If you want code to do a particular task, and write a fitness score that only reflects that, you'll get a hack tha
97.
by marciovm123 17y ago
Yep. Apple's share in the magic devices category is more like >95%. Funny how hard it is for geeks to let go of thinking that the worth of a product is defined by how many features it has!
98.
by marciovm123 17y ago
It might be inefficient in absolute time, but in terms of programmer effort genetic algorithms can be tremendously efficient. I used a genetic algorithm to optimize a signal processing routine in my research (I'm a grad student in biologica
99.
by marciovm123 17y ago
I remember reading "A People's History" during high school and having my mind completely blown. As I got older, I realized my life experiences led me to disagree more and more with Zinn, but I was always thankful that his book had pushed m
100.
by marciovm123 17y ago
That's a valid point for businesses in general. However, for customer facing businesses like DHL or AA that depend on their websites for a large part of their customer interaction, caring a lot about your website would seem to be pretty im
101.
hacking biology(nature.com)
2 points by marciovm123 17y ago|0 comments
102.
Darpa Red Balloon Challenge and the Diminishing Power of Elite Networks (savemefrombschool.com)
2 points by marciovm123 17y ago|1 comments
103.
by marciovm123 17y ago
I grew up in Brazil 20 years ago, when the economy was pretty bleak (at one point my allowance was worth half as much after a week or so due to hyperinflation). I'd move Jobs to #2 (money buys water and food) and replace Civil Order by the
104.
by marciovm123 17y ago
I see this as a case of the fundamental problem with the international non-profit model: the money comes in at one place, the supposed value-creation is happening somewhere far away, and the non-profit group in between is the only entity in
105.
by marciovm123 17y ago
That misses out on efficiency. Good work that takes an inordinate amount of time can indicate high standards but not the ability to get things done (which I would consider an attribute of a good programmer).
106.
by marciovm123 17y ago
jove.com is a good example of using the web to better share science, so is openwetware.org. the people running labs these days are usually 35+; they grew up before google. In a sense, they see the web as a way to do what they've always don
107.
by marciovm123 17y ago
Scientists spend loads of time worrying about what data to release and how to present it because it's necessary in communicating your findings effectively to the rest of the scientific community. The problem with the "release everything" a
108.
by marciovm123 17y ago
I was co-lead organizer of the MIT Clean Energy Prize last year, a national biz plan competition with a $200k cash grand prize (and partner to the MIT 100K). We never thought ourselves capable of designing a competition where the winner was
109.
by marciovm123 17y ago
I think comments are good for adding perspective. You shouldn't expect an expert to arrive and give a concise, absolutely true and exhaustive explanation with that perspective. Spurring a community to dig deeper on something previously as
110.
by marciovm123 17y ago
sure =). I'm an engineer and not an oncologist so don't quote me on this. The main msg is that treating cancer is really, really hard; as another commenter noted biology is incredibly complicated. multi-pronged approaches do seem to work b
111.
by marciovm123 17y ago
Very valid points. I'm not saying this kind of work shouldn't be pursued, I just wanted to point out that it is premature to think of this device as a "breakthrough". As I said before, I hope it works, and new approaches are in general a
112.
by marciovm123 17y ago
This article is inspiring but it fails to mention that no studies have shown that the device actually works. The FDA approval process for medical devices is very different then from pharmaceuticals; to oversimplify, efficacy does not need