mark-t

12 ms·

1. 61.▲
   by mark-t 18y ago

   Just because two planets have been around for the same amount of time in similar conditions doesn't mean they should both exhibit life. The emergence of self-replicating molecules at any given time may be extraordinarily unlikely, such that
2. 62.▲
   by mark-t 18y ago

   That's what a noscript tag is for.
3. 63.▲
   by mark-t 18y ago

   Right. Maybe sophisticated would have been a better choice of words. I just mean that it should have been obvious that they would be highly adapted and competitive, considering the ways some plants interact with specific birds and insects.
4. 64.▲
   by mark-t 18y ago

   I posted a different version of this story a few days ago: http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2008/06/02/a_new_step_in_evolut...
5. 65.▲
   by mark-t 18y ago

   This really struck me, since I'm so accustomed to thinking of plants as little more than scenery and nutrition. However, when you think about it, it's obvious that plants should exhibit very complicated behaviors, since they've been evolvin
6. 66.▲
   Loyal to Its Roots(nytimes.com)

   12 points by mark-t 18y ago|4 comments
7. 67.▲
   by mark-t 18y ago

   Wow. That guy is really bad at Tetris.
8. 68.▲
   by mark-t 18y ago

   I would guess it's because of the JIT compiler to generate machine code (see the Tamarin project in firefox). Writing a compiler for many different platforms requires a significant amount of work. I can understand that they'd want to work o
9. 69.▲
   by mark-t 18y ago

   They're probably avoiding git because it's GPL. They're awfully picky about that sort of thing. But yes, I had the same reaction. There's bound to be some modern VCS that would be better for them.
10. 70.▲
    Carl Zimmer - A New Step In Evolution(scienceblogs.com)

    6 points by mark-t 18y ago|0 comments
11. 71.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    Actually, I live in an area with Comcast, Charter, and reasonable DSL. Holy moly! Yeah, they'd still get away with it.
12. 72.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    Heck, I should add that to mine.
13. 73.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    I realize this is a somewhat unpopular thing to say here, but I don't care about startups. I have little interest in being in a channel where that's the only thing people talk about. I'm here for the general tech news.
14. 74.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    There's a #news.yc channel on freenode, but it's been just me and one other guy for the past few months.
15. 75.▲
    Groups wants Wi-Fi banned from public buildings(kob.com)

    2 points by mark-t 18y ago|0 comments
16. 76.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    I don't find reading well-written code any more difficult than reading a math book. But of course it is an order of magnitude harder than reading prose. You have to force yourself to slow down and understand what each part is saying. As opp
17. 77.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    I strongly disagree. USAMO problems range in difficulty quite a bit. I can solve some but certainly not all. Not so for IMO. And nowadays I generally solve all of the Putnam problems in the time allotted. By the way, the early years of the
18. 78.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    Maybe instead of trying to change everybody else's behavior, you could just solve the problem and move on. If you subscribe to news.yc's rss feed, write a filter. If you visit the front page, write a greasemonkey script. This is not a hard
19. 79.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    Now and then I work through problems on projecteuler.net without anything more than a basic calculator. I've gotten 17 of them so far (1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 15, 17, 18, 19, 24, 52, 63, 76, 164, 190, 191). Also, there are a bunch of contest prob
20. 80.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    Here's a familiar looking idea from 18 Apr 06: I find every ambitious town sends you a message. New York tells you "you should make more money." LA tells you "you should be better looking." Rome tells you "you should dress better." London t
21. 81.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    Until a few months ago, we hosted our svn repository on berlios.de . It went down every few weeks, so I don't recommend them. We started using them when sourceforge only had cvs. Nowadays sf.net supports svn, so you might look into that. So
22. 82.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    I covered that. There is no "absolutely accurate" in a finite number of bits, no matter what data type you use. In N bits, you can't store more than 2^N distinct numbers, and there happen to be a lot more than 2^N distinct numbers, even bet
23. 83.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    I'm afraid I don't understand the downside of nanoseconds since epoch. What accuracy problems and rounding errors? Are you suggesting that nanoseconds are too coarse of a measurement? You could use picoseconds. No matter what, if you're sto
24. 84.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    Oh no, not again.
25. 85.▲
    What genes remember(prospect-magazine.co.uk)

    2 points by mark-t 18y ago|0 comments
26. 86.▲
    Don't forget your towel today(towelday.kojv.net)

    1 points by mark-t 18y ago|0 comments
27. 87.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    The best situation is probably for the parents to disagree, actually.
28. 88.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    That's strange. I seem to recall watching Sussman write a Scheme interpreter in about an hour.
29. 89.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    All things equal, I would rather see a girl, and I'd wager about 90% of the people here are in the same boat. My guess is that your audience is pretty similar to this one. But note the first three words: all things equal. You should choose
30. 90.▲
    by mark-t 18y ago

    Who's your audience?