neilc

77 ms·

721.
by neilc 18y ago
I don't understand why someone would google for "facebook" in the first place (or at least, more than once). I wonder how accurately the web search traffic for facebook correlates with its actual usage/popularity.
722.
by neilc 18y ago
The engineering effort required is too far outside their business focus. Then they should stop claiming that OSX is suitable for use as a server OS.
723.
by neilc 18y ago
Yeah, obviously. But the point is that if the presupplied git quickly becomes out of date, what's the point in Apple shipping it and it taking up disk space? The Apple-supplied versions of other OSS packages (e.g. Ruby) don't exactly set a
724.
by neilc 18y ago
Not really. For one thing, the default version of git would quickly become outdated, and could potentially cause confusion with a user-installed version. What Apple should really do is build a proper package management system. IMHO, that
725.
by neilc 18y ago
Yeah -- IMHO, having 5000 friends on Facebook is borderline abuse of the service just by itself.
726.
by neilc 18y ago
Ridiculous. On what grounds is it "ridiculous"? The cited article quotes a professor of constitutional law, your linked article is from a random blogger (who seems remarkably confident about what he "thinks" would happen if it were ever c
727.
by neilc 18y ago
O(log n) tree search vs. O(1) hash lookup is not the reason for any scalability differences that might exist between RDBMS and key-value stores. RDBMSs with hash indexes are commonplace, and allow O(1) lookups and a b+-tree lookup over a
728.
by neilc 18y ago
Most likely, he will also make no impact in the field he studies. Opening a free medical clinic in the Bahamas is not something I would describe as "no impact". He might not fundamentally change the world, but even doing something as smal
729.
by neilc 18y ago
Can you elaborate on what you view as the downsides of the Lisp approach?
730.
by neilc 18y ago
One thing that's unclear about that article is whether the reported conclusions are the result of a rigorous study, or just the anecdotal conclusions of an individual professor. Also, the idea that a biker with a helmet is more experienced
731.
by neilc 18y ago
Either that, or he just has a sense of humor about it.
732.
by neilc 18y ago
I wouldn't pick on MS for having a Mac in the ad. Yeah, I find this sort of thing funny. Internet people get all worked up into a lather when they discover that, say, some machine somewhere in Microsoft's network is running Apache/Unix or
733.
by neilc 18y ago
Do you guys not realize that this is a joke? Because I'm fairly sure that it is done firmly with tongue in cheek -- and it's pretty damn funny, too.
734.
by neilc 18y ago
It would be very easy to improve searching on CL without needing to license anything from Google, especially given that CL makes plenty of money. It's quite shocking just how bad the Craigslist user interface is, and has been for so long.
735.
by neilc 18y ago
Students subsidising research doesn't make much sense. I don't think that is very common: the vast majority of the funding for research comes from the government (e.g. NSF, DARPA, NIH), various non-profits, and corporate sponsorship.
736.
by neilc 18y ago
Just because you're working for a big company doesn't mean you don't have considerable freedom. Researchers at Google are given quite a lot of free reign, for example -- I doubt Shacter will be a "corporate bitch".
737.
How the city hurts your brain(boston.com)
1 points by neilc 18y ago|0 comments
738.
by neilc 18y ago
Seriously, how often do you say to yourself, "I think I'll dive into this messy code today and try to make it nice and pretty without adding any functionality?" Maybe I'm just weird, but I do that all the time. Nobody is going to pay y
739.
by neilc 18y ago
Excel (or some form of programmable spreadsheet) is much more convenient for a lot of data analysis tasks.
740.
by neilc 18y ago
This is such a simple idea that it's hard to imagine it staying concealed for very long...
741.
by neilc 18y ago
We did periodic performance reviews at the startup I worked for (which had about 15 employees at the time). It wasn't anonymous: I wrote up a document that evaluated my own performance and how I felt about the working environment, and my bo
742.
Is PageRank just good marketing?(daniel-lemire.com)
2 points by neilc 18y ago|0 comments
743.
by neilc 18y ago
I think it's a bit of a stretch to conclude from those that peer review is useless. I don't think that's what the author concludes. But otherwise, I agree with you.
744.
Three myths about scientific peer review(michaelnielsen.org)
19 points by neilc 18y ago|5 comments
745.
by neilc 18y ago
Right, but they aren't typically counted anywhere else, either. Did you read even the first sentence of the WP article?
746.
by neilc 18y ago
AFAIK, everyone only counts those who are actively looking for work but can't find it: that's what the "unemployment rate" means. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment
747.
by neilc 18y ago
Not to be a curmudgeon, but how is this Twitter "proving itself"? There was a fire; the guy and his family luckily survived; and then he tweeted about it, and other people responded after the fact. Why is this surprising/notable?
748.
by neilc 18y ago
SAP and SAS are completely different. SAS is for science (well, for statistical programming in general); SAS has nothing to do with SAP, which is for back-office stuff. The article and the quote are about statistics packages like SAS.
749.
by neilc 18y ago
The argument wasn't that SAS software is used to run systems on the plane, it is that SAS was used to design the airplane. However, the argument is still obviously laughable.
750.
by neilc 18y ago
This is absolutely true. Top CS programs don't even care about the CS GRE very much, at least in my experience (e.g. I didn't have time to write it before applying to grad school, and it wasn't a big deal).

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