zeteo

63 ms·

571.
by zeteo 14y ago
I think "underpaid developers on tight schedule" is far more likely than "look, the specs said 'hard to buy', you need to put in two extra steps and a random wait!".
572.
by zeteo 14y ago
Precisely. Maybe the best way to make math "cool" is to reclaim for it that status of "completely useless but fun knowledge" that Hardy was so proud about in his Apology.
573.
by zeteo 14y ago
Frankly the response only addresses a small part of the criticism (the definition of slope) and then launches an attack on the critic's motivation. The main point in the original article [1] was that Khan's preparation for his lectures is d
574.
by zeteo 14y ago
Is a robot capable of running? Let's say you had one, then take his legs and give them to an amputee. The amputee can operate the legs by pressing a button. However, pressing a button is not running. Similarly, the robot would not really be
575.
by zeteo 14y ago
>Salesforce.com won't disclose exactly how the Influencer algorithm works. So the article proposes to use an obscure, undisclosed karma value for key personnel decisions. If this catches on, the next management bestseller may well be "L
576.
by zeteo 14y ago
There's no reason to require prime numbers, the game works the same with picking the lowest unique positive integer. We actually played this game at our department's research symposium two years ago with about a hundred people. Nobody picke
577.
Misbehaving particles poke holes in reigning physics theory(msnbc.msn.com)
1 points by zeteo 14y ago|0 comments
578.
by zeteo 14y ago
Fun project: - add an IR LED to each band and make it transmit a unique 2 byte MAC address on the IR channel(s) - get a high speed, high res panoramic camera and some good computing gear - figure out from the sequence of frames where each M
579.
by zeteo 14y ago
So you can get about 75% of Voyager 2's speed boost from a conjunction of just Jupiter and Saturn, which comes about a lot more often [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_conjunction
580.
by zeteo 14y ago
> if you [...] take everybody's situation into consideration before taking disciplinary action, your teams are going to start sucking. So if some guy's wife is diagnosed with cancer and he gets a bit distracted at work, you'd just boot
581.
by zeteo 14y ago
The researchers have discovered some ancient changes in the hydrologic regime of rivers in north-west India. There's a big step from here to actually explaining civilizational collapse. Particularly, two factors argue against such a narrow
582.
by zeteo 14y ago
This is practically a high brow version of "math is hard, let's go shopping": hash tables are hard, let's use java.utils. Yes, you can write a lot of programs with a few primitives you've learnt in high school and some random bits of practi
583.
by zeteo 14y ago
http://www.celestis.com/memorial/newfrontier/a-h.asp
584.
by zeteo 14y ago
No. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines
585.
by zeteo 14y ago
Someone needs to write better copy... "Aren't you just a bunch of YC rejects? No, not really. Most of our companies haven't even applied to YC."
586.
by zeteo 14y ago
There are big risks involved in this UI that may well outweigh the benefits. What if you accidentally "ask a friend" on searches you didn't mean to? (It's very easy to mis-click, especially on a trackpad or touchscreen.) And what about the
587.
by zeteo 14y ago
What you do is math, but not all of math.
588.
by zeteo 14y ago
Not every programmer can write any program with equal ease, can we? It depends on your knowledge of available primitives: programming languages, libraries. One who knows OpenGL will have an easier time spinning a 3D model than another who p
589.
by zeteo 14y ago
>Are these proofs of theorems, or are they calculations or formulas? A calculation is a kind of proof, isn't it? Lots of papers contain theorems and lemmas of the form "f(x) = g(x)". I don't think proving such a formula is the same as a
590.
by zeteo 14y ago
>programming in general does not, to me, seem to be anything like doing math. Hi Colin, can you substantiate that? PhD in CS here and I've done some pretty hardcore math in my academic life. After writing lots of proofs and lots of prog
591.
by zeteo 14y ago
Math went on for millenia without computerized proof checking and yes, some of those proofs were buggy. The difference between a professional mathematician and a software engineer is no more than that between a C and a Prolog programmer. An
592.
by zeteo 14y ago
Of course I've read it. He says just the foundations are math. He says actual programs (e.g. those implementing networking protocols) are not math. Curry and Howard beg to differ.
593.
by zeteo 14y ago
Oh yes it is. Programming is exactly equivalent to writing mathematical proofs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%E2%80%93Howard_isomorphis...
594.
by zeteo 14y ago
> Why lie about an additional degree? While Computer Science degrees are common these days, they were rather rare among people who graduated in the '70s. So it does make him stand out among those with the same level of seniority (for a
595.
by zeteo 14y ago
Makes you wonder about the evolutionary pressures at the top of the corporate food chain, doesn't it?
596.
by zeteo 14y ago
"Might have"? Sounds like his college was only offering one CS class at the time... much less a degree.
597.
by zeteo 15y ago
I didn't say that network packets take no processing, just that the processing path matters. Contrary to your intuition, this path is significantly shorter for network packets, and an Ethernet board (first produced in the 1980s) is a much s
598.
by zeteo 15y ago
The total length of wire in a microprocessor is currently on the order of 100km. A signal doesn't have to go through all of it, but processing often involves loops etc. Also considering the delays at logic gates (waiting for clock signals),
599.
by zeteo 15y ago
There's no engineering without a solid theoretical background. You want to do civil engineering, they'll make sure you thoroughly understand Newton's laws; electrical, Kirchhoff's. And that's just the start. In fact, you're much better prep
600.
by zeteo 15y ago
This kind of reasoning actually led to the establishment of "Java schools" in the late 90s, and I hope we've all read Joel Spolsky's classic piece about them: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchool...

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