boryas

I don't know what university you went to, but this is about as far from the truth as statements come.

If you can't learn anything interesting/useful/mindblowing in a university course, you are either not paying attention, or are taking the wrong course...

definitely crazy. http://www.rebelscience.org/Crackpots/nasty.htm This is his page where he claims all of physics is wrong.

Are you really saying that the grades you get in college courses are even remotely equivalent to a measure of how much random anonymous people agree with you on the internet? Granted, my GPA is much better than my karma, but I still don't see how thinking about math or CS problem sets all day is anything like filling the internet with your opinions/favorite links?

Then couldn't Google offer some sort of non-personalized version where such data was discarded that privacy conscious users could choose to use? This would bring me back to believing that Google isn't "evil"

Does it also pay to think Revelations contains secret truths about biology/physics and that almost all the great physicists of the 20th century were crackpots? http://www.rebelscience.org/Crackpots/nasty.htm

What if the "components" are closed under the method of composition? You could probably get quite a bit of abstraction that way, not that it would be more powerful than what we already have which at least has this tool for creating abstraction...

This is a valid point, but I'm not convinced that it's OK for companies to act/co-operate in a way that is this detrimental to their customers just because they aren't supposed to be competitors. Based on the questions asked, the FCC seems to be trying to find out if this exclusivity agreement is harming consumers or not, which seems like a decent goal. If this inquiry leads to some transparency from Apple/AT&T, so much the better, right?

This is really good advice. Also, remember that it means nothing beyond what it says, all you really have to work from are the definitions and the theorems. :)

The UI is super slick. In that regard, I would say I like it better than something like Adobe's form Designer.

I would suggest trying to add more objects, like tables and such to make it easier for people to make the form they want. Maybe something like an option to make custom objects made of other objects? Also, being able to fill the form from existing data is useful too. If someone wants a form that dynamically grow depending on how much input there is, I'm not sure how PDFAmigo handles that, if at all. For instance something like an order form, where a user would want to be able to order 1 thing or 100 different things (which could mean multiple pages, etc...)

With all that said, this is a really nice polished product, and the interface you have so far is a pleasure to use, great job!

I agree with your sentiment, and I prefer the mathematical definition of Big-O to hand-wavey descriptions, but the plain English descriptions do have a place in presenting the material, in my opinion. Once you understand the idea of what Big-O is and isn't used to measure or explain, the actual definition makes sense as a translation of those ideas into math. It's like an example that goes with a theorem in a math textbook. Yes, all of the information is technically in the theorem, but that doesn't mean the example doesn't help a student understand.

File sharers don't directly compete against musicians the way bing travel competes with Kayak. I would say the closer comparison is instead of remixing/sampling a popular band you just release their song on your own album.

I don't understand or intend to comment on any of the legal aspects of this dispute, but as far as morality goes, Bing travel looks like a clone of Kayak with a different logo, and that doesn't feel fair to me.

Considering size and especially battery life limitations, some of those requests seem a little bit pie-in-the-sky, though I'd love to be proven wrong.

I wasn't trying to say that we should have equally barbaric punishments for purse-snatching but rather that we should have equally fair and reasonable punishments for file-sharing.

I can see how my point was made unclear by the unsuccessful joke, though.

Would you steal a purse? If getting caught cost me $80,000 then probably not... So much for reasonable punishments.

I don't know about those studies, but as a student I hated having to lug textbooks around but was lucky enough that my high school rarely if ever made it a requirement. The school and its students are doing well regardless. Maybe they could be doing even better, but at least they have light backpacks :)

With regards to the Governor's plan, this seems like a really good idea in general, and at least a sign that our Governor is willing to reform education in a meaningful (i.e. not by commissioning book committees of the type that Feynman derided) way.

The tone made it sound like How to Discriminate and Get Away With It.

Judging by how many lectures people skip with the justification that "the notes are online" it seems like some parts of the current university set up could possibly change with things like online video lectures. On the other hand, a good professor will speed up, slow down, answer questions, etc.. which will surely be difficult to bring to an online format.

The top results aren't just ads, they're still relevant results and sometimes it's just another good result in the list. It doesn't cost the user anything to click on it, so I don't exactly follow why this is evil trickery...

apache fop is a reasonable way to use xml/xslt to make a decently pretty PDF http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/

Also, there's no one to trade with or conquer on mars

Now we can have a fully automated garden which, once it is in full bloom, will also send a message to a machine that delivers a chemical to our brains that give us the feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction that comes from working on a garden.

widescreen is good for multitasking because you can have more than one window open at an acceptable width, I always notice this as a big advantage when I use a larger/wider screen.

But don't these problems exist regardless of your approach? Git and it's way of handling trees of old commits is a decent place to start. It clearly isn't a final solution, but building on top of it seems like a worthwhile direction, at least to me.

I hope that was sarcasm

Yes, good point. I guess he was referring more to the scientific end of things, where you write a program that runs for days on massive data, and there really isn't a user

I think it has to do with a trick they pull, which actually kind of cheapens the effect. I almost always buy shoes on Zappos, just because it has the convenience of buying online without the risk of not being able to return (it's free to ship them back). So I ruined a pair of sneakers, and ordered a new pair from Zappos and something like the next day, even though I asked for the free, standard shipping, they send me an e-mail that Lo and Behold! Your shoes are coming! We love you! It was a nice break from usual online retail, but on the other hand, if they're only pretending that it's a surprise (eg they used to guarantee this kind of service) that interaction was somewhat staged :(

Either way, great store and it's really nice to see a company that cares about making me happy even if they cheat a little at it

Also, thought I would mention the fact that if you take a day to write a slow program that takes a week to run, that's cheaper than spending a week writing a fast program that finishes in a day. After all, your time is much more expensive than the computer's!

I guess I have a pretty skewed view of high school because I went to a fairly good one, where at least the math/science classes were worthwhile. When I was talking about how much time it takes up, I meant on a day-to-day basis. It's something like 8:00AM to 3:00PM, and another maybe two hours for homework (max, its usually much less) and then the rest of the time is yours to play sports, do programming, read, work, etc...

All I'm saying is that though high school clearly isn't perfect, I have trouble agreeing with the apocalyptic pictures some people paint.

I think you are being too extreme here.

'For another, your friends are chosen by accidents of age and geography, and not by you.'

this seems patently false to me, you hang out with the people who energize and care about you whether you are 16 or 25...

I mean, yes it's true that high school is boring and has many flaws, but it really doesn't take up that much time, and you can get a lot out of it. Classes can be boring and stifling, but I would argue that going to college without at least calculus isn't the best idea if you plan to have a lot of time to learn all the cool math you want/need.

Also, as some previous posters mentioned, until you're kicking everyone's ass and winning math/programming competitions, I don't think it's fair to say that school is too easy

On the topic of ssh/dealing with other computers, doesn't PuTTY do that pretty well on windows? Though I may be misunderstanding the advantage you're pointing out.