joeclark77

Surely you jest.

In my own research, I've separated the ad hoc development of models, algorithms, etc, which I call "data science", from the creation of self-service automated systems, which I call "analytics". These two types of work are very separable and in many businesses they fall under different management and organizational structures -- the data scientists or analysts build the models, then the engineers or software developers turn them into dashboards or other tools.

There are data scientists who specialize in mathematical modeling, some who specialize in visualization, others who specialize in algorithms (i.e. data mining, machine learning), and still others who specialize in business uses of data (modeling decision making processes, designing data communications). If you consider all those things to be branches of "statistics" then you may say data scientists are statisticians.

Linux can sometimes be a pain in the butt to get working well with a projector. Did the guys doing Linux demos have technical difficulties and end up having to pantomime their demos?

To be honest, I often get keyboards from thrift stores. The old ones from Microsoft or IBM about ten years ago are much more satisfying to type on than the stuff you get with new computers today. A colleague of mine showed off a "mechanical keyboard" a few weeks ago and I didn't understand the hype. It felt great, just like one of the old solid keyboards I would buy from Goodwill, but I still haven't seen what makes that innovative or worth big bucks.

Marry her!

Not everybody finishes their PhD. I believe there are a lot of successful people who started something during their PhD that turned out to be more than just a dissertation. You could simply shift gears and go ahead with the startup, hoping to finish the thesis later (maybe using your startup as a research site or data source?) or you could focus on the PhD project now and monetize it after you graduate. Reflect on this question: do you really want to be a professor, or primarily value the sheepskin?

I'd like to cast a vote for Flask, another Python-based framework which aims to be more lightweight than Django. I'm sure Django has nice features, but as a newbie to MVC frameworks, I like using a minimalistic tool that lets me learn what's going on.

On the other hand, I recently learned that Perl is making a comeback with a couple of popular web frameworks. I haven't programmed in Perl since the last century, but I remember it being a fun language!

There is another side to your market -- the job board whose customers are not the unemployed but rather the companies who want to hire them. You could charge companies or recruitment agencies for "premium listings" while allowing them to post basic want ads for free.

The other way to profit, I suppose, is to use the knowledge and data gained from the app and leverage it into some kind of personal income. For example, maybe you run an employment agency of your own, and draw on the site's database for leads. The app continues to be free, and you are just cherry picking the best from it.

I think the whole point of the EU is that they don't have to listen to the opinions of the peasants, no? I suggest working in your own country for independence from the EU.

I know of some academics who were involved in creating a "computer lab in a box" for developing countries. They implemented it in Micronesia, and also had a pretty interesting story about connecting up the island with the lab to the main island by wi-fi so it could get internet. The box itself became the computer desk, because even the desk is something you can't take for granted on the ground. Maybe you ought to think about doing some project like this for schools in a country you care about: http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/innovations/data/0002...

I recently asked my 4th-year students (who take a relational database course in their 3rd year) how much they used what they learned from the database course. Most of them had internships between the 3rd and 4th year, and they told me that in their jobs they needed to (a) write complex queries and (b) write stored procedures. Our database course had focused, I think, too much on ER diagramming and things like field data types. You need to know those things to create a database, but as a new person I guess you're more likely to have to deal with a database that already exists.

To my point: make sure you learn how to do complex SQL queries including subqueries and correlated subqueries. Also, learn to create stored procedures and triggers in your favorite database.

You might look into the book "Refactoring Databases" by Ambler and Sadalage. It challenges you to think about the database as an evolving system, which is different than the kind of textbook exercises where you just sketch or build it once and then move on to the next problem.

You invite the HN crowd to Wikipedia and the programming language articles will wind up more controversial and disputed than the politicians' biographies.

According to Martin Fowler, #nosql was initially just a hashtag somebody came up with for a meetup on some of the new databases, with nary a thought that it would become the name of a "movement".

This is great. I'll definitely show it to my students (undergrad Information Systems majors) who are trying to figure out what tools to learn.

I've been trying to re-learn cursive for about the past 6-7 years and am still not thrilled with it. I find that I tend to try to write too fast, and this makes it sloppy. Something about the connection between brain and paper has been accelerated by typing. When I am able to slow down my writing, so that more thought goes into each word, it looks good. But practice, practice, practice!

Also, try different pens and different paper. I write better with "rolling ball" pens, the kind where ink just sort of flows out of them, rather than cheap ballpoints where you have to press down on the paper. But cheap paper causes the ink to bleed and look messy.

Remember, to avoid long lines, Republicans vote Tuesday, Democrats vote Wednesday.

Me too.

Fair point. I have changed it.

It is not a straw man. You argue that we can transmit nothing (at least nothing in the way of knowledge of truth) to the future generations who will rebuild civilization after some sort of disaster. You base this claim on an argument that civilization is genetically flawed: all of our philosophy and knowledge (with the corollary that no part can be separated from the whole) is in your view either (a) the cause of our downfall or (b) useless in preventing it.

If (a) then you are a Utopian who believes that evil is to be blamed on history or society and not men themselves. If (b) then it seems you are a fatalist who believes that there is no hope for the hypothetical survivors anyway. I don't think (b) is the case because you now mention that you have an "approach" to the problem. It is clear that we disagree on our "approaches", but what is your approach? If you believe (a), then it seems the wisest approach would be to try to keep the surviving children untainted by words or thoughts from adults who remember the cataclysm, in hopes that the new generation will start from scratch. Am I wrong?

Inanimate objects cannot "save us from ourselves" but can only provide the equipment for us to use, if we choose to use it. Do you suggest that our descendants will be better off with no knowledge of virtue, philosophy, or justice?

Are you then one of those Utopians who thinks that human nature is perfect, but "society" is corrupt and to blame for all the problems? On the contrary, it is human nature itself (at least since we were kicked out of Eden) which is fallen, greedy, unjust, etc. You cannot solve mankind's problems by burning the libraries. Instead, we must look into the libraries for wisdom that may help us.

For example, Federalist 51: It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

This is akin to saying that reason is impossible because man is fallen. We know a great deal that we don't consistently practice about morality, justice, virtue, and so on. Our descendants may be fallen people, too, but we can certainly do our best to teach them the best that we know.

Well there are, but I don't have enough space in my backyard to build and operate a casino.

I think you are reading "civilisation" to mean "the current way our society works" including the virtuous aspects as well as the heathen barbarity of the modern age. Let us hope instead that when the OP asks for a "civilisation cheat sheet", he means to find methods to transmit the "civilised" ideal rather than the disappointing status quo.

They can nuke us into the stone age but they still can't force us to use the metric system. Never gonna happen.

Paper-making and the printing press, so that whatever knowledge survived could continue to be passed on. Undoubtedly there would be significant local evolution of language if we lose electronic mass communication, so it will be essential to preserve the use of Latin as a stable language across space and time, giving us access to the Bible and the classics as well as the ability to write a letter to a neighboring kingdom. Hopefully, literacy would enable our children to receive and apply knowledge of the virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice, faith, hope, and charity.

Other than that, we'll need knowledge of food production, food preservation, as well as tool creation (i.e. blacksmithing) and construction based on locally available materials. The only tricky thing here is the "locally available materials" issue. I live in the desert. Would I be able to grow enough food on my land here if the city water were shut off?

You cannot squeeze water from a stone. If Europeans will not have children or transmit their cultures to immigrants, Europe will cease to exist. No amount of politically correct wishful thinking is going to change that.

I also found a great video lecture by Martin Fowler on the topic: http://youtu.be/qI_g07C_Q5I

I can't recommend enough the book Seven Databases in Seven Weeks by Eric Redmond & Jim Wilson. It covers the whole range of different types of databases, with just a little bit of theory (the CAP theorem).

Do you want to be a professor? Or do you just want to be able to call yourself "Dr."? Don't do a PhD unless you really want the experience or need the credential. You can certainly do research (write a book maybe?) without locking yourself into academia.