sz

"Charles I. Andersen Music Company"

Would CIA really do this?

I'd like to see Socrates' take on this.

The rest of the site is good too. "Time makes things worse" I liked particularly.

Approach it like they do in psychological studies: given their initial consent, deceive them if you like, but give a debriefing afterwards.

How was Surface a success where Wave wasn't?

Wolfram Alpha already does an impressive job of synthesizing nice presentations of information from masses of data. I wonder if by allowing citizen data upload via such a "civic mobile app" they could become much more useful.

#3 is my favorite thing about Google. On some level it makes me feel better about handing over personal data when the company doesn't act asshole-ish.

Are we talking about the same kinds of "logic puzzles"?

I'm referring to e.g. stuff in Mensa books.

Do real math. Not this fake logic puzzle BS.

There's a pg essay on this:

http://www.paulgraham.com/goodart.html

Even worse is our definition of temperature... it should really be the reciprocal. The thermodynamic definition is:

1/T = dS/dE where S is entropy and E is energy

dS/dE has a nice intuitive ring to it "if I put a small amount of energy into the system, how will its entropy change", but since we declare that to be 1/T we allow crazy things like negative and infinite temperatures (these actually exist - and the negative temperatures are hotter than the positive ones).

So why do comments have actual downvotes and not just flags?

What it was intended for -- to replace email and IM. Problem was that it didn't integrate with existing stuff, the real time typing actually made it unsuitable to replace email since the other side can replay everything, and other people editing your messages = loss of continuity.

Not unless you have a specific use case to address. In my experience the average user is pretty unimaginative about applications of general computing tools.

Mathematica 8

Inconsolata isn't mentioned but is great too.

PCs are going to be like trucks: http://video.allthingsd.com/video/d8-steve-jobs-on-the-iphon...

Grand unified theory, AI, sustained extraterrestrial presence, human longevity, energy, education reform, ...

Big things tend to really be bunches of little things.

Apple, pay attention. This thing rocks.

I love the integration with Readability and Instapaper.

The tone of your comment got you downvoted into oblivion but that was my reaction too. Just seems like whining about image.

TIL pdf is not a purely representational document format.

I don't have as much experience as others here (~2 years) but I can tell you that it definitely changes the way you think, not just about engineering problems but life situations too, and the change is not something you might predict from the sub-topic you're learning about. Math is really just the art of thinking precisely (lots of inventing beautiful abstractions and interesting examples).

Was it the actual algebra you learned that helped you code these things? Or just the mental discipline of sitting down until the problem is solved?

Doesn't topology past a certain basic level rely on algebra pretty heavily?

Io's layout is still my favorite:

http://www.iolanguage.com/scm/io/docs/reference/

Ah. Sorry for the misleading title then.

I just got the email to apply 3 hours ago. I would be surprised if they put out the application without notifying their own mailing list.

Closer than one might think?

http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2010/11/programming-with-natu...

Obviously the message is naive or delusional at face value (I would agree with you about a person that has this mentality wrt everthing) but it has a grain of truth—two, actually, that I can spot. I suspect the author realizes this.

Just as unnerving are adults that think it's too late for them to be taken with childlike wonder or enthusiasm, but there's no reason for that. It's a remarkable feat to convince yourself that the world is predictable and that some things are impossible. (Not saying that you're one of these people, but that extremes of both sides are bad.)