camccann

14 ms·

1.
by camccann 16y ago
The number of witnesses may be exaggerated, how much of the attack any given witness saw is probably exaggerated, and the extent to which any of those witnesses could have plausibly realized the severity of the attack is likely exaggerated.
2.
by camccann 16y ago
Not that they don't have standards--I'm sure they're very careful not to release anything that would reveal private information about specific, identifiable users. Other than that, yeah. Those guys pretty much do statistics for the lulz. I
3.
by camccann 16y ago
The author argues that males have a wider intelligence distribution, and so though they are equally as intelligent as females on average, there are more of them at the far right end of the scale. At both ends, actually, but that's largely
4.
by camccann 16y ago
While it would be nice to imagine something like this catching on, somehow I suspect that any language whose reference manual gives a specification of semantics using sequent calculus before discussing the standard libraries is unlikely
5.
by camccann 16y ago
You don't get infinite acceleration from one velocity difference. End of story. Given a steady source of energy, you can accelerate as much as you like, up to the limit of losses due to friction. What do you think is going to prevent that
6.
by camccann 16y ago
Arbitrary magic acceleration ...in other words, either you didn't actually read the explanations or you didn't understand them. The energy is being extracted from a velocity difference between two media . And no, tacking works on exactl
7.
by camccann 16y ago
"...this is a vehicle that, in still air, would go uphill under its own lack of power..." No, it wouldn't. The vehicle extracts energy from the velocity difference between the air and the ground, which it converts into forward motion. T
8.
by camccann 16y ago
Hmm. A solid idea, but it's important to contrast it with a less desirable, but superficially similar methodology, namely "Development Driven Development": 1. First, develop some code 2. Think about whether it solved the problem 3. If not,
9.
by camccann 16y ago
Glorifying "hard work" as more important than intelligence is a common mistake made by intelligent people when they finally realize that sitting around being intelligent is not, in fact, sufficient to make things happen (this is often surpr
10.
by camccann 16y ago
In my experience, writing simple code often requires more cleverness from the programmer than does writing clever code.
11.
by camccann 16y ago
I disagree--we should instead continue what appears to be the current trend, namely, putting 4chan in charge of the national political discourse. This seems likely to substantially increase the amount of honesty, intelligence, and common se
12.
by camccann 16y ago
Hey, environmental destruction isn't something to take lightly. Spewing huge amounts of corrosive chemical pollution into the air as a byproduct of energy generation, irrevocably altering the environment, causing mass extinctions world-wide
13.
by camccann 16y ago
Gotta love a page that has a tutorial on "realistic shading" for drawings of 4-D objects.
14.
by camccann 16y ago
Well, there's not much to the basic idea--the λ-calculus just is the structure of a cartesian closed category. Exponential objects represent morphisms by objects, a.k.a. first-class and higher-order functions, the equivalence Hom(X * Y -&
15.
by camccann 16y ago
I'm not sure if what you're looking for exists--it depends on what angle you're looking to approach it from, for one thing. TAOCP is a classic for certain kinds of rigorous, formal reasoning about algorithms, but it can be a bit intimidatin
16.
by camccann 16y ago
It's a well known principle that, given a brief problem description, the less a software engineer knows about the problem domain, the easier they will judge the solution to be.
17.
by camccann 16y ago
Actually, mkramlich specifically said the Republican party's message , which I think most people would agree in regards to. What the Republican party actually does in office, never mind what other parties do, is another matter, and not n
18.
by camccann 16y ago
Computer Science--as opposed to software engineering, or day-to-day programming in general--is nothing but an odd flavor of applied abstract math. Chances are, you know more CS than most people with CS degrees, since most undergraduate "c
19.
by camccann 16y ago
C's "types" are just interchangeable methods of interpreting a pile of bits. That's not a strong type system, that's types on the honor system.
20.
by camccann 16y ago
Apologies, don't have time to do a proper job of it right now, so here's a quick summary: Complex addition is basic Cartesian vector addition in the complex plane; complex multiplication is combined polar-coordinate rotation/scaling, by add
21.
by camccann 16y ago
There's a well-known quote that says "computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes". Often attributed to Dijkstra, but I don't know if there's a reliable source.
22.
by camccann 16y ago
Perhaps it is bad form to pick nits in an amusing bit of April Foolery, but as an interesting aside, with a better technique it would take nowhere near nine years to produce manually a 70 iteration 120x120 rendering of the M-set--by avoidin
23.
by camccann 17y ago
It's such a shame that people think that way, after all, it couldn't possibly be the case that a straight man thought that treating a gay man badly was the wrong thing to do. Or even that someone might just think that a man who did great
24.
by camccann 17y ago
Also significant is that cicadas, while numerous, aren't very large. Predator body size tends to be roughly proportional to their prey's body size, and larger animals tend to live longer. The net result is that the cicada cycle is a bit lon
25.
by camccann 17y ago
I don't think anyone would disagree that, in theory, the ideal government is a wise, benevolent dictator. The primary problem, in practice, is finding such a dictator (the secondary problem, of course, being how to get rid of him when he tu
26.
by camccann 17y ago
I'm surprised the article didn't say more about the phenomenon of businesses using gargantuan Excel spreadsheets held together with a Escher-like tangle of macros and formulas. As much as the idea makes "real" programmers shudder, it's one
27.
by camccann 17y ago
I question the assumption that there is, in fact, any depth involved in arguments over the merits of socialism-in-general. Or most discussions of economic systems, for that matter.
28.
by camccann 17y ago
I was going to say this is one of the saddest things I've ever read. Approximately 150,000 people died yesterday. In fact, another dozen or so probably died while you were reading that sentence. If you were in a room with all the people d
29.
by camccann 17y ago
Let me ask, seriously - I've done a lot of looking into it, and I'm at this point firmly convinced that socialism is a bad thing. Really. Have you defined what is and is not socialism in a rigorous, non-subjective manner? Have you conduct
30.
by camccann 17y ago
Okay, you missed my point completely, but never mind. Arguments about terms with lots of emotional content but very ambiguous meanings tend to look more like people cheering for their local sports team more than like a meaningful discussion

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