wsprague

6 ms·

1.
by wsprague 17y ago
My thoughts about Tk: 1. I think buttons with relief are easier to use, but other than that I am always surprised at how worked up people get about theming (but then I prefer a terminal based emacs...). 2. Tcl/Tk has some GREAT ideas that
2.
by wsprague 17y ago
"Murray and Strout don't understand human nature. People -- especially teenagers -- don't like following pointless rules." Au Contraire -- Murray and Strout understand fully, but as employees of the public school system, Murray and Strout a
3.
by wsprague 17y ago
Interesting point, though I more or less disagree about the level of curation necessary to make a minimally useful product. I think data.gov is FAR below that level, and is just noise so far. But these are practical questions, and I think
4.
by wsprague 17y ago
I moved my reply to my top comment and screwed up the reply tree here. So this is for the comment that follows this one: data.gov is fundamentally flawed, and won't be anything but annoying until it is reworked into something along the lin
5.
by wsprague 17y ago
If you need hierarchies, use JSON, IMHO, or keys that reference between tables (the census PUMS data does this with persons nested within households, using two tables).
6.
by wsprague 17y ago
OK, we disagree. Except that #4 IS sort of redundant, though I want to make the point that data is almost impossible for a layperson, and still really hard for a practiced analyst.
7.
by wsprague 17y ago
I mean that for all practicing data analysts that I know, XML is a pain in the ass (parsers, xpaths, etc, all to get it into a csv that you can import), while nice ascii text is easy to work with. If you want metadata, a well written narrat
8.
by wsprague 17y ago
The problem with data.gov and sites like it is that they are built on faulty premises about data: 1. Fiction: Data doesn't require lots of work to make it useable, so we can just upload whatever we have and it will be useful to somebody.
9.
by wsprague 17y ago
The only thing I HATE about Python is the mandatory indentation. The problems with it are: 1. It mixes format with logic. Don't we all know this is one of the greatest evils one can commit? 2. Indentation is a bitch to parse compared wi
10.
by wsprague 17y ago
I would like to see this supported (or not, methinks) by empirical evidence. A priori arguments without evidence aren't worth a damn, in my estimation.
11.
by wsprague 17y ago
I upvoted you because it is a good point, but ... who is advancing the most quickly in manufacturing these days? That would be China.... Plus, I would hesitate to naturalize the idea of intellectual property as if it were a "thing" just li
12.
by wsprague 17y ago
In python, it seems like it would be trivial to add a __test__() method to a class that was run, well, whenever.
13.
by wsprague 17y ago
I liked the way he applies moderately useful statistics to a real world application, mostly just as an example of how we all could be using the standard deviation along with the mean.
14.
by wsprague 17y ago
I know people who work in social services who have noticed a change in the last generation. Before, you would think twice before telling a working class parent that the child misbehaved because the parent might discipline too harshly. Tod
15.
by wsprague 17y ago
Levi Strauss is not only probably one of the two most famous anthropologists of all time (Magaret Meade being the other), but his work is cited by many of the foundational thinkers of cognitive science. His book "Tristes Tropiques" was also
16.
by wsprague 17y ago
Here is how to say "NY", according to the wiki article on RDF: <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf=" http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns# xmlns:dcterms=" http://purl.org/dc/terms/&#62 ; <rdf:Description rdf:about="urn:x-states:New%20Yor
17.
by wsprague 17y ago
What I meant was "why would you downvote my comment?" Is not giving you much a good reason for downvoting? Seems ok if it is, but I only would downvote things that are stupid or obnoxious, and I don't think my comment was either....
18.
by wsprague 17y ago
Why would anyone downvote this entry? Not that I care, just curious...
19.
by wsprague 17y ago
The existentialists (well, at least the one that matters, Heidegger) would say that to be human means that one never forgets a deep "uncanniness" or an emptiness, and that part of the drive to succeed (or do drugs or find god or stay busy d
20.
by wsprague 17y ago
Which means that an engineer is a "loser" in this system; and in terms of monetary gain, they may very well be. The author stresses that "loser" is not the same as "bad person" or "living their life according to wacked principles".
21.
by wsprague 17y ago
"the reason people aren't compensated accordingly [sic] to their production is that it's incredibly hard to judge production." ... perhaps .... ... but perhaps Karl Marx was correct when he said that (basically) the essence of capitalism is
22.
by wsprague 17y ago
Am I the only one bored with Martin Fowler and the whole 1990s object oriented schtick? It was so refreshing last to see articles on fork() and waitpid()...
23.
by wsprague 17y ago
I think "[old school unix] has gotten so much attention lately" because of accidents in the timing of computer science culture and its victories. The Linux / BSD driven revival of Unix happened, un-fortuitously, just when object-orientation
24.
by wsprague 17y ago
The lack of an explicit point makes me wish I could downvote this.
25.
by wsprague 17y ago
I love it -- finally a way to make accounting fun!
26.
by wsprague 17y ago
Easier to install... maybe. SQL is SQL though, so I disagree.
27.
by wsprague 17y ago
The trite answer: Because idiot MBA managers have heard of MySQL but not Postgres. (Sorry -- I couldn't resist.) The longer answer: When the internet took off, MySQL was a lot better than Postgres in terms of stability and speed, though no
28.
by wsprague 17y ago
It is funny to watch this get upvoted and downvoted in real time, as a religious war descends on my little comment...
29.
by wsprague 17y ago
May I recommend http://www.postgresql.org/ ? :)
30.
by wsprague 17y ago
The master has passed away, but here is the real deal (tm) in Unix: http://www.kohala.com/start/ There is nothing more I can say -- I am so in awe...

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