Comment Re: Leave me behind (Score 1) 320
Last I heard, all the valid ones go through krrmvax or moscvax (and ihnp4, obviously).
Dinosaur Feather Color Discovered 219
anzha writes "Do you remember being a kid and told we'd never know what colors the dinosaurs were? For at least some, that's no longer true. Scientists working in the UK and China have closely examined the fossils of multiple theropods and actually found the colors and patterns that were present in the fossilized proto-feathers. So far, the answer is orange, black and white in banded and other patterns. The work also thoroughly thrashes the idea that fossils might not be feathers, but collagen fibers instead. If this holds up, Birds Are Dinosaurs. Period. And colorful!"
Comment Re:IBM's HPFS (Score 1) 484
You are correct. HPFS was developed as part of LanMan 386 (Pinball), a 32-bit server that ran underneath OS/2 1.2x (which used i286 addressing, even on i386 processors).
That was 20 years ago, but I think I still have the t-shirt...
Comment Re:It's nothing new... (Score 2, Insightful) 513
The tickets were from the '90s, and the firm that has employed me for the last six years has ~$3B under investment (including some from Allen personally).
Credit reports are a stupid way to evaluate a worker, especially a programmer.
Comment It's nothing new... (Score 2, Interesting) 513
This has been going on for a long time. In 2001, Vulcan (Paul Allen's company) withdrew an offer because I had too many parking tickets (~$1000) on my credit report (parking tickets are a fact of life if you work in downtown Seattle). Paying the tickets wasn't enough, and the offer was withdrawn.
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False 259
Hugh Pickens writes "Researchers have found that the winner's curse may apply to the publication of scientific papers and that incorrect findings are more likely to end up in print than correct findings. Dr John Ioannidis bases his argument about incorrect research partly on a study of 49 papers on the effectiveness of medical interventions published in leading journals that had been cited by more than 1,000 other scientists, and his finding that, within only a few years, almost a third of the papers had been refuted by other studies. Ioannidis argues that scientific research is so difficult — the sample sizes must be big and the analysis rigorous — that most research may end up being wrong, and the 'hotter' the field, the greater the competition is, and the more likely that published research in top journals could be wrong. Another study earlier this year found that among the studies submitted to the FDA about the effectiveness of antidepressants, almost all of those with positive results were published, whereas very few of those with negative results saw print, although negative results are potentially just as informative as positive (if less exciting)."
Lawsuit Between Apple and Psystar Moves Toward Settlement 242
An anonymous reader writes "Psystar and Apple have agreed to alternative dispute resolution to keep the public eye away from their disagreements, and to reduce legal costs. This will eliminate any rulings that would set a precedent over Psystar's claim that Apple is violating anti-trust laws by tying Mac OS X to only their hardware and thus creating a monopoly. This could result in a profit for Psystar's business, but eliminate their line of open-computing Mac-compatible PCs. On the other hand, what's to stop a similar company from doing the same thing?"
Bringing OSS Into a Closed Source Organization? 427
Piranhaa writes "At the major corporation I work for, there is currently a single person who decides what software to approve and disapprove within the organization. I've noticed that requests from users for open source Windows programs get denied, nearly instantaneously, on a regular basis. Anything from Gimp, to Firefox, even to Vim don't make the cut due to the simple fact that they are open source. Closed source programs from unknown vendors have a much better chance at approval than Firefox does. The whole mentality here is that anybody can change the source of a project, submit it, and you never know what kind of compiled binary you're going to get. I'm a firm believer in open source code, but I also know closed source has its place. So what would be the best way for me to argue, with all the facts, to allow these people to come to their own conclusion that open source is actually good? Would presenting examples of other big companies moving to open source work, and if so what are some good examples? Or can you suggest any other good approaches?"
XKCD Invited To New Yorker "Cartoon-Off" 231
UnknowingFool writes "Farley Katz, who draws for New Yorker magazine, ran into xkcd.com's Randall Munroe in a grocery store. He challenged Munroe to a cartoon-off — each cartoonist to produce drawings about the Internet as envisioned by the elderly, String Theory, 1999, and one's favorite animal eating one's favorite food. In the ensuing short interview, Munroe describes XKCD as 'a webcomic about stick figures who do math, play with staple guns, mess around on the Internet, and have lots of sex. It's about three-fourths autobiographical.'"
Comment Maybe You Should (Score 1) 168
This book uses C and Java and AWK to illustrate many good ideas about programming.
It is NOT a book about C or Java or AWK.
It is about showing how two very experienced programmers think about how they work.
The themes of the book are: Simplicity, Clarity, Generality, Evolution, Interfaces, Automation, and Notation.
You're ready to dismiss some very important thinking about how to write programs that work (and keep on working) because of some religious idea about notations.
If functional programming is so much better than standard languages (which it is, in many ways), then it is all the more impressive to be able to show how to use abstraction and mental flexibility with the less-helpful languages K & P have chosen. I'm sure they would agree with you that FP and scheme are very powerful tools. They also have enough experience to know that there is no one language that is good for all uses. The last chapter is devoted to the implications of that fact, with sections like "Programmable Tools", and "Programs that Write Programs".
If you don't read this book, you won't learn anything. Your loss.
Anyone that takes the time to read it and think about what it says, will learn.
--
It is NOT a book about C or Java or AWK.
It is about showing how two very experienced programmers think about how they work.
The themes of the book are: Simplicity, Clarity, Generality, Evolution, Interfaces, Automation, and Notation.
You're ready to dismiss some very important thinking about how to write programs that work (and keep on working) because of some religious idea about notations.
If functional programming is so much better than standard languages (which it is, in many ways), then it is all the more impressive to be able to show how to use abstraction and mental flexibility with the less-helpful languages K & P have chosen. I'm sure they would agree with you that FP and scheme are very powerful tools. They also have enough experience to know that there is no one language that is good for all uses. The last chapter is devoted to the implications of that fact, with sections like "Programmable Tools", and "Programs that Write Programs".
If you don't read this book, you won't learn anything. Your loss.
Anyone that takes the time to read it and think about what it says, will learn.
--
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