... and it has nothing to do with AI per se. My experience with legacy code that there is stuff there that is absolutely impossible to figure out by just looking at the code alone. These parts usually encode weird edge cases of external systems, workarounds for even earlier data, "temporary" hotfixes, etc. Even well designed systems have a few corners like these. And even if there are comments, comments tend to assume a certain shared context. I find it unlikely that an AI or even a Homo Sapiens can properly specify these old software by _just_ looking at the code alone... I find this unplausible to be honest.

Btw, if you are really interested in the algorithms for solving hypergeometric identities check out the ebook by Marko Petkovsek, Herbert Wilf and Doron Zeilberger:

http://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/AeqB.html

It is one of the best free mathematics ebooks out there...

Yes, exactly! In fact 0.333... is just a notation for the number that is the limit of the series: 0.3, 0.33, 0.333, ..., and that limit is exactly 1/3.

I feel the same. I spend most of the time at my job thinking, not typing. That said, there are moments once in a while, when I feel like the code is just flowing out of my brain, through my body and fingers, directly into the screen. Now these moments make me really appreciate touch typing.

Does he pass the Voigt-Kampf test?

It seems from the poll results that the even days (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday) are more productive than the odd ones.

"Capturing requirements is pretty useful and having a repeatable, reproducible way of doing this is also useful. Need to take over some other person's 3 year old steaming pile of spaghetti? Requirements are a good start. Need to replace a home-grown system with a market solution? Requirements are pretty useful in negotiating a contract with the vendor (unless you don't mind the vendor nailing your balls to their invoice because you couldn't actually tell them what you needed their software to do)."

Yes, IF your contractor is COMPETENT ENOUGH to give reasonable requirements. In reality this rarely happens. And while you can point a finger at them, that their requirements were stupid, they will think you just deceived them. They will pay you, but they will not come back.

I agree with you except:

This is FALSE. In fact, "institutional causes" are ALWAYS lack of communication, lack of REAL teamwork, lot of ass-cover, responsibility avoidance, bureaucracy and fear. This is exactly CAUSED by such processes.

AAAAAH! Now I remember! Now I remember all the pain! These memories were suppressed, and buried deep down in my mind... This explains all the nightmares. Oh God. I need a therapist.

If I understand correctly, you can run your own Diaspora server, is it right?

Well, then there must be a protocol to communicate between Diaspora servers. If that protocol is sound, then I will just write my OWN server with all the security features I need.

Do we know anything about the security of the protocol? I am more interested in that not in the security of the webapp.

Erdos Pal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdos_Pal (I cannot reproduce Hungarian umlaut in slashdot)

Although an amphetamine taking mathematician is maybe not the best hero for an 8 year old :)

Yeah, and this mechanism hinders deep research. The problem is that the most interesting research subjects are also the riskiest ones. You cannot publish papers on failures, therefore you are highly pressed to go for the low hanging fruit. This means that journals will be full of the (n+1)th refinement of a well known algorithm/technology/formula/theorem.

We need more scientific risk-taking.