There's a real disconnect between the marketing you have heard about ANNs and what they actually do. In fact, the top researchers no longer make the inaccurate comparison to "it's like a brain". What ANNs are are great pattern marchers, but they need supervision (I.e. pre-labeled inputs, by humans or a program human wrote) to learn how recognize those patterns. Then, on top of that, the human has to iterate a set of ANN models multiple times to find the best settings for the best recognition. However, this only works well for the given problem. Once the parameters (e.g. data distribution) changes, the ANN needs retrained or rebuilt. Also, training and prediction are two distinct steps. And while genetic algorithms and things like that can help figure out the best turnings, a good bit of human "art" goes into this task. That's because humans actually have creative thinking. Machines do not. The "creative" things that companies and individuals come up with are just pattern recognizes or evolutionary algorithms or fractal designers, or the like. They're important and worthy of doing real work, but they're not even close to being creative or taking over anything except SPECIFIC tasks that would bore a human anyway and let the human concentrate on more important goals. All of this is true no matter if you had limitless computing power available. Now, it's not to say we won't create a real AI, but right now, none of our tech gets near this. And also, human-level intelligence is actually a good proxy for many natural tasks, since we are probably close to the Bayes optimal error for many of these tasks, especially in the visual arena. Although, computers can be better at different kinds of tasks, but they're not currently creative and able to take your job, unless they are trained for a very specific task, in which case you can learn a different task, hopefully.

I hated it so much I stopped using Google and moved to duckduckgo. I hope they record the fact I stopped using Google after using it all the time for years and change me back.

I can only assume that the .NET and Adobe compilers generate code that uses the Objective-C libraries. Considering Apple only checks that you're using the public frameworks, what is the big deal? It's not like they're going to be able to prove you were using something other than Objective-C. I do know the .NET framework takes up a ridiculous 9+MB of space for even a hello world app, and I'm not opposed to getting rid of that crap. Besides, the apps that take real advantage of the phone are going to be written in the native language anyway, purely so they can keep up with the feature set released by Apple.

I'll create a GUI interface in Visual Basic to track his IP address!

Bono, LOL! You're the biggest piece of shit.

I should say that one area where we do keep updated documents are outside the code. They're in the form of requirements documents and high-level component overviews with the general idea behind them. This has always been enough for my colleagues and me to get a good grasp of what the code is doing when we encounter it. Still... we don't comment the code itself.

You really have all that experience and need all that commenting? I think you need to check your experience at the door. Hell, I've got "two years real world experience outside school", and no one comments their code where I work, including me. I would hardly call them unprofessional or bad programmers, even if occasional things do pop up that seem, and may be, retarded, because it's almost always a big waste of time. After looking at code like that for over two years, across several projects in several languages, I can say it's not as hard to read uncommented code as you make it out to be. In fact, I often skip reading comments for the sheer fact that they're usually incorrect because they're either not maintained as the code is updated or were always wrong.

Except for some extremely obscure pieces of code, generally revolving around optimizations, architecture-specific workarounds, compiler-bug workarounds, etc., have I ever found comments to be useful outside of documenting an API. In point of fact, there will never be a comment stating more correctly what the code is doing than the code itself.

As one caveat, I've seen good use of comments in ASM. However, with the ability to use more advanced assembler features in GCC or LLVM these days, you can put pretty sophisticated names on your code-flow elements and not require nearly as many comments as in the past. And with being able to inline ASM into code for those cases you need it, you can even use sophisticated meta-names for your registers that are obvious to the reader. Also, being the fact that the only person that work on an optimized piece of code would be someone that already knows that architecture's ASM or can learn what they need, you can rest assured that they'll have all the tools necessary to read and modify your code.

I have, and then, after getting more experience, I've decided it's best not to fix code that's not broken (i.e. is not optimal or does not have any major anti-pattern in it). Besides, as you gain more experience, you will be able just to read your own code and figure out why you did something a particular way. If you really did have an obscure reason for why something was done a particular way, put a very brief comment, but don't make a drawn-out explanation that is boring and difficult to maintain as the code is updated, because a comment is worse than no comment if it's an incorrect comment.

I was in Edwardsville, IL during the '06 tornado. I was in my ex-girlfriend's apartment at that time.

Never been to or heard of Felber's. I do love The Magic Kitchen though. I haven't been able to find any place quite like it, even here in NY.

1. Your grammatical errors make it appear like YOU'VE been drinking too much! Try not to hit the bottle so hard.
2. You are not legally required to blow into anything. It's called the 5th amendment; look it up.
3. I wouldn't demand a blood test either (see 5th amendment (look it up)). However, if forced to take one, I really have no choice at that point, but it would only help my case in court if I didn't give up my 5th amendment right (look it up).

Thank you.

I definitely did read it like that. I was like, "Wow, the Chinese are pulling a 180!" Then I read the summary and got a little confused.

Sweet, someone referenced my home town! And yes, the Simpsons are from there. P.S. Don't go to the neighborhood where the Simpsons live (Evergreen Terrace) if you want to live very long. P.P.S. It says they liev in Evergreen Terrace at the beginning of the show when they pan out of the their neighborhood, away from the sign.

Just so you stop making things up that are completely untrue, I want to inform you about an image like this: it is parody and not libel. Parodies are a well-established form of protected first amendment speech. If you think Michelle Obama really is a monkey because of something like this (which would be libel), you really are stupid. Fortunately, the courts are not.

The GP can also purchase the Nokia N900 (available tomorrow in flagship stores; available online for preorder today). It follows the European model you mention and is an awesome phone. I don't know if the Milestone has tethering, but the N900 does and doesn't tell your cell provider that you're tethering. The N900's 3G will only work on T-Mobile towers, unless you're living in an area where AT&T has some 2100 MHz towers. The N900's EDGE connection will work on both T-Mobile and AT&T though.

Only thing the N900 lacks, software-wise, is Android. In it's place it has Maemo, which looks amazing, but let's face it, we also want Android. I can't wait for someone to port it; maybe I'll look into trying it. The other thing I wish Nokia had done better with the hardware are the frequencies it can handle. I would absolutely love a phone I could setup to work on any of the US carriers with full bandwidth, but I'm willing to accept T-Mobile over AT&T any day right now.

I love Optimum Online Ultra. Cablevision is a company that "gets it." http://www.speedtest.net/result/612762349.png