catechu | 14 years ago | on: NLP with Prolog in IBM Watson
catechu's comments
catechu | 15 years ago | on: DNA Logic Gates Calculate a Square Root
Brings new meaning to the field of computer science.
catechu | 15 years ago | on: Einstein Was Right: NASA Announces Results of Epic Space-Time Experiment
From article: "The mass of Earth dimples this fabric, much like a heavy person sitting in the middle of a trampoline."
I will never imagine general relativity the same way again.
catechu | 15 years ago | on: Math genius Grigori Perelman explains why he turned down $1 million prize
Or he could have pulled a Ludwig Wittgenstein and given it to the "already-corrupted" rich.
catechu | 15 years ago | on: Math genius Grigori Perelman explains why he turned down $1 million prize
Hmm...
The Wired article (linked within under "can control the universe") seemed to suggest that he solved the problem by "channeling Jesus"...which seems to misrepresent that he was talking about his childhood training, rather than how he actually solved the conjecture.
catechu | 15 years ago | on: Your taste is why your work disappoints you.
"...couldn't really put his finger on what it was that he really wanted but couldn't just do."
As an amusing literal interpretation of your metaphor, IIRC Leonardo actually painted the shadows around the Mona Lisa's mouth using his finger, which enabled his style of sfumato shading. So I suppose he was putting his finger on it...
catechu | 15 years ago | on: MIT junior dropping out to work on education startup he founded 5 years ago
I speak for myself here, but I don't think something needs to be the "Future of the World" for it to be an immensely fulfilling way to lead one's life, degree or not.
catechu | 15 years ago | on: James Dyson's vacuum cleaner required 5,127 prototypes: In Praise of Failure
For those who enjoyed the author's story, there's plenty more in his well-written autobiography: http://www.amazon.com/Against-Odds-Autobiography-James-Dyson....
catechu | 15 years ago | on: Gleick's new book on information theory
Seconded. Link to pdf for the lazy: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/itprnn/book.pdf.
And to other incarnations: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itila/book.html.
catechu | 15 years ago | on: Machined Learnings: LDA on a Social Graph
While I agree that it can be unstable (inference can get stuck in local maxima), latent variable models like LDA can be used to rigorously evaluate textual categories (e.g. journal articles). We take for granted that the categories we set are "useful", in some sense, so it's interesting to see that quantitatively questioned.
e.g.: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/11/12/1013452107.abst...
Also, for the curious, original paper on LDA: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~blei/papers/BleiNgJordan2003.pd....
catechu | 15 years ago | on: What Makes Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurial?
In case you're wondering whose annotations those are, IIRC, the marginalia are from Vinod Khosla.
catechu | 15 years ago | on: Why is TeX still used? What are some good, modern alternatives?
Independent of the elegant typesetting it produces, TeX contains well-designed notation for mathematics, reflecting the algorithmic bent of its author, Don Knuth.
Mathematics doesn't change as frequently as desktop publishing, so it's a good bet that the TeX (e.g. $\int_0^1 \tau \, d\tau$) is going to be around as long as people talk math online.
That said, I think there are much easier-to-use and less error-prone desktop publishing tools (e.g. Scribus) for less math-heavy domains, like magazine layout.
catechu | 15 years ago | on: Formula of the day: Jeans length
"It is only when thermal energy is not equal to gravitational work that the cloud either expands and cools or contracts and warms, a process that continues until equilibrium is reached."
Gosh, I want pants like that!
catechu | 15 years ago | on: How Search Will Affect Programming Language Design
Biggest impact I've found which is not directly discussed in the OP: A great package repository (e.g. CPAN) can outweigh quirks in language design (e.g. Perl spaghetti code).
It seems to me that TeX did the best job of winning at both -- over three decades, at that!
catechu | 15 years ago | on: Online course on how to give great presentations / pitches
At any rate, whatever people might tell you about your lack of credentials, you've already set your pitching skills apart by putting this out here in front of everyone. It's surprising just how much of presentation skill is about taking one's own ideas seriously.
So congratulations on that!
catechu | 15 years ago | on: Poll: How do you bill recurring payments?
I use the basic version of PayPal for subscriptions, but I've had issues with canceling customers' subscriptions without their explicit request, and the PayPal support is horrendous.
The fees are a little higher than some of the other services, but it integrates fine, so if you're okay with a clunky but easy to set up service, you might find it useful as well.
catechu | 15 years ago | on: A world without advertising
I think product sales is a game of incomplete information in which sellers don't know what each buyer wants and buyers don't necessarily know what they want either. It seems to me that advertising, which is effectively gambling on consumers' unknown desires, is the only way for either party to discover that hidden knowledge of what buyers want -- a commercial Monte Carlo simulation of sorts.
"If I had asked my customers what they wanted," Henry Ford once said, "they would have said a faster horse."
catechu | 15 years ago | on: Jimmy Wales on Apple Model: 'very dangerous and something I'm concerned about'
Not to divert attention from the point he's making, but is that a MacBook he's using in the article picture?
catechu | 15 years ago | on: YouEye.com: User Testing with Webcam Eye Tracking
Wonder if the old NN/g results for eye tracking still hold up: http://www.useit.com/eyetracking/.
catechu | 15 years ago | on: Impatience Kills Startups
That said, impatience also prevents feature creep.
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(For example: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1867.)