sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: Functional Programming For The Rest of Us
sharmajai's comments
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: Yale Discovers a Fungus That Eats Plastic
Yes indeed it was him.
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: Yale Discovers a Fungus That Eats Plastic
This reminds me of a YouTube video, I saw within the last ten days here, where a stand-up comedian talks about, how the planet does not need saving, it will find out ways to save itself. I can't find it now though.
Scientists cannot find a way to degrade plastic does not necessarily mean plastic is not bio-degradable.
I have found time and time again, that stand-up comedians are the ones who make the most serious points.
EDIT: Found it - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: Impress.js - a Prezi like implementation using CSS3 3D transformations
This is mind-blowing, I like how he uses transitions to empower content.
The transitions themselves are fantastic and like others in the thread I don't find them fancy at all, in fact I think they add movies like continuity to presentations for cheap, which if used wisely can enable story-telling style of information delivery.
I can see myself using it for info-graphics and tutorials, other than presentations, by making it do non-linear (zooming in/out or using hrefs) flow of content.
Oh now I realize why I liked it so much, it also removes the single most annoying feature of reading content on the web - the constant scrolling and zooming, like readability it alleviates that pain for you, by zooming in to the content that matters the most at this instant.
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: Why Don’t We Value Spatial Intelligence?
Strange that the author doesn't mention Howard Gardner [1], who pioneered the theory of multiple intelligences [2] which lists spatial intelligence as one of the intelligence form.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Gardner
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligence...
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: GoDaddy is default registrar for Google Apps Domains
Those big names don't make the internet, we do. They might be what 10^-googol% of the internet.
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: Design of CPython’s Compiler
This is best read with CPython's source code available on the side for reference IMHO.
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: Trillion-frame-per-second video
They should use this to demystify the double-slit experiment.
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: Mythbusters experiment goes awry, sends cannonball through two houses
Agreed. Take http://www.democracynow.org/about for an example.
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: Mountains and buried ice on Mars
Also 'few pixels' is relativistic in terms of the dpi of your monitor.
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: A human review of the Kindle Fire
Sorry to disappoint you, but it is not the same hardware as the playbook. Playbook doesn't lack two cameras and a microphone and an ingenious functioning bezel.
Also if all the software quirks are true, then playbook has none of them, it being extremely responsive. I can bet you have never used a playbook.
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: Stanford to host more online classes
I have a masters in CS, and I am taking the online ML class. I highly appreciate how well organized the class is. Thankyou.
I have a question though, is there a way these classes can be made to be taken anytime a student wants?
The problem I am facing is that since I am also working fulltime, I just in time manage to submit the homework, and as a result, I can not take more than one classes at the same time, like the DB and AI classes in this case.
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: Gassée: Thank God Apple chose NeXT over my BeOS
I think hard to change the visual look and feel is what he means.
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: Gassée: Thank God Apple chose NeXT over my BeOS
Good points. No wonder QNX feels so snappy on the playbook.
I sometimes don't understand people's hate for the playbook, it is a wonderful tablet. IMHO it is a much better tablet than kindle fire (which is inspired heavily by the playbook btw), with TAT integration and two extra cameras and an active bezel. I time and time again feel that Google should buy rim and integrate QNX and Android.
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: Steve Jobs's Real Genius
Was it, that he made things closed because he didn't want the user to screw them up or was it because he thought they were already perfect and couldn't be made better?
I would like to believe the former.
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: How I automated my writing career
On an unrelated note, if you highlight a portion of the article, you can listen to it. Very useful for listening to articles while working, instead of listening to music, or just to rest your eyes.
It is powered by http://www.readspeaker.com and AFAICT is the best sounding Text to Speech implementation, I have heard so far.
If you just listen to the text, it sounds like a human news reader, much better than Siri. Wow. And the cherry on the top is that it highlights the text which it is reading as it's being read.
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: Samsung Overtakes Apple as World’s Biggest Smartphone Seller
If all the 'Think Different' ads, the product differentiation by Apple, and the Jony Ive's memorial speech about caring about months for things that the user will never see, with no regards to its contribution to profit, cannot convince the downvoters that Apple is not like all other run the mill companies, then I don't know what will.
Regardless I hate it when people act and support the cynicism that all companies are the same, they all work for profit, there can never be a do no evil company. May all such thinkers stick to their dogma lifelong and suffer from it.
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: Samsung Overtakes Apple as World’s Biggest Smartphone Seller
Ya business as USUAL is what apple is known for. Ya right.
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: Steve Jobs: A Genius, Yes; A Role Model for the Rest of Us, No Way
A very beautiful and probably very correct interpretation of Jobs' management approach was given by 'alexqgb' in a not so old thread here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3078669
This difference, I suppose, is between someone bending your will to theirs, reducing you terribly in the process, and someone who sees you failing to deliver everything you're capable of, and pushing you (hard) to do what he thinks what you can.
The former doesn't care about who you are. The latter cares deeply, and expresses in by placing genuine faith in you. Everything being said by the people who worked with him indicates that they feel humbled and honored by the experience. It's hard to get upset with someone's approach when you know in your bones that it got you to the top of your game.
What people feel in response to that is love.
"He was dubbed a megalomaniac, but Steve Jobs often gambled on young, largely inexperienced talent to take Apple forward; Jony Ive and his team prove that such faith was spot on."
I say probably very correct owing to the Al Gore's remembrance speech about the love and genuineness in respect that Steve held for others in the 'Celebrating Steve' event.
sharmajai | 14 years ago | on: ARM's Cortex A7 Is Tailor-Made for Android Superphones
Wow that is one more reason why your system should be open.
All the closed systems (read windows) have had precedents of working closely with their partners (read OEMs) to achieve this hardware software harmony (which Steve was a big fan of BTW). But if your system is open anybody who wishes can be your partner. Amazing.
I think opening their system is one thing Google did right with Android over Windows.
Sure you can do whatever you want, but if the language does not support things like tail call optimization, non-imperative function definition, writing code in functional style turns out to be a lot slower (due to non-tail-optimized function call overhead) and less safe (due to potential side effects in function definition) than if you are writing it in a functional language with explicit support for these facilities.