jaylevitt

Interestingly, this does not seem to be how Google does their spelling correction. Everything I've read implies that Google looks for human corrections in search queries, and then extrapolates those into suggestions. in other words, "People who searched for 'speling' often click no results, but search for 'spelling' instead.

Comp sci folks: Is predicting whether a compressed file will produce a finite (or, better, reasonably-sized) output roughly equivalent to the halting problem?

Well, we don't have any A/B tests, and we don't have any statistics, so all we have are anecdotes.

That said, my last job was at an angel-funded company, though these were atypical angels - all billionaires, some well-known names. The CEO was not only fat (330 pounds), but old (46), brash, loud, opinionated, and the kind of guy who would say "You know what we need on the landing page? Smokin' hot broads!" In the movie version, he will be played by a taller Danny DeVito.

But he was a good guy and a great salesman, and had no trouble raising multiple multi-million dollar rounds, even while pivoting completely - several times. His investors trusted him to treat their money with respect, and knowing his history, I would too.

Fascinating... I knew * plonk * made a sound, but by 1994 I had always heard it retronymmed to "put loser on newsgroup killfile", which wasn't quite satisfying - Why the awkward phrasing?

Now I know the truth. You can't stop the signal.

This overstates the case. The Grateful Dead might very well have had millions of fans; they just kept forgetting where they were up to in the count, and so started back at zero out of a basic sense of fairness.

By "by hand". I assume you mean using some sort of Intuos tablet with various pen and brush tips and some sort of curve-smoothing software so you can trace over the output of GNUplot, yes?

If this is FUD, please downvote me into grayness, but I remember an article - or maybe even a book - proving that exception-safety in C++ was impossible. I remember nothing else about this; it was probably around 1999-2000.

Am I completely making that up? Or did we discover ways around the "impossible" part? I haven't coded in C++ since, uh, gcc 2.97 or so.

He's at @mynameisjeff... looks pretty safe and alive to me.

If you haven't already, you should pick up Tom Mabe's CD, where he does some serious improv comedy with the telemarketers.

Go back and check the email confirmation you got for these messages.. did it say "...wrote on your Wall?"

Likewise, consistency's more important in facebook-y scenarios than you'd think. The canonical example I've heard is that "defriend my boss" MUST always be seen before "post 'I'm quitting!'"

Is that really allowed in CA? I know that in both NYC and Boston/Cambridge, a hailed cab can't refuse a destination. In fact, after being stranded in uptown Manhattan for an hour, I now make a point of not declaring my destination till I'm in the cab.

No. Moving violations are not necessarily crimes. In Massachusetts, I think that reckless driving is a crime (usually interpreted as 20MPH), but I know that plain ol' speeding is not. If you contest, you see a magistrate; if you appeal the magistrate's decision, you do get a trial with a judge, but the ticket itself is considered evidence of your speeding.