ntownsend
Joined 17 years ago
Karma
228
Submissions
50
Member since
Jul 8
I'm a software developer at amazon.com. My current focus is front-end web development. My background and education are in math.
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Comment · 15 years ago
The LulzSec twitter feed now appears to be empty.
Comment · 15 years ago
Lesson learned: the public can (and must) stop big telecom putting Canada in a digital ghetto.
Comment · 15 years ago
Alton Brown is the reason I started caring about food preparation. Good Eats is unlike most food shows in that its primary motivation is teaching the audience about food and the hows and whys of its preparation. I find that most food shows are about demonstrating individual, usually either uninteresting or impractical, recipes, or stroking the ego of the presenter. Throwdown With Bobby Flay, I'm looking at you.
Comment · 15 years ago
Libertarian clap-trap. Governments and pies only become a bad combination when there is no meaningful oversight or regulation. Your point of view makes sense in America where this is the case.
Comment · 15 years ago
The case is similar in Canada. I think this recent article by Jesse Brown reflects the reality for a lot of broadband-connected Canadians with similar viewing habits to broadband-connected Americans: http://www.torontolife.com/daily/informer/from-print-edition...
Comment · 16 years ago
RIM has extremely talented engineers and developers, but it does not have a culture where engineers can say "We are doing the wrong thing" and have any decision-makers take notice. This is the fundamental problem with RIM. They have completely failed to effectively use the talent they have. If I were another technology company, I would definitely be trying to poach talent from them.
(Disclaimer: I'm a former RIM employee.)
Comment · 16 years ago
And on that note, the creator has made the common mistake of performing the calculation speed_of_light * age_of_universe to determine the radius of the observable universe.
Space has expanded during the lifetime of the universe so the objects that emitted light at the edge of the observable universe have moved further away since emitting the light. The estimated distance to the edge of the observable universe is more like 47 billion light-years: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmology_faq.html#DN
The visible universe, however, is a bit smaller since we can only see as far as the surface of last scattering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_rad...
Comment · 16 years ago
I had very similar thoughts when I read the book. It seems to me that if there is no desire for class mobility then strata are not evil.
However, humans being what they are, it seems impossible to guarantee that lack of desire. This is (kind of) demonstrated by Bernard's discontent and by John the Savage's inability to cope with the society. Both were weak cases. Bernard because he was privileged, and John because he was a total outsider that was not acclimated to the culture.
Comment · 16 years ago
You can set a few other parameters like your size, too. Unfortunately, no one else can see it. I was the biggest sperm you never saw.
Comment · 16 years ago
...we'd need an impossible computer that could simulate years worth of exact quantum-level physics in a cubic meter of space...
...it might take a little more than the ten years to come up with any sensible code with hope of growing into an AI though...
Dude, you are all over the map.
... he seems to be using DNA as a measure for the amount of irreducible complexity that needs to go into a system that will end up with the complexity of a human brain.
At best, you could say it's a measure of the amount of irreducible complexity for an encoding of the required proteins. We don't seem to have a measure of the system, by which I mean the thing that models the relationships and interactions of the proteins (and their components) with each other and their environment.
Comment · 16 years ago
In 2006, nearly half the population of Toronto was a "visible minority". It's estimated that more than half are now. Similarly, half of the population is foreign-born.