amelim

Don't forget about Child's Play either. It's a wonderful charity which raises money to donate video games, books, and toys for sick kids in Children's hospitals.

http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

This is the reason why jury nullification exists. It's just a shame that most citizens have no idea that it either exists, or is a valid choice when serving on a jury.

I'm sure NASA would be just fine sending up a couple of their Robotnaut modules. This could actually provide a viable alternative for satellite/space station repair in lieu of manned shuttle flights. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yadj3asTyc0

I'm sorry, but being able to perform arithmetic does not equate to higher intelligence or mental capacity. As society begins to perform more calculations via computer, it will allow us to begin address more abstract and higher level mathematics, problems which would be near impossible to address had we been required to do the math with grease pencils.

Conrad Wolfram recently gave a wonder TED talk on the subject. http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_m...

Perhaps you are misunderstanding my post, but I never said that people shouldn't change their minds or debate a subject (in fact I vehemently believe that they should). It's simply this forum is not a constructive place for that type of discussion. Debating online, through anonymous accounts, provides little context towards other people's experiences. Additionally, you lose the nuances of language and body language, which often leads to misunderstandings. Personally, I don't feel it's an effective medium for debate.

But clearly, you disagree with me.

I think this type of discussion is much better suited for personal environments. Strike this discussion up at the next HN Meetup in your area, or with your co-workers when you go out for drinks after work. Anonymous discussion of such topics on a news collection website will neither change minds nor produce any constructive debate.

It certainly does seem that HN has become increasingly more political in recent days. Yes, I can understand a post on body-scanner technology and it's applications to travel security, but do we really need to see blog posts about how person n opted out, or how person x experienced an unusual pat-down? Yes, for Americans (and non-Americans alike), these are important issues, but HN does not need to become an aggregate site for stories such as these.

There is a strong commitment by the community to prevent the site becoming like digg, reddit, or slashdot. Losing focus on the topics that brought us here in the first place (technology, startup culture, and programming) is the first step on that path in my opinion.

All I can ask is please, try not to submit/vote up stories which are not particularly related to tech. It's not what I'm interested in discussing in this particular venue.

Or maybe I'm just in the minority. I guess time will tell.

P.S. Just because you put the word "Hacker" in your article/title, doesn't mean it belongs here.

It's still just a projection onto some sort of medium.

I always find it fascinating how poorly the brain conceptualises various problem spaces, specifically in math related fields. The Monty Hall problem is an excellent illustration and just shows how irrationally our minds operate.

I'm a graduating fourth year Computer Science major at Georgia Tech looking for an entry level job. I code well in Python, Lisp, Java, C++, as well as having worked in Lua, Smalltalk, C, Netlogo and C#. My experience is mostly in Robotics in addition to Modeling and Simulation, however I've done some website work. I'm fairly well versed in algorithms as well. Contact me on my e-mail in my profile for a copy of my resume.

So you want to compare a piece of produce that has probably traveled for several days and sat around waiting to be selected against one from a farmers market where it was probably picked the day or two before? It seems like you are arguing against distribution methods, not organic/non-organic.

I would be willing to bet that in a double-blinded study the difference would be a lot less clear cut then you propose.

Then just flag them and move on.

You can always flag...

I'm sure that's exactly what everyone else on Digg/Reddit would say. Now, why don't you actually take the time to formulate your thoughts on why HN fails to meet your expectations and what could be done about it. Until then, please stop contributing to the problem.

Perhaps. He's not the only person involved with FIRST (probably not even the most important), and my praise has more to do with the actual event than the person. Honestly, when it comes down to it, I could care less about someone's personality. It's more about their actual achievements (of which he's had both hits and misses).

Dean may be arrogant, but I find it hard to fault him when his foundation of the FIRST robotics league for high schoolers has impacted my life so significantly. I participated in the 2006 year with my high school as a senior and now I'm working at a major commercial and government robotics company. His outreach to students through the FIRST organization is one of the best science technology activities for teenagers.

Here is the link to Part 2 http://theshyam.com/2009/07/what-could-be-done-to-improve-cs...

Does anyone know if this problem is NP-Complete? It sounds fairly similar to the knapsack problem, so much so that this might be as hard as said problem. However, I'm not sure if these specific conditions could be shown to be in NP.

Swarm intelligence is a fascinating concept that has interesting possibilities in the computing world. Whether it be finding near optimal solutions to NP-Complete problems through the use of algorithms like Ant Colony Optimization or applications in robotics, such SI approaches to common problems will gain an increasingly amount of importance down the line.

As I'm entering my last year as an undergraduate in Computer Science, I'm thinking that my senior project may deal with utilizing swarm robots in some sort of pathfinding problem. Now, if only I could afford enough arduinos...

Could be, but sadly no. Chalk this up to a fatal reliance on Firefox spellchecker and laziness.

I know this may be hearsay, but I've been using pylint and have been generally pleased with the results. I don't take everything it says as the ultimate source of coding standards, but it will pick up on some silly mistakes one might make and generally make my code more maintainable.

Granted, I'm still in University, but I think your disdain for automated code quality tools may be misplaced. Instead blaming the tools, why not blame the community as a whole for engaging in arcane coding practices.

While this isn't exactly related to your Visual Resume, it seems the majority of your interests lay within the business/entrepreneurial realm, however you are a Computer Science major. Having coding as the lowest of your desired careers, yet majoring in CS is a bit confounding to say the least...

Honestly, I think the main reason why Snow Leopard is so cheap is due to the fact that Apple wants to reduce support costs for old versions of OSX. By lowering the price for the newest version, pretty much every Mac user is going to be running the exact same version, significantly lowering the support costs for old versions.

I think the functionality is great, however I think you should reevaluate your color pallet. Choosing bolder colors would be a great first step in my opinion.

It looks like the platform was designed around a Segway. Ultimately, while the execution and development of the hardware is excellent, I think the logistics of everyday life will be the ultimate downfall of the machine. How does it perform in various weather environments? Will it require a trip back to the drop off depot after every single bag? Just how many robots are required to handle the amount of garbage generated every day in just a few blocks of the city? How does it deal with human interference enroute to the pick up/drop off point?

Seems like there are a lot of questions to be answered before I'm convinced it is a reasonable solution.

In fact it does. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Mandarin#Tones

A lot of people don't realize that Chinese is dependent upon the intonation of the word spoken for meaning. Standard Mandarin has four separate tones. When it comes to bing, the fourth tone can mean aliment or disease, but the others mean several vastly different concepts or ideas.

The "too many too soon" myth is just another strategy by these groups to target vaccinations. I'm all for extra scrutiny, but that scrutiny needs to be based in reality and facts, not soccer moms who talk about the evil big pharma people out to get their kids. Again, here is a very thorough article on the topic of vaccination schedules should you be inclined to get more information http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=289

Anti-vaccination groups, such as those led by Jenny McCarthy, are gaining a significant amount of publicity these days. One of the most unfortunate bits of news is that McCarthy herself will be getting her own talk show thanks to Oprah. The medical community as a whole needs to start standing up to these erroneous claims and educating the masses before these previously defeated diseases start popping up again.

Dr. Steven Novella has a pretty good write-up about the whole situation here if you are interested http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=444