mattrepl

Since it was released before MS' offering, Spotlight was probably inspirational to Vista's search.

>Where this technique is useful is cases where the method being called is impossible to know until runtime, such as in Ruby or Groovy. Scala, like Java, is not like this and the compiler can be guaranteed to have enough information to generate the right bytecode for the call inline.

What about polymorphic method calls? Statically typed or not, which method implementation to invoke is impossible to know until runtime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymorphism_in_object-oriented...

A MS usually requires about 30 credit hours, or 10 courses. Do these accelerated MS programs have the same requirements?

Sounds like earning the degree now may shorten the program's duration.

There are two biologists, one physicist, one neuroscientist, and one medical scientist. The list is dominated by individuals with careers in politics, religion, literature, philosophy, and history.

Thanks for mentioning the text you're using. I'm looking for a resource beyond Wikipedia for abstract algebra and Dummit and Foote looks good, but I'm worried that the lack of solutions makes it inappropriate for self-study.

Anyone know of an abstract algebra text that is well-suited for an autodidactic mathematician with a basic understanding of the subject?

For the same reasons, shouldn't TechCrunch stories be banned?

It's worth noting that the buyer, Live Current Media, is based in Vancouver, BC. Anecdotally, that area seems to have a large number of Smalltalkers.

Indeed, laughed after reading that this morning.

I'm paranoid, if my deprived server[1] goes down, the post can also be read here: http://dynamictyping.tumblr.com/post/31152364

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[1] It'll get more love when I get more time.

Individual rates can be ridiculous, organizations like the Freelancers Union may fix that.

Beyond the difference in cost per individual, when health care is tied to an employer it can be a deterrent from changing employers. For instance, an employee undergoing cancer treatment would be forced to stay with the current employer and insurance policy even if they received a better job offer.

There are some federal requirements for covering pre-existing conditions, but they do allow for a period of time where no coverage for those conditions is provided. Some states require immediate coverage of pre-existing conditions.

The original intent of this post wasn't to seek out risk-reduction in startups but to spark a discussion on how health care in the U.S. could be improved.

But what if it wasn't short-term. What if YC alumni decided to band together for health care?

A group of independent contractors is maybe simpler to think about than YC and the companies it produces.

It may be that health care being tied to employment is the real problem. The customer of the insurance companies are corporations, not people. That leaves two options: become a corporation or create an alternative means to get health care.

For the startup crowd, becoming a corporation is the obvious path. Founders may go without health care during the early days, but the ones really out of luck are independent contractors.

It's interesting that this article is at the top of the front page -- unexpected topic to fit the category of hacker news.

My theory: problem solving and unconventional solutions are of interest to hackers and this article presents poverty as a puzzle and hints at an intriguing fix.

Alan Turing - Be true to yourself.

Epictetus - Perspective is everything.

Danc - Mastery through practice.

This could be a step towards self-hosting for Arc.

Category theory shares a lot with set theory, but they are different - they make different assumptions and each is better suited at describing certain types of systems. Graph theory is also its own topic in math, though sets can be used to talk about them

As for the Catsters' videos, I'm unsure about the best order. The recommendation to start with the natural transformations playlist came from someone in #haskell (Cale, maybe?). I'd suggest diving in to whatever sounds interesting and backing up to review other videos that contain any new terms.

I'm in a similar situation and have the same concern. I've told friends about the idea and gotten them to try out the prototype, but I haven't done anything more.

Keeping the idea close is partly out of concern that someone with better timing will run with it, but also that I don't want to write about how cool it is until it's stable and complete enough for a public release.

As an aside, am also looking for hackers to join forces with, but in Austin for the fall.

Category theory is important to type theory and semantics (Pierce, see below, also wrote several books on types in programming languages) and offers a different representation of computational flow (monads, arrows).

Benjamin Pierce's "Basic Category Theory for Computer Scientists" (not online) is terse and complete [1].

Wikipedia is good for definitions and there's also a Wikibook on category theory: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Category_theory

There are some brief, informative, and fun lectures on YouTube by the Catsters: http://www.youtube.com/profile_play_list?user=TheCatsters

The natural transformations playlist is where to start, just be ready to use the aforementioned references.

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[1] Natural transformations are the original point of category theory. A text that doesn't cover them is incomplete.

I didn't submit it.

That was lazy of me. Will update with the eval in a few.

The problem may be that the growth of users and, it follows, submissions is independent from the growth of HN-worthy postings. That is, there isn't enough good content for everyone to make good contributions.

As more "poor" submissions are made, the "mediocre" submissions begin to look better and the community standards are lowered.

A recent talk given at FringeDC on xmonad, a window manager written in Haskell.

More information at the speaker's site: http://byorgey.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/fringedc-talk/

I'm surprised no one brought up column-oriented databases.

When attributes can be added dynamically and/or are have a small value set, column-oriented databases with bitmap indices outperform traditional relational databases.

See MonetDB for an open source, usable column-oriented db with bitmap index support: http://monetdb.nl/

For more kvetching on the topic: http://dynamictyping.org/post/29661699#disqus_thread

I tried to find a public research document with performance comparisons, but to no avail.

>If there was an good enough reason for a business undergrad to pursue a masters in CS or engineering, you'd probably see more of it.

It's a cost-benefit tradeoff and you're only considering the benefits while treating the costs equal.

I surmise it's easier for a person without a business background to pick up an MBA than it is for a non-CS/Math/Eng person to pick up a Masters in any of those fields. The learning curves and requirements are different.

Oh yeah, downloading the latest shareware games (Wacky Wheels, Duke Nukem, Tyrian, Jazz Jackrabbit, etc.) and playing Barren Realms Elite, Falcon Eye, L.O.R.D., and TradeWars.

Was a member of several BBSes in the 703 area code. The BizZ BuzZ and R/C Connection are where I spent most of my time.

Ever shrinking attention spans.