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otto

77 karma · joined July 3, 2008

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otto··on We Learn to Grow Crops in Saltwater
Have less kids? Adopt?

Not that I'm advocating this. I think people should be responsible enough to choose how much to reproduce.

otto··on Apollo 11 Dismembered
The author seems to be a bit misinformed.

because there are only a few shuttle missions left. After that, nada. Nothing. Zilch.

True, there are only a few more shuttle missions(http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle). However this isn't the end of manned space exploration, check out the Orion spacecraft(http://www.nasa.gov/orion/). NASA recently tested MLAS(http://www.nasa.gov/centers/wallops/missions/mlas.html).

Oh sure, NASA talks about designing a space plane- but they’ve been talking about designing a space plane since before Neil took his ride- and I ain’t seen one yet.

NASA has worked on this, many pilots of the X-15 qualified as astronauts, though I would not consider this a space plane either. Several Single Stage to Orbit ships have been built(none of them coming close to orbit)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-stage-to-orbit).

NASA isn’t going back to the moon, not any time soon.

Bah! Constellation program, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Constellation)

It bothers me that posts like this with such misinformation exists. Does NASA not have enough publicity to get this information out there?

otto··on The Devil Is in the Digits: Evidence That Iran's Election Was Rigged
The probability that a fair election would produce [these number distribution disparities] is less than .005.

How did they calculate this probability. I can see what they did in other spots, but this number seems to come out of nowhere to me.

otto··on College Is A Waste. Replace It With Y Combinator
These posts come up every few months, more often than not written by people that did not go to college.

"Students today leave school with so much debt" I finished school debt-free. I saved up for school and applied for as many scholarships as I could. Many employers will even give you signing bonuses to help pay off student loans.

"What it teaches is out of date by the time students graduate" College is not a tech school. Going to college is more about learning how to learn and meeting people. If you really want to go places in your field of study you spend lots of time out of class exploring new ideas, and if this is the case you will likely be ahead of the curve through most of your life.

"People learn by doing, not by sitting in a class and being lectured to." Yeah. Most science and engineering classes are heavily lab and project based.

"Four years of information is too much to retain" Perhaps for some. However those same people can easily review and be back up to speed.

"The truth is that college is one big party" College is what you make of it.

otto··on Darcs' Theory of patches
I found that to be quite the opposite. Having finished my CS degree and taken various analysis of algorithm classes I found proofs to involve lots more hand holding and shortcuts.

I'm working on finishing my Mathematics degree and proofs are much more vigorous.

otto··on Ask Hacker News: Online BS in Comp Sci?
I've worked with a person that received a Software Engineering degree from the University of Phoenix. He was a very intelligent and interested computer scientist.

The degree is just a piece of paper that gets you in the door. The college experience is a great place to network, though I'm not sure how this would work at an online university. The real learning comes from your own interest and desire to figure new things out on your own.

That said I recently finished my BS in CS from a traditional university and now am working on a degree in Mathematics.

otto··on Ask HN: Whats the coolest thing you've seen/done with Arduino?
What type of pumps did you use, the link for them didn't work?

I've been trying to find cheap food-grade pumps for a similar project.

otto··on Ask HN: Someone is trying to clone my site - what do I do?
That sounds horribly unethical.

If there was future litigation between the two sites, this would look very bad.

otto··on Ask HN: Using personal code at work
One important distinction to make is:

Are you considered a contractor or an employee?

I'd recommend talking to the legal department, or contacting someone you know in IP law(an actual lawyer, not some random HN reader).

otto··on The Code Even the CIA Can't Crack
The artist has done other sculptures that have been solved, and the first 3 parts have been solved. So I doubt it is gibberish.

If you are interested you might check out Elonka's website: http://elonka.com/kryptos/

She's given talks all over the country on Kryptos.

otto··on Obama Unveils Plan to Fund High-Speed Passenger Rail
You can generally find a seat.

The only issue I ever ran into was finding a group of seats together; in that case you might want to reserve seats(otherwise you get to hotbox with a cigarette smoking Japanese businessman!)

otto··on PHP on Google App Engine (using Quercus)
http://github.com/moriyoshi/quercus-gae/tree/master Seems to be the patched code. There is also a HOWTO document.
otto··on 50 mb Linux livecd distro with a XUL interface and 10 second boot
Only in countries with laws similar to the DMCA is it illegal.
otto··on 2009 Rubyist's guide to a Mac OS X development environment
Do you know where the vim configuration files are in macvim? I'm curious to see how they did that.

http://repo.or.cz/w/MacVim.git?a=tree;hb=refs/heads/master

otto··on College vs Start-up - It's not about the job
That really depends on how you plan things.If you want to go to college you will find the means for it.

I personally planned financially for it, applied for as many scholarships as I could, hold 2 jobs and work through holidays. Not to mention there are ways to reduce the cost of a degree. Take general ed classes at a community college and then transfer credits.

I'll be finishing my second bachelors degree in Mathematics(finished my CS degree already) with no debt.

otto··on The Pirate Bay Trial Day 3: The ‘King Kong’ Defense
But they also are providing trackers. They are assisting in copyright violations and they often mock requests to remove such files that help others violate copyright.

That said, my thoughts are based on US copyright.

Please mod me down, but this case is a bit more complicated than "I like to torrent Music" and other self-serving interests.

otto··on The Pirate Bay Trial Day 3: The ‘King Kong’ Defense
Does Google break the law because it makes it easy for me to search for mp3s to download?

Google isn't hosting the files that point to trackers and ultimately other peers to download from.

There are cases similar to this: Galoob v Nintendo. In this case Galoob was cleared of charges as it was found that users of Game Genie, while altering games, were not creating derivative works that violated Copyright.

Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation Professional photographer vs image search service. It was decided since Arriba was just showing thumbnails and did not have the actual files on their servers they were in the clear.

I personally think the charges are a little out of hand. That said if you don't have rights to the files you are doing something wrong. The repercussions of the pirate bay winning or losing this case are definitely going to be interesting.

otto··on All I need is an iPod touch and Monitor
This idea has been discussed. I personally remember 3 years ago when everyone though people would be working off of thin clients within the year.

However a lot of people do more with a computer than currently offered by online spreadsheets and email.

Not to mention companies and government that have strict IT security policies that wouldn't allow data on these external networks.

otto··on Want Git Preinstalled On The Next OS X?
Even "novice developers" are able to:

  1. download macports
  2. double click an installer and click next a few times
  3. type 'sudo port install git-core'
otto··on Apple: Jobs to Take Medical Leave of Absence
Historically that has not been the case though. In the short run it probably will not be much of an issue for Apple as there is not a huge shift in management.
otto··on Dean Kamen's 'LED Nation'
http://superbrightleds.com/edison_globe.html is currently selling LED products for homes and vehicles currently. Though they are expensive.

What sort of area of the market are you planning to target with your product?

Full disclosure: I previously worked for superbrightleds several years ago.

otto··on Segway's new hyperdirectional RMP robot
It's been done.

Apparently these videos are very impressive compared to current forklifts(or so I've been told by forklift operators): http://www.airtrax.com/

otto··on Segway's new hyperdirectional RMP robot
That's similar, however the Segway RMP is using mecanum wheels.
otto··on iPhone Takes Screenshots of Everything You Do
Though RAM is volatile it is possible to get data off of it. I've heard of techniques of using extreme cold temperatures to slow the clearing of data.

I think there are papers on this referring to it as "Low temperature data remanence"

otto··on How Our Culture Keeps Students Out of Science
"Gates has a compelling point — largely because the shortage of Americans holding or pursuing advanced degrees in fields like computer science defies conventional market explanations. The average annual salary in the field is more than $100,000. Meanwhile, we have a robust supply of high-IQ baristas and college graduates with jobs that a generation ago would not even have required a high-school diploma."

Where? My first offer was for 50k, increasing to 60k after six months in LA County. Is this a PhD average salary?

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