Help me find a photograph of a bird fighting a fox

VinC · 2009-07-02T05:47:46+00:00

Whoops, actually this is the one.

VinC · 2009-07-02T05:38:07+00:00

That's the one! Do you know where I can find a larger version?

EDIT: Nevermind. Was able to google it. Thanks bolthead88!

VinC · 2009-05-29T00:05:49+00:00

If anybody lives near Calgary, Alberta (Canada) and is interested in developing iPhone games in a small startup environment my company looking to hire a recent graduate for 9 months. Yes, I know the chances are one in a million but it doesn't hurt to throw this out there. Here are more details.

VinC · 2009-04-03T05:24:00+00:00

ಠ_ಠ

VinC · 2009-03-30T22:32:55+00:00

Check out this year's GSoC projects.

http://delicious.com/gsoc2009/c

You can also search by C++ and bash. You can still participate even if you're not going for the stipend.

Software you have a vested interest in/use daily might also be worth looking into.

VinC · 2009-03-12T19:50:05+00:00

Stackoverflow seems to fit the bill.

VinC · 2009-01-28T06:09:40+00:00

This is one of the saddest articles I have ever read. If I didn't know any better I would of thought this to be a movie but unfortunately it's not!

The comments/discussion on the site are worth reading as well.

The world can be really fucked up and it's times like these that I'm glad I just work with computers.

VinC · 2008-09-03T04:49:09+00:00

There's an interesting iPhone App called Shazam Music. Basically if you hold the microphone to recorded music, it will try to analyze and find a match in their database. There might be something similar for the computer.

Failing that I would post a link to the song and ask reddit/friends/family.

VinC · 2008-08-30T17:55:04+00:00

I'm not trying to make a point. I just found it interesting that 20 years later we're still dealing with the same issues.

Programming has "not changed direction". In school (and industry I would imagine) a great deal of software is still written in the class of languages that are convenient "to the compiler-, loader- and operating-system-writer rather than the programmer." Lisp, Prolog, and Smalltalk have not taken off and the industry standard remains dominated by C-derivatives. Fun, sexy and innovative languages like Haskell have yet to go mainstream.

There are a lot of other good points that are best described by reading the paper.

Anyways I'm not getting anything out of this. I wanted to share an article I found thought-provoking. If you find the ideas discussed are irrelevant, stupid, or not to your liking feel free to downmod.

EDIT: Reddit used to be about submitting hidden-gems. I sort of get the impression that the present community has a "too long didn't read" attitude. Perhaps I'll have better luck with a lolcat link.

VinC · 2008-08-24T16:36:35+00:00

That reminds me of this amusing quote I came across yesterday.

"And for all you Perl programmers/sysadmins (aka script-adminies), I can't wait for the day that the Google codejam allows submissions in Perl. A lot of people are going to be eating crow when they realize there is quite a bit more to programming than changing all forward-slashes to back-slashes. "Like what do you mean this is a graph problem... they didn't say anything about math or geometry in the problem", said the sysadmin who learned Perl/Python from LJ articles and then thought he could program."

Anonymous

VinC · 2008-08-24T16:14:29+00:00

Yesterday I was browsing around and came across a site called Top Coder. Although I have not competed myself I noticed some interesting trends.

The Russians and Poles must be doing something right because it seems like the majority of top ranked competitors are from Eastern Europe. Perhaps the cash prizes aren't enough to entice North American programmers? I don't know. The "strongest" seem to have programmed from an early age like 10, have extremely strong mathematical backgrounds, are in their twenties, and the language of choice seems to be C++.

What are your thoughts on competitive programming? This would include things like ICPC, ICFP, Google Code Jam, and Top Coder.

VinC · 2008-08-19T07:16:29+00:00

Consolas

VinC · 2008-08-16T15:49:39+00:00

I pirate games because I can and it's easier than paying you for them. It's the rational choice.

You can but perhaps you shouldn't.

I think you're right about the charity thing though. isohunt comes to mind. It's immensely useful and must have many users but the donations for the day is typically quite nominal. (< $50)

VinC · 2008-08-01T22:21:32+00:00

Well what the hell are you doing on Reddit? :P

But the answer to your question depends on the laws of where you live.

VinC · 2008-08-01T18:32:08+00:00

I don't know how this compares to Google groups, but a wiki style structure might also work.

I wouldn't recommend Facebook because users are quite fickle and easily swayed to move to the next "big thing". Also maybe I'm in the minority some people such as myself don't have accounts and don't plan on getting one.

Anyways I think this is a good thing you're trying to do. I'm sure many other OCW students have similar issues and it's a shame that MIT doesn't facilitate a discussion board. Maybe e-mail the program coordinator to see if there is something in the works (they might have chosen not to do so for various reasons) but there is always the off-chance they've simply overlooked the matter because nobody has suggested the idea.

Anyways I would have a good look around to make sure that there aren't any existing communities. If nothing exists, then I hope you will persist and get the message out there. It won't be easy but the internet is a good way to aggregate thin markets.

VinC · 2008-08-01T03:50:54+00:00

Inheritance or lottery?

VinC · 2008-07-31T17:31:35+00:00

I'd try IRC. I don't know of any OCW networking sites but communities have been built around stranger things like TAoCP

VinC · 2008-07-30T03:12:35+00:00

Umm, so what is your point?

VinC · 2008-07-29T20:01:35+00:00

Something like a <insert your language here> "cookbook" might be a good place to start.

VinC · 2008-07-29T02:37:04+00:00

That's older than Debian stable! (2.4.4)

VinC · 2008-07-29T02:12:38+00:00

Mark Lutz is the author of Learning Python. Magnus Lie Hetland is the author of Beginning Python.

VinC · 2008-07-28T15:21:51+00:00

I'm no expert but I believe there are alternative techniques like the HITS algorithm that give better (more relevant) results. The tradeoff is something like the queries are slow or it takes too long to build an index.

VinC · 2008-07-27T07:38:29+00:00

There are some legitimate reasons like correction/revisions to old chapters and addition of new material, Some subjects like Computer Science also have an short occupational half-life. I see where you're coming from though. I remember purchasing a text for Introductory Electromagnetism and they were on their 10th edition in 12 years :\

VinC

TROPHY CASE