JosefK

Like baloons...

stupid has the one hell of a hangover.

Either he's trying to make the style mirror the content intentionally, or he just doesn't care much for standard English. I disagree either way.

Totally not worth it, for you, for the poor processors, for anybody.

Clearly you're more motivated to win an argument on the internet than to keep $1500. That would seem to belie your argument.

> In particular, the level of math in academic computer science research made some progress with Knuth and since then has, in a word, sucked.

Could you elaborate on this? As someone currently pursuing a PhD in theoretical computer science, I often simply tell (nontechnical/nonacademic) people that I study mathematics rather than computer science, so this offhand remark is somewhat at odds with my personal experience.

http://cakesy.com/832e3969a.jpg

I believe you mean Max-Cut can be 2 approximated with the trivial random algorithm. Min cut can be solved exactly, and that algorithm would give an expected n^2 approx factor (for min cut).

This story seems to have at least the air of exaggeration around it. See http://www.csicop.org/si/show/bacteria_ulcers_and_ostracism_... for the history around the adoption of H. Pylori hypothesis.