brianto2010

I'm also a college student, but not sure how much authority I have on this matter.

Grades (I think) are only an approximation of your knowledge. Take them with a grain of salt, unless things like financial aid or enrollment hang in the balance. I've gotten F's on a few exams before, but I've also gotten two fantastic internships. Grades won't reflect that.

What kind of things did your professor dock points for? Simple mistakes? Or are they conceptual mistakes? Do you feel that the exam material is relatively important? And did you learn?

I (personally) wouldn't worry about what to feel, but instead took towards a goal (like working at Google!).

Just making sure I won't be working with idiots.

I think the the interviewer (or company) would probably take this as an insult.

But I do agree with you in that these types of interview questions are pointless. Spitting back an answer verbatim demonstrates nothing.

A neat approach that I've seen people use is to take a you-should-know-this concept such as the merging part of merge sort and put a twist in it, so it isn't a simple spit-the-answer-back, but different enough to require some thought.

For what it's worth, you can use the local keyword to limit the scope of variables.

http://www.lua.org/pil/4.2.html

"It is unfair to label this poor quality, the author clearly describes a problem with moving a security tool like SSH into the browser."

Yes, I agree. The grandparent does point out a valid problem. However I believe the parent was referring to the sarcastic tone and negativity, which I also believe should be out of place here on Hacker News.

I do not believe that was the point of the article. Extrapolations and technicalities aside, she is showing her perspective of why she is pissed at the cryptoparty community. Personally, I find that somewhat interesting.

> R is currently the lingua franca for academic statisticians. New methods papers, textbooks, and toolkits are much more likely to ship with R libraries and implementations then Matlab or anything else.

Is this the same in industry? I've heard a professor say that SAS is more widely used.

Maybe it'll be a Christmas present. :-)

At RIT at least, R and NumPy aren't in the core curriculum. Instead, there is a "Statistical Computing" class which covers SAS. Most students either use Minitab or Excel. Surprisingly (or not), a lot of in-class work is done using a graphing calculator. Of course, that also carries into a lot of the homework.

I wonder, do statisticians actually use graphing calculators to do stats?

Good point about the karma limit. I was writing under a different assumption.

What I was proposing in my earlier post was exactly as you say: explain the downvote.

Maybe let everyone downvote, but have tiny radio buttons with reasons next to them. :-)

"New" members shouldn't downvote because they might not downvote the right things, or for the right reasons. I do not consider lurkers "new members."

I also disagree with the idea of karma-driven downvote system. However, I wrote the above with the assumption that those who can downvote know HN values and enforce them. As you pointed out, yes the karma-downvote thing doesn't quite accomplish it's goal (assuming the goal is to allow senior members to act as enforcers). It should change. However that wasn't quite the point of my post.

My original point is: if you gonna say smack, gimme a damn good reason why.

That's a neat idea. -1 doesn't mean much without a comment explaining why.

I do have a concern, though. If this system is implemented, doesn't that mean that the "new kids" will also have access to this system and may use it to exasperate HN's "new kids" problem?

What about modifying the existing HN guidelines to include comments and promote the guidelines more? For example, cite a downvote with an appropriate quote from the guidelines.

This is a huge stretch, but will there be any support for noweb?

Whenever I use LaTeX, it's usually for math/physics/stat homework where either computation or graphs are involved. It would be lovely if I could somehow inject (for example)

    <<echo=FALSE,fig=TRUE>>=
    x <- -5:5
    y <- (x - 2)^2 - 5

    plot(x, y)
    @

> You wouldn't call a software architect simply 'an architect' (would you?).

Yes, yes I would.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architect_(disambiguation)

- third bullet down

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_(disambiguation)

- look under 'Process Architecture'

So, are you saying that a discipline that does not involve the physical world cannot necessarily be an engineering discipline?

Personally, I don't usually see people favoring the word "engineer" over programmer or software developer. As for myself, I see them as synonyms.

> way too much money for what you're going to get.

YMMV.

Co-op program. And networking.

A lot of companies see RIT as a huge talent pool, and dedicate quite a bit of recruiting resources to look for potential interns and full-timers. Plus, you'll find peers that you can use to develop your professional network.

Same here, but mine is

    nnoremap <Tab> gt
    nnoremap <S-Tab> gT

Do restaurant owners recieve complaints about Asians? Gays? Muslims? Do restaurant owners recieve those complaints at the level that they do about young children? Are those complaints justified as they are in this case?

If you're on Linux, there is worklog. There's a bit of initial setup with config files, but after you've done that switching tasks is as simple as (switching to your terminal and) hitting a key.

Here's a site I always go to for reference: http://statmethods.net/

Programming books are usually a chore for me to read through. I usually lose focus within 10 or so minutes. That said, there are a few exceptions:

  * _Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby[1]
  * The Tao of Programming[2]

[2] http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html

Why's guide has enough non-text/geeky humor to keep me reading. And, it's mostly pictures! You're learning, but it doesn't 'feel' like you're learning.

The Tao of Programming flows differently than other books, which blast you with information. Instead of telling you stuff directly, it is anecdotal. Rather than didactic, it's like a parable.

Awesome! I learned about zt, zb, zz, ^x ^f, and ^x ^i today. They'll definitely come in handy.

That was not the point of the study. The point of the study was to examine the relational map within the high school. It was not to examine sexual hygiene of students in the school.

> "It would be of far more educational value to the group that was studied and all their peers."

How is that so?

> "This idea fails even on its own, since it presumes that URLs have structure, even within a particular site."

Don't sites usually have regular URL structures. Or, at least, could be organized into regular structures? In Rails, we have routes that map to URLs, like

  <website>/clothing/shirts/
  <website>/electronics/cellphones/verison
  <website>/<department>/<item_type>/<brand>

I guess it's a bit late, but I was joking. If it were truly light, I wouldn't have mentioned (noticed) it.

I'll put smileys next to jokes next time, OK?

A People's History of the United States (Zinn) [http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-Present/...]

There's so much history that isn't taught in school (politically covered up) and Zinn presents many of these little-known history gems. Be warned, there is a light liberal swing.

Heh... reminds me of éX-Driver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-Driver#Overview). I think the idea has potential, but I don't think it will be safely feasible.

> "A test drive off campus on Thursday illustrates the many hazards. A tractor trailer blocked visibility entering a busy traffic circle, forcing the lead vehicle to inch tentatively into oncoming cars. When it did find a break, there wasn't enough time for the second vehicle to follow before another car inserted itself between them, cutting off communication"

Hardstyle: http://listen.di.fm/public3/hardstyle.pls

Eurodance: http://listen.di.fm/public3/eurodance.pls

Eurobeat: http://go2id.net:8000/listen.pls

JPop: http://kawaii-radio.net/listen.m3u

  backtrack = true unless consequence.signifies? :block_end

> "the top voted articles are not the ones that I would want to read."

Then, how about using the top 10 from the classic view? http://news.ycombinator.com/classic Would that help?