Hacker News: michael_dorfman

Knuth: Announcing the first Art of Computer Programming eBook

michael_dorfman — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 08:32:31 +0000

Article URL: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6793057

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

New comment by michael_dorfman in "8192+ bit RSA keys in OS X"

michael_dorfman — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 13:01:12 +0000

Or, channeling Ken Thompson: Unless the tentacles extend to the compiler you use to compile the compiler you use to compile the free software.

(Lather. Rinse. Repeat.)

New comment by michael_dorfman in "A Holiday in Honor of the Korean Writing System"

michael_dorfman — Fri, 11 Oct 2013 18:15:38 +0000

> Please read about the alphabet system of Sanskrit and various modern languages that derives from Sanskrit

The Sanskrit alphabet is very elegant indeed, but Sanskrit doesn't have a writing system. None of the various scripts used to encode Sanskrit (Siddham, Lantsa, Devanagari, Kharoshti etc.) are, in my opinion, anywhere near as well-structured as the Sanskrit alphabet.

>In addition to that, sanskrit alphabets encompasses almost every possible consonant and vowel sounds that a human can generate.

That's nowhere near true; listen to some languages like Xhosa, or even a tonal language like Chinese, and try to transliterate them using Sanskrit.

>Sanskrit grammar is again another beautiful and well thought creation that is considered the best grammar to be used for scientific work.

Sanskrit grammar is highly regular, which is why it is used in some AI applications, but there's no reason to think it is "the best grammar to be used for scientific work." And, as structured as Sanskrit grammar is, it still opens itself up to ambiguities-- it is nowhere near as clean as an artificial language would be.

Sanskrit is a great language, but there's no need to oversell it.

New comment by michael_dorfman in "I was struck by lightning yesterday—and boy am I sore"

michael_dorfman — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:22:11 +0000

I worked in an IT department of about 20, of which two employees had each been hit twice.

New comment by michael_dorfman in "Pirates playing a game dev simulator complain about piracy"

michael_dorfman — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 12:36:54 +0000

It's a reference to a famous quote by Sweden's trade minister in 1999, who said "Norway is the last Soviet State"

New comment by michael_dorfman in "Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?"

michael_dorfman — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:45:22 +0000

If a headline is phrased as a question, the answer is always "no." If the answer were "yes", they wouldn't have phrased it as a question.

New comment by michael_dorfman in "Turing"

michael_dorfman — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 11:52:21 +0000

But his paper “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem” (the one that gave the world the Turing Machine) has a bug in it. In fact, it has two. The first is obvious enough that I spotted it when i read the paper for the first time. The second bug is rather more subtle (but still fixable. It’s okay, the field of computing is not build on sand).

I'd love to see the identification of these-- it seems quite perverse to mention them in a blog posting without at least a footnote giving the details.

New comment by michael_dorfman in "[dead]"

michael_dorfman — Tue, 29 May 2012 10:08:07 +0000

See the FAQ (http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

New comment by michael_dorfman in "Printed books existed nearly 600 years before Gutenberg’s Bible"

michael_dorfman — Sun, 20 May 2012 16:01:30 +0000

And, actually, last week was the 1144th anniversary of the printing of the oldest book for which we have a precise date:

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/05/dayintech_0511/

New comment by michael_dorfman in "Plagiarism"

michael_dorfman — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:51:45 +0000

Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here.

I'll give it a shot. What you should have done, in my opinion, is just provide a link alongside a one-line summary, along the lines of "Here's an article we found fascinating."

If the article you are writing is based on a single source, it's not an article-- it's a paraphrase.

We work immensely had to product original content as well as link to original sources when deserved...this case was absolutely no different.

so, which was this? It was more than a link, but it surely doesn't qualify as "original content" by any stretch of the imagination.

New comment by michael_dorfman in "A story about Miles Davis and the nature of true genius"

michael_dorfman — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:33:02 +0000

Yes, but Bill Evans did the arrangements on Kind of Blue; he is also rumoured to have composed several of the songs (although they are credited to Miles.)

New comment by michael_dorfman in "A story about Miles Davis and the nature of true genius"

michael_dorfman — Wed, 09 May 2012 11:13:46 +0000

No; Bill Evans and Gil Evans are two different people (and both collaborated with Miles.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Evans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Evans

New comment by michael_dorfman in "I made a game in my spare time. With your help, my game can beat Zynga."

michael_dorfman — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:41:52 +0000

Wow, you sure did this wrong. A post like this is going to be aggressively ignored, I imagine. If, on the other hand, you had written a solid blog post about what you've done, and what you've learned doing it, you would have likely gone to the front page, and garnered a lot of attention for yourself (and goodwill from the friendly denizens here.)

Alan Turing wartime research papers released by GCHQ

michael_dorfman — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:33:00 +0000

Article URL: http://www.gchq.gov.uk/Press/Pages/turing-papers-released.aspx

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3878007

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by michael_dorfman in "Learn to read the source, Luke"

michael_dorfman — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 07:33:47 +0000

Just glancing over at my bookshelf, how about Tanenbaum's OSDI and Knuth's MMIXware?

New comment by michael_dorfman in "Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem explained"

michael_dorfman — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 11:25:08 +0000

> But if a person accepts the Church Turing Thesis, then the human brain is not doing any computation that can't be modeled by a Turing Machine. In fact, the brain is at least a Turing Machine. Gödel's limitations will apply to it.

That's not the case. If one accepts the Church Turing Thesis, then those functions the brain performs on effectively calculable functions can be performed on a Turing Machine. The brain is at least a Turing Machine, but may be greatly more than one, and Gödel's limitations will only apply to that portion doing calculations. The brain may very well be doing a great deal more than simple computation.

Thus, when you write I argue that the mind is a program that runs on that Turing machine, you're leaping off into wild speculation.

New comment by michael_dorfman in "Self-contained, Internet-less Wikipedia machine."

michael_dorfman — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 10:22:34 +0000

> Again and again, this topic keeps coming up and the surprising truth is: paper is the answer. Don't discount it.

Paper is good, but clay tablets FTW.

New comment by michael_dorfman in "Tacocopter - Flying Robots Deliver Tacos To You"

michael_dorfman — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:36:08 +0000

I know of someone (here in Norway) trying to build up a business doing precisely this (filming things, such as snowboard and ski events) via a remote-controlled helicopter.

It sounds like a cool project.

New comment by michael_dorfman in "Ask HN: Surgery for RSI injuries? Running out of options..."

michael_dorfman — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 16:17:45 +0000

Have you spoken to a physical therapist?

There's quite a bit of space on the spectrum between "trying things on your own" and "surgery".

New comment by michael_dorfman in "5 Graph Databases to Consider"

michael_dorfman — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 07:53:02 +0000

Actually, this article is about 5 Graph DBMS's.

If you are (like me) more interested in looking for Graph Databases to consider, it looks like Knuth's "Stanford GraphBase" is still the go-to source.