When Python's symbolic computation abilities are even at a tenth of Mathematica's (especially for discrete functions like we love in computer science), I'd be more than happy to switch over. Perhaps someone could integrate Python with Sage or Octave.
not even. I'm working on a mathematica notebook that (mathematically, not physically) simulates the action of an enzyme... It generates a 120x120 matrix of kinetic parameters, symbolically solves to make sure there aren't contradictions (mostly conservation of mass), and then solves the 120-parameter differential equation. Then it does it 1000 times and collates the data (although I'm sure python could do that).
Reducing a new problem to a special case of another, already solved problem is a wonderful skill. Not to mention that the analysis of algorithms can help you discern, at least conceptually, between best-case, average-case and worst-case outcomes to problems that aren't necessarily algorithmic, and react or plan appropriately.
You don't even need to go that far. For non-critical applications (i.e., your web app), you can randomly generate a small string, say 12 bytes, using base-62 characters (A-Za-z0-9) to serve as a probably unique user ID (with VERY high probability).
In some cases, including a timestamp in an ID can be giving away information considered private. Sure, you could just hash the resultant ID, but then you're getting back to random digits anyway.
Especially when you have such pretty defaults in things like Matlab and Mathematica.
Matplotlib (http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/) is actually the best opensource library for creating great looking graphs that I have come across, and is comparable to Matlab and Mathematica.
I guess taste comes in place - I find producing good (as in academic publication good) figures in matlab an exercice of pain. The subplot mechanism is awful (at least was 5 years ago), and it is hard to control the layout. I heard mathematic is much better in that regard, but never used it myself.
This raises the larger question about how much influence hackers and developers really have in terms of product adoption. There seem to be two schools of thought:
(1) Hackers/nerds are early adopters. Thus, they will influence "normal" people to use products that they judge to be superior.
(2) Hackers/nerds are a tiny proportion of the population with no real influence. They might push esoteric but superior technologies, but large-scale adoption will ultimately be driven by how quickly cat pictures can be shared with the largest group of people.
The author of the article clearly believes in (2), but Apple seems to be making money off (1). So which is it? Or is this some sort of false dichotomy to begin with?
"Or is this some sort of false dichotomy to begin with?"
Yes.
When you are starting out, you need that first critical mass of people to get your service going. Those are the nerds looking for the next 'cool' thing.
Once you have a service going, you can ditch the nerds, they are a small segment of the population. Instead pander to the lowest common denominator. I don't see how Apple is making money off (1).
I'm a nerd and I haven't owned an Apple product recently (disclosure: I had a B&W G3 in the late 90s; it was sick, I mean, firewire and usb, man).
The iPod was not the first mp3 player. (In fact, it had worse specs and a higher price than its contemporaries back in the day...)
And with their computers, I mean, realistically, they are making money off of overpriced hardware running warmed-over BSD. Sure, its got a fancy skin, but the in terms of the substantive stuff, it is BSD.
Where they really make money is incredibly amazingly great marketing and an increasingly loyal user population. You could say that the loyal group of users is due to 'superior' something or other (tech ux, etc.).
This might be true, but i can't imagine them actually winning market capital with those. Where they really win are with the commercials that I can't friggin' get out of my head.
So sure, false dichotomy, and no one ever made money off of (1), (1) is kind of the price you pay to jumpstart your market.
From the point of view of the majority of their users it's high end (but not these days overpriced) hardware that happens to have a reliable underpinning to a fantastic UI.
Sure, it's got some BSD underneath, but in terms of the substantive stuff, it's the fantastic UI the users care about.
Of course as an fvwm2 user for half a decare plus, I hate Aqua, but at least I'm aware there's a point there to be missed.
It’s flamebait because your implication is that anyone who uses it or likes it is only doing so because it is well marketed/trendy. That is insulting, for obvious reasons, to anyone who uses it because they believe it is legitimately superior.
Frankly though, your argument is just wrong, on the merits. Most BSD distributions have nothing like the set of tools and APIs that Apple ships with OS X: they don’t have interface tools rivaling interface builder (at least that I’ve seen), they don’t have the APIs for sound and images, they don’t have the APIs for speech synthesis and speech recognition, they don’t have the APIs for integration with a built-in address book, they don’t have APIs for rich typographical support, or printing, or so easily connecting interfaces with a database backend, or doing 3d transformations to portions of an interface, etc. etc. etc.
The further implication is that things like well-supported hardware that comes in predictable configurations, very good technical support for developers who run into difficulty, a large ecosystem of high quality applications and discriminating users, etc. etc. are all unimportant compared to your personal opinion of whether something is sufficiently technically innovative.
To be honest there’s really not that much in any computer system, in terms of groundbreaking ideas, that wasn’t in Doug Englebart’s “mother of all demos”, or in the Smalltalk machines at PARC. So one could argue I guess that everything done since the 70s is uninteresting and derivative. But there’s a world of difference between the ideas and a solid production implementation.
He used the usual lazy arguments and spoke of Facebook users as if they're a type.
"Facebook Messaging was built for Facebook fans. It wasn’t made for folk who are bothered about ‘privacy issues’ or the idea of oversharing"
How many hundred million users does Facebook have? It has them from all walks of life, with all sorts of opinions. Nerds and non-nerds.
From what I've seen, most people don't like Facebook. They use it because it's convenient and because other people do. They stay logged in because of the addictive nature of the status updates, so are more likely to respond quickly to messages, unlike with email.
A lot of people might use this new messaging system. It will be a bad thing if they do. Facebook has already proven numerous times that they can't be considered trusted custodians of peoples private data.
I also wouldn't like it if all my phone calls were routed through Facebook.
I don't think Apple is making a gross majority off of (1), it just happens that Apple's products can appeal to an even larger majority since they do appeal to "hackers/nerds"
I'm constantly amazed when the "hacker" types lack the ability to see the bigger picture wrt (2) you described. At least on internet comments, so many lead a very self centered viewpoint. By sheer numbers, it's clear that "hacker" types don't provide the influence that directly leads to the critical large-scale adoption that is desired by so many.
I don't think it's necessary to choose between (1) and (2) at all. "Hacker"-types and early adopters are necessary for any product to gain any traction. They hold early influence (which obviously varies depending on the product) which diminishes as the product gains a higher adoption rate.
> "Hacker"-types and early adopters are necessary for any product to gain any traction. They hold early influence (which obviously varies depending on the product) which diminishes as the product gains a higher adoption rate.
I guess then my question is whether "hackers" as an early-adopter group are worthwhile for targeting. Anyone have any anecdotes where a mainstream product started as a hacker niche?
It is almost always option 2. Unless it is a company offering cool new tech and/or directly targeted at hackers, I don't think I can think of even one large company that owes its success largely due to hacker/nerds as early adopters. Hackers tend to be extremely practical individuals, and in their pursuit to practical perfection, they often forget to realize that there are people out there who value practicality lower than many other factors (eg. aesthetics, social validation). I bet most hackers won't care much for Facebook's new release ("they just reinvented email folders -- really?"), but I'm sure the majority of Facebook's power-users will love it. Similarly, many hackers don't get the appeal of Apple's products as they believe they're sacrificing function for form, but Apple seems to be doing alright. Lots of opportunities arise when you realize that the majority of consumers out there are actually looking to gain a lot more than just practicality, even if that may come at a practical cost. Women don't wear high heels and emo teens don't wear overly tight jeans because they feel comfortable.
Oddly enough, a lot of Apple Fan boys are hackers but make the (2)-style arguments "you might not like this device but it's great for my mom who knows nothing about computers"
By and large most of those devices don't require you to hand over tons of personal (and potentially sensitive) information just to use them.
Edit: My point being that advocating on behalf of mom and dad when it comes to technology shouldn't be frowned upon if it really does make their lives easier and better.
Oh? What about the graph of everyone that you want to connect with and much of the communication between you and your "friends" (which is only boosted by these new features)?
Obviously if you want to follow your friends' activity and exchange messages with them over Facebook, you have to follow your friends' activity and exchange messages with them over Facebook. I'm not sure what the objection is here.
The point is that Facebook is based on trying to convince users to hand over as much private information as possible without making it seem like a bad thing (or even alerting them to the fact that everything they are doing is being recorded for the financial gain Facebook).
A lot of the 'lowest common denominator' people probably just see Facebook as a tool (or 'the internet'). They don't normally think about whether or not the hammer they are using is recording statistics on them from behind a two-way mirror, so why would they think the same thing of Facebook.
If a geek suggests that his parents should get an Apple computer because "It's 'just works' for my mom" it's not the same thing as Facebook because an Apple computer isn't monetized on the idea that Apple will coerce as much personal information out of your mom as is possible while trying to leave her as clueless as possible to the implications of doing so.
You don't want companies that you're a customer of to know your private information, that's fine, don't join them.
Personally I'd like it if my bank knows my name when they initiate a call to me.
You might like a bank that acts like this:
"Hello Customer with ID 31059283, your bank account balance is negative five dollars and is overdrawn. The last transaction was an eftpos transaction for $5 at a fast food restaurant. We are unable to tell you any other transactions prior to your account being overdrawn because as a matter of privacy policy we only store the last piece of transaction data. "
Well, I don't. Companies that don't know anything about me don't have my business, they just can't compete, like the Ford Model T.
> You don't want companies that you're a customer of
> to know your private information, that's fine, don't join them.
The issue is trying to protect people from themselves. By protecting them from themselves, you are also protecting yourself. I posit that the vast majority of Facebook users fall into the following categories:
1) They joined to use Facebook as a social networking tool, and they are so used to a multitude of things on the internet being free, that they never bothered to question how Facebook is monetized. They personally don't derive any value from their personal, private information, so they don't have any inkling that Facebook could have any interest in that information.
2) They joined Facebook, and they know that Facebook has their private information, but they don't care. Their attitude is: "What's the worst that could happen?" They will only be convinced that something bad could come out of Facebook's data mining of their information when either: 1) something happens to them or 2) something happens to someone else and is high-profile enough for them to believe that it happen (while not being obscure or enough for them to think, "Well, they deserved it.)
3) They don't necessarily want to be on Facebook, but all (or most) of their friends are and they miss out on things like invitations to events, as well as 'inside' discussions if they aren't on Facebook. They attempt to try and limit the private information that they put onto Facebook, and to limit who can see the information they do put on Facebook, but sometimes they get lost in the maze of config options for privacy settings that are hidden here and there (scattered about, rather than gathered into one place).
Facebook is used by several hundred million people. It looks as though their old messaging systems will just be replaced and extended by the new one. I don’t think they need to worry all that much about early adopters. If the average Facebook user likes the new messaging system it will be used. What nerds do doesn’t matter.
I'm the author of the piece and I believe in both. 1 works initially but then 2 takes over in time. Apple isn't about "hackers", it's about people who want ease of use and style. Linux boxes and the like are hacker territory with hardware they can mess with.
Considering the type of people on HN to begin with, I'd be surprised if the moderation system wasn't regularly "messed with". All you need to affect a collaborative ranking system is one really good hacker shill.
This is fantastic. I haven't tried it out yet, but I'll give it a shot for the paper I'm writing.
BTW, even with a "uniform" Linux environment, I've been finding so many differences in the behavior of libraries that it's driving me nuts. This will be a nice way to get past, for example, inconsistencies in wxWidgets.
what research field are you working in? please email me personally if you'd like to chat more about how cde can help your workflow. i'm interested in collecting real-life case studies and anecdotes
I replied to you via email, but thought I'd post it here as well in case anyone else had suggestions.
I've been thinking about a general purpose experimentation framework for research. Over the last 5 years, I've been re-writing parts of this framework for different projects and wish I had spent some time generalizing and packaging it.
The workflow is:
dataset -> experimental parameters -> code+libraries (this is where the trouble often is) -> result files (plain text, hundreds!) -> analysis (generally in R) -> selectively plotting results
A while ago I wrote a short piece about how location-based services will be 'hackable' for a long time (the specific piece was about gaming Foursquare with nine lines of Perl). Given how easy it is to game any location checkin service, what incentive will advertisers have when their deals are monopolized by a small group of Perl+wget armed, obsessive compulsive script kiddies? I don't know enough about marketing numbers--presuming that vendors give out deals to bring customers back to their store, do they care if the deals are systematically monopolized by freeloaders or bargain hunters?
During the live broadcast, a Facebook employee asked Mark how Facebook planned to handle people from fake check-ins and fake people tags, and his answer was that you have to show the retailer your phone in order to redeem the reward.
He also laughed at the question while answering it. Classy.
