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It’s a good thing that data algorithms are getting democratized, and I’m all for there being packages in R or Octave that let people run clustering algorithms or steepest descent. But, contrary to the message sent by much of Andrew Ng’s class on machine learning, you actually do need to understand how to invert a matrix at some point in your life if you want to be a data scientist. And, I’d add, if you’re not smart enough to understand the underlying math, then you’re not smart enough to be a data scientist. If your model fails, you want to be able to figure out why it failed.
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There are also direct analogies between natural language and computer code. Well-written code is light on the computer's memory, and runs smoothly; well-written prose is easy on the reader's working memory, and reads easily. Badly written code will cause errors in execution; badly written prose can cause errors in interpretation. Some people will never learn to write. Some will never learn to code. The disanalogies between computer code and language are as important as the analogies.
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In my continuing efforts to migrate off of WordPress, I now understand some of my biggest mistakes and flaws. Here are ten of them. To post or not to post, that is the 404 Page Not Found.
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The US court responsible for hearing patent appeals is showing fresh signs of disarray over the question of when software-based "inventions" can be patented. We recently covered a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that upheld a patent on the idea of using a computer to perform a particular kind of financial transaction. Now, just a couple of weeks later, the same court has reached the opposite conclusion about a patent on using a computer to manage a particular type of life insurance policy. It might help if judges actually understood how computers work.
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E-readers have been around long enough now that the novelty has largely worn off. To be sure, we still get the occasional article or blog post celebrating the smell of "real books" and denouncing the disembodied fakery of text on a screen, but not nearly as many as in recent years. E-readers are simply part of the reading landscape now -- the first Kindle was released almost five years ago -- and it's time for a midterm progress report. How is the technology developing? What has been accomplished and what remains to be done? They certainly haven't replaced my (excellent) neighborhood bookseller, yet.
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If Microsoft Research gets its way, you might soon be controlling computers using the tiniest of muscle twitches and no controller in sight. With a hand still in your pocket, or behind your back, you will be able to control a computer with a variety of finger-waggling and pinching gestures. I can win this game with both hands tied behind my back.
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Controlling a computer with hand movements. That could go so NSFW very very quickly. Imagine Clippy:
"It looks like you're having a .... Can I be of assistance?"
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We think the time is right to reimagine email. So today, we're introducing a preview of Outlook.com. We realized that we needed to take a bold step, break from the past and build you a brand new service from the ground up. You already know Outlook via the Outlook desktop application-for PCs and Macs-as the world's most popular application for reading email, managing a calendar, and connecting to people. And you may have used the Outlook Web App connected to Exchange Server in your organization. Now, in addition to a desktop application and a service for businesses, we're offering Outlook as a personal email service - Outlook.com. You've got mail!
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Interesting social media features, though I think I'll stick to Exchange Online, as it allows me to use my own domain (which it appears outlook.com can't do).
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I am impressed. Have a hard enough time getting full HD (1080p) support on a 15" display.
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Twitter suspended journalist Guy Adams' account after he was critical of NBC’s Olympics coverage – destroying its good guy rep and creating a PR disaster. [ITworld]
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In the best of all possible worlds, Microsoft and its partners would implement Secure Boot in the ways that the Linux Foundation says would work with Linux. Well, that's not going to happen. So, instead we have three different paths. At this point, there's no telling which one is going to work out. In fact, we may end up using all of them. [ITworld]
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I am not getting it. Last time I checked, Windows 8 bcdedit still had the bootsect option, so it must be trivial to double boot any Linux, especially if it uses GRUB.
If you want to have only Linux and boot it securely, you have to move your a... and adopt to the new technology. Windows 8 or Microsoft has proofed that UIEF Secure Boot is working OK, nothing else. Just use it.
If you want to take a machine that somebody have build to run Windows and install Linux on it, then you may have problems, but I do not care since you just should not do that.
All this UEFI buzz resembles Start Screen buzz and both resemble orchestrated media bashing.
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atbennett wrote: Microsoft and its partners would implement Secure Boot
Microsoft only says that Secure Boot has to be enabled for Windows 8 systems. They're not legally allowed to tell OEMs (Dell, HP, etc.) that they *cannot* put a Linux certificate in the UEFI implementation.
That said, Microsoft is under no legal obligation to tell OEMs that they MUST support Linux in the UEFI. At least they're not in the US, the EU/EC may be another matter but won't be decided until after Windows 8 systems are generally available in the EU, and even then, it's the OEMs, not Microsoft that does the implementation.
Mike Poz
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The ARM Surface release date has been revealed. It's October 26th[^].
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Going to buy one?
Regards,
Rob Philpott.
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The company will. It will also buy me the Pro version.
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Got an idea for an amazing Android game? Create a new, NDK-based Android game app for Intel architecture (IA) based devices, then write an article about it and you could win a $25,000 cash prize! Write an Android app for Intel devices and you could win!
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The little Pi community is having such fun and I think it's because of the device's constraints. It's small, it's cheap, but it's got such potential. If you are aware of it's limitations and are armed with a little patience, you'll have a blast introducing your kids to the Raspberry PI. No, it doesn't run Windows 8.
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I'm surprised that it's too slow to browse the internet. It has same specs as a 3rd gen iPhone
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When an application is focused on controls and not on data a lot of extra code and plumbing ends up being written which complicates things if control IDs are changed, new controls are added, or existing controls are removed. If you only have a few controls that’s not a big deal, but as the number of controls grows it becomes problematic.... The smart money is on building data-oriented applications rather than control-oriented applications. That’s why we’re seeing more and more data binding frameworks for JavaScript being released. Data binding is addictive once you start using it.
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We have found that the best defense against major unexpected failures is to fail often. By frequently causing failures, we force our services to be built in a way that is more resilient. We have written about our Simian Army in the past and we are now proud to announce that the source code for the founding member of the Simian Army, Chaos Monkey, is available to the community. Do you think your applications can handle a troop of mischievous monkeys loose in your infrastructure? Now you can find out. Chalk up another victory to the human spirit.
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Changing the colours of art can be a great way to increase the amount of content, and add variety and richness to your game. It is relatively easy to implement. What is not always as easy is to get a set of colours that look nice. This article gives some ideas for choosing colour palettes that look nice. The ABC's or RGB.
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Obtaining long sequences of random numbers, as required by some cryptographic algorithms, is a delicate problem. There are basically two types of random number generators: true random number generators, and pseudo-random number generators. Let's take a look at both and see how well they work. Testing pseudo-random number generators and measuring randomness.
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