Viewing profile — etal

Right, which is why the novel parts should get more attention and undergo code review, which is the goal of the Bioinformatics Testing Consortium. To be clear, I'm all for open sci…

That's why we write papers. Plain English can be more coherent than a pile of code.

We should be clear which of two kinds of scientific code we're talking about: 1. A program that implements a new technique which forms an important part of a research project. Mayb…

If pre-publication peer review goes out of fashion, then another possibility if that the brand of major journals becomes more important. We still need a quick gauge of the quality …

The major non-governmental funding agencies recently banded together to solve the problem roughly the way you suggest, by creating their own open-access journal which they will eno…

Apparently it brought NPG back to the negotiating table: http://blogs.nature.com/news/2010/08/nature_and_california_m... Unclear on the details, but presumably UC got a somewhat be…

It's probably being poor, which also correlates with worse working environments. Remember, "drive until you qualify."

Unladen Swallow isn't dead, actually -- it just merged into the main CPython code base. The first few quarters of optimizations are in Python 2.7 (it's noticeably faster than Pytho…

This is also called "flow" or being "in the zone" -- focusing on one thing, intensely, without interruptions. It's one more reason to lump programming in with the other creative ar…

It looks like Wayland isn't quite aiming to replace X, but it's close -- X will run on top of Wayland (one day). More about the architecture: http://wayland.freedesktop.org/archite…

LTS versions have stable patch-level releases every 6 months while they're supported (e.g. 10.04.1 was released in July, and there will probably be a 10.04.2 in January), so they'r…

The word you probably want is "truthiness". If there's a fundamental difference between the weaselly narratives constructed by Fox News and the psychedelic screeds Thompson put out…

It would if it were true, but it's not. Still an interesting question, though. I've seen cats focus pretty hard on certain things.

It's easier for students. When I'm on that schedule, I wake up around 7 a.m. (naturally), nap around 4:30 or 5 p.m., and go to bed around 1 a.m. It's maintainable when I don't have…

I'm deeply curious where Clojure would fall in this comparison. Is Compojure as suave as Hunchentoot? Is string formatting just as flexible? In practice, is it a pain to have to fa…

1. In the middle of a long flight, compare pilots' reaction times just before the nap to just after the nap. Result: After the nap, reaction times are 16% shorter. 2. Over the enti…

Ruby, Perl and Python packages usually come with a README that says: This depends on these external packages: ... Java programs usually come with a bunch of .jar files which were o…

If pip/Distribute eventually works as smoothly as apt-get, I'll be a happy guy.

Another way is to pick a top-notch library or framework in your target language, and learn to use that. For Clojure, I'd try making some clever charts with Incanter: http://incante…

This problem is different from the Python issue Zed Shaw wrote about. In Java, developers will bundle dozens of random .jar files with their application. Other versions of these li…

Force upstream to fix a bug and release a new version? And what if they don't? Quite a few packages in Debian have somewhat dormant upstream authors - the packages work, perhaps ne…

I tried a few LaTeX templates on CTAN awhile ago and settled on simplecv: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/simplec... It's fairly boring, but simple to use and …