There's a great talk on this [1] by Raymond Hettinger where he argues that style guides (e.g. PEP8) are no alternative to thinking hard about the code. Blindly following rules (like a bot would do) just gives a false sense of security that it's good code.
Yep, thanks, all fixed ! Surprising how many mistakes one can make in a simple sentence...although, as feeble justification -- I wrote that right after I read the article and was still thinking about some of the stuff. There was a bit of irony though in these corrections -- how we tend to focus on and willing choose to spend energy on the things that don't matter in the long run for things that make us feel good about ourselves.
Not just the long run! It looks like 'dang' already rewrote it to get rid of all of those words. But at least I'll sleep easier knowing that as a team we were able to fix the mistakes before it was erased. :)
Exactly, and it's not like papers are collections of 'facts' that can be extracted anyway. Papers are long arguments based on some data choices, some analysis choices, and followed by interpretations --- none of which are 'facts', and all of which are debatable.
Having submitted to that journal before, I suspect the authors just ticked a check box that said something like "Relevant ethics approval was obtained for this paper".
Or flip it around - what if the next time Facebook sees you post 5 negative things in a row, it decides to positively skew what it shows you? i.e. trying to cheer up depressed people and stop suicide. It's creepy, eh?
Both sides are really creepy. A possible benefit of this experiment is gaining more insight into detecting whether people are happy or sad. Advertisers might soon be able to adapt their ads to a user's mood, thereby reinforcing the artificial connection between the company and the user. Users will feel like the brand really understands them.
Seconding the pandoc approach. I've written articles in markdown (+citeproc) and then used pandoc to convert to LaTeX or MS Word. Easy, clean and elegant. I think it provides all the things that these people want, without needing to reinvent the wheel or make yet-another-markup language.
Yes, words change meaning, especially when they're imported across language boundaries. Originally mana DID mean something like spiritual power, and is heavily linked to terms for thunder, lightning etc.
Currently it's used in NZ to mean prestige, but it's original sense was much broader - a tree that grows well has mana. Gods have mana. People get mana through (1) their heritage (i.e. high status families have more mana), (2) from other people i.e. we give a sportsperson mana because we respect their ability to kick a ball, and (3) via the group (e.g. if I'm part of a prestigious group, some of thir mana reflects onto me).
The Force (Star Wars) was inspired very much by this spiritual meaning as places could have strong mana as well.
While the etymology is supposedly Proto-Oceanic, there's an interesting parallel with Kriyamana karma, particularly in the more modern usage of gaining/losing mana/karma through your actions.
Absolutely. After messing around with various combinations of rsync/ssh/unison/s3/glacier/etc for a few years, I bit the bullet and paid for Crashplan. It's cheap - the family plan is ~150 USD/year for up to ten computers, unlimited.
It's a lifesaver. I've installed it on my parents/wifes/siblings computers and the piece of mind it gives me is immense - when I get the inevitable phone calls about the damn computer deleting that important file, I can either tell them how to recover it, or do it myself.
I'd like to use the Crashplan Family option to cover everyone but since it's all shared and there's seemingly no way to silo the data per-computer, that's a total non-starter. Which is a shame because I'd love to give them my cash.
