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Domain: professorguy.com

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Comments · 6

  1. A note about darkness (by a producer) by professorguy · · Score: 1 · on Police Probing Theft of Millions of Pounds of Maple Syrup From Strategic Reserve

    My wife and I make our own syrup. This year was a poor production year (we got HALF of what we usually get), prices have soared and thefts like this suddenly have a big payoff.

    But the "darkness" is more complicated than just the reduction. Since it is the COOKING and not the reducing that caramelizes the sugar and makes syrup dark, you can make lighter syrup by reduction without cooking.

    That's why light syrup is so easy to get now since most producers use reverse osmosis to remove some water before cooking (to save energy) and thus cook it for less time. In fact, I've heard of producers here that do so little cooking, they add molasses to the final product to darken it so it looks like homemade syrup.

    The late season stuff (known as "bud syrup" because the trees have already started to bud out) is always darker than the early, but that matters much less than cooking method.

  2. Hear hear! by professorguy · · Score: 1 · on Can Unmanned Aircraft Mix With Commercial Planes?

    I've argued this for years. Check out Why There Are No Flying Cars.

    Summary: "Taking the human out of the loop means the lawyers will kill it."

  3. Not a software engineer? by professorguy · · Score: 1 · on Possible Last-Minute Problems With Vista SP2
    Here's a movie of me getting my Master's from Harvard. Notice that when my specialization is read, you can hear the announcer say "Software Engineering."

    So I have a degree in software engineering and then I go out and design software. That would make me a, uh, um, er.... I guess I'll have cards made up that say "Dude who can design and create software."

  4. There's a reason there are no self-driving cars by professorguy · · Score: 0 · on Personal Robots From Valley Startup

    There's a reason there are no self-driving cars and it has nothing to do with technology. Check out Why there are no flying cars. Despite the title, it's actually about self-driving cars. Why there are no flying cars is implied by extension.

  5. There's a reason there are no flying cars.... by professorguy · · Score: 1 · on 'Flying Saucers' to Go On Sale Soon

    Here's an essay explaining Why There Are No Flying Cars. And it explains that no, you shouldn't hold your breath.

  6. I worked for Joe Marks at MERL by professorguy · · Score: 1 · on Mitsubishi Breaks Up Famous Computer Science Lab
    Joe hired me right out of a graduate class he was giving at Harvard. He had used a simulated annealing algorithm to do NP-hard cartographic labeling and I beat his results using a genetic algorithm of my own devising. He was impressed since I had gotten the best results in the 7 years he'd taught the class.


    Joe is a very impressive man--he can spot talent a mile away. The people gathered together at the offices in Cambridge were extremely good at what they do. I was lucky enough to have Micheal Mitzenmacher (an inventor of digital "fountains") as a co-author on a MERL research paper. Unfortunately, one of the results of the regime change seems to be the research paper store in Cambridge seems to have gone offline, so no link to that paper exists anymore.

    The prototype bar glass that would signal the server when it was nearing empty was actually on a special table directly across from my cubicle. And the foot long white paper mache VW bug which served as a 3D screen for driving videos (you'd have to see it to believe it) was in the photo studio under the stairs.

    As to whether Joe made good Mitsubishi products or not, I think it was obvious that he did not. But he was committed to making the lab world class (in a block crowded with world-class labs) which doesn't mean designing the Lancer's windshield wipers. However, since it cost him his job, maybe doing best for the world rather than for one's own advancement isn't a winning strategy.

    Good luck, Joe, and thanks.