Something Confusing about "Hard": It's tempting to think that if it's hard, then it's valuable. Most valuable things are hard. Most hard things are completely useless -- (picture of someone smashing their head through concrete blocks kung-fu style). Hard DOES NOT EQUATE TO BEING valuable. Remember Friendster back in the day? You'd sign in, invite friends, have 25 friends, go to their profile, and then it'd show how you were connected to each one. That's an impressive [some geeky CS jargon] Cone traversal of a tree - 100 million string comparisons per page -- it won't scale. Used to take a minute per page to load, and Friendster died a painful death. MySpace -- not interested in solving problems They use the shortcut of "Miss Fitzpatrick is in your extended network" (i.e. even when you're not even signed up for MySpace) They didn't solve the hard problem. But they make the more relevant assumption that you want to be connected to hot women. [LOL] Shows Alexa graph showing that in early 2005 Myspace took off, and quickly bypassed Friendster and never looked back. -- Max Levchin, PayPal founder, Talk at StartupSchool2007

An interpreter raises the machine to the level of the user program; a compiler lowers the user program to the level of the machine language. -- SICP

Heureux l'étudiant qui comme la Rivière peut suivre son cours sans quitter son lit... -- Sebastien, sur commentcamarche.net

Training research shows that if you get speed now you can get quality later. But if you don't get speed you will never get quality in the long run. -- Philip Greenspun

In God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me? -- David (Psalm 56:4)

It is said that the real winner is the one who lives in today but able to see tomorrow. -- Juan Meng, Reviewing "The future of ideas" by Lawrence Lessig

Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning. ~Robert Kiyosaki

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing, no one to blame. –Erica Jong

You may only succeed if you desire succeeding; you may only fail if you do not mind failing. ~Philippos

Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable. ~Theodore N. Vail