The fact that this whole story culminates in the punchline, "The answer is Udacity!" is kind of a sick joke. Udacity, from what I've seen of it, is comically awful. Sebastian Thrun seems to be mostly a carnival shyster from what I can tell. Their original premise was to offer a full college education (and "disrupt", run existing colleges out of existence), and they've long since retreated from that goal. Their attempt at solving the remedial-math problem was an epic disaster (link). I haven't really heard anyone hype Udacity in a few years now.
I see this sentiment widely on Slashdot. And only on Slashdot. I've never once had a face-to-face conversation with anyone and had them say they want more personalized ads. I've been baffled by this Slashdot thinking for a long time.
Recall that the founders of this industry are mostly scam-artist assholes of the highest caliber. Palmer Luckey in particular is famous for his "shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real" mission-accomplished moment after secretly funding Trump's internet disinformation campaign. Small wonder he's now trolling around US military circles; they're renowned for being enormous slush-funds with no accountability and often actively damaging to public interests. Caveat emptor.
Re: "unconscionable and untenable"... It may be unconscionable, but it's 100% tenable, as evidenced by the fact that this was also the custom for the gaming industry when I was in it personally 20+ years ago. After my first two senior engineer positions, I interviewed a few more places, had a conversation with a producer about "crunch time indicates failure of management" which was received extremely poorly, and I never worked in that industry again. I've also seen other friends' attitudes and health pretty much destroyed at other game companies. Like movies and other entertainment, there's always fresh young blood to refill the staff.
That does not seem to be an satisfactory case in my reading. GGP said, "Some even seem to go around like agent provocateurs, stirring shit up trying to trigger name calling and then pouncing on them as bigots and acting like their taunting is really an act of community service exposing hidden discrimination".
The example you post is someone calling out prior, totally free-willed bigotry by the maintainer of Opal. No one was tricked into name-calling. No one denies that the maintainer of Opal is a bigot. No taunting (e.g., no curse words like "stirring shit up"). The original poster in the linked thread is entirely fact-based and impressively restrained.
"There's always someone that's getting asked to put out the fires or to help fix things or to look over something to make sure that it's okay. That's the competent person..."
Not necessarily. I've definitely had the experience of working with a reputed development "star" for whom all the fires were their own making. Management would ask, "Hey, we need X now!" and the gentleman would make it happen by smashing everyone else's code and leaving a wake of destruction and technical debt that was invisible to management. But it happened fast and management loved it. Meanwhile, all the other developers would have to spend time investigating and asking what the hell happened to break all the other stuff the working on, and trying to interpret his mangled, incomprehensibly named, and undocumented code. Rinse and repeat.
"If I remember correctly symbol tables were global, so that processes could access each other's variables by names, thus allowing libraries to simply work by changing global variables."
This is a surprisingly poignant statement on how crazy people really want global entities to exist.
Last month, I invited some doctoral philosopher friends to discuss what kind of (very common) logical fallacy it is that you're making there.
The consensus was "False Equivalence".
Just because each generation has one similar aspect (e.g., this complaint) does not mean that they are equivalent in all other aspects (e.g., intellect).
I use a custom LibreOffice Database with a single table: fields for Header, Priority, DueDate, Done, Body. Simple, but it's been my most critical tool for years; the first thing I open on my desktop and leave there every day.
The college system been successfully corporatized; that is, taken over by pointy-haired administrators instead of educators. The motivation becomes simply more students/money/diplomas, and the professors who care about upholding disciplinary standards have less and less say in the matter. Having more unprepared students in the classroom means more money/prestige for administrators, at the price of more ongoing nightmares for classroom educators.
The trend is in the other direction; get rid of entry testing and put more trust in high school grades (even student self-reported grades, I kid you not).
The funny thing is that the judgement condemns both an aptitude test, as well as a requirement for a high-school diploma. In fact, the requirement for the degree gets somewhat more condemnation. Therefore it seems like this ruling could easily be referenced to actually strike down policies of credential inflation, in almost exactly the same phrasing that many critics here are putting forward. Quoting from the Griggs vs. Duke Power Co. judgement (1971):
On the record before us, neither the high school completion requirement nor the general intelligence test is shown to bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used. Both were adopted, as the Court of Appeals noted, without meaningful study of their relationship to job performance ability. Rather, a vice-president of the Company testified, the requirements were instituted on the Company's judgment that they generally would improve the overall quality of the workforce.
The evidence, however, shows that employees who have not completed high school or taken the tests have continued to perform satisfactorily, and make progress in departments for which the high school and test criteria are now used...
The facts of this case demonstrate the inadequacy of broad and general testing devices, as well as the infirmity of using diplomas or degrees as fixed measures of capability. History is filled with examples of men and women who rendered highly effective performance without the conventional badges of accomplishment in terms of certificates, diplomas, or degrees. Diplomas and tests are useful servants, but Congress has mandated the common sense proposition that they are not to become masters of reality.
I noticed that Hulu recently increased the numbers ads in between breaks: I believe from 4 to 5 now. It seems close to interminable. In some cases recently I've finished my dinner and just shut off the program before it could get back.
Since it's inception they've been ratcheting up the ads per break. I think 2 to begin with, now up to 5. I wonder where the end-point is.
Meanwhile, charter schools are pushing to bypass state teacher certification standards, and certify their own teachers after only 30 hours of training. I wonder why that is?
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that this whole story culminates in the punchline, "The answer is Udacity!" is kind of a sick joke. Udacity, from what I've seen of it, is comically awful. Sebastian Thrun seems to be mostly a carnival shyster from what I can tell. Their original premise was to offer a full college education (and "disrupt", run existing colleges out of existence), and they've long since retreated from that goal. Their attempt at solving the remedial-math problem was an epic disaster (link). I haven't really heard anyone hype Udacity in a few years now.
Review of Thrun's Udacity statistics course, from a statistics professor (me), on my blog:http://www.madmath.com/2012/09/udacity-statistics-101.html
Previously featured on Slashdot: https://news.slashdot.org/story/12/09/10/129231/the-problems-with-online-math-classes
I see this sentiment widely on Slashdot. And only on Slashdot. I've never once had a face-to-face conversation with anyone and had them say they want more personalized ads. I've been baffled by this Slashdot thinking for a long time.
Recall that the founders of this industry are mostly scam-artist assholes of the highest caliber. Palmer Luckey in particular is famous for his "shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real" mission-accomplished moment after secretly funding Trump's internet disinformation campaign. Small wonder he's now trolling around US military circles; they're renowned for being enormous slush-funds with no accountability and often actively damaging to public interests. Caveat emptor.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/23/oculus-rift-vr-palmer-luckey-trump-shitposts
Re: "unconscionable and untenable"... It may be unconscionable, but it's 100% tenable, as evidenced by the fact that this was also the custom for the gaming industry when I was in it personally 20+ years ago. After my first two senior engineer positions, I interviewed a few more places, had a conversation with a producer about "crunch time indicates failure of management" which was received extremely poorly, and I never worked in that industry again. I've also seen other friends' attitudes and health pretty much destroyed at other game companies. Like movies and other entertainment, there's always fresh young blood to refill the staff.
I have this as item #3 on my list of "Top Geek Myths".
Counterargument: People don't submit to perceived tyranny because their material stuff got destroyed; rather, the opposite.
Also: "What robot soldiers could do is just as scary, though: Make outright colonialism a practical option again." War Nerd, 2014.
That does not seem to be an satisfactory case in my reading. GGP said, "Some even seem to go around like agent provocateurs, stirring shit up trying to trigger name calling and then pouncing on them as bigots and acting like their taunting is really an act of community service exposing hidden discrimination".
The example you post is someone calling out prior, totally free-willed bigotry by the maintainer of Opal. No one was tricked into name-calling. No one denies that the maintainer of Opal is a bigot. No taunting (e.g., no curse words like "stirring shit up"). The original poster in the linked thread is entirely fact-based and impressively restrained.
Maybe if there was universal health coverage like in any other modern country.
But the fast-driving, red-meat eating dudes would likely rather drive themselves directly to the grave that have that, for some reason.
"They bought their ticket, they knew what they were getting into. I say, let 'em crash!" -- Airplane! (1980)
"There's always someone that's getting asked to put out the fires or to help fix things or to look over something to make sure that it's okay. That's the competent person..."
Not necessarily. I've definitely had the experience of working with a reputed development "star" for whom all the fires were their own making. Management would ask, "Hey, we need X now!" and the gentleman would make it happen by smashing everyone else's code and leaving a wake of destruction and technical debt that was invisible to management. But it happened fast and management loved it. Meanwhile, all the other developers would have to spend time investigating and asking what the hell happened to break all the other stuff the working on, and trying to interpret his mangled, incomprehensibly named, and undocumented code. Rinse and repeat.
"If I remember correctly symbol tables were global, so that processes could access each other's variables by names, thus allowing libraries to simply work by changing global variables."
This is a surprisingly poignant statement on how crazy people really want global entities to exist.
"Everything is politics." -- Thomas Mann
Last month, I invited some doctoral philosopher friends to discuss what kind of (very common) logical fallacy it is that you're making there.
The consensus was "False Equivalence".
Just because each generation has one similar aspect (e.g., this complaint) does not mean that they are equivalent in all other aspects (e.g., intellect).
"That's kind of how things roll out in big business though"
Yet somehow the Marvel movies are generally fresh, crowd-pleasing, critically acclaimed, and make tons of money, after 19 movies and counting.
"The point of that scene was that if everyone dies saving the others then you end up with no one left"
This makes no sense. xP(x) xP(x)
I use a custom LibreOffice Database with a single table: fields for Header, Priority, DueDate, Done, Body. Simple, but it's been my most critical tool for years; the first thing I open on my desktop and leave there every day.
Edit: "has been successfully corporatized"
The college system been successfully corporatized; that is, taken over by pointy-haired administrators instead of educators. The motivation becomes simply more students/money/diplomas, and the professors who care about upholding disciplinary standards have less and less say in the matter. Having more unprepared students in the classroom means more money/prestige for administrators, at the price of more ongoing nightmares for classroom educators.
See Ginsburg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters.
The trend is in the other direction; get rid of entry testing and put more trust in high school grades (even student self-reported grades, I kid you not).
https://www.ecs.org/moving-from-single-to-multiple-measures-for-college-course-placement/
LOL, one day later:
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/12/12/1631246/sec-warns-extreme-caution-over-cryptocurrency-investments-as-many-people-take-out-mortgages-to-buy-bitcoin
Instant-ignored.
Jesus christ, you didn't even get half the letters correct in "Ivory". You don't know what you're talking about.
The funny thing is that the judgement condemns both an aptitude test, as well as a requirement for a high-school diploma. In fact, the requirement for the degree gets somewhat more condemnation. Therefore it seems like this ruling could easily be referenced to actually strike down policies of credential inflation, in almost exactly the same phrasing that many critics here are putting forward. Quoting from the Griggs vs. Duke Power Co. judgement (1971):
On the record before us, neither the high school completion requirement nor the general intelligence test is shown to bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used. Both were adopted, as the Court of Appeals noted, without meaningful study of their relationship to job performance ability. Rather, a vice-president of the Company testified, the requirements were instituted on the Company's judgment that they generally would improve the overall quality of the workforce.
The evidence, however, shows that employees who have not completed high school or taken the tests have continued to perform satisfactorily, and make progress in departments for which the high school and test criteria are now used...
The facts of this case demonstrate the inadequacy of broad and general testing devices, as well as the infirmity of using diplomas or degrees as fixed measures of capability. History is filled with examples of men and women who rendered highly effective performance without the conventional badges of accomplishment in terms of certificates, diplomas, or degrees. Diplomas and tests are useful servants, but Congress has mandated the common sense proposition that they are not to become masters of reality.
I noticed that Hulu recently increased the numbers ads in between breaks: I believe from 4 to 5 now. It seems close to interminable. In some cases recently I've finished my dinner and just shut off the program before it could get back.
Since it's inception they've been ratcheting up the ads per break. I think 2 to begin with, now up to 5. I wonder where the end-point is.
As is commonly the case, the highly-upvoted snark about legacy language is dead wrong. It's already in Webster's:
2: not adequately guarded or sustained : unsafe an insecure investment
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/insecure
(Side note: "The only modern dictionaries that trace their lineage to Noah Webster's are published by Merriam-Webster.", Wikipedia.)
Meanwhile, charter schools are pushing to bypass state teacher certification standards, and certify their own teachers after only 30 hours of training. I wonder why that is?
NYSUT slams 'fake' certification plan for charter school teachers
Moreover, you can write a headline like this every single day and never exhaust the number P vs NP equivalent problems.
How Sudoku could win you a million dollars
Finding others is an exercise for the reader.