I used to think this way, but over the years I have come to conclusion that talent as a factor tends to be overrated. Talent is important mostly for the absolute best in the field, where it can differentiate; but below that, hard work actually matters a lot. And hard work typically comes from enthusiasm of individual, and is part of virtuous cycle (see "10k hours rule") of one working hard doing things one likes, which is influenced by positive feedback.
This is just to say that while degree itself may not be all that important, having had to actually work to get it helps a lot, and so most people with degrees are better in their profession as a result. I certainly knew how to program well before college. But I also learnt a lot in college, and it would have taken much longer to get equivalent of theoretical knowledge. I was motivated to study of course, so just copying papers or code would have been of very little value.
As has been pointed out, gold is not highly reactive, and is seldom a health concern for individuals. Further it is actually used as medication in small doses, particularly for rheumatoid arthritis (based on observations that gold rings gave some level of protection for finger joints -- exact mechanism is not fully known, as far as I know).
While there can be moderate and reasonable religious fundamentalists (as opposed to firebrand zealots), I think common definition of fundamentalism does make it unlikely that one could have views compatible with scientific worldview. As has been pointed out, at some point literal reading of the holy book does contradict commonly accepted scientific theories and observations. Fundamentalism then mandates taking claims of bible (or whatever holy book or dogma that religion has) as literal truth, instead of being allegory (which is what non-fundamentalist believes could accept); and scientific approach of theories having to be compatible with observations is thrown away.
So I think what you are talking about are not fundamentalists, but rather devoted believers, but ones that can accept that even religious texts can be either wrong, or use inexact metaphors and allegories to explain bigger concepts. It is completely possible to have non-fundamentalist religious views that are compatible with even rigorous scientific approach; many leading scientist are and have been believers.
If you believe someone can become a suicide terrorist without religion, then you really don't understand people... or religion.
For this to be true, you have to define religion quite loosely, however. Nationalism is another common and powerful mental model that produces terrorists of all types. In general, one just needs zealous all-consuming conviction. So while religion definitely can do this, it is not the sole source; unless you consider all zealous conviction to be kinds of religions (which is one possible angle, just not a common interpretation).
While I don't have knowledge of actual business plan, I think there is a good enough idea given that mr. A is actually investing at this point. He has reasonable track record; most people are not aware of exactly how many things he has been financing; and he would not throw money just for "cool stuff". For what it's worth I would suggest considering other social network investments he has made, and consider possibility of this particular piece working with others (read: making deals with other companies, with placements, cross-functionality and so forth). Money does not always have to come directly from users or indirectly via advertisement.
If and when their business idea is to get people interested, yes, they might want to focus bit more on making it blatanly obvious what they offer. I am sure there are many whose attention span is long enough to spend a minute digging for information; but there are many who do not, and after rather short amount of time give it up with "screw that, whatever" attitude. So unless they intentionally want to reduce audience it would seem like a good idea to, yes, make it ridiculously obvious instead of just possible to find out.
No, not at all. He did not say superman, but just someone capable of solving the problem.
And like has been pointed out ALL projects need at least "one person with a clue". Given this, then, Agile approach is likely to be more efficient in getting to the outcome compared to "classic" top-down approach.
And yes, I have had pretty good experiences with Agile teams; as well as less-than-optimal experiences with in-name-only approach. In latter cases many developers actually wanted to back to old-fashioned top-down approach, mostly because that is what they were used to (never mind the fact that there had been big lay-offs when management had viewed the team as incompetent for taking so long to get anything down; partly due to analysis-paralysis).
There is no requirement that everything uses Agile style; it is possible to mix and match. Nor is there any reason why training, getting up to speed could not scheduled as regular task.
Basically, throwing inexperienced (or incompetent) people tasks they are not capable of doing is just basic management or team failure and has little to do with Agility or lack thereof.
Assuming for moment that this is a true statement (that xbox360 is a big hit -- I don't know, honestly), it would be just one single positive sign, in otherwise stagnating company.
I fully agree with bigger picture that Microsoft is become (and perhaps already is) big, mature and somewhat boring company, which can make money but not really get much buzz or innovate. IBM is an apt comparison; or Oracle.
This in itself is not end of the world, or company. It's just pointing out that illusions of MS being some sort of technology innovator or leader are bogus, and have been for a while.
And yet, massive pile of cash does not make anyone a good person either, or allow one to become such using any known transaction. And you can not buy a clear conscience either.
But hey, at least you can buy all the coffee you want, right?
Yeah, I am sure you are definitive expert on merits of that particular lawsuit.
That is to say: your speculation is about as valuable as that of other Slashdotters. And while Gosling may not know or share all the details, he has definitely been in position to know about that lawsuit than any of us.
And of course MS emulated parts of Java platform; that made sense. But that's where the whole patent law gets messy and murky; and question of if MS did anything unethical is very different from question of whether they could be succesfully sued.
Honestly? How about conducting a quick poll on what people around think about H1B process. You may want to revise your statement after seeing results.
While I agree in that there are many who do consider issues to be separate the way you say, I claim that there are many who are more generally against immigration (of at least some etchnic and/or socio-economic gorups (as in "poor illiterate people from third-world countries")).
Sometimes alleged positive attitudes towards legal immigration are just sort of excuse to have strong feelings against illegal immigration. As in feeling somehow bad for being against illegal immigrants and compensating by saying how much they love the fact that one can become american citizen legally; like "hate the game, not player".
I don't think many claim people should believe everything scientists say. It would be silly, too, since unlike various movements, scientists as a group do not really have much of coherent message -- not more than a herd of cats.
But even when considering specific domain (like climate science), I disagree in that there is equivalence between trusting scientific community's consensus and discrediting it completely: positions are rather asymmetric. Especially when latter is not done by specific argumentation against consensus by presenting credible alternative theories; or providing reasons as to why such expertise should be discarded. Mostly arguments are along lines of "but you can't prove any of it!" or "it ain't necessarily so". It is ok to be sceptical, but over time one should produce some actual counter-proposals. "Beyond reasonable doubt" is necessary for court of law because of significant losses that convicting innocent people causes; but it is not the level that is needed for engineering efforts and society-level planning of environmental issues.
Ahh,, I get it now, you simply do not understand the argument. It's not about who put the hole in the boat, it's about where the whole is, how it was created which indicates a little about how can be plugged or if it even needs to be plugged, and if we are actually sinking or just taking on water. And no, just because you are standing in water doesn't mean you
are taking on water in a boat. It could be water from the fresh water source or the piss running down you leg from being scared.
It could also be that despite all observations, measurements and calculations, earth could still be flat, and no more than 5000 years old.
But it still makes more sense to base one's actions on more commonly held estimates for shape and age of said planet. And specifically regarding global warming, actions taken to reduce human co2 output are also good more generally since other local and global pollutants are reduced nicely by most actions.
Burning non-renewable fossil fuels is also beneficial outside context of co2 emissions.
Still, the most important thing that is missing from "non-believers" (quotes, because I don't consider this a matter of faith or beliefs as much as many others do) is just that there is lack of credible alternate theories. This is suspiciously similar to stances of creationists: the main focus is no denying the main credible scientific theory, pointing at found or alleged holes, instead of trying to come up with better explanation for observations. This is done at multiple levels, from arguing against existence of observe trends to arguing about whose fault is it anyway. And it also aligns with current conservative political views, which are focused likewise on "just say no" way of argumentation. This is why it is very tempting to lump all said groups into one basket.
But still many developers find these second-hand numbers appealing, despite being obviously bogus with even simplest of back-of-envelope calculations. It is very frustrating to see claims like "protobuf is 30 to 100 times faster than xml!" get repeated; same thing in this case. People tend to believe things they want to believe. "hey, flash is crap, of course it's easy to write something that's 10x faster", "Java is slow, my new programming language is 20x faster" etc. etc..
In many cases it is hard enough to get things to be 2x as fast. But human mind seems attracted to inflated claims; and in most cases claims that are NOT made by actual authors.
You are implying that all members of US democratic party would be considered so-called liberals (so-called because word liberal has rather odd current usage in US, but I digress). This is not the case. Rather, just like republicans, democrats have wide spectrum of politicians, extending to liberals as well as moderate conservatives.
And yes, from within actual US liberals -- including those democrats that can be considered ones judging by their overall positions, not just based on their stance wrt war(s) -- most have been against various US lead wars. More so against Iraq, bit less so against others. And for good reasons, not all wars had equally sound or unsound justifications.
If I patent a mathematical proof, it actively obstructs you from using it to further mathematics. I can patent my software and that does not prevent you from re-implementing it in a novel way.
Rubbish. I can similarly claim that even if you patented a mathematic proof, it doesn't prevent me from finding alternate proof for same problem -- and situation is actually very similar to software. It may or may not be possible to work around land mine that the patent presents; and tactically well-placed patent is, well, just like a well-placed landmine for conflicts.
And innovation tends to flourish to some degree with or without patents; similar to how copyrights may or may not help in arts (music, literature). Innovation and creation are not dependant on specific instruments designed to reward authors. This should be obvious for anyone with even basic knowledge of contemporary psychological research into what motivates people.
Considering the small affect that CO2 has on climate, co
Here we go again: after fighting strawmen for a while, you make a bold unsubstantiated claim. It is certainly NOT agreed that CO2 has only small effect, nor is that supported by any science. Rather, there is strong geo-historical evidence to suggest CO2 level has very strong correlation with surface and atmospheric temperatures, as well as credible theories explain causality from concentration to temperature.
And hey, for good measure you attach this to goofball conspiracy theory. I think I need to attach your arguments as poster-child for kinds of bullshit climate change deniers use.
The Earth will easily compensate for any CO2 humans dump in the atmosphere
While true, I am more worried about exact road to said equilibrum. Ideally myself or at least my descendants would be here to see how it works out... but the thing is that while 3rd rock from the Sun can easily survive wildly fluctuating surface temperatures, homo sapiens as a species doesn't.
Really, no one is worried about long-term heating, and few care about survival of most of species. I suspect cockroaches will do just fine with significantly higher temperatures, and yet it's of little consolation.
No, it's not necessarily ethical; rather, it would be legal (which you probably meant). Two things often align, but are very different beasts. Ethical (or more accurately, moral) viewpoint is with respect to right and wrong; legality just whether it is acceptable according to local legal standard.
And while ethical issues are indeed not black-and-white, they seldom have anything to do with national interests.
Actually, this world might be a better place if Islam was actually dragged BACK to the 11th century.
This is not a joke: islamic worldview actually used to be very progressive at about that time, or little bit later (12th and 13th centuries).
Scholars of that era would consider many current fundamentalist priests to be a disgrace, non-intellectual caricatures of earlier spiritual leaders.
Slashdot Mirror
This is just to say that while degree itself may not be all that important, having had to actually work to get it helps a lot, and so most people with degrees are better in their profession as a result. I certainly knew how to program well before college. But I also learnt a lot in college, and it would have taken much longer to get equivalent of theoretical knowledge. I was motivated to study of course, so just copying papers or code would have been of very little value.
Ok, I stand corrected. My information is obviously stale, came from a physician who mentioned this in late 80s (or early 90s), when it was used.
As has been pointed out, gold is not highly reactive, and is seldom a health concern for individuals. Further it is actually used as medication in small doses, particularly for rheumatoid arthritis (based on observations that gold rings gave some level of protection for finger joints -- exact mechanism is not fully known, as far as I know).
So I think what you are talking about are not fundamentalists, but rather devoted believers, but ones that can accept that even religious texts can be either wrong, or use inexact metaphors and allegories to explain bigger concepts. It is completely possible to have non-fundamentalist religious views that are compatible with even rigorous scientific approach; many leading scientist are and have been believers.
For this to be true, you have to define religion quite loosely, however. Nationalism is another common and powerful mental model that produces terrorists of all types. In general, one just needs zealous all-consuming conviction. So while religion definitely can do this, it is not the sole source; unless you consider all zealous conviction to be kinds of religions (which is one possible angle, just not a common interpretation).
While I don't have knowledge of actual business plan, I think there is a good enough idea given that mr. A is actually investing at this point. He has reasonable track record; most people are not aware of exactly how many things he has been financing; and he would not throw money just for "cool stuff". For what it's worth I would suggest considering other social network investments he has made, and consider possibility of this particular piece working with others (read: making deals with other companies, with placements, cross-functionality and so forth). Money does not always have to come directly from users or indirectly via advertisement.
If and when their business idea is to get people interested, yes, they might want to focus bit more on making it blatanly obvious what they offer. I am sure there are many whose attention span is long enough to spend a minute digging for information; but there are many who do not, and after rather short amount of time give it up with "screw that, whatever" attitude. So unless they intentionally want to reduce audience it would seem like a good idea to, yes, make it ridiculously obvious instead of just possible to find out.
And yes, I have had pretty good experiences with Agile teams; as well as less-than-optimal experiences with in-name-only approach. In latter cases many developers actually wanted to back to old-fashioned top-down approach, mostly because that is what they were used to (never mind the fact that there had been big lay-offs when management had viewed the team as incompetent for taking so long to get anything down; partly due to analysis-paralysis).
Basically, throwing inexperienced (or incompetent) people tasks they are not capable of doing is just basic management or team failure and has little to do with Agility or lack thereof.
As compared to completely safe native code?
Late 90s called, they want their FUD back, pronto.
Assuming for moment that this is a true statement (that xbox360 is a big hit -- I don't know, honestly), it would be just one single positive sign, in otherwise stagnating company. I fully agree with bigger picture that Microsoft is become (and perhaps already is) big, mature and somewhat boring company, which can make money but not really get much buzz or innovate. IBM is an apt comparison; or Oracle. This in itself is not end of the world, or company. It's just pointing out that illusions of MS being some sort of technology innovator or leader are bogus, and have been for a while.
But hey, at least you can buy all the coffee you want, right?
That is to say: your speculation is about as valuable as that of other Slashdotters. And while Gosling may not know or share all the details, he has definitely been in position to know about that lawsuit than any of us.
And of course MS emulated parts of Java platform; that made sense. But that's where the whole patent law gets messy and murky; and question of if MS did anything unethical is very different from question of whether they could be succesfully sued.
I, too, feel like a dummy, having made very similar move meself... greed makes you do funny things. :-)
While I agree in that there are many who do consider issues to be separate the way you say, I claim that there are many who are more generally against immigration (of at least some etchnic and/or socio-economic gorups (as in "poor illiterate people from third-world countries")). Sometimes alleged positive attitudes towards legal immigration are just sort of excuse to have strong feelings against illegal immigration. As in feeling somehow bad for being against illegal immigrants and compensating by saying how much they love the fact that one can become american citizen legally; like "hate the game, not player".
But even when considering specific domain (like climate science), I disagree in that there is equivalence between trusting scientific community's consensus and discrediting it completely: positions are rather asymmetric. Especially when latter is not done by specific argumentation against consensus by presenting credible alternative theories; or providing reasons as to why such expertise should be discarded. Mostly arguments are along lines of "but you can't prove any of it!" or "it ain't necessarily so". It is ok to be sceptical, but over time one should produce some actual counter-proposals. "Beyond reasonable doubt" is necessary for court of law because of significant losses that convicting innocent people causes; but it is not the level that is needed for engineering efforts and society-level planning of environmental issues.
It could also be that despite all observations, measurements and calculations, earth could still be flat, and no more than 5000 years old.
But it still makes more sense to base one's actions on more commonly held estimates for shape and age of said planet. And specifically regarding global warming, actions taken to reduce human co2 output are also good more generally since other local and global pollutants are reduced nicely by most actions. Burning non-renewable fossil fuels is also beneficial outside context of co2 emissions.
Still, the most important thing that is missing from "non-believers" (quotes, because I don't consider this a matter of faith or beliefs as much as many others do) is just that there is lack of credible alternate theories. This is suspiciously similar to stances of creationists: the main focus is no denying the main credible scientific theory, pointing at found or alleged holes, instead of trying to come up with better explanation for observations. This is done at multiple levels, from arguing against existence of observe trends to arguing about whose fault is it anyway. And it also aligns with current conservative political views, which are focused likewise on "just say no" way of argumentation. This is why it is very tempting to lump all said groups into one basket.
But still many developers find these second-hand numbers appealing, despite being obviously bogus with even simplest of back-of-envelope calculations. It is very frustrating to see claims like "protobuf is 30 to 100 times faster than xml!" get repeated; same thing in this case. People tend to believe things they want to believe. "hey, flash is crap, of course it's easy to write something that's 10x faster", "Java is slow, my new programming language is 20x faster" etc. etc.. In many cases it is hard enough to get things to be 2x as fast. But human mind seems attracted to inflated claims; and in most cases claims that are NOT made by actual authors.
And yes, from within actual US liberals -- including those democrats that can be considered ones judging by their overall positions, not just based on their stance wrt war(s) -- most have been against various US lead wars. More so against Iraq, bit less so against others. And for good reasons, not all wars had equally sound or unsound justifications.
Rubbish. I can similarly claim that even if you patented a mathematic proof, it doesn't prevent me from finding alternate proof for same problem -- and situation is actually very similar to software. It may or may not be possible to work around land mine that the patent presents; and tactically well-placed patent is, well, just like a well-placed landmine for conflicts.
And innovation tends to flourish to some degree with or without patents; similar to how copyrights may or may not help in arts (music, literature). Innovation and creation are not dependant on specific instruments designed to reward authors. This should be obvious for anyone with even basic knowledge of contemporary psychological research into what motivates people.
Here we go again: after fighting strawmen for a while, you make a bold unsubstantiated claim. It is certainly NOT agreed that CO2 has only small effect, nor is that supported by any science. Rather, there is strong geo-historical evidence to suggest CO2 level has very strong correlation with surface and atmospheric temperatures, as well as credible theories explain causality from concentration to temperature.
And hey, for good measure you attach this to goofball conspiracy theory. I think I need to attach your arguments as poster-child for kinds of bullshit climate change deniers use.
While true, I am more worried about exact road to said equilibrum. Ideally myself or at least my descendants would be here to see how it works out... but the thing is that while 3rd rock from the Sun can easily survive wildly fluctuating surface temperatures, homo sapiens as a species doesn't.
Really, no one is worried about long-term heating, and few care about survival of most of species. I suspect cockroaches will do just fine with significantly higher temperatures, and yet it's of little consolation.
No, it's not necessarily ethical; rather, it would be legal (which you probably meant). Two things often align, but are very different beasts. Ethical (or more accurately, moral) viewpoint is with respect to right and wrong; legality just whether it is acceptable according to local legal standard.
And while ethical issues are indeed not black-and-white, they seldom have anything to do with national interests.
Actually, this world might be a better place if Islam was actually dragged BACK to the 11th century. This is not a joke: islamic worldview actually used to be very progressive at about that time, or little bit later (12th and 13th centuries). Scholars of that era would consider many current fundamentalist priests to be a disgrace, non-intellectual caricatures of earlier spiritual leaders.
No, atheists wouldn't work... they wouldn't be appalled by lots of stuff such that sacrilege-censor should be. :)