Ok, so abstractly you agree that there are circumstances where Apple should remove content, where neither users are being harmed or the Apps are engaging in criminal activity. They're allowed to take down material that is involved in some kind of civil legal dispute. Like if someone is violating licensing terms. Or maybe contractual terms. Or... maybe violating an NDA?
So by that argument, any terms that Apple has for placing apps in their app store (other than those barring criminal or user-harming behavior) are inherently unethical. I think that's debatable, especially depending on your definitions of "criminal behavior" or "user-harming behavior". For example, iFixit broke their legal agreement with Apple: is that "criminal" behavior? You could say that, no, it's not, because it's a civil dispute and not technically "criminal". On the other hand, copyright, trademark, and patent disputes are generally civil disputes, so can Apple remove content where the intellectual property ownership is in dispute?
To be honest, securing email is not that hard, unless you want to "manually" set up a structure to check messages for weird stuff.
It's not that complicated, but it's complicated enough that I've seen plenty of people mess it up. And no, it's not just "checking messages for weird stuff". If you think that's all that's involved, then you don't know enough to run a mail server.
Do you know what SSL certificates are, or how to set one up? Do you know how to set up your firewall to allow only the appropriate ports to the Exchange server, and which ports need to be allowed? Do you understand the security implications of allowing incoming traffic to your network? Do you need to set up multiple Exchange servers with different roles, and do you know what the security implications of that would be? Do you know what MX servers are, and how to set it up so that you don't lose incoming email during a server outage? Do you know how to do a proper backup/restore of your Exchange environment, and how to secure those backups both from breach and loss? Do you know if your email system currently has any unpatched vulnerabilities? Do you have a way of mitigating those vulnerabilities? Do you have a good regimen for installing updates and patches, including testing to prevent unforeseen downtime?
Security isn't just about protecting yourself from malicious email.
You can "outsource" an email hygiene service, to handle the inbound of your email, clean it, and deliver it to your own server
Whoa there. I thought we just established that you're unwilling to trust an outside vendor with your email, and now you're planning on routing all of your email through an outside vendor? If I were paranoid enough about my email to refuse to use a hosted provider, I don't think I'd be willing to use a hosted spam filtering service.
One thing about Microsoft these days is their relentless push to stop you using their software on-premises, or at least out of their control.
I don't think Microsoft is driving that trend. People want it. Microsoft has actually been slow to respond, because I think they'd actually prefer that you keep running their servers onsite. My sense is that their push toward "the cloud" is actually an attempt to prevent other cloud providers from drinking their milkshake, and in fact they've been too slow to react.
Well there are still some non-O365 hosted Exchange companies, e.g. Backspace and Intermedia, who will use this. There are also quite a few companies who are not following the trend toward cloud-hosted email. Besides, I'd bet that a lot of the improvements are being developed for O365 anyway, so I'd bet they continue developing a non-hosted version of Exchange for as long as the cost of porting those O365 updates to the stand-alone version of Exchange is outweighed by the profits of selling licenses to those companies that will buy a stand-alone version.
I understand that mentality, but at the same time, I have to wonder: do you have a team of admins who are experts in security in general, and in securing the email software you use in specific? Because if not, your email may be more secure if you outsource it to a group who does have a team of such experts, rather than trying to do it yourself.
Sure, it requires that you trust the team you're outsourcing to-- that's true. If you don't trust Google, don't use them as a mail host. However, I'd rather trust Google with securing my email than my company's one generalist IT guy with 3 years of experience, running a 8 year-old Exchange server shoved under someone's desk. For a lot of small companies, that's the choice they're making.
it means that people that only think they know what they're doing can really mess things up when they're incorrect.
To be fair, it also means that people who pretty much know what they're doing (but might not be experts) figure out how to do things by browsing through the GUI. I think that's a point that often gets missed by the pro-CLI crowd. CLIs can be much easier and more powerful if you really know all the commands and syntax and intricacies of the shell language, but if not, it's easier to browse through a GUI, see all of your options, and check a few boxes.
True, but Apple provides access to pre-release products through their developer program. Revoking access to their developer program means revoking access to their app store. Also, as others are pointing out, their app included information about the tear-down of the Apple TV, was was violating an NDA. Do you think that if you have an app in Google's app store that included information that breaks an NDA with Google, Google might consider pulling the app?
They got the developer model through the developer program. Violating the terms of the developer program can get your status as a developer revoked.
What, you want them to create special tiers within their developer program, determining who has access to which resources based on who has broken which rules? I think that's a bit much to ask.
By that logic, people shouldn't be getting angry at Apple for revoking their "developer" status. It's like if, after the two year old ate the marshmallow, Mom came in and said, "Ok, I'm not leaving you alone with any candy anymore."
If you can't blame the kid for eating the marshmallow, then you can't blame Mom for refusing to trust the kid with more marshmallows.
Yet in this article, I get the very feeling that what they are trying for isn't to get some weirdos visibility, they're dealing with statistics. There's nothing gloriously weird about black or latino kids as a group.
Yes, I thought we were going off on a tangent in talking about the difficulties in measuring "potential". It's clearly a related subject, but not directly applicable to the article.
They're taking a label "gifted student" and they are upset because it isn't applied to their children in more proportional numbers. It *must* be discrimination.
Well it isn't necessarily active discrimination, but it is a form of bias. And logically, it does work. If minority children are not proportionately represented in "gifted" programs, there are really one of two possibilities: Either the schools are somehow failing to address/rectify a socioeconomic inequality between the different racial groups, or the minorities are inherently inferior. I don't think you'll find much evidence to support the latter.
Now even if it's the former, that doesn't necessarily indicate over racism or intentional discrimination on anyone's part. It's also not clear that schools are ultimately responsible for fixing all of society's issues with racial bias and social inequality-- some of those issues are too large for a school system to tackle. However, if there are gifted children who are not being placed in a "gifted" program for reasons that ultimately boil down to "the child is black," that should definitely lead us to ask, "Is there a way to fix that?"
Even if the problem is not intentional discrimination, but the result of the child being immersed in "black culture", that should raise the question: Must achievement in our school be incompatible with "black culture"? Couldn't some common ground be found? Or are we really comfortable saying, "We're dooming another generation of black children to lesser achievement, but it's their own fault for failing to conform to my own cultural identity."
I think part of the disconnect for me is the idea of "success" as a reward for being a "good kid"-- and then further that idea of a "good kid" being someone who conforms, follows the rules, doesn't question, and doesn't rock the boat. "Do exactly what I say, when I say it, the way that I say it, or I'm going to fail you. Then you're going to be stuck working at McDonalds, which inherently means that you're a complete loser with no value."
I don't like any part of that chain of thought: We should be trying to help all of our children reach their full potential as much as possible, not treating it as a reward. Being a "good kid" doesn't simply mean conformity and obedience. We shouldn't be hoping to destroy children's lives as a punishment for bad behavior. And finally, we shouldn't be speaking so disparagingly of people who work hard every day, fulfilling useful roles in our society, simply because their jobs are not prestigious or high-paying. All of those ideas are incredibly corrosive.
One of the worst lies we perpetuate on ourselves is that we're being "controlled" and we have to avoid conformity at all costs.
And this idea is not really related to what I'm saying. I understand why you would misunderstand, but I'm not saying that conformity is inherently bad. The impulse to conform is an important human trait that helps society function, but the desire to punish those who fail to conform is ultimately a different impulse. That need to dominate and punish often does lead to problems, especially when you're dominating and punishing a group that doesn't even have the option to conform.
Schools are going to break down in a manner the pretty much all of life does. You need to meet a certain standard, and if you do so, you'll succeed. If you don't, you'll have issues, regardless of race or culture, but culture can make it much more difficult.
That's not quite how life breaks down, though. There are sometimes brilliant outliers who don't follow the rules and don't "meet standards" who are fantastically successful. There are also a lot of people who "do what they're supposed to" and "follow the rules" and "meet standards" who are relative failures. I'd be curious if there's real research on success in public schools as an indicator of success later in life, but I'd suspect that it's not a great indicator. Public schools stress conformity, while very often success in life requires some degree of "going against the flow". Also luck, if we're being honest.
But you're probably right that our current public school system, as it stands, is not equipped to foster the potential of individual children. Our system is based on the factory model, attempting to churn out identical little workers who are supposed to be interchangeable. That the aim, anyway. The outcome is that a lot of potential is squandered. We want to take every child with the potential to be a magnificent brilliant weirdo and turn him into a Standard Child who "behaves himself". A system designed to do that will accomplish little else, and throw away any child who cannot be converted.
I think you're right to point out that there's difficulty in measuring "potential", but I think you've underestimated just how deep the problem is.
On the very surface level, you have problems like what you've referenced. Johnny has potential, but not the right environment to realize it. Suzie has less potential, but a better environment. Suzie may test higher on tests. And yes, that's one view of the problem.
But then there's also this: Maybe Niquanda is just as gifted as Johnny, but she's black and speaks in a way that many people would say, "she sounds like she came from the ghetto." Her parents spend time with her, read to her, bring her books, etc. Still, her teachers just sort of assume that she's not as smart because her name is Niquanda, and she "sounds like she's from the ghetto". It's not intentional, but subconsciously they treat her differently, and they have different expectations. So that's another facet of the problem. If you think that kind of racism doesn't play a role in the American educational system, then you're fooling yourself.
Meanwhile there's Jane, who seems to be a bright, wonderful kid, but she's having some kind of emotional problems. The teachers think that her father abused her in some way before he left, but the mother is being tight-lipped about it, and nobody knows for sure. Jane does really well on tests, and often does well in her schoolwork, but sometimes... she just falls apart. She'll stop doing any homework for a month at a time, and act out in class, but her teachers liker her.
But then there's Alexander. He's excellent at math, but really he's only good at math. Or at least, that's all he seems willing to do. He's possibly... somewhere left of "normal" on the autism spectrum, though not enough to call him autistic. He's a nice kid, but doesn't make friends easily. Very good at math, but... teachers are frustrated by him. They're also frustrated by James, who's very interested in both science and literature, and has shown an amazing ability to write for his age, but is terrible at memorizing his multiplication tables and refuses to participate in music or art class, and often won't complete his reading assignments unless they're fantasy/scifi books. James can also be an insufferable brat sometimes.
So here's the basic problem I'm getting at: The reality is that "intelligence" is not a linear scale between "dumb" and "smart", nor does it necessarily correlate with the kind of behavior that teachers would most like to see. Different kids have very different gifts, and it's very difficult to quantify those gifts, let along boil them down into a simplified categorization of either "gifted" or "not gifted". They often have some mix of gifts and disabilities, even if they're not recognized as such. Also, the teachers' views and attitudes play into the achievements of the students-- the kids that teachers like might do better for various reasons.
But even without getting into everything that I've talked about above, there's a even more fundamental problem in assessing "potential": Potential is very difficult to measure except in hindsight. It's the nature of "potential" that it is not yet actually present-- that a potential quality only exists after it stops being "potential" and becomes "actual". When dealing with a child, you don't know what that child could become. Even when you see that child as an adult, you have no way of really knowing what that child might have become-- had the potential to become-- if things had been different.
Because they are utterly different vehicles for different uses. One is mostly a commuter car that spends the vast majority of its life in a garage or parking lot, and the other is a work vehicle where the owner's job often revolves around it.
This ignores the large number of people who buy pickups and SUVs for commuter use anyway. Because obviously you can't drive your kids to school in a sedan. You'd look like a wimp.
Estimates should be used to prioritize features (cost / benefit) as opposed to being used to set hard deadlines.
I have argued for a long time that, when managing projects, people should focus less on deadlines and requirements, and more on prioritization. For example, all the stakeholders can agree on a project to be completed with a certain feature set by a deadline of November 1st for a budget of $20k, but often enough, that's not really the information you need to know. What's just as important as knowing those project requirements is knowing, when you reach the point where not all of those requirements can be met, which requirements should give way?
For some projects, it's better to come in one time and under budget, even if it means sacrificing a substantial part of the feature set (and some features are more important than others). For other projects, you can go over budget and the implementation can be a bit sloppy, but you must meet the deadline with the complete feature set, because other things are dependent on your project's completion. For some other project, the feature set may be paramount, and running a little late and over budget might be fine, as long as the result is solid and thorough. I've worked some projects where if I'm coming in early and under budget, they want me to wrap things up and save time and money, while others would prefer that you take the extra time and money to polish things, clean things up, and maybe add some more tasks to the project.
So whenever I take on a project, I always like to know that sort of thing. What's the minimum I need to do to consider the project a success, and what are my priorities? A list of requirements, a budget, and a timeline are not enough information to do a good job.
I'll admit that I'm not a developer, so I may not have a firm grasp on the relevance of everything being talked about. However, I've managed my share of projects, and I definitely think there's reason to doubt the value of estimates for all kinds of projects. Software development projects are not unique in that regard.
Now, I want to start by pointing out the obvious that you often have to make some kind of estimate. Even if the estimate isn't very precise, you have to make some kind of guess-- is this going to take 1 day, 6 months, or 5 years? Being practical, people have to have some idea of what they're getting into, or they can't make decisions.
On the other hand, estimate can only be accurate insofar as the scope of the project is well defined and well understood. For tasks that you do frequently and know exactly what needs to happen, accurate estimates are not very difficult. Even if you are bad at estimating, you can measure how much time and money is spent on those repetitive tasks, and then use that data to figure out how much time and money it typically takes. However, as the scope of work is less well defined, or the nature of the work is less well known, the accuracy of the estimate will be worse.
Imagine building a house. If you're building 100 houses in a development, and you do that work often, and you've already build 30 houses and know how much the labor and materials cost, then you can probably make a good guess of how much time and money it will take to build the remaining 70. However, if someone asks you to "fix all the problems with their house," and you don't know what shape their house is in, what it means to "fix" it, what the laws are regarding construction in the area, or what the local materials/labor cost, then your estimate won't be worth much.
And this brings me back to the issue of "precision" rather than "accuracy". I think part of the issue is to provide an appropriate expectation of precision when providing estimates. I frequently have to provide estimates, and some of them are wildly wrong, but when I'm not confident in the estimate I'm providing, I'll also provide some kind of disclaimer. I admit that I don't know all the details about the situation I'm getting into, and that my estimate could be off. The thing that I'm saying will take 6 weeks might take 2 months. Maybe 2.5 months. Maybe more. Not 6 months-- at least not unless there's something really unexpected or some kind of mission-creep.
But this is really part of a larger problem: the ineffectual nature of "plans". There's a famous quote, something along the lines of, "no battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy". Again, there are projects where the scope is defined and the work to be done is well understood, and in those cases, you can do conventional project planning. You can set milestone dates and make gantt charts, and develop a whole timeline and budget. But on the other hand, Donald Rumsfeld was on to something when he talked about "unknown unknowns". Often when you are embarking on a project, you're not even aware of the obstacles you're going to face, and so you can't account for them. This doesn't mean there's no point in developing a plan or a schedule. It means that your schedule has to be flexible in proportion to the likelihood of "unknown unknowns" and other contingencies outside of your control.
I think if you want to improve the situation, the answer isn't to stop making estimates or project plans, but to develop better methods for quickly estimating the precision of your estimates, providing a margin of error, or the level of flexibility needed in a project. However, I think the #NoEstimates people are correct to point out that there is often diminishing returns on trying to set deadlines and budgets. It doesn't make sense to spend a week refining your plans for a two-week project.
I don't know of a single person in corporate I.T. who feels threatened by the potential of some "upstart" business model appearing out of nowhere and wiping out their job.
Not only that, but I think most IT people I know would be pretty ambivalent if something did wipe out their job. Sure, it's hard to lose a job and have poor prospects, but on the other hand, most aren't exactly thrilled serving the role of "computer janitor". There's a high frequency of being yelled at, belittled, and being asked absolutely retarded questions.
And you also spend so much time doing things that nobody should have to do. I don't mean "things that are so terrible that nobody should have to endure them." I mean either, "This is so stupid it just shouldn't be done, but some VIP decided it needed to be done, so I'm stuck doing it," or else, "This really should just be a nice, easy, automatic process, but [Microsoft | Apple | Google | whoever] is too [stupid | lazy | greedy] to make this work properly." So much of the work IT people do simply shouldn't be necessary. If someone could make computers and networks work so well that I was no longer necessary, frankly I think I'd be relieved.
From my experience, with each of your anecdotes, I'd half expect a response like: "Look, I'm not interested in all the technical details. That's your job. Why can't you just give me what I'm asking for?"
Take your time to properly understand your costs and revenues so you can make a sensible investment. Maybe it ends up being cheaper just to close door for a week every 30 years than your A-Bomb-proof continuity plan.
This is an amazingly difficult concept to get people to understand. I've had way too many conversations with people who are sure they need an instantaneous failure-proof disaster recovery plan. They believe their servers should be constantly in sync with multiple copies in various places, such that in the even of a short internet outage, their servers will fail over to an outside copy, and then fail back when the outage ends, automatically and without skipping a beat. Unfortunately, they're willing to spend approximately $0 to achieve this, but that should be fine, because "the cloud" is pretty much free, right?
It's a similar problem with security. Everyone wants all of their data to be completely secure without any possibility of being compromised under any circumstances, but they also want it to be as convenient as if the data is unsecured, and they don't expect to pay extra for any of it.
I always try to explain that it's about trade-offs. I can make your data much more secure than it is now, but it'll cost you money, and you'll have to jump through extra hoops to get access to your own data. I can replicate what you need to a remote server, yes, but then you have to pay for the remote server. Depending on exactly what we're talking about, it might not be a real-time sync, or it might not result in anything like an automatic failover. Those things might require special software or services or licenses. Pay enough, and yes, I can probably get you a real-time sync with automatic failover and fail-back, but even then, you could still have an outage. The system that keeps everything in sync and triggers the failover could be the component that fails. Or if there's a total blackout on the east cost, it might not matter that there's a complete replica automatically started on the west coast, if all your employees are on the east coast and without power.
It's trade-offs. Spend enough money and put up with enough limitations, and you'll get something that does what you want, although imperfectly. Most of the time, for most businesses, it doesn't make sense. "Good enough" is good enough. But people don't like to be told, "A pretty secure network with a pretty good disaster recovery plan is appropriate for you." It makes them feel unimportant, which most executives and business owners can't live with. They want to know that they should have the best thing possible.
Do companies actually bulk-order from Dell any more? This is actually the most I've heard about Dell for months.
I know Google manufactures their own computers, for the most part.
So you think just because Google builds their own servers, it must be that everyone else does the same? There are a few companies out there that aren't Google, and yes, many of them still buy from Dell or HP.
Can someone offer an explanation as to why this plane has not been adopted? I don't know anything about it.
It'd be a real shame if it's really as simple as, "This is a great plane that's relatively cheap, and both military pilots and their commanders see these planes as serving a real purpose. Congress won't go for it though, because they want a super-expensive cool-looking boondoggle." But is it? Because this is one of those things where I'm suspicious that there's at least some kind of counter-argument.
All I know is, it didn't used to be a problem, and then suddenly it was a major problem across a lot of different sites, and often sites where the ads were otherwise aggressive. So I don't believe it was purely accidental.
Slashdot Mirror
If they would like to give it a try, they could seek a court order to take down the iFixit app on the basis of an NDA violation.
So you want them to go to court against themselves to get themselves to stop selling something in their own store.
But them doing it on their own vs based on a court order is the difference between due process and vigilante justice.
Really? Are you really going to go with "vigilante justice"?
Ok, so abstractly you agree that there are circumstances where Apple should remove content, where neither users are being harmed or the Apps are engaging in criminal activity. They're allowed to take down material that is involved in some kind of civil legal dispute. Like if someone is violating licensing terms. Or maybe contractual terms. Or... maybe violating an NDA?
So by that argument, any terms that Apple has for placing apps in their app store (other than those barring criminal or user-harming behavior) are inherently unethical. I think that's debatable, especially depending on your definitions of "criminal behavior" or "user-harming behavior". For example, iFixit broke their legal agreement with Apple: is that "criminal" behavior? You could say that, no, it's not, because it's a civil dispute and not technically "criminal". On the other hand, copyright, trademark, and patent disputes are generally civil disputes, so can Apple remove content where the intellectual property ownership is in dispute?
To be honest, securing email is not that hard, unless you want to "manually" set up a structure to check messages for weird stuff.
It's not that complicated, but it's complicated enough that I've seen plenty of people mess it up. And no, it's not just "checking messages for weird stuff". If you think that's all that's involved, then you don't know enough to run a mail server.
Do you know what SSL certificates are, or how to set one up? Do you know how to set up your firewall to allow only the appropriate ports to the Exchange server, and which ports need to be allowed? Do you understand the security implications of allowing incoming traffic to your network? Do you need to set up multiple Exchange servers with different roles, and do you know what the security implications of that would be? Do you know what MX servers are, and how to set it up so that you don't lose incoming email during a server outage? Do you know how to do a proper backup/restore of your Exchange environment, and how to secure those backups both from breach and loss? Do you know if your email system currently has any unpatched vulnerabilities? Do you have a way of mitigating those vulnerabilities? Do you have a good regimen for installing updates and patches, including testing to prevent unforeseen downtime?
Security isn't just about protecting yourself from malicious email.
You can "outsource" an email hygiene service, to handle the inbound of your email, clean it, and deliver it to your own server
Whoa there. I thought we just established that you're unwilling to trust an outside vendor with your email, and now you're planning on routing all of your email through an outside vendor? If I were paranoid enough about my email to refuse to use a hosted provider, I don't think I'd be willing to use a hosted spam filtering service.
One thing about Microsoft these days is their relentless push to stop you using their software on-premises, or at least out of their control.
I don't think Microsoft is driving that trend. People want it. Microsoft has actually been slow to respond, because I think they'd actually prefer that you keep running their servers onsite. My sense is that their push toward "the cloud" is actually an attempt to prevent other cloud providers from drinking their milkshake, and in fact they've been too slow to react.
Well there are still some non-O365 hosted Exchange companies, e.g. Backspace and Intermedia, who will use this. There are also quite a few companies who are not following the trend toward cloud-hosted email. Besides, I'd bet that a lot of the improvements are being developed for O365 anyway, so I'd bet they continue developing a non-hosted version of Exchange for as long as the cost of porting those O365 updates to the stand-alone version of Exchange is outweighed by the profits of selling licenses to those companies that will buy a stand-alone version.
I understand that mentality, but at the same time, I have to wonder: do you have a team of admins who are experts in security in general, and in securing the email software you use in specific? Because if not, your email may be more secure if you outsource it to a group who does have a team of such experts, rather than trying to do it yourself.
Sure, it requires that you trust the team you're outsourcing to-- that's true. If you don't trust Google, don't use them as a mail host. However, I'd rather trust Google with securing my email than my company's one generalist IT guy with 3 years of experience, running a 8 year-old Exchange server shoved under someone's desk. For a lot of small companies, that's the choice they're making.
it means that people that only think they know what they're doing can really mess things up when they're incorrect.
To be fair, it also means that people who pretty much know what they're doing (but might not be experts) figure out how to do things by browsing through the GUI. I think that's a point that often gets missed by the pro-CLI crowd. CLIs can be much easier and more powerful if you really know all the commands and syntax and intricacies of the shell language, but if not, it's easier to browse through a GUI, see all of your options, and check a few boxes.
True, but Apple provides access to pre-release products through their developer program. Revoking access to their developer program means revoking access to their app store. Also, as others are pointing out, their app included information about the tear-down of the Apple TV, was was violating an NDA. Do you think that if you have an app in Google's app store that included information that breaks an NDA with Google, Google might consider pulling the app?
They got the developer model through the developer program. Violating the terms of the developer program can get your status as a developer revoked.
What, you want them to create special tiers within their developer program, determining who has access to which resources based on who has broken which rules? I think that's a bit much to ask.
By that logic, people shouldn't be getting angry at Apple for revoking their "developer" status. It's like if, after the two year old ate the marshmallow, Mom came in and said, "Ok, I'm not leaving you alone with any candy anymore."
If you can't blame the kid for eating the marshmallow, then you can't blame Mom for refusing to trust the kid with more marshmallows.
Yep. If you buy an object, you have every right to take it apart.
This situation is complicated by the fact that it's a pre-release unit provided to developers who signed NDAs.
Yet in this article, I get the very feeling that what they are trying for isn't to get some weirdos visibility, they're dealing with statistics. There's nothing gloriously weird about black or latino kids as a group.
Yes, I thought we were going off on a tangent in talking about the difficulties in measuring "potential". It's clearly a related subject, but not directly applicable to the article.
They're taking a label "gifted student" and they are upset because it isn't applied to their children in more proportional numbers. It *must* be discrimination.
Well it isn't necessarily active discrimination, but it is a form of bias. And logically, it does work. If minority children are not proportionately represented in "gifted" programs, there are really one of two possibilities: Either the schools are somehow failing to address/rectify a socioeconomic inequality between the different racial groups, or the minorities are inherently inferior. I don't think you'll find much evidence to support the latter.
Now even if it's the former, that doesn't necessarily indicate over racism or intentional discrimination on anyone's part. It's also not clear that schools are ultimately responsible for fixing all of society's issues with racial bias and social inequality-- some of those issues are too large for a school system to tackle. However, if there are gifted children who are not being placed in a "gifted" program for reasons that ultimately boil down to "the child is black," that should definitely lead us to ask, "Is there a way to fix that?"
Even if the problem is not intentional discrimination, but the result of the child being immersed in "black culture", that should raise the question: Must achievement in our school be incompatible with "black culture"? Couldn't some common ground be found? Or are we really comfortable saying, "We're dooming another generation of black children to lesser achievement, but it's their own fault for failing to conform to my own cultural identity."
I think part of the disconnect for me is the idea of "success" as a reward for being a "good kid"-- and then further that idea of a "good kid" being someone who conforms, follows the rules, doesn't question, and doesn't rock the boat. "Do exactly what I say, when I say it, the way that I say it, or I'm going to fail you. Then you're going to be stuck working at McDonalds, which inherently means that you're a complete loser with no value."
I don't like any part of that chain of thought: We should be trying to help all of our children reach their full potential as much as possible, not treating it as a reward. Being a "good kid" doesn't simply mean conformity and obedience. We shouldn't be hoping to destroy children's lives as a punishment for bad behavior. And finally, we shouldn't be speaking so disparagingly of people who work hard every day, fulfilling useful roles in our society, simply because their jobs are not prestigious or high-paying. All of those ideas are incredibly corrosive.
One of the worst lies we perpetuate on ourselves is that we're being "controlled" and we have to avoid conformity at all costs.
And this idea is not really related to what I'm saying. I understand why you would misunderstand, but I'm not saying that conformity is inherently bad. The impulse to conform is an important human trait that helps society function, but the desire to punish those who fail to conform is ultimately a different impulse. That need to dominate and punish often does lead to problems, especially when you're dominating and punishing a group that doesn't even have the option to conform.
Schools are going to break down in a manner the pretty much all of life does. You need to meet a certain standard, and if you do so, you'll succeed. If you don't, you'll have issues, regardless of race or culture, but culture can make it much more difficult.
That's not quite how life breaks down, though. There are sometimes brilliant outliers who don't follow the rules and don't "meet standards" who are fantastically successful. There are also a lot of people who "do what they're supposed to" and "follow the rules" and "meet standards" who are relative failures. I'd be curious if there's real research on success in public schools as an indicator of success later in life, but I'd suspect that it's not a great indicator. Public schools stress conformity, while very often success in life requires some degree of "going against the flow". Also luck, if we're being honest.
But you're probably right that our current public school system, as it stands, is not equipped to foster the potential of individual children. Our system is based on the factory model, attempting to churn out identical little workers who are supposed to be interchangeable. That the aim, anyway. The outcome is that a lot of potential is squandered. We want to take every child with the potential to be a magnificent brilliant weirdo and turn him into a Standard Child who "behaves himself". A system designed to do that will accomplish little else, and throw away any child who cannot be converted.
I think you're right to point out that there's difficulty in measuring "potential", but I think you've underestimated just how deep the problem is.
On the very surface level, you have problems like what you've referenced. Johnny has potential, but not the right environment to realize it. Suzie has less potential, but a better environment. Suzie may test higher on tests. And yes, that's one view of the problem.
But then there's also this: Maybe Niquanda is just as gifted as Johnny, but she's black and speaks in a way that many people would say, "she sounds like she came from the ghetto." Her parents spend time with her, read to her, bring her books, etc. Still, her teachers just sort of assume that she's not as smart because her name is Niquanda, and she "sounds like she's from the ghetto". It's not intentional, but subconsciously they treat her differently, and they have different expectations. So that's another facet of the problem. If you think that kind of racism doesn't play a role in the American educational system, then you're fooling yourself.
Meanwhile there's Jane, who seems to be a bright, wonderful kid, but she's having some kind of emotional problems. The teachers think that her father abused her in some way before he left, but the mother is being tight-lipped about it, and nobody knows for sure. Jane does really well on tests, and often does well in her schoolwork, but sometimes... she just falls apart. She'll stop doing any homework for a month at a time, and act out in class, but her teachers liker her.
But then there's Alexander. He's excellent at math, but really he's only good at math. Or at least, that's all he seems willing to do. He's possibly... somewhere left of "normal" on the autism spectrum, though not enough to call him autistic. He's a nice kid, but doesn't make friends easily. Very good at math, but... teachers are frustrated by him. They're also frustrated by James, who's very interested in both science and literature, and has shown an amazing ability to write for his age, but is terrible at memorizing his multiplication tables and refuses to participate in music or art class, and often won't complete his reading assignments unless they're fantasy/scifi books. James can also be an insufferable brat sometimes.
So here's the basic problem I'm getting at: The reality is that "intelligence" is not a linear scale between "dumb" and "smart", nor does it necessarily correlate with the kind of behavior that teachers would most like to see. Different kids have very different gifts, and it's very difficult to quantify those gifts, let along boil them down into a simplified categorization of either "gifted" or "not gifted". They often have some mix of gifts and disabilities, even if they're not recognized as such. Also, the teachers' views and attitudes play into the achievements of the students-- the kids that teachers like might do better for various reasons.
But even without getting into everything that I've talked about above, there's a even more fundamental problem in assessing "potential": Potential is very difficult to measure except in hindsight. It's the nature of "potential" that it is not yet actually present-- that a potential quality only exists after it stops being "potential" and becomes "actual". When dealing with a child, you don't know what that child could become. Even when you see that child as an adult, you have no way of really knowing what that child might have become-- had the potential to become-- if things had been different.
Because they are utterly different vehicles for different uses. One is mostly a commuter car that spends the vast majority of its life in a garage or parking lot, and the other is a work vehicle where the owner's job often revolves around it.
This ignores the large number of people who buy pickups and SUVs for commuter use anyway. Because obviously you can't drive your kids to school in a sedan. You'd look like a wimp.
Estimates should be used to prioritize features (cost / benefit) as opposed to being used to set hard deadlines.
I have argued for a long time that, when managing projects, people should focus less on deadlines and requirements, and more on prioritization. For example, all the stakeholders can agree on a project to be completed with a certain feature set by a deadline of November 1st for a budget of $20k, but often enough, that's not really the information you need to know. What's just as important as knowing those project requirements is knowing, when you reach the point where not all of those requirements can be met, which requirements should give way?
For some projects, it's better to come in one time and under budget, even if it means sacrificing a substantial part of the feature set (and some features are more important than others). For other projects, you can go over budget and the implementation can be a bit sloppy, but you must meet the deadline with the complete feature set, because other things are dependent on your project's completion. For some other project, the feature set may be paramount, and running a little late and over budget might be fine, as long as the result is solid and thorough. I've worked some projects where if I'm coming in early and under budget, they want me to wrap things up and save time and money, while others would prefer that you take the extra time and money to polish things, clean things up, and maybe add some more tasks to the project.
So whenever I take on a project, I always like to know that sort of thing. What's the minimum I need to do to consider the project a success, and what are my priorities? A list of requirements, a budget, and a timeline are not enough information to do a good job.
I'll admit that I'm not a developer, so I may not have a firm grasp on the relevance of everything being talked about. However, I've managed my share of projects, and I definitely think there's reason to doubt the value of estimates for all kinds of projects. Software development projects are not unique in that regard.
Now, I want to start by pointing out the obvious that you often have to make some kind of estimate. Even if the estimate isn't very precise, you have to make some kind of guess-- is this going to take 1 day, 6 months, or 5 years? Being practical, people have to have some idea of what they're getting into, or they can't make decisions.
On the other hand, estimate can only be accurate insofar as the scope of the project is well defined and well understood. For tasks that you do frequently and know exactly what needs to happen, accurate estimates are not very difficult. Even if you are bad at estimating, you can measure how much time and money is spent on those repetitive tasks, and then use that data to figure out how much time and money it typically takes. However, as the scope of work is less well defined, or the nature of the work is less well known, the accuracy of the estimate will be worse.
Imagine building a house. If you're building 100 houses in a development, and you do that work often, and you've already build 30 houses and know how much the labor and materials cost, then you can probably make a good guess of how much time and money it will take to build the remaining 70. However, if someone asks you to "fix all the problems with their house," and you don't know what shape their house is in, what it means to "fix" it, what the laws are regarding construction in the area, or what the local materials/labor cost, then your estimate won't be worth much.
And this brings me back to the issue of "precision" rather than "accuracy". I think part of the issue is to provide an appropriate expectation of precision when providing estimates. I frequently have to provide estimates, and some of them are wildly wrong, but when I'm not confident in the estimate I'm providing, I'll also provide some kind of disclaimer. I admit that I don't know all the details about the situation I'm getting into, and that my estimate could be off. The thing that I'm saying will take 6 weeks might take 2 months. Maybe 2.5 months. Maybe more. Not 6 months-- at least not unless there's something really unexpected or some kind of mission-creep.
But this is really part of a larger problem: the ineffectual nature of "plans". There's a famous quote, something along the lines of, "no battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy". Again, there are projects where the scope is defined and the work to be done is well understood, and in those cases, you can do conventional project planning. You can set milestone dates and make gantt charts, and develop a whole timeline and budget. But on the other hand, Donald Rumsfeld was on to something when he talked about "unknown unknowns". Often when you are embarking on a project, you're not even aware of the obstacles you're going to face, and so you can't account for them. This doesn't mean there's no point in developing a plan or a schedule. It means that your schedule has to be flexible in proportion to the likelihood of "unknown unknowns" and other contingencies outside of your control.
I think if you want to improve the situation, the answer isn't to stop making estimates or project plans, but to develop better methods for quickly estimating the precision of your estimates, providing a margin of error, or the level of flexibility needed in a project. However, I think the #NoEstimates people are correct to point out that there is often diminishing returns on trying to set deadlines and budgets. It doesn't make sense to spend a week refining your plans for a two-week project.
I don't know of a single person in corporate I.T. who feels threatened by the potential of some "upstart" business model appearing out of nowhere and wiping out their job.
Not only that, but I think most IT people I know would be pretty ambivalent if something did wipe out their job. Sure, it's hard to lose a job and have poor prospects, but on the other hand, most aren't exactly thrilled serving the role of "computer janitor". There's a high frequency of being yelled at, belittled, and being asked absolutely retarded questions.
And you also spend so much time doing things that nobody should have to do. I don't mean "things that are so terrible that nobody should have to endure them." I mean either, "This is so stupid it just shouldn't be done, but some VIP decided it needed to be done, so I'm stuck doing it," or else, "This really should just be a nice, easy, automatic process, but [Microsoft | Apple | Google | whoever] is too [stupid | lazy | greedy] to make this work properly." So much of the work IT people do simply shouldn't be necessary. If someone could make computers and networks work so well that I was no longer necessary, frankly I think I'd be relieved.
So what has Uber done to justify verbing? Sure it's shorter than, say, "out-innovated". But "Ubered"?
Not to mention that we already have a perfectly good stupid-fad-term for the phenomenon: disrupted.
From my experience, with each of your anecdotes, I'd half expect a response like: "Look, I'm not interested in all the technical details. That's your job. Why can't you just give me what I'm asking for?"
For some reason, this comedy sketch comes to mind.
Take your time to properly understand your costs and revenues so you can make a sensible investment. Maybe it ends up being cheaper just to close door for a week every 30 years than your A-Bomb-proof continuity plan.
This is an amazingly difficult concept to get people to understand. I've had way too many conversations with people who are sure they need an instantaneous failure-proof disaster recovery plan. They believe their servers should be constantly in sync with multiple copies in various places, such that in the even of a short internet outage, their servers will fail over to an outside copy, and then fail back when the outage ends, automatically and without skipping a beat. Unfortunately, they're willing to spend approximately $0 to achieve this, but that should be fine, because "the cloud" is pretty much free, right?
It's a similar problem with security. Everyone wants all of their data to be completely secure without any possibility of being compromised under any circumstances, but they also want it to be as convenient as if the data is unsecured, and they don't expect to pay extra for any of it.
I always try to explain that it's about trade-offs. I can make your data much more secure than it is now, but it'll cost you money, and you'll have to jump through extra hoops to get access to your own data. I can replicate what you need to a remote server, yes, but then you have to pay for the remote server. Depending on exactly what we're talking about, it might not be a real-time sync, or it might not result in anything like an automatic failover. Those things might require special software or services or licenses. Pay enough, and yes, I can probably get you a real-time sync with automatic failover and fail-back, but even then, you could still have an outage. The system that keeps everything in sync and triggers the failover could be the component that fails. Or if there's a total blackout on the east cost, it might not matter that there's a complete replica automatically started on the west coast, if all your employees are on the east coast and without power.
It's trade-offs. Spend enough money and put up with enough limitations, and you'll get something that does what you want, although imperfectly. Most of the time, for most businesses, it doesn't make sense. "Good enough" is good enough. But people don't like to be told, "A pretty secure network with a pretty good disaster recovery plan is appropriate for you." It makes them feel unimportant, which most executives and business owners can't live with. They want to know that they should have the best thing possible.
Do companies actually bulk-order from Dell any more? This is actually the most I've heard about Dell for months.
I know Google manufactures their own computers, for the most part.
So you think just because Google builds their own servers, it must be that everyone else does the same? There are a few companies out there that aren't Google, and yes, many of them still buy from Dell or HP.
Can someone offer an explanation as to why this plane has not been adopted? I don't know anything about it.
It'd be a real shame if it's really as simple as, "This is a great plane that's relatively cheap, and both military pilots and their commanders see these planes as serving a real purpose. Congress won't go for it though, because they want a super-expensive cool-looking boondoggle." But is it? Because this is one of those things where I'm suspicious that there's at least some kind of counter-argument.
All I know is, it didn't used to be a problem, and then suddenly it was a major problem across a lot of different sites, and often sites where the ads were otherwise aggressive. So I don't believe it was purely accidental.