actually, according to tfa liberals are better thinkers.
actually, the tfa says nothing like that. It says liberals tolerate ambiguity better, and conservatives think in a more structured manner. Which is better (if at all) would depend on the situation.
imho old persons become conservative just because of decline of cognitive functions due to old age.
imho you're not old enough to have the experience required to know just how valuable experience can be.
1. It takes great courage to admit you were wrong and back out of the war.
Yes, it certainly does. Assuming, of course, that you *were* wrong. That's pretty well the whole debate about Iraq there, isn't it?
It doesn't take great courage to start a war.
Let's all hope that you're never in a position to find out just how wrong you are.
Re:If the journalist was stupid enough to sign it.
on
AMD NDA Scandal
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Did you even read the fucking summary? The journalist refused the NDA. The journalist reported that AMD uses abusive NDAs. AMD denies the journalist's claim. Proof of the claim is found.
Did you even read the fscking story? The NDA said any materials used in marketing had to be cleared first. There is absolutly NOTHING in there about attempting to censor news stories, opinion pieces, or anything else.
How the bloody hell is a story about a company wanting to control the marketing of it's own products news?
Aren't these the same directors who (for Enron, Worldcom/MCI, Adelphia Communications, etc) claimed that they had no idea that their companies were operating deeply in the red and that their quarterly earnings reports weren't worth the paper they were printed on? These are the same people who go before congress and suddenly develop very bad memories.
No, they're different directors. That lot WAS jailed - and they were jailed because of THEIR decisions, not those of their underlings.
Engineers are legally responsible for all of the design decisions that go into their work.
Yes, they are - and they should be. But you're not held responsible for the decisons of *others*. If some contractor says "Rebar? We don't need no stinkin rebar!" and the bridge falls down, he's sued, not you - because it wasn't your design decision.
I see no reason now to hold corporate shills - erm, CEOs and other board members - to the same standard.
They are - that's the whole idea behind due diligence - showing that you DID do your job. But how the bloody hell do you think it's fair to hold a director responsible because some wanker forgot to put the firewall back in place? And wtf was it doing down in the FIRST place?
Reading more about writing code than actually writing code would imply very little coding experience, or a vast desire for redundancy, or a career in software engineering research.
And spending more time reading code can go a long way into impressing on somebody the importance of writing it clearly in a manner that makes it maintainable and easily understood.
So many programmers in the world need to have their keyboards substituted for a pair of reading glasses so they can learn some basic competence.
Not true. It kills internet radio broadcasts that stream to the U.S., according to Rusty Hodge of soma.fm:
"The law says that anything transmitted to listeners in the US is liable for the royalties."
And that's going to bother me here in Canada HOW?
Last time I checked, U.S. law doesn't apply in Canada. You lot can make saying "eh" a capital offense, but it's not going to change how we speak up here one iota.
Putting all that aside, a benchmark should reflect what the default installation (maybe with tweaking necessary parameters based on the DB nature) would do in a specific scenario.
Isn't that what I just said? What sorts of optimizations do you thing we've been TALKING about?
As far as benchmarking default installations is concerned..... I'm guessing that you don't do a lot of database work. There is not a database out there that comes "pre-tuned". They ALL need to be adjusted, futzed with, experimented on, and played with in order to get the right configuration for your specific combination of hardware and db load.
If you need one of Sun's key luminaries in order to get that level of performance it is also of limited value. I don't want to have to drag Burleson or Niemiec out to my shop just to get my database to run well. I need to be able to get the database to run well on my own. My company won't spring for Niemiec's pool boy, nevermind Niemiec himself.
You're missing the entire point of what he's saying.
When you see benchmarks run and comparisons made between different databases that are conducted by a single person or company, all things are seldom equal. The people involved have more expertiese with this db package and less with that... things are not set up equally well.
For these published tests, Sun spent a lot of time optimizing postgress to make it fly.... just as the people at oracle spent a lot of time optimizing *their* database configuration for the tests that *they* publish.
So, all things ARE equal, in relation to the database tuning & setup - both were done by experts with the respective packages, and we don't have to wonder if some yahoo screwed things up, intentionally or otherwise, by missing a basic configuration option.
Effectively killing internet radio in the US seems like it would be pretty far beyond that point, as it would be hard for congress to look the other way on that.
But they won't kill internet radio in the US. They'll kill internet radio BASED in the US.
Anybody want to rent some of my Canadian bandwidth for streaming to US customers?
Recent longitudinal studies released by the NIH in Atlanta, funded my grants from the Bill Gates foundation, have concluded that scientists are the leading cause of cancer in lab rats.
normal behaviour depends on context.... and context IS everything.
When you're working on a classified project, and your neighbour says "Hey, john - how's work?" you say "fine", and you don't worry about it.
But when the neighbour says "Hey, john - I was wondering. I know you work at XXXX, and I got to wondering.... what can you tell me about YYYY, and is it true that ZZZZ?" you start to pay a bit more attention to your neighour. Yes, it may still be innocent - but as it gets away from banal generalities about your work, or who you work with, or exactly what you DO do, you have to be more careful. If you work in high-energy particle physics, and John happens to be a line cook at a greasy spoon who also just happens to have a life-line interest in the exact things you work with, you have to wonder.
Most people are interested in computers, and will talk to you about them if they know you're a programmer, for example. But if you go to a party and some guy who works with an accounting firm in collections tries to pick your brain a specific class of heuristic algorithms that you just happen to be working on for DOD, you can be pretty damned sure that it's not casual party conversation. THAT'S the type of "curiosity" they're talking about.
The things that were listed ARE indicators to be carefull, and that the person you're talking to may not be exactly who they claim to be, IF YOU ARE INVOLVED IN CLASSIFIED PROJECTS, working for DOD or other sensitive government departments. These types of things are NOT normal in the workplace - people really *aren't* interested in exactly what you have on your desk before you at work, and it IS a sign.
IN academia, it's different. The same principles apply; but because many of these indicators *are* normal behaviours (to a large extent) in academia, they don't transfer well, or obviously.
I don't see a plot here to suppress or control people at the universities. What I see is a bunch of people who are used to one environment trying to transfer their knowledge to another environment, and because they're not familiar with it, they're screwing up.
Unreported contact with foreign nationals... if you have a security clearance, you are *required* to report all contacts with foreign nationals (depending on the country, the relative level of your clearance, etc).
Well, guess what - it works in industry. It does NOT work in university where 35% of the student population, and 50% of the faculty comes from somewhere else in the world.
The rest are really just "you're a non-conformist, let's chase you down".
Again, context and understanding - neither of which came through in TFA.
If somebody goes on vacation to a different resort every year, there is nothing to worry about. But if somebody who has never taken vacations all of a sudden starts going on vacation 4 times a year, it can be an indication of something. It's the CHANGE in habits and behavior that is more important than the behavior itself in most cases. And it's not a matter of "He's different - let's chase him down". It's a matter of "He's acting differently than he usually does - could there be something here we should know about?"
So they check the guy out. They find out his uncle died and left him a time-share in St Lucia, and $250,000 in stocks. All of a sudden his foreign travel and new car aren't an issue - they've been explained.
But if he hasn't won the lottery, nobody's died, and instead of going to St Lucia he's traipsing off to Quatar, Afganistan, Cuba via Toronto or Mexico City, etc, then don't you think there's a pretty good chance that something IS going on?
That's why things like that are called indicators, and not proof. It's a reason to look at the situation and make sure that everything IS kosher - nothing more, nothing less. And neither the FBI nor any other agency in the western world concerned with security considers it anything but that.
Aldrich Ames comes to mind. He operated for at least 9 years as a foreign spy right under the noses of the CIA. I don't know what brought him down, but I doubt it was someone noticing he worked late hours
One of the things that brought Ames to the notice of investigators was that he was living much better than he *should* have been able to given his salary. Or, in other words.... "unexplained affluence".
And it's not like we haven't had a large set of high level officials that've been busted for espionage after years spent doing it
Just because they don't develop a stamp in the middle of their forehead that says "SPY" in big, bold letters the first time they do something doesn't mean that these behaviors can't be good indicators.
And even the FBI says that that's all they are - indicators. They're not proof.
Unexplained affluence, failing to report overseas travel, showing unusual interest in information outside the job scope, keeping unusual work hours, unreported contacts with foreign nationals, unreported contact with foreign government, military, or intelligence officials, attempting to gain new accesses without the need to know, and unexplained absences are all considered potential espionage indicators.
What a paranoid and counterproductive list. Isn't the information in bold just about everyone who works in academia?
Actually, it's neither paranoid or counterproductive.... if you're working for a defense contractor, the government, or the military directly.
It's a pretty standard set of criteria that's probably been in use since the mid-'50s... and is very usefull.
It's just not applicable in an academic environment. This isn't an attempt to curtail freedoms as much as it is an example of total ignorance of how academia works.
A single counterexample (you) doesn't prove that my statement is false. It merely proves that it is not UNIVERSALLY true. On the whole, in most cases, my statement is absolutely correct.
"On the whole, in most cases", you made a blanket statement of fact. To recap:
My point about diff.eq and calculus was that techies study these things in school. I did. You did not.
There is no qualification there. It is a bald statement with NO qualifications. It's an absolute claim. Therefore, my being an exception is proof that you are wrong, not a statistical anomaly.
Maybe while I'm digging out my logic texts, you can haul out an english text, if it's not too artsy for you.
And with this hot job waiting for you, you just turned it down to play with "teh shiny" eh?
Yup
Bullshit.
Nope. Hard as this may be for you to believe, for some people, money isn't the motivating factor.
Either they didn't want YOU, or it wasn't much of a job to begin with. "Shoulda, coulda, woulda" eh?
There's no "shoulda, coulda, woulda" at all. I made the choice I wanted to make, and I have had no regrets whatsoever.
Now please, find something else to troll about. You've been shown to be wrong - suck it up and deal.
Of course you spent quite a bit of time learning my trade
I don't know how long you've been a programmer, but I've been at it since 1982. I suspect it's more likely that you learned *my* trade.
and those skills did NOT come from historian training.
Personally, I think it's a wee bit arrogant to think that the ability to distill a problem to it's essentials, dissect it, and solve it logically is a skill that's common in programming only.
Bits like language syntax, methods of expression, etc, are details. They are absolutely required to be able to express the solution to a problem (write the source code), but that's not where the real skill is. The REAL skill is the ability to solve the problem in the first place - without that, you have nothing to express. You need to be able to break down a large problem into progressively smaller and smaller chunks, rearrange it in some semblance of order, and THEN express the solution. The details of how you express that solution can be looked up in any reference manual anywhere..... but first, you need to have a solution worth expressing.
Hmmmm..... would now be a good time to also mention that part of my "training" was becoming qualified as a linguist, and a translator? You'd be amazed at how helpful linguistics training can help you absorb the concepts and ideas behind programming languages, and therefore become productive in them much quicker than those trained in "only" the sciences. But maybe I shouldn't - that would just make me artsy-fartsier, I suppose.
What really happened here is, you used to be a historian but there was no money in it. So you bought a LOT of books, and you retrained as a programmer
Actually, you're absolutely, 100%, totally, completely, drop-dead wrong... that's the danger of making assumptions.
First, I had no intention of finding work as a historian, period. I took the degree I did out of pure interest - I always liked history.
Second, the job at Control Data was supposed to be a summer job..... but I got bitten by the "Ooooohhh.... Shiney!" bug, and simply became MORE interested in computers than I was in history. And as a final note, I worked with computers because I found them INTERESTING, not because of the money.
Your experience proves nothing. You have no point. You are merely distracting everyone with a pointless story about how it's possible for a historian to learn about technology.
Not at all. Scroll back, and see my first comment in this thread. I was responding to something you said:
My point about diff.eq and calculus was that techies study these things in school. I did. You did not.
You see, you made a fairly commmon mistake. Interests aren't mutually exclusive. I don't have to give up a love of history for a fascination - I can enjoy both. And I also enjoy hockey. Politics. Raising my daughter. And I can do all of those things, because I am capable of having multiple interests - as is pretty well any half-way well-rounded individual. And whether or not you happen to study a technical interest in university instead of one of your other interests as nothing - absolutly ZERO - to do with my being a "techie" or not.
You say "techies study this". I said that's not true - I'm a techie, and I studied THAT. That doesn't make what I said a pointless story - it makes it proof that your statement was incorrect and invaled, because *I* am proof that what you claim isn't true. And there are very many other people floating around in our industry that ALSO have formal university degrees in fields other than computing science.... and each of those different perspectives *adds* t
You are a statistical outlyer, not a trend. I seriously doubt very many historians could duplicate your experience
That I am a historian who chose to become a programmer may very well make me a statistical aberration. But it doesn't change the fact that the skills required to be a good historian are very directly useful to most aspects of computer programming.
My point about diff.eq and calculus was that techies study these things in school. I did. You did not.
Guess somebody should have told me that before I got an honours degree in Soviet & East European Studies. If I were to describe myself in terms of training, I'd say I was a historian.
Funny how that hasn't stopped me from being a programmer since 1982.... and I started out at Control Data, which was SCIENTIFIC, not business computing.
Then there's the shutdown system I worked on for a nuclear reactor. I still, to this day, don't have any real understanding of the maths involved in some of the calculations - but then again, I didn't HAVE to. The important thing, even for that project, was that I understand numerical methods well enough to be able to code the equations the physicists & engineers gave me to return the proper results.
Being a programmer (which I think should qualify me as being a "techie") involves logic, problem decomposition and definition, not math.
My training as a historian, which gave me the ability to sift to massive amounts of information, extract the relevant bits, and put them together in a cohesive whole makes me "perfectly" suited to be a programmer - and is much more useful than a thorough knowledge of partial differential equations could ever be.
He throws up a bunch of examples, like the fact that the army is still using horses in Afganistan, because they're efficient. And that "huge" innovations, like the V-2 rocket in WWII weren't as pivotal as people think they were (no mention of, you know, the tank).
..... which was used in World War I. It's wasn't the tank per se that had the impact in WWII (although the massivly more powerful engines, guns & armor made a massive difference in their *practicality*, they were still basically the same beasties used 30 years earlier), but it was the development of tactics that allowed them to be used more effectivly than the "trundle along with the pongos and give them some supporting fire" type of thinking.
And then there are things like the cell phone, the internal combustion engine, and the personal computer...Technologies which actually are as influential as we think they are.
Both the cell phone and the PC are perfect examples, I think, to illustrate the points he was making - and they're at opposite ends of the spectrum.
The development of the PC has had a massive effect - in business, and in personal lives. It allowed people to do things they've never been able to do before. that was a major, MAJOR shift that's literally changed the world. But 1 core vs 2 vs 4, or 16 mhz vs 3 ghz is a change in degree, even though the differences between the computer I have now and my first 386 machine based on the original Intel motherboard are massive.
THe cell phone is a different story. Although it's created enough societal changes to keep legions of sociologists busy for a century or so, the reality is is that the cell phone didn't really *add* - it just changed.
You could still get in touch with the kids at home to see who wanted what at the store before you returned from your shopping trip... you just stuck a quarter into the pay phone at the entrance instead of hauling a cell phone out of your pocket. The BIG change took place much, much earlier, when the phone was first invented and started to be deployed. THAT'S the technology that created the seismic shift in how society and the world operated, not the development of cheap cell phones.
And I think that that's the point that I take from the article. Technology is a good thing, innovation is a good thing - but too much of our thinking of innovation revolves around "Oooooo....shiny!"
YouTube didn't invent anything - I'd been using streaming video for years (paltalk? firetalk before that? MSN/Yahoo and even more ancient web cam-broadcasting software?) Streaming video wasn't new. What was new was how it was *packaged*
Myspace didn't invent anything. I've been using discussion boards on-line almost since the web was invented. What was new was how it was *packaged*
But both of those sites - and I'm sure we can all think of many more examples - innovated more by packaging than technical, "shiny" advances.
So I think TFA author is essentially correct - innovation is NOT all about technology and science. There are other factors that are equally and sometimes even more important as driving forces.
That state of mind is not reserved just for liberals... In my experience, it seems just about anyone who labels them self as anything (liberal, conservative, etc.) has that "my way or the highway" thinking.
I very, very strongly disagree. If you ask me what I am, I will say "conservative", because I tend to be to the right of center. But on some issues, I'm on the left - on others, further right
I think your statement - "anybody who labels themselves has that "my way or the highway"" - has about as much merit as "all liberals support terrorism" or "all conservatives are sheeple who have been brainwashed by the corporations"
*All* blanket statements are seriously broken in very fundamental ways..... including this one.
Slashdot Mirror
How the bloody hell is a story about a company wanting to control the marketing of it's own products news?
Anybody interested in Canadian co-location services?
So many programmers in the world need to have their keyboards substituted for a pair of reading glasses so they can learn some basic competence.
Last time I checked, U.S. law doesn't apply in Canada. You lot can make saying "eh" a capital offense, but it's not going to change how we speak up here one iota.
As far as benchmarking default installations is concerned
When you see benchmarks run and comparisons made between different databases that are conducted by a single person or company, all things are seldom equal. The people involved have more expertiese with this db package and less with that
For these published tests, Sun spent a lot of time optimizing postgress to make it fly
So, all things ARE equal, in relation to the database tuning & setup - both were done by experts with the respective packages, and we don't have to wonder if some yahoo screwed things up, intentionally or otherwise, by missing a basic configuration option.
Anybody want to rent some of my Canadian bandwidth for streaming to US customers?
Recent longitudinal studies released by the NIH in Atlanta, funded my grants from the Bill Gates foundation, have concluded that scientists are the leading cause of cancer in lab rats.
Is it just me, or were people saying that about Japan just before and after WW II?
When you're working on a classified project, and your neighbour says "Hey, john - how's work?" you say "fine", and you don't worry about it.
But when the neighbour says "Hey, john - I was wondering. I know you work at XXXX, and I got to wondering
Most people are interested in computers, and will talk to you about them if they know you're a programmer, for example. But if you go to a party and some guy who works with an accounting firm in collections tries to pick your brain a specific class of heuristic algorithms that you just happen to be working on for DOD, you can be pretty damned sure that it's not casual party conversation. THAT'S the type of "curiosity" they're talking about.
The things that were listed ARE indicators to be carefull, and that the person you're talking to may not be exactly who they claim to be, IF YOU ARE INVOLVED IN CLASSIFIED PROJECTS, working for DOD or other sensitive government departments. These types of things are NOT normal in the workplace - people really *aren't* interested in exactly what you have on your desk before you at work, and it IS a sign.
IN academia, it's different. The same principles apply; but because many of these indicators *are* normal behaviours (to a large extent) in academia, they don't transfer well, or obviously.
I don't see a plot here to suppress or control people at the universities. What I see is a bunch of people who are used to one environment trying to transfer their knowledge to another environment, and because they're not familiar with it, they're screwing up.
Unreported contact with foreign nationals
Well, guess what - it works in industry. It does NOT work in university where 35% of the student population, and 50% of the faculty comes from somewhere else in the world. Again, context and understanding - neither of which came through in TFA.
If somebody goes on vacation to a different resort every year, there is nothing to worry about. But if somebody who has never taken vacations all of a sudden starts going on vacation 4 times a year, it can be an indication of something. It's the CHANGE in habits and behavior that is more important than the behavior itself in most cases. And it's not a matter of "He's different - let's chase him down". It's a matter of "He's acting differently than he usually does - could there be something here we should know about?" So they check the guy out. They find out his uncle died and left him a time-share in St Lucia, and $250,000 in stocks. All of a sudden his foreign travel and new car aren't an issue - they've been explained.
But if he hasn't won the lottery, nobody's died, and instead of going to St Lucia he's traipsing off to Quatar, Afganistan, Cuba via Toronto or Mexico City, etc, then don't you think there's a pretty good chance that something IS going on?
That's why things like that are called indicators, and not proof. It's a reason to look at the situation and make sure that everything IS kosher - nothing more, nothing less. And neither the FBI nor any other agency in the western world concerned with security considers it anything but that.
And even the FBI says that that's all they are - indicators. They're not proof.
It's a pretty standard set of criteria that's probably been in use since the mid-'50s
It's just not applicable in an academic environment. This isn't an attempt to curtail freedoms as much as it is an example of total ignorance of how academia works.
Maybe while I'm digging out my logic texts, you can haul out an english text, if it's not too artsy for you. YupNope. Hard as this may be for you to believe, for some people, money isn't the motivating factor.
There's no "shoulda, coulda, woulda" at all. I made the choice I wanted to make, and I have had no regrets whatsoever.
Now please, find something else to troll about. You've been shown to be wrong - suck it up and deal.
I'm done with this thread.
I'm a techie.
I studied Soviet & East European Studies. (please note the lack of a math component).
Therefore you're wrong.
See how easy that was?Please read the above quote very, very carefully. I leave it as an "exercise for the interested reader" to determine where the pretension lies.
And where, pray tell, did I claim that is was?
I don't know how long you've been a programmer, but I've been at it since 1982. I suspect it's more likely that you learned *my* trade.
Personally, I think it's a wee bit arrogant to think that the ability to distill a problem to it's essentials, dissect it, and solve it logically is a skill that's common in programming only.
..... but first, you need to have a solution worth expressing.
..... would now be a good time to also mention that part of my "training" was becoming qualified as a linguist, and a translator? You'd be amazed at how helpful linguistics training can help you absorb the concepts and ideas behind programming languages, and therefore become productive in them much quicker than those trained in "only" the sciences. But maybe I shouldn't - that would just make me artsy-fartsier, I suppose.
Bits like language syntax, methods of expression, etc, are details. They are absolutely required to be able to express the solution to a problem (write the source code), but that's not where the real skill is. The REAL skill is the ability to solve the problem in the first place - without that, you have nothing to express. You need to be able to break down a large problem into progressively smaller and smaller chunks, rearrange it in some semblance of order, and THEN express the solution. The details of how you express that solution can be looked up in any reference manual anywhere
Hmmmm
Actually, you're absolutely, 100%, totally, completely, drop-dead wrong ... that's the danger of making assumptions.
..... but I got bitten by the "Ooooohhh .... Shiney!" bug, and simply became MORE interested in computers than I was in history. And as a final note, I worked with computers because I found them INTERESTING, not because of the money.
First, I had no intention of finding work as a historian, period. I took the degree I did out of pure interest - I always liked history.
Second, the job at Control Data was supposed to be a summer job
Not at all. Scroll back, and see my first comment in this thread. I was responding to something you said:
You see, you made a fairly commmon mistake. Interests aren't mutually exclusive. I don't have to give up a love of history for a fascination - I can enjoy both. And I also enjoy hockey. Politics. Raising my daughter. And I can do all of those things, because I am capable of having multiple interests - as is pretty well any half-way well-rounded individual. And whether or not you happen to study a technical interest in university instead of one of your other interests as nothing - absolutly ZERO - to do with my being a "techie" or not.
.... and each of those different perspectives *adds* t
You say "techies study this". I said that's not true - I'm a techie, and I studied THAT. That doesn't make what I said a pointless story - it makes it proof that your statement was incorrect and invaled, because *I* am proof that what you claim isn't true. And there are very many other people floating around in our industry that ALSO have formal university degrees in fields other than computing science
Funny how that hasn't stopped me from being a programmer since 1982
Then there's the shutdown system I worked on for a nuclear reactor. I still, to this day, don't have any real understanding of the maths involved in some of the calculations - but then again, I didn't HAVE to. The important thing, even for that project, was that I understand numerical methods well enough to be able to code the equations the physicists & engineers gave me to return the proper results.
Being a programmer (which I think should qualify me as being a "techie") involves logic, problem decomposition and definition, not math.
My training as a historian, which gave me the ability to sift to massive amounts of information, extract the relevant bits, and put them together in a cohesive whole makes me "perfectly" suited to be a programmer - and is much more useful than a thorough knowledge of partial differential equations could ever be.
Both the cell phone and the PC are perfect examples, I think, to illustrate the points he was making - and they're at opposite ends of the spectrum.
The development of the PC has had a massive effect - in business, and in personal lives. It allowed people to do things they've never been able to do before. that was a major, MAJOR shift that's literally changed the world. But 1 core vs 2 vs 4, or 16 mhz vs 3 ghz is a change in degree, even though the differences between the computer I have now and my first 386 machine based on the original Intel motherboard are massive.
THe cell phone is a different story. Although it's created enough societal changes to keep legions of sociologists busy for a century or so, the reality is is that the cell phone didn't really *add* - it just changed.
You could still get in touch with the kids at home to see who wanted what at the store before you returned from your shopping trip
And I think that that's the point that I take from the article. Technology is a good thing, innovation is a good thing - but too much of our thinking of innovation revolves around "Oooooo
YouTube didn't invent anything - I'd been using streaming video for years (paltalk? firetalk before that? MSN/Yahoo and even more ancient web cam-broadcasting software?) Streaming video wasn't new. What was new was how it was *packaged*
Myspace didn't invent anything. I've been using discussion boards on-line almost since the web was invented. What was new was how it was *packaged*
But both of those sites - and I'm sure we can all think of many more examples - innovated more by packaging than technical, "shiny" advances.
So I think TFA author is essentially correct - innovation is NOT all about technology and science. There are other factors that are equally and sometimes even more important as driving forces.
I think your statement - "anybody who labels themselves has that "my way or the highway"" - has about as much merit as "all liberals support terrorism" or "all conservatives are sheeple who have been brainwashed by the corporations"
*All* blanket statements are seriously broken in very fundamental ways