I can attest to this. My wife and I went to Paris for our honeymoon years ago. She took high school french and I didn't know a word. Our waiter was pretending not to know English until my wife ordered me penis instead of rabbit. He burst into laughter and then took the rest of our order in English.
There is something inherently negative about aging. You heal more slowly. Your vision declines. Your hearing declines. Your mental capacity declines. Your phsical capacity declines. Your odds of contracting various horrible diseases increases dramatically. I'm sorry, but pretending that you should still be able to make the future better than the past at any age is simply foolish. I wish it weren't so. But once you reach a certain age, it becomes painfully obvious that decline is inveitable. Perhaps you haven't reached that age yet.
The best time of my life is in the future, and it always will be.
Unfortunately, there's this horrible thing called aging that makes this inevitably false for everyone that doesn't die suddenly before they're old an decripit.
I suggest you re-read the posts in threaded mode. The first sentence of my post is "I was initially intrigued by reccomendation algorithms." It's obvious that all subsequent use of the word "rates" applied to the reccomendation engine. Only you seemed to have trouble understanding that.
What question did I post that you thought you were answering? The last sentence of your last post shows a complete misunderstanding on your part. Is English your first language? Based on your sig, I wouldn't have thought you'd have trouble understanding that.
I could see your point if I was paying on a per-movie basis. I guess if every one feels a tiny bit better about Netflix because their predictions are 0.1 or 0.2 stars better, it's a win for Netflix. I'm guessing there were better ways to spend the million + achieve that. Although as someone else pointed out, they may not ever pay the 1M and they are getting lots of free pub.
First, you can't rate something 0 stars, so there's only a true range of 4 stars. 4 * 0.1 = 0.4 which would be +/- 0.2. However, as I mentioned in my post, the vast majority of predictions (for me) are in the 2-4 star range. Hence, 2 * 0.1 = 0.2 is +/- 0.1 star. Based on what my perceived margin of error is, +/- 0.1 would probably not even be noticeable.
I was initially intrigued by reccomendation algorithms. Sadly, it's easy to get them up to a certain point and then almost impossible to make them any better. At least for movies. Netflix rates almost everything between 2.5 to 4 stars. Movies it rates 1 or 2 stars, I wouldn't have considered watching anyways. It never rates anything 5 stars. And for things between 3 and 4 stars, I seem equally as likely to really like a 3 star rated item as I am to not really like a 4 star rated item.
So why is Netflix paying a million bucks to change that 3 to a 3.1 or 2.9?
Your response is a perfect example of the point of my original post -- you cloud the real issue, corporate interests, with your own personal take on who's serving them.
I agree wholeheartedly that the current patent system (and legal system for that matter) favors entities with the cash and scale to pay lawyers' hourly rates.
To pretend that only conservatives/republicans (at least in the US) have been "serving the upper income brackets and corporate proprietors for a long time" is laughable at best. I suggest that you check the donation statistics for the parties or review the favorable treatment corporate interests received under the Clinton administration.
Your silly use of labels and one-sided demonization of the "conservatives/republicans" obfuscates the real issue. Frankly, I'm tired of the whole two-party system. In the last 10-15 years, about the only sigificant differences between the two major parties in the US in practice (as in passed legislation) have been social, not economic ones.
Your point would be clearer if you focused less on labels and more on ideas. Bush is hardly an economic conservative in the true sense of the term. In fact, aside from cutting taxes, what has he done that is economically "conservative?" "Reforming" the patent system is not something I see as a "conservative" move either. In fact, eliminiating patents altogether would be the most economically "conservative" thing to do as it would represent the least amount of government intervention.
running into a serious problem with unsupported software can be seen as a violation of Sarbanes-Oxley and may be construed as negligence. Not only that, but it's a major cause of global warming and stops poor children from getting health care too.
Seriously, does anyone even remember the original purpose of SOX?
This is so true. I personally know 4 *good* developers that have left IT over the last 5 years. These weren't band-wagoners that hopped on in the late 90s, these were good developers. IT at most large organizations these days is a joke. It's all jargon and PMPs with no one around that can really get anything done. If you do happen to be one of the few real coders still around, you end up working with 5 project managers and a bunch of contractors (which I am now). Unless things change, I don't think I can ever go back to work as an employee for a large corporate entity again.
An even better analogy, IMO, is the strict regulation of natural gas pipelines. If I own a natural gas pipeline, I have to pay the same rates as everyone else to move my gas. I can't give myself a price break or priority access.
We need something like this for internet backbone providers.
Vertical integration can and will be abused. It's just a matter of time.
In case you forgot to read the question, he wants *programming* superstars, not MBA wannabes. Board positions? Not programming in 10 years? Are you kidding? You have no clue what a programming superstar is.
Consultants are consultants. Every big company has them pulling the same type of stunts. Even the consultants pushing FOSS are self-serving, except maybe for you and those other people
I'll help you out. Most developers I know don't mind buying a new computer every couple of years. I could give a shit if a DEVELOPMENT IDE runs on a 10 year old computer.
Have you ever worked on non-open source projects? When things go wrong, you just enter the error message into Google, and 80% of the time, the solution is right there!!! Don't mistake Google's search capability with some benefit of open source projects.
Slashdot Mirror
I can attest to this. My wife and I went to Paris for our honeymoon years ago. She took high school french and I didn't know a word. Our waiter was pretending not to know English until my wife ordered me penis instead of rabbit. He burst into laughter and then took the rest of our order in English.
I should mention that I've attended the funerals of both my wife's grandmother and my Aunt in the last 10 days.
There is something inherently negative about aging. You heal more slowly. Your vision declines. Your hearing declines. Your mental capacity declines. Your phsical capacity declines. Your odds of contracting various horrible diseases increases dramatically. I'm sorry, but pretending that you should still be able to make the future better than the past at any age is simply foolish. I wish it weren't so. But once you reach a certain age, it becomes painfully obvious that decline is inveitable. Perhaps you haven't reached that age yet.
Unfortunately, there's this horrible thing called aging that makes this inevitably false for everyone that doesn't die suddenly before they're old an decripit.
What question did I post that you thought you were answering? The last sentence of your last post shows a complete misunderstanding on your part. Is English your first language? Based on your sig, I wouldn't have thought you'd have trouble understanding that.
Thank you, Caption Obvious!
I could see your point if I was paying on a per-movie basis. I guess if every one feels a tiny bit better about Netflix because their predictions are 0.1 or 0.2 stars better, it's a win for Netflix. I'm guessing there were better ways to spend the million + achieve that. Although as someone else pointed out, they may not ever pay the 1M and they are getting lots of free pub.
First, you can't rate something 0 stars, so there's only a true range of 4 stars. 4 * 0.1 = 0.4 which would be +/- 0.2. However, as I mentioned in my post, the vast majority of predictions (for me) are in the 2-4 star range. Hence, 2 * 0.1 = 0.2 is +/- 0.1 star. Based on what my perceived margin of error is, +/- 0.1 would probably not even be noticeable.
I think they are paying 50K a year out to the top team. Not sure if that's got a time limit on it. I guess the pub is good.
Really? How so? We're not talking about money here or something tangible that really adds up.
I was initially intrigued by reccomendation algorithms. Sadly, it's easy to get them up to a certain point and then almost impossible to make them any better. At least for movies. Netflix rates almost everything between 2.5 to 4 stars. Movies it rates 1 or 2 stars, I wouldn't have considered watching anyways. It never rates anything 5 stars. And for things between 3 and 4 stars, I seem equally as likely to really like a 3 star rated item as I am to not really like a 4 star rated item. So why is Netflix paying a million bucks to change that 3 to a 3.1 or 2.9?
I agree wholeheartedly that the current patent system (and legal system for that matter) favors entities with the cash and scale to pay lawyers' hourly rates.
To pretend that only conservatives/republicans (at least in the US) have been "serving the upper income brackets and corporate proprietors for a long time" is laughable at best. I suggest that you check the donation statistics for the parties or review the favorable treatment corporate interests received under the Clinton administration.
Your silly use of labels and one-sided demonization of the "conservatives/republicans" obfuscates the real issue. Frankly, I'm tired of the whole two-party system. In the last 10-15 years, about the only sigificant differences between the two major parties in the US in practice (as in passed legislation) have been social, not economic ones.
Your point would be clearer if you focused less on labels and more on ideas. Bush is hardly an economic conservative in the true sense of the term. In fact, aside from cutting taxes, what has he done that is economically "conservative?" "Reforming" the patent system is not something I see as a "conservative" move either. In fact, eliminiating patents altogether would be the most economically "conservative" thing to do as it would represent the least amount of government intervention.
This is so true. I personally know 4 *good* developers that have left IT over the last 5 years. These weren't band-wagoners that hopped on in the late 90s, these were good developers. IT at most large organizations these days is a joke. It's all jargon and PMPs with no one around that can really get anything done. If you do happen to be one of the few real coders still around, you end up working with 5 project managers and a bunch of contractors (which I am now). Unless things change, I don't think I can ever go back to work as an employee for a large corporate entity again.
An even better analogy, IMO, is the strict regulation of natural gas pipelines. If I own a natural gas pipeline, I have to pay the same rates as everyone else to move my gas. I can't give myself a price break or priority access. We need something like this for internet backbone providers. Vertical integration can and will be abused. It's just a matter of time.
In case you forgot to read the question, he wants *programming* superstars, not MBA wannabes. Board positions? Not programming in 10 years? Are you kidding? You have no clue what a programming superstar is.
Big difference between "a few" and 10+ years. Also a big difference between the ability to run the IDE and the APPS it produces.
No one said coding should just be for wealthy westerners. It's for wealthy easterners too. Didn't you mean socioeconomocentric?
Did you mean it was Java 8 years ago?
I'll help you out. Most developers I know don't mind buying a new computer every couple of years. I could give a shit if a DEVELOPMENT IDE runs on a 10 year old computer.
Have you ever worked on non-open source projects? When things go wrong, you just enter the error message into Google, and 80% of the time, the solution is right there!!! Don't mistake Google's search capability with some benefit of open source projects.
In a word, no.
Did you pull this computer out of a dumpster?