bryanwb

I imagine that working in a call center at night is safer than working in a coal mine or many heavy industries. Plus probably pays better.

Python isn't my favorite language but IPython is by far my favorite REPL. Keep up the great work IPython team!

RIM seems worse off than nortel. Individuals can change mobile phones much faster than companies can change telephony infrastructures.

I really like my google tv but it could be so, so much better. I see huge potential as long as Google doesn't lose interest in it, but that may be asking too much.

Well said. Peter Thiel's argument is essentially "If you are already well educated you don't have to go to college before making money/value." It certainly describes those students who learned a bachelor's degree worth of knowledge through the IP or AP programs. It doesn't apply to those kids who haven't already mastered basic math and writing. It doesn't apply to the average American kid, only to the top 1% of overachievers who can choose between Harvard and a startup.

It doesn't apply to those of thus who aren't well educated and otherwise have remunerative. full disclosure: i went to a shitty public high school in Los Angeles and learned basic math and writing at university.

I doubt that will happen but would love to see it

Sounds like that new Silicon Valley they were building outside Moscow, or the one they built in Malaysia, or the high-tech cluster outside Kathmandu, . . . you get the point.

to do well economically in the modern world, whether as an auto mechanic, computer engineer, reporter, nurse, etc. is: 1) solid writing skills, preferably in English 2) strong reading comprehension, preferably in English 3) Basic grasp of math up through and including statistics

so while you don't need college/university you absolutely need 1-3. I picked up #1 in university because i went to a lousy, impoverished high school. I mostly taught myself #2 and #3. A new learning community focused on narrow skill acquisition won't help students acquire 1-3.

Investing in basic education will fix these problems, both investing in teachers and in pushing kids to just fucking study and take learning seriously.

This article is the "High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries" http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html?_r=1... is much more relevant in my opinion.

best of luck w/ skillshare but please don't think it will teach calculus to people who can't add.

While mikekarnj has some interesting points about education and the obvious higher ed bubble, he is apparently unaware of education concept of "scaffolding" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructional_scaffolding

I concur, I consistently read his posts while not being particularly interested in ruby.

I am pretty skeptical of the Montessori approach.

Take kids from wealthy, well-educated families and put them in small groups with educators that also happen to be very well-educated and very passionate and you will get great results whatever the pedagogy.

Contrast this w/ poor kids whose parents had low educational attainments, stuck in giant classes with poorly-paid teachers.

If you put 6 well-off kids with 1 passionate, well-educated teacher, you will get good results almost every time.

Montessori approach may have its merits but I find it very hard to separate them from the demographics of its students and teachers. The study in Milwaukee does not seem sufficient to establish a link. Those passionate about teaching are probably more likely to be attracted to the Montessori school than the regular public schools because it has a distinctive approach and probably more liberal management.

I would love to love to know if the Montessori schools in teh Milwaukee school had the same teacher/student ratio as the other schools in the study. I am betting they didn't.

They do make 100k a year but typically after moving abroad. In my anecdotal experience, 90% of the "great" Nepali sw engineers emigrate. I do think you will see some move back and take high-paying contract work w/ them to Nepal. However, this depends on whether Nepal's political/economic climate stabilizes. By all accounts, the current situation is a mess and worsening.

I ran a startup in Kathmandu, Nepal for 4 years (www.olenepal.org) and this mirrors my experience there. The modus operandi of Nepali Schools is the "the teacher speaks and the kids repeat." this means that you can't judge applicants at all by their educational background. The best ones I had were almost entirely self-educated. Also, I think I found that only one in 50 applicants were worth hiring.

That said, I believe that the geeks I hired are totally world class. I also believe that w/in 5 years time they will be earning 100,000 USD per year, whether they are living in Nepal or elsewhere. cuz, they are worth it.

Most countries are far worse than the US in terms of immigration policy for skilled workers. However, the US should make it stupid simple for talented techies to get work visas.

excepting its immigration policy for skilled persons

I wish the US govt did more to reach out to startups. This may be over the top but if I was young techie in Europe this would be extremely appealing to me. Is this tied into their startup visa thing?

very interesting. Then they have fewer excuses for not getting their updates out

good to see RH being profitable. They put a lot back into the open-source technologies that are the foundation of their business, much more than many other modern tech companies, ahem facebook, amazon whose contributions are relatively small compared to their huge profits

I suspect that WP7 continues to have update issues because it is built on top of the Windows CE kernel. the MS-skeptic in me thinks that it probably a bad foundation for a high-performing device, but this view is not based on any actual knowledge of Windows CE. Would love to hear from someone who actually knows about Windows CE.

Go does solve some painful problems for certain communities, esp. the linux desktop folks. Java hasn't caught on writing linux desktop apps, probably because of memory requirements and there are mixed feelings about Mono. Python is just too darn slow for such apps. I imagine this is why Canonical is using Go. Admittedly this isn't a huge space.

I am really curious how popular this will be. PowerShell is crap compared to bash or ksh. It is actually kind of embarrassing how bad powershell is. I would love to hear from someone who likes powershell and is proficient with bash.

The events in Japan represent the end of nuclear energy as a viable long-term option.

my wife works in public health, a field that seems to be 90% female. My wife's office is much more gender skewed than mine.

If doctors didn't make so much $, I am convinced that women would make up the majority of doctors.

this is how android will eat symbian's market share

i went to a top-twenty liberal arts school in the US and frankly it wasn't worth the $. Further, top-tier private schools dumb you down when it comes to life skills because they coddle you.

If I was this kid I would go to SUNY Binghamton

A good school can help you but you really have to ask yourself if it worth $200,000 USD

Also, this 18 year old may change his mind in two years about his major and decide that he wants to teach high school science, in which case he will be screwed financially.

I also expect as such but would like to see some numbers rather than rely on my assumptions

I would love to see how performant lift is (or isn't) when compared to rails and django

At the GSoC 2009 Mentors conference, I was amazed that a majority of attendees were running OS X

The guy deserves it. He created a tool that a lot of people find very useful. I don't use it myself but I recognize how valuable it is to others.

I still haven't seen any significant revelations come out of wikileaks, so I think they were right to not pick Assange

can you comment on how well basecamp has worked for you and what kind of projects you have used it for?

I agree that gantt charts aren't critical but I do think that planning is pretty darn important esp. when your staff is not entirely composed of well-organized self-starters