dorkrawk

It seems like a good solution to someone abusing this system would be to call them out on it. It stops because of social pressure (hopefully) and you don't have to take away everybody's fun. Something like an email that reads "We noticed Jim Jenkins hauling out a case of pop last week. This is not acceptable. Don't abuse the system so we can continue to have nice things. Thanks."

I know a fair number of people with a wide range of CS-type BS degrees from vocational schools up to top tier universities. None of them are working "$8/hr no benes" jobs. It sounds like you're just being unnecessarily pessimistic.

Here's an article that lists the average starting salary with a CS degree as $56K ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/04/12/college-de... ) And another that lists CS major unemployment at 4.3%

Most people who get a BS in biology end up becoming scientific biologists, though they might apply things that they've learned about biology in more practitioner type careers. Most people who get a BS in computer science don't go on to be "computer scientists", though they hopefully apply things they've learned in practitioner type careers. Of course people without serious research oriented training/education/focus aren't going to be professional scientists.

I've read it several times, the first time being in highschool and the most recent being a few months ago. As I get older I've read it with a bit more skepticism about the novelty of his overarching ideas and the rigor of some of his reasoning but I always find the book full of valuable ideas and interesting food for thought.

I'm guessing that they made a finite number of this version because they'll be making a lot of improvements and new versions in the future. In order to make those improvements they need lots of data about how people use the product. People are more likely to use a product a lot if they paid $1500 for it than if they got it for free.

One of the things about physical vs online higher education that I see as under-discussed is the ambient learning that takes place when you are in physical location with a bunch of curious people learning similar things to you.

I know that I learned so many things in college just because I happened to be sitting around, talking with interesting people before or after class or while working on assignments together. Just living in a dorm with people in that sort of "adult life with training wheels" setting and being able to hang out with totally new people who I might not have sought out on my own was REALLY valuable. There is so much to be learned outside of the classroom at college and online education is going to struggle to emulate those things.

Yes there are all sorts of social places online that can augment this, but there really is something valuable about learning and interacting with people in person. Yes, there are local clubs and hackerspaces and meetups, but there really is something to be said for having all of these things right at your fingertips (almost) all with in close proximity and (almost) all populated and run by your peers. A good college just lowers the barrier of entry for all these things.

Online education is awesome. It gets information to people in a way that was never before possible and that's a great thing. But I think that formal education is only one benefit of a good college experience.

Like declaring public opinion bankruptcy?

How well did that work for Xfinity?

I've been fortunate enough to live a comfortable life, but I was able to get some experience living on the street through a volunteer project I did in college working with the homeless in Washington DC. We spent the first 48 hours of our time in DC living on the street with no money. We slept in a church parking lot for 2 nights in snowy weather. We then donated all of our panhandling money not spent on food for those 2 days to the homelessness organization we were working with and spent the rest of the time volunteering in soup kitchens and raising awareness about an upcoming bill regarding homelessness. That certainly changed my perspective on things AND I was able to provide a net benefit for the organizations that help people on the streets.

Sure, living on the streets for 2 days isn't the same as living there for 2 years but there are ways to get perspective without being an unnecessary drain on a system already spread thin.

Can you tell us how many "no idea" people/groups were accepted last round?

I think this would be great because it would really let people use what they want. Office is good at what it does. There are lots of people who run Linux who could benefit from it. If you're not one of those people and Google Docs or LibreOffice works for you, that's fine you can keep using that. And from Microsoft's point of view, allowing more users to have access to Office makes setting up a Microsoft ecosystem an easier sell for a company. There is plenty of expensive enterprise software to be sold to companies that ties into Office. If companies can buy it without worrying about forcing an OS change for employees who are already productive with their current setup, that makes for an easier sale for MS.

> Ironically despite being low on this list Marissa Mayer is by far one of the most recognisable, probably because as an attractive woman it's a good brand for Yahoo.

Or publicly pulling a highly recognizable face from Google is really good for Yahoo!.

It's not quite that simple. A good interface for a power user is not a good interface for a first time user. Many developers think VIM has a good interface for what they want to do but I wouldn't call it intuitive for a first time user with no prior knowledge of its interface paradigm.

Tools to bridge the gap between first use and power use are worth using.

> but calling 'Delorean' to convert times is totally obscure

Unlike calling 'pickle' to serialize...

Is your company The Dating Game?

How does a song get qualified as good? If the production is bad but the song itself is good, will it get attention? Is there a specific style of music for which your artist reviewers have expertise/preference?

But I think more people are starting to incorporate the idea of love without the baggage that might come with a religion.

I think that when you try lots of things and thinking critically about them as you work with them, you're bound to form strong opinions about what you like and what you don't like. That's why being able to intelligently discuss your favorite language/framework/whatever is much more important that what that pet technology is.

Considering the very low percentage of IDEAS that turn into valuable companies, especially without the injection of new contacts and business expertise that an incubator might provide this actually seems like an OK deal. If hmexx does 10 of these, there's a very good chance that he'll flush $80K down the crapper and 10 developers will have had a great time building something they care about and learning a TON about what it's like to work full time on something alone. Perhaps some new friendships are forged.

If you know that your idea is THE big idea that can be worth millions, take $5K out of the bank or your retirement fund or sell your car or do anything in your power to come up with 2 months of survival money and do it on your own. If not, have some risk free fun and a great experience building something awesome with hmexx's money.

You are absolutely right, but that's really not the point of this post. While real poverty is an issue worth talking about, that's not what this guy is trying to address.

The point seems to be that many people who have disposable income treat that money as disposable and then wonder why they don't have more money. There are many people who could afford more of what they really care about (be it time, travel, things, etc) if they didn't nickel and dime themselves on things that might not really be that important to them.

Though I'm sure this is a sentiment held by many as they mature in their fields, I almost feel bad for people just getting started with web development today. When I first started most web development was pretty bad. I hacked around with HTML and CSS and a little JS for mouse rollovers and that wasn't too far away from being on par with the average site out there. Now there is a much richer ecosystem of tech to use (which is awesome!) and much higher design expectations. It's a more mature field which means newcomers will need to grow up much quicker.

I suppose, to balance that out there are better learning resources and better OOTB tools/libraries to get people started.

More importantly, knowing how to change the world is hard. Finding the right hard problem to solve is a hard problem.

Eh, if they launched today they could at least slap Bootstrap on top of it to clean it up a bit. :)

Well... maybe not all of them... it depends.

I have the same problem. Music is too interesting to not be distracting when I'm working on things that require my full attention.

I suppose you could just make a new rule that says rules are decided on by something other than voting.

I would assume that someone like Guido would be really valuable when architecting complex project written in Python. Maybe he won't be directly writing a bunch of small features, but at the scale Dropbox works at some REALLY good code reviews and language-related design decisions could produce big dividends.

For many CS undergrad programs you don't HAVE to know any programming languages to graduate. You would just be at a serious disadvantage for many likely future positions if you don't.

Maybe you can finish your PhD without publishing but it seems unlikely that you could spend that much time doing GOOD original research and not have your name on something. Also it will be very hard to get an academic or even industry research position without GOOD publications.

Sort of off-topic but I thought that the use of "take a punt" was interesting. Before I realized he was European, I thought it a strange phrase. Obviously in (soccer) football, taking a punt (a kick to try to score) would be a good thing, but it first registered to me as an (American) football reference of punting (rather than going for a touchdown).

I think you're trying to make a statement about objective artistic value, which arguably doesn't exist.

From this comment all you've really said is that you and Bill Hick (probably) wouldn't think this is art. Nobody here could argue with that. But it says nothing about what art is or who is an artist.

What do you mean by "top users"? The top users are those with tons and tons of followers and those followers are what make Twitter valuable to them. Not any feature or any good developer relationships. Do you think any celebrity or company is going to want to put their message behind a paywall? I know I'd have a hard time moving enough of my friends to something like App.net to make it interesting for me.

It sucks that Twitter is blocking cool development like this, but they've managed to become "a place where people are" (which is no easy task) and it's a mistake to underestimate that value.