liquidben

I can't provide episode number, but I can concur anecdotally that this was discussed on the Stack Overflow podcast. It was probably at or around the debut of the jobs subdomain.

I think one of the worst gaps in a college education is the preparation for finding a job. I graduated with no clue for what to do next, having rested in the thoughtless assumption that it would all just follow. No one had ever told me that the search for work is the most important job you'll ever do.

Your first point is good, but the second point is problematic. Just because someone is an expert and helped build software, doesn't necessarily translate to that same person being able to teach it. Teaching is a skill in and of itself.

Luckily other posters here vouch for Strang's ability as a teacher.

So to restate: We need to praise intelligence as an applied behavior, not an intrinsic trait.

This mode of reinforcement really should be reapplied to anything "natural" vs practiced: athletics, grace, popularity, ninjitsu...

I like using smart bookmarks like this for specialty searches, e.g. only searching Wikipedia

http://www.google.com/search?q=%s+site%3Aen.wikipedia.org

But if I'm searching the entire internet, I just hit CTRL+K to jump to the search box. Beatcha by two keystrokes! :-p

How weird is it that I just read this webcomic from 2003 yesterday. And it did the same joke http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/177.html

I'm a little disturbed by the presence of "accident" and "aggression" in my results. I haven't the faintest clue as to what I've done to deserve that.

I am greatly intrigued by this and would love to see an analysis, but 5 hours since posting of the article seems too soon for anything that Google provides to me. I wonder if the Toys'R'Us sales deal expenditure was written up two quarters previous?

Schneier on Security: Intelligent and adroit

Schneier on Videogame Terminology: Somewhat lacking (but we'll let him slide)

Hey, don't underestimate the importance of the cask/barrel!

I'm not sure about sourcing, but it was recently used on the Stack Overflow podcast in Jeff and Joel's discussion of the profitability of creating plug-ins for another piece of software. Other considerations aside, one of the greatest threats to stability was if you created something so useful to the general userbase of the parent application, that the producers of the parent application would roll that up into the next version of their software, thereby rendering your cash cow redundant, e.g. a spell-checker for Firefox.

Joel likened this to snatching nickel from in front of an oncoming steamroller.

First, the article never explicitly states that the author didn't try exercise.

Second, getting up and exercising is a complementary behavior to changing your eating habits. Neither negates the other and both together are best.

With luck, the author will feel more energetic after the diet change, and will then be motivated to start an exercise program. (or just nail the early donut, shrugs)

I strongly agree with this. It's never too late to start hitting the gym either. I, like many others, gained the 'freshman 15'. Then I started hitting the gym and lost the weight and got myself into the good habits that helped me for the rest of my life.

An understated portion of college life is that it is independence with training wheels. You have the ability and chances to make wonderful mistakes and learn the reflexive life-lessons from them, but without suffering the odious penalties that one would incur as a fully self reliant adult. Learn to do laundry, to cook, maintain a healthy diet, balance your finances, to meet people who haven't known you since kindergarten, to act ways that the 'rents wouldn't approve. Find out who you are and shape it.

Enjoy yourself, and good luck.

Good for you that this strategy worked for you, but as others have commented, this relies on your ability to efficiently recognize classes you don't need to attend. The penalty for attending class when you didn't need to is a few hours a weeks spent in suboptimal times, but you can still work on other things at that time. The penalty for missing a class where you needed to be... well, that's your grade, buddy.

I recommend erring on the side of conservatism, as it's easy and attractive to self-deceive into an overinflated concept of what we would have done with our time (hack vs TV+videogames+internet)

Valve versus mall shopping is an interesting comparison in that it has shows some strong underlying differences. Anecdotally, most mall shops are clothing, an area where a lot of items contain the same basic function of nudity prevention and weather protection, plus some fashion value of relative merit. Valve's products are more akin to the one or two bookstores in the mall, where the basic function of the product is entertainment where the entertainment value of the product is enhanced by differences between individual products. Similarities do occur within genre, but differentiation is still necessary for success.

Anyway, it's the clothes stores that have neverending sales of their highly interchangable product. I don't think that Waldenbooks would see the same profitability curve as Valve by rotating sales throughout their stock though, as their product requires shelf space and falls within a much smaller price range.

As for L4D's initial price, Valve was smart to set it relatively high, as a multiplayer game like that leverages peer pressure to motivate sales.

Am I wrong in expecting that there should be something more than carbon dioxide and water? I would be the first to admit I know nothing of the molecular composition of the things involved, but shouldn't there be nitrogen leftover somewhere?

It strikes me that this reduces password cracking to a game of Mastermind.

Amusement aside, it also allows a cracking attempt to be done without running up against server authentication. Even if the same series of color patterns can occur for multiple passwords, the quantity of attempted server authentications is greatly reduced.

I'd say that the instances where the article discusses the negatives of drug prohibition policy far outweigh the instances where the article discusses the negatives effects of drug use. In fact, the anti-drug discussion seems to go no further than an anecdote about cocaine usage, as opposed to many paragraphs spent retelling the pro-drug opinions of a Huffington Post writer that once worked for the Marijuana Policy Project.

I'm not strongly against the opinions put forth in this article, but I think that we should be clear that it is pro-drug.

I think the artist was implying accuracy that he probably couldn't vouch for.

So it's supposed to be geographically correct, but the advanced reader can take it as shorthand for wiggly coast.

I had a similar experience that alienated me to contributing. (Geeky confession) I posted a comic book cover to an article about a derivative character of a comic book character. The usage of a comic book cover for demonstrative purposes was covered in their hard-coded fair use Q&A for posting images. A few months later, a page was created as a blanket article about all alternate versions of said character. The article I'd donated to was excerpted to that page, along with the image.

So what happened? The image was deleted from Wiki because the fair use notice wasn't updated to explain how the image's use on the new page was covered.

I was notified about this before it was deleted, and replied to the person who set it in motion, asking them why a redundant disclaimer was necessary for an excerpt. In return I got a link to the fair use page. I thought about deleting the image link with the excerpt. I thought about copy/pasting the original fair use text so it was in there twice. I thought about punching that guy.

Instead, I quit editing articles at WikiPedia. Just wasn't worth the frustration. I'll fix spelling occasionally, but that's it.