narkee

>It’s not guaranteed that something of high quality will make it on Reddit, but it’s absolutely guaranteed that something of low quality will be destroyed there.

That's not true at all. There are tons of low quality posts. There's just such a high turnover that you tend to forget some of the stuff that you automatically skip or filter.

>And security would be a snap—if you can’t see the light, you can’t access the data.

That doesn't make any sense at all. People don't intercept data transmission with their eyes. If your computer or device can "see" the light, so can mine.

Anyone care to share how their usage patterns lead to having hundreds of tabs open at a single time? How is it even feasible to find a specific tab without doing a time consuming linear search?

I rarely have more than 4-5 tabs open at a time, so I'm honestly curious.

Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.

What added information would she have gotten from hearing the song? Given the fact that his songs are lyrical parodies, the only substantial difference between her song and his are the words.

On what grounds would she reject the song, but be ok with the lyrics? Because by asking him to sing it she's basically said "I'm ok with the words. But I might not be ok with the delivery."

Actually the Quick Search Box maintainer (dmaclach) posted on Google Groups that Quick Search Box is basically dead in the water, and no longer funded by Google. Apparently most of the former team are now working on Chrome:

http://groups.google.com/group/qsb-mac-discuss/msg/ded590b8b...

>It’s going to do something better: release an API and become a platform.

Isn't that what Amazon S3 already is?

The OP claimed that he procured a reference that attested to his "hard-workingness". It's perfectly ok to be a smart worker, and I don't disagree with your point. My point of contention is with the abuse of the reference system - what value does the reference system have if you simply ask for (and receive) character attributes you do not possess?

So basically he was admitted on traditional merit, by misleading application reviewers.

> I took no time to do homework, and instead spent time reading math books and programming

vs.

>I got an extra recommendation from a professor teaching the math class I was taking, whom I had asked to explicitly let them know that I was mature and a hardworker...

These statements are irreconcilable. A hard worker does work that he/she is assigned, and does not make pre-mature value judgements on the worthiness of said work. Being smart does not mean you're a hard worker. That was a pretty irresponsible recommendation by the professor, considering you didn't exhibit the qualities you claimed to.

I always thought "inverse" square root was a misnomer. The actual inverse of the square root is the square.

This should either be called multiplicative inverse square root, or reciprocal square root, no?

I wonder if his supporters would be so enthusiastic if they found out their family doctors had cheated to pass their medical exams.

Credentials matter. That's why we require people have them. So we can be certain (within reason) that they possess the capabilities their degrees imply. In the case of a politician, the degree could signify a level of critical thinking, diligence, and knowledge. The only thing plagiarism tells us is that he is a liar, and a cheater.

Wait a second, he has the perfect credentials for politics...

People had the same choice a decade ago, and chose against AOL.

I think Dvorak is simply pointing out the fact that Facebook is being praised like the second coming of Jesus, while AOL is regarded as an internet backwater and failure, where they both provide/provided very similar functions.

So it's news now that some businessmen don't like a decision made by another businessman/men?

Calling these investors angels is misleading because it makes it seem like angel investing is an act of altruism. These guys use this to imply that when something happens to make it more difficult for them to make money, it means it's bad for the startup environment in general. Get over it.

Then why not just use the web client? It has 100% integration.

> I shouldn't need to say this, but the plural of a terrifying anecdote is not data

I hear this repeated a lot, and I think people parrot it without really understanding what they say. I'm not saying that this particular article is presenting properly sampled data, but in reality, a lot of social sciences collect their data by sampling a population and pulling together a plurality of "anecdotes".

That's basically the definition of data. An anecdote _is_ data. Whether or not it's statistically significant depends on the plurality, and sampling procedures, but to call it not "data" is quite unwarranted.

If you believe in western medical science, then you had better believe in anecdotes as data, because to this very day, medical journals report single case studies as data and evidence for dissemination across the medical community.

Because that would require a mouse, and that would require an X server, etc...

I've observed that success in an academic environment requires more than simply scientific acumen. It also requires relentless self-promotion, networking and a passion not only for science, but for winning the academic game.

There are a lot of good science minded people, and there are a lot of good, driven self-promoters. Most successful scientists you encounter (apart from the odd genius) belong in the intersection between groups.

If you click on the graph, you can see "MIPS" (millions of instructions per second) on the dependent axis.

There isn't one. That was my point, I guess - that people often grossly overvalue themselves.

The only thing I can think of is "mother", but that's a cheeky answer.

Lots of people seem to think that the specific set of skills they possess is unique, extremely under-valued and completely necessary to the survival of the human race.

I shall call this phenomenon occupational narcissism.

How does that imply that programmers are underpaid?

I think your implication that the value of trades are somehow worth less than the value programming brings to society is unwarranted.

Why should I have to be signed in to my Google account to be able to use this functionality?

Right, good catch there - it was a sloppy typo.

So P(jobless|PhD) = 0.017, whereas P(jobless) = 0.066

According to Baye's Theorem, the P(PhD|jobless) = P(jobless|PhD)*P(PhD)/P(jobless)

Where according to [1], P(PhD) = 0.01 (for all PhDs) so assuming roughly half are science, P(PhD) = 0.005, and we get

P(PhD|jobless) = 0.0013, or 0.13%, which means that roughly 1 out of every 1000 jobless people has a PhD.

[1]http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTable?_bm=y&-geo_...

So, you're like AIM/MSN Messenger/Yahoo Messenger/Google Talk/ICQ...?

They're not really posers if their behaviour is encouraged by the environment and culture in the Silicon Valley.

I completely agree. I've long said that we should separate academic pursuits from technical or vocational training.

Arts and Sciences => Academic

Engineering, Medicine, Law, Pharmacy, Business, and everything else => Vocational

I think we need to recognize that there are two classes of people who go to college:

Academic: those who wish to learn

Vocational: those who wish to qualify for jobs

I think given enough students, 3 data points over 4 years is a perfectly appropriate dataset from which to measure longitudinal effects.

I'm not saying I don't agree that the test may not have measured anything useful, or that there wasn't some sampling bias, but there's nothing inherently wrong with 3 data points per person over four years.

It's like a pyramid scheme!

Illustrates how much tech adoption is driven by hype and bandwagon behaviour, and not by actual content or usefulness.