Irregardless

Sometimes the truth hurts. I think we're all mature enough to handle that. And I personally prefer when people are blunt/honest instead of sugar coating everything or refusing to state their opinion because they're afraid it will offend. There's nothing more annoying than someone who's too weak to speak up and tell the truth -- they can do just as much harm as the people who are mean.

For what it's worth, I just re-read the top 5 comments on the post he's referring to and couldn't find a single one that was mean. Negative, sure, but mean and negative are entirely different things.

> And why are you making the arrogant assumptions that we want to invest our time and energy in reading your comment too?

Well if that's not the definition of irony right there...

EA has a reputation for being more akin to a sweatshop than a place where passionate people work on things they love, and it's been that way for many years now.

I do feel bad for anyone who works in that type of environment, but I don't think many (if any) of their employees are under the impression that their work will be lauded by adoring fans. Gamers resent everything that EA stands for -- especially their constant profiteering and manipulation -- and begrudgingly buy their games because they're one of the few companies with the budget to create AAA titles.

Takeover by EA is usually considered a death knell for game studios...

> We make sure we're around from 10am–6pm PT on Monday–Friday

Why are you expecting them to be in live chat at 7am when they say the hours are 10am - 6pm?

So when can we expect it to be $2 again this time? June? Maybe July? I think the last 90% drop only took about three months[1], so I'm gonna put my money on late June for this one. And by "put my money on" I really just mean "post this comment so I can quote it in June".

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/18/bitcoin-val...

Wow, unanimous 1-star reviews on Yelp. Very impressive: http://www.yelp.com/biz/theladders-new-york-2?sort_by=date_d...

Edit: But wait! There's more! http://corcodilos.com/blog/3219/theladders-how-the-scam-work...

They didn't mention anything about the hardware, and you've jumped to the conclusion that this means hardware is dead? Talk about linkbait...

Gamers may not care about hardware aesthetics (the original Xbox is a fat, ugly hunk of cheap plastic), but they sure as hell care about the technical aspects. E.g. Is it backwards compatible? Will it play used games? Can I take my save data to a friend's house? Can I replace the HDD if it fails or I run out of space? Etc.

> But Windows Phone is entering a dangerous time, one in which its competitors are starting to catch up and even surpass the innovations of Microsoft’s mobile platform.

What alternate universe was this article written in? I've wanted to give Windows Phone a chance since they released the newer version, but it literally has nothing to offer other than a slightly more minimalistic default UI. Does no one remember the "Get Smoked by a Windows Phone" contest that Microsoft stacked in their favor only to get beaten by Android anyway? [1]

News flash: You can configure any Android phone to have the same interface and functionality of WP7, and you've been able to for years.

[1] http://skattertech.com/2012/03/i-won-the-windows-phone-chall...

It's possible I've missed some setting somewhere in the tangled web of menus, but I'm fairly certain the data is lost in the case of both those conversions.

For example: Type 09-2012 into a cell and hit Enter. It will probably turn into Sep-12 (or some other variation depending on your default date settings). If you convert that to Text or General, it turns into 41153 -- the number of days since 1/1/1900.

Excel recognizes all dates from 1/1/1900 through 12/31/9999, so it happily converts anything from 01-1900 to 12-9999 into a date. You can create a function to convert them back, but it would have to be based on the assumption that the format was originally ##-#### (which you may or may not know for certain depending on where the spreadsheet is coming to you from).

The simplicity and flexibility of Excel make it great for one-offs and random hack jobs that don't require a new application or full-fledged report. At the same time, it has some minor idiosyncrasies that can be infuriating and make me wary of trusting it in the hands of average end-users who need to enter/analyze important data.

Automatic type conversion is my favorite. I can't even count the number of times I've received Excel spreadsheets where data was completely lost because of it. Leading zeroes at the beginning of your account number? Excel will gladly chop those off for you. Order number looks like a date because they used the year as a prefix? No worries, Excel will change that to a standard date and completely forget the original format.

Maybe I'm just crazy, but I don't think a business-oriented application should favor convenience that much more than data integrity.

How do you scale something that decreases in value with every new customer it acquires? You can only pump so many fake video promotions into a market before it's completely saturated and people start to resent the constant assault of your ads. Not to mention the fact that every Tom, Dick and Jane with a camera is already pushing their own videos every chance they get.

Then there's this:

> “All [Jimmy Kimmel] had done was expose [the Double Rainbow] video to a couple hundred million people who would find this video interesting to them,” Debelov says. (Actually, [Kimmel] tweeted it to his 90,000 Twitter followers). “We’ve taken that process, and reversed engineered it. We can’t guarantee your video will go viral because it all depends on your content, but we can get it in front of a million, two million, half a million, whatever your budget is – we can get you in front of that audience.”

You've reverse engineered the power of celebrity? Highly doubtful. When a comedian with the clout of Jimmy Kimmel calls something the "funniest video in the world"[1], his fans are going to watch that video. When those same people see a video advertisement at the bottom of a blog post or in one of their mobile apps, they're going to ignore it. Hell, even celebrity has its limits -- Kimmel's suggestions would be ignored if he started posting random videos rather than specific links of his own choosing.

Anyone born after 1980 has been conditioned since adolescence to ignore online advertisements. It's gotten to the point where you have two choices: 1.) Make your ad so obtrusive that it might actually cost you users, or 2.) Don't infuriate your users, and settle for a CTR of .01% on a good day. I can only see this service reinforcing that conditioning.

[1] http://twitter.com/jimmykimmel/status/17665533038

If this were the olympics of mental gymnastics, you would take the gold medal in every category.

> So, here's the story: He is expecting a number at around 100 miles because he thinks he's being more efficient now. He sees 50 miles. On a digital display at a hotel at night, he misreads the 5 as a 9, and this fits with his expectation, so he goes to bed thinking he has 90 miles of range. He wakes up and the Tesla has lost 5 miles of range inexplicably -- but it therefore has become 45 miles, which looks totally different. He calls them up complaining that the Tesla lost half of its charge overnight and some sympathetic tech support describes it as a "software glitch."

Pure gold. Thanks for the laugh.

This makes me wonder: How will today's games be preserved in a collection like this?

I'm sure the DRM servers for games like Assassin's Creed won't be maintained for more than another decade, if that. Then, you have all kinds of PC games with limited authorizations. Most people also have numerous digital games tied to their Steam / Origin / Amazon accounts. If any of those disappear, you could lose a big chunk of your collection. There's no way to pass those games on to anyone else even if the services are still around.

It seems piracy is the only hope of preserving today's games for future generations.

For those who find the original poem's advice too daunting, you may have better luck as a devotee of National Lampoon's parody, Deteriorata: http://plodplod.blogspot.com/2006/07/deteriorata.html

For example:

> Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself; and heed well their advice, even though they be turkeys.

You've missed the point about the nature of their discomfort, i.e. the fact that they're upset simply because their egos aren't being stroked.

So nerds only like shows that cater to their superiority complex and idolize every aspect of their existence?

That sure sounds a lot like the superficial, narcissistic plebeians from whom nerds constantly strive to differentiate themselves. Not to worry, though, I'm sure they're all smart enough to detect the overwhelming irony.

Apparently nerds are too self-conscious to be parodied and find it more offensive than the Hitler jokes they post on Reddit all day. The fact that I just stereotyped them (and by them I mean "us") probably has several scrambling for their rage comic generators already. It's incomprehensible that anyone would ever joke about their quirky, endearing traits or the fact that they're passionate about unconventional things.

Adrock's quote is the perfect example of this:

> . . . the main difference between Sheldon and Abed is that Abed is treated as a hero. . . Community tells us it’s cool to be a nerd. If Abed is better then we are better. Community is a warm hug of acceptance whereas The Big Bang Theory is a pantsing and a punch in the face.

This is just sad. Nerds insist that you coddle and pander to them because their egos are too delicate to handle a joke? Please, that generalization is far more insulting towards nerds than any joke TBBT has ever made.

As a nerd and a geek, the thing I find most offensive is the way other geeks and nerds react to The Big Bang Theory. It's almost embarrassing to be associated with people who behave like such spoiled children.

I can't find anything in those links about their survey being tested beyond 12th grade -- have they done that yet? It would be interesting to see if the same survey is effective in a college setting, especially one where classes can exceed 300 students.

> “The report concluded that there were observable, repeatable and verifiable ways of measuring teacher effectiveness,” wrote Gates in the letter. Anonymous student surveys that asked such questions as “Does your teacher use class time well, get class organized quickly, help you when you are confused" – were proven to provide useful feedback as were reports from trained professionals observing teachers at work.

Students are notoriusly bad at rating their professors. This was proved with almost ideal control groups at the Air Force Academy [1] and again with groups of trained professionals/graduate students who learned first hand about the 'Dr. Fox Effect' [2]. Even teachers don't seem to like the teacher evaluations done by students [3].

Anecdotally, I can say that most students in my college classes either didn't show up on the survey days, or they walked out the door as soon as the surveys were being handed out. There's also no incentive to provide useful feedback from the student's perspective. If you're taking a survey about the class, it means the class is over and you'll probably never see that professor again, so why bother? I made an effort only because I felt an obligation to help future students, but I'm not sure there are many kids in college who share that feeling.

> Mary Ann Stavney, a high school “Master Teacher” profiled in the annual letter, spends 70% of her time observing other teachers, meeting with them and providing input. The problem, of course, is that this kind of measuring, particularly the hands-on observation in classrooms, is costly, adding about 2% onto payroll.

So you can have cheap and unreliable measurements, or you can have accurate but costly ones. Who's going to pay for the latter? The rating agencies? The schools? The students? Imagine the costs to enact such a program across all colleges in the U.S. alone -- some of the larger state schools easily have > 1,000 teaching faculty across a myriad of disciplines, and they're teaching increasingly diverse student bodies.

The thought of trying to implement a thorough, standardized program of that scale is mind boggling. And that's probably why we've been facing this dilemma of measuring teacher effectiveness since the day the first schools opened. Bill Gates is right that we have a serious problem, but it doesn't sound like he's any closer to a solution.

[1] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/college-inc/2010/06/study_h...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Fox_effect

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_evaluation#Criticism_of_...

Using a story about marketing to market your new marketing product, eh? I'm onto you!

I don't have any products to sell, but it was still an interesting read. Good to see you focusing on building trust before selling since that was one of the things your last e-book sales page was lacking (at least in my opinion).

"Cause of injury: Lack of adhesive ducks." - Sheldon

I'm not sure what the takeaway from this article is supposed to be. Always be conscious of your safety but not to the point of constant paranoia?

Isn't that basically -- dare I say it -- common sense?

It has nothing to do with measuring productivity or making sure they're at their desk instead of watching TV. It's about creating a virtual presence in the office to reduce communication barriers. I don't see anything ridiculous about that -- several people on HN have mentioned that their company does it.

Yeah, I get that. You are more productive. You are interrupted less. You can focus more easily. You are happier at home.

Now, where's the consideration for everyone else on your team? That seems to be the one thing missing from all these counter arguments, yet it's the crux of the matter.

The referenced study answers all of that: http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~sillito/cpsc-601.23/readings/...

Like a few others who have responded, you're not seeing the forest through the trees. That's somewhat alarming for a group of people who are supposed to be creative problem solvers.

Team productiviy > your individual productivity. It's that simple. Do you think your team members interrupt you just for the fun of it? No, they interrupt you because they need your help to accomplish something. As a resource to the team, you hurt it's overall performance by making yourself less availble.

Because team work is all about you, right? Quite a myopic view. How dare anyone try to increase the productivity of the team by stealing precious seconds from you!

Teams are more productive when they're in the same location. That is a fact. Your individual productivity may suffer at times, but the team will do better overall if you all work together in one location.

> From the employee point of view: Is your business so special I should sell my house, pull my kids out of school, and move so I can work for it? Do you really want to pay me the 50% pay differential I'd need in order to live in your higher-cost-of-living and lower-quality-of-life area? Is your (presumably internet-focused) company so incompetent it can't manage to use the same systems that we use in our day to day work and life to communicate?

People make those choices knowing it limits their career options. Since when are companies expected to accomodate every lifestyle and location employees might desire? That's pretty self-centered.

> Completely laughable. Do you have closed circuit TV recordings of everywhere in the office?

Why would you need closed circuit TV for team members who are all sitting in an office together? Is there something difficult to understand about tying to create an on-site presence for a remote employee? There are companies that already do it.

Oh, really? Because researchers disagree with you:

> Another field study compared interruptions in paired, radically-collocated and traditional, cube-dwelling software development teams, and found that in the former interruptions were greater in number but shorter in duration and more on-task (Chong and Siino 2006). Close proximity improves productivity in all cases." -- http://conway.isri.cmu.edu/~jdh/VRC-2008

From adrianhoward's post above.

> Do you require that local employees be physically visible at all times? What if they need to take a walk to clear their head and focus on the problem at hand? What if they need to go to the bathroom?

Yes, remote and physical team members must have a mobile webcam that they bring with them on all breaks. The webcam must have RFID tags built into it, and their homes and frequent break locations must be equipped with RFID scanners to verify the location of the camera and prevent any funny business. No exceptions, ever.

Also, when people ask questions they never EVER preface them with "Let me know when you have a second".

Seriously, are you in third grade? Can you read something and not interpret it literally? The Greek knew reduction to absurdity was a shitty argument more than 2,000 years ago... how come you still haven't figured it out?

From adrianhoward above:

> Another field study compared interruptions in paired, radically-collocated and traditional, cube-dwelling software development teams, and found that in the former interruptions were greater in number but shorter in duration and more on-task (Chong and Siino 2006). Close proximity improves productivity in all cases." -- http://conway.isri.cmu.edu/~jdh/VRC-2008

Who are you to say they don't understand their own business process and culture well enough to determine that remote employees aren't a fit for them? I've worked with several remote team members, and it's always been frustrating. Why aren't you answering your phone? Why haven't you responded to that email I sent you 5 minutes ago? Are you even at your computer right now? Hello???

Communication is extremely important when working in teams, and you'd have to be pretty ignorant to claim remote workers are able to communicate as well as on-site workers. If I need to ask a teammate a question, I turn my head slightly to the left and ask them. They respond immediately. Sure, you can set up some sort of always-on video or teleconferencing, but do all new, growing companies have the know-how and resources to implement that for multiple remote workers? Or are you just so special that you deserve all that extra effort?

Small, early stage companies also seem to be focusing a lot on developing a company culture these days. Remote workers don't fit into that strategy very well, if at all.

I'd welcome a remote employee under one condition: They're required to be on a constant video call so their on-site team members can see and talk to them at any time.

I've often wondered why so few companies make a concerted effort to seek out talent rather than credentials. Have most companies not realized that the two aren't directly related? Are they too lazy? Do they have no confidence in the ability of their hiring managers? Do they lack the resources to train new employees?

There's an upside to this, though: You can easily identify short-sighted companies that probably aren't worth working for based on the degree requirements stated in their job listings. If you require 3 years of experience and a CS degree for all your 'junior' and 'entry level' developer positions, there's a good chance you couldn't think your way out of a paper bag. That's often code for "I expect a lot out of you, but I'm not going to give you much in return".

Tech companies need to adapt more quickly than most others just to stay afloat. Following the same hiring practices that have been around since the 19th century is a great way to fall flat on your face in that regard.