bugsy

She's posted the names and details of what is going on, so yeah, it's a fact. Are you Anthony, or just one of his friends?

When I say that I've heard of this company named Google and the seem to produce some decent products, I am understating the fact that they are one of the top software oriented companies in the world today. Since this is widely known I saw no reason to either call attention to that or belabor it, that would just be silly and a waste of time.

You suspect that one could get the same results by throwing resumes down the stairs and hiring all the ones that land face up. That is a testable hypothesis. I recommend you test it and post back here with your results. I look forward to reading your report.

My understanding is "they don't do usability testing" is in the context of "usability testing" being defined as hiring some usability consultants who have never designed usable software to come in and video tape random people off the street trying to accomplish canned tasks using the software. They then write the results in a report with some generic or impractical suggestions which would not actually improve usability because they are neither designers nor target users. Apple doesn't do that sort of "usability testing". However, Apple does test their products for usability.

Good point to bring up. Regarding "Have your designers and executives use the products realistically for long periods of time before release to identify problem areas", that's a form of user testing as well when the products are things that people in the company actually use.

Google seems to be doing pretty well anyway though. I've tried several of their products and they seem pretty decent. I have a hard time imagining that stuff I found like google search and google maps were built by developers without any skills. Therefore it seems reasonable to conclude that they must be able to hire good people with their current methods, despite the skepticism.

Yeah, sounds like we are in complete agreement on this.

Very few people have designed CPUs. A lot of people manage to write great software despite this. It seems to be irrelevant. Again, coming from someone who knows.

If someone is interested, yes, I absolutely encourage them to pursue that interest and yes it will deepen their understanding of how things work.

But necessary? It's self evident that it's not necessary because many don't know it and write great software despite this. And if deciding what sorts of optional things one should master, it's fairly low on the list.

I completely understand the advocacy. I used to tell people that without fluency in assembly they couldn't consider themselves competent. That might have been true when I said it. It's not true any more, it not a fundamental skill any more because it's not necessary except for certain tasks that all but a few won't encounter. We can't reasonably require that everything that is not necessary for all but a few should be required, there would be too many things. It's now an optional skill.

The 13th amendment establishes the right of the state to own slaves.

Technically, according to the text of the 13th amendment, it formally and legally establishes as a constitutional right of the state to declare people slaves as "punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted", which has of course resulted in prison chain gangs and various corporations hiring prisoners for cheap compliant slave labor over the years, and in the demand for such slave labor and thus the motivation of the state to imprison as many people as possible.

I'm surprised that you are so open that you are disrespectful, immature, and uncivilized, but thanks.

I used to say absolutely yes too, but it's been a long time since I needed to mess with it. You no longer need to write in assembly to optimize speed, or even to write drivers for any but the rarest cases that hardly anyone will run into.

Does it help you understand how things really work? Yes, as does knowing things like CPU design down to the gate level. Most don't know that (I am one who does) and I never hear it advocated that they should.

I think it makes more sense to emphasize other difficult core skills that are far more useful like knowing how to build a compiler.

I'll tell you what. She's not making it up and she's not a drama queen. Will you agree with both of these statements regarding this specific situation?

People don't usually make this sort of stuff up. I agree with her decision not to post details. She does not need your permission or consent to be upset. Her experience is not subject acceptance of every random passerby on the internet to be valid.

It's not about gender it's about being a minority compared to the majority in some group.

I am not white and when it comes down to it, there are those that try to use that to discredit me.

On the internet no one knows you are a dog, so using an alias I can hide my race, which, no, I will not disclose to the curious. It is only relevant in that I know what she is talking about and have experienced the same, but it's not only women and gays that get to see these things brought up when someone wants to discredit them to achieve greater power.

What is the solution? Is it to abandon my identity? Sure, maybe I am doing that when I post here anonymously. When I post with my real, obviously ethnic, name, I sure as hell get a lot more abuse rather than an honest consideration of ideas.

When responding to people on the internet, I prefer them to be anonymous as well. I like to respond only to ideas, though I will wonder about agendas when posts just don't make sense.

The corporations that are trying to seize control of the internet from the people don't like this. I say boycott Google and Facebook because of this. No one is listening. They would rather trade freedom for shiny baubles and just be part of the abusive system.

He's right that GPL is draconian and limits freedom. But I am not sure your point because you didn't state it. You have a drive by post where you post some cryptic excerpt that seems unrelated to the topic with no commentary. Are you a posting bot, or are you a person with a point? Speak clearly. Explain yourself.

If the intent is to be critical of notch, I can't see any fault in his saying he hopes to release source code eventually and that since the GPL is such an anti-freedom license (huh, actually my words not his, but my sincere interpretation and agreement with his 'draconian' term usage), he "might just possibly" release as public domain, which means completely unencumbered and free. That sounds pretty cool. He's not under any obligation to do so though, and I don't see that many other games sold on Steam are somehow better.

Or perhaps you meant to indicate that you think his true reason not to release on Steam is not what he said, but he is lying and the secret real reason is that he intends to release public domain, and for some reason Steam would not allow that after signing their draconian and freedom limiting contracts, that are as freedom limiting as the GPL.

Maybe. Don't know because your post was incoherent.

AT&T is a really bad company and has been for a really long time. (Another example company with a similar record is Allstate Insurance.) At this point in time it is so well known and obvious, that anyone still using them is basically a masochist that likes to be abused. I don't feel anyone else should get involved in this situation at this point since it's obviously consensual and people certainly have many other carriers to choose from. People in every state in the US have access to a large number of telephone service companies. There is not just one. No one is being forced to use AT&T. It is a free choice to do so. If they were still a monopoly as Ma Bell then certainly I could get behind proposals for government intervention and regulation but it simply isn't needed here. Vote with your feet, or accept the dysfunctional relationship you have chosen to be in.

Aaron was right about what should have been done, but it's known that Ives incurred the wrath of Jobs recently when he said he was tired of working in the US and wanted to go home and Jobs said absolutely not. This put Ives on Apple's "Disloyal" list.

Cook will be a disaster. He would have been fine as an exact opposite but balancing weight against a visionary leader like Jobs, as Ives would have been. But as the visionary leader, a man whose only contributions have been to reduce costs and quality in order to increase profits, it's going to go down a predictable path that other companies have followed.

The salary and $385 million signing bonus thing being reported are obscene for Cook who has not a single case of innovation, because it is something he is simply not capable of. This is not an insult against him, it is a simple acknowledgment of his known strengths and capabilities.

I agree completely. It was very clear to me when reading the original that the context is that the person simply has no interest in buying the product no matter what for his own reasons. The selective quoting completely changes the vibe to read that the person deeply despises the product, not that he has no use for it. The use of selective quoting here is dishonest and highly misleading, by intention.

I agree with the article. We occasionally get comments about how our software is too expensive. The only thing that matters though is we do periodic pricing experiments and we know for a fact we don't make more money by lowering the price or by raising it.

Yes yes yes. I agree completely that those sorts of shenanigans are exactly what our young friend needs to consider.

How this sort of thing works is you sign an onerous contract that, in a general sense, precludes you from ever jailbreaking again since now that you've worked there you have inside information. Then after a couple months they let you go, or they give you some super boring and tedious job so you have to quit in order to prevent from killing yourself. But you're still legally bound by the contract, and the whole thing cost them 1/100 what it would to bring you to court.

That's a good thought, aggregating them. Or better yet, curate a yearly print journal of product Post Mortems. Hard to get people to disclose details though, really hard to find these on the corporate level. Most published post mortems seem to be from really small companies or from former government contractors. I appreciate these posts a lot as I find post mortems to be much more useful and enlightening to read than books written by consultants who have never run a successful business containing their latest theory on what should probably work if someone would try it.

My own theory is that the best way to achieve success is to avoid doing all the things that ensure failure.

It's not sad. As a new service, people are going to check to see if it works at all before spending time doing something more complex.

Do you have a source for your claim that US teachers make 60% of the national average for someone with a masters in education? (A degree which doesn't qualify one to do anything but teach.)

Average US salary $40,711.61:

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/AWI.html

Average US salary for those with any sort of Masters $53,000:

http://www.salary.com/learning/layouthtmls/leal_display_noca...

Average salaries by type of teacher for their 9 out of 12 months of work:

http://resource.educationamerica.net/salaries.html/

I agree with you that "bad teachers" is not the core or only issue. A more serious issue, as an example, is that good teachers are actively driven away by petty bureaucrats. Those that remain are severely constrained in the good they can do. With the advent of endemic standardized testing tied into bonuses and tenure, classes have devolved into regurgitate the answer mode. That issue, of really excellent teaching being punished or prohibited, is only one of many many problems in the system. Easy fixes don't work because there is not just one thing that is the problem. There are many things and the things vary somewhat state by state and district by district within a state.

Not really, we are easy to find and all over the place. It's just that typical corporate environments are threatened by the highly talented, and those that aren't are unwilling to pay the market rate. Not a problem since others are and when that's not the case such as with Google's founders, they just create their own business and run it themselves.

Seems like a silly distraction claim since they only look at raw number of things and not their quality or return.

Would you rather invest $10,000 10 years ago and get a PHP calendar app, or invest $20,000 and get Google search? Both are single products.

> Web Surfing Helps at Work, Study Says

The problem is the study didn't really find that at all. The experimental design was so contrived and artificial it is unpersuasive, difficult to imagine, and unestablished by the data, that it applies to real work situations.

I find references to "resource" in general to be unnerving and a bit offensive when it refers to a member of the human race. When I hear about "buying another resource" meaning hiring an expert, it really starts to sound like some strange form of slavery, humans being bought and sold like pigs.

Well yes, this is my point. It's not clear to me why it's being massively downvoted. Randal is real, credible, and a valuable and well known contributor to culture and citizen of our early 21st century era.

It is odd that Wikipedia is voting whether he is generally of no account or value worth mentioning. It would make more sense for Randal to vote on whether Wikipedia is of value and worth mentioning, or should be deleted instead. No doubt Wikipedia is notable, but mostly in the sense it is notorious.

The real question to ask is why does anyone take wikipedia serious as a source these days? I would trust Schwartz's opinions on Peruvian copper mining, quantum physics, square dancing, or any other subject long before I would trust any article on wikipedia because Schwartz has more credibility.

"Productivity has fallen"

Yeah that appears to happen when you inflate the money supply yet continue to measure in productivity using cash paid in devalued funny money. Prices in funny money are inflating by over 30% a year right now so of course salaries have to go up to prevent the hapless workers from starving. Productivity is doing great though in terms of real money such as gold, where the cost of labor has dropped significantly.

The article conveniently avoids discussing that and distorts other relevant information. For example, when they say "The United States spends more per capita on health care than any other country, yet without producing measurably superior results.", it is pretty misleading since it suggests results are comparable despite the high spending. It should instead read "while producing measurably inferior results compared to nearly all modern economies".