chubbard

That's just window dressing on the problem. The merchant still has the overhead of a paying for the store hence the price he can offer the product for will reflect that. Even if they had coffee, a warm blanket, and comfortable shoes for you to sit at the kiosk and order the same book just mere steps from you. It'll still cost more.

Now it looks like producing apps that are tablet + phone capable is important for this to succeed. Think if you have an app running on your phone, and you dock it now you just got more space so you're app should change to tablet style interface. Android's architecture might shine because apps are capable of single binary with all of the goodies included for phone vs tablet. So plugging in your phone just causes the Android App to run onCreate() again on your activity and now you're in tablet layout vs. phone layout. iPhone is a universal binary, but it's two different executables in one package so you'd have to start the app over. The over arching point is form factors like this require app developers do certain things to make their apps behave well in these environments.

Nooooooooo! I'm gonna miss Clik and Clak. My wife is not a talk radio listener, but she'll listen to Car Talk, and laugh. Sad to see them hang it up.

If you just use GZIP, supported by most browsers, it compresses without the need of special software on the client side to rebuild the original JSON response. And does a better job at compression I bet. I thought of doing something like this to rebuild cycles in object graphs, but I didn't because it requires special parsing logic for the client to use.

Yea I have to agree with other posters. This is easy money for most software engineers because they have exactly the skills that will be posted on the ads, criteria that are checked, etc. I think even your challenge misses the point of the article which is when we post wanted ads we put down such specific skill sets that if we rigidly stick those skill sets, just like our software does, we'll miss the people that can grow into those roles.

The irony is that software engineers are so much rarer than everyone else in the market we can easily be hand screened thus bypassing the very software we created. Finding software engineers is really hard because there are so few so either you don't get a lot of people applying, which makes it easy to screen by hand, or you set the bar very low to get people in the door. Then you go through 6 months to find the right person.

If you aren't a software person its much much harder to find a job because there are so many other people looking for jobs. You have to compete much harder, downward wage pressure, etc. Hence the volume increasingly demands automated solutions that make it even harder to get past the screeners.

I happen to agree with this article that we do a poor job of specifying the skills that are absolutely mandatory vs. what's nice to have. If we back off on rigid skill set we can find great people than can grow into a job.

That was an awesome article. I couldn't finish it as it was too long, but the technical detail in it was really awesome. Just the biology and relating it to computer nomenclature was really interesting. I think what's really amazing about blogging about the topic is you've created a brain dump of your most of your knowledge on the subject. Everyone who reads that is now much more versed than most medical staff anyone might run into, but because it exists they can educate themselves on your child's history as well. You've created a piece of fairly rare scientific information that exists in the public free for comment. That's not something we'd have done even 10 years ago.

+1 for the hack, but the other solution was to tell your lacky, ...err...I mean personal assistant, to push a button on Mark's phone at the same time as Mark rang the bell. We live in a age where we can execute all amazing technical solutions to non-problems. Now was that truly epic? Waiting for the pop to see...

This is a disheartening story about education in the US. People aren't going to continue to work a job if you call them terrible at it. I feel I have strong self esteem, but I don't think I could handle that.

What's sad is our over reliance on these statistics. First thing you have to do when using stats is setup checks and balances to verify you are getting what you expect. This is a counter example that might indicate you aren't measuring the right thing. Does this value add measurement of prior year improvement even predict anything about the students comprehension? It's like the BCS system of education where you just scratch your head over the outcomes.

America has a long time fascination with measurement and quantifying. We created Scientific Management Theory dating back to 1880s, but it ended mostly because workers rebelled. However, its influence is still felt everywhere in American society so much so I have a hard time understanding how the Finish model achieves its results without measuring. I know its better, but I can't explain it.

Good to see that this project is still going strong.

I forgive them. The title is misleading, but I imagine the alternative:

"Kuiper Belt Orbits Indicate A New Planet" Nah.

"Mystery Planet Influences Kuiper Orbits" Nah.

"Data suggests Remote New Planet" Nah.

Ah screw it.

"New Planet Found in Our Solar System", oh add ?, and Print it!

I see Jeff's point. Don't turn a bunch of people into coders that aren't ready for it. You'll just dilute the brand, and right now being a coder is valued today for whole host of reasons. As evidence of the faked resume scandal at yahoo. It's cool, but there will be a day when it goes back to being very uncool. And doing things like what Jeff is rallying against will help drive us there. On the other hand non-coders want to understand what we do and how we do it. Just like I find watching construction workers build things or a plumber fix things. Its fun.

When I was an undergrad the first lecture I had in CS was my favorite. Still is. It discussed how fundamental scientific discoveries and technology affect how humans view the world and solving problems. To quickly paraphrase as industrialization began to take shape we saw the world as a machine. And so we looked for problems that could be solved by viewing them as a machine. As electricity was discovered and commercialized we saw the world as a circuit. Our brain compared to a circuit, and our nerves were the wires. Is our brain an actual circuit well not entirely, but this idea helped us make other discoveries about the brain. As each of these technologies took root in the minds of humans we shifted our paradigms and began to solve problems differently than prior generations or prior paradigms. These paradigms tend to have long life cycles going on for decades, and that's why they are important to recognize.

The introduction of computers, and particularly computer programming, has changed our paradigm again. How we solve problems with programming is fundamentally different than how we solved it with physics, chemistry, etc. And I think that's the life skill we want to pass along to non-coders because it changes how you approach problems. As we take what was physical and turn it into a digital representation it changes how you use it to solve problems. And when I look at coding in that respect I do think its important to learn, but I wouldn't teach it the same way as most are learning it.

No generation ever knows what its all for until they're 40 possibly 35 because you're outside the holy grail of advertising demographic. Coincidence? Yea probably. If you haven't figured it out by then your not paying much attention anyway. There's prescript of zoloft by the door for you.

Anyway, This essay is much the same that Allan Watts articulated in the 60s and I think he did it with much more panache and charm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4

I find its best to laugh because it really has been a well executed practical joke.

Non-existant ecosystem is a harsh assessment especially given the massive amount of java code our there. Any jar file can be used so the Java ImageIO package can easily be leveraged. It's early on for this tool chain, but all you have to do is get a 3rd party jar file in the class path of the server, and you can directly call Java methods from Javascript.

importPackage(java.io); var file = new File('/blah/blah/blah.txt');

Other languages would be equally easy as well. It's burried, but here is some relevant information from the docs on integrating 3rd party libs:

-cp <path> The path on which to search for the main and any other resources used by the verticle. This is ignored if you are running an installed module. This defaults to . (current directory). If your verticle references other scripts, classes or other resources (e.g. jar files) then make sure these are on this path. The path can contain multiple path entries separated by : (colon). Each path entry can be an absolute or relative path to a directory containing scripts, or absolute or relative filenames for jar or zip files. An example path might be -cp classes:lib/otherscripts:jars/myjar.jar:jars/otherjar.jar Always use the path to reference any resources that your verticle requires. Please, do not put them on the system classpath as this can cause isolation issues between deployed verticles.

An government run monopoly is also massively successful. That doesn't mean we like it and want it to continue.

"Worst article ever!"

At what point, in that repetitive myth that keeps getting recycled, do the english majors start taking over? They don't. And they won't. And I want my time back.

Bravo! If you thought you were immune because you only visit "reputable" sites it'll make you think twice. I tried putting it in a incognito tab in Chrome and Google apps in a normal tab. That didn't log out, but if I put both google apps and this site in incognito tabs or normal tabs then it logged me out. Pretty important to log out of sites when you aren't using them. But, more important to fix my sites!

Well this is where I think the term of joker should be clarified. Jokes must not consume the public good, but they must destroy it. Lloyd certainly benefits and certainly destroys, but his benefits exclude him from being a joker. Defectors cause the tragedy of the commons by not paying a cost. Or maybe as steep of a cost as others because in the real world Lloyd definitely paid a cost, but it was a mere fraction of his wealth where others were wiped out.

It was hard to understand the role of the joker and how it creates an equilibrium, but if the joker is random destroyer then he destroys the cooperator AND the defector equally. If defectors out pace cooperators then the likelihood a defector will be wiped out is greater. By wiping out a defector that shifts the balance (ie the defector dies, or the defector turns to a cooperator from the joker's actions). That's the only way I can understand the joker as a force of "good". And jokers turn out to be a better solution to the problem of equilibrium.

I'm having trouble understanding who is a defector, who is a cooperator, and who is the joker. The author has copious asides where he asserts "the financial industry; most of the people you work with, and probably you, too" are the defectors. However, I'm having trouble understanding the leap. Clearly he wants to relate this game to an insight about society at large as judged by all of his asides. So I'm trying to understand his position.

In our society most people must perform work to earn money, that money is taxed, to provide public services to all of us regardless of if we work or not. Therefore, the people paying taxes have a cost and get a benefit of the public services which fits his definition: "Cooperators generate a benefit, shared by all, but they pay a cost to do so." If someone pays taxes that must make them a cooperator. Of course we can have shades of cooperation based on how much is paid because no one give all of their money to the IRS. We do have the other extreme where no money is paid.

Now, there are people who pay less taxes or none at all as much or at all can enjoy those same services less cost or no cost all. That's his definition: "[Defectors] sit back and enjoy the group benefit without paying the costs."

In the sliding scale we are all both cooperators and defectors, but to what degree our role alters the equilibrium of the system (ie causing more cooperators or defectors).

That seems pretty straightforward, but he seems have flipped even the definitions: not just the joker/batman role.

"...Blah blah blah dear god please don't leave us. We've even conducted an internal audit and 89% of us wanted to keep our job. See we're honest people."

I'd be more inclined to trust their communications, but as he cites in several parts of the letter about leaked internal communications to support his feelings. Then we also have other people stepping forward saying "Yes I worked at xxxxx, and I saw, suspected, or participated in fleecing clients." To what degree is all arguable. Are these all well timed publicity stunts of a person trying to take clients away from a firm to start his own? That's one hell of a conspiracy theory, and probably pretty unlikely. Maybe he is. Who cares.

Here's what I think. The last down turn shook Goldman to the core, and with it all the good will they had for their clients. Suddenly, the money train looked like it could derail permanently. When you got a lot of cash it's really easy to look like a genuine and generous person/firm. "Here there's enough cash to go around for all of us," they'll say.

But, when that cash dries up. Generosity dries up too. And it's all too easy for people to turn into selfish, desperate people. Remember back during the crash when Carl Icahn was quoted saying he had friends that didn't know how they were going to live on $10 Million/year? That was the desperation setting in.

Here's the thing though. S&P 500 closed the decade out flat. Contrast that with the 80's & 90's where it had multi-year straight growth. It was easy, and the money was easy. Now all that easy money ain't around. This drought is playing out all over the financial industry. Goldman ain't the only one behaving badly.

I'm a Yammer user. I'm not head over heels for it, but it's good especially for decentralized operations. I'm in a consulting company and we don't actually talk about projects as much as advertise articles we wrote, software we created, questions, or water cooler type stuff. I see the utility, but $85 Million valuation?! I don't see that. How will Yammer turn a profit with that debt load? Let's say the exit strategy is selling would anyone want to buy it at $400M? If not is it worth that risk for less?

The money figure doesn't matter. We could quibble over the dollar amount or the fact that even if I had all that great equipment I couldn't reproduce the photo myself. All of those pedantic arguments don't matter. The Intellectual Property value of the photo does.

I think we've reached(-ing) the point where freedom for all to publish isn't as magical as it was 5 or 10 years ago. Democracy of publishing is giving away to Capitalism of publishing. The new killer app isn't enabling people to publish or get exposure. It's a platform for getting people paid for their time and skills.

Layout. The legacy layout model and the cryptic CSS work arounds we employ to get it to work are terrible.

Yes but all of that was after you had gone through most of the weed out boring stuff (at least that was how it was further back than I care to admit). You really had to be committed to it to stick around to get to the fun stuff. But, I think what Matt is really saying is maybe CS is backwards. We could boost people's interest in doing the fun stuff up front and then layer on the foundational underpinning once they've got your attention. I bet if people are really excited about doing what he's saying they might be more inclined to stick around for the really hard stuff. But, even if they don't there is merit and growth that happens in learning the practical or, as academia might see it, mundane things.

Maybe you were thinking of this:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090414084627.ht...

Is it really all that strange to find out that we aren't that different from how we were in 1960 with respect to authority? Back then we thought of authority as a government and the nation state, but today it's you and me, our entertainment, tvs, xboxes, corporations, and facebook that exert more control over us. In this case who is the authority? The game show host or the crowd? Is this the power of the perception that "everyone's doing" it has authoritative control over us?

Scary stuff still. Does anyone want to volunteer for the new TV show "Alcatraz" where we recreate Stanford prison experiment?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

Colonoscopies cost loads of money because they are performed in a Dr's. office. Insurance won't pay for them because they don't want you to actually go to a Dr's. office. Screenings can come down in price if they can be performed outside of Dr's. offices which they completely can. We need to separate these things out so we can move insurance out of the day to day choices about your health. That way you are in control of our health and improve your health on your own dollar with your own choices. It won't happen overnight, but getting people to think about the problem differently is the first step.

The only difference being image clarity, 3D? Yes it's improved since then, but so does everything we create. The underlying technology hasn't changed that much. By this logic we should continue to pay 1950s prices for a TV because a cathoray tube today is different from a cathoray tube from 1950. What's interesting about our TVs, VCRs, computers, etc is that not only do they get better, but they get cheaper too. Ever noticed how LED and plasma TVs existed before 2006, but it wasn't until their price dropped below a certain level that everyone started getting them? Point being that these technologies have to come down in price before we can scale them to a large audience. Right now they cost way too much, and are not available to a large enough audience to really start making health care better overall. Lowering disease prevalence, raising life expectancy, etc.

As pointed out by other readers Symbian ISN'T the brand that Nokia holds up to their end users. I think it's a mistake to advertise Android to the masses as a brand. Sun tried that with Java and it didn't work because they spent so much of their resources advertising Java to the end user they didn't actually do compelling things with it. Contrast that with Flash where Adobe did compelling things with it, developers wanted to do that, and users loved it. First doing something compelling to attract attention, then you can tell them how you did it. Not the other way around.

That's a horrible story I'm so sorry to hear that about your friend. I think you're right on track that prevention and screening is our weapon against these things. Screening and prevention costs way less than "the cure".

If you read Christensen's latest book "Innovator's Prescription" he analyzes the medical industry through the lens of disruptive technology, and concludes that the forces of disruptive technology have been dismantled which keep prices high. The is such a unique perspective in this health care debate because it's basically been framed as "You pay the high price", or the "Government pays the high price". However, Christensen is giving us a third option saying fix the economic engine and disruptive technology will drive prices down over time and things will get better too. Neither side of the debate can guarantee this either.

His idea is that Doctor's cost a lot of money, but when you have to have the very best analyze what's wrong with you have to pay it. Doctor's jobs are very hard and time consuming. However, certain types of care can be provided without a doctor for things that are well defined. Prevention is just such a thing. Screenings are just such a thing.

The problem right now is that technologies that enable us to screen better are often wrapped up so that you can only go to a doctor to get them. Things like MRI's and CAT scans require prescriptions from doctors. The price of a CAT scan has remained the same since it was invented. 1970 technology the same price!? Where else in our free markets does this happen?

Prevention is more easy to provide without having to tackle the prescription system, but screenings are very important part of medicine in the 21st century.

I remember reading a story a while back about progress made on deaths from heart attacks versus progress made on deaths from cancer. The key thing they zeroed in on was the fact that heart research focused on prevention first. They determined early on that it was too late to do anything once someone shows up in the ER with a heart attack. So, heart research focused on prevention.

While cancer was stuck in trying to cure the disease once someone had it. Overall the article stated not much progress had been made on cancer relative to progress made in heart attacks.

So I'm a little suspicious that cancer can now claim we're winning because of prevention. If you stop smoking it's helps BOTH cancer and heart attacks. I remember the group who pushed people to stop smoking, forever, was the heart association. Remember that little heart logo on all the ads?

This is overall good news, and I hope the researches focus more on prevention and research into what causes it. I find it tremendously interesting that "the cure" has been our focus for so long in medicine. I think drugs like Penicillin that cure got us stuck in that meme because they were so much a miracle. However, prevention is another tactic that's probably not been effectively utilized to keep us healthy.