foulmouthboy

From the article's conclusion:

The preceding rant is to be taken merely as a preface to something shorter and more aphoristic I wanted to say about commentary on the U.S. election. It has to do with the comparison that is made, usually by insinuation but often overtly -- throughout the mass media, and especially in the elitist mass media -- between the educational backgrounds of Barack Obama and Sarah Palin.

Am I to understand that this article's point is that Barack Obama is dumber than Sarah Palin because she's self taught and he went to an Ivy League school?

This is still HN right?

I'm pretty sure we gave it to ourselves when we were feeling surly during the 90s.

True, but it does keep the irrelevant conversation out of the way of discussion of the actual news item.

Current business plan (apparently only slightly facetious):

1. Get everybody on Facebook 2. Create a huge map detailing how everybody relates to everybody else. 3. ???? 4. Profit

I always figured that there were smarter people than me working on step 3, but maybe there weren't.

Maps of the non-social kind are useful because they can be bought and used to get to places you've never been to. Maps of the social kind are apparently useless because everybody wants their privacy and you're basically left with a map telling you where you are and what's within two steps walking distance.

Just because somebody can get a program to compile and run doesn't mean that it was done right. Keep in mind, I don't really disagree with what you're saying, cause it's the mentality lots of coders have.

I also think that the discipline is so new that there are a good number of schools that don't teach it very well.

I read all the answers, and I'm now convinced that there's nothing keeping this site from eventually going down that same path.

Death. Taxes. Gentrification.

I'm not sure how the "Runner Ups" in this piece work. Digg is a runner up to Stumble Upon when it should probably be compared to Reddit. And then the whole thing is numbered, but not ranked and then grouped, which is easy enough to figure out, but weird for a list like this.

Summary for this: Be open minded because close minded people are assholes.

Reach is overrated. Others have alluded to it, but reaching potential customers is just scratching the surface. There needs to be the engagement and conversion to dollars.

Here's an analogy that I'm almost positive won't make sense: A panhandler sitting outside of a pizza place in downtown Manhattan will potentially "reach" the same number of people with their respective messages. Which one will have made more money at the end of the lunch hour?

To answer your question with a question, where do you want to go?

You don't really specify where your interests lie or what type of "news" you're looking for. I could tell you where I go, but unless you're into the exact same things that I'm into, you're just going to be bored. I don't think anybody's really looking to plan your day for you.

Measuring success that way is really just turning the class into a seminar on viral marketing in facebook. If the class were for credit and one were the competitive sort, it would be "easy" enough to send out spam mails and to advertise the app as doing something amazing that it doesn't really do.

Rather than look for "success" metrics, I think the students might appreciate a qualitative assessment of their efforts from bkrausz.