pauljburke

I firmly believe diets are like software development methodologies. Doesn't matter which one you subscribe to as long as it isn't universally recognised as junk, you'll still see results because it is better than what you'd be doing by default. Once everyone gets to a certain baseline we can quibble about what's more effective.

I'd settle for a single bottle of decent wine/beer with the proviso that MDs and above who turn up late just to show how important they are still get to pay it and I would never have sobered up since 1995 (apart from 2 glorious years at a hedge fund in startup mode). I used to lock the door to meetings 15 minutes in and refuse to let late comers in ... you can imagine how well that turned out the first time my boss and his boss missed one of my meetings.

This is just an introductory course (as stated in the original article) that I'm signed up for, more to see what it's like than to learn the material (after 5 years of econometrics and 3 years of statistics I'd like to think I knew this stuff). Not the only course I've signed up for (Logic and Discrete maths etc.) but the only one where they got in touch asking us to push it to others - they're obviously trying to break some sort of record with this one. Which I hope they manage. Given how much regular university education costs I'm hoping this catches on before any of my kids want to go.

As the article states, this isn't necessarily just an online problem (although Facebook brings it into sharp focus I guess). Each group of people I know meet essentially a slightly (sometimes very) different person because the interests and hobbies I share with those people is a small fraction of who I am (I always assumed it was the same for everyone). At my stag do I had relatives, work colleagues, online gaming friends, my jui jitsu friends and university study friends all meeting up for the first time trying to figure out why on earth I'd spend time with these other people that were so different from them. Of course once they started actually having a decent conversation a certain amount of commonality was found (there seemed to be a large number of arrogant sarcastic know it alls for some reason) but while they kept interactions at a superficial level (like a lot of online communication I suppose) there seemed to be very little common ground.

I had one of the first O2 XDA phones (released 2002) and also one of the first iphones. I'd say the biggest improvement was in the network speed and price of the data packages over the (5?) years or so between those two purchases. I'm not saying the iPhone doesn't roundly trounce it in general, just other things matter more.

1. It's trivial for you.

I used to think like this until a recent conversation between 2 cousins on facebook concerning the nautically naughty bay.. I had a bit of a shock seeing one of my "knuckle dragging, mouth breathing" (my words) relatives spouting on about VPNs etc. and getting it mostly right. I suspect if it's a choice between not accessing certain sites and learning you'll be surprised at how quickly people will learn.

Unless I'm misreading this (and I have the mother of all migraines at present so it's possible) weren't both the author of the post and Dave volunteers helping out rather than students? In which case shouldn't whoever was running the session just shut them down since the whole point is to help the people attending to learn rather than intellectual willy waving?

I used to be Dave when I was younger (still am if I don't keep a lid on it; I'm sure empathy is a wonderful thing but I've just had to learn to fake it over the years). So my preferred solution would have been to ask "does anyone else have any questions or are the rest of you secure enough in your own ability to not feel the need to advertise?". But then I guess there'd have been two jerks in the room and only one of them being helpful.

More like people only want to read them when what you love is economically in demand. These always remind me to go back and reread the sections on survivorship bias in fooled by randomness. I'm not sure if that's ironic or not.

Probably just a really bad analogy. They also used "vicious cycle of driving and learning" where "virtuous circle" (which I take to mean a system with positive feedback) would be more appropriate.

I'm reminded of the old microsoft certification hoops I was required to jump through for a previous job (I think I ended up with about 30 or so of the things and a load of letters to put after my name that I now cringe to think about, mainly because of how absurdly pleased with them I was at the time. HR departments and management were impressed by it, the people who worked at the coal face, not so much.

Be interesting to see how it turns out.

EDIT - and of course for things slightly more academic, I'd expect there to be not quite the same set of issues as there were with vendor qualifications (before someone points it out). Yes, I too would prefer to hire people who maintain an interest in learning over someone that didn't (I'm signed up for four of these things as soon as my MSc is out the way), so not intended as a derogatory comment.

I can't remember where I read it (or I'd provide a link) but the real "a-ha" moment for me came when I read "... so what if there's a million doors instead of 3? Does that make a difference" (it doesn't to the argument but it does to most people if you frame it in that way allegedly) in an explanation.

It's entirely possible they were trying to force me to defend the position I'd taken. It probably annoyed them that I took their pet interview question (that they expected me to struggle with) and shot it down in front of them. Not that I'm claiming any special skills - probability is a hobby of mine, this problem was a gateway drug into it and I work at the very low/noddy end of quantitative finance - so a certain familiarity with things like these is to be expected. I was more surprised the guy didn't recognise the name when I said it.

The few times I've been asked it, mentioning it by name results in them swiftly moving on ... the one time it didn't, the person didn't recognise the name and insisted I'd provided the wrong answer - which was a huge time saver for me in terms of turning them down.

At least one of the publishers thoughtfully sticks (or at least used to) the pictures of all the authors on the front cover. Finding people that have both the time and knowledge to write about a particularly in-demand technology is difficult, I had a publisher I particularly respect approach me to write about SQL Server + XML years ago and I just didn't have the time ... of course if someone asks you for "just a chapter or two" and you think you have something interesting to add (note it was never about the money, at an hourly rate it truly sucked) you might feel like contributing to a "cut & shut" as I like to think of them. Of course if you take that approach you need a really good editing team/overview which doesn't always happen.

I remember being shown mosaic on the day it went into limited academic beta and (after half an hour or so) saying "It's pretty and all but I can't see how it's ever going to replace gopher"... the person I said it to still won't let me forget that. However, at the time, I had a point. Not always easy to see that with perfect hindsight.

It pains me to admit it but the point still holds. I've lost count of how many places I've seen that have an excel farm cranking stuff out over the last 15 years. Even when they don't go down that path, microsoft technology works (quiet in the back) really well with the rest of the microsoft technology stack (in comparison to with anything else anyway, although it's better these days).

Actually, I'd put excel (& the massive amount of custom code and extension to it, at least in financial services) way above both of those.

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

If you're a top performer, unless the place you are at is losing money you aren't subsidising anyone's paycheck - I assume that the people skimming the cream off your contribution do exactly the same to every employee and anyone that isn't contributing (the value of) at least their own salary (should) would be shown the door.

I suspect it gets diverted to senior management (founders?) and shareholders. Given we are commenting on this at ycombinator.com, I don't have a problem with it, since I'm hoping to end up in either or both categories at some point.

I found this post this morning, went over there and haven't stopped smiling yet (sad I know). I threw a couple of 10 page or so assignments at it and after uploading a couple of .sty files it all went perfectly and rendered faster than my local machine, which was a bit insulting.

I was a bit taken aback that this has been live since January 2009 (if I'm reading their blog correctly) since an online LaTex editor is something I look out for on a semi regular basis (and has been for years).

I think they missed a few.

I KEEP six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.

http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_serving.htm

... what kind of sadist plans to release this on or around April 1st?