While I was reading this three separate things sprang in my mind and I think there is some degree of connection between them. Over the last decade busness degrees have become more and more popular, leaving engineering and science for nerds. Also I have seen more high school kids with an Idea that collage is waste of time and money, they better of trying to make it on their own. It seems that all these business schools which crunch out PHBs have given bad reputation to a collage degree.
Two things that would help the music industry I think is to move have free streaming music on sites like Lulu and Last.fm but for a limited number of times. This will still let people discover new music int he manner that many do it online now and will let them decide if they want to spend 50-90 cents to buy the song.
Secondly, more profits from song sales should go to the artists themselves. It's hard to feel bad for recording industries please when you read that only minute percentage of CD sales actually go to the artists.
explain why it is not misplaced in your last sentence
Good catch. I was trying to give a reason for this misattribution and not justify it.
But back to the larger point. It strikes me that intellectuals who have racked up the greatest kill-scores have done so because of their views in humanitarian fields (politics, philosophy, etc.) I am yet to see a genocide in the name of math or art. One exception I see is the misrepresentation of climate data to support global warming (if indeed that is true).
which is trusting their beautiful theories too much
I think this mistrust of intellectuals is misplaced. Any kind of person, no matter education level, is susceptible this. Any person who is single-mindedly perusing his crazy view of the world and does not care of consequences is dangerous. Historically, intellectuals have had more means and knowledge to pursue their crazy ideas and I guess that is why they are more prominent.
The article mentions that the bank had gotten requests to register two new computers for the company that was sent from the company's internal email. This makes me think that their bank credentials weren't the only thing compromised. This in turn suggests that the company's security practices could be improved.
Consequently, measuring Y is a good proxy for measuring not only when high levels of X means high levels of Y, but also when high levels of Y means high levels of X. Next great search engine should take that into account.
One of their failings has been a lackluster ad champaign. Ads for Pre are poor at showing off any of the phones capabilities. More importantly, the market is split between Android and iPhone with Verizon and AT&T acting as proxies. Each of their ads implicitly or explicitly plays to that standoff. They ignore Palm and Sprint as non-existent, and the later have failed to place themselves somewhere within that environment as well.
Maybe the future for Palm would be to preempt Google and go without being attached to any one carrier.
If you are about to give an interview and show off your new product to a bunch of people, wouldn't you take time in advance to make sure all is set up and you can give a flawless demo of many different aspects of the toy? Having a WIFI connection should be one of the basics.
Grunting for GPA is a well-defined path. You take your classes seriously, study, do you assignments, and pass your tests; that's all there is to it. Whereas independent projects means venturing into the unknown, having to define your goals, and judging your success yourself. The later is a more daunting task.
Another example where powers-that-have been are trying to stop inevitable future with restrictions and fines. The way it's done is noteworthy also: instead of targeting pornography on personal sites in particular they have banned any one person from having a personal site at all* . This is akin to chasing flies with a baseball bat.
*At lest independent sites that are not created through some service, a la Blogger, and which it would be labor-intense for the government to police one by one.
If you are currently helping a Nigerian ex-general retrieve his family's fortune from overseas accounts, this might come in handy as a hedge in case he is not legit.
As a side note, he raises an interesting question that has been floating in my head for a while. Two hundred years ago, politicians were the most educated and informed people around. We could rely on them to make good informed decisions. But with the explosion of information and ever-accelerating development in technology and therefore our every aspect of our lives, it seems politicians are reduced to the common denominator knowledge and understanding and quality of their decisions is less and less sufficient to lead a country.
As far as I remember the waterfall model has been taught to us in Software Engineering class in CS undergraduate degree as one of the most effective. Even at that time I felt a little uneasy with it being so highly structured and inflexible. In contrast I have not seen it being used even once where I work. I feel duped.
"This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God's beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing."
I have long thought that one of the major downside of any religion is that it radicalizes people. No mater how much peace and tolerance it preaches, dogma always takes over.
In light of a recent content overload discussion (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=968101), what are the chances that each of the 10 pages have been outsourced to some freelance writer for a few dollars?
And the strange thing is, they only put 4 adds per page, so it's not like they are breaking up the article to increase ad space. They do pimp their own content alot though.
The stay-tuned-to-find-out message of the last paragraph seemed kind of out of place. Made me think there could a reality show in this mission somewhere.
I believe in a democracy+capitalism gov't has to be as large as necessary and no larger. We cannot always say that gov't has to be small, it has certain duties one of which is to make sure, through legal means, that the system does not destroy itself. Once we agree that net neutrality is required for healthy capitalism, what possible ways are there to guarantee it other than a meaningful amount of regulation. It is in the same vein as regulation needed to prevent monopolies.
They have a great idea on making money of users. Instead of charging a larger amount to let them play the game, they charge a numerous smaller amounts for different objects in the game. First, people are more willing to part with, let's say, 25 cents for that one cool fish than with 25 dollars for a game. Second, once you get them pulled into the experience, they will be even more willing to spend money. Surprisingly, I don't see that kind of pricing used much in other areas.