thewisedude

Genius: one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration : Thomas Edison

I understand what the author is trying to say! But the title is so different from the content. Its great and its a compromise? its neither here nor there?

<Quote> Time in bathroom spent reading on your phone [Side note: how freaking scary would it have been to explain to your great-great-grandfather that people would carry around computers and look at them while in the bathroom or driving - he would have been terrified of this future] </Quote>

Really? Try telling your ancestors that you have bombs that can destroy entire cities. Or try telling your ancestors[few centuries back] that you could go to moon today, or that you have the whole world's information in your fingertips, they might faint in disbelief! My point being, that our ancestors' reaction is not a reason why we should not be doing something!

But, I do agree with the author that, the availability of tremendous information is forcing us to judge too quickly, and probably will lead us to making bad judgements!

True... are we not taught to NOT judge based on prejudices? There are so many stereotypes not just about women and men that is. There are also stereotypes about Black, Latino, Asian communities etc. Sometimes they are spread by the people of these communities itself. However, its unprofessional or wrong(? for the lack of a better word) on anybody to judge them based on these stereotypes however tempting it might be, and that is what I think our education should teach us? I must admit they do make good late night comedies and hopefully nothing more!

<Quote>...who has read that nonsense, he may be thinking, consciously or subconsciously, “she doesn’t really want to work at this startup because she wants to have a baby.” </Quote>

Based on the above quote, looks like the author is more concerned about her interviewers being prejudiced against her(since she is a woman) rather than actually delving into the veracity of Tech Cruch's article!

Stereotypes exist. Women like this. Men like that. Men are more good at that, Women are better at something else etc. As an interviewer if he is prejudiced, its not your fault. I would not think that it is right to control his prejudices by censorship of inconvenient truths!

In my experience, its over abstraction that is the real hard nut to crack. I have heard people using very abstract statements which everybody seems to agree on, but most of them understand it differently.

Kudos to Slashdot! It had a great impact. That is the word I would choose to use, rather than the word "Better". It is because "impact" can be quantitatively measured. "Better" is subjective.

Is it not going to reduce the wait time for a majority of people at the expense of minority of people?

I am trying to understand the implication here. Does this bill mean Indians and Chinese ppl will have to wait 3-4 years only now? Also, I am not sure how its detrimental to Koreans (Some OP here seemed to imply that) ?

I think just talking about only hard work being a means to success is a over-simplification of working of this complex world. Working smart as opposed to working hard is also important if you want to benefit financially.

Lets say a kid works hard in his college days and gets to be a dentist or a lawyer or somebody like that. Lets say another kid in similar circumstances chooses not to work that hard or makes a bad judgement and ends up in a not so rewarding area- rank and file job. It is totally fathomable that the dentist kid could end up making twice as much by working half as hard as the rank and file kid for the rest of their lives.

All in all, the idea that working harder will reward you in the future seem fair or karmic. The real world probably is not that simple. I would think there are many other equally important factors like opportunities, luck, judgement etc.

I concur. Another question to think over is...lets say you hand out a brand new pack of cards which come arranged in a certain order. Now you hand them out to one million people and ask them to rifle shuffle it 'N' times. What are the chances that two of them have it stacked in the same way after they do so? My guess is for low values of 'N', it would not be that uncommon.

I am trying to think of applications of such a product? Can anybody help me here?

Informing FBI whatever you do every time is such a pain. Dont you think it makes living less fun?

Also, in the future we could have sophisticated computer systems that could analyze data if everybody started revealing everything. His solution of revealing everything may not necessarily be a long term solution.

I am sure this was an interesting article. But I did NOT read the whole article. Let me reason that in a fair way. The internet has a plethora of interesting information. the style used here makes me spend 20 minutes on this article without knowing if what I find in the end would be worth my time. I rather like a style where you get to the outcome soon( say in the first paragraph), and then get into more detail for those people who think that this article is relevant or interesting.

I remember reading an article on HN where there was a recommendation for a style of prose that might be useful in today's lifestyle. The author recommended summarizing everything in the first paragraph, then having having a more detailed middle section ( few paragraphs), and then having even more detailed paragraphs in the end. Depending on the interest level of the reader, if he stopped at the end of any paragraph, he would have still gotten the gist, only the finer details would be missing!

Thanks dude... everybody has their own evaluation criteria in their mind (which is not disclosed) and people start calling things good or bad. Most of the debates end up being a very unscientific way of evaluating something!

I dont see why a great product cant have a great market share which seems to be an implication. Google search was one example. I am sure there have been other examples.

I am sure there are many lessons to be learnt from Steve Jobs, but I think we should be careful in not making everything he said or did as a lesson to learn!

I agree. IPhone is clearly a great smartphone and I pretty sure it has a very good market share... can somebody quantify this please?

I see that the context is missing. The alternative is two wheeled vehicles (scooters and motorbikes). In India a big percentage of people use two wheelers for commuting. Nano seems to be a slight upgrade from two wheelers. However with rising gas costs, moving from a two wheeled vehicle to the cheapest car does not make much economic sense. Also with Nano being branded as the cheapest car, it does not make much social sense either.

I really want to know what the plan is? How will poor people who cant afford a decent computer have access to WiFi? Its not like India has free Wifi spots in many of these locations. Is there a plan to provide Wifi in the schools where these kids go? I wish this article had more information regarding the whole plan

I couldn't agree more. In software engineering, I have seen people read books on design patterns and use it EVERYWHERE possible.

Even the most simplest and straightforward development work is matched to a pattern and implemented as a design pattern.

I think there should be a rule that says if your feature or a particular problem that you are trying to solve does not exceed XYZ lines of code, then it should never be implemented as a design pattern.

Yet to determine XYZ. I would guess XYZ = 200?

I dont think he hates software....he seems to hate the unnecessary steep learning curve that he is faced with when he is out to do something simple with an existing platform like unix.

I think this argument is perfectly sound. As a software developer, there are times when I wanted to do something simple using a particular framework, and I was faced with a steep learning curve to achieve it. Note here that I was not trying to use the fanciest features of the framework, but the most simplest of it.

OK...like many countries with big population...there is significant income inequality. 400 of the richest americans have more wealth than 150 million americans. Getting back to your point -> So how should that affect the fact that India is about to be the 3rd largest economy?

There will always be problems. You think USA does not have significant problems ? You think Europe does not have significant problems?

I dont think any country at any time was "perfect" and I dont think the headline is conveying that in any form

True...only in the cities.

Doesn't "Exploiting the System" capture the same idea? I think basically what people are doing here is understanding the core weakness that is intrinsic to the system(which probably is not perfect) and using(abusing) it to their advantage.

2 out of the 3 girls seem to be of south Asian origin(Indian?). Does that not seem like a statistical anomaly considering the percentage of south Asians in the US? Any comments?

You are right that regular mirrors absorb or scatter light energy. However, to get 100% reflection it should possible with a setup where the light is getting refracted or bounced off critical angle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_internal_reflection This is commmonly used in Fibre optics.

Its more of an engineering challenge to come up with a setup to view your past than a theoretical one!

A good analogy no doubt! But you should be careful when using analogies. Every behavior of the analogy might not be applicable to the original problem.

Analogies can only help make people "understand" something. Normal brains try to relate things to what it has learnt so far. So analogies seem to help. Analogies in themselves are not scientific explanations obviously.

A scientific/rational explanation to the question posed by the user would be - C++ makes no promise about the behavior of the program when out-of scope C++ variable is used. Obviously this explanation -a simple one is quite less dramatic.

First of all, I dont think the analogy is apt. Also, your claim that Apple seems to be setting terms is not true at all. Android has captured a big market share and from what I read last time it was more than Apple.

I also think that if you can come up with a phone that adds 'significantly' more value than an existing phone, it will automatically capture attention. You dont need imitate the current players in the market.

There have been many examples in the past ( for eg: Google search Vs Yahoo search ).

But I do think that Nokia phone is really pretty, with pretty good UI features showcased. But I am not sure if it has the necessary qualities to make users switch from an existing iphone or android phone. I dont know if it adds "significantly" move value!

Of course switching between search engines is a lot easier than switching between phones, so that is also an important factor.

In Sanskrit -> Koopa Manduka [Frog in the well]. I googled it up and found this link http://www.balagokulam.org/kids/stories/koopa.php

It tries to captures the idea that it is very difficult to accept something that is very radically different from what you are used to.

For eg: In the narrative by Sivers, entrepreneurship is probably not so important to a different culture!