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kkshin

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Good content, but seriously who signed off on actually presenting this content the way it is presented? Seems like a high school multimedia class project.

[dead] 13 years ago

This is a valid complaint, although probably has more to do with the fact that someone in product believed this does translate into a like (before the like system existed).

Also I believe Facebook does not show these ads for minors, so most likely she lied about her age... but I remember just vaguely reading about this at some point in the past.

[dead] 13 years ago

The fact that this is getting upvoted at all is ridiculous. I saw this thread on Reddit and chalked it up to mob mentality on Reddit, but I'm pretty surprised to find that it is also getting upvoted here.

Let's think critically for a moment: Is it more likely that a 14 year old girl liked the AT&T page in all her days of using Facebook and forgot or that this is normal for Facebook ads that would potentially open them up for a huge lawsuit, after all this is basically libel.

Also check out this author's about section. He's a Google+ fanboy (Google+ is pretty nice, nothing wrong with liking it) and hardly a biased source.

Articles like this and its spread of misinformation highlight the inherent dangers of how easy the Internet has made it for random, misinformed people to get massive reach and it seems that even our "enlightened" community has fallen for it.

I am so disappointed.

On-site interviews are a necessary for the most part, but phone screens have always been the bane of my existence. About 50% of the time I can barely understand what the other person is saying, mostly because the person conducting the interviewer is not a native English speaker. I almost never have an issue in person with non-native English speakers because you're able to pick up so much more context from subtle physical clues. I wonder if anyone else has this problem.

Disclaimer: My parents are non-native English speakers and I can't understand a thing they say over the phone, but in person I have no trouble.

I don't agree with your statement. Its equivalent to saying that I shouldn't consider buying ethically raised meat because its the same industry that factory farms are part of. One can identify the ethical quandaries and support producers that choose to eliminate them.

From the Korea Herald:

"According to South Korean experts, Pyongyang’s electronic warfare capabilities are second only to Russia and the United States."

Not sure how accurate THAT statement is, but North Korea has waged electronic warfare multiple times in the past including jamming SK's GPS systems at one point. They probably have a fully capable electronics warfare unit.

Its also quite possible that China supplies the technology/know how to conduct such attacks and uses NK as a proxy to test systems as SK military procedures are somewhat related to the United States.

Also, South Korea has REALLY bad security. For example, if you want to use some form of online banking you must use an ActiveX control with IE.

I just went through the process of whether I would purchase a diamond engagement ring for my fiancee or not. Rationally, it made absolutely no sense to me for the following reasons:

1) The idea of "blood" diamonds as well as the fat that the industry marks up diamonds to a ridiculous notion without translating any of those benefits to the societies it exploits. 2) There is no tangible benefit to a diamond ring that CZ or similar gem would not provide.

That being said, my fiancee very strongly wanted a genuine diamond ring. When I explained my viewpoints and she understood and said that she did not want to force me to purchase a ring that I felt very conflicted about. At no point was our relationship in jeopardy over the issue. Even so, I knew that she really wanted a rock and it took me a while to figure out what to do.

In the end I decide to get her a ring because it was what she really wanted, even though she was wiling to suppress her desires to respect mine. I wanted to respect her wishes as well. If she had threatened or had gotten upset over the matter, I might have not reached this conclusion. Maybe she's just a super shrewd negotiator.

For me, the biggest blocking point is the human hardship that goes behind the diamond industry, and I was able to somewhat subdue this by seeking out a conflict free diamond provider. There are a couple around and if this is your biggest blocking point as well you should look into it. Artificial diamonds were not an option for me, because at the moment they are not able to provide colorless diamonds afaik.

Having been to a number of "geeky" conferences, I was surprised at how large the number of women there were at the conference.

We should also keep in mind that this community has always been aligned more with the engineering side of entrepreneurship and less on the all the other equally important functions, which tends to make the community somewhat insular and under-represented.

I guess what I meant was that the geography factors heavily into the culture, which feeds heavily into the leadership.

Even though large technology companies are opening offices, like you mentioned, the difference are that these are satellite offices. Your career potential will be limited, its just an unavoidable fact of the current corporate world. Its a very different scenario to move from the center of the solar system to Pluto.

A self feeding startup culture is not a healthy startup culture, at least imo.

One of Microsoft's biggest problems that contributes to their insular view is that they are located in Redmond. They're insulated from the rest of the highly competitive technology field (except for Amazon). This works out great for them when it comes to retaining talent in Redmond as employees are usually not willing to uproot their lifestyle to head to 'greener pastures'.

Contrast this to how Google handles compensation and employee retention. Granted, Google is a much smaller organization and can afford to be more nimble, but part of it has to do with with the fact that being in the valley means that its incredibly easy for talented, motivated engineers to move to the next hot startup once they're dissatisfied with their current job.

In Redmond, however, these options don't really exist and creates a culture of stagnation. People goto their jobs because they have and leave as soon as it is culturally acceptable.

I fear a lot of Microsoft's future as I just don't believe that they are able to recruit top young talent anymore. Not only is Microsoft not a "hip" place to work anymore, but their compensation is generally below market. Its pretty standard for funded startups to give more BASE salary than Microsoft. Google's base is roughly 50% more than what Microsoft pays. New hires at Google make more money than level 64 Microsoft engineers (5 levels from starting).

Microsoft will continue to execute and create good products, but until their internal culture drastically changes they will slowly slide into irrelevance.

I try really hard to not get pigeon-holed into using my company's (one of the mentioned ones) stack but its really hard. Why? Cause when you have a full-time job then you're working 8-9 hours a day and there's really not that much time left over. I do a lot of side projects that usually revolve around non-proprietary technology but really there are only so many hours a day. I think it comes down to a decision of whether you want to sacrifice employment productivity over your own enrichment (which might never even pay off)

Google is probably the highest paying large software company at the moment. Their base pay is very much above market at the moment due to its recent across the board 35ish% raises. It will be interesting to see how large companies like Microsoft will respond when their recruiting numbers drop.

Your master's degree does not have much of an impact, but I know personally of strong performers at Google with 3-4 years of experience who are receiving 135k-150k in base salary + other goodies such as their obscene bonus scheme and stock grants.

I also attended CMU (SCS). I'm not sure how many other schools do this, but when applying to CMU you apply to specific departments and the acceptance decision is handled at the department level. This causes there to be a great variance in the paper qualifications of attending students across the school.

http://my.cmu.edu/portal/site/admission/adm_statistics/

You can see that compared to the other departments that the College of Fine Arts lags "significantly" behind the other "academically rigorous" departments. Yet even that being the case, we have one of the strongest fine arts programs in the country with many of the programs being considered top 10.

My reason for bringing this up is that college admissions are (and should be) based on something more meaningful than paper qualifications. The point of a well rounded University is to foster a place of learning across a varied set of fields. Who is to say that athletics is any more or less worthwhile than Fine Arts, Drama, or Computer Science? Athletics contribute a lot to a school's experience. Who cares if their grades are slightly lower and didn't get perfect SAT scores. They are recruited because they have astounding talent in their respective fields just like a geek might have a talent for numbers or a music major has talent for playing the piano.

(I am not and never was an athlete)

I would personally find it a sad, sad day if enrollment in liberal arts rapidly declined. People that major in liberal arts bring great joys to our world. Film, music, art, dance, and great books are all things that truly enhance life, and honestly, is also the cultural force that makes the United States so great.

One of my biggest regrets of my collegiate education was not making a conscious effort to expand my curriculum by taking courses in the humanities department.

For certain types of positions I think its a really great litmus test. It tests a applicant's personal discipline in coding as well as whether they have a passion for the field outside of the standard 9-5.

The largest issue with this is you can lose out on really good engineers who view technology as their work, but not their hobby. There is a great number of awesome engineers who only do work within their employment, and therefore won't have a good repository of code to show potential employers.

A good alternative to this is to simply present a coding challenge to solve during an alloted time period (day/week).

Dude, the S line hasn't been meant to compete with M/AMG models for the last couple iterations. The S4 is a direct competitor to the 335i and is marketed as such and is priced much lower than either the C63 or the M3. The RS line of cars are the ones designed to directly compete with AMG/M.

The US is, by and large, successful because we have the largest market in the world (forgetting for a moment the effects of WWII). We continue to be a success because we have a huge population of affluent people who can spend enormous amounts of money on consumer goods. The Chinese middle class is already larger than the entirety of the US population* and will continue to rise as the country increasingly becomes a first-world country.

There are of course issues with managing such a large population, but the chance of any sort of collapse is the figment, and hope, of our pride and does not reflect the realities of the situation.

* - Income of middle class in the US is higher, but cost of living is also substantially less in China.

I think they're already starting to break through that barrier. Look at companies such as Huawei, TCL, Lenovo, and Haier who are competing at the global stage with many US tech firms. If you are limiting "technology" to what most of us do around here (software) then I might be able to concede the argument, but that is an incredibly narrow view.

edit On innovators: I agree in the current climate the environment in the US is more conducive to raising people with the entrepeneural spirit, however China is rapidly changing. This is the time when the first batch of college grads have parents who had white collar jobs. They aspire to be more than their parents, and this desire/greed/ambition will inspire a new generation of business men and engineers. Their children will be even more so.

I don't think anyone disagrees that China will out pace the US in technology at some point within the next two generations. They will probably outpace the US in all business sectors. This has nothing to do with the failings of the American education system or ineptitude of our leadership. No matter what our policies, we are a natural disadvantage. China has more people. With more people comes more consumers, larger markets, and ultimately more innovators.

Ultimately though, this doesn't matter. As the world becomes more globalized it will matter less and less where companies physically exist. Global companies will still hire the best minds from wherever in the world they graduate from, and global companies/investment firms will still invest in the best of ideas.

It really depends on what you're looking for, but Philosophy is a field where one philosopher's work is built on top of the other's going all the way back to the ancient Greek's. Its important (I think anyways) to read the raw texts before you read philosophical commentary so that you have a chance to form your own opinions. That being said, here's some recommendations of mine that cover a breadth of philosophical subjects and time periods. Its always good to see someone else want to learn more philsophy, especially if its of their own volition.

Plato. Strangely enough, Plato is probably one of the best introductions to philosophy, not only because he was one of the first whose writings survive to modern time, but also because its relatively simple to read and understand. Some of my personal favorite are 'The Apology', 'The Symposium', and 'The Phaedrus', and of course 'The Republic'. The weird thing with Plato is you'll never know how much of his writings are his thinking as opposed to Socrates teaching. I still reread Plato because the stories (most of his writing is in narrative form) are so damn entertaining.

Aristotle. This is a natural progression from reading Plato. The 'Nichomachean Ethics' is a cornerstone of ancient philosophy and is a relative simple read.

John Locke/Gottfried Leibniz. I'll admit, I struggled through 'An Essay of Human Understanding' but this title and Leibniz's rebuttal 'New Essays on Human Understanding' illustrate a historically important philosophical debate between empiricists and rationalists. Since you're reading 'Common Sense' you might also want to give Locke's 'Second Treatise on Civil Government' a gander.

Immaneul Kant. Since you're reading Schopenhauer you should read Kant as he was heavily influenced by him. You'll hear him referenced a lot if you continue to read philosophy so you should familiarize yourself with his thinking, especially on his thoughts in epistemology.

Bertrand Russell. People have already recommended him and he's one of the most popular philosopher's of modern times, mostly because he's so easy to read and was somewhat of a cultural icon during his time. I have a particular fondness for his work because when I had doubts about my faith, "Why I Am not A Christian" helped me find words to communicate my break with Catholocism. His "History of Western Philosophy" is considered a cornerstone history of philosophy book (although it is somewhat dated now). His writings are usually rather short and concise.

Jacques Derrida/Gilles Deleuze. Now we're getting into some wacky shit. To be fair, I shouldn't even be commenting on it because I have no idea what these guys are talking about half the time. These are the philosophers that people read and pretend to understand because they want to sound smart. You know the stereotypical "philosophy" students that you see in movies. Maybe you'll find something of substance in their work although many philsopher's believe these guys are/were hacks and purposefully obfuscate their writing to hide the fact that there's no substance in it.

One of the best ways to read philosophy is to start with a philosopher who truly changed the game with their work (such as Kant) and work your way out reading the work of his supporters as well as the work of those that disagree with him. This way you'll get a worldy view on 'important' philosophical issues while starting to formulate your own opinions on th ematter.

[dead] 16 years ago

I think you're reading too much into it. Certainly Apple may have offered ABC some amount of money for the product placement but the important question is has this specific example taken away from the entertainment factor of the show? If you follow 'Modern Family' this is certainly is consistent with the portrayal of a father. Would it have made you happier if instead he was obsessing over an unfamiliar technology product that you've never heard of? Would you have been able to relate to it as much?

So I say, "who cares," as long as product placement is not impacting me from being entertained and/or compromising the artistic merit of the show.

The New York Times overlooks that Microsoft has one of the largest, although not numerically, active social networks with its Live and more importantly Xbox Live service. This is a key part of Microsoft's strategy currently as well as moving forward as evidenced by integration in their upcoming mobile phone and most likely other platforms.