ph0rcyas

Bubble or no, from a personal perspective I will not use bitcoin as a currency to exchange goods - things like purchasing items or paying salaries. Bitcoin's value is just too volatile, why would I pay someone a certain amount in bitcoins, when it'll probably rise up to 10 times the current value in a few weeks? But as a medium for investment, like buying stocks, bitcoin does provide a novel and alluring option.

This is just great. Enjoyed it - posted it on fb and ready to watch it again - then the server is apparently overloading. Wonder what the traffic is like.

A 3d scanner and 3d printer, both controlled by a phone. I should be able to send whatever I scanned to my friends and have him/her to print it off rightaway(3d fax?).

This spoke the hearts of many souls, myself included. Thank you for writing this.

How is this different from codemirror? Codemirror's preview utility easily handles this (and much more versatile in other ways):

  http://codemirror.net/
  http://codemirror.net/demo/preview.html

I beg to differ. What you are describing is scientific dogma, simply another kind of symbolism. Totally natural though: when confronted with too complex a situation, we seek abstractions so we are not overwhelmed with the enormity of the information.

The kind of abstraction that works is greatly influenced by its surrounding context. In more complex issues (say in law), appeal to common sense is sometimes more preferable than using the most fashionable 'scientific theory'. You don't like your spouse? How about teaching her evolutionary biology/psychology?

Dogmatism breeds the act of taking these out of context. Some parts of math works in their internal framework(i.e. math), but taking it out of context is at best, dumb, and at worst, harmful. Having theorems giving infinite-length messages yield certain events of probability one makes all 'realistic' outcomes probability zero. Same for theorems too sensitive to perturbation in axioms that removing a single point turns things upside down.

We don't need 'institutional science', or dogma, or 'mathematics strictly contained in universities', all we need is science, is mathematics, is reason, and understanding their application context.

Such debate often occurs with confusing science with 'opinions of the majority of scientists in academia of what's right'. No, science is not the latter.

[TL;DR] Science and math are useful in a very specified context, and as such is a framework of thinking. Those who take some of their context-dependent results universally and urge everyone to accept it is dogmatic, not scientific.

'Up and Running with Node.js' is a much better book:

http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9781449398583/index.html

And seriously, before jumping into node one needs to know some javascript. Haverbeke's 'Eloquent Javascript' and Resig's 'Secrets of the JS Ninja' will provide a starting point. They're one of these rare books you thought 'boy, I wished it was longer...'.

'Up and Running with Node.js''s code aren't thoroughly polished yet (eg.chapter 2), but plenty people refined and posted them on StackOverflow.

Here is something that's easily overlooked: bringing design and manufacturing together promotes innovation. Having a more rapid iteration cycle is important, but why? Here's a principal reason: it allows design flaws to become visible in the manufacturing, and leads to a redesign if necessary.

Having both these modules in close (spatial and temporal) proximity helps minimizing efforts spent in irrelevant problems. The general rule holds for most softwares with 'manufacturing' replaced by user appreciation.

The hidden cost of taking manufacturing offshore is that a GREAT deal of industrial knowledge is lost. How do you know a problem needs to be taken into consideration if... you don't even know what the problem is?

The glorious days of Bell Labs seems like heaven for tinkerers. Designing, implementing and manufacturing camps don't alienate but simply part of one living organism.

I feel you on the 'life' part. Only people that have been deeply commited to academia, and realizing its role in this era, can understand the emotional impact on this choice.

Life: Knowing life is pointless, and it's completely up to you to make a point.

Programming: Common Lisp. And... not being overzealous about it.

It isn't just emails in particular. Think for a moment about some fancy sites you've come across - say a startup advertising their service/product. How many times after being fed a plate full of bells and whistles, you still don't know what they actually do? It tells you how wonderful their product is without telling you exactly what is that product.

But this does make sense, because if they put things in plain words most of them will be "This is another social platform", or "this is another cloud service", "another image processing tool", "another education software". That doesn't sound very attractive, and they're well aware of it. The trick is to first convince that this is something wonderful, then subconsciously people will perceive it as something different from all existing services - and so willing to try it out.

However, most users are getting increasingly sophisticated and skeptical, and this sensible strategy sometimes backfires.

It is nice to see these more expensive variants of colleges spring up. At least they're more honest than most universities - but then as [intellegacy] already noted, the opportunity cost is well hidden under this startup craze. Indeed, one does make more money by selling axes to gold miners than to mine gold.

There'll always be someone to point out that such degrees are necessary for higher(!) degrees which are necessary for academia. While the myth that we have a shortage of PhDs and scientists - combined with a huge portion of academics retiring - continues, it is a very profitable excuse to get more public funding.

But that's okay, we have plenty of money to spend on all kinds of research - we're aiming at a lofty goal! But the discomforting bit is when the majority of the graduates regard everyday-life mundane stuffs are below them, that all high is in the textbooks, and simultaneously have no urge to do something (themselves or earthly people value) instead of just "learning".

In the risk of being downvoted to death, I think reposting these articles is necessary:

'Don't become a scientist!': http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/scientist.html 'Women in science': http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

The career for pure mathematicians(which is more like the humanities, and specific knowledge quite untransferrable) in academia, being better or worse, is open for discussion.

It is about 'meaning'. I'll elborate: there are so many things you can learn, so many areas of art, of science, of mathematics, of history and what not - but _why_ should we learn them? Because they are useful? They make us a better person? This is the elephant in the room. Education and learning is more of an attitude instead of constantly stuffing yourself with 'potentially useful information'.

Programming is arguably one of the best ways to derive pleasure and seeing meaning in the learning process. You create, you design, you implement, you learn from others and in the end - most importantly - you have something working (and to show off), together with the thrill of knowing that this existed _because_, and solely because, you made it happen.

It gives one a purpose. So in order to bring things that're only in your imagination into reality, you learn to code better, and learn about what you're trying to code (say, history, or science, or Tarot decks if you're into that).

Instilling this sense of purpose to our young is a very lofty goal. In our current context, programming seems to achieve this goal in a far more time-efficient and rewarding way.

  Give up pursuing eloquence, unless
  You can speak as you feel! One's very heart
  Must pour it out, with primal powers address
  One's hearers and compel them with an art
  Deeper than words. Clip and compile, and brew
  From the leavings of others your ragout
  Of rhetoric, pump from your embers
  A few poor sparks that nobody remembers!

That the only thing left to do is to pay the "processing fees".

This finally happened. Narrow specialization at its best.

Agree. It is unbelievable - one has to study it to believe it.