rkon

Taking advice from Sebastian Marshall is dangerous. Seriously, are his articles being upvoted by trolls or are there actually that many morons in this community now? The kid wouldn't know the difference between a billion dollar business and a steaming bag of shit, and 30 seconds on his blog will prove I'm right. Shirtless homemade videos of yourself scribbling "business strategies" on a whiteboard and insulting every major company you've come in contact with? Classy.

I would say I pity him, but it's hard to feel sorry for someone who publicly ridicules his colleagues by repeatedly calling them all "fucking jokers" in a 10,000 word rant on his blog.

Downvote this if you're stupid enough to take advice from a tactless wannabe with the business sense of a doorknob.

This is unusable on the Galaxy Nexus due to its mysterious tendency to make fonts microscopic for random sections of the page. Guess it never occured to anyone to test their flagship browser on their flagship phone? It doesn't even resize the page to fit the screen when you pinch zoom (which the stock browser does)

Also, it has a persistent address/menu bar that takes up the top 10% of the screen, no doubt thanks to ICS' lack of a dedicated menu button. Once again, proof that removing said button was a pure stroke of idiocy.

> The material at Penn State is 99% the same as MIT's

As someone who attended Penn State (but not MIT), I would have to say that's some extremely wishful thinking. And even if the material is 100% identical, the way it's taught certainly isn't. The fact that the latter is far more important is undeniable. After all, why bother with a university at all when we could all purchase the same material (textbooks) on Amazon.com?

You also seem to ignore the fact that many tech companies are now far more interested in your personal website/portfolio and GitHub page than the degree listed on your resume. Even if you find a potential employer who values an expensive piece of paper more than your actual ability, would your really want to work for them anyway?

I didn't personally experience all of those side effects, they just seem to be the most common based on dozens of other users of those medications I spoke with after beginning them myself. There are some other very common side effects I didn't mention as well, such as headaches/bouts of anger/crashing when the medication is wearing off each day, dehydration/drymouth, and heart palpitations or racing heartbeat.

The side effect that most annoyed me was actually loss of appetite, which is basically accepted as 'normal' when taking stimulants. Anxiety was probably a bigger issue with Adderall, though. I don't recall ever talking to someone who felt zero side effects from any these medications.

Parents should really take note of the studies and conclusions in this article. As someone diagnosed with ADHD who has tried numerous medications (Adderall regular and XR, Vyvanse, Strattera, Focalin, and Wellbutrin) I have to say I would never ever EVER allow a young child of mine to take any of them. I can't even fathom how confusing and damaging the side effects of these medications could be to the fragile psyche of a child -- anxiety, mood swings, depression, sleep loss, etc. I was diagnosed at the age of 23, so I knew my own personality well enough to tell when it was being altered by the medications, but how would a child know this? The answer is simple: they wouldn't, and in many cases they're prescribed additional medications (usually anti-depressants and/or anti-anxiety pills) to deal with it.

I cannot respect any parent who allows their minor child to take these types of psychotropic drugs in any but the most dire of situations. Reading ADHD forums was an absolutely horrifying experience for me: parents list the multiple drugs their children are taking in their signatures as if they're badges of honor.

After 2.5 years of trying various ADHD medications I gave up on them completely and have never looked back. Yes, most of them did have the benefits they promised, but the types of side effects they're capable of producing can absolutely wreak havoc on your emotional well being even in their most mild forms.

The dedicated menu button made navigation in every app not only intuitive but consistent. One of the things that absolutely infuriated me about iOS was playing a game of "Find the settings/back/exit/etc. button" in every single app. The best part is realizing the app's developer didn't include the option you're looking for after 10 minutes of searching, which would be obvious if you tapped the menu button once in Android.

As a Galaxy Nexus user, it's the one feature of my original Droid that I miss the most. Google's "If it ain't broke, break it" strategy is really getting on my nerves lately.

Oh, really? The title says "Agree or GTFO" on your screen? Odd, it doesn't look like that at all on mine.

Ever heard of a little thing called hypocrisy? Just curious.

> I'm convinced the professors have come to the wrong conclusion.

That's usually the part where you begin citing evidence that has convinced you. Unfortunately, it's where this article ends. I'm convinced this article is wrong.

See how that works? If you don't put any effort into backing up your statements, they can just as easily be rejected.

> "without onerous licenses and unreasonable disclosures of personal information clearly indicates you will have to provide verification of your identity, which in today's world is not a requirement."

Really? That's his proof that ID will be required? I must be blind, because that doesn't seem clear to me at all. In fact, it almost seems to imply the opposite of what he's saying.

I wish it weren't true, since any economic collapse has global implications, but they've dug themselves into a serious hole and haven't made any drastic moves to pull themselves out.

Numerous sources (and much better explanations of China's precarious financial situation) are in this post http://chovanec.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/china-data-part-1a-... It's a blog by an American economist who teaches at Tsinghua University, the top ranking school in China.

This sort of news is particularly distressing to hear as the bubble is only beginning to burst: "A source at a state-owned property firm in one provincial capital told Caixin that local agencies don't have enough money to cover basic healthcare costs or pay teachers." http://english.caixin.com/2011-12-19/100339928.html

This may actually be one of the worst times to move to China if you're looking for a fresh start. They've been on a lending binge that's created a massive fixed asset bubble (mainly real estate), and it looks like the correction has recently begun. It's a lot like what happened in the U.S. and Dubai, although on a much larger scale and without the fancy derivatives (at least not yet).

Local governments have actually been forcing developers to borrow more money and buy land from them because they depend on those sales to meet their financial obligations. Real estate agents are offering luxury cars and bars of gold when you purchase an apartment, not to mention buy one get one free deals (the gold and luxury cars allow them to mask declines in the prices of apartments because list prices are still high).

I would stay far, far away... at least for the next 6-12 months so we can see how hard the landing will be. A lot of wealth is potentially going up in smoke and that could wreak havoc on their domestic demand, which is what they were planning to rely on in order to continue their rapid GDP growth (which we now know has been largely artificial).

The title is just a meaningless game of semantics, and the article doesn't contain a single shred of useful information that wouldn't qualify as common sense. Trust, communication, personality... are these really things anyone needs to be told to look for in job candidates? If so, the tech industry (and humanity, in general) is in pretty dismal shape.

And how does it help to ask ambiguous things like "In four to six years, will you be doing something amazing?" That's just asinine, not to mention lazy. It's the interviewer's job to glean that information from answers to more thoughtful, deliberate questions.

Facebook hates anything that makes their ads less effective, which this extension did by automatically clicking past them. It's clear that Facebook's priorities have nothing to do woth satisfying users and everything to do with satisfying advertisers. Why else would they repeatedly make sweeping changes that are universally despised by users?

Better yet, why hasn't anyone created an app that just simulates a guest mode? A launcher with two sets of home screens would be perfect. Or, you just disable your preferred launcher when handing your phone to a friend, revealing the mostly barren stock screens. It's as simple as hiding icons, since the apps might as well not exist if the icons aren't there (access doesn't actually need to be explicitly forbidden, per se).

Maybe I'm missing something important here, but it seems many apps on the Android market are just a few tweaks away from doing this already?

It's actually a valid point, but you would never get that impression from this article.

Ars Technica did a much better job of summarizing what makes WP7 "great" and how that greatness repels hardware makers and carriers: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/12/is-windows-pho...

No, they're both wrong, but his friend misses the more important point: self-discipline is necessary to alter the status quo, not consistency.

Well, self discipline isn't really the same as consistency, but his point still stands.

To be fair though, you could completely lack self discipline and be extremely consistent when it comes to watching TV on the couch all day.

Career-ending disaster, or brilliant viral marketing campaign for the Avenger controller? The world may never know ;)

Profiles? Sure. Users? No... not even close.

It's actually rather telling when the only way to make Google+ sound popular is to count meaningless automatic signups.

Boycotting companies who make political donations IS one way of using money to win the fight. We can see which politicians and organizations those companies donate to, which means they need to stop donating or risk dealing with the backlash.

Sorry, but I guess being an "aggressive observer of politics" isn't a valid qualification for dispensing political advice.

More like "GoDaddy no longer publicly supports SOPA".

Just looking out for their bottom line, I'm sure.

Did you read the petition? It seems like you're missing the joke in this one...

Exactly. Or, in other words: The rich would get richer and the poor would get poorer.

Who wants to buy an invite to my high-roller social network? We promise to weed out those "untouchables" who are losing their jobs and homes!

Honestly, it would only be a matter of time before we saw entirely fabricated social groups. Unless social networks start requiring photo ID/SSN to join.

Not to mention the potential this would have to further skew wealth distribution in favor of the rich while strengthening the barriers that already prevent upward economic mobility.

My problem with literary criticism is that it's essentially a disingenuous pseudoscience. Critics make authoritative pronouncements on human nature, culture, society, etc., when they're not actually qualified social scientists. They constantly misappropriate theories from other disciplines, yet they make no effort to support their claims with research or empirical evidence.

Literary criticism as a whole seems to suffer from a fundamental misunderstanding of epistemology (for which I'm sure we can thank postmodernism). It's the perfect platform for anti-intellectuals to espouse their unsubstantiated social and political theories while enjoying immunity from any rigorous scrutiny.

This was made painfully clear to me when I took an English literature class in college. The class focused on short stories and involved a lot of "deep analysis". My method of analysis was to approach stories from a rational standpoint, which doesn't sound creative at first, but the problem with fiction is that the stories exist in a realm without rules (or incomplete rules, in the best case scenario). Approaching this type of work from a rational standpoint usually leads to a nearly endless number of possibilities, each of which cannot be proven more likely than the next.

Analyzing fiction is a guessing game at best, and a completely naive, amateur attempt to perform psychoanalysis on dead authors at worst. Anyone who points this out will not fare well in such a class... take it from someone who learned firsthand. Professors who have taught the same interpretations for twenty years don't like it when someone has a new idea of what their favorite stories might mean.

I can't imagine the talk of vacuum instability and universe-destroying explosions will make the general population very supportive of this project:

"World's Most Powerful Laser to Tear Apart the Vacuum of Space" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8857154/Worl...

These terms are absolutely unacceptable: "We may change or discontinue certain apps or content offered in the Windows Store at any time, for any reason."

Reminds me of the Nintendo and Sega emulators in the Android market[1]. Microsoft will be more than willing to comply with takedown requests -- regardless of how legitimate they are -- if it gives them even the slightest potential to put another dime in their pocket. Why would they ever favor consumers who are locked into their devices for 2 years at a time? Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/06/gaming-system-em...

If ideas are worthless, then every 'smart nerd' should be extremely successful. We all know that's not the case, so we should also know better than to click on articles with such myopic titles.

'Vision' and 'idea' are essentially the same thing, and the author admits vision is necessary. Why is it that everyone tries to separate the two? Because that makes it so easy to write a contentious article? How unoriginal.

This article might be worth reading if it included even a single shred of evidence to back up the author's ridiculous assumptions. Instead, what we got is "this must be what happened because it's the best thing a completely uninformed layman like myself can come up with."

The truth is that an Iranian cowboy caught it with a lasso, in case any of you were wondering.

Edit: Undeniable proof of this article's absurdity: "Even if that control signal is encrypted pattern recognition during many flights over four years would have given them enough information to break the code."

Because all you do is take a few encrypted flight control readings, put them into Code Breaker 2.0, then enjoy your brand new (previously owned) stealth drone, right?