vubuntu

Ultimately I think there are a lot of industries that a degree requirement is a good thing (I really want my doctor to actually have an MD), a lot of industries where certification is sufficient .

Why only Doctors? Because human lives are involved? I assume by the same logic, Civil Engineers also need to have a degree (they build bridges and other life critical infrastructure)

There may be thousands of software products that are also life critical. Not just the obvious ones like some medical hardware control program/firmware, Air traffic control programs, Flight onboard software Self-driving car auto-pilot software etc. So I assume those would require a qualified software engineer with a degree.

But there may even be others that may not be so obvious immediately.

I have a degree and not been on the other side (not having a degree) and so cannot identify with any injustice that is perceived by folks on other side. I can certainly see somewhat equivalent when it comes to bachelors degree vs Masters/PHD as I don't have those. So I am not sure where the lines should be drawn to make it fair to everyone.

Some more important questions to ask :

Facebooks customers are the ad buyers. I and my data is the product. Mark says I should have control over which of my personal data is shared to whom.

1) But can I control which of my behavioral data (ad clicks, etc) can be collected and used by facebook and provided to the ad buyers? Can I say nothing be collected , even in anonymized manner?

2) Primary selling point to ad buyers is facebook provides them ability to do targeted advertisement. Granted over time facebook has limited discriminatory targeting (Race based, political inclination based) etc to comply with anti-discrimination laws. But as a user, do I have control over how I can be classified, what legal category labels facebook can apply on me and my data? And whether I want to be classified into any category at all ?

Goods have intrinsic value...currencies don't. They are just trusted (and backed by a public trusted entity, usually government, but need not be) stores to 'hold' transferred 'value' that lubricates an otherwise raw barter exchange economy.

Raw barter economy: I provide service to someone in exchange for food/clothes

Currency lubricated economy: I provide service to someone. They give me 'token(s)' equivalent to value of my service. I use the token(s) to buy what I want from someone else.

The token(s) need to be trustable, not-easily-duplicatable, should be equal to the total sum of values of all services + goods that exist in the society/economy. The token(s) needn't have any intrinsic value themselves other than the properties mentioned (probably more than the listed ones, but I listed basic ones)

Punish/hurt the company with punitive damages, big enough to discourage negligent behavior - 100% on this

Compensate the victims with amount equivalent to their loss(physical) + some decent compensation for emotional losses etc. But that need not be 30X of their actual loss. May be 2x or 3x. The rest of the punitive damages should be awarded to the regulatory body that can improve their oversight, or to a public research body that works on fire safety alarms/products etc for example, or to a public cause/charity that helps fire hazard victims or to a publicly funded affordable fire hazard insurance body etc. I see no need to award all the punitive damages to a single victim. This only encourages the 'sue first and for anything' behavior of the society.

"Ok google turn on/off the flash light" works on my motorola nexus 6

iPad or other tablet with facetime or skype. Open a chat session, ask parents to point camera at laptop screen. Then guide them thru steps (click on this, click on that etc). Bit more time (and patience) intensive but has the side effect of making parents/relatives more familiar with doing new things on the computer as well as satisfaction of some level of self sufficiency :) . Only useful for this type of remote support use cases only though.

How does this compare with Storm? So Storm is not needed anymore ?

priceline of the food industry?

I moved to digg reader and it is pretty good.

For me both problem 2 and problem 3 should also be 1/2 .

The variances are due to how people interpret the outcome space .

It is right that probability = favaroble out comes / total possible outcomes.

In problem 2, in my opinion the possible outcomes are not how it was suggested in the post but as below. When a family has 2 kids , the below are the only possible outcomes

1) Potential Outcome 1: Both are boys 2) Potential Outcome 2: One boy and one girl 3) Potential outcome 3: Both are girls

The 3rd one is not a legal potential outcome in our particular constraint of problem 2, since problem #2 statement already states 'at least one is a boy'

So Total possible legal outcomes = 2 Favorable out comes for our event (both boys) = 1

So probability for Problem 2 = 1/2

Similarly for problem #3, I think the post unnecessarily complicates the calculation of problem space. The fact that 'Tuesday' is mentioned is irrelevant in my opinon, if you state the problem #3 in a different way that is more clearly understood.

There are 14 baskets labelled as follows "Sunday Boy", "Sunday Girl", "Monday Boy", "Monday Girl",....."Saturday Boy", "Saturday Girl". A stork came and dropped 2 babies. One baby was dropped in "Tuesday Boy" basket. What is the probability that both are boys?

Now the total outcomes and favarable outcomes are :

Total possible outcomes = Number of ways second baby could have been dropped = 14 possible baskets = 14

Favorable outcomes = second baby dropped in 'boy' basket = 7 possible baskets = 7

Probability that both are boys = 7 / 14 = 1/2

The small metallic type suitcase/box may have been a perfect container

1) To cram in all the ugly looking wires inside while the outer appearance of the product looks polished 2) Nice platform to tether the circuit boards etc to keep them in place 3) Doubles up as a carry box to move around his project and display/show to friends , teachers etc

On the flip side

1) There is subtle difference between timers vs clocks 2) Doesn't look anything like a traditional clock, but more like a James Bondish suitcase/gadget, especially if I just saw the picture of the device alone with no other context given to me.

Having said that, , I am in no way defending the action of police or the school.

What is needed was context, ability to do minimum analysis and common sense. And the teachers, school administration, police had plenty of that. It could have been a simple matter of explaining to the kid , while his zeal is appreciated, to notify his teachers in advance in future, to make sure his projects don't disturb the class, and to encourage more such robotic/electronic projects for science fairs etc (appropriate time and place for everything)

Also unfortunately, due to the current security song and dance every where, kids (and adults too) have to be taught about being sensitive to fear and perceptions of others timing/location/context . Even kids may have to be explained to be sensitive to such things.

May be all or some involved may be bigoted towards the muslim community as the media or comments suggest and that may have played a role in the escalation.

And may be some(or all) weren't. But generally concerned about past incidents related to school environments and violence in schools (Shootings etc). Some of these were perpetrated by fellow students, which can't be discounted in playing into the fears of those involved in this incident.

We can't say for sure , religion/color was the sole motivation. Some past violent incidents were perpetrated by white kids/persons. So if it were a white kid in this situation, can we absolutely discount 100% that similar amount of concern might have not been triggered in the class teacher's mind, or the administration or police.

The point is, reasonable benefit of doubt can be given to the teacher, admin, police for going into a heightened/alert mode.

But what cannot be justified is the failure in subsequent analysis and diffusion of the tension at every level. The teacher could have clarified the intention, and diffused the tension and not escalated it after establishing facts (and the awareness of the enthusiasm and character of a kid of their own class that they should be familiar with). Or the next level, school security/admin could have diffused and de-escalated the situation. Or the police could have done that.

But, no, escalation seems to be a one way process for authority/admin/police these days. What happened to 'peace keeping' part of their job ?

You can still answer 'no' without violating the law , if you rearrange the headline a bit without changing its meaning at all. Will your grandkids run out of oxygen to breathe by 2100? No.

I agree with the parent poster that the participant's awareness of whether the host acted randomly or made an informed decision is critical for the participant to decide whether set B's 2/3 probability shifted/concentrated into the one unopened door in set B or whether set B's overall probability got reduced.

I can illustrate this with a variation to demonstrate that revealing a goat in the door is not that important compared to whether the host knowingly opened that door. For example, say the host blasted the door (and it's contents) instead of opening and revealing what's inside. Now it becomes critical to know whether the host randomly blasted it or whether it is guaranteed that he would never blast a door with car inside it. That knowledge rather than the 'reveal' of what's inside the door he selected (to open or blast) is what influences my decision to recalculate or keep the probability of set B.

OP points out that warp 1 is supposedly speed of light and yet some how warp 9 being 1000 light years per year is somehow not impressive enough. I reversed the calculation to point out that warp 9 = 1000 times speed of light. And want to know what part of it is not impressive enough or misleading.

And by the way OP did not directly point out that warp 9 is 1000 times speed of light and my intention was to point that out to make sure they did not get confused by their own calculation which might have led to their underwhelming impression.

Seeing OP's response to one of the comments below (warp 9 factor = 834 ) validates my assumption that OP was lost in his own calculations for a moment. Only they can confirm.

It could be a job posting to satisfy the requirements of PERM (http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/perm.cfm )

This applies to everything. Why just software?

I could say the same about mechanical or electronics of a vehicle

"I've always been leery of vehicles. They run on mechanical parts. Mechanical parts are only as good as the mechanical engineer that designed them and the quality of material. What if a newly introduced part was not well tested and developed a stress failure due to design or material deficiency. Be it in the middle of rush hour traffic, or hurling down the highway at 70mph? How do we account for the issue of buggy mechanical parts or electronics "

See how that works? Everything other than your own two legs is man made. It's just the level of maturity of the process and testing and time that eventually gives you enough confidence to start trusting any human made device, whether it is software, mechanical, electric, electronic etc...

What part of "2.74 light years per day" seems low? Assuming your break down to the day level is right, to expand, it means at warp 9 voyager is capable of covering a distance of 2.74 light years in 1 day. That means the distance that light could travel in 2.74 years, Voyager could cover in 1 day. So warp 9 = 2.74 x 365 x speed of light =~ 1000 times speed of light. So warp 1 = speed of light. warp 9 = 1000 times speed of light. which does not seem 'low' to me.

Shouldn't it be more like "Airbnb for Expermients" , you are renting out unused lab resources, right?

I am not vagrant user... but what role can it play when my dev laptop is ubuntu for eg? Does it become redundant layer if all my virtualization,configuration and deployment needs are met by docker and dockerfile?

It is messy because VM layer is unnecessary. If OSX had native support for containers or if ur dev laptop was linux then all you had to do was use docker directly with dockerfile. That is the purpose of docker. To make usage of container virtualization easy and standardized and to be used directly on baremetal. All the convolutions introduced by the VM virtualization will evaporate as container support becomes standard across all OS.

I believe (not an expert) it is more important to minimize losses that to maximize wins in game theory (cold war roots).

That sounds meaningless. Aren't they the same thing? Isn't minimizing losses effectively mean maximizing wins? Give me an example where minimizing losses is not the same as maximizing wins. The only cases where it is not is if you haven't vetted out (or could not vet ) the complete outcome of all possible moves that you can make next, for example chess, where the game tree could be of infinite (or deep enough to process in reasonable time) depth.

But chess programs are coded to try all possible tree paths to a reasonable depth given the time constraints and pick a move that has the best weight/score/winning chances. Not a move that has least losses. From that perspective it is all about maximizing the chances of winning. Although I am sure they are also coded to recognize draw conditions and play for draw if that is more effective. So it is not so dry and cut.

So when you are not sure of the certainty of the outcome of the several possible moves you could make next in a game, the best strategy is to pick the one with maximum winning chances not minimal losses. Especially if you think the opposite party is also going to play to win. Next, if your chances of losing are increasing, then play for draw first and lastly mutual destruction (to force the opposite player to draw)

Even in the 'cold war roots' that you mention, the goal is not just to occupy/conquer the opposite country. The goal is also to do so at minimal loss to ourselves. So "winning" in the game of war "is to conquer enemy country at minimal losses or maintain status quo if the losses would be substantial/irrecoverable". So you are always playing to 'win'.

If you are asking this question after the copy was made, then the mere fact that you would be asking that question to the original, means that the original diverged from the copy. The copy was not presented with that offer (to swallow pill) and the thought processes and synaptic impressions in their brains started to diverge! They are no longer identical.

The best scenario would be if there were no concept of choice at all. Not even before the copy were made. Not even the awareness that as part of the cloning either the clone or the original would die is good enough, because you are still asking me to make a choice.

The ideal case would be I am awake today, go to sleep and tomorrow either me or my copy would wake up.

> This has been the default policy (inventions / work on your free time == the companies) at just about every job I've ever had in my career.

I second this. The companies I have worked in the past and current company (I think all come well within Fortune 50 list) all had exactly similar default policy. I too was surprised when I learnt that. But ALL of my past/current companies had a "discuss & establish exception" (via manager+legal coordinator if required) for my own work done (opensource or income-generating mobile app for eg:) during non work hours. The requirements were not very complex but they could be very broadly applicable since most of these big companies are in every field/domain of the software world. And the terms could be broadly summarized as "Thou shall not be given ownership of something that is going to be competetive or near-future business opportunity for the company" . Mostly your typical android/iphone app would get an easy approval. Opensource contributions (as long as non-competetive to existing company product) get easier-pass than income-generating (any thing involving money typically complicates things :) ) projects of the employee because the potential for conflict of interest is higher.

A lot of companies (like Rackspace or my current employer) are adopting opensource into the enterprise more and more and encouraging employees to contribute to opensource during work hours.

Neither strategy is sufficient. Putting armor on areas that had statistically more bullet holes based on examining planes that survived, is obviously not a good strategy as explained in the article. But neither is the strategy of armoring up all the areas that did not have bullet holes. May be not all of those areas are critical. You just don't know unless you examine the planes that did not survive.

In the absence of data on the planes that did not survive, you just have to follow sound structural/mechanical/electrical/mathematical (flight trajectory) principles to determine which of the exposed surface areas of the plane are likely to be hit under various trajectory fly overs over anti-aircraft gun batteries, and among those areas , which are critical (engine, pilot cockpit, weapon storage, fuel etc), and armor those areas up.

I have heard this thousands of times, but a common man, a ordinary software engineer, does not have a lawyer on his speed dial. He/She may not even know how to go about finding one without spending at the least 10-15 mins on Google. So how does this work out? If one says "I will only talk in the presence of a lawyer", then the officers say ok, you get your one phone call, go call your lawyer....then what?? Who do I call? Say best thing is to call my wife/friend and have them find and bring a lawyer.....but what if neither my wife/friend is immediately reachable and I waste my one phone call away....then what?? Are the officers obligated to provide me a 'public' lawyer ?? It's easy to say "don't talk ever without lawyer being present" , but if I don't know what to do after saying that, and I do know there is nothing to be hidden (100% sure) and have reasonable belief that they will let me go once they are convinced of that, then which do you think is an easier choice for me, especially in that panic/stressful mode??

Flawed argument by the poster...

> "Pages filled with words about processing family drama, formulating goals, plans for life changes, romantic details, lists of regrets, contemplations, etc"

C'mon, those are her super super private secrets? Thats ridiculous. 'romantic details' may be a little bit...

Thats why she says "So if someone is going through my private things, for example, and gets upset about what they find, then that’s their problem, not mine!”"

But things people like to keep really secret (and not coyly secret) and worry about others finding out, are those that would upset themselves (and not the readers) if they get discovered. These would be things that one is ashamed of, that one is afraid of being discovered, that if known to others will result in loss of respect/love/admiration/consolation etc that they are currently receiving from others. Or those if discovered by the wrong person can leave one vulnerable to exploitation/blackmail etc. Any other type of secrets are just silly and overblown.

but im talking long term, when currencies will be backed by actual work that provides social and economical value

If it were possible, the absolute currency would be 'life time' as in the movie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Time. In the absence of that, something equally dear for staying alive in a increasingly moving towards apocalypse world, like may be bottles of oxygen or water ? But even then, the things that are of value may not be easier/handy to barter/trade with. That is when an alternative 'scarce' 'hard to create and requires resource intensive mining' but 'easy to handle' , 'easy to determine purity' type of resource takes the place as a currency. Gold has that property inherently. Not saying that it is the only absolute resource that has it. But it is a time tested resource with those qualities.

This is how I have intuitively learnt pretty much everything that I know so far. Didn't know there is a name to this technique. The only way to know that I understood something properly, is to try to explain it in my own words/vocabulary/analogies. Mostly I would be thinking out loud to myself or writing down/drawing flow chart etc, during such 'absorb info & explain' phase. Sometimes sounding off to a friend or colleague also helps.

Why would he provide fodder to Google Helpouts product managers?

He is already 'selling' his product, by writing a blog, by making sure it showed up on HN and pointing out that his product is more mature and Google tried to 'get inspiration' from his product (by creating accounts on his website and probably browsing through features etc).

He has drawn enough attention so that potential users might now try it out for themselves and compare between his product and Google Helpouts.. He doesn't have to list out the features one-by-one that they have found through 2 years of being a live/running product that they believe are strong differentiators. In any case, it wouldn't be the features that will lead to growth of such products. It would be the momentum they generate and mass they can gather that will feed itself and further increase adoption. Making it harder for any late comers to make any significant dent.

Also, he is probably leaving enough tantalizing info out of public, to possibly draw Google to the table for a possible acquihire. You can sense from the tone of his blog that he is neither being too harshly critical (that they copied his product) nor too solicitous of Google's products/services/prowess. Just setting the right amount of tone.

"If every student receives an F for a 40% correct (and they all only get 40% correct), a curve normalizes that. Students who understand the material as it was presented and tested better than others receive a higher grade."

If every one in the class was lazy to study/prepare for the exam and every one ended up getting less than 40% correct, then they all deserve to get F. Normalizing with a curve means, it's possible that someone who got only 39% in that exam in a class full of lazy folks who all scored much less than him, can earn a A or A+ ! Compare this to similar class/exam taken by different set of students (all brilliant) at a different time or place, who all worked hard and scored above 80% but still some of them could get B or C's due to curve grading. Wouldn't it be unfair to the 80% scorer who got a C whereas some one who scored a 39% on the same subject got A+ due to circumstances (time and peers he took the exam with) !! How is that fair at all?