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re:mechanical_fish

I've made other replies in this thread, but I think I've just realized the core issue:

It's easier and less error-prone to change yourself than to change external organizations.

Over the years, this becomes more and more clear, which is perhaps why older people seem more conservative and cynical.

Essentially you're arguing: this thing is difficult for me and others to do, so let's change the system. You assume that this will be easier than changing yourself and that it will turn out as you expect.

Experience teaches that things almost always seem easier and less complicated at first. Experience teaches that again, and again, massive fuckups start with good intentions.

From a coding perspective: think of getting buy-in from various people and departments to change some process or piece of code, versus just doing it yourself. Which will be easier?

So, should we avoid all structural change? Of course not. It's just that as you get older you've experienced more of these good intention -> massive fuckup cycles, and become attuned to them.

So to summarize, I expect that your plan would have unintended consequences, and that it would be easier and ultimately more effective to just re-train yourself.
LOL - spot on ;-).

What's interesting though is to observe a monster organization like Fool.com leverage this exact same style - it scales, believe me!
Attach the pin to the package with a piece of wire or thread. When the happy customer pulls out his new monitor the pin will automatically fall out. Easy.
They say:

In fact, no country allows unrestricted flow on the Internet of pornographic, violent, gambling or superstitious content, or content on government subversion, ethnic separatism, religious extremism, racialism, terrorism and anti-foreign feelings.

Not true, the US allows all this, with very minor exceptions.
Yes, very good point, the brand I get does do that (Nature Made Liquid Softgels Odorless 1200mg).
The idea behind is to protect the screens from dust and other issues... many people buy a screen protector for iPhone, can't these guys keep the one which came with the display for free.
I don't know much about the history of farm subsidies but on the point of government intervention perhaps it made sense at some point in history but its time has past. Anyone who tends to argue for government intervention / regulation is usually pretty realistic about the need for the policies to be continuously adapting and evolving over time. It'd be silly to think we should never revisit these policies just because they've become the accepted political status quo. I'm a fan of any regulation / intervention to come with built in sunsets instead of being considered something that will stay on the books indefinitely.
I've heard this many times before, but it is largely irrelevant. Consumers believe they are paying for the content. They pay $30 a year and get 12 issues. It's like saying the shopper doesn't pay for the lettuce, she's paying for the transportation of the lettuce. All the costs and all the revenue ultimately go on the same side of the line -- either you are profitable or you aren't.

Which makes me wonder if the HuffPost is profitable. I think they aren't:

"While traffic is surging at the HuffPo," Hippeau told
an audience at the OMMA conference earlier this week that
rates for CPM-based advertising are nearing "zero."

http://www.beet.tv/2009/09/huffington-post-ceo-revenue-must-... The HuffPo is not immune to the problems facing the industry and they don't also distribute via print. How are they going to survive.

I wonder how all of a sudden, the HuffPost, which is living on a $25 Million investment is the expert on how to be a profitable online distributor and creator of content. They are struggling too and thumbing their nose at the traditional establishments. Before I take their side, I'd like to see some evidence that they know what they are talking about. I'm not sure they do and I'm not sure they will outlive the nytimes who trounces them in the online content space.

The NYTimes gets online more than any other publication I have seen and they seem to understand the web as a delivery mechanism way more than the huffpost.
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I would imagine they would be localizing the manuals a bit (OSD usually are not that simple), adding one more line there shouldn't hurt.
Re: examples vs problem-solving: I found that attempting a problem that was beyond me would prime my mind, so that when I read the solution, my mind would grab it. Like an enzyme. Apart from focusing on the relevant aspect of the material, it also provides motivation, and then satisfaction though tension and release. Something of a drama/sales technique.

[EDIT it also combats that feeling of not having learnt anything in 3 years, by giving contrasting experiences of not-knowing and knowing.
All humans are intelligent; I believe learning is just a matter of paying attention, which requires motivation and confidence. A sense of progress helps both.]

I tried this on a class when I was tutoring at uni, and it seemed to work well. Students were surprisingly interested in the answers to puzzles I put on the board at the start of each tute, even though I didn't refer to them, and several did extremely well in the subject. Unfortunately, I have no comparative data with other tutes, due to "privacy issues", which averages would have overcome. So much for my dept's interest in teaching quality.
I'm not sure history should disagree with it. The underlying message is that corporations shouldn't be playing politics, and that's an increasingly popular public sentiment in the USA as well (or the internet amplifies it).

How is Google trying to manipulate foreign government different from the health industry lobbying for their own interests?
I'm not to certain about that. Chinese internet users will need to be as valuable as other users around the world to warrant more investment in new companies. Unless some one has data that contradicts this, I believe that revenues per user is much much lower in China then elsewhere and it might take a while for it to catch up. The total revenues of the Chinese internet market doesn't seem to be worth it currently. It's certainly a future investment and it doesn't seem that foreign companies are winning the battle with local companies for the market. It seem that the Chinese Internet market is isolating itself.
That doesn't address the surprising and undesirable "sproing" the customer will experience.
Actually, the book is probably the most polished and edited product we've ever released. There is a typo though.
Have you ever tried Adfrainil?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrafinil
Not just tech companies I'm sure. For example HSBC moved it's world headquarters to London before Hong Kong was handed over to the PRC.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hsbc#History

If your company is in China, it's implicitly controlled by the gov't since it has authoritarian rule.
Online gambling is, at least to some degree, illegal in the US

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_gambling

So are certain types of porn and anti-government websites.
No company should be forced to do something it's executives and employees find morally wrong. They are not actively trying to usurp the Chinese government and I don't see anyone claiming Google is bribing people and push for self serving laws in Beijing.

Lobbying can be ok if it's done in a fair and open matter. Which it is not. Lets not forget that corporations have employees and those employees are often better off when their corporation has an easier time doing business.
At the very least it respects most's definition of what is acceptable under free speech.
Google Shuts Down google.cn
From my understanding of the use of TaoBao and Baidu in comparison to eBay and Google, void is a description of what western companies occupy in the Chinese marketplace — not what would be left by their leaving.
I have. It's not as strong as modafinil, and it's harder on your liver.
Pretty smooth of the PRC to redefine this as "Google trying to make a political statement" rather than "Google deciding it can't do business in a country that sponsors attacks on its systems."
The only thing that I wonder (and fear) about this piece -- is whether this is the only slant on the story that Chinese citizens will be allowed to access.
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I'd be surprised if Google didn't offer each of their employees in China to leave the company before they made the announcement that they were going to cease censoring the Internet. I'm sure that several took it. However, if there was a similar case in the United States, many would be willing to put their lives on the line to affirm the necessity of free speech. Please don't cheapen the decisions of the employees to stay onboard as Google employees by suggesting that Google has held them hostage. They are making a statement that, whether or not the Chinese government decided to go after them, they are on the right side.

No. China isn't Apple or Microsoft. Apple and Microsoft aren't evil. They don't violate human rights as China does. Doesn't that make the fight against China the correct battle to choose?

Sorry for my idealism, but I seriously believe that Google made the right choice, as did the employees in China who decided to stand by Google's side in defense of freedom.
Extreme programming could be a better alternative. Have the experienced person solve the problem while the novice types out the solution. It's better than simply reading the solution, because you're hearing the rationale for the lines as they are being written. Writing them burns them into your brain.

Perhaps we can group sophomores with freshmen. The sophomores are tasked with solving the problems and the freshmen are tasked with typing out the code. It also primes the seemingly naturally introverted programmers for group based activity that will benefit them in the long run.
Did everyone forget that China tried to break into their network?

Most corporations don't want to be involved in the politics game. However, as MS found out if you aren't involved you quickly become a target of opportunity.

It's a free world for the Chinese gov't if they'd like to do business with companies like Google they'll have to offer a mutually beneficial arrangement.
To make fish oil, you need fish that are low enough in the food chain to not have many PCBs. Fish oil is usually made from the menhaden fish (aka the alewife fish), which used to be plentiful all around the Atlantic coastline of the US, feeding on algae. With all those fish turned into fish oil pellets, there are massive algae blooms, and the food chain's getting disrupted.

See http://www.ethicurean.com/2009/03/23/menhaden/ and http://motherjones.com/environment/2006/03/ill-take-menhaden
Well, that's exactly the sort of cloaking EE used to do. Google bot saw the answers, but visitors were greeted with a page asking for a credit card. At some point, I imagine google threatened to delist them.
I fear for the safety of the Google employees who are still there. At best they are going to lose their jobs -- at worst, their lives.
Its precursor Adrafinil is not a controlled substance and easier to obtain over the internet. Same effects, different dosage requirements. Modafinil itself is schedule IV in the US and harder to obtain cough nubrain.com cough
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Perhaps we can group sophomores with freshmen. The sophomores are tasked with solving the problems and the freshmen are tasked with typing out the code. It also primes the seemingly naturally introverted programmers for group based activity that will benefit them in the long run.

I think this is an awful idea because the average freshman will learn from the output of the average sophomore, which is not good at all.
While I agree in general with what you're saying I don't think most of it applies to Google's situation.

- Google was never forced to do anything. They chose to. The cost of doing business in any location is abiding by any number of laws that businesses must evaluate to see if they're willing or profitably able to operate within.

- They didn't seem to have many moral problems for the first 4 years.

- They very publicly announced they had a problem with the situation and tried to force the Chinese governments hand with an ultimatum - change the laws or lose Google's business.
Well, for one, lobbying is legal. Why Google isn't lobbying the Chinese government to change its censorship laws is my question. Instead, they are putting people in harm's way and tarnishing the relationship between east and west.

What really are they going to accomplish? What are they trying to accomplish?
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This reminds me of some teacher training I received a few years ago. The teacher was showing us a technique for teaching a new skill to people:

* First I do it. (Step one is blah, then we do foo, etc.)
* Then you help me do it. (So what's the first step? and then what do I do? etc.)
* Then I help you do it.
* Then you do it.

The first part is important: new learners simply watching an experienced teacher applying the skill.
The sites may be illegal, but are not blocked. There are plenty of people who still gamble online from the US through off-shore accounts and using off-shore websites.
I like the idea but I agree with the others that the color scheme is terrible. I am using FF 3.6 on Ubuntu 10.04 on my netbook and the text is overlaying the boxes which overlays the numbers which overlays the side menu. Needless to say it is very hard to read. While designing your site dont forget us netbook using couch potatoes with the small 1024x600 resolution.
In fact, no country allows unrestricted flow on the Internet of pornographic, violent, gambling or superstitious content, or content on government subversion, ethnic separatism, religious extremism, racialism, terrorism and anti-foreign feelings.

<sacasm> ...except Sealand </sarcasm>

Anyway, there is a great divide between letting a good majority of this kind of stuff through vs blocking as much of it as you can (eg, 99.9% vs ~30%)

In both instances you can say that no country is allows unrestricted flow, but that is not an adequate measuring stick for data flow.
There are also lots of laws about fraud. Imagine if a Chinese company came to the U.S. making fraudulent claims about its products. We'd condemn them, yet we applaud Google. I don't understand.
What gives you the idea that people with such potential would apply at RethinkDB?

Because they already have. Smart and driven people apply for the same reasons smart and driven people do anything - they're interested in the problem, and have an innate desire to solve it. In any case, if you sit around and wait for great people to apply, the sourcing part of your recruiting process isn't done right. If you want great people, you have to go out, find them, contact them directly, and then do everything in your power to close them.

I'm going to hazard a pretty safe guess that one of the reasons you can blithely assert this is that you've never actually personally known someone with the abilities of a Dennis Ritchie or Claude Shannon. It is easy to overestimate the abilities of the best you've known if you've never known the truly best.

This is not a slight on the abilities of some of the developers you are lucky to have. It is a well deserved compliment to some of the giants of computing.
It's a usual stance for China to claim some situation is an internal affair to block outside meddling.

When the bird flu broke out, China blocked Taiwan's access to the World Health Organization to get information on how to deal with it--mostly on the grounds that it is an internal affair.
The farmers aren't the guys putting people in jail for disobeying censorship rules.
Yes, online gabling is mostly illegal, thus my "minor exceptions".

But all types of porn except child porn are allowed as far as I know. Definitely all types of anti-government websites are allowed. The first amendment confers very strong protection on free speech.

This Chinese news release is trying to mislead. I think the average Chinese citizen would be shocked to learn the level of freedom of expression and access to information in the US.
Thanks for that! Any recommendations on alternatives? I find other sources of Omega3 (flax seed) to be not as good unfortunately...
I really don't think China is afraid of Google leaving at all. Baidu is beating Google in China. China also has hackers that according to Google themselves are able to defeat Google's security measures, so I'd say China will do plenty fine without Google.
I suspect that's unlikely. Google and it's country specific domains are the most trafficked sites on the internet. The level of visibility is too high to make examples of anyone. Worst case scenario they block access and carry on like nothing changed. Best case, China realizes it must make certain concessions if it wants to continue growing it's economy and fostering competition. There is no reason India should be the only billion person democracy.
NYTimes has a fantastic website, but it doesn't make any money either.
The best way for me to study for test was to read through a lot of worked out problems. This works great for the short term, but not for the long term. Retention from reading is a lot less than from doing.

Sure, you may learn programming faster by reading lots of examples and books ... but it will discourage experimentation. You'll only learn what you read, and you will likely not understand it as in-depth.

I learned programming without guidance, on my own. Having to figure everything out with only one or two books and no Internet is an invaluable experience. I really feel that going through that was my competitive advantage.
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he he. good one, paulster
Ironic for the Chinese government to talk about obeying laws, when they don't even obey their own laws.

Maybe Google should point this out to them.

And there's no rule saying companies need to stay out of politics. Even if there was, Google, from the outset, said it was going to be a different kind of company.
This is a technique that teachers use and it can be effective if done right. Of course you have to make sure the "sophomores" know what they are doing. It works for a variety of reasons, including more one-on-one time and the fact that you learn best what you teach (yes, the sophomores will be learning, too).
I think I hold similar views, except I would say "sound epistemology" not neurology. Do you think P=NP?
- They didn't seem to have many moral problems for the first 4 years.

The reason Google didn't have a problem for the first 4 years, is because for the first 4 years it wasn't clear who was going to win the search engine war in China. Now it is clear, the winner is Baidu.

Google is leaving China because they have clearly lost in China and rather than take second place, they are inventing a principled stand and forcing China to kick them out.

Baidu has 3/4 of the search market in China and it's growing.[1] Rather than Google search traffic hitting zero, they're leaving in a political charade. What better excuse for losing to Baidu?

[1] http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/12/28/googl...
I think pair programming with the beginner at the keyboard is the best thing I've worked with. As part of the student ACM chapter I've organized a lot of tutoring for non-programmers. Walking through my own thought process with the beginner in how to solve a problem seems to help a lot. For example, one thing I had to explain to a student was that figuring out how your program will work is often identical to figuring out how you yourself would do the problem (assuming you can solve the problem). One specific problem we were working involved essentially an itoa function. By using the Socratic method I managed to get the student to explain at the most basic level how they did operations on numbers. Once they got to the digit level, I handed them the well-known division + modular division algorithm for processing the digits of a number and they were able to build the solution from there.

I also think that one of the most important concepts is really poorly taught in computer science. A lot of what we view as "good code" is really just a series of idioms and conventions that we have all agreed upon. As the IOCC shows, there are really no rules forcing anyone to follow these conventions. With somebody looking over their shoulder and saying, you know, we usually express this pattern as this, it basically teaches them what they would have otherwise had to spend hours reading code learning.

That said, I'm not really sure what the best way to teach programming is. The most important thing one programmer can teach another is how to learn on their own, but I really have no idea how to teach that.
I thought POST was supposed to be the modify/edit verb of REST.

Why add another one that browser makers won't implement?
I have used several puzzle web sites to benchmark my brain from day to day. Obviously puzzles are a narrow measure of cognitive capacity, but that's true of any benchmark. I've used http://www.ricochetrobots.com and the Puzzle Maniak game on the iPhone (usually the loopy puzzle).
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I have experienced this very thing with a SunOS box at the remote end of a satellite link. It was in the US and we were in NZ. Let's just say that you can do a lot with bash and a single root shell.
That was not out of any sense of generosity. That was because their patent clearly only applied to a (good) method for compressing gifs. Therefore their patent did not apply to creating or reading gifs.
Have you considered facebook connect or twitter oauth? I have a hard time justifying signing up for sites anymore because of this. I guess I'm just spoiled/lazy. Looks like an awesome idea. Looking forward to posting up some projects.
Attach a coupon to the pin that they can apply to future purchases.
This is exactly the point. Billing under this some dedupe scheme would be a nightmare. The only scale that is to be had is for the provider. Either Amazon in this example, or some other service built on top of Amazon (or self hosted) that kept the vagaries of price fluctuation away from the customer.

Notice that the way Amazon does price arbitrage with their compute nodes allows then to pull the power on them at any time when the price point moves above what you had payed for it. Anybody feel good about that happening to their data?
Perhaps they did have moral problems, but decided that providing some access to the internet's vast amount of information to Chinese users was better than providing none. It's the reform-from-within approach. Perhaps they hoped the situation would improve with time, and then it didn't, or there was indication it was not going to in the foreseeable future.

I don't have any more evidence for those motives than you do for the ones you presented.
That site seems really insecure. Got this MySQL error at one point:

QUERY = UPDATE ec_customer SET `noOrders`=noOrders + 1 WHERE customer_id =

Their registration doesn't seem to be done through HTTPS. I'd be careful handing your CC info to them. Whoever wrote their software seems really incompetent.
At least in my case, this wouldn't have worked at all. Most of the stuff I wrote as a sophomore was orders of magnitude more complicated than what I was doing as a freshman. I wouldn't have understood what was happening at all.
I was thinking the same thing. Instead of shipping a disposable one, just pay the $0.000001 more for a "permanent" one.

And btw, by LCD I mean things like LCD clocks, the display of a stereo, etc. Things like phones are totally different.