skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
From the article:

"...bachelor's degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance. Even a degree in a vocational major like business administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to four years of barely remembered gut courses."

So either the graduate is knowledgeable and the system did its job, or the graduate knows how to be a good member of a big bureaucratic organization and how to accomplish arbitrary things they're told to do.

Sounds like one more level of sorting, and the schools have done the job for big companies.
I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic or not. I can see it now: "I'm a certified Awesome Dude."
Hopefully this will provide more transparency and uniformity to the process and help all concerned get a better deal, especially startups who cannot afford decent lawyers and hence often more vunerable.
The Díaz thing surprises me. I was under the impression that Pinochet allowed free markets, but I thought Díaz expropriated a lot.
I spent a year at college (freelancing at the same time to support myself) and it was a tremendous waste of time. I can say with certainty that I lost maturity being there, and left feeling stupider than when I entered in the fall.

You tell me which will teach an individual more: A sheltered, friendly environment with mostly privileged peers, or living independently? I chose the latter. I interviewed for a web design job before receiving my HS diploma, got the job, and started two days after graduation. A month later, I was out on my own, paying bills, taking care of myself. Now that was a learning experience.
See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=275328
A better way to teach how to learn to learn, would be to teach a class in exactly that. The motivational speaker industry does a better job in "meta" subjects, such as "getting things done", "how to be successful", than college does. Paul Graham's essays for startups are more effective than college courses in entrepreneurship.
Remains the international standard for legal/biz docs, particularly docs that need to be redlined.
I'd charge when people need to use it. Or at least have that as an option. That might lead to a lot of installs (it's free insurance), but if your laptop gets stolen it's not a big deal to pay $200 to get your data. And of course that seems more legit than free (I would never sign up for this thing as is, you don't explain who you are or why you're providing this service.
Introducing ActsAsMarkup: A Markdown, Textile, Wikitext, and RDoc Plugin for ActiveRecord
PalmOne Treo 680 Red
PalmOne Tree 680 (GSM) Unlocked is a phone that provides you with many facilities including email, web access, messaging and lot more. This is not all. It provides you with all that a performance oriented mobile phone does.
The commenter above partially suggested it in jest, but being an entrepreneur is a good fit. You don't have to define yourself by skills, or job title.

But first, do you want to become a specialist? Or would you like to stay a generalist?

I wouldn't force a fit. I'm dealing with the same situation actually.

I realized that in a specialized society, a generalist is a specialist. You're a generalized problem-solver. You're not just adding new knowledge and skills, you're integrating them.

It's hard to explain to others what you're good at. And sometimes you don't even know yourself. But that forces you to follow your own vision.
The price of oil is falling, right? Right?
i'm not sure people are making a big joke about it. i think we all learned something from the cuil launch. as i have said before, only time will tell and we should give them the benefit of the doubt.

i made the first post, and it certainly wasn't to make fun of them. apologies if that is what it sounded like.
The most valuable part of college for me (in terms of my career prospects) was not the degree I got, although it was a good degree.

The most valuable thing about college for me was the support, money, facilities that the college provided to me while I was there. They enabled me to do plenty of things I wouldn't have been able to otherwise.

When I was at college I worked on plenty of OSS, created a web site for Nasa, and contributed to the W3C. My school paid for me to fly to a number of W3C conferences as scholarship.

I also spent an inordinate amount of time in the university library which was many times vaster and better resourced than any library I've had at any employer since. Any technical book I wanted that they didn't have would normally turn up within a matter of weeks.

Add to that a 24hr computing campus with access to mainframes around the clock. I got to experiment because I could keep my own hours and get time on the interesting hardware at 3am when sensible people were in bed.

University is not just about a degree. As many other people here have said it's about the experience (I met my wife in college) and the learning, in an environment which allows it.
Huh, I watch that and chuckle at how dated it is, and totally missing the point. Should we all point and laugh at how "Why So Serious?" from The Dark Knight soundtrack isn't something you can sing in the shower?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB5tbTpQvsM

And 12-tone music isn't the result of an especially "mathematical approach" to music. It's the result of the attempt to break the boundaries of the traditional tonal systems using the musical language that existed at the time. It's the primary endgame of atonality within equal temperament system. Traditional western music is all tonal. It's all in "keys." 12-tone music is an attempt to create meaningful, coherent music that avoids relying on tonality. It's an attempt to create music that can't be identified as being in "C Major" or any other key.
I guess we'll have to conclude that the "world of guitar" meanings of the terms are substantially narrower than those used by laymen.

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/tone

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/style
The certification system he's talking about would massively accelerate global outsourcing of US jobs.

ISO 9000 certification in the 80s and 90s played a huge role in sending US manufacturing overseas. People were reluctant to believe that factories in various second and third world countries could be just as good. Then the certs proved pretty well that they were!

Same deal now with personnel. Employers are sometimes reluctant to believe Indians or Vietnamese are on par with a four year American college grad. Sufficiently standard tests would prove they are.

In other words, the US has coasted on reputation in a lot of ways and empirical approaches can damage that reputation.
Wundrbar launches Tripeedo for faster, easier travel search
No I'm being serious, and "Awesome Dude" is in the eye of the beholder, you can only really judge that in interviewing.
the best thing you can do is get provocative pictures and have them appear on sites like reddit to boost traffic.

www.pixdaus.com was on the front page of many digg/reddit sites, and it seems to be doing pretty well, traffic-wise. It's also a very impressive site to visit, becuase some of the pictures are amazing. They have a reddit-style voting system. You might be able to pull images from that site?

I think the term 'fave' is kind of cliche, it doesn't seem to be working for faves.com, but that's probably hard to change at this point.

Comments would be cool, not sure how hard it would be to integrate it with laconi.ca.

Another feature would be to do slideshows of images, or be able to set it as your wallpaper. Or send an e-mail to people with a link to the image. Maybe even make a vista side-bar gadget that pulls images.
I meant "free-market" in the sense of the cost of switching governments you mentioned. Switching governments was just not an option.

Side note: Díaz probably did some expropriations but at least not the biggest ones. Those where done during Lazaro Cardenas´s presidency.
Thanks much for the input.

I was planning on charging like $15 a year or so to recoup server costs once I'm sure it works and such. If a free product doesn't work people get mad, but if a pay product has problems they get really mad and so does their credit card provider.

About the IP address, I would probably find out the ISP and then email the ISP. Realistically, I think that's the best you can do in many cases. The police have better things to do than track down the odd stolen laptop.
One benefit of liberal democracy is that it's much more robust

The normal trajectory is Louis i through xvi -> "Democracy" -> Napoleon. The kings that precede democracy are sometimes more stable that it itself...

There are no large countries that are democracies that I'm aware of. If there were, they would get their Bonapartes or Bolsheviks as they always do.
Where do we send these forms once we fill them out? How do we make it "official"?
Lots of people only look at a feature once out of curiosity. Feature usage is a different thing. Just noticing something is there might cause me to click. Whether I would continue to use it would totally depend.

All this tracks is how many would try out a feature at least once which isn't the same as how many people actually want it.
No, we don't. I don't want some guild or certification authority telling me I can't program for a living until I've done 2 years of "journeyman" programming and passed my licensing exams.
Fair enough.

In the interest of educating everyone: Tone is more like turning the bass and treble up or down on an equalizer. Contrast this with hearing an original version of a song and then someone else covering it and you'll have a good idea of how style is different from tone.

Equipment is precisely how you change tone, though there are possibilities for tone changes with existing equipment.
Minimalist look is such a good choice for this - the images are the focus.

Small bug: signed up, got redirected to my profile and the email address field was blank.

Bookmark is ace. I want to add my own titles, though. And have a back-up upload form in case the bookmark doesn't work.

What are your thoughts on filtering for the front page?
Is that what Murray is advocating? The article I read suggested that using standardized tests would be a cheaper alternative than college -- but if you'd prefer four years of paying and not working to two years of getting paid to learn, you can at least enjoy the status quo.
You should put a few how-to docs up there about finding an ISP, etc. Explain it might not always work, that sort of thing. I'm always in favor of more explaining, especially if you want to attract users who aren't technologically savvy, but savvy enough to want protection.
Adding corresponding term sheet as part of this document set would be really nice.
But you're assuming outsourcing is bad for individuals in the US, whereas most indications are the opposite, it increases their wealth. The point about the nongrad IT worker is that he would be able to create more wealth than he would as a local service worker (in the same way as offshore workers do). Increasing production (and hence wealth) from all workers, whether offshore or in US is better for society than allowing inefficiencies and protectionism to prevail.
Why not simply be honest and tell them "Hey, we intend to introduce these features and testing few ideas. So far, 445 people have expressed their interests, including you. Thank you for your interest and time. You can enter your email below (this is optional)and we will let you know as soon as this is available. Thanks again."

Two birds in one shot :)
Agree. The causation (i.e. getting college degree makes you a much better employee because of specific knowledge learned) might be a myth but the correlation (people with at least passable intelligence/work ethic and the dedication and ability to do what they're told, which are the primary traits wanted by corporations, are more likely to get a college degree) is so strong that it still has a lot of value to employers, even if they don't fully understand why.
The Great Divide
Yes, Columbia actually.
You have to be careful with marketing to get this to work, but I think lots of people would love it.

One, it's very attractive to only pay if your laptop is stolen, so if you take care of it, you get the peace of mind of the service without paying out any money.

On the other hand, people usually aren't in a very good mood when their laptop has just been stolen, and having to pay money on top of that puts them in a worse mood. Then, if they don't get all their data back or can't recover it, because maybe the thief doesn't leave it connected to the internet, then they're going to be in an angry mood.

Its like there's a fine line. People love the idea of only paying when its stolen, but hate the idea of paying once it has been stolen.
42 days in and what have we learned?
I think someone should start a secret society of young women enrolled in institutions of higher learning. The upperclassmen leaders of these secret societies would observe the freshmen males, searching for individuals of exceptional potential hampered by extreme awkwardness and sexual insecurity. They'd arrange to ensnare these freshmen in a series of relationships as a part of a program to groom them for leadership and to inoculate them against misogyny.

Maybe they could call themselves the "Bene Gesserit?"
> For a lot of people the social life is a big part of it

I think a little discussed reason college is such a big deal in America is because most communities are so socially and architecturally dysfunctional. Many colleges provide what a proper town/city is supposed to: public spaces and facilities, walkability, organizations with civic and social functions, etc. It's only because people graduate and go live in alienating suburban asteroid belts or in soulless political-machine big cities that they idealize college so much.

College isn't so great, it's just adult life in most of America sucks. But it's not like that every where.

p.s.
The oft repeated "college rounds people out" line desperately needs data. I think it's a load of bullshit.
I'm having trouble finding it right now, but there was a good argument posted here a while back for requiring a certification proving that programmers know how to write secure code. The analogy was that the market can already sort out good chefs from bad chefs, but that there should be a basic certification to prove that you understand food safety.
What about the children of poorer families who don't have the luxury of going to college. The above would be fine if parents/students were paying the full cost of the facilities, but in most cases its government/charity subsidized.
That's 10 minutes from me. I'm in Columbia almost every day after work though.
How To Develop Intuitive User Experiences Leveraging Listening Labs
Who made the study? Where and when? On how many women? Why so many people believe anything the press says without questioning it?
Sounds pretty elitist, and your company might suffer for it.
See section 1.14
http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/c-faq/c-1.html
This is really really useful. Thanks so much!

Jessica / Paul - do you have the source code of this as wall, not just the byte code?

I'd love to have a summary of these terms, e.g. what rights the preferred stock created in these documents has (anti-dilution, liquiditation preference, double-dip, etc.).
It seems like it would be nice as a norm, but not as a codified system with licenses and such.
Angel Financing Without Hellish Legal Fees: Y Combinator legal docs
We don't? I've been in a lot of different programming shops as a consultant, mostly in large organizations, and let me tell you -- I don't think a lot of the people out there who are programming really should be. I've had to be the hero far too many times for shops where someone didn't realize doing something was O(n^2) and doing it another way was O(n).

The industry doesn't need to the government to penalize non-guild programmers to benefit from a guild. All the guild has to do is to show that it is effective in producing competent, knowledgeable programmers. I suspect that things like employment at Microsoft have filled this niche. (Sub-optimally.) An organization that is designed to fulfill this particular purpose would be much better at its function and more robust.

A majority of US drivers think they are above average. I have met very few under-qualified programmers who realized it.
"The problem with this plan is that it will just make every college vocational."

The system is supposed to be separate from college. That's the whole point. That way kids who don't want to go to college can still get a good job, and colleges can be even better for those who do go because they don't have to teach job skills.
Be happy it's not in WordPerfect, which up until recently was the lawyer word processor of choice
Is that what Murray is advocating?

No, but that seemed to be what the commenter I replied to was advocating.
It'd be great if someone could back this out into a 1 or 2 page term sheet
I'm sure most of us know that good test performance does not always equal good job performance. Whenever I see a resume in front of me that has a score on a test (ie. GRE score) I almost always get disinterested in the candidate, even if the test is related to the job. I do think that these test scores can show a level of competency in showing one's ability to study/work hard for a test and do well. However, doing well on a professional test does not mean you would be good at working in that profession. I'm sure we all know people from college/school who were great at testing/studying and getting good grades but still have a hard time in non-academic environments.

College is only as useful as you want it to be. If you want to 'coast' for four years and meet/network with a lot of people, do it. If you want to study your tail off in a difficult field and try and get a good job afterward, do it. Just do not complain afterward that college did not prepare you to get a job or that college did not make enough friends for you afterward.
I optimistically assumed people would be so happy they got some data back they'd be willing to pay without thinking twice. What pushed me more towards a yearly fee is purely selfish interest: I pay hosting even if no one's laptop even gets stolen ;-).
Not to sound ungrateful (this is actually really awesome, not that I have use for it right now), but why only ".doc"? In the spirit of openness, it'd be great if they were also available in an open format such as the OpenDocument Format.
PageRank was a graph algorithm that seems to have done pretty well. ;-)
I can't believe I never thought to do that. Awesome idea, thanks.
it's kind of a long read, but it was an interesting read.

Did you spot the headfake?

This talk wasn't about the Bible, or Bach, or Shakespear, or the secret of Psalm 46: it's about the sensation of awe. That "....Huh!" feeling you get from finding Easter Eggs, of decoding secrets, of discovering treasures, of reading this transcript, that, my friends, is awe.

Understand its secret, put it in your code, and make something awesome.
Too many conclusions jumped to. Though guilds have had legal backing like this historically, I don't think you need that to have some form of benefit from a "programmer's guild."

I think you could base it entirely on empirical results -- successful programming projects being the sole measure of value.

Come to think of it, Open Source projects somewhat fill this role.
Just thinking about thesedocs coming out o a meeting with wilson sonsini, who quoteda convert debt round of 300-500k to be around $15k in costs. Will have to look closer, but excited to cut tha amount down.
It's just a parody. The "point" is that 12 tone music is:

1. Not enjoyable or successful in the popular, "catchy" sense,

2. Stylistically uniform,

3. Suitable as incidental music for scenes of horror and carnage.
Yes, corresponding term sheet would be very helpful.
RescueTime seeks cross-platform C++ Developer (Seattle)
RescueTime is helping individuals and businesses understand how they spend the most precious resource they have-- time. Armed with that data, we're helping them spend it more effectively and building a fascinating data asset of tens-of-millions of man hours of anonymous attention data. Our users love what we're doing, we're getting write-ups all over the place (from TechCrunch to the New York Times), and we've got some fabulous investors.

We're looking to hire our first non-founders, which will give you a rare opportunity to help shape a 6 month old product and company. We're looking for people who aren't specialists-- be prepared to break out of the narrow roles you find at larger companies. You'll help shape the product strategy, blog occasionally, and help support our users.

RescueTime offers competitive base salary, stock options, health benefits, flexible hours.

CORE QUALIFICATIONS
-------------------------------------------------

A passion for what RescueTime can be, and a healthy love/respect for "productivity pr0n" like Web Worker Daily, LifeHacker, GTD stuff, etc.

Solid foundation for software architecture and software engineering practices

3+ years of development with C++ and multi-threaded programming

Cross platform development experience with two or more of the following: Windows, OS X, and Linux

Low-level OS experience in two or more of the following: Windows API, Cocoa/Carbon, and POSIX API

Sense of humor and general willingness to work on a small (often eccentric) team on hard (often impossible) problems

IT WOULD ALSO BE GREAT IF YOU HAD:
-------------------------------------------------

Any skills that help on the web front (Rails, Django, MySQL, REST, JavaScript, CSS, xHTML)

Background in security/encryption application development

Knowledge of building applications that support user contributed plug-ins and extensions

Ability to mentor team memb ers and ambition to grow into a lead role

If you're interested, please drop us a note (jobs@rescuetime.com) and tell us about yourself and what you're looking for (if you have a resume handy, that's great-- but don't let it stop you if you don't). No phone calls please.
I'm sure there might be problems with choosing the wrong criteria, but I can't see how "elitism" in itself can be a cause of problems in the hiring process.
There's something to be said for being free of the fear of random street violence, or of having your stuff stolen.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32553
Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists
bookmarked!
I don't know, I can see the education model being useful. I'd rather not have to submit to a guild or union (unlike some friends of mine,) but I can see the value of serving time in a real programming shop with experience and competent (hopefully) individuals as part of one's education. Of course, I think this is called an 'internship' these days.
The .doc is actually a more widely readable format. Why care how hackable a document format is if all you want to do is view and edit it?
Could be, but can't you go talk about it on reddit?
Inspirationalguidance.com/2008/06/c... - StumbleUpon
Open source licenses upheld in US court
I used this article to determine my membership site software
Google acknowledges tracking behavior without consent
Charging only if you can recover data makes you stand behind your product more though. I'd trust a service more if they put their revenue where their mouth is.
He man, I know some neo-guildists if you want me to put you in touch. :P
EFF Launches Coders' Rights Project
>1. Not enjoyable or successful in the popular, "catchy" sense,

well, then it must be bad.

>2. Stylistically uniform,

No.

I love this stuff. Better than Brittney any day.
Nice-- would love to see it work for car rental, too...