Yeah, there are really two major problems with the story. First, that he drove off with 32 miles left. Even if they did say it was okay, a rational consumer would be pretty skeptical. This also creates the problem that the story depends on what was said in a telephone conversation that we don't have access to, so there's really no way to know who is telling the truth. The other problem is this quote: "If there was a public charging station nearby, no one made me aware of it." When I go on a road trip and I'm running out of gas, I don't wait for a call from someone to tell me where the gas station is. I stop and I find out where the gas station is, and then I drive straight to it and fill the car. Broder says that he was trying to simulate a real trip, but that just doesn't square with his behavior. Only filling to 72% is not what an ordinary consumer does on a long trip. You fill the tank, because like your mother always told you, "Better safe than sorry."
I'm still using mine (got it December 2010), but I replaced the ChromeOS with a Linux. It actually works great, especially for a free laptop that's over two years old. I agree that the last several updates to ChromeOS made things worse rather than better, though.
I've been using my Cr-48 with Linux for development and it's actually pretty doable, and it only has 16GB and obviously much worse specs. This is, of course, going to depend very heavily on what kind of development you're doing.
I think you're dead on and that's the factor a lot of techie people seem to completely fail to understand. We look at this stuff through a completely different lens than the typical consumer. Back in the awful days when I was retailing computers, I can't count the number of times people bought one laptop over the other because of the color or finish or some other minor detail. One of the main reasons Apple succeeds is that they make beautiful products, and it looks like Google is trying to share that market.
I'm still too new to Lisp to answer this question, but I have seen the book Let Over Lambda recommended as having answers to that and similar questions.
It's not a straw man if the views being ascribed to the movement at large are the views being conveyed by the movement at large. If you were to try to learn about the paleo diet from the perspective of someone who had never heard of it, you would find views that align quite closely with the views that Zuk is critiquing. Look at the Google results. The fact that your interpretation of the paleo "concept" does not square with those views does not make her critique a straw man.
What does this day and age have to do with it? Things still need to get from one place to another. It is still a laudable goal to have the cost of that process be socialized; that aspect has not changed. Yes, many things have gone digital, but that does not change the underlying nature of the mail, nor does it invalidate the way we should be thinking about it as a society.
Because people should be able to send things through the mail affordably regardless of where they live. That is a value that we used to hold as a country. Admittedly, that was back when at least a few of us actually viewed ourselves cohesively and cared about people other than ourselves.
What, exactly, is your point? Are you actually using anecdotal evidence to try to state generally that people don't need the mail? I certainly hope not, because I thought the level of discourse was at least a little bit higher here than that kind of absurdity. If not, it seems like you're just telling a story with no real purpose.
The movie glossed over some details. In the book, Soylent was a variety of different things, with a soya and lentil base (hence the name), and only Soylent Green specifically was the problematic one, it being the newest release. (I haven't read it myself, just summarizing what was discussed in the last thread.)
That's what I don't understand - where the hell did sexism come into this? Telling dirty jokes is not sexist. Women tell dirty jokes too. This whole thing doesn't make any sense at all.
This is exactly why I feel like the only person actually guilty of sexism here is Adria herself. She's belittling her own gender by acting as though women cannot be around sexual humor.
This makes absolutely no sense to me. Watch how fast my friends stop making gamer jokes when our sports-fan friend walks up. Is that "jock-ist"? Of course not. It's taking into consideration that the topic being discussed isn't likely of interest to the new member of the conversation, and therefore being considerate enough to change the topic. That's not oppression, it's courtesy.
Okay, I understand the disconnect now, but I still disagree with you.
First off, you've consistently used the word routinely without establishing that that word applies. This event does not count as a routine. I'm sure that other people have made dick jokes at tech conferences, but 'routinely' strikes me as an overstatement.
Second, 'in public' doesn't really work either. Two friends were sitting next to each other and one made a joke to the other. That's not private, but it's not exactly public either. It wasn't broadcast to the whole room. Adria happened to be sitting close and paying attention to their conversation, but from the best information I've been able to piece together she was not a part of it and it wasn't said with the intention of anyone hearing it other than the guy's friend. That's not making the tech conference a guy space, it's making their semi-private conversation a guy space. That is not a problem.
Third, I shouldn't have engaged your argumentation with a comparison, because I disagree with a fundamental premise that my comparison lent credence to. Sexual humor is not gender-specific. Girls make dick jokes too. That's why I fundamentally find the cries of sexism and misogyny to be ridiculous. Many of my female friends make me look like a Puritan when it comes to the jokes they tell. This should never have become a gender issue, it should have been an issue of appropriate behavior at professional events. Adria made it a gender issue, and here we are.
Depending on the context, I might do the same thing. What I wouldn't do is act as though I was the defender of a righteous cause and that the guy making the dick joke was somehow oppressing my <minority group>. Dick jokes may be in bad taste, but they are not oppression.
That's actually really not accurate at all. If feminism were that simple of a concept, discussing it would be a hell of a lot easier. First off you have the whole "wave" notion, where feminism has changed dramatically over time. Second, most contemporary feminists are talking less about equality and more about diversity, and the value of alternate perspectives. As for whether fanatics get to be classified as feminists or not, it sounds like a classic No True Scotsman scenario to me.
They were not sexual jokes at Adria's expense. They were not sexual jokes about women. They were not sexist jokes. They were jokes about dongles. Men make dick jokes. Women make dick jokes. They're usually in bad taste, but they are in no way sexist. This wasn't abuse, it was a publicity op that went south. Adria saw an opportunity for a spotlight and didn't foresee the consequences of that spotlight. Judging from her blog post, she's more of a sexist than the joker, because she makes the implicit assumption that other women can't be around sexual humor. Anyone who spends any time with women knows that that is not the case; most of my female friends make dirtier jokes than I ever would. The jokes were not discriminatory, they were not prejudicial, they were not sexist, and they were not abuse.
The jokes were not sexist. I've had to type that sentence so many times the keys are starting to wear in. The jokes were not sexist. They were not about women, directed towards women, or discriminatory towards women. They didn't have anything to do with women at all. Calling a dongle joke sexist is extremely detrimental because it distracts from real instances of sexism that do occur within this community. We need to talk about the real issues, and this incident is not one of them.
Interesting how well this aligns with http://paulgraham.com/identity.html. You basically seem to be saying that you are more trusting of people who follow pg's advice in that essay, and I'm inclined to agree with you on that particular point.
Consistently throughout this thread you go off into a legal discussion when that's not what anyone is trying to talk about. We're talking about sexism. The question is whether or not the joke was sexist. The answer is that it was not. Jokes of sexual nature are inappropriate and unprofessional. That is obvious, and everyone agrees. They are not, however, inherently sexist.
It exists, but if you read past where you clipped the quote, you notice that all he's saying is that in the valley demand is extremely high. Demand in other places is significantly lower. (Speaking partly from personal experience, as I do not live in Silicon Valley.)
> You're absolutely right that I'm talking about the law, and that I'm not talking about if the joke is sexist or not. That's what this discussion should be about, shouldn't it?
No. Absolutely not. The law defines things for the legal system, not for our society and not for our culture. The concern here is a cultural one, not a legal one. The laws on the books are barely relevant to the real discussion here.
> If your only interest is in if the joke is sexist, then you're spending all your focus on the easy issue, and ignoring the more important and thornier issues.
My interest is in whether the joke is sexist because of its relevance to whether the culture is sexist. Many people are using the incident as evidence of a pattern of sexism in the tech community. I'm arguing against that conclusion, because the joke was not sexist.
The legalities are not more important. Thornier, sure, because the law is almost always thornier. Not more important. Culture is more important than law, every single time. If the culture of the tech community is positive and welcoming, it won't matter what the law says because nobody will care to file suits. If the culture of the tech community is negative and discriminatory, it won't matter what the law says because women will simply avoid the tech community. Either way, the culture matters and the law does not.
Yeah, you're entirely missing the point. I haven't rendered any opinions regarding current laws other than to say that they are not relevant in this particular issue. I'm saying that the concern is the culture, not the law. The reason I'm talking about sexism as opposed to discrimination regarding race, color, religion, national origin, et cetera is that the jokes in question were clearly not discriminatory in those areas. Nobody has claimed that the joke was racist. That would be ridiculous. Many people have claimed that the joke was sexist, and that is the claim that I am taking issue with.
I'm talking about ignoring the law because culture is more important than law. Yes, there is plenty of interesting case law, and that case law is interesting when discussing the issue in a legal context. I'm saying that the cultural context is more important than the legal context, and therefore the case law is a complete non sequitur.
I would strongly assert that laws do not influence culture, and that rather the exact opposite is true. Laws reflect culture. Laws enforce the norms of the culture in which they are written. When the culture changes, the laws change. The reverse is not true.
I have not been arguing for change. I do think that some changes to tech culture should happen, because though the actual incident was not discriminatory, the internet reaction clearly was. That is a much broader issue, because internet reactions are always disproportionate and discriminatory. That is a standing issue that must be solved. What I'm asserting is that the joke was not discriminatory, and that the conference was not a discriminatory environment. Though I was not there, from everything I have heard from people who were, the conference was a very positive environment. This is good, and I take issue with people who would cast aspersions on the conference and the community as a whole because of a 'discriminatory' joke that was not in fact discriminatory at all.
I don't see how something can be a "dirty secret" when everyone already knows about it. This is not news, and I think the author is well aware of that and just wanted an eye-grabbing headline.
As for courses being too fast: they're college courses. That's a core part of their value proposition. If they were slower, or did not follow a rigid schedule at all (like the "better" examples presented in the article), they would be a fundamentally different product. The author simply doesn't understand the concept behind MOOCs, and probably isn't their intended audience. He would be better served watching lectures on Youtube (I don't mean that sarcastically, there are fantastic courses available there).
Synchronous learning is not, as another poster claims, an anachronism. It simply isn't necessary or valuable for everyone. For some, myself included, it is a significant benefit. That is the market that Coursera and edX are targeting, and one shouldn't criticize a company simply because one isn't a member of their target market.
There is a substantive difference between the service offered by iTunes U, Youtube, and countless others, and the service offered by Coursera and edX. This difference corresponds to a difference in learning styles (synchronous v. asynchronous, as it has been phrased in this thread), and it doesn't make sense for any one product to target two diametrically opposed learning styles. What does make sense is the approach that Coursera has actually already been taking: offer both as separate products. You can take classes on schedule, or you can take them off schedule for no certificate. Complaining about the synchronous model because you are an asynchronous learner simply doesn't make any sense.
Exactly. Salespeople fundamentally do not create. For those of us who are in technology not to build a 'successful' company or pad our bank accounts, but rather to create new things, none of what this guy is talking about really has any relevance.
I have bills to pay too, but I try very hard to prevent them from being the motivating factor in my life. If I am living to pay my bills, then I am living my life in a wrong fashion. Creation is one of the most important and fulfilling activities that I know. Pursuing that activity for the sole purpose of paying bills seems to me such a great perversion that I would rather not create at all. Being paid for my work is fine and good, but working only for the sake of being paid? No. I would rather be poor.
(I imagine that this may be perceived as an extreme stance. To that I can only say: “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” - Jiddu Krishnamurti)
A monad must have a `return` function that works on an arbitrary datatype. That includes a datatype that is already 'wrapped' in the monad. For example, `return $ Just 5` yielding `Just (Just 5)`. jQuery does not have such a function. The `jQuery` function can 'wrap' strings, but it cannot wrap, for example, other jQuery objects. If you try, you simply get the original jQuery object back. Accordingly jQuery does not satisfy the monad laws, and is therefore not a monad.
$(element) does not implement return. $($(element)) gives $(element), which means that it does not work on an arbitrary datatype, which means that it does not implement return.
jQuery may be analogous to a monad. That doesn't make it a monad.
No, I'm sorry, you're wrong. return(return(1))::[[Int]] gives you [[1]]. For something to be a monad, it must be a polymorphic type of kind * -> * . That means it must be a type constructor which takes any type as a parameter. Any type, including a concrete type constructed from the type constructor you are declaring an instance of Monad.
Yes, in Haskell the type [Integer] is not a monad. For a type to be an instance of the Monad type class, it must be of kind * -> * . As [Integer] is of kind * , it cannot possibly be an instance of Monad.
In that particular reply I was talking Haskell specifically; I should have been more clear. You are of course right that being a monad does not mean being an instance of the Haskell type class Monad. It means being a monoid in the category of endofunctors. It does not mean "anything that satisfies ... associativity and left/right identity". You have to specify what operation is associative, which in this case is composition of endofunctors. Associativity and identity on binary operations on sets, for example, gives you a monoid, but not a monad.
Monads are more specific, and it is in that specificity that you find the requirement for monads to be "polymorphic": monads are endofunctors, and the monad laws concern the composition of those endofunctors. An endofunctor is a mapping between a category and itself. When we apply this category theory to programming, we talk about a category of types. In Haskell this is the category Hask. This is where the polymorphism requirement comes into play. The monad maps from Hask to itself. That means that it must be able to map over all types, which means polymorphism.
I really don't follow what you're trying to say here. >>= has signature m a -> (a -> m b) -> m b, so clearly you are working with a concrete type m a. The point is that the concrete type isn't what instantiates the Monad type class, the constructor m is.
The part that isn't arbitrary is that monads are endofunctors, meaning they must go from a category to itself. That means that the domain and codomain are the same, which means that you must be able to wrap already-wrapped values. There's no way around that.
Now it's a monad how? What category is it a monad on, and in what way does it satisfy the monad laws? Are you really saying that sometimes $() is return and other times it's id, and presto magico it's a monad?
Early in a mortgage you're paying what, 25% principal? Probably less? And that's not even taking into consideration property taxes, mortgage insurance, etc, etc. So no, you're not getting $1k back from every month.
“If this error turns out to be an actual mistake Reinhart-Rogoff made, well, all I can hope is that future historians note that one of the core empirical points providing the intellectual foundation for the global move to austerity in the early 2010s was based on someone accidentally not updating a row formula in Excel.”
One of the fundamental ideas behind science is that results must be able to be replicated, and that peer review is essential. Three years later, and we're just now finding out that these guys made a typo (if you're charitable enough to believe that's what it was). If you didn't already think the state of economic ‘science’ was bad…
People underestimate just how important jQuery's documentation has been to its success. Even jQuery themselves seem to underestimate it, because the documentation for jQuery UI and jQuery Mobile really are not as good as the core docs (though still far better than the average). I probably would not have started using jQuery for my projects nearly as soon or as often had it not been for the excellent documentation.
Whining about browser choice is never going to accomplish anything. You're speaking the wrong language. Speaking the right language would go something like: “I can increase revenues while decreasing long-term maintenance costs, and I can do it at the current expense level. The only way I can do this for you is if we use this technology.” The person you're pitching couldn't possibly care less about IE/Chrome/Firefox, but they certainly care very much about business metrics.
