anon7865
The brazenness...only in NYC.
Also, if you ever get in the position of saying "X is extremely complicated and I can't explain it to you" it is because you stand to benefit by designing a system poorly, or you aren't bright enough or don't have the experience to realize that you can reframe the problem. Algebraic geometry is also complicated, but these days there are plenty of books that will explain it to you, and the tools (like sheaves) are well-established and standard.
Obfuscation is the MO of installed, configured enterprise software. If there were an incentive to create a simple, effective solution, then, lo and behold, one would be created. The incentive is almost never there.
Take Unix for example. It is simple and effective (and flimsy as all heck) but before it came along, obtuse operating systems were the norm. It is worth pointing out that A) Thompson and Ritchie are geniuses and B) there was no financial incentive.
The internet will know what you are thinking, and it will use that against you. At some point, a tipping point, those who control the internet will be able to control the rest of society.
The internet can survive a nuclear war. Whoever controls the internet will control the future.
He was about 10 years ahead of his time. This is more or less the formula for most blog posts. Even people who should know better throw in some bullshit because they think it will look good. Take the machine learning post that appeared here a bit ago. At the level of precision laid out in the article, model complexity and scalability are at best totally-ordered sets, and there is absolutely no way you can do a regression of any sort. The graphic, however is cute and appears to flatter the reader's intellectual sophistication.
http://metamarketsgroup.com/blog/machine-learning-in-wonderl...
The New York Times has been reduced to gawking.