nickbarone

He doesn't use the phrase, but this is basically talking about taboo trade-offs and value conflicts - and what really strikes me is that this isn't problem, rather, these technologies make it so we can no longer ignore the questions that value conflicts pose.

That is, we've already recognized the question of "would you kill one to kill ten?", we haven't yet needed an explicit answer or decision process.

(Well, that's not quite true. The Triage system for medical care during disasters, for instance, but that's not everyday everywhere like driving is)

+1 for awesome, I really like the added line

...but, AFAIK, a Koan tries to thwart understanding in order to communicate an otherwise impossible to describe concept. By preventing understanding yet asking for investigation, a koan communicates its actual content through your investigation, rather than the successful translation of the words into your thoughts.

+1, but I think you want to keep the column width shorter. Took me a bit to figure out why browsing was harder than on Slashdot, but I think that's what it is.

"Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled." (Howard Stevenson)

'Course, cut out man in the link isn't pursuing opportunity, he's whining about not having them.

Sticking my foot out - Panopticons are not a bad thing. They're actually a really good thing, because they, theoretically, let you get a lot more security without losing a lot of liberty (instead, you lose privacy).

The problem people have - universally in my limited experience - is with the people and institutions behind the cameras, not the cameras themselves. If CCTV is Big Brother, isn't neighborhood watch something like Little Brother?

(Jumping ship from the other link to the same story)

Success metric fail.

Then again - What is the success metric for education? Attendance is (IMHO) pretty terrible, and standardized testing hasn't worked out the best - so what is it?

A classic answer (but still, probably not all that great of one) is jobs upon graduation - but that doesn't help in elementary school.

So, how would you go about turning such long-term metrics as "employment in ten years" into short term metrics, to figure out what to do next week?

What I'm saying is that using attendance as the metric to determine funding sucks and we should find a better way.

Success metrics are how you determine whether a change has worked, and they are how you determine where to put more resources. So if your success metric is attendance, you're going to maximize attendance, not quality of education.

Huh. An interesting illustration of privacy / security trade-offs.

Success metric fail.

Then again - What is the success metric for education? Attendance is (IMHO) pretty terrible, and standardized testing hasn't worked out the best - so what is it?

A classic answer (but still, probably not all that great of one) is jobs upon graduation - but that doesn't help in elementary school.

So, how would you go about turning such long-term metrics as "employment in ten years" into short term metrics, to figure out what to do next week?

Seems to me that the problem you're describing is one of confusing the tool for the task, rather than the tool being over-hyped.

Ah! I am, sorry, and thanks.

Do you remember EA Spouse? Although it looks defunct now, the spouse, Erin Hoffman, went on to found GameWatch[.org], which aimed to address these issues. AFAIK, they at least curbed the worst offenses, like those that led to the scandal, but...

If you could get enough studios to realize the important of a good QA department, there'd at least be a niche to form a company dedicated to it, where skilled QA could get what they deserve.

I'm going to be honest - It's never occurred to me to /practice/ programming, particularly in the way that you might practice, say, juggling. I've always worked to learn some new technique or technology, instead.

So - What are the other methods that people use to "practice" programming?

Sounds like a baby out with the bathwater kind of case, to me. if comments are the problem, why aren't they playing with alternatives to the standard thread format?

Interesting. Are there any that are the other way around - dangerous when eaten, but not when inhaled?

I'd imagine it'd have to do with the digestive ecosystem, if there were any that worked that way.

Well, but then your problem is religion, not coding standards. And then it'll be over this or that design pattern, coding paradigm, version control commit logs....

If you name the problem "coding standards" and it's "religion", you'll solve the wrong problem and of course it won't work.

Seems to me that what you need more than the standards are the reasons behind the standards - because yeah, the person coding that particular problem knows more than you about that problem, and should /teach you what they know/, particularly when it's easy.

Woah @ prefunding-treatement. Brilliant! I hope it scales - It can, I think, if you keep momentum.

So, could we start a listing of things learned through the application of extremist programming?

Or better yet, a listing that shows where a given principle hasn't been extremified, so we can go try it out and see what happens?

The post may be about programming over politics, but the post is essentially recommended exploring the consequences of extremes, and that operation is valuable in (heh - taking it to the extreme!) all places. For example: 1984 - extremes of medication, Player Piano - extremes of automation.

You can also notice this technique in a debate, someone takes the emotional stakes to an extreme - while it's usually used as an attempt to convince you, it's actually a useful practice because it can magnify otherwise overlooked elements of the positions, opinions, and principles.

There's something missing from the summaries: An indication of how much there is to read when non-summarized / how wrong the summary might be.

Two of my favorite examples for this are the DCA cancer treatment news and those people who don't pay for fire protection in counties that don't require it; the typical headlines are "Canada Cures Cancer" and "Firemen stand by as house burns down". The former isn't very true and there's a fair amount to read, while the latter is entirely true, only missing a little, critical, bit.

To put it another way, you're teaching me something with all those summaries, but you're NOT teaching me how much I don't know or when to go look up more information, and I think you should try.

My question is what kind of contaminants (or none!) this process picks up - If you're getting your water from a polluted atmosphere (say, LA), what kind of pollutants end up in your water? Or does it produce "ultra-pure" water, leading to weird health risks like hyponatremia?

My read is that the coating doesn't need a manufactured flow (after all, the beetle that inspired it doesn't) put it's very possible they'll make a bottle with a surface that requires it, say, a conch shell.

I generally think of this strategy as "engineer the situation instead of yourself", but then I often times find a way around the trick, end up with an unintended consequence, or am in a non-engineered situation.

Have no cookies at home? End up eating all the cookies at friend's house, event, etc, where I can't make there be no cookies.

Unproductive websites? End up replacing the "mental reboot" process with some other task.

Far away phone? Tolerance to the ring goes up so that I just don't care.

That all said, engineering the situation can be really effective, it just has to fit in your "natural rhythm" - When I start browsing, I always start with the 8 sites on my Chrome new tab page, so if I change those, I change how I browse.

I also wonder what happens if you sit with laurax for an extended amount of time - are you more able to make out the differences?

There's many cases where our senses are "designed" to notice changes, either over time or from the norm - which AFAIK is why you don't generally notice your own smell, and why after a few hours in a meat packing plan you stop noticing that smell as well.

An additional question is whether the naming of different laurax mixes increases your ability to distinguish them - the same way that having names for more colors appeared to literally let you see more colors.

Let's bring back the Renaissance-era model of the Art Patron. Instead that twenty-something pull out a roll of bills to buy a scalped sports ticket... get them to pull it out to fund the creation of a sculpture, a song, a painting.

Connect the influx of money and people directly to the creation of the "cultural contributions [that] attracted those neo-yuppies here in the first place". This has the advantage of turning those neo-yuppies into participants in the culture they're here for, rather than just consumers of it.

There's an old SF short story about a writer who, after wishing he never had to wait again (for the bus, in line, to hail a cab...) realizes that those interstitial moments were his most creative.

Also seems to me it's like those nights you can't sleep, but because your mind wanders where it wants, you end up feeling rested anyway. Or "unstructured time" in the schedules of over scheduled kids.

If you keep the moments where nothing in particular is happening, you allow for those moments where anything can happen...?

What I find really interesting about the PaaS world is that it's basically DRY with design-by-composition for hosting - but if doesn't continue in that direction, I can definitely see the noise failing to lead to substance.

I'd say - Look to what it takes for a local currency to succeed, and then consider the effect of crowd-funding and the Humble Bundle model. The former is what allows the system to sustain itself, and the latter is what allows an influx of resources from other systems.