I am sure that most designers and programmers working on games are driven by passion to make great games. But they will be hired, paid, and managed by another bunch who need to pay at least partial attention to making money. It is like the partnership between the start-up founders and venture capitalists: the fact that the latters are driven by desire to make money does not negate the passion of the former to make great apps.
And the point of the article is that if the incentives of money guys get subverted, their decisions will get subverted and that subversion which will trickle down the entire production chain.
Most of what's in a newspaper is junk food, but there are very worthy parts: I find columns in NYT by Krugman, Brooks and Douthat to be thought-provoking even if I don't agree. And I find feature pieces of social or economic trends to be enlightening and helpful in terms of understanding people and the workings of our world.
You might not find such understanding of people and of the world to be worthy goal in itself, but even so such an understanding is useful as a framing device or an anology store for general reasonsing. In the same way that a mastery of philosophy has value as a reasoning device.
And, there is the value as source of inspiration: pointers towards topics to read up on or ideas to incorporate into one's life/work
I think what Irving was going for was less about news being worthless in the sense of the content being garbage, but rather that the distractions introduced into ones life by caring about national/world affairs of which we as individuals have little impact come at a great cost to our reserve of emotional energy.
Sorry but that is flat out wrong. The SAT math and verbal sections are not about knowledge but about reasoning abilities. In fact, the "knowledge" (rules etc.) is given right along with the questions. Not anyone can get 800, only 1% of all test takers manage to get 770 or higher on the Math section. The reading section is even more difficult, the scores of the top 1% start at 760 there.
So if SOPA fails to pass and stops being an issue, will that boycott end or will it continue?
Going by PG's reasoning (If these companies are so clueless about technology that they think SOPA is a good idea, how could they be good investors?") then it should continue until there are major changes the leaderships of those companies. Right?
That's a good question, and tough one to figure out. This applies to anyone who wants to deprive these companies of their support.
From my perspective, these attempts will not stop, and will take on new forms of bills. We have had to deal with bad bills since during the Clinton administration/Republican-controlled congress.
Some people call for 'Internet freedom' laws, but what is stopping the next congressional class from weakening or negating these laws without amending the Constitution?
My own view is that it will take a long time for these attempts to cease. Worst case, efforts will peter out until the generation who did not grow up with the Internet are no longer with us.
You mentioned the GRE, and I assume you mean the famous GRE general test. But another option to look at to prove mastery of material is the GRE subject test. While the GRE General is mostly an IQ test, GRE subject tests have a knowledge component to them. And, they are quite challenging: for the GRE CS test less than 1% of the test takers in the past 3 years achieved score above 900 (maximum score possible is 990).
EDIT: anyone interested can download the test booklet here which has an example test:
I meant both tests but definitely the subject tests.
Usually the CEEB, SAT, and GRE tests are designed to have Gaussian distribution with mean 500 and standard deviation 100. So, can get a table of the cumulative Gaussian distribution and see what percentile 4 standard deviations above the mean is; I would guess less than 1%.
I got 800 on the GRE subject math test, the only 800 I got on any of those tests, and that 800 always intimidated my wife, MUCH smarter than I am, PBK, etc.
Why especially the subject tests? Because the question was how to skip a Bachelor's degree and do not pass GO, do not collect $100, and go directly to grad school. There the grad school may still want a Bachelor's but for anything less really good scores on the relevant GRE subject tests may be the difference. Show up with 750 or better on GRE subject math, physics, and computer science, and offer to take the Ph.D. quals right away, and may, just MAY, be permitted to 'enroll'. Blow away the quals, publish a paper or two, even in a conference, maybe knock out some code just to prove are not all theory, and may be regarded as a good student. Then will be closer to the front of the line for various kinds of financial aid.
How to skip a Bachelor's is chancy. For the importance and potential of good independent work, at the best research universities that's rock solid. Read the story of the guy who gave the name a 'good' algorithm, Jack Edmonds. Read what Feynman did at Princeton. Read what Gleason did at Harvard. Independent work was just crucial in how I got my Ph.D.: It helped that I did the research for my dissertation independently in my first summer and worte a 50 page manuscript. Then it helped that took a 'reading course', selected a long outstanding problem, and found a solution which also solved a problem in a famous paper by Arrow, Hurwicz, and Uzawa (poor Uzawa was left out of the prize). It helped that the department chair taught a flunk out course, an advanced, second, course in linear algebra and I took it as my first course in linear algebra and blew everyone else away. How? I'd done a LOT in linear algebra independently and in my career in 'scientific programming' before grad school. It even helped that I was the only student that year who showed that there are no countably infinite sigma algebras. That's the kind of stuff that can help one get through grad school.
Skipping the Bachelor entirely might be one use case for the GRE subject test, but I think a more common use case is where the applicant to grad school has a Bachelor is a different field (Math grad going to CS school). I imagine one wouldn't need blow out grades in that case.
Also, I don't think what you're saying about the Gaussian distribution is true for GRE Subject tests as they have significantly varying distributions. Check out this table:
I had a 'qualification': "Usually the CEEB, SAT, and GRE", and with that we both can be right!
For those tests, at the level of detail of the distribution of the scores, it can be tough to get solid data.
But it is easy and common in educational testing to scale 'raw' scores so that the 'scaled scores' are Gaussian.
Also in educational testing, it is easy and common to have enough data on individual questions so that the distribution will be known fairly accurately for a test made of such questions -- my father did that for years as the main 'educational architect' at one of the world's largest and most important technical schools, with 40,000 students there at any one time.
Having those tests be accurately Gaussian more than
2.5 standard deviations away from the mean is likely challenging. I've often suspected that on some of the SAT tests they didn't give any 800 scores.
There have been suggestions that those testing companies have not always been very open about just what they were doing in their details!
Amazon's advantage are mostly -though not entirely- in the superb logistics that allow them to undercut competitors' prices. Beyond low prices, there is not much that is unique and can't be duplicated.
I think GE at its prime had more intrinsic advantages and unique technologies than just superb logistics.
While superb logistics are not unique to Amazon it is just one factor that combined with other mostly non-unique factors creates a very unique and hard to duplicate advantage:
1) The marketplace - Amazon's website are massive marketplaces with tons of sellers, millions of customers, tons of reviews, etc.
2) Third party seller network - Amazon has thousands of people that sell on its site. This results in lower prices, more selection, and more money for Amazon when they take their cut.
3) Fulfillment - Yes Amazon has logistics but it also has Fulfillment by Amazon. Third party sellers can send Amazon their inventory. Amazon charges them 'rent' for this. Plus Amazon does not have to take inventory risk on that item yet it is still available to customers 'within 24 hours'. And to top it off Amazon still gets their cut of the sale.
And the one ring to bind them all:
4) Prime - a shipping subscription to keep people looking at Amazon before anyone else.
Any one of these alone is a great thing to have and several companies do -
Ebay and Craigslist have a marketplace and third party sellers but they don't have a fulfillment network. This fundamentally limits the customer experience they can achieve.
Walmart has a marketplace and a fulfillment network but their third party network is in its infancy. It will take years to work out how they merge catalogs and can deal with fraud issues and the like.
FedEx and UPS have fulfillment and programs to store your inventory but they lack the marketplace to sell on. UPS customers will still end up selling on Amazon giving Amazon a cut of the sale. Plus using Amazon's fulfillment gets your inventory available to customers faster and usually results in more sales.
Prime is a major competitive advantage that pretty much no one else can offer. You aren't going to buy a subscription to Barnes & Noble or Best Buy. I've heard of some companies trying to band together and offer a shipping subscription. I'm doubtful that without very tight integration they can make that profitable.
That isn't to say no one can catch up (Walmart is probably the closet) but I think we're looking at decades of dominance.
Great point. I have been a prime subscriber since my freshman year of college. They offered anyone with .edu email address a free year, and I bit. When my year ran out, they offered me a second year at half price. Now I probably spend at least $100 on Amazon a month on various things - and free 2 day shipping makes it even more attractive.
So it's not just that CS departments are graduating engineers who can't solves FizzBuzz, law schools are graduating lawyers who can't file a merger certificate.
This goes to the heart of what education should be about. Foundations and theory, or vocational training.
The problem with making predictions about a complex system (nonlinear system) like human civilization is that there are so many factors and variables that can affect the trajectory that accurate prediction is virtually impossible. You would think that, of all people, a physicist would appreciate that and thus refrain from making strong claims about the future trajectory of such a system.
