You might give some thought to how this relates to the lack of diversity (esp.) gender diversity in our field. It ought to be the starting point for a great discussion. Perhaps HN is not the ideal venue for such a discussion....
The Gates Foundation work is and will likely continue to be disastrous for public education in the U.S. It is simply an attempt to push education into the private sector.
Basic Web architecture: 1. expose resources, 2. resources have names (URL), 3. allow basic actions on these (GET, DELETE , PUT, POST ) as needed. 4. Include URLs (as links/forms) in representations.
OK, now build your API . Please do NOT start w/the API and work back to basic web architecture. Servers should always provide URLs (url templates are fine), NOT the client (by way of snowflakey construction algorithm).
BMI is not a record company. It is a performance rights organization. Lots of independent label artists have their work registered through BMI (myself included & I get checks quarterly from BMI). This seems crazy/greedy to me, though. How about if I put my work on a website (which I do -- free for listening or downloading)? I would hope that's not considered public performance.
"But the world would be a better place if more engineers, like me, hated technology.
The stuff I design, if I'm successful, nobody will ever notice. Things will just work, and be self-managing. Though, I've learned that some people like to configure things, so I usually design in knobs for them to play with, and perhaps improve things, but any setting of the knobs will still work correctly.
When engineers [who] just love this stuff design something, we wind up with a system that asks an innocent person attempting to install email, "Do you want POP or IMAP?" One common comment engineers make is that we need "more user training". That's just wrong. Instead of expecting humans to adapt to an interface slapped together by engineers, engineers should strive to create a system that is designed for humans in their natural form. "
Although I've heard 5.3 fixes some of the issues, PHP is often not suitable for long-running scripts due (I believe) to memory consumption (when using OO code). I believe it is an issue w/ garbage collection of objects.
When I was in college, taking a Shakespeare course, it was standard practice to go up to the music library (where they had LPs of nice productions of the plays) and listen at 45 rpms while reading along in the Riverside Shakespeare. Worked quite well.
The Boys' First Book of Radio and Electronics. Author: Morgan, Alfred Powell, Publisher: New York, Scribner Date: [1954]
The Boys' Second Book of Radio and Electronics. Author: Morgan, Alfred Powell, Publisher: New York, Scribner Date: [1957]
The Boy's Third Book of Radio and Electronics. Author: Morgan, Alfred Powell, Publisher: New York, Scribner Date: [1962]
The Boys' Fourth Book of Radio and Electronics; an introduction to solid state physics, semiconductors, and transistors, Author: Morgan, Alfred Powell. Publisher: New York, Scribner Date: [1969]