My questions is, what changed about Nerf? I'm not all that old, but most Nerf guns today just seem to be more powerful and more stylized versions of what they were making when I was a kid.
Hitchens never seemed to understand that "North Korea" isn't the Christian conception of heaven.
To wish for him to be surrounded for all eternity by those he loves most, in the presence of the source of all love, truth and beauty... I think that's something we'd all like to experience along with him.
One developer probably entered [email protected] in a database, and then another guy probably accidentally triggered the "email everybody in the database" script. I can see how that would happen. I've obviously never personally done anything like that but I know a guy who tripped the "Send sales report to CFO" using test data once when I was an intern.
The open source world will also be better off when everyone stops using the word "FUD". It's a knee jerk term that allows the speaker to ignore criticism as lies. I am speaking from experience. The sound issue happened to me about two years ago. About six months ago I tried dual booting Linux on my MacBook and couldn't get it to shut down without hanging.
You're making my point. I (someone who works in the software industry) had a problem with a piece of open source software. If the open source world is going to go mainstream, the reaction can't be "That's FUD." It has to be "That's unacceptable, we need to fix this immediately."
Don't do it for me. If I decide the tradeoff of effort vs. benefit is worthwhile, I can eventually resolve the problem myself. Do it for my mom, who just wants the printer to work so she can print handouts for her students. Do it for your grandparents who just want to check their email and look at their grandkid's pictures. Or just tell me I'm an anti-open source propagandist and dismiss me.
I've made my decision. Computers are made for people, not people for computers.
I think this is a microcosm of a problem I've seen in the open source area in general... a preference for code over people.
Open source software won't take over by being 1.86x faster and using a totally sweet heap sort algorithm. I'm a geek and I find that kind of thing interesting at an intellectual level, but it doesn't make me want to spend an entire Saturday trying to get Linux to recognize my sound card. "Normal" people absolutely don't care and won't put up with the hassle.
With Steve gone, there's a taste-shaped hole in the entire technology world that I can't see anyone stepping in and taking over. Until the open source world gets its own Steve Jobs -- someone out there who starts focusing relentlessly on the users (how to make software "just work" and look/feel great at the same time), it's never going to unseat the dominant players (as much as I might want it to).
I'm not convinced that there are really two distinct sets of people in the world: stupid and not stupid. In my experience, most people are pretty good at some things and stupid with other things. I notice that in myself to a certain extent, and forces like the Dunning-Kruger effect probably prevent me from noticing more.
In terms of the original article, I think that answers the question of why stupidity continues to exist. Most people (even ones who appear to me to be stupid) are smart enough at enough things that they continue to live and procreate.
The game theory examples the author gives in the second half of the article over-simplify the issue by assuming stupid is a binary on/off attribute. Within a game, you can assume that's true by assuming the people make stupid decisions within the rules of the game. But in real life, there isn't one single set of rules that determines whether we or not we live and procreate.
What company are you with? I live in Milwaukee and I'm not actively looking for a job right now, but I like to keep an eye on what kind of work is around.