Sorry to threadjack but... how does it work? It seems that, for some reason, my account is blacklisted too. Who decides that? On the basis of what? I'm honestly perplexed...
Beware. Titanium looks good on the surface but as soon as you push it to its limits ugly things start to happen.
There's a still ongoing discussion about Titanium on my blog, here -> http://usingimho.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/why-you-should-sta... , it's up to you to decide if Titanium fits your needs or not. If you're building only small and simple applications it might be fine.
The article is missing the point. The purpose of peer review is not to assure that a given publication is of good quality - it's to maintain the status quo. A system in which any undergraduate/PhD can publish his or her research without passing from a committee, or his own professor, is exactly the opposite of what people in academia are looking for.
If you read my comments, you'll see that I wasn't making a comparison between me and her. I was making a comparison between her and somebody who's accomplished what she did and much more without being born in a rich family, and is striving to get something to eat at the end of the day. There's plenty of them, why aren't they on the news?
I know I'm beating a dead horse but I'll try anyway.
> If a 16-year-old boy from the ghetto in the US became the world's youngest MCP at the age of 9, I would absolutely expect that to be news.
It's very, very likely that some 9 years old kid in the ghetto has produced something much more noteworthy than becoming an MCP. You would expect that to be in the news, but it isn't there.
> well, I, as a white man with excellent access to education, got an MCP at the age of 20, and it wasn't all that hard
What I was trying to say is: think that you are a poor Pakistani little kid, working your ass off between work/school hours on your lame old computer. What would you think of the celebrations here? Again, that Pakistani little kid most likely exists. Most likely, there's hundreds of them. You don't hear of them in the news.
And you're a true manager right to the end, my friend. Making decision with your heart alone and refusing to see logic and data when they're in front of you.
Again, perspective. On average, that's certainly true. In this specific instance, not so. Take a 16 year old boy from the ghetto in the US and compare it to a rich upper caste Pakistani girl. Who has the most advantages?
What does her death has to do with you? What does her death has to do with all of us?
What disgusts me is the lack of tact and consideration of editors and maybe her parents - the first are ready to exploit the death of a 16 years old girl to make some uniques, the seconds (I really hope that's not the case) are ready to put their child on the cover for some advertising.
Empathy should have nothing to do with your ability to evaluate facts. Empathy has an evil cousin, politically correctness. When politically correctness comes into play, you lose the game. You can't talk about anything with a straight perspective because, you know, somebody might get offended.
A 16 years old kid has died. That is a sad fact by itself. If she was the dumbest kid in Pakistan that wouldn't have made the fact less sad - only, you wouldn't have known it. If she was the poorest kid in Pakistan, same thing. Now, you know that a lot of 16 years old kids die in Pakistan? Most of them with family situations much worse than the one she was in? Do you feel empathy for them? I bet so. That's a good thing, a human thing to feel.
Now, as a thought experiment, let's say she wasn't a Pakistani little girl. Let's say she was a 16 years old boy coming from a rich US family. Even fat and greasy, to add to the image. Let's also add that this one didn't die - he's well off in his NY mansion eating Snickers all day. What would you have thought of the article? "16 years old kid from NY loves messing around with .NET". Wouldn't you have said: who cares? And rightly so?
Empathy drains perspective. Feeling empathy is the noblest thing in the world. At the same time, it doesn't mean that it should suspend your ability to evaluate situations. A big problem with our society and our communication channels is that they routinely employ this effect to steer public opinion where they want it to be. Don't be a sucker - be human, but use your brain.
> we get a bunch of morons on here telling us how the accomplishments aren't as good as they seem.
Whoa, easy. I have expressed my opinion and I have backed it up well I think. No hate for the poor girl, that's just terrible that somebody 16 years old have to die, no matter his or her accomplishments.
On the other hand, what accomplishments are we talking about here? Seriously, I'm really sorry for the poor girl, I really am, but still I can't see the accomplishment she's made.
And, honestly, I don't give a rat's ass about what people will write about me when I'm dead.
At least in my community, when you talk about "sql server" it's obvious that you're talking about MS SQL Server. In the same way, postgreSQL is "postgres" and Oracle Database is just "oracle".
> and made it to the Redmond campus based on her own ambition and drive to do something for herself.
Sorry but no. Again, I don't want to belittle her accomplishments - it's certainly a feat for any girl or boy her age to be even able to put a very simple application together, but she came from a very wealthy Pakistani family. Saying that she made it to Redmond out of her own ambition and drive is spitting in the face of all her not so privileged compatriots who are struggling to do the same.
No no no not at all - Sorry if it came out that way.
On a personal level, I am deeply sorry for her death. Given time, she might have become a great programmer.
On a more general level, when I see something like this on the news, I can't help but ask myself why exactly somebody has written an article about this particular person. In this case, it doesn't seem to me that she was the prodigy they're talking about. A smart kid with a will to improve herself? Certainly. But think about the context - she came from a very rich Pakistani family. What would you think, as a 16 year old boy from Pakistan, coming from a poor family and working your bones off to make a living, coding at night, of this story? Because, you know, it's very likely that there's somebody like the boy in question in Pakistan.
Scope mixing is the bane of modern communication. You can't use empathy as an excuse to talk about anything. This personal tragedy should have remained personal, not brought up on the news. Just my humble opinion.
Exactly what i thought. Plus, from a marketing point of view, porting sqlserver to unix would have been suicide for Microsoft given their primary objective (for what concernes the server market) since XP is to enlarge their market to the server world. sqlserver is the main reason to have a windows machine at all if your team develops with .NET.