It's quite shallow. Another app harvesting data from schoolkids. Privacy policy is vague. Teachers don't care because it's useful. Parents try to care but don't really. There's really nothing new here that deepens the discussion about the continuing erosion of student privacy.

Anyone really looking for a good read on that subject should turn back to the May Politico article highlighted earlier on Slashdot. Also interesting to note is how some companies are pledging to no longer mine student data, as well as companies that were notably absent from signing that pledge, including the one that promised to stop collecting student data last April.

It's one way. I should have been more specific. "Amount of moderately difficult work completed at a moderate-or-higher level of quality." Another might be, "Ability to complete extremely difficult work at a extremely high level of quality in non-infinite time." Someone who excels at the first might not excel at the second, though generally I'd expect there to be a lot of overlap.

I've been doing software dev. for about 15 years. I'll grant that the level of productivity between "the worst" and "the best" is at least 10x, if not more, because "the worst" are essentially producing nothing. Or, worse, have negative productivity in the sense they're creating stuff that is totally non-functional and will need to be re-written by someone else at a later date.

That said, the difference between "the best" and "the average" is probably not 10x. At least not if productivity is measured in "amount of output produced at some acceptable level of quality". Where "the best" guys excel is in being able to solve problems that average guy is probably never going to be able to solve (well) no matter how much time he's given. On the other hand, those sorts of problems come up less often than most people think.

If, after interviewing somewhere, I end up taking a job for which I'm a poor fit then the fault is mine and not the recruiter's. I view the recruiter's job as getting me interviews at places where I'm likely to be a good fit and where they're likely to be willing to compensate a level I'd be satisfied with.

Don't recruiters, or their employers, typically get paid a sum based on the salary given to the person they placed? So, in theory, they have an incentive to see that the job-seeker gets the highest salary that doesn't price him out of the market entirely.

Where I could potentially see 10x being useful is for guys who are the acknowledged "best in the world" at some particular thing. Like, "tuning huge postgresql installations". Because you're the primary committer on the project, or something. There are employers willing to pay "best in the world" level compensation for these guys to do short-term work. 10x would be useful if it put the devs in contact with these employers and they would not otherwise have come into contact with them. In that sense it's a sort of match-making service, bringing "guys who can charge exorbitant consulting fees" together with "companies willing to pay exorbitant consulting fees".

So basically, like most American sitcoms.

Irony? :-D

Usually, buried comments are garbage, but you're always able to change your comment threshold. Not so if a site you want to see is on your ISP's blocked list.

Too Many Links!

I don't think anyone claims that Uber should not have insured drivers or should permit their drivers to discriminated by race.

What they do claim, is that it's ridiculous for the city to have a fixed number of medallions for drivers, instead of letting anyone that meets the (insurance,inspection,background,...) checks compete under the same set of rule. The sad fact in a number of cities is that possession of an arbitrary token is more important that substantive comliance with an objective set of requirements.

We have about 50 iPads in our building for now. Last year, I was busy loading apps on a few in Apple Configurator when it glitched on me. Said I had -1 apps when the detailed redemption code list showed that there were still two to spare.

Called and complained to Apple. They took a copy of my AC database and analyzed it. Told me it was corrupt. Refunded me 1 1/2 years of app purchases, told me to get another Mac computer, unsupervised all the iPads on the old config station, re-supervise them on the new, buy all new apps, and load them all again onto the iPads. I told them that this process would take about 20 hours to accomplish and told them that they'd likely lose future business if there was nothing they could do further for an unhappy customer. They politely said "nope."

And that's why Google's winning.

I'm sure they'll assume your permission or have a clause in the sales contract which will turn this into "opt-out" instead of "opt-in".

Fraud isn't a part of a free market, and is a legitimate time for using courts to settle the dispute.

Could be the case. The guy asked me if I wanted to get accessories with it, and I told him to just put it on my account. AT&T is the last place I'd buy accessories from, I noticed they still had cases for the iPhone 4 for $50 on the rack!

When big corporations do it, it's "different".