First off, didn't read the article. Yeah, I said it. So if the article dispells this just ignore me.

What if Google actively uses the human ratings as a comparison/benchmark against which they measure those fancy algorithms? In other words, the users are rating the algorithms more than they are the websites. Makes sense they would improve search results algorithms, a highly technical and scientific method of ranking sites (which is of little use to a human in and of itself), by constantly striving toward an unscientific and untechnical (e.g. "quality") method... humans... which afterall is, you know, who uses the engine in the first place.

Amazon probably does the same to improve their suggestions model.

Maybe I'm just a desensitized product of the times, but I fail to see why this is a big deal. The video isn't disturbing to me. There's no blood or brain matter shown, no audio. A far cry from something like the detailed Bud Dwyer suicide that aired live sometime back in the 80s I think. I still cringe when I think about seeing it.

Suicide is a reality. As a society we need to drop the taboo and understand suicide, genocide, war, etc. are all too real. I'd argue it is society, not me, who is really desensitized. Out of sight out of mind as a previous comment stated. The problem won't go away if you bury your head in sand. These things are shocking, sometimes disturbing, but they should be. Rather than ignoring them we should shed more light on them instead of living in a round corners, padded, molded plastic half true reality.

You miss the point. Most Android phones have Google Maps preinstalled. Imagine if iPhones started shipping with something else. Doesn't matter if it's a custom Apple app or if they used MapQuest. The ubiquity of such a product would immediately provide significant competition to Google Maps. As an Android user I would love that if it means my Google Maps improves somehow as a result.

Uh... but they aren't "slapping" the OSI logo all over the place. They have their own distinct logo which *contains* a keyhole symbol. OSI is grasping here. Their brand is not in danger of being confused with the OSHWA brand in the least.

First, I'd like to say whoever thinks there's no serious web development in Java simply doesn't know what they're talking about. Probably the same kind of person who believes Java is incredibly slow. This isn't 1998. Things have changed a lot.

Second, I actually came from a PHP background. I think PHP gets a bad rap because it's so easy to learn, so there's TONS of "developers" out there who never took the time to learn how to properly design and develop software with it. But it can be done. If you go this route, look into an MVC framework. Zend has some really cool stuff.

Finally, I would personally recommend sticking with Java. Like many here probably, I make my living with Java and so I'm most definitely biased. I work on a "real time" Java team at a major corporation, and we deal with anything that is real time and deals with Java. This obviously includes web development, which is my personal area of expertise. If you name it, we've developed with it. I've used many different frameworks, both server and client side.

For the server side, I think the best Java framework hands down is Spring. Its MVC module is a dream, and the framework itself is very well designed. The API is well documented. There's loads of resources too. It's really a developer's framework; made by developer for developers. The Spring guys really know what they're doing. For the view, I'd say stick with JSP. The newer versions have a lot of powerful features over their earlier incarnations, and you keep full control over the HTML. Learning how to debug JSF/RichFaces/ICEfaces/etc is a pain in the butt, especially if you're still learning web development with Java. Other good alternatives for view would be lightweight templating frameworks, like Freemarker or Velocity (which Spring has good integration with).

For client side, you need to brush up on HTML and DOM. You need to make yourself familiar with a good JavaScript framework, my personal favorite is jQuery. Learn how to keep your markup (HTML), your functionality (JavaScript), and your styling (CSS) logically separated. I hate to see these things embedded into one another like a nasty hodgepodge of bad software design.

Really? This was marked 'informative'? What is so informative about that? 'Pithy' and 'cute', sure... but informative? Wow.

Regardless of your intention, you are coming off offensive and your point is probably being lost on those that need to hear it most. (Sad face.)

That said, everything is relative. There's absolutely nothing incorrect about an American bitching about high taxes. Or gasoline prices. Or [whatever]. Relative to what Americans know, these are all true and valid grievances. It's like a soldier complaining his arm was blown off in combat... then you come along and smugly point out the fact BOTH of your arms were blown off. Sure, you may be in a worse position, but his complaint is still valid.

FFS, this popular urge to condense down very complex ideas into a pretty soundbite ("I doubt you know what 'high taxes' are. *rimshot*") is part of a much bigger problem re: politics at large.

Keep the files locally on a spinning disk, and subscribe to a cloud-based storage service, i.e. Mozy or Carbonite.

If your house burns down then you can restore from the cloud, and if the cloud goes down (or rather, these days it seems... WHEN it goes down) you'll have your local copies.

This solution is simple, easy, and inexpensive and still provides very good reliability. For my personal files, this is the route I take; my laptop holds 90% of my "important" files, and my unlimited plan at Carbonite gives me piece of mind should something happen to my laptop.

The point is never rely on one single solution. And you want your data to be physically redundant in case of a physical catastrophe--fire, theft, user stupidity--so you'll have the other physical location to fall back on. There's always the chance both your laptop will catch fire and Mozy's servers crash, but data reliability is focused on mitigating risk; removing the risk completely reduces the options available that fit into easy, simple, and/or inexpensive categories.

I wish I had discovered design patterns earlier in my career.

Beside that, maybe "Enjoying the Good Life: How to Pick a Career in Anything Other than Software Development So You'll Still Have Your Hair by 35". ;)

Intelligence is not built; accumulation of facts is. But capacity for knowledge and abstract thought, critical thinking abilities... these are things you either have or don't have.

Seriously, online storage is the way to go. Mozy and Carbonite both offer unlimited storage for $55/year. Both are incremental, so after that initial transfer backups are executed extremely fast. They're in the background, and you can set it to work only when the machine is idle, so you won't even notice it's there. I swear by online backup, personally. It's the cheapest and easiest solution for most people.

It's what my company does, and it works great. Except those of us that use Firefox. (Though that wouldn't be a problem if the security dept. supported non-IE browsers.

I agree with everything except your conclusion regarding it not benefiting the economy. Competition on the global scale does indeed benefit the global economy. Global is the keyword. Proof is the rising wages in the countries where outsourcing work is going. You've got to remember that there is an enormous wage gap between the western world and the more poverty stricken world. Competion--in this case of labor--is doing what comppetiton does best: making the commodity more efficient to produce on the whole.

That's not to imply it doesn't suck for us developers in the States. But the fact is a $3 cut in our pay doesn't have anywhere near the effect a $3 increase on pay has on someone in India or China.

In the end globalization will benefit everyone in the world. It's like when computers became popular; no one can deny they were good for everyone ultimately. But in the beginning it sure did suck for the people who made and used typewriters.

The idea is that to make a higher profit, to be more efficient, one has to serve the demands of the customer to gain the business required to make a higher profit. The instances where this idea stands at odds with those in the "real world" are usually examples of sectors that are highly regulated by the government, raising the barrier to entry and preventing competition.

Take hot dogs... you might be able to make your machines more efficient at making hot dogs than the next guy, but that won't help your profit margins if your hot dogs taste like dog shit. The nasty tasting hot dog manufacturer might then use the strong arm of government to enact legislation outlawing one of his competitors' ingredients. (In the end, all hot dogs are pretty fucking unhealthy, but that point is missed by the politicians wanting to look health-conscious to their constituents.) The nasty tasting hot dog manufacturer might also push to have its brand of hot dogs be served exclusively in schools for the lunch entree on "hot dog Tuesdays".

Take out the corporatism element of government-sanctioned monopolies, and you get the best tasting AND most affordable hot dog becoming "top dog" as it were. Does "top dog" afford some luxuries not existing in the mom-and-pop businesses? Sure. But as long as the barrier to entry is low, regulation is not crippling, the market will tend toward the collective desires of the customer.

The problem is so often the collective customer is an idiot.

Could you not forsee a time when computers and robots have become so advanced that they contain all the knowledge, experience, and wisdom of several human doctors, thereby being programmed with theoretically hundreds of years of real world experience? Humans make mistakes; computers can too, and when they do sure it's really really bad especially if they're cutting you open, but given the right engineering and advancement so that the chances of a robot screwing up is infinitesimal small compared to that of a human screwing up, I'd take a robotic surgeon over a human one any day. Of course I'd want the robot supervised to throw an abort switch in case the bastard goes into an infinite loop or something.

The logic and decision-making skills that doctors learn that give them the ability to work on many different, although basically similar, "models" could theoretically be programmed into the robot. Along with robot precision and speed, the choice is obvious to me.

There might be a good point in there, but it's blinded by your arrogant entitled attitude.