I'm all for the testing of psychopaths, but how do we test for them? Last time I checked, the psychopathy test is a secret test, and you need to be a psychologist in order to access it. This type of secrecy put some serious concerns on whether being a psychopath is really something that can be verified scientifically.

Just so there is not misunderstanding: I do not doubt the existence of psychopaths. I just wonder whether we have a better test for it than what amounts to a secret procedure that is only known to people *who have a stake in having these tests done* in the first place.

... as the end-user adoption rate of Linux clearly proves.

They are?

And that proves ...?

Drug dealers have the same desire. For different reasons.

And what is the competition offering? How can I get this competition to offer it to me? The competition I last saw were sitting in India, and they ain't offering much.

Because there is clearly something wrong with how things are. And being satisfied with something wrong does not help to fix it. The first step to fixing a problem is acknowledging it.

And here I was thinking that, where it comes to games, fun was the metric that matters.

Google is not a search company. Google is in the business of selling user information, and uses our need to find information to hook us. Facebook is probably more of a concern for Google here, as they are in the same business, but using a different means (by providing social networking services).

It seems to me that Apple is Amazon's real competition. Both seem to be in the business of owning your pocket through owning the channel to it.

The ability to eat something is not the obligation to eat it. Our canines is just as useful for eating other humans - is cannibalism and evolution thus similarly linked?

Vegetarianism is a moral or health stance. Evolution is a scientific stance. I'm baffled why you think there is any possible contradiction between them.

This is not psychohistory, but actuarial science. Psychohistory is about predicting future behaviour of groups by analysing their psychology.

Psychohistory is the holy grail of psychology. Philosophers and other scientists have expressed doubt about psychology's "scientific" credentials by pointing out their bad history in predicting human behaviour. As an example: researchers asked psychologists and psychiatrists to predict which offenders that were just given parole would re-offend. At the same time, they ran properties of the offenders through an actuarial process. The result? Psychologists and psychiatrists (even the ones who were treating the offenders) predicted the re-offence rate no better than chance, while the actuarial method performed much better (reference: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/dp/1847679382).

Haha, good one. A friend of mine has a similar one - always leave a coat hanging on your chair, for the same reasons.

The thing I find most interesting about stack ranking is, even if the theory is sound (it isn't, but let's run with it), it's self-refuting. Let's say all companies decide to stack rank. Then, at the end of the year, 10% of the worse performers are automatically fired. In order to replace them, you have to hire from the bunch of work seeking individuals in the market - which are the 10% under performers of other companies that have just been fired.

All you are achieving is to exchange under performers. And now you have under performers that need to be trained up and integrated into your company from scratch.

The theory of stack ranking only makes sense if you are the only one doing it. The more companies adopt it, the more costly it becomes for everyone.