Steve Albini has been a slashdot darling because of his outspoken nature. However, it is all empty BS that is just armchair philosophy. It doesn't look like he's involved in the guts of the music industry to provide real insight but just out there to reflect our outsider slashdot user views.

Copyright is very important. Streaming revenues are based on copyright. Digital downloads are based on copyright.

Also streaming can be as high a quality as needed. I don't know why he think it is supposed to be low quality. It can be higher quality than radio and with 24 bit audio higher quality than CDs.

They are selling billions of tracks through digital downloads, people are listening to billions of songs through streaming services and there are many services that are working on music being aggressively categorized by moods, styles and what not. Cloud management of music library and instant access to the library has been a huge.

The music industry has been ridiculously dynamic and new innovations have changed where music is heading. Maybe great recommender systems that will boost music sales. Maybe super high quality music and services that provide a great music experience are on the way that people will want to build up a huge library.

Saying copyright is not working is wrong.

You cannot use floats for decimal numbers since floats are approximate types.

In banking, you would never use float to represent money, which are decimals.

There is so much open source and free software available on the internet. Does anyone even make any money selling software?

There is so much free music. There is so much free movies. So much free news, books, educational material, and so on and so on.

Harvard takes a lot of government money one way or another.

One is NSF, NIH and other research oriented grants and funds. Those funds are in some ways also designed to develop future scientists and if you're racially biasing against one group, then Harvard would be ineligible to receive any such grants.

I know a poster long time ago said that a lot of money for Harvard comes from the alumni and the race of the people with money do not correspond to the race of the potential student body. Before the immigration reform act in the 60s, non-whites were less preferred as potential immigrants compared to whites. So, the racial distribution of the alumni with money is very different than the racial distribution of the most qualified applicants.

Excellent question.

What is the major problem that limits children from learning from apps now? Most children in the US are glued to the iPad and I'm sure people have tried to create learning apps.

Is it lacking in apps and games, or lacking in content? Or, is it lacking in algorithms or just a charismatic personality for the students to learn from?

Also, how are app/content developers going to test their stuff against children in the developing world or children in general? Are there schools or organizations in place where the app can be tested? In a lot of ways, it would require children psychology for the apps to be engaging to learn, and without testing it in kids and in the third world environment, it would be very effective.

Did OLTP have the impact it was designed to have? I think OLTP kicked off the market for netbooks or whatever they were called back then - cheap small computers with cheap CPU and OSes.

Perhaps this will create an avalance of educational websites and apps. There are sites like Coursra, Udemy etc that do education market that have good content and platform.

As it says in the youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dnn7NFQPbQ#t=52), the traditional model of education is not sustainable or scalable for those living in developing countries.

Automotive electronics developers would say the same thing about consumer communication protocols. It is a mess that can't guarantee anything for even a simple control setup.

There are plenty of people putting car computers etc in their cars. When manufacturers put in an entertainment system and someone crashes and dies because of something in it, fingers are pointed to the car manufacturers. They always have to worry about SAFETY!

This isn't like a consumer device that if it crashes or freezes, it's not a big deal. If a car software system crashes, people die.

Speaking of GM ignition switch problem, it perhaps affected one person or at most a few and they had to do multi-billion dollar recall. Windows has security holes that affects millions and they just issue a fix whenever they feel like it and just tell the users not to do stupid things. Completely different systems.

First of all, grow a sense of humor buddy. Don't assume I'm insulting you. I'm replying to your post to add something to what you said.

Anyways, he's not paid to teach you, he's paid to teach the class. If you don't learn anything in the class and you fail, that's not his problem. You and your classmates have a shared goal of learning the material and working together will make the goal easier to attain for both of you.

Anyways you're not in school anymore so this is all just pointless talking.

Let me guess, you didn't do well in the classes and you've found it very convenient to blame the professor's accent for your failures.

Just kidding, LOL.

We're in college, there is the internet. You don't need professors of a skill of a stand up comedian to keep you entertained for 3 hours/week. Don't look at the professor for learning, the most important aspect is your classmates. Take classes with your friends or make new friends. You'll do well, you'll have fun and learn a lot. Just don't expect your professor to be your buddy buddy and guide you through everything.

The professor is the guy you ask why you can't figure something out and he'll tell you in 1 second what you're doing wrong. He's not the resource for keeping you entertained and motivated during class.

It's because we have been so far successful in getting the a large chunk of the 95% to move the US.

But, new programmers are being minted everyday and if we don't get there here, they will start creating their own software companies in their own countries. It doesn't take long for a company to start with nothing and become one of the largest company in the world in a decade.

I'm only half serious though. There are enough reasons why the next Google can or can't come from outside the US. Can we confidently say that the next Google will be an American company? Can we do anything about it or just sit and wait?

I've seen certain fortune 500 companies advertise software engineering job positions that do not require any experience, do not list any requirements (except high school) and job description is as vague and all-encompassing as desire and ability to write software. That does not make getting that position easier to get.

The biggest unwritten requirement is if you'd want to spend and interact 40+ hours a week with that person. That is why most women programmers no matter how inexperienced will always get hired very easily. Programming ability matters very little when the guy is a weirdo and awkward to deal with.

Not that I'm implying you're a weird or anything, but when a guy walks in the door, people fear for the worst. Until you get to know someone, guys think other guys are creepy or bad. Thus, it is very easy to get a friend hired in your company but if a friend doesn't want to give you the recommendation in his company, that probably means your friend doesn't like you and wouldn't care to work with you.

Despite what Slashdot and their parent Dice would like you to believe, job hunting is largely done through connections. If you are reading job requirements and fuming over not enough experience and what not, you're probably exhausted your contacts. Employers also fear the worst of the applicants coming through random job searchers and will scrutinize them more than if they came through connections.

It is blatantly false that companies will not consider hiring anyone who already doesn't know the tool in depth. The biggest tool to learn is the company software repo, the business and culture of the company which is the least documented. Any commercial tool can be learned in weeks or months since there are thousands of resources on it. Learning the company source code base and all the ways the company works is the hardest part.

My psychology book said that in most cases people make up their minds unconsciously and then go find reasons to justify it. I read somewhere (and it could be completely false) that an interviewer decides to offer a job or not very quickly and spends the rest of the time confirming it. I have found that it's the weird things that get people hired. If they were in the same fraternity, attended the same university or some other commonality. I hate to say it but if a team leader is Chinese, you will find that a lot of junior Chinese developers and this is because ethnicity is a super-obvious observation. Sometimes, entire teams have hidden commonality like an fraternity, an ex-employer or a university.

Anyway, I've been turned away from many jobs that I was qualified for and had the technical skills for. But, if I want to land that job right after an interview, I have to have connections or be a super-charming person. Everyone thinks they are geniuses in their own right but others think differently. The most qualified candidate isn't the one who always gets hired. In the end, in software development, it is the team effort than the individual that matters.

The cool thing about governments is that they can post emissions standards or face fines, non-renewal of licenses. Then, there is an incredible incentive to make technological advances that significantly decrease emissions.

Anyways, with cars, manufacturers are required to meet emissions standards. Then, in some states, owners are also required to maintain the vehicle to the emissions standards.

When the oil prices went up, it was effectively a tax on emissions. However, did we see "technological advances"? Nope. Many airlines went bankrupt and had to be bailed out.

This is not true.

I know recruiters and they love hiring new graduates. New graduates need jobs, experienced engineers already have jobs.

Training does not take long at all. Revenue generation isn't a factor since there is not even a way to measure how someone directly generated revenue when hundreds of people work on a single product.

The article says,

The summary says 1/3 has smoking and environmental effects, while the article says the 1/3 doesn't have smoking and environmental effects.

Lately, slashdot summaries have gotten worse and worse and completely change what is being claimed.

The problem is that they are enabling it without consent.

Comcast should give a large discount to incentiveize people in enabling them. Since they are Comcast, they just said fuck you and turned it on to rake in the sweet sweet profit.