I consider myself as one as far as technical competence is concerned, though not as much by attitude. I would typically rate at 10 in most of the teams I have worked.

But having managed a few high profile developers later in my career, I would definitely say they are detrimental to the health of teams. In most teams, you just need average or above average developers who can churn out pages of code, once specifications are given. This is very much true in business computing, though it may not be valid in product development and system software.

Rockstars have their uses though. When the time is short, or during critical situations when quick thinking and a fast hack is required, they come in handy. So most teams tolerate having one of them around. So long as there is a decent manager who can keep such developers controlled and balance team dynamics, they won't cause too much trouble.

The quality of chinese brands have improved significantly over the past year. Some of them are better built and much better looking than Samsung models. Especially the new ones with quadcore Mediatek MT6589 chipset and its variants have taken over the market by storm this year. The market here in India too is flooded with models having crazy specs (1.5GHz FHD 13Mpx/5Mpx 2GB/32GB for less than $300).

One problem with these sets is that, you can't flash CyanogenMod or other ROMs. The Mediatek chipsets is not supported by CM and that company isn't sharing info.

There is just one Indian college in that list at position 60. Indian universities are equiped to mass manufacture programmers for IT industry, not for creating star programmers.

Quick and dirty solutions have no place in real world? Tell that to the customer losing a million an hour due to broken system. He will take whatever quick and dirty fix you can give him in a matter of minutes.
I am not sure which real world you are living in. But thinking and coming up with fixes at very short notice is a real skill needed in software industry. I have saved or recovered from several disastrous situations with quick and dirty fixes.

If the number of hours you are being *called* is minimal and you are worried about what to do with your time, then it is doubtful you will have that job for longer.

I am not talking about the philosophical aspect of science above. Neither am I questioning the validity of scientific method. This is about psychology. This is what the original article is asserting. There are of course some fundamental scientific truths or apparent truths. But at the same time, every "scientific" article or assertion coming out of our research centers can't and shouldn't be believed as it is. For scientists and scientifically oriented people this is not a problem. However it is problematic for journalists and general public. People tend to believe a good amount of what they read in newspapers and wikipedia - just like they believe the preachers and gurus. So from a psychological perspective science is gradually replacing religion.

Now I have a question about psychology... is it really a pure science?

We are just gradually exchanging one belief system to another. Most of what we have as science is belief and trust. Instead of trusting any religious holy book, now we trust text books. Instead of gods and priests, it is scientists and theorems. There are good number of fallacies, misdirections, and bogus research in science as in religion.

In the past it was religion because human mind had been conditioned from childhood in believing in a supernatural power which can solve all our problems. But in today's world more and more children are conditioned into believing *science* can solve all their problems.

Bottomline is, humans have to believe in something. Lack of belief will do *bad* things to human mind. This is especially true in highly stressful situations, where we feel we don't have full control ourselves. Our mind tries to find assurance in other things which can have a influence. Those with weak reliegious beliefs as in the above study, in other words, those who already have a stronger belief in science will show a higher tendency to believe in science during stressful situations.

Now my question is, why should a belief in science better than belief in religion? If believing in something is essential for human mind, religion is anyday a stronger one than science, since it emphasises on absolute belief. So believing in religion might be better than believing in science as far as mental health is concerned... at least until the scientific belief system grows as strong as religion.

You are forgetting the main intention and benefit of Earth Hour. It is supposed to make us *feel good*. The sacrifice of switching off our redundant lights gives us enough karma to not feel guilty the rest of the year when we splurge on fossil fuel. No other energy saving event would feel as good.

So I am all for Earth Hour, even if it wastes more energy in the process.

...why does he/she go on a tangent and link everything under the sun to his/her theory?

Now, that should be worth an Ig Nobel, no?

Most of the legal music stores online here sell hardcopy music :-(. Flipkart is the only downloadable music store that I know of. No DRM. It has somewhat decent collection. Note that majority of Indian popular music is film songs, other popular categories being devotional and classical.