Yup, which is why they've licensed someone else's tech to power the searches for most of the company's history.

Wait, what? You think Yahoo is going to use Google to power their search engine, without paying them? And you think Google's lawyers (let alone their technical team) would really let that fly?

... because learning skills at a bootcamp makes you incapable of learning skills on your own in the real world? Or because computer science degrees somehow teach you to read blogs and subscribe to RSS feeds?

... and what do any of the things you just mentioned have to do with typical JavaScript programming? Just because someone wouldn't be good at doing your particular job doesn't mean they're bad at other programming jobs: you could just as easily dismiss any Java programmer, no matter what their skill level, for not knowing how to manage memory.

Actually, I have nothing to do with that side of the business; I don't even know what she makes.

I'd say at least 80% (maybe 90+%) of the stuff you listed has no applicability for a front-end JavaScript programmer. Which isn't to say JavaScript programming is easy: there's a whole lot of art and craft to being a good JavaScript programmer, and a boot camp won't teach it all. But as for all the traditional CS bits you listed, almost none of them contribute to being a good JavaScript programmer.

What a good front-end programmer needs is understanding of the JavaScript language, of how the DOM works, of how browsers render pages, etc. And for serious JavaScript programming you need to know object-oriented programming and all that good stuff too ... but you don't need "database theory", "microprocessor systems", or "artificial intelligence".

I'm sure that's based on lots of empirical evidence from your experience working with bootcamp graduates, and not just you spouting your own prejudices, right? Because I would think that someone who's worked with a boot camp graduate for 6+ months and is about to hire another one *might* just know more than someone who's never even met a bootcamp graduate ...

You're completely right: the web is just a fad, JavaScript is going away soon and there will be no more jobs for JavaScript programmers in a few years.

You're assuming such boot camps only produce "monkeys", which is false. These people work twelve hour days, seven days a week, for three months: compare that to your typical CS graduate who's maybe had a month total of relevant programming experience.

In fact, we hired a boot camp graduate about half a year ago, and she's been awesome. WAY more knowledgeable about programming than other candidates we considered, including CS graduates.

Actually, we're a serious thick-client shop with a single-page all-Javascript application powered by Backbone, and we've had great success hiring a Boot Camp graduate. She definitely does *not* just copy/paste code snippets without understanding how things work. To the contrary, she knows far more about the language and basic theory than most other applicants we've seen (including ones with CS degrees), and we've in fact had so much success with her that we're planning to hire another boot camp graduate shortly.

This, except the part about giving it a try. Firebug revolutionized everything when it first came out, but it's failed to improve in the way Chrome Developer Tools ... and Firefox's own developer tools have remained far behind both the entire time.

After ignoring the web development community for so long, I have a hard time seeing myself ever going back to Firefox unless they get some *seriously* rave reviews.

Police have been collecting finger prints for decades, and they have caught thousands, if not millions, of criminals they otherwise wouldn't have caught as a result.

All this judge said was that you using your fingerprint on your phone doesn't give you a "get out of fingerprinting free" card when you get arrested. If it did every criminal in America would lock their phone with a fingerprint so they didn't have to get fingerprinted.

I care and I don't even have an uninsured house ... though to be fair my uncle and aunt do :-( Pahoa is so remote you can't even get cellphone coverage there, but it's a beautiful area (it's on the island's rainy side so everything is lush and green). Houses cost in the 100-200k range, and while that is pretty cheap it still sucks to see it all melt away.

No rebranding needed. The Big Island has never exactly been the key to Hawaii's tourism industry (most of the island, especially on the volcano side, doesn't even have sandy beaches.) Plus, just about everything tourist-y on that island already is lava-themed anyway. They've got a lava forest, lava tubes, steam vents powered by underground lava, the giant volcano itself ... heck they even had a highway that got overrun with lava and instead of fixing it they turned that in to a tourist attraction!

Altrag already answered this very well, but I just wanted to make one other point: in lots of industries the consumer can already "defect" to a competitor with absolutely no impedance. It doesn't matter if I'm buying a computer from Dell or a box of Cheerios from Safeway: nothing stops me from buying a computer or cereal from a different manufacturer the next time I want one.

However, the "defectability" possible with all those products hasn't caused Dell or General Mills to go bankrupt; quite to the contrary both companies (and many others) have found ways to make the user want to continue purchasing their goods. Similarly here, even if a social network with almost no cost of leaving were to exist, it wouldn't necessarily mean that any company operating it would go out of business. Instead, it would just mean that company has to figure out how to please its customers.

There is very little evidence that that is true if you look at services on the web today. To the contrary, ads very often are the only way entire industries can profit on the web. Take newspapers: with only a handful of exceptions like the WSJ, every major newspaper in the country has had to switch to an entirely ad-supported model on the web, abandoning all their old subscription profits.

I'm not saying a paid Facebook-like service is impossible, just that there's (relatively) scant evidence that one could succeed.

Isn't that the idea? Everyone gets the Facebook(-like thing) they already know and love, only without the evil corporate overlord. If that "large player" became evil, the transitory nature of the setup would let everyone easily abandon that evil player.