The text in bold: That is the worst suggestion you can make. As a salaried employee, you do that only in very critical projects and dead lines. It can never be the norm, nor should one be happy about being expected to do so. For hourly paid contractors, however, that is different.

Under normal (read non ZOMG CLUSTERFRAK EMERGENCEYEYE!!!) circumstances, what is required from salaried employees is the ability to 1) estimate completion dates with a degree of confidence and 2) be able to deliver on those days without going into heroic 60hr work weeks.

There are quite a few geeks, talented geeks (many of them spearheading some of the most important FOSS projects out there) who are active bloggers and twitteres. Several of the people I have on my facebook are hard-core software/electrical engineers. I don't know what your personal anecdotes are like, but those are mine. YMMV.

That it is still a useful tool to connect with family and friends, which the author of this article refers to in the past tense.

It still is. Just because it no longer provides usefulness to different sectors of the population (of which one contains YOU), that does not indicate it is not useful at all to some other sectors (or to the majority of the population that just wants a de-facto standard of e-networking.)

That is in the eye of the beholder wrt what you and I value/give a shit about privacy.

As it should be. Why would you put something like that on a site that is not your own, on infrastructure that is not your own is beyond me. You don't need to be security-savvy to know this. You only need common sense. Having (or not having) common sense is a person's onus, not the onus of an internet portal/networking service for-profit company.

That people fail to understand that (or to grasp the fact that sites like this are business trying to create a niche market based on information and personal networks), that's their (your) fault.

That's sensationalism. I have no problem putting my bod or other information that can be easily gleamed from public records on facebook. It serves several purposes for relatives, friends and past/present co-workers and college-mates with whom I network on facebook. Besides, you have fine-grained control regarding privacy levels on the information you have.

Why probably? Just do so right away. Why wait if it is such a privacy pirate?

Projection. Just because you don't follow up, that doesn't mean it holds for a certain % of the population. You can't make conjectures about other people based on what works or does not work for you.

But that is a given. What is wrong with keeping connections to people that are now acquaintances and not the close friends they were 10-15 years ago? What is the surprise in that, and what is wrong with it? Some people obtain benefit (socially and emotionally) by keeping those connections alive, even if by just checking each other's glimpses of lives via shared family photos. Others do not.

And. Both. Are. Natural.

Ow wow, it raised $17K. Oh Yipees!

I work in software, I've worked in security, and I've worked in e-commerce, so maybe there is a chance that I'm educated enough in the industry to know about developments like diaspora. I dunno, just a wild guess.

The fact that Diaspora is coming to existence does not mean that it will work WRT to replacing Facebook or that it can provide a "better" alternative (better for what, with respect to what anyways).

There are so man social and psychological variables that /. posters like to conveniently neglect when it comes to social e-networking that it just hurts to even debate them.

Such a project, such a site will work for YOU and for enthusiasts who gather around the ideal of something different from the so-called privacy pirate that is Facebook. It is YOUR rallying point.

The idea that it will replace Facebook or similar for-profit services, for the general/typical internet user, THAT is a fallacy. It is not a conclusion that can be logically drawn from the points mentioned in the paragraph above.

That would be an excellent point except that I'm not referring at all by any stretch of the English language to 'geeks only' technology (referring instead to web-based information and publication in general as I clearly state.)

You are asserting something as if it were a certainty. And assuming it were to happen, it is non-sequitur to my post.

It is easier to write an article (for Wired, that tells you that much) than to actually do it. The whole idea is idiotic anyways (missing the entire point of sites like facebook and people who *want* to use it.) Either he knows that and simply wrote the article to get some traffic, or he really believes it (and thus his intelligence should be called into question.)

Used to? What, it no longer serves that function?

And still is.

ZOMG1!!! I think there is a very strong possibility that Facebook *knew* they owned the thing that runs on their f* infrastructure. Maybe that was part of their business model from day one. Crazy I know!!!

Even crazier to think they just realized that fact </facepalm>

See above.

Yeah, I can see the typical Facebook user (or the typical consumer of web-based information and publication in general) doing just that. This is what happens when geeks project their own experience and worries onto others, thinking others do as they do, and most importantly, care or worry about the same shit they do. They don't.

If such a proposal ever takes place, all it would do is facilitate the creation of new "facebooks" that will wither and die over time. Eventually people will conglomerate to specific venues with functionality and ethos that appeal to them, run not by a collective of selfless enthusiast but by people who put the time and money to make it happen (and that won't happen just out of charity.)

Talking about missing the entire point of human communication.

And to boot:

Knowledge my ass.

Fuck that. I wouldn't hire these people even if they paid me. Knowledge is not equal to intelligence, common sense, and above all, ethics that you can bet your reputation and business on as this following quote from TFA reveals:

Desperately stupid geek playing racketeering because he can't find a decent job, even if it is for flipping burguers? Nerd-meet-Tony-Soprano? Only a moron would hire that type of person knowing a priori the type of person he is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchanan_v._Warley Yeah, neither laws nor the judicial legislative systems ever work for the people, ever. Tool.

What exactly did he exposed?

Sorry to hear that, but we get what we put in. The only way to get some expertise under the belt before graduation is by doing internships if possible, or work in computer labs as a second option. And by working in computer labs I don't mean showing students how to eject the CD drive but doing actual administration and setup (and luckily sysadmin programming/scripting.) The other option is to get an AA/AS degree, then get a job (even if only a data entry/report generating one) while doing the remaining junior and senior year at a 4-year college. With that path, it is almost certain to accumulate 1-2 years of programming experience...

... but most importantly, it allows to create professional networks.

Some anecdotal stories for shits and giggles... When I was in community college, I did everything I could to get a "computer" job. I was working at Home Depot at the time (selling floor/tile stuff and driving forklifts). I pestered management to gave me a job at the store data center (where they ran these old mini-computers and stuff.) Management tried, but there was never an opening. Later I got a part-time job at the comm.college computer lab, setting up software while tutoring and assisting teaching intro-to-micro courses, Pascal, Assembly, C and DBase. First connection was my Pascal professor with whom I got another part-time job doing Visual Basic programming... now I'm programming while getting paid!!!!

Next connection came from another professor with whom I was taking Delphi and Expert Systems programming. Through his class I get to meet a senior developer at one large insurance firm in my city (one of the largest in the country at the time). When I got my AA, he took me under his wing and got a job developing applications with FoxPro (we were doing the transition from procedural to object-oriented programming back then.) I did that while doing my junior and senior year in CS. On my last year, through another connection, I got a part-time job at the computer science department, doing Unix administration. I left my full-time FoxPro job to concentrate on the last 6 months of my senior year while working on that Unix admin job.

I graduated with my BS degree (and 3 years of programming experience already). Through another connection I made with school and work, I got a research job at a research center (distributed systems, formal methods and security were the focus of research). So as I'm plowing my way through the MS program and doing a lot of really good shit in C and C++, network protocol programming, distributed systems and the like, we started working with Java and CORBA...

and alas, through yet, another connection with the research center, I met a group of developers funding a start-up company that was heavy on Java and CORBA. Off I went to my full-time Java development job. 3 years of programming experience and 2 years of research with immediate industrial application sponsored by people doing that for a living. Just a year and a half after graduating with a BS degree and right in the middle of my masters.

After that job, I've had many others, many of them thank exactly for the type of research I did (performance evaluation of distributed authentication systems to be precise.) From SQL and relational database theory to software engineering to network programing to algorithm/complexity theory, each had helped me in a real way in the real world.

My advice to people studying CS - work on your connections and pursue internships/college lab jobs. Many of my friends from college got really sweet jobs right off the bat because they did internships. We get from college what we put in.

Only if you are that naturally talented. I know I wasn't when I started. I don't even think I am. I simply plow my way. Any schmuck can learn how to put pieces together in a programming language and call it a delivered program just by putting the time with programming books (or cruising the CS curriculum.) It takes serious work and effort (or a rare natural talent) to put all the pieces together to program in a manner and style that doesn't suck, that it's maintainable and that it is efficient. Don't fool yourself into thinking that there is just coding in it. There is a lot more into this job, starting with a throughout understanding of modularity, Bohm/Jacobini's structured program theory and Jackson's Structured Programming, top-down decomposition, bottoms-up synthesis, object-orientation and composition, procedural programming (you can't truly get OO right off the bat without understanding procedural programming.)

I guess mileage might vary from one person to the next, but I cannot think of one single undergrad or grad course that hasn't helped me substantially and practically *in the real world*. Actually, I take that back. The only course I can think of that hasn't had a direct impact was a graduate course in semantics of programming languages. After that, all others, even the theoretical courses have helped me. And it is not as if I do rocket science crap. A substantial amount of my work has been plain ol' enterprisey stuff.

Formal education is not supposed to turn you into a rock start. But it should provide you with the mental tools to start from zero, and help you evolve from code monkey to developer to engineer to architect or team lead. 4 years of code monkey experience is simply 1 year of code monkeyism * 4. It's not 4 years of experience. A formal education helps you, if you put your mind to it, turn each year into a year that you can truly count as cumulative experience.

There are people out there that are awesome at software w/o a formal education. But they are far and few between. Unless your education really sucked, believe me, you are better off starting as a newbie with a degree than doing code monkey crap for 4 years thinking your code is actually good. We got too many of those leaving turds in legacy systems.

Mileage might vary from one person to another I guess.

So what is the plan here then? To churn the video game equivalent of javascript/web designers? Equating video web design with simple game scripting is like equating enterprise computing with dynamic web page programming. A 4-year degree just for that, for designing on top of existing engines? No discussions on how to design one, on understanding what it takes to make a game (both vertically and horizontally programming, architecture and integration)?

Unless a person is a natural when it comes to understanding programing (efficient programming that is), I highly doubt (based on what I've seen) the average programming student can get that type of understanding without getting closer to the metal. In particular, if this school is banking on being in the DC area and attract the heavy duty simulation market (in the military and medical fields), they need to provide a bit more than just teaching how to program on top of a engine with a scripting language.

Do you believe in unicorns too?

Freedom of speech does not mean a free-for-all usage of anything available to express any point of view. You are free to exercise freedom of speech using the means that are legally available (which are plenty.) Really, not being able to use a copyrighted song to make fun of a political figure does not hamper my liberty of doing so. I haven't seen the satire, but from what I can gather, DeVore is/was in the wrong here unless the artistic work was altered so as to make clear it is a derived art clearly distinguishable from the original (with the derived art being legally usable for such a purpose.)

You are confusing freedom of speech (politically motivated and otherwise) with fair use. Imagine for example (and just for shits and giggles) that during the last presidential elections, the Republican party decides to make a satire of Obama at the tunes of, say, one of Michael Jackson's songs (say, "Beat It".) You could alter the roles with the Democratic party making a satire of McCain/Palin (as well as changing the name of the artist and type of art being used) but the essence is the same - a satire and form of political speech using copyrighted material without parodying the copyrighted material herein used.

It would be legally reasonable that the Jackson's camp would be entitled for monetary fees due to the usage of those songs for purposes other than parodying the song and the artist. The law would recognize the artist' claim (which should not be construed as an attack to freedom of speech.)

As for the analogy with the removal of the Hitler parody videos, I'm sad to see them go, but the law is clear in that satires are not protected in the same way parodies are (wrt of using copyrighted material). None of this should be construed either as an attack to freedom of speech in the form of satire or parody.

Unfortunately, the law is (or seems to be) clear on this. I hope that someday (sooner I hope) the law gets amended so that satires done for non-commercial purposes get the same protection wrt copyrighted materials (at least so that we can all enjoy Hitler going at it for lolcatz sake).