"What is the technical term for an expert who has not received formal training?"

Autodidact?

"I don't see a problem with automated essay graders in principle."

I don't see a problem with automated essay creators then.

"Who wants to read multitudes of mediocre essays."

Nobody. That's why they attach a paycheck by the end of the week to that activity. If you think that's not fair, you can forego your paycheck at any time.

"If the computer graders show a more consistent performance than the humans (i.e. are the outlier less frequently), then the computer grader is better."

ON AVERAGE. It happens that it is the outstanders the ones that have more potential and you are just conciously throwing all them by the bathtub. Humans can detect outstanders, computers do not.

"As someone who graded hundreds of essays while serving as a teaching assistant for a senior-level engineering ethics course, I have to say that I find your lack of integrity rather appalling. Your moral obligation to write the essay yourself is independent of the method they use for grading it."

No, it isn't.

Once you failed on your end of the contract (in this case, that you will do a serious attempt to grade my intimate knowledge on the issue by using experts to review my work) you shouldn't hold any assumption on my end -Kant's categorical imperative and all that.

Given that we are talking about gradings here, since the grading is obviously not to show my knowledge, by myself and in comparation to my group, all that rests is the grade itself, so whatever that jumps up it the highest in the most effective way is the proper way to go.

In other words: you impose a tiranny but then you talk about the citizenship's moral obligation not to rebel? bollocks!

"Rote memorization != intelligence [...] Someone with terrible grammar can be far more intelligent than some worthless rote memorization monkey."

"...For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it."

René Descartes "A Discourse on Method"

"Rote memorization" is what fills your mind with useful items to play with, without them, you well may possess a "vigorous mind" but you won't be able to rightly apply it.

"In the fantasy land of OSS evangelists, thousands of highly skilled coders are constantly auditing big OSS projects."

Do you know what a strawman argument is, right?

But now, for a reality check: this bug, while serious, affected maybe a few thousands out of millions of users and once discovered it was fully disclosed, audited, peer reviewed and patched *because* it was on an open source environment.

Now, please, tell me you can say the same about other closed source products.

the salesman warned me that natural granite is a bit "porous and tends to get stained irreversibly"

The salesman wanted to sell you a composite. First you need to know that in the market, any kind of counter top stone will be called granite in the business. Then, while it's true that ligth-coloured mostly quarz and feldspar are somehow porous (but less than, say, marble, and you'll find, even white marble, covering floors) and can be stained, then try just "standard" Spain Grain or Swedish Absolute Black and let me know if you manage to, while technically porous, stain it at all even without any caresness.

"A $30 aeropress coffee maker is as good as a $5000 espresso machine"

Haven't tested a $5000 one so I can't say. I tested espresso machines at any bar at, say, Venetia, and I can attest that no, your $30 aeropress coffe maker is no challenge for them.

"A double edge safety shaver that uses 20 cent blades is far superior to any expensive disposable shaver system, even the ones with 5 blades."

I use them and I agree.

"A $150 Formica counter top fulfills all the duties of a $3000 granite counter top."

The $150 Formica counter top at my rented flat and my mother's 30-year-old granite one beg to differ.

"And yet we are constantly told by marketing and advertising that better equals more expensive."

Yes, marketing (publishing, to better say) is quite clever in using bad rationals to push sells.

Better equals more expensive and that's right more times than not. The point is that more expensive doesn't equate better (see? even you fall on bad rationale).

"DevOps people don't necessarily have good understanding of the underlying issues of the production environment."

You should train them better, then.

Because the point of "devops" is exactly so they understand the underlying issues of the production environment.

"my car's not going all that much slower than a Cessna."

A Cessna 172 cruise speed is 143 miles/hour. Remember kinetic energy formulae states it goes to the square of speed and you'll see that yes, you are going all that much slower than a Cessna (and that's cruise speed, if you are uncontrolably heading to the ground you'll probably go faster than that).

"I think what's really going on is we actually are anti-matter, and what WE see as anti-matter is the real matter."

You probably have a point after all.

After all, I don't think the problem is what kind of matter are we, that one of them should become majority it's obviously a must. The problem is why matter instead of antimatter... but if antimatter was the majority it automatically would become matter, wouldn't it?

"At that point you want 'clean' VMs that follow the vendor spec exactly."

Except, of course, when the vendor insists that their software shouldn't be virtualized at all.

"Certification counts for very little BTW, it'll be read on your CV, and then ignored"

Certifications will be read BY AN HR DRONE and, if not found, your CV ignored. You won't get to an interview unless:
a) It is a short company so CVs are triaged by technical staff themselves.
b) You know an insider so your CV bypasses HR.
c) Your CV has the proper buzzwords for HR to pass it to next level.

Note that having the certifications won't hurt on cases 'a' and 'b' but not having them will kill you in case 'c'. Now you need to look around you and ask yourself what's your proportion of 'a', 'b' and 'c' cases to see if it's worth for you the investment on time and money to get the certifications.

"For pragmatic-minded people, PHP is an extremely productive language to work in. No compiling, or waiting for compiling, no object files to mess with or get out of sync, and still relatively good speed. "

You mean, like any other interpreted languages you could choose?

"The down-side has always been that the language also had many sloppy characteristics."

You mean, like those avoided by any other interpreted languages you could choose?

Exactly my thoughts: he's a good technology teacher (so he says) but all he seems to know is using Microsoft products and lacks the push to even do a Google search and experiment a bit at home.

I'm sorry for his students.

"The story is about the health benefits of a vegetarian diet"

Hummm... nope.

It is about a low-protein diet, not a vegetarian one.

Try to be more attentive and think before you speak.