10 MAR 2019 by ideonexus

 Automation Improves Safety

The airports with their self-check-in kiosks and restaurants full of iPads are staffed by thousands of human workers (most using mano machine can do? Or, like operating an elevator and driving a car, is it because at first we don't trust machines to do a job where lives are at risk? Elevators became much safer as soon as the human operators were replaced. The human-hating Skynet from the Terminator movies could hardly do a better job of killing people than we do killing ourselves with cars. H...
Folksonomies: automation
Folksonomies: automation
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30 NOV 2013 by ideonexus

 "Follow Your Passion" is Terrible Advice

So I started to wonder what would happen if we challenged some of these sacred cows. Follow your passion -- we've been talking about it here for the last 36 hours. Follow your passion -- what could possibly be wrong with that? Probably the worst advice I ever got. (Laughter) You know, follow your dreams and go broke, right? I mean, that's all I heard growing up. I didn't know what to do with my life, but I was told if you follow your passion, it's going to work out. I can give you 30 example...
Folksonomies: passion meaning purpose
Folksonomies: passion meaning purpose
  1  notes

"The road less traveled" is better advice.

03 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 Revolutions That Break with the Past Fail

Starting anew with a clean slate has been one of the most harmful ideas in history. It treats previous knowledge as an impediment and imagines that only present knowledge deployed in theoretical purity can make real the wondrous new vision. Thus the French Revolution of 1789, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949 each made brave new worlds that catastrophically failed. By cutting off continuity with the slower parts of their cultures they had no fallback...
  1  notes

Erasing the past is a crippling thing to do. The Founders of America built on the past in their revolution and Evolution succeeds by building on the past.

21 APR 2011 by ideonexus

 Bernie Cosell on Java

Java didn't feel right. My old reflexes hit me. Java struck me as too authoritarian. Thats one of the reasons why I mentioned that Perl felt so good, because it's got the safety and the checks but it is so damn multidimensioned that the artist part of me has a lot of free board to express things early and to think about the right way do things. I have some freedom. When I first messed with Java—^this was /vhen it was little baby language, of course—I said, "Oh, this is just another one...
Folksonomies: programming coding
Folksonomies: programming coding
  1  notes

Describing his first impressions of it as authoritarian and designed for not-so-good programmers.

06 APR 2011 by ideonexus

 Lincoln on the Enthronement of Corporations

As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless (emphasis mine).
  1  notes

There is a valid dispute as to whether these words were actually Lincolns, or if they were fabricated to support a political campaign 20 years after his death; regardless, they are prescient words eloquently spoken for their time, no matter the speaker.