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The Atlantic is running an article on the friction between the computing world and Professional Engineer societies. This discussion has been going on for a long time, and is meaningful to me personally - I quit a 10-year career as server administrator with 'engineer' in my job title when I graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree, and have since earned my Professional Engineer license. In a world where most software comes with a disclaimer of liability due to defects, where would an ethical, civic-minded programmer even practice Professional Engineering? Angry Birds probably doesn't have any responsibility to the public safety, so there's little need there; on the other hand, Google's self-driving car program is a good candidate.
I'd love to welcome the programming profession into the circle of licensed Engineers, provided that the industry manages to agree on standards of quality and accountability. I don't see the methods (such as Agile) used by programmers as a significant obstacle, either; the programming motto of "move fast and break things" (which the article wrongly decries) is echoed in the motto "fail early, fail often" that is held by many Mech Eng R&D shops. I just fear that the halting problem will be solved before any such standards become widely accepted and implemented in the industry.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday November 07 2015, @12:28PM
See? This is why Faecebook/Instagram/Twitter/etc are USian: an European engineer would never bother thinking at such things as something worth to be created.
Minitel [wikipedia.org] on the other side - I raise my hat to that one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday November 07 2015, @03:27PM
The people behind companies like Facebook have made billions of dollars, so there's obviously something wrong with the European mindset there. The Americans have figured out that you can make tons of money by creating new and silly ways for people to waste their time online, and since so many people actually like and use these services, there's obviously something to them. It's not like all these people have jumped on Twitter and Facebook because they were forced to or coerced into it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 07 2015, @04:02PM
Only if you think that making billions of dollars is the ultimate goal to strive for.
Just as food for thought: The Mafia also makes billions of dollars.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Saturday November 07 2015, @05:48PM
Making billions of dollars shows what people, as a group, value most. The Mafia makes lots of money because there's a huge demand for things which some smaller group of people have deemed "bad", namely alcoholic beverages.
By saying that making billions of dollars isn't a very good goal to strive for, you're implicitly saying that things the majority value are junk, and by extension that you know better than the majority of people about what is and isn't valuable.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday November 09 2015, @07:32PM
If you think the Mafia makes its money through alcoholic beverages, you're utterly outdated.
Also that people give money for something does not always mean they value it. It may just mean it's the alternative that sucks least. For example paying ransom money usually sucks less than what happens if you don't pay.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday November 09 2015, @11:45PM
Obviously, Prohibition v1.0 ended some time ago, but Prohibition v2.0 is still going. The Mafia makes money largely by selling stuff to people that they want to buy, but the government has deemed "bad": prostitution, drugs, gambling, etc. Of course, they also make money with protection rackets. However there, given how horrible our regular police forces are, I think maybe shutting down the police in some localities and letting the Mafia handle it isn't a bad idea.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @04:44PM
>coerced into it
Oh really? I think most of fagbooks users are coerced into it through social manipulation. In the US, employers, potential friends, mates, etc all use fbook to 'vet' you. If you don't have a profile, many people consider that a red flag.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by BasilBrush on Saturday November 07 2015, @05:38PM
When I rarely come across someone who's not on Facebook, I tend to think they are either technophobes or anti-social. These days It's rather like not having a telephone. You miss out on a lot of what's happening in your larger real world social circles.
Lots of people here and on slashdot pour scorn on Facebook. But it's because they spend too much time on their computers at home, and don't have enough real-world social contacts to make it worth-while.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday November 07 2015, @11:42PM
Why not add a few other categories:
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Sunday November 08 2015, @03:09PM
"privacy-literate" means choosing what information you share and what you don't. It doesn't mean cutting yourself off from useful services.
a "marketing-avoidant" person would know that ad-blocking works just as well on FB as anywhere else.
"generally-smart" - It seems not.
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(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday November 10 2015, @07:01PM
I discovered last weekend that Facebook was banning sharing of any discussion -- including news articles -- about a new competing social network. After that, I deleted the app, and am planning to block their domain entirely from my home network shortly.
So add 'people who oppose abusive business practices' to that list...
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Tuesday November 10 2015, @08:11PM
An anonymous "new competing social network" apparently. Or were you scared that mentioning it's name it wasn't allowed on Soylent news either.
I wish I had a pound for every time someone claimed something was banned from Facebook. It's a daily clickbait tactic.
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(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday November 12 2015, @03:25PM
No, I just didn't remember the three random letters that are its name....but here, I went and looked up one of the news articles about it. Note that this article itself has also been banned from being posted to Facebook:
https://www.rt.com/usa/321101-tsu-facebook-block-competition/ [rt.com]
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Friday November 13 2015, @02:20AM
Thanks, I hadn't heard of Tsu. But from the article you post, it seems pretty obvious that Tsu has incentivised users to create spammy posts on Facebook to bring users to their Tsu page for the users 45% share of advert revenue. I'd be amongst those complaining if any of these had got through to me. Is it a social network at all, or just a "make money working from home" type scam.
Facebook's explanation is obviously right. They don't have anything to fear from Tsu as an obscure social network; they don't ban any of the social networks that are actually competitors - Twitter, Instagram etc.
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(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday November 17 2015, @04:26PM
Yeah...I don't really care if they block Tsu.com because they think it's spam. But when they start claiming that any news articles reporting on that ban are also spam, things start getting pretty dystopic. That's clearly more about controlling user behavior than protecting them from spam.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Sunday November 08 2015, @05:58AM
Missing real world if not using FB???? WTF?!?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Sunday November 08 2015, @03:07PM
See. you don't even understand what FaceBook is about. Here on SoylentNews, you talk to pseudonymous people you don't know in real life. On Facebook you talk to people you know by name, in real life. And you hear about local events from real life that you attend in real life.
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday November 08 2015, @06:22PM
Even more, I even don't intend to know them in real life. 'Cause what it be good for? With most of them, there are large distances separating us, I'm not going to be part of their real-world life by any meaningful amount.
Oh, is this the definition of "talking" and "hearing" now? No longer mediated by mouth/ears?
What happened to a face to face over a pint of beer?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Sunday November 08 2015, @11:38PM
What happened to a face to face over a pint of beer?
What part of "And you hear about local events from real life that you attend in real life." did you not understand? You have to arrange it somehow. In what way is emailing, phoning round (or even walking round) to each of your friends individually better than arranging it via Facebook?
That's why I said I tend to assume people not on Facebook are technophobes or anti-social. It's the best tool available for organising and communicating one to many amongst real-life friends. That you don't understand this just makes me make the same assumption about you.
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday November 09 2015, @12:34AM
You mean, apart from the ads?
Little others but us get to know about the context/content of the interaction (translation: higher degree of privacy).
Besides, phoning lets other info be transferred in the process (intonation, moments of silence, etc) something that is lost via text, no matter how many emoticons you are decorating your text with.
"Well, allow me to retort": in what way is FB better than emailing or phoning to accept the loss of privacy in exchange for it?
Yeah, and I tend to think as hipsters about the early-and-no-so-early adopters of new technologies even when the older ones satisfy perfectly their needs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by BasilBrush on Monday November 09 2015, @01:18PM
You mean, apart from the ads?
Ad blocking works just as well on FB as any other site.
Little others but us get to know about the context/content of the interaction (translation: higher degree of privacy).
If Zuckerberg wants to turn up at the pub he's welcome.
Facebook is a SOCIAL network. You talk about the same kinds of things you'd talk about at the pub, where you may be overheard also. If you want a super-secret communication tool, then that's something else. Note that the telephone isn't secret either, and email is far less secret than any of these things, being potentially transmitted in plain text between any number of random points on the internet.
"Well, allow me to retort": in what way is FB better than emailing or phoning
FB maintains the distribution you intended for a thread. Email gets randomly replied to sender only, replied to all or forwarded. Phoning is a one to one medium, rather than one to many. FB also has a specific events tool that allows for invitations, lists of the invites, who's accepted/declined, etc.
Basically FB is a specific tool for the purpose of maintaining a real life social network. It has lots of things that enable that, that these other generic communications tools don't.
And if you think FB is about hipsters, you're REALLY out of touch. Most adults are on it in my experience. At least in my country and the US. Other countries may vary.
You seem to be making assumptions about something you know nothing about. And if you're not on FB how would you know?
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