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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: 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.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(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.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(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.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(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.