"Our model
makes two very strong predictions. The first is that the rate of de novo mutations in affected
children from multiplex families will be barely above that of an unaffected control population.
On this point, the literature presently has conflicting reports [3,6,22]. The samples needed to
resolve this question properly, namely blood derived DNAs from multiplex families, has either
not yet been collected or sequenced. The second prediction made by our model is that there will
be a high rate of transmission of strong alleles in multiplex families, typically from the mother,
and in the same genes targeted by de novo mutation in simplex autism. While there is some
indirect support for a female carrier effect based on half-sibs [23], a genetic study of
transmission based on the targets of de novo mutation is only now possible [21]."
This seems like a succinct summary for the paper. Or at least, it's the part that stuck out to me.
I wish that the author had actually included a benchmark with nice pretty graphs. The list of example hardware is nice, but doesn't tell me nearly as much as a couple of benchmarks would. Blanket statements such as "EC2's price-to-performance ratio is horrible" don't really do much to convince me. Yeah, the author is probably correct. But to what extent is he correct?
Actually, I do recall stories about revolution in Iceland. Which is why I was so surprised to see this article use the word "peaceful" revolution. I recall riots in Iceland making a big stir back in 2009. Indeed, after a quick Google search I found this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Icelandic_financial_crisis....
Snippet from the Wikipedia article:
"On 20 January 2009, the protests intensified into riots. Between 1,000 and 2,000 people clashed with riot police, who used pepper spray and batons, around the building of the parliament (Althing), with at least 20 people being arrested and 20 more needing medical attention for exposure to pepper spray.[3][11] Demonstrators banged pots and honked horns to disrupt the year's first meeting of Prime Minister Geir Haarde and the Althing. Some broke windows of the parliament house, threw skyr and snowballs at the building, and threw smoke bombs into its backyard.[2][3][12] The use of pots and pans saw the local press refer to the event as the 'Kitchenware Revolution'.[13]"
[2] ^ a b Gunnarsson, Valur (21 January 2009). "Icelandic lawmakers return to work amid protests". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 31 January 2009. Retrieved 22 January 2009.
[3] ^ a b c "Iceland protesters demand government step down". Reuters. 20 January 2009. Archived from the original on 3 February 2009. Retrieved 22 January 2009.
[12] ^ "Icelanders held over angry demo". BBC. 21 January 2009. Archived from the original on 24 January 2009. Retrieved 22 January 2009
[13] ^ Ian Parker, Letter from Reykjavík, "Lost," The New Yorker, 9 March 2009, p. 39.
As far as "revolutions" go, I'd call tossing a few eggs and yogurt and maybe burning a tree or two rather peaceful. There was one night where everything went crazy (when we burned down the Norwegian Christmas tree... sorry about that, Norway) and threw rocks at Alþingi, but other than that, it was mostly just family people banging pots and pans.
In Iceland, it's known as the "Búsáhaldabylting" which basically means "kitchen appliance revolution", if that gives you any idea of what it was like. (edit: you already stated that in your post)
Edit:
To elaborate some more... most of the people who were arrested, or those who were pepper sprayed were nothing more than opportunistic (often young) people taking advantage of the situation. Some of them were self declared "anarchists" or had some kind of "fuck-the-system" attitude. Most of them probably had little stake in what was happening. this was in contrast to most of the peaceful protesters, they were family people protesting how the govt. handled the bank collapse.
These people had just lost their life savings, their house, their car and were left with insane debt. I went, and protested for my parent, whose debt have now doubled because of the inflation. I showed my anger, I threw rocks, I screamed, we were all pretty angry.
But only a very small group of people were actually violent, and you could literally point out who was there for a valid protest and who was just looking for an excuse to fight the police.
--
Addendum: What you may not understand is that loans in Iceland are "insured". That's good... if you're a bank, but if you're a n individual, it's bad... very bad.
It basically means that, in addition to interest, your loan principal increases by the amount of inflation. So if the inflation is 5%, voila, your loan is now 5% higher. Now realize that inflation went as high as 18.6%, which means your 4% interest loan just went up 18.6 + 4 = 22.6% in one year.
There are associations currently suing the banks and the govt. to try and make this form of loan illegal.
Not quite the same thing but a bad idea for the consumer nonetheless. Our loans are price-index fixed. There is a consumer index calculated by our benevolent government organization that calculates the index based on the sale value of common household goods and essential costs like the price of gasoline. This mean that if the government raises gas taxes (like they did here - twice) that in turn causes your loan interest to rise. Ingenious, right?
The media often misrepresents these things. I'm not saying it's a conspiracy, they might simply want to make things more interesting than they are.
At least this was my experience with the recent student protests in Montreal. I attended a few of these protests and my roommate many more. They were mostly peaceful. The ones that weren't were in response to dubious police behavior such as locking protesters in a street and not letting anyone out for extended periods of time. This happened maybe once or twice over the course of a year. I felt safe moving about Montreal.
Now if I looked at the media, especially foreign media, it was another story. Had I not been in Montreal to see things first hand, I would have imagined a warzone. I would have been afraid to visit or live in Montreal. It was amazing to see the students portrayed as violent protesters when they went to incredible lengths to insure everything was done peacefully.
I experienced this same phenomenon, but not for protests, living in Toronto during the SARS epidemic. The city was running perfectly, no one was panicking (I think we had something like 22 potential cases). The only noticeable difference was that I saw a few face masks in the subway. If I listened to foreign media, everyone in Toronto was panicking, thousands were infected. Once again, it was represented as a warzone.
Having been there, I can say it wasn't in both cases. The media often misrepresents stories to make them more interesting. Having read the stories about Iceland (which are rather mild), if the trends I observed hold, it must have been really peaceful protest.
As I read the article, I kept wanting to write "citation" in the margins for nearly every assertion that the author made. He is clearly passionate about the subject. I applaud the attempt to hold multi-national companies responsible for their actions. However, this read more like opinion and gut feeling than a well researched article. I want to know what the law says. Exactly what laws are being broken? What is the wording? Justify the statement that "each of the companies made such a mess of this event" with quotes and counter quotes. Don't just tell me your opinion.
I was going to say almost exactly the same thing. The items that he listed are certainly detrimental from a startup perspective, but for a big company I think that they are actually arguments in favor of Java. Unfortunately for Paul Graham, and his prediction, the big companies have had more say in adoption than the startups. I agree with you. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense. But, it wouldn't necessarily have been obvious at the time.
Personally, I dislike the language wars. I think that a good developer should be able to write good software with the tools available. Arguing the opposite always smacked of the "silver bullet" to me.
In the end, all languages are Turing complete, but there is still a difference. It is similar to woodwork (from the small dabbling I've done in woodworking): good tools make you faster and can produce better output. You can produce the same quality, but it takes a whole lot more effort.
But more important than the tools you choose (Makita vs DeWalt, Chevy vs Ford), getting to know them is far more important. And that's where the language wars seem to fail: the recognition that a guy with 15 years of good Java experience will code circles around that <insert your language here> beginner.
XML is not Turing complete, nor are most configuration file formats. Yet these are used to provide significant behavior. They are are programs. Programs are data. Data are programs.
> I think that a good developer should be able to write good software with the tools available.
While that's true, it would be hard for me to consider someone a good developer if they, given the choice, chose poor or inappropriate tools for a job.
Sure, if you have the choice. But that's were the Hacker News startup culture and the enterprise development culture diverge. In a small startup you can dictate the tools. In an enterprise company you may not have any say in the matter. You can either complain endlessly about it (and boy howdy are people willing to complain endlessly) or you can do your job to the best of your ability with the tools available.
I understand where you're coming from though. I just think that you need to know a lot of context about the developer in question before you dismiss him/her over their tool choices. You need to know why they used those tools and how well they learned them.
But what it really comes down to is how fast the developer can learn something new. I'm fairly confident that I understand enough about programming language concepts to be up and running with a new language in a few days. I might not know the API (if one is provided) but I will probably be able to contribute to the team pretty quickly.
I'm curious why Fred Wilson would proclaim to the world that investing in his VC firm isn't going to give you the return that you're looking for these days. Is there a short term gain for him that I'm not seeing? Or is Wilson genuinely trying to change an industries path with a few words of wisdom? I'm not suggesting that his advice is bad. It seems to make sense to me.
One of us missed something here. I did not see Fred saying investing in his firm is not a good idea. I saw him talking about VC's in general having a poor return and thus putting investors on the fence. It's probably safe to assume that with Fred's profile and track record he's not personally struggling.
https://github.com/timothymdavis/taciturn