Viewing profile — alexakarpov

Instead of the article, better read Vonnegut: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_%28novel%29 A much better, if also significantly longer, exposition.

Can't believe no one mentioned the best work on 'bullshit jobs' out there - "Player Piano" by Kurt Vonnegut. Back in 1952 he already guessed it all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pl…

That. Also, this: http://this-plt-life.tumblr.com/post/55420560033/when-somebo...

sorry, didn't realize this was the main point I've never read the Olympics code, list of principles etc, but I can imagine there's something about human dignity and freedom and lib…

"Make sports even more political" -- this is our disagreement, yes. You think sports and politics are somehow 'independent things' -- but they aren't. Best parallel would be: money…

Do understand, that no "traditionalist values" can contradict the principle of liberty. People should be free to follow whatever values they want to follow. Heck, I'm an ultra-trad…

Google for his approval rating - it's high, even if you adjust it for all the rigging and such. Short story is: collapse of USSR brought a lot of suffering and despair to Russians …

There's an old joke from Communist times. It goes like this -- and old communist argues: - What do you mean, we don't respect human rights? Of course we respect human rights! Why, …

..and that's why Fry mentions that: "The idea that sport and politics don’t connect is worse than disingenuous, worse than stupid. It is wickedly, wilfully wrong. Everyone knows po…

(Russian here) - Fry is 100% correct in his assessment. I pay a lot of attention to the wickedness of Russian politics, and, quite frankly, LBGTQ are right there at the very edge o…

Can't agree more (Russian here). In Russia it's all about putting up a show of anti-americanism, because that's what the voters like (the one thing that brings back memories of rel…

This should not be news, though, right? Consumers can only be trusted to be concerned for their own best interests. More than that -- only about their own immediate and simple best…

...to expand on other answers - I encourage you to ask the same question, but about Lisp (Scheme, Clojure) =)

I just got 'Test-driven web development with Python" from this sale. Django feels awesome! Got 'Two Scoops", too =P

It's an odd argument to make - that is, yes, of course the web is now better in many aspects than what it was 10 years ago -- but what makes you think that without Google the progr…

> Money is about power and is a zero sum game. > If someone increases their share of the pie, > then someone else necessarily loses out. Except this is plain wrong. I know a Wikipe…

Wow. How did you know all about me?

couldn't say it better!

HR =) he generated quite some interest among our Seattle folks, so most likely they already knew about him

not sure what kind of statistics would be good and not violate the NDA =) but our internal rubyhackers mailing list is one of the busiest lists that I'm on. I myself am not a Ruby …

Ruby is replacing Perl, and that's been going on for a few years now (and we have a pretty active RoR community).

of course they did: http://gizmodo.com/5980618/amazon-is-down bogus, I can assure you

not 100%, but more and more teams are moving over; it's a goal that's pursued aggressively, but not reached yet.

Thanks; sounds like I really should learn at least some.