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Paul Graham: News from the Front

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Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front

#91

Post by abstractbill »

npk wrote: post #86
abstractbill wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bunch of other education-related words have different meanings on different sides of the pond. For example, UK: You write a dissertation for a masters degree and a thesis for a PhD. US: The opposite. I wonder if the terminology will converge...

In the US you never write a thesis, you write a dissertation (document) based on a thesis (idea.)

Interesting. Wikipedia thinks the two are synonymous:

"In academia, a thesis or dissertation is a document that presents the author's research and findings and is submitted in support of candidature for a degree or professional qualification."

[from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis]

Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front

#92

Post by jey »

corentin wrote: post #89
jey wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The software involved is more of a key issue. You can always get more machines off the shelf, but you can't just go to Dell.com and place an order for a few killer algorithms. If you have awesome software, you can get funded. IIRC, Powerset is already backed by some big players.

The infrastructure behind Google, Yahoo and even Microsoft is not just a bunch of machines plugged to the same Ethernet switch... They're building datacenters from scratch.

Sure, but it's still an easy problem. Building big data centers is definitely a problem these guys face, but it's by far not the biggest or hardest one. The software infrastructure and algorithms are much more daunting problems.

Let me remind you that Google was a small startup very recently, and that was during the "dot com bust".

Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front

#93

Post by pg »

michael_nielsen wrote: post #81
pg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have enough data yet to prove anything by research paper standards, but that doesn't mean I'm saying nothing. We try consciously to ignore where people went to school; that is not standard practice; and moreover this is something I'm claiming we've changed.

Presumably, your data can only show that it doesn't matter what school you went to, conditional on being accepted by YC. That is a completely different statement than showing that it doesn't matter what school you went to. Your article appears to me like it is conflating the two.

No, I'm also considering people we invite for interviews.

Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front

#94

Post by dfranke »

abstractbill wrote: post #91
npk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US you never write a thesis, you write a dissertation (document) based on a thesis (idea.)

Interesting. Wikipedia thinks the two are synonymous: "In academia, a thesis or dissertation is a document that presents the author's research and findings and is submitted in support of candidature for a degree or professional qualification." [from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis ]

Npk is correct, but it's a pedantic distinction. Most people, apparently including the Wikipedia editors, just use the two words interchangably.

Edit: yikes. Somebody went on a downmodding spree on this thread.

Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front

#95

Post by pg »

jedberg wrote: post #68
pg wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[4] At the best colleges you learn more from other students than from your professors. You should be able to reproduce this at almost any college by making a conscious effort to find smart friends, instead of leaving it to chance. I.e. the benefit of going to an elite college is that you get almost for free something you have to work at otherwise: knowing lots of smart people.

Ah. I guess being in the footnote made me think it was more of an offhanded comment than a major counterpoint to the premise of the essay. Perhaps in an edited version, this should get its own paragraph.

Ok, a lot of people seemed to be commenting about this, so I pulled that point out of the footnote and up into the body of the essay.

Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front

#96

Post by portLAN »

"Good" colleges are a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the best students organized online and randomly picked some backwoods institution and applied there, it would instantly become the place to be. Meanwhile the previous top schools would be left with the second-stringers.

It bears repeating: out of the top 10 richest "U.S. Americans", 4 inherited it; of the six who didn't, one has a degree (Warren Buffett), and 5 are drop-outs: Bill Gates, Sheldon Adelson, Larry Ellison, Paul Allen, and Michael Dell. Woz dropped out to start Apple (he went back to school only after he was done working there) and Jobs dropped out of Reed College here in Portland. (We're all very proud of him.)

Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front

#98

Post by cstejerean »

I'm surprised it took Paul this long to realize this about universities. A little less than half way through high school I realized that the entire process (get good grades to go to a good school, get good grades there so you can get a good job) is crap. I decided that it was more important to spend my time in high school learning what I cared about then to obsess over GPA.

I never got around to finishing my college degree, I left about 2 years into it and got a job because I ran out of things to learn in college. I've worked for a series of both small and large companies and I've found that most companies also don't care where one went to college (Google is a big exception to this). Most companies simply don't value people that are fresh out of college because colleges don't teach people the right skills.

It's true however that in good schools there are more smart people and you are more likely to meet interesting people, but that doesn't mean you need to go to a top school, just live close to one.

Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front

#99

Post by menloparkbum »

pg wrote: post #97
menloparkbum wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wireless jennicam? Not crazy.

It's dramatically different not just technically but also in what it does to the subject's life.

It isn't. The tech is interesting, the content is not. As for what it does to the subjects' lives, I don't really care.

Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front

#100

Post by euccastro »

corentin wrote: post #79
pg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't count justin.tv as crazy?

Yes, I have to agree that the technology behind justin.tv is quite interesting. Right now, it seems like it's only used by a bunch of exhibitionist and egocentric persons in a real TV fashion, but it will probably end up being used for more interesting stuff (like, say, a sailor racing across the world). On the other hand, they'd be stupid not to go where the money is (that is, were all the MySpace generation kids ar…

A sailor racing across the world would be dead boring in real time. It would be interesting to watch a half-hour documentary summarizing a couple months worth of travel.

Then again, I guess that's true for all kinds of reality TV we've seen so far, including justin.tv.

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