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People at Facebook are working to allow Scott Hanselman to be able to find friends of friends with diabetes to ask for advice.
Oh goodie, another arrogant whine by raganwald where he can't understand why the greatest minds (implying people writing code are somehow the greatest minds) aren't doing what he thinks is important. This post makes two incorrect assumptions. First, that the things he derides (Google automating targeted content, Facebook introducing new search features that are tangential to their current features, Apple changing for…
This post makes a third incorrect assumption too. That the "greatest minds of our generation" work at Google, Facebook and Apple.
Reminds me of investment bankers who thought that shuffling pieces of paper made them 'Masters of the Universe'.
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This is an important point that people often misunderstand in internet arguments. Attacking or insulting someone is probably not a good idea in general, but it doesn't constitute an "ad hominem" and doesn't affect the rest of the argument presented unless it's being argued that the other person is wrong because e.g. they smell bad. If it's just mentioned that they smell bad and they're wrong for other reasons, it's n…
I do understand that in order for an argument to be fallacious it has to actually be part of an argument. There's a bit of subjectivity to this. Generally when someone makes an argument and the response is merely "you're a hypocrite", the inference is that person #2 believes that person #1 is wrong and that's the best counter they've got. I understand there's some inference on my part, but that's how I usually see it…
Maybe I'm giving people here too much credit.
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Is there any indication that education needs geniuses? Does it substantially improve innovation? When America was world dominant in innovation, were its geniuses in academia, or industry?
When the US was dominant, was it truly because of the quality of output, or because of an advantage of not being leveled by WWII?
It appears that Diabetes research receives over a billion in funding each year just from the NIH [1][2]. As far as I can tell this doesn't include private funding for cures/treatments. Maybe I'm misinterpreting the data here, but it looks like many people and many millions of dollars are devoted to solving real world problems like the one Scott Hanselman has. [1] General Disease research numbers http://report.nih.gov…
I've had Type 1 diabetes for about 20 years now; it's a little bit of pain in the ass, but I don't get why people bellyache about it so much. Blood sugar meters? Check. Fast-acting insulin? Check. Insulin pumps? Check. Blindness, amputation and kidney failure are no longer guaranteed and I'm grateful as heck for that. For now I'll count my blessings: one of which is the fact that my wife has yet to find me laid out i…
Judging by all he's accomplished at Microsoft, I'm sure Scott could successfully lead a team to solve his problem and bring a product to market. But he doesn't. I (luckily) would not have use for such a product. If he doesn't care enough to tackle the problem, why should I? Same goes for Obesity. Most of it could be controlled by changes in diet and behavior. If people affected can't be bothered, why should I care?
That said, I've already put a product to market in the mid-90s. I wrote GlucoPilot, the first portable blood sugar management software for the original PalmPilot. I worked a lot in the diabetes and healthcare space. I'm tired though, and I did my part for now. Now I guess I'm just complaining.
As far as obesity, I agree that's totally unrelated to Type 1 diabetes and I share your opinion. Move more, eat less.
Because research pays terribly and not everyone has the luxury of martyrdom. Want to be a grad student? 80-90% pay cut. (Unless you go to Switzerland and then it's closer to 70%). Want to be a university research programmer? 70% pay cut. Removing economic considerations, would I rather be researching auto-immune disease? Sure. But 'doing good' means compromises like buying a house at 45 instead of 35. No one asks doc…
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Because nobody cares about your diabetes and obesity. Lay down that taco and get some fricken exercise, FFS.
For those with Type 2, yes, exercise and eating right largely solves that (totally different) issue.
Lots of people in the Googleplex, including my team, are working to make sure that when Scott Hanselman types [blood sugar monitoring] into Google he gets useful results. I'm working on this because I believe it to be the most important thing within range of my skills and experience. People at Facebook are working to allow Scott Hanselman to be able to find friends of friends with diabetes to ask for advice.
Diabetes isn't a problem that we need technology to solve. Sure it could help, but that's treating the symptom, when what we really need to do is use preventative care to treat the root of the problem - corn subsidies and education.