Doesn't anyone remember that it's "UNABOMer"?

> Doesn't anyone remember that it's "UNABOMer"?

No, the FBI investigation was named “UNABOM”, the popular media name assigned to the perpetrator before he was identified, inspired by that, was “Unabomber”.

“UNABOMer” seems to be an attempt to preserve the sound of the latter while making it more consistent with the former, but is historically inaccurate.

My working definition of "too clever" is:

If you have to spend time explaining 'what' the code is doing, it is "too clever".

If you have to spend time explaining 'why' the code is doing something.. then "them's the breaks working in a complicated world".

Code should only be as complex as the problem domain.

The Romans called it decimation.

Though, Twitter would need to make the layoffs random, force co-workers to escort the laid off off premises, and take away perks for a few weeks... If that's what they were angling for.

You don't raise a rebel by telling them it's okay to play on the roof.

You raise a rebel by telling them "I don't want to see you on that motherfucking roof!"

Then, when they are ready, they will go to the roof.

You provide the back pressure and their job is to overcome it.

How much back pressure? That's an exercise left to the parent.

For my money, I want the few rebels who survive helicopter parents.

These kids may be milquetoast with no sense of evaluating risk.

Then the marauders will thank you for your pile of guns as well.

I sometimes think that the whole fashion around "prepping" is few hardcore survivalists ensuring that there will be lots of food, fuel and weapons stockpiled by the clueless masses and easily accessible after the apocalypse.

Like Civil Defense?

A lot of the back-and-forth here reminds me of:

"Note that, with careful optimization, only 14 gajillion messages are necessary. This is still too many messages; however, if the system sends fewer than 14 gajillion messages, it will be vulnerable to accusations that it only handles reasonable failure cases, and not the demented ones that previous researchers spitefully introduced in earlier papers in a desperate attempt to distinguish themselves from even more prior (yet similarly demented) work."

from James Mickens' "The Saddest Moment" - https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login-logout_1305_micken...

This is such an elegant way to phrase my general sense of frustration I felt reading certain exchanges here. Thanks =)

1. I see your pedantry and raise you a "Honduras is in Central America"

Some would argue Central America is a subset of North America.

I don't engage devil's advocacy.. only pedantry.

To me.. the core idea is that (given one chooses, over and over, from a bunch of independent and identically distributed events.):

There are more ways for everything to happen than there are ways for one thing to happen over and over.

His point about the bastardization of "cut and paste" is very important in my opinion. Hell, he ends with this..

Bringing a complex tangle of code to heel becomes tractable if you just print it out, cut it up, and rearrange the parts.

It would be fairly sexy to be able to do this on your computer... granted, you need a lot of screen space to pull it off.

Oh, and I'm ignorant of Ted Nelson.... But it seems fairly obvious these talks are meant to be taken with some humour.

Its a sexy read.

James Mickens is AKA "Galactic Viceroy of Research Excellence"

http://microsoftjobsblog.com/viceroy-james-mickens/

The LeBron James of Computer Science

http://www.livescience.com/40023-james-mickens-microsoft-s-l...