This is a good thing, mostly because the concept of 'reputability' is not very viable.
A third party is reputable as long as it is 100% objective. And there is no such thing as 100% objectivity in human world. Everything is relative. Reputation of third party will be questioned and tried every time third party publishes questionable information, which is every time.
I would rather have two distinctly biased parties with clearly established interests publish their stories, and then I will be the judge on whose story is right.
That sounds great, but in practice I believe it is difficult and wastes time. You cannot be as good a filter as someone who does it for a living. Division of labor is the foundation of civilization. I don't try to fly my own 737, diagnose my own diseases, or try to filter propaganda and fact check issues I have no context for or experience with. I haven't the time, and it would be better spent, but if I did, I would most likely be constantly manipulated without my being aware of it.
The fact that it is effective marketing doesn't nullify the fact that it is misleading. In fact, those two properties go hand-in-hand most of the time (though not always).
How is it misleading? Saying that someone is in the "Top 5%" most viewed profiles is pretty straightforward. Just because there are a lot of people in the top 5% doesn't make it "misleading".
That's silly. "Doing the math" doesn't change how "elite" your status is, because "elite" is relative to the size of the total group being considered, just like percentages are. If you're in the top 3 of your high school graduating class that only had 3 people in it, does that make you part of an elite group? I think not.
Those people still were viewed more than 95% of all the rest, it doesn't matter if it's a group of 100, 1,000 or 1 million people - still pretty impressive.
Now I'm wondering what I need to do to market myself there...
Consider how many LinkedIn users are active. Probably fewer than 25%. I'm guessing the top 10% are the people who use LinkedIn a few times per month (like I do).
People who use LinkedIn actively will get way more views since they will be adding connections and viewing other people's pages more (LinkedIn emails people your contact info if you view their page).
At first, being top 5% made me feel popular. But considering the pool includes users who created an account 3 years ago and haven't touched it since, I'm not so sure.
Not disimilar to somebody informing me the other day that I'm in the top 2% of HN users by karma. Objectively pointless, and subjectively relies on ignoring the thousands of old or throwaway accounts to boost my ego (which is already healthy enough).
I think the author is missing a point here: Macbook Air is a full-blown computer (I run several VMs on mine), while Surface is a freaking tablet.
I am ok with 'wasted' space on a computer, because first, I expect OS to have a substantial footprint, and second - I can see, touch, and actually 'consume' the OS files.
I am not ok with wasted space on a tablet, because to me it is a glorified book reader/mp3 player; I expect to use all the available space for storage.
Wait, you are saying Surface is actually a computer (although a shitty one), not a tablet? Well, then MSFT completely failed to communicate this message. Which is pretty regular problem for MSFT.
> Macbook Air is a full-blown computer (I run several VMs on mine), while Surface is a freaking tablet.
You are wrong. The Surface Pro, which is what we're talking about here, is a full-blown computer just like the MBA. It can run VMs as well. Or any other software you can run on a windows laptop.
You only think it's unfortunate because you're thinking about a sympathetic defendant. Consider the opposite hypothetical: all those people suing mortgage lenders for predatory loans. A lot of those people are going to lose those cases. Should they get stuck with the mortgage lenders' legal bills?
Losing a (civil) case does not mean the plaintiff was in the wrong for having brought the case. Very often, people legitimately think they've been wronged, they submit the conflict to the courts for resolution, and the courts decide against them. That's why loser pays is the exception, not the rule. It's reserved for when people use the legal system simply to harass someone else, instead of submitting a legitimate grievance the resolution of which just happens to not come out in their favor.
What's exceptional is that the Institute for Justice http://www.ij.org took up Mr. Caswell's case pro-bono (after Caswell had spent $100k he'd borrowed to fight the case on his own). Standard legal procedure has the motel being taken possession of by the Govt., sold, and the proceeds being divided up amongst State and Federal law enforcement agencies. "Should the government win its case, it will sell off Caswell’s property and give the Tewksbury Police 80 percent of the take." http://www.wbur.org/2012/11/14/tewksbury-motel-owner-fights-...
Software changes in 7 years - people don't. [I mean the average person; individuals age and get more experienced, but new ones come in.]
Today's homo sapiens brains function the same way as in 2006. Productivity of mental workers responds to disruptions in the same way as in 2006.
A large majority of programmers and other people working now in IT are the very same people that were analyzed in 2006.
They have, but if you look at it in terms of fundamental change, then of course not.
For example, a cell phone from today isn't fundamentally different than a cell phone from a decade ago. They're both computers and can be used to make phone calls. But with the cellphone of today, I can have a virtual meeting with anyone from anywhere, face-to-face. That alone is a huge improvement for distributed teams.
