You should read up on why Microsoft got the DOS deal. When IBM decided to build their PC, they first sent representatives to visit Microsoft thinking they had an OS in development. However, they didn't at the time, and Gates actually told them to go visit Kildall instead.
When the IBMers arrived at Kildall's house, they got told to wait because Kildall was busy handgliding that day (or something similar). They waited the whole day before deciding they had enough and left.
It's only then that Gates saw an opportunity, and told IBM they could provide an OS.
I'm not sure to what extent the problem is due to economics and to what extent it's due to culture. I read recently that half of single men in Japan are virgins, which is quite staggering. Lots of Japanese people seem to have simply "dropped out" of the idea of having an intimate relationship, replacing that with video games and pornography.
When I lived in Japan, what struck me was how infantile and coddled the whole culture seemed: lots of "kawaii" anime everywhere, in advertisements, on product wrapping, etc. Signs everywhere telling you how to act (in grocery stores they have footprint markings on the floor to tell you what path to follow...). Grown men watching anime about little girls. I wonder if all this is creating a masculinity crisis in Japan.
> All Africans are black and all Europeans are white? That's a new one.
In terms of race, yes. But of course, in terms of citizenship, no. You have white south africans and black europeans obviously. But obviously white south africans hail originally from europe and black europeans hail originally from africa.
> Its categorization is very much country dependent - Hispanic people are often not considered white in America
Hispanic is not a race. Latin american history is complex and a lot of mixing happened. You do have hispanics who are predominantly european and are considered white in the USA, and they're appropriately called "white hispanics".
> while no one would be making that distinction in Europe.
Where do you get that from? I'm pretty sure a guy looking like Hugo Chavez would stand out in Sweden.
> On the contrary, Europeans often don't consider Arabs white, even though they often look white.
Same thing, what's an arab? The term arab is applied to people as distinct as yemenites, moroccans and syrian alawites. It's not a racial category. It's true that levantines can look white (Bashar al Assad for instance).
> The US and Europe have things like 'white', 'black', 'asian' but Latin Americans are much more nuanced. There are people that would be considered 'white' in Brazil and 'black' in the US. There are also things like passing [1] and so forth.
You're cherry picking. It's true that mixed race individuals (like a lot of Brazilians) are hard to classify, because they're precisely mixed! Same thing with other "border populations" like Turks. I'd like to see a full blooded Nigerian attempt to "pass" as Japanese in Japan. You know very well that is a ridiculous idea.
> All I'm saying is, this has nothing to do with the results of a 23andme sequencing run, which would provide details about your ancestry.
Ancestry and race are the exact same thing, since racial characteristics are passed down genetically. You're just playing semantics.
> Race (in the US sense) correlates pretty weakly with ancestry
It actually correlates really well. For instance, having all of your ancestors moving from Europe a hundred years ago correlates pretty well with you ending up white (and not a pygmy or australian aboriginal).
> Race (in the US sense) correlates pretty weakly with ancestry, e.g. all the early humans for most of human history were black.
I don't even know what to say to that. I guess we're all unicellular organisms too, if you go even further back...
> I didn't say Africans and Europeans, I said black people and white people.
Same thing
> A black person from Africa and a black person from elsewhere are considered the same race because of their visual similarities, regardless of their background. That's the social construct.
And also perhaps because they actually are from the same race? Do you consider all the current inhabitants of the USA to be native americans?
> It can be inaccurate enough that it isn't useful, though.
That's true, but racial categories are really accurate, especially in this age of cheap DNA testing. As for usefulness, I'd say it's pretty useful in the medical field, for instance certain drugs work in some races but not in others due to racial differences in body chemistry.
> Two black people living in the same area, sharing the same cultural and ethnic identity, can differ more genetically than either with a white immigrant.
I'm pretty sure that's false. What is true is that africans exhibit a great amount of genetic diversity, i.e. two africans will typically be more genetically different than two europeans. But the genetic distance between either of those two africans and either of those two europeans will still be even greater.
> In other words, that "black" is a race, and "white" is a race, etc, is entirely a social construct, which should be non-controversial given that these categories were created and solidified, culturally and politically, long before genetic science was even a thing.
It's a social construct to the same extent as colors are a social construct, which were formulated long before the theories of electromagnetism was even a thing.
A thing being a social construct doesn't mean it doesn't describe an underlying reality. That applies to any category invented by mankind. For instance, considering plants and animals, or even living beings and inanimate objects, as belonging to different categories is also a social construct. Because, after all, they're all just an association of atoms.
What do you mean by racism? Discriminating against people based on their race? I think the reason we've forced ourselves not to be racist is because it's morally wrong.
All dog breeds are part of the same species, and dog breeds are fundamentally a social construct. Does this mean that we need to stop categorizing dogs into breeds?
I find it hard to understand how some people still cling to 1960s "there is no such thing as race" arguments while in the real world you can send a swab of spit to 23andme or similar services and get a precise breakdown of your ethnic background down to the percentage.
1) Art of Unix programming - amazing book, lots of "ah-ha" moments. Enlightening is the word I suppose.
2) Mythical man month - very uneven. Some chapters are insightful, some are hopelessly outdated. It's short though so it's not too hard to finish.
3) Flowers for Algernon - meh
4) Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh - fun pop sci, enjoyed it
5) Whatever and Elementary Particles by Houellebecq - really liked them (especially Whatever), but I'm not sure I would recommend them since they're so... dark
I'm surprised Bezos doesn't empathize more with the working class, especially given his own humble origins. In fact, I find it hard to discern his personality.
Edit: of course it is up to individual judgement on a case by case basis, and there are instances were it is obvious that no other concrete implementation of an interface will be required. But otherwise, writing an interface is good practice because it helps safeguard against time consuming future refactoring.
Why all the animosity towards "frat bros"? I worked in a "nerd only" environment before and I felt incredibly lonely. Nobody ever wanted to go out for drinks, nobody even talked during lunch.