I am sure that most designers and programmers working on games are driven by passion to make great games. But they will be hired, paid, and managed by another bunch who need to pay at least partial attention to making money. It is like the partnership between the start-up founders and venture capitalists: the fact that the latters are driven by desire to make money does not negate the passion of the former to make great apps.
And the point of the article is that if the incentives of money guys get subverted, their decisions will get subverted and that subversion which will trickle down the entire production chain.
Most of what's in a newspaper is junk food, but there are very worthy parts: I find columns in NYT by Krugman, Brooks and Douthat to be thought-provoking even if I don't agree. And I find feature pieces of social or economic trends to be enlightening and helpful in terms of understanding people and the workings of our world.
You might not find such understanding of people and of the world to be worthy goal in itself, but even so such an understanding is useful as a framing device or an anology store for general reasonsing. In the same way that a mastery of philosophy has value as a reasoning device.
And, there is the value as source of inspiration: pointers towards topics to read up on or ideas to incorporate into one's life/work
Sorry but that is flat out wrong. The SAT math and verbal sections are not about knowledge but about reasoning abilities. In fact, the "knowledge" (rules etc.) is given right along with the questions. Not anyone can get 800, only 1% of all test takers manage to get 770 or higher on the Math section. The reading section is even more difficult, the scores of the top 1% start at 760 there.
So if SOPA fails to pass and stops being an issue, will that boycott end or will it continue?
Going by PG's reasoning (If these companies are so clueless about technology that they think SOPA is a good idea, how could they be good investors?") then it should continue until there are major changes the leaderships of those companies. Right?
Also, I don't think what you're saying about the Gaussian distribution is true for GRE Subject tests as they have significantly varying distributions. Check out this table:
Skipping the Bachelor entirely might be one use case for the GRE subject test, but I think a more common use case is where the applicant to grad school has a Bachelor is a different field (Math grad going to CS school). I imagine one wouldn't need blow out grades in that case.
You mentioned the GRE, and I assume you mean the famous GRE general test. But another option to look at to prove mastery of material is the GRE subject test. While the GRE General is mostly an IQ test, GRE subject tests have a knowledge component to them. And, they are quite challenging: for the GRE CS test less than 1% of the test takers in the past 3 years achieved score above 900 (maximum score possible is 990).
EDIT: anyone interested can download the test booklet here which has an example test:
Amazon's advantage are mostly -though not entirely- in the superb logistics that allow them to undercut competitors' prices. Beyond low prices, there is not much that is unique and can't be duplicated.
I think GE at its prime had more intrinsic advantages and unique technologies than just superb logistics.
So it's not just that CS departments are graduating engineers who can't solves FizzBuzz, law schools are graduating lawyers who can't file a merger certificate.
This goes to the heart of what education should be about. Foundations and theory, or vocational training.
The problem with making predictions about a complex system (nonlinear system) like human civilization is that there are so many factors and variables that can affect the trajectory that accurate prediction is virtually impossible. You would think that, of all people, a physicist would appreciate that and thus refrain from making strong claims about the future trajectory of such a system.