I'm not worrying. The fact that the market is being flooded with lots of (likely less skilled, because let's face it, fad majors attract fad-following types that aren't really as much interested in the subject matter as much as making money) programmers means I can charge a premium for my skills.
Edit: Of course, you better damn well be sure that your differentiation from the rookies is fairly obvious to the casual viewer of your resume.
Normal Lua's performance is also quite decent (especially compared to its peers: Python, Ruby, and Perl), and has a very clear path for moving hotspots out to C. LuaJIT's performance is just a bonus. :)
This actually points out the issue perfectly: Khan Academy is great for people who are actually interested in learning. They seek out the website themselves and are already motivated to watch. General education seems to me like it contains a lot of teaching things to the unwilling.
At the community college there is a lot of unwillingness, as you put it. It's what makes the job tough. I care much more about my students' education than most of them do.
I'm bad at motivating people. I suspect that to be a great teacher one should be great at motivating people. Knowledge of the subject isn't as important as I once thought it was.
What is a problem now is that there is no current mechanism for the self motivated to use Khan Academy or MIT's open courseware and get credit for it.
"I don’t make idle threats. I have all kinds of information about this person, and I’m going to be keeping an eye on him, this particular domain, and any other domains run by him or his host that access my servers."
So what's your proposal to deal with such a problematic behaviour?
The guy is quite nice - he only made the thieve risk his reputation by the consequences of his own action. He didn't involve anything like law enforcement, the hosting company or the banners network - which would have cost them time thus money.
All he did is take some of his own time so that the scraper would get the "accusing" version of the website next time. He fixed that at his own expenses.
I believe many of us wouldn't have been that nice. And yes I believe he should keep an eye on this thief, because from what he said (the games didn't play) the guy didn't spend a lot of time on that borked job.
For all we know, this might be his full time job - copying websites, replacing copyright notices and authors, making money out of it with banners. All he needs is a process that scales well financially to be a "scamtreupreneur" (Couldn't find a word so I made up one. Do I get karma claims on that word?? :-))
With bots, selecting target websites etc. it might be possible to make a living out of it while true entrepreuneurs are starving in bootstrapped companies :-/
I don't know if the poster was criticizing the owner's response; I read it as just an observation about the state of things. Also, you're right - the thief got off easy.
So, I have an interesting perspective to share. I'm graduating and might end up working for Kayak. I know at least part of their infrastructure depends on ITA, and while the existing contract goes until 2013 (I think), Google is obviously looking to compete. Kayak also recently filed for IPO.
It's not like Google has never failed at any of its ventures, but to me it seems like it might be a tough competitor to everyone in this field, since a decent amount of traffic does come through search results. On the other hand, I think a majority of users come in directly, either through WOM or advertising or previous use.
So, what is HN's thoughts on the situation for Kayak? Would it be a wrong move to accept a job there? The engineers seem smart, the work is interesting, the culture is sane and easygoing. What's the worst that could happen?
Kayak is a great company and this is a fascinating time to be in travel search. Go for it! A first job under Paul English (even a few layers beneath him) is a big win and Kayak's engineering reputation so great that you'll have plenty of opportunities down the road.
So in summary: Worst scenario is pretty darn good for you!
I wouldn't discount a company because they're competing with Google. There are a lot of companies that have competed with Google and have successfully out-competed them (likewise, there are a lot of companies that Google has acquired after failing to out-compete). You should look at Kayak on its own merits -- if the folks there are giving you a good offer, and you think the company has a good chance, then go for it.
I believe the consent decree was reported to say that ITA has to renew existing contracts until at least 2016. So that's 5 years before Kayak might, theoretically, lose access to QPX. Don't worry about it; 5 years of a good job is a good run.
Edit: Of course, you better damn well be sure that your differentiation from the rookies is fairly obvious to the casual viewer of your resume.