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sebastianmarr's comments

sebastianmarr | 13 years ago | on: The Apprentice Programmer

I also live in Germany and am currently writing the thesis for my masters degree in CS. In my case, I wished I left college after getting my bachelor. I had a solid foundation of theoretical CS knowledge after 3 years. I continued to study only because I wanted the degree, in case I "need" it later to get a job.

For over a year now I didn't see any lectures, but have been working at a company instead. I had all my exams, the only thing I have left to do is my thesis. It's hard motivating yourself to do scientific work if you know you can get by just fine without it. And all just for a degree that doesn't matter (to me at least).

sebastianmarr | 13 years ago | on: Oxford Temporarily Blocks Google Docs

"In the absence of effective monitoring, it can be easy for over a million messages to be sent out before someone happened to notice."

Just wanted to point out this specific detail. They seem to be attacking the wrong problem, as many others already noted.

sebastianmarr | 13 years ago | on: Why you should not use Twitter for corporate customer service

First of all, the title of this post is pretty misleading. From reading it, I assumed some privacy nightmare story.

But the point the author makes is great: Think about the price of the customer service you receive. You're getting that service for free, so someone else has to pay for it.

sebastianmarr | 13 years ago | on: The Basement

Quite an interesting point. You suggest that the act of doing something mechanical does add emotional value to it. But what adds even more is time. Look at your Facebook posts from five years ago, or even your tweets from last year. Time passing makes you feel different about things.

I think the emotional appeal of those pictures pasted to the wall comes from the sheer age of them, in sharp contrast to the high tech equipment in the same room.

I am more concerned about the preservation of our postings than the emotional value. Things that really matter will produce the same emotions regardless of the medium.

sebastianmarr | 13 years ago | on: Attention Disorder or Not, Pills to Help in School

I find it interesting to what lengths parents go to improve their children's grades. The fact that grades indeed go up after taking those pills just make this worse: people believe to see "measurable" success.

“We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment. So we have to modify the kid." - To me that is the gist of the article. We failed to provide an enjoyable learning experience for kids, so we have to make them enjoy it.

sebastianmarr | 13 years ago | on: Is a resume relevant in the age of online courses and open source projects?

A resume is a listing of what you have done in your life that could be relevant to the job you are applying for. If that is an online course and a couple of open source projects, then this can be just as helpful to your future employer as a list of companies you have worked for.

To resume means to summarize. Your GitHub profile is not a summary, it is a raw dump of everything that you have done without weighting.

So, of course a resume is still relevant today. And it is still up to the applicant to present himself to the employer, because most of the time the applicant is looking for a specific job when the company is not looking for a specific employee.

sebastianmarr | 13 years ago | on: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

I think part of the problem is that it is considered to demonstrate wealth to have a full fridge. People feel good knowing that there is always enough to eat in their homes.

Another problem is the sheer distance to the next supplier of food. Supermarkets move outside of towns, so people feel it is best to go shop for a longer period of time when, in fact, they can't possibly plan their food needs. So a lot of stuff gets thrown away because it has gone bad or doesn't look as nice any more.

In Germany, we have organizations like "Die Tafel", that take food that is near it's best-before date out of supermarkets and distribute it to homeless and poor people. That to me looks like a much better use of the over-supply on food.

sebastianmarr | 14 years ago | on: My month as a vegetarian

I agree with the social pressure. I think it's only the transition phase that can get annoying with your friends. I guess once you are known as 'the vegetarian' amongst your friends everything's fine.
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