i interpreted kirsh's claim as:

"in spite of the theoretical procedural differences in assigning faith, both camps are substantially influenced by culture and tradition.

i like making stuff. consuming less actually helps me be more creative, feel more satisfied, live more customized, and earn practical skills.

amen. kids are expensive, especially without that fat health insurance package from a real job.

i don't assume we shouldn't exclude the middle, except that's where a wealth of experience and wisdom comes from.

maybe. it would be interesting to see what trends occur in vastly different cultures than the western individualistic, self-centered one.

for example, the Great Law of the Iroquois states, "In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations."

i am completely ignorant of Iroquois economy and lifestyle otherwise. nonetheless, the optimist (or perhaps sci fi reader) in me imagines a (near?)-future in which people are motivated not simply be money, but also by joy, inclusiveness and sustainability.

the effectiveness of rules depends on cultural context (or complete domination of free will).

when i first read the title three meanings came to mind:

1. how do you back up data?

2. how do you back up 'progress' (eg, code commits, releases)?

3. what is your plan B (eg, this startup failed, what do i do next)?

maybe it's just me, but verbal communication is funny.

I couldn't tell whether he was intentionally hiding wisdom behind a front of "winning" and "competitiveness", or whether I am able to take the positive out of any statement and ignore the negative.

He offered some good advice.

A discussion is a process of understanding multiple perspectives and finding a resolution that satisfies all parties.

yuck.

i agree with you in spirit. for me, the social/political difficulties are even larger obstacles than the technical.

well, you did say obvious vandalism. anything other than nonsense could be a trial by fire to "correct".

there was a satire making the reddit rounds (and presumably hn?) a few months back in which editing wikipedia was extrapolated to time traveling, complete with inane policy discussions.

found it: http://www.abyssandapex.com/200710-wikihistory.html

js itself isn't so important.

already the desktop UI approach (think Java AWT/Swing) is gaining traction, eg GWT.

nonetheless, if using js directly, the js itself isn't so important: * use a good js library with helpful abstractions for DOM traversal, manipulation, etc * use good js frameworks, eg for compiling data plus templates into html * use ajax to get html

Do you actually know anyone who uses GWT? I have not heard good things about it. I personally would rather ues plain javascript with jquery.

I actually use GWT, and my advice is to be very careful.

I've managed to have bugs that show up in the browser that I have had an amazingly difficult time tracking down. You get a pile of javascript from your pile of java, and it can be hard to tell where the bug is at all.

Complexity is dangerous, and GWT is fantastically complicated. I haven't run into a GWT compilation bug, but I'm sure there exists such a thing, and the day I run into it I will simply sit down and cry because I have no other recourse.

(But when it works, I guess its kind of a nice way to build UIs, if you like Java-style UI APIs... I've never met such a person, but I'm sure they exist ;))

Kdice.com, a game much like Risk, was done with GWT by one guy, and he wrote a book on GWT.