Absolutely brilliant. This needs to be watched by many, many people.

First example:

I want "software" that I can use to launch programs, manage my files and folders. Easy, right?

And yet in the 21st century we're being imposed GNOME 3 aka Gnome Shell (and unity).

Second Example:

I would love to watch videos on my computer screen.

And yet in the 21st century Nvidia, AMD, HP-cripple (with the exception of Intel) don't know that things cand and do move on the screen (incluiding video). And what we got as a resault is video tearing in the 21st century. No sync to VBlanc. Worst than in the time when motion picture camera was invented.

Required viewing. The last five minutes could really apply to anyone.

He missed a study on productivity. In Peopleware, Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister say:

Beginning in 1977, we have conducted some sort of a public productivity survey each year. So far, more than three hundred organizations worldwide have participated in these studies. From 1984 on, we have run our annual survey as a sort of public competition in which teams of software implementors from different organizations compete to complete a series of benchmark coding test tasks in minimal time and with minimal defects. We call these competitions Coding War Games. Here's how they work:

* The basic competing unit is a pair of implementors from the same organization. The pair members do not work together, but in fact members work against each other as well as against all the other pairs.

* Both pair members perform exactly the same work, designing, coding, and testing a medium-sized program to our fixed specification.

* As they go through the exercise, participants record the time they spent on a time log.

* After all participant testing is completed, the products are subjected to our standard acceptance test

* Participants work in their own work areas during normal work hours using the same languages, tools, terminals, and computers that they use for any other project.

* All results are kept confidential.

From 1984 to 1986, more than 600 developers from 92 companies have participated in the games. The benefit to the individual is learning how he or she compares with the rest of the competitors.

The benefit to the company is learning how well it does against other companies in the sample. And the benefit to us is learning a lot about what factors affect productivity, factors discussed in the rest of this chapter.

Individual Differences

One of the first results of the coding wars was proof of a huge difference between competing individuals. Of course, this had been observed before. Figure 8.1, for example, is a composite of the findings from three different sources on the extent of variation among individuals (shows figure)

Three rules of thumb seem to apply whenever you measure variations in performance over a sample of individuals:

* Count on the best people outperforming the worst by about 10:1

* Count on the best performer being about 2.5 times better than the median performer.

* Count on the half that are better than median performers outdoing the other half by more than 2:1

The top quartile, those who did the exercise most rapidly and effectively, work in space that is substantially different from that of the bottom quartile. The top performers' space is quieter, more private, better protected from interruption, and there is more of it.

Regarding autism & vaccines data mentioned, I feel claims about a link are unfounded (yet), but:
1) do you trust the way the data is collected and are they safe from manipulation?
2) what if a specific kind of people are vulnerable to autism when vaccinated? Assuming such a kind exists, then even if that kind might be small in numbers, if the vaccination causes autism to them with a big probability then you have a problem if you combine it with mandatory vaccination