Czarnian

Who's their compliance officer and what are their qualifications? Without that kind of disclosure, they have forced me to conclude that they are full of shit. Without basic information and contact info about their compliance structure, they have no business making this kind of claim. It's just press release nonsense.

It's probably some combination of people downloading the app and signing up for the free service. It is most likely not a reflection of how people use the app on a regular basis or pay for the service.

Good luck, guys. It's a tough row to hoe considering all of the major agricultural machine manufacturers (Case, Deere, etc.) have some variation of this service coupled with world-wide dealer networks to sell it. If you think you're going to be able to wedge yourself between farmers and the dealers that they have been dealing with for years and in some cases generations, best of luck with that.

Interesting idea, but the best they can hope for is a talent acquisition buy-out.

The thing that immediately jumps to mind after reading this article is my grandfather's stories about the old mining towns. These were places where the local employer (the mining company) had so much political clout that they became de facto dictators and pretty much did whatever they wanted with impunity. The lack of accountability led to business practices that were devastating to the locals. Miners were doing dangerous work in ridiculously unsafe conditions. When they weren't working, the company used various tactics to manipulate them into not leaving. The most well-known being the Company Store, which sold goods at prices that were just beyond what the miners could afford (surprisingly easy when the owner of the store is the same company who signs the paychecks.) But they were very willing to give credit. Nobody complained because that would earn a visit from some thugs in the mood for breaking fingers and kneecaps.

This arrangement strikes me as the Company Town on a massive scale. Without a legal framework that exists outside of their own best interests, I don't see how this kind of thing doesn't devolve into the Company Town.

I would expect "entrepreneurial solutions to government" to be at best neutral on human rights. Protecting human rights requires a great deal of political will to codify and then enforce. And it usually goes against the perceived best interests of the powers that be. It took a hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation (and the 14th Amendment) for the US to codify equal rights for minorities. On a cultural level, we still have way too many people who pine for the days when they could lynch a black man with no repercussions. I see no reason to think this enterprise would be able to muster the kind of political morality and will to go out of their way to protect human rights.

Yes, the Framers were a sort of political entrepreneur. They were the type of political entrepreneurs who allowed slavery to exist and came up with the 3/5ths compromise.

I can honestly say I learned far more about critical thinking in a single Intro to Philosophy class than all of my CS coursework combined.

Learning how to code has about as much real-world utility as learning how to rebuild an engine block. It's necessary to know if you're in the industry. It's interesting information if you like that sort of thing. For everyone else, it's a non-factor. They'll never be in a position where coding will solve a problem for them. Even if they are made aware of a potential solution involving code, they won't be bothered to try. Knowing how to change the oil in your car is a far cry from wanting to change the oil in your car.

It wasn't a typo. It was just a garden-variety spelling error. Thanks for pointing it out. I'll try to remember the correct spelling in the future.

I guess I hold myself to a higher standard than you do. I have old-fashioned ideas. Writers should be competent enough in the fundamentals that even their informal remarks meet a certain standard of composition. When you are a good writer, you put the same level of care into your work regardless of the purpose. Quite frankly, a writer who thinks, "The editor will catch it," doesn't deserve to be paid for the job. It's bad craft.

AKA: Laziness. (Edited to fix spelling pointed out by child comment. Thanks.)

I don't require perfection, just competence. If you don't care enough about your output to make it easily understandable (I don't have to put effort into deciphering your words), why should I care about it?

Probably the same reason they don't recognize plagiarism when it jumps up and bites them on the ass.

I prescribe a copy of Strunk and White with a healthy dose of proofreading.

I must be reading this differently than a lot of people. I don't think he's talking about actual business people. People with demonstrated experience, skill, and/or ability.

It sounds more like he's talking about the idea tourist. The guy who truly believes that the secret to start-up success is:

1. Have an idea. 2. . . . 3. Make money.

I think we can all agree that the idea tourist is annoying. If all you bring to the table is something as ephemeral as an idea, just keep walking. I've got no time for you.

It's all on him. He could have avoided the whole thing if he just had the foresight to keep a few hundred bucks in his account as a reserve against charge-backs.

It looks like Square adhered strictly to their end of the terms of service. They did exactly what they always said they would do. Jason is the one who screwed up and then demanded special treatment and then got huffy when they didn't give him special treatment.

Except it's not a very good idea. It's actually a very poor business practice.

Dude's got no one else but himself to blame. If he's taking credit card transactions, he should be holding a reserve in the relevant account for exactly this sort of situation. His lack of foresight is the root cause of the entire mess. As the saying goes, "Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."

Safety-critical software is any software where failure can result in death/severe injury to a person or loss/severe damage to equipment/property.

There are concrete answers to the question. Many languages are just flat not capable of being safety-critical.

Being non-deterministic is a non-starter for safety or mission critical systems.

One of the foundational concepts of safety-critical design is strict scheduling of resources. The schedule must be strictly deterministic. The process must get it's work done in the time allocated because the scheduler will move on regardless. It's why you don't do recursion in safety-critical systems. Strictly speaking, you're not even supposed to use while loops in safety-critical systems. In the five years I worked in avionics, the only time I saw a while loop was in code review where the person who wrote it (always a new person) was directed to take it out.

All that being said, safety-critical software production is more about the processes than coding. Even crappy programmers can be taught how to write good safety-critical code when the company adheres to best practices.

As far as the original post, Ada and C. Ada has tremendous support for concurrency and is stable as the day is long. Not much in the way of libraries, but honestly not that important on the kinds of projects you would use Ada to build.

Agreed. My experience is that there is way too much emphasis on languages, libraries, and frameworks. Nobody really talks about the methodologies of building software. For any given day on HN, how many articles are about how such-and-such extension for this-and-that language is the best thing since the great pyramids and how many are about how code review can help reduce bugs? Or how to more effectively gather requirements? Or anything about comprehensive testing practices (unit tests are just a small part of effective testing.)

Software for banking and insurance is like this. The product has to accommodate different rules for all 50 states and federal oversight. Changes to just about anything need to be cleared by the relevant state and federal agencies.

Another big difference between physical engineering and information engineering is that when an overpass is completed, the project is done. If you're lucky, someone will come by and look it over or maintain it over the years. There's no such thing as "done" software. When a program wraps up, everybody rushes back in and starts monkeying with it for the next iteration.

Serious question. What exactly is he right about?

I'm sure all of your coworkers are very thankful to have a super-hero like you around to protect them from all the mortal dangers that pop up in the office on a daily basis.

If I heard you going on and on about how it's unfair that your expected to hid fear and put the safety of all the women-folk before your own, I wouldn't think you were a whiner, I'd think you have a damned screw loose.

Read what you wrote, man. We're not talking about the wilderness of Afghanistan, we're talking about a cube farm. Your macho baggage has no place in that setting. If you can't get rid of it, at least suppress it long enough to not burden your co-workers with it.

- Why do women wear low-cut dresses if not to attract male attention (in the majority of cases)?

It's none of your concern why a woman dresses the way she does. As long as she isn't violating company policy, she is under no obligation to justify her wardrobe to anyone else. And if she is violating company policy, that's between her and HR, not you.

I imagine "Don't make women feel unwelcome." would go a long way towards reducing the need for "Make women feel welcome."

Do you think that the overtly sexist nature of these little frat-parties come hack-a-thons might have any bearing on the lack of women in the tech industry?

Last I checked, women generally don't like being treated like perks.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a "well" planned document.

If it's a joke, where's the punchline? Were they not going to have women servers? Were the massage people going to be big, hairy, biker types?

It's not even a prank. It's a couple of half-educated, drunken frat-boys who wanted to throw a frat party disguised as a hack-a-thon. For it to be a prank, there would have to be a punchline.

Had they hired a bunch of Chippendale's dancers to serve booze (because alcohol does wonders for your productivity) and big hairy bikers to give massages (as opposed to the girls in tight t-shirts they no doubt retained for the event,) would be a prank.

You are correct. Most men like women. However, there is a time and place for men to express their admiration for women. An event like this (as represented to prospective sponsors) is neither.

The feat of building that kind of app is impressive. I sure as heck can't do it, yet. I do have a few comments, though.

Refine your data classification. On one of your screenshots, you are listing "Arrests" as a type of crime. That's confusing. Also, consider filtering for violent crime rather than crime in general. That would be more in line with the stated purpose of your app.

Realign the usage from a real-time application to a planning application. You don't want your users to be fiddling with a smartphone in a bad neighborhood. That really increases the odds of getting mugged and defeating the purpose of the app.

I agree with some of the other posters that you should tone down the alarmist tone of the app. If nothing else, it's more professional.

Congratulations on your experiment.

I'll probably lose a bunch of karma over this, but here goes.

This is my takeaway from the article:

The pragmatic approach means that the company (media companies) should accommodate the folks who:

1) Are so emotionally damaged that they can't perform the simple act of opening a door without making a mess (pay a couple of bucks for content that they like.) 2) Are so ill-mannered that they have no respect for the people they share a space with (take content without the creator's permission.) 3) Are so poorly socialized that any attempt to correct their behavior causes them to act out like a 5 year old by making a bigger mess (downloading even more stuff that they don't even really want.) 4) Are so lazy that they can't be bothered to take the simple action of taking the towel back to their desk and putting it in their own trash can (using the distribution channels the creator asks them to use.)

I find his argument unconvincing.

If you need to be told to put trash in a trash basket, you deserve to be condescended to. If you don't want to be treated like a child, don't act like a child.

Although I think this is a bit of an apocryphal anecdote, I presume this is happening in a professional setting. Messages of this type require a bit more tact than what you're suggesting.

Similarly, I have a friend who is in the comic book industry. When he does signings, he brings a bunch of his original work (covers, pages, etc.) with him to sell. He has about 5-10 pieces that he prices at 10x the similar pieces. One time I asked him why cover x was so much more expensive than cover y from the same series.

He said that he's particularly proud of those pieces and that price pretty much guarantees that whoever buys it will take care of it. They'll put it in a proper frame and display it somewhere where it can be appreciated. As opposed to the less expensive pieces which may go in a sleeve and put on a shelf.

I just released my first iPhone app: http://www.wrestlingscorecard.com and priced it at $4.99 ($1 more than the other app on the app store.) I set the price point based on what I thought the app was worth, not on an expectation of sales. I haven't received enough reviews or ratings to show on iTunes, but the feedback I've gotten has been mostly positive. Even the complaints have been extraordinarily polite.