alexscheelmeyer

One reason is that many developers work with package managers / languages that are INCAPABLE of handling multiple versions of the same dependency. Without this you quickly get version deadlocks without semver.

Another reason is that many developers are obsessing on getting the latest version of their dependencies for fear of security issues or just missing out on the latest and greatest - and they often completely ignore retesting the application since they now have someone to blame if it fails (that other developer should not have pushed the breaking change with a minor version bump!)

I agree with you that it should be the standard to have fixed versions and update your dependencies at a time of your choosing so that everything can get tested properly - but it seems to be an uphill battle.

Also discourages its citizens from leaving the country.

And for that extra API goodness you could do it through node and expose your fancy wide-screenshot-app to the world : https://github.com/alexscheelmeyer/node-phantom

New url for those getting 404 : http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/chaptersprobability.pdf

With fine print I meant answer to questions like "what do I get in a commercial license that I do not get in a personal license?" as it is written it could mean that with a personal license you are not allowed to earn money from apps, or it could mean that it would only cover a single developer (then how many developers do I get for the commercial license?)

Also by actually reading that license it seems to contradict what you promise elsewhere, it says: "All fees shall be non-refundable".

This is exactly what I am looking for and I would probably buy it if I had some reassurance that it would actually work. Where is the docs? The sample code? Proof of concept apps that can be downloaded from app stores? Fine print for what is allowed in the different licenses?

Given the sometimes arbitrary nature of these rejections, it would seem that a natural strategy would be to keep trying (with changes to meet their expectations) - at some point you should get it approved.

Is there some maximum tries that one get to show ones worth as a pubilsher?

Because Tesla do not have the privilege of printing money like banks do. Banks do not directly loan out money from depositors, they keep that money and print(punch in numbers in a computer) 10x that amount for loaning out.

That is a powerful privilege and the reason why it is smart to partner with a bank, even if you have money to spare.

"And it gives people a chance to point out what I am misunderstanding and educate me, if they really think I've gotten it wrong."

Just a friendly note that this notion will cause you much grief.

I used to think that it was the best way to quickly get to the point and figure out what is what in the matter. What happens instead is that people will call you an imbecile and go off on tangents about subjects they have recently read a story about instead of addressing the core issues, of which they know less about.

In reality most people do not know much about these complex issues and you will not really learn anything by trying to make them educate you. They are not able to.

You will need to investigate the issues yourself, including reading a lot of literature by those you think are wrong. Eventually you will be able to understand where those opposing viewpoints are coming from and if you are lucky you will learn something that can adjust your own views and you will no longer have the "us vs them" feeling and instead think of it as "those who are wrong on this point and those who are wrong on this other point".

Getting to that place is impossible by imploring others to educate you. They will at best try to convert you, which is entirely different.

"I have chosen to have a policy of NOT paying for my phone".

Suddenly it is all clear why you have gone through 16 phones.

He is simply saying that you should not bring a lollipop to a knife fight. Verbal confrontation and physical confrontation are very different. Trying to educate your opponent might work in a discussion on the merits some technical issue but will only serve to further provoke that drunk guy in the bar that wants to smash your face in. For some of us this lesson is hard to learn. But if we die because we did not learn it, it is the ultimate game over - you cant retry with a different perspective to win the argument, you lost. This changes the risk/reward scenario and being "nice" will not cut it. You will need to do everything in your power to prevent such irrevocable loss, including those things you would prefer not to do.

You can compare things on many aspects. The Zynga/Madoff comparison was on trajectory - meteoric rise followed by sharp fall. Such a trajectory characterizes the scam or fad. My point is that Yammer is a fad, Madoff was a scam and Zynga is probably a bit of both.

When a colleague of mine heard that Yammer was bought for 1 billion he exclaimed : "Oh, so THAT is what we should be doing - create a crappy product and get bought by Microsoft!". My point is that other factors than creating the crappy product is what gets you bought by Microsoft. There is no causal relationship between the quality of the product and the money received. Another similarity to Zynga/Madoff btw.

So the conclusion is that you are better off creating a quality product, despite such evidence to the contrary. Likewise you are better off providing real value to the world, despite some people getting rich by winning the lottery.

I am one who thinks "Yay! Another accelerator to the Microsoft death-spiral" when reading this.

I am not sure what data it is you want me to put in my data bank, as I do not buy your premise that getting bought by Microsoft is any kind of validation. Quite the contrary.

You can get rich by playing the lottery, just as you can get rich by making a crappy product that you manage to get enough hype around to get sold to Microsoft. It does not mean you should bet on the lottery as a viable business strategy.

Getting the world to think your crappy product is the newest silver bullet might be a viable way of making money (see Zynga, Madoff, et al), but it does not lend itself very well to reproduction.

If you have some specific details on what makes Yammer objectively superior to alternatives (and not just a fad) I am all ears though.

I would be more inclined to accept his message if it could not be boiled down to "If it is not working for you, you are not trying hard enough". Also, more marriages have probably failed due to the husband being a wimpy "I love you every day no matter what"-kind of guy than due to adultery. Adultery is the consequence of a failing marriage, not the cause. When you are the president with power over a nation it can counteract the wimpyness. For a software developer? Not so much.

I think one would need to start by testing a different question first : "With everything else being equal, should your language choice be affected by the level of competence of the developers?". It seems discussions on topics like this all boil down to clash between the idealist and the pragmatist. Idealist: "I want to use language X because it is powerful and lets me to Y". Pragmatist: "but that feature will be abused by the average developer and your project will suffer". So you can't win. Either you have to work in a mediocre language that the mediocre developer knows how to use, or you will work in a great language that the mediocre developer will use to shoot you in the foot. If the answer to the above question is no, then we can put this discussion to rest - otherwise we will need to probe further and understand how developer competence should guide your language choice.

I like how you apologize for stereotyping Java developers by clarifying that you really wanted to stereotype ALL kinds of developers.

I would say that knowledge is tied to separation due to the fact that in order for you to know a concept, you will need to know what separates it from everything else. Said in different words: Being able to see only one color is the same as not being able to see. You need at least two colors to see anything, as you need the contrast(separation) to see where something begins and/or ends.

+1, this has nothing to do with binary search and everything to do with the fact that almost any application written in those languages will have bugs that do not show until numbers nearing INT_MAX are used. Another given is that all applications that use recursion is bound to run into stack overflow errors/bugs when used on big data.

Both will work. The xor version is an old trick that many years ago was faster to execute. I do not think that is still the case, but there is still the difference that the XOR opcode is only one byte and the mov version is multiple, so it saves a few bytes in the executable.

I think they are entirely right in shutting down this outward facing display of unfinished ideas/projects.

I also think they could have done much better than just redirecting it to google.com. Instead of trying to emulate Apple, they should acknowledge that their culture is different and very nerdy. So I think what they should have done instead is to highlight that and use "labs" to instead show off their technical prowess, much in they same vein as what Festo has done : http://www.festo.com/cms/en_corp/9617.htm

A flapping wings robot, how cool is that?!

Google could really do something similar, and the world would love them for it. Instead they look more and more like a big corporation with all the boring "common sense" and mediocrity that comes with it.

Regarding the technology used. In this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWujsO2V2IA you can see lots of artifacts and also talk of point cloud data, so it is clearly not raytracing but rather point data rendering. All the repetition seen is because of the memory constraints. The point data is probably preprocessed and compressed in numerous ways, which makes it very difficult to do animations. But as others have mentioned, even as a last resort they should be able to just use this technology to render terrain/background and then use polygons for moving/animated objects. This would probably also utilized current technology better as the polygon pipeline would not just sit there unused.

Was it this one? http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/al...