codeglomeration

"I secretly chuckle at how I've never once met a Chinese citizen who has felt oppressed, in China."

A lot of people fail to realize during these "I've been there and asked around" situations is that there is a fear or reprisal, especially in regimes that prosecute dissident views, and especially in those persons you ask don't know/trust you.

How do the people know who you are and whether you have ties to the government to confide in you? They know they and their families can be sent to jail and persecuted just for stating an opinion. What's the benefit of telling you about their beliefs? The downside is quite obvious.

Don't take for granted these "I've asked them and they said it's fine" encounters.

Put yourself in your shoes, living in that regime. Would you confide in someone looking like a traveller/stranger in such a regime?

I don't get the nobleness. If he wanted to donate to charity, why didn't he do so with his own money? He basically took other people's money from an honor system, intended for solely different purpose and decided to donate that. How is that noble?

He just decided this honor system is not to his liking and decided to screw it up. That makes ou an a*hole. After all this time, not realizing his own douchebaggery just makes him look like a pretentious douche bag. The worst kind.

That's why it's called an honor system. It's based on trust. Not on any guarantee that it can't be circumvented. Of course it can. But if you do, I fail to see how that wouldn't make you an a*hole.

Oh man, I've tried numerous time to buy something using Steam and was never able. If you have a card issued in a country and you are traveling abroad, good luck making a purchase. Even if you change the billing address registered with the credit card to the same country you're traveling to and making a purchase from, it won't go through.

I would not give Steam as an example of a successful payment system implementation.

This sounds more like social engineering to me. My first thought was this was a hacker who took control of an email address from the security firm, and just tried to exploit the weakest link in order to get plaintext passwords.

I think you need to act on this, rather than just keep making promises. I also believe you would have helped already if you really wanted to.

You're essentially asking her right now to be a beggar, and putting her into an even more degrading position. What do you expect her to do? Write you that she needs $1000 for a new laptop, $100 for a new door, $50 for new locks?

Put yourself in her shoes. Doubt you would do that.

EDIT: Also, you can't have it both ways. If you state you're going to help her, then help her. Otherwise just state it's out of AirBnbs' reach, and the hosts should have insurance and pay carefull consideration to who they rent.

You're coming of as disingenuous in your remarks.

Mark Suster has a more in depth post about hiring based on attitude not aptitude. http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/03/17/whom-should-yo...

Another problem that Android has is with the availability of the Market. Right now there are not many countries where you can purchase apps. Which is irritating for a lot of users who buy these phones, only to find out that they cannot purchase apps. So most try to find free apps. Some root their phones and pirate them.

Agree. While it's great to have a demo available if it pops up in a conversation, power pitching can be annoying. Especially if it's done by somebody who exhibits the traits of poor salesmen.

It's also about creating new markets. Identifying something along the way and taking your business in a different direction. There are successful businesses today started out as something else, and evolved in time.

This continuous change of the landscape might work very well for the guy who's behind the competition and doesn't make all the money yet. Those that make the money are usually reluctant to experiment with new paths. They usually fear risking what they've got.

It's basically so unpredictable and things evolve so fast right now, that it's a wild guess what you, or you competition could look like in 2 years.

EU based jobs would be highly appreciated.

The point seems to be that it doesn't do all the things that the author wants it to do. And, it doesn't have to.

Anybody who knows what his talking about is not saying that computers are dead, and that tablets are the way forward. In the same way, nobody is complaining that smartphones are crap because it's hard to create content on them.

Obviously the use cases are different.

Now would somebody who mostly consumes content ditch the computer for a tablet? Possibly. Would somebody who creates content ditch the computer for a tablet or smartphone? Doubt it.

At the same time, this is not a zero sum game. People can own a computer and tablet.

Agree. The point was that it's more of a principle not buying the .ly domains rather than something having a real economic impact.

I would say buying their oil has more of an influence, rather than owning a .ly domain. The earning for the domains are probably insignificant compared to the oil.

I think Joel and Jeff touched on the issues discussed in the article in their podcasts.

And Jeff always proclaimed that the purpose of the site is a very pragmatic one. To be a source of help for the specific professional community. Not a place to meet your buddies and hang out.

And there's a place for both. Personally, I like that StackOverflow stays away from too much social interaction and focuses on providing valuable technical content.

He was referring to the fact that once you've made significant investments in a platform + applications + DRM content, it's not really straightforward to move to another platform, especially because you cannot transfer the content you already paid for.

Also let's not forget about early termination fees from carriers, or getting another subscription just to get another phone.

For some people moving to another platform can be a significant expense. And for most people it's not really clear what else you might be missing on the other platform, that you were accustomed to using now.

Maybe it's part of their long term strategy. For now just require validation of fake sounding names. But as soon as you have critical mass, roll out the requirement for everybody to validate their names with valid IDs in order to continue using the system. That would make sense for the current state or requiring IDs for fake names.

Then they can go to advertisers or just blatantly sell the data if it doesn't work out.

Regardless if their intentions are good or bad, this data in the wrong hands can cause nuisance.

From the screenshot of the secret page: "Also, we can only give you a Chrome notebook if you live in the United States and ... "

I find it such a shame that these types of conditions are so popular for most contests / easter eggs, etc.

Are the legal issue regarding this that complex?

I'm assuming Google is not really that cheap regarding postage costs, since we're also only talking about 1 notebook here.

Also interested how it all worked out for Jamendo, since (from what I see) they're based in Luxembourg.

You know you can disable data transfer for roaming right?

Multiple contributors does not necessarily mean pair programming.

My problem with pair programming is that it doesn't allow me to get in the mental state of "flow". The most productive state at least for me is when, for a period of time, I'm so focused on the job at hand, that I'm not aware of my surrounding. This is where my most productive work happens. You're completely immersed and focused.

When pairing I never can get into that state because I keep getting interrupted with "name that method x", "move that method before that method", "refactor now". It really breaks my focus.

I find it useful when tracking obscure bugs, where you can bounce ideas off of someone and basically nail the problem faster.

Oh yeah. Cause if you're already using the mouse to navigate it's so fricking hard to click. And the whole graphics with the mouse and hand, just hides away all the content, so I have to go to extremes to be able to reveal the content. And I mouse over something else by mistake and the whole content changes.

This is not an improvement. This is horrible usability.

I thought this was supposed to be a UI design that doesn't require the use of the mouse.

That was my main reason for not picking UK when deciding to work abroad, even though that was my first preference because of the English language. Eventually I ended up moving to the Netherlands, because of their more liberal policies.

Your visa being tied to an employer can pretty easily turn into exploitation, if you end up picking the wrong employer.

But seriously, even worse is the appearance of how you're being treated. Why would I want to live there under those conditions?

This measure can't really attract talent. I don't see what good developers - in their right mind - would accept those terms. There are other better options.

> There is _always_ going to be a better tool for any job, but the criteria for said 'right tool' I think needs to be perfectly spelled out.

It is difficult to perfectly spell out and continue innovating at the same time. Just look at W3C. They're so far behind standardizing, that the industry in the current state has moved so for ahead ahead. Like I said, there are different motivations for people picking certain technologies, and when those motivations fall outside of picking the right tool for the right job, it's probably a bad idea. You can't really standardize this industry because it's evolving so fast. just look at technology 10 years ago. It's a totally different landscape. This couldn't have happend with standardization.

> Is it a tool that is the most conceptually pure? Is it the one that we can hire developers for easily?

I think it's a mistake to hire people based on a skill set and not the capabilities or potential. Technologies come and go, and as a business, you mind end up at a point where you realize you need to switch technologies, for a good reason (either the one that you're using isn't appropriate or your business model has changed and you need a different tool, or whatever reason). If you're left with developers who only know how to do one thing and can't switch technologies, you're probably going to have a hard time.

> Software developers are amazingly good at coming up with a plethora of rhetoric why they should or shouldn't do anything. Look at their motives closely and you'll discover some interesting driving factors...

I agree. Just like there are competent and incompetent developers, you have developers making choices for the right or wrong reasons. That's why hiring is a difficult process, because distinguishing between these types is not straightforward. That's why there's a fight right now for talent. That's why there's a huge gap between the professionals. Because it's not a standard, and things move too fast to set things in stone.

> Some smart people are interested in this stuff, but that doesn’t mean it’s about to transform the industry.

I would argue it already has. Now, has it transformed the entire industry? Obviously no. Just like there's no silver bullet, you have to pick the appropriate tool for the job. Having an understanding about the tools available will aid you in making better decisions.

Are there people overexcited about scalability? Of course. Just like there are people obsessed about premature optimization, choosing languages for a product for the wrong reasons, or trying to push a project in the direction of their skill set rather the most appropriate.

The skill comes with the ability to pick the right tool for the right job. And for that you have to be aware of the options.

I don't think they're using peer to peer. From what I know they use local syncing on the client and the content is uploaded via SSL, and stored encrypted on EC2 storage.

It will gradually pick up in a few minutes. I've had that before too. Not sure why sometimes it starts up slowly.

I would say that if your area is web development, your best options are the Ruby language and the Ruby on Rails framework, or the Python language and the Django framework.

You really can't go wrong with any of those.

I come from a .Net background and currently learning Ruby and Rails, and I'm impressed. Ruby is a very expressive language, not at all verbose, has good libraries and the community for the Ruby on Rails framework is impressive.

Before making the choice of what I wanted to learn myself, I spent a bit of time comparing the two and decided to go with Ruby.

heh. That's pretty much a reference post now, I see.

The ranges are all over the place. But I would say for a competent developer they start around $50 per hour. Under this rate, and especially at the lowest rates, quality becomes a gamble. You might be able to find someone competent living in a country with lower costs of living, offering a lower rate, but usually if they're good, their rates will just be slightly lower, especially since iOS development is such in a high demand now. There's a post on StackOverflow (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/209170/how-much-does-it-c...) that contains a lot of information about what it means to build a quality application, and that will give you some idea of the time frame you can expect. There are also some mentions of websites where you can look for hire.