HN user
For once I'd really like to see Microsoft position its product as a high end product instead of always trying to undercut everybody on price.
If they think their product is better, then sell it as such. Actually say your product is better and therefore, it's going to cost more.
I've always thought about the ravages of war nowadays and how many countries are constantly in conflict. As a great admirer of this period in American history, I have to conclude war and pestilence have always been around and are more symptomatic of the human race than of some particular span of time. The reminders were quite eye opening.
My whole family have always been avid readers. Even the younger kids (13-18 years) still read and exchange books on a regular basis at our family gatherings. A while back I asked why none of them had started reading on their i-pads or gotten an e-reader. Their answers were pretty interesting.
They all mentioned not being able to fully utilize their imagination. On a paperback novel, you have the cover artwork, you have the author's bio, and the back cover art. They said most e-readers don't have these and it takes away from the experience. They also said the feel of a book in their hands is an experience they know and love. Even the simplicity of turning pages is lost. Holding a little tablet, they never knew if they getting close to the end of the story or not. With a paperback, it was easy to visually see and know how close you were to the end of the book - and it felt like more of an accomplishment.
I found it pretty enlightening. A lot of simple things people take for granted which can't easily be replaced by a better technology.
Hardly the holy grail they're talking about. The fatal flaw is as soon as you close you one door, the pirates are already looking for 10 other ways to get around your technology.
Case in point? Look at how many times they've tried to shut down Pirate Bay. They just keep re-tooling and continue on.
I found it interesting they made a point about rebooting. Considering if you had people turn off their PC's at night, you could save almost double that when you take into account the energy it takes to run a PC and a single monitor. Although most employees I'm sure would be running dual monitors.
If they were indeed running Linux (which boots at least 5X faster than Windows) you could easily make an argument for the exact opposite.
Sorry, should have been more clear. By "it" I meant the sites where bitcoins are being traded. And yes, seeing these sites getting hacked frequently makes mainstream acceptance a lot harder. Which in turn makes changing the paradigm take a lot longer.
Also keep in mind this is in a country with around 5 million people and an area of around 330K sq miles. By contrast, Texas has 25 million people in roughly the same sq mile area.
Making such promises shouldn't be hard considering the size of the population and the area you're dealing with in terms of having to lay fibre.
Agreed. I know a lot of people who start to flirt with the notion of using Bitcoin, only to have their dreams smashed when they learn how frequently these companies and their accounts are hacked.
It may be anonymous, but its far from being secure.
The thing that's scary is how easy it is for these people to get away with what they're doing. I wonder how much money is lost every year and how many hackers you never hear about going to jail for this stuff. I'm pretty sure this is the motivation to do a lot of this stuff. The risk/reward level is completely slanted.
I see a LOT of stories on HN and other Tech sites about these kinds of attacks. Unfortunately, I rarely, if ever, hear about hackers getting arrested for this sort of activity.
I'm actually glad they are continuing on and fighting the stigma of the "best social network that never was".
I have used Diaspora's site for a while and prefer it to Facebook and Google+. The problem is trying to maintain three separate social networks. Since most of the people I like to keep up with are on FB and G+, my use of Diaspora has slowed down over the past year or so.
Great point. I had a friend who worked as a salesmen at Thomson West when they still owned Thomson Learning which published all their academic materials. To say the industry is entrenched is an understatement. My friend told me once a publisher was in with a university, there was virtually no way other publishers could get in there. Even the professors had little or no say who they could buy their books from.
It's a few steps removed from organized crime.
I agree with having someone who's already in the role interviewing you. Let the HR and managers interview the programmers last. This way you can filter out a ton of people before they waste everybody's time. One my last interviews the guy who interviewed me was a "change management" director. I thought to myself, "This is going to be a short, easy interview."
After being the industry for a while, I feel the best way to hire someone is still on referral. Developers know good developers and the good ones tend to stick together. They also know what their friends skills are, what they excel at, and what kind of work they would recommend.
Also, in the end, I learned its not what questions they ask, it's not about the stupid quizzes they put you through. Developers have to learn it's about you knowing enough about the company or asking enough tough questions to determine if it's going to be a good fit. Developers should have as much, if not more of a responsibility in vetting the companies they choose to interview with.
I had the same reaction when I saw the issue with the title, "How to Beat the CIA - Keep Everybody Out with our Ultimate Privacy Guide."
Real or not, it's still a very powerful piece of literature. I think there's an underlying theme to the story - a lot of our history is being lost or superseded by the internet.
There's so many things we have left to learn from "The Greatest Generation" yet when given the opportunity, most would rather downplay the story, or simply go back their smartphones social networks.
I had the same reaction. He would have kept his respect with me had he lobbed a few grenades in his resignation letter. However, kicking the devil in the nuts and then expecting something positive to happen was surprising.
Saying because you want to go public, your company is legit is a pretty weak argument to me.
There have been plenty of "shady" companies who've gone public. The one that comes to mind most recently is Weedmaps:
I've actually found most of the growth is in rural communities, not large urban areas. In the 2010 census, you saw low increases, or even decreases in these areas, while more rural areas gained large numbers.
For instance, Cook County in Illinois (where Chicago is located) saw a 3% drop in its population from 2000-2010. By contrast, Cass County in North Dakota (where Fargo is located) saw a 21% population increase from 2000-2010.
(source was 2010 census - http://www.usatoday.com/news/census/index?refresh=1)
After seeing some early videos, I had mixed thoughts. I was impressed with the idea of the game, but thought for all the time he spent on it, it might be over the heads of 85% of the gamers out there.
I'm still wondering if he's just putting this game out there, or if he actually has a target audience he's aiming at.
I can back you up on this. I also worked at corporate as a contracter on the dotcom team and it was a total circus. After outsourcing the work for their website for so many years, the entire site was a disaster. Not to mention the "business" side was running on waterfall while our team was trying to do agile. Worse? Mangers on both sides knew it and did nothing about it - this was just considered "normal" there.
I pulled the plug after only 8 months - it was crazy what was going on there. Afterwards, a few of my friends who also did short stints there were amazed I lasted that long.
During the dot com boom days, I sustained an epic burnout. I quit playing hockey and soccer to concentrate on a buddies startup. It was the worst thing I could've done. Within months I was consumed by the work, when the crash came, I was too deep to dig out - like in the article, I knew my sanity was at stake and almost had a nervous breakdown.
I took a job for six month in a totally unrelated industry (a high-end home audio company) and got back to playing sports and working out. It was a slow process, but after six months, I had the itch to get back into the tech world again.
What I realised is that its important to listen to your body. When you ignore those signals, it can start impacting all facets of your life. Also, no matter what, you need to exercise. Run, walk, play sports, it doesn't matter but do something to get those endorphins humming and the blood flowing. It makes all the difference, trust me.
Agreed. I've had several bad experiences with Google's AdSense and it was a real pain in the ass to deal with them. They suspected one of my accounts of click fraud and it took almost 2 years of back and forth to finally get my money back. Even after all of that, they never reinstated my account.
My general attitude is the same, "Don't rely on Google for anything in which some kind of monetary relationship is involved." It's just not worth it - ever.
I think its important to note, even if this was some contracted company who put up the site, you would think designers would either know better, or at least have the skills to create something similar. I'm by no means a whiz with Illustrator, but I bet I could whip something up in a few hours that's similar without infringing on Apple's copyrights.
I mean hell, all you have to do is google "blueprint icon tutorial" and you get over a million hits. There is absolutely no excuse for someone doing this with such a vast amount of resources at their disposal.
This is pretty typical. Slamming the standardised tests, without actually giving a better alternative. Maybe instead of complaining about this, these teachers should get together and figure out how to keep from letting so many kids fail out of the educational system.
Good, bad or indifferent this was the plan of the "no child left behind" initiative (which had very strong bi-partisan support mind you) which is now heavily under fire for other reasons.
Its too bad most of the local governments believe throwing money at the situation is the solution. In the Minneapolis School Districts, they're spending close to $13K per student. By comparison, in a suburban school district, they're actually just over $9K per student.
The Minneapolis graduation rate? 49%. The suburban school? 98%.
I really feel like this is a ploy to get a chunk of Facebook, just like they did to Google (http://cnet.co/w7IaUn). $50B? That equates to "X" amount of shares, which Y! would snap up in an instant.
For a company flailing in the water right now, this seems like a perfect play to get a good financial shot in the arm.
As someone who just went through this, I had a similar experience. I was on contract through January. January comes around and I figure I'll have a gig no problem. As a front-end developer, I already had recruiters knocking down my door.
A month later, I finally landed a gig. I had a few offers, but over the course of a month, I had more frustration with people I was interviewing. Three places I interviewed with weren't looking for a front-end guy, they were looking for a Javascript programmer (my goal wasn't to write JS 7 hours a day - sorry). Also, I had several instances where the company had no idea what they were looking for. One company said they wanted someone who did a lot of server sided Javascript (node.js and backbone.js) as well as being a great designer. Seriously? WTF?
I agree that most of the interviews I excelled at, was where I got up and showed the company the app I just helped build. As opposed the the "code quizzes" a lot of places now use. I actually stopped a guy in one interview who kept asking me basic CSS stuff and said, "Did you even look at the sites in my portfolio or my personal site I built?"
All in all, it was very frustrating and I felt like I really had to go way out my way to try and convince people of my skill level. At other times, I was trying to pry out of them what they were really looking for.
Thanks for a great post Paul.
I had a similar experience when I was in college. I was close to finishing school, partied a lot and generally went through life without a care. One night, we were at a bar, and the trains ran right through town and right behind the bar we were at. I was waiting for a friend. When he finally got there after work, he walked up to our table like a zombie, he was completely pale, like a ghost. We asked what was wrong, and he said he just saw a guy kill himself by walking on the train tracks as the train was coming. He was just getting out of his car and saw the whole thing but was powerless to stop it. He said he didn't feel like drinking tonight and turned to walk out of the bar. My group of friends all looked at each other and we all had the same reaction. Time to go. The rest of the night we talked about the fragility of life, and to make sure you tell your family you love them everyday and to enjoy the time you've been given.
Needless to say, that night was a wakeup call. Ever since then, I try and keep a good perspective on what's really important. It's always nice to get a gentle reminder though, so thank you.
This pretty much sums it up from the article:
"While sup_g may indeed have been a "credible threat," he was in the end no match for the overwhelming federal resources of the FBI agents hunting him down. Over the last month, federal agents staked out his home in Chicago constantly, dug up old police surveillance records, tapped his Intern'et connection, used directional wireless finders to locate and identify his wireless router, and relied on Sabu back in his New York City apartment to let them know when sup_g went on or offline."
This is the one thing hackers will never get. You get the FBI on you and guess what? You're one person. They can assign hundreds of people to the case, bring down a wealth of resources to get you, and they go 24/7 until they build an airtight case on you. Not much you can do at that point but play their game.
I actually used it when I was getting going with Rails. Trying to install rails on Windows was a nightmare. Your tutorial was so easy to follow and was invaluable right after I had switched over to Mint from Mandriva.
I've had the same reaction to tablets. They're kid of a "tweener" device for me. If I want to, I can surf the web on my phone (Android), but I'm certainly not going to develop anything on a tablet.
I take a 15-20 minute ride into the city every morning and I've built a few apps on the way. I really couldn't see myself trying to type on a smaller device, with a smaller screen and a condensed keyboard.
I have yet to find a really good use for a tablet yet. I have an older 14.5" laptop which runs Linux Mint 11, and with only 1GB of ram, it's a lot faster than you think. It accomplishes the tasks of simple browsing, hammering out some quick code and other remedial tasks - and oh yeah, it only cost $150.
"The question, of course, is why Americans pay such high prices — and why we haven’t done anything about it."
This is probably the same reason we've taken close to 40 years to finally try and get off our dependence on foreign oil after Jimmy Carter said we needed to in 1978. Yet, we still pay more than we really should and haven't done anything about it.
Why? Lobbyists, too many layers of bureaucracy, special interest groups. Take your pick, but at the end of day, it takes a lot of people wanting to do the right thing to make things change. In this country, that's a lot harder to do than most people think.