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naitbit

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email: nait@naitbit.com

photos: http://gplus.to/Nait/photos

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I'm sure that git with it's very powerfull backend has way for improving way someone works, but I'm not convinced by this example. IMO it shows again that usability of git is far from perfect. For example in bzr to accomplish this task you can:

1. (same)

2. (same)

3. put all changes that you are not interested in on shelve: `bzr shelve` (or qshelve if you want QT gui)

4. Run full test suite

5. If 4. fails keep editing

6. If 4. pass `bzr commit` (or `bzr ci`), and to revert shelving use `bzr unshelve`

You need to remember 6+ git command to accomplish this tasks, and only 3 with bzr. Moreover there is symmetry in bzr (fe: shelve - unshelve, commit - uncommit) that is no present in git.

edit: formatting

Thank you so much for that. If I just started doing something I compared myself to professionals, if my work started to look good compared to them I started comparing myself with best people in profession I knew about, and if I could not find anyone better then I would start comparing myself against imaginary ideal. I knew it was bad for my self esteem but I thought that it will make me achieve more. Thanks for showing me a reason why being so critical about myself is not needed.

AFAIK Starcraft and Quake 3 are over decade old and still played. I assume that this days their player base is far smaller than in early days, but they still have tournaments. However they probably did not bring a lot of money for producer in later years because everyone who wanted them already bought them. Quake live if pivot to free to play model but I have no info about its profits.

I've never seen QWERTZ keyboard in Poland and I live there. Typewriters indeed were using this layout, but not many people use them to program.

"practically all computers (except custom-made, e.g., in public sector and some Apple computers) use standard US layout (commonly called Polish programmers layout, in Polish: polski programisty) with Polish letters accessed through AltGr (AltGr-Z giving “Ż” and AltGr-X giving “Ź”)." http://keyboard-layout.info/#Polish

Are web technologies on the phone really the best way to empower users? Sure Firefox and Linux are open source(and I love them for that), but what about online apps? User does not have any control over the web page. If web page changes or disappears he can do nothing(and it can happen with no warning). Storing local copy of webpage may not be possible(because huge part of app may be on server side). Even proprietary desktop apps are better[1] because they do not change on each startup and you could always try to reverse engineer them. Web app also can store user data on server giving him no way to recover and it gives more spoofing opportunities. Sure we can try to teach users about to choose open source web pages, or pages that can work in offline mode, but unfortunately most web pages does not fit these categories.

I'm impressed by what Firefox OS managed to achieve using web technologies, but I posted this as a warning that users may chain themselves to some proprietary webapp even stronger than to native one. Hopefully Firefox Os will force more webapps to provide offline mode.

[1] Of course DRM tries to take away this advantage from desktop apps.

What about me-too comments? Are they also thousand times better than writing nothing? Is it different because of scale?

IMO biggest value of Me-too products are in their (even slight) differences from existing ones. For entrepreneur they obviously give him experience and may bring him money but from consumer point of view gains are smaller. Me-too products increase competition(making monopoly or stagnation less likely and bringing prices down), but straight up clones have same (relatively small) cost as me-too comments: decreasing signal to noise ratio.

Well lets check result of their methodology with other data. For example for Slashdot. Geeknet provides very different data http://geek.net/our-network/slashdot/ Linked article suggest almost 50% in age 35-54 but geeknet stats says it's only 5%. I cannot find it now but someone wrote that about 1/4 or 1/3 of slashdot audience are female which again differs from result in article. I looks like that either US audience is very different from global(although it seems unlikely on US centric site like Slashdot) or methodology of linked article indeed is far from perfect. Obviously I checked only one site from article and there are other possibilities (like geeknet lying or having bad methodology itself), but I would take pingdom report with a big grain of salt.

Personally for longer page browsing I pivot my screen vertically, zoom and scroll to make content fit my screen. It may not be fastest way but gets job done. It works better on Google plus then on some other pages(were some toolbars obfuscates content on zoomed page, or which get to wide for screen). On non pivoted screen I usually have browser only on left halve on the screen and do it same way. There may be some plugin that would fit you more though.

In the beginning I too wanted to write that I don't agree with this split. Then I come to conclusion that he met far more programmers then I so he probably knows better.

Anyway I'm not sure were to put myself on this axis. My behavior changes depending on other variables(what consequences would bug have/how many times code is going to be executed etc).

FE: critical part of commercial software (like money calculation) would be written in a way that would try to make it obvious that there are no errors, in language with type checking with unit tests and if possible even with mathematical proof of correctness. With code review and QA thrown at it afterwards. To sum up very conservative(and costly) approach.

On the other hand my holiday photos got completely different treatment. Short python script, that would batch their HDR process in a way specific for their content and with a lot of dependencies to my current desktop setup, without any unit tests(script thrown up few temporary files making it easy for manual debug, had backup of my photos in case script ate them). The only conservative thing that I could think of in this setup was that I made it concurrent to use 4 cores because it was only one line change and 4time speed up in lengthy process was worth it.

Can someone suggest were on liberal-conservative axis am I?

I would agree that it may be better if they showed result for lowest FPS (instead of average) and on weaker system(were difference would matter far more). They probably tested on powerful developer workstation because it was the machine that they already program on.

Yes but Carmack also said that he now prefers D3D[1] and that difference between OpenGl and D3d does not really matter: "It’s interesting how little of the technology cares what API you’re using and what generation of the technology you’re on. You’ve got a small handful of files that care about what API they’re on, and millions of lines of code that are agnostic to the platform that they’re on." [2]

[1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2313661

[2] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/e3_2008_the_john_c...

Well good version of OpenGl 5.0 would be very welcome(even without complete rewrite), but history shows that ARB(Architectural Review Board) likes to shoot itself in foot[1]. Design by committee usually takes a lot of time, so rewrite would probably take forever given number of legacy OpenGL Cad applications.

Small nitpick: OpenGL would be catching up with Direct3d not with DirectX(which includes parts like input or sound that AFAIK are out of scope for OpenGL)

[1]http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60544/why-do-...

edit: found HN discussion about this link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2711231

By "do the encryption for you" do you mean that they should encrypt on what you send them on their side? I'm afraid that gains you nothing. Not only they control encryption method, they also have unencrypted data and your key. Encryption must occur on client side to give you safety, and I would argue against using JavaScript to do it(after all website can be updated without your knowledge, and it is not practical to review site code each time you load it).

Steam'd Penguins 14 years ago

Well I did not buy AAA games that I wanted to play that were windows only(like Portal 2[1]), but I would bought them if they are ported to Linux, so I would argue that they will expand their user base(a little). I must admit that in case of some games were to good to miss and I played them on wine(like Witcher 2 - my excuse is that it was DRM free and different enough that it was worth rewarding even when there were no Linux version).

edit: [1] - I mean games with no native Linux version(Portal 2 have also Mac version)

It's unfortunate that I was right http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3889127 If they use white list approach for their DRM it is not surprising that they flagged wine, but keeping in mind it is permanent ban and there is no way to play D3 offline, and that they refused to give refunds there are reasons to be angry at them. Fortunately personally I did not "bought" d3 because i don't like renting games(and requiring constant connection to server makes it renting).

I also found it surprising that it is apparently possible to modify client to teleport, move faster, and see data that is not allowed by standard client[1]. One would thought that after they went such a lengths to make it online only (making even map generation on server side) they would not trust a client. But apparently not.

[1] http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5978861022?page=1 "These programs may increase movement speed or teleport heroes from one place to another beyond what is allowed by game design. It also includes any programs that obtain information from the game that is not normally available to the regular player"

Well personally I'm quite happy with my life. For my helping other live better lives* is meaningful(but if everyone had same purpose it would be uncomfortably circular). I found it interesting that ChrisNorstrom can be happy when he reminds himself that he does not matter. Either I misunderstood something or there is a way to be happy even about that.

*happier/longer/leading to total higher number of happy people in the future etc(Although obviously my success in this goals is very limited)

Well even though I agree that what we do is "worthless, useless, meaningless, purposeless" in universe scale it does not make me happy. I can be happy by thinking for example that universe defaults to not-existence (since most of it is empty/dead/not alive) and I'm lucky enough to experience life(even for short time), but I'm rather being happy despite worthlessness of my life rather than thanks to it. Could you explain your thought process that led do you to happiness from being meaningless?

I don't think that linked table supports equation. It should be possible to add them. You don't have to look further than google docs that it is possible. I did write excel like language in the past and it was quite simple. Obviously there is performance hit when comparing js to native, but it should be fast enough. Sorry but I cannot give you my code because it was written as my job, but as I said writing something like that should not be a big challenge.

(Edited to improve readability)

> Modern browsers allow a user to type (in lowercase) text to find in a select element while focused and will scroll to an exact match inside of it.

Additionally they always highlight item that begins with typed letter. Because of that in default combobox i can type only "po" to get Poland, whereas search after typing "po" highlights French Polynesia. I think that difference is worth noting because it may searchbox more or less useful depending on data.

Seriously? Ads? 14 years ago

I cannot talk for everyone, but I use paypal instead of Google Wallet, because it allows me to pay without using credit card. I do think that current model of credit card payment is broken so I refuse to use it. Sure if dishonest merchant purges all my cash from credit card I could get it back by contacting bank, but money lost would be covered by all bank clients. I don't have much trust in paypal, but I can transfer to it appropriate amount of money from bank just before the payment, so possible damage is much lower. That said my level of trust with facebook is so low that I would probably refuse to put on their account even 100 USD.

I do have d5100 and I confirm that there is no DoF Preview button. You can read about it's purpose here http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/dof-button.htm If you really need this button d7000 have same sensor and does same quality photos. It allows for more control using physical buttons (in d5100 you need to use info menu to set some setting). It is also better suited then d5100 for manual lenses. That said it is also more expensive and heavier(but is also more water prove). Personally most of the time lack of DoF preview did not bother me because I either wanted as much in focus as possible(for landscapes), or only person in focus which was quite easy. Weak support for manual lenses on the other hand baited me once with out of focus picture that I did not notice until it was to late(if it is really bright outside is hard to see photo on LCD, so i just checked histogram). You can see my d5100 pictures here https://plus.google.com/100147104412340662455/photos if you are interested.

I'm pretty sure that you don't have to touch shutter in manual mode. I have d5100 so I can make sure in the evening if you want confirmation.

Offtopic, but I saw bizzare Bing translation to Polish below your twit. Translating it back to English it was something like:

This is the year of Linux desktops? Pipe fitting seems to be running on the client home pair.

Google translate managed at least to get first sentence right..

Actually most Blizzard games run fine on wine. I've played games like: Diablo 3 beta(game run out of the box, but there are problems with installing), Starcraft 2 http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&... Starcraft http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&... Warcraft 3 http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application... I guess that porting to Mac made them fix most of hard coded system assumptions.

Wine is amazing but it still is not the same as native support, because of small performance hit or possibility that game that you bought will stop working in the future (ie: because some game patch or anticheat protection that will detect wine as modification). Because of that Steam and Source games are very welcome. Probably I'll buy them and don't play them because of lack of time(just like all HIBs).