rjd

... umm.. because its white? and every thats white is Apple?

If you actually look at it you'll see its a not printed anything like an Apple keyboard, the letters are offset for one, they are centered on Apple keyboards, and has Windows keys.

From a personal perspective I stopped building HTML web apps after I started to transition my WebSQL apps to IndexedDB. I really really disliked the experience (messy code/overhead) and haven't had any desire to write another with a client side DB again. The bright side for is however it drove me to learn iOS and Android development... not such a great day for the web though as I suspect my experience isn't unique.

Because in the short term it sounds good, like eating takeaways. But in the long run its pathogenic. If you can't see the whole system and need a quick buck why not.

Theres a reason most of these industries have existed unregulated through out history, exploitation occurs, become regulated, and are now reappearing with a new tact and hitting up existing laws... and hence all the court cases where they are desperately trying to claim the services aren't illegal.

Theres a lot of consumer safety to be considered you rarely hear of, let alone what is technically stealing by reselling things you don't own. Theres a reason regulation happens, and its usually because exploitation occurs.

I mucked around with a few but found them quite restrictive and generally only pushed issues around as opposed to solving them. As soon as you're dealing with a nasty API you can generally find the limits of a framework and have to start writing your own work arounds to behave inside its designed parameters.

Essentially I've found jQuery the best option as a framework, and only because it reduces the verbosity of straight Javascript. Everything else, as noted above, usually ends up in the "good at first then in wish I didn't" basket.

At the end of the day, the majority of what I do is binding, validation, and event handling... and no framework really reduces what has to be done, they just stops other people from doing it differently.

2010 macbook pro and I can't scroll the page without serious lag and jumping :/

I loved it, but I'm bias as I love all of Mike Judges work. I don't really find most his his work boisterous comedy, more a charming satire that I can watch over and over and still enjoy.

I do find however when I try to retell scenes from his work I often choke up with laughter more in the retelling than the watching. I can't retell a scene from office space ending up gasping for air LOL I think thats the genius of his work, and I definitely got that feeling watching it.

His other strength is always the depth of his characters, their nuances, and subtly... so they get funnier the more you understand them. The characters from King of the Hill are some of the best thought out characters I've seen on television, the mannerism, reactions, interactions, just brilliant.

From what I saw of the characters there definitely was a lot of that to come, so hopefully as it develops it'll become something truly amazing.

I can't wait to see more of this show for that reason, everything looked promising, and everything looked balanced for great satire.

It's also about his ability to be a leader, if people lost the ability to respect him then he looses the ability to lead. That happened, he had to go.

I'm not sure how it differed from opening up any manual to anything. The reason you are opening up the manual is the key point. I think for me its was a progression from 'how' -> 'when' -> 'why' -> 'is there a better way'.

I'll frequently go days without Googling anything, weeks if its just CRUD work. When I started it was very different, I can remember writing entire database layers via copy and paste with no idea what anything did I just knew it worked and thats all I needed.

But I'm at a point now I smell bad code in my own work and want to get rid of it and I only got there because I did google... I did go to blogs... read the responses... reference pages/critiques... read white papers/specs/manuals.

And above all I wasn't intellectually lazy, I put in that little bit of effort to ask why, and then get it verify. Nothing wrong with reading source material, theres only problems if you fail to understand and retain what you are reading.

No thank you, its great to see such lateral thinking and particularly around something thats the potential to be quite beneficial to people who have live hard enough as it is.

You put a smile on a jaded mans face with this app, and towards tech news thats a rarity for me these days :)

Thanks, I opened 'zite' up on my tablet and it was mainly really uninspired/mundane/transparent/poorly executed attempts at humor and I was quite put off by it. Be glad for that crap not to surface here.

I haven't seen the term "pragmatism" in this thread. Thats a major difference I've noticed over the years. Something that used to drive me nuts when I was a junior dev, and something I get torture my underlings with these days.

I've found most junior debs I've worked with over the years (and have memories of my own behavior) of being too cock sure of approaches, to keen on new techniques etc...

Over engineering is a major problem I see from younger people, often leading to fragility and bugs, blowing out support in 6-12 months. The other issue is using frameworks for everything, which I've found on questioning reveals fundamental lacks of knowledge about the domain they are experts with (being instead framework experts). Using massive library packages for access to one util class is very very common.

Sometimes I deliberately ask for nonessential 3rd party framework changes, or the utility class to return it slightly different just to make sure that juniors have to look into the framework and understand the domain they are working with. Quite entertaining at times, even if you have to throw out there code and rewrite for them :)

From my point of view its management handling thats my issue. When I say week to update iOS, 3 days on the html version, 3 weeks for android, I get a massive push back... "android in one week".. "OK an extra few days for testing, but we need these out now"

Then I start to get really annoyed at the level of shit of I have to support for Android and the backwards and forwards on testing and just seriously wish the company didn't support it all.

Actually TBH, I only took up looking after the mobile suite as a learning thing. And what I learnt is I'd rather be doing other forms of software (almost exclusively due to time pressures and android). The experience has been less rewarding that other forms of development I've done.

I'd never work on Android products again without a proper team (project manager, QA etc...) so someone else could fight the battle of more development time every iteration instead of me.

What I instantly thought of shared experiences with the game recording features of the PS4, or even ghosting along other players in real time. Its the type of tech that could take the competitive gaming community to whole new levels of enjoyment and participation.

But yes second life applications... I don't see it at all.

Sony was about to steam roll them? and Microsoft in the next year as well?

The Sony morpheus system is already better than oculus feature wise, with better position tracking, and accessory tracking as well. And don't under estimate that, I've read some pretty strong "never again" comments from people using VR headsets and loosing grip of the controls and floundering and/or having to take the headset off to get the controls back into there grips again... even just moving your hand on the keyboard is apparently quite annoying.

Essentially without backing they will loose all market capabilities and be relegated to experimental hardware and not a mass market device.

Being brought out by other companies probably wouldn't of been a reality. MS probably have there own tech and wouldn't gain much more than branding... and xbox is a stronger brand anyway... and Valve would no doubt have chosen to partner rather than buy out... so waving $2bil in your face and the guarantee of ongoing funding and launch platform... its a no brainer.

Well for me its the fact Facebook is an overbearing controlling experience which abuses it market position for its own interests above those of its users (both paying and free).

Its also a very narrow sighted company that has moved into the clone or buy instead of innovate cycle that most big companies evolve into.

That sort of mindset in the upper ends of management would kill the potential of something like occulus, especially when occullus have essentially been trumped by Sony (standing vs sitting, supporting accessories, and a massive user base) in the last week and will be playing catch up... and no doubt the MS power house will be on full roll as well rolling out headsets in the same market space... so its market share is drastically shrinking before its ready for launch.

Theres no way Facebook management will be able to handle the company intelligently enough to prevent the product from faltering. IMO it's pretty much a death blow for occulus.

Same reaction here. I'd say more about my opinion of Facebook and Zuckerberg business capabilities and behaviour, but it would add nothing to a civil discussion...

EDIT: for some laughs have a read of the Kotaku thread on facebook : https://www.facebook.com/kotaku/posts/10102759696153589 people are not happy

Cool, I've read good things about grunt but haven't had the time to look into it. Its direct access to the CLI thats the killer for me with make ... and to be frank ... if I was going to script in a third party language it would probably be python and not javascript but each to there own.

I couldn't agree more here. After reading the source code on the twitter css bootstrap makefile a few years ago I got inspired and wrote my own rewrite of what they had... I was blown away by the gains at it gave me. Of note I bound make to cmd+b in Sublime Text, and I just compile when I see fit.

I've now tweaked my make files so they are almost unrecognisable from the twitter ones, it can run PHP, JS unit tests, fires up phantomJS and tests individual modules, can release minified for production, or not for debugging purposes. I can't stress how useful it is being able to just add a line and you get such powerful support.

I haven't had time to add git hooks yet, but thats the next stage, I plan to set the hooks to run tests and clamp down on poor quality code (I work with interns quite often... sometimes I cry for just average quality code coming in).

For a story of the production gains I've had. I moved the whole company CSS into a CSS preprocessor and cleaned up all the existing structures to fit the make file release procedure. It came back a thousand fold away a rebranding and I had everything done in two days. I was blown away with that alone, I've been involved in so many rebrands over the years that go on for months... not hours.

Do it, if you're bit unsure where to start check the twitter bootstrap build file and muck around with what they have done.

The problem with silent+no vibrate is that interruption still exists. I often take my phone out of my pocket when sitting for dinner, or just randomly when I become aware its there.

What I really should do, and might do after writing this is trying and balance the notification messages. reduce them to have no context at all, hopefully I wont accidentally read them.

But the real problem is once I have a problem on my mind it bugs me to I solve it. It takes over my thought processes and annoys me, and when this happens while I'm out on a stroll or out for dinner, I'll spend the rest of the evening thinking about it.

I'm not a fan of cell phones at all, even dumb ones. I hate being interrupted, being taken out of the zone, when I'm enjoying things. So I don't take the phone I have with me. I leave it in the car. And its permanently on silent.

It might be a bit selfish but I'll return your call when I feel like it, or not at all... generally its easier just to stop in and see someone face to face to resolve things.

The only reason I currently have a smart phone is work got annoyed with me and purchased me one (and a monthly contract), as I build and maintain our company mobiles apps. Suppose I should have emotive and behavioural affiliation with I'm building :) couldn't really win that argument. I'm looking forward to the day I leave and I can hand the phone back TBH... although I'm sure my other half isn't LOL bet I loose that argument as well.

Still hasn't changed my behaviour though. The only thing that has is the camera. I used to lug around heavier larger cameras, the small form factor smart phone cameras are nice.

No you are getting downvoted because you are as wrong as you can possibly get. And by the looks of it CSS focused... which I wouldn't even call engineering.

Things rarely go obsolete for one thing. Try explaining why COBAL, FORTRAN, VB6, ColdFusion, or hell more modern stuff like J2EE are still around and in good usage. Things become unpopular, often for good reason, but they don't go obsolete for well over a decade. When something costs over a million dollars to construct and its working OK then theres no reason to get rid of it. Most places can't afford multi million rebuilds because its become unfashionable.

What you also learn as you get older is most modern advances are just rehashes (often poorly as they where written over a month instead of years in a research lab) of existing ideas. Or they are nothing more than a load of premade scripts which are nice (and I'm very thankful for the ones I've used) but if you work with clients or existing stacks those often become problematic.

The new ideas that stick often take 5 years to get rolling, and another 5-10 before they sunset. I wouldn't call that quick by any stretch of the imagination. The hype moves fast... but the technology doesn't.

So separate yourself from the hype and you'll see a world moving a lot slower than you think, the given time the overwhelming torrent of new ideas starts to become a same old shit, different day scenario.

I more or less stopped participating a while ago due to decline in comment quality. I'm at 950 karma but if the system works I might make the effort reach 1000 lift the opinions I think are relevant to get this forum back to what I used to enjoy.

The only issue I have is that it might make the groupthink that exists here even worse. Sometimes the descending opinions are very important not just the status quo.

But will see how it goes, I just hope there isn't a rise in parroting comments like you see on stack overflow where people just start copying other people opinions to raise there own karma value, which would entrench the status quo.

If that happens I'll probably be out for good.

Well now he knows what its like when Facebook does the same thing.

"The author's argument against automation in these life-saving contexts is weak."

I think you missed the point of the article. Its not that existence of automation is bad, its the implementation of it that (in a lot of cases) is wanting, useless, distracting, or even detrimental to the items purpose.

I agree, I can't read the text without my glasses on.

In comparison from the same distance and size I can read almost every other font I encounter on the web.

I read last year the (Texas?) police had some similar devices in there possession. The ones the article talked about listened to lock frequencies and could then work out the unlock frequency from it. So the criminals would scan car parks waiting for people to lock cars that where brought in, wait for the person to leave, then approach the car and unlock it with the captured frequency.

I have no idea if thats what all these devices are, or how legit the article was, but seems legit to me.

I do it for a simple reason, layout clean up with auto-indent. I've found HTML layout cleanup to be unreliable in most editors. Where as XML layout works 99% of the time.

Heres what I would be trying if I was netflix. Probably sure I'd have trouble pushing it against the rest of the company but I'd try this:

1) Collect evidence of network tampering/filtering

2) Get agreement in place to pay for better service

3) Collect the rest of the evidence that network filtering was in place when it gets lifted.

4) Simultaneously hit comcast up for breaching the neutrality agreements, while notifying all comcast customers that comcast is forcing netflix to charge its customers more for access.. that it might have to be along to them to pay... but we are working on ways yo prevent it.

Try and squeeze comcast from both ends at once and public embarrass them, while trying to keep the higher ground, looking like the peoples hero, under dog etc...

I doubt many companies would take that risk, but that what I'd try.

LOL yeah there where always jokes about that. But apparently he just threw the plants into his compost heap.

Someone else said they had seen the cop doing that. From memory it was another officer that said that (I didn't attend the hearings).

So who knows :) I think the plants where pre harvest though, my dad noticed the moment they arrived and acted immediately.

I had two incidents within a year involving members of my family that make me keep cops at a huge distance.

First was my father, he was a farmer at the time, late 50s. He found a crop of marijuana on the farm and turned it into the police. The planters of the crop decided that what happened was that my sisters boyfriend must of stolen it to sell. So they drove to my fathers house at dinner time, four of them, and started demanding payment.

My sisters boyfriend confronted them and told them what had happened, which then resulted in a four on one beat down. My dad ran back into the house grabbed a bat, ran back out and hit two of them. First guy dropped unconscious with the first blow, second guy stumbled dazed. The last two took off so fast they left the car behind.

My mother had rung the police before the violence had started, and they arrived before my sisters boy friend had managed to get off the ground. They arrested my father and he spent the next 3 days in jail. No other charges where laid.

Tens of thousands of dollars later the case was thrown out by a jury and the judge scolded the police for there actions and for wasting the courts time and tax payers money.

During the proceedings evidence came forward that the police had received the crop, and instead of filing paper work just disposed of it being lazy (the same cop that arrested my father). Before the court the cop was fingered by other police officers as a liar, breaking laws, my family pointed it out, even the four guys fingered the cop as a liar. Official complaints where laid, the response was no wrong doing could be found.

A few months after the incident my cousins mates where doing burn outs around, being little bastards really, but the cop couldn't catch them. Angry he went to my cousins house, it was around 3am. Knocked on the door asking where they where.

My cousin is also a farmer, gets up around 5am, he opened the door tired and confused. Said he hadn't seen them. The cop got in his face yelling at him, so my cousin said "listen I got work in a few hours and I need some more sleep, they aren't here, you can see that, how about you just fuck off". Which resulted in the cop kicking the door out of his hands and beating my cousin so bad he had to be taken to hospital with a broken jaw, and swelling so bad he couldn't open his eyes. During the beating the cop threatened my cousin, his mates, and father directly.

My father, and my family are pillars of the community. My dad grew up in the town, was the local scout master, organises the christmas parades, helps with local stage performances. So the event did not go down well at all.

The next bit of what happened is all heresy but this is what I've been told happened. Photos where taken of my cousin. A group of local farmers went to the police station, handed over the photos and said if the cop steps out of line once more he will be lynched (black mail essentially). I've heard variations where they roughed the cop up to send the message to him.

He was told he wasn't welcome on any bodies property in the area and to search for a new position immediately. If he failed that then the town was going to turn on his big time, and the photos would be used if an investigation began to make him loose his job. I can remember being in the supermarket on a visit and watching someone eye ball the cop as he was shopping, staring straight down the isle at him, as the cop moved to the next aisle the guy just moved along to the end of that aisle and eye balled him till he left the store.

The cop was gone in 6 months, but it took an entire rural community to stand up to him when the police and the complaints organisation wouldn't. You could say there are procedures to deal with these situations, but there aren't when they are design to protect the police.

The real sad bit is that prick just moved to another station. He's probably still trying to beat confessions out of kids right now.

So I have become a "don't talk to the police" person as well. I don't treat them badly, I smile at them on patrol, but the moment anything starts to get tense I have less than zero trust.