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User: vitaflo

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  1. Re:Twitch is not exactly a money maker on Report: YouTube Buying Twitch.tv For $1 Billion · · Score: 1

    As a friend who has over 1 million subscribers on Youtube and streams 20 hours per week on Twitch told me:

    "Youtube is like Hollywoood, Twitch is Indie film."

    Like you I would have guessed the opposite, but Youtube is much more lucrative for the content creator when your subscriber base is high.

  2. Re:Can't Tell Them Apart on Ask Slashdot: Minimum Programming Competence In Order To Get a Job? · · Score: 1

    I have open source code (about 13k lines of c/c++ for embedded platform) and I happen to interview 'badly' when I am put on the spot and asked to code up something in 15 minutes while someone watches me. that's not how I work and I fail horribly at THAT style of interview. note, I am fairly good (not a+ but definitely better than average) at coding in the real world - just NOT in synthetic white-board style interviews.

    As a designer, this type of thing floors me. Every job I've gotten (and every job any designer has gotten) is based on their portfolio. Nobody asks if the person actually did it, or was helped, etc. They ask you to discuss what you did. That's been the standard for getting design jobs for decades.

    I don't understand why developers don't have portfolio reviews like this as well. What they're asking of you is akin to someone asking me in an interview "draw us some pretty pictures". Most designers would find that an offensive disregard for the practice of design, let alone a disregard for the previous work they've done that should be the actual litmus test for getting the job.

    Developers need to start putting their foot down and asking for portfolio reviews of code they've written and not be asked to do a side show act to get jobs.

  3. Re:get rid of salary pay / make it have a high lev on New French Law Prohibits After-Hours Work Emails · · Score: 1

    The only way that could possibly be reversed is a group larger and more powerful than the owners of tech companies fighting to reverse it; that is to say, the organized tech workers will have fight for our own standard of living.

    Many already have, they've become contractors. When you bill by the hour, most companies will not let you work more than 40 hours per week, and those that do, you get to bill for. It may not be time and a half, but it's payment for time.

    You just need to take control over your own career to get out of the salary prison.

  4. Re:From the Oculus VR Forums on Markus on Minecraft Creator Halts Plans For Oculus Version Following Facebook Acquisition · · Score: 1

    I guess you get to be picky and complain when you have an extremely popular game.

    Yes that's exactly what you get to be. Why this is seen as some negative is beyond me. Notch built his company from nothing and hasn't taken investment or any of the number of things most companies want to do. He has enough money to tell anyone he wants "fuck you" and has every right to as a business owner. There's nothing wrong with that.

  5. Re:We're stuck on IE 6 or 8 here in business land on Google Ends Internet Explorer 9 Support In Google Apps · · Score: 1

    Sometimes it isn't YOUR company's app you need to use. In the real world, businesses deal with OTHER BUSINESSES.

    And if you want to use Google's app's you'll need IE10 or a modern browser. It goes both ways.

  6. Professional Web Designer of 15+ years here... on Ask Slashdot: Value of Website Design Tools vs. Hand Coding? · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've never used a WYSIWYG editor for any website and nobody worth their salt ever would. So your kid is correct and is learning it the right way.

    However, what is just as essential (imho) as knowing how to code it all by hand is having a good grasp of graphic design and user experience. If you are able to master both you are a rare breed and extremely marketable in today's world.

    The only real design tools you need to design websites is a copy of Photoshop and a good text editor. Everything else is basically fluff.

  7. Re:Poetic Justice on Georgia Apple Store Refuses To Sell iPad To Iranian-American Teen · · Score: 1

    Given this took place in an Apple Store, I think Apple is most certainly allowed authority over what anyone does or does not buy there.

  8. Re:Someone sells a tool to open these things easil on Worst Design Ever? Plastic Clamshell Packaging · · Score: 1

    There's an even easier tool to use that everyone already has.

    A can opener.

    Makes opening these things quick and easy.

  9. Re:Someone take that awesome display... on Apple Unveils New iPad · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're not getting any more screen real estate on the iPad3, you're just getting twice the resolution. There's a difference. The browser for instance will still tell websites the device width of the iPad3 is 1024x768. So the same website on the iPad2 and iPad3 will have the same layout and width, but the iPad3 will look less pixilated.

  10. Re:More nostalgia goggles on Who Killed Videogames? · · Score: 1

    My point was that you didn't get his point, apparently.

  11. Re:More nostalgia goggles on Who Killed Videogames? · · Score: 1

    How is this fundamentally ANY different from what video games have been doing since the dawn of time?

    Shareware games->designed to get you hooked on the first few levels so you buy the game

    Those little SNES consoles they set up at stores back in the day->designed to get you hooked on the game so you guy it.

    hell even a lot of arcade games were intentionally designed to be really easy for the first stage or two so you would get hooked and feel compelled to pump more quarters in. This guy has some serious nostalgia goggles, the model has, and always will be to get gamers to spend money on the game by tempting them with a little taste of what is in store if they do spend money on the game. Free to play has just added another method for achieving the same objective.

    You didn't actually read the entire article did you.

  12. Happened to me on Mystery of Vanishing iTunes Credit Shows No Sign of Fading · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I had this happen to me back in May. The only reason I knew is because Apple sent me a receipt to the purchase of the app in question. When I looked online to see what the app was it was already pulled from the app store, but various caches online showed it was a very badly designed "game" about chinese words with the dev being a chinese name. At that point I knew someone hacked my account and bought the app (yup it was bought with credit I had on the acct).

    I brought it to the attention of Apple and they immediately disabled my account. Then asked for proof that I was who I said I was. After I did so they reenabled my account, changed my password and credited me the money.

    It was more of a PITA than anything, and left me scratching my head as to how they got my login info. Which is probably a worse feeling than losing $5 on an app purchase.

  13. Re:I have some difficulty understanding this on Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot · · Score: 1

    Taco is just attempting to make a Beowulf cluster of tech resignations.

  14. The new CEO. on Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot · · Score: 1

    What Taco forgot to mention he has named Jon Katz as CEO just to spite us. And then something about removing ones self from his recreational land planted with grasses.

  15. Why a two-teired system? on Ask Slashdot: Do We Need Pseudonymous Social Networking? · · Score: 1

    I don't really see a distinction between a pseudonym username (ie, Captain Avenger) and a made up real name (ie Joe Smith). The later would be accepted by Google+ and FB, the former most likely not, and yet both are pseudonyms because they're not the actual name of the user.

    As such I don't see why you would need a two-tiered system. Additionally, I don't see why you wouldn't just allow pseudonyms of any kind in any social network. You're not gaining anything by enforcing a "real name" because you can't actually enforce it without asking everyone for an ID to prove that's their actual name.

    All you end up doing in the end is having people switch from a username like most of us have on slashdot to a pen name ala Mark Twain. But it's a distinction without a difference.

  16. Re:Spamming and Trolling and PR on Security Expert Slams Google+ Pseudonym Policy · · Score: 1

    Code words for spamming, trolling, and PR astroturfing.

    I am thrilled G+ doesn't allow psuedonyms. Makes it a much higher class establishment.

    Spamming, trolling and astroturfing can easily be done with fake "real names" (ie, Joe Smith). Disallowing pseudonyms solves none of that.

  17. Re:"real name" means your REAL NAME. on Google+ Account Suspensions Over ToS Drawing Fire · · Score: 1

    This begs the question of what a "real name" is. Many people use nicknames in place of their first name, and a majority of people know them by that nickname. Is a "real name" then your legal name? Where is the line?

    This also begs the question of why a real name is required in the first place. If it's to thwart spammers or to assume people will be nicer if they have to have all posts show their real name, nothing is stopping anyone from saying they're "Joe Smith" and spamming comments, incoming streams, et al with their crap. After all, "Joe Smith" is a REAL NAME.

    If it's to allow Google to better link your data, then having your real name public is not needed. Google can ask for this as private data and still be able to do it's big data crunching. Requiring it just asks for people to put in fake (but real sounding) names to get around it which ends up poisoning Google's data well anyway.

    I frankly can't think of any reason why it should be required.

  18. Re:Lutz is dead wrong on Have American Businesses Been Stranded By the MBAs? · · Score: 1

    Most engineers know next to nothing about marketing and sales... to the degree that they actually despise interacting with customers.

    That's perfectly fine. Take the engineers that *are* good at marketing and sales (which there must be since you said "most" and not "all"), and put them in management positions. There will be fewer managers than overall engineers so this should work out just fine. Hell, you can even legitimately pay them more because they have skills that the typical engineer doesn't have. Win-win.

  19. Re:Google+ on Google Deleting Private Profiles · · Score: 1

    "Maybe your friends are just as odd as you then, nothing really wrong with that but the reason most of us feel the social pressure is because almost all my "old real" friends now are on Facebook. That's where they chatter and share pictures and make events and whatnot, it's not that they're purposely shutting you out but you're the special case. You're the one "being difficult", why can't you just get a profile just like everybody else?"

    If they're really old friends, then why can't you just call them? Or text them? Or email them? Or stop by their house to say "hi"? There are a million different ways to stay connected, especially when it comes to long time friends but it seems everyone it too lazy to pick up a phone and have a real chat.

    In some ways not being on social networks has its benefits. When you do hang out with your old buddies you actually have something interesting to talk about because you don't already know every little minute details of people's lives.

  20. Re:Another example of form over function on Netflix's New Web Interface Gets Thumbs Down From Users · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Having been a web designer for the better part of 15 years I think you should be careful when you lump designers into taking the blame for this. In doing so you give them way to much power.

    Any real designer would consider the new Netflix site an abomination. It sucks for the reasons everyone knows it sucks. But if you've ever actually done design work you would know that these sorts of sites rarely are the brain child of a typical web designer. These horrible UI decisions are usually the result of many layers of bureaucracy inside a company, with middle managers inevitably deciding on their own pet ideas and influencing design ("Ohh bigger images, bigger!", "Hover scrolls! Those would be cool and fun!").

    In fact, the hardest part of being a designer isn't design. That's not particularly difficult. No, it's the fact that design to most people is subjective and thus everyone feels the need to want to add their own bits and pieces into a design, even when they make no sense and are horrible ideas. This is why so much of design education is learning about critique, because inevitably, someone will want to add amazingly bad ideas to an otherwise decent UI and you need to learn how to argue for (or against) your ideas.

    What this design says to me is that Netflix may have just gotten too big for its own good. Marketers and managers seem to be having way too much say on the user experience of the website. This happens to all big companies eventually, it's just unfortunate that Netflix has finally crossed that line.

  21. Re:You are welcome to pay more. Here's how on Need a Receipt On Taxes? The Federal Tax Receipt · · Score: 4, Informative

    Do you know how much you pay today if you earn more than 500Kin Connecticut today? With 35% federal, 6.5% state (and the governor wants to push it up by a few points), FICA is really irrelevant then, because it's capped at first 100K, but 2.9% Medicare tax is applied on the ENTIRE amount. This is only the income taxes, can you do the addition?

    The problem is it's not entirely additive. That 35% number you quote for federal is only for the amount above $380k (when the 35% bracket kicks in). People often quote the highest rate as if that's the total tax for the entire amount. This often comes up when people talk about taxes 50 years ago at 90% tax rates. The problem with this is that taxes are progressive so quoting the highest rate is misleading.

    If you want to talk about taxes due, you should be calculating the effective tax rate, not the top tax rate. On $500k it's about 29% with no deductions (which everyone gets). Start there and your point would have more weight.

  22. Re:"Doom creator"? on Doom Creator Says Direct3D Is Now Better Than OpenGL · · Score: 1

    The topic is about comparing one API to another.

    In that context, even if you were to go into a semantic rant about it, John Carmack is the creator of Doom.

    I read it as was why the need to describe who he is at all. On a site for nerds, just using the name John Carmack should be good enough for everyone to know who it is. It's akin to referring to Woz as "Apple creator".

  23. Re:But will we? on King Wants To Sell Out Ham Radio · · Score: 1

    I hear this a lot, that Ham radio is useful in disasters, but can anyone give some examples?

    It's also useful in preventing disaster. I'm part of Skywarn, which is put on by the National Weather Service. They reach out to Ham Radio ops and teach them how to spot severe weather. You take a class to get a license (on top of your normal ham radio license) to do this. In the summer months we get alerts and calls to action to go out and weather spot, looking for severe weather and reporting in to weather nets.

    It is all volunteer. Now, not only does the NWS get real time reports on the ground and valuable data on storms, but have you ever wondered how the local news knows that there is 1" hail or a wall cloud at a specific location? Radar is not going to tell you that information. They're monitoring the ham bands for that info. This can mean the difference between life and death when someone is alerted to the fact that a tornado is likely in their vicinity and they can take the precautions necessary to protect themselves.

  24. Re:Stupid Floating Headers on Slashdot Launches Re-Design · · Score: 1

    It's a design trend right now because everyone wants things to be "app like", with their fixed nav bars and the like. What's funny though is that on things like the iPad, fixed positioning is turned off, so on the one device it might actually feel "native" this doesn't work at all.

  25. Re:Not really! on Scientists Cut Greenland Ice Loss Estimate By Half · · Score: 1

    I think it just means that in reality, science hasn't got all the right answers, all of the time, and science should be treated, as it was always intended, with a grain of salt.

    Unfortunately, with that grain of salt, the ice melted faster.