You're right. As I said in another post in this thread, I'm not stuck on them having to resign, I'm stuck on them reacting somehow. They've known about the illegal activities for months. They could have taken action during the last few months while no one knew about it, and prepared themselves for this day. Instead, they're caught with their pants down. Everything they do now will be under shareholder scrutiny. In the documents on thesmokinggun.com, Perkins seems to lightly hint that the remaining directors may be complicit because they've refused to do anything or even acknowledge his warnings about possible illegalities. So sure, they shouldn't leave, but they shoulda done something.
You are talking about the board of directors. Every single one of them is powerful and wealthy (although we could argue over how wealthy). Hell, the guy who resigned is the head of a venture capital company. What's he worth? A few hundred million?
They most certainly can afford to walk out. Besides, it is not their job. Leaving the board of directors != leaving your paid day job. A seat on the board is a part-time advisory position.
Hi Hoi Polloi. You're totally right. I should have been more clear. The board has known what Dunn did since May. So my real thought is not that they all should have resigned, but that they all should have done something. Yes, make her resign. If not that, then public disclosure and shareholder review. Something. But they sat on this for May, June, July, August, and now we're into September, and they've still done nothing. Well, they've finally been caught off guard by being exposed. Maybe that will stir them into action.
I just think these dumb idiots bent over and let her screw them. And when they found out how much they had been violated, they apparently just stayed hunched over, waiting for more. It's pathetic.
HP didn't pay for the phone lines. If they did, they would already have the records showing who called who, and thus they wouldn't have needed to do anything more.
These were the personal lines of the directors. They didn't tap the phones. They called the phone company, impersonated each director, and then got the phone company to send them the bills. From there, they simply scanned the numbers called until they found a C|Net number. Supposedly.
Hi deacon. According to the article, there was no wiretapping. So no, they didn't break the law you cite, and did no illegal phone tapping.
What they did do was "pretexting," which apparently is also illegal. Basically, they impersonated the directors. They called their phone companies, and -- pretending to be the director in question -- they lied to the customer service person until he/she believed the real customer was on the line. Then, they instructed the customer service person to give them the contents of the director's personal phone records via email.
That's pretty shocking. It's corporate-sponsored law-breaking. Of course, as I mentioned in another post, the other members of board found out they were being illegally spied upon back in May, and did nothing. They've had months. What the hell were they thinking?
Believe it or not, it's hard to get worked up about this. Sure, reading the Slashdot text got me mad. It sounds shocking -- what a huge violation of privacy! But then, reading the article, you see that aside from 1 director who resigned, all the other directors, including the leaker, have stayed on board! In other words, the guys whose privacy was invaded didn't care. It was done to them, and their response was to keep serving.
So why care on their behalf? These walking lobotomies need to stand up for themselves.
Wow. That last question of yours would make some developers -- the best ones -- walk away from the job.
Does it work if the embedded page is offline?
It's more like a remotely-hosted library. And no, the page would likely NOT work if that other server was down. A good developer could probably add some code to check the remote site and disable certain features on-the-fly if needed. I've done that for a lot of Salesforce stuff I do. Not too awful.
Does it slow down if the embedded page is under heavy load from somebody else?
Seems like it would.
Does it break if some standard/lib/implementation/EULA changes?
Not sure, because I don't know what you're referring to. Do you mean, what happens if you change a library on your own server? Probably shouldn't hurt -- it's all client-side JavaScript. If you mean, what happens if the site that hosts the JavaScript code changes a license or how a library works, then yes, that could likely screw you up.
Can we customize it to our GUI?
Looks like a qualified yes.
In the example given, how does it play with browserspellcheckers like the one coming in FF2.0?
It's not aware of the spellchecker in Firefox 2.0. But neither are any of the other spelling tools. This spelling tool works live on the text, and if you had Firefox 2.0 spellchecking it also, you'd simply have 2 tools running spellchecks. That could make for some interesting interface weirdness, but I doubt it would hurt anything.
Why are we paying you if all you do is reuse thirdparty code wich doesnt belong to the company?
That question is so completely insulting to a developer -- it so trivializes their attempt to do something smart and useful for you -- that if you asked that question, developer morale would immediately plummet. If you have ever asked such a question in the past, you need to know that your company has lost productivity because of it. Even if it never resulted in a missed deadline. Once you insult your developers, they're not going to want to work hard for you. They're going to stop caring. Do something smart and get insulted? OK, stop trying to be smart. If you've ever had to limit your scope or drop features or push out a deadline or worse, and such a thing happened after you asked such a question, now you know why. If you've ever released something that was buggier than people expected, or more difficult to refactor than the developers expected, you can probably bet that a member of your team was insulted and stopped caring.
Any question that is basically a "sounds like you're useless" kind of question is self-destructive to ask. Anyone with self-esteem will not accept it. You know how useful your developers are by their output. Do they hit deadlines? Do they build the things that are needed? Is the uptime good? Is the bug count low? Are the customers happy? Think about it. How are you going to feel if the developer replies to you by saying, "all you seem to do is push pencils around, so why are we paying you again?"
(And if you're inclined to respond by saying, "Unfair question, because I don't just push pencils, I provide real value!"...then you understand the argumentative feeling you've instilled in your developers.)
It really is asking for trouble, once you have third party javascript on your site you are basically at the mercy of whoever wrote that javascript.
They can do nice stuff, and not so nice stuff with your end users (popups, form content hijacking and so on)
Yes, what you really mean is remotely hosted JavaScript apps are problematic. Understood.
And you seem to be correct that by using such a remotely hosted service, you open yourself up to popups or other unwanted ads, at least in this case. Here's a quote from the site:
And in exchange for making the cool apps, the application host can create branding, drive traffic, or employ serveral revenue streams.
Where do those revenue streams come from, I wonder? About the only things I can consider are that they intend to charge for this after people are hooked to the free model, or that ads will start appearing on any site that uses it.
Slashcode is code that you copy onto your own server and use under your own control. He is talking about remotely hosted code. In other words, this cow code stays on a 3rd party's server. You do not get to control it or custom-rebuild it. It is very different from the Slashcode model. Thus, your questions and concerns are inapplicable.
Yahoo allows reviews of this nature. But it doesn't really have a rating system that goes into specifics about service. For example, here is a restaurant:
Note that it does have a star-rating, but that's just an overall score. And it has 28 reviews. Here's a quote from one review:
What was good? The ambiance upstairs, the bartender and their willingness to host a large group without any extra room fee.
What was bad? The banquet manager, Diana. She was pretty much the rudest person I have ever come into contact with.
I think that gives you an up-close & personal insight into the customer service. Any local business can be listed. Most don't seem to have many reviews. You could start adding yours.
As a parent, I cannot begin to say how important the Megan's Law website has been for me. I was shocked to see about 20 convicted child molesters live in my area. I had no idea how prevalent it was.
Having said that, this new proposal is awful. What the hell happened to "innocent until proven guilty?" Isn't this just an end-run around the law? Of course, as it's being made into law, I guess it's a law to do an end-run around other laws. How awful.
I hope it doesn't stand. I hope the first person who experiences this sues to overturn it. I hope a huge financial penalty is imposed, and paid by the State, which in turn would hurt the taxpayers of that State. It's the only way to make them wake up and hold those responsible accountable.
That's just speculation, and I don't think it's true. However, even if it is, it is an incredibly poor response, and would in my opinion point right back to Debian having issues. If people were really wearing "Fuck Ubuntu" t-shirts, wow. What a bunch of immature losers. I've lost all respect for Debian if that's true.
While having one point of authority is good if you are looking to conduct a project under corporate type structures, it is undesirable if you are looking to adhere to principles of community involvement and community focused agendas.
While that may be true in some cases, it's not true in cases like Linux, or Perl, or Ubuntu. Therefore, while I am not going to suggest that your point is incorrect, I am going to suggest that your point is diminished by counterpoints.
I agree that it must be acknowledged that not all developers are equal, but disagree that this must be explicitly stated somewhere. In an open, meritocratic forum, relative skill levels become apparent fairly quickly, and if you need full and formal recognition of your work, then you are out of place in the open source community.
I'm going to 100% disagree here. It has been my sad experience that -- as someone else mentioned here on Slashdot -- "megaphone democracy" is what you get. The person who speaks loudest the longest wins. But I'm not even upset about that, now that I've experienced that and understand it. You see, the core group that does the most is very often very small. And they're surrounded by a large group of sorta-disconnected sometimes-contributors. That large group is not well informed, and you cannot blame them. They have lives. They've decided that other things are priorities. That's fair. But that also means that they cannot be expected to judge who has skills. All they know is who has been helpful for the 3 interactions they've had on the project. And sometimes, the person who has been helpful to them was a PITA to everyone else.
This is how humanity is. I do not blame, because I've had to pick & choose what gets my attention, too. But now that I understand this, I know that your argument that skill levels become apparent just ain't so. Not for the majority. It's a pipe dream. Especially in this context -- chatter on mailing lists.
Garrett: If you are unable to work in the Debian project becuase your ideas conflict with it, then don't be blaming the Debian project. It may simply be the case, as with many relationship breakdowns, that your ideals and theirs are simply incompatible.
That may be true. It may also be the case that as an insider who has been a good contributor, he has seen the core of the apple, so to speak. He may be in a good position to reveal what's rotten. Write him off at your own peril.
I'm sorry, I thought that the Wii was supposed to be the console for moms (and dads, and grandparents). It's a bit of a stretch to think that the same controller and button-combos that make hardcore gamers happy can also make a soccer-mom happy. I agree with Nintendo that the best approach is to rethink the interface, rethink the interactions, and re-engineer things to win over non-gamers. They've done OK in winning over new gamers with the DS interface and Brain Games. With the Wii, I think they can repeat their success, if they stay sharp and deliver on the things they've been saying.
Of course, a rising tide lifts all boats, so I'm sure the XBox 360 will benefit. But the 360 is not the vanguard, IMHO.
I always felt that Planescape: Torment was high-brow. It's a game that is very text-heavy and wouldn't be enjoyed by a typical action-oriented gamer. Although you always end the game in the same place, you can get there various good and wicked ways. There are many moral quandries, and the entire game revolves around assuming the role of a man who has done horrendous evil. As the game unRavels, you realize the extent of malice your character has displayed, and how it has ruined the lives of people around you. Many decisions are ambiguous -- you do not choose good or evil, but try to find the best path among many imperfect paths.
In the end, when the game ended for me, I wept. I wept because there was no happy ending, only a bittersweet "best I could manage guys, sorry" ending. It felt very true to life, with consequences for each decision I made. When I was done, I felt that I had learned many life lessons, that I had been exposed to viewpoints contrary to my own and had come away better for it, and that sometimes the best way out of a bad situation is to be a better person from the start.
Wow, no funny mods for alphasubzero949? Did nobody get that the milk comment is an allusion to something Steve Jobs said about 8 or 9 years ago? I think what Steve said was something like 'If I were in charge of Apple, at this point all I could do would be to milk the Macintosh for all it's worth, and sell the company off."
Police told Hairston that they did take Cruz into to custody, but they said Cruz was not on his property when they arrested him.
OK. I'm more inclined to believe the cops... wait a second...
A neighbor said she witnessed the incident and could not believe what she saw.
"He opened up the gate and Neffy was coming down and he went up to Neffy, pulled him down...
Oh, you dumb, dumb cops. Of course Neftaly Cruz was "not on his property" during the arrest if you went onto his property and dragged him off! Why would you do that in front of witnesses?
...which hint at conflict. Maybe one of those blew up in a way he didn't like. However, I don't think those really are the issues. I would guess it's something off-list. It's too bad. I have friends working at Zend. You never want to see someone so useful walk away.
I must admit that I'm impressed with the mailing list -- Jani said "don't reply" and nobody did. They're either a disciplined bunch, heavily moderated, or Jani's leaving just didn't have much impact.
Gomes does have a good point which he simply overstated. 20% of the products *are* still accounting for 80% of the sales, which Anderson's thesis *seemed* to undermine. To be fair Anderson (at least in the original article, I haven't read the book) doesn't dispute that 80/20 rule. Instead I think he could be summed up as saying that with unlimited inventory the 20% of inventory is a much bigger absolute number and also that retailers can profitably capture the 20% of sales that come from the 80% of the inventory that they used to have to forego for reasons of limited physical space.
Yeah, I think you're on the right track. I remember reading the article in Wired the first time around. And my impression wasn't that he was suggesting, "ooohhh, the long tail is overshadowing the hits!" Instead, my impression was that he meant, "the long tail exists in a digital world, but not brick & mortar!"
In other words, Blockbuster stores would stock 10,000 movies. Maybe even 100,000. And that provides enough variety for most customers. But weird freaks such as myself, who want to view every film from Sundance, or want to view every documentary produced in a given year, are pretty much out of luck with Blockbuster. Enter Netflix. They have 1 massive warehouse (or a few), stocking everything they can possibly get their hands on. Maybe 10,000,000 titles. They can ship every obscure film to me, whereas the Blockbuster store down the street cannot.
So it isn't that the long tail is wagging anything. It's that the long tail exists. It's that 10 years ago there was no long tail market. But now people such as myself will buy things I couldn't before. On the surface, that simply means that Netflix gets 20% more sales (following the 80/20 rule). However, because Netflix provides more of everything, I eventually consolidate 100% of my purchases/rentals there, leaving my Blockbuster account to atrophy. That's why the long tail is so interesting: it's disruptive technology, in a sense. Being able to offer long-tail-anything is a business advantage, which causes other models to be overturned.
Shame on them? No, shame on you. Shame on you for throwing away our freedoms, shame on you for pissing all over the Constitution. And shame on the rest of America for letting sheep like you throw away what generations have fought and died for.
My God. Your post makes me want to weep. Partly because I'm just so thrilled to see someone stand up for the Constitution is such stark terms. But partly because it's completely sad to think that a post like yours is rare enough to evoke such a reaction.:(
Re:The problem with the alternatives to PHP
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Pro PHP Security
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· Score: 1
It must just be personal preference, then. I agree with the grandparent post, the PHP docs are the best. I've seen the docs cited by others as a reason for considering PHP, so apparently it's a factor in PHP's success. If other languages provide documentation in different forms, then perhaps they are merely catering to other smaller markets. Maybe one of these different methods of documentation will prove to be superior at some point, and cause others to switch.
I guess the decision for those language developers would be, do we want to use our existing documentation system at the risk of marginalizing our language, or do we want to jump on the "Web-based with comments" bandwagon to entice a larger audience?
Note that an important part of the PHP documentation is the ability to type php.net/function into the browser, and get back a page with guesses as to what function you need to use. So php.net/array returns info on arrays, php.net/string returns info on strings, php.net/array_push returns the documentation for that particular function, etc. That would be an important part to implement, for anyone considering copying the PHP model.
I wonder. Would a CSS specification where elements did NOT float outside the page flow do any better? I mean, one of the hugest issues is that designers cannot seem to intuitively whip up complicated layouts with multiple columns and footers and so on. At least, not without grabbing something from the Garden as a crutch.
So the question becomes, how would it be possible to create a version of CSS that designers could grok? And I think one of the basics would be if floats simply affected page flow as a designer might expect -- in other words, boxes should affect each other, and be relative to the boxes they are in, and take up space that is correllated to their size. Another would be to see widths constrained to the content if no width is specified (the current model has the boxes expanding browser-wide in many cases, even if the content is only a pixel wide).
By doing this, wouldn't CSS become a more easily comprehended science, because it would lay out in a way that parallels physical objects? What risks come from such a model, and can they be overcome?
EA is reknown for treating employees less than fairly. And I don't really like many of their games. But strong 3rd-party support is something that Nintendo has been lacking, and this helps to dig them out of the hole just a little bit.
If Nintendo could get similar statements from other big companies, it would do so much for their prospects. I would really like to see Blizzard, Bioware, and Obsidian doing Wii games. I respect their PC games, and I think they could help to up the ante.
Also, I'm starting to get excited about Nintendo's new console for a different reason. People have struggled with RTS console games, due to the controllers. But couldn't the Wiimote work similar to a laser pointer? If so, wouldn't that open up some better control mechanisms for RTS console games?
Slashdot Mirror
You're right. As I said in another post in this thread, I'm not stuck on them having to resign, I'm stuck on them reacting somehow. They've known about the illegal activities for months. They could have taken action during the last few months while no one knew about it, and prepared themselves for this day. Instead, they're caught with their pants down. Everything they do now will be under shareholder scrutiny. In the documents on thesmokinggun.com, Perkins seems to lightly hint that the remaining directors may be complicit because they've refused to do anything or even acknowledge his warnings about possible illegalities. So sure, they shouldn't leave, but they shoulda done something.
You are talking about the board of directors. Every single one of them is powerful and wealthy (although we could argue over how wealthy). Hell, the guy who resigned is the head of a venture capital company. What's he worth? A few hundred million?
They most certainly can afford to walk out. Besides, it is not their job. Leaving the board of directors != leaving your paid day job. A seat on the board is a part-time advisory position.
Hi Hoi Polloi. You're totally right. I should have been more clear. The board has known what Dunn did since May. So my real thought is not that they all should have resigned, but that they all should have done something. Yes, make her resign. If not that, then public disclosure and shareholder review. Something. But they sat on this for May, June, July, August, and now we're into September, and they've still done nothing. Well, they've finally been caught off guard by being exposed. Maybe that will stir them into action.
I just think these dumb idiots bent over and let her screw them. And when they found out how much they had been violated, they apparently just stayed hunched over, waiting for more. It's pathetic.
HP didn't pay for the phone lines. If they did, they would already have the records showing who called who, and thus they wouldn't have needed to do anything more.
These were the personal lines of the directors. They didn't tap the phones. They called the phone company, impersonated each director, and then got the phone company to send them the bills. From there, they simply scanned the numbers called until they found a C|Net number. Supposedly.
Hi deacon. According to the article, there was no wiretapping. So no, they didn't break the law you cite, and did no illegal phone tapping.
What they did do was "pretexting," which apparently is also illegal. Basically, they impersonated the directors. They called their phone companies, and -- pretending to be the director in question -- they lied to the customer service person until he/she believed the real customer was on the line. Then, they instructed the customer service person to give them the contents of the director's personal phone records via email.
That's pretty shocking. It's corporate-sponsored law-breaking. Of course, as I mentioned in another post, the other members of board found out they were being illegally spied upon back in May, and did nothing. They've had months. What the hell were they thinking?
Believe it or not, it's hard to get worked up about this. Sure, reading the Slashdot text got me mad. It sounds shocking -- what a huge violation of privacy! But then, reading the article, you see that aside from 1 director who resigned, all the other directors, including the leaker, have stayed on board! In other words, the guys whose privacy was invaded didn't care. It was done to them, and their response was to keep serving.
So why care on their behalf? These walking lobotomies need to stand up for themselves.
Wow. That last question of yours would make some developers -- the best ones -- walk away from the job.
It's more like a remotely-hosted library. And no, the page would likely NOT work if that other server was down. A good developer could probably add some code to check the remote site and disable certain features on-the-fly if needed. I've done that for a lot of Salesforce stuff I do. Not too awful.
Seems like it would.
Not sure, because I don't know what you're referring to. Do you mean, what happens if you change a library on your own server? Probably shouldn't hurt -- it's all client-side JavaScript. If you mean, what happens if the site that hosts the JavaScript code changes a license or how a library works, then yes, that could likely screw you up.
Looks like a qualified yes.
It's not aware of the spellchecker in Firefox 2.0. But neither are any of the other spelling tools. This spelling tool works live on the text, and if you had Firefox 2.0 spellchecking it also, you'd simply have 2 tools running spellchecks. That could make for some interesting interface weirdness, but I doubt it would hurt anything.
That question is so completely insulting to a developer -- it so trivializes their attempt to do something smart and useful for you -- that if you asked that question, developer morale would immediately plummet. If you have ever asked such a question in the past, you need to know that your company has lost productivity because of it. Even if it never resulted in a missed deadline. Once you insult your developers, they're not going to want to work hard for you. They're going to stop caring. Do something smart and get insulted? OK, stop trying to be smart. If you've ever had to limit your scope or drop features or push out a deadline or worse, and such a thing happened after you asked such a question, now you know why. If you've ever released something that was buggier than people expected, or more difficult to refactor than the developers expected, you can probably bet that a member of your team was insulted and stopped caring.
Any question that is basically a "sounds like you're useless" kind of question is self-destructive to ask. Anyone with self-esteem will not accept it. You know how useful your developers are by their output. Do they hit deadlines? Do they build the things that are needed? Is the uptime good? Is the bug count low? Are the customers happy? Think about it. How are you going to feel if the developer replies to you by saying, "all you seem to do is push pencils around, so why are we paying you again?"
(And if you're inclined to respond by saying, "Unfair question, because I don't just push pencils, I provide real value!" ...then you understand the argumentative feeling you've instilled in your developers.)
Yes, what you really mean is remotely hosted JavaScript apps are problematic. Understood.
And you seem to be correct that by using such a remotely hosted service, you open yourself up to popups or other unwanted ads, at least in this case. Here's a quote from the site:
Where do those revenue streams come from, I wonder? About the only things I can consider are that they intend to charge for this after people are hooked to the free model, or that ads will start appearing on any site that uses it.
Your fears are founded, Jacquesm.
Slashcode is code that you copy onto your own server and use under your own control. He is talking about remotely hosted code. In other words, this cow code stays on a 3rd party's server. You do not get to control it or custom-rebuild it. It is very different from the Slashcode model. Thus, your questions and concerns are inapplicable.
http://tinyurl.com/fcoog
Note that it does have a star-rating, but that's just an overall score. And it has 28 reviews. Here's a quote from one review:
I think that gives you an up-close & personal insight into the customer service. Any local business can be listed. Most don't seem to have many reviews. You could start adding yours.
-Tony
As a parent, I cannot begin to say how important the Megan's Law website has been for me. I was shocked to see about 20 convicted child molesters live in my area. I had no idea how prevalent it was.
Having said that, this new proposal is awful. What the hell happened to "innocent until proven guilty?" Isn't this just an end-run around the law? Of course, as it's being made into law, I guess it's a law to do an end-run around other laws. How awful.
I hope it doesn't stand. I hope the first person who experiences this sues to overturn it. I hope a huge financial penalty is imposed, and paid by the State, which in turn would hurt the taxpayers of that State. It's the only way to make them wake up and hold those responsible accountable.
Dear Google,
This would be evil, mmmkay?
-Tony
That's just speculation, and I don't think it's true. However, even if it is, it is an incredibly poor response, and would in my opinion point right back to Debian having issues. If people were really wearing "Fuck Ubuntu" t-shirts, wow. What a bunch of immature losers. I've lost all respect for Debian if that's true.
While that may be true in some cases, it's not true in cases like Linux, or Perl, or Ubuntu. Therefore, while I am not going to suggest that your point is incorrect, I am going to suggest that your point is diminished by counterpoints.
I'm going to 100% disagree here. It has been my sad experience that -- as someone else mentioned here on Slashdot -- "megaphone democracy" is what you get. The person who speaks loudest the longest wins. But I'm not even upset about that, now that I've experienced that and understand it. You see, the core group that does the most is very often very small. And they're surrounded by a large group of sorta-disconnected sometimes-contributors. That large group is not well informed, and you cannot blame them. They have lives. They've decided that other things are priorities. That's fair. But that also means that they cannot be expected to judge who has skills. All they know is who has been helpful for the 3 interactions they've had on the project. And sometimes, the person who has been helpful to them was a PITA to everyone else.
This is how humanity is. I do not blame, because I've had to pick & choose what gets my attention, too. But now that I understand this, I know that your argument that skill levels become apparent just ain't so. Not for the majority. It's a pipe dream. Especially in this context -- chatter on mailing lists.
That may be true. It may also be the case that as an insider who has been a good contributor, he has seen the core of the apple, so to speak. He may be in a good position to reveal what's rotten. Write him off at your own peril.
I'm sorry, I thought that the Wii was supposed to be the console for moms (and dads, and grandparents). It's a bit of a stretch to think that the same controller and button-combos that make hardcore gamers happy can also make a soccer-mom happy. I agree with Nintendo that the best approach is to rethink the interface, rethink the interactions, and re-engineer things to win over non-gamers. They've done OK in winning over new gamers with the DS interface and Brain Games. With the Wii, I think they can repeat their success, if they stay sharp and deliver on the things they've been saying.
Of course, a rising tide lifts all boats, so I'm sure the XBox 360 will benefit. But the 360 is not the vanguard, IMHO.
I always felt that Planescape: Torment was high-brow. It's a game that is very text-heavy and wouldn't be enjoyed by a typical action-oriented gamer. Although you always end the game in the same place, you can get there various good and wicked ways. There are many moral quandries, and the entire game revolves around assuming the role of a man who has done horrendous evil. As the game unRavels, you realize the extent of malice your character has displayed, and how it has ruined the lives of people around you. Many decisions are ambiguous -- you do not choose good or evil, but try to find the best path among many imperfect paths.
In the end, when the game ended for me, I wept. I wept because there was no happy ending, only a bittersweet "best I could manage guys, sorry" ending. It felt very true to life, with consequences for each decision I made. When I was done, I felt that I had learned many life lessons, that I had been exposed to viewpoints contrary to my own and had come away better for it, and that sometimes the best way out of a bad situation is to be a better person from the start.
-Tony
Wow, no funny mods for alphasubzero949? Did nobody get that the milk comment is an allusion to something Steve Jobs said about 8 or 9 years ago? I think what Steve said was something like 'If I were in charge of Apple, at this point all I could do would be to milk the Macintosh for all it's worth, and sell the company off."
-Tony
I just thought it was for the (remote) possibility of a little hot simulated girl-on-girl action. ;)
-Tony
OK. I'm more inclined to believe the cops... wait a second...
Oh, you dumb, dumb cops. Of course Neftaly Cruz was "not on his property" during the arrest if you went onto his property and dragged him off! Why would you do that in front of witnesses?
-Tony
I found these:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=php-dev&m=11329681 6720289&w=2 5 7711671&w=2 0 9820157&w=2
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=php-dev&m=1153255
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=php-dev&m=1153312
...which hint at conflict. Maybe one of those blew up in a way he didn't like. However, I don't think those really are the issues. I would guess it's something off-list. It's too bad. I have friends working at Zend. You never want to see someone so useful walk away.
I must admit that I'm impressed with the mailing list -- Jani said "don't reply" and nobody did. They're either a disciplined bunch, heavily moderated, or Jani's leaving just didn't have much impact.
-Tony
Yeah, I think you're on the right track. I remember reading the article in Wired the first time around. And my impression wasn't that he was suggesting, "ooohhh, the long tail is overshadowing the hits!" Instead, my impression was that he meant, "the long tail exists in a digital world, but not brick & mortar!"
In other words, Blockbuster stores would stock 10,000 movies. Maybe even 100,000. And that provides enough variety for most customers. But weird freaks such as myself, who want to view every film from Sundance, or want to view every documentary produced in a given year, are pretty much out of luck with Blockbuster. Enter Netflix. They have 1 massive warehouse (or a few), stocking everything they can possibly get their hands on. Maybe 10,000,000 titles. They can ship every obscure film to me, whereas the Blockbuster store down the street cannot.
So it isn't that the long tail is wagging anything. It's that the long tail exists. It's that 10 years ago there was no long tail market. But now people such as myself will buy things I couldn't before. On the surface, that simply means that Netflix gets 20% more sales (following the 80/20 rule). However, because Netflix provides more of everything, I eventually consolidate 100% of my purchases/rentals there, leaving my Blockbuster account to atrophy. That's why the long tail is so interesting: it's disruptive technology, in a sense. Being able to offer long-tail-anything is a business advantage, which causes other models to be overturned.
My God. Your post makes me want to weep. Partly because I'm just so thrilled to see someone stand up for the Constitution is such stark terms. But partly because it's completely sad to think that a post like yours is rare enough to evoke such a reaction. :(
It must just be personal preference, then. I agree with the grandparent post, the PHP docs are the best. I've seen the docs cited by others as a reason for considering PHP, so apparently it's a factor in PHP's success. If other languages provide documentation in different forms, then perhaps they are merely catering to other smaller markets. Maybe one of these different methods of documentation will prove to be superior at some point, and cause others to switch.
I guess the decision for those language developers would be, do we want to use our existing documentation system at the risk of marginalizing our language, or do we want to jump on the "Web-based with comments" bandwagon to entice a larger audience?
Note that an important part of the PHP documentation is the ability to type php.net/function into the browser, and get back a page with guesses as to what function you need to use. So php.net/array returns info on arrays, php.net/string returns info on strings, php.net/array_push returns the documentation for that particular function, etc. That would be an important part to implement, for anyone considering copying the PHP model.
I wonder. Would a CSS specification where elements did NOT float outside the page flow do any better? I mean, one of the hugest issues is that designers cannot seem to intuitively whip up complicated layouts with multiple columns and footers and so on. At least, not without grabbing something from the Garden as a crutch.
So the question becomes, how would it be possible to create a version of CSS that designers could grok? And I think one of the basics would be if floats simply affected page flow as a designer might expect -- in other words, boxes should affect each other, and be relative to the boxes they are in, and take up space that is correllated to their size. Another would be to see widths constrained to the content if no width is specified (the current model has the boxes expanding browser-wide in many cases, even if the content is only a pixel wide).
By doing this, wouldn't CSS become a more easily comprehended science, because it would lay out in a way that parallels physical objects? What risks come from such a model, and can they be overcome?
-Tony
EA is reknown for treating employees less than fairly. And I don't really like many of their games. But strong 3rd-party support is something that Nintendo has been lacking, and this helps to dig them out of the hole just a little bit.
If Nintendo could get similar statements from other big companies, it would do so much for their prospects. I would really like to see Blizzard, Bioware, and Obsidian doing Wii games. I respect their PC games, and I think they could help to up the ante.
Also, I'm starting to get excited about Nintendo's new console for a different reason. People have struggled with RTS console games, due to the controllers. But couldn't the Wiimote work similar to a laser pointer? If so, wouldn't that open up some better control mechanisms for RTS console games?
-Tony