This was part of my point: abstract statements sounding like implying much more than what is really in there. Additionally and even in case that they could accurately track my location in a given moment, having a system automatically managing the information of millions of people and adequately putting together/regularly updating all that, actually having a proper understanding about most of these people is quite improbable. In summary, the title "Facebook Has Mapped the Entire Human Population of Earth" doesn't mean what it seems to imply.
Mobile devices are certainly much easier to track. Also if you have access to the given machine (via app as you suggest or OS or even hardware firmware), the location can also be tracked much more accurately. Although my post was mostly focused on highlighting the poor understanding skills of systems collecting tons of information. Tracking a specific device/person is one thing; automatically managing millions of devices and properly understanding all that information is a completely different story.
So, if Zuckerberg is obsessed with you and wants to know where you are exactly in each specific moment, he might be able to track you pretty accurately (don't complain or it would be worse! LOL). But if you are a random person whose personal information is included in one of these huge data repositories, the chances of the corresponding automated system having a proper understanding about you are pretty low.
The fact is that they have a vast repository of information about a large international slice of humanity
Just having isn't too relevant; at least, not nowadays when everyone knows that personal information is being systematically collected everywhere. It is like having lots of money which you cannot spend: apparently important, but actually useless. In any case, I am not defending these behaviours, just being practical and realistic about what I cannot control.
Until around 2 years ago, some IP geo-locations tools were missing my actual location by over 900 km. Even nowadays, they rarely get my town and associate my network with neighbour cities up to 100 km away. My ISP is the biggest provider in Spain and I have a pretty standard dynamic-IP package. I don't use VPNs, proxies or similar approaches other than sporadically.
During the last quite a few months, I have been sharing a lot of information about myself online. I have written many posts about different issues and regularly updated my two sites, both of them with a relevant amount of information and quite search-friendly. But I am still getting involved in many misunderstandings, references to what I deleted years ago, inclusions in nothing-to-do-with-me categories, I rarely see advertisement which is appealing to me or to the generic group where I should be included, etc.
Something as simple as not including my own picture or regularly communicating in English despite living in Spain or simply not having the typical social-media activity are issues which seem very tricky for these systems. They seem to rely on very simplistic assumptions and to not be able to understand even slightly complex scenarios. I don't think that they are in a position to really maximise most of the collected information; certainly not for a big proportion of the worldwide population.
under the speed of sound in it so there is no sonic boom or excessive heating.
So, you are saying that reason for choosing what seems a quite arbitrary target (notably higher than the conventional values under similar enough conditions like trains and, as such, what our current technology seems to indicate as the actual upper limit) is pretty much to be the highest safe-enough value before reaching what, a priori, seems as quite problematic conditions, at around 1200 km/h. Basically, just thinking about what might the best result, assuming that it might be reachable and building all your remaining ideas over that ultimate truth!
This is not precisely how (reasonable, reliable and actually-accomplishing-something) engineering is supposed to work but what can I say? There are lots of things here which don't follow conventional, sensible, likely-to-output-anything-worthy proceedings. I guess that these Chinese people thought that the sound barrier wasn't too problematic and simply applied your approach to a different (arbitrary) upper limit. What is impossibility anymore, right? All what you have to do now is to think about a big enough whatever, wrap it up nicely, put some money in and just wait for the next revolution. I see.
No.
4Km is the same as 4km.
K or k means kilo, kilo means 1000.
No. Km means kelvin meter. Kilo is always represented with "k". You might use "K" to denote kilo within a random text if it isn't confusing (e.g., year 2K); but when talking about measurement units, where lower/upper caps matter, you should use the proper symbols. A different story is dealing with short forms or acronyms like kph/KPH where there is no possible confusion.
UNIT-RELATED NOTE FOR THE EDITORS: I personally don't care about you using metric-like (because km/h isn't exactly SI, nowadays metric system, as far as hours isn't part of the metric/SI/CGS systems) or imperial/USCS/whatever other system relies on miles-like (for the same reason); this is just to let you know that kph is as good as mph. Technically speaking, the most correct approach is to use the fractional versions (mi/h and km/h) though.
Is there a reason why both of them want to stop at around 4000 km/h?
Good question. This is also applicable to the original Hyperloop: why 700 km/h and not 1000 or more? Changing the numbers in their advertisement and making a video showing 2x/3x that speed don't seem too difficult. They should also be able to keep increasing the speed in their ridiculous saying-absolutely-nothing tests with tiny vehicles, short stretches and extremely favourable conditions without any problem. One test every few months showing slight improvements and increasingly faster speeds might be more than enough to keep this going for some years.
In fact, I don't know the answer to your question. I have never been in that position myself. I am just a practical engineer who will never take part in the promotion of such unrealistic expectations as technically doable. You should ask the marketing-oriented people with low-to-no common sense and knowledge (and/or principles) who firstly thought that all this would be a good idea. On the other hand, the most logical reason for having even started is that there is an actual market of (gullible, ignorant, extremely unpractical and rich) suckers willing to lose their (or others') money there. So, perhaps you should also ask those potential "clients" about the upper limit making all this nonsense still attractive to them.
Apparently, sharing my honest impressions about my personal experiences by somehow censoring too aggressive positions ("Although that statement certainly looks a bit too aggressive (+ prejudicious)") and by being as over-understanding as possible ("it might cut both ways if you wish") is now also considered trolling by some people (the post above got -1 troll)! Interesting!
One of my life goals is to be able to come up with a comprehensive and accurate enough definition for trolling/being a troll in internet. I might have not enough time (most likely, I will only live around 40-50 years more), but I am a quite optimistic person! LOL.
CLARIFICATIONS FOR THOSE NEEDING LOLs TO GET WHEN I AM SERIOUS/KIDDING: a LOL in one of my posts doesn't mean that all what is written there isn't serious/true. It is just meant to be a mere generic warning helping you to not quickly jump to crazy conclusions after reading a couple of isolated words; you need basic understanding skills to properly get what is going on (with my posts and, in general, with the world around you). Also bear in mind that I haven't been relying on this policy of undoubtedly tagging for too long (I used to trust in the proper understanding of people or, at least, in innocent jokes not being a problem! What was I thinking, right?) and that posts here cannot be edited. Please, don't convert this good-faith gesture in a new resource for nonsense via if-not-LOL-is-serious. Do you still have doubts? Here you have two suggestions: avoid dealing with me (+ doing anything even slightly affecting me); take a look at the certainly-serious-and-clear parts (e.g., my profile description or any time I talk about my knowledge, expertise, principles, physical features, etc.). It is really very easy: I (= just one, the same, every time, no exceptions) am a honest, fair and straightforward guy, extremely proud of what I do/think/expect and with nothing to hide, be afraid of or prove to anyone (this is just about minimising the chances of getting involved in ridiculous situations); if any of your conclusions/expectations about me goes even slightly against anything of that, it would mean that you are wrong (and/or didn't get a joke).
Happy to help and to confirm that you have the kind of adaptable and reasonable attitude which is certainly required to accomplish what you want. I will keep an eye on your site and might give it a shot at some point.
Thank you so much for the detailed response. It makes me so happy to hear that you're so up for a discussion and aren't ready to just right it off without a giving it (and me) a chance.
This sounds as an excellent starting point. For me, this is more than enough to assume that you have the right mindset and that I might have unfairly misjudged your attempt.
Simply put, we advise creators to come up with a system for allocating cpts.
Well, basically it does sound as the moderator-based system with the not-too-positive addition of being a mere recommendation. If you want to make sure that things will certainly be going in the right direction, you would have to set up some basic rules which will have to always be observed.
Everything is done through project tasks. Tasks are created based on position and have a cpt associated with them. Anyone in that position can accept it (provided they've not undertaken too many tasks) and anyone in the project with a threshold level of cpts can create new ones.
The concept of task seems interesting, but at the end it is still linked to the same arbitrariness. Another thing would be setting up global rules being applied throughout the whole site (even perhaps with different versions for different languages/frameworks). This would be more work for you, but also higher value for your idea and much higher chances of coming up with a fair approach. If you allow performing as many local redefinitions of fairness as required you would be heading directly towards unfairness. What about something like this: you create a set of template groups of tasks (+ for each language); each project has to define some tasks by following any of those templates; you would have to approve all the tasks. Example: task template IO 0 reading/writing from/to files, get 3-10 points * relevance of project; person1 in project1 submits task 1 "implementing our I/O system" applying the template IO 0 with 5 points defined by... + you approve/deny it + every contributor to that project taking care of that task will get 5 points times the size of the project. Fair, square with minimal arbitrariness (or, at least, same arbitrariness for all the projects and contributors).
which case it can be voted on by anyone
Standard voting systems have proven to be heavily misused almost everywhere. In fact, one of the few voting systems which I kind of like is the Slashdot one and it isn't precisely perfect; but I think that its defining features are very worthy: people randomly selected to vote, restricted conditions under which the votes can be issued, limited number of votes per account. As above, the lower number of power instances, the better. A centralised, fair government whose decisions, which everyone has to accept, define the whole system sounds to me as the only acceptable approach to avoid all the problems which I described in my previous comment.
The balance of power of course, was the largest thing I had to solve
What about my proposal above? Accepting the reality seems to mean that you cannot grant unlimited powers/freedom to random people online because it is likely to provoke lots of unfairness. If you are really up for changing things and you are really committed to your project, why not doing some serious centralising work on the lines on what I am proposing above, something fair and rigorous enough?
idea-people have some desire to maintain the power of their projects or that they have a desire to exploit work because they don't have knowledge. Well the simple solution is, those kind of people don't have a space on this site one bit
This is the way to go: clear rules to be applied no matter what whose sole purpose is to fulfil the intended goal under the intended conditions. Your site/approach has to undoubtedly define those and to provide the tools to ensure their observance. You can
Clarification to the clarification: I am not interested in dealing with people actually needing these clarifications or similar (e.g., me adding "LOL" to denote that what I wrote shouldn't be taken seriously/literally). I am writing all these clarifications to minimise the chances of having to waste time on addressing nonsensical concerns (+ avoiding misunderstanding-based uncomfortable/negative-to-everyone situations).
(I seriously hate it, but seems unfortunately required)
I heard something about a friend of the ex-wife of the guy in charge of hiring the streaming provider being a frat pal of Gavin Belson. At least, this is what someone bro-ed me because, you know, bros disclose.
This whole paragraph is a reference to the sitcom Silicon Valley, exactly the same than the parent post.
?! They are everywhere and will never go away. In fact, the huge amount of money + relatively easily availability of resources in software development have precisely provoked them to be the new normal. This is basically what non-technical management, recruiters, sales, marketing, etc. become when expecting their low-to-knowledge to be imposed when dealing with technical aspects. This is the kind of people providing all the funding + getting it; that's why a big proportion of the last trendy products/companies are promoted and managed by these individuals. The whole software development reality is slowly becoming an idea-people reality. The logical evolution isn't aspiring to become a better developer anymore, but moving up to idea person (who can say that has a programming background). They (in the widest version of the idea which I am depicting) are certainly required, but there should be a much clearer separation than what is quite common lately.
A true honour and I am not being sarcastic. This is one of the aspects which I love of Slashdot: you can get involved in this kind of situations!
I love your cynicism
I am not cynical. I am absolutely and completely realistic on account of all my experiences on this front. But you don't need to take my experience to get a proper feeling about all this, you might just take a look at the last quite a few revolutionary app, site, whatever posted here, their actual content (beyond a poorly thought idea), the involved funding (quite a few millions) and how everything ends. You can even start a programming chat here with almost anyone and see the knowledge/reactions/contributions of the younger members. You can start visiting (newer) open-source projects, check their chats and the problems they have (mostly not related at all with technical aspects). You can do some research about how developers are being hired, what is the background of decision makers (and what aspects are really being weighted to make the final decisions), etc.
distributed to all members of a project, including the creator and all the profits are distributed to every member of the project based of the weight of their C.pts
In principle, it sounds much fairer that my initial assumption (sorry for the having shared inaccurate information). On the other hand, ideas on these lines are usually being sold as fair, because this is precisely the bait to attract free workforce. The first question coming to my mind is: how are you planning to perform such a distribution? How can you assess the relevancy of each contribution (across the huge number of different programming languages which I presume that you will be supporting)? How can you avoid people to trying to trick the system by performing lots of irrelevant commits? I will answer it for you (if you were still thinking about it, here you have your options): you can either try to come up with a pretty complex (even just for one single programming language) application which is likely to be eventually tricked or you can rely on people assessing that issue like moderators. Whatever option you choose, at the end, you will almost certainly end relying on these moderators; probably to be the ones who firstly initiated the project and consequently this would be a sub-set of idea-people-1 (or a new subset which you might call idea-people-1-b whose position would be pretty similar to those). Even if this assessment wouldn’t be required, pushy mobs/factions/bros would eventually appear and relegate actual knowledge/objectivity to a secondary position by converting them liking you/arbitrarily deciding your contribution into the only relevant factor. Any of these versions have nothing to do with actual software development, objectiveness, sharing among knowledgeable and for the knowledge; all of this has to do with people with no knowledge (or not willing to use it) expecting to get some gain from others' knowledge by basically relying on an arbitrary assessment system not based on actual merits (or payments). Basically, idea people providing ideas (impositions, arbitrary decisions, etc.) milking knowledgeable people. So, I am afraid that what your system is essentially linked to (any version of what) I described.
I've spent £600 so far to get the branding done and the rest has been built by myself in my spare time
If this was true, it would be excellent news and a very much appreciated fresh air in the industry (and again I would have to apologise about my inaccurate random guess). Although honestly, it seems kind of hard to believe that you can get so much visibility (lots of shares in Reddit), being posted here, etc. for so little. On the other hand, you might be good at social networking (one of my weakest points) and it might be possible.
The last part of the quote (from Reddit) which got cut: "...At the moment I’m hoping that on every sale there’ll be a cut of about 10% before transaction costs so that 90% of all sales revenue is going to the project contributors - with no extra, hidden costs. This could change though, depending on costs.".
...everyone earning contribution points as they complete tasks. There are voting options and rights that come with additional contribution points which makes all the projects completely autonomous (I hope). The best part though is that by using the selling tools I want to provide, any software created with Crowdsourcer.io will be able to sell on a store (yet to be built), via its own websites and maybe even through third party retailers, with 100% of the profit being distributed to a project’s contributors...
It seems that these ideas can be summarised into the following 3 groups of people:
-idea-people-1 (owners of the site). They provide: the idea (which took years to be formed!) and the site. They get: upto 10% of the money generated by the future sales of the future applications in the future shop. Until reaching that point, I guess that they will be spending the money given by some VC (most likely, already used for the promotion so far), various $ millions probably.
- Idea-people-2 (project/future-apps owners). They provide: the idea for the app/code. They get: the code written for free and the app ready to be sold + 90% of the generated money (by the future sales, etc.).
- Programmers. They provide: all the code + having everything ready for the future sales. They get: contributor points, being told that all this is for their own good and this warm feeling of having helped the aforementioned two groups of people to get money from virtually anything.
Is it just me or is there something here that isn't exactly right? Open-source code as a way to share work/knowledge with other people performing equivalent work and having similar knowledge, who might be getting some profit from selling the outputs of that effort, seems OK to me. Assuming that contributors to bigger/more demanding projects are likely to be more knowledgeable and, consequently, that fact being some kind of badge of honour helping these people to find better jobs in the industry seems also fine. Even sharing some code as a way to help others know better about your programming skills seems perfectly acceptable (I do that and give all my code as public domain as far as all what I want is to show my programming skills to future employers; although I am starting to think that almost nobody cares about the code, but about either stars or ready-to-be-used outputs). But at what point have people with low-to-no-knowledge (or, at least, no interest in doing any work) decided that they can get money from others' specialised expertise on exchange of "points"?!
At what point the next logical step after "I need a piece of software + don't have knowledge/am not willing to do it myself" changed from "I would have to hire someone" to "I would get it for free"?! Rather than investing money on having a proper product, you try to get the product for free and invest all the money in promotion and disproportionate salaries?! How can such a nonsensical situation even exist? Might any of this be perhaps related to the increasingly number of errors, problems, bugs, low-quality software everywhere? The most incredible part is that such an approach is starting to become not just acceptable, but required! I have to spend an important amount of time saying that I am a programmer, that I do all the work myself, that the product of my company is my own work! Because having a software development company isn't associated anymore with actually developing software ?! I personally wouldn't mind to share fair parts of my benefits with those providing me with what I am naturally bad at (= getting clients interested in what I develop); but it seems that the overall behaviour is expecting even more?! Me working for nothing?! I will never do such a thing! I work for free a lot but only for me! Who is enabling these disproportionate expectations where those having nothing are seriously thinking that are in control?! Well, my ideas are clear and I can be really patient; if I have to wait for this weird world (of software development) to completely crash, I would do it:)
"unprovable" in a post, and was puzzled at the red underlining
Automatic spell/grammar checks have surely become a very helpful tool to avoid problems on this front, but I also ignore their suggestions relatively often. I agree with you in languages being variable realities which should adapt to how people use them rather than the other way around.
I heard something about a friend of the ex-wife of the guy in charge of hiring the streaming provider being a frat pal of Gavin Belson. At least, this is what someone bro-ed me because, you know, bros disclose. LOL.
On a serious note: software-related (online) unreliability isn't precisely a surprise to me. The case of video streaming is particularly descriptive: there are quite a few sites with tons of problems, limited (browser or features) support and surprisingly slow. I have even seen these problems in the sites of major players in the broadcasting business like big television networks!
Describing someone as a monkey usually implies that this person has a somehow limited comprehension ability or isn't even able to perform complex, human-like thoughts/interactions. In programming, "code monkeys" are the ones who blindly copy-paste/type what is written somewhere else, without properly understanding and without a real knowledge; basically, what a monkey or another animal would do in case of being in front of a computer: repeating simple actions, not precisely for a too sensible reason (because the sound is nice or because someone told them to do so).
What do you think that is more monkey- (irrational, arbitrary)-like? Blindly applying certain abstract rules with no real intrinsic purpose other than helping to better fulfilling a given goal (= proper communication) + acting aggressively against anyone not doing so; or adequately understanding the situation, the importance of each bit and actually accomplishing the intended goal of adequately understanding regardless of irrelevant details? What do you think that a monkey would do in a similar situation? If you train a monkey to know that "food" means that it will eat, do you think that it would understand "foud"? Or might perhaps get angry and act aggressively because of feeling frustrated with a world which is too complex for it and which can barely understand?
The funniest thing of people like you or the electro-shocker above is that you seriously think that any kind of ridiculous errors are associated with lack of knowledge (what BTW denotes your own limitations)! You don't seem to understand that not everyone else might share your scale of priorities ("I have to make sure that each single word I write is fine such that nobody can criticise me"); other people might prefer to adequately understand and to care about what really matters/is really indicative of whatever issue rather than getting lost in irrelevancies; there might even be some cases where people intentionally break those rules to somehow criticise whatever fanatic behaviour. There are always many possible reasons for reaching the same outcome, no sensible person should ever blindly assume otherwise.
In case it isn't clear, I am not supporting the lack of care in writing (online or anywhere else) or minimising the importance of the rules of the English language (or of any other language). I am plainly criticising fanaticism: supporting electro-shocking or calling someone a monkey over this?! Not because of not properly understanding something, but because of not perfectly respecting a set of abstract rules meant to facilitate that understanding process!! Not just feeling internally bothered or suggesting an improvement or teaching that person; not even focusing on cases where the error is truly relevant to accomplish the given goal because of actually avoiding a proper communication! These arbitrary attacks were exclusively motivated by abstract rules not fully respected and not even in a very specific context where this is a very relevant issue! And the best part is that a big proportion of people so concerned about these issues (mainly the most aggressive ones; aggressiveness when used to arbitrarily and unfairly attack others is undoubtedly bad) have serious understanding problems! They are so concern about making sure that all the words follow a certain set of rules that forget about properly understanding the transmitted message! Pffff.
Slashdot Mirror
But by IP address alone, it's unlikely.
This was part of my point: abstract statements sounding like implying much more than what is really in there. Additionally and even in case that they could accurately track my location in a given moment, having a system automatically managing the information of millions of people and adequately putting together/regularly updating all that, actually having a proper understanding about most of these people is quite improbable. In summary, the title "Facebook Has Mapped the Entire Human Population of Earth" doesn't mean what it seems to imply.
Mobile devices are certainly much easier to track. Also if you have access to the given machine (via app as you suggest or OS or even hardware firmware), the location can also be tracked much more accurately. Although my post was mostly focused on highlighting the poor understanding skills of systems collecting tons of information. Tracking a specific device/person is one thing; automatically managing millions of devices and properly understanding all that information is a completely different story.
So, if Zuckerberg is obsessed with you and wants to know where you are exactly in each specific moment, he might be able to track you pretty accurately (don't complain or it would be worse! LOL). But if you are a random person whose personal information is included in one of these huge data repositories, the chances of the corresponding automated system having a proper understanding about you are pretty low.
The fact is that they have a vast repository of information about a large international slice of humanity
Just having isn't too relevant; at least, not nowadays when everyone knows that personal information is being systematically collected everywhere. It is like having lots of money which you cannot spend: apparently important, but actually useless. In any case, I am not defending these behaviours, just being practical and realistic about what I cannot control.
Until around 2 years ago, some IP geo-locations tools were missing my actual location by over 900 km. Even nowadays, they rarely get my town and associate my network with neighbour cities up to 100 km away. My ISP is the biggest provider in Spain and I have a pretty standard dynamic-IP package. I don't use VPNs, proxies or similar approaches other than sporadically.
During the last quite a few months, I have been sharing a lot of information about myself online. I have written many posts about different issues and regularly updated my two sites, both of them with a relevant amount of information and quite search-friendly. But I am still getting involved in many misunderstandings, references to what I deleted years ago, inclusions in nothing-to-do-with-me categories, I rarely see advertisement which is appealing to me or to the generic group where I should be included, etc.
Something as simple as not including my own picture or regularly communicating in English despite living in Spain or simply not having the typical social-media activity are issues which seem very tricky for these systems. They seem to rely on very simplistic assumptions and to not be able to understand even slightly complex scenarios. I don't think that they are in a position to really maximise most of the collected information; certainly not for a big proportion of the worldwide population.
Alright, but it still doesn't explain mrsquid0's "4 Kelvin-meter per hour is about 2500 mph" math
Sure. I didn't even read that other comment, just focused on correcting your Km = km.
under the speed of sound in it so there is no sonic boom or excessive heating.
So, you are saying that reason for choosing what seems a quite arbitrary target (notably higher than the conventional values under similar enough conditions like trains and, as such, what our current technology seems to indicate as the actual upper limit) is pretty much to be the highest safe-enough value before reaching what, a priori, seems as quite problematic conditions, at around 1200 km/h. Basically, just thinking about what might the best result, assuming that it might be reachable and building all your remaining ideas over that ultimate truth!
This is not precisely how (reasonable, reliable and actually-accomplishing-something) engineering is supposed to work but what can I say? There are lots of things here which don't follow conventional, sensible, likely-to-output-anything-worthy proceedings. I guess that these Chinese people thought that the sound barrier wasn't too problematic and simply applied your approach to a different (arbitrary) upper limit. What is impossibility anymore, right? All what you have to do now is to think about a big enough whatever, wrap it up nicely, put some money in and just wait for the next revolution. I see.
No. 4Km is the same as 4km. K or k means kilo, kilo means 1000.
No. Km means kelvin meter. Kilo is always represented with "k". You might use "K" to denote kilo within a random text if it isn't confusing (e.g., year 2K); but when talking about measurement units, where lower/upper caps matter, you should use the proper symbols. A different story is dealing with short forms or acronyms like kph/KPH where there is no possible confusion.
UNIT-RELATED NOTE FOR THE EDITORS: I personally don't care about you using metric-like (because km/h isn't exactly SI, nowadays metric system, as far as hours isn't part of the metric/SI/CGS systems) or imperial/USCS/whatever other system relies on miles-like (for the same reason); this is just to let you know that kph is as good as mph. Technically speaking, the most correct approach is to use the fractional versions (mi/h and km/h) though.
Is there a reason why both of them want to stop at around 4000 km/h?
Good question. This is also applicable to the original Hyperloop: why 700 km/h and not 1000 or more? Changing the numbers in their advertisement and making a video showing 2x/3x that speed don't seem too difficult. They should also be able to keep increasing the speed in their ridiculous saying-absolutely-nothing tests with tiny vehicles, short stretches and extremely favourable conditions without any problem. One test every few months showing slight improvements and increasingly faster speeds might be more than enough to keep this going for some years.
In fact, I don't know the answer to your question. I have never been in that position myself. I am just a practical engineer who will never take part in the promotion of such unrealistic expectations as technically doable. You should ask the marketing-oriented people with low-to-no common sense and knowledge (and/or principles) who firstly thought that all this would be a good idea. On the other hand, the most logical reason for having even started is that there is an actual market of (gullible, ignorant, extremely unpractical and rich) suckers willing to lose their (or others') money there. So, perhaps you should also ask those potential "clients" about the upper limit making all this nonsense still attractive to them.
Firstly, I couldn't understand why anyone would have bought such a domain name. Now, I completely get it and my life has finally a purpose! LOL.
We need a new elegantly caustic mod category just to be fair with your comment. LOL.
Apparently, sharing my honest impressions about my personal experiences by somehow censoring too aggressive positions ("Although that statement certainly looks a bit too aggressive (+ prejudicious)") and by being as over-understanding as possible ("it might cut both ways if you wish") is now also considered trolling by some people (the post above got -1 troll)! Interesting!
One of my life goals is to be able to come up with a comprehensive and accurate enough definition for trolling/being a troll in internet. I might have not enough time (most likely, I will only live around 40-50 years more), but I am a quite optimistic person! LOL.
CLARIFICATIONS FOR THOSE NEEDING LOLs TO GET WHEN I AM SERIOUS/KIDDING: a LOL in one of my posts doesn't mean that all what is written there isn't serious/true. It is just meant to be a mere generic warning helping you to not quickly jump to crazy conclusions after reading a couple of isolated words; you need basic understanding skills to properly get what is going on (with my posts and, in general, with the world around you).
Also bear in mind that I haven't been relying on this policy of undoubtedly tagging for too long (I used to trust in the proper understanding of people or, at least, in innocent jokes not being a problem! What was I thinking, right?) and that posts here cannot be edited. Please, don't convert this good-faith gesture in a new resource for nonsense via if-not-LOL-is-serious. Do you still have doubts? Here you have two suggestions: avoid dealing with me (+ doing anything even slightly affecting me); take a look at the certainly-serious-and-clear parts (e.g., my profile description or any time I talk about my knowledge, expertise, principles, physical features, etc.).
It is really very easy: I (= just one, the same, every time, no exceptions) am a honest, fair and straightforward guy, extremely proud of what I do/think/expect and with nothing to hide, be afraid of or prove to anyone (this is just about minimising the chances of getting involved in ridiculous situations); if any of your conclusions/expectations about me goes even slightly against anything of that, it would mean that you are wrong (and/or didn't get a joke).
Anyway, I really do appreciate the feedback.
Happy to help and to confirm that you have the kind of adaptable and reasonable attitude which is certainly required to accomplish what you want. I will keep an eye on your site and might give it a shot at some point.
Thank you so much for the detailed response. It makes me so happy to hear that you're so up for a discussion and aren't ready to just right it off without a giving it (and me) a chance.
This sounds as an excellent starting point. For me, this is more than enough to assume that you have the right mindset and that I might have unfairly misjudged your attempt.
Simply put, we advise creators to come up with a system for allocating cpts.
Well, basically it does sound as the moderator-based system with the not-too-positive addition of being a mere recommendation. If you want to make sure that things will certainly be going in the right direction, you would have to set up some basic rules which will have to always be observed.
Everything is done through project tasks. Tasks are created based on position and have a cpt associated with them. Anyone in that position can accept it (provided they've not undertaken too many tasks) and anyone in the project with a threshold level of cpts can create new ones.
The concept of task seems interesting, but at the end it is still linked to the same arbitrariness. Another thing would be setting up global rules being applied throughout the whole site (even perhaps with different versions for different languages/frameworks). This would be more work for you, but also higher value for your idea and much higher chances of coming up with a fair approach. If you allow performing as many local redefinitions of fairness as required you would be heading directly towards unfairness. What about something like this: you create a set of template groups of tasks (+ for each language); each project has to define some tasks by following any of those templates; you would have to approve all the tasks. Example: task template IO 0 reading/writing from/to files, get 3-10 points * relevance of project; person1 in project1 submits task 1 "implementing our I/O system" applying the template IO 0 with 5 points defined by... + you approve/deny it + every contributor to that project taking care of that task will get 5 points times the size of the project. Fair, square with minimal arbitrariness (or, at least, same arbitrariness for all the projects and contributors).
which case it can be voted on by anyone
Standard voting systems have proven to be heavily misused almost everywhere. In fact, one of the few voting systems which I kind of like is the Slashdot one and it isn't precisely perfect; but I think that its defining features are very worthy: people randomly selected to vote, restricted conditions under which the votes can be issued, limited number of votes per account. As above, the lower number of power instances, the better. A centralised, fair government whose decisions, which everyone has to accept, define the whole system sounds to me as the only acceptable approach to avoid all the problems which I described in my previous comment.
The balance of power of course, was the largest thing I had to solve
What about my proposal above? Accepting the reality seems to mean that you cannot grant unlimited powers/freedom to random people online because it is likely to provoke lots of unfairness. If you are really up for changing things and you are really committed to your project, why not doing some serious centralising work on the lines on what I am proposing above, something fair and rigorous enough?
idea-people have some desire to maintain the power of their projects or that they have a desire to exploit work because they don't have knowledge. Well the simple solution is, those kind of people don't have a space on this site one bit
This is the way to go: clear rules to be applied no matter what whose sole purpose is to fulfil the intended goal under the intended conditions. Your site/approach has to undoubtedly define those and to provide the tools to ensure their observance. You can
Clarification to the clarification: I am not interested in dealing with people actually needing these clarifications or similar (e.g., me adding "LOL" to denote that what I wrote shouldn't be taken seriously/literally). I am writing all these clarifications to minimise the chances of having to waste time on addressing nonsensical concerns (+ avoiding misunderstanding-based uncomfortable/negative-to-everyone situations).
I heard something about a friend of the ex-wife of the guy in charge of hiring the streaming provider being a frat pal of Gavin Belson. At least, this is what someone bro-ed me because, you know, bros disclose.
This whole paragraph is a reference to the sitcom Silicon Valley, exactly the same than the parent post.
weeded out of existence years ago
?! They are everywhere and will never go away. In fact, the huge amount of money + relatively easily availability of resources in software development have precisely provoked them to be the new normal. This is basically what non-technical management, recruiters, sales, marketing, etc. become when expecting their low-to-knowledge to be imposed when dealing with technical aspects. This is the kind of people providing all the funding + getting it; that's why a big proportion of the last trendy products/companies are promoted and managed by these individuals. The whole software development reality is slowly becoming an idea-people reality. The logical evolution isn't aspiring to become a better developer anymore, but moving up to idea person (who can say that has a programming background). They (in the widest version of the idea which I am depicting) are certainly required, but there should be a much clearer separation than what is quite common lately.
I'm the creator of the site
A true honour and I am not being sarcastic. This is one of the aspects which I love of Slashdot: you can get involved in this kind of situations!
I love your cynicism
I am not cynical. I am absolutely and completely realistic on account of all my experiences on this front. But you don't need to take my experience to get a proper feeling about all this, you might just take a look at the last quite a few revolutionary app, site, whatever posted here, their actual content (beyond a poorly thought idea), the involved funding (quite a few millions) and how everything ends. You can even start a programming chat here with almost anyone and see the knowledge/reactions/contributions of the younger members. You can start visiting (newer) open-source projects, check their chats and the problems they have (mostly not related at all with technical aspects). You can do some research about how developers are being hired, what is the background of decision makers (and what aspects are really being weighted to make the final decisions), etc.
distributed to all members of a project, including the creator and all the profits are distributed to every member of the project based of the weight of their C.pts
In principle, it sounds much fairer that my initial assumption (sorry for the having shared inaccurate information). On the other hand, ideas on these lines are usually being sold as fair, because this is precisely the bait to attract free workforce. The first question coming to my mind is: how are you planning to perform such a distribution? How can you assess the relevancy of each contribution (across the huge number of different programming languages which I presume that you will be supporting)? How can you avoid people to trying to trick the system by performing lots of irrelevant commits? I will answer it for you (if you were still thinking about it, here you have your options): you can either try to come up with a pretty complex (even just for one single programming language) application which is likely to be eventually tricked or you can rely on people assessing that issue like moderators. Whatever option you choose, at the end, you will almost certainly end relying on these moderators; probably to be the ones who firstly initiated the project and consequently this would be a sub-set of idea-people-1 (or a new subset which you might call idea-people-1-b whose position would be pretty similar to those). Even if this assessment wouldn’t be required, pushy mobs/factions/bros would eventually appear and relegate actual knowledge/objectivity to a secondary position by converting them liking you/arbitrarily deciding your contribution into the only relevant factor. Any of these versions have nothing to do with actual software development, objectiveness, sharing among knowledgeable and for the knowledge; all of this has to do with people with no knowledge (or not willing to use it) expecting to get some gain from others' knowledge by basically relying on an arbitrary assessment system not based on actual merits (or payments). Basically, idea people providing ideas (impositions, arbitrary decisions, etc.) milking knowledgeable people. So, I am afraid that what your system is essentially linked to (any version of what) I described.
I've spent £600 so far to get the branding done and the rest has been built by myself in my spare time
If this was true, it would be excellent news and a very much appreciated fresh air in the industry (and again I would have to apologise about my inaccurate random guess). Although honestly, it seems kind of hard to believe that you can get so much visibility (lots of shares in Reddit), being posted here, etc. for so little. On the other hand, you might be good at social networking (one of my weakest points) and it might be possible.
I've actively denied going to financing experts
The last part of the quote (from Reddit) which got cut: "...At the moment I’m hoping that on every sale there’ll be a cut of about 10% before transaction costs so that 90% of all sales revenue is going to the project contributors - with no extra, hidden costs. This could change though, depending on costs.".
...everyone earning contribution points as they complete tasks. There are voting options and rights that come with additional contribution points which makes all the projects completely autonomous (I hope). The best part though is that by using the selling tools I want to provide, any software created with Crowdsourcer.io will be able to sell on a store (yet to be built), via its own websites and maybe even through third party retailers, with 100% of the profit being distributed to a project’s contributors...
It seems that these ideas can be summarised into the following 3 groups of people:
:)
-idea-people-1 (owners of the site).
They provide: the idea (which took years to be formed!) and the site.
They get: upto 10% of the money generated by the future sales of the future applications in the future shop. Until reaching that point, I guess that they will be spending the money given by some VC (most likely, already used for the promotion so far), various $ millions probably.
- Idea-people-2 (project/future-apps owners).
They provide: the idea for the app/code.
They get: the code written for free and the app ready to be sold + 90% of the generated money (by the future sales, etc.).
- Programmers.
They provide: all the code + having everything ready for the future sales.
They get: contributor points, being told that all this is for their own good and this warm feeling of having helped the aforementioned two groups of people to get money from virtually anything.
Is it just me or is there something here that isn't exactly right? Open-source code as a way to share work/knowledge with other people performing equivalent work and having similar knowledge, who might be getting some profit from selling the outputs of that effort, seems OK to me. Assuming that contributors to bigger/more demanding projects are likely to be more knowledgeable and, consequently, that fact being some kind of badge of honour helping these people to find better jobs in the industry seems also fine. Even sharing some code as a way to help others know better about your programming skills seems perfectly acceptable (I do that and give all my code as public domain as far as all what I want is to show my programming skills to future employers; although I am starting to think that almost nobody cares about the code, but about either stars or ready-to-be-used outputs). But at what point have people with low-to-no-knowledge (or, at least, no interest in doing any work) decided that they can get money from others' specialised expertise on exchange of "points"?!
At what point the next logical step after "I need a piece of software + don't have knowledge/am not willing to do it myself" changed from "I would have to hire someone" to "I would get it for free"?! Rather than investing money on having a proper product, you try to get the product for free and invest all the money in promotion and disproportionate salaries?! How can such a nonsensical situation even exist? Might any of this be perhaps related to the increasingly number of errors, problems, bugs, low-quality software everywhere? The most incredible part is that such an approach is starting to become not just acceptable, but required! I have to spend an important amount of time saying that I am a programmer, that I do all the work myself, that the product of my company is my own work! Because having a software development company isn't associated anymore with actually developing software ?! I personally wouldn't mind to share fair parts of my benefits with those providing me with what I am naturally bad at (= getting clients interested in what I develop); but it seems that the overall behaviour is expecting even more?! Me working for nothing?! I will never do such a thing! I work for free a lot but only for me! Who is enabling these disproportionate expectations where those having nothing are seriously thinking that are in control?! Well, my ideas are clear and I can be really patient; if I have to wait for this weird world (of software development) to completely crash, I would do it
You'll have to do a bad Spanish version if you want the same.
What about "malo eh de pedí peo má malo eh de rová"? Come on! Spare some electro-shocks! LOL
"unprovable" in a post, and was puzzled at the red underlining
Automatic spell/grammar checks have surely become a very helpful tool to avoid problems on this front, but I also ignore their suggestions relatively often. I agree with you in languages being variable realities which should adapt to how people use them rather than the other way around.
OK. My apologies for having misunderstood your intention.
I heard something about a friend of the ex-wife of the guy in charge of hiring the streaming provider being a frat pal of Gavin Belson. At least, this is what someone bro-ed me because, you know, bros disclose. LOL.
On a serious note: software-related (online) unreliability isn't precisely a surprise to me. The case of video streaming is particularly descriptive: there are quite a few sites with tons of problems, limited (browser or features) support and surprisingly slow. I have even seen these problems in the sites of major players in the broadcasting business like big television networks!
trying to train monkeys
Describing someone as a monkey usually implies that this person has a somehow limited comprehension ability or isn't even able to perform complex, human-like thoughts/interactions. In programming, "code monkeys" are the ones who blindly copy-paste/type what is written somewhere else, without properly understanding and without a real knowledge; basically, what a monkey or another animal would do in case of being in front of a computer: repeating simple actions, not precisely for a too sensible reason (because the sound is nice or because someone told them to do so).
What do you think that is more monkey- (irrational, arbitrary)-like? Blindly applying certain abstract rules with no real intrinsic purpose other than helping to better fulfilling a given goal (= proper communication) + acting aggressively against anyone not doing so; or adequately understanding the situation, the importance of each bit and actually accomplishing the intended goal of adequately understanding regardless of irrelevant details? What do you think that a monkey would do in a similar situation? If you train a monkey to know that "food" means that it will eat, do you think that it would understand "foud"? Or might perhaps get angry and act aggressively because of feeling frustrated with a world which is too complex for it and which can barely understand?
The funniest thing of people like you or the electro-shocker above is that you seriously think that any kind of ridiculous errors are associated with lack of knowledge (what BTW denotes your own limitations)! You don't seem to understand that not everyone else might share your scale of priorities ("I have to make sure that each single word I write is fine such that nobody can criticise me"); other people might prefer to adequately understand and to care about what really matters/is really indicative of whatever issue rather than getting lost in irrelevancies; there might even be some cases where people intentionally break those rules to somehow criticise whatever fanatic behaviour. There are always many possible reasons for reaching the same outcome, no sensible person should ever blindly assume otherwise.
In case it isn't clear, I am not supporting the lack of care in writing (online or anywhere else) or minimising the importance of the rules of the English language (or of any other language). I am plainly criticising fanaticism: supporting electro-shocking or calling someone a monkey over this?! Not because of not properly understanding something, but because of not perfectly respecting a set of abstract rules meant to facilitate that understanding process!! Not just feeling internally bothered or suggesting an improvement or teaching that person; not even focusing on cases where the error is truly relevant to accomplish the given goal because of actually avoiding a proper communication! These arbitrary attacks were exclusively motivated by abstract rules not fully respected and not even in a very specific context where this is a very relevant issue! And the best part is that a big proportion of people so concerned about these issues (mainly the most aggressive ones; aggressiveness when used to arbitrarily and unfairly attack others is undoubtedly bad) have serious understanding problems! They are so concern about making sure that all the words follow a certain set of rules that forget about properly understanding the transmitted message! Pffff.