Most of the stuff that gets posted to SlashDot these days is blogspam, advertisements... junk in other words. This is not. It's an excellent read that offers a real picture of life in the new China.
RTFA is kind of a joke, but in this case you won't regret it.
If you run a software startup and don't know software, you will forever be making errors of judgement due to your lack of that understanding.
You can't hire people effectively. You can't manage projects effectively. You can't call BS when your engineers tell you it will be done impossibly soon, or isn't possible. You can't *judge*.
I do tech startup consulting, and a fair bit of my work is helping non-tech founders hire, manage, and analyze. It's crucial to have this ability on your founding team if you're a software startup. That MBA is not enough.
Hand coding is the only way to go. Modern web pages integrate HTML, CSS, and several different javascript libraries. They contain div's with dynamic content updated via AJAX. They are often built with templating libraries such as Rails' ERB, meaning you have code (conditional statements, for example) mixed into your page's HTML.
DOM structure matters - with a WYSIWYG tool like Dreamweaver, you have no control over the actual content of the page unless you go into HTML mode and basically use it like Notepad.
Your son is doing it the right way. If you want to save time, build a personal library of javascript libs and CSS snippets that you rely on. But skip the dedicated editors. You lose much much more than you gain.
I just wanted to congratulate TFA's authors for this incredibly novel approach to finding a girlfriend - drafting all of society into a plan to find them dates. Ingenious!
All, one of the big reasons for this move is to provide a cleaner, smaller, faster version of jQuery to apps dedicated to a given platform, such as iOS apps running as HTML5 shells. These applications know their "browser" environment, and thus can benefit from lack of IE support with no cost in terms of audience size.
No one who has a general-public website should use 2.0 for years to come, but if you're developing a quickie Android app, or one of the dozen or so javascript-based desktop shells, etc, then this move is for you.
I've worked in a dozen or so small-to-mid software shops as employee, contractor or founder. The number one (preventable) reason for companies to go under, in my experience, is one or two jerks poisoning the well.
No matter how awesome someone looks on paper, if he or she is making people around him or her resentful, fearful or angry, pink slip immediately. Don't mess around. Don't worry about loss of capability - ask your team to step up and fill in until a new hire can be brought in, and they will.
Nothing kills team spirit more than that one guy who thinks primate politics trumps respect and results.
I bought Diablo 3, but have had 3 separate occasions where my "single player" game was unavailable for multiple hour long "maintenance" windows. Not being able to blow off steam in a dungeon crawler so Blizzard can get more value out of its players is leaving a SERIOUSLY bad taste in my mouth.
Who the hell is going to pay real money for gear in a single player game?
I'm sorry - "keep to your Java roots" and "jQuery"?
They have nothing to do with each other. Syntax, programming paradigms, typing... how the heck did this comment get upvoted?
And using a CMS... god. I'm a contractor. About half my work is taking fugly sites hacked together using "plugins" for WordPress and making them actually work (using Rails, in my case). You'll learn almost nothing from putting up a WordPress site, except how frustrating it is to try to pick a set of plugins that mostly get you what you want done without making a mess of the site.
WordPress is a blogging platform with delusions of general purpose usage. Can't speak to Joomla etc., but I'd be amazed if you didn't regret trying a one-and-done CMS solution to a custom web app problem.
Just want to say as a (very regretful) MacBook Pro owner:
I went to upgrade my 4GB RAM to 8GB because my top-end laptop couldn't function without it, and was quoted FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS for the upgrade.
$400. Just gonna lay that out there. The price of a top-of-the-line Transformer Prime tablet, soup-to-nuts.
I declined(!) and bought some RAM at Best Buy, plus a jeweler's screwdriver, and had the thing upgraded for $70. And got a nice screwdriver in the bargain.
Everything you posted may be true, but it doesn't make Apple a good company.
If you have non-trivial Android experience, you will be hire-able, full stop. I can't count the number of recruiter calls I get due to having a single Android line-item in my resume. There aren't enough developers to do the work that the market demands - polish up your work in this area, and target it as your application focus, and you should have no trouble.
YMMV and all that, but it's the reality on the ground here in North Carolina at least...
I recently purchased a Bubba 2, 2TB capacity. It is network-enabled, so you can leave it on and plugged in all the time, and supports remote mounting from OSX, Windows and Linux. Very sexy little box, with nice Web-based GUI for managing it and a smorgasbord of OSS services enabled (eg music streaming, email cache-and-forward, etc. etc.)
It's quiet and problem free after 3 months. Not too pricey, either (~$250 IIRC).
I don't buy crap from phone companies, but I advise dozens of people on what phone to buy, and THEY buy crap. Thought leaders often care about issues the herd doesn't. Doesn't mean you can ignore those issues if you want positive word-of-mouth.
I'll pick this comment to respond to, as a proxy for the many comments posted.
I would like to be clear - I oppose the current occupation of Afghanistan. I don't think it serves our national interest, and would favor a staged retreat starting today.
I also don't trust the government unconditionally - hence my comment about needing WikiLeaks. There's a long history of those in power abusing that power, and the only way to get justice is to expose the problem. No argument there.
But transparency serves us best when it shows us true problems. We gain little from broadcasting our honest errors - that innocents die in conflict is not surprising - but we potentially lose a lot. Obviously, as in cases where informants or soldiers are exposed, less obviously when specific cases become tools for the people who don't like us to use in stopping all our foreign policy actions, not just our current occupation.
I guess what I'm saying is, I applaud WikiLeaks for showing cases of malicious intent, abuse of power, negligence, and general wrong-doing. But I don't support them blanket broadcasting all the gory details of life in war. It doesn't server our interests as a country trying to do good, however misguidedly at times, in the broader world.
I'm not going to jump on you, but you're living up to your handle here a bit.
Prosecuting war (or police actions, or whatnot) is an ugly business. It has to be - armed men, bombs, etc are dangerous. Soldiers are fallible. They have seconds to make the right call, and quite often, screw up. This is a fact of war, and no one disputes it.
In an ideal world, full transparency would be great. If a country were being responsible in its usage of force, for every mis-called bomb strike or innocent victim there would be hundreds of examples of making the right call, calling off the troops just in time, doing the job professionally. A neutral reviewer could say "Yes, there were several major errors, but on the whole, the US troops are doing well in a very difficult situation."
But that is not how the world actually works. One single graphic image, video, or similar can be taken from the overall picture, blown up, put on the front page of newspapers, and tar the entire country and all its soldiers. We see this all the time with politics in the US - good people done in by a goofy on-camera moment (Dean's scream comes to mind) or poorly chosen word or phrase (potatoe!).
This is not to say that all transparency is bad. Simply that full transparency, in this real world we live in, is not all good. We still need something like wikileaks for the next Mai Lai massacre, or similar, where the authorities who should prosecute those who willfully screw up fail to take action. But we don't need full 24/7 coverage of every piece of the conflict. And in my personal opinion, the most recent set of disclosures crossed that line.
We aren't responsible enough as a society at viewing all that information fairly to be trusted with it indiscriminately.
They aren't satisfied with knowing (and using to advertise and monetize) your social network. Now, they want us, 3rd party web devs, to help them figure out what other sites you visit, what type of music you like to listen to, and what movies you've watched recently.
So they can advertise and monetize it.
I'm not seeing a real good reason to add this "Like" thing on any site of mine. I'd rather my visitors build *my* site's community, rather than simply acting as a source of content and demographics info for Facebook.
It always amazes me. The studios blow ungodly sums to hype up a new movie. They buy ads, the stars do interviews, etc. ad nauseum. And then the movie is out! But only in theaters! And if you love it, and just can't wait to own a copy, well, actually, you have to wait. Up to a year. By which time, you've completely forgotten the movie, and your initial enthusiasm is gone, and all the hype is dust.
What a waste.
This is just more of the same. Movie's out! You'll love it! But you can't see it! HAHAHAHAHA!
ALL mutations are random. If they are advantageous, great, than it is likely that they will be passed along.
That's more an article of faith than anything rigorously proven. In face, we don't know a lot about how mutations are conserved. It's quite possible, given our relatively high-level understanding of the workings of the cellular nucleus that some mutation is in fact courted, or even driven, by yet undiscovered mechanisms.
There would be powerful advantages to organisms that could dial up or dial down their mutation rate in response to changes in their environment, for example. Or if there were a way to have mutation occur more frequently along beneficial paths. Nature has had a long time to tinker with this one - don't go making blanket assumptions until we truly understand the whole system.
It's long been known that the price of a game is fixed - that is, that the amount you can charge for a boxed game on a shelf has a very definite (and mostly arbitrary) price point.
What we're starting to see is publishers trying to sneak past that price point with tricks like this. And we'll see it more and more. Single-player games don't generate a revenue stream, so you've been forced to hit the customer all up front for whatever you hope to recoup from your new game. It's just too tempting to try and spread that cost out a bit and grab some more money.
Thank god for the indie scene. I can't imagine paying $80, $90 dollars for a game.
Or it could be that having more CPU/GPU power allows for more AI, animation, etc and thus more teammates. Ditto for co-op play - we finally have networking that doesn't suck. It's more a simple technology question than something cultural or political, IMHO.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the stuff that gets posted to SlashDot these days is blogspam, advertisements... junk in other words. This is not. It's an excellent read that offers a real picture of life in the new China.
RTFA is kind of a joke, but in this case you won't regret it.
If you're interested in using Asterisk (or FreeSWITCH) to do your phone work, check out Adhearsion: http://adhearsion.com/
Ruby-based MVC-ish asterisk framework that gives you the power without the pain.
If you run a software startup and don't know software, you will forever be making errors of judgement due to your lack of that understanding.
You can't hire people effectively. You can't manage projects effectively. You can't call BS when your engineers tell you it will be done impossibly soon, or isn't possible. You can't *judge*.
I do tech startup consulting, and a fair bit of my work is helping non-tech founders hire, manage, and analyze. It's crucial to have this ability on your founding team if you're a software startup. That MBA is not enough.
Hand coding is the only way to go. Modern web pages integrate HTML, CSS, and several different javascript libraries. They contain div's with dynamic content updated via AJAX. They are often built with templating libraries such as Rails' ERB, meaning you have code (conditional statements, for example) mixed into your page's HTML.
DOM structure matters - with a WYSIWYG tool like Dreamweaver, you have no control over the actual content of the page unless you go into HTML mode and basically use it like Notepad.
Your son is doing it the right way. If you want to save time, build a personal library of javascript libs and CSS snippets that you rely on. But skip the dedicated editors. You lose much much more than you gain.
I just wanted to congratulate TFA's authors for this incredibly novel approach to finding a girlfriend - drafting all of society into a plan to find them dates. Ingenious!
A bit desperate perhaps, but still... genius!
All, one of the big reasons for this move is to provide a cleaner, smaller, faster version of jQuery to apps dedicated to a given platform, such as iOS apps running as HTML5 shells. These applications know their "browser" environment, and thus can benefit from lack of IE support with no cost in terms of audience size.
No one who has a general-public website should use 2.0 for years to come, but if you're developing a quickie Android app, or one of the dozen or so javascript-based desktop shells, etc, then this move is for you.
"Fire the assholes"
I've worked in a dozen or so small-to-mid software shops as employee, contractor or founder. The number one (preventable) reason for companies to go under, in my experience, is one or two jerks poisoning the well.
No matter how awesome someone looks on paper, if he or she is making people around him or her resentful, fearful or angry, pink slip immediately. Don't mess around. Don't worry about loss of capability - ask your team to step up and fill in until a new hire can be brought in, and they will.
Nothing kills team spirit more than that one guy who thinks primate politics trumps respect and results.
I bought Diablo 3, but have had 3 separate occasions where my "single player" game was unavailable for multiple hour long "maintenance" windows. Not being able to blow off steam in a dungeon crawler so Blizzard can get more value out of its players is leaving a SERIOUSLY bad taste in my mouth.
Who the hell is going to pay real money for gear in a single player game?
I'm sorry - "keep to your Java roots" and "jQuery"?
They have nothing to do with each other. Syntax, programming paradigms, typing... how the heck did this comment get upvoted?
And using a CMS... god. I'm a contractor. About half my work is taking fugly sites hacked together using "plugins" for WordPress and making them actually work (using Rails, in my case). You'll learn almost nothing from putting up a WordPress site, except how frustrating it is to try to pick a set of plugins that mostly get you what you want done without making a mess of the site.
WordPress is a blogging platform with delusions of general purpose usage. Can't speak to Joomla etc., but I'd be amazed if you didn't regret trying a one-and-done CMS solution to a custom web app problem.
WordPress is the DreamWeaver of our age.
Just want to say as a (very regretful) MacBook Pro owner:
I went to upgrade my 4GB RAM to 8GB because my top-end laptop couldn't function without it, and was quoted FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS for the upgrade.
$400. Just gonna lay that out there. The price of a top-of-the-line Transformer Prime tablet, soup-to-nuts.
I declined(!) and bought some RAM at Best Buy, plus a jeweler's screwdriver, and had the thing upgraded for $70. And got a nice screwdriver in the bargain.
Everything you posted may be true, but it doesn't make Apple a good company.
If you have non-trivial Android experience, you will be hire-able, full stop. I can't count the number of recruiter calls I get due to having a single Android line-item in my resume. There aren't enough developers to do the work that the market demands - polish up your work in this area, and target it as your application focus, and you should have no trouble.
YMMV and all that, but it's the reality on the ground here in North Carolina at least...
I agree with the YouTube commenter who said "Get this up on Kickstarter and make a full length movie".
I'd chip in $50 easy. Congrats to the people involved!
Whoosh back at you. cat a png, and the *data* is bytes. The *ui* is a display based on the type of data being shown - in this case, an image.
That's really the core idea - separating what data-centric tools see, and what users see.
I recently purchased a Bubba 2, 2TB capacity. It is network-enabled, so you can leave it on and plugged in all the time, and supports remote mounting from OSX, Windows and Linux. Very sexy little box, with nice Web-based GUI for managing it and a smorgasbord of OSS services enabled (eg music streaming, email cache-and-forward, etc. etc.)
It's quiet and problem free after 3 months. Not too pricey, either (~$250 IIRC).
I don't buy crap from phone companies, but I advise dozens of people on what phone to buy, and THEY buy crap. Thought leaders often care about issues the herd doesn't. Doesn't mean you can ignore those issues if you want positive word-of-mouth.
I'll pick this comment to respond to, as a proxy for the many comments posted.
I would like to be clear - I oppose the current occupation of Afghanistan. I don't think it serves our national interest, and would favor a staged retreat starting today.
I also don't trust the government unconditionally - hence my comment about needing WikiLeaks. There's a long history of those in power abusing that power, and the only way to get justice is to expose the problem. No argument there.
But transparency serves us best when it shows us true problems. We gain little from broadcasting our honest errors - that innocents die in conflict is not surprising - but we potentially lose a lot. Obviously, as in cases where informants or soldiers are exposed, less obviously when specific cases become tools for the people who don't like us to use in stopping all our foreign policy actions, not just our current occupation.
I guess what I'm saying is, I applaud WikiLeaks for showing cases of malicious intent, abuse of power, negligence, and general wrong-doing. But I don't support them blanket broadcasting all the gory details of life in war. It doesn't server our interests as a country trying to do good, however misguidedly at times, in the broader world.
I'm not going to jump on you, but you're living up to your handle here a bit.
Prosecuting war (or police actions, or whatnot) is an ugly business. It has to be - armed men, bombs, etc are dangerous. Soldiers are fallible. They have seconds to make the right call, and quite often, screw up. This is a fact of war, and no one disputes it.
In an ideal world, full transparency would be great. If a country were being responsible in its usage of force, for every mis-called bomb strike or innocent victim there would be hundreds of examples of making the right call, calling off the troops just in time, doing the job professionally. A neutral reviewer could say "Yes, there were several major errors, but on the whole, the US troops are doing well in a very difficult situation."
But that is not how the world actually works. One single graphic image, video, or similar can be taken from the overall picture, blown up, put on the front page of newspapers, and tar the entire country and all its soldiers. We see this all the time with politics in the US - good people done in by a goofy on-camera moment (Dean's scream comes to mind) or poorly chosen word or phrase (potatoe!).
This is not to say that all transparency is bad. Simply that full transparency, in this real world we live in, is not all good. We still need something like wikileaks for the next Mai Lai massacre, or similar, where the authorities who should prosecute those who willfully screw up fail to take action. But we don't need full 24/7 coverage of every piece of the conflict. And in my personal opinion, the most recent set of disclosures crossed that line.
We aren't responsible enough as a society at viewing all that information fairly to be trusted with it indiscriminately.
Microsoft Bob lives!
And takes up the awesome responsibility of being the latest hyped MS product to utterly fail. Sheesh.
They aren't satisfied with knowing (and using to advertise and monetize) your social network. Now, they want us, 3rd party web devs, to help them figure out what other sites you visit, what type of music you like to listen to, and what movies you've watched recently.
So they can advertise and monetize it.
I'm not seeing a real good reason to add this "Like" thing on any site of mine. I'd rather my visitors build *my* site's community, rather than simply acting as a source of content and demographics info for Facebook.
Ah, another satisfied iPhone user.
Just bought the wife a brand new laptop for christmas. Booted up Windows 7, straight factory install. She bluescreened it within an hour.
Moving a desktop widget.
I don't even want to *know* how that is possible.
It always amazes me. The studios blow ungodly sums to hype up a new movie. They buy ads, the stars do interviews, etc. ad nauseum. And then the movie is out! But only in theaters! And if you love it, and just can't wait to own a copy, well, actually, you have to wait. Up to a year. By which time, you've completely forgotten the movie, and your initial enthusiasm is gone, and all the hype is dust.
What a waste.
This is just more of the same. Movie's out! You'll love it! But you can't see it! HAHAHAHAHA!
Please god, let them die.
That's more an article of faith than anything rigorously proven. In face, we don't know a lot about how mutations are conserved. It's quite possible, given our relatively high-level understanding of the workings of the cellular nucleus that some mutation is in fact courted, or even driven, by yet undiscovered mechanisms.
There would be powerful advantages to organisms that could dial up or dial down their mutation rate in response to changes in their environment, for example. Or if there were a way to have mutation occur more frequently along beneficial paths. Nature has had a long time to tinker with this one - don't go making blanket assumptions until we truly understand the whole system.
It's long been known that the price of a game is fixed - that is, that the amount you can charge for a boxed game on a shelf has a very definite (and mostly arbitrary) price point.
What we're starting to see is publishers trying to sneak past that price point with tricks like this. And we'll see it more and more. Single-player games don't generate a revenue stream, so you've been forced to hit the customer all up front for whatever you hope to recoup from your new game. It's just too tempting to try and spread that cost out a bit and grab some more money.
Thank god for the indie scene. I can't imagine paying $80, $90 dollars for a game.
Or it could be that having more CPU/GPU power allows for more AI, animation, etc and thus more teammates. Ditto for co-op play - we finally have networking that doesn't suck. It's more a simple technology question than something cultural or political, IMHO.