I find http://feedbin.me/ to be pretty good. Certainly hasn't required me to get a Google+ account and it is free software (with an account on the main hosted instance available for $20/year)
Gittip basically lets you set up weekly payments of like $1 or more to a person who does something, like, say, maintains some free software. If you are prepared to do that, it's a great way to support developers because, at its best, it would a regular income.
I don't really know whether Gittip will amount to much, but at least it's a new take on the "funding free things" problem rather than a rehash of something that has been done several times before, which "bribe.io" appears to be.
The author obviously has his pet topic, which is that it's not anyone's fault that anyone is fat. Sorry, but I've lived around too many fat people. They eat. They eat a lot. Honestly the author goes on far too long about "it's not their fault" and doesn't spend too much time discussing "why".
I didn't get that from the article at all. The word "fault" doesn't turn up once. Nobody is trying to pretend that you can eat lots of food and lose weight. Pretty much the entire article is about factors other than overeating that can contribute to being overweight, so I don't see how you can think that the author doesn't spend enough time discussing "why" in there.
This post contains a fairly fundamental contradiction. We do teach reading and writing for the sake of reading and writing, initially -- children don't hold off learning to use a pen until they have a specific sentence in mind. It's taught from the basic principles (this is an "A") and taken for granted that in later life it'll be useful. Programming could probably be taught in the same way and at the same sort of stage of development in the mid future. It cannot be learned on the hoof the first time someone tries to make a computer do something that hasn't been done before, though, which seems to be what the article is suggesting.
Was providing satellite imagery of the entire world to a level where I can make out the plants in my garden, and then providing street view for every single road in my country something that was done by a startup and then bought by Google? Or is something anyone could do with a weekend and a camera mounted on their car?
Just to note your scalping solution, Glastonbury Festival in the UK actually implements that solution, because at one point 150,000 tickets would sell out within a couple of hours of being released and would mosty go to touts. Since I think last year you've needed to register a photo before you buy a ticket and they are non-transferrable.
Taken at face value this is ridiculous ageism. However I currently work in customer service for a major telephony provider and have dealt with a huge number of people calling on behalf of their parents claiming they have been missold an expensive package and demanding they are released from the contract. I can fully understand why they are hesitant to sign up people who are statistically very likely to enter a contract, having it fully expained to them, and then a week later demand to be released from it saying they weren't made aware of terms.
Incidentally the excuse used by a lot of the sons and daughters who phone is is "she's 84, she had no idea what she was entering into"
The question is not how can we survive the next 100 years but how we can do so without drastic changes in the way Western society functions and without widespread suffering throughout the planet. We're not dinosaurs; the fact that we aren't going to be able to drive to the out of town supermarket to buy food that's been flown in from around the world doesn't mean we're all destined for starvation. Subsistance farming is not rocket science!
It's hard to imagine a way out that doesn't involve a lot of people dying though.
I have a total transfer limit each month. It's fairly high. But if I put up a big torrent, I simply can't upload it to all the hit-and-run kids by myself. This isn't a huge problem for me because when I've put a few copies up I'll simply stop seeding or put on some absurd limit (have fun uploading at 512b/sec).
However on the big public sites this almost always means the torrent dies because nobody else has any incentive to seed. I might as well have uploaded the thing to my own webserver. The idea of private sites which track ratios are to prevent this very thing and it works very well.
in fairness, you seem to be missing the point. Looking up an address in a two-dimensional array would take exactly as much calculation as the address of a pixel in mode 13h, so there's no possible way it could increase speed.
"If you wish to protect the next generation of geek geniuses ( and do please bear in mind that "geek" doesn't mean "computer nerd") then do what you can to get them out of school and into a library."
To be fair, a true genius should know how to fit within the system, even play it to their advantage, without being at all constrained by it.
A long time ago, I remember having my first PC built for me. While dad was out of the room, I looked around the case and carefully pulled out all the ugly little black plastic things on the motherboard and piled them in the corner of the case.
No smoke, no fire, just a totally fried 486. That was the time I learned what "jumpers" were
Normally I'd agree with you... but seriously, MS have left it way too late. Google is a household name, people who think leaving a disk in the drive causes bitrot know that you should use google to search, even if it's just because "the IT guy says so." That won't go away.
I so want to support the man. But I can't stop this nagging feeling that he's ever so slightly deluded and actually, Sun is fucked, capitalism is getting more and more broken, losing tech jobs is a problem, golf does suck, etc. Pessimism, I guess. I hope.
I'd say that CAN do it and they WILL do it. But the question that rings in my mind is what doom it will spell to Microsoft when they do. No more upgrades for a long time... people won't want it or care about it. That's a huge chunk of income for them.
See, I'd like to agree with you, but you're assuming that you are clever than Microsoft at business (ie, you've seen this coming before they have). Going purely by who has almost $50 billion in the bank and who spends the most time reading Slashdot, I'd say this assumption is wrong. They may be junkboat coders but, hey, they know how to make money in (=out of) the world.
Slashdot Mirror
I find http://feedbin.me/ to be pretty good. Certainly hasn't required me to get a Google+ account and it is free software (with an account on the main hosted instance available for $20/year)
There are various sites that have done this in the past, I'm sure someone has mentioned them above.
What I've not seen anyone mention yet is https://www.gittip.com/
Gittip basically lets you set up weekly payments of like $1 or more to a person who does something, like, say, maintains some free software. If you are prepared to do that, it's a great way to support developers because, at its best, it would a regular income.
I don't really know whether Gittip will amount to much, but at least it's a new take on the "funding free things" problem rather than a rehash of something that has been done several times before, which "bribe.io" appears to be.
The author obviously has his pet topic, which is that it's not anyone's fault that anyone is fat. Sorry, but I've lived around too many fat people. They eat. They eat a lot. Honestly the author goes on far too long about "it's not their fault" and doesn't spend too much time discussing "why".
I didn't get that from the article at all. The word "fault" doesn't turn up once. Nobody is trying to pretend that you can eat lots of food and lose weight. Pretty much the entire article is about factors other than overeating that can contribute to being overweight, so I don't see how you can think that the author doesn't spend enough time discussing "why" in there.
This post contains a fairly fundamental contradiction. We do teach reading and writing for the sake of reading and writing, initially -- children don't hold off learning to use a pen until they have a specific sentence in mind. It's taught from the basic principles (this is an "A") and taken for granted that in later life it'll be useful. Programming could probably be taught in the same way and at the same sort of stage of development in the mid future. It cannot be learned on the hoof the first time someone tries to make a computer do something that hasn't been done before, though, which seems to be what the article is suggesting.
Was providing satellite imagery of the entire world to a level where I can make out the plants in my garden, and then providing street view for every single road in my country something that was done by a startup and then bought by Google? Or is something anyone could do with a weekend and a camera mounted on their car?
Yes you can. You need either -
a Windows system and unetbootin: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
or, an Ubuntu system with usbcreator: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick#usb-creator%20(Windows%20or%20Linux)
I used unetbootin on Windows and it's a very well-made program, no problems at all.
"1) We are not running out of land to build houses on."
True, but I don't particularly want to live in a country that doesn't have the capacity to feed itself.
Want to make money? Play live.
I would put money on you having never tried to make money playing live.
Just to note your scalping solution, Glastonbury Festival in the UK actually implements that solution, because at one point 150,000 tickets would sell out within a couple of hours of being released and would mosty go to touts. Since I think last year you've needed to register a photo before you buy a ticket and they are non-transferrable.
Given the 2 hour queues for some of the rides, having a PDA to pass the time is kind of a mint idea !
Taken at face value this is ridiculous ageism. However I currently work in customer service for a major telephony provider and have dealt with a huge number of people calling on behalf of their parents claiming they have been missold an expensive package and demanding they are released from the contract. I can fully understand why they are hesitant to sign up people who are statistically very likely to enter a contract, having it fully expained to them, and then a week later demand to be released from it saying they weren't made aware of terms.
Incidentally the excuse used by a lot of the sons and daughters who phone is is "she's 84, she had no idea what she was entering into"
The question is not how can we survive the next 100 years but how we can do so without drastic changes in the way Western society functions and without widespread suffering throughout the planet. We're not dinosaurs; the fact that we aren't going to be able to drive to the out of town supermarket to buy food that's been flown in from around the world doesn't mean we're all destined for starvation. Subsistance farming is not rocket science!
It's hard to imagine a way out that doesn't involve a lot of people dying though.
I have a total transfer limit each month. It's fairly high. But if I put up a big torrent, I simply can't upload it to all the hit-and-run kids by myself. This isn't a huge problem for me because when I've put a few copies up I'll simply stop seeding or put on some absurd limit (have fun uploading at 512b/sec).
However on the big public sites this almost always means the torrent dies because nobody else has any incentive to seed. I might as well have uploaded the thing to my own webserver. The idea of private sites which track ratios are to prevent this very thing and it works very well.
Jerkcity is the best web comic the world. Full stop.
T RANDS CHOKING AND TEACHING ALL AT THE SAME TIME
in fairness, you seem to be missing the point. Looking up an address in a two-dimensional array would take exactly as much calculation as the address of a pixel in mode 13h, so there's no possible way it could increase speed.
"If you wish to protect the next generation of geek geniuses ( and do please bear in mind that "geek" doesn't mean "computer nerd") then do what you can to get them out of school and into a library."
To be fair, a true genius should know how to fit within the system, even play it to their advantage, without being at all constrained by it.
A long time ago, I remember having my first PC built for me. While dad was out of the room, I looked around the case and carefully pulled out all the ugly little black plastic things on the motherboard and piled them in the corner of the case. No smoke, no fire, just a totally fried 486. That was the time I learned what "jumpers" were
(yeah, I suck) Fresco.
Fresco
Nice that trolls get posted in the headlines now. "Maybe we should start to think about jumping ship" ... heh, yeah.
Because I can't get laid and I need something to do with my evenings.
Normally I'd agree with you... but seriously, MS have left it way too late. Google is a household name, people who think leaving a disk in the drive causes bitrot know that you should use google to search, even if it's just because "the IT guy says so." That won't go away.
"Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce of the new law."
Yeah, because Britain's prisons are so empty that they're just crying out for more harmless inmates who pose no danger to the public.
They're dumb money people, not evil people. Make it uneconomical and they'll go away.
I so want to support the man. But I can't stop this nagging feeling that he's ever so slightly deluded and actually, Sun is fucked, capitalism is getting more and more broken, losing tech jobs is a problem, golf does suck, etc. Pessimism, I guess. I hope.
I'd say that CAN do it and they WILL do it. But the question that rings in my mind is what doom it will spell to Microsoft when they do. No more upgrades for a long time... people won't want it or care about it. That's a huge chunk of income for them.
See, I'd like to agree with you, but you're assuming that you are clever than Microsoft at business (ie, you've seen this coming before they have). Going purely by who has almost $50 billion in the bank and who spends the most time reading Slashdot, I'd say this assumption is wrong. They may be junkboat coders but, hey, they know how to make money in (=out of) the world.