Hi DHH.
How much of the code for basecamp 3 did you personally write? and is it a challenge to clear out long stretches of time for concentrating on development (vs meetings, etc) due to your seniority at the company?
From your blog posts it seems that you're definitely still significantly involved in day to day development.
The problem with that logic is that Stallman missed a huge point.
If, from his example you're using Google Docs, even if the JavaScript is "freed" using his new standard with stylized comments and the @source directive - you are still accessing non-free server software (the Google web servers) that responds to the AJAX requests.
Not only that, but your browser is also making a call to the Google Ad server, which also has non-free software. You might also argue that its being served by a modified version of MySQL thats non-free, and perhaps even the firewall and the proxy that its passing through is a custom version written by Google Engineers (likely.)
Thats not Kevin Rose's take, this post is taken from a blog entry by Dan Huard, who was the guy that answered phones. I just love all the misinformation on Slashdot.
I have been trying out different movie download services - so here are some impressions:
It's definitely the future. It's so much easier to click and download a movie you want to watch instead of going to the store and renting it. And it has a significant advantage over Netflix in that you don't have to plan in advance, you get instant gratification. I decide I want to watch Troy - I log in to my computer, pay the fee and can be watching it 2 minutes later as it starts downloading
Movielink is the venture put forth by a bunch of big movie studios. As such it has the latest movies which is good. However, it is expensive ($4.99 for 24 hour watching period!). It is also very restrictive DRM wise - you only have 24 hours, and you can only watch it on the computer you downloaded. The plus side is that they have all the latest movies
Starz Ticket on Real Movies - this one is cool because for a flat fee ($12.95/month I think) you can watch all the movies you want. A drawback is that they have a very limited set of movies (300 movies I think), most of them you never heard of, or heard of and never wanted to watch, and a lot of very, very old movies. BUT, besides that, the service is pretty cool - you can activate up to 3 computers, so you can download to one computer and view it on another. And you can view and download as many movies as you want. They rotate through different movies and always have about 300 or so in the library, so if they rotate "out" a movie you were watching, you can't finish watching it. But I do like this service, because unlike Movie Link you're not limited to 24 hours
Digital Cable / VOD / On Demand - I have Adelphia Digital Cable, and they seem to have a large library of movies "on demand". The convenience factor is great - it's already on your TV, you don't have to plug your computer into your TV to use this. Drawback is steep price - like MovieLink its $4.95 for 24 hours of viewing time. They do let you view the movie from any digital cable box in your home, so thats a little flexibility right there. And you can obviously record it to your TiVo and watch it beyond the 24 hour period. They have a lot of new movies, I'm watching Shrek 2 using this right now.
If someone managed to combine the Starz Ticket pricing and DRM model with the movie collection of the others, that would be close to a winner.
After having been a Netflix subscriber for 5 years, I realized that this is really the future, once people start getting it. (The vendors AND the consumers need to get it)
I eagerly read through their API documentation, thinking it could be usefull.
The "news" api just returns the news headlines, with a link to the story. Isn't that what RSS already does?
Calling it an API instead of RSS gets people all excited.
Positive use of IRC
on
Is IRC All Bad?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
we use IRC as the official chatroom of G4 TV. For the less experienced user we offer a java chat client (open source app called PJIRC) that connects them automatically to the correct server and channel. The more experienced users connect via their IRC client of choice - which makes for a nice balance.
The chatroom usually has around 100-150 people, except for when the The Screen Savers is taped live every day at 4PM PST where the room spikes at 300-400 people. Users in the chatroom interact with the hosts on live TV and the live show incorporate user comments from the channel.
I'd say we definitely make good use, legal and positive, of IRC!
I wouldn't say HTML is easy. I would say that it's a skill that people without a programming background can pick up which is why it has an easy reputation. To really be an HTML guru you would have to spend a lot of time and understand the structure and the theory.
and started charging San Francisco area employers for job listings. (Job listings in other areas are still free.)
Los Angeles job listings on Craigslist have been switched to paid about 3 or 4 months ago. They're $25 an ad. (Compare with $75 in San Francisco)
But I must admit, for the last three positions I hired - all were through Craigslist. For the last two I posted a paid ad on Monster and a paid ad on Dice and a free ad on Craigslist. Craiglist always turned up the best candidates.
From this page: Sprint TV - This comprehensive basic service presents a variety of content from familiar brands. Think of it as "basic cable" for your phone.
And from the Treo 650 spec sheet:
23MB user-available stored non-volatile memory [doesn't list program memory - I believe it's 32MB]
The two figures you mentioned (32MB and 23MB) are not additive, and is a cause for much "anger" among the early adopters. It's a total of 32MB memory, but the new file system is based on constant sized blocks of 512K, which effectively gives you about 23MB us usable memory. A lot of users that are upgrading from the Treo 600 to the Treo 650 find that their address book will not fit because of the decreased capacity.
Some users have found workarounds - by using a large SD card (I just bought a 1GB card for $50!) and a 3rd party application launcher, such as Z-Launcher, you can launch applications from the SD card. (You couldn't do that natively).
what would be really usefull is being able to run Firefox from an online location, so you don't even have to take a flash drive with you - as long as your connected to the internet you have access to your firefox.
Upstream Engineering is willing to provide miniature color video projectors for use with portable video player, travel TV, laptops and handhelds next year.
Now thats either really poorly translated from Japanese or something, or that's a really ego-centric business.. Willing? WILLING? I'm paying you money, you better be willing.
Nobody would blow $7 on wiring the building for his neighbors... My guess is that either he was hired to do it and doesn't know the first thing about it, so he's turning to slashdot, or that he's doing it with the expectation of charging his neighbors for internet access and making money off of them.
one of his complaints is the disparaged naming of the same virus by different anti-virus companies. I tend to agree it is annoying, but if the anti-virus companies want to be reactive and come up with a fix as soon as possible, they need to come up with a name for it quickly so they can reference it, and they don't always know if it's the same virus that another company is hyping up or not.
anyone know how they come up with these names? sounds like a fun job, anti-virus virus namer.
I just got back from a trip to Ecuador. In the largest city (Quito) there are Internet Cafe's every 5 feet, so I struck a conversation with my broken spanish with one of the owners. He was astounded by how fast & how cheap it is for me in California.
He is paying $100/month for 256kbs down and 18kbps up!
(I'm paying $50/month for 1.5Mbs down and 384kbs up - in Southern California)
Why would you bother keeping a credit card with a zero balance on it? If you can afford to buy stuff without credit, you don't need one.
there is one more reason that I think is very important:
8. Credit card companies charge vendors between 3% and 5% of your purchase. This means that this price is already reflected into your purchase price. If you're buying with cash, the price is still the same (in most cases) and the vendor pockets the difference. If you're buying with a credit card and you're smart about it, you can either get some of that cash back, or get get some of it back in the form of "rewards" or frequent flyer miles.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi DHH. How much of the code for basecamp 3 did you personally write? and is it a challenge to clear out long stretches of time for concentrating on development (vs meetings, etc) due to your seniority at the company? From your blog posts it seems that you're definitely still significantly involved in day to day development.
The problem with that logic is that Stallman missed a huge point. If, from his example you're using Google Docs, even if the JavaScript is "freed" using his new standard with stylized comments and the @source directive - you are still accessing non-free server software (the Google web servers) that responds to the AJAX requests. Not only that, but your browser is also making a call to the Google Ad server, which also has non-free software. You might also argue that its being served by a modified version of MySQL thats non-free, and perhaps even the firewall and the proxy that its passing through is a custom version written by Google Engineers (likely.)
The onion already had this story several weeks ago:
Sony Releases New Stupid Piece of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of
send feedback to earthlink, to let them know what you think about this.
Thats not Kevin Rose's take, this post is taken from a blog entry by Dan Huard, who was the guy that answered phones. I just love all the misinformation on Slashdot.
a day in the life of lemarr
If someone managed to combine the Starz Ticket pricing and DRM model with the movie collection of the others, that would be close to a winner.
After having been a Netflix subscriber for 5 years, I realized that this is really the future, once people start getting it. (The vendors AND the consumers need to get it)
in other news, Slashdot is fined for having too many dupes.
I eagerly read through their API documentation, thinking it could be usefull.
The "news" api just returns the news headlines, with a link to the story. Isn't that what RSS already does?
Calling it an API instead of RSS gets people all excited.
The chatroom usually has around 100-150 people, except for when the The Screen Savers is taped live every day at 4PM PST where the room spikes at 300-400 people. Users in the chatroom interact with the hosts on live TV and the live show incorporate user comments from the channel.
I'd say we definitely make good use, legal and positive, of IRC!
I wouldn't say HTML is easy. I would say that it's a skill that people without a programming background can pick up which is why it has an easy reputation. To really be an HTML guru you would have to spend a lot of time and understand the structure and the theory.
(Note - I'm a programmer, but I do ok with HTML)
Congratulations! In the history of Slashdot - yours is the first comment referring to having (or having had) a girl and getting modded up to a +5.
Los Angeles job listings on Craigslist have been switched to paid about 3 or 4 months ago. They're $25 an ad. (Compare with $75 in San Francisco)
But I must admit, for the last three positions I hired - all were through Craigslist. For the last two I posted a paid ad on Monster and a paid ad on Dice and a free ad on Craigslist. Craiglist always turned up the best candidates.
Sprint has already been offering something of the kind
From this page:
Sprint TV - This comprehensive basic service presents a variety of content from familiar brands. Think of it as "basic cable" for your phone.
And from the Treo 650 spec sheet: 23MB user-available stored non-volatile memory [doesn't list program memory - I believe it's 32MB]
The two figures you mentioned (32MB and 23MB) are not additive, and is a cause for much "anger" among the early adopters. It's a total of 32MB memory, but the new file system is based on constant sized blocks of 512K, which effectively gives you about 23MB us usable memory. A lot of users that are upgrading from the Treo 600 to the Treo 650 find that their address book will not fit because of the decreased capacity.
Some users have found workarounds - by using a large SD card (I just bought a 1GB card for $50!) and a 3rd party application launcher, such as Z-Launcher, you can launch applications from the SD card. (You couldn't do that natively).
what would be really usefull is being able to run Firefox from an online location, so you don't even have to take a flash drive with you - as long as your connected to the internet you have access to your firefox.
how do you know where to fax to? does it say it when you sign up ?
After hearing Arnold Schwarzenneger endorse Bush and in the same speech say we can't be "Girly Men" about the economy... I'm voting kerry.
Upstream Engineering is willing to provide miniature color video projectors for use with portable video player, travel TV, laptops and handhelds next year.
Now thats either really poorly translated from Japanese or something, or that's a really ego-centric business.. Willing? WILLING? I'm paying you money, you better be willing.
Nobody would blow $7 on wiring the building for his neighbors... My guess is that either he was hired to do it and doesn't know the first thing about it, so he's turning to slashdot, or that he's doing it with the expectation of charging his neighbors for internet access and making money off of them.
anyone know how they come up with these names? sounds like a fun job, anti-virus virus namer.
Apologies to Rob Reiner for the paraphrasing.
You should actually appologize to William Goldman, he wrote the screenplay.
He is paying $100/month for 256kbs down and 18kbps up!
(I'm paying $50/month for 1.5Mbs down and 384kbs up - in Southern California)
If you guys RTFA you'll notice that it's actually Linus suing Lindows, and he wants them to remove the "Lin" part from their name...
there is one more reason that I think is very important:
8. Credit card companies charge vendors between 3% and 5% of your purchase. This means that this price is already reflected into your purchase price. If you're buying with cash, the price is still the same (in most cases) and the vendor pockets the difference. If you're buying with a credit card and you're smart about it, you can either get some of that cash back, or get get some of it back in the form of "rewards" or frequent flyer miles.
Same reason I never use a debit card.