Why couldn't the rate of currency coming in to the system just be controlled by a server and award the coins by lottery? Why is it essential to have clients perform meaningless computation? Doesn't the fact that people are able to dedicate hardware to generating hashes mean that a small group of people are most likely to "win" the new coins?
Microsoft loses more *really* smart people to Google, Apple and especially Facebook than they hire. Microsoft has matured and grown boring (with a couple of divisions like XBox being notable exceptions). They are still going to make more money than just about anybody, but their days of being able to attract the best talent passed around 10 years ago.
I've always said Silverlight is a fine choice for the intranet and now I'm wondering if that's actually true. I wonder if five years from now Silverlight applications will have the same stigma attached to them that applications that were built on IE6 have today?
I've noticed the same thing. C++ was definitely taking on second class status at Microsoft. Recently, that trend has been sharply reversed. I think Herb Sutter has finally become effective inside the Microsoft machine.
BTW, the UAC nonsense is pretty much working as it should now. The only thing missing is the ability to sudo from the command line. Powershell may have this feature, but I haven't looked into it yet. Far too many XP users were running as administrator all the time.
In the programming world, I always got the impression that, collectively, we respected the self-taught coder more than one who spent four years in school being spoon fed how to code.
I think in the programming world, degrees from respected schools open doors. After that, what is respected is the ability to create. Nobody gives a crap what school Notch went to. What matters is that he created Minecraft. That said, I really would recommend that if you have the means to go to university away from home, do it. In my experience, academics are no more than about 25% of why you go to school. The rest is about a social life and immersing yourself with other (mostly) young people and getting access to just about anything a young hacker could ask for. My special tip: most schools have a machine shop that motivated people can get access to. Take advantage of this. Be respectful of the old guy who maintains it and this may be the place you learn the most.
In geeky fields (and especially open source) it really is a meritocracy.
Well this is weird. I've never heard of src:kit so I tried to Google for it and it matched zero documents. Tried the same search string in Bing and found https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/iieeldjdihkpoapgipfkeoddjckopgjg. Seems a bit embarrassing for Google that their search engine wasn't able to locate this and Bing was able.
After reading this, I still don't see anything that differentiates a web app from the store from a web app accessible from a bookmark. It seems like an arbitrary distinction.
most of the "Apps" don't amount to much more than a bookmark to a website
What's a good example of something in the store that is more than a bookmark? I really have a hard time seeing the web app store as anything more than something like what Yahoo was in the early days - a directory.
Gmail is by far my favorite mail client, but I pretty much have to stick with Thunderbird for the gpg plugin. I tried using FireGPG for a while, but it didn't work very well.
BTW, I've seen a couple of people insist that old browsers get backported security fixes. You might want to read RedHat's official policy on this:
For most products our default policy is to backport security fixes, but we do sometimes provide version updates for some packages after careful testing and analysis. These are likely to be packages that have no interaction with others, or those used by an end-user, such as web browsers and instant messaging clients.
It would be insanely difficult and dangerous to backport security fixes after the Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 codebases diverge significantly.
IT may drag their feets, but the legal department is going to make sure that employees with access to confidential data either don't have access to the internet or operate under a policy of only running up-to-date software. Security and convenience (for IT) are usually at odds with each other.
For most people, it's a really bad idea to be using an old browser that is no longer being updated. I think it's an excellent idea for big players like Google to be a little more proactive in getting people to keep their browser and plugins up to date. For most people, I recommend Chrome because of its auto-updating features. If you prefer Firefox, I would just install multiple versions of the browser and default to the newest one but still keep an older one available if you need it.
I forgot to add that if you think it is expensive for businesses to keep up with software releases, you should see how expensive it is when they don't.
I'm sure you're not the only one who doesn't get it, but so far you are the only one to complain about it rather than look it up or just move on with your day.
Are you serious? I had to fly a couple of weeks ago and walking around the gate area I would there were roughly twice as many people reading from an electronic device (mostly Kindles and iPads) as were reading from paper. If I stop at a coffee shop on my way to work, there are always a few people reading from a Kindle. Come to think of it, I haven't seen anybody reading a newspaper at my local coffee shop for quite some time now.
I'm not saying paper is dead, but I do think ebooks are now firmly established as a mainstream way to read.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not just use LastPass or one of the bookmarklets that make a hash from a master password and the site url?
Why couldn't the rate of currency coming in to the system just be controlled by a server and award the coins by lottery? Why is it essential to have clients perform meaningless computation? Doesn't the fact that people are able to dedicate hardware to generating hashes mean that a small group of people are most likely to "win" the new coins?
One thing I've never understood is why do the computations have to be difficult?
Microsoft loses more *really* smart people to Google, Apple and especially Facebook than they hire. Microsoft has matured and grown boring (with a couple of divisions like XBox being notable exceptions). They are still going to make more money than just about anybody, but their days of being able to attract the best talent passed around 10 years ago.
I've always said Silverlight is a fine choice for the intranet and now I'm wondering if that's actually true. I wonder if five years from now Silverlight applications will have the same stigma attached to them that applications that were built on IE6 have today?
I've noticed the same thing. C++ was definitely taking on second class status at Microsoft. Recently, that trend has been sharply reversed. I think Herb Sutter has finally become effective inside the Microsoft machine.
If that enragiates you, I recommend you never look at how SQLite is used.
Eye candy isn't pointless. There's research out there that indicates things that look better, work better. Don Norman has done a lot of work on this.
This is a decent article about the phenomenon.
BTW, the UAC nonsense is pretty much working as it should now. The only thing missing is the ability to sudo from the command line. Powershell may have this feature, but I haven't looked into it yet. Far too many XP users were running as administrator all the time.
I think in the programming world, degrees from respected schools open doors. After that, what is respected is the ability to create. Nobody gives a crap what school Notch went to. What matters is that he created Minecraft. That said, I really would recommend that if you have the means to go to university away from home, do it. In my experience, academics are no more than about 25% of why you go to school. The rest is about a social life and immersing yourself with other (mostly) young people and getting access to just about anything a young hacker could ask for. My special tip: most schools have a machine shop that motivated people can get access to. Take advantage of this. Be respectful of the old guy who maintains it and this may be the place you learn the most.
In geeky fields (and especially open source) it really is a meritocracy.
BTW, thanks for posting to this. I installed it and I think it's the first Chrome web app that has really impressed me.
Well this is weird. I've never heard of src:kit so I tried to Google for it and it matched zero documents. Tried the same search string in Bing and found https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/iieeldjdihkpoapgipfkeoddjckopgjg. Seems a bit embarrassing for Google that their search engine wasn't able to locate this and Bing was able.
I searched for an answer to this question and this is the best like I could find:
http://lifehacker.com/5708613/the-five-best-chrome-webapps-that-arent-just-bookmarks
After reading this, I still don't see anything that differentiates a web app from the store from a web app accessible from a bookmark. It seems like an arbitrary distinction.
What's a good example of something in the store that is more than a bookmark? I really have a hard time seeing the web app store as anything more than something like what Yahoo was in the early days - a directory.
Gmail is by far my favorite mail client, but I pretty much have to stick with Thunderbird for the gpg plugin. I tried using FireGPG for a while, but it didn't work very well.
BTW, I've seen a couple of people insist that old browsers get backported security fixes. You might want to read RedHat's official policy on this:
It would be insanely difficult and dangerous to backport security fixes after the Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 codebases diverge significantly.
IT may drag their feets, but the legal department is going to make sure that employees with access to confidential data either don't have access to the internet or operate under a policy of only running up-to-date software. Security and convenience (for IT) are usually at odds with each other.
Absolutely ancient. At least for anything with as many vulnerabilities and as much exposure to malware as a web browser.
Security is expensive and unfortunately you are right - too many businesses aren't interested in investing in it.
No they don't.
For most people, it's a really bad idea to be using an old browser that is no longer being updated. I think it's an excellent idea for big players like Google to be a little more proactive in getting people to keep their browser and plugins up to date. For most people, I recommend Chrome because of its auto-updating features. If you prefer Firefox, I would just install multiple versions of the browser and default to the newest one but still keep an older one available if you need it.
I forgot to add that if you think it is expensive for businesses to keep up with software releases, you should see how expensive it is when they don't.
A couple of things:
* Not supported isn't the same thing as doesn't work
* Don't use Google if it is costing you significant time and money to do so
Firefox 3.5 is almost 2 years old now and is no longer supported by Mozilla. If you are using it, it's time to step up to at least 3.6.
Speach?
I actually prefer short-stroke chicklet keyboards because I can type much faster. The noise is nice, but speed is better.
Are you sure about that? Steve Jobs wasn't able to board his private plane in Japan because he was carrying ninja stars.
I'm sure you're not the only one who doesn't get it, but so far you are the only one to complain about it rather than look it up or just move on with your day.
Are you serious? I had to fly a couple of weeks ago and walking around the gate area I would there were roughly twice as many people reading from an electronic device (mostly Kindles and iPads) as were reading from paper. If I stop at a coffee shop on my way to work, there are always a few people reading from a Kindle. Come to think of it, I haven't seen anybody reading a newspaper at my local coffee shop for quite some time now.
I'm not saying paper is dead, but I do think ebooks are now firmly established as a mainstream way to read.