You're right. What happened was the app gets a lot of revenue (most of it, actually) from in-app purchases. After recouping the original investment they decided to go FTP - with a huge outcry as result a few days ago, from all the original purchasers who got shafted both ways: they bought the app but now everyone else gets it for free, however the original buyers don't get anything back in return and still have to make in-app purchases,
This whole "we did it because of them piratez!" just stinks of PR spin.
8 weeks ago, someone managed to sell an Apex app to the company I'm working for. For 50K euro's. It was an automated conversion from an XSD scheme into a bunch of Apex screens. For the 120 fields I could have done that myself in about 4 hours. Good sales department - I think that's where the money went:)
But the fact that a lot of people took it serious was priceless:)
Team America was never in danger of being taken serious - and thus completely harmless. Starship Troopers is probably the better movie of the two, even if I did like Team America more.
The barracks bomb is a good point: the local population felt the French and US troops were no longer neutral bystanders after shelling that killed innocent bystanders and attacks on the Bekaa valley. At that point they became co-belligerents without getting formal notice, while already having irritated Iran to the point it had announced retaliation, as well as several other factions in the civil war. The marines were representatives of a power that was actively involved in the fighting in the region, so no surprise they got hit. The surprise was about how hard they got hit, not *that* they got hit. You can call it terrrorism, but asymmetrical warfare is probably a better name for it.
However, squabbling over the definition of terrorism is rather futile. From the wikipedia article on definitions of terrorism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism):
A 2003 study by Jeffrey Record for the US Army quoted a source (Schmid and Jongman 1988) that counted 109 definitions of terrorism that covered a total of 22 different definitional elements.[7] Record continued "Terrorism expert Walter Laqueur also has counted over 100 definitions and concludes that the 'only general characteristic generally agreed upon is that terrorism involves violence and the threat of violence.' Yet terrorism is hardly the only enterprise involving violence and the threat of violence. So does war, coercive diplomacy, and bar room brawls".[8] As Bruce Hoffman has noted: "terrorism is a pejorative term. It is a word with intrinsically negative connotations that is generally applied to one's enemies and opponents, or to those with whom one disagrees and would otherwise prefer to ignore. (...) Hence the decision to call someone or label some organization 'terrorist' becomes almost unavoidably subjective, depending largely on whether one sympathizes with or opposes the person/group/cause concerned. If one identifies with the victim of the violence, for example, then the act is terrorism. If, however, one identifies with the perpetrator, the violent act is regarded in a more sympathetic, if not positive (or, at the worst, an ambivalent) light; and it is not terrorism."[3] For this and for political reasons, many news sources (such as Reuters) avoid using this term, opting instead for less accusatory words like "bombers", "militants", etc.[9][10]
While I think your policy is pretty sensible (all anyone can ask for, really) the reason people work on company time is usually one of the following: - you have to work in your spare time, unpaid, to read and review stuff for a hot project. This cuts both ways. People take work home, and home to work. - you hate your job. Going on internet is a warning sign that you need to find another challenge either within or outside the company or you may have issues with your boss. A smart company will figure out if this is the case and try to find something else to do for either the boss or the person involved. - you have to work hours that make it impossible to conduct business from home. You compensate by doing stuff like this during lunch.
Ofcourse you may have an occasional saboteur but IMO, most times it's something like this. And if you find people doing this, management should take a good look at who's to blame: are they driving their workers into doing this? In that case firing someone will not solve the issue, just make sure the workplace climate becomes even worse.
The problem is that there is only one maker of hybrid drives, and the hybrid drives they are making are rubbish. To be precise, they are slower than cheaper plain hard drives, which somehow defeats the purpose.
Yup. My whole response to the stupid article is: "I'll buy a hybrid when it stops being sucky and starts being an interesting choice." Currently, it just sucks on every count: sometimes even lower speed, combined with much more risk and cost. No thanks.
If they can provide me with a hybrid that has a 128GB SSD and 750GB+ HD on board, the HD is not worse than any other and the pricing is not more than I'd pay for the two separate (give or take 10%), then I'd buy it (because otherwise I have to replace my single-bay laptop). But right now, they're just not an option. More a vague theoretical possibility.
You're right. Telling management you want to hire a McGyver, troubleshooter or "general all-round developer" is fine. But announcing you want to hire a hacker is just a dumb move in any company.
True enough. If you really want to hire one, though, replace the name "hacker" with "troubleshooter" or "all-round developer". Management can understand why you would want to hire a troubleshooter, as opposed to a hacker who "just makes trouble".
Prototypes are the best specs. And if you have the builder giving you daily feedback on your new development, allowing tweaks and quick decisions, then you have what they call "agile development". Works for me:)
I prefer VB.Net versus C# actually. I use both but C# has more complications without adding more functionality for most standard software development usage.
About Java: it may be false, but most products I have to use that are built in Java are pretty slow, and/or have an awful GUI. Apparently it is very difficult then to use it in such a way that you don't suffer performance issues.
But the main question I have is about the Visual Studio remark. While I know of one IDE that had realtime code compilation (pretty interesting tool to work with, it could take a context-free grammar and parse the language you described while you typed) and I would LOVE to see literate programming implemented in it, the usability of VS is, IMO, unequaled by any other currently available product. But please do point out alternatives, I'd be happy to try them.
Startups without patents don't get investors. If they have patents the investors will look at them and if they like what they see, invest their money AND help defend those patents. If you don't have patents, you don't have a chance at venture capital unless you aren't building new IP but instead do services or build existing product under license or do something else that doesn't require you to defend your IP from people who could easily reverse engineer and copy it.
Then we could use statuscode 666 Evil Government - so cool:)
But on a slightly more serious note, the following codes would be perhaps slightly better?
303 See Other - with a list of bittorrent sites you might want to check out:) 305 Use Proxy - with a list of proxy servers in other countries that would enable you to get around the block:) or 503 Service Unavailable - if you think the situation is temporary:)
Slashdot Mirror
You're right. What happened was the app gets a lot of revenue (most of it, actually) from in-app purchases. After recouping the original investment they decided to go FTP - with a huge outcry as result a few days ago, from all the original purchasers who got shafted both ways: they bought the app but now everyone else gets it for free, however the original buyers don't get anything back in return and still have to make in-app purchases,
This whole "we did it because of them piratez!" just stinks of PR spin.
The need for humans to associate with the perceived "winner" is a very old psychological mechanism.
Someone using the net should have a clue what DNS is about anyways
We're at least a decade beyond that point.
Internet trolls only come in one size: small. So at worst, it's Chucky.
Ouch. That article was so full of buzzwords and hype that my brain started cavitating.
But did it *super*cavitate? Inquiring minds want to know! :)
Since the article is talking about a boat, resting on two underwater foils that use supercavitation to reduce friction so the *boat* goes faster :/
8 weeks ago, someone managed to sell an Apex app to the company I'm working for. For 50K euro's. It was an automated conversion from an XSD scheme into a bunch of Apex screens. For the 120 fields I could have done that myself in about 4 hours. Good sales department - I think that's where the money went :)
Yep - Cognos TM1 exists for precisely this reason: to part fools with their money. And keep the IT department happy while doing so :)
But the fact that a lot of people took it serious was priceless :)
Team America was never in danger of being taken serious - and thus completely harmless. Starship Troopers is probably the better movie of the two, even if I did like Team America more.
Explain to me again how this make me more free?
It makes you free in the same sense that work makes you free. Oops, I accidentally Godwinned :)
Ooooh, the "simplify game"... present a couple of false dillemmas and you're good to go, right?
The barracks bomb is a good point: the local population felt the French and US troops were no longer neutral bystanders after shelling that killed innocent bystanders and attacks on the Bekaa valley. At that point they became co-belligerents without getting formal notice, while already having irritated Iran to the point it had announced retaliation, as well as several other factions in the civil war. The marines were representatives of a power that was actively involved in the fighting in the region, so no surprise they got hit. The surprise was about how hard they got hit, not *that* they got hit. You can call it terrrorism, but asymmetrical warfare is probably a better name for it.
However, squabbling over the definition of terrorism is rather futile. From the wikipedia article on definitions of terrorism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism):
A 2003 study by Jeffrey Record for the US Army quoted a source (Schmid and Jongman 1988) that counted 109 definitions of terrorism that covered a total of 22 different definitional elements.[7] Record continued "Terrorism expert Walter Laqueur also has counted over 100 definitions and concludes that the 'only general characteristic generally agreed upon is that terrorism involves violence and the threat of violence.' Yet terrorism is hardly the only enterprise involving violence and the threat of violence. So does war, coercive diplomacy, and bar room brawls".[8]
As Bruce Hoffman has noted: "terrorism is a pejorative term. It is a word with intrinsically negative connotations that is generally applied to one's enemies and opponents, or to those with whom one disagrees and would otherwise prefer to ignore. (...) Hence the decision to call someone or label some organization 'terrorist' becomes almost unavoidably subjective, depending largely on whether one sympathizes with or opposes the person/group/cause concerned. If one identifies with the victim of the violence, for example, then the act is terrorism. If, however, one identifies with the perpetrator, the violent act is regarded in a more sympathetic, if not positive (or, at the worst, an ambivalent) light; and it is not terrorism."[3] For this and for political reasons, many news sources (such as Reuters) avoid using this term, opting instead for less accusatory words like "bombers", "militants", etc.[9][10]
Which is why tech companies block their employees from using the patent-search function hosted by IBM. And likely vice versa.
While I think your policy is pretty sensible (all anyone can ask for, really) the reason people work on company time is usually one of the following:
- you have to work in your spare time, unpaid, to read and review stuff for a hot project. This cuts both ways. People take work home, and home to work.
- you hate your job. Going on internet is a warning sign that you need to find another challenge either within or outside the company or you may have issues with your boss. A smart company will figure out if this is the case and try to find something else to do for either the boss or the person involved.
- you have to work hours that make it impossible to conduct business from home. You compensate by doing stuff like this during lunch.
Ofcourse you may have an occasional saboteur but IMO, most times it's something like this. And if you find people doing this, management should take a good look at who's to blame: are they driving their workers into doing this? In that case firing someone will not solve the issue, just make sure the workplace climate becomes even worse.
The problem is that there is only one maker of hybrid drives, and the hybrid drives they are making are rubbish. To be precise, they are slower than cheaper plain hard drives, which somehow defeats the purpose.
Yup. My whole response to the stupid article is: "I'll buy a hybrid when it stops being sucky and starts being an interesting choice." Currently, it just sucks on every count: sometimes even lower speed, combined with much more risk and cost. No thanks.
If they can provide me with a hybrid that has a 128GB SSD and 750GB+ HD on board, the HD is not worse than any other and the pricing is not more than I'd pay for the two separate (give or take 10%), then I'd buy it (because otherwise I have to replace my single-bay laptop). But right now, they're just not an option. More a vague theoretical possibility.
Cool - they need "Programmer-at-arms" people. Reminds me of A Fire Upon the Deep...
Oooh good one. Hadn't thought of it that way.
Too bad. Since they're hiring "offensive hackers" and hackers aren't offensive, I guess they won't be able to find anyone then :)
Always use antivirus and firewall while debugging :)
You're right. Telling management you want to hire a McGyver, troubleshooter or "general all-round developer" is fine. But announcing you want to hire a hacker is just a dumb move in any company.
True enough. If you really want to hire one, though, replace the name "hacker" with "troubleshooter" or "all-round developer". Management can understand why you would want to hire a troubleshooter, as opposed to a hacker who "just makes trouble".
Prototypes are the best specs. And if you have the builder giving you daily feedback on your new development, allowing tweaks and quick decisions, then you have what they call "agile development". Works for me :)
I prefer VB.Net versus C# actually. I use both but C# has more complications without adding more functionality for most standard software development usage.
About Java: it may be false, but most products I have to use that are built in Java are pretty slow, and/or have an awful GUI. Apparently it is very difficult then to use it in such a way that you don't suffer performance issues.
But the main question I have is about the Visual Studio remark. While I know of one IDE that had realtime code compilation (pretty interesting tool to work with, it could take a context-free grammar and parse the language you described while you typed) and I would LOVE to see literate programming implemented in it, the usability of VS is, IMO, unequaled by any other currently available product. But please do point out alternatives, I'd be happy to try them.
Startups without patents don't get investors. If they have patents the investors will look at them and if they like what they see, invest their money AND help defend those patents. If you don't have patents, you don't have a chance at venture capital unless you aren't building new IP but instead do services or build existing product under license or do something else that doesn't require you to defend your IP from people who could easily reverse engineer and copy it.
Then we could use statuscode 666 Evil Government - so cool :)
But on a slightly more serious note, the following codes would be perhaps slightly better?
303 See Other - with a list of bittorrent sites you might want to check out :) :) :)
305 Use Proxy - with a list of proxy servers in other countries that would enable you to get around the block
or
503 Service Unavailable - if you think the situation is temporary