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Michiel

151 karma · joined February 8, 2011

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Michiel··on All Presentation Software Is Broken - igvita.com
> all if you manage to give me good feedback on how to do a better presentation next time around.

You really should ask the audience that question.

What a web based tool could do is integrate a feedback mechanism, maybe even tied to specific slides. Imagine you are giving the presentation, and I am bored to tears by your slide on profit margins increasing in Q2.

So I open the synchronized viewer app on my phone, and touch the frownie face icon or the icon that says 'zzzz'. Hopefully you will replace the bullets with an animated chart for your next presentation.

Maybe there already is an app for that?

Michiel··on Douglas Crockford now at PayPal
"Doug, it's important that, when writing JavaScript, your use JSLint to verify it. Do you know it? If you need any help, refer to our internal wiki."
Michiel··on The surprising rise of JavaScript
There was JavaScript (including the good parts) before Douglas Crockford started disseminating his ideas about the language and long before jQuery was released. So it was like a powerful and possibly quite elegant language all along, but it needed to be 'discovered' and 'evangelized'.

With respect to JavaScript, it's like front-end developers are all enlightened today, after living in the dark ages for about 10 years.

Michiel··on Introducing The New Bing: Spend Less Time Searching, More Time Doing
> it's really cluttering the UI.

It looks like Bing is trying not to clutter the UI with its social features by default:

"Sidebar is the most novel component of the new Bing. It's a mellow, gray sidebar that is closed by default. It shows a thumbnail of your picture and two control icons, and that's it. There's a hint arrow to expand it. When you open Sidebar, it shows you stuff from social networks that's relevant to your search."

Michiel··on "Adobe has released Adobe Photoshop CS6, which addresses these vulnerabilities"
Actually, the Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner Tool can be downloaded from adobe.com:

http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cscleanertool.html

From the page:

"The Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner Tool helps resolve installation problems for Adobe Creative Suite 6, Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Creative Suite 5 - 5.5, Adobe Creative Suite 4, and Adobe Creative Suite 3 software. The tool can clean up install records for any pre-release (beta) installations of these Creative Suite products. The Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner Tool is designed to not interfere with existing installations of previous versions of Adobe Creative Suite products; it does, however, allow you to remove them as well, if you so choose to."

Michiel··on Could this explain the Instagram deal?
What is Instagram was to be the replacement? Can Facebook, with a lot of cash from the IPO, avert the same fate as MySpace buy buying its supposed successors?
Michiel··on When Kids Start Doing Root Cause Analysis
That path seems to go in the same direction, but then it diverges in Science, mostly due to the first sentence on that page, where [Latin] and [knowledge] are links:

> Science (from [Latin] scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes [knowledge]...

It happens again in Taxonomy, which otherwise would surely lead to Philosophy from the [classification] link:

> Taxonomy (from [Greek]: τάξις taxis "arrangement" and Greek: νομία nomia "method"[1]) is the science of identifying and naming species, and arranging them into a [classification].

On our way to Philosophy we are constantly confronted with Latin and Greek concepts, because Rome and Greece are where many of the concepts in Philosophy originated.

Michiel··on When Kids Start Doing Root Cause Analysis
> However I don't know if that reflects some deeper truth about the world, or just my bias in how I answer the questions.

It's the same reason why you always end up on "Philosophy" if you're browsing Wikipedia and consistently follow the first link in each article. Here's the path for "Airplane":

  Airplane
  Fixed wing aircraft
  Aircraft
  Vehicle
  Motion (physics)
  Natural science
  Science
  Knowledge /* we know where this going... */
  Fact
  Proof (truth)
  Argument
  Philosophy
Try it yourself: http://www.xefer.com/wikipedia
Michiel··on Why you should ALWAYS CC someone
Why not?
Michiel··on Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers
Doh! Thanks for the update.
Michiel··on Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers
Here are the stats from my MacBook Pro (also mid 2009, 13-inch, original battery):

  Temperature = 2990
  CycleCount = 488
  DesignCycleCount9C = 1000
  DesignCapacity = 5450
  MaxCapacity = 4804
  WearRatio = 88%
  CurrentCapacity = 4804
  ChargeRatio = 100%
  Voltage = 12568
  Amperage = 253
  InstantAmperage = 88
  TimeRemaining = 0:8
  AvgTimeToFull = 0:8
I seem to be missing the InstantTimeToEmpty and FullToEmptyTime data. Reading your script, that tells me the values are "None" but not why that is. I'm also apparently 8 minutes from an empty battery, even though it's fully charged. Do you know why this is?
Michiel··on Microsoft drops the Azure branding
Yes, Marketing
Michiel··on Bertrand Russell’s 10 Commandments for Teachers
What a coincidence, just this morning I read an account of "How Bertrand Russell was prevented from teaching at the College of of the City of New York" [1]. The judge deemed him to be a dangerous influence on students because he would undermine their morals. Therefor he should not be allowed to teach there.

Reading his 10 commandmends affirms for me that he was the wiser man. He taught later at Harvard and received a Nobel Prize for Literature.

[1]: http://www.skeptic.ca/Russell_&_CUNY.pdf

Michiel··on The new Git-scm.com
I'm not sure which one you mean, but the new logo looks great and it visualizes the concept of branches quite effectively.
Michiel··on Remote exploit found in all WooThemes
"WordPress installations with unsecured shortcodes (such as [php] which allows raw PHP code to be run) are vulnerable to serious attacks if WooThemes are installed..." (emphasis mine)

Wow, I had no idea that was even possible, but on the surface it seems incredibly stupid to allow an editor to add server-side code to content in a CMS.

Michiel··on How I got a job at Stack Overflow
I live in Europe and I pay €250 in rent. So I can't relate to this at all. How much of your salary goes into rent if you pay $1500 and you're a senior web developer in NYC?
Michiel··on Apollo program source code
Maybe they had... or maybe the NASA/MIT code is based on code originally obtained from behind the iron curtain.
Michiel··on PlaceHold.it A simple image placeholder service
Let's not forget http://placesheen.com if you need placeholders of Charlie Sheen.
Michiel··on Announcing the Windows 8 Editions
> I didn't even want to read the whole table for all the features of windows 8

Took me all of 5 minutes to digest that table (and decide I want Windows 8 Pro for Boot from VHD and Client Hyper-V). That's not too much time to choose something I'm going to be using for 3 years, is it?

Michiel··on Brendan Eich: The infernal semicolon
I am currently writing the a style guide (for a small agency), and I have added semi-colons as preferred for JavaScript. And abusing the && operator like in the now infamous code snippet is definitely out.

Our code needs to be maintainable for inexperienced developers. I don't want to make it easier for them to make mistakes and I don't want them to ponder rare (though valid) syntax. I feel this is a valid reason to maintain this rule.

  // This we can all understand
  clearMenus();
  if(isActive) {
    $parent.toggleClass('open');
  }
Once a developer understands ASI and other details he is free to feel elated with his new-found knowledge, but I'd prefer if he choses to know rather than to apply these powers.
Michiel··on 9 year old's DIY Cardboard Arcade gets Flash mobbed: Video
> It looks as though Caine will be a future lover of HN, like us.

He's got the hacker gene, that's for sure. With his non-reversible, encrypted, calculator-based hashing algorithm one time pad ticketing system...

Michiel··on Microsoft quietly buys Netscape browser technology (and patents)
There was also mention of patents for messaging. Microsoft outright bought Skype, wich was bound to have patents in that area as well. Adding these patents to their portfolio must be helpful knowing some of their competition (Google, Apple).
Michiel··on Love hotels and Unicode
Unicode is probably the closest we are today to world peace. If we can get all this somewhat right, including the flags, the noodles and the 'person with blond hair', I think there is hope...
Michiel··on Ask HN: What is the best laptop on the market for programming right now?
"the presence of readline-style keyboard shortcuts at an OS mediated level"

What does that mean? Do you have an example comparing it to non-'readline-style' shortcuts?

Michiel··on CSS text-transform is language-dependant: the Dutch case explained
Of course, editors should be using the ligature (unicode character LATIN SMALL LIGATURE IJ). But having said that: I'm Dutch and a) I have never used that character and b) I have no idea how to write it on a keyboard.
Michiel··on ASP.NET MVC, Web API, Razor and Open Source
And let's not forget Phil Haack (http://haacked.com), who is now working at GitHub. He used to be the program manager at Microsoft for ASP.NET MVC, the first part of the ASP.NET framework to be released under an open source license.
Michiel··on Google+: The Charge of the Like Brigade
That's like comparing an intersection with a parking garage.
Michiel··on Poll: What's Your Most Disliked Programming Language?
How much of your rant has to with the actual language C# as opposed to the VM, other people, XML and patterns?
Michiel··on A "real" user proves Windows 8 fails on the desktop
From what I can tell everyone is going to have to use the Metro UI because it has replaced the Start menu as the built-in launcher. There is also a new menu on the right side of the screen that let's you access search and settings among other things. So even producers must use some of the Metro UI on a daily basis.

I predict we will see a number of utilities emerge in the next few months to emulate the Start menu or otherwise provide alternatives to the Metro UI for said tasks.

Michiel··on Metro breakdown: Windows 8 UI is little gain for lots of pain
"The target to click is essentially smaller which requires more precision and effort to hit."

It's actually the opposite, the virtual target area extends beyond the screen to the bottom and left and that area has no boundaries. In other words, you can move your cursor in the right direction and if you keep moving you are guaranteed to hit that area. Experienced users will just 'flick' their cursor in the general direction knowing they are going to hit it.

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