202 karma · joined March 14, 2010
To the curious - SO has an explanation of why Python was designed like this, which I found interesting: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1132941/least-astonishmen...
Also, I'm curious - what are the legal reasons for not working with full black or white in broadcast video?
[1] http://blog.zachwaugh.com/post/9666969587/how-i-name-my-apps
Thank you so much for making me aware of this.
The code would be far from perfect, but if it works then it may be considered 'good enough'.
In fact, I'll go out on a limb and suggest that most (if not all) non-trivial code is imperfect yet 'good enough'.
When you send a message from WhatsApp to your friend, the message is not sent directly from your phone to his. What actually happens is your message is sent to WhatApp's server, which then generate a push notification and sends it to your friends iPhone. (Push notifications must originate from a server. Your friends iPhone cannot check for new messages, instead it is told when there is a new message).
In Sparrows situation, they have no control over Gmail's server, and so they do not know when a new email is received and therefore cannot send a push notification to the users iPhone. Sparrow could store everyone's Gmail credentials on their own server and regularly check Gmail's server for new messages for each of their users and, if there are new messages, send a notification to the relevant user. However, this would mean that Sparrow would have to store everyone's Gmail credentials in one place which has certain security implications and, understandably, they do not want to do this.
Alternatively, Apple provide an API that certain apps may use to regular check for updates by running code on the iPhone, but Apple are not allowing Sparrow to use this API.
Person A made something and is granting access to their creation subject to certain conditions. Person B finds a way to access the creation while circumventing the creators conditions. This is clearly wrong.
Not for the average user. The user who uses the default web browser. The user who uses IE.
Threaded email conversations were a step in the right direction, but I've yet to come across an implementation that just works. I wish email clients were designed to look more like instant messaging applications by abstracting away everything in the body apart from the actual content.
Most clients handle replies acceptably most of the time, but I also want to see signatures gone (perhaps recognising phone numbers and adding them to my address book) and automatic re-formatting forwarded emails so that it looks like it was sent directly to me.
Of course sitting back and complaining is lazy and unproductive, perhaps I should have a go at building an email client that abstracts away the frustrating parts of email.
Edit: I'm envious of a lot of collaborative communication apps that exist but unfortunately everyone has to be using it which is a barrier to entry that it some circumstances, is just too high. I envision a similar tool that is built on top of email as a standalone application (web and/or desktop). This would afford the benefits of making communication a much quicker and easier to manage process, while not requiring anyone you need to communicate with to change their process.
(I can't find any information on why it was removed in the first place)
What would people recommend as a replacement? Fitbit looks good, but I am really only after the alarm clock aspect of the product.