VengefulCynic

I worked as a Precinct Captain for one of the Caucuses in Iowa last night, and I didn't personally have any issues. But I heard from colleagues who definitely did. Also, yesterday we got an email with a 7-page google doc instructing us on how to reset the browser caches on our phones to avoid issues with data carry-over from the Mock Caucuses that we had been holding.

It's entirely possible that my ability to follow directions and my status as Not-an-Octegenarian-Caucus-Volunteer is all that kept me out of trouble.

As a software guy, all I can say for sure is that I'm overwhelmingly grateful that we kept paper backups so we don't have to rely on this software.

As someone who puts in-flight entertainment systems in private jets, the only common thing I've seen in the ownership groups is an ability to afford the price tag. There are definitely a lot of buyers who are getting into this for time gains, but there are also buyers who are simply interested in privacy, luxury, or some peace and quiet. I ended up having to troubleshoot an in-flight issue on a ~$60 million private jet and the investment in sound-proofing insulation is totally worth it.

I would be shocked if this lead to significant site consolidation due to the backlash that this would cause from Congress. If anything, this will enable Raytheon (the company with more defense content) to use United Technologies facilities to create a larger network of appreciative Congressmen for large projects.

By contrast, while it might not be a permanent career-ending event for an engineer to blow the whistle at an engineering company, it holds the significant risk of ending the engineer's career at that company. Not to mention lawsuits and the cost of finding a new job. Most every engineer I know wants to do the right thing... but those are powerful headwinds. So on the mere suspicion of misfeasance or malfeasance, the prospect of losing a job and being embroiled in a lawsuit serves as a powerful deterrent.

People will point out (correctly) that adding financial incentives will inevitably lead to a combination of malicious compliance and misreporting, so there's a line that has to be drawn. Also, protections in private sector are either toothless or come with expensive oversight, but it's clear that if the government wants more whistleblowing from the ranks of normal engineers (and that's a big 'if'), they probably need to do something more to cause it to happen besides just keep asking.

  “There is no loyalty in business, Ashley.
  You’re a single mom. You have a family and you owe it to them to see this Microsoft interview through.”

  Smile is doing this because they have to

As someone who doesn't need $5/month of TextExpander services, this also leaves me in the market for a new solution.

Mostly, it seems unnecessarily fiddly to have entries in your FAQ about an average number of pieces of paper and special rates on processing paperwork backlogs.

I want to believe that the arrogant tone in combination with this line are some sort of punch line or social experiment that I'm just not getting. Please?

The mere availability of source documents elevates the conversation from a juvenile process of people hurling meaningless statistics at each other. In the absence of actual data and redacted filings provided by the government, leaked documents such as provided by Manning and Snowden take on a new life. Instead of just statistics without context, there are documents that illuminate a court of law that's basically been a secret up to this point. Obviously those documents selectively serve a narrative, but ironicaly, they're made even more powerful by virtue of the fact that they're the first substantive look that much of the public has gotten at the FISC.

I'm not sure that the association is unfair. There are a lot of honest people out there plying the trade and doing good work in the SEO space, but the same could be said for email marketing. For every good guy, there's enough spammers out there that even now, guys like patio11 have to spend a decent amount of time spelling out the difference between legitimate email marketing and spamming. SEO strikes me the same way: lots of people doing good work and being drowned out by the negative press of snake oil salesmen, con men and link sellers.

It's unfair to the people doing the good work... but I don't think it's unfair that people free associate "email marketer" with "spammer" and "SEO Guy" with "Hucksters, Liars and Criminals". Too many run-ins with the Black Hat SEO crowd have made me wary and I'd be shocked if I was the only one.

While I believe that he would probably prevail, the author is building his future plans on the assumption that O'Reilly won't sue him for breach of contract and, if they do, the courts will rule in his favor. If I were Analytics Press, I'd be very uneasy being the third wheel in this sort of relationship with the unresolved matter of breach of contract still in play.

As an example, in the implosion following the dot-com boom, it was almost impossible for denizens of many Eastern European and African countries to buy things online because the incidence of fraud attributed to their country was high enough that the fraud officers at many online retailers wouldn't chance it. I have a friend who lived in Romania who had a credit card that used my address in the US and frequently required me to ship stuff for him because no companies would ship directly to him. He loves the modern era of fraud evaluation, because while his country is weighted negatively, his use of a respected international bank, an IP address in the same area as his billing address and purchase history with many online companies has greatly reduced his level of hassle due to false positives alleging that he's a fraudster.

Impediments on the power of government aren't particularly popular to those who wield the power of government, regardless of the branch they occupy.

As a member of the tech community, I'm excited and looking forward to getting Glass for myself, but I don't see widespread adoption to the scale that the non-tech community can handle until we've innovated at least some of the uses and worked out the 1.0 bugs.

Watching Apple try to tackle web services, most handset makers try to tackle software and pretty much anyone other than a web company trying to tackle social (even Google seems to have real trouble here) leads me to believe that most companies optimize in hiring and organization for a limited skillset that makes it almost impossible for them to succeed in most other domains. I'd be willing to bet everything I can buy, steal or mortgage against even one traditional television hardware vendor managing to create a successful software platform, much less more than one.

*I'm so sorry that I wrote that phrase. Please forgive me

In fact, IV attempts to have the records sealed and, if they settle out of court, they require the settling company to sign an NDA so as to ensure that there's no record at all.

Has anyone else seen behavior similar to this in their own javascripting (is that even a word?)? I hadn't been paying special attention to IE's CPU usage but I'd like to think I would have noticed this in any of my own stuff when I was doing browser compatibility testing.

Unless you want to sell native software to the ~400 million Windows users worldwide. Regardless of how you feel about the platform, it seems foolish to fault someone for trying to sell software on it.

Looking closer, it's not even clear that ReadWriteWeb asked either party for a comment... note: "Google’s PR response to questions like this is that “we’re working closely with Apple” on getting it released." and "Well, Apple doesn’t talk about these things, so all we know is that it isn’t out."

1) Do Gruber or Marco honestly believe that The Verge's ethics are questionable? Both have appeared on On The Verge and frequently link to The Verge... I really doubt they've suddenly developed serious misgivings about The Verge's standards of ethics. And if they have, sniping about it in links and Twitter comments is immature at best.

2) Does Topolsky need to defend the ethics of The Verge in light of such sniping? If so, I feel like a personal, emotional and vitriolic response isn't the way to go. Double down with an editorial piece that restates the ethical stance and integrity of The Verge or ignore the sniping. All this does is bring Topolsky down to Marco and Gruber's level.

Either someone has serious ethical misgivings or nobody does. If there's a serious beef here, I feel like full-on articles and some investigative journalism (2 of the 3 parties are journalists and Marco plays one on the internet) is in order. If not, all three need to grow the fuck up and start behaving like professionals.

update: added formatting