I actually talked to Google yesterday. Minimum tier is 100k per day at $17.5k per year. Very fair price (If you think that is expensive, then you clearly do not work in commercial GIS, where licensing of software and data is insanely expensive). At the same time, they force you to use the data on a Google Map component (yes, even for the paid accounts), and while their api is acceptable, their js map control is severely lacking in features compared to something like leaflet, openlayers, or esri's js component. This may have very well been simply an arbitrary decision, but it has the effect of snuffing out any small companies or start ups that want to use their apis to build new, innovative applications. Considering the big few companies in this space bought up just about all the data companies that originally compiled the underlying data, this seems completely anti-competitive to me. I am not saying they should give it away for free, but there should definitely be some smaller paid plans with more open terms of use, considering that Google and the couple other competitors basically just purchased a cartel together over the last decade.
You can crack into any system with 30 billion dollars at your disposal. People are always the weak link. Most of the revelations of late suggest a "paid backdoor" rather than a mathematical backdoor or a technical backdoor. The old adage of "follow the money" probably leads to many backdoors here that were paid for with cold hard cash.
I think cutting out the agents and lawyers would be pretty dangerous if you were not able to solve the huge problems for consumers that make them necessary. I am about to close on a house next week and would be completely lost without a quality realtor. There is a ton of regulation and risk that make buying a home extremely difficult, especially for first time home buyers. A good realtor does a lot more than just drive you around and collect a check. The same goes for attorneys. Neither provide a whole lot of direct value, but they both mitigate loads of risk.
I will accept goats and chickens before I accept Bitcoin. 99% of people have never even heard of it. I am pretty certain that 100% of my customers have never heard of it. Not worth my time.
I have been a Type I diabetic for the past 15 years, and have had the "pressurized stream of blood" that shot across the room a handful of times when injecting my stomach. Granted, being an insulin dependent diabetic, I have given myself an estimated 32,000 injections, which I seriously doubt a steroid user would ever get anywhere close to.
1) Worst reputation for verbal abuse of any open source project around
2) Actively cultivated reputation for being esoteric and difficult to get started in
3) Few "big wins" left. Young devs want to work where there is plenty of land to conquer. This often leads to a jump towards new platforms with plenty of low hanging fruit (node.js is a great example of this in action at the moment, and I say this as a node.js guy in his twenties).
I think the worry would be that HR will miss a lot of people with relevant experience. "Oh, John Smith only has experience in C#, but we need someone with experience in .Net".
I left the .Net world about 3 years ago. There were plenty of things to complain about, but licensing was never one of them. Most of the stack is free until you get to the point where you should be able to pay for it anyway.
Risk has this same dynamic. Going head to head on main choke does nothing but let the other players come in and mop the floor with you and your opponent.
Flow based programming has a funny way of being suppressed... this has been tried many, many times. Some examples off the top of my head: Scratch, Windows Workflow Foundation, Arc Model Builder, etc. All of the marketing for NoFlo seems to be targeted at non-programmers who think "I could code anything if I could just understand the syntax!" Their main video basically says "Don't you wish you could finally stop paying those sneaky developers who act like everything takes longer than it really does? Now you can!"
The one beef I have with the "my github page is my resume" meme is that many developers work in spaces where they do not have the ability to work with open source much. I personally have years of work checked into github in private repos, and if I showed it to a potential employer I could be sued into oblivion. Many of us work on very sensitive systems with loads of legal walls around them. Sure, I contribute to OSS in my spare time, but my public github profile is not even close to a fair representation of my professional work.
I will not hire someone without seeing them code something... period. There are too many tricksters out there. I ask them to solve Fizzbuzz using any language they want, any editor, any question, any google search (including just looking up the problem and copying and pasting), and any amount of time. They get to do it on their own at a private workstation. Still 90% fail even after completely fleecing me in the "technical conversation" portion of the interview.
Agreed. Especially for the young people referenced. People are flocking there in droves out of college with very little job prospects and an extremely competitive job market (outside of tech).
I would love to work there, but the rents look completely ridiculous compared to the rest of the country. I live in the heart of a wealthy urban area, and still pay close to a third what I would pay in SF. I am an engineer, so I could afford to live there, but saving would be impossible. It is a bit worrying that the tech community seems to be so irresponsible with where they choose to set up shop. Sure, an office in downtown Manhattan would be awesome, but is it really necessary for a non profitable startup?
I would point people towards the Stadium Pal, described by David Sedaris. Essentially, it is a urine bag strapped to your leg attached to an external catheter. I am not sure if it works for women, but I am sure Musk could figure that out.
Can confirm from the south here. No idea about real Canadians but "Canadians" pretty much never tip in my area. I was shocked when I first heard this, but I have friends who have been in the industry for years and it seems to be nearly universal. I asked a couple black friends about it once and they pretty much said it was just a cultural thing and they were not taught to do it as kids.
So I guess he could have used a nix box then and just used curl, which comes preinstalled? I am not saying the government has no case here, but using wget is way too fuzzy to weak to be one of the central charges.
At risk of being trolled into oblivion, I have not found unity to be all that bad. Keyboard shortcuts seem fine to me. Dock on the left is only annoying when I pick the mouse (actually trackball), which is rare. I use OSX and have found its window system a bit better than that at least (not saying it's the best, but it is what I use often).