kjackson2012

What sort of legal implications or liabilities would someone take on by hosting this person? For example, if the child got hurt or in a bad accident, would they have the legal obligation to pay for him? And would this child fall under the hosts' medical insurance, or would he have to pay for his own medical insurance?

There might be Java positions in various groups, but VMware is having a hard time retaining their top engineers after their IPO options completely vested. Most of my current and former colleagues that worked at VMware say that all the hardcore C/C++ programming jobs in the core virtualization app (ESX server) are dead, they sit around not doing anything challenging anymore, and that the C++ jobs you'll find working on the Virtual Center app are boring.

300,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in the past 15 years because of the monopoly that GMO companies have over seeds with patents. What used to be previously free now costs farmers a huge amount of money with promises of great returns. However, in the past few years, these GMO crops have had tremendous crop failures, and have instead bankrupted the farmers that used them.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers taken advantage of by a monopolistic GMO company and ruins the lives of countless families sounds like a real-life disaster scenario to me.

http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2012/11/why-are-in...

The author's story is very romantic, but I think this comment is probably the hard truth of the matter. It's an unhealthy relationship on both sides. It's unfortunate that this relationship is so tragic, but sometimes in life there are no happy endings.

I wish the author the best and hopefully something good comes from it, but my guess is that it will be a tragic relationship with tragic end results.

My wife loves expensive shoes and purses. Not the "aspirational" brands like Coach or even Louis Vuitton. She has graduated to brands like Chanel ($3000-5000) and Hermes ($15,000) and Louboutin shoes ($900).

I'll tell you exactly why women love to spend lots of money for purses and shoes. It's for the sheer exclusivity of it. It's not because of things like quality or functionality, so the argument that a $200 knockoff is just as functional or has just as good craftsmanship is useless.

I have argued that for something so expensive like $5000 handbag, you would expect an INCREASE in functionality or durability. I would expect things like waterproofedness, etc but no. They are even more fragile than you would expect. The price is simply a way to create a sense of exclusivity.

It similar to why a man buys a 600 hp Ferrari when most highways only allow speeds up to 60 mph. It's a show of power, prestige and wealth. Sure you could get a car that had the same acceleration with better fuel efficiency, but that's not why people buy ferraris.

That's an interesting point, but it's also pretty obvious that my valuables are going to be in my pockets.

I'm a C/C++ programmer with 15+ years experience. I recently was looking in the job market, and I didn't feel any problems trying to find a C++ job. Most jobs weren't C++, but there were still jobs that I could have applied for that would have interested me. But I chose instead to go with a job doing PHP (having no practical experience in PHP), because of the opportunities presented by the company, not because I felt PHP was superior in any way.

C++ opportunities are definitely decreasing, but there is still a lot of life left in it for performance-critical applications. And most kids these days coming out of school don't really learn C++ as much as they used to. I find most of the kids that I interview have experience in Java and Python, so it means that those old dinosaurs like me that have significant C++ experience still have a decent shot, unlike the COBOL programmers of Y2K.

Fascinating article!

The one thing I've learned about pickpockets is not to let people get so close to you so that you are confused by all the "noisy" touches. That's how pickpockets work, either by getting large groups of kids to surround you and they start putting their hands in all your pockets (like what almost happened to me in Rome), or in crowded places like subways or tourist areas (like the Eiffel Tower). I've conditioned myself to put all my things in my front pockets, like my wallet, keys, etc, and whenever anyone gets close, my instinct is to put my hands on my pockets.

I ran my own DNS server from my own home DSL static IP address 10+ years ago. It's fairly innocuous as long as you only respond to DNS requests for your own domain and don't forward requests. But it ends up being more hassle than its worth.

As recently as a few months ago, I hosted my own DNS server on a Linksys SLUG, but after I suffered a power outage and realized that there's no reason for hosting this stuff myself, I just decided to use namecheap.com for their Free DNS service.

No, you are wrong and hmexx is right.

By using the algorithm that hmexx says (use the result of your own coin flip to make the guess of the other's coin flip) what this is really doing is reducing the problem to "What is the probability that two coin flips are the same?"

The probability that two coin flips are the same is 50% (HH or TT vs HT or TH). The algorithm could also be "Use your own coin flip and then guess the opposite of your own result" and the probabilities would be the same, ie. 50%.

Give the fact that you have a 50% chance of losing $2 and a 50% chance of winning $1, this is not a game that C should play, since the expected value is -$0.50.

This is a horribly self-pitying blog post. It's typical of a lot of people I've met these days where they are so self-centered, they can't bother to feel happy for someone else.

"I just got a bonus at work because I worked my ass off!"

"I got nothing, thanks for making me feel like a pile of shit!"

Why not be happy for your friends? If I see that my friends are on vacation, or enjoying their lives, I feel genuinely happy for them. I don't feel jealous. And they certainly aren't posting on Facebook to make their friends feel jealous.

The author should come to grips with the fact that the world doesn't revolve around him, and that if he doesn't post anything no one will notice or even care. This whole "keeping up with the Joneses" is a phenomenon he has created himself, and if he can't handle the fact that other people are actually enjoying successes in their lives, then he should definitely log off from Facebook.

I really hope the one point about communicating with patients in a vegetative state is wrong. Not because it's not a groundbreaking discovery, but the implications are horrifying to me. Imagine all those patients who are left to just lie there their entire lives, and those that like Terri Schiavo that were allowed to starve to death. If they were actual aware of what was going on, that is the most horrifying fate I could imagine.

No, it's not. The Earth has always experienced devastating weather-related occurrences. There's nothing about it that suggests things are on a upward and exponential track.

Adam Lanza had zero history of violent behavior, and certainly didn't do anything like threaten to kill people with guns. There was no way to foresee that he was going to behave like this, which makes this even more tragic.

It would require a serious investment to make a camera that would exceed GoPro in terms of quality and reliability, and then even more investment in marketing to get some sort of consumer mindshare. All of this for a market that is something like 5-10% of their point and shoot market. It's the type of gamble most companies aren't willing to make.

I've used GoPros a few times on road trips, and they are fantastic.

I did a time lapse of 5 days driving through the South-West on one occasion, and new SLC on another, and the picture quality is great, and its time lapse functionality is really amazing. The only problem is that it generates a lot of data... I had to scale down from 1 pic per second to 1 pic every 10s, and I still had about 30GB of data. Anyone considering using the GoPro for time lapse, though, 1s frequency is what you want for a smooth video afterwards, 10s is too coarse and it gets really jumpy.

There are competitors, but none of them are a threat. The Contour has some traction, and the Sony ActionCam is pretty decent spec-wise, but nothing compares to the GoPro HD3 Black edition: 120FPS @ 720p, 240FPS @ WVGA, and even 30FPS @ 2.7k. They are still a generation or two ahead of their competitors.

The only thing I wish the HD3 Black had was GPS so that you could geotag your videos. That's about the biggest missing piece to that camera, otherwise it would be perfect.

It sounds like you should ask him to leave. "Smart" is meaningless unless it's coupled with "Do". If you want to do this in the least offensive way, ask everyone on the team to buy into this project, maybe around $10,000 for future expenses. Then we'll see how interested he is in continuing.

Credit card companies charge at least $15 per chargeback, which makes dealing with small charges very unprofitable, especially with credit card thieves using small purchases as tests for valid credit card numbers.

A 7% chargeback rate is huge and would likely get you shutdown by your credit card processor.

I don't think there's any sexism at all, because it applies to both males and females. Have you ever seen a male model that is chubby? All the male models I've seen have 6-packs and are incredibly fit, just like their female counterparts.

To me, it doesn't mean go skydiving or spend all your money and go partying every day.

It means stop living in fear, and stop distracting yourself with bullshit.

Lots of people are afraid of the shame of failure, the shame of rejection, etc. If you really were going to die tomorrow, it would strip away all the fear that you have of living with this burden.

I've been through some health scares and believe me, there is nothing more sobering than being in an MRI machine looking for a brain tumor. All the day-to-day bullshit that many people worry about, like "Why didn't I get that promotion" or "I really want that car" gets stripped away pretty quick, and the things that really matter surface immediately.

What a terrible and self-righteous post.

How is a test case supposed to explain why MAX_COUNTER is set to 5 or 20? Comments are the single-most important thing when writing code, in my opinion. When feature specs are lost, and documentation goes out of the date, you only have code. And if you're supposed to jump through hoops like test case code to try to divine WHY things are as they are, then you're dealing with really hard-to-maintain code.

I strongly suggest all developers to ignore this blog post, and to comment as best as you can.

It's not a fair question. It's a terrible question because every charity has their own merits, and any ensuing discussion is not fruitful and only causes conflict. What's makes it even worse is your self-righteous tone.

Your unfair question basically boils down to "My worthy cause is more worthy than your worthy cause!"

I've tried Blekko a couple of times, and thought they were okay, but I don't find them so much better than Google to make me switch.

I'm curious, how Blekko can stay in business? Do they get enough traffic and revenue from ads, etc, to maintain some sort of positive cash flow, or are they simply burning through cash from investors?

I agree with all points except one thing: NEVER GIVE HONEST FEEDBACK.

When you are leaving, never, ever give honest feedback. Say everything is great, and you just wanted a change. Employers say that they want honest feedback, but they really don't, because the truth hurts.

Case in point, I left a previous company because the founders screwed up a potential acquisition. I had no confidence in upper managment, and I thought they were running the company into the ground. I had worked there 3 years and I gave them honest feedback as to why I was leaving. Not rude, mind you, but I told them exactly that I was leaving because I felt like upper management wasn't good enough to run the company, and that I needed to leave because I was worried there was going to be subsequent layoffs. I ended up being right on both accounts.

Recently, there was a drastic change in management, and I felt like the prospects for working for the company had changed, and I thought just for fun I would re-apply and see if there were any jobs that I would be interested in. I got only one phone screen, despite applying to a bunch of different areas, and in the middle of the phone screen, the interviewer had mentioned some of the things I had said in my exit interview. So it was obvious the exit interview was added to my employee file, and to some degree, I was "blacklisted".

I'm fine being blacklisted, I knew the consequences of being honest with my feedback, and I'm not owed anything, but my point is that there is no benefit to being honest EVER to your employer. It's much better to simply say everything was great, and to move on. It's to your advantage to keep all of your options open, and by giving honest feedback, you are closing out some of those options. The best you get by giving honest feedback is you get to temporarily scratch an itch, and you never know when in the future you might need to play those cards.

I mentioned in a previous comment that I think Apple should just bite the bullet and license Google Maps in perpetuity, in order to preserve the best experience for its users. Let Apple get access to the data that Google acquires via Maps, let Google take all the ad revenues, and fully integrate with Google, and pay them some amount one-time money... maybe $10B? $10B represents 3 months of their free cash flow in a year.

It would be the equivalent of Apple making a deal with Microsoft back in 97/98 that allowed them to stop their distracting fight against Microsoft and concentrate on making themselves better.

This whole Maps fiasco is a complete distraction to the iPhone, and it's not something that Apple is good at. They are amazing at hardware innovation. This is where their core competency is. Case in point, despite all the negative talk about how the iPhone 5 wasn't innovative, their latest iMacs are amazingly beautiful and futuristic-looking still.

Their software is okay at best, but not innovative. Their web services offerings are below average, at best.

There is no point in getting into a protracted ground war vs Google when it comes to Maps because it's a distraction and they won't be able to overtake Google. Companies like Yahoo that had way more resources than Apple when it comes to search have tried and essentially gave up. If Yahoo can't do it, how can Apple do it, where hardware wags the tail on their software? Better to keep focusing on maintaining/retaking the hardware innovation mindshare and lead.

Most programmers gravitate towards programming because they is some aspect of programming that inherently interests them. I have about a dozen friends that I've tried to convince to learn how to program, even something as simple as Excel formulas, and they just weren't interested.

Most people won't find sitting in front of a computer day after day interesting. It takes a certain mindset to get comfortable writing and organizing things in your head an on a screen.

There is something to be said about the analogy to writing, however. When I code, I always feel like I'm trying to tell a story, and my goal is to make it easier for the next person who reads my code (likely me) to understand what I was trying to do. If it's too byzantine and "clever", and I have to sit there and think about what I was trying to do, then I'm doing something wrong.

I think it's different now than before because almost everyone is comfortable with the idea of communicating over the Internet. I used to IRC and MUD and the types of people that engaged in those activities were, for lack of a better term, more nerdy, like me. Back in the 1990s, people still weren't used to sitting in front of their computers all day long, because there largely wasn't anything to do with a non-networked computer. You could play games, or you could be writing an essay or a report, but there wasn't much else that could keep you engaged for hours upon hours, unlike today.

People used to spend more of their time talking on the phone or watching TV, or socializing. But having computers online all the time has turned it truly into a "social web".

A good CEO knows when to stop throwing good money after bad. Apple will NEVER reach the search domain expertise of Google, and Maps is too valuable to let turn into a complete debacle, as Apple has learned.

We have given Apple so much money THEY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO WITH IT. They have $120B in the bank, more cash than any other company has ever had. They can buy very famous companies for cash, like Cisco, Dell, Facebook, etc, and even banks like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, etc. This is a crazy amount of cash, and they are clueless as what to do with it.

I know what I would do, I would throw some of that money to improve the quality of my product for the sake of my hundreds of millions of customers. I would admit defeat, and I would pay Google for a license in perpetuity for Google Maps to be on iPhone. I would engage in some sort of rev/data share with the Maps app and throw them a few billion. Win-Win-Win for everyone.

Sure, maybe Apple doesn't extract every single red cent from the deal, but money is of secondary or tertiary importance here. Their money is already relatively useless sitting in a bank account making 0% interest. And sure, maybe they left money on the table, and maybe Apple overpays and gets the short end of the stick for once, but it's called taking one for the team. Customers get the very best maps technology and a permanent agreement to always have access to it, and Apple can stop being distracted by one of the most important aspects of a smartphone experience, which is location services. They can continue innovating in things that will make them money, like newer designs, etc.

No, you're wrong. It's not with the data. It's with Apple's ability to search. Like I said below, look up "Pier 39 San Francisco". This is a dead simple query, extremely specific, and they point you to a really bad area of SF. This isn't Tom Tom data, it's how Apple resolves this query to something useful.

Search is Google's domain expertise. Apple needs to basically start from scratch and figure out how to create a search engine that will return relevant data based on queries.

It's the same thing with Apple's App store search, it's also terrible. But because we have no choice, we are forced to use it, and hopefully it will improve. But because Google's is so nearly perfect and getting better all the time, why would someone go ahead and use Apple's terrible search engine to help them improve their search?