rjd

* Canuckistanians

I can remember playing what is essentially the same game on an acorn computer in 80s, pretty sure a helicopter. All this talk is just a witch hunt by jealous people, ignoring how rare original ideas actually are.

I assume you don't use Snapchat then, because it should be fairly self evident.

For one thing, snap chat is audio visual, email is not. The second is snap chat is designed to work in manner to capture the moment without interfering with it, email on the other hand has a very interrupting flow.

So you end up with one product that captures the emotional state of a moment, and the other which doesn't. This weekend for example I received a snap chat taken a friend bombing a motorway exit on roller blades. The fact it self destructs adds to this as well, because its not the content that matters so much as the vibe of the message. When I got that message I was stunned and wanted to see it again, I had the impluse to contact my friend immediately and respond. I would never get that from an email.

I probably get in excess of 100:1 snapchats to emails from friends for those reasons. I also get maybe 20:1 vs Facebook messages now as well now.

"Snapchat does nothing email doesn't" is about as useful or poignant as saying "A tractor does nothing a donkey doesn't"

I grew up in NZ, Swanson is one of the rougher and poorer areas in Auckland, and the school no doubt has all the issues that come with areas like that. I'd be careful that gains aren't skewed as its not a 'average' school or socio-economic environment.

I knew this had a context : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J9X9VvYQXU

That actual works as well, don't book anything from South Africa I found out as I was booking my mates flights. You could knock several hundred off by going through an Australian or UK proxy. I believe from memory it was the same agency as well. Just changing the domain brought up vastly different prices on the same flights.

But no as I mentioned above lots of holiday destinations have cheap tickets inbound, but out bound are expensive. I first noticed it travelling from London to Croatia.

It was like $200 flight to Split, but the flight home was double or triple. I hopped on a proxy, and found I could get the reverse deal from Split to London. $200 to London, $600 back home to split. So I started gaming the system.

The agencies are hedging on the fact you have to take the return flight. So they coerce you into the cheap flight to location X, but claw the money back with the return flight which I guess the vast majority of people have to take.

Yeah thats right, quite often to holiday destinations they run specials like flights to Croatia $200, but you try and get a flight back $600. They recoup the costs on the return flight you need to take.

But if you're in Croatia you can get flights to London $200 etc... geofenced deals marketing deals to try and coerce people into taking holidays.

I've been doing this for years. After I noticed most places are cheap to get to but flights are expensive back. I noticed the same business model was in place from the other direction. So just fake the country of origin and you get cheap to and back.

The other one is clear your cookies before booking. Places create fake demand by disappearing the cheap flights on you if you shopping around. If you clear your cookies the cheap flights will return.

Ha, I read the page for a moments thinking "What is this?... a cooking app?". Definitely a gold star in the incomprehensible awards. Thanks for the link.

Who knows ... maybe this guy : "The NSA problem ruined it for the Americans," a Brazilian government source said on condition of anonymity."

Yeah I grew up in New Zealand as well, and the article doesn't relate to any experience I've ever seen. Its a case of correlation doesn't equal causation.

People don't ride bicycles in New Zealand because they have to wear helmets, they don't ride them (or stop there kids from riding them), because the roads and drivers are absolutely terrible. The drivers literally just push on through like you aren't there.

If you say to anyone you ride to work, the first question you usually get is "is it dangerous? do you have a good route?". Thats how people feel about cycling, if you do it, then you might get seriously hurt.

Same thing in London by the way, I used to ride to work there. I got the same style of response "Jeez, you're brave", "Roads are to dangerous for me to try that". I felt way safer in London than I ever did in New Zealand though. Something about constant traffic jams that lets you slip right through :)

Personally, I've always defined it as the ability to take two separate ideas and create a third one.

The more creative people are, the more they have the ability to make a connection between two less related items.

I've often noticed the main difference between creative people and not so creative people isn't skill or intelligence or anything. Its the ability to not get phased by when you can't get an idea to work, you just keep plugging on like a small form of insanity even though you fail and fail. A biochemistry driven insanity I would say, I feed off the process of failing, and get massive elation when something that shouldn't work does work. To me failing is as important as succeeding, but the reward of succeeding is so much better.

And like most things, people rarely see the long chain of failures, so assume a brilliance to what might be better classed as a madness ;)

Not being from the states I've only seen this through documentaries and expose shows... but to me its just seems to be the police are starting to treat everybody the way minorities have said they have been treated for decades.

Judging by what I can tell its basically using CSS in the way it was designed... using inheritance etc... chuck in some best practices and well... I suppose its ok, but its what you should be doing for sanities sake anyway, no need for a special name or framework.

I started working on a project with a friend to use NFC in phones to start on this problem.

We where working on using NFC to auto lock and unlock your PC when you phone was on your desk hear a receiver. The idea originated from using the NFC to by pass the RFID door scanner so we didn't need our toggles to get into the office. Deciding we could get in troupe pissing around trying to bypass the security system we ended up working backwards to something easier... being the lock/unlock thing.

Unfortunately we stopped working on it when my friend went broke and his priorities changed (i.e. silly hobby projects don't pay the bills).

Would love to pick it up again some time in the future, we had lots of awesome discussions and ideas with this field. We where just investigating a braclet RFID to add to the system as a two factor authentication, so you needed more than just the phone do it. But thats roughly where we got up to.

We used to do this at an place I used to work. We just approached a local liquor store, he agreed, no delivery charges as it was guaranteed sales. No licensing issues, straight forward. We'd get a call in morning to confirm the order, between 3-4 he'd show up with cold beers for us. Ask and you shall receive basically.

Probably as soon as all the stolen coins in circulation have been cashed in and suddenly there is no market manipulation to keep it up.

I look at it and think its a con. Coincidentally after a several massive thefts, the price suddenly raises? sounds like deliberate manipulation to dump stolen coins to me.

Wouldn't mind betting some syndicate took a huge upfront loss to drive up price, and are now recapitalising that loss with said stolen coins.

True, I think most snatch and grabs are sold quick for cash and not identity theft anyway.

But in a worst case scenario how quick could someone determined actually compromise you? minutes? less time than you'd wait on hold during work hours, let alone waiting till the next day?

Because a common tactic kids are using ATM is a simple snatch and grab, right out of peoples hands. Heaps easier than taking a laptop as you might be standing in a crowd, they can approach you with speed, shunt you off balance and are gone.

Phone doesn't lock while they run with it as they are touching the screen, they get away from the user and disable the security features. You are compromised, phone is compromised, thief's win.

Or so the papers say, and several female friends who have had this happen to them at evening events (not identity theft, but the snatch and grab).

Because whats on my Google is mildly embarrassing, where as I grew up group of kids from Yugoslavia, where the government forces used information like this to butcher people in the streets, in there homes. I turn not he TV and see it happening in Iraq, and Syria right now.

Its not a future I want this world to have, and we are unfortunately enabling it, as always, with poorly thought through best intentions.

You totally miss the point. Its not about how great two factor authentication is. Its about the fact I don't want to use the two factor authentication, I'd rather loose everything.

I'd rather have my "sensitive" data compromised than have some multinational advertising company that has been compromised by every major government on the planet have access to me at any given time.

And its as annoying as having someone stand in your kitchen every morning and say "A bowl of bran Sir, its good for you, best thing to eat Sir, other options are inferior". I hate Bran, I'd rather eat toast, I'd eat fruit, I'd rather wait till lunch time. But that butler person won't go away, he shows up at lunch time, an dinner, and when I just feel like a quick snack down town.

I don't care how much better it is for me, I already know, I just don't want it.

And lastly, if someone steals your phone, with your a mail client on it, it is way easier for identity theft to occur, not harder.

Like from Adobe circa last month :P

My initial thought was " Don't most people that go on weight loss diets shake do this anyway?" ... followed by "whats actually different about this product and existing food replacement shake diets?"

And the fact Google Maps interface is awful and Apple maps has more useful contextual data.

Personally I used both Google Maps and Apple Maps to around navigate Australia in a mobile home recently. At times both maps where useless, but generally Google Maps was just awful.

Its been stated in this thread that Apple Maps is good enough, but the flip side is, in rural Australia at least, Google Maps just isn't good enough.

I know of one person who has brought one and ended up describing it as useless, selling it on, and buying a macbook air.

I've not seen or heard of anyone else with one. Shipping volumes do not equal consumer purchases, so till I actually see people with them I'll take this as some sort of advertorial.

From what I've read it achieves no detectable improvements, and in some places can bring out worse problems causing people to amplify themselves to reenforce ego (and vice versa become nastier to push others down to achieve the same goal). So it just becomes a pissing contest more than a credit score.

Spending years as a short term on site contractor I've picked up one question I find invaluable. I always ask "what are the pain points you have to deal with"

I've asked it so often and been in so many different teams I can more or less tell what the working environment and management will be like now.

Generally they aren't expecting this question so you catch them flat footed and get a clear unfiltered emotional response. The emotion on there faces betrays them. Every team has pain points, they have to answer the question with something negative, but its how they react with them that gives away a lot about the work place.

From a good teams you'll get a chuckle or story, which indicates to me a culture of understanding and dealing with things sensibly. Sometimes just a smile followed by a negative statement like "well releasing is problematic". But its that initial positive reaction.

From bad teams I've seen panicked looks between interviewers to make sure they don't divulge something, people turning white/clammy/sweaty, refusals to answer/insisting to move on/changing topics, silent stars at me LOL anything thats not openly a positive emotion.

He dismissed just plain experience to easily. Having intuition where a customer is likely to change its mind later down the track and throwing in a factory or an interface declaration so that just a small tweak doesn't cascade into into a weeks worth of refactoring.