umjames

My guess is that a lot of that 70% represents the OS these people use professionally at work. I'd be more interested in seeing the split between OS used professionally and OS used personally.

Understood.

Does anyone know what these IBM supercomputers ultimately are used for after they're done winning Jeopardy or beating Gary Kasparov? I'd imagine something top-secret for the US government, but it would be nice to know exactly what Deep Blue is doing now.

"I'm telling y'all, it's sabotage!" Literally.

If Watson wins, it should have to keep coming back as defending champion until someone else beats it. It should also qualify to return in the Tournament of Champions if it gets that far.

Now that would be a true test.

Much of success on Jeopardy is not just deciphering clues in the answers, but your timing on ringing in to give the question. I'd imagine a machine could get really good at getting the timing down. Does Jeopardy have a way of varying who rings in first to keep things more fair?

I'd be interested to know more details as to how you were able to accomplish this. Specifically:

How long did it take you save up enough?

How frugally did you have to live to stretch your savings for 9 months?

Does your geographic location have a high cost-of-living?

What were you able to accomplish in 9 months' time?

Did you have to quit your job or were you able to convince your employer to take an unpaid leave of absence?

If you quit, how hard was it to get a new job?

Do you like this new job better?

If that's the case, then why not stop hiring until more sufficient talent becomes available? Does this mean that Google's new hires are primarily there to increase headcount?

No, it's more likely the idea of "you don't get rich by writing checks" at work.

I think most programmers dislike the idea of what they see as kissing their boss's ass so much, that they'd rather start their own startup to get what they want (more interesting work, potentially higher pay, more amenable working conditions, etc). I can't say I blame them.

Sorry to be pedantic, but wasn't Java designed initially for set-top boxes, when it was still called Oak, and was repeatedly re-purposed for running code in web pages (as applets) and then for enterprise-friendly server-side web apps (J2EE)?

Just curious, do you work in the same place as the people who produced the Dead Space series?

So he's comparing a RoR web application with a Java portlet? Notice the portlet screen shots don't show the rest of the browser window like the Rails ones. That's because you'd see the rest of the portal chrome and the god-awful unfriendly URL that all portals can't escape.

Portlets weren't meant to hold full web applications, but that's how every IT department tries to use it. Actual web applications let you have control over the URL structure and easily link to other pages. In portlets, to maintain cross-portal compatibilty, the portlet must be isolated from the rest of the portal. That means you can't link to other pages unless you use a specific portal's proprietary API or hard-code the links.

He also tends to gloss over the setup of the portal and application servers needed to run the portlet even for development purposes. I assure you it's more than 'rails server' or 'rails script/server'.

I also noticed how he has to depend on Eclipse to make it look like all he has to do to see changes is use a simple keyboard shortcut. Eclipse is doing the work of compiling the code, making a proper .war file and moving that file to right place so his application server will re-deploy it. Not to mention that depending on the change, you have to restart the application server also. Rails doesn't require 3rd-party tool support to make things seem easier than they are.

Is it just me or is the text a little small and the color too light against the background?

I agree with all of these, but I'm glad you brought up points 7 and 9.

As a job applicant, you don't always know how bad things are or will be until after you start working there. Sometimes, the job starts out OK, but things get progressively worse over time. Am I supposed to voluntarily endure a crappy situation that has no end in sight, so that my next employer doesn't think I'll leave too fast? You should be able to explain that kind of thing in an interview without it being considered a mark against you.

As for #9, too many places ask these types of questions when the job you're applying for amounts to cranking out CRUD web apps. I think it's just cargo-cult behavior from old Microsoft interview techniques. If the job will require the unorthodox, creative thinking the employer is trying to test for by that question, a better way to do that would be to see if I have any actual projects, apps, open-source code that I actually wrote that demonstrates this ability.

I buy TiVos when I can get a lifetime subscription. One price, no recurring monthly or yearly bills. This usually happens around Christmas and for older models (Series 3 TiVo and earlier nowadays). Also, the box is mine.

I'm sure if I got a DVR from a cable or satellite provider, the monthly service cost would be included in my bill for as long as I have the device (a never-ending cost). I am essentially renting a DVR from the cable company. No thanks.

I agree, but local TV and radio stations keep online services from streaming sports events to people in that area.

Also, sports is somewhat unique in that the value is all in seeing it live. Personally speaking, once I know the final score of a game, watching a replay of it is worthless. Highlights are one thing, but watching the entire game when you already know who wins, makes no sense to me.

So does Sega change their name when marketing in Italy?

Would you really want your pee-ing prowess shared publicly? I can't imagine that would impress anyone worth impressing.

Disney owns ABC and ESPN. I vaguely remember plugs on TV in the mid-90s that mentioned go.com when referring to ABC or ESPN. I think this was the time period when most people were used to hearing AOL keywords instead of actual URLs and domain names when websites were advertised.

So yeah, it's probably legacy.

That's because most companies are not technology companies. They purchase all of their IT infrastructure instead of building anything in-house. So if the vendors they buy from only support IE6, their customers will be stuck with IE6 until the vendor decides to upgrade or their customers go with someone else.

I have, although I was looking for mobile web frontend frameworks rather than building native mobile apps using web technologies. I'll keep it in mind though.

Well there goes months' (nights & weekends) worth of iOS side project work down the drain. I have a very large delicious bookmark collection that I was still posting to as of this week.

Does anyone know if delicious' demise affects pinboard's API service in any way? Since pinboard's API documentation just links to delicious, now would be a good time to archive the delicious API documentation.

No, the former usually works at a company whose profit doesn't come from software or computers. They usually work on internal-facing systems that other members of the company are forced/required to use to get their work done.

The latter is usually the exact opposite of this.

Disclosure: I am in the former group and really want to be part of the latter group.

I don't know of any American companies that pay employees to eat lunch. 9-5, I think is just an American colloquialism at this point. If you get an hour for lunch, then it's really 9-6.

Yeah, you can give any answer when you know you'll never need to actually be put through any of the options.

If everyone who flies, and I do mean everyone (regardless of whether you'll be boarding a personal plane), had to go through this every time, we'd see this go away.

I should have figured as much, but part of me was hoping it was something like the official release of iOS 4.2.

I figured it was November, and we already knew what the features were going to be, so no need for Jobs to give a presentation. I just couldn't figure out what would make it a day I'd never forget. I guess I'm still wondering what about this is something I'd never forget.

OK, I'll bite (and show my ignorance regarding security). What should we use in place of SHA1?

Here are photos from the conference: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1558264@N23/pool/

Yeah, I don't know if fighting people who have deadly weapons (or at least access to deadly weapons) is a good idea. Even if you win a first encounter, what's to prevent them from finding you later and shooting/stabbing you?

I guess that can also apply to bullies in some American schools nowadays. What if the bully wants to prove how badass he is by taking it to a level that involves guns and knives?

Thank goodness I graduated before that kind of stuff started.

This person should have attended SecondConf in Chicago. They got the name tags just right. So much so, that everyone at the conference mentioned it. Big name and Twitter handle that you could read across the room.

Did you or that guy already have another job lined up, or did you just walk?

Also, when you decided to leave, did you give your former employer 4 months notice or was it less (the standard 2 weeks) and it grew to 4 months? If you already had accepted the other job, how did you handle pushing back your start date with them?

I'm curious, because I'm currently entertaining changing jobs. More money isn't the main reason, it's because I want to work on more modern technologies, and my current job is stuck in the mid-1990's.

I'd also be interested in any details you'd be willing to share about these fallouts.