warwick

Could you give us some examples of condescending remarks that have been made but which weren't intended to offend?

It really depends on the area of Canada you're in. My folks live in Southern Alberta and there's still a bit of xenophobic climate there. That being said, I didn't notice it when I went to school out east, or now that I live on the west coast.

Edit: Actually, I should mention that since I went to school in Quebec, there was usually some sort of xenophobic/racial issue in the news. I went to an english school though, so most of the kids were from Ontario or Montreal where it's way less of an issue.

That link lists stories that you've upvoted.

If this prediction holds, Apple could add an awful lot of value to MobileMe by providing a sort of answering machine service to subscribers.

I'm close to wireless for most of the day, but when I'm not it would be nice to have FaceTime callers that couldn't reach me leave a video message that got delivered via email.

In this case, where you're typing the URL in a form, presumably as some sort of content management system, you're not telling your browser to go directly to the URL but rather saying 'I want to use this resource, it's at this URL'.

Before it uses that URL for anything, the server should process it, and if it's missing something like a protocol, add in a good default like http.

We could really use a strong startup city in Canada, but when your shining example is an incubator whose only features seem to be interrupting people who are working, I don't know that it's the best example. That might impress the Globe and Mail's readership, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I don't think we need to focus on getting more VCs or more incubators, what we really need is to collect all the startup-inclined geeks in one place.

He's asking for a notification of when his site is linked to, not anything to do with conversations. It sounds like a clumsy solution to a problem that trackbacks should already have solved.

The front page being saturated about a particular topic isn't anything new. The content has certainly changed as the community grows, but we've had trendy topics for years. A couple years ago I wrote a little ruby script to determine the top words and phrases in headlines, so I'd have an overview of what the community was buzzing about on weeks that I was too busy to read.

If you're not happy with the articles on the front page, go to the newest links page and vote up articles that you think should be on the front page. I try to do this at least once a day.

If you're looking for a smaller community, check out the recent Ask HN thread about alternatives to HN.

And most importantly, on the days when the front page is all about the latest overblown controversy, just say 'this too will pass' and go back to work.

[Edited to correct a spelling error]

It might be hard work, but I'd much rather be out mowing the lawn than stuck in a cube.

Absolutely beautiful. A slight typo: I noticed Jamie Zawinski's name is spelled wrong in the table of contents.

Make sure you watch the next video in the series. It's about the gap between the ambition of what you want to make and the reality of what you're actually producing, and how the good taste that got you into creating will result in you feeling disappointed with your output while you're honing your craft.

It's extremely difficult to estimate the amount of work a software project is going to take. If you're working with an experienced developer, and have a good specification of the software you're building, they will probably be able to give you a ballpark estimate.

No matter how good the ballpark estimate is, it won't be right on, either in terms of time or money. Every piece of software you build is, by it's nature, unique. If it wasn't, you'd just license the existing software.

He's selling downloadable software. He's got an item on there about plugins, which might be considered the desktop equivalent.

I'm an indie Mac developer (what Mac guys call Micro ISV's), so I scanned down this list and compared it to my checklist for a recent release. Out of the 124 items listed here, I'd say that ~105 of them are either essential or good ideas to have. I don't really agree with the ordering: for example, I can't imagine leaving usability testing to #116.

That being said, the ones that should be in place ought to be in place from day one.

I don't see any point to several. EULA's on first run, asking at the BOS forum, PAD files (though I understand these are pretty important in Windows download sites), various pricing levels, obfuscation, or physical disk shipping.

The one that really bothers me is #88, 'box shot 3d'. If you don't ship boxed software, you shouldn't have a picture of boxed software on your site.

Reread the comment. The folks working outside their field are the ones without technical degrees. Incidentally, the ice cream parlour cashier has a psych degree (undergrad only).

I think what bothers me most when I read this sort of article is that it treats all college degrees as equivalent. They talk about average earnings potential and average unemployment rates, but they never break it down. If you get a B.Sc. instead of a B.A., how does that effect your chances?

Almost all my friends without some sort of technical degree (Chem, CompSci, Physics, Math, etc.) aren't working anywhere near their field of study. They paid tens of thousands of dollars so that they can be secretaries, waitresses, and ice cream parlour cashiers.

Rock climbing, hiking, fencing, longboarding. All of these require intense in-the-moment focus, but they aren't overly stressful.

On the non-sports side: Clarinet, learning sax, going to shows, dancing, writing music, cooking, sitting in trees and reading.

It's alright. I'm on what you might call my 'second startup' at 23, but the main reason why my first one wasn't successful was that I didn't give it enough time to grow up and become it's own thing.

A startup is a serious commitment. At that age, I didn't understand that it was going to take time to actually grow the thing. I think it's something that a lot of people don't grasp. Instead we have 'startups' over the weekend, 'startups' that get abandoned when the next shiny idea comes along, and 'three startups before 18'.

I don't know that there's a way to have that many failures that young if you actually made an honest go of all of them.

Here's an entry out of my personal journal that I think applies here:

'Something Untrue'

When I was nineteen, I had my shiny idea I was working on. I’d written some software that proxied the iTunes Music Store, displaying third party content via the iTunes Music Store interface. You had to download and install the software, it required root privileges to install, there was no clear reason why looking at something in the iTMS was better than looking at it in a browser, it was hard to explain to non-technical people, there was no clear way other than advertising to make money out of it, etc. In other words, though it was a cool hack, it was a bad product.

I launched it, made a little splash, got a few news articles, and silently faded away. A few months later I just shut the whole thing down. Didn’t even bother to renew the domain name.

The biggest thing that’s stuck with me from the experience is how it wasn’t an overnight success. I wasn’t prepared to spend the couple of years on it that it would have taken to build up a really vibrant community and product. I wasn’t ready to iterate a few dozen times until I had something that really was worth taking the time to install and use.

I can’t help but wonder if this comes from our schooling where we work for weeks on a project, hand it in, and then get our A+ or our F back in one definitive stroke of a red pen. There’s no building upon previous work. You get the idea that a work, once presented to an audience, is immutable and complete.

And that’s just not true.

Whenever possible, I try to debate on the side that I /don't/ believe to be true. I find that debating 'my side' of the argument is harder since I take my points as self evident and don't back them up as well.

Debating the other side means that you have to consider the argument on an intellectual level, not an emotional one. I think keeping yourself intellectually honest by forcing yourself to carefully examine the arguments that you don't personally believe is great for scientists.

It's also handy, because the other team tends to bring up points you're very familiar with as their arguments.

I've debated at a few of the big university tournaments in Canada and the format was always British Parliamentary or Canadian Parliamentary. In either case, your team debates one side of a given resolution. In BP it gets really fun, as you have to not only present a consistent case, but also back up the other team that's on your side. (For non-debaters, BP has four teams, two government, two opposition.)

What I found unusual in the article is that the teams knew the resolution in advance. In BP, you're usually given the resolution, and then 20 minutes or so to work up your arguments. In CP, one of the teams will introduce the resolution, so they can prepare, but the other team is working on the fly. Obviously the judges take that into account.

[Edit, I also debated primarily in Ontario/Quebec, so I'm not sure if this all holds true back west.]

"Disney and many other parks recognize that keeping it clean and refreshed, with all of those little details that you don't notice until they are missing, are important to the park's success."

This is exactly how I feel about writing software.

I'm just as glad that they didn't. There's a rule of thumb among Mac developers that you need to charge at least $20 to be able to make a decent living off your indie software. Given that we can write more desktop-scale apps on the iPad, I'd guess that it's going to be similar for the iPad.

Anything that helps establish a standard of apps actually costing enough that I can run a reliable business off of the platform is better for me. I'm interested in developing for platforms where I can create a sustainable business, not a hit based one, which is exactly where lower than sustainable app prices lead.

It's a reference to intuitionism, a constructivist approach to math and logic. Because the law of the excluded middle is disallowed in intuitionist proofs, you can't show what the parent comment was annoyed about.

Just claim to be an intuitionist. Depending on your profs sense of humour, it's a valid answer.

He mentioned living in the UK a few posts back.

Here's mine: http://bobwarwick.ca/photos/desk.jpg

"But on the other hand, when a child calls an adult Mr. or Ms., it helps him recognize that status is earned by age and experience. It's also a reminder to respect your elders."

The absurdity of reading how young people feel so entitled from an article written by someone who thinks age influences status in mind boggling.

Status is a function of achievement. Experience is a rough proxy for achievement, so I can accept that they might be referencing the same thing here.

But if you ask me how your earn status, age doesn't factor in. I don't care how many hours you've put in on this planet. You earn my respect by doing things, and the best way to earn my highest respects is by doing something great.

I can't help wondering if all the regular app reviewers have been pulled to help with iPhone and iPad app reviews. The Apple Downloads section hasn't been updated in weeks, and now this.

As a Mac developer, this feels like a major blow. Sure, I understand that the iPhone OS stuff is the new shiny and the spotlight is going to be on it, but lately it feels like Apple is just coasting on the Mac side. It makes me seriously question if I'm writing apps for the right platform.

If it's time to reevaluate platforms, then it's time to take a look at all the possibilities again, not just the ones made by Apple. The iPad looks great, but then again, so does the web.

Doesn't this accidentally back up the 'third party frameworks lack quality' argument? iTunes for Windows is generally considered to be a lousy piece of software. Same with Safari for Windows, another piece released under the same approach.

If that's going to work, they're going to have to charge advertisers sufficiently high rates. Online advertising rates are a joke compared to print ad rates.

It seems absurd to me that newspapers are willing to ask individual consumers to pay for online distribution, but aren't willing to have their online ads department use the phrase "Yes, you can put your ads on some random blog for almost nothing, but we're the New York Times. We have a premium audience, and advertising with us goes for premium rates."