CrankyPants

We tested AeroFS and BTSync on a variety of data in shared folders, and consistently found sync issues with BTSync. We eventually abandoned BTSync for AeroFS, and while it hasn't been perfect, it's been considerably better at handling syncing issues.

Anecdotal, and just one case, but hope someone finds it helpful.

This is correct. They also show when someone is a Vine reviewer (which is an invitation-only program), even if the product being reviewed was purchased, and not provided via Vine.

The conflict of interest argument will always carry some weight re: the Vine program, but Amazon seems to be handling it quite well. Anyone who doesn't like the program is given enough information to just ignore those reviewers.

Same here. There's no way I'd use an IM client that doesn't allow me to set my status manually.

Except your decision really won't win you as many customers as it'll lose you. I was interested in buying it until I saw this thread.

Having manual status turned off by default, but available to enable in settings, shouldn't lose you a single customer.

Strange design choice, even stranger justification.

Eh, "the Apple bug" is a bit off the mark in this case, since Apple's own IM client allows one to set away status.

• As a point of reference, the average price of a new car in August was $31,252. (That's a US statistic, but all I found.) The average cost of a bicycle is probably three-figures.

• Ownership of the two is not mutually exclusive.

• Usage habits of the two vary wildly, probably mostly favoring cars, not only because keeping an unused car is far more expensive and complicated than keeping an unused bicycle is, and because people don't tend to buy cars the first week of January to work off those holiday pounds.

I'm not sure why this article matters much.

Sure, it had its roots in KDE's KHTML and KJS, but WebKit was started as an internal Apple project, and without their efforts it's highly unlikely that KHTML/KJS would have ever developed into the dominant layout engine.

According to the guy who implemented FFmpeg's ALAC encoder, there are power benefits to ALAC over FLAC. ALAC was developed when iPods were struggling to get 8 hours of playback, so it doesn't seem unreasonable that Apple's engineers wanted to be able to match the codec to the hardware as efficiently as possible.

WebKit? ALAC?

On top of that, Apple's done more than any other single player (except perhaps Adobe!) to move the industry away from Flash, to open alternatives.

No, they don't always follow standards or always have open implementations, but their garden is arguably quite a bit less walled than the one in Redmond. Which makes your point a little confusing, at best.

Also related: http://www.apple.com/opensource/

I'd be interested to see your thoughts on each distro, even if it's just a sentence or two. Switching quickly, while obviously making some types of perspective difficult to develop in such a short timeframe, probably makes it easier for you to notice some things most people wouldn't through more typical usage habits.

I suspect there were other factors which prevented your success.

There were no measures to technologically limit one's ability to perform multiple installations from a purchased OS X install disc. You could buy two different Tiger installers and they'd checksum the same, and there were no serial numbers to be entered. It was an honor thing.

That's interesting, I'd like to know more about that.

There are certainly areas where some level of multitasking can be trained. For some, it's still merely fast switching, and for the gifted few, there's the capacity to become so familiar, competent, and therefore at ease with complex tasks that they become second nature, and that frees up bandwidth for other things.

The problem gets to be that that sort of thing is very challenging, and most people just aren't capable of doing it well, if at all. The level of self-deception surrounding the issue is stratospheric. (We're talking about maybe ~5% of the population.) And, for the most part, it only makes sense to practice in high-workload environments where there may not be the ability to add people to divide the workload (think: some aviation).

I like that, though they'd need a Humvee.

Dual-view, in two windows.

Also, uploading would make it an instant non-starter for me, due to data sensitivity issues.

This kind of link-bait title and article seems above The New Yorker.

"You can multitask? Fine. Then read a book and write one at the same time." -David Weinberger, 1999

Obviously (the excellent) William James predates this by some time, but within the context of the modern era, this sort of thing has been discussed long before the Hallowells and Ferrisses of the world made their careers by repackaging old notions.

Noticed the same thing.

I hope they're more careful with their software design and monetization plan than they were with that announcement. And at some point they should probably address that it's still an advertisement–for their services.

They've become considerably less transparent about fraud-related adjustments in recent months, both in the UI, and on invoices. Employees who seek clarification tend to get very little in the way of answers.

Not saying anything shady is happening, just that they've made big changes and aren't communicating properly about them.

Yeah this kind of scenario is absolutely realistic. I've seen, firsthand, stuff that makes the above look downright honorable, and done by major, major players.

When there's money and success at stake, it's difficult to be too cynical about what tactics are probably being employed.

I've been fortunate enough to have first-hand access to the analytics platforms of a number of fairly high-traffic sites (in the tens-to-hundreds of millions of unique visitors per month), and not once did Hitwise, Alexa, or any of those estimates come anywhere close to actual data. There was nothing shady about the way these sites got their traffic–the vast majority was organic, because they're sites everyone here has heard of–but for some reason the third-party data was just bogus. Like, not unreasonably outside the realm of totall-made-it-up bogus.

It's worth remembering that sites like comScore, Quantcast, Alexa and Hitwise derive a solid chunk of their business by enabling Google sales reps to better convince clients to spend more money. It's not far off from an academic whose career depends on grants by parties who are heavily invested in seeing a particular outcome.

That's fair.

I'll do better.

Thanks. Viciousness wasn't my intent.

I'll rephrase it: the definitions on the site, or at least the few-dozen I looked at, seem like forced attempts at a particular strain of hip cleverness. Which is what one often sees when middle-aged writers try to script hip teenagers. And in a fairly horrifying social phenomenon, it's becoming self-reenforcing amongst the target demographic.

I'm curious to know just how the original comment didn't reek of Reddit's culture of vacuous pithiness.

Down-votes without discussion strike me as being against the generally productive atmosphere this place usually has.

Sorry, typed that one out on a touchscreen and blew it. "baitait" = "bait"

Sorry for the stalkwardness, but I guess my horrorlarity made everyone feel totally brewed.

Now could those who're downvoting me please tell me what about my feedback they found either inaccurate or irrelevant?

A site like this, if it becomes popular, will absolutely further the trend of everyone wanting to talk like they're a Zooey Deschanel character. Which may or may not be a good thing. Agree? Disagree?

Thanks for the insight.

Every major publication runs a piece just like this every few years. The exotic countries and methods always differ somewhat, but the formula is always the same. It's the pseudo-intellectual version of the filler/cover-baitait articles on new ways to become heart healthy, or inventions that will change the world, usually done well in advance and saved for slow news-weeks.

Not that the subject matter isn't of value, but it's always oversimplified, and oversold.

I'm not sure enabling hipsters to sound like they're scripted by the writers of Juno is a good thing.

He's like the drunk neighbor who tries to break into your home, thinking he's locked himself out of his.

Dude probably thinks he's scoring comment karma at Reddit with that gem.

Leaders from Saudi Arabia, India, and probably the UAE, Lebanon, Algeria and others all disagree with you on this one.

It's a less effective tactic, though. More people are terrified by the thought of being blown out of the sky than they are of being blown out of a long, boring line.

Airline terrorism plays against people's innate fears, and is therefore more effective.

Yahoo was mismanaged to an utterly stunning degree before her time, so I don't doubt that a more sensible approach is going to do net-good things for them.