JonoW

How is this any different to a male and female friend better married just for tax benefit? Its not widespread now, why would it become widespread when people of the same sex can do it?

"Offtopic" was a wee bit of an understatement there

Ah I went to River Country! Was there in '94 when I was about 14, loved it. But damn the water was cold, went in December - we hadn't been in the water yet and jumped on the main slide, feck it was freezing, and we knew when we got dumped into the lake at the bottom it was going to be worse...it was. But awesome place, sad to see it in ruin

Check out freecycle.org, it's a place where people advertise stuff to give away for free (normally on condition of you picking it up). There is also a "wanted" section to ask for particular items, which you might find useful.

Here is the URL for the Brisbane group: https://groups.freecycle.org/group/freecycle_brisbane/posts/...

I don't really see how {company-name}.sucks is any worse than {company-name}sucks.com. Do firms really go around registering every combination of bad words with their brand name, with every standard TLD? Can't imagine they do...

1 month mat leave? Leaving aside the fact that this seems really short, people often take 1 month holidays (I certainly have), i.e it seems a short enough time not to fill it, as a contractor will probably not be that productive in a month, and will cost you a lot. That said, a new mom coming back to work after just a month is probably not going to be firing on all cylinders just yet, so be patient :)

As for whether you should offer mat leave even if you don't have to - absolutely, it will leave a bad taste in your teams mouth if you don't, and will probably make anyone considering having children resign

How about this; don't autofocus on search, but listen for key presses at document level, and if the first key is alpha-numeric, then autofocus on search (and prefill what was typed so far). Allows quick search and doesn't break up/down key navigation.

This seems such an old fashioned outlook now. MS doesn't have, and probably will never again have, a monopoly on the browser environment; they have no choice but to be good web citizens.

Does anyone know what DRM/CDM it uses? I assume FairPlay, but cant find any info about it at all

A lot of people include Apple when talking about how the big companies are pushing EME, but Safari is now the only browser that hasn't announced support for it. I assume they'll eventually do it, but it's worth noting that Firefox wasn't the last browser to announce support.

One problem I'd like to see solved across platforms is the case when you click an app deep-link for an app you don't have installed. Currently we're having to do some crazy hacks so that a single link goes to the relevant app store if the app is not installed, or opens the intended app if it is. Solutions for iOS and Android are also currently quite different, and it's a PITA. Do AppLinks solve this problem?

Whilst I'm generally pro-TDD (and personally haven't seen or experienced any snobbery against folks who are not), I can see how test-first can seem grating to people. However, I would say TDD, a long with a more decoupled architecture, has a primary advantage over system-test only; division of labour. By not relying on databases or web-services to be implemented, we can work more in parallel, as long as the interfaces to these external systems are stable. If you only have system tests, you have to work in sequence.

I think they just need to separate out the tools from the libraries, within the SDKs, i.e. all libraries through NuGet, everything else can still be an Msi, as a dev will need things like emulators and VS tooling add-ins, but none of this is needed for build server just to build the project

Combining 2 devices into 1. This is useful for many people. While there are compromises with hybrids, sometimes the end result is good enough for people, e.g. camera phones.

RIP Madiba. As a South African this is a helluva sad day, but we knew it was coming. I think I was 10 when he was released, but I had never heard of him before, partly because of my age, partly because of the media gagging.

I remember all the adults being worried that retribution and revenge was coming. But it never did, all he ever did was preach reconciliation. My best memory of him must him presenting Francois Pienaar with the '95 rugby world cup trophy, it sounds lame but it was such a unifying moment for the country.

It can't top a table it's not in...

Just because you use c# doesn't mean your whole stack needs to be Microsoft. No reason why you could have Windows web-servers running asp.net/c#, but have postgres DB, nginx, memcache etc on linux. Azure seems to be actually encouraging this.

The cost of windows licenses for web-servers is not that much. Avoiding SQL Server is the big win in reducing cost.

I'd be too nervous about renting into my old age. Who's to say the govt in 20-30 years time won't have a more capitalist outlook and allow rents to rise with rises in property prices and price you out of your home? I agree foreign ownership should be limited, but I think there will always be local demand due to people wanting security for themselves. But maybe this is a UK style view-point (I'm not British, but live in London), maybe the Swiss have faith that renting for the rest of your life is safe enough?

This post is so hand-wavy and vague, it's hard to know what he's suggesting as an alternative. The last two paragraphs make no sense to me, can anyone translate?

Yeah I'm in London too, have seen a noticeable uptick in the number of Lumia's recently.

This is where I see the traditional PC headed. Many people think that MS and traditional PC makers are taking a risk by making convertible/dual-use devices, but Apple is also taking a risk by not doing it. If the market decides that having a tablet that can multi-task as a fully fledged PC is a good idea, then Apple has a problem, because they can't make OSX touch friendly in a hurry. Their other option is make iOS more capable and make it run on Macbook level devices, but this won't be a quick task.

Many people will say that dedicated devices like tablets and laptops are what people want, but there are plenty of cases where a multi-use device succeeds. The obvious case is the smartphone - it's basically combined a phone, MP3 player and camera together, and people love it.

The free TV streaming service has been live for some time - www.clubcardtv.com . There's an Android app of course for the Hudl

Yup it's totally possible that WP will never crack the US, but as the non-US smartphone market is growing rapidly, I don't think success in the US is the be all and end all.

I'm not sure why so many are predicting WPs death - it's actually doing pretty well outside the US. Here in the UK it's now just under 10%. Pundits are far too US orientated.

Odd title, they've always been freely available, just bundled with the larger .Net framework

They launched Windows RT and regular Windows 8 the wrong way around. In 2-3 years time, when the Windows app store is more mature, Windows RT will make more sense so that people don't need desktop mode as a crutch.

At that point they should try again, but with a fully Metro UI, i.e. ditch desktop mode (including a Metro version of Office). Also needs a different name, maybe SurfaceOS, it's too confusing for users with a name that includes "Windows", and has a desktop that kinda-sorta works like regular Windows.

Saying that, I think the Surface Pro and other Windows 8 tabs are going to get a lot better as x86 chips get better with power consumption, continuing from Haswell. Seems Windows 8.1 is solid step forward.

One welcome change is the "PC settings" one - sounds like all settings are "metrofied", which will help the reduce the jarring flip to desktop mode when you're not expecting it.

I think this is the crux of the issue - should the web be a general purpose platform? Or do we draw a line somewhere and say some tasks, like watching protected video isn't something it should be doing. Personally I think all video consumption is a good fit for the web, it's seem awkward to split protected and unprotected video.

I hear lots of objection to DRM in HTML but no alternatives. If EME is rejected and not added to the HTML spec, lets consider some alternatives:

1. Leave things as they are, so Flash and Silverlight limp along to serve DRMed content, and native apps are required to watch on devices which don't support plugins. Verdict: Not great, but hey it's how it is now.

2. Lobby the media owners to drop DRM. Verdict: Highly improbable

3. Lobby the media distributers (Netflix etc) to boycott media owners who won't drop DRM. Verdict: Highly improbable

4. Ask end-users to boycott purchase of un-DRMed content (and no pirate it, as they will only encourage the media owners to use more DRM). Verdict: Highly improbable. Us nerds may do it, but regular folk don't really care about DRM.

5. EME is implemented as a convention, but not in the official spec. Verdict: Possible, I think EME will be implemented in IE and Chrome with or without it being in the spec. Mozilla wouldn't I presume.

Can anyone think of any others?

As long as an ORM allows you to break out and right custom optimised SQL when needed, then I see no reason to write all your SQL by hand. ORMs are great for covering basic, repetitive queries, but there are times where it's not producing what you need. Of course you then loose the portability feature of ORMs, but I think this is acceptable. The biggest advantage for me isn't generation of SQL, it's mapping data back into your domain model/DTOs.