Weird. I can access the provided link, but when I click the homepage, I need an account.
45 karma · joined January 23, 2011
in 2005, the ability the reply using an account was the norm, where replies could be rated 1-5 (slashdot and the rest).
In 2010, upvoting messages by giving them points was the norm, which Digg started and Reddit perfected.
In 2015, labelling posts I think will be the norm. Users will get the ability to associate posts with labels, such as insightfull, funny, interesting, firstpost, nonsense, et cetera. Every post will get it's own tagcloud, the labels being associated a lot being bigger.
The problem with upovoting is that you only classify posts using a numeric value. A numeric value can only express a limited classification. It does not say anything more specific then "bad rated" (<1), "not rated" (1), "somewhat rated" (>1 <6), "good rated" (>5 <20), and "awesome" (>20). Other then that, it does not say anything useful.
A paper document generates code also, like OO.org (LibreOffice) or OOXML. They're pretty good at that, I have yet to meet the first guy manually writing a doc by hand. Html5 will replace those document formats, simply because they're based on paper.
The camp saying current code generation tools suck, are right. The camp saying future code generators will fit your needs, are right also.
Why, or why not?
You hit the nail right on the head. Github is about sharing code. The code is the creation. Github's unique selling point is the webinterface to show the code: It's the best designed interface in the industry to show code in a browser.
> Does GitHub provide this feature better than SourceForge or others?
Various software is available to show code in the browser, but none works as well and is polished as well as Github. The creation (code) therefore can be best shared on Github. As such, others willing to check out the creation are, from the moment they arive at github, mostly busy this exactly that: check out the creation (code). Every time I visit repo's visualizing the code in html on other places then github, I get agitated by the annoying interface. Example: some interfaces require you to click on a file, after which the postback returns a site containing a list of revisions, and new buttons to 'view' a revision. This causes me to wait for a postback, and click, twice per file I want to view. Github instead instantly shows the last revision.
All these small tweaks account for much better usability on Github compared to other sites.
I guess for scientists, there must be the same approach as Github approaches programmers. For programmers, it's about code, and for scientists, it's about data and the conclusions derived from it. Instead of showing code, show a paper with the possibility to drill down on data. The data being shared can then be treated the same as code being in a source repo, so the usual git stuff (branching, merging, pulling, pushing) can be applied on the paper+data.
If we want non-programmers to use git, we need GUI's to instantly visualize the state, commands and other possibilities. No non-programmer is going to learn git using a CLI.
Personally, a motivation (of a lot more motivations) is indeed prestige. Now I can show off my nice work.
Sure, openness started it all: Linus shared his VCS, which in turn sparked Github, which in turn initiated thousands of developers to share their code. But openness really isn't the sole driver for people to share their code any more; more incentives, of which prestige is an important one, drive the popularity of github.
The main blockers of open science will probably be paper publishers and commercially funded science. For publishers, it's easy to see why: their market will be reduced to only peer-reviewing services. For commercially funded research (especially political commercial science): It's in their interest not to share the data. Because sharing it would allow critics to scrutinize the data and filter out the ugly.
Is he being funny or serious?
With a title like this, I won't even read the thing. So many things are wrong with this first sentence. 1. Why The Capitals For Each Word? That screws with my human word recognition algorithm. 2. The title implies three things: Writing clear, do something concise and something with sentences. That's all but clear to me. "Writing clear": you mean writing the word clear? Does not sound interesting to me. What do you want with "Sentences" and "Concise"? Not clear at all to me. 3. Probably, the author meant something like "How to write clear & concise sentences". That gives the sentence instantly another meaning.
My prediction is that books eventually will disappear completely, and only nichebooks will be left. Encyclopædia Britannica becomes Wikipedia, novels become blogs, FAQ books become StackOverFlow-like websites, education materials become wiki's, how-to books become tutorial websites. And so on.
Print books will remain, but as a print edition based on the digital incarnation. The next generation will look to books as we look to magnetic tapes and CD's.
Piracy is not a problem. There are numerous studies proving piracy increases popularity of games, artists and software. If you can't monetize piracy, don't go to the government asking for help. Update your businessmodels so piracy has a positive effect on your business.
The notion of an 'official' dictionary is rather strange. We use certain words, but we can only include them if an institute blesses these words. Having a dictionary is not a bad thing; it serves as a guide to know what language others may expect. The process of having an institute decide for us what's the set of words we ought to use is merely ridiculous. The alternative is this: generate a dictionary from all webpages utilizing the english language. We can do this every -say 5- years, which then will serve as a dictionary for the next 5 years.
The language speakers and writers should decide what the contents of the dictionary should be, not some elitist club of people calling themselves 'language experts'. We, the people are the language experts, not them.
Firefox 3.6: fail
Chromium 10: loads, fails to play
Opera: loads site with errors, clicking button doesn't do anything
Nice way to quit.
We did it. We HackerNewsed it. Uh. YCombinatored it. Hm. We hacked it. No. We slashd... NO. We Redd.. NO!
o.O
This time, it won't be so easy as IE6: Google bets on html5, Apple (although somehwat), and they both have very good browsers already.
Nice try MSFT.
This is awesome.
After that, what the hack am I supposed to do?