chavesn

I know this is completely juvenile of me, but I can't help but see "libs ass".

It's kind of like "xbone". I'm sure it's not intentional, but people will see it nonetheless.

Compile error: only the full sequence ";\n" ends a statement.

That's a good point, but I don't think the point is that its dividing the whole population into one group or the other.

Instead, I think the point is that the volume of doubters and supporters still seems to be about equal; whereas many technologies appear to shift proportion of support vs. doubt more significantly over time.

Online communities are sources of passion, emotion, argument, conflict.

There's a big difference between that and knowing basically nothing about a person other than that they're in a hospital and having a birthday.

This is a depressing comment.

If there are people who would go out of their way to snail-mail an insult to an unwell and unfortunate target, then there is far less hope for the human race than I realized.

Alternatively, if you're suggesting that someone is so entrenched in their principles that when they need comfort or compassion, they won't appreciate a gesture of goodwill for what it is because they don't agree with the beliefs of the well-wisher, then, well, same thing.

Where's the assumption of good faith? Or at least hope for it?

Thanks for trying to make the world better, OP.

Your first headline may be dry, but headlines like "6 Unbelievable Techniques Two College Students Used to Get a $4B Buyout Offer from Facebook!" sound like spam to me.

Sensationalism will always work to grab eyes but I don't think that particular brand of headline sensationalism is going to work forever.

Having a reputation for quality journalism makes a news business sustainable, not headline tricks.

"One weird trick to make $4b! See why entrepreneurs hate him!"

It really seems like this author has some kind of bone to pick.

Banks aren't going away soon. Banks are not going to make it easy for third-parties to proxy transactions soon. NFC or other non-card POS technologies are not going to be everywhere soon.

Those are valid hopes or dreams, and I hope someone is working on it. But Coin promises to be a product that will reduce many cards to one now.

And arguing whether a "pre-order" scheme is legal or not is kind of a moot point: Pre-ordering customers show agree to the transaction, and show their intent give Coin their money now for something later -- even if it is forced by law to be done in a different matter.

Bypass paywall with a google.com referrer: http://google.com/url?q=http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...

Note that you might have go incognito or clear your cookies if you already tried the direct link and failed (I can't believe how far they'll go to block everyone but search engines).

This is a dangerous rule; if you put this rule in the hands of a programmer who is not used to Javascript and doesn't really understand the type system, you can just as easily run into problems.

This is because you require the programmer to always understand the output (and defaults) of every call made. Sometimes it's undefined. Sometimes it's null. Sometimes it's empty string. This takes experience.

Example, the default for getAttribute is null, but an undefined property is undefined:

  document.body.getAttribute("test"); // null
  document.body.test; // undefined

Except if it's a special property, then getAttribute might still be null, but the property empty string:

  var input = document.createElement("input");
  input.getAttribute("value"); // null
  input.value; // ""

Remember, "" !== null and null !== undefined.

As programmers we all know that Javascript has some crazy edge cases.

I'm not actually all that impressed by this illustration of Javascript's equality rules. This makes it look crazy when in fact it just gives the many edge cases much stronger visual weight.

The truth is, Javascript has lent strongly toward being natural in many of the most common cases -- things like being able to do `args = args || []` or simply prepending `!` to anything. Then, sometimes when you end up comparing NaN to undefined you aren't sure what the result should be or how you ended up there.

Funny thing is that often when I've run into those problems myself, I pull on the thread and find it was really caused by my own poor design somewhere else.

It doesn't seem like you've actually read the article in its entirety, then (I can't blame you, it was very long but also very well written).

The author addresses 1) the counter-argument 2) an explanation for the "angle" wording (the section with the diagrams) which did a much better job of explaining the purpose of the angle than the "px is a non-linear angular unit" article, and 3) a line-by-line reasoning for why that other article was confusing (or outright wrong).

All of these sections made more sense than the other article, and in fact established why the points made by the two articles are very different and why it would make no sense for the px unit to be either "angular" or "non-linear".

Just trying to understand your argument: So, you are saying that neither Google nor Apple has really changed the world because their achievements were much more inevitable in a short period of years (<5) compared to potentially stopping starvation? (Which I think we'd all admit is not inevitable at all.)

I can see the logic in that if that was entirely true. But I don't know if I can agree that either Google or Apple's particular takes on various high achievements were actually inevitable at all (search in various forms, and maybe not the PC, but the iPhone, certainly).

Well, not nothing else. As the author said, it makes next to no money. And it sounds like the traffic is almost entirely transient, which reduces its value greatly. The site averaged less than 2 visits per unique visitor.

So, while I get your point that an interested audience propelled the site to great use without much work at all, that's not the whole equation, not even close.

Except, counter to your assertion, several other actual arguments were made:

- People care about Twitter, but not Google+

- Twitter has achieved the "network effect"

- Twitter could be a hedge against Facebook

- Combined with Google's data needs, the value could be much higher to Google than the price

Nowhere does it suggest "because it would be cool". All of those are concrete arguments.

Also, you seem irritated at the perceived pretentiousness of the idea that Arrington might think Google will listen.

I don't think that's the point at all. I can't put words in Arrington's mouth, but he's been writing his own thoughts about the industry -- both reflection and speculation -- for years. I'm sure part of the reason he does it is to simply create a conversation -- like we are having here.

The OP suggested that it's a bad option for phones. But Amazon offers something else for higher-end items that worked great for me,"Amazon Trade-in" (http://www.amazon.com/Trade-In/).

You start by finding your product in the store, and they give you prices for different condition levels. You pick a level, checkout, ship your items for free, and await receipt and review. If accepted as the condition you picked, you get an Amazon gift card for the amount. They might even upgrade your items to a higher condition.

If not accepted, your items are returned, free of charge. The only risk is the waste of time.

A month ago, I traded in two nearly-3-year-old iPhone 4's. I listed them as "Good". Both were accepted and one was upgraded to "Like New" for $20 more. I got $380 total, which I was extremely happy with.

Speaking of which, can we talk about some great ideas I have for a new place to store our bicycles?

One of my most popular answers on Stack Overflow has been about exactly these properties. This trick you are using is new to me and you've helped me improve the answer so it works for any URL. Thank you!

Updated answer here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6944744/javascript-get-po...

I also created a JSFiddle to test here:

http://jsfiddle.net/nchaves/vMrjs/2/

Yes, that's how you'd get a box to appear over the triangle, but it doesn't really solve any of the containment issues.

Example: http://jsfiddle.net/9pMJS/

Well, then the text isn't really "in" the triangle, is it? Leading you to rely on further hacks to make sure the text stays in the triangle with a nice padding, correct wrapping, and all the other features you get when text is really inside a container.

I've never seen that one, but it looks pretty similar to the one I use, Mou -- http://mouapp.com/

Definitely an odd choice. Asking for trouble. If you've put so much work into, is the marketing value from a hint of association worth the potential mess?

Enterprise is going to be a slow-adopting beast, no matter what, but that doesn't mean that iOS (or some future evolution of it) is out of the running. Come on, you're not really saying that office work can't ever fundamentally change again, now that PCs are here -- are you?

I think if we're painting with really broad brushes, in the end companies care about ease of use. The cost of people is far greater than equipment. Of course, they don't evaluate hardware the same way that individuals do, so it looks like the price matters the most, because most companies already have established IT conventions and those qualify the highest for "ease of use" (they already know what they are doing).

So it will certainly take time, and it will take smaller, riskier companies demonstrating that some futuristic new platform is soooo much easier, but if that really was the case, it really wouldn't be that crazy to see large enterprises starting to shift this way.

Of course this is all based on the assumption that "it's going to be so much better and easier to use that it's obvious to the market as a whole." I'm not saying Apple will achieve that goal, but I think a lot of people who wouldn't traditionally have been "Apple fanboys" are rooting for Apple, simply because we've all seen them make transformative changes with the iPod and iPhone, and we like progress.

Ubuntu? Where's the hardware? Where's the full experience?

Regardless, innovative isn't just trying it first. It's making it work first. Microsoft has made a good try but there's something missing if it's just not seeing adoption. I don't think it's easy to say what that is or it would be fixed already. But I do think Cringely is right that someone will get there, Apple or not.

Good points, a lot to think about. And I do agree it seems like there is a long way to go before we are seeing many great apps in iOS 7 design language.

Original iOS may feel bland now, but I feel like the design language that it created bred extremely usable apps at a far higher rate than any other OS before it. I can't say that I see the same happening with iOS 7. The foundation just doesn't seem to inspire great design as easily. In the hands of great designers, we'll be fine. But let's be honest, the vast majority of all apps and even a large portion of those we use daily are not created by great designers (or are held down by corporate interests).

Most of these, especially without colorful, professional photography adorning them (which is unlikely to be the case in real use), just look like wireframes to me.

With a sample of that size there is no way 2% is significant. You're talking about 1 or 2 seconds right? Mine was 50% or more. Maybe I'm extremely distractable.

So much more makes sense now, like why I feel like their use of Tumblr for the corporate blog is purely perfunctory.

Unfortunately, to me her post says different things:

* "I work on weekends." (With a hint of "Just saying...").

* Designed in only two days.

* This was personal. Talking about her love for design and "most of all" Illustrator (!?) says "It's at least partly about me."

* Mixed messages. "We didn’t want to have any straight lines in the logo." -- yet the logo ended up with a ton of essentially straight lines.

And worst of all, the new logo seems to throw out too much of the old brand, misunderstand modern design trends and logo portability (logos with depth still need to be interesting when flat), and try too hard to have weight and impact without really achieving it. For example, the saturation of the purple has been pumped up till it almost hurts your eyes. Like TV sets at Best Buy, it's attention grabbing, but it's not desirable in the long term.

I think the problem was that SWFs so frequently needed load indicators. Sure, progress bars make the time seem to go by quicker, but what's better is actually being quicker. Progress bars were a crutch, but the pages were still dramatically slower, that's why we all hated Flash sites so much.