computerslol

If the credit card you are using is stolen, eventually the billing company will have to charge back your purchase. Enough chargebacks in a month and the billing company gets a HUGE fine. It is in their interest to err on the side of caution in cases where something like this occurs.

The time constraint is more motivating when you're working on your product full time and have not released yet (are not making any money).

(Former fraud prevention research scientist)

Being unproven in a new type of challenge is humbling.

I had a number of roles over the course of my stay. One of them was to watch for threats on the horizon, estimate how far they will go, and figure out how to stay ahead of them if they were to become any real threat. I reported directly to senior management. I have an unusual (and hopefully elucidating) perspective on this topic.

In my experience, MVP products go one of two ways: Either they never grow, and eventually disappear; or they grow too quickly, drop in quality, and disappear. Either way, they disappear.

In my section of the market, you get very little attention unless you're swinging for the fences. Not that swinging for the fences is a recipe for success, but it's certainly an ingredient.

I mainly watch for three things (this list is hugely oversimplified):

- Do they understand our audience? If my interaction with their product is fatiguing, they don't understand our audience. If their copy or humor or interface isn't equally accessible to a 46 year old mother of two in Nebraska and a 28 year old lawyer in New York City, they don't understand our audience. If they haven't convinced me that they have all of the information they need to serve me informed results, they don't understand our audience. If, after one session, I feel I've seen everything there is to see; they don't understand our audience.

- Do they have the technological ability to produce magic? If they can do more in a timely fashion (under 130ms per page load) with limited hardware than we can with our huge budget, they are capable of magic. If their results are good I can't figure out how they do what they do, they are capable of producing magic. If I am seeing something I haven't seen before (and it's good), they are capable of producing magic.

- Are they passionate enough to stick around? Production quality shows me passion. A tight and intuitive flow shows me passion. Well written help/tutorials shows me passion.

What I saw most was MVP products, and none of them survived long enough to warrant planning a fight.

My section of the market might be different than yours. The lessons learned during the MVP V1 may have been enough to show our new friends that they don't want to be a part of our game. I don't know. Some companies make it, and they get acquired. We acquired a number of them.

I'm glad it's a tech guy.

wow.

For me, windows 8 answers a few questions.

1): What do we do when users want to use their fingers instead of a mouse to click buttons made for the (superior) accuracy of a mouse pointer?

2): What do we do when monitor manufacturers sell 4k+ displays and windows applications aren't written to scale up that way?

3): How do we sell users and developers on using desktop applications again (instead of web apps)?

I think all three questions are answered well, and users will be less hostile to the changes once enough applications move to Metro, and consumers are buying 4k tablets.

At the moment, what I am hearing most is "Why change something that worked so well? Why do I have to learn something new?". The next generation PC hardware will answer that question.

I spend all of my time in windows, and I wouldn't want go back to 7. I like the new start screen; I find my applications a lot quicker when all I need to do is hit the windows key and type the name of the app, or file, or whatever I'm looking for. Windows 8 really shines on the surface, where a high DPI screen and touch come together. I use desktop apps on the desktop and mostly ignore metro; but on the surface I prefer metro apps which are more finger friendly and easier to read.

I like the new store architecture, and the limitations made on apps written for it. I will have to worry less installing an application from a publisher I don't recognize. I read a lot about the APIs, but I haven't written anything for it yet. I am waiting for metro to be available to enough users to make it cost effective to put effort into it.

If I were working at Microsoft right now, I would be shouting at the top of my lungs "Let's put out commercials explaining why Windows 8 is better!". I don't feel Windows 8 is a technological or UI disaster; I feel it's a marketing disaster.

As a .net developer I am pretty happy ASP.net is doing so well. PHP however, is still king.

This way I can only blame myself when pressing the button doesn't work as expected.

Are gists indexed in a big indexed list where others that don't know me can find them using search terms?

"A hacker is someone who loves to program or who enjoys playful cleverness, or a combination of the two. The act of engaging in activities (such as programming or other media) in a spirit of playfulness and exploration is termed hacking. However the defining characteristic of a hacker is not the activities performed themselves (e.g. programming), but the manner in which it is done: Hacking entails some form of excellence, for example exploring the limits of what is possible, thereby doing something exciting and meaningful."

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html

"Hacking might be characterized as ‘an appropriate application of ingenuity’. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it."

Although it is popular to call just about anyone creating products in IT a hacker nowadays, the term did have a meaning once and more people should know about it.

The scroogled ads are pretty good for microsoft standards.

My concern is less with the data collection, and more with the lack of native application support. If it looks like a laptop, consumers like my parents will think they found the best deal in the world when they come across it. I have talked both of them out of buying one because it won't run the work applications they need (they wanted to use it to replace their aging laptops). If it was a tablet, I'd have no problem with it. Consumers are used to the idea of tablets as toys (and don't expect them to run office and their workplace's custom windows apps).

As a programmer, I really don't want another platform to write native apps for; there are so many already. I'll learn it if they get enough market penetration. I don't know enough about the native APIs for the chromebook; how different is it to write a chromebook app than an android one? Is it web only? Are you really cut off from any functionality if you aren't around wifi?

So in those instances you have a choice. You can use those libraries/products as they stand, or you can roll your own.

I can't speak for all .net shops, but in my experience you roll your own. You sit down, discover your problem, and write a solution for whatever you need from scratch specifically tailored to your need and performance requirements. Afterward, you understand the code (and the intent behind it) very very well.

I don't lament the lack of third party frameworks. I take them as an inspiration when I find interesting ones, and I know my toolset well enough to re-work their solutions and make them my own in pretty good time.

For me, as long as whatever it is is meant to run on windows (and doesn't require native performance), C#'s sweet spot is whatever I decide it needs to be.

Having a C#-like language in which I can write code with performance comparable to native will put some icing on my cake.