educating

> Had 1,867,713 additions, 1,748,514 deletions and 4,923 project commits.

93% of the code written was replaced at an average of 734 lines changed per commit. That is some serious coding.

> Keep emotions out of arguments.

Impossible.

I think a better choice for Programmers' Day would be New Year's Day, as there is no day 0.

I have to admit my heart almost stopped when I thought that Thomas Dolby, one of my favorite musicians, had passed away. I caught his tour recently. Really good!

Ray Dolby is the Dolby though. Very few in the history of Earth have done so much for a surname. You can't read Dolby and not think quality audio.

Thanks for the advice, but I don't know that I'd place all my eggs in a basket affected by the politics and distance of the Federated States of Micronesia.

That's the problem with domains these days. Yay we're using a Libyan domain and whoops (remember- they took it offline http://readwrite.com/2011/02/20/what_happens_to_ly_domains_w...). io - British Indian Ocean Territory: same deal. People aren't thinking.

I'm glad you said this, because it was the reason I stopped also. I'll give it another try at home.

However there are a lot of times at work where having search results relevant to me is essential. Since DDG is all about not being the search bubble, to use them all of the time, I'd have to change the way I worked to bookmark my projects and search for my blog entries in the blog's search bar instead of just using the omnibox in Chrome (that is using Google) for everything.

Reason #2 is that search advertising helps pay for the GMail service that I rely on. I don't want to go back to my cable company's email accounts. Yuck. Terrible spam filtering and much worse webmail UI.

But, I'd like to stop using Google as much as the next guy. I'm waaaay too reliant, and I'd be surprised if the U.S. hasn't infiltrated their employee ranks, along with other countries, for greater influence and access to data than is even currently known by congress. Using Google is like living in a whorehouse.

> reducing the possibility

I was going to disagree because some U.S. remakes of British shows have not been as good or have been terrible, but in-general tried and true products in a market in one country have a better chance of succeeding in another country in similar form. This generalization pretty much carries over into most products and services.

Something else that would be interesting would be to show the # record/CD/mp3 sales of cover songs of successful original vs. originals by the same band doing the cover.

It's neat and useful but having text sometimes scroll under other text is going to be disorienting for some.

Personally, though I like that it will be an option, I don't want it in my pages. For documentation it just gets in the way of other text to read. Headers are a marker and starting context- they don't need to continue to be displayed.

Long-time Java developer here saying I mostly abandoned ship several years ago. Still work doing some Java dev, but have mostly switched to Ruby, because Scala is unreadable to me and I've not found anything else I like as much as Ruby yet. Oracle really fucked things up, if for no other reason than they've poorly managed security issues. They let the government tell people to uninstall Java from their browsers. That is fucked up. It's like they don't even care and want it to die.

The author was very obviously biased:

> In short, there is nothing really surprising in this leak. Microsoft does not steal open-source code. Their older code is flaky, their modern code excellent. Their programmers are skilled and enthusiastic. Problems are generally due to a trade-off of current quality against vast hardware, software and backward compatibility.

"Their programmers are skilled and enthusiastic." How would you get that from a code reading? Comments? No developer I know puts enthusiastic comments in unless they are being sarcastic. So, I think the summary tries to whitewash it.

The comments show some problems that never got fixed or addressed properly. They are signs that code at the time was being developed quickly and haphazardly. That is what I mean by crappy. And I'm talking about it being historically crappy, not the way it is today. I can't speak for the state of their code in every project they currently manage.

Backstabbing happens everywhere, unfortunately. The main problem with MS was that it was too profit driven for too many years instead of trying to do what was best for the users. Making profit eventually has a direct correlation to providing consistent quality that is better than the next guy or more consistently better. It all comes back to happiness; customers are happier when they get what they expect (intuitive) and what the need (low bugs, fast), not what they want (shiny UI).

They had some really shitty code. http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795

My fav:

  private\ntos\w32\ntuser\client\nt6\user.h:
  * The magnitude of this hack compares favorably with that of the national debt.

Photoshopped: http://media.salon.com/2013/09/vishavjit_singh_embed3.jpg

From what I understand, like you said, the problem was that they spent too many years in "lets fix that later" mode. They couldn't be agile because they had too much crap on the plate.

MS needs to have a haircut like Marissa Mayer gave Yahoo. Hardware and SAAS are not the way for MS; they need to get back into large(r) system OS dev in a big way, to run house and building automation. The game console should only be part of it. If they want to do hardware, it better be to run the code they write, otherwise they will be stomped.

I'm glad this was the top post. I don't think events are an anti-pattern, but they are way the hell overused. Part of the overuse is using (name something)MQ for everything, not just for centralized persistent async and pubsub in large systems. Part of it is because of functional languages making a comeback in the past several years, which then settled down again after a spike; They don't require being event driven of course, but stateless systems are the gateway drug to overly event-driven. And part of it is JavaScript's fault- if you were in JS in the bad old days of early Ajax, you knows what I mean, and JQuery just made it easier- but promises hide the fact now that so much is async, though I think promises are just as bad if not worse because they hide a lot of nonsense.

Didn't something like this happen in the Left Behind series? African nation gets better irrigation and raises food for rest of nation, or something like that?

Granted, Kenya isn't barren.

Maybe they could build a water park.

> If the NSA can break 2048-bit RSA, it would be a Big Deal

2048-bit is nothing. Here's why:

1. A great mathematician can find shortcuts. Tons of great mathematicians working in parallel will find them faster.

2. A fast processor can eventually brute force a key. Millions of fast processors working in parallel will find it faster.

You are talking about a well-known method with a determinate algorithm. May as well just hand them a cake, because they are going to eat that up.

Why use encryption mechanisms they've trained us to believe in and use? And how could be beat them at a game where they hold all of the talent and power? The only answer is to have dark encryption methods that are not shared, and that change frequently, frequently enough so there is no group of mathematicians with millions of servers that could determine the constantly changing algorithms.

> At the same time, biometric sensors raise questions of security. When Apple’s sensor was announced on Tuesday, a flurry of skepticism and privacy concerns erupted online even though Apple said users’ fingerprints would be stored only on the phone — not sent to online servers or made available to app developers.

Yes, the thumbprint is going to be the bane of the iPhone 5s. It is a horrible idea. They think phones are completely personal. They aren't. I share mine with my daughters all of the time. Sometimes my wife needs to use it. It is going to be a problem.

I'm not sure if thumbprints are worse or Microsoft's racist facial recognition that wouldn't recognize very dark African Americans.

The best way to stop making people sign up is to have a universal authentication method that is trusted and used by everyone.

I don't believe we'll see a good one in our lifetime.

But, that would stop an involved sign-up process.

> So we will see. This could be a complete failure...

There you go guarding yourself from a possible bad decision.

The trick in hiring is to trust your gut. Your gut might be wrong, but it is often better than everything else.

A simple up, down, or sideways (which is usually down) vote by the interviewers without having to give a reason is much better than trying to rationalize and enumerate the pros and cons. It isn't perfect, because an interviewer could be a racist, sexist, etc. but the cultural fit is much more important than what is on paper to hire and it is hard to judge much else during the interview, other than the ability to interview well.

I'm a big fan of the 90-day trial period. If the person coming in knows right away it is a bad fit, they'll be looking for a job right away to avoid being laid off on the 90th day.

> Shouldn't the goal to be as slow as possible (but no slower than a user will tolerate)?

Slowness is an idiotic goal: slow on slower hardware is fast on faster hardware and slow on faster hardware is unusable on slower hardware. The goal should be a minimum level of security that is still practically secure, and something without a backdoor/easily churnable with adequate hardware. Do you think anything that the majority use today is adequate? I don't. So I think this is all bullshit.

Clarified my comment. Sorry- not trying to get you into trouble.

> The sexism is in knowing that it will make most women somewhat uncomfortable, and some women very uncomfortable, and not caring.

I'd go so far as to say that how is an app that is all about exploiting women NOT sexist?

It is more than just making them uncomfortable. Some pics are taken of women that are drug addicted or white slaves or both. For most that do it on their own initiative, it is a decision they will regret later, but unlike a one night stand, it isn't just for one night. Those images stay around forever.

Played this game and it really sucked. :(

The appropriate response is to as much as possible help them contact the authorities and/or to keep a lookout for the laptop and the thief. But, you also have a hackathon to run, so you cannot inconvenience others just because someone was thoughless enough not to take their laptop with them when they went to the bathroom without someone they trust watching it for them.

Things I think are bullshit:

1. Ubuntu's decision to include ads

Linux got a real black eye from that imo, and turned me off of the normal Ubuntu distro for the forseeable future. Even for my lightweight distro I use Mint XCFE now just to stay the hell away from an organization that would do that.

2. Corporate Linux

I liked RedHat in 1997-98, but they went corporate quickly, and since then I personally don't like paying anyone for Linux. I want to support the hacker ethos that made Linux great, not some big corporate head.

> Gnome, KDE, Ubuntu and many others are self-destructing in an effort to imitate Apple's design without understanding it

I'd go so far to say that the desktop App Store is a BAD idea.

1. It was meant to make mobile more free, and now makes desktops less free.

It was born out of things like Brew on the old, old cellular market. Mobile content used to be as free as a concentration camp, and in order to appease them, Apple said "we'll do your content management for you". That was a huge deal step forward, but it obviously wasn't enough or people wouldn't jailbreak their phones.

2. It is not sustainable over the long haul.

Centralized app management is not a long-sustainable model for the desktop, or anything for that matter. You cannot continue to micromanage that much software without things eventually deteriorating. Apps require maintenance or removed as hardware and the OS changes.

3. The user experience sucks.

It puts all the installed apps in its own area (LaunchPad) in addition to the AppStore app where you see what you bought, and both in addition to the previously widely known Applications directory/folder. That's just stupid. Why do people want to emulate that mess?

3. But it survives for now because it is profitable.

I've bought more apps in OS X using the App Store than I would have in a store or via some other online delivery mechanism or Amazon, etc.

But, none of all of that would have been as terrible, if it hadn't spread to Ubuntu. Seeing similar there was a huge WTF moment.

So, you're saying that all of those in our government responsible for determining what requirements are needed for public education are wrong, and that the decades and decades of experience they have in determining what should be required mean nothing? Loads of teachers dedicate themselves to educating themselves as teachers and taking on student loans for no reason and then never say anything about it? It's all just a big lie?

The EFF is a great thing, but let's look at what they won:

> [O]rders and opinions of the FISC issued from January 1, 2004, to June 6, 2011, that contain a significant legal interpretation of the government’s authority or use of its authority under Section 215; and responsive “significant documents, procedures, or legal analyses incorporated into FISC opinions or orders and treated as binding by the Department of Justice or the National Security Agency.”

My interpretation of that is that the results could just include a lot about: "As stated in (some law or regulation) case # (redacted) with regard to (redacted), (redacted) is fully (or not fully) within the rights of the government to do so."

So, I'm sure there will be some information there, but it will be about the laws and regulations surrounding what is possible, not about the actions being discussed. And, frankly I've known for years (who hasn't) that our government wants an excessive amount of information about us with the intent to keep us safe and/or dominate the world, so I don't need the EFF or our government to spend much time on this. The EFF should be figuring out what can be patented and what can be free, and our government should be doing what it can to boost our economy in a long-term fashion while ensuring our freedom and safety. If that involves an overreaching security group, so be it.

Nice to have met you!

How many in your group of 20-30 have the qualifications that would allow them to be teachers in every subject that they teach their children if they were to apply for jobs in your public school system?

While I believe in your freedom to homeschool your children, why does the public school system have those requirements for their teachers? It isn't only to have the ability to manage kids and parents. While I believe that your group may do an excellent job at educating your students, 84% of 1.5 million students were estimated to be homeschooled only at home as of 2007 according to http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=91 , and I doubt that all of them are sufficiently qualified to teach all subjects required in their local public school.

Someone with sleep apnea here. I think it is great when the problem of lack of sleep gets more attention. Though my snoring and pain at night has caused my sleep apnea, the lack of sleep is what has caused all of my health and mental problems. I've tried CPAP, dental appliance, and every other type of device you can think of. Ended up with a dental appliance but I still get very little REM and not enough sleep in-general. I haven't woken well-rested in maybe 25 years. It is horrible. Depression, weight problems, CRS (can't remember shit), people think I'm an idiot, often irritated, hopeless, tired all the time. Basically, it really, really sucks.