greyboy

Interesting view. I certainly care about what browser I use on my XP installation. I (and my coworkers) have always cared which browser we use. But, we aren't Web 2.0.

Can such a competitor not create a "Tom Jones in Skokie, IL" Google+ (along with a myriad of other fake accounts) to achieve the same result? Or, is that to difficult for someone with those intentions?

Edit: Also, "a lot" is a rather unhelpful metric.

That's all well and good, but does that (CCTV surveillance) fall into what cobrausn quoted (Benjamin Fraklin?) above?

I guess it's a matter of perspective or opinion. Where do you/we draw the line?

In fairness, Chrome/Chromium have their own set of issues. I use both browsers and come across crashes, poor renderings, bad performance, etc. I still prefer Firefox for a few extensions I use, though.

I stopped using FF when I left my previous job, synced up my bookmarks before I left but then was unable to retrieve them because I had not written down the access guid. I'll just sync with my Google account and be done with it!

Having been a user and developer for almost any time, I would never have relied on that! A simple bookmark export, spot check for some URLs, USB drive/email/FTP to somewhere. I've always done that when leaving jobs (along with other personal things or notes/application settings).

Maybe I'm too cautious, but I've always ended up with a good copy of my data.

Here is what she said:

bloggergirl 21 hours ago | link [dead]

I'll add to this list my all-time favorite writing companion: Virginia Tufte's "Grammar As Style". It's been out of print forever, which is tragic, and, when you can find it, it usually sells for over $100 - even in rough shape. "Artful Sentences" is meant to replace "Grammar As Style", but I prefer the original. If you want to tie all the rules together so you can understand why we even have grammar in the first place and how truly magical grammar can be to shaping a sentence or paragraph, track down this book.

Interesting: Virginia Tufte is the mother of data visualization guru Edward Tufte.

(Other good books for writers and writers-in-training: "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamont, Stephen King's "On Writing" and a collection of letters on writing by F. Scott Fitzgerald, also called "On Writing". Oh, and please don't hate on White's "Elements of Style" --- it may be old, but it's foundational.)

I wholeheartedly agree. Rarely are people confronted about such things, nowadays. It's OK for someone to put on their Big Boy/Girl pants and take some criticism (tactifully, sure).

Plus, civility and such are different for everyone.

Cool, having some professional experience in this domain, I'm interested in what you folks are doing.

I got my notification a week before they billed me for it. Using the same method they use to advertise all their many services monthly (3-4 postcards/month). That's certainly falls in the 'sneaky' category, I think.

If it was important it should have been included in the bill - like virtually every other sane company would do.

Additional anecdotal data: of the four or five pilots I know personally (ages 23 - 65), all had their pilot's license before turning 18. So, yeah, not all that uncommon.

Note: I'm not a pilot, these aren't coworkers, just natural friends.

He was looking at used cars, not new. It's a different game. For new cars, I agree with you.

It's a lame situation, for sure, over what appears to be a strictly greedy or personal matter. And hindsight is alwasy 20/20. Fortunately, a good name was available and (hopefully) only an inconvience in time and effort is the major consequence (well, and all those now non-resolving links).

That's true. I made the assumption it was the same person based on:

The person owning the CyanogenMod.com domain was caught impersonating Steve to make referral deals with community sites. When confronted and asked to hand over control of the domain amicably, he decided he wanted 10K USD for it, which we won’t (and can’t) pay.

but, that could be a mistake if "owning" meant he simply took control of it at some point over the years.

I absolutely agree, it's just unfortunate. The only domains worth that much are really rare.

I read:

And due to the small size (and lack of funds), the CyanogenMod.com domain was bought by a third-party back in 2009 and donated to CM, when CM was a much smaller project and had no online presence besides XDA.

I must be missing something (and speaking from a US perspective), but was $10 really unattainable in order to secure a domain? Three years worth would have been $30-ish dollars now. Genuinely curious what led up to this scenario.

We use Skype to call friends' mobile numbers in African countries, Ukraine, etc. Does Google+ allow that? (Note: not a Google+ user)

Is the Nexus 4 not a GSM-only phone? I don't recall seeing any CDMA bands listed in the specs. I suspect, then, adding LTE wouldn't be beneficial to a Verizon user, unless they didn't use the phone (right?).

I understand the idealistic view. That doesn't negate what I said, however.

In addition to what Cushman said, find out the results of Dr. Richard Hipp (sqlite creater) about putting his software in the public domain. Some countries don't have a similar concept, some companies need explicit permission, etc. It would be easier if they simply chose a very permissive license to use.

My previous employer had such a policy (5 year old company with less than 100 employees, total, though we all worked in groups of 10-ish). While it sounded nice, if was difficult to get time off as needed. There was always trouble making sure work was done and things were covered (it was a fairly fast-paced schedule). In the end, very few people took much vacation.

While I have no problem with the general premise of that policy, I would rather have had an additional stipulation that all employees are required^ to take, say, 3 weeks of vacation annually (or, pick a number). That way, it was expected you would be out of the office for a portion of time.

^ I guess you can't force people to do that, but it would have made things so much less confusing or difficult to me if I could point to such a "rule."

[Edit: I realize some of this problem probably rested on the shoulders of management, but that wouldn't have solved all the issues of the policy.]

That's true.

I guess the ridiculousness of this excuse is that the page already exists and would simply (I would think) be a matter of changing the page text. I wouldn't think this would require intensive site-wide testing, but I've been wrong on these thigns before.

That caught my eye as an excuse of the super enterprise-y. I don't recall the page they put up after Steve Jobs passed away taking quite near that long.

I'm well aware of these generators with two shipping-container sized units right outside my building, tested fequently. So, I concede and simply disagree.

I agree they will likely lose some customers but I disagree that there was too much they can do now. Were they in the mandatory evacuation zone? (I don't know) Will 20 drums (10-ish hours) really help if this is a multi-day outage? Did the customers plan for a failover to another datacenter, or put all their eggs in one basket? (oops!)

So, now they're expected to move around an unknown quantity of 400-500 lb 55-gallon drums of fuel? And where would they have sourced these so easily and quickly (another unknown, I would think)?

We don't know how much energy is being used nor how much fuel is required to run the generator(s) per hour, among other things. That seems like a lot of important information that's missing to call this situation 'poor planning.'

But, I'll respond to your single datapoint with mine: according to [1] that's 2 full drums for every one hour of generator running.

My point isn't to be simple argumentative but to look at things from a more appropriate perspective. Generators in these circumstances (and my professional experience) are not meant for very long periods or indefinite usage.

I'm filing this proposed drum-filling plan into the 'unrealistic' category.

1) http://datacentersmadesimple.com/tech_highlights.html

How long would some <X> 55-gallon drums full of fuel have helped, anyway? Most cars can easily run through 55 gallons of fuel in a matter of hours (<10), much less a datacenter!

There well may have been poor planning at some point, but these things happen so infrequently there must be an allowance for this-is-a-disaster that cannot easily be worked around.

Another question is for the customers: are they running all their services from a single datacenter? Sounds like it shows poor planning.

Then they could go down the road to the local coffee shop/home/mobile network and browse the internet, unblocked. No?

They have options. I'm not sure the Chinese population have (such an easy) option to get around it.

I'm not so sure he was recalling all those details from memory. You could see him looking at a prompt of some sort quite often (looking down/up, etc).

Of course, that might reinforce your position.

No argument there as it was "free" for me in college. However, I've never worked in academia - so all the private sector companies I've known to use it had to pay big bucks. Plus, as I'm no longer a student, I suspect it would be a good chunk of money to buy a personal license (I'm guessing).

Python/Octave/R are free, last I checked.

Apparently, they aren't recyclable.

When my city went from plastic bins to large, rolling cans last year, we asked what to do with the old bins. They said either keep them for personal use or throw in the trash as they can't recycle them. (I saved a few that weren't heavily damaged from abuse over the years.)

It also doesn't "cost" anywhere near MATLAB. (I couldn't check the price of MATLAB as you have to have/create an account).

My thoughts exactly. I constantly found empty shelves back then, and while I can't blame that solely on BackBlaze, it doesn't impress me.

Also, why the surprise at the two drive limit? That's an everyday thing in retail channels. I would have expected that sooner.