madhouse

No, it is not. It's a "code hosting" thing, which is semi-official, but is more like a code dump than a repository used for development.

You can pretty easily get a list of SOPA supporters (eg, from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_that_supp...). Good luck boycotting them all!

However, I didn't say the boycott wasn't OK, either. It sure is, and it's well deserved.

I just said I'm not participating in it. If others do, that's their choice, and I don't see anything wrong with doing so, either. I just said I'm not going to, because (among other things) I consider it wrong to select one from the many, and punish only that, when there are others who are guilty of the same thing (and some even guilty of more).

It isn't a clear choice, because the service they provide is something I didn't have a problem with, and moving would mean extra work and effort I'm not willing to pay. Why am I not willing to pay the price?

Because, as I wrote, I'd have to do the same thing with every other company who's services I use, when I don't agree with their decisions, or find their CEO someone who should be locked away and never spoken of ever again.

If I'm starting to boycot companies based on what they support, then I will do it with all of them, not just a single one. However, that is not possible.

I'm not neutral, either. I'm not going to use GoDaddy for any more domains in the future (partly due to their support for SOPA, partly for other reasons). I just won't move my domains from there, because it's not worth the effort.

A lot of other companies were involved in writing SOPA, and even more support it still, that are not treated the same way GoDaddy is. There are a lot of other CEOs who did very bad things - but I don't see people boycotting them, either.

Just boycotting one SOPA supporter won't buy you anything, either.

Do tell me though, why GoDaddy is exceptional, and why the same treatment doesn't apply to the rest of the SOPA supporters.. because I honestly don't see the difference: they're all bad.

No, for multiple reasons:

* I never had problems with it.

* I registered my domains via google, I have no idea how to move to a different registrar, and I'm not motivated enough to find out.

* If I started to stop using services where I don't agree with either the company's decisions, or whatever their prominent staff members chose to do, I would have to stop using all such services, not only one. I would have to go offline and live in a cage, pretty much.

Just because I am using a service does not mean I agree with whatever choices the provider makes. As long as those decisions don't affect me, I honestly don't care, because doing otherwise leads to a path of constant anger and depression. Don't need that, thank you.

I played with Haskell, to the point of being able to read and understand larger chunks of Haskell code - but I haven't written anything of note in it yet. Not sure I ever will, either. I started playing with it due to git-annex (which was written in Haskell, and that triggered the interest) and the LYAH book (which is beyond awesome, by the way). Coming from an OO/imperative background, functional programming seemed interesting, and even though I didn't end up using Haskell, the tricks and ideas I borrowed did have a huge impact on me.

The other language I played a lot with, and ended up using a lot this year is Clojure. The main reason I started learning it is because its not only a LISP, it's a mostly functional, yet, practical language, whose concurrency and paralellism support is unparalelled. Being a JVM language, with great interoperability with Java also means that I can use existing Java libraries. All in all, it had great properties, and a syntax I was already somewhat familiar with (being an Emacs user for the past 12 years or so did expose me to at least some lisp, after all!), so my next few projects, which will likely see the light of day in early 2012, will be written in Clojure.

I also learned a bit about sparc assembly, because I had to, and as much as I didn't want to, I learned to read PHP a little bit better than I used to. I'm not exactly proud of that, but nevertheless, that's what happened.

A jumping man, in C+4 BASIC: clear screen, draw an ASCII stick figure, for loop to wait, clear screen, draw stick figure in different position, for loop to wait, goto 10.

I still know it by heart, though it was written more than two decades ago.

As far as I see (with my limited Haskell and Clojure knowledge), Haskell, being pure functional, has a much steeper learning curve than Clojure, which while mostly functional, focuses a bit more on being practical.

Furthermore, Clojure can use the already existing Java libraries, while in Haskell's case, the number of available libraries is considerably smaller. Clojure plays nicely with Java, so you can mix and match Clojure developers with Java devs, and they won't go for each other's throat.

Haskell doesn't play all that well with any other language.

Flot (http://code.google.com/p/flot/) is missing from that list.

Convenient dates. Now I only need to convince $work to sponsor my trip, yes, yes.

Most of the time, by looking at a backtrace (I primarly debug C stuff, by the way), I already have a good idea what the problem might be. Tracking that down in a debugger is horribly inefficient, especially if optimisations are involved (how may times did you try to print a local variable, or a parameter, only to be greeted with <this value has been optimized out>?), so another way to see the program flow is required.

printf() does wonders in this area, if you can put them at the right places. Over the years, I found and fixed far more issues with printf() than with a debugger.

Granted, sometimes a debugger is neccessary, at least until I understand the problem, and become able to reproduce it. Then printfs it is again. If I can't reproduce it, and only have a core file to work with, then, obviously, a debugger is one's only choice. If I need to extract information from a core dump, a debugger is the way to go again.

But when trying to examine running code, printfs are - in my experience - more straightforward to work with.

target="_blank" is horrible. It was a stupid thing in the beginning, and remains to be awful to this day.

If I want to open something in a new tab or window, I will do so, no website should tinker with my tabs and windows, be it opening new ones or anything else: it's none of its business. Opening a new tab without MY approval is about as bad as spying on other tabs or attempting to interfere with them in any other way.

Middle click and the open in new tab/window context menu option in most browsers is there for a reason, have been there for years, and most people I know (techies and non-techies alike) know how to use it, and was one of the first things they learned to use when they met with a web browser.

The only stupid thing you did is feeling down about a single wrong decision made very early in your life. Don't worry, you'll make much more of those in the next 60 years, and this one will pale in comparsion. And anyway, the latest one will always seem to be the worst.

Don't worry about it, at least, not too much. By worrying too hard, and blaming yourself, you only make it worse. Suck it up, and accept that you're just like any other human: we make mistakes. We then go and fix them.

So do that. You're only 20, there's a tremendous amount of time still ahead, and opportunities you don't even recognise just yet.

The things you shouldn't leave in your blog post:

8) auto-converted to a smiley image (well, any kind of automatic conversion to a graphical smiley face is generally a bad idea, but this blog post only has 8) :P). It kinda destroys every bit of credibility you had.

It also looks rather awkward in the middle of your post.

In the best case, you can look at their contribution to open source software (their github/bitbucket/google code/etc profile). Those are, in most cases, very telling. Sadly, it's not always an option.

Would running Windows in Virtualbox be an option? Then you have the full power of a unix-like system, yet, you still have access to windows.

If not, and you really wish to go the other way around, then Debian is the distribution you're looking for. It has all the basics, apt included, without all the bells and whistles you don't neccessarily need (but, if you do want them, they're an apt-get install away).

I do believe that a linux host, with a windows guest would feel superior, if you were missing the unix background.

nginx supports FastCGI, and CGIs can be supported via fcgiwrap and similar tools, it works remarkably well, and configuration's easy.

My experience shows otherwise. When I listen to some deep, gloomy metal, that's a far higher diversion than listening to, say, some ambient music with a female singer. Even though the latter has far more high notes.

Why does 1.8->2.0 break their own stated versioning scheme?

It just says that the major will rarely change - and that is correct. The major changed only once so far, since 2009. One major version bump in two years isn't that bad, and can even be considered rare, for some values of rare.

Nothing else in their versioning scheme says anything, that would suggest that 1.8 would be followed by 1.10. So far, the version number difference between two stable releases has always been 0.2: they're consistent in their versioning.

There are plenty of projects that work the same way.

Depends on the situation. If it makes sense to improve my code (it's still actively developed or maintained, and changing the implementation does not introduce incompability (or if it does, then it outweights the trouble of updating dependent software), etc), then I go back and change it. Otherwise, unlikely.

Gee, what a sensationalist title. Luckily, only the title, but still.

Personally, I find most of facebook and the rest of its ilk nothing more than noise. Nevertheless, I don't mind their existence: its users usually yell their noises within the boundaries of these sites, which in turn decreases noise elsewhere.

And THAT is a good thing: I can find information easier. And there always were, and always will be hubs for various topics, that are relatively low on noise, and as more people discover the internet, more will find it, even if they spend some time yapping about on pure-noise sites first.

And that is also a good thing.

I found that in the vast majority of cases, just opening in a new tab if I want to be sure not to leave the page will do the right thing. When it doesn't, well.. that's one more broken UI I'm not going to use again.

Thus, I always assume that any link will open in the same window, or do something disruptive, so if I don't want to leave the page, I'll middle click. Can't remember the last time that did not work.

But perhaps I'm just lucky, and all the sites I frequent have decent UIs.

Please don't. If I want to open a link in a new tab or window, I'll use the appropriate key and/or mouse magic to do so. If I click on a link without modifiers, I want to leave the current page, thank you very much.

I usually stop visiting sites that try to second guess me and fail at it.

As long as disks can be manufactured, and data centers can be built, we're not going to run out of storage space.

You need as much space (as in, disk space) as there is content to server, plus a bit more. It's not the disk space you should worry about, though. (Even an entry level server at whatever hosting company will have plenty of space to host pretty much anything.)

I have g+ open pretty much 24/7. A chrome addon alerts me if there's anything interesting. Do I spend countless hours on social sites then, or only when I actually look at it?

If the latter, then about 15 minutes a day.

While you read, you make the writer of the book you're reading happy. He or she wrote the book to be read, when you do so, you're making it all worthwhile for them. You contribute back to humanity by enjoying and using the work of others.

And if the book's purpose was to teach, and it delivered that promise, then by reading it, and gaining knowledge, you will 'perform' (lacking a better word off the top of my head) better, and will be more useful in the long run.

Reading is an investment. Read good books, and the investment will be worth it.

I'll probably be bashed over the head, but debbugs (the thing behind Debian's bug tracking system) came to mind as I read the question.

Because there's at least some source code for android, which is not the case with IOS, perhaps?

It's not trivial to port something you don't have the sources (nor the required permissions) for.