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melvin

97 karma · joined June 8, 2010

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melvin··on Man claims to own 84% stake in Facebook - judge grants TRO in his favor
He's clearly way out of his league, but then, has managed to pull it off... so maybe not.

I see him as extremely sleazy - just the type of person who I hate to see become successful.

Facebook is the prime example of a company that needs a real CEO, with actual business experience and ethics. Not one of those MBA types who is actually a complete idiot, though. I guess it would be very hard to find the right person.

melvin··on JavaScript needs modules
Dynamically typed, no. Interpreted, yes.
melvin··on One ‘Small’ Statement Backfires on BP
It would be typical of the media/American public to act as if this statement was what made them think that they were not respected by the individuals who run corporations, while they didn't seem to get the idea from 150+ years of being abused by corporate aristocrats.
melvin··on Things I Learned Eating On $1 A Day For A Month
I'm quite sure that I could accomplish that. Bulk brown rice, lentils and beans are extremely economical. Combined with some greens and fruit/vegetables from my own garden plus the bounty of nature (you can walk outside and pick raspberries here, for instance).. well, that's how I eat anyway. I'd just have to give up the bags of chips and jars of salsa.
melvin··on Is the BP Gusher Unstoppable?
Nothing that has occurred since the incident has given me the impression that BP has a complete understanding of what's going on.
melvin··on Linode Turns 7, Big RAM Increase
Their traffic allotment is fairly generous compared to comparable services. Sure, if you compare it to something like 1and1 with 'unlimited' for $12, maybe not, but you don't get the same control and reliability for something like that. If you compare it to how much it would cost to serve the same requests on Amazon S3, it's much cheaper.
melvin··on Linode Turns 7, Big RAM Increase
Yeah, I'm glad they have the linode.typepad.com status blog - when Dallas is down, I can't connect to members.linode.com or status.linode.com to see what is going on! I know DOS attacks aren't their fault, but we've had a few more interruptions recently compared to usual.
melvin··on Linode Turns 7, Big RAM Increase
Slicehost: St. Louis Linode: Dallas
melvin··on Linode Turns 7, Big RAM Increase
I have one in Dallas, too. Nothing curious about it, take a look at http://linode.typepad.com/ Perhaps my requirements or expectations are higher than your own. The downtime hasn't been excessive, but sometimes, it is down for an hour before I see anything on their status update blog, and meanwhile, I'll have received a few notes from site users and advertisers.

There are three incidents listed in the past two weeks of packet loss, routing issues, and so on for 1-3 hours. There were other issues in May, I don't know where those are listed now.

Yes, it's only going down for a couple of hours at a time. Considering I'm using the server for images for a medium traffic website - an hour or two is VERY noticeable to my customers, and as noted, it adds up to more than the downtime on my Slicehost account (St. Louis).

melvin··on The Gulf Oil Spill vs. Home Energy Retrofits
Yes, that's one of the disturbing things about the oil industry. The oil companies have done their best to make sure usage of oil is as inefficient as possible, since that is in their medium-term economic interest... They go to tremendous lengths and expend (and destroy) significant resources to extract oil, and then they are actually hoping we'll waste a major portion of it.
melvin··on Linode Turns 7, Big RAM Increase
I was thinking '720 to 768? That's not such a big deal...' until I actually read the chart.

That's great! My 720 just went to a 1024. Thanks, Linode!

melvin··on Linode Turns 7, Big RAM Increase
I've had sites on linode and slicehost, and have found Slicehost to have less downtime, packet loss, network problems (unreachable), and so on. I'm satisfied with both, overall.
melvin··on Founders should be CEOs
Unfortunately, I've been close to a couple of companies where the founders, while they did have the original drive to create the company, have no idea how to manage a business. These are companies founded by 23 year old kids with no management experience or really anything other than some college - like many tech startups. The company cultures have needed up poisonous, the companies have no structure. Customer service and general organization is abysmal and it's visible from the outside. So, not all founders should be CEOs.
melvin··on I'm Comic Sans, Asshole.
Strange, I pictured Comic Sans more as an out of touch, 53 year old woman who enjoys knitting and is a bit spacey than an angry, egotistical, abusive frat kid, or whatever this is supposed to portray. The author has entirely failed to capture the essence of Comic Sans.
melvin··on 1's and 0's
'lines of LOC' sounds to me like a phrase meaning 'lines and lines of frivolous code of which the only value is incrementing the LOC count'.
melvin··on Excel Is The World’s Most Used “Database”
The text is set to 22px, then that style is overwritten with '100%', meaning 22px. This is huge by desktop standards. 3% of people will be reading your words with an iPad. A much more common font size would be about 16px.
melvin··on Excel Is The World’s Most Used “Database”
I find it difficult to use for storing arbitrary information, personally.
melvin··on Out of Sync: Puberty at age 9
A colleague of mine has a daughter who went into full-blown puberty at the age of 7. Bodily changes, emotional lability - everything that usually happens at 13. The doctors recommended they cut out the use of plastics and household cleaners... so, off to read the article.
melvin··on Simple Way to Extract GET Params from a JavaScript Script Tag
I think he means duplicate keys, as in '?id=4&color=8&id=6'
melvin··on Simple Way to Extract GET Params from a JavaScript Script Tag
I was seeking to avoid the same thing recently. Instead of adding more JavaScript, I decided to use PHP. While we're using Rails, it's very inefficient to fire up the whole engine to do something as simple as outputting a script with a few interpolated variables. A simple PHP script can put out 2-3 times as many requests per second as Rails/Django for a task like that.
melvin··on Google removes background image from homepage
Yeah, I think that they added this, faced a backlash, flubbed the rollout, and then did an about-face the next day is noteable for various reasons.
melvin··on Microsoft Secretly Installs Firefox Extension Through Windows Update
Microsoft intentionally made Netscape (more) unstable and slower, if I recall. is there any reason to think they wouldn't respond to Firefox's growing popularity is to intentionally make it perform poorly? I'm very, very suspicious of Microsoft interacting with Firefox in any way whatsoever. No doubt they'd like to exert control over it in some way.
melvin··on Microsoft Secretly Installs Firefox Extension Through Windows Update
I don't think you can 'accidentally' install a toolbar in Firefox.
melvin··on David Heinemeier Hansson's Rails 3 keynote at RailsConf
100% agreed, I hate watching videos. I don't have the time to sit there and stare at something, and well, you said the rest.
melvin··on Ask HN: Why do no other laptop manufacturers get it?
I recently bought my first MacBook and was wondering exactly the same thing.

How can all of the other manufacturers miss the point to this extent?

Simple branding. Simple model distinction. "15 inch". Elegance. High quality. Visual appeal. No wonder Apple has been so successful... everyone else is so poor, and so caught up in the middle of the pack. Sony is the only other company offering laptops to appeal to the high-end and theirs are kind of a joke.

melvin··on Google removes background image from homepage
Yes. Anyone who is interested in making changes to their own website may very well be interested in how changes to the largest website in the world are received by the public.
melvin··on 'Remove Google Background' surges to number 2 in Google Trends
Flippant comments aside, I'm entitled to use a competitor's product instead if I don't like how Google is treating me or the changes they are making. This is likely not the goal that Google was seeking to accomplish. I'm sure you understand that Google does derive revenue from visitors, correct?

If they want to A/B test something like that on a signed in, daily visiting member, they should offer a small explanation and an opt in/opt out option.

melvin··on 'Remove Google Background' surges to number 2 in Google Trends
Hell yeah, thanks. That's my new homepage now.
melvin··on 'Remove Google Background' surges to number 2 in Google Trends
My friend was complaining about the background today. She said she couldn't get rid of it. She was even going to upload an 800x600 white image.

I've never seen the background image and I can't even get it to appear or find a setting for it anywhere. (???)

It's kind of like how my Google News was all weird for like 4 days, and then went back to normal. I do understand a/b testing, but it's strange being an unwitting, unwilling guinea pig for something I use every day like G News.

melvin··on Notepad++ leaves SourceForge
Well, it's just a text editor. I've had good experiences with girls named 'Kate', so for me, this is a bonus.
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