michaelneale

I won't use an ad-blocker as I think advertising is legitimate, and provides support for many great sites and potential for important startups.

I do use flashblock/click to flash (which has the side effect of hiding the most offensive video ads). But any site that becomes unbearable with ads, I move on, and don't go there again. I would suggest it is time to avoid those sites.

I got the impression that they liked/used the Interface Builder on the iphone SDK (the comment on the easy of making things pretty) - if that is the case that is telling. I do no iphone dev, but I have some close friends who are prolific and successful iphone devs, and they take a dim view of anyone who thinks it is more than a toy (of course, maybe something else was meant? I dunno - but yeah, GridBag+XML sounds horrid doesn't it).

I guess things like Charles Nutter's duby language (and other alternative JVM langs) can really make a much more pleasant experience.

Q: does the company make its income via billable time of staff? if so, it is a services company (or a tech services company), not a tech company. The difference is subtle to some but makes all the difference in how things work.

The positive spin for HN folk: if you are an entrepreneur, get cracking ! This is both opportunity for you, as well as a Good Thing to do for the economy (yes yes, I know, unlikely to hire a long term unemployed person for a new internet startup, but it still doesn't hurt !).

Some have mentioned that the iPhone/iPad (and probably other mobile platforms) are moving consumers away from file based computing (even if the specific OSes underneath are using them). Each application in the iphone doesn't really think about files, but more objects and persistent data or the network resources.

That article kind of makes being a loser appealing.

"People are afraid to compete because they prefer to pretend they could have won if they played, than to know that they played and lost."

Wow - it would have taken me pages to explain that observation (that I see in myself and others).

I resemble that remark.

I would almost bet my life it is secondary sources referencing the same single primary source - this sort of thing happens over and over and over. And often can continue on for years/decades popping in and out of popular news, despite being refuted (not saying that this particular observation has been, but could be at some point in the future).

Right yes of course that is vastly different. One way is to think of classes as immutable (which they are, in that sense). Of course adding a method to a class is possible - but being statically compiled makes that somewhat less useful ;)

>very clearly should be objects, such as classes, are not objects

Well classes are objects themselves, but not necessarily related in a useful way to the objects which they instantiate. You can't do as much with them (other then look at them, or load new ones) - or do you mean more a prototype based OO?

I think 3d full time would be terrible !

I don't want my TV 3d ! At most, maybe some movies, some games, and maybe sport (if I watched it). Certainly not for kids - kids have no need for that.

Surely it won't be 3d all the time though? And I still would like to see a quality study on the effect of 3d on depth perception - my intuition is that it is probably identical with a normal (long) movie going experience (we all feel a bit disoriented after being immersed in "another world" for a while).

Certainly on the food/medical side - that is where the issue lies mostly, and I think that is where the energy should be better spent.

I just think it would be a very odd world if there were articles written in that style, by science writers who appeal to the mainstream non-scientific audiences, about every novel technology (eg "iPad to make you stupid !!"). And I don't think that link is really enough evidence - perhaps if the data was public it could be?

In any case, the real issue with 3d for me is the eye strain - won't that be more of a hazard then temporary depth perception? (I have no evidence, just a headache).

>So obviously, caution should be thrown to the wind because ..

Obviously? how did I imply that? My point was that it would be nice to have more solid evidence in articles to avoid people turning into quivering messes at the potential danger of every technology. Or course we should have caution.

I am a bit sensitive about this general issue (nothing to do with 3d) as there have been quite a few deaths in my area in the last year due to people's fears of radiation from mobile phone towers (which are in fact no where near their house, but that is another issue).

interestingly, the Amish attitude to technology is to initially reject until they see that is both safe (physically) and enhances their values (pretty much the opposite to everyone else). I find that interesting, but I can't find the link to the article that talked about that.

It reads very similar to how people objected to "fast travel" in the past (ie speeds at which we call "slow" in a car or train now) - people honestly thought they would go insane for reasons like sensory overload.

It happens to anything new going mainstream really: predictions of doom.

The article doesn't talk at all about evidence of this - the closest it gets is to the lack of evidence that it is "safe".

Gosh - I can imagine this guy at the invention of the printing press: "people who read these words, and imagine fantasical worlds in their mind, will not be able to get up and walk as their mind adapts to the lack of physical stimulus while reading and imagining)."

I understand what you mean by a "full linux" machine - but Linus, of all people, would see GNU/Linux as being what it really is: the kernel, and nothing more. The community has wrapped lots of things around it, but really, they aren't linux. I think it is good that him and people like him still realise that. Android makes a linux phone. Period.

I would like to think clojure, but am old enough not to get my hopes up about "a lisp" approaching the mainstream. So that means scala (self preservation?)

Using scala almost daily, I don't think I have ever done that, with floating point anyway - looks like one line slideware code for demos.

Yes, I knew what you meant ;) I think an open source exchange killer was far more up the list of priorities when Yahoo bought it, than it would be today. (Exchange is still everywhere, but people don't seem to mind nor talk about it - with Lotus, and Google "gone google" in the market - maybe people view it as acceptable competition now?)

I think Yahoo paid quite a bit more for Zimbra in the first place, so looking at only that for valuation, that would seem a good discount for VMWare. But yes, the numbers are unreal seeming !

I boarded a plane in china once and they explicitly asked me if I had nunchucks. They do the spiel on sharp/flammable items, but nunchucks don't fit in an obvious category like that, so they spell it out (makes sense, but was hilarious at the time).

Yes they have spun things that way - spinning it as good news for them. But it won't hold forever. People are not ignorant - well at least not all of them, not all the time ;)

I registered a complaint with the ACCC with this a few years ago - they kept it on file, but couldn't really do much until there was a flood over epic bills (and they admitted it was hard for them to understand what the likelihood of this sort of thing happening, but they did appreciate it was unsavoury).

Don't assume that the Chinese Gov. are ignorant of PR dangers, they aren't irrational. It would be complex mixed feelings.

Ideally people would have used/shown interest in a reasonable spectrum of languages. And most tools in common use (common being the key word !) really should only take an afternoon to learn enough to get something done, however small. I am not sure why more interviews aren't done like that, but I guess hard to scale.

better still, stop binding yourself to a language - there are no Python programmers, or Java programmers - there are programmers that use the respective language (at that time).

That kind of blunts any personal attack. There are however communities, so I guess that is what people could attack, for better or worse. But its not personal.

You are very fortunate to like fish so much - you can pretty much eat as much as you want (sensibly cooked) and it can only be good for you (I really don't like fish). My only superpower in food is loving beans/legumes (I could live off them - which is both cheap and nutritious). Well at least in my country there is no lack of vitamin D unless you live and work in a lead screened bunker and never have to go outside (Australia).

The thing is, those companies are not technology companies. They would see such practices as things that software companies would do (and they don't believe the potential savings - as often that is all they are, savings, not new revenue). Consequently, the talent goes to companies that are technology companies, and the cycle continues.

Maybe I am misreading, but you seem to be contradicting yourself. You say that it isn't a cultural problem, but then describe how what I would call cultural problems ! I agree with the gist of your post though - and yes, choosing appropriate technology would help, a lot, but it is a cultural problem preventing it ! (culture of management perhaps?).

Exactly - it is NOT a technology problem. Well other then vendors capitalising on the corporate culture in selling "solutions" which just make things worse.

He then oddly goes on to talk about the buy vs build argument for things like Oracle/SAP financials/ERP - which are deeply hated by those that use them (granted, may not be able to make that kind of BigCo HR/financial stuff fun !) - but what is interesting is that those systems are not really off the shelf. They are usually multi-million dollar "implementations" and sometimes (seriously!) "re-implementations" of them - which cost orders of magnitude more then most IT bespoke projects - often due to licencing costs. This makes me think that the numbers make things look better then they are. For example: if the cost of an setup for SAP financials is 2mil, and 400K "implementation", then a blow out of 100% in the "implementation" cost is not, percentage wise, as big a deal as if it was a bespoke project (ie sans the licence cost) - as the bulk of the cost is a fixed licence.

This is also why building (as in skyscraper style) blow outs don't appear as huge - they labour cost is generally a relatively smaller portion of the project cost then the materials compared to IT projects.

Wow that is really quite profound.