rotw

To put it bluntly, Google is happy-clappy hippie wonderland in comparison to Apple, yet there are no stories of the top echelon being absolute cunts to each other. Success is not reliant on dictatorship. You don't have to be a horrible person to be honest, you don't have to be a tyrant to demand and foster excellence.

>The women are better than in the UK,but far from the best looking in the world.

Woo, casual misogyny \o/

>The internet in Germany is borderline third world quality

Germany, the completely authentic sub-Saharan information drought experience...

>but I'd doubt it that you go there more than 5 times a year.

Culture's about more than clubbing.

>however there are cheaper places in Eastern Europe with better tech talent availability overall.

1 City vs. half a continent. Good comparison.

> And I have nothing bad to say about this project in particular, but they are a YC company, and the state of the prototype shows that they already have all they need to make it happen. This project doesn't need money. The campaign seems to me to be nothing more than a simple "I'm making something cool, so give me cash".

I fully agree. Honestly, I hope both that this campaign fails and that the guys at Pixate are able to develop and launch their product successfully. The point of Kickstarter is to enable creative endeavours that would have trouble succeeding in a market environment -- a talented friend of mine financed his first short film via a similar site, which will hopefully get him a foot in the door of filmmaking. In his case, the Kickstarter idea is a great thing: It guarantees artistic independence and audience involvement.

This app, however, already has backing and will easily make plenty of money on the market. It's not a catastrophe in the long haul, but I sincerely hope this doesn't catch on: That's not audience involvement, that's a commercial transaction. You give me money, I give you product. On a larger scale, it's abusing opportunities for people who have few, which is particularly nefarious if it comes from people who have no need to beg.

They do, subtly. It's only major overhauls that are rare. However, I think they'll be working on mobile apps a fair bit and the subtleties of interaction, since Google+ has grown in leaps and bounds through major design overhauls (both the new app and web interface are very good looking and good to use) and flashy ad campaigns. I guess they're trying to pre-empt the effect the relatively good-looking Facebook had on disgruntled MySpace users jumping ship from over-customised profiles.

Ouch. These guys are idiots.

> 1000+ UN Emails, Usernames & Passwords leaked

Most of these from undp.org. The United Nations Development Programme. They are harming aid to Third World Countries.

> A Senate for Global Corruption, the United Nations sits to facilitate the introduction of a New World Order and a One World Government as outlined by Brock Chisolm the former Director of UNWHO when he said: > 'To achieve a One World Government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, their loyalty to family traditions and national identification'

Completely out-of-context quote. Paranoid conspiracy theorists right here.

> How far you have come from the first address by Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson had nothing to do with the UN. Whatsoever.

> The UN is a fraud! The bureaucratic head of NATO used to legitimise the Barbarism of Capitalist elite!

The UN and NATO are completely separate institutions... The pathetic ignorance baffles me. To think these people might've got their hands on sensitive data of global significance frightens me.

I agree though, the writing is sub-par. It somehow sounds far too american to quite fit into the Harry Potter canon, in my opinion.

"Nowhere near as bad as Rowling, who is an awful writer, but still pretty bad. To be fair to Rowling her first book actually introduced some good ideas, the rest were pretty much universally crap."

What? Excuse me, are you serious? Rowling is a very good writer. In terms of style and plotting, the latter of which isn't always perfect, but definitely not as awful as you make out. And why on earth are you measuring her in terms of "ideas" such as historical context, she wrote a series of children and teen's books, which happen to possess a cross-over appeal to adults due to their quality. Harry Potter isn't hard science fiction, and I do find your seeming inability to find simple pleasure in reading such a (in my view) charming series quite disheartening.

I don't use any of the three services, but the landing page of FriendBinder made me more curious then FriendFeed's. However, it just looks a tad unprofessional, with faded looking colours, unsubtle shadows & gradients, and heavy use of Arial. I'd really get a professional designer to tweak that a bit, I think you might profit from that.

Or, if you don't want to spend money: Brighter, more friendly colours, replace Arial with Helvetica, drastically cut down on the italic, draw some subtle, but clear seperations of the containers. But keep the basic concept intact, I really like it.

Another teenage perspective.

Readability: Read real round figures, not aliased fonts.

Convenience: Ebooks win, hands down. But going to a good bookstore is a nice experience.

Annotation: Nothing beats proper writing for notes (quick diagrams, drawings, underlining, switching position etc.) A pencil does just fine.

Cost: More than ebooks, which aren't all free.

Social flags: Bookshelves are something very physical, touchable, smellable. Also, printed book covers are great to look at.

Aesthetic: Books are beautiful. Dunno about what you read, but novels often have great packaging design.

Sentimental value: Compare a device, like Kindle, that had lots of books on (sort of like old hardware) vs. books, that each seperately hold a tale (sort of like old games). Old games definitely evoke more sentimentality, imho.

Rarity: Some texts do exist only offline. I assume it won't stay like this though. But rare physical copies make things valuable.

Single Mindedness: Books are for reading. This keeps things easy. Or would you read a book on teletext?

Religion: Not a factor for me.

I may live in the digital age and enjoy, but I just really couldn't let books go.

True. The guy who brought his kids up with a proper understanding of rhetoric definitely did a better educational job.

The kids of Dr. No, however, will grow up being people who can't express themselves, and inevitably provoke conflict by being obstinate and seeing themselves mostly in the right because of their authority.

They will not value reason.

The Ian Curtis effect.

My favourite subject in school is history. I love it in (almost) all its facets, the military, the diplomacy, the politics, the study of what people did. You can say that my interest began at a young age, reading lots of children's books on castles or the Romans, but what really got me into the subject was a game: Age of Empires II.

I was nine, and a friend had given me a pirated copy of the game. I was instantly fascinated by the campaigns and the background to the actual gameplay (at which I was pretty bad). I learned a lot about history in general, I loved playing around with castlebuilding or crushing an enemy with a huge army. I loved the evolving and changing missions, reflecting a real battle, more a long, progressing struggle with sudden interruptions and changes than a simple fight. I spent ages creating my own scenarios. I loved playing the game, and it shaped me.

Fast foward to the present day. I'm 17, and going to choose the specialist subjects for my final exams in 2 years. History is definitely going to be one of them.

Those XML configuration files and bloated criteria actions make Propel look pretty ugly and inelegant. Several Python-based ORM systems such as SQLAlchemy do a much better job.

Try the tab feature of Fluxbox (www.fluxbox.org).