villiros

From what I can figure out, Auto-Save and Versions are pretty-much built-in. Assuming an application that uses standard Cocoa approaches to document management, it just needs to declare its support for the auto-save functionality, and pretty much everything else will be handled by the system libraries. Fairly trivial.

Resume is more involved, however: the application is responsible for (de)serializing its state. Again, for a document-based application that doesn't stray far from the "recommended" path, it should be fairly simple to implement. It's just a matter of the document and UI being auto-saved on termination, which requires little work from the developer. One very interesting side-effect of the Resume feature is that it removes the need for applications to stay running: the system can silently terminate unused applications, and bring them back if they're needed again. What's really exciting about this, is that it's turning applications into something that is "always there".

At least they've done enough testing to realise that interaction should be done with the left hand.

It was totally open and free. One needed to just sign up on the website and turn up.

Which is probably the most damning thing about the platform: when such effort is spent at luring developers in, one wonders.

I'm actually expecting this whole thing to turn out to be a fantastic case of guerilla marketing by tumblr. It just seems too hilariously perfect.

For what it's worth, I took just one look at the front page and it told me pretty well what the product is. But then, I've spent years working in this exact field, so it might be a case of a blurb aimed at those in the know.

You are right. He needed a visa to get on the flight. However, my understanding of the refugee stuff is that one doesn't actually need to enter the country. You're not inside the country till after the border guard has waved you through; but you can still ask for protection while at the border. He's probably still in detention, which doesn't really count as being in the country in my book. He used the mask to try and get protection, not simply enter Canada. Very different motive.

This is descending into analty, so I'll stop now :)

Actually, he only needs a visa to enter the country. The Geneva Convention allows anyone to present at a border post and claim refugee protection (with a few exceptions, but visas aren't included in those).

There are various laws that require careers to prevent people without visas arriving at borders, but those are aimed at making it harder to ask for protection. He managed to work around those; mission accomplished.

His assertion is actually backed up by MongoDB docs: "Sharding will be production-ready in MongoDB v1.6, estimated to be released in July 2010." Their current sharding alpha is only tested/supported for small clusters (up to 20 nodes). In addition, looking at their sharding mode of operations, only a very limited set of actions are properly sharded; the rest require touching all the shards.

Disclaimer: this was the first look I've had at MongoDB. However, based on this alone, it would be prudent to wait several years before considering using this technology in serious production. It is somewhat reckless to consider a DBMS feature that wasn't locked for awhile "production-ready".

By the way, this article first appeared in a recent Something Awful thread. It is very long but has heaps of information for anyone interested in highway design.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=317...

There is a very simple solution: pass a law that automatically absolves customers of any fraud, and places burden of proof on the banks. Transactions reported fraudulent should be automatically reversed, unless the bank can provide proof (satisfying the standards expected in civil courts) that the customer was at fault.

As an example, this was largely the case with transactions not involving PINs (signed-for purchases). Recent introduction of EMV (chip-and-pin cards) was really done to shift responsibility for such transactions back onto the customers and reduce banks' losses.

This is also the case with stolen cards (in the UK and Ireland, at least): losses related to such cases are covered by the bank, even for losses occurring before the card was reported stolen. This is the reason banks implement various pattern-matching techniques to try and detect such transactions as soon as possible.

I've noticed some newer ATMs around these parts started doing that as well. However, is is of absolutely no use without associated customer education. The machines don't even say "here is what the slot should look like, please check it before entering your PIN." There were even reports of people calling the police thinking this security feature was a skimming device, since it looks so out of place and different from what's usually on the machines.

As a russian, I can add to this. Lettershapes in cyrillic cursive look nothing like printed ones. When I started school I could read perfectly, yet handwritten notices on the door looked like greek; I had to ask adults to read them.

Admittedly, there is a good reason for cyrillic cursive's existance: shapes of printed letters are just not suited for writing them by hand. Whereas in latin most letters can be printed with just one or two pen strokes (even disallowing retracing), cyrillic letters take two or three at minimum. Probably related to the fact that cyrillic mostly developed after printing was invented, and changed by acts of kings and church, while latin had a much longer and gentlier history.

Here's how I would explain REST to a wife:

It's a made-up pile of bollox. It stands for "and now I'm going to refer to meaningless pseudo-science in an attempt to confuse you and bill more money to the project."

On second though, that probably explains why I don't have a wife.

This for washing clothes would be good. Put a reader in the hamper and track all dirty clothes going into it. Notify me when there is enough similarly coloured stuff there to do a wash, or when I'm running out of clean necessary items. Also, tell me to start washing stuff in advance of long trips away.

This is really cool. Taking one look gave me quite a few new ideas.

I'm slightly confused about its focus, though. How is it different from those sites that list webapp ideas? Nothing is stopping me from taking one of the ideas described on this site and just doing it myself...

PayPal's basic business account has subscription functionality. It does exactly what you described: you send a customer to PayPal, indicating what their billing cycle is and how much they should be charged. Once they payment goes through, paypal notifies you (via IPN callback) that the subscription should now be active. Once it expires (due to limits you have put in, or because the customer cancels, or if their payments fail), paypal pings you and you can update stuff on your side.

It's actually very easy to integrate, and provides a very good functionality set. It even has trial periods and such.

I imagine Amazon's payments system can do similar things.

Most games in this space depend on virtual goods sales for their revenue. You know, "Get the sword of Unknowing and Libidinousness for $0.50" sorta stuff. A surprising number of players are quite happy to shell out their credit cards for such items.

For those who aren't willing to pay real cash, but still want them items, an option is to complete (free) affilate offers. Things like completing surveys, signing up to websites, downloading ringtones, etc. At the moment, those pay publishers quite well, and everyone wins.

We are using Offerpal network for ours, and when someone completes an offer to get a certain number of in-game points, we get the face value of those points in cash. CPM metrics are fairly useless for this sorta things, but eDAU (revenue per 1k daily active users) tend to be very good for games with well-designed transactions model.

This stuff is also fairly useful for anyone selling cheap things on line. If you're selling a thingybob for $5 apiece (website subscriptions, physical items, etc), you can capture cheapskates by having them complete offers. In which case you get an extra $5 from a customer who would've brought you no revenue otherwise.

You got it. We didn't actually change advertising stuff at all, it's just that it only kicks in after a few days for each user. In general, advertising performs terribly in these kinda games, so our revenue model is based on transactions and premium accounts. Ads are just a way to force users to pay. It might be slightly over the top at the moment, though.

Thanks a lot for all your feedback, guys. It far outstripped my expectations. HN once again proved to be a fantastic place :)

We've addressed some of the most pressing issues, and based on what we're observing from new users, it did help a lot.

One thing I definitely learned, is that providing context in the original post would have been tremendously useful for everyone. Writing a few lines in the original post would have helped everyone involved.

Our business plan is fairly typical of these sorta games. It is free to play, however players can pay to get extra abilities and items. Usually, a game develops a core group of people who do enjoy it, and they're willing to pay a few quid a month (or more, on occasion). Since our cost per player is pretty miniscule, that works out pretty well. Of course, we also do advertisment (which only shows up after a few days, to avoid scaring new users away), but that tends to do terribly in such games.

Btw, this has been incredibly useful, and we're busy reworking issues pointed out here (new users' experience, for example.)

This has been removed. Thanks, guys. :)

Thanks. Most of your points are very much valid, and this sort of frank opinion is very much appreciated. Naturally, we will be improving the site based on the feedback we get.

Haha, fixed, thanks.

BureauPoints was meant to evoke feelings of battling bureaucracy. I suspect that got lost somewhere along the way.

The site's hosted on Amazon US, and seems fast enough from here..

Some advanced game features require paying, and advertisement shows up eventually. It's a standard model for these sorta games.

The irony of proposing saving money by using an outrageously expensive* piece of technology seems to be lost on him.

* http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=cDZUk67FpB0

As you're near-sighted, ask your optometris to give you a "near vision" prescription. Such prescription would have lenses that are as weak as possible while still allowing you to see clearly at about arm's length.

Idea being that focusing at things close by requires keeping your ciliary muscle stressed for long periods of time (try to focus on your palm as close to your face as possible, and then keep it there for a few minutes to feel this). Focusing at things far away requires complete relaxation of the eye. If you wear near vision glasses, your screen will hopefully be far enough that your eye is relaxed when focusing on it.

I've been using weak glasses for work for the last 5 years or so, and find it makes a huge difference after a day of coding.