It's one thing to yell at the people who made this system via email. It's quite another to never allow them to ship it in the first place.
I don't think I've _ever_ seen a process that convoluted, and I've been using Linux OSes since _before_ the advent of dependency-resolvers like yum and apt (i.e, the bad old days of "RPM hell").
So I want a simple movie editor to clip 5secs off the beginning of a home movie - BUT to do this I have to sign up for an MS specific hotmail account, create a windows passport (I thought they had abandoned that?) get Windows messenger, windows photo viewer and be included in a whole bunch of MS specific social websites.
So I found a torrent of Movie maker 2.6 for XP - it works perfectly on Win7.
It comes across as the sort of email you would write while criticizing/mocking a competitors product that you were powerless to change.
There's no demand for improvement, or accountability for making that happen. No wondering if this small experience is indicative of other problems. He's just "disappointed".
The another example is Java development. Everyone who run Maven2 build process (say to build clojure-contrib) will be amazed by a tons of a strange and useless messages, repeated downloads of what seems the same files (but, different minor version numbers) to unknown location. That process will took something like 10 minutes on 3G connection, while you have absolutely no idea what's going on (OK, I can figure out that it is a process of a recursive downloading and building dependencies, and because people don't care about migration to the latest stable versions, it will download half of internet.)
This alone tells me what is really happening in a Java world better than all Sun's brainwashing altogether. ^_^
btw, sudo apt-get install maven2 downloaded another 70Mb of shit (in case JDK is already installed). 70Mb for a apt+make replacement? Compressed Linux kernel sources are less in size.
Two years later, nothing about XP had changed, and I moved to OS X, just in time to avoid Vista...
So, while the letter is, itself, excellent, I'm not sure how much it did to help out Windows in the long run. (Maybe Windows 7 represents a change.)
I have to endure some amount of XP and 7 on a regular basis, so I have some understanding on how to work with them (well, mostly how to set up or correct things).
Those that say that Windows 7 is so much better.. well, in some sense. I admittedly has better optics. And it crashes less.
Administrative tasks got more tiresome though, compared to XP you have to wade through more windows to get to a specific configuration point. That gets very irksome if you want to perform some configuration for a dozen PC's. (Enough to make it very repetitive, too little that automation would make much sense, especially considering the abysmal automation tools Windows comes with coughshellcough). Other critical points are software management systems (lack of) and general disability in the usability sector.
Granted, learning to cope with a Linux system is somewhat more challenging, but once you are into it, it's really much less bother to do things, no matter the scale.
Microsoft still has a long way to go just to reach the current status. Maybe they will manage, as they seem to be very apt at keeping the stranglehold on the market.
And I will keep avoiding them as much as I can.
The second time I read it I actually laughed.
They can have their 3d. Just please, please don't make the 2d experience worse in order to shoehorn this nonsense into what should just be passive wall monitors. If there must be 3d on most tvs, please provide an easy way to turn it off.
-Lack of 3D content
-Lack of 3D TV standards - which causes the previous problem.
-Increased cost
-Decreased 2D quality
-Extra equipment required for some implementations
I'll look at 3D TV when it is similar to a Star Wars 3D hologram. I don't think I'm alone. No one wants to pay extra for glasses and watch a faux 3D illusion.
And the fact is 90% of television doesn't have visuals that are going to benefit from that. The remaining 10%, few people will miss it when it's gone. There just isn't a huge value proposition for most styles of video, and there's not a clear case that 3D video is a superior art form to 2D, it just costs more and takes more production time.
I'm skeptical just like this reporter, but at the same time, I would really like to see 3D more widely available.
As it stands now, 3D tv is going to be a flash in the pan. Advancements in tech is about making things easier, not more difficult/annoying to use.
Having to wear ($200) glasses to watch tv takes all the ease out of it, and as silencio mentioned, is pointless when watching a movie/game with friends.
Edit:
1) It's a networking library; no admin tools or other soft handle-bars, like user-space utilities.
2) It uses a binary protocol. Good luck debugging that with syslog.
It's a very powerful tool in the hands of a capable systems architect, who actually needs it. For the rest, it's pretty much like an adult male tiger; excellent to watch in its natural habitat from a safe distance, terrible pet idea for you and your fiancee (and not because you live in a studio apartment.)
There's some built-in support for common topologies (client/server, publish/subscribe, pipeline), and if you're willing to use the undocumented XREQ/XREP socket types, you can build more exotic topologies.
Most of the value in ZeroMQ is the actual C++ implementation, so other languages generally just wrap the C++ code. The zeromq API is tiny.
I haven't used it on a big production project yet, but I hope to do that soon.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but wouldn't this make ZeroMQ a Modern & Fast abstraction of a Networking Stack?
I'm curious on as to what other developers think of these contests. Yesterday, I got several emails and saw several tweets suggesting that I vote for a local startup. They pulled in a lot of votes and seemed to be leading at one point.
I'm assuming that several other contestants also benefited from similar voting campaigns.
I didn't look at any of the entries and I generally wouldn't take part in these contests. However, I'm curious to know whether other HNers look at these things as (a) sham contests, or as (b) real contests where the best product wins or as (c) contests that are a legitimate test of marketing skills or (d) just a harmless fun activity
Since I never miss an opportunity for a plug and it basically serves as the most meaningful credential in this business, my company has one serious product in the store: http://ballisticpigeon.com/folio. I've been doing iOS development since the day the SDK was released (personal projects while I finished up graduate school then proof-of-concept contract work for a startup).
For now I'm hoping to finance my little entrepreneurial endeavor some interestingly hourly projects.
Thanks
http://www.goodiff.org/changeset/587/google/www.google.com/p...
Edit: Indeed after reading the plain version the words seem, and apparently above are not really necessary. The change might not be entirely significant, but it might in many ways be compared to the principle that the government can do only what is authorised to under the law while citizens can do anything that is not prohibited by the law.
Whether it is significant that google has chosen to move from the former to the later I am not certain. They surely have the right to, they are not a government, but it is a significant change, rather than just trimming.
Thus, unlike previously, they do not need to adhere to their privacy policy. They might therefore be free to, well I do not know, we will find out soon.
Right. The difference lies in the way that trust is achieved. The "I trust X because Y trusts X" transitivity is very easy to jump on, but often disastrous; just ask Bernie Madoff's investors. If you read in the newspaper that "X is one of the foremost scientists in his field", it is also dangerous to rely on just this pronouncement, and blindly trust X's assertions.
The other way for the layperson to judge specialists is to learn enough about their field in order to evaluate their predictions. Granted, this involves much, much more effort than lazily following the reputation talk. But it also makes it much safer to trust the people involved, and to maybe stop trusting them if they go astray at some point.
To bring forth examples, evolution is quite easy to verify after reading a bit of biology. For example, DNA analysis comes in a full century after the "Origin of Species" and shows us how amazingly related all living things are, deep within; thus giving precise shapes to the "trees of life" that Darwin first sketched in his notebooks. And there are many, many other predictions of the theory of evolution that can be easily checked by the unprejudiced amateur. You'll rarely find articles that say "Dawkins believes in evolution, and Dawkins is a great scientist, therefore evolution is true".
On the other hand, things like climate science seem (to me at least) to rely much more on the argument from authority for gaining lay support. If some prominent climate scientist had predicted in the 90's that "average temperature in the 2000-2010 decade, as indicated by methodology X, will be 1.4 plus or minus 0.1 degrees Celsius warmer than in the 1990s", I would have a much easier time trusting his or her claims now. But things seem to be moving in the opposite direction with this field, e.g. as witnessed by the very replacement of "global warming" (somewhat verifiable) with "climate change" (unfalsifiable), and the popular attribution of all kinds of meteorological phenomena to this cause, in the same non-comprehending way that, not so long ago, they were ascribed to the god of thunder.
Here's a taster, from his Guardian column: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/feb/03/badscience.ukn...
The bridging has to be done by cultural evolution, so that the prejudices that form by 18 are not as counter-science as they are now, but even so, they cannot be adapted to future science when it's not yet in existence.
So we need a culture based on constant learning and adapting our views to evidence. Based on the amount of cognitive bias we have built-in, the 'uncoolness' of rationality, and the speed of scientific progress, I'm not hopeful save for deep de-biasing interventions on our hardware.
Let's see what 'anti-' movement that's going to raise.
The first is, of course, the science one. The other being our idiotic libel laws.
From this it's clear he's very switched on too (well, that was probably not in doubt but still). This, in particular, is an important point we face:
''Scientists aren’t necessarily good communicators, because they aren’t trained to be good communicators. A researcher could be doing really important work on global warming, and then somebody writes a column in a national newspaper that completely undermines what they’re saying.''
"That said, they can also find support for their ideas in the mainstream media—because when the mainstream media gives a so-called balanced view, it’s often misleading. The media thinks that because one side says climate change is real and dangerous, the other view is that it’s not real and not dangerous. That doesn’t reflect the fact that something like 98 percent of climate scientists agree that global warming is real and dangerous. And this happens with everything from genetically modified foods to evolution."
It is not just in science. It is in everything, including politics. The (modern) concept of the unbiased view has turned into a "ask both sides of the argument". Which can work when (say) you are in an election campaign. But take a scientist and a charismatic charlatan: the scientist tries to give the right view (with all the ifs and buts) and the charlatan gives a appealing and simple to understand story... though completely wrong. I don't blame the reader/viewer for not being persuaded by the scientist.
The idea that, for example, a group of us could join forces and argue that the oil spill is really a good thing for the biology of the mexican gulf, and we would be given equal time with the guy who's done 10 years of study in it... that does not help the viewer.
The journalist seem to have forgotten their role of gatekeepers, and fact checking. They seem to be just there repeating verbatim what he or she says: sure, it makes their job easier, but it really doesn't help their readership.
However, I have a problem with laymen needing to sit down and accept whatever scientists say for the simple fact that science is not some pristine incorruptible institution dedicated only to truth. Scientists are PEOPLE and are subject to the same political issues, careerism, bias to not make funders angry, etc. that everyone else is.
Science is subject to a lot of influence from the people holding the purse strings, which are often industry. Take the recent story that came out of Harvard Medical School about how pharma has been influencing the ways that drugs are being prescribed: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-co... - should we non-scientists not question scientists, physicians, and other "authorities" when this type of thing is happening?
It is a GOOD thing when people question what scientists say. What is needed are better ways for scientists and non-scientists to engage in dialogue, and more often. Believe it ot not there might be a few things scientists can learn from the non-scientists.
I think that a lot of this gets discussed by regular people on broadcast channels (talk radio, cable news) that are really terrible mediums for communicating complex ideas. It would be nice if TV and radio weren't so cluttered with advertising, which makes it almost impossible to do more than make short statements. The exceptions that are good for communiating ideas through broadcast (such as Michio Kaku's radio show) prove the rule by being commercial-free.
Another note, scientists have to understand how political discourse and beliefs work. The domain is NOT based on rational inquiry and peer review. There is no "correct answer" as to whether Social Security should be privatized or if the US should withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. The work of George Lakoff is a must-read on this topic; we form much of our political beliefs based on non-rational moral frameworks that stem from our childhood and our ideas about the family (strict father vs. nurturant parent morality), and mapping our ideas about how the family should work onto the "nation as family" morality.
I do agree that the "media" and "common sense" assumptions give more legitimacy to seemingly crazy ideas or counter-ideas. But simply dismissing all opposing viewpoints because they don't fit your scientific model is insane.
I think Simon needs a little more years under his belt (wisdom) and maybe another PhD in history to make him aware of this historically painful fact.
Also, he's a great example of why average people dislike academics. Just being smarter is not enough to convince people. You actually need to listen to them, and learn to communicate with them in order for them to trust you. And isn't that what Simon wants?
"Some might also wonder why a shortage of oil should automatically trigger a collapse. It turns out that, in an industrialized economy, a drop in oil consumption precipitates a proportional drop in overall economic activity. Oil is the feedstock used to make the vast majority of transportation fuels -- which are used to move products and deliver services throughout the economy. In the US in particular, there is a very strong correlation between GDP and motor vehicle miles traveled. Thus, the US economy can be said to run on oil, in a rather direct and immediate way: less oil implies a smaller economy. At what point does the economy shrink so much that it can no longer meet its own maintenance requirements? In order to continue functioning, all sorts of infrastructure, plant and equipment must be maintained and replaced in a timely manner, or it stops functioning. Once that point is reached, economic activity becomes constrained not just by the availability of transportation fuels, but also by the availability of serviceable equipment. At some point the economy shrinks so much as to invalidate the financial assumptions on which it is based, making it impossible to continue importing oil on credit. Once that point is reached, the amount of transportation fuels available is no longer limited just by the availability of oil, but also constrained by the inability to finance oil imports."
This is the part which attempts to convince the reader that a simple recession/stagnation cannot occur.
Unfortunately, it vastly underestimates our resourcefulness and runs on the fallacy of the USA only ever being capable of transportation with petroleum, or of a collapse so swift and sudden(from full consumption to zero in a matter of months; an unlikely event, between price hikes, austerity measures, the application of strategic reserves, opening of existing private stocks, etc.) that no response can be made. If it ever becomes too costly to run petroleum-based freighters, we can still revive coal and sail technology. That alone will ensure the survival of ocean-bound transportation(and hence a lot of import-export dependencies). Overland, goods in the USA are transported through the most cost-effective freight system in the world; trucks are "last mile" haulers in most situations. Our existing rail and electric systems can revert to coal for some time to come, although nobody likes the ecological costs involved in coal. And this even leaves open the possibility of refrigerated transit, just not necessarily at present-day schedules.
So the remaining energy problems, as I see them, are in petro-agriculture dependency and infrastructure(primarily in housing stock). Difficult? Yes. Impossible? No. People will die as a result of pretty much any peak oil scenario. A full collapse, though, requires both an overnight cratering of production, and an awful lot of faith in people to do exactly the wrong things.
Choice 2: Thorium reactors + electric vehicles.
That's about it.
BTW, The "Peak Oil Community" are 5% oil and gas industry people, and 5% energy policy wonk want-to-bes.
The rest are radical environmentalists eagerly anticipating the ecological-Malthusian-doom rapture (see dieoff.org, etc) and are not interested in practical solutions and are just sitting in front of their computers waiting to be raptured up into their ecological-hand-tools-subsistence-agriculture wonderland.
For instance, the issue of Iraq and Iran, both very undeveloped in terms of wells drilled and the modernity of the infrastructure that runs those wells.
Iraq, for all its recent investment, remains underdeveloped, and Iran has not had access to newer oil tech since 1979.
Further, there is the question of whether we are suffering from an "oil coming out of the ground" problem or "refine the crude oil into something we can actually use" problem.
The bottleneck at this point appears (from my admittedly limited, amateur research) to actually be in total refining capacity.
It seems like there should be some solution that lets me use basic auth for those little scripts. Maybe tell Twitter IP's from which I want to be able to use basic auth? It would be a bit of a pain since most people have dynamic IP's, but it would be better than nothing, and it would at least make it simple to run basic auth scripts on my VPS (which obviously has a static IP).
If they had just upgraded to OAuth 2.0 like Facebook recently launched, I'd be happy.
Facebook's OAuth can be done in like 10-20 lines of code. Twitter's takes like 100 (in PHP+Curl).
(essentially OAuth 2.0 just relies on https SSL instead of directly encrypting tokens via code before they are sent)
Rather than switching to OAuth, I'm tempted to just write a mechanize script to make posts using the web interface. Has anybody tried this approach?
Is there an actual reason to use xAuth over OAuth aside from having to put users through the trouble of re-authenticating? You have to have special permission from Twitter to use xAuth but who knows how easily they hand it out.
Otherwise, no, I don't see it. I know that I'm less inclined to write a little hack to work with Twitter without basic auth.
xAuth seems like it'd work, but, as stated in the article, that involves me going through some hoops to get back to this level of security. woo.
Sure, you might just be able to create a new user and key if you get banned but this still gives them one more tool and a better picture of who is sending what over their network.
In that case you would use Out-of-band/PIN Code Authentication. See http://dev.twitter.com/pages/auth_overview.
For Pythonistas, my little Twitter API script uses tweepy.py. Thanks to http://jmillerinc.com/2010/05/31/twitter-from-the-command-li... for the steps involved. As an exercise, you could scrape the required PIN with beautifulSoup or similar code to eliminate one step.
The migration to OAuth 2 will be interesting though. All the existing clients will have the right kind of structure to plug in drop in a replacement flow, but I bet there will still be a bunch of complaints. "OMG I don't want to use HTTPS! This is so hard! Who cares that I can use curl to debug now, I want programming to be drag and drop." Haters gonna hate.
Generally speaking though, this is a great move by Twitter in my opinion. I'm always a bit concerned when a 3rd party website asks for a username and password. In some cases I no longer provide credentials when I know a certain service provides oauth.
It might not be as easy for non-web based applications, but I'm sure things will improve in the long run.
[1]: How the press likes to portray YC: get unknown kids, accelerate them towards terminal funding velocity, stir for three years, and bam instant millionaires.
"Twitter has 145m users in the same way @MikeTyson has $400m in career earnings."
http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/overnight-success-t...
I think this is one of the most important pieces of advice ever. Not many people are solo savants - almost everyone who is successful (in business, academia, life) is surrounded by other competent, like-minded people.
We're all standing on the shoulders of giants here, and the romantic meme of the lone-wolf superstar maverick needs to be put away.
Love this.
Back to hardwork.com
* Never give up (eg: play SC for 10 years)
* Build a huge following around his daily series
* And my god he is so evangelical about what he loves, he exudes love for the game - http://blip.tv/file/3486428
/tenuous.
So does Trump, if you want to do a showmatch vs a progamer. He is ranked 159 or so in the world right now....and lives near Cupertino I think
What is novice? Silver league and below?
This will be after the Terran nerf patch comes out, so there are no guarantees on how good I will be.
I feel like there's a clear line where 'closed' is bad for everyone, and though I'm not sure if the SF startup community has crossed it, StarCraft II clearly has. It sends a bad message, as I see it.
The game is being finished by Gearbox Software and will be published by Take-Two Interactive, publisher of the Grand Theft Auto series.
The game is currently expected to ship in 2011, although given its history, Pitchford [CEO of Gearbox Software] is understandably reluctant to be more specific. "We’re in the polishing phase now. This is a game where we can not make a promise we can not fulfill," he says. "We need to get past the shock and awe and then we can go to all the retailers and first parties and work out a launch plan."
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/09/03/controversial-long...
----
Edit: And some more from Kotaku. Here is a video of people actually playing it at PAX:
http://kotaku.com/5629655/your-first-look-at-duke-nukem-fore...
Few screenshots:
http://kotaku.com/5629778/the-duke-nukem-forever-pax-demo-a-...
First impressions:
http://kotaku.com/5629782/duke-nukem-forever-impressions-two...
That's really an interesting puzzle. What do you do when graphics outstrips your content?
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation...
I loved Duke, he was a hero of mine. Now, because of fucktardRealms his franchise has died, he's now associated with the most successful money-hole ever invented and it's going to have to be a complete reboot to even hit relevancy now.
Seriously kill Forever and start a new game called 'The End' and release it in 2012. (Edit: I'm serious, do a parody alien-Mayan end of the world, cash in on the popular hype, sell it to a new expanded market and then do Forever)
We all want it to be coming, that's the point. :)
It seems like a standard FPS with some cheeseball bravado, sexism, and sex wrapped around the mechanics. Also, I can't imagine why anyone would think the same people could make a modern game, which is 1000x more complex and expensive to produce than the games of old, with the same success that they made the old, relatively simple one.
So what's the major excitement here? Humor? Pure nostalgia for the days when the cheeseball stuff was really satisfying?
For comparison I found Muse had a stream on Ping so I checked it compared to their Twitter account. Ping's stream for them was sanitized and small. It was not personal and I assume it didn't tell me anything other than what the label wanted me to know.
With full access to my very large library including many albums purchased in ITMS, they suggested a series of artists I have no interest in.
Activity is only measured by what you purchase or review in the ITMS, not on what I actually do in iTunes. They have an opportunity to steal everyones lunch with Ping. Mirroring last.fm functionality with scrobbling and then presenting that info in the profile is a no-brainer.
When looking at my profile, I noticed that the two things it pointed as were two reviews I made in iTunes from years ago. Fresh content is king.
The interface is terrible. Navigating around Ping is a mess.
Granted this is a 1.0, but they have a lot of work to do if they want it to get serious traction and they need to loosen the content reigns a bit. Waiting for my profile pic to be approved is silly.
This is not about music fans. This is a controlled environment to sell more music.
Maybe it's releasing a product without a comprehensive music database being in place. Maybe it's the inability to link to, you know, their OWN PRODUCT a la last.fm and, well, anything.
But really, whoever was in charge of this obviously wasn't being watched closely enough - this is a software foul-up of pretty large proportions.
Plus I like the implication that they don't trust any other form of avatar/username site (Gravatar, etc) and instead you have to take your picture with your cute widdle iCameraAsApprovedByApple and then wait for it to be "approved."
Which makes me feel immensely sorry for anyone whose job encompasses looking to see if pictures violate a ToS agreement, even if it is 10 minutes a day, and even if it is "pre-filtered" by some type of algorithm (surely, please for the love of all things surely).
Overall, depressing.
I quickly went back to my library, right clicked on a song and searched for some Post button. Unfortunately, as I was soon able to find out, you can only do that inside the ITMS. Of course, some of the songs I have on my library are not in the ITMS, but they could still figure out an automatic way of matching the artist and track name, ask me if one of the matched songs is the one I'm talking about and post it.
As a result, Ping, instead of being that brilliant last.fm killer idea we all envisioned when we heard about it of bringing a music social network to the actual music player people use, is just a webpage poorly stamped to my music player, with absolutely no integration with my library.
Even Last.fm, a 3rd party social network has more integration with my library then a social network inside my music player. If this makes sense...
P.S.: what I said about Posting is equally applicable for Liking a song. You can't do that in your library and there is also no relation between your 5-star rated songs and the music you actually like according to ping.
For posterity, I'd like to record the following message:
These comments were all made when ping sucked. I'm sure that, similarly to the iPod launch, Apple will fix Ping and use it to destroy facebook. 10 years from now, all of these comments will look foolish.
Clearly Apple has gotten so good at making winning products they need a fresh and new challenge. They've set the bar very high for themselves.
(is that an ad? or some kind of 'social feature'?? Something incredibly ironic about this article if the latter)
Having said that, Ping seems to be a targeted product, aimed at a particular audience. It is a sales tool for music. If you fit the demographic it will probably work pretty well. My guess is that computer geeks (include me) are not the demographic Steve is aiming for. If you teenager, and listen to whatever 90% of teenagers listen to these days, then it might work quite well for you.
The product's success will not depend on how well people like the typical Hacker News reader like it...
Is this the best critique of Ping HN could find, a poorly written, rage-infused, explitive-riddled rant fest that one would expect to be found on digg?
Ping came out 2 bloody days ago! Who would expect that every niche artist would be on this thing not even 48 hours in? I'm very impressed with the mix they got on board pre-launch. Give it a couple of days.
By the way, how many users did Myspace, FB, or Twitter have 2 days in? Let's use our heads here, folks.
On the wish side: kill suggested follows, allow comments / like audiobooks, follow but do not display in profile artist (guilty pleasure).
I'd say it's extremely premature to say it will fail, though. But I guess tech pundits love to jump to conclusions based on opening day impressions.
I heard about it a couple of days ago, but never really gave it much thought because, honestly, I don't really even know what it is for. Streaming music? Better than grooveshark? Not likely if its run by Apple.
After seeing this article (and the one directly below it as of right now), I decided I should check it out.
Hmmm...do I go to ping.com (no, because I'm pretty sure that ping golf clubs aren't going to sell their domain), or apple.com/ping? No, that says "the page you're looking for cannot be found".
Okay, then, duckduckgo it is! Hmm...apple.com/itunes/ping, that is a lot to type...stupid move, apple, whatever.
click
Annnndddd...nothing? I have to launch iTunes to even see what this is?
iTunes, right, the software that won't let me play half of my audio files because Apple refuses to allow flac?
So I have to get out my laptop, open it, launch itunes, then figure out how to get to ping?
The barrier to entry, at least for me, is way to high.
Lately it seems like this discussion group has become increasingly anti-Apple. It didn't use to be this way, originally it was far more neutral. I wonder what's changed?
I assume last.fm's scrobbler works entirely from the unencrypted itunes file which only gives play count.
Looks like ping is another home run.
[1]With all apologies to Rob Malda: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257
I've paid off almost all of my debt and she will take care of hers once she graduates. Even if we both had 100k+ in debt, it wouldn't make a huge difference to our standard of living. We'd simply be paying off debt instead of adding to our savings.
Having hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt is fine. It's a curse of the middle class, at one point or another--a mortgage if not student loans. You're supposed to realize what you're doing when you borrow that kind of money, though. Running up hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt without fully recognizing what you're doing seems irresponsible. You're mentally evading your responsibilities to others.
I can't even comprehend the mindset involved in that. How can you spend years paying for anything (even a car!) without even once trying to keep track of where you stand in terms of paying it off?
Those who I have been with (counting 2 now) I would have moved the world for. I only left the first one because I didn't think she even cared I was there (and her actions didnt show it).
If their marriage was a convenient way to get tax benefits and other marriage related tax burden reductions, so be it. Enter as a business arrangement, which is what he seemed to have done without understanding liabilities.
Makes a good point about the potential pointlessness (and lack of financial feasibility) of higher education. Makes me question getting an MBA.
So how do you go about finding the global maximum? Using A/B testing you could create some variations that are 'wild' to hope to get lucky but it is not very efficient. What else can you do?
- I have to subtract 23 minutes (or add 37 minutes depending on daylight savings time) from the clock in my car because I lost the manual. What ever happened to a dial with 2 hands?
- I have to stand beside the microwave and open the door when the popcorn stops popping because I have no idea how to get good popcorn any other way.
- I never put anything in the dishwasher because I have no idea whether it's clean or dirty. How hard would it be to put a large green/yellow/red light on the front panel? (I am not the main user.)
- Why does almost every web page or Windows screen have buttons that do totally different functions right next to each other in the same color? (Yesterday, I meant to click on my only unread email and accidently sorted by Subject Name instead. It took me 5 minutes to realize what I had done.
- I gave up on our 4 TV remotes (124 total buttons) long ago. If it's on Channel 6, I'll watch it without sound.
- What do those other 2 buttons on the garage door opener do? I hit them so often, some days I wonder if I'll hear dogs barking.
- Need ice or water from the refrigerator door? Make sure you're in the right "mode" first. Why not just have 2 openings?
- Cell phone is ringing. Where is it?!?!? Why can't I just answer the land line? It's always in the same place.
- Stereo in living room is unplugged until we need it. I don't know how to stop the constant light show on the front panel.
Just when was it that things got so complicated that they created more problems than they solved?
From the Zen of Python:
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Flattening an interface helps the learning curve. If you need to set the time on your microwave, bet on the "time" button. On the other hand, I still need to ask my girlfriend how to set her iPod to "shuffle," or shut it off, or reset it when it freezes.
For instance, the washing machine that needs two buttons but has 20. Two buttons on a washing machine, if designed well, is a great marketing opportunity. BUT you would have to design it with a way to SHOW the user all of the things that the machine is actually doing, like how the prius shows you what it's doing. Give it a sleek, standout design, and you've got a high-end, high-dollar washing machine.
Thing is, that means someone has to step outside the box and do something different than their competitors. Slapping lots of 'features' on a machine is cheap and gives the sales guys lots of fodder for B.S., no extra training required.
Look at Apple's products, look at the Toyota Prius. Complex machines that simplify the tasks they do. And they're selling very well.
Ultimately, design and marketing have to make simple mean more, not less, to middle America. And someday, probably soon, when every washing machine has 20 knobs and I need to push 10 buttons to toast a piece of bread, simplicity will be the new selling point.
However, consumer products aside there are some cases where a complex, but not complicated, solution is better than the simple solution. For example, city planners have this eternal tendency to build flyovers whenever and wherever they can, but the flyovers themselves can't handle the increasing loads after a certain period of time. So, then what?
A more complex, but uncomplicated solution would be to make the traffic lights respond dynamically at a city wide scale with traffic. If you can figure out the volume of cars on a given stretch of road vs. other roads you can then use a routing algorithm to predict the best timing and path to guide the cars. It's more complex than the flyover, but it's cheaper and the leftover money can be then put into making better mass transportation in order to cut down car growth.
Further, you can figure out the volume of traffic by using accelerometers embedded in the road. Any vibration propagating through a solid medium has certain characteristics, which can be accurately predicted by studying solid acoustics. Hence, if you have an array of sensors (they are cheap) you can track the vibrations down to their respective sources. In this scenario accuracy is not an issue, a roundabout number should be good enough.
Powering the sensors isn't much of an issue either and we can put wire them to micro-controllers that crunch some of the data and sends it higher up the chain.
So, at the end we have an entire city that behaves and responds like an organism to the traffic flowing in its veins. It will be just beautiful.
The irony is that its inherent complexity ensures that people won't buy it. After all, who would want to trust solid math?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption
Your new toaster might have too many buttons and displays for you to use effectively, but it will surely impress the heck out of the next visitor. In fact, it's arguable that conspicuous consumption is the _only_ reason why you'd buy a $250 toaster with a dozen buttons instead of of a $20 toaster with a knob.
For example, my parents bought all the gadgets and gizmos a kid could ever want, and I though growing up with them and pressing and getting myself out of awkward situations (like trying to figure out what "change language" would be in mandarin after changing the languate on the DVD player just to see what would happen) I would consider something like a Sky box, a pre-amp or a DVD player simple no matter what the interface (tactile and digital) looked like a simple tool to use.
My parents, who bought all these things and used them a little are consistently lost whenever they have to replace their digital radio, or DVD player. All the functions are the same, but the experience is different, and for them that means everything is different and unknown. Their understanding of simple is from way before we even had our fist microwave.
Simplicity is not a myth, it's just not a constant. This is pretty much addressed, but not argued, explicitly in the article: the measure if simple you use for your product must be appropriate to your target demographic and not the definition of the engineering team or a think-tank.
It is possible for simple to not be simple.
If I want to heat something up for thirty seconds, I have to wade through four menus and sub-menus:
Express cook (ha ha)->
30 seconds->
OK->
Start
People who designed consumer microwaves have obviously never used one.
I have NEVER cooked anything in the microwave that should have involved more than a single button press. If the cooking is going to take fewer than 30 seconds, I'm not going to need a timer; it's not like I'm going to go walk the dog with the rest of my time.
I never want to type in an amount of time and then have the microwave not begin cooking until I hit a Start button. I always want full power. I don't want to adjust the fan speed. Nobody has tried to cook actual meals in the microwave since 1985 so I don't need a chicken-pot-pie setting. I don't want the keys to beep loudly when I press them and I don't want the microwave to beep loudly when it's done because I don't want the kids to wake up.
I'd pay more for the lack of "features."
i'ma geek I like complex programmable stuff. But this is still BS. I buy the $19.99 toaster oven cause after a year or two they're all nasty inside and It's nice to chuck it an buy new one. $20/yr is worth it to have toasty things. $250 is not.
If I made $200k I'd proly buy the $250 toaster and never use it cause I ate out all the time.
I recently was absolutely shocked shopping for vacuums. they went from $60 to over $500. WTF! The $200+ ones were filled with retarded, do nothing "features". I went to thrift store and bought a $30 one.
My points are 2
1) purchasing decisions have many more factors than simplity or complex.
2) the biggest factor is manipulating the buyers psychology, simple/complex is a symptom of that. Apple has made it a cool/hip lifestyle choice to own "sealed", low-featured, slick and overpriced electronics. Complex == status for Koreans. Do nothing technical sounding features == I don't know what? but something to convince people to pay $500 for $200 vacuum. Monster Cables.
Making complex things was actually expensive to do, so a microwave with lots of functions cost more than one with a single button that said "heat up my food". This made it a bit of a status symbol. It was also the start of everything becoming digital, so it was cool for everything to have lots of buttons and a fancy readout.
Now we have several TVs, all with several boxes, incorporating our audio system, and connected to several services. We have smartphones, computers, tablets, printers and routers. Then there's all the software on and off the web to figure out, configure, and get working together. And you have to deal with all that at work, too. It's tough just to stay afloat.
So, the last thing you want is a digital toaster. They can make it look as complex as they want, but it won't make it look any more expensive. Today something looks expensive if it is simple, heavy, and looks like it was handcrafted by a German man. People still lapse into 1980s thinking and make the association that complicated means better, but that will wear off.
I'm not saying that extra features aren't sometimes important, but features are so easy to add to things today. You just have to type a few lines of code. Making someting look complex is easy and inexpensive. Making something complex look simple takes much for time, effort, money, and talent. Increasingly, people will pay for that.
They went from being a computer company struggling to survive to one of the world's largest and most profitable consumer electronics companies based on an obsession with simplicity and elegance.
Simplicity is hard, but get it right and the world will beat a path to your door.
We've also been trained to want a manual override switch. When I think of simplicity in UI, I think of Apple. I remember when Apple stopped putting eject buttons on their Mac disk drives. A also remember constantly having to find a paper clip when the machine refused to eject the disc(often).
Secondly, there are always special cases where you need some extra control. It's hard to believe that the manufacturers software has accounted for everything. When I find a "bug" it's very frustrating to not be able to manually override the behavior.
Another case for complexity is if some sensor breaks, the appliance becomes useless. I remember shopping for a car in the early 90s (with my parents), and wanting manual windows because everyone I knew with electric windows had broken motors with windows that didn't work anymore. The situation is drastically improved now, but then, manual ruled. Sooner or later your "automatic" appliance won't work the way it did when it was first purchased. Having manual controls should extend the life of the appliance.
He also mentions users' "favorite features" (it's well known that we don't like having to change our behaviour, even for the better); and "“critical” features" (sometimes they aren't actually necessary; and sometimes, as Joel says, "everyone uses a different 20%" - Linus has also said this). An example of the latter, and as people have said here, is when really do need to customize a default behaviour.
Love Joel's linked comment on bootstrapping:
So you sell "simple" as if it were this wonderful thing, when, coincidentally, it's the only thing you have the resources to produce. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/09.html
Complexity per-se has nothing to do with it, (over) complex problems fail just as fast as overly simplified products.
The trick is to match what your application is offering to the user in such a way that the context determines what face the application puts on it's capabilities.
Mobile phones fail spectacularly in this respect, often used features are stacked 6 down in unnavigable menu trees, never used (but commercially interesting stuff for the carriers) sits near the top.
There are many examples like that.
But there are (fortunately) also examples to the contrary.
Highlight features to sell, but keep those features well-organized and intuitive to create a positive experience after the sale.
BS.
Some people prefer simplicity, some prefer complexity. I'm not sure where the median is, it might be on either side. Preference can be a function of many things, including culture.
You can make money from either. Just know your customer.
Also there is simplicity on the user's side and there is simplicity on the engineering side. Sometimes it implies incredibly complex and hard engineering work to enable simplicity on the user's side. Although UX is the king, I've realized that sometimes you have to make compromises even in UX to keep the underlying technology not extremely complex.
The MiFi that was just being raved about earlier today also only has an on/off button.
Perhaps those are exceptions, rather than the rule. What makes those exceptional, though?
I would say that Western people tend to define a successful product as something that's simple, functional, and easy to use.
In other cultures, the feature list defines whether a product is successful. The more the better.
Thus the pioneering products in any new segment are simple, however as time passes new "necessities" emerge, which means the product "must" be modified to fit those needs. This also assumes a well regulated market with rational buyers (no fanboi's).
Note that this does not means that Simplicity should always be favored or The simplest solution is usually the correct answer, even if there is a single legitimate need which a simple solution cannot address, then the solution must be made complex to address that need effectively.
Evolution of Personal Computer or any non monopoly product is a good example.
The real solution is to offer simple as a feature. Have a default mode which makes everything really easy, and a "complicated" mode which allows people to change everything.
By breaking things up into two usability modes, most people get the benefits of simplicity, while the ones that care get the benefit of control.
Now, whether you can convince these people that they also should pay more for their simple looking appliance, or even convince them that the simple looking one can actually do all that 'advanced stuff' as well, is another question. I would guess it depends on how sleek and high-quality you manage to make it look. There is a thin line between "looks simple because it probably is very cheap and basic" and "looks simple but also seems to be high quality and professional"
We can go from £1.50 for an espresso all the way up to £3.60 for something that may resemble a coffee but probably only costs a few pence more to produce!
Assume the weights are resting on a surface, the pulleys and rope are massless, the pulleys are frictionless, and the system is maintained in quasi-equilibrium as the rope is pulled (steady state & small accelerations). In this case, the tension T in the rope is constant everywhere. Now, take a horizontal section through the ropes. ("Cut" them and replace the missing portions of the rope with the tension.) Each weight is experiencing an upward force of 2T.
When 2T >= 20, or T = 10, weight A begins to rise. Once a hits a stop, T must be increased to just above 20 to get Weight B to rise. Similarly, T just above 30 causes C to rise after B stops.
The "trick" with these pulley problems is to section the problem through the cables and show the tension, T. Then you've just got free body problems, in this case subject to the floor constraint.
Oh, also, while the first weight is being lifted, the floor beneath weight B experiences 40 - 20 = 20 units of force, and the floor under C experiences 60 - 20 = 40 units of force. Once B is lifted, the floor under C experiences 60 - 40 = 20 units of force. (Presuming that the labels are weights, and not masses.)
If the rope really is weightless and the pulleys really are fictionless (and inertialess) then it doesn't matter how hard or fast you pull, the lighter weight will rise first. This is at odds with your intuition simply because you have no (or insufficient) experience with weightless and frictionless environments. This is one reason why space is so bloody dangerous, in addition to the dangers posed by, say, diving, where similarly to space, your equipment has to work perfectly or you die.
In the real world, pulling fast enough will make the closer weight rise first.
The truth lies somewhere in between.
If the man does nothing, the heaviest weight will fall and the lightest will rise. If it's frictionless and he starts pulling, the same thing will happen, only the lengths will lessen.
- Friction of the pulleys
- Mass of the pulleys
- Moment of inertia of the pulleys
- Mass of the rope
- Unit of mass of the weights
- Is there a surface that the weights are resting on?
- What's the local gravity like?
- Others
The 'meat' of the "article" is
webby# curl -O http://nodejs.org/dist/node-v0.2.0.tar.gz
webby# tar xvzf node-v0.2.0.tar.gz
webby# cd node-v0.2.0
webby# ./configure
webby# make
webby# make install
> "When my so-called phone rings, my first reaction is "Shit. What's wrong now?" ..."
This is so true. Partly because we've trained our contacts this way. I only ring people when it's 'important' (read: shit+fan) and tend to expect the same in return.
It's odd since a 30 second phone call can usually replace 10 minutes of back and forth over email (albeit without the paper-trail).
"That's the kind of question I ask the magic box."
For me this thing means knowledge. It's the oracle, the multitool, the utility belt, the mystic key.
I suggest we all call it "the box".
What about emergencies? A certain protocol exists for friends and family in double-ringing the phone which always gets me to pick up immediately.
Well, at least for a certain class of 'smartphone'
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/05/iphone-4...
I've always hated Apple like the pox, but I give them this - they made it fashionable to carry around a pocket computer.
However, I liked his observation about the recipient of every phone call being a "victim."
That's why it fun to read Scott's stuff. Right there in the middle of a 'serious' discussion on finding a new name for a phone he drops this little LOLbomb.
I think calling it a memex would be interesting as well...going way old school. ;-)
http://cs.condenastdigital.com/cs/wordpress/repomen/?p=2124
I've bugged her to write down her experience in some form, she traveled all over the country on a limited budget, and we pulled some pretty smooth tricks on the people chasing her (by the time one guy figured out I was a mole, none of the other hunters trusted him, and thought HE was the one leaking info to the runners), but she never got around to that.
Alex managed to elude people quite well, using me and one other friend as her sole contacts during the ordeal. I think we did a smashing job eluding everyone, and it was a really fascinating experience, even just from my position as the guy gathering and relaying intelligence and information. The other guy who beat the hunters was ex-Army, said we'd do well in the CIA, heh.
Anyhow, I guess what I'm really posting about is that even when you're forced to reveal aspects of your whereabouts online, it's not that hard to disappear. The hard part is not going crazy during the process. At first you're too paranoid, but if you get too comfortable, you'll start to give away clues to your past, and that will ultimately be your undoing. "Never look back" is so much harder than most people realize, especially in the long term.
I would love to believe that in the future, people are given more leeway for the way they behaved in their youth, given the way the internet never forgets. Everyone makes mistakes, but so many people are documenting each other now, things like that aren't forgotten the way they used to be.
The idea of completely shedding an old identity is pretty absurd, a short-term workaround at best.
I play Starcraft2 right now and am usually in the top 10 of my diamond league. In fact the company is almost completely stacked with video game players. The article here is probably not taking itself very seriously but it's definitely close to what I've done ( unconsciously ) and it works extremely well.
It sounds silly but the day to day work of a CEO isn't very different from playing a game of Starcraft.
Before starting a startup I used to compete in many gaming tournaments. Not sure if that helped me much in preparation for becoming a CEO but it definitely got me started on programming. My first programming project was to decode the network protocol of quakeworld and create a proxy server that could inject all sorts of useful information into the network stream. Cool stuff.
We need not limit ourselves to games, either. How many useful skills does one acquire in the process of becoming a quality musician, playing competitive sports, or raising a child?
I wouldn't advocate only hiring good StarCraft players, but I would advocate looking for people who are awesome at something.
I suspect that I might actually be able to play Starcraft without it taking over my life. Though I have so far been loath to test this theory.
- only hire white males
- under 25
- without much of s social life beyond other < 25 year old males
- but if your target market is under 25 males and you don't plan to deal with government laws that will screw you because of the the bigotry.
Then you're good.
- Good StarCraft Players Know How To Configure Their Video Card Settings, Making Them Savvy Enough To Deploy And Manage Business Servers.
- Good StarCraft Players Master A Small Predictable Walled Garden, Not The Vast Outside Ever-Changing World Of Business.
Seriously. Using that logic, you can make the argument that a porn star who has a high PPM (penetrations per minute) should be hired by startups. ;)
The thing I love about Starcrack is how dynamic each game can be. The three races are so different and unique, yet balanced. There are so many different ways a game can end; there is a counter to every counter. You have to manage economy. You have to manage army production. Technology upgrades, information reconnaissance, micro-harassment, army positioning. Your brain has to be on top of everything, and you have to make decisions quick.
Its like compressing your startup work-life into a 20 minute simulation. Its kind of crazy, I actually get a bit of adrenaline and nervousness from wanting to win so badly.
Would I ever mention anything about my gaming history on a job interview though? Unless I know the interviewer would be really into it, sadly, no.
Weirdly, actually having it doesn't seem to make a huge difference to me. The idea of something like a smartphone was pretty exciting when I read about it in the 1980s, and it was interesting to follow early PDA forays like the Newton. But now that they exist and work well, I haven't even gotten around to buying one yet; by the time reality caught up, it wasn't that exciting anymore.
No it's not. Everything else he mentioned is humans using their brilliance and innovation to work around a huge obstacle. To make something incredible happen. To make something that wasn't possible, possible.
Every one of those things is something that sci-fi geeks years ago and innovative thinkers centuries ago dreamed and salivated about. But a black president? The only reason it didn't happen before is due to negative attributes of humans. It didn't happen because we suddenly used our positive powers to make it happen - only because we stopped using our negative ones.
That's like comparing a child walking to school in Gaza or Iraq without getting shot or bombed (WHY SHOULD THEY BE IN THE FIRST PLACE, GUYS????? HELLO????) to achieving teleportation, the latter of which is something truly incredible and the former is just sad that we have this problem.
This is probably explained by the Change blindness phenomenon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_blindness
Maybe its because we're so focused on ourselves? I still have a regular brick-type cell phone. So its a lot of fun for me to play with an iPhone or iPad whenever I'm at the store, or when my friends let me play with theirs. I always get an urge to buy one - it could totally make my life better (especially mobile internet).
But if I buy it, I know the magic will go away. It's particular exceptional-ness will become an expectation, and even a frustration when it doesn't work correctly. And after a certain period, I'd likely refer to it as just another brick-type object, compared with whatever relatively exceptional technology is out then.
In all seriousness, it may be a trained assistance pet for the blind.