1) Need Siri to respond intelligently to time-based queries - "Show me nearby currently open hair salons"
2) Voice Translation in Siri - "English and Korean translation mode. You are so beautiful!"
3) Ability to replace default utilities - i.e. replace safari with Crome.
Huh??? The idea of grants being served by the "inteligencia in government" -- honestly, it sickens me. What is the inteligence level of a typical person in civil service relative to the typical startup employee or entrepreneur? Oh help me please... I've worked for civil service in the past, and I know the real story.
Honestly, we all know that the "Inteligencia" in government cannot fight out their way out of a paper bag. So, how does it serve the public good for these designers of waste, these perfect jewels of the moric, and even criminaly graphic behaviour, to decide that even one charity deserves funding in the interest of society?
If a tech non-profit cannot sustain itself by garnering public support through donations for it's work in the public interest... dude... it doesn't deserve to survive.
Perl is only as (un)readable as you make it; if you write readable Perl code, you won't have any problems reading and understanding it 6 months later.
But yeah, you can write unreadable Perl code - but then again, is there any language in which you can't?
I for one am certain I can write unreadable code in Perl better than any other language I know... I am "fully enabled" -- encouragingly so -- in the language for the illegible to the limit that such is inevitable.
This is is the message of what I am trying to get across, with -- granted -- much less eloquence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbqLO1TBnGo
That even "the goal" of a moral society is superior to the decadent bent and inevitable behaviour of socialism.
I have to add to this... I work on productizing cell phone chips. No government agency would work as hard as my org in producing a product (LTE) that is turning out to be so beneficial to so many people's lives. Nobody in government could have predicted the utility of being able to map where they needed to be interactively, or the tremendous utility of being able to query how to defibrilate their friend at the mall in the middle of a heart attack... let alone answer the question of the next evolution of Pikachu to their son.. from their phone, or from a "Siri" equivalent... Such "frivilous" innovation is actually discouraged by active government.
OK, granted the guy is green and full of himself... But perhaps a fresh perspective is not all that bad. We KNOW that a lot of the stuff we have worked on and inherited is absolute crap that is very difficult for average human beings to grasp. Here's a human being trying to come to grips with a wicked mass of old (and, granted, battle-tested) ideas.
You are also right that all of us tend to want to greet a problem by trying to bend it into our will so that no matter if the pin is trapezoidal, it will fit (darn it) into our circular world view. And this goes for the new guy as well... We are aware of it, but this new guy may not be aware of it. Explain to him htat he needs to learn to do this as well. Instead of strict adherance to a dogma, a set of programming patterns grows up around a problem space -- not the other way around. Try to help him see the problem and make sense of it first before he triest to tackle the crap with the "new hotness."
So... give they guy a challange. ell him the abovve, and also help him to understand that the code-base is NOT going to take on a revolutionary overhaul overnight. Tell him he can add his new ideas gradually if the new ideas do any of three things:
1) Reduce the LOC's in the program.
2) Measureably improve performance.
3) Measureably improve the code quality (via new introspection/tracing tools, unit testing or algorithmnic proof of correctness).
From a person that doesn't do email. Truly, truly incredible.
I know this will ruin my Karma, and... I have never used this language in a public forum in my life, but, it's warranted...
Not only "no," but "HELL NO!" you Hitlarian Fascist bitch.
I worked in field applications in my previous job -- I lived by my cell phone & I was all over the place always, and 100% connectivity was paramount for me... I would also often need to do conference calls while travelling the highway. I tried a couple of carriers, and then tried Verizon. A few things I could tell you about Verizon:
0) Incomparable coverage -- I almost always had coverage everywhere across the country.
1) Rarely dropped any call... only intermittently driving I-5 across Camp Penalton.
2) I worked many times in an RF SHIELDED building, and I got calls ringing through the shielding.
So, for me there was no comparison. It cost more, but my butt was on the line with my connectivity, and I had to have that service -- and I have the service to this day.
Recently though, I had to go to take my dog to a remote area above Temecula in California to shelter my Dog for a trip. I could get coverage (bars) there, but I could not connect a call through. The lady running the kennel said that ATT was the only provider that worked there... So... for remote areas, maybe ATT is catching up? I've heard stories that ATT coverage is not so great everywhere, but at least in this one place it was the only option.
KDE and Gnome obviously yes, but Unity is one of the top 3? Just because most recent Ubuntus foist this on users (and most feedback I've seen has been negative)...
OK, I'll bite... Yes, Unity is crap. BUT IT WAS LESS CRAP THAN Gnome3.0 and KDE4.0 WHEN IT FIRST CAME OUT -- and that's why i use it to this day. I am on Unity because it's not as clunky & restrictive as gnome3, and KDE was complete and "udder" stink under 4.0. But more than that, Ubuntu 6 mo. release cycles are awesome & I am hooked on that, and it's easier for me to stay on the path that they are actively developing for now. However, now that KDE4 is on the
I wanted to stay with a mainline Linux graphical environment that would grow & wouldn't break too badly with each release. So, I figured that I had 3 choices really for main-line Linux environments... Gnome 3, KDE 4 and Unity... and I was already on Ubuntu. Gnome 3 was/is not mature yet... I'd tried KDE4 and found it "wanting." And I'd tried Unity on a Netbook -- It was a bit slow, but usable and tweak-able with Compiz -- and hey, for Netbooks, right? -- they had to make it faster.
Well, I decided I liked the 6 month cycles & decided not to migrate to Debian or Fedora. I eventually bit the bullet & let Ubuntu upgrade my laptop to Unity, & "got used to it." I keep my eye on Gnome 3 but, PLEASE -- that's even more a joke. KDE 4 also still looks like a Windows knock-off & is still clunky. I'll stick with Unity for a while. At least I'm hopeful because it _has_ improved.
Given the options available and the directions KDE and GNOME are taking... I'm better off with Unity or rolling my own. YMMV, but I'll stick with Unity for now.
To write good code is a worthy challenge, and a source of civilized delight. -- stolen and paraphrased from William Safire