They're not arguing that probable-cause initiated arrests with a judge onsite is wrong. They're arguing that stopping and interrogating every individual on the street without probable cause is wrong, and more specifically, unconstitutional.

Do you think Bush's record was any better? JFK's? Roosevelt's? Obama is up there in experience with most presidents we've had.

Palin is not even in the same ballpark.

I figured out from another post that daily builds is in reference to large compiled projects. Somehow every project I've worked on has either been interpreted (eg. php: 'svn up' and visit any page, if configs are broken you find out immediately) or compiled projects small enough to rebuild every time you make a change to verify the change works.

It's actually really hard for me to imagine coding on a project so large I can't test my code as I work. Waiting even a day to get a build created and see the results of my work sounds frustrating! I can definitely see why daily builds would be a necessity on a project that takes 30 minutes+ to build.

You'd find out the next time a coder updates from the repository and builds, which (ideally) shouldn't take more than a day or two anyway.

Ahhhh, now I get it. With a build time that long I can definitely see the necessity for daily builds. I've never worked on a single compiled project anywhere near that size. Now I feel bad for whining that my last java project took 2 minutes to build ;)

Joel must have been talking about large compiled projects too, based on some of his other posts. I guess that item on the test deserves a mention that it only applies to large compiled software.

I don't think Joel was referring to deploying/launching daily builds, just building in a test environment. I guess this goes against the spirit of the Joel Test, but I assumed it went without saying that any build going to production would go through building, unit tests, and QA. I'm pretty sure Joel was talking mainly about compilation to check for syntax errors.

I would expect the same build/unit test/QA process for a build used to demo, and that the demo would go to a UAT or other stable environemnt (in the "doesn't change every day" sense, not the bug-free sense). There's no reason to stop coding and commits to demo a stable build of your product.

But...that was a lot of assumptions, like multiple testing environments, that probably don't exist at companies failing the Joel Test.

Daily builds have never made much sense to me. If someone breaks a build, the fix is easy - revert their commit and tell them they screwed up. If you have expensive (processing-wise) unit tests that you want to check with continuous integration, I can see value in that at least.

Other than that, Joel's list is quite solid. Those are the first things to fix at a company, and the things to jump ship over if the leadership refuses to address them.

Unless the language is open source, and then you can change the language and frameworks to meet your needs instead of rewriting in a new language for 1 feature. Or being forced to throw up your hands when you find what seems to be a language or framework bug, versus being able to dig into the source, confirm it, and submit a patch.

Not saying changing languages is never the right solution, but with open source there are more options. That is actually how Facebook is still using PHP.

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2356432130
http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/358

Careful - they don't always tell you they're required to login until afterwards.

Best to keep a copy of the string of gibberish encrypted on a private machine in case you need it. That's the best solution for all passwords anyway, despite OP's claim that using password managers to save strong passwords is a bad idea.

Your post mostly restates that you don't like the idea of "mandated" health insurance. But you continue to ignore GP's post. The feds fine the state by withholding money if the states don't have an drinking age of 21 too. There are an enormous number of these types of mandates that are enforced through taxing or withholding taxes. You can say it's a bullshit loophole that allows the fed to govern things the constitution was not intended for, and you're right. But the loophole is there, and if it gets struck down, the implications will be very complicated and interesting unless they find some incredibly narrow way to strike down the health care mandate that does not also strike down every other federal mandate enforced in this way.

Agreed that 5 seconds is enough to get most ad impressions off. But I think what Youtube is going for is more about "selling" you targeted advertising than shortening ads. The goal is to find which ads you like (sci fi movie trailers dont get skipped? great! heres more!) by letting you skip the ones you don't. End result is you either get shorter ads, or ads you're interested in. Either way everyone involved is happy.

It may also give valuable non-targeted feedback to advertisers about whether an ad campaign is successful or downright obnoxious. Who hasn't seen ads before that were so annoying it made them avoid the company for years? What if the company could see that feedback on day 1 and cancel that ad campaign, instead of plugging along for another year before dropping sales make them finally cancel it and try a new campaign?

I don't know about the OP, but I generally would prefer to pay a reasonable fee to watch a TV show ($0.50-$1.00) rather than watch ads.

My wife bought The Walking Dead for $18 on iTunes and we just realized this week that it's only *six* episodes. That's $3 an episode, which is completely ridiculous. You can buy entire 24-episode seasons of most shows for $20-$30 in retail stores, which sets the reasonable price of about $1/episode for a physically-distributed copy of the show.

Meanwhile other shows, in particular Showtime, HBO, and CBS (have they changed yet?) are completely unavailable online via legal means. They won't even let you pay $3/episode, let alone the more reasonable $1/episode. We usually wait and get them "free" on Netflix, but most people shrug and pirate away.

The networks should set shows at $.50 per half hour (or 24 minutes, whatever it comes out to) OR X minutes of commercials, take your pick on a show by show basis, end of story. That's the choice we're already being offered, just in a severely convoluted fashion by waiting for DVD releases or being forced to use iTunes vs. watching real-time on TV or Hulu with commercials.

Sorry, which greedy bastards are you blaming the mortgage scandal on exactly?

The greedy realtors who lied on mortgage forms about buyers' income?

The greedy home buyers who bought way beyond their means, or bought 2nd and 3rd houses with interest-only loans with the expectation to resell it in 6 months at a major profit?

The greedy builders who built entire neighborhoods on spec, creating far more product than the demand for houses could support?

Or were you just blaming the banks who approved the loans, because they're the ones who got bailed out of their mistake?

I'm not sure if it's spammers exactly, but Apple probably wanted people to see something to indicate who was adding them besides an email address.

WOW is an MMO where you spend a lot of time with people you only know from the internet. Real names don't even mean anything there between most friends. "Tom? Who the crap is that? Oh, you mean elwinlybronzebottom?"

Gamescenter, from what I can tell, is for you to play Scrabble with people you're already friends with. Does it even support playing with random players on the internet? Maybe some games do, but without voice or fast-typing chat, you're probably not going to be making many friends on the service.

They could avoid the whole issue by only showing your real name when you add someone by e-mail address, which you tend to give out to people you know IRL, and not using real names when friending by Apple/Gamecenter ID. If you're adding someone from a menu within a game, for instance, odds are you don't know the person. (If such alternate friends-adding options even exist, which they probably don't)

I think you've confused the article with MMOs. The article is NOT talking about MMOs like WOW, the article is talking about Farmville and the like.

WOW is a mix of the elements you laud from games like Starcraft and GTA and the "turn brain off" accomplishment reward from games like Farmville. The biggest draw to WOW isn't even the accomplishment-reward addiction, it's the social "hang out with friends" aspect.

Comparisons can be drawn between WOW and Farmville for sure, but don't conflate the article's discussion of barebones "click-reward-only" games like Farmville to games with actual gameplay, storyline, and socialization like WOW.

Just looked it up, and apparently it's a "prepared meals tax", so the tax may still apply to take-out. I'll try getting it "to go" next time anyway and see if it works. Thanks for the tip!