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Comment Re:Pandora's Problem is repetition (Score 5, Informative) 152

This is based on their algo which is based off of your likes and dislikes. Have you noticed that after you dislike a song, they tend to play a song you liked before? They want to keep you happy. They do tend to play your artist (if you made the station based on an artist) about every 3-5 songs. That is usually because you will tend to like that artist's music, and because that is the main focus of the station.

Additionally, if you want more range, you can add songs or artists to a certain station to better define it for you. That way, adding a techno tune to a hard rock station may bring you something more in the middle to better refine your desires for that station.

Also, if you are having issues, make new stations. I made some for workouts, some for the kids, etc, and refined them based on those specific feature sets. I haven't had any issues with it. But the best thing you can do is add a new style to a station and give it a wider range of filters (as there is only one or two main sets to start from based on the original artist or album, further refined by your likes).

Also, if you don't like a song, literally tell it you are sick of that song. It will drop it from the playlist for a while.

Comment Re:You must have very large pockets. (Score 2) 214

Umm, yes, yes I do. Actually, my 4.3" smartphone with hard case actually even fits into one of the lower pockets of some of the carpenter pants I own. I generally keep my wallet and keys in my left pocket (once I traveled internationally, I never saw a reason to keep the wallet in the back pocket, its bad for your back anyway). The right pocket has my smartphone and possibly a small usb drive. So, yeah, see no issue with carrying my smartphone around in my pocket. Since I used to work at heights frequently, I never trusted belt cases, plus they are generally regarded as tacky. How tight are your pants that you can't fit a smartphone in them?

The Gimp

Submission + - Gimp 2.8 Finally Released (gimpusers.com)

Cryophallion writes: "After many years of development, gimp 2.8 is finally released. Among it's features the oft desired single window mode, layer groups, and many other massive improvements including some of the gimpui teams' work. This might be the release that helps make the gimp a much more user friendly experience for newcomers, and has features that are rivalling those of certain exceptionally expensive commercial programs. While the porting th GEGL is still ongoing (and recently reported to have made massive advances made), this is a major step forward for one of the premier open source projects."

Comment Re:I'm shocked (not really) (Score 1) 27

If only that were the case. As usual, let's go with the car analagy. A person gets a ticket for speeding. That may slow them down for a week or two, but they will enevitably be speeding again when they are in a rush, or old habits take over. Fines are a slight deterrent, but they are in no way the most effective discipline method.

Now, on to corporations. They are trying to make money. they want the lowest price. In fact, they are basically required to get it in most situations. They are told constantly by their investors that they need to maximize shareholder value. That means doing the most with the least. Actually, this doesn't just apply to corporations, here in America, I work with bidding to a lot of schools. I may do far better work, but if my price is $10 over the other guys, he wins, and does his shoddy install. This is maximizing their "investor" value (taxpayers).

They are certainly not going to fund their own internal small web development team. Let's add up the prices. Let's say there are 2 people in it and a new manager. We'll say that the two devs make $50K/year, and the manager makes $60K. Then we tack on $25K per person for taxes and benefits. That's $185,000.00 per year for team, every single year. No way is that going to fly, if they only get fined $250,000.00 once per every 10 years or something.

So, no, fines will not change things in corporate culture. It is a nice dream, but a dream nonetheless.

Comment Re:I'm shocked (not really) (Score 4, Insightful) 27

I agree that would be far better. However, in reality, it sometimes fails. This can be due to feature creep, overly high workloads (esp at some sweatshop web companies, like HIT/Heritage used to be - I dealt with them once, and wish I could have run away, but it wasn't my money), a library that got changed, or even some junior developer committing his code by mistake and having it appear in production when he meant to send it to his super.

SQL injection still appears to happen almost constantly, even though most web languages have very good safeguards against it, and high profile places still show vulnerabilities, so it is still high on the list of security flaws next to XSS.

I've been on both sides - times when I have the time to write good clean code, which has everything completely buttoned up. But I've also been a victim of those times I echoed a variable in testing and it appeared in production when just the right situation arose. I'm not proud of it, but no one is perfect. Being up all night hunting down an obscure bug means sometimes you don't clean things out the way you should.

I wish I had the leisure to take my time at it. However, reality can be the boss and the client screaming their heads off, as you try to fix a showstopper in a feature or form that was added last minute by sales due to a miscommunication, or unseen need. Companies are less people do more work, not the other way around.

Comment I'm shocked (not really) (Score 5, Informative) 27

So, a web developer that was hired from outside screwed up his code. That happens almost every day. If not far more often.

Seriously, if companies were to get fined for every bad piece of code or stupid bobby tables vulnerability (obligatory xkcd reference), they would all go out of existence. Mistakes and bad code happen, especially with outside contactors. Are they going to start fining companies for not encrypting hard drives too?

20 people COULD have been affected, and this is supposedly big news. However, thousands of people were affected by the far more intrusive credit card breaches that seem to happen almost monthly. I think the ICO should be focusing their resources elsewhere.

Comment Re:Riggers? (Score 3, Interesting) 89

Not Really... I just raised one in New England two weeks ago. We had 13 people up top pulling, 10 more below helping to pull, and numerous other people who were assisting below to keep the screen surface raised as much as possible. There easily need to be that many, as the screen is extremely heavy and difficult to pull up as a dead load. Additionally, ours had a silver surface for 3D, which means you can't touch the screen or you will ruin it.

Then there was the joy of bringing a 60' box holding the screen through a mall, raising it 2 stories in a food court all night, and then raising up the screen itself...

Comment Tell Them Other People Will See It (Score 1) 545

Tell them that they will open source the code with their name pegged to it. Better yet, tell them you will send it to their college professors and any company that calls asking for employment verification...

I write a very small codebase, but it is used in webpages, so I know that others will see it. The embarrassment of ugly and badly commented code alone makes me keep my documentation up to date.

Comment Final One More Thing.... (Score 1) 1613

Impressive. Only Steve Jobs could pull off the final "One More Thing" after the most recent Apple announcements. It was as timely as could be, and it's sad to see a true visionary go.

He brought an artistic sense to the usually boxy engineering and computer world, and aethetics can make a big difference.

Good on you Steve. Thanks for giving as much as you did.

Comment Who to Believe (Score 1) 98

Within minutes of each other, we have one story here that says they will duke it out, and TechCrunch saying that they are now scared and are going to settle (http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/26/htc-warms-up-to-settlement-talks-with-apple/).

Seriously, there is way too much speculative journalism and hot shot CEOs all trying to put a good spin on where they stand.

In the end: Patents are killing everything, and we all lose. If it doesn't get under control soon, it will just be a big royal rumble cage match where everyone is covered in blood. And the cost of our devices will shoot through the roof due to lawyers fees.

Of course, it takes so long for Congress or the courts to do anything, that in the meantime, we all have to just duck and cover.

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