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Comment timing - which year (Score 2) 72

I travel a ton and stay in dozens of different hotels every year. Domestically, and in maybe 50% of the foreign cases, the high priced hotels had worse and slower internet up until a couple of years ago. For the last 2 years they have gotten better, on the average. Oh, I was in a 5-star Vegas resort last night that had horrible bandwidth. In the past, my joke was accurate that the difference between a Four Seasons (just an example) and a Super 8 is that at the Super 8 the internet worked and was free. The most important thing to me in a hotel is computer use. The fancy suites in major hotels are often set up for entertaining friends and DON'T even have a computer desk. I ask my wife to book me into Super 8's whenever possible.

Comment Re:The question to me seems to be... (Score 1) 148

End goal: change the constitution. We need a start. It's easy to see how hard this will be and to give up early, but some of us feel the imperative to fight for it. We can change things. The vast will of the masses (corporation political donations are not equivalent to the free speech we enjoy as individuals) needs to be strategically gathered. Critical mass could take decades, as with things like gay marriage.

Comment Each jurisdition is different (Score 1) 208

The laws of each State are different. This is true in other countries. I suggest you consult a local attorney at law in your jurisdiction, with a knowledge of Intellectual Property law. I suspect you MAY be looking for a "durable" power of attorney. (That means the power of attorney survives your death.) The power would instruct the person you chose "At the time of my death, please do X, Y and Z." Then the power dies, and is of no further effect. If there are huge financial implications, you might consider having the holder of the power post a bond to insure full performance. But please, get a professional to help with this. I don't try and fix my computer, because.... well.... I'm clueless. As far as I'm concerned it's all magic and that's the end of it. It took me three tries to get this posted, how's that for clueless? Just my humble opinion.

Submission + - Asl Slashdot

trialjudge writes: The other day "Rachel from Credit Services" called for the 81st time this week. I just happened to be practicing blowing on my whistle, and I'm afraid the sound greatly annoyed whoever I was talking to.

For those of you who don't know Rachel, see http://business.time.com/2012/...

I would never intentionally damage "Rachel from Card Services"'s equipment, but I was just idly wondering if there is something low tech I can do better than a whistle.

An M-80 would be great, but it leaves a stinky residue in the house. Slam a book on the table? Do any of you tech geniuses know anything that might persuade them to stop calling, while not hurting my cheap telephone?

Thanks!!!!

Comment I miss Firefox in this regard (Score 0) 102

Firefox bookmarks sync is much better than Chrome bookmarks sync. Firefox stored your bookmarks locally and updated them periodically from the cloud. Chrome appears to have to download everything when I start the browser. I get a blank bookmarks bar for a few seconds when the internet is slow and I open Chrome. This is one place where Firefox got the design right and Chrome has it wrong.

Comment As soon as the automated tests pass (Score 4, Interesting) 182

Push to production as soon as the (many) automated tests that you have pass. This means you should have comprehensive unit tests and tests that run in the browser, probably written in Selenium. You'll also want to script your release so that you can do it with the push of a button. Once the tests pass, and the mechanics of a release are trivial, there is little reason to hold up a release.

I worked for a top 500 website (East coast) for 7 years that did weekly releases. Since I left, they decided that wasn't fast enough and now release multiple times per week. I'm now self-employed on my own website and release within an hour of finishing development of a feature.

I started my development career writing firmware for laser printers. When you are shipping code on a physical product, the cost of bugs can be quite high. Especially when it leads to returns or recalls because customers are not satisfied. Our release cycles there were 6 months+. Quite appropriately, IMO.

On the web, the cost of bugs is much lower. In most cases it is the only cost of another release. Sometimes it could cost more because of downtime, but good automated test coverage mitigates that risk pretty well (especially if there is load testing involved). The worst case would be data-corruption, but I've never actually seen that in practice from a release, that has only been related to hardware failure or accidents in my experience.

Comment Re:Your influence (Score 5, Interesting) 612

Apple is very complex. I like personal simplicity. I like to do what I'm good at, which is enjoying technology. I don't honestly feel I could do better than anyone reading this at a role in Apple. Jobs had the drive to run things and influence things. If there was something for sure where I'd be a great help to Apple, I'd be there in an instant, as Apple is #1 in my heart.

Comment Re:Best Practical Joke & How Much Tech (Score 4, Interesting) 612

There are too many answers to this. I have put a lot of time and energy and money into practical jokes. Different people would enjoy some more than others. I had some great ones with Jobs too. But I'll go back to one that I hadn't thought about for 45 years that came to me recently. As electronics club president in high school I would submit notices for the daily announcements, read at the start of each school day. I submitted a phony one, sure it would be caught, but it got through. Something like a meeting at 3:00 PM in room B25 - Stanford's head janitor will speak on higher custodial education. The students would laugh and the teachers would tell them it was serious.

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