Good UI & UX design is hard. Really hard. It's one thing doing a cleanroom design of UX, an entirely other doing it for real life and various screen-sizes - preferably responsive. It's like with the code itself. In dev it will run and work, but beware of post-deployment if you haven't tested your stuff in every possible situation. I did tons of this stuff with Flash back in the day, and even with Flashs superiour visual & direct manupilation workplace and solid cross-plattform compatilibilty it was hard. I remember doing the UI for a flash-based MMO at a gamepublisher some years ago. We worked for months just to get the pageflow of character configuration and setup right. Video-based UX testing with usergroups and all. We'd discuss how and why the rail of a slider would look like X and not like Y.
Now, with HTML5, CSS and JS and all the screen sizes and mouse vs. tough it's by orders of magnitude harder.

It does not get that much easyer when you go native with Android or iOS SDK. You're app and your workflow will always have something significant that a good UI designer would like to highlight or help out in being intuitively usable - without destroying the page- and workflow the user is used to with other applications. It's a really tough job and each and every time it's like jumping off a cliff and not knowing if the parachute will deploy.

I'm one of the rare cases that's actually reasonably good at both - I have various diplomas in art and design and 28 years of programming experience, but I honestly couldn't tell which is harder. Basically both require very hard work if you want to do it well. Good UI is also where shitty backends are exposed. If the backend can't deliver what the user needs, no UX in the world will fix it. A significant portion of the logic is having the computer do what the enduser needs, fast and efficient. If UX and backend development don't work together or one of them doesn't understand the needs of the other, it almost instantly shows in a project. That's the classic difference between Apple and MS, btw. Steve Jobs basically nailed it in this rare direct comparsion comment.

Bottom line: The apps shown in this rundown on lollypop are the best you can get with boilerplate UX. The article basically is right, good UX looks different.

I think the mold on the left yogurt in my fridge is an MCSE. ... Yeah, he was bored one afternoon.

Seriously though, if my kid were a computer prodigy, the last thing I would teach it is something proprietary with such a short half-life as MCP. Basic knowledge of a programming language and TCP/IP would've been much better for this kid at that age. What a waste of talent. ... Put him on the kernel team and Linus accept a commit by him - *that* would be news. :-)

I hope this wasn't some nutty dad driving his kid to do something so he could feel great about himself as a dad.

But maybe the kid is happy and loves his dad and dad loves him back. That's the most important think at that age - MCP or not.

My 2 cents.

You'll come back as a TCP/IP Expert - which can never hurt. That aside, I'd take some serious stoic philosophy with me too. Helps you tune into the mood you need if at sometime you're feeling down. Senecas "Letters of a Stoic" and everything from Epicurous is neat aswell.

Maybe you want to check out a little buddhist philosophy while you're at it, since you're in a place where that's the thing anyway.

Other than that, I'd try to find ways of coping with boredom and loss of meaning. Mingle with the locals and learn their traditions - perhaps a musical instrument or their local tales or tibetan buddhist literature. No need to be arrogant or pompous about things we nerds of the west care so much about.

Oh, almost forgot: Learn alpine mountaineering! You're in climbers paradise, stupid! If you get into climbing, you won't get bored and your computer-books will remain unread. Promise. Also there's a lot to geek out about on gear and climbing routes and all that kind of stuff. Ice climbing is a whole field in itself aswell. If that's not enough, take a camera and try to catch some lokal wildlife, if that's your thing. ... Seriously, the books on computing stuff should just be a fallback.

Have fun!

Seven minutes to fly up and down three feet; that's almost impossible to imagine.

Yepp. You could probalby jump beyond it's gravitational pull.
One sneeze and your away for the day.
*Aaaachoooh!* ... oh noes! Help, I'm flying.

How did they do it? I started reading the linked paper, but my brain started hurting two sentences in. I couldn't extract any useful information on the 'how'.

This is so cool. ... Isn't that freakin' amazing? ... I'm getting goosebumps all over and feel like back in the 70ies when we'd been to the moon. (my Grandpa worked at Grumman as a Engineer on the Lunar Lander btw.)

We've landed on a friggin' Comet! This is so awesome!
F*ck yeah! YAY! Go, space exploration, go!

The problem probably just finally got escalated inside Groupon. Before it was some stupid desk clerk thinking: Oh, some hobbyists I've never heard of are mad that their little programming club has the same name as our new terminal. No big deal.
Then it was "Sue them into next wednesday!" "Burn Groupon to the ground!" "Hang them higher!" and their response being "OMFG! It's a project that's FOSS and Linux and they are all friends with IBM, Oracle and Google. And they've got lawyers!"

Probably some exec with a clue got wind of the situation and concluded that "... yeah, they do have a case and this Gnome Project acutally isn't that small of a deal as one might think. And we have enough bad press as it is. Back down.".

Smart move I'd say.
And they even get a little neat publicity for playing nice.

I love it. Hipster-hate, in all it's forms, is the latest new thing! It's the latest trend.

What's wrong with hippster? ... I love hippster. Nerdyness becoming the über-chique. That's awesome. For once, fashion has caught up with nerd-culture and not the other way around. In the 80ies it was Grundge and oversized, today it's hippster. Different name, same thing, basically. I can get huge and stable plastic frame glasses that are sturdy, cheap and let me see everything and I'm right ahead with the avantgarde.

The best thing about it is, that if you want to dress extra classy, a *normal* suit and tie will do just fine, becaue everybody else is wearing chucks and NBs anyway. And, to be honest, girls all dressed up like chicas in high-heels and tons of makeup all day never was my thing. I thing they look really cute with their baggy smurf-woolen caps, doc martens and oversized parkas. ... It's all been there in the 60ies and 80ies already and I love it whenever it comes around.

Yay for Hippster!

Sorry to be raining on your parade, folks, but seriously, no one really cares.

If Windows 8 has become a utility OS for Steam and Valve is OK with that and is dropping Linux as a foundation - so effing what? Valve would've built yet another dodgy distro of Linux (a shabby Debian fork I'd guess) and I think we all can agree that we have enough of those. And if you think that Valve would've put effort into the community - think again. Their a business.

With Android and Chrome OS we already have to large Linux distros comparatively tightly controlled by a MegaCorp. And from what I can tell, Android is going to be the next gen gaming OS. Convergence is upon us and once that's through, no one will give a damn about the "Desktop" - it was a crappy metaphor anyway - or PC gaming. Aside from a few enthusiasts and development professionals perhaps.
You'll plug your phone into your TV/Monitor grab your favorite independantly manufactured gaming controller and play Assasins Creed 12 you've just downloaded and bought a 32-hour gaming ticket for.

NVidia Shield anyone? Did you see the gaming demo in the iPhone 6 presentation? Gaming on smartphones and tablets is just taking of and there are enough experts in gaming who've expressed their feeling that the current gen of consoles will be the last. XBone is bombing, Wii has significantly slowed and the PS4 is one step away from becoming Sonys all-in media and home computing center - if they don't screw this one up that is.

No one want the Linux desktop, because the Desktop is on the way out.
Utility OSes like iOS, Chrome and Anroid is where the parties at now. End of Story.

How are they gonna get him out again? Cut the snake open?

How about giving the beast some real food and/or just leave it alone?

Or film it from a distance and watch it eat some of its natural prey.
Isn't that what discovery channel usually does?

And, btw, AFAIK boa constrictors - which include anacondas - prefer their prey not breathing anymore. And they don't really care if it's bottled air you're breathing or not. They constrict you 'till you stop breathing. Hence the name. Duh.

To be honest, I kinda hope this snake teaches the guy a lesson and get's away with it. Now *that* would be some news. :-)

And? They obviously are in pain for developers of this rare language. Show some pitty!

No. Chromebook is actually the better package for most people.

8 hrs. battery time. Boots in 8 seconds. Zero maintenance. Zero worries about backups. Zero worries about installing programms. Zero virii. Zero synching your photos, videos, audios, whatnot with your tablet and/or phone. Everything in the cloud. Drop your laptop, have it stolen, pour coffee into it - no problem. Order a new one, log on, all your stuff is there and you didn't even have to archive. While the the one is being shipped you can use your friends computer or your cellphone to do the most important stuff until it arrives. I gave my fiance a laptop (IBM Thinkpad, Ubuntu 14.04, all ready and set up) and an android tablet. She used the laptop once. The tablet she uses constantly. Just watching her is a real eye opener.

Anther Point in case:
I'm your type A slashdot computer geek and even *I* would prefer a chromebook over a windows laptop (typing this on Linux btw.)

I'm quite convinced that my next portable computer will either be an android tablet with an extra bluetooth keyboard or a chromebook - routing a chromebook with crouton and installing linux on it is quite easy, and 8 hrs battery time for 299 has a nice ring to it.

The truth is: Google is set to bring the second half of humanity online. They are basically the budget Apple. You pay significantly less with at least as much convenience, if not even more. Google takes care of you and all your computing stuff for free and in turn the may observe you 24/7. That's the basic deal and there is no upside MS can offer to that.

With MS it's pay premium, and get observed, and functionality degraded over time and virii and we want to know all your details before you can use windows unencumbred. Oh, and MS Office is a subscription now. ... Who the eff wants that? ... MS only has a chance to do that for historical reasons, and those are wearing off quickly.

No one I know would want this ugly laptop with windows on it.

My 2 cents.

You are NO Linux guy! A Linux guy cares about all things Linux, however slightly.

Wrong. A Linux guy cares more about Linux than any other OS and is one who's judgement perhaps has a little weight.
Like, if he's been programming since '85 or something like that and has been using *nix during the times when the only usable editor on it was Emacs or Vi.

You may not believe it, but I, and quite a few others who do computing for a living, actually have a life outside of computers and fiddling with init-scripts and xconfig. Partly because I've done that to death already back in the day when there was nothing else to do and making Gnome 1.x , Nautilus and GKrellm look like Star Trek was a cool way to spend your time.

*the old rooster ruffles his feathers*

Seriously, I've been a Linux Guy since the 90ies and I honestly couldn't care less.
Anything I know about init is about runlevels - and those are a really neat thing. I mean really cool. You can fiddle with those using mc (Midnight Commander) and debian has a stack of 4-6 of those preconfigged and set up by default - last time I checked, some 7 years ago or something anyway.
Point is, my grandma can set up a runlevel that ex- or includes the LAMP stack in it's 'launch', 'init' or whatever-it's-called sequence and I can set my box to it by typing "init [simple Int here]" for my box to go there.

Again, that is pretty neat and cool and the best working solution I've run into so far.
Way better than anything in the Windos world, that's for sure.

If this "systemd" thing - whatever that is - doesn't break this or offers a neater improvement on that runlevel stuff or a way better concept that's worthwhile moving into, perhaps like the SVN vs. Git thing in which Git comes out on top IMHO - without requiring some bullshit GUI tool to be usable, that's all very fine and dandy with me.

If, on the other hand, you're going to push this new fad and hurt me wile doing so, I'm coming for you some time in the future. With a baseball club and my mafia friends. Other than fucking around with one of the best filemanagers ever - Konqueror - and replacing it with an inferior dolphin - this isn't some GUI toy you should fiddle with. This is Linux at a level where it's actually *the* industry standard. As in 'no other even comes close to this level of reliability and quality". Fucking that up would be a really stupid idea.

Otherwise I really positively couldn't care less - and that's how it should be, no? Except for, maybe, if I were a System Developer or Distro Release Manager or something.

My 2 cents.