Cramming 20 commands and 8 layers of brackets into one line doesn't make your programm an 'impressive 5-liner'. It, at most, makes a neat stunt by a mathematician in a proprietary programming language he invented himself. I'd be tempted to call it shitty programming.
Nothing to see here folks, move along.
Javascript, DOM, CSS etc are a bastardised mish-mash of technologies that lack elegance and coherence; they've come about from the legacy need to display static pages in a browser. To gain functionality more and more features have been added like throwing crap against a wall in the hope something will stick. Using this spaghetti system to drive a text editor makes little sense from a technology point of view.
Web technologies today are a toy. Very true. PHP is a silly mess (Sidenote: ATM I develop PHP/HTML/CSS/JS for a living) and clientside Flash was eons ahead of everything else. That's 'was' as in 'has passed'. Adobe and Macromedia sought to that.
Devs will settle for the lowest common demoninator and will backtrack 2-3 generations of technology if it's open and free. It was the same with the PC. It was a toy. But it was open and free and you could dabble with it without a giant megacorporation sueing you into next wednesday. Now x86 rules the planet, and Amiga and GEOS Works are faint history.
That's the way things go. Nature finds the absurdest ways around obsticles, but it's true.
We spent NINETEEN BILLION DOLLARS on a chat program.
Nope. We spent 19 Billion on 450 Million active users and counting. On a programm that carries itself by asking 1 Euro per year for the service. If we play out cards right, we've just bought the soon-to-be-the-worlds-largest phone and telecommunications company at a bargain price.
Android just passed 1 billion activated devices. How long to you think it will take before the majority of humanity is communicating and doing most of its everyday work with an android based smartphone? I expect that to happen in the next decade.
... I want one you can't steal. Or that is significantly unfeasable to steal. Two long integrated articulated heavy-duty locks and QR codes etched into the frame at various places once I buy one with my name and ownership certificate at the end of the URL and an alert if I reported it stolen. Plus hidden RFID Chips to do the same. And an optional hidden UMTS/GPS Module in sleep mode, powered by the batteries and integrated into the electronics so I/the authorities can track it down and/or lock down the power unit / motor / controls with a cryptocode if the need arises. And a battery and an electronics/controls unit you can remove and carry with you with zero fuss.
Oh, and it should be sturdy enough for everyday use. Have yet to see an uncustomized bike, e- or otherwise, that offers that.
Once that happens, *then* I'll seriously consider shelling out 2000 Euros for an E-Bike. Until then they are a toy for people with to much money.
My 2 cents.
Don't look for logic in these sorts of aquisitions anymore - its another tech bubble getting ready to burst.
Nothing is bursting. Capital suction has little or no effect in the digital world these days. No one cares if you burn a million or a billion. It's about data and market share, revenue be damned. Do you think running whatsapp indefinitely cost any more than a crew or two of developers and some rackspace in some datacenter nowadays? Twitter is run by 13 people. 13 people!
They don't care about revenue, they want your data and they want lock-in. And they'll trade lock-in for data and omnipresence at any time.
It's about 4,5 billion people on this planet about to be connected to the internet in the next few years, with devices that cost less than what a fourtnights worth of Starbucks costs us.
We are moving head on into a post-scarcity economy, at least in terms of digital connectivity - from there on out it's all about attention and mindshare. The purchase might bomb, yes, but it might as well just turn out to be a real bargain. And if it bombs it won't even do a blip on FBs bank account. And others won't care either. Those who have VC can buy into WhatsApp like startups for peanuts because deving, deploying and scaling has become so dirt cheap. So even if they all bomb we'll be back to business as usuall 4 weeks into that.
The world is changing, and it's changing fast. The dot-bomb era was just people getting ahead of them selves in a way that wasn't good for them. The hardware wasn't there, Databases and IDEs costed more than luxury cars, and what passes as a toy today was a cray workstation in 2001 that would set you back 30 grand. It was silly back then. It isn't now.
Reality is catching up. Fast.
Bottom line:
I wouldn't hold my breath for any bubble of sorts bursting any time soon.
My 2 cents.
CEOs are rich because they pinch on things that seem strangely unreasonable to the layman. I bet one CEO pressing another to an appointment because he otherwise has wasted his Miles was actually a solid appeal to Zuckerbergs politeness and courtesy and Zuckerberg felt compelled to follow suit - and rightly so.
Zuckerberg, Jobs and other rich people have strange money saving habits they carry on well into being insanely rich. I'll still be mending my own trowsers should I ever land a lucky punch, f.i. Zuckerberg lives in a house reminiscent of that of a simple honest working craftsman here in Germany and he's married to a modest, refreshingly unspectacular asian woman, probably because the western / u.s ladies were to strenious for him.
Truth is, these people don't give a shit how many bazillions they have on the bank. They want to build cool stuff and make a dent in the universe, and they would be doing the *exact* *same* *thing* if they just would barely get by, because they like what they do. I know wealthy multi-Ph.Ds who still ask for the rest of their dinner to be wrapped up so they can take it home. That may be strange, but it's comforting. They haven't forgotten where they come from.
That's why these people have my respect. I don't like FB to much, I don't like Apples golden cage lock, etc. pp. But who am I to complain? Nobody is stopping me from sitting my ass down and building the next big thing in IT. But my respect they have nonetheless.
As fas as I'm concerned that WhatsApp guy deserves every billion he can squeeze out of the deal. If he still doesn't waste his miles, that makes him more respectable in my book.
My 2 cents.
I didn't know the ICE had licence plates.
Anyway, I'm all for tracking those, if it helps them being more punctual.
Then again, you'd expect Deutsche Bahn to know where all their ICEs are at any given time, no?
Mac & Linux:
Xonotic (excellent FOSS FPS Multiplayer), Wesnoth, Warzone 2100 (neat FOSS 3D RTS)
Nintendo DSi:
Prof. Layton (the Time Machine Story (can't remember the exact title)
Advance Wars 'something' (DSi Edition of AW)
Zelda Spirit Tracks
PSP 1:
GTA Chinatown (hilarious and fun)
Patapon
Ratchet & Clank
God of War (the PSP titles)
Wipeout
Android Tablet (HTC Flyer
The Bards Tale
I've been playing very rarely though in the last 10 years, so all of those games I've been playing for a few years now. F.i. I've been at that specific title of Prof. Layton for roughly 2,5 years now. I'm something like 2 or 3 titles behind in the Layton series now. In GTA Chinatown PSP im at the 5th mission or so.
Yes, but you have limits on who can attend, right?
Yes, you have to have basic brain functions. And your A-Levels. Which you can get "post-schoolum" in public GED 'evening school' programms which can take 2-3 years. Also basically for free, btw. Though you only get student support (basic monthly sustenance + some extra as an interest-free (!!) loan from the government) up to the age of 30 or so. A little later in some cases (if you've raised children in the mean time for instance you get up to 9 years added to the agebarrier).
There also are NC barriers for popular fields, so f.i. to become an MD you have to have a good or very good average, depending on the college you want to attend, but it's doable for anybody who put's his mind to it. The important part is that you don't need any money whatsoever to go to college , beyond the most trivial amounts of fees, the cost of living and such.
And it pays off for everybody.
Those who make it and get the paying jobs pay taxes, those who aren't there yet allways have a real chance.
Contrary to the situation in the U.S. where that isn't the case, no matter what they tell you.
Whoops. It's "Semestergebühren", with a 'b'. Sorry.
How about no tution at all? It works great for Germany.
(Cue "Nanny State!", "OMG SOCIALIZM!!", "Obviously won't work because of reasons a,b,c and d", etc. remarks below, thank you.)
Allthough we do have Semestergeühren. Something like 150€ per Semster (GASP!) of enrollment fees.
Seriously, you guys should move out of the middle ages allready. Healthcare, tution-free college and metric system. It works. Get with the programm.
My 2 cents.
I've come to compare our field with that of doctors. Everybody has something bad to say about them and their field, yet everybody needs one at one time or other and will consult one then. At the same time, whilst everybody is commenting on the field, very few people actually really know anything about it or are confused by the fields complexity.
That makes it very easy for charlatans to gain traction and the trust of unsuspecting novices and puts a burden of an ongoing bad-reputation-influx on the useful workers in the field. That the field of IT is constantly moving and is still quite young on top of all that doesn't help much either.
This is a problem we'll have to deal with as the industry moves on. It's one of the downsides of the job. Just like being a MD and getting all kinds of BS from everybody all the time *and* having the odd quack, fraud or charlatan inbetween spoiling the reputation of medicine.
Professional organisations, advisery boards, certifications and tried and tested regulations and procedures are what helps lawyers and doctors deal with this kind of shit.
My 2 cents.
The Wall has an Architect and a detailed Plan. The bricklayer knows what to expect from the foundation and the material and he knows exactly what the wall is supposed to look like when it's finished. And everybody involved knows what time and work it takes to build the wall, unless a flood or earthquake or something other happens. The bricks and mortar are delivered and up to spec. And the wall is built on ground that has been surveyed by experts and is considered stable enough to hold the weight of the wall.
If all that is in place when you develop software, yes then of course you fix your own bugs on your own time.
If, on the other hand, your boss refuses to invest in a tried, true and working software development pipeline and expects you to solve every problem in 5 minutes on a shoestring budget without him or his customers knowing what they want before they tell you when it's supposed to be finished, then your boss or the customers pay for bugs and their fixes.
We both, and everybody else here on slashdot know which scenario is more likely, sadly.
Show your boss this post. If he wants some input on how to build a software dev pipeline, I'm glad to help him / you guys out. Just reply here and I'll get back to you for my contact data and we can talk about some remote software dev consulting. It's what I do for a living, partly.
My 2 cents.
That's why it's good (for Apple) that Woz isn't and never was CEO of Apple. He obviously has absolutely not the faintest idea what he is talking about marketing and business-wise. I use Android for my phone and tablet, just recently backed off of buying an iPad Mini for development because it was to expensive
Apple should stick right where they are, perhaps move in closer with the opinion leaders a little again. Like XCode for free and without registration, direct access to iOS devices and filesystem, direct deployment of apps to iOS devices and some other stuff that's pissing of the top 0.2 % expertlayer of computer users, i.e. us, with Apple. That would be about all the changes I would make if I were in charge.
The rest is going absolutely perfect for Apple, a fashion mindshare Google, Samsung, MS and others would kill for and bizar gros margins of 30%+ on post-PC devices included. Thinking of bringing Android into that picture makes me cringe - and I'm not even an Apple Fanboy.
My 2 cents.
I personally am about as interested in fashion as I am in programming. I write my own software and sew my own pants. (Hakamas to be precise) The last two christmasses me and my buddy spent the holidays talking about FOSS, playing Wesnoth, watching movies and sewing. Last year I fixed my favourite tango jeans (jea, I dance too, imagine) and he sowed his living room curtains. No joke.
Remember that scene in Taratinos "Death Proof", where the guy at the convenience store sells the chica "this months italian vogue" from his private stash for some steep premium? That scene is about as spot on as you can get. Seriously. Two fashion nerds striking a deal. I found it hilariously 'straight from life'.
Why am I interested in fashion? Couldn't tell exactly. For a lot of reasons.
Well, for one, as they say in Paris: Fashion designers dress the women they'd like to have. Or, more precisely, want to be, if they had a choice.
Oh, and another cliche: A button a man has sewn on himself *never* comes of again. That's because at one time we get so pissed at them coming off all the time we do it ourselves - and then the right way. Ever since my mom screwed up sewing lost buttons back on I've been doing it myself. Since the age of 15 roughly. The first time I did that I used dracon kiteline to sew metal buttons back on to my jeans jacket. They too never came off again.
In my opinion being a male geek/nerd and into fashion design goes very well. And the girls dig it a lot. Especially those who like to look cute and do the hookeypookey with guys they can connect with. *grins very wide*
My 2 cents.
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion
