Your two posts were fascinating, thanks. It has never crossed my mind to think about rats that much, but the sentence about humans effectively keeping them safe from other predators is one of those obvious-in-hindsight things that I probably never would have realised.
As an Australian that has recently relocated to the US, you have also inculcated a new fear of raccoons, which I will now go at lengths to avoid!
If it's used as some kind of vehicle to push FB onto the few who don't have it and don't loathe it on principle, then I can very well do without and am retroactively glad I decided against funding the kickstarter.
Out of interest, have any of Facebook's other acquisitions been used to force users onto the FB platform? In other words, do they have a strong precedent of doing this?
In the case of Oculus spending $2b and then immediately trying to alienate its core user base by somehow pushing FB on the tiny percentage of users that don't already have it seems like it would be a weird thing to do.
Yes, I guess Abrash really dropped the ball when he didn't do his due diligence on what language the parent company of the VR company he just accepted a job at build their website in!!!@@@
What an odd piece of techno-elitist whining. For what it's worth, Facebook's engineering acumen can be seen in some of the software they've released, including the Hiphop VM for PHP as well as the recently announced Facebook Hack. They have contributed to a huge variety of OSS ( https://code.facebook.com/proj... ) - and things like the OpenComputer project ( http://www.opencompute.org/).
The scale alone of Facebook is an impressive engineering feat. That is entirely the point of Abrash's post, really.
This
Making Snow Crash into a reality feels like a sort of moral imperative to a lot of programmers, but the efforts that have been made so far leave a lot to be desired.
It is almost painful for me to watch some of the VRML initiatives. It just seems so obviously the wrong way to do something. All of this debating, committee forming, and spec writing, and in the end, there isn't anything to show for it. Make something really cool first, and worry about the spec after you are sure it's worth it!
I do think it is finally the right time for this to start happening for real. While a lot of people could envision the possibilities after seeing DOOM or Quake, it is really only now that we have general purpose hardware acceleration that things are actually flexible enough to be used as a creative medium without constantly being conscious of the technical limitations.
The Metaverse of the Snow Crash world was basically an epic social virtual reality experience. I've always figured Carmack would be involved in making that a reality somehow, and the Oculus Rift certainly seems like it could be a critical part. Facebook actually makes sense from a social perspective as well.
I'm sure there's going to be a lot of people terrified because of imagined privacy implications, but I'm still fascinated to see where this ride takes us.
...that has recently moved to the USA, I am stunned by Amazon - I mean, I always knew it looked awesome but until I got here I didn't fully understand how much stuff was on there and how amazing it is to order basically anything.
Prime simply adds to my amazement - I can order (almost) anything and it will arrive (almost always) 2 days later. My shopping behaviour has changed significantly, to the point where I'll not buy something while it's right in front of me in a store because I can just have Amazon bring it to my house a few days later, saving me the effort of carrying it around or trying to get it home (I don't own a car yet).
Even at the new price it seems like a fantastic deal, and that's before I add the streaming video service, which I've also gotten a lot of use out of, despite having Netflix and Hulu.
I guess I am surprised by the people complaining about the price hike. I'm back in Australia right now for a couple weeks and from the wistful look everyone here gets when I explain how great it is, I know they'd happily pay twice the new fee just to never have to deal with the local retailers ever again.
Anyway, my 2c: this price raise would in no way dissuade me from renewing next year (if I'm still living in the usa).
To be fair, some people might not be aware that substances are often made up of substance.
American Senators sure have a lot of time to spend on impossible tasks and tilting at windmills, instead of learning about technology and displaying adaptability.
If he wants to look good for banning some scary technology thing, maybe he should start with something easier - like getting porn off the Internet.
... because I can't see anything anywhere else (wtf is this post?) I figured maybe this might be worth mentioning:
Yesterday Moxie Marlinspike announced a new version of TextSecure: https://whispersystems.org/blo...
TextSecure is an encrypted messaging tool - currently for Android, but iOS is in the works. It is open source and has a high focus on privacy and security.
I encourage people to check it out - if you want to Snapchat securely and privately, then using an open source tool that isn't maintained or built by some giant corporatrox that is simply trying to get bought out by Facebook might be a good idea.
Please make a news post about the issue. I'm glad you're finally responding to the comments but today has been a train wreck and failing to publicly acknowledge that will not help matters.
Give people an official thread to comment about the beta. Ensure that it has the feedback mechanisms - the survey and the email address, both of which I've used - prominently listed.
I'll try that. I actually have a Kobo reader - every book I've wanted on their store has been DRM'ed, so I haven't bought anything. I'll give it another crack.
Thanks. I just wish everyone was on Baen - that is exactly how I want to buy books.
How do I buy DRM free books from Tor? Every few months I try again and I feel stupid because I can't figure out how to do it.
They have a "looking for Tor books?" module which takes you to http://us.macmillan.com/TorFor....
Then I end up on a page like http://us.macmillan.com/thehum... which just gives me a list of normal retailers, like Amazon, Kobo, etc to choose from - with no evidence that I'm getting a DRM-free version.
I just want an epub, like what Baen deliver - is that possible?
Is it possible to buy
In Australia it's reasonably common for the insurers to care about modifications - here's one common car insurance company's page on it: http://www.aami.com.au/custome... .
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Voltaire
