We are, yes. But we do need some functionality that, right now, is implemented as an elaborate WordPress theme that still doesn't do everything we need. A traditional CMS or blog software is really a poor match for what we're trying to do and trying to shoehorn our needs into one led to several years of frustration.

There are solutions that almost do what we need but those are all offered as services and it's not easily possible to integrate the rest of what we want with them. Plus, they're technically our competition.

The company I work for has decided to drop WordPress and develop a new CMS that does exactly what we need in-house. We mostly need static pages so there's no need to load an entire application platform (which is what WordPress is, essentially) every time anyone wants to view a page. Plus, WordPress does what it does slowly, plus we need tons of plugins (which eat even more performance) to get the functionality we need, plus many WordPress plugin authors think "best practice" is where you find a good doctor.

Sure, it's going to take some time to develop but we can take the 20% of WordPress's functionality we actually need, cover the functionality WordPress doesn't offer natively without relying on modules of questionable quality and have a web-facing dynamic codebase that's so small we can be reasonably certain it's not vulnerable. (Essentially, the only PHP code on the published website should be a simple session management script so we can put content behind a password with more flexibility than .htpasswd.)

Despite writing everything ourselves we still expect to save money in the long term, simply because WordPress generates so much work for both our employees and our server. It's okay for a basic blog if you can babysit it but anything beyond that becomes a nightmare.

If I remember correctly they actually specified the error handling in the HTML 5 spec. XHTML, for its part, didn't really take off, so chances are that much of the web would still be using HTML 4 if the W3C still insisted on XHTML. HTML 4 wasn't exactly a paragon of security, either.

I did that for Borderlands 2 because I liked the first part so much I was willing to gamble on the second one being good. I was not disappointed. Of course I'm aware it's a gamble, which is why I tend not to do it, but sometimes it just might be worth it. Oh, and because the first game's German release was censored I imported from the UK so pre-ordering cut down on the waiting time.

As has been pointed out, not owning the console is one thing. I'm not going to buy a 3DS for a single game. Or perhaps you no longer have the game and want to take a look at it for nostalgia's sake. Some games may also be interesting from a story perspective but uninteresting gameplay-wise - I might end up watching an LP for Mass Effect 2 and 3 but I'm certainly not going to install the second part again, much less buy the third one. Some Let's Plays are value-added like IlliterateChild's Glitchy Walkthroughs where bugs in the game are exploited for comedic effect.

Sure, playing the game is usually better. But there are games you can't or won't play but are still interested in experiencing to some degree or someone did something with their playthrough that you can't easily replicate. That's where the value in Let's Plays lies.

When my friends need new losses there's only one word I tell them, Lossy. http://tiffzhang.com/startup/i...

Bonus points for having one team member with the job description "Product". At least now I know what^Wwho they're selling...

Today, we move on. Of course, we would have liked to bring our great products to new cities, but it turned out we don't actually have any. This took us by surprise but a quick poll among our executive staff came to the result that nobody actually knows how we make money or why we're still in business. Money comes in, certainly, and from what I could gather some of it is government money so we seem to be providing some kind of service, I guess. And some of it to the government, it seems. But the exact nature of this service remains a mystery.

Look, I only wanted to merge with Time Warner Cable because the guys over there seem to know what kind of business they're in and I figured it could be a learning experience. Now that that plan has been kiboshed, could anyone tell me what it is that we actually do? I heard some speculation that we do something with the internet but from what I can tell we don't have anything resembling a broadband infrastructure so that can't be it. We do have call centers but when I called one they didn't know anything about the internet, either. Perhaps we're some kind of telemarketing outfit?

Seriously, if anyone has an idea what our business plan is, please drop me a line at ceo@comca.st.

I'm imagining how things would go if a widely-sampled piece like Pachelbel's Canon in D was covered by copyright. The labels would be buried under willful infringement suits over more money than the entire entertainment industry is worth. While it would be amusing to see BMG sentenced to pay someone a hundred billion Dollars I'm not certain it would be in anybody's interest.

Some sites go a reasonable middle ground: They replace the ad space with a message like this: "You're running Adblock. Please consider whitelisting us so we can pay for this website. Thank you." And I'm perfectly fine with that. Treating your visitors like human beings and politely asking them to help you out makes a good impression.

Also, Reddit's "You're not blocking ads on our site and we think you're awesome because of it" ads. If you want people to see your ads a bit of appreciation can go a lot further than a technological arms race. It's cheaper, too.

Excuse me but that sounds entirely implausible. Cooking food with a radar unit? I'll believe it when someone uses one to, say, melt a chocolate bar. Until then keep your loony theories to yourself!

I'm not certain whether using f.lux really improves my sleep (although I'm certainly not complaining if it does). What it does do is make my desktop look more like an object in the room. When a white area on the screen has the same color a white piece of paper would have in the same light that essentially makes using a computer more... immersive. It just feels more natural if the monitor forgoes accurate absolute color representation in favor of more accurate color representation within the context of local light conditions.

It's definitely one of those "try it, you might like it" things. Either it feels great for you or you toss it.

Perhaps someone should write a mod that redundantly reimplements Minecraft on top of Minecraft with as few calls into actual Minecraft code as possible. Still dependent enough to require the actual game but with such little contact area that it's almost completely isolated from changes to the game itself.

Yeah, it'd basically be a fork that attempts to solve the rights issues by requiring the main game. You'd lose anything Mojang adds to the game later (unless it's ported over) but the API could be designed to be long-term stable...

Scientology has plenty of experience in lobbying. After Germany decided to deny them tax-exempt status (and then engaged in further actions against the CoS because some of their rhethoric and practices were uncomfortably reminiscent of Germany's past) the Scientologists spent a lot of money and effort on getting the US government to step in on their behalf, even going as far as asking for political sanctions.

I actually think they're not going to lose the tax exemptions in the first place because their lobbyists will pay off the right politicians before it can happen.

Easily solved. Just have the code in uxtheme.dll (or the modern equivalent) that locks out third-party themes GPO-controllable. Most themes are just collections of graphics files so there's not much danger involved. If you're feeling fancy you could have two settings: One that allows only simple "graphics files and settings"-style themes and one that allows themes to load their own drawing libraries to do whatever they want.

Honestly, I can't see a GPO'd uxtheme.dll as anything but a win for everyone: Corporate users can easily lock down themability and enforce a consistent workplace. Home users can unlock it and install the theme they prefer. Microsoft can evade complaints of "I don't like the flat look" by saying "then don't use it but it's not our job to make a different one".

The German Wikipedia article on generic drugs. I assumed that the English article would contain similar data. That's an assumption I really need to drop; it virtually never holds.

The cites are as follows:

2006 data: The Generic Pharmaceutical Association: ANNUAL REPORT 2008. Generics: The Right Choice for Better Health. February 7th, 2008; downloaded on December 28th, 2012.

2000 data: World Health Organisation: The World Medicines Situation. September 8th, 2004; downloaded on December 31st, 2012.
(Note: I screwed up here by overlooking a footnote in the Wikipedia article. The 45% figure is not from 2000 but from 1998.)

Actually, the United States aren't doing that bad with respect to generics. Almost 67% of all medications prescribed in 2007 were generics, up from 45% in 2000. (Those numbers are from Wikipedia but sourced.)

But yeah, healthcare in America is still way expensive and IIRC doctors are extensively marketed to by pharma companies, which doesn't help them make informed decisions about generics. Perhaps that could be better regulated. (Or perhaps some other approach might help to improve things. Perhaps that approach has even been taken already; I'm not that well informed about the American pharma market.)