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Communications

Why Creators Should Never Read Their Forums 221

Posted by Soulskill
from the lalala-i-can't-hear-you dept.
spidweb writes "One full-time Indie developer writes about why he never goes to online forums discussing his work and why he advises other creators to do the same. It's possible to learn valuable things, but the time and the stress just don't justify the effort. From the article, 'Forums contain a cacophony of people telling you to do diametrically opposite things, very loudly, often for bad reasons. There will be plenty of good ideas, but picking them out from the bad ones is unreliable and a lot of work. If you try to make too many people happy at once, you will drive yourself mad. You have to be very, very careful who you let into your head.'"
Graphics

The First Photograph of a Human 138

Posted by samzenpus
from the fist-cheese dept.
wiredog writes "The Atlantic has a brief piece on what is likely to be the first photograph (a daguerreotype) showing a human. From the article: 'In September, Krulwich posted a set of daguerreotypes taken by Charles Fontayne and William Porter in Cincinnati 162 years ago, on September 24, 1848. Krulwich was celebrating the work of the George Eastman House in association with the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Using visible-light microscopy, the George Eastman House scanned several plates depicting the Cincinnati Waterfront so that scholars could zoom in and study the never-before-seen details.'"
Transportation

Denver Airport Overrun by Car-Eating Rabbits 278

Posted by samzenpus
from the night-of-the-lepus dept.
It turns out the soy-based wire covering on cars built after 2002 is irresistible to rodents. Nobody knows this better than those unlucky enough to park at DIA's Pikes Peak lot. The rabbits surrounding the area have been using the lot as an all-you-can-eat wiring buffet. Looks like it's time to break out The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

Finnish Police Wants Passport Fingerprints

Submitted by Bocconcini
Bocconcini writes "Since June 6th 2009 all new Finnish passports have included fingerprint information of the holder in accordance to the EU ruling. The current Finnish law doesn't allow the fingerprint database to be used in most police investigations, however, the national police commissioner is pushing to get the law changed to give the police access to the information. The current goverment does not share his views, but he hopes that the next year's parlamentary election will result in a more willing goverment. I wonder if anyone really though this would not eventually happen when the fingerprint ruling was introduced by EU."
Image

North Korea Develops Anti-Aging "Super Drink" 296

Posted by samzenpus
from the can-full-of-wonder dept.
__roo writes "According to North Korea's official news agency, a drink produced by North Korea's Moranbong Carbonated Fruit Juice Joint Venture Company can cure aging and all disease. 'It, with effects of both preventive and curative treatment, helps improve mental and retentive faculties by multiplying brain cells. It also protects skin from wrinkles and black spots and prevents such geriatric diseases as cerebral hemorrhage, myocardium and brain infarction by removing acid effete matters in time.' It also has no side-effects." Last month North Korea announced its fusion breakthrough, and now it has a super drink. One can only imagine what wonders may come in July — perhaps self-buttering toast.
Image

The Race To Beer With 50% Alcohol By Volume 297

Posted by samzenpus
from the good-stiff-12-pack dept.
ElectricSteve writes "Most of the world's beer has between 4% and 6% alcohol by volume (ABV). The strength of beer achieved by traditional fermentation brewing methods has limits, but a well-crafted beer that is repeatedly 'freeze distilled' can achieve exquisite qualities and much higher alcohol concentrations. An escalation in the use of this relatively new methodology over the last 12 months has seen man's favorite beverage suddenly move into the 40+% ABV realm of spirits such as gin, rum, brandy, whiskey, and vodka, creating a new category of extreme beer. The world's strongest beer was 27% ABV, but amidst an informal contest to claim the title of the world's strongest beer, the top beer has jumped in strength dramatically. This week Gizmag spoke to the brewers at the center of the escalating competition. New contestants are gathering, and the race is now on to break 50% alcohol by volume."

Comment: Re:When noobs want to start a project... (Score 1) 73

by Bocconcini (#32270340) Attached to: The Design of Design

...they by-pass a solid design stage and whip out the agile card. It allows them to get onto the fun parts straight away. Of course, it all turns to custard. Good design is a combination of education, and experience. In the end some perople just never get it.

You should get with the times. Agile is so out. Kanban lets you get into the fun parts with even less design.

Government

California's Santa Clara County Bans Happy Meal Toys 756

Posted by timothy
from the when-self-righteousness-attacks dept.
WrongSizeGlass writes "The L.A. Times is reporting that Santa Clara County officials have voted to ban toys and other promotions that restaurants offer with high-calorie children's meals. 'This ordinance prevents restaurants from preying on children's love of toys' to sell high-calorie, unhealthful food, said Supervisor Ken Yeager, who sponsored the measure. 'This ordinance breaks the link between unhealthy food and prizes.' Supervisor Donald Gage, who voted against the measure, said, 'If you can't control a 3-year-old child for a toy, God save you when they get to be teenagers.' The vote was 3 - 2 in favor of the ban."
Programming

Simpler "Hello World" Demonstrated In C 582

Posted by kdawson
from the non-obfuscated dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Wondering where all that bloat comes from, causing even the classic 'Hello world' to weigh in at 11 KB? An MIT programmer decided to make a Linux C program so simple, she could explain every byte of the assembly. She found that gcc was including libc even when you don't ask for it. The blog shows how to compile a much simpler 'Hello world,' using no libraries at all. This takes me back to the days of programming bare-metal on DOS!"

Comment: Why don't you try Agilefant (Score 1) 428

by Bocconcini (#30465084) Attached to: What Does Everyone Use For Task/Project Tracking?

Why don't you give Agilefant 2.0 alpha a try?

It's a FOSS tool designed to solve just the problem you have and it has most of the features you need, except file attachments, which aren't there (at least just yet). Currently Agilefant lacks some of the customization options commercial software like VersionOne or Rally have, but many of our users have been quite happy with the current functionality.

Agilefant handles multiple product, projects and iterations simultaneously with ease. In addition to normal backlog lists, it has a personal job queue for each user so you can see what you were planning to do next. If you enter your effort estimates for tasks, Agilefant will calculate how much work on average you have planned for the few next weeks.

Agilefant runs on Tomcat and MySQL and is really easy to install.

Disclaimer: I'm a former Agilefant developer and currently working on a project very close to Agilefant development.

Teutonic: Not enough gin.