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Comment Re:Professional != Tantrums (Score 1) 1501

He has created and curated an amazing thing. Kudos to him. Few people have the dedication he shows. I respect his achievements immensely. He's in the top 5 contributors to modern computing in my books.

That doesn't make it respectable to be an asshole though. The world has enough assholes. Being the smartest asshole still makes you an asshole.

Maybe he couldn't have done it any other way. Maybe he could have. Don't think we'll ever know. I still wouldn't hire him, and there's no risk he would have ever been looking to work for me anyways.

Comment Professional != Tantrums (Score 4, Insightful) 1501

I've worked with people like Linus many times; brilliant, know it, and abuse those who suggest ideas that don't align with their world view. They are usually correct when they shoot down an idea. However, I avoid them at all costs, both from a hiring and from peer perspective, because they are a cancer in most organizations, and the long term cost of dealing with their anti-social behaviour greatly outweighs the benefit they bring.

Abuse does not solve problems. Belittling others does not benefit anyone. It's fine to be blunt and explain why the idea proposed will not work, it saves time and energy. It is sign of a deeply flawed personality to attack the person who proposed the idea that won't work.

Comment I have found this chart to be helpful in the past (Score 1) 297

http://coding.abel.nu/2012/06/programmer-time-translation-table/
4 hours is about the sweet spot.

In seriousness, there are many ways of improving estimates (reviewing past similar projects - you kept metrics right?), appropriate granularity of features and estimates of these features, confidence factors appropriate to the complexity/unknowns of the task (write a CRUD GUI screen? high confidence. Write a new algorithm to combine multiple videos into a 3-d pannable single video? Low confidence), etc. You need to be refining and grooming these estimates weekly as data changes, so at least you fail early.

Comment Sorry, we're supposed to be mad? (Score 2) 164

Mad because a government official cannot wield undue influence over the global, borderless Internet?

Facebook treats all their users like shit, no reason this guy should be special. I agree it sucks for him, but it sucks just as much for the 13 year old whose classmates put up pages mocking him. I don't think you want it to be otherwise. Ideally they would always "do the right thing" but at least they are consistent in ignoring their users and don't play favourites.

Comment Please explain to me (Score 1) 276

How does this translate to real-world user-visible improvements?

Does it scroll more fluidly?
Do apps run noticeably faster? (Were they slow to start with?)
Is there any software out there that takes advantage of it to do more?

Can't see anyone caring about this at all in the mainstream market (you know, the one where people buy 50M+ units).

Also, comparing against iPhone5 is misleading as Android code runs via a JVM and iPhone runs native.

(Not a fan of either, aiming for objectivity)

Comment This is a false dichotomy (Score 5, Insightful) 663

I didn't bother to read the article obviously, but to compare opening weekend results directly with CAM downloads ignores many aspects. The most obvious to me is the people who did NOT go out to the theatre and who WILL NOT download the CAM, but who WILL wait two months for a high-quality free Blu-Ray rip to appear online. These are potentially lost sales for the theatres.

(Having said that, after going back to a theatre for the first time in a couple years specifically to see Avengers, I still believe the root of their problem does not lie with piracy, it lies with the appalling rudeness found in your average public gathering. For the same price, two months later, my living room is infinitely more comfortable and better equipped to show ME the movie in a manner I will enjoy and not be distracted by phones, screaming children, and poor sound).

Science

Antarctic's First Plane, Found In Ice 110

Arvisp writes "In 1912 Australian explorer Douglas Mawson planned to fly over the southern pole. His lost plane has now been found. The plane – the first off the Vickers production line in Britain – was built in 1911, only eight years after the Wright brothers executed the first powered flight. For the past three years, a team of Australian explorers has been engaged in a fruitless search for the aircraft, last seen in 1975. Then on Friday, a carpenter with the team, Mark Farrell, struck gold: wandering along the icy shore near the team's camp, he noticed large fragments of metal sitting among the rocks, just a few inches beneath the water."

Apple Orders 10 Million Tablets? 221

Arvisp writes "According to a blog post by former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee, Apple plans to produce nearly 10 million tablets in the still-unannounced product's first year. If Lee's blog post is to be believed, Apple plans to sell nearly twice as many tablets as it did iPhones in the product's first year."
The Internet

The Internet of Things - What is a Spime? 141

CoolVibe writes "From the abstract in the talk: "World-renowned Science Fiction writer and futurist Bruce Sterling will outline his ideas for SPIMES, a form of ubiquitous computing that gives smarts and 'searchabiliity' to even the most mundane of physical products. Imagine losing your car keys and being able to search for them with Google Earth." It's a very interesting lecture given by Bruce Sterling about something we might see in the near future. The lecture can be viewed here on Google Video."

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