Well there was a complication during his birth that caused extended oxygen deprivation, and he'll never be quite right his entire life. Then people gave him millions worth of their savings. That's what went wrong.
I actually happen to think doing interviews with him, struggling to explain the unexplainable is quite pointless. It's cruel entertainment. It's like asking a baby why are those pants pooped.
Oh come on, I have one post that's been substantially negatively modded and the little nerd detectives are coming out of their basements to shower me with their investigation insights.
Yes, Sherlock, I have a few accounts, but I do it because the site is so coded that it's easier to make new accounts than to remember my passwords. So sue me.
Why aren't you creating throwaway accounts. Are you here for the achievement badges? Building a legacy? To leave your children one day or something.
I happen to think points are earned so they can be wasted from time to time. It keeps life in balance.
The purpose of me posting is so I can say what I want to say, I don't care about the scores. Most often they're positive, from time to time they're negative. So be it.
And if I wanted to create throwaway accounts, I wouldn't do so with the same name and easily identifiable suffix, so you can then nag me about it, genius.
Those previous accounts all have a positive score, by the way. But since for the first time ever, I was coerced into a rant, I guess this one's a first. I've never went off topic on NewsHackers. You made me do it, so congratulations.
Well. It's... it's good he calls it "Summary", because if he called it "Brief" it'd be very ironic, correct?
Like any experienced developer I have a lot of respect for Martin Fowler and his work, but sometimes I wonder if his best skill is saying simple things in many, many, many words.
Well, could anybody sum this up? Because I'm definitely not going to read Part 2 since it seems Fowler didn't even bother to produce correct sentences.
I know open source folks don't consider branding important, to the point they intentionally give their projects stupid names for the "irony" and so on, but I don't even have this key on my keyboard, and I don't even know how to say this. Mewjee? Mewg? Ug? Come on, folks, you can do better.
Whether you know it or not, this has an actual effect on the ability of the project to spread by word of mouth (online or otherwise), therefore its success and number of contributors it'll get.
μTorrent seems to do fine with the Mu, even though most people write it as "uTorrent" and spell it as such.
You've said it yourself there; μTorrent was rebranded by the majority of users to uTorrent, and "uTorrent" is a distinct, mostly spelt-how-it-sounds and easily-Googleable name.
I doubt that an involuntary rebranding of μg to "ug" would be quite as successful, nor likely to happen.
The funny thing is that in Modern Greek the letter μ is pronounced "me", so the name of the software could be pronounced "meTorrent". Spelling it with a u makes the name of the software sound like "youTorrent".
Its a ballache though, especially in 8.1 (u1) with classic start. Press the first letter and get a list of programs that start with that letter? U doesn't bring it up. Because it doesn't start with a U.
This has an actual effect on the ability of the project to spread by word of mouth (online or otherwise), therefore its success and number of contributors it'll get
I completely agree with you.
"What's that you're using?"
"Microgram, I think. It's cool, you should check it out"
sound of frantic typing
"I can't find it on Google, how do you spell it?"
Variants on the above conversation happen every day.
Adopting a name like μg only places petty and annoying barriers in front of potential users.
I thought the same. Branding can make or break the success of a project. I think OSS is no exception. Patio11 wrote a great piece on the branding of Heartbleed. [1]
Here on Hacker News, I momentarily mistook "µg" for "pg". So I thought Paul Graham was making an announcement about APIs for Android. If that had been intentional, it could have been a homograph attack.
The government isn't censoring information here, citizens are.
Any explicit mention of "there is censored information" would mean Google are back in court.
I honestly doubt any big scandal can be hidden by removing it from Google. Scandals spread virally, ear to ear (i.e. social networks, digital or not). This is more useful so embarrassing or false information can't prevent normal folks from getting a job and so on.
The government is absolutely the force of censorship here. These requests to be forgotten only have any teeth because the government backs them with its ability to punish Google if they fail to comply with them.
Yes, and the government has teeth because it is backed by its citizens. You could probably argue that the main force from governments comes from police and other armed force, but this is not what found their legitimacy. And most people in Europe, for historical and deep-rooted cultural reasons, seem to be in favor of the ruling. So all is well!
The government has teeth because it ultimately has the threat of violence over the governed. That's what "law enforcement" is.
A government's legitimacy comes from the consent of the governed, but its power comes from the threat of force. If that wasn't true, then there would be no need for government, since people could just ask nicely for what they want and receive it without any need to coerce others into doing it under threat of forced deprivation of assets or liberty.
It needs to happen more, but there are exactly zero reasons for the U.S. to give a shit about some business Verizon lost in Germany. No taxes go to the U.S., no jobs go to the U.S., and thanks to high taxes, no profits get repatriated in the U.S.
The only one suffering here is Verizon.
Probably if all U.S. based companies suffer enough, they'll start lobbying for change in U.S. but that would have to be some massive wave of upset businesses.
And guess how companies "protest" policies in the U.S. - they pay politicians to lobby for changes. So yeah, the shittier the govt does its job, the more lobbyist money politicians get, funny how it works right?
The more likely situation is the govt keeps not giving a damn, and companies suffer.
Not that Verizon are angels, but notice how all those "government doesn't like another government" passive aggressive actions end up hitting people and companies who have no fault at all for a given government policy.
Case in point, Germany doesn't like what U.S. does - boom, Verizon takes a shot.
U.S. and few other countries don't like the anti-gay laws of Uganda. Boom, poor Uganda citizens take a shot (aids get cut).
U.S. doesn't like North Korea's policy. Boom, poor citizens take one again.
Obviously there's no channel where said governments can express themselves, maybe we should have a social network for governments where they can rant and vent off, instead of having innocent third parties suffer?
It might come a bit as a surprise to you, but people are generally expected to have at least some responsibility for the actions of their government. After all, the latter is usually not some alien black box deciding things but rather a set of people, elected from the general population and by the general population, requiring the support of the general population to implement the laws affecting that very population. Saying that Americans are ‘innocent’ regarding the actions of their government is as ludicrous as claiming that the American president and parliament(s) are not responsible for the actions of the American government.
In this particular instance though, according to the article, some negotiation was done between the two governments to reach a no-spy agreement.
As no agreement could be reached, an American company cannot offer the service required by the German government. Thus is it not reasonable for the contract to be cancelled?
This is not a shot at an innocent third party, this is the third party being constrained by American laws to the extent that it cannot offer a required service. Sure, it is unfortunate that a third party is adversely affected by this, but it cannot be portrayed as a deliberate act against them by the German government.
Don't you know almost every shop tracks you by your CC, and they literally put up fake wireless networks, so they can track your phone MAC address when you walk around a store?
The world on the street is exactly as cynical as the one online. It's the same world. Online it's just easier to track people even more, so they get tracked even more.
I am pretty sure the GP was being sarcastic with that list of alternatives (if it just mentioned one of those things, the GP might have just made a mistake, but by naming three controversial things and nothing else, it was likely said sarcastically.
There is nothing sexist or racist about this article, unless you believe that stating a black person is black is somehow offensive towards black people.
Like many people, I hold certain aesthetic preferences. You can call me racist while continuing to prefer blondes to brunettes if it makes you feel good about yourself.
If machines are flying over your head, would you feel safe going out without a helmet on your head?
Despite all safety measures, you know it'll happen at some point. One of those will fail, its safety will fail and it'll drop on the head of some kid and put it in the hospital.
I can predict immediately that birds and drones colliding will be one of the biggest problems (and it's not something you can fix with frequent tech checkups, as it's not a technical failure, just a fact of life).
Having casualties is the case with cars too, of course, but it's a whole new kind of terror to expect not just cars hitting you coming from the street, but also machines dropping from the sky (where you usually aren't even looking).
I'd take one of those risks, but not both at the same time. I can't look for both at the same time. And I'm not saying "ban them" is the only solution, but this has to be solved somehow.
> If machines are flying over your head, would you feel safe going out without a helmet on your head?
No, not with the current state of technology. That's why I think that this ban is in the right thing to do for the time being.
> I can predict immediately that birds and drones colliding will be one of the biggest problems
You're definitely right, bird strikes are a hazard for drones, model aircraft and big aviation alike.
Unlike big aircraft (which can dodge big flocks at best), a drone is more maneuverable and could be able to dodge birds to some degree using some kind of camera technology. Of course, a bird may also intentionally attack a drone (they certainly attack my kites occasionally), which is a harder problem to solve.
These are challenges that have to be overcome with navigation, camera and drone-to-drone communication techniques as well as redundancy.
Before we can put a number estimating the statistical risks of drone traffic, it is premature to think about large scale commercial operations. I think that it's inevitable that we'll have such a number (ie. number of incidents per hours of drone flight), and we can utilize technologies that will bring that number down to acceptable levels (ie. near or below existing road and air traffic risks). When that happens, re-thinking this restriction (not necessarily lifting it) is due.
I actually happen to think doing interviews with him, struggling to explain the unexplainable is quite pointless. It's cruel entertainment. It's like asking a baby why are those pants pooped.