AlexBucataru's comments

AlexBucataru | 14 years ago | on: Twitter to move away from Hashbangs

Hashbangs for state representation are just a tool, which can be used to make things better or worse for the users.

Where content is the main purpose ("websites"), they are overkill at best.

They can be useful though in functionality-first applications ("apps"), where the interface can be costly to build (too slow if you reload the whole "page" on each state change). Ideally, the app differentiates between fundamental states, represented in URLs, and transient states, represented in hashbangs.

Anyway, this is good news for Twitter, if they are really going through with it.

AlexBucataru | 14 years ago | on: I feel like downvote is a censure

The way I understand down voting, it is meant to help clean up the conversation by marginalizing useless posts. For the most part, it looks like it is used correctly for that purpose. However, I have noticed a few down voted posts that were expressing an on-topic point of view, in a civilized manner. And that does feel like mob-rule censorship.

The "seeing the haterz" proposal would only be introducing another form of censorship.

The "cost for down voting" idea, on the other hand, makes sense and has been proven. It does give some disproportionate power to users that have high karma (their perceived sacrifice cost of one point is lower), but I see that as a meritocracy (they should be the most valuable contributors to the community to earn all that karma).

AlexBucataru | 14 years ago | on: BBC confronts Facebook troll

> If you can't say something nice...just don't comment.

That's great advice, both online and face-to-face. Well, probably "useful" rather than "nice", and say it respectfully; e.g. when debating an idea, arguing your position may not be seen as nice...

It is all so true that what you say can come back to haunt you. It is the responsibility that comes with the freedom (of speech, in this case). You cannot have one without the other, but while it is important to understand and accept the responsibility, you shouldn't let it frighten you into giving away your freedom.

AlexBucataru | 14 years ago | on: Rich Dad Poor Dad... Worst Personal Finance Book of All Time?

This would be a more accurate review that the OP :)

Another big takeaway for me was that you cannot have a healthy relationship with your money until you stop working for the money. Work for passion, curiosity, experience, whatever satisfies your mind, and you will start seeing the bigger opportunities for profit; the ones that can free you from the rat race of selling away your life (time & effort) in the hope of improving it.

AlexBucataru | 14 years ago | on: You're solving the wrong problem

In experimental tasks, parallelizing does not provide the same gain in success probability as accelerating the process of prototyping.

Building prototypes in parallel does not provide the benefit of a feedback loop, as the iterative process does.

Let's say you have a 10% probability of success on the first attempt, which improves by 40% after each experiment (to 14%, 19.6%...), and you have resources for 5 attempts. The chance of getting at least one successful solution is: parallel ~ 40.95%; iterative ~ 72.19%

AlexBucataru | 14 years ago | on: Why You Should Sell First Then Give It Away For Free

Giving it away for free, even for a limited time, can make future sales an uphill battle, not to mention ticking off the clients who already paid for it in the "sell first" phase.

Giving something away for free should work, as long as it is valuable and related to the product. I think that was the case in the example given, though it is not immediately clear.

AlexBucataru | 14 years ago | on: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA

Government control and government ownership are two distinct concepts, with the latter not being a necessary condition for the former. That being said, it is more an issue of the same groups controlling most of both the political and economic landscape. However, as a Romanian I thought you'd pick on the irony of the situation: a politician finally admitting they have no clue about what they're doing - another thing that Romanians have not invented, but "optimized" :)

AlexBucataru | 14 years ago | on: You're solving the wrong problem

You are right: the problem was not the problem, but the available tools, namely the inability to "fail fast and cheap". However, I am not sure what alternative to building better tools first would be viable - throwing more resources into broken processes rarely, if ever, leads to results.

AlexBucataru | 14 years ago | on: Suffering-oriented programming

Good point. Breaking down the code into "isolated enough" units as you write it shouldn't add much complexity or effort. It actually makes testing / debugging and refactoring easier. You cannot anticipate what will need to be added, expanded or improved, but you can be sure something will.
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