newishuser's comments

newishuser | 13 years ago | on: MongoDB 2.4 Released: Text Search, Security, Hash-based Sharding

I feel like you're more concerned with making sure people understand where they sit on the totem pole than encouraging progress or exciting developers. While learning from history is certainly paramount in software development, raw experimentation, naive excitement, and continuing in the face of nay-sayers is what pushes all industries forward.

People are allowed to make mistakes, tons of them, and the software industry is one of the best industries to make mistakes in. You get quality feedback almost instantly and can fail faster than anywhere else. No one is claiming that "detailed knowledge of old things" is on it's way out. We are engulfed in systems and code that are decades old. I don't see the point in nay-saying.

newishuser | 13 years ago | on: MongoDB 2.4 Released: Text Search, Security, Hash-based Sharding

Yeah, your right, MongoHQ hasn't brought anything positive to web development and there's no way they're going to make a business supporting their db. It definitely needs to be put in it's place and we should all take the time to talk about just how cool we are for predicting it's downfall. If only the whole world had enough insight to just stop before they tried to do something awesome. After all, someone may have tried it before.

newishuser | 13 years ago | on: EA CEO John Riccitiello Steps Down

Firing would have been a deliberate attempt on EA's part to tarnish his career. Stepping down is the nice corporate way of saying "You're a great guy but things just aren't working out."

newishuser | 13 years ago | on: EA CEO John Riccitiello Steps Down

I think you mean any attempt to say he got push out solely because of the SimCity fiasco... It's perfectly reasonable to wonder as to whether or not the SimCity launch had an effect on his position at EA.

newishuser | 13 years ago | on: Do We Really Want to Live Without the Post Office?

No company is legally allowed to compete for business with the USPS. In order to deliver letters, other companies must by law be providing premium services that the USPS either doesn't provide or aren't it's core business. UPS must charge you significantly more to deliver your letter in order to stay out of the USPS' market.

newishuser | 13 years ago | on: Do We Really Want to Live Without the Post Office?

It seems nobody at esquire even bothered to read the wikipedia article on the USPS as they would have crossed the section titled Universal service obligation and monopoly status[1]. This brings me to 2 things; 1) Monopoly: The USPS has a legal monopoly on letter carrying. You're not legally allowed to compete with them and that, simply, is why mailing a letter through UPS is so expensive. 2) Universal Service: One problem with completely privatizing as that you would have to legally mandate private companies to deliver to everyone.

I think the USPS could be a profitable company, they've just royally screwed up customer service. Screwed it up so bad that most people actually resent it. Not only is going to the post office comparable to a bad visit to the dentist but just try to make sense of their services [2]. They're incomprehensible. If I just want to mail a letter with a tracking number I should be able to go to the post office and say, "I would like to mail this with a tracking number." Actually forget that, I should be able to go to a vending machine, put in $1 and have it print me a tracking number that I can slap on the envelope. Instead I have to wait 30 minutes in a slightly dilapidated room, with service change signs dated back to 2004 and ask for "First Class mail with tracking and delivery confirmation". Every time, I say "I just want a tracking number" and they have to ask me 10 questions. Just give me a damn tracking number and clean your office.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usps#Universal_service_obligat...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usps#Service_level_choices

newishuser | 13 years ago | on: Flat UI DMCA Takedown

If you want to speak up, don't hesitate to contact LayerVault's support ( [email protected] ) and let them know, respectfully, how you feel. You can also tweet your opinions @layervault.

I stress respectfully. Try to be well spoken and sincere.

newishuser | 13 years ago | on: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

You can't copyright a color pallet. You can't copyright an icon concept.

Sending DMCA take-downs without full intent to prosecute and full conviction that your copyrights have been violated is not only illegal but shameful.

newishuser | 13 years ago | on: EmberJS Confuses Me

Don't give up! Ember has a steep learning curve but once you've got a bunch of it memorized development gets much easier.

newishuser | 13 years ago | on: Why American Eggs Would Be Illegal In A British Supermarket, And Vice Versa

This is one of those obvious to some, and eye opening to others things. I had always wondered why other countries keep their eggs unrefrigerated and we Americans have always been very thoroughly warned about the dangers of room temperature eggs.

I always figured it was a matter of cultural tradition and that eggs weren't really as sensitive as I've been told. I had no idea there was so much process and science behind it.

This kind of fits as a rough analogy for software. Consumers may see eggs in either market as just eggs. Maybe they have a slight different taste, maybe some are kept in a fridge, but they're still plain, simple, safe eggs. Getting to that point of consumption though is a choreography of processes that has no "right way" and is more complex than the average consumer wants or needs to know.

newishuser | 13 years ago | on: The Pirate Bay is now hosted in North Korea

The Pirate Bay is not concerned with your judgment. The Pirate Bay is concerned with making socio-political statements and providing access to their site, seemingly in that order. Discomfort with the situation is exactly what they are going for.

It should make you uneasy that they have to go to North Korea to keep the site online. While they are not martyrs for an easy to grasp cause, and their definition of 'free speech' may fly in the face of yours, they are doing their absolute best to keep alive what they think is important. This has recently resulted in much irony. Irony that I'm sure they're proud of.

You should hate this. That's the point. This wasn't done so people could keep downloading movies illegally, this was done to make a statement, to get you to think. So please, ice your knee, and think.

newishuser | 13 years ago | on: How I Fired Myself

Better that it happened 2 months after backups were canceled than 6 months or later. If you're going to cancel your backups you're begging for disaster.

newishuser | 13 years ago | on: Music Industry Sales Rise, and Digital Revenue Gets the Credit

Reporting Revenue is a hugely political affair. There are many ways to manipulate that number and it's not really a direct measurement of the health of the industry. It's only real use is for pointing at and shouting "look at what new fangled technology is doing to us. we must restrict everything."

newishuser | 13 years ago | on: How I Fired Myself

You did them more good than harm.

1) Not having backups is an excuse-less monumental fuckup.

2) Giving anyone delete access to your production db, especially a junior dev through a GUI tool, is an excuse-less monumental fuckup.

Hopefully they rectified these two problems and are now a stronger company for it.

newishuser | 13 years ago | on: How I learned to love rebase

You rebase to clean up your own, non-shared, local commit history. That is it. As soon as your commits are shared you can no longer rebase them or feel the wrath. If you don't care about cleaning up your local history, before you share it, then don't rebase.

A merge creates a new commit that doesn't effect history so it's always safe to merge.

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