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user2459 | 14 years ago | on: Adobe to charge Flash coders to use 'premium' features

"It's not clear to me how requiring programmers to pay to use something that was previously free will spark innovation."

Steve doesn't understand his own article. The whole point is that they're changing for completely new functionality. These aren't improvements of the existing flash player, they're completely new additions. And beyond that the vast majority of devs will never even have to think about it. You have to make over $50k with your flash product and you have to use the premium features.

Weather you like flash or not, these new features are great for online and ios game developers and cost Adobe a lot of time and money. Also weather you think about it or not, many of the mobile games you play are written in actionscript and running in Adobe air and air apps are specifically exempt from the fees.

So all in all, this is interesting news, but it's in no way as dramatic or devastating as some people would like to believe.

user2459 | 14 years ago | on: A Pinterest spammer tells all

The spammers make their money because they can "fake out" the system to think they're the honest money-making folks.

None of this is any different than basic capitalism. Now this isn't an anti-capitalism rant, it's just an observation. Rite-Aide and Walmart can buy entire city blocks and run their businesses at a loss for years to fake out and overcome honest citizens' businesses and we celebrate their success.

I suspect if people could invest in spammers there'd be a different public perception of them.

user2459 | 14 years ago | on: Mexican Drug Gangs Kidnap Computer Hackers and Programmers

Events like this are the main reason why The War on Drugs™ is so dangerous for everybody. It's not the drugs or gangs killing gangs. It's the gangsters that live through it sitting on piles of money who now have the resources to expand into crimes that take more than a gun, friends with guns, and some luck. Because of the prohibition they can now hire hackers to commit crimes for them in any place in the world. It's going to get harder to implicate them in crimes, and yet easier for them to make money off them.

Possibly the worst part is that this happened to us(and is still affecting us) in almost exact detail during the prohibition of the 20s and yet we continue to shrug our shoulders and keep giving them more money.

user2459 | 14 years ago | on: PHP-Snow - A concise, dry and beautiful language that compiles to PHP

With a passion? Kind of over the top don't you think? Snow is just a tool like php is just a tool. We're all programmers just trying to make development easier for ourselves and hopefully others. I don't know how anyone can hate any aspect of programming with a passion. It's our modus to find things we dislike and we write tools to prevent us from ever having to do them again.

user2459 | 14 years ago | on: Ability to learn is affected by the timing of sleep

I always figured it was because I had less other things to think about between me and the next morning. I could learn something and think about it a little while I was lying in bed trying to get to sleep VS trying to learn something and then shift to some other cognitive activities afterward.

user2459 | 14 years ago | on: Notepad++ 6.0 Released

Definitely not free, but non-self-crippling.

"Sublime Text 2 may be downloaded and evaluated for free, however a license must be purchased for continued use. There is currently no enforced time limit for the evaluation."

user2459 | 14 years ago | on: One IDE to Rule them All?

This question lacks a lot of details, what tech is being used, how experienced the team is, what the build and deploy environments are like, what level of syntax consistency is needed for various reasons etc..

While many programmers are religious about their tool chain there are very legitimate reasons for wanting a standardized dev environment especially with an IDE that does things like syntax homogenization for you. Without more details it's impossible to tell weather this specific individual case would really benefit from the mandate in spite of upsetting the comfort of their devs.

user2459 | 14 years ago | on: The Unwelcome Mat - How Not to Attract Tourists

It's not an unwelcome mat, it's a go away mat. As an American who travels a lot the biggest hassle I've ever had to deal with when entering another country was putting my bag through an x-ray machine and filling out a form about fruits and vegetables. Whenever I get back to the states I see hours long lines of non citizens waiting to get through customs with way too few customs officers stamping passports. That alone would be an unwelcome mat, but put on everything else we make people go through and we're pretty much just saying "Go Away".

Along with the fee and abusive questionnaire at this site https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/ we've also got this lovely informational site http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/types/types_1262.html and tons of other fees http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/types/types_1263.html . Then of course after you've paid all your fees and told the US government all about your diseases, mental illness, and intention to spy on them, you still have to give them your fingerprints, photo, submit to a search, wait in line for 2 hours, and answer many more questions about the same stuff.

It's not xenophobia. It's full on we think we're better than you and you pathetic humans get to deal with us 'cos we said so. The whole system wreaks of 'cos we said so. Every citizen and border patrol agent knows it's excessive and ineffective, but we keep on truckin' cos hey, they're all just doing their, trained to be overly aggressive, jobs.

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