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I just did a bit more research, and from what it appears, the perfect cloud solution just isn't there.Have you looked at JungleDisk or any of the other Amazon S3 solutions? I'd be curious to know where you find them failing.-wraith808 (April 21, 2010, 10:02 AM)
...once they got to the site that looked totally different than Facebook...To be fair, Facebook changes the layout of their site more than any other that I know, and the changes tend to be more than just small tweaks as well. They've effectively trained their users to expect nothing to be where it was the last time they used the site.-JavaJones (February 20, 2010, 04:19 PM)
When you buy an ebooks thru oreilly.com you get lifetime access to the book, and whenever possible we provide it to you in four, DRM-free file formats — PDF, .epub, Kindle-compatible .mobi, and Android .apk ebook — that you can use on the devices of your choice. Our ebook files are fully searchable, and you can cut-and-paste and print them. We also alert you when we've updated the files with corrections and additions.
<h2>Tuesday, February 5, 2008</h2>
<h3><b>Use Mercurial, you Git</b>!</h3>
It's a land rush of revision control, I tell ya! Among the <a href="http://en.wikipedia....rsion_Control_System">stable of eager candidates</a> for best-loved DVCS, <a href="http://git.or.cz">Git</a> and <a href="http://www.selenic.com/mercurial">Mercurial</a> seem to be the two tools capturing the most programmer heart-share for now.<br /><br />Git is admired because Linus Torvalds wrote it, but Mercurial is <em>better</em> because he didn't.<br /><br />Developers with refined sensibilities are in a tough spot right now. We'd clearly like <em>something</em> to take the place of centralized tools like Subversion. But why, oh why, does it have to be Git? Let's examine the hype and the reality:<br /><h4><cite>"<a href="http://mjtsai.com/bl...5/subversion-to-git/">The user interface is... not too bad</a>"</cite></h4><br /><em>False.</em> I've heard dozens of authors whining about Git's usability. I thought maybe they were overstating the case, or were just confused. Then I tried Git. If anything, they were being too kind. Git polluted my /usr/bin with nearly <em>150</em> distinct binaries. Mercurial has <em>one</em>.<br /><br />And if you think that you only need one or two of those commands for daily use, you're an optimist. Check out the <a href="http://rubinius.ligh...jects/5089/using-git">"easy use" guide</a> from, by the way, an awesome Ruby project. You're expected to juggle, depending on how you count them, about ten commands, just for day-to-day work.<br /><br /><blockquote>The <code>git rebase</code> command will save your changes away, update the topic branch, and then reapply them.... Warning! If you are sharing a branch, you must use: <code>git merge master</code>... Rebase causes the commit layout to change and will confuse anyone you've shared this branch with.</blockquote><br /><br />Huh? <a href="http://static.flickr...03564_7281ad0588.jpg">Blah blah blah Ginger blah blah</a>. For day-to-day use of Mercurial, you only need <code>hg fetch</code> to get code, and <code>hg commit</code> to give code.<br /><br />Git apologists will tell you that you need all these extra commands because Git was written with the "UNIX philosophy" of small tools that do only one thing, and do it really well. Which brings us to our next myth.<br /><h4><cite>"<a href="http://git.or.cz/">Git... consists of many commands that do one thing well</a>"</cite></h4><br />O RLY? From <a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/210045/">Git's own gurus</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Git checkout can do three separate things:<br /><ol><li>Change to a new head.</li><li>Revert changes to a small number of files.</li><li>Create a branch.</li></ol></blockquote><br />Those are pretty massively different tasks. So much for "doing one thing." I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to debunk the "well" part. Hint: try using git for any non-trivial project.<br /><br />Having lost the simplicity argument, Git-folk will try to tell you that the reason they dumped 150 pieces on your floor was so that you can build your own revision control software:<br /><h4><cite>"<a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/131312/">It's not an SCM.... I bet you could make a reasonable SCM on top of it, though</a>"</cite></h4><br />That was from Linus himself in the early days, though Git's recent admirers echo the same sentiment: <cite>"<a href="http://utsl.gen.nz/t...n/intro.html#wtf-why"><code>git</code> is first and foremost a toolkit for writing VCS systems</a>."</cite><br /><br />Who cares? I ordered a version control system, not a toolkit for building one! If I'd wanted building blocks for rolling my own, I'd have gone to Home Depot and bought a 1 and a 0. You can build any software you like out of those, including a source control tool.<br /><br />Mercurial is a <em>working</em> DVCS right out of the box. Why not use it?<br /><h4><cite>"<a href="http://wincent.com/a.../one_of_the_thin.php">The model is rock solid and infallible because it is simple.</a>"</cite></h4><br /><em>Horseshit.</em> I've even unwittingly <a href="http://rubyforge.org...November/004583.html">repeated</a> this stinker myself. Let's break it down a little. <a href="http://utsl.gen.nz/t...ntro.html#yay-simple">Quoth</a> the explainers (alongside a rat's nest of UML, to boot):<br /><br /><blockquote>The core Git filesystem can be explained as four types of objects: Blobs (files), Trees (directories), Commits and Tags.</blockquote><br /><br />Unfortunately, no, it can't. The core of Git may well be <em>implemented</em> as four kinds of things. But to get even the most basic tasks done, you need to know repositories, working trees, branches, remotes, masters, origins, index caches, and a bunch of other unexplained concepts.<br /><br />The manual pages are no help, for the same reason that "look it up" is no help to someone with a spelling question. You have to know the name of the command before you can look it up. And the commands are so obliquely named that there's no way to reason upward from what you know about the alleged "four kinds of objects" to make an educated guess as to which of the 150 commands you're supposed to use.<br /><h4><cite>"<a href="http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/">Git on Windows is only officially supported using Cygwin</a>"</cite></h4><br />This is another way of saying, "Git is not supported on Windows."<br /><br />I <em>like</em> Cygwin -- it's one of the few things that raises my (mandatory) Windows experience at work from "completely unbearable" to merely "excruciating." But forcing my teammates to download and wrestle with the Cygwin setup, much less learn Bash, makes Git a complete non-starter in the one place where it could do me some good.<br /><br />Punting to Cygwin, in this day and age of awesome scripting languages (like <a href="http://www.python.org">the one Mercurial is based on</a>) is basically shouting to the world, "I can't be bothered to do my job properly."<br /><br />Actually, speaking of scripting, using Python is <em>exactly</em> why Mercurial can be so scriptable and extensible without dumping 150 inscrutable binaries into your /usr/bin.<br /><h4><cite>"<a href="http://kubasik.net/blog/2007/01/04/19/">git is reliable</a>"</cite></h4><br />I wanted to believe this. Really, really wanted to believe it. Unfortunately, Git fails at the most fundamental of source control tasks -- so much so that I'm going to have to take that up in a different post.<br /><br />The short version is that Git encourages and even requires you to tamper with your project's source history, and that is a recipe for disaster, not reliability.<br /><br />In summary: Git was created by a brilliant mind and is maintained by a posse of smart, motivated developers. But it's a stinker. Its power might justify the agonizing experience of using it, if there weren't any better alternatives. There are.<br /><br />Code in good taste. Use Mercurial.<br /><br /><strong>UPDATE</strong> <em>2008-2-6, 9 PM</em>. In retrospect, a discussion on reliability should just be about data integrity: having a repository that's resistant to crashes and hardware failures and such. The concerns in the final section -- discovering how to get data reliably out -- are not a pronouncement on the resilience of the repository format. They have to deal with usability and coherence. "Reliability" as a fuzzy human term is too broad a word here.
Posted by undees at 9:55 PM
New Prices in 2010!
19-Oct-2009
The addition of power features like Dual Pane, Mini Tree, Tags & Comments, Search Results Caching, Custom Toolbar Buttons, Undo/Redo, and Action Log, will be reflected in next year's prices:
Lifetime License
NOW: single € 29.95 -- US$ 44.95 -- £ 28.95 each
2010: single € 49.95 -- US$ 74.95 -- £ 44.95 each
Standard License
NOW: single € 17.50 -- US$ 24.95 -- £ 16.95 each
2010: single € 29.95 -- US$ 44.95 -- £ 26.95 each
Home License
NOW: single € 9.95 -- US$ 14.95 -- £ 8.95 each
2010: single € 19.95 -- US$ 29.95 -- £ 17.95 each
Crapware is in the eye of the beholder, apparently.I'd venture that most of the people installing Flash have heard of Google, in fact they probably used it to find the installer. iTunes and Quicktime are both made by Apple and meant for media playback (for the most part), so it's not that big of a surprise that they bundle them together. I believe certain features of iTunes do rely on Quicktime, and now that Apple offers the ability to download Quicktime alone without having to go on a scavenger hunt, it's not too bad. Like Flash, I'm sure most of the people installing Java have heard of Yahoo! Toolbar, and I believe they only show an advertisement for OpenOffice while installing.
Seemingly respectable software now tries to bundle all sorts of crapware. Have you tried installing Flash recently? They try to sneak the Google Toolbar on you.
Anyone tried installing iTunes or Quicktime in the past decade? They bundle each other.
Anyone tried installing Java? I think it tries to bundle Yahoo! Toolbar or OpenOffice or both.-Deozaan (August 14, 2009, 04:08 PM)
Hold everything! They are going to use my computer for "searching the web" without explicitly asking for my permission? What exactly are they indexing, and how do I know they aren't accessing something illegal with my computer? Why are they trying to hide this in the first place?
To be fair, they do give you a way to disable this absurd nonsense—though they bury the setting behind a "Support Digsby" item on the menu, with no clear description on exactly what they are doing with it. It's clear they are abusing their users, but since they technically explain it in the TOS and let you disable the feature, they weasel out of any responsibility.
15. USAGE OF COMPUTER RESOURCES.
You agree to permit the Software to use the processing power of your computer when it is idle to run downloaded algorithms (mathematical equations) and code within a process. You understand that when the Software uses your computer, it likewise uses your CPU, bandwidth, and electrical power. The Software will use your computer to solve distributed computing problems, such as but not limited to, accelerating medical research projects, analyzing the stock market, searching the web, and finding the largest known prime number. This functionality is completely optional and you may disable it at any time.
Plura® requires that all affiliates fully disclose and obtain permission for the utilization of such resources. This is important as we want such utilization to be completely transparent and voluntary.makes it sound like they'd be perfectly within their rights to do so, since Digsby implemented it as an opt-out instead of opt-in.
my understanding is that they were only supposed to verify that the code works, not decide based on efficiency, etc. and that they could not "re-open" the contest unless there was some violation of the rules.Well for links, just look at what you posted, none of them have an official statement that Ensemble won.
do you have any more info about this and links?-mouser (July 27, 2009, 06:01 AM)
And the official Netflix blog says that they'll begin verifying: http://blog.netflix....n-closes-but-no.htmlQualified entries will be evaluated as described in the Rules. We look forward to awarding the Grand Prize, which we expect to announce in a few weeks. However if a Grand Prize cannot be awarded because no submission can be verified by the judges, the Contest will reopen. We will make an announcement on the Forum after the Contest judges reach a decision.So maybe not taking performance into consideration, but there's also ...
Thanks. In fact, this is a very happy day for us - our team is top contender for winning the Grand Prize, as we have a better Test score than The Ensemble. (Probably this is the first post revealing this in the forum smile)Which led me to believe that the leaderboards are not calculated on the full/exact data set that the winning algorithm will be tested on.
I can elaborate more on that point here if you'd like, but people over in your forum start foaming at the mouth every time someone brings the point up over there.I only see 4 threads that mention descript.ion over there and none of them exhibit said users. In fact the most negative thing about it is that Don finds it "crap compared to tags.dat." We've gotten in debates over there before, but usually things remain rather civil. (DP aside.)-Innuendo (June 16, 2009, 09:59 AM)
2nd: I am not XY user and I will never be. Why should I post anything on their forum then?Well then it seems silly to complain that XY doesn't support it, does it not? If the desire for such a feature is so small that no one wants to bring it up on the XY forums, how can anyone expect that feature gets implemented? It's a bit backwards to think that Don (who is the only person behind XY) should scour the internet looking for features to implement for people who "will never be" XY users, when he already has wishes of his own and his community on his to-do list.-fenixproductions (June 16, 2009, 07:39 AM)
Most people are probably aware of it, but you can always get a very recent version of Gooogle Chrome from which all the auto-update and call-home-to-mama-google features have been surgically removed. Works great for me and it is my standard browser for the laptop (since the UI is so space saving)- even online banking is no problem.I've always found this (and similar projects) a bit ironic. "Don't trust Google? Well try this version from someone you know even less about!"
The tamed chrome version is SRWare Iron:
http://www.srware.ne...ware_srware_iron.php-Lutz_ (April 20, 2009, 09:48 AM)
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