The Truth of Libertarian-ism..
The point of libertarian-ism is not forgo care, but to encourage people to volunteer care.
When 911 struck I didn't know what to do, I was scared, and everyone was in shock, and things were closing down. The best idea I had at the time was to go to the hospital and to donate blood. It took 6 hours for them to finally get to me, but, while I was there people came in and brought food to the hospital workers working late, and to the people donating blood. As we where all there together it had a sort of healing effect to just give blood.
After that day I gave blood every 2 months for 6 years while I lived in Milwaukee. But one day, I went in and I was in a bad mood and I made a joke that the Vampires were coming to take my blood, and one of the nurses stopped me and said. Justin, we appreciate your gift, but we do want you to give cheerfully, and if you can't do that then you should find something else you can do.
That's the point of Libertarian-ism, we just want people to give cheerfully, rather than by the force of the Law.
The problem with forcing people is that they will fight it, and then we spend time fighting the people who fight it. In the end we end up spending all of our efforts fighting and not caring.
On the other hand, people who give with a cheerful heart, are those that will go an extra mile to care for someone.
I want to live in a world where people want to help each other out, and not say, hey here is a government that can take care of the sick and the homeless and I don't have to. That's what my taxes do.
The reality is that everything is in decay because we are leaving it to someone else to fix. What if you started fixing things you saw were wrong on your own?
JSLint-Feature – Error Severity
Hi Douglas,
I have been to a good number of your talks, and I love the idea behind JSLint. I even don't mind it when JSLint makes me cry every now and then, however, I feel like the priority of JSLint should be around launch successful code early and often.
Here at Kabam we build games that run as HMTL5 apps, and recently we have started to use JSLint as part of our build process. In a few cases it has caught some minor errors and we were later able to resolve them.
Our build process uses Jenkins, which is an open source version of Hanson. These continuous build automation tools make use of another wrapper library you might be familiar with. http://code.google.com/p/jslint4java/
So in this sense let's say a develop wants to add a new piece of code, and this code causes a problem.
JSLint reacts in the following ways,
- it has a an error limit and stops reporting erros after a certain amount
- errors are not prioritized based on 'newness' - because that would be hard
- errors are not prioritized based on priority.
The end result is that a team must fix all errors to get the maximum value out of JSLint.
I propose a 2 part solution.
1. JSLint should not set error priority, unless it sets sensible defaults
2. JSLint should report an error code so that a wrapper like jslint4java could use a config file set an error priority.
This would allow teams to triage error types as part of their build/ development process.
On line 1326 you have a function warn() defined I propose it's written something like so, including a new warning property, defining an error.type property using the bundle[] accessor name as the error code.
If you think of some other change that could get to the spirit of what I am looking for that would be great too. If I get the time I might try to implement a prototype. Hudson and Jenkins have 3 levels of errors, High, Medium, and Low.
Would you have some suggestions as to what would make good defaults for each of the error.types?
I feel like this change would better support agile development and continuous integration, and would allow teams to prioritize their development efforts.
Thank you for being a beacon and leader in the community.
function warn(message, offender, a, b, c, d) {
var character, line, warning;
offender = offender || next_token; // `~
line = offender.line || 0;
character = offender.from || 0;
warning = {
id: '(error)',
raw: bundle[message] || message,
type: message,
evidence: lines[line - 1] || '',
line: line,
character: character,
a: a || (offender.id === '(number)'
? String(offender.number)
: offender.string),
b: b,
c: c,
d: d
};
warning.reason = warning.raw.supplant(warning);
JSLINT.errors.push(warning);
if (option.passfail) {
quit(bundle.stopping, line, character);
}
warnings += 1;
if (warnings >= option.maxerr) {
quit(bundle.too_many, line, character);
}
return warning;
}
Netflix, Rushing Roulette?
Like many of us you might be wondering why Reed Hastings is tearing a great company in two. The company had had a solid decade of growth and now it seems to be faltering at every step. In the past decade Netflix has gone from ~$3 a share to ~$300 a share a 100x return, so investing $100 in the company would have made you $10,000, not bad. In fact that return is so good that you would find it hard to find a bet in Vegas that would give you a return like that. Roulette only nets a 35x return if you bet on a single number, and in Craps you can make an unlikely bet to earn 30x, by betting either on a 2 or a 12, both requiring a pair of doubles to come up.
In the case of Netflix though there are a number of pressures bearing down on them. Content providers see Netflix's 25 million customers and feel like DVD/ BluRays are more secure and feel like they can turn content on and off to A/B test how consumers view content. The US Postal Service is thinking about cutting 238 offices nation wide, cutting out up to 5 post offices per state, or more likely up to 10 offices per metro region. Netflix has had to adjust content pricing to afford them the ability to bring in new content, while, other long standing partners have decided to take their content libraries elsewhere. And then add to that that there are Trillions of dollars of investment, yes Trillions, invested in the group of company's competing with Netflix over the content war brewing in your living room and you might start to see why Netflix is being brash about this.
As a Netflix subsriber, I have been more than happy to have items sitting both in my streaming que, and in my dvd que, and honestly if everything on Netflix was available via streaming or download, I would opt for that format. The kicker however is that so much good content is left on disc for one reason or another. I have seen content appear on various outlets, like Netflix, XBox Live, Hulu, and Amazon to name a few, but rarely is all of the content in one place. This is probably why Google feels the need to provide a TV with a search bar, and why Apple has been trying to figure out how to own the channel as well. However in the end, the customer still looses. I think in this case, right or wrong Netflix is just tired of talking to content providers about what format the content will be available. I think the re-brand is more of a point of discussion in contracts, and negotiations than it is a consumer feature.
The next chamber of risk brings us to the pending demise of the post office. Currently the US government has been looking for ways to trim the budget and the US Postal Service has been operating at a loss for as long as I can remember, however, today they are preparing for being on their own. There are a few bills in the House and Senate that might require the Post Office to be profitable, and so the Post office has proposed a plan that will cut 7% ( 38,000 ) of it's workers, and 1% ( 238 ) of it's offices from it's budget just before Christmas. I think Netflix, which is one of the largest users of the post office next to Amazon is probably concerned that the cost to ship DVDs this winter will increase, and the delivery times will too. Right now I get my DVDs in about 1 day, sometimes 2. Imagine now that those discs now take 2 days or maybe 3. How much more pressure will there be to stream. The odd part is that all of the disc rental sites will have the same problem. And for a 2hour film waiting 2 days for a film, and the having to wait another 2 days for it to get back to Netflix/Qwikster might cut the number of DVDs you have cycling through by half. I would expect Qwikster to play with pricing over the next year to account for that. Splitting the two companies means that while Qwikster finds it's groove Netflix can focus on getting content.
On top of all that, Netflix is a 12 Billion, strike that 8 Billion dollar company that is competing with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Comcast, Time Warner Fox, NBC, ShowTime, HBO, TNT, Viacom, Disney, etc... I think the market cap of their competition is near 2 Trillion dollars. Netflix needs to be more nimble than is competitors and if by doing this they can even gain a month or two on these companies it might be worth it. iPad beat several company's by only 6 months, but by that time they had already sold enough devices to make it very expensive for other's to compete there.
Finally companies like to manage their investors expectations and if the news was already bad, they have this habit of pilling on bad news or announcing bad news right before really good news. So if Netflix stock is already taking a hit, and you were going to separate the companies in q4, but now you can just do it in q3, you can write those numbers off earlier, you can push your bad books down into q3, and then you can set your self up for a decent q4. If Netflix wants to compare q4 of this year to q4 of next year, doing this now helps. I also thing that Netflix's gross margins will skyrocket right now Netflix has a P/E of 40 at $150 a share, and it probably was a P/E of 80 at $300 a share which was probably a bit over priced with a gross margin of 15%, but let's say that Netflix drops it's DVD rental service, and it's gross margins go from 15% to 50%? Even if the company looses customers it probably is better for the stock, and the company. The company would be cash rich and able to better acquire content. Right now Qwikster is expensive to run and competes on costs, and is probably constrained to 10-20% gross margins.
Netflix on the other hand has been experimenting with buying their own custom content and this may allow the company to do that more. I would love to know what the insider trading is doing with Netflix.
Efficiency and Independence, Mankind’s next giant leap forwards
It's July 4th, and it dawned on me today that so many of the things we grew up being futuristic actually depend on us getting greener. Look at any popular science, or popular mechanics issue from that last 50 years, and you'll see articles discussing leisure, space travel, or solving large problems like world hunger. If you look at it, system efficiency are the largest hold ups. As we approach more efficient processes, things will get cheaper and easier.
Greentech is not just what's needed to save us from a controversial end like, Climate Change, instead it's how we can make Mankinds next giant leap forwards.
When my great grand father was growing up he witnessed something amazing, he witnessed the moment when mankind learned how to fly. He saw us go from failed experiments to creating roadways, and a deep transportation network that could transport resources over great distances cheaply. He witnessed what it took for us to land on the moon. At the core of it all was a shift in engine power density, or rather the amount of mechanical power we could generate with less weight.
Our generation will witness fantastic changes in efficiency:
- Farming
- Water
- Computational
- Lighting
- Transportation
- Manufacturing
For us to approach many of the challenges that we need to travel into deep space, we will need to be masters at living on less. It's not about living with less, but that we might use less to do more. My hope is that we can look at green tech not as a way of scaling back, but as a way of reaching out.
Being green will allow us to leap farther, because we are weighed down less.
New Babelfin logo and Site design coming.
Babelfin Logo - Icon
In the near future I hope to push out a version of Babelfin that will work in Japanese. Soon after I will release one in French. As part of that release I thought I would iterate a bit on the logo and the site layout. The previous logo was a one color logo with grey text ( which in print is two colors anyways ), this one is a two color log and is high contrast. I think the new logo is readable and distinct. I also hope that the subtle abstract nature of a fish bone is present.
I found inspiration for this logo via the hit show Mad Men and my recent visit to the Picasso exhibit.
Let me know if you like the logo, or if you are feeling bold, I would love to see what you come up with. Take this as inspiration.
As for the site at large, I really just need to add a call to action to collect email addresses and to send people a link to the plugin/ chrome extension. I felt like an email list is the best option until I can afford to dedicate some time to really write some copy. At some point I expect to add at least two more pages, one for each language. Over time I will start to add the other typical pages like About, etc... But for now I only need a landing page.
What are your thoughts?
Using Cellular Atomata as a Design Principal for ‘Natural Design’
I read this really thought provoking article using Cellular Atomata, prime numbers, and layered images to create seemingly random backgrounds for web pages. Yes, backgrounds for web pages.
The problem is that on so many web pages, load time is an issue and so is screen size, so it's really hard to avoid those lines or patterns that seem to repeat and distract from the content on a variety of devices.
It's actually a great design principal to accommodate randomness, so the eye can focus on the structured content. It's kinda like having a great forest in the background to an architectural monument. If done right the monument and surrounding garden will really pop against the scene.
In any case the author, Alex Walker, discusses how to uses geometric patterns based on prime numbers to create a sort of randomness in the background. The examples he gives are a much more understandable explanation than say Stephan Wolfram gives about the value of cellular automata in creating natural systems.
I think this better illustrates what Stephan Wolfram was talking about with cellular automata.
It's clearly brilliant to use it as a graphic design principle.
Maybe Cellular Atomata (CA) rules could be used to generate layout width & height rather than typical asymmetrical patterns? An app like Flipbook could benefit from it, to keep the page layouts feeling designed and fresh.
I think Alex is on to something here using CA (Cellular Atomata) as a design pattern.
I would love to see it in designing UX and Architecture. I would love to see CA being used as a way to generate dynamic, but structured design.
It's brilliant. Imagine what Santiago Calatrava could do with such a pattern.
Paypal IPN Validation Fails with Adaptive Payments and PHP query/ post parameters
If you are looking for a solution you can find it here.
Thank you Gleb ( http://www.memberwing.com/ )
https://www.x.com/message/158509#158509
The problem comes in how the API is designed, and it takes advantage of a little known feature of query parameters and their allowed characters. Paypal uses array'ed parameters like:
&transaction[0].status=value
The problem is that PHP does not know how to parse the query parameter and either skips it or stops processing the list. ( i can't remember which ).
Paypal's Adaptive Payments API is neat and freshens up their functionality, and additionally uses JSON as a communication layer, so I think it's clearly their future, however, there are a number of little problems like this as you walk through getting up to speed on the API. I hope this helps anyone in the future by saving them an hour to day.
It kinda reminds me of some of the problems we had getting the MySpaceID API up and polished so I guess this is a nod to all of those APIs that do it right the first time.
Cheers.
Getting VerifyStatus API working in Sandbox
There are a few caviots to getting the API working.
I hope this saves someone a few hours/ days.
- CallerServices.php has a small bug
- Only Sandbox email accounts work in the sandbox. Thanks for confiming @ppalavilli
- ALL Sandbox accounts have the First Name: Test Thanks @ppalavilli
- ALL Sandbox accounts have the Last Name: User Thanks @ppalavilli
If you get a
PHP Warning: Missing argument 3 for CallerServices::callWebService()
On line 101 of CallerServices.php you have:
function callWebService($request,$serviceName,$simpleXML)
It should read: //(most of the calls that use callWebService are parent::callWebService( $request,$serviceName ) anyways.
function callWebService($request,$serviceName,$simpleXML=NULL)
{
$response = null;
try {
$endpoint=API_BASE_ENDPOINT.$serviceName;
$response = call($request, $endpoint, $this->sandBoxEmailAddress,$simpleXML);
}
catch(Exception $ex) {
throw new FatalException('Error occurred in call method');
}
return $response;
}
Here is the code I used. Replace {email} with one of your sandbox email addresses.
public function verify_email($params){
$VstatusRequest = new GetVerifiedStatusRequest();$VstatusRequest->emailAddress = '{email}';
$VstatusRequest->matchCriteria = 'NAME';
$VstatusRequest->firstName = 'Test';
$VstatusRequest->lastName = 'User';$rEnvelope = new RequestEnvelope();
$rEnvelope->errorLanguage = "en_US";
$VstatusRequest->requestEnvelope = $rEnvelope ;$aa = new AdaptiveAccounts();
$response = $aa->GetVerifiedStatus($VstatusRequest);echo json_encode($response);
}
The JSON encoded object looks like such:
{"responseEnvelope":{"timestamp":"2011-03-25T15:37:32.443-07:00","ack":"Success","correlationId":"42bce847aebc9","build":"1772158"},"accountStatus":"VERIFIED"}
@jdavid
Japan: Pay it Forward
I just sent this message to a friend in Japan. My hope is that others will do the same.
I was inspired by a few articles I had read about in the past about pastors giving money to the congregations members to do good in a community. I don't know how my friend Jon will make use of the money but I trust he will slightly know better than I how to use it.
I figure that this $100 will work in different ways than the other money that I have sent to the relief effort via the Red Cross.
If I get a note back of how the money was used, I will update this post. Please let me know if you choose to do the same. #japan #payitforward
Jon, I am sending $100.00 to you in Japan, if you need the cash please use it. If you know of a way to leverage the money please do that. If you think someone else could make better use, pay it forward. Write back to tell me how you use it.
Cheers,
Justin
Paypal X Adaptive Pay FundingConstraint for PHP
The following code is an example of adding the FundingConstraint objects for a payRequest with Paypals new Adaptive Payments. I hope this helps.
$payRequest->fundingConstraint = new FundingConstraint();
//$payRequest->fundingConstraint->allowedFundingType->fundingTypeInfo->fundingType = "BALANCE";
$payRequest->fundingConstraint->allowedFundingType->fundingTypeInfo->fundingType = "ECHECK";