Interesting idea. I've been using Django for 10+ years and like all the choices you've made here. Not 100% what I personally prefer but close. And the decisions I differ on I'm curious about: "Hmm, should I be doing it that way?"
In the past few months I've been working on side projects and have gone through the process of setting up a similar template (just for my own use), which I've used with two different side projects.
I think my interest in buying this is not so much to replace my own template but to borrow parts of it.
From the borrow perspective, I wonder if this could be worth it to some established, non-agency companies that use Django.
Really nice code you can copypasta over? Doesn't take too much of that to get to $1000 of value.
I could absolutely see the "borrow some code" angle. Especially if you have an existing/established project where it would be pretty hard to integrate everything anyway. $1000 is not much for a company looking for another "professional Django resource" (if that's what it is).
Would have no issue with some people paying for access, borrowing some stuff, and being a part of a "community" of people sharing variations of the ideas and occasionally factoring that in to the Forge code itself, copying it out, etc.
Free Geek is a great organization. Like this guy, I knew very little about Linux or programming before volunteering there. Fast forward five years and I spend all day monkeying with Linux boxes at work. Free Geek was a perfect introduction to this wonderful world.
The best volunteering opportunities are those where one can learn something new and/or interact with those people which normally they wouldn't. I've washed dishes, worked in a warehouse, written code etc - they were all fun, but the dishwashing became boring after a few weeks. If every volunteering opportunity mentioned what people would learn, they might increase participation.
Presumably this trade-in will be done by people who are thinking, "I'm not crazy about my iPad. I want to try something new." If Microsoft convinces these customers to try Surface versus something else (aka Android), it's a win.
The iPads will be resold to someone thinking, "I want to try a tablet, but I've never tried an iPad." Which is a different market segment.
Also, a $200 gift card != $200 cash. Some estimates say 20% of gift cards in the US are not redeemed. See:
Or at least something. If I were a shareholder, I'd be irate. Maybe Zynga has some grand master plan for Draw Something and whatnot. But as of now, this looks like executives taking a massive, unnecessary loss in order to cover their own incompetence.
"These team members wanted whatever Zynga was willing to sell, even if that didn’t include the more valuable Draw Something assets or user data. Even more employees offered to work on OMGPOP.com for free. However, Zynga said this would all take too much legal work and wouldn’t agree to sell anything."
This is a huge red flag. To me that says there's something that would emerge during the due diligence process that Zynga does not want people to know about. If I was a gambler I'd short them hard in response to this, my hunch is that the firm is on its way to de-listing and collapse.
Do you think that it would be related to the reasons for shutting down OMGPOP operations? That is, they found some nasty skeletons in the closet, and the best way to hide them is to wind down everything OMGPOP-related so that they don't have to file reports about it and it doesn't ever get audited?
I couldn't say, and my comment above is honestly baseless speculation, just a very strong hunch. I haven't read any of their public filings on that acquisition so weight that appropriately.
This is a good point, and the most positive interpretation of Zynga's actions.
But I doubt one more competitor in the gaming industry would have a substantial impact on Zynga's long-term health. There are so many competitors already, many of whom create smash-out hits. Zynga does not anymore. OMGPOP's existence or non-existence won't change that.
agree completely but my point is two fold. first unless they were willing to pay the asking price, why would you do it. second you're better off having your opponents start as far back as possible unless they again make it worthwhile
"A very small part of your energy comes from breaking down your muscles — but you can avoid this by doing some resistance training, otherwise known as pumping iron. The majority of your energy comes from breaking down fat."
I thought fasting would always cause your muscles to weaken. But this makes more sense for evolution. If your muscles are being used, the body takes energy from all other sources first. The preserved muscle could make all the difference between eating and not eating.
You will definitively feel weaker and be unable to work out as hard. Even a days worth of poorly timed meals and/or too little protein can mess my weight lifting up for the following day, and fasting quickly forces my lifting volume down substantially (though amino acids from your protein intake can stay in your blood stream for a few days, so if you've kept protein intake high, you can keep things normal through a couple of days of fasting).
But the main predictor of how quickly you'll recover your strength afterwards will be whether or not you keep up resistance exercise. After a weak of lazing about during vacation, it can take me 2-3 weeks of hard exercise to be back at my peak. After eating too little or fasting for a short while, it's mostly just a matter of getting well fed enough again. I don't have experience with longer fasts, so I can't say how much they'd affect me, but it does take time to trigger substantial muscle breakdown, and even if you do lose muscle, getting back up to the same strength is much quicker.
Looks like Snow isn't being extradited. Xinhua is the official press agency of the state. Editorial or no, this didn't get posted without the state's nod.
Washington Post did revise the story. And yes, they should have issued an explicit correction. But this is still a major story:
> Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), who had classified knowledge of the program as members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, were unable to speak of it when they warned in a Dec. 27, 2012, floor debate that the FISA Amendments Act had what both of them called a “back-door search loophole” for the content of innocent Americans who were swept up in a search for someone else.
> “As it is written, there is nothing to prohibit the intelligence community from searching through a pile of communications, which may have been incidentally or accidentally been collected without a warrant, to deliberately search for the phone calls or e-mails of specific Americans,” Udall said.
US Senators with classified knowledge of the program don't have knowledge of what exactly it entails or how it is being used. I can forgive the Post for getting some of the details wrong.
> Wyden repeatedly asked the NSA to estimate the number of Americans whose communications had been incidentally collected, and the agency’s director, Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, insisted there was no way to find out. Eventually Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III wrote Wyden a letter stating that it would violate the privacy of Americans in NSA data banks to try to estimate their number.
This is what I was referring to when I said the Senators didn't know how exactly it was being used. It is pretty basic knowledge about the program.
Has the NSA incidentally collected data on 300 Americans? On 3,000? On, say, 300 million?
In the recent Senate Intelligence hearing Senator Wyden asked General James Clapper "Does the NSA collect any data at all on millions or hundred of millions of Americans?" Response: "No sir, it does not .. not wittingly, there are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly."
If ones assumes that William Binney both knows what he is talking about and is telling the truth, then the NSA has been collecting data on Americans since before September 11th.
If the rest of what William Binney says is also correct, then the NSA initially was keeping the data on Americans anonymized, for viewing only after a court order -- but then after September 11th disabled data anonymization for some order of time.
If the data has been anonymized once again, this may present legal problems in how officials can guarantee this because it would reveal past illegal activity which those same officials may have been involved in.
This is one of the most breathtaking biased pieces I've seen in a very long time. This guy really, really doesn't like Google. Or maybe just Larry Page.
Edit:
By the same writer:
In the same vein as this "story", a bizarre caption in a "story" covering Eric Schmidt's Guardian op-ed suggesting civilian drones are a bad idea:
"Google CEO Eric Schmidt knows what's best for us."
I glanced through the first 10 pages of his other stories on Slate. They aren't all rabidly anti-Google. Though he does seem to hold the founders of Google in special disdain for some reason.
Now I'm more inclined to think this is simple link-baiting, not bias. He'll say anything for the clicks. Which seems like a common trend on Slate these days. I remember the days when Slate had some really excellent original journalism.
In the past few months I've been working on side projects and have gone through the process of setting up a similar template (just for my own use), which I've used with two different side projects.
I think my interest in buying this is not so much to replace my own template but to borrow parts of it.
From the borrow perspective, I wonder if this could be worth it to some established, non-agency companies that use Django.
Really nice code you can copypasta over? Doesn't take too much of that to get to $1000 of value.