Imho, this is were alternative layouts really shine: comfort, health.
Typing speed is an overrated fad (and in the worst cases an e-penis length contest) as in most cases when writing stuff (be it fiction, reports, code) your throughput isn't limited by typing speed.
Avoiding injuries on the other hand is invaluable.
Yes, I didn't mention it in my post because I think the auction house and the underlying economy issues are going to be the hardest part in making everything cross-realm, but cross-realms guilds are highly desirable. Your arguments are on point.
From what I see, Blizzard is slowly rolling out everything they need to eventually get rid of realms entirely as separate technical entities.
Cross-realms features are everywhere, the concept of PvP servers is no more, and if they manage to upgrade the auction house system to something more global, realms will be mere namespaces and players will be able to seamlessly play with all other players from their region.
You don't need to run arbitrary third-party software to run ads, period. I'm perfectly fine with ads in an ad-sponsored ads but I'd appreciate if it didn't open my computer to malware infestations.
That would be neat, browsing through several dozen fonts to find the right pick is a bit overwhelming, although one can argue it's a self-imposed burden.
Isn't the iPhone more power-efficient than many Android counterparts? That would explain why they can afford a smaller battery (but may not explain all the gap).
US is a great country for many things, but having any serious health problem putting you in financial jeopardy (or throwing you in an inextricable administrative maze to dodge high and cryptic charges) in ridiculous for a "great" country.
Having a life-threatening condition is already scary enough that you don't also have to dread bankruptcy at the same time.
I agree that Facebook's implementation of those features is piss-poor and your analysis is on point. However you can't expect something to be a proper Facebook alternative with them missing.
* It has built-in authentication and ACL, you get to choose who sees your stuff or not (not counting overarching privacy issues).
* It has built-in syndication, which means that it's easy to follow everyone's updates.
* It has discovery abilities that helps finding people you want to connect to.
* It has group conversation.
* It has event planning.
Personal pages have none of that, except with syndication where RSS is a partial solution. And on top of that, Facebook is providing it free-of-charge (with the "hidden" cost of scattering your personal data all across the universe) with very minimal setup, including for laypersons.
It was unclear to users what they consented to when they signed in. Because Facebook doesn't give a damn about proper consent. The fact that Facebook botched it up is not less problematic than Facebook selling data because the outcome for users is more or less the same.
Turns out "move fast and break things" is a shitty policy when it comes to privacy concerns.
In this case the two points where we should have caught the issue would have been:
* Integration testing with a specific data set that was different from actual production data.
* Code review (they're not systematic yet but we're working on that) because the faulty code had a sketchy section and the conversation around it would have lead to a better version (that's what actually happened when fixing the bug)
My intent was not to blame the developer, I'm aware of the context they work in and as you have guessed correctly our engineering process is fucked up in many way.
The developer writing the correct implementation was just the earliest point where it could have been avoided in this case, I didn't want to frame it as the developer's fault, but simply wanted to say that some algorithmic knowledge still comes in handy.
My original comment wasn't clear enough about this I confess.
To give a counterpoint, the lack of basic algorithmic knowledge of a developer in my team cost us a nasty production performance bug.
I agree that whiteboard algorithms are not exactly our typical day work, but I'm fine with them being "foundations", things at back of your mind and you can conjure when needed.
Thinking that "Working software over comprehensive documentation" means "don't write documentation" is one of the biggest misunderstandings about agile and I feel your pain.
While I suspected the disappearance of big software boxes had something to do with available shelf space, it didn't know it was competition from DVDs that were the main factor.
> Yes, they modelled it after Epita which was also about code, code, code.
I don't know where you last got your information about Epita, but this has been less and less true for around 10 years now.
They sought to have a state certified engineering degree for a long time and implemented a lot of changes around 2003-2007 that made the cursus a bit less about code a more about common engineering stuff (maths, physics, english, ...) with more structure (they structured classes with a credit system, made more standard student evaluations, ...)
Source: graduated in that era, been in touch with later students.
Typing speed is an overrated fad (and in the worst cases an e-penis length contest) as in most cases when writing stuff (be it fiction, reports, code) your throughput isn't limited by typing speed.
Avoiding injuries on the other hand is invaluable.