Disqus - Latest Comments for csun

Re: How I Stay Productive | Jeff Kao | My Rants

csun — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:37:48 -0000

Nice blog post. These are some good tips.
You're going to be an awesome programmer after university.
I sincerely hope you start a company some day.

Chris

Re: Bill Walsh and Joe Montana on the fundamentals of quarterbacking

csun — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:16:56 -0000

Thanks for sharing these videos. This is awesome, especially for a 49ers fan like me. Watching Walsh, Montana, Jones, Craig, and Sapolu really brought back some great memories.

Re: 5 Gifts for Your Foodie Boyfriend (or Girlfriend) - Date Report - Dating Blog | HowAboutWe

csun — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:28:21 -0000

Just wanted to say: This blog is awesome.
I've started reading a few posts recently and they are all helpful and practical.
Really appreciate these blog posts.

Re: Exclusive: Yahoo Overhauls Marketing Unit — The Internal Memo

csun — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 21:05:14 -0000

Personally, I hate corporate leaks. It's fun for journalists and readers. It sucks for companies. I think more companies should have clauses in job offers that say you'll get fired if you ever leak anything. And companies should take an active role in policing leaks and enforcing rules to set an example.

Re: How Yahoo Spawned Hadoop, the Future of Big Data

csun — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:21:53 -0000

>> The irony is that Baldeschwieler worked for an outfit few would associate
>> with enterprise technology. And if you listen to the pundits, it wasn’t a
>> technology company at all. He worked for Yahoo.

Fortunately, I don't listen to the pundits. The pundits are often writers who have no technical background, so they don't understand the technology needed to power one of the world's largest websites and the 2nd largest search engine (before they signed a deal to use Microsoft's Bing).

Yahoo's revenues are declining and it obviously isn't a star anymore. But that doesn't mean it never had any technology. Hadoop is just one example of open source technology created at Yahoo. A lot of contributions to front end technologies, such as YUI, YSlow were also led at Yahoo. Yahoo Pipes and Yahoo's BOSS API are both well known and respected by developers. Yahoo also has a significant research team with experts in many fields of computer science.

I encourage members of the media (print, online, TV) to learn more technical skills so they can understand that many companies have a lot of technology. Technology obviously doesn't guarantee business success. But in this case, it's ridiculous for the author and many others to perceive Yahoo is not a technology company.

Furthermore, I'm pretty tired of the media's negative view of most companies, including Yahoo. Most companies fail. There is only one Google, only one Facebook. There are millions of other companies that failed. Most never got VC funding. Most never were profitable. Most never were acquired or had an IPO. Microsoft used to be king, and now people think less of them. As the media is praising Google, Apple, and Facebook today, tomorrow they could see the same fate as Yahoo. If that happens, the media will hate on those companies and praise the new kings. And that will repeat as well.

Re: Glam acquires Ning, boasts it is No. 2 social company behind Facebook | VentureBeat

csun — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:21:09 -0000

>> "which makes it second only to Facebook’s more than 500 million uniques"

Google and Yahoo both have more than 500 million uniques. What about them?

Re: Whither TechCrunch?

csun — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 13:42:32 -0000

I completely agree with your views.

It's sad that most readers like the arrogance, the bullying, the drama.
People are used to it and many enjoy it.
It works. It gets pageviews. But it's sad.

Re: Great People Are Overrated

csun — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:52:37 -0000

Part of the reason, a single programmer can be worth much more than others is because their solutions to problems are more creative, faster, efficient, scalable, etc. And when dealing with computers, better solutions can be exponentially better than poor solutions. That means idea A can be 100X better than idea B. It's also possible that idea A could be a million times better than idea B. Figuring out idea A has nothing to do with the number of people. It requires creativity, skill, and knowledge. 1,000 mediocre programmers could never come up with a great solution because they are all dumb. Only Einstein could have come up with his theories on relativity. Thousands of Ph.D physicists couldn't ever think of the same ideas.

Re: Was Miami’s Pick And Roll Defense Truly Successful?

csun — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 14:21:01 -0000

I just discovered this blog (via a link from Yahoo Sports) and it's really good content. The analysis is very interesting and the videos are great.

Re: How LeBron James’ Dagger Dunk Was Set Up

csun — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 14:18:45 -0000

I agree with Goose. Refs now let players take 3 steps without a dribble (sometimes). Specifically, if a player does a left to right crossover, they always let it go.

I've seen Deron Williams do this move and the refs don't call anything. Just recently, in the conference finals against the Bulls, Luol Deng stole the ball, took his last dribble with his left hand (and right foot). He then took 3 more steps, jumping off his left foot and dunking it over Lebron. It was the same thing and there was no traveling call.

I'm going to start doing this move in my pickup games.

Re: Link LinkedIn into your next Ruby application - Blog

csun — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:41:39 -0000

Ugh! Accessing the field profile.education used to work.
Now it seems like I have to use profile.educations.
This caused a bad bug for our production environment.

It was odd that I was using profile.education originally.
My code first tried to use "educations", but that didn't work.
And "education" did. Now the opposite is true.

Re: Wael Ghonim: If You Want To Liberate A Government, Give Them The Internet

csun — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:55:55 -0000

I totally agree with PrincetonPlainsboro. It's great that Ghonim utilized Facebook to organize people. That deserves to be noted. But it would wrong to single it out as "the reason" that protests and revolution happened. Historians and journalists love to use the line "and the rest is history". But that's just a cliche and there's always many reasons (big and small) that contribute to why something happens.

If the media is searching for quick and dirty reasons why the Middle East protests are happening, I'd rather hear about the Tunisian man, Al Bouazizi, who protested by setting himself on fire in front of a government building.

Re: Is Yahoo about to shut down Delicious?

csun — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 15:02:33 -0000

I personally find it very unprofessional for an employee to leak information like this.
It's fun for news readers, but obviously it's confidential to Yahoo.
And it should have stayed confidential.

I'm sure the MyBlogLog founder is disappointed,
but he shouldn't have leaked this info.

Re: LAUNCH - Website Login

csun — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 11:41:08 -0000

>> In fact, Yahoo not being able to turn Flickr (OR Yahoo Mail OR Yahoo IM)
>> into a social network is mind-blowing. Flickr is a sleeping
>> social network giant. If you switch the default view into a feed of
>> your and your friends’ photos, it would instantly boom.

Flickr does this already and they've had it for a while. The homepage has a feed of your friends' photos. So having a "friends" list and feed doesn't guarantee an instant boom.

Facebook's 500 million users and "social network" effects are the reason it's photo site is bigger than Flickr, Photobucket, and Picasa combined.

Re: RockYou CEO Lance Tokuda Steps Down

csun — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 23:46:44 -0000

Games provide entertainment value, just like movies, TV, radio, print media, and websites. If a company can provide quality entertainment, people will gladly
pay them because it makes them happy.

Re: Testing Disqus

csun — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 22:20:18 -0000

I do declare, this one mighty fine blog.

Re: Yahoo Hires Ross Levinsohn To Run Americas Business

csun — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:37:01 -0000

>> And for once, we have nothing negative to report about Yahoo.

Good for you TechCrunch. You're coming around.

Re: - Politics - The Atlantic

csun — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:22:48 -0000

>> ... isn't there at least some room on a roster for a fan favorite player,
>> regardless of what he ultimately contributes on the court? ...
>> ... again, i see what's distasteful about his ethnicity being a resource for the
>> organization to utilize to its profit, but image is just as much a commodity
>> to push as product,

This is a good point. And honestly, this stuff already exists. Look at Tim Tebow. He's a great Christian and look who drafted him, Denver. Many non-Christians may not realize this, but Colorado Springs (just outside Denver) has a huge Christian community. It's practically the center of Christianity in the U.S.. I'm certain that it played a role in Tebow being drafted by Denver. After all, he did a Super Bowl commerical for "Focus on Family" which is based in (you guessed it) Colorado Springs. Tebow has been questioned by many people for his football skills, but no one doubts his sincere Christian faith. He is definitely there to sell jerseys and be a fan favorite. He might become a good NFL player.

Also, many white players in the NBA are fitting the description that you mentioned: fan favorite, increasing the attendance, selling jerseys, but not really contributing to the team.

Re: - Politics - The Atlantic

csun — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:35:19 -0000

>> Perhaps, as some have speculated, this is the reason the Warriors signed him.
>>If so, then it will have been a crass, short-sighted move..

I agree that if the Warriors signed him primarily because of his ethnicity it would be mistake. But personally, I don't think that's the case. I'm Asian American, and frankly I don't want charity. If he doesn't deserve it, then he shouldn't be there.

But he does belong because he can play. He can flat out play. Remember, it was Dallas who gave him a spot on the summer league roster, not Golden State. There aren't many Asians in Dallas, so why would they do that? It's because Donnie Nelson liked Lin's game. And why would Donnie think that? Well, because he won a state title in high school against a perennial powerhouse, Mater Dei. He also was a first team player in the Ivy League for a couple years. He torched UConn for 30 points. He held #1 pick John Wall to 4 of 19 shooting, while scoring 13 points himself. He wows people. His game wows people. That's why he's in the NBA.

Re: Is Apple poised to launch cloud-based iTunes service?

csun — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 17:54:12 -0000

This is a good article and I enjoy VentureBeat.

But as a little rant, I'm disappointed that the term "cloud computing" is still misused. At this point, it's probably too late. Everyone thinks it means web based service. And it's been used in that context for the past few years, so everyone believes that's what it is.

In my opinion, the buzzword "cloud computing" came about because of Amazon Web Services. One of their first products was named "Elastic Compute Cloud". This service provides on-demand computing power. It's like using electricity. You pay only for what you use on an hourly basis. Had they named the product "Elastic Compute Farm", then all writers today would be using/misusing the term "Farm Computing".

Again it's probably too late now. "Cloud computing" is now accepted as anything web based. But really, it's about paying for hardware/software on an as needed basis. Flickr is not cloud computing. Google Docs is not cloud computing. And a web based ITunes is not cloud computing. Consumers should be oblivious to cloud computing. Only the service providers themselves should care about whether they want to use cloud computing.

Re: Yahoo’s Carol Bartz tells TechCrunch editor to “f*ck off”

csun — Mon, 24 May 2010 17:05:17 -0000

I enjoy VentureBeat because it doesn't resort to gimmicks, sensationalism, or shock and awe.
VentureBeat is more professional than other tech blogs.

I suggest giving no attention to those who crave it. The next time some blogger does something weird, don't report on it. That's what they want: attention. So don't give it to them.

At baseball games, whenever a fan illegally runs on the field it is never shown on TV.
The TV stations know that if they showed it, more fans would run on the field.

Re: Document host Scribd will abandon Flash

csun — Wed, 05 May 2010 21:09:48 -0000

Just because developers choose a new technology to replace their old Flash code,
it doesn't necessarily mean Flash is dead or people are becoming "anti-flash".

Developers review their work and sometimes decide tool X is the right tool to use. Maybe they were using tool Y for sometime, but eventually it was time for a better tool. Companies change programming languages, database vendors, version control systems, etc. all the time. Does that mean the old tools are dead. No. The old tools with still have customers, because for some customers those tools are the right solution.

Certainly, losing customers is bad and in that sense Adobe should be concerned. But they won't drop dead. I can't imagine casual game developers using anything but Flash for a while.

Re: 23 insights from the Netflix culture deck

csun — Wed, 05 May 2010 14:08:17 -0000

Thanks for sharing this. Definitely a great presentation. Netflix must be a great place to work.

Re: Four myths about the Lean Startup

csun — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:59:48 -0000

Nice post. I think skeptics to new ideas often think of extreme cases as the reason for their skepticism (i.e. "Lean startups try to spend as little money as possible").

I enjoyed the book MoneyBall and some baseball old timers felt that metrics could not equal winning baseball. They took an extreme view thinking that nerds were ONLY looking at stats and not considering other factors.

I think practices from the "Lean Startup" should be considered a useful tool in helping the long term goal. The practices should be balanced with other things like creativity and vision (as you mentioned). Rarely should anything ever be taken to an extreme.

Re: Wi-Fi detectors eighty-sixed from App Store

csun — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:22:27 -0000

This is a total bummer for developers.
But it is an important lesson: "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone".
That pretty much sums up the terms of service for most platforms (iPhone, Android, Facebook).
Platform providers can remove anything they want, anytime, without warning.
That's the danger of being on a platform.