I've noticed a few people say they've just gone out and found an angel instead of working freelancing/etc. during development. Out of curiosity - how do people go about this? Do you meet people through your existing contacts? Do you search on the internet? Do angels generally need to be people in the same country?
> A lot of us are high level developers, architects, consultants, and so on.
Which in the eyes of most people other than those you have listed, makes us geeks. If we're talking about leadership, it isn't so much how we see ourselves that matters, but how others see us.
I've been using Colemak for a couple years now - but instead of learning it with my laptop's keyboard, I learnt it with a new Kinesis Advantage Pro. I now find that if I'm using a standard keyboard, I can type qwerty without much more difficulty before, but if I'm using the Kinesis, I have no trouble touch typing Colemak. My guess is that the massive difference in the actual keyboards stops my brain from getting confused.
I love the idea - I've been looking for ways to try and "immerse" people in a new language without actually travelling for a while now.
I do have two worries about it, though. The first is that they seem to be using translations which aren't particularly accurate, which means its possible that if it works, you'll still end up sounding like a beginner.
The other worry is that the language you are learning is still embedded in your native language. I'm pretty sure this will not help with learning the grammar of words, and when you are constantly switching between your language and another language, it won't be very conducive to memorisation of the new language (from my own experience learning Japanese).
Its still a really neat idea though, and I wish the best to the creators.
> Japan has extremely low crime as well, and is probably the least Americanized of all First World nations today. Clearly, it is physically possible for the State to eradicate crime.
It is possible that the fact that Japan is the least Americanized of First World countries is the reason behind it's low crime rates. I wonder if it is their culture, not their government, which keeps the crime low.
If you believe the autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa, it is the police that are responsible. Fukuzawa lived in Japan during the mid to late 1800's, before and after the time of the Meiji restoration. At that time Japan had quite a lot of crime, the roads were not safe, and if you passed another person along the roads you would both clutch your sword and maintain a wary eye. His description sounds a lot like walking in certain neighborhoods of Philadelphia. But later in his life, that was no longer the case, and he credits the creation of a professional police force.
From the first page: "In 1989 Japan experienced 1.3 robberies per 100,000 population, compared with 48.6 for West Germany, 65.8 for Great Britain, and 233.0 for the United States." There's that two orders of magnitude again.
Suppose crime in America has halved since 1989. (It hasn't.) From the Japanese perspective, wouldn't a writer still seem a little odd in exulting over the conquest of crime? When there are still two orders of magnitude more robberies?
When someone asks you a price for a repair, quote that single repair only. Resist the temptation to quote other jobs that they ask of shiny ball fashion.
The reason for this he explained (and what I later found to be true) was that if the cost of everything asked for was to high many times the customer ended up doing nothing.
So you get the first job locked up. Once you have that work started or the price agreed to only then do you quote additional work.
There's actually an open source app which functions similarly to super-memo, but uses an older spaced repetition algorithm and doesn't quite have the same feature set. Its called Anki (http://www.ankisrs.net), and its been a godsend for both myself and many friends who learn Japanese.
The thing I found interesting in this article is that switching contexts actually increases the amount you can learn. From what I understand, this would mean studying grammar, character reading/production and vocabulary at the same time would be beneficial. I never quite understood why this was the case before, even though people have told me it is so.
I also heavily use Anki for learning (Japanese). Although you can learn all sorts of things very efficiently with it once you get into the habit of using it.
The program is great, it comes with >free< syncing/online backup, provides an iOS/Mac/Linux/Win/Android/Maemo client and a slick browser interface.
I really like that there are so many clients. Would really like some kind of cloud-sync + mobile client for SuperMemo. It also only works in Windows which means I have to run it under VirtualBox.
My only concern with Anki is whether it still uses some variant of the SM-2 algorithm and whether or not the people implementing the software are doing more than just polishing interfaces, etc. and actively work on improving the learning algorithm. Looking at the history, SuperMemo on SM-11 http://www.supermemo.com/english/algsm11.htm and Wozniak claims that there is a substantial evidence that this algorithm increases the speed of your learning.
Yes, Anki used to use a slightly modified version of SM-5 but the Lead-developer decided to revert down to a modified and improved version of SM-2. Basically he reasons (you can find his explanation on the Anki FAQ) that while versions newer than SM-2 are supposed to (slightly) increase efficiency, it only happens if you study every day and at roughly the same time of day. The reason is, that starting with SM-3 a failure on a certain card changes the difficulty of (determined by the algo) similar cards.
A further explanation by the lead developer can be found here: http://markmail.org/message/u2zfnrg7x53bzp24#query:+page:1+m... I am convinced that it (at least for me) offers much better studying conditions. (Actually, the mere fact that I can revise on a crowded 30min commute on my ipod would make up for any efficiency increase).
This poses an interesting question for those of us building apps - would you get more signups to your app eventually if you didn't make people sign up just to view the content? Its theoretically possible that requiring people to authorize your app just to view content will annoy enough people that you'll end up getting lower signups. And of course, the reason for requiring or not requiring authorization is in most cases to get signups.
These authorisations might be acting as a filter. Being an app developer and someone who's read a lot about FB, I'm very wary of authorising anything, whereas someone who's less informed won't give it a second thought.
Basically, these filters are only funnelling people to the website who are more likely to click on ads and fall for scams.
As a developer who wants to integrate a few new open graph verbs, I'm wondering if this behavior can be bypassed? I don't want a registration wall for people to view our content.
Any developers here know if it's possible to bypass?
You would not. Permission dialogs are already transparent to 90% of users. It's the equivalent of social peer pressure dynamics that works here, your app is implicitly endorsed by a friendly person.
