On flysaa.com (Star Alliance member) I can get a cheaper direct flight. Not sure what logic was coded to determine which result receives preference (i.e. ranking) in the results.
I also usually use http://flisea.com/ to search for reward flights on Star Alliance airlines. Not sure what API to linking to - perhaps you could check it out.
Or perhaps, change the purpose of the site:
Find the best available reward flights on One World, Star ALliance and SkyTeam over a specific period of time. It's focused and a big need for frequent travellers
Tried it just now. http://flisea.com was confused when I entered "San Francisco" as the destination; I had to enter "SFO" when what I really wanted was "SFO | SJC | OAK" and it never returned any flights. Adioso has room to improve their price search but the user interface is just what I want to use - no error messages, just does the best it can with what you give it.
"Hello, I'm sure this is all a big misunderstanding, but did you happen to root my computer?"
Not trying to be sarcastic, but I'm really curious what such an email could possibly achieve. If they tell you they haven't done anything, they're either lying or not - you wouldn't know. And really, what are the chances they would tell you that they have rooted your PC if they had?
It'd likely only achieve something if someone else is trying to pull a prank either on him or CSIS, in which case drawing their attention to it might not be so bad (and of course if it's them, they already likely knows he knows, so who cares).
However, the site will never keep the API's the same. The mini-program may stop functioning a few years after the person's death, and there will be nobody to change it
True. The specific APIs will go out of date. That is why the intent has to be captured at a higher level, while the implementation of the intent can be swapped out and replaced as APIs change. Many aspects of human behaviour have basically remained the same in hundreds of years - giving a gift, helping out in a good cause, though the specific mechanism of searching and giving of gifts has changed.
Organizations, trusts and even countries have been running for hundreds of years, based on a limited set of rules written in a programming language called LEGALESE, updated from time to time. One way to look at the mini-me program is as a "software trustee", whose parameters are monitored once in a while by a programmer-lawyer human. This approach yields the same scale-out/low cost/automation benefits of the cloud, letting a single programmer-lawyer maintain hundreds of trusts, in much the same way as a single admin can manage hundreds of instances in the cloud. It reduces the cost of creating and administering a trust to the point where such options are available beyond the top 1%.
Think of virtualization, emulators of old video game machines... they haven't been manufactured in ages, and yet, we find a way to faithfully run them inside emulators. I think we'll find a way to translate the Amazon APIs while remaining faithful to the original human's intent.
Why was the primary source of buying HD's initially newegg (online electronics store). If you are in the business of buying SO many HDD's, shouldn't you consider getting them directly from the manufacturers?
Also, I would like to know what other techniques they used to find / save space - any special compression software, any techniques to limit the storage of duplicate files, backing up your data to another data centre / on the cloud...
I'm sure they would have been dealing with various distributors to source their drives, but pretty much every one of them will have been saying the same thing "We've got no drives to sell."
Anyone who didn't have a multi-year, multi-million drive deal struggled to get any drives at all, even EMC and HP (who are possibly the number 1 and 2 hard drive buyers in the world) couldn't source drives at their usual prices, and they were definitely buying from the manufacturer.
You can have all the manufacturer direct deals you want, but it doesn't make a difference when the manufacturers factory is under water.
They couldn't compete if they would "back it up on the cloud". They build their own custom storage servers, this way they "can reliably store and retrieve data at up to 25 times lower than the cost of other services such as Amazon S3 by using our own purposed-designed cloud storage". [1]
If you buy direct from manufacturers you're generally talking about really seriously large sales contracts, which is outside the scope of a small-medium business.
A decade ago when I studied usability, we were taught Geert Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions, and how we should design a UI that is appropriate for users in specific locations.
I would like to understand what process followed when designing the new site that will be accessed by anyone in the world. Did the project team do User Experience testing? If there was testing, did this happen at local office level?
I was hoping / expecting the article to conclude with a recommendation on how to best channel the energy / talent of the "brilliant jerk". Not have this person fired.
Promote him, but limit him, under a specifically defined position in the company where the boundaries are set - e.g. Head of Product Development, Head of Business Ops, Line Management, Finance...
I'm a Stargate fan and when I read brilliant jerk, I thought Rodney McKay and Nicholas Rush. Yeah, they had there issues, but at the end of the day, you can count on them...
This is 2012. Can't they hold a videocon / telecon with Assange if they have questions?
Why does he have to be on the ground in Sweden to be asked questions?
On flysaa.com (Star Alliance member) I can get a cheaper direct flight. Not sure what logic was coded to determine which result receives preference (i.e. ranking) in the results.
I also usually use http://flisea.com/ to search for reward flights on Star Alliance airlines. Not sure what API to linking to - perhaps you could check it out.
Or perhaps, change the purpose of the site: Find the best available reward flights on One World, Star ALliance and SkyTeam over a specific period of time. It's focused and a big need for frequent travellers