Many responses in one. Please accept my apology, I'm still not sure how best to avoid long comments...



blasdelf: Their problems stem almost solely from having a system...supporting hundreds of thousands of concurrent users.

This estimation of concurrency doesn't jibe with mine. How are you arriving at this conclusion? (Twitter's use seems higher to me.)

delmoi:... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 5:32 AM on June 25, 2008

you can't rely on SMS

Snuh? Isn't reliance subjectively experienced? If there was evidence that millions of people currently use SMS for communication they find important would you change your mind?

I know plenty of people who work on hardware for the telecom industry, so big numbers don't scare me that easily

I've seen massive bandwidth usage, data storage, and hardware use at... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 10:38 AM on June 25, 2008

- But reliability can most certainly be objectively measured (assuming you define properly what the system is supposed to do).

- That last few tenths of a percent is hard.

Yup, reliability theory and assessment is one heck of a difficult and necessary discipline in engineering and can be used to objectively measure a system.

When I first mentioned use cases for Twitter, though,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 5:41 PM on June 25, 2008

Kadin2048 - Thanks for responding. Sorry about overlooking your "pretty much everything" qualification earlier.

> Rather than just using a globally unique username

Namespaced identity and decentralization would have been interesting to see at the outset of their development, though I'm curious if useful adoption and critical mass would have occurred given the added weight in the user's experience of either a)... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 7:01 AM on June 26, 2008

As mentioned several times above:
Raggedy Ann & Andy meet The Greedy. "There's not one delight I haven't tried..."

Oh, there is, Greedy. Beating right in front of you.
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 3:04 AM on March 27, 2008

I know this is several days late ... but I was having trouble accessing the site and realized that a scan of the entire book is online at Google Book Search and can be read online, searched, or downloaded as a PDF. (Disclosure: sure, I'm a Google employee, but I still think it's neat and I needed to find out what a gull-groper was. Now I know.)
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 9:03 AM on July 8, 2007

The song's origins might be more interesting that at first glance. Here's a recording on wax cylinder of The Laughing Song (mp3) via the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project. According to them it's from a wax series made somewhere between 1896-1901. It features George W. Johnson, the first popular African-American recording artist who also recorded other laughing songs (mp3). If I'm hearing this correctly The Laughing Song and The Laughing Policeman are the same music and melody,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 2:24 AM on February 12, 2007

Anyway, this auto-linking thing sounds dumb, from what I've read of it. I can already highlight any text on a web page and right-click to search for it.

Which is true and, I think, worth mentioning. However, I would offer that this action can potentially be a more complex and less generally usable form of interaction. For example, in IE6 with the Google Toolbar installed, the action to search for a map could be broken down as... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 2:44 PM on February 24, 2005

Massless, I think in a thread such as this identifying yourself as an employee of the company being discussed would be useful/a good thing to do

Ok, that's a good idea. (Course, this thread's pretty long by now and could be winding down.) Hi everyone, I work for Google. I don't work on the Toolbar team - and I'm not involved with the strategy or implementation of the Autolink feature being discussed here. I'm just interested in the UI parts being... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 1:47 PM on February 25, 2005

Why does Google hate Apple so much?

It's totally about the love. We love our brushed metal friend. It's just delayed love. There's a bunch of people working on Safari support for Google Maps right now.

And I do mean, like, now. Like I'm watching them type. *cracks whip*
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 11:48 PM on February 7, 2005

touched by the loving hands of massless and youngpup

Nah. Aaron and I get a few minutes to catch our breath here. Maps has been brought to life by a bunch of engineeers a lot smarter than myself. [I won't speak for Boodman. :D] Thankfully, too, or there'd be a lot more bugs.

Still... *eyes slacking Safari-bugs developer, cracks whip*
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 12:30 AM on February 8, 2005

Managing metadata seems an interesting challenge. A rich system becomes richer with better metadata and it seems clear that improving metadata quality gets complicated as the burden of entry and management is pushed to the scope of the user interface.

A weird thought: One way to encourage metadata contributions could be to have the entry more resemble play than work. Perhaps if metadata entry were tied explicitly to a customization result that was... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 3:31 AM on December 6, 2004

Re: discussing one's company -- Companies frown on that sort of thing.

Should they? Should an employee's involvement in an online discussion of a feature or otherwise publicly-available technical note always merit disapproval?

Even if these statements weren't cleared by her employer - do the tone and substance of Joyce's statements actually merit termination without warning? (Assuming that's what actually occured - I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 12:56 PM on August 31, 2004

But then again, if it's all compliantly css-y, it'll be a snap to change or skin or whatever...

Yes. Absolutely.

Whoa, the profile page is almost exactly like a friendster/orkut/tribe profile page. It's like identity, community, and demographics all rolled into one....

Yes. After my searching all night, Matt is the first to comment on what's a bit of a peculiar development... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 12:14 AM on May 10, 2004

Commenting on older posts isn't possible, or if it is I haven't found a way yet

If you open an old post and click on the words "More Post Options" you'll see an option to "Allow New Comments on This Post".
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 8:10 AM on May 10, 2004

we're supposed to drool... making it kind of like MovableType or LiveJournal...

I hope no one is suggesting that anyone's supposed to drool. It's just that there are an awful lot of Blogger users and now their service has improved.

If the update appears notable, it's fair to say that it is, in part, because it helps a lot of people.
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 10:45 AM on May 10, 2004

I need a screenshot of what the invitation (now) looks like

Sadly, the gmail invite isn't currently included in the new look and feel. But it will come back online after we get some breathing space post-launch.
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 11:14 AM on May 10, 2004

One thing I like very much about A9 is having search results saved out thar on the interweb and associated to my user identity. I find my past searches very valuable and would love for them to be available from any computer, anywhere, anytime.
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 1:35 PM on April 14, 2004

We are reading this, actually.

And asd...we saw that your phone fell out of its charger. We replaced it, hope you don't mind.
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 9:04 PM on April 1, 2004

I hope I'm not being a kneejerk luddite, but I thought the old design did many things badly, but I guess I got so used to them that I hate the new "design".

Not a luddite at all, sez me, a Google UI engineer. Testing showed that there were a small percentage of people who preferred the tabs. What's amazing, though, is the very, very large percentage who didn't seem to realize they were there. I'm always amazed at the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 10:52 AM on March 30, 2004

I think it's kinda neat (and a little unnerving) that one of my co-workers' pet projects can garner so much attention at such an early pre-anything kind of stage. When CNET called some people just looked around and said, "Orkut should get an agent. And a glamour shot."

Google: A noun which, among other things, also currently means "under the microscope, emphatically." I get weird emails from reporters about projects I've only every thought about -... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 2:11 AM on January 23, 2004

I thought that was qualified prediction of a possible outcome.

That's fantastic. I would love to try that. I predict (though I'd like to qualify this by acknowledging that it's not yet entirely clear) that future updates or releases of both Blogger software and Google features will occur at some point and that the most likely possible outcome of this will be an article written by Mr. Orlowski that addresses the news head on (but is ultimately... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 7:36 AM on May 9, 2003

Late one night after playing a show, I took a wrong turn near a soundwall in West Oakland - and found myself in the middle of a crowd that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Two cars raced by my van, screeching tires and banging engines - dragging. Everyone was piled onto a broad stretch of highway, turning the four-lane into an ad-hoc parking lot. Cars were everywhere, tricked-out rigs, idling, rumbling, speeding madly. Music thumped loudly from seemingly every car. It was an eerie and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 8:00 PM on March 15, 2003

Patrickje: As for Opera, puh-lease, it may render OK, but with no real Javascript support, it's just not an option.

You and I are in the same boat. Opera is a sexy browser, but since I help develop large-scale browser apps with complex GUIs, I've had to restrict most of my development to those browsers with excellent (and similarly exploitable) DOM support. Meaning Mozilla 1.0 and IE 5.*.

And I feel for ya, trying to mimic the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 1:00 AM on July 9, 2002

And it's possible that Dealership might play the S.F. party...

Awww, found out recently from my friend who asked me about our little band playing the S.F. Mozilla party that Jamie's already set for the night.

But I'll be there as a spectator. I've been fascinated by Mozilla development ever since I heard a Netscape announcement about the project.

Three or possibly even two years ago, this... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 3:50 PM on June 5, 2002

When defending his decision to commission the statue, Bruce Ratner said about the brave deeds of the firefighters that "Ethnicity played no part..." And so, I'm wondering out loud if the following question is appropriate here.

Is a situation or social construct in America devoid of ethnicity when only "white" people are involved?

This is a personally challenging question for me because in many cases I'm jarred from my... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 5:23 PM on January 11, 2002

Was just reading about the attacks at The Times of India site, but can't get through. It had up-to-date information and a list of those injured or killed as well. Maybe check back at http://www.timesofindia.com/ later?
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 2:16 AM on December 13, 2001

Still an active thread? Chiming in anyway...
Company I work for is evaluating web services as a way to distribute web application work among remote servers. Echoing Scott Andrew's point, .NET's appeal of a runtime environment for web services that supports many languages isn't new (and, it could be argued, is in many ways a catch-up game), but Microsoft's marketing power and presentation is reaching our executives, decision-makers, and developers quickly and effectively. The... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 2:34 AM on September 1, 2001

Posting from NS6.1...Those developers should be proud. The support for CSS, among other features, is excellent.

My experience? Currently using it on MacOS9, Windows NT Server 4, Windows 2000 Advanced Server. (Um, because I *like* using server software as a desktop system :)

On Windows, the big win for me is the The "Enable Quick Launch" option. Now Netscape is always running in the background (kinda like IE does) which makes it very usable by... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 10:38 AM on August 25, 2001

KirkJobSluder: Oh yet another gripe I just discovered, installing it replaces the nice easy-to use functional, easy-on-the-eyes WinAmp skin with a silver monstrosity

I'm confused. Do you mean it changed the skin of Winamp? Or that there was a Winamp skin for NS 6.0 that it replaced? Or that the Classic skin that comes with NS 6+ is "Winamp-like"?

If it's point one and NS6.1 really did change your skin for the Winamp program,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 11:19 AM on August 26, 2001

Suggestion revision: Post and Delete are kinda pointless. Better would be a Blog This! or Post This Page button...
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 11:25 AM on August 26, 2001

People have a right to make a copy of a CD they have bought. The record industry is preventing people from exercising this right.

Is this true? Do people actually enjoy some specified right to copy audio CD information in an unaltered state onto their hard drives? Because then people would have a legal recourse against the companies manufacturing these CDs.

My guess is that this practice skirts, but does not cross over the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 10:40 AM on July 20, 2001

Another viewpoint: I happen to be suffering from vitiligo...all over. It sucks. I find myself having to explain my condition more as the disease progresses. And I'm (somewhat) worried that the spots (which are currently small-ish on my face but grow in size weekly) make others uncomfortable...and its hard to avoid the paranoia that my looks could affect whether or not I can get a different job. Ugh.

Thankfully, I'm a programmer. Occupation choice serendipity since... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 4:56 PM on July 16, 2001

Several posts ago: And by the way, the javascript: pseudo-protocol in netscape keeps me hooked on Netscape 4 for development of most javascript.

artlung, you should try the JavaScript Console that's included in the Mozilla builds. It also provides excellent feedback for debugging. And W3C compliant DOM info, to boot.

You can find it under the Tasks menu, then Tools, then JavaScript Console.
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 11:51 PM on June 19, 2001

hincandenza: you have Apu vs. Moe and you pick Moe?

Moe? Over the man who said...

"Each of these bullet wounds is a badge of honor."

"Hey! Hey! Stop it, stop it! Conserve your precious hatred for the game."

"Silly customer! You cannot hurt a Twinkie."

"Please do not offer my God a peanut."

"He slept, he stole, he was rude to the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by massless at 7:51 PM on June 2, 2001