nesu

How about America's Next Top Model? Or The Apprentice? Most viewers of these shows are neither models nor managers. Perhaps when coding has become as ubiquitous as cooking, business, or fashion (which will happen most likely), coding as a spectator sport will make more sense.

I think you as a customer acted rationally and with honesty. Most customers, when hearing such an initial reply, do not bother responding at all (probably gone forever as a customer). And the worse thing is, support/devs think that, with no further response from the customer, they are doing a great job.

I myself am a customer-dev to at least two websites (been working with them for the last 5+ years). These sites have made at least a large share on their niche market, but their support is terrible. Business-wise, they think they can afford to lose a customer, so their 'default' support mode is to brush customers off (or leave support requests hanging). I believe many businesses are like this.

About the condescension, many devs are like that, treating support as 'inferior' to development and not equally important (cost center vs profit center mentality). When in fact, it's a profit opportunity. The customer's requirements are very specific, and from the correspondence, I can see that the customer understands that not all customers would request for such a feature, and probably would be willing to pay a premium for a custom-made solution. Most people here are devs, so they sympathize more with the support side (personally, I work on both domains).

SUPPORT: There is no supported capability to do that with any "COMPANY_NAME" product, thanks.

CUSTOMER: FYI, in 2015, that’s absolutely TERRIBLE. None of the other premium providers game me a STRAIGHT NO.

1. Sometimes, when support made the wrong initial contact, all future correspondence will turn sour. Make the first impression count.

2. Having 'thanks' at the end of sentences seems casual/unprofessional to me, if not rude. Maybe something like "thank you for your message" as an opening line on that email might be better.

3. At least you should have offered alternatives, rather than leaving the customer empty-handed. If there are none, at least you could have said that "we are looking at/thinking about/working on/still gathering feedback from more customers/ to implement this feature in the near future. as soon as it's ready, we'll let you know."

4. I think most of your replies are too long. On the other hand, your initial reply almost looked like canned response.

5. Never vent out to your customers as support. You will never win. You have the final say on what features you will put to your products, but your customer has every right to express how they feel about your product/service. You have none. Don't take it personally.

disclaimer: I am writing based on experience

>It's ok if someone isn't, but in that case, why bother? At least there is some sort of protection, and at least to scare away those who cannot afford the risk of being sued. Who knows, a lowly developer now might be able to turn things around and finally afford lawyers at his whim. Or even gain some backers.

I would react the same. At least, before other users change my own code or even profit from it, they should try to contact me. But MIT license does not oblige users to disclose the source. Nothing against MIT license, but it's somehow not a good fit for stuff that don't require the full source in order to run.

Why not release a new version, and publish it as GPL? That would be clearly a violation if they accept bids on Elance like that. Or try dual licensing.

All open source licenses are not liable for damages arising from the use of open source code

I gained a huge interest on piezoelectric materials upon learning of solar piezoelectric thermoacoustic generators. Not really as efficient as solar panels, but could be far cheaper and more environmentally-friendly.

Thank you for your courage in making this post. I am from the Philippines too. Like you, I did not finish college. Yeah, it's really hard in this country to get a corporate programmer job if you don't have that piece of paper.

I am solely a freelancer for about 4 years now (not full time though, as I don't get to work 8 hours a day). I get mixed results with my career as a freelancer (oDesk, Elance, etc.). Sometimes the monthly income is so high I can take a vacation for three months. Sometimes, it's very low or nothing at all. At times I had to borrow from my girlfriend or some friends just to keep things going. Here are some things that I have learned in my journey:

1. Make sure that you have winter savings, or it would be hard to raise your rate even if you are qualified to do so. Before I resigned from my BPO job, I made sure to have some savings before working freelance full-time. Unfortunately, TY Ketsana hit, and my house went underwater. I lost my initial savings, but still I was able to thrive with some projects.

2. Start with small projects first. Your priority at this time is feedback. When starting out, my mistake was that I aimed at larger projects first. In the eyes of most clients, size does not really matter. Your ability to accept and finish work with good results is more important.

3. Personalize your cover letter, but keep it short. In my experience, clients don't like reading lengthy messages. But they take effort in writing jobs descriptions. Every freelancer should respect that.

4. Higher-paying clients are generally easier to work with.

5. As much as possible, charge a fixed-rate for projects. Clients can limit their risks while you can save yourself from time trackers. If it's going to be a job for at least six months, it's usually OK. If not, it's often wiser to give a fixed price. I have seen some bids where their hourly bid is equal to the fixed-price, and get accepted.

About your employment, I think you can sue your employer for lowering your rate (if it's at least an established business entity). That's against the law.

About the bomb, it's not a question of necessity, but of economics. That was a time of war. American forces beat the enemy every step of the way in the Pacific. The Allies may have enough power to bring Japan down to its knees during the war in the long run, but how tempting is a weapon that wreaks destruction unseen yet on the planet, but gives zero casualties, instead of sending your fellow soldiers to their deaths on a foreign land? Who wouldn't get sick of a long war and not seek to end it as soon as possible?

Of course, someone may argue that since it's a question of economics, then it is unnecessary, and therefore, the bombings were wrong. But surely, if there is something you wouldn't want to give to your enemy, one of those is time. The author mentioned a Japanese nuclear research program, and that really deserved a red flag.

It took 6 more days after the Soviet invasion and Nagasaki bombing, before Emperor Hirohito publicly announced their unconditional surrender. If the emperor made the public announcement before the Nagasaki bombing, then the second bombing may be wrong.

If there is something I would admire of the Japanese people, it would be their sense of patriotism. Stalin did not beat Japan. What kept the country from surrendering and hold that long was Japanese Pride.

Little Boy and Fat Man are very weak compared to today's nuclear weaponry. Historians and article writers should be discreet when discussing sensitive issues like this, as they can fuel hatred. Focus should be on preventing nuclear war, or there would be no more history left to discuss.

Automated trading is more on strategy, while HFT has more to do with volume and speed. With automated trading, you predict price movements. HFT involves being a liquidity provider. You don't use market technical indicators in HFT, you wait for some really huge orders.

HFT firms won't bother him. Those are dealing with an entirely different set of algorithms. He should have contacted brokers instead.

source: http://blog.kaggle.com/2012/10/04/engineering-practices-in-d...

Software development is important, but it's not everything. People choose what works and use it.

Though I agree that spreadsheets won't always work on Big Data, there's no point in doing more if you can achieve it with less.

This would be very helpful for writers, although it can also be used to target ads.