Then, when you visit http://plus.google.com, you’ll see this message:

Which is just like it was when Google+ wasn’t supported for Apps Domains.

At some point in the future, cloud storage will be faster than a local HDD.  Even later, cloud will be faster than an SSD.

A couple of people called “BS” on the SSD part, which I found surprising.  They quoted network latency, and other facts about today’s performance numbers.

Remember that in today’s large scale server environments, that a clustered filesystem can provide performance that’s better than any locally connected storage.  Yes, this is really true, today.  And yes, it’s about network latency and the pretty lame state of bus technology for hard drives.  But, it’s true nonetheless.  (You might have to try pretty hard with a fully switched 10GigE network, but it’s possible.)  I can even imagine a not-that-crazy rack setup that provided better throughput than a locally connected 4*SSD RAID array. (by using fully switched 4*10GigE bonded ethernet).  But, I digress.

Isn’t this exactly like saying “640kB should be enough for anyone”?  What were network latency and throughput numbers like 10, 15 or 20 years ago?  I’ll remind you:  15 years ago you were lucky to have a 100Mhz machine, and you likely had a 56.6kbps modem, and maybe you had a 100GB hard drive.  Maybe.

So, 15 years in the future, and I’d fully expect my home to be connected to cloud storage that’s faster than a single locally connected SATA3 SSD is today.  But, I’d also expect that whatever state-of-the-art local storage technology we have will still be far faster than that.

Having a Google+ account active, even if you don’t use it, means you’re telling Google that this behavior is OK.  It means you’re telling Google that it’s okay to base search results on a dysfunctional social network.

To tell Google that you don’t support integrating Google+ into search, you must delete your Google+ account.

If you keep your idle & inactive Google+ account around, you’re becoming one of Larry’s statistics.  He’s counting you in the “active users” count, even though you’re not using Google+.  Google will continue to attempt to optimize it’s algorithms to your inactive network.

Deleting your Google+ account is the one and only way to truly send a message telling Google that you don’t agree with their social integration strategy.  Do it now. 

If you’ve got Django view code that gets & sets session values, you’ll want to test it properly, and the standard “self.client” from Django’s TestCase doesn’t really give you a usable session.  So, here’s the method I’m using:

def stuff_session(client, dictionary):
    """Given a client (self.client in a unit test TestCase) set the session to the contents of
    the dictionary given"""
    from django.conf import settings
    from django.utils.importlib import import_module
    engine = import_module(settings.SESSION_ENGINE)
    store = engine.SessionStore()
    store.save()  # we need to make load() work, or the cookie isworthless
    client.cookies[settings.SESSION_COOKIE_NAME] = store.session_key
    session = client.session
    session.update(dictionary)
    session.save()
    # and now remember to re-login!

So, in my setUp() methods, I just call stuff_session(self.client, {‘key’: ‘value’}) and it all works out great.

But, I also want TAB to indent the current line according to the current mode.  So, here’s a best of both worlds solution:

(defun virtual-beginning-of-line ()
  "Returns 't if there is nothing more than whitespace between
   point and the beginning of the line"
  (interactive)
  (let ((startpos (point))
        (matchpos 0)
        )
    (save-excursion
      (beginning-of-line)
      (setq matchpos (search-forward-regexp "[ \t]*" startpos 't))
      (if (<= startpos matchpos)
          't
        nil))))

(defun virtual-end-of-line ()
  "Returns 't if there is nothing more than whitespace between
   point and the end of the line"
  (interactive)
  (let ((matchpos 0)
        (lep (line-end-position)))
    (save-excursion
      (setq matchpos (search-forward-regexp "[ \t]+" lep 't))
      (if matchpos
          (if (= matchpos lep)
              't
            nil)
        't))))

(defun smart-tab ()
  (interactive)
  (if (virtual-end-of-line)
      (delete-horizontal-space))
  (if (virtual-beginning-of-line)
      (c-indent-command)
    (if (virtual-end-of-line) (dabbrev-expand 'nil))))

Then, in any mode you’d like, just do something like this:

(local-set-key [tab] 'smart-tab)

1. The red notification box in the upper right of virtually every Google product these days is incredibly annoying.  To me, this box says “stop working, and start using our social network”.  It drives me crazy, and the only way to truly turn it off is to delete my account.
2. Incessant “Person X has added you to their circles” messages. These are unstoppable.  I’d get about 10 people adding me to circles every day, and virtually all of them were fake looking accounts.  Therefore, I can’t make the red notification box go away, ever.  I tried turning off Profile visibility as much as possible, but it had no effect.  This is unacceptable.
3. Google+ offered no additional value to me that my existing, active social networks don’t already give me.  I think this is the most major shortcoming of the system.  Circles are fine, if a bit tedious.  Public circles are actually sort of annoying (just like Twitter lists are.)  If Google+ had surfaced new and interesting people & content in a way that doesn’t or can’t happen on other networks, then I would have been hooked.
4. The +1 button is pointless.   Why would I ever click it?
5. Forced integration of Google+into other Google products.  I don’t want Google+ integrated with:
   1. My GMail (I don’t want to be distracted away)
   2. Google Reader (I want a separate social network)
   3. google.com Search Results (I don’t want to be pulled into “entertainment”)
6. No one is using it.  I had over 350 “people in your circles” and all I ever saw was updates from my friends at Google.  Seriously.  Those are the only people using it.

Sorry, guys.  Maybe if you improve content & discovery I’ll give it another try in a few more months.

Thanks for making it easy to delete my account.

When am I going to be able to buy a Robot that can drive me around in my car?

It sounds appealing, doesn’t it?  If such a thing existed, we’d never have to drive our cars anywhere anymore.  We could just tell our personal robots where we want to go, and they would drive us there while we sat in the back, right?

Wrong!

Robots will never drive cars.

Why?

Because trying to cram all the car driving specific knowledge into a general purpose robot is a huge waste of engineering time.  For example, you would need to teach the robot how to grasp the steering wheel, push the pedals, and all the other physical mechanics of interfacing with a car.  But, a robot could easily just “plug in” to the car’s mechanical controls and forego the extra layer of indirection, right?

But, when you start to go down this route, you quickly disembody the robot, stick it’s head (cameras & sensors) on the roof, its brains (a big computer) in the trunk, and servos or even digital interfaces for gas, brake, steering & shifting.  And, since you’ve disembodied the robot, you’re not going to need to worry about how to teach your robot how to take out the trash and make sandwiches, since it’s already been disembodied and is now one with the car.

What does this teach us?

It teaches us that general purpose interfaces for specific tasks are a fools errand.  Making a general purpose interface is really, really hard in comparison to a well-crafted single-purpose interface.  The single-purpose interface is going to be much simplified, faster, and easier to use than some grand-unified vision.

Why am I thinking about this?

Because I believe that spoken, natural-language interfaces are a fools errand.  They make great demos (as do general purpose humanoid robots) but practically, it’s much better and easier to have a special-purpose interface for a given task.

• Use rvm.  Really.  http://beginrescueend.com/
• “sudo apt-get install libreadline-dev ncurses-dev” before you rvm install 1.9.2, otherwise you’ll see weird issues when rails code says “require readline”  (rails console, for example)  If you had previously installed ruby via rvm, you’ll need to “rvm remove …” your currently installed version.  rvm uninstall is not enough!
• You’ll need a JavaScript runtime.  After generating your rails app, edit its Gemfile and add “gem ‘therubyracer‘” to the end of it, and then run “bundle install” to install it.

Here’s a screenshot for the interested:

Want to know something?  People don’t care as much about StackOverflow as they did in ’09.  Back in ’09, it was the model success of how to bootstrap a scappy idea into a programmers utopia of canonical, purist information retrieval.

In 2011, StackOverflow is a “network” (yes, I correctly used sarcasm-quotes) of Q&A sites where it’s hard to know which one to go to, which one to post to, or what the culture is.  The volume of traffic on the original stackoverflow.com is so, so high (and the filtering so poor) that it’s impossible to get in a great answer first, and the whole thing is so maddeningly disorganized that it’s just not fun anymore.

In ’09, there was something magic about going to the site, finding a newly asked and newly answered question, jumping right in and getting those votes.

Now, in ’11, it feels like a Reddit-esque popularity contest of Karma.  (Oh wait, I meant “reputation”).  I still enjoy seeing StackOverflow in Google results, because the content is better than most, but many times the top voted question isn’t the “best” one, and adding my measly one vote isn’t going to fix it, so I rarely bother.  Oh, and dare I say that ActiveState will frequently have correct, good answers for Python issues not really covered well on StackOverflow?

So again I say sorry, Jeff & Joel.  It’s not you, it’s your site.  You’re not the new shiny anymore.  You’re a great resource, but I’ve moved on, and I spend my time writing code rather than hanging out on StackOverflow.  And thus, the community aspect has greatly weakened, and that’s why the DevDays weren’t as popular.