Diaspora Co-founder Dies At 22 312
phaedrus5001 writes "Tech Crunch is reporting that one of the co-founders of Diaspora, Ilya Zhitomirskiy, has passed away. He was only 22. At the moment, the cause of his death is unknown."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Diaspora Co-founder Dies At 22
Related Links Top of the: day, week, month.
For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think!
Let this be a lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
To all young, horny, self-absorbed, invincible little gods of the internet: you're never too young. The cosmos cares not for you.
Value your health. Value your safety.
Accomplish something while you still can, just as Ilya did.
Re:Let this be a lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
Very true words... health is one of those things that gets stolen away from you almost literally overnight and from there it's a major struggle to get back to normality. Most of us as kids would screw up our faces when our parents would say "You've got your health" when we moaned about not having anything - sadly, as with so many things, you don't realise how true that is until you're older.
The trouble is, you trip up with something, that later causes something else...and so on... you find yourself snowballing down into the pit of death .
Re: (Score:2)
Most of us as kids would screw up our faces when our parents would say "You've got your health" when we moaned about not having anything - sadly, as with so many things, you don't realise how true that is until you're older.
Mostly because it's being used in the same way as "think of the starving children in Africa". Of course there are people that are much, much worse off than us but if any comparison should always be towards the lowest possible bar then you'll lose every time. Particularly if you throw in history on how growing up today is much better than most children through history, probably including your own parents and grandparents. After all, most people - certainly kids and other young people you identify with - do h
Re: (Score:2)
Mostly because it's being used in the same way as "think of the starving children in Africa". Of course there are people that are much, much worse off than us but if any comparison should always be towards the lowest possible bar then you'll lose every time. Particularly if you throw in history on how growing up today is much better than most children through history, probably including your own parents and grandparents. After all, most people - certainly kids and other young people you identify with - do have their health.
Also it's sometimes used as a poor man's equalizer, it doesn't matter that you're Steve Jobs you can still die a long drawn out death of cancer. In that yes your health is important and your health can't really be bought for money, but just because there's a variable you can't control doesn't mean poor and (good|bad) health beats rich and (good|bad) health. It's a just a way to mentally put a few people in the (rich, bad health) below you (poor, good health) in the feelgood hierarchy.
If this is intended to make you feel good about making poor choices, then carry on.
However, I'll tell you now that most people under 30 are typically living in a dream world. "Poor health" is a concept to most such "youngsters." When I was that age I'd been ill and I'd been injured, and I thought I understood. But, now, with the mild aches and pains of age creeping up on me slowly, I realize how big that gun is that I'm looking down the barrel of. Poor health isn't about being hit by a taxi-cab at 9 and get
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Let this be a lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
Value your health. Value your safety.
Accomplish something while you still can, just as Ilya did.
Value your mental health.
Working flat-out at all costs to accomplish something can be extremely detrimental to both your physical and mental health. The line between sane and insane is much narrower than many imagine. Whilst you may write some cool code, what use is that if you end up losing your sanity, or worse your life?
Suicide Apparently Was the Cause (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Suicide Apparently Was the Cause (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe put him in the care of people who aren't suffering from depression?
Re:Suicide Apparently Was the Cause (Score:5, Insightful)
What? Life didn't even get interesting until I was at least 22. The best years of life are in you 30s when you have money, friends who are more than just coincidental classmates. I pity your children.
Re:Suicide Apparently Was the Cause (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree strongly with that. I'm in my mid-40s, and so far I have to say that life has got better with each passing decade. Not necessily easier, mind you, but certainly better. My job has never been more interesting, and my kids are getting old enough to be not just fun but interesting to have deep discussions with. Perhaps most importantly, I know myself, my strengths and weaknesses better than I ever used to, I've got far more confidence than when I was younger, I'm happy with who I am, and I know how to apply myself and to work with the people around me to get stuff done.
Life is what you make of it. Whatever age you are.
Re: (Score:3)
after 50, you'll find that things have gotton worse; employers are no longer willing to consider you, your peers (should you HAVE a job, still) consider you an 'old fogey' and the cost of med insurance (even if you are mostly healthy) skyrockets.
lots of 'stuff' ahead of you and most of it is not all good. hate to break it to you (as one who is 50, now).
aging SUCKS and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Re: (Score:2)
You make your own destiny. Don't let the environment dictate who you are.
Re: (Score:2)
It sounds like you're depressed, and that is rubbing off on your child.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's interesting to see the range of reactions people have. This one, anger and condemnation, is pretty common. I always figured it was just a way to distance one's self from the pain rather than it being any kind of logical perspective.
I hadn't heard that there was Science behind it. Any links you have handy?
Well... (Score:2)
...the blog sites can't decide if he was 21 or 22. Most copy blindly off each other - and that includes Zdnet who should know better. Given that his work was in social networking and thus communication, I can't help but feel that he has been let down by the poor quality of communication surrounding his death.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
His final posting on Diaspora was of a translucent butterfly [joindiaspora.com] on the 7th. There was nothing that really stood out to be in his other postings as being suicidal, so I'm not going to go with that theory until there's something a bit more solid than the rumourmill. However, if it does turn out that that was what happened, it would alter how this image should be seen and therefore show that this was no sudden thing.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
When someone commits suicide, it's not always the case that they're going to smother the Internet with cries for help -- introverted especially, especially the geeky kind, tend to bundle up their emotions. Suicides can and do happen out of the blue.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
As an educated (BS in SE), 25 year old male who has attempted suicide twice (and failed by chance/luck/bad luck), in general we do send out cries for help. They get dismissed or go unnoticed. They aren't "I'm going to kill myself tonight. Don't try to stop me." but more like "I don't really care" or "I just cause problems" along with a passive shrug cause you don't want to make the other person feel bad too.
Personally if someone had noticed my attempts, I think I would've been better off. The ones that are vocal about it get help, the ones that are discovered before death get help, but the ones that are barely strong enough to keep from going all the way just linger on in quiet misery without being able to get help or end it.
My respect to the guy. Humans die easily, but it takes a lot to kill yourself. He was stronger than me.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would tend to say this post is a cry for help.
Re: (Score:2)
You really didn't want to commit suicide or you would have. Truth is that it is easy to commit a successful suicide. That being said I hope you are now getting some help. Depression is a terrible thing and can effect anyone. I am dealing with it now over the death of my mother.
Re: (Score:2)
This was only in reference to attempts not to feeling like you want to. There are just to many ways that one can kill themselves that any failed attempt says more to a desire to not die than luck. I meant it really as a complement to a part of yourself that has the strength to no give up. I am not a skilled writer so forgive my inability to communicate exactly what I meant in the way I meant it. What I was saying is that part of you really wants to live otherwise you would have pulled it off.
So far I hav
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, AC, even if your're not ready to go the full 'counseling' step, consider calling one of the hotlines for 'just a chat'. A five minute committment is worthwhile to just be able to talk to someone who doesn't know you and won't judge you.
I'm not really anyone to you (Score:5, Interesting)
And I make no pretense to know what it is like to want to commit suicide.
But I've always wanted to say to someone who was considering taking their life: why not just take your "life" instead?
And what I mean by that is, your situation in life. It obviously is not working, so abandon it. Take a plane to a far flung location on the globe, without any money or means of support, change your name, dissolve all ties to your previous existence, preemptively sabotage any way anyone could trace you, and live off trash or stolen mangoes from a tree, until something better comes along.
And become another person. Someone who might be happy someday.
Effectively "kill" yourself: all the identities you have with your current existence, the sum of all your relationships that aren't working, the job that fills you with nothing but misery, all of the reality around you that cages you about how you think about yourself. "Kill" all of the signifiers about who you currently are and how you think about your place in life.
And maybe the challenge and novelty of that will put you in a new frame of mind. And then you can be happy someday.
Of course, I know, the fear is you carry the seed of your depression around inside you, and even in a new life, the despondency will return. But I think, for many people, it is a combination of nature and nurture, and you, who you are, had your life gone another path, you might not be so depressed. We all are depressed at times, we all carry the seed of depression, and major depression too, were the situations in our life and how we come to think about ourselves had evolved a different way. So write a new story. Yes, you carry a seed of it inside you. We all do, and we aren't committing suicide because our seed never grew. So cut down the tree your seed has grown into, and move to new soil where the seed can't grow.
So restart the story. A lot of people talk about reinventing themselves, in ways they consider major, but are really minor. Consider the most radical reinvention possible, instead of suicide.
Re: (Score:2)
A few thoughts.
If someone is convinced that everything in life is meaningless, they are unlikely to have the perspective you present. It seems a little like telling someone who is depressed from a week of no sleep that they just need to "buck up"-- their mental state at that point will make your suggestion an impossibility. Depression can be like that-- you may understand objectively your depression, but that does not make it easy to simply say "Im going to stop being depressed now".
Also, a lot of people
Re:I'm not really anyone to you (Score:4, Informative)
I did appreciate your attempt to virtually relocate the parent and thus am happy for your comment to stand. I just thought it shouldn't stand alone. ;)
Something else your post might have helped with. People rarely prioritise long-term happiness. They'll put work, family, pseudo-rationality etc first and then wonder why they're not happy.
As far as I can tell, the biochemical contribution to depression is minimal to non-existent. Many studies have shown the failure of SSRIs to outperform placebo. Indeed SNRIs (which do the opposite) are also prescribed for depression.
That CBT works at all shows that depression in most cases is a largely down to habitually depressing thought patterns. There are other cases where this is not true at all.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem is the research is all methodically skewed to show the drugs work.
A common and accepted trick was to use a sugar pill as a placebo. I can tell the difference between a sugar pill and prozac and I'm not attuned to SSRIs.
A ubiquitous and accepted trick is to never test the blind. In these multi-million dollar studies, nobody spends a few thousand asking the patients what they think they took. Why? Because the patients can nearly always guess [deep-trance.com] [my own site] (Fisher and Greenberg 1993). One pres
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Suicides don't happen out of the blue. It might be a surprise for everyone but the subject, but it's not "out of the blue".
Re: (Score:3)
Paradoxically, some depressives seem like they're improving just before they commit suicide. Deciding on and planning out the deed, knowing that the end to their suffering is at hand can make them seem happier. This adds to the "out of the blue" perception.
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of time they don't want "help". A great many of them happen when someone is just coming out of the "too depressed to get out of bed" phase of cyclical depression, and they just don't ever want to go through that again.
Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Just demonstrates the cynical, borderline sociopathic nature of most /.ters =/
Re: (Score:2)
Just demonstrates the cynical, borderline sociopathic nature of most /.ters =/
I have all the characteristics of a human being: flesh, blood, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.
Welcome to slashdot, you'll find plenty of like-minded folk here.
Re: (Score:2)
If you're serious, see a doctor. You might have a brain tumor or something.
Re:Sad (Score:5, Interesting)
It may be related to this message: https://joindiaspora.com/posts/721055 [joindiaspora.com]
where he announces that he just started an intimate relation, less than 2 weeks ago.
The relation has probably been broken, as his heart :-(
What is Diaspora? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, guys, I know only a moron like myself doesn't know what this Diaspora project is, but couldn't you put a link or a two-word explanation? Yes, I know Google is my friend. Feel free to mod me down now.
Re:What is Diaspora? (Score:4, Informative)
Open Source Facebook Clone
Re: (Score:2)
No, Diaspora was to be distributed. There's no central authority to decide who gets banned, blocked, censored, spied upon, and sold to marketers. It would be YOU in control of your social network. It was a noble goal. But it didn't seem to go anywhere.
I don't know anything about the guy, but suicide is always a damn shame. A
Re:What is Diaspora? (Score:5, Interesting)
Google is my friend, too, yet I would have been ever so grateful for the tiniest social grace of sparing me yet another Google result set.
I'm pretty sure Lewis Thomas in Lives of a Cell (or possibly Et Cetera, Et Cetera: Notes of a Word-Watcher) comments about the sad decline of the elder statesmen: he hasn't forgotten anything so much as piled it so deep in the attic he can't find it without a substantial jog.
For about five minutes a year ago I knew what Diaspora was. Then it went directly to the Lewis Thomas attic of things I can only possibly remember once reminded.
Hard to understand, I guess, when you're twenty two.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What is Diaspora? (Score:5, Informative)
One area of particular appeal I see for the project is in serving enterprises. I can see Diaspora being pretty useful for places that want a facebook like application to serve an internal audience. e.g. you have 20,000 people in the company you might use aspects and the wall for general team and company level chitchat. Perhaps that's how the project ultimately intends to make money, selling support to these places.
Anyway I think it's early days for the project. It got a lot of bad press about 12 months back but its really rolling out in alpha form. It's still slow (and currently suffering from a bit of a Slashdotting), but it shows a lot of promise.
I'm really sorry to hear this. (Score:4, Insightful)
Condolences to his family and friends.
Re: (Score:2)
This got modded funny? What is wrong with the people on this website?
It's full of immature ACs who are too afraid to stand behind what they say, I suspect. *shrug*
Re: (Score:2)
This got modded funny? What is wrong with the people on this website?
It's full of immature ACs who are too afraid to stand behind what they say, I suspect. *shrug*
I'm going to (again!) respond to my own post.
If you're one of those Anonymous Cowards who can't put a name behind your beliefs, then your belief or opinion is worth nothing. Sometimes anonymity is necessary for one reason or another. However I do believe that the majority of AC posts here (/.) are posted anonymously because the poster is either a troll or has so little self confidence that they're not sure if their belief will be "accepted" or not, and don't want to face criticism. *If* you fucking believe
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, yeah, whatever. Maybe we realize that registration is pointless. You're not "anonymous"? You "put a name behind your beliefs"?
Really?
I'm guessing your birth certificate doesn't say "Psychotria". If you worked in the cubicle next to mine, I wouldn't even know that this was you. How are you any less anonymous than me? What, because I can see which of the comments on this specific website came from you, whereas you can't know for certain which AC comments came from the same person? BFD.
Re: (Score:2)
"Yes. AC abuse has skyrocketed,"
This is merely a reflection of the fact that many are fearful that their own abilities don't match their rhetoric or their self-conceived view of themselves. Posting anonymously only slightly retards the speed at which the reckoning comes. In reality little of even the greatest minds amounts to little that matters in time. Humans are rather limited in their intellectual capabilities, which are all relative to circumstance. It is difficult to confront the reality that one'
Re: (Score:3)
If you're one of those Anonymous Cowards who can't put a name behind your beliefs, then your belief or opinion is worth nothing.
That opinion is worth nothing, because you're posting it behind a pseudonym. Where's the line between a worthwhile opinion and a worthless one on a website where barely anybody uses their real name?
Re: (Score:2)
But so what? I'm not the only one in the world, so what does it really tell you?
Re: (Score:2)
*If* you fucking believe something, *If* you are passionate about something, then fucking post it without hiding. If you can't post it without hiding behind the AC (and this obviously excludes people who post AC for legitimate reasons) then you doubt your own "belief" or "opinion" and why should anyone take you seriously.
Prudence Goodwife disagrees.
Re: (Score:2)
Antitrust (Score:2)
May not have been much of a movie, but it seems it got many predictions right.
Advice for younger /.ers: Do not kill yourself. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't kill yourself. Just don't.
Throw away all your stuff, shave your head, leave your home and your hometown, and start walking, heading in one direction. Drop your job. Stand and pee on the desk of your Boss. Run away from school. Do whatever you must, but do *not* kill yourself. It's about the stupidest thing you can do.
My Grandpa who dug the whole Nazi-Wehrmacht thing back then and went on to invade and fight on the eastern front in WW2 as a Waffen-SS Officer (Kompanieführer) gave me this advice he took home after the war: If everything you believed in is gone, the 3rd Reich, the Wehrmacht, your hometown and half of your homeland burned and lost to the russians of which a few million are now rightfull super-pissed and heading straight your way, raping and killing their way through whatever is left of the eastern german population, if your entire Kompanie is dead (two assistants aside, which got captured a few days ago) if the beloved Führer is dead (*his* beloved Füher - not mine (emphasis mine!)), Berlin is falling and you're hearing the gunfire, the Stalinorgel and their bombshells crashing in near Zossen just a few Kilometers away, your injured and they are coming to get you and they will tear you to tiny bits and pieces, and the maggots are eating away at the festering wound in your leg, your career and your life and everything you've ever believed in is basically over and out with no stone on another in bombed out Berlin for Kilometers in each direction ... if all that has and just is happening before your very eyes right here and now ... you might aswell just crawl on a few more meters and see if something interesting happens instead of putting a gun to your head.
He crawled on, found a deserted Wehrmacht horse, crawled on to its back sideways. The horse eventually rode to a gathering-camp. The nurses picked him up and the russians didn't deport him because his injuries were to severe - the lucky bastard.
Long story short, he lives to this very day (age 97) to tell us this advice. Old Type-A nazi or not, that actually *is* a very valuable advice. If *he* in that situation decided *not* to kill himself, so can you.
Bottom line:
Don't kill yourself. It's that simple.
My 2 cents.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nice troll, but it only worked because the summary was badly written (once again).
But this is Slashdot. I was told here just last week that we really don't need good summaries, since anyone who needs a summary obviously isn't interested in the topic anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, you mean sarcasm? That is also a long-standing Slashdot habit.
Re:RIP (Score:4, Informative)
Your link is very nice for folks interested in etymology, but not informative.
Diaspora [wikipedia.org] is not Diaspora [wikipedia.org].
Or even (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Wow it looks almost exactly like Google Plus
Re: (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
Not to be (deliberately) insensitive, but murdered just like reiserfs.
Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
This ^^ deserves the Aspie poor-taste comment of the year award...
Congratulations!
Re: (Score:3)
An Aspie wouldn't know the comment was insensitive.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It won't. Diaspora died long before he did.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Right there is the problem with Diaspora. Their sign-up process is ridiculous. I'm still waiting for my invite, and probably for just as long. At least Google let people invite their friends, when they were still doing the invite-only thing with Google+.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I would have thought the privacy guarantees would meant at least geeks but possibly a wider audience would find the attraction in using it
What privacy guarantees? Who has reviewed the federation protocol? Last time I checked, it was an ad-hoc pile of crap full of serious design flaws and the reference implementation (which was about as close as you got to real documentation for the protocol) was a security disaster. The difference between Diaspora and Facebook is that people actually had to pay for Facebook to harvest all of your 'private' information...
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
What privacy guarantees? Who has reviewed the federation protocol? Last time I checked, it was an ad-hoc pile of crap full of serious design flaws and the reference implementation (which was about as close as you got to real documentation for the protocol) was a security disaster. The difference between Diaspora and Facebook is that people actually had to pay for Facebook to harvest all of your 'private' information...
Well you've just answered it. All the source code is there to run your own pod so if you are paranoid about the official host you can run your own and disclose what you like. See http://podupti.me/ [podupti.me] for some pods that already exist. As for reviewing the code, the code is all there too on https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora [github.com] so review it to your own satisfaction or not. Diaspora makes no bones about being in alpha so I'm quite certain there are bugs to be found. Doesn't mean that the principle is sound and from reviewing some of the federation protocols in the wiki it appears to take reasonable security precautions, and takes advantage of emerging standards for distributed comment / pubsub feedback such as Salmon.
Can you review Facebook's code? Can you see what data they capture on your behaviour and activities and what they do with it? Can you host your own code? The answer is no you can't. Facebook Europe does offer some toos for limited disclosure of data but certainly not enough to satisfy people who are identified major omissions in it.
Re:Causes? (Score:5, Informative)
Some Twitter [twitter.com] posts [twitter.com] (pre-dating the "official" announcement by more than 12 hours) mentioned suicide.
Re:Causes? (Score:5, Informative)
"Suicide is the action of selfish people"
No, http://www.suicide.org/suicide-is-not-a-selfish-act.html [suicide.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Causes? (Score:5, Informative)
.
Trust me on that - I've had Bipolar type 2 for the last 30 years or so. When I'm functioning properly, I can see the effect the illness has had on those around me - when I'm on a major down, nothing apart from the endless spiral of negative introspection exists.
It's not selfish - it's mental hell caused by $deity knows what. Meds help, but if it's the first big down then you don't even seek help (I didn't seek help until I was 40, and that was only through having a partner who knew what was happening).
Applying rational criteria to what is a most irrational condition is pushing the bounds of rationality itself. :-)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
As a matter of fact, I suspect that many p
Re: (Score:2)
.
But hey - go ahead and call it selfishness
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Causes? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the same thing. I don't think you can so easily find and take a moral high ground in such a complex philosophical issue. I think most people would agree that anyone contemplating or attempting suicide needs help, I'm just not sure that insulting someone in such a fragile mental state by calling them selfish is very helpful.
Re: (Score:2)
Basically, not only do I disagree with your argument, but it has no bearing on the point I made. It is possible for those who wish someone to not committ suicide to be selfish and
Re: (Score:2)
I scanned the postings for "Mafia", found it, that's all I need to know.
Re: (Score:2)
Very sad news, not only because of his vision and the fact that he was a good geek
Which vision?
but just because 22 is way too soon.
Any news on the causes yet?
Any age is way too soon for anyone active in anything and/or loved by someone. RIP to the guy and his relatives, but some of his e-sycophants herald the news as if he was Dennis Ritchie or Dijkstra. Diaspora was dead on arrival before the first line of code was typed. The he problem statement, the suggested solution, the execution of it, and the coding of it, the very concept behind it were severely flawed and doomed to failure. For anyone that reads this and who wants to learn how to write and
Re: (Score:3)
Tom, is that you?
And I definitely think trying to execute the idea is worth a lifetime of talk about ideas. All the time you spend posting "way too often" could be spent coding, or at least guiding others on an open source project if you really have all the architectural issues worked out.
Re: (Score:2)
And I definitely think trying to execute the idea is worth a lifetime of talk about ideas
Unfortunately, Diaspora always seemed to fall into the latter category. Lots of UI stuff (none of it original - designing a good UI is hard, copying an existing UI is easy), but no attempt to address any of the problems in that space that are actually difficult, such as how should the network be federated in a way that doesn't allow malicious nodes to harvest information, scales to hundreds of millions of users, and doesn't have a single point of failure.
Re:Fact (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, it's a bit late now, isn't it AC! Sheesh. Geez... I'm not even going to respond to you any further.
To Ilya: R.I.P
To Ilya's family, friends, colleagues and associates: I offer my condolences and wish you peace also and wish you the strength to get through this.
Regards
Craig
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry for replying again. But if you are sincerely sorry and regret your troll, man up and put your name to the apology. I accept that you may be sorry, but hiding behind the cloak of anonymity means your words and your somewhat cowardice[1] "apology" bear little weight IMO.
Cheers, Craig
[1] Cowardice because you can't even put your first name in the response as the most minimal gesture.
Re: (Score:2)
How offensive! My entire life is just... ruined.
Re: (Score:2)
How offensive! My entire life is just... ruined.
Yup. The "Anonymous Coward" lives up to his name.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
What's really sad is that that lame joke is probably older than this guy was.
Re: (Score:3)
No because Diaspora was going nowhere.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, yeah. Championing the cause of privacy protection in social networks earns you that right many times over.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
When you make a web page that conforms to standards, it is the browser's fault if it cannot render it correctly. Targeting specific browsers is: hard, ugly, mind blowing, and a wasted effort in the long run.
That's fine for your own personal blog. But when you're a company that lives and dies by getting as many users as possible to flock to your banner, you want your site to work in as many browsers as possible.
Re: (Score:2)
We find that customers who can't understand the need for a standards-compliant browser are typically difficult to work with and have a high rate of returned merch, so we just throw them at a page that explains why and how they can get a real browser. The ones that we can have a profitable relationship with, follow the instructions. The rest, we believe we are better off without. Fools cut into profits and pandering to fools is bad for employee morale.
If your product or service is not well known or not particularly desirable (or if you actually depend on swindling fools) I can see where you might want to cater to non-compliant browsers. But if what you're selling is something intelligent people already want to buy, you don't need the fools and tools. And if you're building a community, I can understand wanting to have a little "test" up front for the same reasons.
Ok, a little bit of attention to the stuff in bold above:
1. How did that apply to Diaspora? Self-fulfilling prophesy/wishful thinking? I mean, seriously, as far as quality went, the software sucked. Intelligent people saw the silliness of it a mile a way, and more intelligent people went "ewww" when they finally had a grasp on the software. Furthermore, the security holes in it are the types that are already document, examples of what-not-to-do. Where was the intelligence in it? Where was the intelligence
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see Diaspora as anything close to a competitor of Facebook.
Indeed. Diaspora is not a competitor of anything at all. It's just a make-believe solution looking for a poorly understood problem statement that rings the bell for a very small subset of those into online communities. The saddest part, and the greatest indictment, of movements such as this, is the amount of security holes present in a software that was supposed to provide a better, safer alternative to FB. And that went beyond misunderstanding the problem, but not even knowing how to code secure web softwa
Re: (Score:2)
What?
Re: (Score:2)