Tag Archives: programmers

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Conference Ad Fail

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I saw this ad in Reader:

From Screenshots and random things

I read a lot of tech blogs, so it’s not that it isn’t targeted. But the thought of 200,000 lines of payment processing code, when PayPal is taking care of all the credit card stuff already, makes me queasy.

For anyone reading my blog who isn’t a programmer, imagine an ad like this:

“Hungry for a hotdog? Get access to over 200,000 pounds of hotdog buns. And learn how to use it.”

If I was in the market for payment processing, an ad that offered a few really useful, secure APIs would be a lot more enticing.

Why Geeks Support Barack Obama

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ObamaI just donated $25 to Barack Obama. Much like many other geeks before me. Obama is clearly the choice of the country’s programmers, researchers, and other eggheads. Why?

Despite the explosion of baby name voting posts, I usually write about more technical topics on this blog. I’m very interested in the intersection of technology and society, and use of the internet in social interaction. So I think it’s fair to talk about that other vote that’s going on right now, the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.

As I said before, Obama is clearly the choice of the geek constituency. Don’t believe me? Here’s a graph of individual campaign contributions by employees at five large, notoriously geeky tech companies, Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Amazon:

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