"So you have an issue with her evading answering a non-question (note, he didn't ask a question, he just ranted and waited for a response). I don't have an issue with that. He was inappropriate, and she addressed him appropriately. She didn't dodge the question. She just didn't give the answer he wanted."
Nonsense. I say again, WATCH THE VIDEO OF THE EXCHANGE. I quote from it (I don't have the transcript here right now and I don't recall what the word that sounds like "ARB" is.) I have made some comments in brackets []:
Sen. Johnson: "Do you disagree with me that a simple phone call to those evacuees would have determined what happened... would have ascertained immediately that there was no protest? I mean, that is a piece of information that could have been easily, easily obtained."
[Note: This is A QUESTION!. "DO YOU DISAGREE WITH ME..." is a simple, yes or no question. And it is a RELEVANT question, to which many of us want answers!]
Clinton: "But Senator, again..."
Sen. Johnson: "Within hours, not days."
Clinton: "Senator, I've... (stutters)... when you're in these positions, the last thing you want to do is interfere with any other process going on, number 1."
[This is an EVASION. Making a phone call would not have been "interfering" by any reasonable stretch of the imagination.]
Sen. Johnson: (Interrupting) I realize that is a good excuse, but...
Clinton (Interrupting Johnson): "No, that's a fact. Number 2, I would recommend highly you read both what the [ARB?] said about it, and the classified [ARB?] because even today, there are questions being raised. Now, we have no doubt they were terrorists, they were militants, they attacked us, they killed our people, but what was going on, and why they were doing what they were doing, is still..."
[More EVASION. The fact that there are questions still being raised has NO bearing on why a simple phone call wasn't made to verify whether it was a protest or not. Those at the embassy knew at the time that it wasn't. The question is why the Obama administration claims that THEY didn't know.]
Sen. Johnson: "No, no, no. I... again: we were misled that there was supposedly protests and then something 'sprang' out of that, an assault sprang out of that. And it was easily ascertained that was not the fact. And the American people could have known that within days, and they didn't know that."
Clinton: "With all due respect, the fact is that we had 4 dead Americans. Was it because of a protest, or was it because of some guys out for a walk one night who decided to go kill Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?"
Now, let's take this for what it really is:
He asked a RELEVANT and IMPORTANT question. And EVERYTHING Clinton said in reply -- no matter how truthful it may be -- is an EVASION. She never event attempted to answer the question.
This is a Senator, in a Congressional hearing, asking an important QUESTION that we want real answers to. Clinton did not answer him. So he got angry. Well, guess what? I would have been pretty goddamned angry too. And why no such phone call was not made (so we're told) makes A VERY BIG difference, "at this point" and in the future.
"It it was so obvious and blatant, how could it have not been known? That's the confusing part to me."
You are repeating a question I already answered. It wasn't known at the time.
"When only blogs (and of those with a specific political leaning) report on it, it seems very conspiracy-theory, rather than factual."
Horseshit. Why would "the other side" report on it? Why would they want it known? That's just ridiculous. The fact that they don't want to report on it doesn't make it "conspiracy theory", any more than
"No, we need human spaceflight now more than ever. We need a self-sustaining colony, off-planet, ASAP. I don't care if it's a lunar colony, Mars, an asteroid, or even a city-sized space station at a Lagrange point, as long as it can sustain itself indefinitely. There's relatively little scientific gain to be made from this, but that's not why we should do it."
Exactly. Some things are important beyond consideration of budget.
For example (along a different line from what you were saying, but just as important), most of the big countries like Russia, China, EU are setting their sights on the Moon, while the U.S. is off pissing away money on some jaunt to an asteroid, thanks to Obama.
But the strategic (not economic) value of the Moon cannot be overemphasized. We MUST get there, and stay there, if for no other reason than to keep others from getting too far ahead of us. Whoever controls the moon pretty much controls the Earth. Never forget that.
And I find it laughable and sad that the Teapartiers are mostly old white people and if they REALLY wanted what they think they wanted, they'd have to shoot themselves in the pocketbook and give up this notion the the US of A has to have a superior military and go off fighting "evil".
The people you are referring to aren't the real TeaPartiers. They are the Republicans who usurped the Tea Party banner.
Not the same thing. They may think of themselves as Tea Party but they bear little resemblance to the actual, original, Tea Party. Which did in fact want to stop the money wasting and "wealth redistribution".
"Oh, I hadn't heard that Hillary announced her running."
I wrote (twice) potential candidate. This whole thread was in the context of Hillary maybe running for office in 2016. Is there something about that you did not understand?
"And Reagan was a candidate when he committed Treason."
You wrote Bush (and I am not defending him). You did not mention Reagan. What "treason" did Reagan commit, in your opinion?
"What US law did the CinC commit by ordering a military strike?"
First, it wasn't a legitimate "military" strike, because the target was not a confirmed military combatant, and in fact even his involvement in any planning of military action wasn't proven. Second, it wasn't a legitimate military strike because it crossed the border into a country with which we were not at war, in any sense of the term. (Without permission from that country, by the way.) Those things are against a number of International laws, and against the Geneva Convention specifically.
Second, because it was not a legitimate act of war, by any standards recognized by either U.S. or international law, then by U.S. law that means it was murder.
"There was an interrupted rambling by a freshman senator baiting her that wasn't even a question that complained about poor information *after* the attack.
He was NOT "baiting" her. I repeat: just go watch it on YouTube. His question was perfectly legitimate, and she was trying to sidestep it. He was getting angry, because she wasn't anwering the question. That's not "baiting". That's evasion on Clinton's part.
I see a BIG issue with that.
"What does it matter now?" Seems a logical and appropriate answer to someone asking you about "security" by complaining that the information *after* the incident was slow to be confirmed.
He was asking here why certain things were not done. It was a legitimate question about why certain actions were not taken. "What does it matter now" is NOT an answer, it's an evasion. He had a perfect legal right to ask, AND damned good reason for wanting to know, AND right to be angry when she evaded. It was neither logical or appropriate to sidestep that direct question in a Congressional hearing. (Hint: that's called "Contempt of Congress" and it's a crime.)
"I still don't see the issue. I read the entire transcript."
Then go watch the video, and get a feel for the REAL context. That's why I linked to it. I read the transcript, too, and it doesn't adequately convey the exchange. The words might be accurate but that's not the whole story.
"The Treason by Bush and Reagan was much worse, and nobody cared then."
Wrong on both counts. No, it wasn't "worse". And a hell of a lot of people cared. I was one of them. Just as a hell of a lot of people care about THIS time, and I am still one of them.
And "mainstream media" didn't cover the timelines of the disclosures, only the conservative blogs, and I didn't track it at the time, so I have no way of verifying the facts,
Yes, you do. You can spend a bit of time on Google and look up the things that did appear in those articles. What you are saying is, "I was not spoon-fed any of that information so it must not be so." You have a brain, and an internet connection, and fingers. If you WANT to know about something like that, you DO have ways to find out. But don't just not bother and then complain that you have no way to verify things. Because it's not true.
and if it was so obvious she announced the attacks or deaths or whatever before we knew, why didn't Congress ask about that?
"Really? My company only gives me 2 weeks to enroll. Everyone here seems to do just fine. Then again, we've had mandated healthcare in my state for a while because we aren't absolute morons. Guess what, state isn't bankrupt and the economy is doing better than a lot of places."
(A) Mandated employee health care. What about everybody else?
(B) As mentioned by that other person: how many options does your employer offer? Gee, it's handed right to you. YOU don't have to go through all that mess of trying to find a provider that's affordable, find out if they're approved, go through all the Federal paperwork.
(C) Don't assume that everybody is in the same position as you.
"Why didn't your state setup their own exchange like my own, New York? It worked great. The fed site redirected me right to new york's site."
That's completely off-topic. Regardless of how good or bad your state exchange is, that has no bearing on the fact that they spent $634 Million of our tax money for THIS mess.
And remember that even the state exchanges are ultimately dependent on the Federal infrastructure.
Again, just to be clear: I'm not asking you to take my word as "proof". Just go look at the javascript file I linked to, and find somebody knowledgeable about JavaScript, and let THEM tell you what a horrific mess it is.
I just now downloaded the file again, and it is apparent that they have been working on it. The example I gave just above has been fixed. But others haven't, and there are now new errors. For example, the file now has a comment on the first "line", but has no line breaks for quite a while, which means EVERYTHING up to the first line break is commented out. That would not be such a big deal if it were not about 80k+ characters of apparently important code.
But if you format the code correctly, right there on line 47 is this gem:
resources['ffe.ee.shared.error.reviewInformation'] = 'Review the information you entered. If the information you entered is correct, select the ' Continue ' button. If the information you entered isn' t correct, make any necessary changes, then select the 'Continue'
This is exactly how it appears in the file. Note that the single-quoted string contains not just one, but several single quotes. And they are not escaped. This code simply cannot function.
It *IS* apparent that they have been working to fix things. But even their fixes appear to be as though they are just thrashing about in the dark.
Ahah. In this particular case, it looks like they used a unicode equivalent to the single-quote, inside the string (because it did not come out as a single quote on Slashdot, which does not support unicode, or much of anything standard for that matter).
BUT that wasn't the case the other day. So they have indeed fixed some of these errors over the last couple of days. But as of yesterday, those errors WERE as I described, and they were NOT simple coding errors, they were egregious, INCREDIBLY DUMB errors that nobody should expect to get paid for.
"Thanks for the clarification, but the anecdote still doesn't prove anything. There's lots of bad code out there in any sector."
My anecdote was not intended to prove anything. But I gave you a link, and that DOES prove something. That is javascript CURRENTLY ON the healthcare.gov website -- so you know I'm not pulling a fast one -- and it is chock full of errors.
That's called proof. And the errors are so elementary, that I literally mean that they are "You actually got paid to write this sh*t???" quality.
" There's lots of bad code out there in any sector."
Not this bad. Literally. THIS is a first-day-in-class javascript student level error, from the linked file, for just one hilarious error out of MANY:
resources['ffe.ee.myAccount.resetPassword.password.instructions'] = 'Your password must contain 8-20 characters. There must be at least 1 upper case letter, 1 lower case letter, and 1 number. It must be different from your last 6 passwords. It can't contain your username or any of these characters = ? ( ) â " / \ &';
Note that this string value begins and ends with a single quote: '. But it also CONTAINS a single quote. It's telling you that it can't accept a single quote (among other things), but a single-quoted string cannot contain "unescaped" single quotes! What happens is the interpreter sees the first single quote, then chops the whole string off at the second... the one in the list of non-allowed characters. The remainder that is left dangling is a syntax error.
This is really, truly, grossly, elementary-school BAD code. It isn't worthy of a first-term javascript class. This code doesn't work.
"Not Scientific American's fault reality has a liberal bias."
This is disingenuous. I didn't write anything about "liberal" bias. The subject was BIAS. Any bias. It doesn't matter which "side" it is on, it doesn't belong in a science magazine.
Nor do politics, or social issues. It's supposed to be a SCIENCE magazine, and it is failing to be what it is supposed to be. To the extent that I (and others too... read the other comments here) are leaving it on the shelf in disgust.
Having said all that, I disagree anyway that "reality has a liberal bias". If you mean "liberal" as in "political Left", I disagree VERY strongly. (I am not politically "Right", either, but that's beside the point. "Not left" is not the same as "right" unless you can only think in one dimension.)
I don't care what your political persuasion is; real science does not take sides. Scientific American has. Therefore, it is not a real science magazine anymore. Q.E.D.
"From time to time I have considered resubscribing in the hope of finding that missed feeling"
And that is the feeling I get too. SciAm was an old friend. I started reading it in childhood. Mathematical Games was wonderful, as was the regular Amateur Scientist piece. Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas" was good for a while, too, when Gardner left. But over the last, oh, 15 years or so, maybe a bit more, it has been on a steady downhill slide.
But back to my original point: it's like losing an old friend. It sucks.
"Yeah, like George Bush committing treason at least twice that we know of (both material aid to the Iranians who were enemies of the US at the time). Oh no, that gets no coverage, does it?"
Hahaha! First off, Bush wasn't a candidate when he did it. I clearly referred to potential candidates.
But if you want to play the comparison game, how about Obama breaking international and U.S. law by sending drones to Libya? Isn't it treason when the President violates U.S. law and the constitution, in order to invade another country? Wasn't that what you just claimed Bush did, and called it treason?
Isn't it treason to help the rebels in Syria, a large portion of whom are Al-Qaeda, our declared enemies? If so, then why does Obama want to do it? If it isn't, why not?
"As if sending an email to the authour saying "I did this, let's discuss next week" is difficult. And, who gets Columbus Day off, except the post office and banks?"
"You are wrong. Her testimony in no way indicated any wrongdoing. The quip that made it in the news was an admonition from a freshman Senator who was trying to bait her that she replied in kind to."
Do you have reading comprehension issues? I did NOT claim her testimony indicated "wrongdoing". What I was saying was that her statement "What does it matter now?" before Congress showed a gross lack of respect for the facts, and was sidestepping the legitimate questions being asked.
What actually transpired matters a great deal. And he was not "harassing" her. He was trying to get a straight answer out of her as she attempted to sidestep the question. It's all HERE in the first 1:40.
It was the timeline, and the actions taken (or lack thereof) that indicate wrongdoing. And I cannot condone her evasion of legitimate questions in testimony. As so many other Obama administration officials have done. Even worse: we know that Holder and Clapper both LIED to Congress in their testimonies, though those were different issues.
"Micro-USB, while ubiquitous, is rather fragile and has orientation."
Micro-USB is not all that fragile compared to lightning. In fact it was designed for robustness when it turned out that Mini-USB was in fact rather fragile and prone to connector problems.
So the Micro-USB is far stronger than the Mini, and made to withstand many times more connect/disconnect cycles.
I agree with you about the orientation, though. That could have been dispensed with. But it's not that big a deal. If you have trouble telling which way is up, mark one side of the connector.
"Erotica and romance novels are two completely different categories. Romance novels usually have some sort of plot or story that would function just fine without the smut."
You're making an artificial distinction that doesn't really exist.
Romance novels are generally erotic, and erotic novels generally involve romance. What you're talking about it text porn, not "erotica". There IS a difference there.
Granted, some booksellers do draw a line between romance and erotica, but in reality it's an extremely wide, gray line that is barely visible.
"Which suggests very strongly that if they take that two months, then a lot of people are going to be looking forward to penalties come tax-time next year."
It's COMPLETELY unreasonable to expect people to find and implement a policy that fits them, given this huge mess of bureaucracy and glitches, in 60 days or so.
Clarification: when I said it's not even "private sector", I mean it's not representative of private sector coding. It looks closer to a middle-school student's "do what I mean, not what I say" style of almost-coding.
"It just goes to show: It doesn't always pay to contract everything out to the private sector..."
This website is not even what I would call "private sector". A couple of days ago I looked at some javascript from the registration page. You can look at it yourself HERE, direct from healthcare.gov.
This javascript is hopelessly broken. Even simple string values are completely messed up. I just checked it again, straight from the website, and even the most basic (literally first day javascript student level) mistakes have not been changed!
This is a complete mess. 70% my smooth, shapely, lily-white ass. It ain't even close to working.
You linked to another story (in a conservative blog), and all it did was confuse with time zones that she announced the attack before it started. Serious journalism would have listed everything in UTC or otherwise try to coordinate time, rather than converting for us. For all I know, there was a daylight savings error that meant she announced the attack 45 minutes after, not 15 minutes before.
Stop whining. The facts were given, and you can check them yourself. If you don't believe the time zones were given accurately, you can spend ALL OF 5 MINUTES looking it up yourself. That's what it's all about: checking the facts for yourself. If you don't want to bother, then you have no cause to complain.
"And no, I didn't see her testamony."
Then how can you claim it was out of context? Sounds to me like you are doing what you accused me of: knee-jerk acceptance of propaganda.
"And I agree with her. If there was some misinformation given about the number and state of protests, or the sharing of that at the time, what difference does that make now?"
Are you serious? I mean, really serious? The biggest possible scandal that ANY potential Presidential candidate has ever been involved in, and you wonder why it matters?
"The evidence doesn't seem to support what you claim it does. At least to someone who is looking at the facts now, without color of immediate reports and fanfare."
You admit that you didn't check it, so how the hell would you know?
Slashdot Mirror
"What "confirmation" is required before a presidential order becomes legal?"
Are you fucking kidding me? He isn't a goddamned king. He can't just decide to kill whoever he wants!
Other than Robert Heinlein, what is your documentation for "Whoever controls the moon pretty much controls the Earth"?
The military "high ground" has been a known principle for over 2000 years. Nukes don't change that, even a little bit.
"So you have an issue with her evading answering a non-question (note, he didn't ask a question, he just ranted and waited for a response). I don't have an issue with that. He was inappropriate, and she addressed him appropriately. She didn't dodge the question. She just didn't give the answer he wanted."
Nonsense. I say again, WATCH THE VIDEO OF THE EXCHANGE. I quote from it (I don't have the transcript here right now and I don't recall what the word that sounds like "ARB" is.) I have made some comments in brackets []:
Sen. Johnson: "Do you disagree with me that a simple phone call to those evacuees would have determined what happened... would have ascertained immediately that there was no protest? I mean, that is a piece of information that could have been easily, easily obtained."
... (stutters) ... when you're in these positions, the last thing you want to do is interfere with any other process going on, number 1."
[Note: This is A QUESTION!. "DO YOU DISAGREE WITH ME..." is a simple, yes or no question. And it is a RELEVANT question, to which many of us want answers!]
Clinton: "But Senator, again..."
Sen. Johnson: "Within hours, not days."
Clinton: "Senator, I've
[This is an EVASION. Making a phone call would not have been "interfering" by any reasonable stretch of the imagination.]
Sen. Johnson: (Interrupting) I realize that is a good excuse, but...
Clinton (Interrupting Johnson): "No, that's a fact. Number 2, I would recommend highly you read both what the [ARB?] said about it, and the classified [ARB?] because even today, there are questions being raised. Now, we have no doubt they were terrorists, they were militants, they attacked us, they killed our people, but what was going on, and why they were doing what they were doing, is still..."
[More EVASION. The fact that there are questions still being raised has NO bearing on why a simple phone call wasn't made to verify whether it was a protest or not. Those at the embassy knew at the time that it wasn't. The question is why the Obama administration claims that THEY didn't know.]
Sen. Johnson: "No, no, no. I... again: we were misled that there was supposedly protests and then something 'sprang' out of that, an assault sprang out of that. And it was easily ascertained that was not the fact. And the American people could have known that within days, and they didn't know that."
Clinton: "With all due respect, the fact is that we had 4 dead Americans. Was it because of a protest, or was it because of some guys out for a walk one night who decided to go kill Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?"
Now, let's take this for what it really is:
He asked a RELEVANT and IMPORTANT question. And EVERYTHING Clinton said in reply -- no matter how truthful it may be -- is an EVASION. She never event attempted to answer the question.
This is a Senator, in a Congressional hearing, asking an important QUESTION that we want real answers to. Clinton did not answer him. So he got angry. Well, guess what? I would have been pretty goddamned angry too. And why no such phone call was not made (so we're told) makes A VERY BIG difference, "at this point" and in the future.
"It it was so obvious and blatant, how could it have not been known? That's the confusing part to me."
You are repeating a question I already answered. It wasn't known at the time.
"When only blogs (and of those with a specific political leaning) report on it, it seems very conspiracy-theory, rather than factual."
Horseshit. Why would "the other side" report on it? Why would they want it known? That's just ridiculous. The fact that they don't want to report on it doesn't make it "conspiracy theory", any more than
"No, we need human spaceflight now more than ever. We need a self-sustaining colony, off-planet, ASAP. I don't care if it's a lunar colony, Mars, an asteroid, or even a city-sized space station at a Lagrange point, as long as it can sustain itself indefinitely. There's relatively little scientific gain to be made from this, but that's not why we should do it."
Exactly. Some things are important beyond consideration of budget.
For example (along a different line from what you were saying, but just as important), most of the big countries like Russia, China, EU are setting their sights on the Moon, while the U.S. is off pissing away money on some jaunt to an asteroid, thanks to Obama.
But the strategic (not economic) value of the Moon cannot be overemphasized. We MUST get there, and stay there, if for no other reason than to keep others from getting too far ahead of us. Whoever controls the moon pretty much controls the Earth. Never forget that.
And I find it laughable and sad that the Teapartiers are mostly old white people and if they REALLY wanted what they think they wanted, they'd have to shoot themselves in the pocketbook and give up this notion the the US of A has to have a superior military and go off fighting "evil".
The people you are referring to aren't the real TeaPartiers. They are the Republicans who usurped the Tea Party banner.
Not the same thing. They may think of themselves as Tea Party but they bear little resemblance to the actual, original, Tea Party. Which did in fact want to stop the money wasting and "wealth redistribution".
"Oh, I hadn't heard that Hillary announced her running."
I wrote (twice) potential candidate. This whole thread was in the context of Hillary maybe running for office in 2016. Is there something about that you did not understand?
"And Reagan was a candidate when he committed Treason."
You wrote Bush (and I am not defending him). You did not mention Reagan. What "treason" did Reagan commit, in your opinion?
"What US law did the CinC commit by ordering a military strike?"
First, it wasn't a legitimate "military" strike, because the target was not a confirmed military combatant, and in fact even his involvement in any planning of military action wasn't proven. Second, it wasn't a legitimate military strike because it crossed the border into a country with which we were not at war, in any sense of the term. (Without permission from that country, by the way.) Those things are against a number of International laws, and against the Geneva Convention specifically.
Second, because it was not a legitimate act of war, by any standards recognized by either U.S. or international law, then by U.S. law that means it was murder.
"There was an interrupted rambling by a freshman senator baiting her that wasn't even a question that complained about poor information *after* the attack.
He was NOT "baiting" her. I repeat: just go watch it on YouTube. His question was perfectly legitimate, and she was trying to sidestep it. He was getting angry, because she wasn't anwering the question. That's not "baiting". That's evasion on Clinton's part.
I see a BIG issue with that.
"What does it matter now?" Seems a logical and appropriate answer to someone asking you about "security" by complaining that the information *after* the incident was slow to be confirmed.
He was asking here why certain things were not done. It was a legitimate question about why certain actions were not taken. "What does it matter now" is NOT an answer, it's an evasion. He had a perfect legal right to ask, AND damned good reason for wanting to know, AND right to be angry when she evaded. It was neither logical or appropriate to sidestep that direct question in a Congressional hearing. (Hint: that's called "Contempt of Congress" and it's a crime.)
"I still don't see the issue. I read the entire transcript."
Then go watch the video, and get a feel for the REAL context. That's why I linked to it. I read the transcript, too, and it doesn't adequately convey the exchange. The words might be accurate but that's not the whole story.
"The Treason by Bush and Reagan was much worse, and nobody cared then."
Wrong on both counts. No, it wasn't "worse". And a hell of a lot of people cared. I was one of them. Just as a hell of a lot of people care about THIS time, and I am still one of them.
And "mainstream media" didn't cover the timelines of the disclosures, only the conservative blogs, and I didn't track it at the time, so I have no way of verifying the facts,
Yes, you do. You can spend a bit of time on Google and look up the things that did appear in those articles. What you are saying is, "I was not spoon-fed any of that information so it must not be so." You have a brain, and an internet connection, and fingers. If you WANT to know about something like that, you DO have ways to find out. But don't just not bother and then complain that you have no way to verify things. Because it's not true.
and if it was so obvious she announced the attacks or deaths or whatever before we knew, why didn't Congress ask about that?
Because it wasn't known at the time.
"Really? My company only gives me 2 weeks to enroll. Everyone here seems to do just fine. Then again, we've had mandated healthcare in my state for a while because we aren't absolute morons. Guess what, state isn't bankrupt and the economy is doing better than a lot of places."
(A) Mandated employee health care. What about everybody else?
(B) As mentioned by that other person: how many options does your employer offer? Gee, it's handed right to you. YOU don't have to go through all that mess of trying to find a provider that's affordable, find out if they're approved, go through all the Federal paperwork.
(C) Don't assume that everybody is in the same position as you.
"Why didn't your state setup their own exchange like my own, New York? It worked great. The fed site redirected me right to new york's site."
That's completely off-topic. Regardless of how good or bad your state exchange is, that has no bearing on the fact that they spent $634 Million of our tax money for THIS mess.
And remember that even the state exchanges are ultimately dependent on the Federal infrastructure.
I just now downloaded the file again, and it is apparent that they have been working on it. The example I gave just above has been fixed. But others haven't, and there are now new errors. For example, the file now has a comment on the first "line", but has no line breaks for quite a while, which means EVERYTHING up to the first line break is commented out. That would not be such a big deal if it were not about 80k+ characters of apparently important code.
But if you format the code correctly, right there on line 47 is this gem:
This is exactly how it appears in the file. Note that the single-quoted string contains not just one, but several single quotes. And they are not escaped. This code simply cannot function.
It *IS* apparent that they have been working to fix things. But even their fixes appear to be as though they are just thrashing about in the dark.
Ahah. In this particular case, it looks like they used a unicode equivalent to the single-quote, inside the string (because it did not come out as a single quote on Slashdot, which does not support unicode, or much of anything standard for that matter).
BUT that wasn't the case the other day. So they have indeed fixed some of these errors over the last couple of days. But as of yesterday, those errors WERE as I described, and they were NOT simple coding errors, they were egregious, INCREDIBLY DUMB errors that nobody should expect to get paid for.
"Thanks for the clarification, but the anecdote still doesn't prove anything. There's lots of bad code out there in any sector."
My anecdote was not intended to prove anything. But I gave you a link, and that DOES prove something. That is javascript CURRENTLY ON the healthcare.gov website -- so you know I'm not pulling a fast one -- and it is chock full of errors.
That's called proof. And the errors are so elementary, that I literally mean that they are "You actually got paid to write this sh*t???" quality.
" There's lots of bad code out there in any sector."
Not this bad. Literally. THIS is a first-day-in-class javascript student level error, from the linked file, for just one hilarious error out of MANY:
resources['ffe.ee.myAccount.resetPassword.password.instructions'] = 'Your password must contain 8-20 characters. There must be at least 1 upper case letter, 1 lower case letter, and 1 number. It must be different from your last 6 passwords. It can't contain your username or any of these characters = ? ( ) â " / \ &';
Note that this string value begins and ends with a single quote: '. But it also CONTAINS a single quote. It's telling you that it can't accept a single quote (among other things), but a single-quoted string cannot contain "unescaped" single quotes! What happens is the interpreter sees the first single quote, then chops the whole string off at the second... the one in the list of non-allowed characters. The remainder that is left dangling is a syntax error.
This is really, truly, grossly, elementary-school BAD code. It isn't worthy of a first-term javascript class. This code doesn't work.
"I think that would qualify for a -whooosh-"
And I would disagree. GP's comment was concise, to the point, and insightful. And in my opinion, also accurate.
"Not Scientific American's fault reality has a liberal bias."
This is disingenuous. I didn't write anything about "liberal" bias. The subject was BIAS. Any bias. It doesn't matter which "side" it is on, it doesn't belong in a science magazine.
Nor do politics, or social issues. It's supposed to be a SCIENCE magazine, and it is failing to be what it is supposed to be. To the extent that I (and others too... read the other comments here) are leaving it on the shelf in disgust.
Having said all that, I disagree anyway that "reality has a liberal bias". If you mean "liberal" as in "political Left", I disagree VERY strongly. (I am not politically "Right", either, but that's beside the point. "Not left" is not the same as "right" unless you can only think in one dimension.)
I don't care what your political persuasion is; real science does not take sides. Scientific American has. Therefore, it is not a real science magazine anymore. Q.E.D.
"From time to time I have considered resubscribing in the hope of finding that missed feeling"
And that is the feeling I get too. SciAm was an old friend. I started reading it in childhood. Mathematical Games was wonderful, as was the regular Amateur Scientist piece. Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas" was good for a while, too, when Gardner left. But over the last, oh, 15 years or so, maybe a bit more, it has been on a steady downhill slide.
But back to my original point: it's like losing an old friend. It sucks.
"Yeah, like George Bush committing treason at least twice that we know of (both material aid to the Iranians who were enemies of the US at the time). Oh no, that gets no coverage, does it?"
Hahaha! First off, Bush wasn't a candidate when he did it. I clearly referred to potential candidates.
But if you want to play the comparison game, how about Obama breaking international and U.S. law by sending drones to Libya? Isn't it treason when the President violates U.S. law and the constitution, in order to invade another country? Wasn't that what you just claimed Bush did, and called it treason?
Isn't it treason to help the rebels in Syria, a large portion of whom are Al-Qaeda, our declared enemies? If so, then why does Obama want to do it? If it isn't, why not?
I don't think you're winning any arguments here.
"As if sending an email to the authour saying "I did this, let's discuss next week" is difficult. And, who gets Columbus Day off, except the post office and banks?"
I had the same thought.
"You are wrong. Her testimony in no way indicated any wrongdoing. The quip that made it in the news was an admonition from a freshman Senator who was trying to bait her that she replied in kind to."
Do you have reading comprehension issues? I did NOT claim her testimony indicated "wrongdoing". What I was saying was that her statement "What does it matter now?" before Congress showed a gross lack of respect for the facts, and was sidestepping the legitimate questions being asked.
What actually transpired matters a great deal. And he was not "harassing" her. He was trying to get a straight answer out of her as she attempted to sidestep the question. It's all HERE in the first 1:40.
It was the timeline, and the actions taken (or lack thereof) that indicate wrongdoing. And I cannot condone her evasion of legitimate questions in testimony. As so many other Obama administration officials have done. Even worse: we know that Holder and Clapper both LIED to Congress in their testimonies, though those were different issues.
A Seal is not a "State Department official" by any stretch of the imagination.
"Micro-USB, while ubiquitous, is rather fragile and has orientation."
Micro-USB is not all that fragile compared to lightning. In fact it was designed for robustness when it turned out that Mini-USB was in fact rather fragile and prone to connector problems.
So the Micro-USB is far stronger than the Mini, and made to withstand many times more connect/disconnect cycles.
I agree with you about the orientation, though. That could have been dispensed with. But it's not that big a deal. If you have trouble telling which way is up, mark one side of the connector.
"Erotica and romance novels are two completely different categories. Romance novels usually have some sort of plot or story that would function just fine without the smut."
You're making an artificial distinction that doesn't really exist.
Romance novels are generally erotic, and erotic novels generally involve romance. What you're talking about it text porn, not "erotica". There IS a difference there.
Granted, some booksellers do draw a line between romance and erotica, but in reality it's an extremely wide, gray line that is barely visible.
"Which suggests very strongly that if they take that two months, then a lot of people are going to be looking forward to penalties come tax-time next year."
It's COMPLETELY unreasonable to expect people to find and implement a policy that fits them, given this huge mess of bureaucracy and glitches, in 60 days or so.
Clarification: when I said it's not even "private sector", I mean it's not representative of private sector coding. It looks closer to a middle-school student's "do what I mean, not what I say" style of almost-coding.
"It just goes to show: It doesn't always pay to contract everything out to the private sector..."
This website is not even what I would call "private sector". A couple of days ago I looked at some javascript from the registration page. You can look at it yourself HERE, direct from healthcare.gov.
This javascript is hopelessly broken. Even simple string values are completely messed up. I just checked it again, straight from the website, and even the most basic (literally first day javascript student level) mistakes have not been changed!
This is a complete mess. 70% my smooth, shapely, lily-white ass. It ain't even close to working.
You linked to another story (in a conservative blog), and all it did was confuse with time zones that she announced the attack before it started. Serious journalism would have listed everything in UTC or otherwise try to coordinate time, rather than converting for us. For all I know, there was a daylight savings error that meant she announced the attack 45 minutes after, not 15 minutes before.
Stop whining. The facts were given, and you can check them yourself. If you don't believe the time zones were given accurately, you can spend ALL OF 5 MINUTES looking it up yourself. That's what it's all about: checking the facts for yourself. If you don't want to bother, then you have no cause to complain.
"And no, I didn't see her testamony."
Then how can you claim it was out of context? Sounds to me like you are doing what you accused me of: knee-jerk acceptance of propaganda.
"And I agree with her. If there was some misinformation given about the number and state of protests, or the sharing of that at the time, what difference does that make now?"
Are you serious? I mean, really serious? The biggest possible scandal that ANY potential Presidential candidate has ever been involved in, and you wonder why it matters?
"The evidence doesn't seem to support what you claim it does. At least to someone who is looking at the facts now, without color of immediate reports and fanfare."
You admit that you didn't check it, so how the hell would you know?