Why does everyone have to have the latest, greatest, top-of-the-line phone?
I have a year-old Moto G. I paid $200 for it, unlocked. It's got the latest version of Android, a good camera, plenty of RAM and CPU. I've never had problems with an app running sluggishly. As far as I can tell, it performs as well as my friends' top-of-the-line phones.
I have NO IDEA why anyone needs to pay $800 for a smartphone!
If you can restrain yourself and buy something less than the priciest model, you won't have to decide whether to lease or buy.
Oh, yes, we definitely should pay to defend the rights of citizens to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But that does not mean we taxpayers should pay for your livelihood, or your Internet. YOU should be free to pursue these things, but you should not be handed them for free.
Some of us don't seek the absolute lowest price because we've learned that there are tradeoffs for that low price, such as low quality or lack of features. Usually, the sweet spot is in the middle, because we typically don't need all the bells and whistles you get with the "premium" products.
There is nothing that is inherently more secure about ASCII control codes over XML or JSON. And it's inherently less human-readable. There's a reason the world has moved on past ASCII control codes!
In fact, the new docx and xlsx formats are implemented in XML.
There are many data sets that don't work well as CSV. Anything, for example, that has one-to-many relationships such as customer order history with names, addresses, billing info, etc., doesn't work well as CSV. That's the whole point of XML / JSON--you can easily store and retrieve data sets that are more complex than a spreadsheet. And that is just about everything.
I had AHS for a few years. They always came out promptly when I called, and did the repairs. The problem was that they always found "non-covered expenses" that ran up my bill into the hundreds of dollars, instead of the claimed $50 co-pay. Examples included coolant evacuation and recharge for $400, and a concrete condenser pad for $150. When my condenser went out, my total non-covered expenses were $900!
Later, when I dumped AHS and started paying for my own repairs, I discovered that my A/C contractor didn't even charge me for these same "non-covered expenses"! At one point, my new contractor replaced a condenser with a new one for $1,400, just 50% more than the replacement under the so-called warranty! The AHS contractors are paid so little by AHS that they have to find ways to make their money, so they come up with these nonsense extra costs.
As stated int he linked document, for JSON.NET to be vulnerable, you have to explicitly set an option making it less secure.
As with encryption and security libraries, you are better off using well-established libraries like JSON.NET than rolling your own. A solo developer, or corporate team, just doesn't have the resources or time to work out all the security vulnerabilities, as can be done with a dedicated library.
I remember life before XML or JSON. It wasn't pretty. I've reverse-engineered the.doc and.xls file formats. It was a time when everybody made up their own file formats, and there were no libraries to help you read and write those formats. No, thank you, I'll live with the potential serialization issues.
It seems a bit early to write off humanity as extinguishing itself. Yeah, so we've heated up the planet, and we put trash where it doesn't belong. But excesses do tend to undo themselves, as we can see with even China and India starting to curb emissions. Survival is a powerful instinct, and it hasn't been exhausted just yet.
Survival is tough and ugly. Violence didn't start with humans, not by a long shot. Species have been killing each other since the beginning of life on earth.
I suspect that if there is life elsewhere, survival is just as hard for those life forms, leading to just as much violence.
Automation isn't going to solve the labor shortage in IT. I do automation for a living. The problem is, automation is very, very expensive. It only pays to automate the most routine of tasks, or the tasks that have the most critical need for precision and accuracy.
Even fast food restaurants are having a hard time automating away the need for high school workers. They introduce things like kiosk ordering, but there still seem to be just as many jobs for human cashiers and the like.
Automation does improve efficiency, but we're not headed towards a 20-hour work week any time soon. If anything, the trend is going the other way.
I live in Houston. My company has been trying to hire a DBA, offering a competitive salary, for months. We've made offers to candidates who told us they had two other offers and had to choose. As a lead developer, I myself had to look for a job a year ago. I had four interviews within two weeks, and was hired with a good salary and benefits within another two. Here in Houston at least, IT talent is very tight.
This idea works to a point. The reality is, however, that no matter how good an individual contributor is, he can only increase the value of his own contribution to the company by a low multiple. In my experience, a really great programmer might produce 3x or 5x more than a less skilled one, but despite the literature, probably not 10x.
By contrast, an effective manager can make the difference between total failure or brilliant success for an entire team, or group of teams. The potential value to the company for such a leader can be much greater than an individual contributor.
There are probably exceptions, but as a rule, a good manager simply is worth more to a company than a talented individual contributor.
In politics, whenever people are said to "need" something (houses, healthcare, education, air conditioning, computers, smartphones, internet, etc.) in practice it means that we the people are required by the government to pay for these things, for anyone who "can't afford" them on their own. Yes, we need all those things to varying degrees. Should all of these things be paid for by taxpayers for those who don't have them? The government isn't smart enough to distinguish between people who are too lazy to earn the money they need for these things, and those who truly are helpless. So we all end up paying for both groups.
I've lost track of how many passwords I have on various sites. Each site has its own rules, that conflict with each other. There's no way I can remember them all. So what do I do? I send myself emails with password hints for each site, or save a list in a password-protected document, or let Chrome remember it, or write them on a sticky note.. If somebody figures out a way to hack Chrome's password vault, a LOT of people are in trouble! Somebody DID hack LastPass.
When building security is very tight, and there's a need for a plumber to come and go, what do they do...somebody props open a door, of course! Passwords are no different. If you make them too hard, people take measures to remember them--measures that make them less secure than if the rules weren't there in the first place!
It's certainly true that some students are oblivious to the pecking order, and that some ignore it, but that doesn't mean it didn't exist.
You "assumed" you were at the bottom. Apparently you were aware of the pecking order and thought your knew your place in it, but you made some mistakes as to your "real" position, and got "beat on" as a result. This is also the way it works in the animal kingdom, such as when deer or elk fight over a mate, or when cows line up for milking in exactly the same order every day. Sometimes one of the animals isn't aware of the pecking order, or decides to flout it. When this happens, fights result.
is it really what we want, or just what we were taught to want?
For answers, you can look to nature, human and otherwise.
Consider school. Every child knows exactly where they fit into the class pecking order. The only way to change your rank in that pecking order is through competition--sometimes non-violent, but sometimes violent.
This tendency didn't start with school children. The animal kingdom is full of examples of animals that observe a similar pecking order, from birds (from which it was named) to many mammals.
It's really hard to argue that we are only competitive because we are "taught" to be competitive.
Slashdot Mirror
Why does everyone have to have the latest, greatest, top-of-the-line phone?
I have a year-old Moto G. I paid $200 for it, unlocked. It's got the latest version of Android, a good camera, plenty of RAM and CPU. I've never had problems with an app running sluggishly. As far as I can tell, it performs as well as my friends' top-of-the-line phones.
I have NO IDEA why anyone needs to pay $800 for a smartphone!
If you can restrain yourself and buy something less than the priciest model, you won't have to decide whether to lease or buy.
Oh, yes, we definitely should pay to defend the rights of citizens to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But that does not mean we taxpayers should pay for your livelihood, or your Internet. YOU should be free to pursue these things, but you should not be handed them for free.
Some of us don't seek the absolute lowest price because we've learned that there are tradeoffs for that low price, such as low quality or lack of features. Usually, the sweet spot is in the middle, because we typically don't need all the bells and whistles you get with the "premium" products.
There is nothing that is inherently more secure about ASCII control codes over XML or JSON. And it's inherently less human-readable. There's a reason the world has moved on past ASCII control codes!
In fact, the new docx and xlsx formats are implemented in XML.
There are many data sets that don't work well as CSV. Anything, for example, that has one-to-many relationships such as customer order history with names, addresses, billing info, etc., doesn't work well as CSV. That's the whole point of XML / JSON--you can easily store and retrieve data sets that are more complex than a spreadsheet. And that is just about everything.
Yes, Firefox can stop autoplay videos. See https://www.ghacks.net/2015/06...
I recently switched from Chrome to Firefox because of one thing: Firefox has a setting that stops autoplay videos.
https://www.ghacks.net/2015/06...
I had AHS for a few years. They always came out promptly when I called, and did the repairs. The problem was that they always found "non-covered expenses" that ran up my bill into the hundreds of dollars, instead of the claimed $50 co-pay. Examples included coolant evacuation and recharge for $400, and a concrete condenser pad for $150. When my condenser went out, my total non-covered expenses were $900!
Later, when I dumped AHS and started paying for my own repairs, I discovered that my A/C contractor didn't even charge me for these same "non-covered expenses"! At one point, my new contractor replaced a condenser with a new one for $1,400, just 50% more than the replacement under the so-called warranty! The AHS contractors are paid so little by AHS that they have to find ways to make their money, so they come up with these nonsense extra costs.
For information about the history of the definition of a second as measured by the first cesium clock, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
As stated int he linked document, for JSON.NET to be vulnerable, you have to explicitly set an option making it less secure.
As with encryption and security libraries, you are better off using well-established libraries like JSON.NET than rolling your own. A solo developer, or corporate team, just doesn't have the resources or time to work out all the security vulnerabilities, as can be done with a dedicated library.
I remember life before XML or JSON. It wasn't pretty. I've reverse-engineered the .doc and .xls file formats. It was a time when everybody made up their own file formats, and there were no libraries to help you read and write those formats. No, thank you, I'll live with the potential serialization issues.
It seems a bit early to write off humanity as extinguishing itself. Yeah, so we've heated up the planet, and we put trash where it doesn't belong. But excesses do tend to undo themselves, as we can see with even China and India starting to curb emissions. Survival is a powerful instinct, and it hasn't been exhausted just yet.
Survival is tough and ugly. Violence didn't start with humans, not by a long shot. Species have been killing each other since the beginning of life on earth.
I suspect that if there is life elsewhere, survival is just as hard for those life forms, leading to just as much violence.
Automation isn't going to solve the labor shortage in IT. I do automation for a living. The problem is, automation is very, very expensive. It only pays to automate the most routine of tasks, or the tasks that have the most critical need for precision and accuracy.
Even fast food restaurants are having a hard time automating away the need for high school workers. They introduce things like kiosk ordering, but there still seem to be just as many jobs for human cashiers and the like.
Automation does improve efficiency, but we're not headed towards a 20-hour work week any time soon. If anything, the trend is going the other way.
Where exactly do you live?
I live in Houston. My company has been trying to hire a DBA, offering a competitive salary, for months. We've made offers to candidates who told us they had two other offers and had to choose. As a lead developer, I myself had to look for a job a year ago. I had four interviews within two weeks, and was hired with a good salary and benefits within another two. Here in Houston at least, IT talent is very tight.
This idea works to a point. The reality is, however, that no matter how good an individual contributor is, he can only increase the value of his own contribution to the company by a low multiple. In my experience, a really great programmer might produce 3x or 5x more than a less skilled one, but despite the literature, probably not 10x.
By contrast, an effective manager can make the difference between total failure or brilliant success for an entire team, or group of teams. The potential value to the company for such a leader can be much greater than an individual contributor.
There are probably exceptions, but as a rule, a good manager simply is worth more to a company than a talented individual contributor.
In politics, whenever people are said to "need" something (houses, healthcare, education, air conditioning, computers, smartphones, internet, etc.) in practice it means that we the people are required by the government to pay for these things, for anyone who "can't afford" them on their own. Yes, we need all those things to varying degrees. Should all of these things be paid for by taxpayers for those who don't have them? The government isn't smart enough to distinguish between people who are too lazy to earn the money they need for these things, and those who truly are helpless. So we all end up paying for both groups.
I've lost track of how many passwords I have on various sites. Each site has its own rules, that conflict with each other. There's no way I can remember them all. So what do I do? I send myself emails with password hints for each site, or save a list in a password-protected document, or let Chrome remember it, or write them on a sticky note.. If somebody figures out a way to hack Chrome's password vault, a LOT of people are in trouble! Somebody DID hack LastPass.
When building security is very tight, and there's a need for a plumber to come and go, what do they do...somebody props open a door, of course! Passwords are no different. If you make them too hard, people take measures to remember them--measures that make them less secure than if the rules weren't there in the first place!
Why is paying for your internet the FCC's problem?
The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness does not include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness at taxpayer expense!
It's certainly true that some students are oblivious to the pecking order, and that some ignore it, but that doesn't mean it didn't exist.
You "assumed" you were at the bottom. Apparently you were aware of the pecking order and thought your knew your place in it, but you made some mistakes as to your "real" position, and got "beat on" as a result. This is also the way it works in the animal kingdom, such as when deer or elk fight over a mate, or when cows line up for milking in exactly the same order every day. Sometimes one of the animals isn't aware of the pecking order, or decides to flout it. When this happens, fights result.
No doubt about it.
Are you arguing that we are "taught" to compete? Or are you arguing that we can be taught NOT to compete?
So you're arguing that we are "taught" to compete then?
Ants.
We should be more like ants.
is it really what we want, or just what we were taught to want?
For answers, you can look to nature, human and otherwise.
Consider school. Every child knows exactly where they fit into the class pecking order. The only way to change your rank in that pecking order is through competition--sometimes non-violent, but sometimes violent.
This tendency didn't start with school children. The animal kingdom is full of examples of animals that observe a similar pecking order, from birds (from which it was named) to many mammals.
It's really hard to argue that we are only competitive because we are "taught" to be competitive.