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User: The+Dancing+Panda

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  1. Re:living in america :( on How Colleges Are Pushing Out the Poor To Court the Rich · · Score: 2

    My medical care plan is 200 dollars a month. Even if you're paying 4 times that, That puts your total income at 2400 a month. Which is ~14 dollars an hour. Which is less than my sister is making on her internship right now, and is quite a bit less than any of my engineer friends are making. College isn't the problem dude. It's you.

  2. Re:Then ban Gambling on Florida House Passes Bill To Ban "Internet Cafes" · · Score: 1

    Seriously, not the same thing. The "internet cafe" is just a name. It's a big room with a bunch of slot machines. you use them to win Calling Cards (the kind you used to use to make long distance phone calls), and then trade the Cards for money once you're done. They call them internet cafes to skirt the law against gambling.

  3. Re:Political stunt on White House Urges Reversal of Ban On Cell-Phone Unlocking · · Score: 1

    This is really the issue. We're breaking everything down to "for my wishes" and "against my wishes". What we should be voting for is a group of people who can break the country's wants and needs down to their base impulses, and then coming up with legislation that satisfies as many of those as they can.

    It's basic project management, turning customer statements into a list of requirements. The worst project leads just write down everything the customer says in the requirements. This generally causes a project with logical fallacies. The best ones take what the customer says and tries to figure out what they really want out of their idea. Then they propose a solution that meets all their real needs. We need good project managers in congress.

  4. Re:Question for you liberals... on Texas Bills Would Bar Warrantless Snooping On Phone Location · · Score: 1

    "We are not at war with" is now vague because of the situation. That is unfortunate, but we have to be aware of realities. Our military can't be hindered by "well, there might be an American citizen in that building we want to attack, who has the right to be arrested rather than executed". Again, the best possible solution is that this person is arrested and brought in front of a jury. But that's not a real possibility.

  5. Re:Question for you liberals... on Texas Bills Would Bar Warrantless Snooping On Phone Location · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I hate when people say "you liberals", as if there's a conglomerate out to kill your babies and turn all your sons gay. Different people have different opinions. The things you hear on the radio that "liberals believe" or "conservatives argue" are mostly bullshit. It's like assuming Rush Limbaugh speaks for all conservatives (though...does he? His bullshit gets repeated as fact quite a bit on my FB feed).

    Anyway, I'm fairly moderate. Drone strikes should probably be considered acts of war. Attacking Americans on American soil is wrong, we have a police force to arrest those people. Attacking Americans that have joined an enemy in a war zone, and are actively fighting or actively planning to fight our troops (maybe not directly. planning attacks counts), doesn't seem wrong. We don't have a police force to arrest those sorts of people. Bringing them in and putting them on trial is the best possible solution, but it's not really practical, and the military strategy has to account for them some other way.

    Whether the war itself is just is another question entirely.

  6. Re:Political stunt on White House Urges Reversal of Ban On Cell-Phone Unlocking · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd just like to see a politician with some convictions and backbone for a change.

    See...you don't, really. People with convictions create standstills. What you want is people who are willing to compromise. People who are willing to see both sides of an argument and will try to get the best of all of it. You need "flip-floppers". You need people that will accept that they can't have everything they want. Stop voting for people that are "strong leaders". Vote for people that work well in groups.

  7. Just get your degree, dude on Ask Slashdot: Best Alternative To the Canonical Computer Science Degree? · · Score: 1

    I used to think like you. I was a year and a half into my degree and was wondering why I'd ever need to learn what a B-Tree does. Or the algorithmic complexity of merge sort. Or why I'd need to learn Haskell. But, it turns out, you actually do need those things to be a good web developer. I know, because prior to my current job, I was a good web developer (I'm now working on a new test automation suite, but I do web dev on the side), working among a sea of awful web developers (yeah, I would think that maybe I sucked, but I was the person managers called on when they needed a project done on time, or to fix something that someone else screwed up. Customers specifically asked for me). Awful developers had 2 year degrees in CIS, or none at all, or a degree from the local school who has probably the worst CS department in the country (I'm looking at you, UCF. I had a person tell me they had never heard of a tree structure, and had no idea how to traverse one. WTF).

    So here's the thing. You can go learn PHP or C# or Java and become a web developer without a degree. And you will probably think you are very good at your job, and you will probably be happy with your paycheck. But then you're going to turn out a piece of shit web app. It will happen, trust me. Everyone, even those with degrees, turns out a piece of shit at first. It won't work right, it will be too slow, it will not conform to UI standards, so on and so forth. Now you're going to have several problems. One, unless you're really bright (which statistically, you aren't), you won't know where to start with regards to making your app run faster, or work better, or do all the things that it needs to do to be a usable app. And that sucks for you, because it's going to take you time to learn that sort of thing, which you could have learned part of in college. And now your employer is going to wonder "why did we hire this kid when there are 10 kids with degrees waiting for jobs? He's no better, and he's costing us time and money". And that's going to suck for you because you are no longer going to be happy with your paycheck. And then someone like me is going to have to fix your shitty web app. So I guess it works out for me, cause I get paid, except that I hate fixing shitty web apps.

  8. Re:You wouldn't care.. on Ask Slashdot: Buying a Laptop That Doesn't Have Windows 8 · · Score: 1

    Says a guy who hasn't used it. If you have it in quick launch, it's "move mouse to bottom left corner, move to tile, click". All your commonly used apps are right there in front of you. If you want a-non commonly used app, it's "mouse to bottom left corner, click the programs tile, click your app tile". Not really any different than the start menu. It's just laid out a little differently and uses the whole screen. Takes a little getting used to, I'll admit, but it's not this crazy abomination that some people make it out to be.

  9. Or just f'ing use Win 8... on Ask Slashdot: Buying a Laptop That Doesn't Have Windows 8 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Seriously. It's the same, with a small UI change. The Start Menu is now accessed by moving your mouse to bottom left corner of the screen, and it's redesigned in a tile format. Other than that small change (which people make way too big a deal of), and moving the Control Panel to the settings menu (bottom right corner, click Settings), it works exactly the same, in my experience.

  10. Re:I have a better idea... on Richard Stallman's Solution To 'Too Big To Fail' · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The car one is pretty easy to explain.

    GM, Ford, and Chrysler all share US manufacturers for smaller parts of their cars. Ford did not take bailout money, but did argue for the other companies to be bailed out. Why? Because the smaller companies that they all share would suddenly have 2/3's of their customers cut out from under them, all at once. because economies of scale no longer work for the suppliers, parts prices go up severely and immediately. Demand for Ford cars may shift upwards, and increased production could be an outcome eventually, but the immediate price increases make Ford increase their prices, effectively pricing themselves out of their own market because their competitors failed too quickly. This leaves most of the state of Michigan completely devastated.

    I'm not against the companies failing. In fact I would applaud it, because GMs and Chryslers have sucked so hard for so long. But it works out better for everyone if it's a more gradual process. This is the same case for the banks. Bad banks need to fail by customers moving their money out of them, so as to keep the least amount of innocent bystanders affected.

  11. Re:3000 players you say? on How EVE Online Dealt With a 3,000-Player Battle · · Score: 1

    Not liking sports is one thing, but not caring about human interaction is decidedly more robotic.

  12. Re:This just in, duh on Can a New GPU Rejuvenate a 5 Year Old Gaming PC? · · Score: 1

    i5s are quad core in about half the cases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core#Core_2_Quad

  13. Re:Good Riddance on Cisco Exits the Consumer Market, Sells Linksys To Belkin · · Score: 1

    So far I really like my TP-LINK. I haven't had any problems with it, the throughput is fast, the range is good, and the config software is about what you expect. And it wasn't expensive. And it has a USB on it to work as a print or file server. I like that.

  14. Re:What a great thing on New Microsoft App To Coordinate Disaster-Relief Efforts · · Score: 1

    You'll note that those are all relatively new cities (even though you're wrong about Chicago, and probably Seattle). Older cities were built near rivers, on flood plains, because that's where they needed to be for shipping, food, and a clean water source. Even now these things are pretty important. Los Angeles wouldn't exist without a completely diverted river, for instance.

  15. Re:What a great thing on New Microsoft App To Coordinate Disaster-Relief Efforts · · Score: 1

    Can you name a major city not in a flood plain?

  16. Re:At least one on IT Job Market Recovering Faster Now Than After Dot-com Bubble Burst · · Score: 1

    It's short for "This is what I wanted to say"

  17. Re:Excercise and diet on Ask Slashdot: How To Stay Fit In the Office? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because then you look like a weirdo in your office. Geeks a lot of times have issues feeling awkward. This won't help.

  18. Re:Enroll in Martial Arts on Ask Slashdot: How To Stay Fit In the Office? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm an Aikido guy (2nd Degree Black belt). It's fairly useful in a fight (depending on your teacher, I guess). Mostly for teaching you how to get around one, or making it look like all self defense. My Dad (4th Degree, owns his own club) has taught SWAT teams and Police forces, because it's pretty good for subduing attackers without a lot of blood.

  19. Re:Nice on This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why would anyone take a petition seriously when it wants to completely dismantle a government agency?

    Seriously, guys. Everyone knows the old "First they arrested..." adage. It's saying that freedoms erode slowly and you have to be careful not to let them. But for some reason, everyone forgets that the opposite is also true. If you want your freedoms back, you have to take small steps to erode corruption. Make a petition to allow drinks past the security checkpoint. That might get a decent answer.

  20. Re:Can't America get its acts together ? on Congressman Introduces Bill To Ban Minting of Trillion-Dollar Coin · · Score: 1

    But...yes you do benefit from those things. You get "not having poor people all over your streets begging you for money or robbing you blind". You get the added benefit of being able to take more risk in a small business, because you know you won't go hungry and cold if you lose everything.

  21. Re:Bullshit on Degree Hack: Cobbling Together Credit Hours For Cheap · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And they are all completely useless, except for as transfer credits to a 4 year university.

  22. Re:From a network engineer on Computer Science vs. Software Engineering · · Score: 1

    You're talking about Computer Engineering, which is a different field than either of these.

  23. FL - Not bad on U.S. Election Day In Progress: What's Been Your Experience? · · Score: 1

    In Melbourne, FL (small city). Was in and out in 45 minutes, and everyone was friendly. Had a bunch of City Councilmen to vote on that I hadn't read into (and some I had). No other issues, really. I'm hoping I didn't misunderstand some of the statutes I had to vote on, but read into them twice over last night and this morning.

  24. Get the Nest on Ask Slashdot: Ideas For a Geek Remodel? · · Score: 1

    Get this thing for a thermostat. It's kinda awesome.

  25. Re:Android is the most popular mobile OS? on HTC Losing Ground Faster Than RIM or Nokia · · Score: 0

    iPhone is the most popular smartphone. However, iOS only runs on that phone, and Android runs on everything else.