An interesting paradox. You're not a real programmer if you realized that define was necessary, but you are a real programmer if you obfuscated it using that archaic octal notation.
You're right, I should have stuck to the original version. With the character as an engineer, it's a humorous error. With a programmer, it's more like what did you expect?
To Apple shareholders? Probably not, but that's what companies with too much money do. They get away with it because it's a small part of their income, even if it doesn't do anything but satisfy some egos.
Walmart is an interesting contrast. Whatever mixed feelings you may have about them, it's interesting to see Walmart's world headquarters. It's a one story brick building that they bought cheap many years ago, and makes most factories look ostentatious. Yet sales reps from all over the world travel to cosmopolitan Bentonville Arkansas, and would probably sell their grandmothers to get into that building.
The city I live in, Mountain View, has given Google all sorts of incentives. It's hard to argue with success.
On the contrary, it's easy to argue the counterfactual. If Mountain View hadn't given Google tax breaks, would Google have moved to an inexpensive part of SV? Where is that exactly? Or would they have left SV altogether? There are many reasons companies have facilities in SV, but low cost isn't one of them. All the tax breaks in the world wouldn't make SV a cheap place to do business. If cost saving was their main interest, they'd move no matter what.
Here in the NY area I see the same thing in Manhattan all the time. Manhattan makes SV look cheap, yet there's loads of business there. Why? Hint: it's not to save on facilities costs.
Apple are able to choose to move to a different city
And you actually think they'd do that for a few bucks in taxes? Forget elsewhere in SV - everywhere there is expensive. So they'd jeopardize their enormous revenue stream by moving and losing many of their people, for the sake of a few bucks in taxes? I don't think so, but that's the kind of stuff that idiots and cronies on city councils believe in. Whenever companies threaten the "we'll hold our breath until we turn blue, and move our facilities if you don't give us a tax break" crap, it's almost always one of two cases. Commonly, they have no intention of moving no matter what, but make empty threats to try and save a few bucks. Other times they're going to move no matter what, but play this silly game so they can justify the move.
This whole thing is particularly absurd when a company has facilities in an expensive area, like SV or Manhattan. If a company didn't think it was advantageous to have a facility in such an area, despite the expense, they'd move no matter what kind of tax break they got. Taxes are far from the only, or even the major expense, in expensive areas. Check out the price of office space in midtown or downtown Manhattan, not to mention the salary differential they have to offer people to work there, and tell me if taxes are a make or break issue.
Will they ever learn to factor prime numbers though? I understand it's difficult, but solving it would save a lot of embarrassment when people misstate the problem.
it seems like more than coincidence that China would tighten the reins on Internet use at the same time as they publicly announce relaxing the one child policy. Sounds like a government becoming even more authoritarian, but throwing the people a bone to distract from the serious issues.
The one child policy is a much bigger deal than a bone.
This is what I love about China. They're completely up front about who they are. In the US everything needs to be carefully cloaked in terms of protection from terrorists.
Every country has it's bogeymen (a/k/a government excuses). Here it's "terrorism", over there I think "social disharmony" or some such . The funny thing about manure is that it smells the same wherever you go.
The US is being gently pushed ( nudged ) into a beginning of rrelevance. Has already been going on for a couple of years: computer technology, aerospace tech, politics.
To the extent we're being pushed into irrelevance it's mostly by shooting ourselves in the foot. Historically decline of great powers has been more because of rent-seeking by domestic special interests, rather than by external causes. For example, the big landholders in the Roman Empire were exempted from taxes. Similarly for the aristocracy in pre-revolutionary France.
Special interests with excessive (and often corrupt) influence in the US? "Intellectual property" interests? Check. Finance? Check. Medical-industrial-insurance complex? Check. We're doing pretty good.
As for China's prominence, predictions are hard to make, especially about the future. I remember the 80's when everybody thought Japan would take over the world. Time will tell.
Do you remember the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire?
Not personally, no, but I have read about it. One of the things I read is that it took centuries. Perhaps in a few hundred years my descendants in North America will live like characters from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".
In the words of Number Two: "But you, like an idiot, want to take over the world. And you don't realize there is no world anymore! It's only corporations!"
On the bright side it's nice to have a Starbucks coffee bar in World Domination Headquarters. They even have cream for the cat.
For instance: Solid Rocket Booster designs have had funding lobbied for based on the merit of bringing and keeping jobs in certain congressman's local economy instead of on the pros / cons of the various designs themselves.
Surely that didn't happen during the heyday of the military-industrial complex in the 50's and 60's - an era when our economy was growing hand over fist. I don't like pork, but it's hardly the biggest of our problems.
The only thing Canada is up to is their long planned invasion of the US, with the Great Canuck Hordes swooping down on their battle moose. Instead of the nuclear option, they'll deploy their strategic reserve of maple syrup (pleasantly warmed of course). If you think that's a joke, recall the Great Molasses Flood.
P.S. They'll also try to convince us that that crap they serve is bacon.
Slashdot Mirror
An interesting paradox. You're not a real programmer if you realized that define was necessary, but you are a real programmer if you obfuscated it using that archaic octal notation.
Only a mathematician would think that two primes separated by six is "sexy". And they say programmers and engineers are a sad lot.
It's not a programmer, it's an engineer.
You're right, I should have stuck to the original version. With the character as an engineer, it's a humorous error. With a programmer, it's more like what did you expect?
I know, explaining a joke ruins it.
That point can't be overemphasized.
we'll be rich, evil, mad geniuses with unlimited power. Mhhhahahahaha
Sounds good, as long as we don't actually achieve it. The joy of being an evil genius is in striving, not succeeding.
Is it really worth it?
To Apple shareholders? Probably not, but that's what companies with too much money do. They get away with it because it's a small part of their income, even if it doesn't do anything but satisfy some egos.
Walmart is an interesting contrast. Whatever mixed feelings you may have about them, it's interesting to see Walmart's world headquarters. It's a one story brick building that they bought cheap many years ago, and makes most factories look ostentatious. Yet sales reps from all over the world travel to cosmopolitan Bentonville Arkansas, and would probably sell their grandmothers to get into that building.
The city I live in, Mountain View, has given Google all sorts of incentives. It's hard to argue with success.
On the contrary, it's easy to argue the counterfactual. If Mountain View hadn't given Google tax breaks, would Google have moved to an inexpensive part of SV? Where is that exactly? Or would they have left SV altogether? There are many reasons companies have facilities in SV, but low cost isn't one of them. All the tax breaks in the world wouldn't make SV a cheap place to do business. If cost saving was their main interest, they'd move no matter what.
Here in the NY area I see the same thing in Manhattan all the time. Manhattan makes SV look cheap, yet there's loads of business there. Why? Hint: it's not to save on facilities costs.
Apple are able to choose to move to a different city
And you actually think they'd do that for a few bucks in taxes? Forget elsewhere in SV - everywhere there is expensive. So they'd jeopardize their enormous revenue stream by moving and losing many of their people, for the sake of a few bucks in taxes? I don't think so, but that's the kind of stuff that idiots and cronies on city councils believe in. Whenever companies threaten the "we'll hold our breath until we turn blue, and move our facilities if you don't give us a tax break" crap, it's almost always one of two cases. Commonly, they have no intention of moving no matter what, but make empty threats to try and save a few bucks. Other times they're going to move no matter what, but play this silly game so they can justify the move.
This whole thing is particularly absurd when a company has facilities in an expensive area, like SV or Manhattan. If a company didn't think it was advantageous to have a facility in such an area, despite the expense, they'd move no matter what kind of tax break they got. Taxes are far from the only, or even the major expense, in expensive areas. Check out the price of office space in midtown or downtown Manhattan, not to mention the salary differential they have to offer people to work there, and tell me if taxes are a make or break issue.
Three people are asked to prove that all of the odd numbers are prime - a physicist, a mathematician and a programmer.
The physicist goes first. "3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime, 9 is a ... oops, experimental error, 11 is a prime ...".
Next the mathematician takes a crack at it: "3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime, and the rest by induction".
Finally it's the programmer's turn. "3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime, 9 is a prime, 11 is a prime ...".
Will they ever learn to factor prime numbers though? I understand it's difficult, but solving it would save a lot of embarrassment when people misstate the problem.
Calling them "directed energy weapons" in the headline was pretty stupid. They're radio jammers and spoofers. What's their output, 10W?
No, the US is equally up front about that
So the Snowden revelations about domestic surveillance were old news?
it seems like more than coincidence that China would tighten the reins on Internet use at the same time as they publicly announce relaxing the one child policy. Sounds like a government becoming even more authoritarian, but throwing the people a bone to distract from the serious issues.
The one child policy is a much bigger deal than a bone.
This is what I love about China. They're completely up front about who they are. In the US everything needs to be carefully cloaked in terms of protection from terrorists.
Every country has it's bogeymen (a/k/a government excuses). Here it's "terrorism", over there I think "social disharmony" or some such . The funny thing about manure is that it smells the same wherever you go.
I'm shooting for a job as a trade and labor negotiator.
Newsflash: geek website uses specialized geek terminology.
The US is being gently pushed ( nudged ) into a beginning of rrelevance. Has already been going on for a couple of years: computer technology, aerospace tech, politics.
To the extent we're being pushed into irrelevance it's mostly by shooting ourselves in the foot. Historically decline of great powers has been more because of rent-seeking by domestic special interests, rather than by external causes. For example, the big landholders in the Roman Empire were exempted from taxes. Similarly for the aristocracy in pre-revolutionary France.
Special interests with excessive (and often corrupt) influence in the US? "Intellectual property" interests? Check. Finance? Check. Medical-industrial-insurance complex? Check. We're doing pretty good.
As for China's prominence, predictions are hard to make, especially about the future. I remember the 80's when everybody thought Japan would take over the world. Time will tell.
Do you remember the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire?
Not personally, no, but I have read about it. One of the things I read is that it took centuries. Perhaps in a few hundred years my descendants in North America will live like characters from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".
I presume that "fatso" is meant ironically from someone who posts as Hognoxious (the hog part being ironic, not the noxious part).
In the words of Number Two: "But you, like an idiot, want to take over the world. And you don't realize there is no world anymore! It's only corporations!"
On the bright side it's nice to have a Starbucks coffee bar in World Domination Headquarters. They even have cream for the cat.
"Free trade agreements" is a propaganda term. We have trade agreements, but they're not about "free trade".
The classical examples are the cost of labour or agricultural subsidies
Eliminate them or it's not a "free trade" agreement. Don't talk about "complexities" when you're merely distorting the issue.
Additionally, what exactly are these parties? "The US" is way too vague, given that we're not entirely monolithic.
Good one! Now I've got one for you, two geeks walk into a bar ...
For instance: Solid Rocket Booster designs have had funding lobbied for based on the merit of bringing and keeping jobs in certain congressman's local economy instead of on the pros / cons of the various designs themselves.
Surely that didn't happen during the heyday of the military-industrial complex in the 50's and 60's - an era when our economy was growing hand over fist. I don't like pork, but it's hardly the biggest of our problems.
Canada is up to something
The only thing Canada is up to is their long planned invasion of the US, with the Great Canuck Hordes swooping down on their battle moose. Instead of the nuclear option, they'll deploy their strategic reserve of maple syrup (pleasantly warmed of course). If you think that's a joke, recall the Great Molasses Flood.
P.S. They'll also try to convince us that that crap they serve is bacon.