By that logic no one should be allowed to buy land, we would just rent it from the governemtn (I hate saying this, but AFAIK, this is how it was done in Soviet Russia). Do you want to rent your land?
Eminent domain issues aside, you are renting land from the government. The traditional name for this rent is "property tax." Just try not paying it for a while, and we'll see who really owns what.
[Off-topic: This is my one thousandth post. *sigh* I need to get a life.]
I can't speak for Dr.Evil, but "Paid Time Off" at my employer is any time you take off from work and expect to be paid. That means sick time, vacation, and emergencies.
On 9/11, just about everyone in IT who had direct reports sent all of their subordinates home, since we were all just running to whoever's browser managed to get through to cnn.com or wherever. The next day, there was a company-wide email from HR saying that Yes, yes, it's quite a tragedy, but anyone sent home without at least director-level approval had to use PTO to make up the time not in the office. I was one of the lucky ones in that case, but there were a lot of pissed off people in other parts of the building.
Perhaps more significantly, your boss's boss or peer, who had nothing against you until they heard from your boss how you screwed him, could be interviewing you later on somewhere else.
Hear! Hear!
At the start of 2001, I left Company X to come work where I am now. I've recently started looking for a new job, and a few weeks ago I got an interview with Company Y. It's a first-round interview, so I'm really just there to listen to their recruiter's sales pitch. I show up to the interview and--what's this?--it's the guy who recruited me to work for Company X! Turns out he left about three months after I did.
Had I made a huge scene when I left Company X (and I really, really wanted to), I wouldn't even be considered for the position at Company Y, which is currently my favorite choice.
You don't hear much about Kerry campaigning in, say, Georgia, even though it carries 15 electoral votes, more than twice that of, say Idaho (7 votes). That's because Georgia is going to vote for Bush.
Now, if the election were decided on percentage of the total vote or, say, by obtaining a majority (>50%) of the vote, then it might be worth it for Kerry to campaign in urban Georgia areas, such as Atlanta, where he might be able to pick up thousands of votes.
A fairly reasonable compromise would be keeping the electoral college, but eliminating the winner-take-all aspects of it. To go with your example of Georgia: There are 13 voting districts in that state. Make the system "one district, one electoral vote." You'd need to figure out a reasonably fair way to distribute the last two votes, but you'd find that there were suddenly a lot more "battleground" states, because (for example) Ohio's votes would be nearly evenly split between the candidates. This might also have the benefit of getting third-party candidates some more exposure, because you'd find an occasional electoral vote going to Nader or whoever.
One, they're not asking keeping the law itself secret, just the reasons behind it. No problems knowing what to enforce.
Actually, the whole point of the trial is that the government refuses to disclose the regulations in question. Gilmore is suing to compel the government to disclose them.
The reason incompetents don't get fired is because competent people cost more, at least from a hard-dollar perspective. Incompetence costs a company money, but in ways that are hard to pin down. It's far too easy for someone to shift blame; one of the keystones of Dilbert-esque companies is that it's virtually impossible to point to one person and say, "The buck stops here." Where I work, you can't even volunteer for the position. People think you're trying to make some kind of power-grab. Management wants to pretend the developers are all interchangeable cogs, shuffling us between teams as staffing needs dictate, and then they wonder why the overall result is mediocre.
Who modded this crap insightful? To censor is to remove "objectionable" speech, whatever that may be and whoever does it. The only relevant difference is whether it's a kind of censorship permitted by the law/constitution/whatever.
Actually, the courts have ruled that humanity's personal application of fire constitutes "fair use," so we're effectively in the clear. However, distribution to mortal species has been deemed "contributory infringement," which carries a penalty of perpetual liver consumption.
Until I unplugged the bulb, it was the only thing keeping me sane when my car's "passenger seat belt" light would blink constantly -- because I had a book on the seat and it thought 14 ounces was enough to count as a passenger.
Can you suggest a better business model for Google?
How is this insightful? This is total nonsense. Consider:
Let's pretend I start selling text ads in my Slashdot sig. "YOUR AD HERE! WILL POST CONTINUOUSLY!" and pick a price high enough to live on comfortably. I quit my day job and spend all day, every day, posting on-topic rants to every article on Slashdot.
Early on, I get a few rubes at some ad agencies to pay up, but things falter once they learn how the moderation system works, and now my posts consist of me ranting against the moderation system, and how it's unfair that people are allowed to turn off others' sigs.
Somehow, Slashdot deems the whole saga worthy of a story, and now dirk comes along and says, "IT seems it is Prior Restraint's own fault for not finding a better revenue model."
The sixty-four thousand dollar question is: Do you consider dirk to be a damn fool?
In what manner is it innovative? They aren't the first to offer gigabyte email accounts, their spam filtering isn't the best. So what exactly is innovative here?
#define CONSPIRACY_THEORY 1
What's so innovative? Four words: Six degrees of separation.
By keeping the email service invite-only for so long, it's trying to establish large known social networks. My ex-wife got her account from me, I got mine from a buddy at work, who got his from his brother-in-law, who got his from his roommate in college, and so on.
If, as some people have speculated, Google gets into IM, it can add your invitees to your buddy list, and occasionally drop in a "Hey, Bob's not online just now, but his friend Sue is. Would you care to introduce yourself to her?" If they went really crazy and decided to start a dating service, they can use the social networks to show how you're connected to your potential mate. If they start an online job seeking site, they can potentially connect you with someone inside whatever company you're looking to get hired at.
A lot of this sounds pretty stupid, and places like gmail swap work to undermine it to a certain extent, but I wouldn't put it past someone at Google to try something like this, just to see what would happen.
Correction: Welcome to the weird, wacky world of cause and effect. Part of the point behind the DMCA was to invalidate MAI v. Peak. The DMCA expressly permits copying software into RAM.
You cannot force garbage collection. From the API:
Calling the gc method suggests that the Java Virtual Machine expend effort toward recycling unused objects in order to make the memory they currently occupy available for quick reuse.
Trouble is everything that comes to mind other than McVeigh ends up being of Middle Eastern origin. Hmmm, wonder why that is?
I believe the technical term is "confirmation bias."
Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber)
John Walker Lindh (the American Taliban)
Brandon Mayfield (attorney whose fingerprints may or may not have been found on a bomb in Mardrid)
Lucas Helder (put 18 pipe bombs in people's mailboxes)
All of these leapt to mind instantly. Depending on how far back you want to go and how you want to define "terrorism," we can find a lot more white terrorists (I suggest looking into the membership rolls of the Ku Klux Klan).
I just wanted to let you know that some of us got it, even if the moderators didn't.
Re:Many projects don't fail, they rust in place
on
IT Myths
·
· Score: 1
...making you work within some bastardized pseudo-process that's worse than the orginal.
My employer calls it XPe. The "e" supposedly stands for "enhanced," but my buddy said it stood for "except," as in: We'll do XP... except for the parts that actually make it useful. I have to believe the pitch went something like this:
"XP says we should ditch all those ponderous design documents. It also says IT will produce results faster; they'll produce value-add every two weeks! We can move developers from team to team, because it's all just code, right? That's what they mean by 'egoless code.' The users will have to send one of their own to sit with the developers; I'm sure it'll be someone highly productive.
"There's some silly parts, though. Take, for example, this no-overtime rule. Hello?! That's why they're salaried! Refactoring and test code and blah blah blah. That stuff takes--What? An hour? Two? Our developers are smart; they won't need to refactor, anyway, because they'll get it right the first time."
Okay, if casting counts, then I agree completely (and don't forget the instanceof operator). You can't do much of anything without casting all over the place.
We use a fair amount of reflection, too (which makes debugging all kinds of fun). I'm fairly ignorant of Python, so if it doesn't do a lot of that, it sounds pretty neat. My only complaint is I'd prefer a compiled language, because watching production crash because of a typo is not fun.
Consider running PMD on it to see if it can dig up any unused code. One never knows....
You are my new friend, tcopeland. I know we have unused code (data objects whose private members have no setters?), and I've tried to clear-cut as much as possible, but it's a spare-time task, and thus far a manual one.
Slashdot Mirror
Eminent domain issues aside, you are renting land from the government. The traditional name for this rent is "property tax." Just try not paying it for a while, and we'll see who really owns what.
[Off-topic: This is my one thousandth post. *sigh* I need to get a life.]
I can't speak for Dr.Evil, but "Paid Time Off" at my employer is any time you take off from work and expect to be paid. That means sick time, vacation, and emergencies.
On 9/11, just about everyone in IT who had direct reports sent all of their subordinates home, since we were all just running to whoever's browser managed to get through to cnn.com or wherever. The next day, there was a company-wide email from HR saying that Yes, yes, it's quite a tragedy, but anyone sent home without at least director-level approval had to use PTO to make up the time not in the office. I was one of the lucky ones in that case, but there were a lot of pissed off people in other parts of the building.
I would be more inclined to agree if this story were on the main page.
Hear! Hear!
At the start of 2001, I left Company X to come work where I am now. I've recently started looking for a new job, and a few weeks ago I got an interview with Company Y. It's a first-round interview, so I'm really just there to listen to their recruiter's sales pitch. I show up to the interview and--what's this?--it's the guy who recruited me to work for Company X! Turns out he left about three months after I did.
Had I made a huge scene when I left Company X (and I really, really wanted to), I wouldn't even be considered for the position at Company Y, which is currently my favorite choice.
A fairly reasonable compromise would be keeping the electoral college, but eliminating the winner-take-all aspects of it. To go with your example of Georgia: There are 13 voting districts in that state. Make the system "one district, one electoral vote." You'd need to figure out a reasonably fair way to distribute the last two votes, but you'd find that there were suddenly a lot more "battleground" states, because (for example) Ohio's votes would be nearly evenly split between the candidates. This might also have the benefit of getting third-party candidates some more exposure, because you'd find an occasional electoral vote going to Nader or whoever.
Because old CD-ROMs can't read "burned" CDs.
Actually, the whole point of the trial is that the government refuses to disclose the regulations in question. Gilmore is suing to compel the government to disclose them.
How is it neater and faster to have to two pieces of media instead of one?
Also, I learned recently that those of us who do free tech support for relatives can't rely on the existence of a CD-R on the target machine.
The reason incompetents don't get fired is because competent people cost more, at least from a hard-dollar perspective. Incompetence costs a company money, but in ways that are hard to pin down. It's far too easy for someone to shift blame; one of the keystones of Dilbert-esque companies is that it's virtually impossible to point to one person and say, "The buck stops here." Where I work, you can't even volunteer for the position. People think you're trying to make some kind of power-grab. Management wants to pretend the developers are all interchangeable cogs, shuffling us between teams as staffing needs dictate, and then they wonder why the overall result is mediocre.
Who modded this crap insightful? To censor is to remove "objectionable" speech, whatever that may be and whoever does it. The only relevant difference is whether it's a kind of censorship permitted by the law/constitution/whatever.
Actually, the courts have ruled that humanity's personal application of fire constitutes "fair use," so we're effectively in the clear. However, distribution to mortal species has been deemed "contributory infringement," which carries a penalty of perpetual liver consumption.
Just keep the belt latched at all times.
If you're putting that in cron, you should consider dropping the v.
How is this insightful? This is total nonsense. Consider:
Let's pretend I start selling text ads in my Slashdot sig. "YOUR AD HERE! WILL POST CONTINUOUSLY!" and pick a price high enough to live on comfortably. I quit my day job and spend all day, every day, posting on-topic rants to every article on Slashdot.
Early on, I get a few rubes at some ad agencies to pay up, but things falter once they learn how the moderation system works, and now my posts consist of me ranting against the moderation system, and how it's unfair that people are allowed to turn off others' sigs.
Somehow, Slashdot deems the whole saga worthy of a story, and now dirk comes along and says, "IT seems it is Prior Restraint's own fault for not finding a better revenue model."
The sixty-four thousand dollar question is: Do you consider dirk to be a damn fool?
What's so innovative? Four words: Six degrees of separation.
By keeping the email service invite-only for so long, it's trying to establish large known social networks. My ex-wife got her account from me, I got mine from a buddy at work, who got his from his brother-in-law, who got his from his roommate in college, and so on.
If, as some people have speculated, Google gets into IM, it can add your invitees to your buddy list, and occasionally drop in a "Hey, Bob's not online just now, but his friend Sue is. Would you care to introduce yourself to her?" If they went really crazy and decided to start a dating service, they can use the social networks to show how you're connected to your potential mate. If they start an online job seeking site, they can potentially connect you with someone inside whatever company you're looking to get hired at.
A lot of this sounds pretty stupid, and places like gmail swap work to undermine it to a certain extent, but I wouldn't put it past someone at Google to try something like this, just to see what would happen.
Correction: Welcome to the weird, wacky world of cause and effect. Part of the point behind the DMCA was to invalidate MAI v. Peak. The DMCA expressly permits copying software into RAM.
Just so you know, this cast isn't strictly necessary, since B "is-a" Object already.
You cannot force garbage collection. From the API:
[Emphasis added.]
I believe the technical term is "confirmation bias."
All of these leapt to mind instantly. Depending on how far back you want to go and how you want to define "terrorism," we can find a lot more white terrorists (I suggest looking into the membership rolls of the Ku Klux Klan).
I just wanted to let you know that some of us got it, even if the moderators didn't.
My employer calls it XPe. The "e" supposedly stands for "enhanced," but my buddy said it stood for "except," as in: We'll do XP... except for the parts that actually make it useful. I have to believe the pitch went something like this:
"XP says we should ditch all those ponderous design documents. It also says IT will produce results faster; they'll produce value-add every two weeks! We can move developers from team to team, because it's all just code, right? That's what they mean by 'egoless code.' The users will have to send one of their own to sit with the developers; I'm sure it'll be someone highly productive.
"There's some silly parts, though. Take, for example, this no-overtime rule. Hello?! That's why they're salaried! Refactoring and test code and blah blah blah. That stuff takes--What? An hour? Two? Our developers are smart; they won't need to refactor, anyway, because they'll get it right the first time."
What sig?
Man, I wish I could type that fast!
Okay, if casting counts, then I agree completely (and don't forget the instanceof operator). You can't do much of anything without casting all over the place.
We use a fair amount of reflection, too (which makes debugging all kinds of fun). I'm fairly ignorant of Python, so if it doesn't do a lot of that, it sounds pretty neat. My only complaint is I'd prefer a compiled language, because watching production crash because of a typo is not fun.
You are my new friend, tcopeland. I know we have unused code (data objects whose private members have no setters?), and I've tried to clear-cut as much as possible, but it's a spare-time task, and thus far a manual one.
I'm not sure what you meant by "dynamic this-and-thats," but on the other, here's my current situation at work:
If you could clarify what you meant by the "dynamic this-and-thats," I'll see what I can find out about it.