Agreed, Netflix should make a stink. They're in a prime position to educate their user base and use their clout to help the distributors see the light. We want what we want, and we want it now. If they refuse to provide, we will go elsewhere. If that elsewhere is a private torrent tracker, well tough tits MGM, you just lost a rental.
Probably because it's a form of time travel. By the time the show is over, you wake up and wonder where the time went (and why in hell you paid for it).
VIA suffered losses because, as a general rule, their products targeted the low end of the market, and even failed to satisfy those bargain hunters. Their chipsets are ass, their ITX boards underpowered, their audio chips noisy. They apparently failed to invest in R&D over the years, always playing catch-up with the big boys.
The tendency to acquire commercial/enterprise gear speaks to a desire to have feature parity with what you use at work/school, so you can learn properly on the "real thing". That's professional gear. This isn't the same as Joe Sixpack wanting to have something slightly better than the Wal-Mart stuff - that's prosumer. Prosumer gear is generally inspired from the more expensive stuff, but dumbed down a little to make it user-friendly and affordable. As an example, my $400 sound module is a prosumer device. It has a bunch of inputs with built-in mic preamps. The preamps are noisy and the signal routing is fixed, so it's crap compared to the $3500 studio kit, but good enough for fooling around at home. It's certainly better than those horrid Sound Blasters, but it's still considered a toy, a compromise between cost and functionality. If I were building out a real recording studio, I'd spring for the expensive stuff that sounds better.
On the other hand, I personally would not be a very good enterprise sysadmin if I were using consumer/prosumer gear at home. I couldn't sell white-box file servers without having a couple of them in the rack beside my desk for developing and testing, along with a sampling of common SAS expander boards and 10ge adapters. I couldn't charge top dollar for VMware cluster deployments if all I'd ever used was VirtualBox and a portable hard drive. Sure, you can lean on Google, do your research and read about others' experiences, or you can spend a little money and learn first-hand. Tech forums are great for discussing what doesn't work, but only rarely will they identify what actually DOES work. When I design a server or an entire rack of them, there is no guessing. I know it's going to work, because I've tested the exact same hardware/software combination, right here in my living room. That's what a "home lab" is supposed to be.
When you plan on doing something for the rest of your career, it's not at all unreasonable to commit some of your income to further your skills and competitiveness, it's called "investing in yourself". And yeah, heck, it's fun to have big fancy toys:D
Given a large enough sample set, you're bound to find at least one person offended by any random innocuous concept.
Heck, I find the slogan "God Bless America" highly offensive, but that's just me.
You suggest that the offensiveness of "pantyshot" might be heightened by the legality of the act. Well what if I forked MySQL, sprinkled a bit of hipster chic on top and called it "Freebase" ? Is that offensive ? What if I drew a logo that looks like a cartoon developer snorting lines of SELECT statements ? Now is it offensive ? What if I used a (properly licensed) picture of Charlie Sheen instead ? Where is the line drawn ?
I often do/write offensive things to weed out the whiners. I'd rather goad someone into showing their intolerance through a harmless joke or pun, than find out much later once I've invested my time and effort into a relationship. I prefer not to censor myself - I see political correctness as the wool that is drawn over society's eyes. That doesn't mean I'm not a nice guy, I just don't candy coat my words. If my colourful vocabulary and frank talk is enough justification for someone to dislike or even detest me, I'm all to happy to be rid of them. To me, this is equally true in both business and personal matters.
If someone were to take great offense at something named "pantyshot", I'd cordially invite them to fork the project and call it whatever the hell they like. It's a name for a piece of software. Words are just labels, neutral representations of concepts. The word itself didn't invade anyone's modesty, it's just a jumble of letters, abstract shapes on a canvas. The offensiveness exists only in the reader's mind.
That's what I do. There's a handful of countries whose IP ranges I've blocked at the firewall. I typically block the mail ports, and redirect web traffic to a "Sorry we're not available in your region" page with a contact form. The reality is that I don't foresee myself selling any products or services into Asia, Russia, or South America. I don't speak their language(s), I can't process their money, and I sure as shit can't litigate if a deal goes wrong, so why expose myself to unnecessary risk ? There are other web sites to choose from, probably better suited to those specific markets than mine could be, I think it's a win-win.
Going against Steam, at this point in time when they're extremely well established, is suicide. People already hate EA for a dozen reasons, what makes them think we are going to gleefully hand over all our PII and credit card numbers just to play the latest DLC operating system ? Because that's what their games are rapidly becoming: a vehicles to sell add-ons. The damn DLC is planned before the first line of code is ever written, before the first storyboard is sketched, before half the damn staff is even hired to build the thing. Now they want access to my smartphone too ?
The only thing EA has accomplished over the past couple of years, is to convince me never to buy their products again. They fuck everyone over: users, staff, and now distribution partners. If EA were a person you knew, you would rally the neighbourhood to go stone them to death!
Dude, we're all way ahead of the curve. We're using "predictive commenting", where we can save all that reading time and just type random insults. With the millions of monkeys using/., surely one of them will happen upon a valid comment.
The problem with those "best practices" types is they usually spend 90% of their time nitpicking, and the remaining 10% copy/pasting Java patterns out of someone else's email. So yes, I agree with you, fuck 'em.
The truth about code review is that you're not actually supposed to pick on stupid shit. The goals are usually:
1. Make sure you didn't miss something important 2. Make sure other people can read and understand your code
Beyond that, who cares ? Code review isn't about belitting your colleague, it's about covering each other's ass. When dealing with an asshole reviewer, the solution is not to scrap the code review process, rather scrap the bad colleague. If the person reviewing your work starts acting like a holier-than-thou passive-aggressive jerkoff, I say whack them in the teeth with your Model M!
Dude, Canadians hate paying taxes too, but at least we get services out of it. And these shiny F-35 jets to impress the royal family (and not much else).
I can't tell from the satellite photo, but does that intersection even have lights ? It reminds me of the Clyde / Merivale corner, here in Ottawa, which is decently handled by regular street lights and right-turn ramps. Same idea though, too many ways to get on the same streets with redundant merges.
My perception is that most drivers should not be driving. Maybe that's because I live in Ottawa where half the drivers are rich/diplomatic assholes and the other half are clinically retarded federal employees, or maybe it's because I'm a computer programmer and I'm used to the concept of "idiot-proofing" in software, but I think the less we rely on user/driver intelligence, the less accidents we'll see. Roundabouts require more thinking than the average human can spare while operating a vehicle. They can barely drive down a straight road without screwing up, I have zero faith in them handling a curve with traffic coming at them from four tangents. Most people still shit bricks when faced with a yield sign:P
Why does the 4-way stop turn to chaos ? When right-of-way is properly followed, it is completely deterministic. The car to your right goes, then you, then the guy on your left, and so on. Each side gets a turn in sequence. It is inefficient, in that each vehicle has to come to a full stop, but each driver's wait time averages out to the same, whereas 4-way light signals are all about getting lucky and hitting all green lights.
The difference between right-of-way at a roundabout vs a 4-way stop, is that each lane gets its turn at a stop sign. In a roundabout, if it's bumper-to-bumper you can only get on if one or more vehicles take your exit, otherwise there is no gap for you to merge into. It helps the heavily-congested side while SEVERELY punishing the casual sides.
Yes, 4-way stop signs in low-traffic areas are perfect candidates for roundabouts. The problem is that our city planners are using them to replace extremely heavy-traffic intersections that would be better served by long-cycle lights.
I'm guessing some trendy douche pitched the idea of roundabouts to our malleable city officials a few years ago, much like the monorail guy from the Simpsons. Now they're putting them everywhere without any forethought and it's a damn mess.
The problem with our roundabouts is they are too small, so the space between two exits is difficult to share. Just go stand at the "Allumetieres" roundabouts in Hull during rush hour, people get stuck at the entry points because the loop is too tight to enter. Then you add the usual complement of luxury cars and minivan families who drive like they are the only vehicle on the road, cutting across to the exit from the inner loop. Even after being there for several years, the traffic is still ugly.
It's great that they finally built that stretch, after decades of municipal red tape, but the fundamental problem in Ottawa/Gatineau is that the jobs are too tightly concentrated, and the nicer neighbourhoods too remote. Roundabouts are no substitute for forward-thinking city planning and employment reform. For these reasons, I moved to downtown Ottawa 6 years ago and eventually stopped driving. I'd rather walk, bike or taxi, than waste two hours a day in traffic. Even better now: I work from home. My building and neighbourhood may be full of irresponsible students, drunkards and fake homeless, but I'd rather face the swine on the sidewalk than in traffic.
I remember roundabouts in the FR/CH/DE area from my visit 25 years ago, and I'm not at all surprised to learn that drivers are still confused. Most people are not NASCAR monkeys, we don't tend to drive in circles so it requires more concentration to navigate the roundabout. Given that the average commuter can barely handle going in a straight line without screwing up, throwing a multiple yield entry-exit loop into the mix results in a buffer overflow with their frail minds.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, Netflix should make a stink. They're in a prime position to educate their user base and use their clout to help the distributors see the light. We want what we want, and we want it now. If they refuse to provide, we will go elsewhere. If that elsewhere is a private torrent tracker, well tough tits MGM, you just lost a rental.
Probably because it's a form of time travel. By the time the show is over, you wake up and wonder where the time went (and why in hell you paid for it).
VIA suffered losses because, as a general rule, their products targeted the low end of the market, and even failed to satisfy those bargain hunters. Their chipsets are ass, their ITX boards underpowered, their audio chips noisy. They apparently failed to invest in R&D over the years, always playing catch-up with the big boys.
VIA is to AMD what AMD is to Intel: a wanna-be.
The tendency to acquire commercial/enterprise gear speaks to a desire to have feature parity with what you use at work/school, so you can learn properly on the "real thing". That's professional gear. This isn't the same as Joe Sixpack wanting to have something slightly better than the Wal-Mart stuff - that's prosumer. Prosumer gear is generally inspired from the more expensive stuff, but dumbed down a little to make it user-friendly and affordable. As an example, my $400 sound module is a prosumer device. It has a bunch of inputs with built-in mic preamps. The preamps are noisy and the signal routing is fixed, so it's crap compared to the $3500 studio kit, but good enough for fooling around at home. It's certainly better than those horrid Sound Blasters, but it's still considered a toy, a compromise between cost and functionality. If I were building out a real recording studio, I'd spring for the expensive stuff that sounds better.
On the other hand, I personally would not be a very good enterprise sysadmin if I were using consumer/prosumer gear at home. I couldn't sell white-box file servers without having a couple of them in the rack beside my desk for developing and testing, along with a sampling of common SAS expander boards and 10ge adapters. I couldn't charge top dollar for VMware cluster deployments if all I'd ever used was VirtualBox and a portable hard drive. Sure, you can lean on Google, do your research and read about others' experiences, or you can spend a little money and learn first-hand. Tech forums are great for discussing what doesn't work, but only rarely will they identify what actually DOES work. When I design a server or an entire rack of them, there is no guessing. I know it's going to work, because I've tested the exact same hardware/software combination, right here in my living room. That's what a "home lab" is supposed to be.
When you plan on doing something for the rest of your career, it's not at all unreasonable to commit some of your income to further your skills and competitiveness, it's called "investing in yourself". And yeah, heck, it's fun to have big fancy toys :D
Military grade just means it's 10 years out of date and 10 times over priced.
Using government math that makes it 100 times more better!
Given a large enough sample set, you're bound to find at least one person offended by any random innocuous concept.
Heck, I find the slogan "God Bless America" highly offensive, but that's just me.
You suggest that the offensiveness of "pantyshot" might be heightened by the legality of the act. Well what if I forked MySQL, sprinkled a bit of hipster chic on top and called it "Freebase" ? Is that offensive ? What if I drew a logo that looks like a cartoon developer snorting lines of SELECT statements ? Now is it offensive ? What if I used a (properly licensed) picture of Charlie Sheen instead ? Where is the line drawn ?
I often do/write offensive things to weed out the whiners. I'd rather goad someone into showing their intolerance through a harmless joke or pun, than find out much later once I've invested my time and effort into a relationship. I prefer not to censor myself - I see political correctness as the wool that is drawn over society's eyes. That doesn't mean I'm not a nice guy, I just don't candy coat my words. If my colourful vocabulary and frank talk is enough justification for someone to dislike or even detest me, I'm all to happy to be rid of them. To me, this is equally true in both business and personal matters.
If someone were to take great offense at something named "pantyshot", I'd cordially invite them to fork the project and call it whatever the hell they like. It's a name for a piece of software. Words are just labels, neutral representations of concepts. The word itself didn't invade anyone's modesty, it's just a jumble of letters, abstract shapes on a canvas. The offensiveness exists only in the reader's mind.
Since it's an open-source project, the only sane resolution is to fork it. Upskirt/Pantyshot for the frank crowd, and Pantsuit/Burqa for the prudes.
That's what I do. There's a handful of countries whose IP ranges I've blocked at the firewall. I typically block the mail ports, and redirect web traffic to a "Sorry we're not available in your region" page with a contact form. The reality is that I don't foresee myself selling any products or services into Asia, Russia, or South America. I don't speak their language(s), I can't process their money, and I sure as shit can't litigate if a deal goes wrong, so why expose myself to unnecessary risk ? There are other web sites to choose from, probably better suited to those specific markets than mine could be, I think it's a win-win.
Going against Steam, at this point in time when they're extremely well established, is suicide. People already hate EA for a dozen reasons, what makes them think we are going to gleefully hand over all our PII and credit card numbers just to play the latest DLC operating system ? Because that's what their games are rapidly becoming: a vehicles to sell add-ons. The damn DLC is planned before the first line of code is ever written, before the first storyboard is sketched, before half the damn staff is even hired to build the thing. Now they want access to my smartphone too ?
The only thing EA has accomplished over the past couple of years, is to convince me never to buy their products again. They fuck everyone over: users, staff, and now distribution partners. If EA were a person you knew, you would rally the neighbourhood to go stone them to death!
Dude, we're all way ahead of the curve. We're using "predictive commenting", where we can save all that reading time and just type random insults. With the millions of monkeys using /., surely one of them will happen upon a valid comment.
SHHH! Don't let the cops hear that intellect, they'll think you're mocking them.
Prediction: crime will be highest in areas with the greatest gap between rich and poor.
If they want a computerized version, I will gladly write a .Net app that displays the same truism for only 50 million dollars.
Quicklime.
If you were anyone's employer, you wouldn't be posting as AC.
The problem with those "best practices" types is they usually spend 90% of their time nitpicking, and the remaining 10% copy/pasting Java patterns out of someone else's email. So yes, I agree with you, fuck 'em.
The truth about code review is that you're not actually supposed to pick on stupid shit. The goals are usually:
1. Make sure you didn't miss something important
2. Make sure other people can read and understand your code
Beyond that, who cares ? Code review isn't about belitting your colleague, it's about covering each other's ass. When dealing with an asshole reviewer, the solution is not to scrap the code review process, rather scrap the bad colleague. If the person reviewing your work starts acting like a holier-than-thou passive-aggressive jerkoff, I say whack them in the teeth with your Model M!
You win the internet, eh ?
Dude, Canadians hate paying taxes too, but at least we get services out of it. And these shiny F-35 jets to impress the royal family (and not much else).
I can't tell from the satellite photo, but does that intersection even have lights ? It reminds me of the Clyde / Merivale corner, here in Ottawa, which is decently handled by regular street lights and right-turn ramps. Same idea though, too many ways to get on the same streets with redundant merges.
My perception is that most drivers should not be driving. Maybe that's because I live in Ottawa where half the drivers are rich/diplomatic assholes and the other half are clinically retarded federal employees, or maybe it's because I'm a computer programmer and I'm used to the concept of "idiot-proofing" in software, but I think the less we rely on user/driver intelligence, the less accidents we'll see. Roundabouts require more thinking than the average human can spare while operating a vehicle. They can barely drive down a straight road without screwing up, I have zero faith in them handling a curve with traffic coming at them from four tangents. Most people still shit bricks when faced with a yield sign :P
Why does the 4-way stop turn to chaos ? When right-of-way is properly followed, it is completely deterministic. The car to your right goes, then you, then the guy on your left, and so on. Each side gets a turn in sequence. It is inefficient, in that each vehicle has to come to a full stop, but each driver's wait time averages out to the same, whereas 4-way light signals are all about getting lucky and hitting all green lights.
The difference between right-of-way at a roundabout vs a 4-way stop, is that each lane gets its turn at a stop sign. In a roundabout, if it's bumper-to-bumper you can only get on if one or more vehicles take your exit, otherwise there is no gap for you to merge into. It helps the heavily-congested side while SEVERELY punishing the casual sides.
Yes, 4-way stop signs in low-traffic areas are perfect candidates for roundabouts. The problem is that our city planners are using them to replace extremely heavy-traffic intersections that would be better served by long-cycle lights.
I'm guessing some trendy douche pitched the idea of roundabouts to our malleable city officials a few years ago, much like the monorail guy from the Simpsons. Now they're putting them everywhere without any forethought and it's a damn mess.
The problem with our roundabouts is they are too small, so the space between two exits is difficult to share. Just go stand at the "Allumetieres" roundabouts in Hull during rush hour, people get stuck at the entry points because the loop is too tight to enter. Then you add the usual complement of luxury cars and minivan families who drive like they are the only vehicle on the road, cutting across to the exit from the inner loop. Even after being there for several years, the traffic is still ugly.
It's great that they finally built that stretch, after decades of municipal red tape, but the fundamental problem in Ottawa/Gatineau is that the jobs are too tightly concentrated, and the nicer neighbourhoods too remote. Roundabouts are no substitute for forward-thinking city planning and employment reform. For these reasons, I moved to downtown Ottawa 6 years ago and eventually stopped driving. I'd rather walk, bike or taxi, than waste two hours a day in traffic. Even better now: I work from home. My building and neighbourhood may be full of irresponsible students, drunkards and fake homeless, but I'd rather face the swine on the sidewalk than in traffic.
I remember roundabouts in the FR/CH/DE area from my visit 25 years ago, and I'm not at all surprised to learn that drivers are still confused. Most people are not NASCAR monkeys, we don't tend to drive in circles so it requires more concentration to navigate the roundabout. Given that the average commuter can barely handle going in a straight line without screwing up, throwing a multiple yield entry-exit loop into the mix results in a buffer overflow with their frail minds.