Sometimes, breaking things actually fixes things, though. As it is commonly said, "The devil is in the details." You are right: there are a lot of instances where breaking something will lead to just more breakage. A controlled break under certain circumstances, can be good, though.
This is one of the biggest problems in the U.S. and I'm not talking about entertainment. Exclusive contracts are severely harming the U.S. economy. I think another term for it should price fixing. No company should be allowed to exclusively sell their stuff in one store.
I think you made another and possibly more important point without stating it: if there are 100 low probability events, there's a high probability of a catastrophe happening in any given year.
Perhaps... but these "Once in a $TIMEPERIOD" storms are so frequent in the news, the saying has lost credibility. When the northeast gets pounded that often and we hear that phrase every time, one wonders what the purpose of saying the phrase is. Is it an excuse? Or is there something we should be doing to the northeast? Moving people out? Putting up better defenses? Allocating more money for repair?
It also separates the reading from the writing. When accessing a variable directly, you don't know if your code is necessarily reading from the variable, writing to it, or both (actually, because of passing by references in Java, there's a high chance of both). Simple bugs like = vs == can turn into a side-effect nightmare without the layer of protection a getter/setter affords
Using a getter or setting affords you the same opportunities as directly accessing a variable. About the only thing a getter and setter offers is an advantage of doing something before / after accessing the variable for a read / write operation... which breaks the objected oriented mentality. That means an getter and setter shouldn't be used. Now... a function or subroutine which modifies a variable is ok. Here's why: an object should be read or modified... not the variable. It's a subtle, but important difference that affects how the code is written and maintained. Sometimes, with trivial code, they can (but not always) look the same.
Another point, with modern IDEs, I know where a variable is used. I use "find all references"... which is (I believe) the only thing you can do with a getter and setter as well.
As far as your = vs ==, I don't see where getter / setter can afford you any different protection. Perhaps you can give me an example? In my mind, the only example I can come up with is if (variableA = 5) vs if (obj.getSomeValue() = 5) when the variable is accessed outside of the object is exists in and is properly encapsulated. If the code exists within the same object where the variable lives, then neither of these statements will protect you. obj.getSomeValue() won't stop you from directly accessing the variable if you accidentally (or another programmer purposely) uses variableA.
There are many situations where you want to do something else just before or after a variable is modified.
No. In OOP, there are things you want to do when an object is modified, not a variable. Do not think in terms of modifying variables. This is similar to using triggers in databases and that is usually a bad idea. It is better to put changes into functions that are clearly named and preferably documented. About the only thing I can think of where a getter/setter might be useful is for logging or debugging. Also, if there is a value change in a UI, that is what the valueChange event is for.
girlintraining is absolutely right. Heed her advice: know thyself. With that said, I'm going to give you what works for me and some gotchas I've found in the field.
Some people think they need just a specific answer so they learn by googling for everything and never learn outside of a narrow box. Personally, I find they often don't make good programmers or DBAs. I think a disciplined approach to learning a language or database is a must. The PostgreSQL documentation is excellent in that regard. It starts off with a brief history of the database, then gives you basics and then moves on to more advanced topics. Yes, yes... of course you have to use your google-fu for specific answers sometimes, but I think you need a rock-solid core to base your studies off of. Not everyone works this way, but I think we'd have better programmers if they had good material to base a foundation from. When I learn a new language, I hunt down a good, comprehensive core to work from and work my way though.
Next: Practice. Being a book worm won't get you anywhere in the real world. You have to be able to utilize that knowledge. I like to give myself a task or a goal and work towards completing it. I'm not talking about "make a table" then "add a row". I'm talking about working towards a complex goal. My favorite is the address book. It can be extremely simple or incredibly complex. Take something like names. You can just slap a common name into a field in a table, right? Are you sure? How many digits are in a phone number? I live in Germany and the number of digits vary greatly... sometimes within the same city. Who lives at what address? What if a person lives at multiple addresses? (North in the summer, south in the winter.) What if a person has more than one phone number? What if a phone is shared between people at home? Or a team of people in a work place? Another option is to form links between people: who got married? Divorced? Married again? When? Kids? From which spouse? Don't get me wrong... you can drop all this information into a single table or into thirty. It can as complex or simple as you want. You decide. The most important thing is to have something to practice against as you learn.
We Americans will work on this with the rest of Europe. When the U.S. does something stupid... say like forcing presidential planes to be put in danger and then searched, you slap the living shit out of the people requesting it and hold them up high so we can make examples of them.
This is one of several reasons why I like to put as much business logic into SQL as I can. I'm not saying all business logic should go there, but overall I believe the closer your code is to the data, the better. I know a lot of people disagree with me, but if you're storing data in a database, then you probably want SQL to interact with the data as much as possible for performance reasons.
Heh... Yeah... never finished. Too many politicians are trying to get make their face next on the monument and ultimately no decision gets made. That does sound about right!
The big omission I noticed in the article was any mention of changes to the annual review process.
He's very heavy on the management speak too. There was certainly no omission of that. I skimmed parts and read parts of the email he sent out. Yeah, there are some specifics, but ultimately, this email does not inspire me at all. I can't imagine it inspires any of the "little guys" at Microsoft either.
Another thing to consider is airbags. I lost my car about a year ago in an accident. (The bastard that pulled out in front of me was more than two times the legal limit.) I loved that car and had it well maintained. My car slightly crumpled. The estimates to fix the minor crumpling and the head light was significantly less than replacing the airbags and the damage to the inside of the car due to the airbags. Now, granted, my car was over 10 years old, but you get the picture. It was the airbags that wound up totalling my car.
No, "a lot" of cyclists don't have deathwishes nor are they stupid. You just think they do, because they're a minority outgroup - so you exaggerate negative attributes. The vast majority of cyclist crashes are caused by drivers operating recklessly or illegally.
As a frequent driver, bicyclist, and pedestrian, I think all three "classes" of people have significant amounts of stupidity, recklessness, and high-probability-danger in them. How many cars follow the two second rule? How many bicyclist run red lights? How many pedestrians actually dress well (bright colors at night) and are predictable to where they are going before stepping into a street? I would argue that in all three cases, about 75% of the people I typically encounter are not well trained to drive, bike, or even walk safely.
Most gun illiterate people don't know they're gun illiterate - they think they know all they need to from watching TV
That's why I recommend any John Woo film. The film goes in slow motion so you can learn everything you need to know about handling fire arms and safety. You can even watch from multiple angles.
I dont think Joe User is ready for desktop linux quite yet
Users wont be ready to use linux flavors on the desktop until vendors are ready to support them.
Actually, the name is "Common Joe" and it's my wife that isn't ready to use Linux yet, but you're right. She has a business and the $1000 program that her clients require her to use only runs in Windows.
You make great points, but I am forced to disagree with you on your conclusion. I don't come to conclusion that "these people are just thieves that got caught and are now trying to get off".
There's a guy who I knew who was sent to jail. He was charged with murder of his girlfriend. There were steroids, cocaine, and a fatal seizure involved. Now, I'm not saying the guy wasn't stupid, but the prosecutor of the case stated the following: individually, the facts make it look like he was guilty of murder, but when the facts are pieced together, the facts looked like an accidental overdose.
That was about 30 years ago. He was found guilty of murder and (if I recall correctly) served five years in prison. So was he really innocent? What happened? Why was he found guilty if he was innocent? I don't know. I do know that prosecutors are quite happy throwing people in jail in the U.S. today. See the drug war stats for that one. I also believe that prosecutors are quite happy to throw someone in jail just to help their careers. There seems to be stories popping up all over these days where innocent people are going to jail. Google "innocent people who have been put to death". If this can happen in the States, the post office story can happen in Britain.
Now, you make a very astute point. Nowhere in the article does it say where this missing money went. That is a very interesting point to me. You'd think it would be trivial for a reporter to find this out. From my perch, that means it can go any which way, because I don't trust government (in any country), I don't trust people and I certainly don't trust the media. This article leaves way too many questions.
I used to think that companies were serious about hiring. A few years ago, I didn't worry about and actually went with a temp-to-hire scenario and things worked out well. I was confident enough in my abilities. Today, I'm confident in my abilities, but I'm not confident enough that the companies are telling the truth. Lies and misinformation seem to be the cornerstones of all companies these days.
I did make one mistake in the temp-to-hire story. I agreed to work for a small company by going through a 3rd party. I said I wanted X amount of pay. After 3 months, my temp time was up and the company liked me so the boss asked me how much I wanted so he could hire me permanently. I said X amount. The response "Wow, that's more than I was expecting." They still hired me. Here's the kicker: I left the company 3 years later when they were having financial troubles and I was hired with a 20% pay increase at another company... to start at the bottom rung even though I had a number of years of programming experience and ran the IT section of the small company.
I contemplated that and wondered what I had done wrong. It may have been the size of the company. (A small one versus a large one.) It may have been the noob factor for me as I hadn't had but a couple of real jobs by that point. (I don't like to job hop.) I may have had an ignorant boss. It was probably all three.
My lesson learned was to overcharge for the contract portion and treat it as a contract job. Oh... and also to make sure I knew I what I was worth.
Here's an anecdotal story. I've been wanting to buy the CD version of the Transformers (2007) Score for years now. I check off and on for for years and the price fluctuates but never to a reasonable level. I even wrote Amazon once, but nothing.
I once heard the price is partially based on how much others are selling it for and I've heard of spirals where Amazon bases it on Place A which bases their price on Place B which bases their price on Amazon and the price spiral upwards into the thousands of dollars for even things like obscure books. Who knows if it's true, but it's an interesting story.
Yes, I could buy the MP3s for less, but I like having the physical media that I can rip that hasn't been compressed with a lossy algorithm. One day I'll probably buy the MP3s. Besides, it's harder to accuse me of pirating if I can produce the physical products.
Today's price for Transformers? Here you go. As of this writing, it was $59.99.
Oh... and say what you will about the movie (which did suck), but the second Transformers has a really good score.
I sympathize with you. The house where my brother and I grew up was nearly taken by Katrina. (It was in a suburb.) My parents left that house to flee from the hurricane. I lived in another state and they came to live with us for a while before returning. About 8 months later, I returned to New Orleans for a visit and I toured the area including stepping inside the house where I grew up. Except for the grass and weeds that were a few feet high, everything felt so empty and so dead. The neighborhood looked like it was from out of an apocalyptic movie... except it felt much more eerie. There were no birds. No sounds. Dead. There are no words to describe it.
I'm sure our experiences are different, but I thought I'd throw in my story with yours so that you don't feel alone.
I see someone replied to you saying anecdotes are pointless. I'll give you my anecdote anyway.
I saw a girl fall on her bike and start crying outside of my house. I sent my wife to go deal with it for fear of being labeled a perv. A moment after my wife started helping the girl, the girl's father started berating my wife for helping his kid. I can only imagine what would have happened had I gone out there.
I love kids yet very rarely deal with them because I don't want the hassle. My life is stressful enough without the stigma of being labeled a perv by society.
See now that I can understand, your first article was kinda vague.
That was on purpose. I've found people don't like reading / hearing long, technically correct and accurate statements. I've had complaints about going on too long both personally and professionally. Once, I made complete documentation for a simple program I wrote. It was about 15 pages; most of it was screen captures. I delivered it in electronic form so they could refer to it when they wanted. It was for about 10 people and it explained everything with examples. Every single one of those people came back to me and said, "How do you use your program?" I asked what was missing from the documentation and they said it was too much for them. They'd rather ask me one-by-one how to use a brain-dead simple program. (It was literally press one button and watch the status lights go from yellow to green. Red meant something bad happened and then there was a button to check logs.)
I mean I too want to help occasionally.
I know. I detected that in your initial response and it's the reason why I responded to you. On a personal and professional level, I've run into people who would rather control my life than give me choices. I lose a lot of respect for anyone who does that to me and it is one of my most cherished personal principles to let others choose their own way in life even if it is not necessarily what I deem for the best. I can see how my comment could be construed in a "bad" way. [Shrug.] Such is the limit of today's communication.
Now you have to explain exactly why you think that this is such a bad thing. Just imagine we would give you a switch for the sun and you would actually get your way with it. This would be bad! I mean the path to hell is plastered with good intentions.
I don't have to explain anything, but I will anyway. I start with saying that you read a little too much into my words. Here are some examples of what I meant:
First example: I love children a lot. One day, a very young girl fell off her bike on the sidewalk in front of my house and cried very hard. She looked ok and not badly injured, but when no one arrived after 30 to 45 seconds, I wanted to make sure. Fearing being labeled a pervert (because I am a guy after all and we're all strangers to one another in the neighborhoods these days), I took the coward's way out and sent my wife out to deal with it. She's not comfortable around children and would have preferred that I go out, but understood how I felt. She had no sooner asked the girl if she was all right than the father came from four houses down and started berating my wife for simply talking to his child to find out if she needed help walking or if we needed to get her parents. I watched very carefully from the door to make sure my wife would be ok. Fortunately, that is all there is to the story. We're both glad I didn't go out there.
Next story: I like helping people with their computers. One of the very few people I did know in my neighborhood were clueless about computers and I offered to help teach them and their daughter for free. They didn't want a thing to do with it other than have a computer setup and surf the web. Asking them to sit down and learn about computers (safe web surfing, how to remain anonymous because the wife was in a previous abusive relationship, ripping CDs they owned onto MP3 players, etc) was like pulling teeth. I wasn't in the mood to pull teeth and it was their decision anyway. I didn't appreciate doing all the work knowing they would eventually mess it up. I believe in teaching people to fish... not simply giving them a fish. That's the kind of thing I like.
Some of my stories are programming related. I was told to ignore edge cases in a program because they will never happen. Well, my program crashed badly in the middle of a large and very time sensitive production run. Oops. We hit that edge case. Hard to tell you boss "Told you so" because all he's interested is a solution right now. Or how about the time when a bunch of people were let go and I got the work of 4 of my other colleagues when I couldn't even keep up with the programs I was maintaining at the time? Or how about the time another boss told me not to help a secretary learn how to use Windows Explorer because that would be a security issue. (Really? WTF?)
I have this HUGE drive to improve the world, but the world rejects what I have to offer and they box me into a small corner where I have to wrestle with unreasonableness. It is very frustrating to be shoved aside and told, "You're not important. Just do as you're told." Curiously, I'm treated like a child a lot of times. I know I'm just a "Common Joe" in the world and I don't expect to accomplish super hero feats (as someone else suggested on this thread). I just want to make a positive contribution. I want to be treated as an equal and as an adult. Even simple things (such as helping a little girl who fell on her bike or not being treated as just free labor) would go a long way to that "improve the world" thing. I don't want to control other people as you imply. I know people have to make their own choices and I respect that, but often when I offer to help people, I'm usually spit upon. I've learned to be very cautious about who I offer my help to. That's a real shame. I may not be perfect, but I have a lot to offer.
Right now, I see my comment is modded at 5. That doesn't usually happen to me. I take heart that I'm not the only one who feels that way, but I also take it to mean that there is a lot of improvement that could be made in the world and isn't. It's such a waste.
Slashdot Mirror
The decline of Microsoft has been this slow motion avalanche of stupid.
I love this quote of yours. It is witty, funny, and a hyper-accurate account of Microsoft.
Sometimes, breaking things actually fixes things, though. As it is commonly said, "The devil is in the details." You are right: there are a lot of instances where breaking something will lead to just more breakage. A controlled break under certain circumstances, can be good, though.
This is one of the biggest problems in the U.S. and I'm not talking about entertainment. Exclusive contracts are severely harming the U.S. economy. I think another term for it should price fixing. No company should be allowed to exclusively sell their stuff in one store.
I think you made another and possibly more important point without stating it: if there are 100 low probability events, there's a high probability of a catastrophe happening in any given year.
Perhaps... but these "Once in a $TIMEPERIOD" storms are so frequent in the news, the saying has lost credibility. When the northeast gets pounded that often and we hear that phrase every time, one wonders what the purpose of saying the phrase is. Is it an excuse? Or is there something we should be doing to the northeast? Moving people out? Putting up better defenses? Allocating more money for repair?
It also separates the reading from the writing. When accessing a variable directly, you don't know if your code is necessarily reading from the variable, writing to it, or both (actually, because of passing by references in Java, there's a high chance of both). Simple bugs like = vs == can turn into a side-effect nightmare without the layer of protection a getter/setter affords
Using a getter or setting affords you the same opportunities as directly accessing a variable. About the only thing a getter and setter offers is an advantage of doing something before / after accessing the variable for a read / write operation... which breaks the objected oriented mentality. That means an getter and setter shouldn't be used. Now... a function or subroutine which modifies a variable is ok. Here's why: an object should be read or modified... not the variable. It's a subtle, but important difference that affects how the code is written and maintained. Sometimes, with trivial code, they can (but not always) look the same.
Another point, with modern IDEs, I know where a variable is used. I use "find all references"... which is (I believe) the only thing you can do with a getter and setter as well.
As far as your = vs ==, I don't see where getter / setter can afford you any different protection. Perhaps you can give me an example? In my mind, the only example I can come up with is if (variableA = 5) vs if (obj.getSomeValue() = 5) when the variable is accessed outside of the object is exists in and is properly encapsulated. If the code exists within the same object where the variable lives, then neither of these statements will protect you. obj.getSomeValue() won't stop you from directly accessing the variable if you accidentally (or another programmer purposely) uses variableA.
There are many situations where you want to do something else just before or after a variable is modified.
No. In OOP, there are things you want to do when an object is modified, not a variable. Do not think in terms of modifying variables. This is similar to using triggers in databases and that is usually a bad idea. It is better to put changes into functions that are clearly named and preferably documented. About the only thing I can think of where a getter/setter might be useful is for logging or debugging. Also, if there is a value change in a UI, that is what the valueChange event is for.
Yeah, but after that, Linux 8 is going to suck and Linux 8.1 will be worse.
girlintraining is absolutely right. Heed her advice: know thyself. With that said, I'm going to give you what works for me and some gotchas I've found in the field.
Some people think they need just a specific answer so they learn by googling for everything and never learn outside of a narrow box. Personally, I find they often don't make good programmers or DBAs. I think a disciplined approach to learning a language or database is a must. The PostgreSQL documentation is excellent in that regard. It starts off with a brief history of the database, then gives you basics and then moves on to more advanced topics. Yes, yes... of course you have to use your google-fu for specific answers sometimes, but I think you need a rock-solid core to base your studies off of. Not everyone works this way, but I think we'd have better programmers if they had good material to base a foundation from. When I learn a new language, I hunt down a good, comprehensive core to work from and work my way though.
Next: Practice. Being a book worm won't get you anywhere in the real world. You have to be able to utilize that knowledge. I like to give myself a task or a goal and work towards completing it. I'm not talking about "make a table" then "add a row". I'm talking about working towards a complex goal. My favorite is the address book. It can be extremely simple or incredibly complex. Take something like names. You can just slap a common name into a field in a table, right? Are you sure? How many digits are in a phone number? I live in Germany and the number of digits vary greatly... sometimes within the same city. Who lives at what address? What if a person lives at multiple addresses? (North in the summer, south in the winter.) What if a person has more than one phone number? What if a phone is shared between people at home? Or a team of people in a work place? Another option is to form links between people: who got married? Divorced? Married again? When? Kids? From which spouse? Don't get me wrong... you can drop all this information into a single table or into thirty. It can as complex or simple as you want. You decide. The most important thing is to have something to practice against as you learn.
Good luck.
Deal?
Counter deal from an American living in Germany:
We Americans will work on this with the rest of Europe. When the U.S. does something stupid... say like forcing presidential planes to be put in danger and then searched, you slap the living shit out of the people requesting it and hold them up high so we can make examples of them.
This is one of several reasons why I like to put as much business logic into SQL as I can. I'm not saying all business logic should go there, but overall I believe the closer your code is to the data, the better. I know a lot of people disagree with me, but if you're storing data in a database, then you probably want SQL to interact with the data as much as possible for performance reasons.
Heh... Yeah... never finished. Too many politicians are trying to get make their face next on the monument and ultimately no decision gets made. That does sound about right!
The big omission I noticed in the article was any mention of changes to the annual review process.
He's very heavy on the management speak too. There was certainly no omission of that. I skimmed parts and read parts of the email he sent out. Yeah, there are some specifics, but ultimately, this email does not inspire me at all. I can't imagine it inspires any of the "little guys" at Microsoft either.
We did it too. Although, I'm not really sure what we were trying to say...
Another thing to consider is airbags. I lost my car about a year ago in an accident. (The bastard that pulled out in front of me was more than two times the legal limit.) I loved that car and had it well maintained. My car slightly crumpled. The estimates to fix the minor crumpling and the head light was significantly less than replacing the airbags and the damage to the inside of the car due to the airbags. Now, granted, my car was over 10 years old, but you get the picture. It was the airbags that wound up totalling my car.
No, "a lot" of cyclists don't have deathwishes nor are they stupid. You just think they do, because they're a minority outgroup - so you exaggerate negative attributes. The vast majority of cyclist crashes are caused by drivers operating recklessly or illegally.
As a frequent driver, bicyclist, and pedestrian, I think all three "classes" of people have significant amounts of stupidity, recklessness, and high-probability-danger in them. How many cars follow the two second rule? How many bicyclist run red lights? How many pedestrians actually dress well (bright colors at night) and are predictable to where they are going before stepping into a street? I would argue that in all three cases, about 75% of the people I typically encounter are not well trained to drive, bike, or even walk safely.
Most gun illiterate people don't know they're gun illiterate - they think they know all they need to from watching TV
That's why I recommend any John Woo film. The film goes in slow motion so you can learn everything you need to know about handling fire arms and safety. You can even watch from multiple angles.
I dont think Joe User is ready for desktop linux quite yet
Users wont be ready to use linux flavors on the desktop until vendors are ready to support them.
Actually, the name is "Common Joe" and it's my wife that isn't ready to use Linux yet, but you're right. She has a business and the $1000 program that her clients require her to use only runs in Windows.
You make great points, but I am forced to disagree with you on your conclusion. I don't come to conclusion that "these people are just thieves that got caught and are now trying to get off".
There's a guy who I knew who was sent to jail. He was charged with murder of his girlfriend. There were steroids, cocaine, and a fatal seizure involved. Now, I'm not saying the guy wasn't stupid, but the prosecutor of the case stated the following: individually, the facts make it look like he was guilty of murder, but when the facts are pieced together, the facts looked like an accidental overdose.
That was about 30 years ago. He was found guilty of murder and (if I recall correctly) served five years in prison. So was he really innocent? What happened? Why was he found guilty if he was innocent? I don't know. I do know that prosecutors are quite happy throwing people in jail in the U.S. today. See the drug war stats for that one. I also believe that prosecutors are quite happy to throw someone in jail just to help their careers. There seems to be stories popping up all over these days where innocent people are going to jail. Google "innocent people who have been put to death". If this can happen in the States, the post office story can happen in Britain.
Now, you make a very astute point. Nowhere in the article does it say where this missing money went. That is a very interesting point to me. You'd think it would be trivial for a reporter to find this out. From my perch, that means it can go any which way, because I don't trust government (in any country), I don't trust people and I certainly don't trust the media. This article leaves way too many questions.
I used to think that companies were serious about hiring. A few years ago, I didn't worry about and actually went with a temp-to-hire scenario and things worked out well. I was confident enough in my abilities. Today, I'm confident in my abilities, but I'm not confident enough that the companies are telling the truth. Lies and misinformation seem to be the cornerstones of all companies these days.
I did make one mistake in the temp-to-hire story. I agreed to work for a small company by going through a 3rd party. I said I wanted X amount of pay. After 3 months, my temp time was up and the company liked me so the boss asked me how much I wanted so he could hire me permanently. I said X amount. The response "Wow, that's more than I was expecting." They still hired me. Here's the kicker: I left the company 3 years later when they were having financial troubles and I was hired with a 20% pay increase at another company... to start at the bottom rung even though I had a number of years of programming experience and ran the IT section of the small company.
I contemplated that and wondered what I had done wrong. It may have been the size of the company. (A small one versus a large one.) It may have been the noob factor for me as I hadn't had but a couple of real jobs by that point. (I don't like to job hop.) I may have had an ignorant boss. It was probably all three.
My lesson learned was to overcharge for the contract portion and treat it as a contract job. Oh... and also to make sure I knew I what I was worth.
Here's an anecdotal story. I've been wanting to buy the CD version of the Transformers (2007) Score for years now. I check off and on for for years and the price fluctuates but never to a reasonable level. I even wrote Amazon once, but nothing.
I once heard the price is partially based on how much others are selling it for and I've heard of spirals where Amazon bases it on Place A which bases their price on Place B which bases their price on Amazon and the price spiral upwards into the thousands of dollars for even things like obscure books. Who knows if it's true, but it's an interesting story.
Yes, I could buy the MP3s for less, but I like having the physical media that I can rip that hasn't been compressed with a lossy algorithm. One day I'll probably buy the MP3s. Besides, it's harder to accuse me of pirating if I can produce the physical products.
Today's price for Transformers? Here you go. As of this writing, it was $59.99.
Oh... and say what you will about the movie (which did suck), but the second Transformers has a really good score.
I sympathize with you. The house where my brother and I grew up was nearly taken by Katrina. (It was in a suburb.) My parents left that house to flee from the hurricane. I lived in another state and they came to live with us for a while before returning. About 8 months later, I returned to New Orleans for a visit and I toured the area including stepping inside the house where I grew up. Except for the grass and weeds that were a few feet high, everything felt so empty and so dead. The neighborhood looked like it was from out of an apocalyptic movie... except it felt much more eerie. There were no birds. No sounds. Dead. There are no words to describe it.
I'm sure our experiences are different, but I thought I'd throw in my story with yours so that you don't feel alone.
I see someone replied to you saying anecdotes are pointless. I'll give you my anecdote anyway.
I saw a girl fall on her bike and start crying outside of my house. I sent my wife to go deal with it for fear of being labeled a perv. A moment after my wife started helping the girl, the girl's father started berating my wife for helping his kid. I can only imagine what would have happened had I gone out there.
I love kids yet very rarely deal with them because I don't want the hassle. My life is stressful enough without the stigma of being labeled a perv by society.
See now that I can understand, your first article was kinda vague.
That was on purpose. I've found people don't like reading / hearing long, technically correct and accurate statements. I've had complaints about going on too long both personally and professionally. Once, I made complete documentation for a simple program I wrote. It was about 15 pages; most of it was screen captures. I delivered it in electronic form so they could refer to it when they wanted. It was for about 10 people and it explained everything with examples. Every single one of those people came back to me and said, "How do you use your program?" I asked what was missing from the documentation and they said it was too much for them. They'd rather ask me one-by-one how to use a brain-dead simple program. (It was literally press one button and watch the status lights go from yellow to green. Red meant something bad happened and then there was a button to check logs.)
I mean I too want to help occasionally.
I know. I detected that in your initial response and it's the reason why I responded to you. On a personal and professional level, I've run into people who would rather control my life than give me choices. I lose a lot of respect for anyone who does that to me and it is one of my most cherished personal principles to let others choose their own way in life even if it is not necessarily what I deem for the best. I can see how my comment could be construed in a "bad" way. [Shrug.] Such is the limit of today's communication.
Now you have to explain exactly why you think that this is such a bad thing. Just imagine we would give you a switch for the sun and you would actually get your way with it. This would be bad! I mean the path to hell is plastered with good intentions.
I don't have to explain anything, but I will anyway. I start with saying that you read a little too much into my words. Here are some examples of what I meant:
First example: I love children a lot. One day, a very young girl fell off her bike on the sidewalk in front of my house and cried very hard. She looked ok and not badly injured, but when no one arrived after 30 to 45 seconds, I wanted to make sure. Fearing being labeled a pervert (because I am a guy after all and we're all strangers to one another in the neighborhoods these days), I took the coward's way out and sent my wife out to deal with it. She's not comfortable around children and would have preferred that I go out, but understood how I felt. She had no sooner asked the girl if she was all right than the father came from four houses down and started berating my wife for simply talking to his child to find out if she needed help walking or if we needed to get her parents. I watched very carefully from the door to make sure my wife would be ok. Fortunately, that is all there is to the story. We're both glad I didn't go out there.
Next story: I like helping people with their computers. One of the very few people I did know in my neighborhood were clueless about computers and I offered to help teach them and their daughter for free. They didn't want a thing to do with it other than have a computer setup and surf the web. Asking them to sit down and learn about computers (safe web surfing, how to remain anonymous because the wife was in a previous abusive relationship, ripping CDs they owned onto MP3 players, etc) was like pulling teeth. I wasn't in the mood to pull teeth and it was their decision anyway. I didn't appreciate doing all the work knowing they would eventually mess it up. I believe in teaching people to fish... not simply giving them a fish. That's the kind of thing I like.
Some of my stories are programming related. I was told to ignore edge cases in a program because they will never happen. Well, my program crashed badly in the middle of a large and very time sensitive production run. Oops. We hit that edge case. Hard to tell you boss "Told you so" because all he's interested is a solution right now. Or how about the time when a bunch of people were let go and I got the work of 4 of my other colleagues when I couldn't even keep up with the programs I was maintaining at the time? Or how about the time another boss told me not to help a secretary learn how to use Windows Explorer because that would be a security issue. (Really? WTF?)
I have this HUGE drive to improve the world, but the world rejects what I have to offer and they box me into a small corner where I have to wrestle with unreasonableness. It is very frustrating to be shoved aside and told, "You're not important. Just do as you're told." Curiously, I'm treated like a child a lot of times. I know I'm just a "Common Joe" in the world and I don't expect to accomplish super hero feats (as someone else suggested on this thread). I just want to make a positive contribution. I want to be treated as an equal and as an adult. Even simple things (such as helping a little girl who fell on her bike or not being treated as just free labor) would go a long way to that "improve the world" thing. I don't want to control other people as you imply. I know people have to make their own choices and I respect that, but often when I offer to help people, I'm usually spit upon. I've learned to be very cautious about who I offer my help to. That's a real shame. I may not be perfect, but I have a lot to offer.
Right now, I see my comment is modded at 5. That doesn't usually happen to me. I take heart that I'm not the only one who feels that way, but I also take it to mean that there is a lot of improvement that could be made in the world and isn't. It's such a waste.