If you go camping in the woods and are afraid of bears, every shadow looks like a bear and every noise sounds like a bear.
I frequently go camping in the woods, I am terrified of snakes and I agree with your general statement. I will frequently carry a machete for the purpose of separating snakes from their lives. The thing is, I don't go wildly swinging every time I see a branch, twig or something in my peripheral vision move. I stop, quickly but safely move away from the thing that could be a snake and try and figure out what it is. If it is a snake, I then take a split second to assess how much of a threat it is to me and respond accordingly. More often than not, I simply avoid it. That's even knowing those bastards are a lot faster than I am, especially when I am tired.
On one particularly horrific trip, I was on a very narrow ridge line and ran into a rattlesnake (and I didn't have my machete). I spent nearly an hour trying to come up with a plan before deciding that chances were pretty good it didn't want to tangle with me. I had to pass well within striking distance but I moved slowly, carefully and deliberately past it. While not deadly, it was a mix of my worst nightmare and a decent dose of venom in the backwoods. I prepared for the worst but hoped for the best. It didn't want to mess with me and we both went out separate ways, happy that the other was gone.
I am not a professional woodsman, ranger or herpetologist. I do not have any training or experience in dealing with snakes outside of "kill them good" and suck at identifying them. Even with that, I know that if I get jumpy or panic then things are going to get really bad really quick and a good outcome becomes more pure fortune than anything else. I would be shocked to find that police are not trained to stay calm and keep the situation under control.
So granting patents for "[ whatever ] on a computer" became a revenue stream.
In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman (I do believe the chapter "I Want My Dollar!"), Feynman talks about being contacted by someone trying to get him to come up with everything that could possibly be nuclear-powered and patent it. These parasites have been around a lot longer than you are giving them credit for.
Given the previous information you can find the chapter online easily but I encourage you to read the book -- it is quite good.
Under Armour seems to have purchased a whole herd of fitness sites and brought them together under them. I noticed that MFP, a cycling site and a running site I use (not with great results but I use them) all came under their control within the past few years. I also noticed a lot of overlap between the sites after the acquisitions so I am guessing that breaking into one system gave them access to everything. I actually kind of liked the homogeneity after the merges but this is the obvious downside.
While I am not a big democrat, I think many of us wanted to see Bernie vs Trump.
I desperately wanted this. I did not want to see the two candidates battle it out as much as I wanted to see both parties realize that the candidates they wanted to put forth were unwanted by a huge swath of their bases. In my grand dream, I was hoping that they would realize they cannot put forth status quo candidates anymore and start to stretch their narrow focus. I doubt it would have worked but it was my dream.
Make copyrights non-transferable from the actual creator(s), and only licensable for no longer than 5 years at a time.
I largely agree but would suggest that copyrights be transferable exactly once (idea stolen from another/. poster a long time ago). If I create something but cannot fully realize it for financial reasons, I could at least sell the copyright to a large organization that could fully realize it while I still profit from the invention. It couldn't be sold time after time but I am sure trolls would pop up and ruin that idea. Still, it would be good for a little while and I like it significantly more than what we have now.
A long time ago I worked with an application called Octane -- a customizable CRM software package. It's IDE was Visio and its programming was via flowcharts. They advertised their system as a self-documenting language.
I thought it was a neat idea but, once you really started programming in it, you realized it wasn't a very good one. Flowcharts allow you to gloss over some of the finer details of implementation. Programming requires those implementations be spelled out which makes that section of code/documentation awful to look at. Eventually, any decent-sized chunk of code/documentation resulted in a huge flowchart that you couldn't take in in one viewing.
It really didn't help that Octane screwed up their implementation of the "language" with numerous bugs. I spent all night trying to figure out why XML wouldn't load. Any node could be in any order but I eventually discovered that one node for some reason had to be in a particular order. The rest? Throw those anywhere. This one node in the center of the XML had to be right here.
By far the bigger problem was exception handling and IF statements. There simply was no exception handling whatsoever. Simply don't make mistakes. Unfortunately, the flow of IF statements in their accursed pile of junk software worked so that, if an IF statement evaluated to True, it would follow one path. If it evaluated to False it would throw an uncatchable exception (no exception handling) which ended the application.
The silver lining was that they allowed calls to outside DLLs. After I figured out all these gotchas in the code, it was decided that every single flowchart would consist of one object: a call to an outside DLL written in a real language with real features. By that point I was put on another project to figure out how that damned thing worked.
It is my understanding that Octane changed their name and engine with the next release and became a better software company. Still, based on that experience, I don't think a flowcharting "language" is a good idea at all. I would prefer my diagrams be able to gloss over certain details if need be.
Attention to detail? Slovenliness? These people must not have looked at much corporate code, there's a world of kludges out there.
I have worked with far, far more developers who were in it for the money rather than a love of programming. I worked with one developer who got into it because they wanted to buy a cheap sports car. That person didn't write very good code.
If you "don't do riddles" then I actively don't want to hire you
I love to program. I program during the day and go home in the evenings to program for fun in my preferred environment. While I don't trust myself to give a fair rating to my ability, several companies have entrusted me to interview developers, mentor new developers, perform code reviews, designs and write coding standards and best practices documents, I seem to have at least some competency at programming. Either that or several employers are in on a dark joke I am just not getting.
While I adore solving programming problems, I loathe riddles. I have no patience whatsoever for riddles.
I view riddles as a complete waste of time. I should add that that is my view of them. I know some people that love them. Awesome. I hate them with a passion because I view them as a complete waste of time. More often than not, the purpose of riddles I have seen is not to determine how clever or smart I am, but rather to show how clever and smart the person asking the riddle is.
Programming problems (real-life ones that is -- I also hate unrealistically simplistic problems) are gorgeous things. When I solve a programming problem I am extremely proud of it because I accomplished something. I can hold it up and immediately see the fruits of my effort. I started at A, broke through a barrier and ended up at B. With riddles you end up exactly where you started, you just wasted some time. Even when I solve one my reaction is more akin to "Well, I am glad that's over with. Now I want to do something productive."
I don't see riddles as a good measure of a person's ability to do anything other than memorize riddles. If I were in an interview I would much rather be given a practical development problem and asked to sketch out a solution. That can show how I think, what I know and the depth of my experience. Throw some people in there to discuss it with me and let me demonstrate how I handle interacting with people. That seems a far, far better judgment of my abilities as a programmer than riddles.
If I met Gollum I would be so dead so fast.
This isn't to say you are wrong -- if this works for you then that is great. I pose this as an opposite viewpoint to yours. Perhaps you may be missing out on some good developers.
The local 7-11 store taped over the slot and have a note to swipe the card instead. The chip reader is too slow to move a long line at a faster pace. With limited parking out in front, the clerks want to turn over as many customers as fast as possible to avoid losing sales.
An auto parts store near me rolled out the chip reader software which ended up shutting down their entire store's computer system for three days. I would bet it was their own corporate software release that did it but apparently most stores (nationwide retailer) had it work just fine.
Where I live it seems about 50% of all retailers support the chip readers though everyone has them. It is hard to guess who uses it as well. It throws me for a loop every time I go into Petsmart and I have to swipe my card.
If you're using an encrypted VoIP app or email to communicate, the carriers don't have access to the data either.
Likewise if the subjects of the surveillance are using a personal code (code words) it wouldn't matter if their conversation was in plain-text unless the surveillant understood that code.
Employers are also required to pay out your vacation time when you quit.
Be sure to study both your employer's policies and state laws before you rely on this. My current company's policy is that you will not be paid for any accrued paid time off when you leave. I researched it and, sure enough, my state's law is pretty much "It is up to the employer whether you get that or not." My previous employer did pay me for my rather hefty accrued time off when I left which was quite nice.
I went to school with quite a diverse group of people and every so often we would run into other students that were used to pit toilets. Seat or not, they tried to use the toilet as if it were a pit toilet. I have definitely heard of many westerners in the far east grossly (in more ways than one) misunderstanding the plumbing system.
With that in mind, I found that statement rather confusing. It sounded ominous but I could interpret it in two different ways.
Version numbers are a lot less arbitrary than artsy-fartsy names like "Dapper Drake" or "Mangled Melon" or whatever Ubuntu is up to today.
One day a coworker and I were engaging in one of our usual pointless debates about software trivialities. I said that I preferred well thought-out version numbers to version code names while he preferred the code names. The next day he came in and grudgingly admitted that I had a point. He wanted to download the most recent version of Ubunutu but had considerable difficulty finding it. It took him about an hour to realize that "Dapper Drake" was not a user name.
Google errs on the other side, empowering handset providers, allowing them to indulge their baser instincts when it comes to how they view customers on their networks. For telcos, the customer is the commodity.
"So when Siri goes out into the Internet looking for what an abortion center is or what an abortion provider is, it hits on these non-abortion-providing organizations because they're the ones who use the word to underlie their websites," [Damon Poeter, a reporter for PC Magazine] says.
My favourite Tick episode is where he gets flu and, for some reason, has to fight a version of himself made out of snot. He wins by snorting it into himself and sneezing it into a dimensional portal. Nice.
The Tick had to fight a clone of himself that Thrakkorzog made out of a tissue sample. Since the Tick is nigh-invulnerable Thrakkorzog had to obtain that tissue sample from one of Tick's actual discarded tissues. He eventually beat the clone mucous version of himself by inhaling it.
That was a brilliant cartoon. I remember that as one of the first episodes I watched. The Tick had to run an extension cord up to the roof to power the device to send Thrakkorzog back to his own universe. I remember watching it and thinking "This would be the greatest cartoon ever if the plan failed because he needed a three-pronged adapter." Sure enough, it was the greatest cartoon ever.
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I frequently go camping in the woods, I am terrified of snakes and I agree with your general statement. I will frequently carry a machete for the purpose of separating snakes from their lives. The thing is, I don't go wildly swinging every time I see a branch, twig or something in my peripheral vision move. I stop, quickly but safely move away from the thing that could be a snake and try and figure out what it is. If it is a snake, I then take a split second to assess how much of a threat it is to me and respond accordingly. More often than not, I simply avoid it. That's even knowing those bastards are a lot faster than I am, especially when I am tired.
On one particularly horrific trip, I was on a very narrow ridge line and ran into a rattlesnake (and I didn't have my machete). I spent nearly an hour trying to come up with a plan before deciding that chances were pretty good it didn't want to tangle with me. I had to pass well within striking distance but I moved slowly, carefully and deliberately past it. While not deadly, it was a mix of my worst nightmare and a decent dose of venom in the backwoods. I prepared for the worst but hoped for the best. It didn't want to mess with me and we both went out separate ways, happy that the other was gone.
I am not a professional woodsman, ranger or herpetologist. I do not have any training or experience in dealing with snakes outside of "kill them good" and suck at identifying them. Even with that, I know that if I get jumpy or panic then things are going to get really bad really quick and a good outcome becomes more pure fortune than anything else. I would be shocked to find that police are not trained to stay calm and keep the situation under control.
In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman (I do believe the chapter "I Want My Dollar!"), Feynman talks about being contacted by someone trying to get him to come up with everything that could possibly be nuclear-powered and patent it. These parasites have been around a lot longer than you are giving them credit for.
Given the previous information you can find the chapter online easily but I encourage you to read the book -- it is quite good.
Under Armour seems to have purchased a whole herd of fitness sites and brought them together under them. I noticed that MFP, a cycling site and a running site I use (not with great results but I use them) all came under their control within the past few years. I also noticed a lot of overlap between the sites after the acquisitions so I am guessing that breaking into one system gave them access to everything. I actually kind of liked the homogeneity after the merges but this is the obvious downside.
I desperately wanted this. I did not want to see the two candidates battle it out as much as I wanted to see both parties realize that the candidates they wanted to put forth were unwanted by a huge swath of their bases. In my grand dream, I was hoping that they would realize they cannot put forth status quo candidates anymore and start to stretch their narrow focus. I doubt it would have worked but it was my dream.
Ooh, thanks for that. I apologize.
Here is a breakdown of the vote. I wish news outlets would simply provide a link to this and make life easier.
Damn it, I am an idiot that posted in the wrong thread. Sorry for the noise. And this noise.
This appears to be the actual vote so you can see how people voted.
Gripe: I wish news articles would include this link or something similar that makes finding this information easier.
I largely agree but would suggest that copyrights be transferable exactly once (idea stolen from another /. poster a long time ago). If I create something but cannot fully realize it for financial reasons, I could at least sell the copyright to a large organization that could fully realize it while I still profit from the invention. It couldn't be sold time after time but I am sure trolls would pop up and ruin that idea. Still, it would be good for a little while and I like it significantly more than what we have now.
Cynically speaking, it is kind of a joke.
A long time ago I worked with an application called Octane -- a customizable CRM software package. It's IDE was Visio and its programming was via flowcharts. They advertised their system as a self-documenting language.
I thought it was a neat idea but, once you really started programming in it, you realized it wasn't a very good one. Flowcharts allow you to gloss over some of the finer details of implementation. Programming requires those implementations be spelled out which makes that section of code/documentation awful to look at. Eventually, any decent-sized chunk of code/documentation resulted in a huge flowchart that you couldn't take in in one viewing.
It really didn't help that Octane screwed up their implementation of the "language" with numerous bugs. I spent all night trying to figure out why XML wouldn't load. Any node could be in any order but I eventually discovered that one node for some reason had to be in a particular order. The rest? Throw those anywhere. This one node in the center of the XML had to be right here.
By far the bigger problem was exception handling and IF statements. There simply was no exception handling whatsoever. Simply don't make mistakes. Unfortunately, the flow of IF statements in their accursed pile of junk software worked so that, if an IF statement evaluated to True, it would follow one path. If it evaluated to False it would throw an uncatchable exception (no exception handling) which ended the application.
The silver lining was that they allowed calls to outside DLLs. After I figured out all these gotchas in the code, it was decided that every single flowchart would consist of one object: a call to an outside DLL written in a real language with real features. By that point I was put on another project to figure out how that damned thing worked.
It is my understanding that Octane changed their name and engine with the next release and became a better software company. Still, based on that experience, I don't think a flowcharting "language" is a good idea at all. I would prefer my diagrams be able to gloss over certain details if need be.
I have worked with far, far more developers who were in it for the money rather than a love of programming. I worked with one developer who got into it because they wanted to buy a cheap sports car. That person didn't write very good code.
I love to program. I program during the day and go home in the evenings to program for fun in my preferred environment. While I don't trust myself to give a fair rating to my ability, several companies have entrusted me to interview developers, mentor new developers, perform code reviews, designs and write coding standards and best practices documents, I seem to have at least some competency at programming. Either that or several employers are in on a dark joke I am just not getting.
While I adore solving programming problems, I loathe riddles. I have no patience whatsoever for riddles.
I view riddles as a complete waste of time. I should add that that is my view of them. I know some people that love them. Awesome. I hate them with a passion because I view them as a complete waste of time. More often than not, the purpose of riddles I have seen is not to determine how clever or smart I am, but rather to show how clever and smart the person asking the riddle is.
Programming problems (real-life ones that is -- I also hate unrealistically simplistic problems) are gorgeous things. When I solve a programming problem I am extremely proud of it because I accomplished something. I can hold it up and immediately see the fruits of my effort. I started at A, broke through a barrier and ended up at B. With riddles you end up exactly where you started, you just wasted some time. Even when I solve one my reaction is more akin to "Well, I am glad that's over with. Now I want to do something productive."
I don't see riddles as a good measure of a person's ability to do anything other than memorize riddles. If I were in an interview I would much rather be given a practical development problem and asked to sketch out a solution. That can show how I think, what I know and the depth of my experience. Throw some people in there to discuss it with me and let me demonstrate how I handle interacting with people. That seems a far, far better judgment of my abilities as a programmer than riddles.
If I met Gollum I would be so dead so fast.
This isn't to say you are wrong -- if this works for you then that is great. I pose this as an opposite viewpoint to yours. Perhaps you may be missing out on some good developers.
Posting to undo a bad moderation. Sorry
An auto parts store near me rolled out the chip reader software which ended up shutting down their entire store's computer system for three days. I would bet it was their own corporate software release that did it but apparently most stores (nationwide retailer) had it work just fine.
Where I live it seems about 50% of all retailers support the chip readers though everyone has them. It is hard to guess who uses it as well. It throws me for a loop every time I go into Petsmart and I have to swipe my card.
Likewise if the subjects of the surveillance are using a personal code (code words) it wouldn't matter if their conversation was in plain-text unless the surveillant understood that code.
Be sure to study both your employer's policies and state laws before you rely on this. My current company's policy is that you will not be paid for any accrued paid time off when you leave. I researched it and, sure enough, my state's law is pretty much "It is up to the employer whether you get that or not." My previous employer did pay me for my rather hefty accrued time off when I left which was quite nice.
With that in mind, I found that statement rather confusing. It sounded ominous but I could interpret it in two different ways.
One day a coworker and I were engaging in one of our usual pointless debates about software trivialities. I said that I preferred well thought-out version numbers to version code names while he preferred the code names. The next day he came in and grudgingly admitted that I had a point. He wanted to download the most recent version of Ubunutu but had considerable difficulty finding it. It took him about an hour to realize that "Dapper Drake" was not a user name.
I am not saying that is impossible but an NPR story on this concluded that:
The Tick had to fight a clone of himself that Thrakkorzog made out of a tissue sample. Since the Tick is nigh-invulnerable Thrakkorzog had to obtain that tissue sample from one of Tick's actual discarded tissues. He eventually beat the clone mucous version of himself by inhaling it.
That was a brilliant cartoon. I remember that as one of the first episodes I watched. The Tick had to run an extension cord up to the roof to power the device to send Thrakkorzog back to his own universe. I remember watching it and thinking "This would be the greatest cartoon ever if the plan failed because he needed a three-pronged adapter." Sure enough, it was the greatest cartoon ever.
I like cartoons too much
You also have The Film Crew