I do agree that credit scores are flawed in that *some* (not all) of the various measures that go into them, it don't perfectly reflect a person's actual credit trustworthiness. It's a decent approximation, but it's often treated as a hard number rather than an approximation, and that's always lame.
I do *not* agree on your statement that "try taking out a credit card and then RELIGIOUSLY paying back the full amount every month for many years. They hate you for it. Your credit score is still basically zero."
I did that - had a credit card when I left for college, which I used exclusively for only those items that my parents said they'd pay for. After 4 years of that, I graduated, went to buy a new car, and when my mom told the dealer she'd be happy to cosign if it would help, the dealer person said don't even bother, your son's credit is amazing for a 21 year old. She looked almost shocked. That's all I did - had one credit card for like 5 years, and paid it off every month, with no other debt. (Well, other than a bunch of college debt, which I suppose probably also helped, since that was also getting paid every month but was still an active debt rather than rotating. So I suppose it's not a perfect experiment.)
"Are you kidding? 16:10 is a retarded aspect ratio for a laptop screen. For one thing, most movies are 16:9, so 16:10 gives you bars on the edges. But even if you don't watch movies, 16:10 sucks ass because you lose vertical space"
Huh? I think you're confusing that statement with its antithesis. Yes, movies are 16:9, which means in 16:10, you get bars on the top and bottom - bars that are perfect for popping up UI elements without those elements covering up your movie, which is sort of nice.
Regardless, as you say, most of the things I do on a computer are not "watching a movie", at which point I like space both horizontal and vertical. How exactly does going from 1920x1200 to 1920x1080 give me additional vertical space?
Meanwhile, I'm obviously not saying "all phones should have physical keyboards". That would be silly. Some people don't want or need them, and that's great. I'm saying "phones with physical keyboards should still exist, because some people do want them and would like to be able to still purchase them". What is so wrong with allowing people the ability to purchase things they would like to purchase?
Conveniently, my name is nobody (in Latin), because I do indeed want it.
Why is it that people can't believe that other people might want different things than they do, for legitimate reasons, and that anyone who wants something other than what they want has to be "misguided and wrong"? I *like* slideout phones. I like them a lot. I would much rather buy a older used phone with a slideout keyboard than a newer shinier phone that doesn't have one, and will be about as sad when they disappear completely from even the used market, as I was when 16:10 laptop screens disappeared - another thing that marketers try to brainwash us, and have apparently somewhat succeeded, into thinking are inferior, when no they fracking are not.
Ok, maybe they're a little bit more expensive to manufacture, so, pass that on to the customer? Don't manufacturers *want* things that are more expensive to manufacture, so they can pass that difference (with markup) on? It is so much easier to type on a physical keyboard than a virtual one, it's not even funny. Meanwhile, I've dropped my phone (with a physical keyboard) sooo often - hasn't broken yet. My phone is also waaaay smaller, and waaaay lighter than many notable phones that have been selling like crazy.
Yes, it does make it a little bigger and heavier. You know what really makes a phone bigger and heavier? A larger screen, but nobody is screaming that phones must be tiny. Personally I think phablets are dumb, but I don't think anyone who wants a phablet is "misguided and wrong".
I'm completely baffled what the crap that post has to do with the thread it was posted to? That said, I refuse to let it die! Mostly because I work at a company named "Laserfiche" - so jokes about sharks with freaking laser beams are completely common around here. (Sadly, the higher ups don't have enough of a sense of humor to name one our mascot.;))
I have a friend (no, really, it is actually a friend, it isn't me, I'm not just saying "I have this friend") who has a *semi*-legitimate reason to have been approved to do business with said pot dispensaries. (Though I also learned at that point that you really don't need one - she went in thinking she was going to have to prove her case, and the doctor basically just rubber-stamped her request immediately, so that was interesting.)
Anyway, not that she's necessarily an expert in weed quality, but my understanding is the prices are fairly comparable, and the quality seems fine. Honestly, even given the choice (which she wouldn't have anyway - as totally law-abiding citizens minus the occasional bittorrent, neither of us would even have any idea how to *find* a corner dealer of illicit substances), I'd *much* rather deal with a legitimate business than a sketchy dude on the street, even if it meant paying a bit more. You can yelp review businesses - not so much a sketchy dude on the street.
It's not coincidence that one of the largest single groups of people trying to make sure the weed legalization proposition didn't pass in 2010 were freaking weed dealers - of *course* they wouldn't want the competition.
I'd love a smarter watch. I like the *concept* of wearable electronics. I would not, however, be willing to sacrifice any of the features of my "dumb" watch - I would buy a smart watch if and only if I never have to change its battery, I could take it with me in the shower or into a swimming pool, and regardless of whatever other fancy stuff it might do, it never failed to continue to tell me the correct time.
Um, because the Tesla Museum was the The Oatmeal guy's baby? And because Elon Musk presumably is donating a million bucks at least in part because said Oatmeal guy made a comic a few weeks ago that started off talking about how awesome Teslas were, and then finished by making fun of Musk for being all excited about the museum, but donating an extraordinarily tiny fraction of his immense wealth? How is the title at all wrong?
Because it's a *terrible* language for learning the fundamentals of programming? It's a pretty good language for learning the fundamentals of *programming languages*, as in a PLs class, and a pretty good language for learning how to think in functional language ways, but really, I can't imagine anyone thinking starting first-time programmers in a purely functional language would be a good idea?
Which is not to say it hasn't been done, just that it's crazy - the college I went to taught their intro course in Java when I took it, later experimented with Scheme for a year or two, and I believe use python now, because that actually makes sense.
My cell phone is in my pocket. If I want to see what time it is on my cell phone, I have to take it out of my pocket... then I have to press the power button, wait half a second, then read the time. On the other hand, my watch is on my wrist. If I want to see what time it is on my watch, I just have to look at my wrist.
My cell phone's battery lasts about a day, maybe a day and a half. If my cell phone is out of juice, I have to plug it in and wait for it to recharge. My watch's battery lasts about 2 years. That's not so much of a problem.
My cell phone is a complicated, expensive piece of electronics that can do almost anything. My watch is an extremely cheap, extremely simple piece of electronics, that does a couple things and has been engineered specifically to do those things effectively. There are times you want the former, and times you want the latter. All-purpose complicated programmable devices do *not* obsolete simple, cheap specific-purpose devices unless those latter devices just plain suck.
Nobody "needs" a watch - but then, nobody "needed" a watch before cell phones, either. There are clocks all around most of the time, why carry one with you? Because it's useful to have the time on your wrist is why.
I went and found a reader that did everything google reader did, with a similar UI - boringly named "the old reader", as in "bring back the old Reader!" (I tried a few that advertised that's what they were going for - theoldreader got it the most right at the time), ported all my stuff to it, and have since completely forgotten about Google's fail in that area.
Eh, it was mostly just for myself anyway. If it were anything even remotely professional, I would. I mean, it runs a web server that's technically locatable on google, but only if you're googling for it exactly; I expect most of its visitors were pointed to it by me directly. So it wasn't a big deal.
VS also handles javascript pretty well these days, so I rarely have to leave the VS bubble - which is nice, as VS is actually a pretty darn good IDE.
Very recently I've been fooling about with learning Android development, for which I use IDEA. It's no VS (I miss VS), but it's also no (major ew) Eclipse.
On the rare occasion that I have to edit some other type of code file (or the slightly less rare occasion that I have to edit an xml file), I use notepad++. Unless it's a really simple edit, in which case I use regular notepad.
On the rare occasion that I'm in a linux environment and I have to edit a text-type file, I use pico/nano, because screw emacs *and* VI.:p
Sad but true, if police want to do something illegal, and you argue with them, they *will* do it anyway, and you *will* be in further trouble for attempting to resist.
On the plus side, it seems like that could actually *help* you, seeing as how it would be inadmissible in court, so if you were on trial and their evidence was found that way, great for you! (I am not a lawyer. All my knowledge of law comes from watching fictional tv and reading fictional books. Ask a real lawyer if what I said is actually true. But it certainly definitely seems like it should be? But the "don't resist arrest" part definitely, that comes from the news.)
I love when I forget I have the cloud-to-butt extension installed, and it surprises me. I especially love it when people use the phrase "the cloud" in context that *don't* have anything to do with web 2.0 bullshittery.
I'm pretty sure that is factually incorrect, unless you literally have never been to Slashdot, or any other site that allows comments, ever.
It's also completely accurate. It is certainly not completely impossible that there are occasionally racists (or more likely, people who have slight biases and don't even realize it) in hiring departments for major companies. It is, however, much more likely that this issue is more cultural and/or class-based: one, minorities are more likely to be poorer by virtue of having been marginalized in the past, and poor people are less likely to have had the opportunities required to get into the tech field. Two, cultures push different things, and minorities who stick together form cultures. That is not racist, that's, well, obvious. Not all skin-color-based minorities stick together, obviously, but enough do (which is also partially class-based, as you don't really have a choice to have been born in a crap environment, and it's harder to get yourself out of one.)
As for women, there's a lot more evidence that HR departments do discriminate, and some more obvious reasons why they might want to (which are still BS and should be burned mercilessly, but which still make sense why they happen). Still, it is *also* almost certainly true that more men than women have the inclination and ability (more the former than the latter) required to get hired at tech companies, and that's not really the fault of those companies.
My dumbwatch's battery lasts about 2 years, and when that battery dies, I can go to a store and buy another one for a few bucks. When the watch itself eventually dies, I can go to a store and buy a whole new watch for about 25-30.
I would buy a smartwatch when those things are true of smartwatches. Until then, I'll stick with the watch I have, thanks. I don't really *need* a watch to do anything other than tell me what time it is and have an alarm on it, after all - in fact, doing other things would probably just make it less useful for those primary tasks, a la Stroustrup's great quote about phones: "I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone."
Presumably so you can run Blender on it, and make a Yo Dawg joke about it? I heard you like blending, so I installed Blender on your blender, so you can Blend while you blend!
I'm pretty sure the reason your payroll calculator written in C# was that slow had nothing to do with the.net framework and everything to do with something you failed to optimize in that version, but did optimize in the original Cobol version. Either that or you were running it on a way slower computer - a "desktop OS" rather than a "server", even though those terms are pretty meaningless and there should not be any reason you would have to run it on a desktop machine? Unless, of course, you're defining "server" as "machine that doesn't run Windows", in which case, that's pretty no-true-scotsman-like. You can make a plenty fast Windows server machine, then run headless, server-like C# programs on it.
Yes, obviously C# programs aren't going to be quite as fast as equivalent c++ programs - you *are* compiling C# code to bytecode and then running it through a virtual machine, so of course it'll be a little slower. But only a little. I doubt you could write a balls-to-the-wall Crysis-like shooter in C#, but I don't imagine there'd be any performance-related reason you couldn't write an RTS in C# and have it run just fine on any machine not so old that its OS wouldn't support the.net framework anyway.
That is not the same logic at all. By his logic, you should be able to *purchase* spotlights and a sound truck, which yes, yes you should. There are a lot of objects that make little sense to regulate merely owning, but a great deal of sense to regulate the *use* of. I'd put spotlights and sound trucks clearly in that category.
Objects that make sense to regulate merely owning, are those whose legitimate uses are much rarer than their illegitimate, and those where by the time someone has gotten in trouble for using it, it's far too late to do the person for whom it's been used *on* any good. GPS jammers are sort of in a grey area on that one - they probably do belong on the "regulate owning" side, but you can argue either way.
I don't really have any pressing need for 4k. I mean, I'd take it, though I feel like it would require not only sufficient hardware, but also an OS with a UI better designed for it (I imagine there'd be a lot of times, with a screen that large, that you would want to tell windows to "maximize" onto only one quadrant, for instance.)
What I would really like is for monitors to just not have *regressed*. My laptop's about 3 1/2 years old. I'd be tempted to buy a new one sometime kinda-soon (was looking, and drooling over the fact that affordable laptops these days finally generally come with bays for both a ssd and an hdd, often even a ssd and *two* hard drives)... but screw 16:9. All I want is the choice of 1920:1200. That's 1200, not 1080. (Though it's also surprising how many mid-level, desktop replacement laptops don't even have 1920:1080.)
Slashdot Mirror
I do agree that credit scores are flawed in that *some* (not all) of the various measures that go into them, it don't perfectly reflect a person's actual credit trustworthiness. It's a decent approximation, but it's often treated as a hard number rather than an approximation, and that's always lame.
I do *not* agree on your statement that "try taking out a credit card and then RELIGIOUSLY paying back the full amount every month for many years. They hate you for it. Your credit score is still basically zero."
I did that - had a credit card when I left for college, which I used exclusively for only those items that my parents said they'd pay for. After 4 years of that, I graduated, went to buy a new car, and when my mom told the dealer she'd be happy to cosign if it would help, the dealer person said don't even bother, your son's credit is amazing for a 21 year old. She looked almost shocked. That's all I did - had one credit card for like 5 years, and paid it off every month, with no other debt. (Well, other than a bunch of college debt, which I suppose probably also helped, since that was also getting paid every month but was still an active debt rather than rotating. So I suppose it's not a perfect experiment.)
"Are you kidding? 16:10 is a retarded aspect ratio for a laptop screen. For one thing, most movies are 16:9, so 16:10 gives you bars on the edges. But even if you don't watch movies, 16:10 sucks ass because you lose vertical space"
Huh? I think you're confusing that statement with its antithesis. Yes, movies are 16:9, which means in 16:10, you get bars on the top and bottom - bars that are perfect for popping up UI elements without those elements covering up your movie, which is sort of nice.
Regardless, as you say, most of the things I do on a computer are not "watching a movie", at which point I like space both horizontal and vertical. How exactly does going from 1920x1200 to 1920x1080 give me additional vertical space?
Meanwhile, I'm obviously not saying "all phones should have physical keyboards". That would be silly. Some people don't want or need them, and that's great. I'm saying "phones with physical keyboards should still exist, because some people do want them and would like to be able to still purchase them". What is so wrong with allowing people the ability to purchase things they would like to purchase?
Conveniently, my name is nobody (in Latin), because I do indeed want it.
Why is it that people can't believe that other people might want different things than they do, for legitimate reasons, and that anyone who wants something other than what they want has to be "misguided and wrong"? I *like* slideout phones. I like them a lot. I would much rather buy a older used phone with a slideout keyboard than a newer shinier phone that doesn't have one, and will be about as sad when they disappear completely from even the used market, as I was when 16:10 laptop screens disappeared - another thing that marketers try to brainwash us, and have apparently somewhat succeeded, into thinking are inferior, when no they fracking are not.
Ok, maybe they're a little bit more expensive to manufacture, so, pass that on to the customer? Don't manufacturers *want* things that are more expensive to manufacture, so they can pass that difference (with markup) on? It is so much easier to type on a physical keyboard than a virtual one, it's not even funny. Meanwhile, I've dropped my phone (with a physical keyboard) sooo often - hasn't broken yet. My phone is also waaaay smaller, and waaaay lighter than many notable phones that have been selling like crazy.
Yes, it does make it a little bigger and heavier. You know what really makes a phone bigger and heavier? A larger screen, but nobody is screaming that phones must be tiny. Personally I think phablets are dumb, but I don't think anyone who wants a phablet is "misguided and wrong".
I'm completely baffled what the crap that post has to do with the thread it was posted to? That said, I refuse to let it die! Mostly because I work at a company named "Laserfiche" - so jokes about sharks with freaking laser beams are completely common around here. (Sadly, the higher ups don't have enough of a sense of humor to name one our mascot. ;))
I have a friend (no, really, it is actually a friend, it isn't me, I'm not just saying "I have this friend") who has a *semi*-legitimate reason to have been approved to do business with said pot dispensaries. (Though I also learned at that point that you really don't need one - she went in thinking she was going to have to prove her case, and the doctor basically just rubber-stamped her request immediately, so that was interesting.)
Anyway, not that she's necessarily an expert in weed quality, but my understanding is the prices are fairly comparable, and the quality seems fine. Honestly, even given the choice (which she wouldn't have anyway - as totally law-abiding citizens minus the occasional bittorrent, neither of us would even have any idea how to *find* a corner dealer of illicit substances), I'd *much* rather deal with a legitimate business than a sketchy dude on the street, even if it meant paying a bit more. You can yelp review businesses - not so much a sketchy dude on the street.
It's not coincidence that one of the largest single groups of people trying to make sure the weed legalization proposition didn't pass in 2010 were freaking weed dealers - of *course* they wouldn't want the competition.
I'd love a smarter watch. I like the *concept* of wearable electronics. I would not, however, be willing to sacrifice any of the features of my "dumb" watch - I would buy a smart watch if and only if I never have to change its battery, I could take it with me in the shower or into a swimming pool, and regardless of whatever other fancy stuff it might do, it never failed to continue to tell me the correct time.
You're saying Michael Bay's engineering team designs ways for cars to *not* catch on fire? I would think rather the exact opposite would be true.
Um, because the Tesla Museum was the The Oatmeal guy's baby? And because Elon Musk presumably is donating a million bucks at least in part because said Oatmeal guy made a comic a few weeks ago that started off talking about how awesome Teslas were, and then finished by making fun of Musk for being all excited about the museum, but donating an extraordinarily tiny fraction of his immense wealth? How is the title at all wrong?
Because it's a *terrible* language for learning the fundamentals of programming? It's a pretty good language for learning the fundamentals of *programming languages*, as in a PLs class, and a pretty good language for learning how to think in functional language ways, but really, I can't imagine anyone thinking starting first-time programmers in a purely functional language would be a good idea?
Which is not to say it hasn't been done, just that it's crazy - the college I went to taught their intro course in Java when I took it, later experimented with Scheme for a year or two, and I believe use python now, because that actually makes sense.
My cell phone is in my pocket. If I want to see what time it is on my cell phone, I have to take it out of my pocket... then I have to press the power button, wait half a second, then read the time. On the other hand, my watch is on my wrist. If I want to see what time it is on my watch, I just have to look at my wrist.
My cell phone's battery lasts about a day, maybe a day and a half. If my cell phone is out of juice, I have to plug it in and wait for it to recharge. My watch's battery lasts about 2 years. That's not so much of a problem.
My cell phone is a complicated, expensive piece of electronics that can do almost anything. My watch is an extremely cheap, extremely simple piece of electronics, that does a couple things and has been engineered specifically to do those things effectively. There are times you want the former, and times you want the latter. All-purpose complicated programmable devices do *not* obsolete simple, cheap specific-purpose devices unless those latter devices just plain suck.
Nobody "needs" a watch - but then, nobody "needed" a watch before cell phones, either. There are clocks all around most of the time, why carry one with you? Because it's useful to have the time on your wrist is why.
I went and found a reader that did everything google reader did, with a similar UI - boringly named "the old reader", as in "bring back the old Reader!" (I tried a few that advertised that's what they were going for - theoldreader got it the most right at the time), ported all my stuff to it, and have since completely forgotten about Google's fail in that area.
Eh, it was mostly just for myself anyway. If it were anything even remotely professional, I would. I mean, it runs a web server that's technically locatable on google, but only if you're googling for it exactly; I expect most of its visitors were pointed to it by me directly. So it wasn't a big deal.
Unless you started off free, then decided to pay but kept your free domain because you were already using it. Like I did.
Two days later... still down. This is kind of absurd.
See title
VS also handles javascript pretty well these days, so I rarely have to leave the VS bubble - which is nice, as VS is actually a pretty darn good IDE.
Very recently I've been fooling about with learning Android development, for which I use IDEA. It's no VS (I miss VS), but it's also no (major ew) Eclipse.
On the rare occasion that I have to edit some other type of code file (or the slightly less rare occasion that I have to edit an xml file), I use notepad++. Unless it's a really simple edit, in which case I use regular notepad.
On the rare occasion that I'm in a linux environment and I have to edit a text-type file, I use pico/nano, because screw emacs *and* VI. :p
Sad but true, if police want to do something illegal, and you argue with them, they *will* do it anyway, and you *will* be in further trouble for attempting to resist.
On the plus side, it seems like that could actually *help* you, seeing as how it would be inadmissible in court, so if you were on trial and their evidence was found that way, great for you! (I am not a lawyer. All my knowledge of law comes from watching fictional tv and reading fictional books. Ask a real lawyer if what I said is actually true. But it certainly definitely seems like it should be? But the "don't resist arrest" part definitely, that comes from the news.)
I love when I forget I have the cloud-to-butt extension installed, and it surprises me. I especially love it when people use the phrase "the cloud" in context that *don't* have anything to do with web 2.0 bullshittery.
I'm pretty sure that is factually incorrect, unless you literally have never been to Slashdot, or any other site that allows comments, ever.
It's also completely accurate. It is certainly not completely impossible that there are occasionally racists (or more likely, people who have slight biases and don't even realize it) in hiring departments for major companies. It is, however, much more likely that this issue is more cultural and/or class-based: one, minorities are more likely to be poorer by virtue of having been marginalized in the past, and poor people are less likely to have had the opportunities required to get into the tech field. Two, cultures push different things, and minorities who stick together form cultures. That is not racist, that's, well, obvious. Not all skin-color-based minorities stick together, obviously, but enough do (which is also partially class-based, as you don't really have a choice to have been born in a crap environment, and it's harder to get yourself out of one.)
As for women, there's a lot more evidence that HR departments do discriminate, and some more obvious reasons why they might want to (which are still BS and should be burned mercilessly, but which still make sense why they happen). Still, it is *also* almost certainly true that more men than women have the inclination and ability (more the former than the latter) required to get hired at tech companies, and that's not really the fault of those companies.
My dumbwatch's battery lasts about 2 years, and when that battery dies, I can go to a store and buy another one for a few bucks. When the watch itself eventually dies, I can go to a store and buy a whole new watch for about 25-30.
I would buy a smartwatch when those things are true of smartwatches. Until then, I'll stick with the watch I have, thanks. I don't really *need* a watch to do anything other than tell me what time it is and have an alarm on it, after all - in fact, doing other things would probably just make it less useful for those primary tasks, a la Stroustrup's great quote about phones: "I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone."
Presumably so you can run Blender on it, and make a Yo Dawg joke about it? I heard you like blending, so I installed Blender on your blender, so you can Blend while you blend!
I'm pretty sure the reason your payroll calculator written in C# was that slow had nothing to do with the .net framework and everything to do with something you failed to optimize in that version, but did optimize in the original Cobol version. Either that or you were running it on a way slower computer - a "desktop OS" rather than a "server", even though those terms are pretty meaningless and there should not be any reason you would have to run it on a desktop machine? Unless, of course, you're defining "server" as "machine that doesn't run Windows", in which case, that's pretty no-true-scotsman-like. You can make a plenty fast Windows server machine, then run headless, server-like C# programs on it.
Yes, obviously C# programs aren't going to be quite as fast as equivalent c++ programs - you *are* compiling C# code to bytecode and then running it through a virtual machine, so of course it'll be a little slower. But only a little. I doubt you could write a balls-to-the-wall Crysis-like shooter in C#, but I don't imagine there'd be any performance-related reason you couldn't write an RTS in C# and have it run just fine on any machine not so old that its OS wouldn't support the .net framework anyway.
That is not the same logic at all. By his logic, you should be able to *purchase* spotlights and a sound truck, which yes, yes you should. There are a lot of objects that make little sense to regulate merely owning, but a great deal of sense to regulate the *use* of. I'd put spotlights and sound trucks clearly in that category.
Objects that make sense to regulate merely owning, are those whose legitimate uses are much rarer than their illegitimate, and those where by the time someone has gotten in trouble for using it, it's far too late to do the person for whom it's been used *on* any good. GPS jammers are sort of in a grey area on that one - they probably do belong on the "regulate owning" side, but you can argue either way.
Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" back in 1976... it describes exactly the same fracking concept.
...What other things were you molesting...?
I don't really have any pressing need for 4k. I mean, I'd take it, though I feel like it would require not only sufficient hardware, but also an OS with a UI better designed for it (I imagine there'd be a lot of times, with a screen that large, that you would want to tell windows to "maximize" onto only one quadrant, for instance.)
What I would really like is for monitors to just not have *regressed*. My laptop's about 3 1/2 years old. I'd be tempted to buy a new one sometime kinda-soon (was looking, and drooling over the fact that affordable laptops these days finally generally come with bays for both a ssd and an hdd, often even a ssd and *two* hard drives)... but screw 16:9. All I want is the choice of 1920:1200. That's 1200, not 1080. (Though it's also surprising how many mid-level, desktop replacement laptops don't even have 1920:1080.)
"The ISPs want to sell you the same service instead and are not afraid to degrade Netflix service to get what they want."
More like, they want to sell you a service that's buggy and slow for way more money, and would like to kill netflix so people don't have a choice.