It's actually quite funny how US people put up with PayPal and their shitty and insecure system.
It's actually quite funny what people in other parts of the world put up with that we do not. However, in Paypal's case I think it's more a matter of ineffective regulation than anything else.
Even if they do ask, they depend on someone else to provide "the one true answer" - because they don't have the tools to arrive at a useful answer on their own.
Which provides for a compliant, easily manipulable population. Remove the capacity to handle mathematics and even basic statistics, and you have people who literally can be told what to think.
to become defacto babysitters for millions of kids.
Defecto you mean. Family economics has changed substantially as well: most that I know fell into the so-called "two-income trap" where both parents have to work to maintain their respective American dreams, leaving precious little time for baby-sitting (AKA, "raising one's children properly.") If you're going to be a parent, and you give a damn about your kids, make sure that you have enough time to spend with them. It's a substantial investment too... but you shouldn't complain. After all, it's the commitment you made when you decided to get laid. If you can't handle that, keep it zipped. We'll all be better off.
When you look back in time, the only pattern I've ever seen is access to implements and free time. Admittedly, that's highly unscientific, but having free time in which to do nothing and where one doesn't have to produce as a portion of the day is really important if one wishes to create anything.
The poor Russian we are, suffering under a bloody KGB regime, why don't you come here and bring us some of you freedoms? And do not forget winter clothes, it can get bloody cold over here.
No, we only spread freedom to countries with plenty of oil and other natural resources... oh wait.
Most of the population of the world live in places that are at times hotter than that and they still don't die...
So, in other words, as long as you don't actually, you know, die, it doesn't matter how miserable you are? That's an extreme position and adds little to this discussion.
Wondering about the logic in not at least pretending to have one.
When the excrement hits the fan it's nice to have an ace at the negotiating table.
They were nuked before because they didn't have anything to retaliate with.
Because if you successfully pretend to have one, you just painted a bullseye on your forehead.
Residential refrigeration IS a rich only thing if you look at the entire world instead of just the US. Especially whole-house cooling in the summer seems like a luxury to me.
The editors should've done their job and at least looked at who the article was sourcing,
I had someone pass me a link to an article claiming that President Obama has ties to terrorist organizations. I backtracked the link and found the article came from a white supremacist site (serious loonies... let's just say that the sky is not blue in their world.) I pointed that out to the person who sent it: they were shocked, and promised to be more vigilant in the future. It does pay to check your sources.
I am not nearly as confident that the rest of the nuclear world has safeguards anywhere nearly as good, and that's what worries me
Me too. Presumably (and you'd know better than I) the Soviet Empire had pretty good safeguards, given that they managed to avoid starting World War III. In the U.S., no one person can order a nuclear strike. A nuclear-capable dictatorship might be very different.
Prices rises, lower concentrations become economically viable, util we use all the fucking Earth crust.
This is just a STUPID rant with the all too common "blame the rich". Way more resources are used keeping stupid people like you viable than keeping my humble pleasure boat.
There aren't enough yacht-owning rich to account for all the resource usage on this planet. Hell, one of the biggest uses of electric power in the U.S. is residential refrigeration... let's blame the rich for that.
the developers of GIMP respond well to people who can admit that their suggestions might be less then perfect.
Irrelevant. There's nothing that says a development team must implement Joe User's suggestions. What they should do, in my opinion, is be polite about it. It doesn't matter if the user is obnoxious or otherwise "less that perfect". A professional simply accepts the suggestion and either implements it or not, but doesn't respond childishly.
It is amazing how the US comes down on on other countries for even thinking of having 1 bomb. While their history is of irresponsibly setting them off like fire crackers on the 4th. How many atolls no longer exist? How many places on earth are radioactive? Yet we are all supposed to believe that they are the sole responsible country on the earth.
Amazing? Not at all. It's called "self preservation." Funny you should mention firecrackers: they're illegal in many states (which pisses me off, actually: paternalistic politicians trying to "protect the children"), and if you knew more about us, you might understand their cultural and historical relevance. Regardless, you can complain about our history of testing nuclear weapons, but you know, we don't anymore. You also conveniently forgot to mention that Russia has a similar history, and in fact set the record for the largest fusion explosion ever: fifty megatons of TNT equivalent, and that was tuned down from the design yield of one hundred megatons, over concerns about fallout. I believe our biggest detonation was about twenty-five (and at that, it exceeded expectations.)
Just get one thing through your silly little head: this is NOT A MATTER OF FAIRNESS. It's just not. We aren't discussing trade agreements, or illegal immigration, or any of a hundred other issues that the world faces every day. We're discussing weapon systems that can kill millions of innocent people in a few milliseconds. Do you really want everyone to have them? Is it "fair" that a city should die because you don't like the U.S.?
Look, the United States and Russia exercised the requisite restraint during the Cold War and after. Yes, that was the desired outcome of M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction), but put it this way: MAD worked. No ICBMs were fired, no long-range bombers dropped heavy weapons on Moscow or Washington. So here's the question: do you honestly believe that all countries in the world capable of building atomic weapons would do the same? Do you believe that the leaders of all countries are sufficiently rational to understand the concept of MAD? Yes, we dropped small tactical devices on an enemy twice during World War II, but when you consider the power of modern fusion weapons when compared to Fatman and Littleboy, well, you really need to rethink your position.
This is a matter of "we have them, Russia has them, China has them, England has them, Israel has them, and a few other countries have them, and that's enough." It less to do with who is the "most responsible", and more to do with the odds of thermonuclear weapons being used increasing the more nations have them. Consequently, we'd like to keep anyone else who doesn't already have them from acquiring them, and the United States is hardly alone in that position. Nobody who has atomic weapons, nobody who has seen what they can do, is at all comfortable with an unstable nation owning them. You can bitch all you want about that, but the fewer nations that have the things the better.
You're concerning yourself that it's "unfair" that the United States and a few other powerful nations have nuclear weapons and don't want anyone else to have them. Well, you're damn right, it may be unfair, but it's the sanest approach to the issue that we have. And you know what? The first time some two-bit "nuclear power" like Iran, Pakistan or North Korea decides turn a few square miles of someone else's city into a glass lake, you'll be the first to complain that the United States should somehow have prevented those deaths. I just know it.
Odds are they will be met the same way my father was met by the GIMP developers, i.e told to fuck off and do the changes himself, despite him not being a programmer at all, just an advanced hobby photographer. He spent almost a week laying out what, how and why, writing a couple of pages of structured and well-described suggestions.
I don't find that hard to believe at all. The thing is, if you're a programmer working in the software department of a larger organization, you will have other people whose job it is to find out what customers need. That information is ideally codified into reasonably detailed specs and passed on to the software engineering staff.
Your typical small software house or open-source project doesn't have that luxury: developers usually are required to deal with end-users directly, and depending upon their personalities (and general level of professionalism) that may not work very well. True professionals in any field try their best to leave their egos at home, and when they get to work accept that there might be a better way of doing things. In a word, openmindedness. It's especially important when it comes to user-interface design: it truly does not matter how great a solution you feel you've created if your users think it sucks. When that happens, you go back to the drawing board and figure out something better. But the first step in that process is an admission that you're not perfect, and that your work can, in fact, be improved upon.
I bet if they switched from their Windows software to a Mac OS software, they'd experience similar results. It's inevitable that when you jump from one style to another style, you'll experience some slowdown in the work.
Office Ribbon, anyone ? Why the hell did Microsoft think that was a good idea, without at least leaving the menus in place for transition.
"That's very true. ASCAP (and the RIAA, and all other such abominations) feel that they are entitled to a piece of every sale or performance of every copyrighted work."
How is this not a protection racket??
The difference here is, I think, that they've convinced the Federal Government to be their enforcers.
Slashdot Mirror
Calling a phone Eris is sort of asking for it..
Yeah ... kinda like naming a space telescope after someone whose name rhymes with "trouble".
It's actually quite funny how US people put up with PayPal and their shitty and insecure system.
It's actually quite funny what people in other parts of the world put up with that we do not. However, in Paypal's case I think it's more a matter of ineffective regulation than anything else.
Even if they do ask, they depend on someone else to provide "the one true answer" - because they don't have the tools to arrive at a useful answer on their own.
Which provides for a compliant, easily manipulable population. Remove the capacity to handle mathematics and even basic statistics, and you have people who literally can be told what to think.
to become defacto babysitters for millions of kids.
Defecto you mean. Family economics has changed substantially as well: most that I know fell into the so-called "two-income trap" where both parents have to work to maintain their respective American dreams, leaving precious little time for baby-sitting (AKA, "raising one's children properly.") If you're going to be a parent, and you give a damn about your kids, make sure that you have enough time to spend with them. It's a substantial investment too ... but you shouldn't complain. After all, it's the commitment you made when you decided to get laid. If you can't handle that, keep it zipped. We'll all be better off.
When you look back in time, the only pattern I've ever seen is access to implements and free time. Admittedly, that's highly unscientific, but having free time in which to do nothing and where one doesn't have to produce as a portion of the day is really important if one wishes to create anything.
Google's 20%, for example?
Personally, I'm always looking for ways to make Paypal less relevant.
The poor Russian we are, suffering under a bloody KGB regime, why don't you come here and bring us some of you freedoms? And do not forget winter clothes, it can get bloody cold over here.
No, we only spread freedom to countries with plenty of oil and other natural resources ... oh wait.
Most of the population of the world live in places that are at times hotter than that and they still don't die...
So, in other words, as long as you don't actually, you know, die, it doesn't matter how miserable you are? That's an extreme position and adds little to this discussion.
Basically George is mad that someone ripped off a design that he ripped off already.
Ha. You could be talking about Steve Jobs.
As my wife is so fond of saying...."It's all about the packaging."
Hm. I think we need to see a picture of your wife.
Vader wasn't in a suit because he was 'battle scarred', he fell into a damn volcano.
He had his legs cut off by Obi Wan. I think that counts as battle scarred in most people's book.
Wondering about the logic in not at least pretending to have one. When the excrement hits the fan it's nice to have an ace at the negotiating table. They were nuked before because they didn't have anything to retaliate with.
Because if you successfully pretend to have one, you just painted a bullseye on your forehead.
Residential refrigeration IS a rich only thing if you look at the entire world instead of just the US. Especially whole-house cooling in the summer seems like a luxury to me .
It was 102 outdoors today. One man's luxury ...
The editors should've done their job and at least looked at who the article was sourcing,
I had someone pass me a link to an article claiming that President Obama has ties to terrorist organizations. I backtracked the link and found the article came from a white supremacist site (serious loonies ... let's just say that the sky is not blue in their world.) I pointed that out to the person who sent it: they were shocked, and promised to be more vigilant in the future. It does pay to check your sources.
FUCK THE TSA!
I wouldn't fuck 'em with yours.
Hey TSA ... I got your "controversial opinion" right here!
I am not nearly as confident that the rest of the nuclear world has safeguards anywhere nearly as good, and that's what worries me
Me too. Presumably (and you'd know better than I) the Soviet Empire had pretty good safeguards, given that they managed to avoid starting World War III. In the U.S., no one person can order a nuclear strike. A nuclear-capable dictatorship might be very different.
Insightful MY ASS.
Prices rises, lower concentrations become economically viable, util we use all the fucking Earth crust.
This is just a STUPID rant with the all too common "blame the rich". Way more resources are used keeping stupid people like you viable than keeping my humble pleasure boat.
There aren't enough yacht-owning rich to account for all the resource usage on this planet. Hell, one of the biggest uses of electric power in the U.S. is residential refrigeration ... let's blame the rich for that.
the developers of GIMP respond well to people who can admit that their suggestions might be less then perfect.
Irrelevant. There's nothing that says a development team must implement Joe User's suggestions. What they should do, in my opinion, is be polite about it. It doesn't matter if the user is obnoxious or otherwise "less that perfect". A professional simply accepts the suggestion and either implements it or not, but doesn't respond childishly.
It is amazing how the US comes down on on other countries for even thinking of having 1 bomb. While their history is of irresponsibly setting them off like fire crackers on the 4th. How many atolls no longer exist? How many places on earth are radioactive? Yet we are all supposed to believe that they are the sole responsible country on the earth.
Amazing? Not at all. It's called "self preservation." Funny you should mention firecrackers: they're illegal in many states (which pisses me off, actually: paternalistic politicians trying to "protect the children"), and if you knew more about us, you might understand their cultural and historical relevance. Regardless, you can complain about our history of testing nuclear weapons, but you know, we don't anymore. You also conveniently forgot to mention that Russia has a similar history, and in fact set the record for the largest fusion explosion ever: fifty megatons of TNT equivalent, and that was tuned down from the design yield of one hundred megatons, over concerns about fallout. I believe our biggest detonation was about twenty-five (and at that, it exceeded expectations.)
Just get one thing through your silly little head: this is NOT A MATTER OF FAIRNESS. It's just not. We aren't discussing trade agreements, or illegal immigration, or any of a hundred other issues that the world faces every day. We're discussing weapon systems that can kill millions of innocent people in a few milliseconds. Do you really want everyone to have them? Is it "fair" that a city should die because you don't like the U.S.?
Look, the United States and Russia exercised the requisite restraint during the Cold War and after. Yes, that was the desired outcome of M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction), but put it this way: MAD worked. No ICBMs were fired, no long-range bombers dropped heavy weapons on Moscow or Washington. So here's the question: do you honestly believe that all countries in the world capable of building atomic weapons would do the same? Do you believe that the leaders of all countries are sufficiently rational to understand the concept of MAD? Yes, we dropped small tactical devices on an enemy twice during World War II, but when you consider the power of modern fusion weapons when compared to Fatman and Littleboy, well, you really need to rethink your position.
This is a matter of "we have them, Russia has them, China has them, England has them, Israel has them, and a few other countries have them, and that's enough." It less to do with who is the "most responsible", and more to do with the odds of thermonuclear weapons being used increasing the more nations have them. Consequently, we'd like to keep anyone else who doesn't already have them from acquiring them, and the United States is hardly alone in that position. Nobody who has atomic weapons, nobody who has seen what they can do, is at all comfortable with an unstable nation owning them. You can bitch all you want about that, but the fewer nations that have the things the better.
You're concerning yourself that it's "unfair" that the United States and a few other powerful nations have nuclear weapons and don't want anyone else to have them. Well, you're damn right, it may be unfair, but it's the sanest approach to the issue that we have. And you know what? The first time some two-bit "nuclear power" like Iran, Pakistan or North Korea decides turn a few square miles of someone else's city into a glass lake, you'll be the first to complain that the United States should somehow have prevented those deaths. I just know it.
Hypocrites.
Odds are they will be met the same way my father was met by the GIMP developers, i.e told to fuck off and do the changes himself, despite him not being a programmer at all, just an advanced hobby photographer. He spent almost a week laying out what, how and why, writing a couple of pages of structured and well-described suggestions.
I don't find that hard to believe at all. The thing is, if you're a programmer working in the software department of a larger organization, you will have other people whose job it is to find out what customers need. That information is ideally codified into reasonably detailed specs and passed on to the software engineering staff.
Your typical small software house or open-source project doesn't have that luxury: developers usually are required to deal with end-users directly, and depending upon their personalities (and general level of professionalism) that may not work very well. True professionals in any field try their best to leave their egos at home, and when they get to work accept that there might be a better way of doing things. In a word, openmindedness. It's especially important when it comes to user-interface design: it truly does not matter how great a solution you feel you've created if your users think it sucks. When that happens, you go back to the drawing board and figure out something better. But the first step in that process is an admission that you're not perfect, and that your work can, in fact, be improved upon.
I bet if they switched from their Windows software to a Mac OS software, they'd experience similar results. It's inevitable that when you jump from one style to another style, you'll experience some slowdown in the work.
Office Ribbon, anyone ? Why the hell did Microsoft think that was a good idea, without at least leaving the menus in place for transition.
You forget that company's unofficial motto:
Microsoft
Where Do We Want You To Go Today!
Could everyone please stop equating PC with microsoft windows. PC is short for Personal Computer.
No. Too late. About 25 years too late.
Yeah. Kinda like getting people to stop equating "hacker" with "criminal".
Unfortunately they are not alone; the gov't runs a great many protection rackets of its own, so thinks this is "normal".
Yes. Start with the IRS and go from there.
"That's very true. ASCAP (and the RIAA, and all other such abominations) feel that they are entitled to a piece of every sale or performance of every copyrighted work."
How is this not a protection racket??
The difference here is, I think, that they've convinced the Federal Government to be their enforcers.