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User: Count+Fenring

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  1. Re:Uber doesn't own the vehicles, correct? on Uber Drivers Are Employees, Not Contractors, Says California Labor Commission · · Score: 1

    But he doesn't set his own hours - he sets his own availability with higher than normal granularity, but actual scheduling is top-down from the app (there's a limited amount of rides he's allowed to refuse, but it holds in general).

    They're paid per time (or, rather, per fare, which works out to be equivalent).

    Being able to sign up for other ride services doesn't seem particularly relevant, given the prevalence of multiple part-time jobs in the U.S. at this point.

  2. Re:Having security meet him at his desk on Ask Slashdot: Dealing With User Resignation From an IT Perspective? · · Score: 1

    After a birthday lunch? That is ICE COLD. At that point, I would assume that some part of their business was literally fueled by employee tears.

  3. Re:Having security meet him at his desk on Ask Slashdot: Dealing With User Resignation From an IT Perspective? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And it's a terrible way to go about things.

    Treating exiting employees like criminals when there's no established reason to doesn't improve workplace security - it just means that the person outside your company with the most current stories about how you operate has a story about how you treated them badly.

    You should absolutely be able to revoke people's powers, etc, but that's an "after they've left" step. Any damage you think you're preventing, they've already had the opportunity to do.

  4. Re: Centralized on GitHub! LOL! on Github Under JS-Based "Greatfire" DDoS Attack, Allegedly From Chinese Government · · Score: 1

    There's a world of difference between having an agreed-upon repository of record, and having a centralized system. A big part of the difference is that setting up a pro-tem repository of record can be done trivially from any up-to-date repository.

    GitHub is convenient. It's not necessary.

  5. Cautionary suggestion on Ask Slashdot: Terminally Ill - What Wisdom Should I Pass On To My Geek Daughter? · · Score: 1

    I hope this successfully comes off as it's meant, as helpful criticism.

    Your daughter is in sixth grade; the best thing you can do might be to spend the time you would on these videos being with her now. The "write a bunch of time-release notes" thing has been promoted a lot lately, but can seriously backfire - I can't find it right now because @work, but there's an article where a woman talks about how that sort of thing can be taken extremely badly - she basically dreads the once-a-year reminder that her father is gone.

    Things like documenting your life can certainly be a good idea; but be really careful to set it up so that she can come to it on her own terms, and don't let it turn into something that will attach your passing to all her memories of you.

  6. Re:from the what-until-they-get-a-load-of-this dep on Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens · · Score: 2

    Most man-eating alligators are natives... their food, on the other hand...

  7. Re:I have nothing better to do... on Should IT Professionals Be Exempt From Overtime Regulations? · · Score: 1

    The only thing you choose to do at home, sure. But "I don't have a life" isn't actually an argument to set social policy by.

  8. Concurrency bugs found in highly concurrent langs on The Effect of Programming Language On Software Quality · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Also striking - they point out that functional languages, in particular Scala, Erlang, and Clojure have more concurrency bugs, without bringing up that concurrency support is basically the primary feature those languages are selected for. I'd love to see the defect number correlated with the percentage of code dealing with concurrency.

  9. Re:Work on the basics on Ask Slashdot: It's 2014 -- Which New Technologies Should I Learn? · · Score: 1

    "it's" in that is referring to Javascript. He's saying "Even though JS is as bad as python, JS is like that annoying relative..."

  10. Re:And? on Female Software Engineers May Be Even Scarcer Than We Thought · · Score: 1

    And you are expert in the ethnography of how many societies across the planet? Or do you somehow feel that being a computer geek has somehow given you the power to make sweeping generalizations in other people's fields without citing sources?

  11. Re:"Scarce" on Female Software Engineers May Be Even Scarcer Than We Thought · · Score: 1

    It's scarce relative to the percentage of the population they make up, which is the metric that actually counts. When bisexual transgender autistic bi-racial individuals of native american/tongese extraction with dwarfism make up 51% of the population, that can be a goal.

  12. Re:And? on Female Software Engineers May Be Even Scarcer Than We Thought · · Score: 1

    There are plenty of people complaining about it. Like, say, almost every single feminist who's written anything, for example. It's also worth pointing out that, while the paranoia about molesters is a factor, the dearth of male teachers in the professions at hand predates the molestation scare by decades, and is directly caused by society devaluing "women's work" and attaching a stigma to it.

  13. Re:And? on Female Software Engineers May Be Even Scarcer Than We Thought · · Score: 1

    ...we geeks LOVE geek girls.

    Kinda the problem, dude. It's not all as simple as avoiding the "he-man women-hater's club" mentality - you also have to accept women as individual people, rather than a fetish object that you're all for because it pings your pleasure centers.

    Also - if you think that the scholarships, special clubs, awareness programs, et cetera aren't necessary, how come the HIGH number here is 22%. I guarantee you, there is not enough biological difference in the world to drop 50% of the population to 22% across a well-paying, intellectually stimulating and high-employment job in this economy.

    It's not thought policing to point out social inequity. And all sorts of shit steers culture ALL THE TIME. Culture is nothing if not a sea of competing voices and influences; and it's the basic duty of a rational person to try and push for positive change, rather than whinging about how "It's alright just the way it is, and it's totally awesome that there's a stigma on male nursing because I don't care."

    So don't get your balls caught in your jock.

  14. Re:Duh! on Are We Socially Ready For Wearable Computing? · · Score: 2

    It's not exactly either/or though, is it? What wouldn't be rude is saying "I'm sorry, I have other things I need to get to" or "I'm sorry, I have to keep an eye on my phone, my wife/boss said they might text." But just ignoring someone you're speaking to in person while staring at your phone? Yes, that's rude, and frankly, it's still rude if you're expecting a text of great import. It comes down to treating other people as if you value their time. If something you're doing doesn't meet that criteria, you're being rude.

  15. Re: Here's the full story. on Ask Slashdot: Suitable Phone For a 4-Year Old? · · Score: 1

    I mean, if it was the OP, he'd have no reason not to use his account (since, you know, the content identifies him). This seems very likely to be a troll.

  16. Re:Don't Copy That Floppy on California Elementary Schools To Test Anti-Piracy Curriculum · · Score: 1

    Urrrrgh. So close. Darn you for getting there first.

  17. Re:Probably a good thing on Middle-Click Paste? Not For Long · · Score: 1

    The clipboard isn't visible, but it's absolutely a virtual physical space related to the mouse. Because selections are, by and large, made by the mouse - and this is truer for novice users than for experienced users.

    So, it's not nearly as "abstract" as you're claiming - it's saying "grab the thing I put in my pocket, and put it where I'm touching."

  18. Re:revenge on Middle-Click Paste? Not For Long · · Score: 2

    You, sir, have my vote for senior executive in charge of killbots.

  19. Re:Obligatory answer: on Is HTML5 the Future of Book Authorship? · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The "vertical-align" property only functions as a general vertical alignment tool in table-cells. Now that we have "display: table-cell" in basically all modern browsers, this is more or less sufficient, but it's still a far cry from being as simple as you've made it out here.

    Columns are HUGELY more complex to build than they have any right to be, and they are fragile in any number of cases where they shouldn't be. Support for true multi-column content panes is far from where it should be.

    Saying "the developer builds their own" is the same as saying "one is not provided." Whether it should be provided is a worthy argument, but it's not a foregone conclusion, and calling the OP a poser isn't remotely justified here.

    Doing rich interface design is unquestionably clunkier in HTML/CSS/JS than in dedicated GUI toolkits on the desktop; I don't agree with the parent that it's not suitable for any real work, but your dismissing him out of hand isn't remotely fair. And it's pretty clear that he's not a "poser web dev," but rather a native dev who's used to more explicitly specified layout mechanics (that is, not having to work around the assumptions inherent to HTML as a descendant of a width-specified static document format.

  20. Re:Moo on Study Shows Professors With Tenure Are Worse Teachers · · Score: 1

    Maybe you could disentangle your good point ("Tenured faculty can, in fact, be fired for cause, and teaching standards can be cause.") from your misplaced rage at liberal arts and business majors? Because, at least on the liberal arts side, we're not all party monsters - and subjective fields aren't necessarily less demanding. I mean, I've had multiple 30+ page papers due over a single weekend, and I've had intensive programming assignments due over the same time, and I know which one I'd choose.

  21. Re:Moo on Study Shows Professors With Tenure Are Worse Teachers · · Score: 1

    This. Also, tenure has the significant role of giving professors more scholarly AND instructional independence from their host institution. Which is important in times where academic censorship is an actively supported stream in the public consciousness. It was incredibly important in the McCarthy era, and it's looking like it's getting very important again, just when it's being erased.

  22. Re:Or... on Ask Slashdot: Speeding Up Personal Anti-Spam Filters? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is it? I've never had a false positive in all the years I've been using GMail.

    That you noticed. There's a fairly high bias inherent there; it just has to not have hit something that was both noticeable and that you knew was incoming.

  23. Re:not surprised at racism and naive WASPs on George Zimmerman Acquitted In Death of Trayvon Martin · · Score: 0

    There are multiple definitions of stalking - I don't believe the one in the VAWA requires a time component. Also, I'm really talking about harassment and intimidation, the relevant components - which are illegal and not necessarily "over time." I used the stalking article because it has the most concise set of references.

  24. Re:not surprised at racism and naive WASPs on George Zimmerman Acquitted In Death of Trayvon Martin · · Score: 1

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalking

    Following someone with intent to intimidate or do them harm (or even, speculatively, to do them harm if you decide they're no good) is absolutely not just good faith, obeying-the-law behavior. Private citizens (like Trayvon Martin) have a right to be protected from intimidation and harassment as much as from assault and violence.

  25. Re:not surprised at racism and naive WASPs on George Zimmerman Acquitted In Death of Trayvon Martin · · Score: 1

    That's certainly not a "pumped up on the thrill of my own potential deadliness" mindset you've got there, it isn't at all more about macho posturing than calm consideration of self-defense, and it definitely isn't the mindset that leads to misjudging situations and "emptying a mag" into someone who's not doing anything wrong except triggering your paranoiac tendencies. /sarcasm