... that just tells me that they recognize you as a sad geek with no self-respect. Not necessarily saying you are, just saying that's what they think of you. "Bah, he doesn't have anything better to do with his time, anyway."
Let me put this in perspective:
- if a car engineer lived next door, would they call him every month to fix their car for free? Nope.
- if an electronics engineer lived next door, would they call him every month to repair their TV for free? Nope.
- if a plumber lived next door, would they call him every month to unclog their toilet for free? Nope.
- if a skilled carpenter lived next door, would they call him every month to fix some piece of furniture for free? Nope.
Why? Basically because they have more respect for that plumber than for you. They can understand that:
1. Plumbing is real work, and it deserves compensation. On the other hand they likely see you not as an "expert", but rather as "bah, even kids know this stuff. If we only had a 10 year old, we'd ask him instead."
2. They can understand that the plumber has better stuff to do with his time. Like, dunno, grab a can of beer and watch the football game. Whereas what they think of you is more likely the exact opposite "some sad geek who surely has nothing to do with his time anyway."
3. Also because that plumber has enough self-respect to say "no". Whereas you seems to measure your worth by how much other people abused your time. Well, keep flattering yourself, and I'm sure they'll be more than happy to take advantage of you. Because that's all it is: taking advantage of someone who can't say no.
So, dunno, personally I'd rather be know as the "bad" guy who will _not_ fix your computer. (Well, not unless you're willing to pay my consultant fee.)
I don't give a flying ____ (sexual intercourse) if some random neighbour considers me an expert or not. What really matter is if my boss considers me an expert.
The short story is that the more voltage you apply to the gate, the smaller the O becomes.
(If you want a more in depth explanation, as was pointed out, the "o" is really a fuzzy cloud without clear borders. The border of the "o" you need to visualize is not really the border of the electron, but the distance at which the tunnelling probability is low enough for your transistor to still work. Raising the potential barrier lowers that probability, so basically the effect is of shrinking the "o".)
However, raising the voltage has problems of its own. The main problem being power dissipation, as anyone who overclocked a CPU knows.
Skipping over the details: at those sizes, to make the "o" any smaller, would make the chip dissipate many kilowatts. Yes, more than a heater.
Even if you're rich enough to afford the energy bill for that, and even if you have the water cooling to pump it all away, will you want all that heat being pumped into your room? Or can you imagine being at the office in July, with several of those computers pumping kilowatts of heat each? Or can you picture the air conditioning costs to run a server farm of those?
1. JavaScript and even Flash, in moderate doses are one thing, whereas idiocies like forcing gesture based navigation upon users who don't want it in the first place and who don't expect suddenly changing pages just because they moved the mouse are already ego masturbation. The whole thing basically just screams, "Oooh, look at me. I'm such a hero. I'm bringing gestures to the poor uneducated Microsoft IE users." That's already making a site for one's ego, not for the users.
2. Those legitimate uses still don't outweigh the sheer annoyances that JavaScript is used for on other pages. I.e., do expect some people to have it disabled. I.e., if those scripts are there for the _user_'s convenience, you'll want to make sure that the _user_ can still use your site even without the scripts.
3. If you can say with a straight face something along the lines of, "I don't give a damn if I lose some sales because some people disliked my overkill use of JavaScript/graphics/whatever", like your idol poster does, then again, you're missing the whole point. At that point that javascript isn't there for the user's convenience, it's there just for your ego. It's yet another way of saying "my ego is more important not only than the users' needs, but also than the company's money."
You may notice that he didn't say he'll do small quantities of helper functions, but take care that the site works with javascript disabled too. Nope. He's gonna have his 50k of funky javascript effects, goddamit, and whoever doesn't like them, can jolly well fsck off the site. Go away, he doesn't need your money if you don't like his funky use of scripts and flash.
And I honestly hope that one day the industry as a whole will one day wake up and kick this kind of retards out.
1. "The Web Content Style Guide: An Essential Reference for Online Writers, Editors, and Managers" By Gerry McGovern, Rob Norton, Catherine O'Dowd. Addison Wesley, ISBN 0-273-65605-8
Quote: "Write for the reader, not for your ego" (This is actually a title.)
Quote: "What makes a website great is what is below the surface, not what is above. Too many Web designers focus on the shiny stuff, the fancy graphics, the clever animations. Study after study shows that people are just not interested in this surface sheen. In fact, in many cases this visual-driven design gets in the way of people doing what they want to do."
Quote: "Computer users are accustomed to seeing certain conventions on the web that help them know where to look, what to click, and how things work. For example, navigation bars are typically at the top or side of a page, links are often blue and underlined, and items need to be placed in a shopping cart to be purchased. This kind of familiarity makes browsing and buying easier because people know what to expect from sites in general and aren't required to learn how a site works each time they visit a new one."
Quote: "People see the Web as a single huge place. What they learn through navigating around one website, they like to bring with them to another website. Take hypertext, for example. The original design for hypertext was blue for unclicked and purple for clicked. People like it because they're used to it. So when they see a blue link, they know that's a part of the website they haven't been to. When they see a purple link, they know that's a part of the website they have visited. Changing the color of the hyperlinks just confuses people. It's like having red and green traffic signals in one part of town, and orange and yellow in another."
Quote: "All this experimentation might have been fun for the designer, but it was hell for the reader. The reality is that the eye finds it easiest to read black text on a white background. Small quantities of text are okay with different designs, but if you want someone to read more than 300 words, give it to them black on white. The Web pioneers learned that lesson? today, the vast majority of websites use black (or dark) type on white (or light) background."
2. "Submit Now: Designing Persuasive Web Sites" By Andrew Chak. New Riders Publishing, ISBN 0-7357-1170-4.
Quote: "So, in come the usability consultants (myself included) who get paid to tell you what's wrong with your site and how to fix it. Make your links blue and underlined. Make your buttons clickable. Structure your site according to how your users think."
Quote: "The other major competitor to your site is the offline world (i.e., real life). If your site doesn't make something easier or more convenient than its offline equivalent, it probably isn't worth the disk space it occupies." (Note how, like the whole book, it focuses on providing convenience to the user, not idiotic flash animations.)
Quote: "If your links aren't blue or at the very least underlined, users might never bother to move their mouse to click on them. If your buttons don't have any depth or at least an outline, they might sit on your page unused. By designing your site and its elements according to users' expectations, you can increase the likelihood that your site will be used as you intended it to be."
Get the idea already? Your average visitors are _not_ looking for a funky psychedelic experience, with an interface that fundamentally differs from any other site. (E.g., having your very own gestures.) They want something boring, plain, and which works like any other site. It's that simple.
But somehow I highly suspect that all this won't get you out of your "who the fsck are you to tell me what you expect on my site?!!" mentality.
Well, guess what? That's exactly what I meant by feeding your ego to the customers. You're not making that site for the readers, you're making it just for yourself. A site which basicaly just says, "fuck you! _I_ am the important one here." Common clueless manager mistake.
Actually, what I'm saying here is already in countless books and studies. Ever since someone first put up a web site, and with a boom during the dot-com era, there have been people who actually did studies. Just to actually determine what the people want. To see which sites actually sell stuff, and which just drive people away.
And, no, the studies were not done on technocrats, they really studied the average Joe.
Of course, that is assuming that someone's actually willing to read stuff. The more retarded the PHB or marketroid, the more convinced they'll be that "bah, all the world is wrong, and only I'm right." Sadly, they're never right.
See the other article today, with the book about managerial stupidity.
To put it bluntly: if you actually tried reading stuff, instead of putting your ego first, you would already know everything that was written in that message. It wouldn't come as a personal rant to you.
Basically, to put it even blunter: if you want to paint yourself into the clueless PHB role, be my guest. The world needs more fucktards with failed sites.
Sadly, they're not that easy to do with most non-English keyboards. On this here German keyboard, for example, the right Alt key is "Alt Gr" and is used as, well, a special shift key to obtain some extra symbols.
E.g., the square or curly brackets, or the vertical bar character, have been moved to funky positions, to make room for the national characters. And you need that Alt Gr key to obtain them. (Gnah. Whoever designed these national keyboards sure wasn't programming in C or Java.)
And strangely enough the Alt Gr key used together with the arrows has no effect whatsover in any browser. I.e., good luck trying to press an arrow key and the _left_ Alt key with one hand:P
Still, for whoever is lucky enough to be on an US keyboard, those are great shortcuts:)
No, actually what you can count on, is that a helluva lot of us have it disabled. Why? Because:
(1) it is used for pop-unders, on-close pop-ups, taking control of the browser, changing my home-page, adding crap to my links, and other annoyances.
(2) because in reality it's not needed. I know that to every clueless manager and newbie web designer, it may look like "hey, cool, we can make our site an exciting experience." In practice, most of us _don't_ want an exciting experience, we just want a comfortable and familiar experience, and to have an easy time getting to the actual information. We actually _want_ the text black on white, the links blue, and we also want it all to download quickly.
The same, incidentally, goes for the idiots who make an information site in flash. Like I go to simply find information about a PS2 game. I want the _information_. But I'm treating to a flash bonanza, which:
- is uncomfortable to navigate, _and_
- forces me to browse with some tiny text, in some tiny window, instead of letting me use the whole 1600x1200 on this big monitor and zoom the fonts, _and_
- treats me to a 30 second wait to download each page
So it's not that I don't know what it can do. I know. I've programmed JavaScript. (Against my vocal protests, I might add.) It's that I don't _want_ it in my browser.
If you're a web designer, take a look at some of the most successful sites. Slashdot, Google or Amazon, for example. What do you see? Plain black-on-white sites, without any flashy effects, without horrible JavaScript navigation, etc. And people like them that way.
Again, what Joe Average wants on that site, is simply to get to the information. No more, no less.
And the easiest for him is to have a consistent interface, so he can apply his existing skills immediately, instead of figuring it out again for each page. (E.g., if links are always blue and underlined, Joe instantly knows which are the links. That's comfortable.)
Here's some more free clue, for those clueless marketroid types: a web site is not a publicity clip, nor a marketing brochure. If someone is already on your site, you got his attention already. Now what you want to do is let him get quickly and easily to the information. Forcing him to go through a horribly funky scripted interface, is already testing his patience. Forcing him to go through pages of marketing bulls**t before he gets to the actual info, doubly so. And taking control of his browser is the easiest way to royally piss him off. So unless you're one of those scammers who just want to install spyware, don't even _think_ about it.
"But how does he know the info is even there? We must advertise it to him! We must make him interested in reading it!", I can already hear some of the clueless marketroid crowd. Not so, my friends. If he's already on the site, you'll _only_ want to provide him with plenty of opportunity to _find_ that information, if and when _he_ wants it. Such as having a clear index of products/articles/whatever. That's good. Full text search is a must too. A site map is also good. Etc.
The point I was trying to make, perhaps in too many words, is that I rarely ever hear about those mouse gestures except as "proof" that "IE is the inferior product" and that "Microsoft isn't innovating." I've yet to read any pro-gestures article that isn't yet another anti-Microsoft fanboy rant. (Including fanboys posing as journalists, such as some of those on The Register.)
The fashionable karma-whoring moved from yesterday's "Microsoft is evil because they're a monopoly" (which at least has some truth in it) to today's elitism of "Microsoft's products are inverior anyway, because... erm... uhh... oh, I know, because they don't have gestures. People only buy MS stuff because they're clueless Redmond fanboys."
Heck, you don't even have to look further than the current thread to see such samples. Which is what triggered my rant in the first place.
The reality is that most people don't want gestures, for the exact reasons that you mention. Even if reaching for the big "Back" button on the toolbar was such a horrible effort:
- the standard IE right-click menu has a "Back" link, just a few pixels away from the current mouse position (i.e., with far less effort and far more reliable than a mouse gesture)
- there are mice with extra buttons (including one for "Back"),
- there are keyboards with extra buttons (including one for "Back")
- there are mouse drivers, such as Logitech's drivers, which include a handy menu of their own (including, you guessed, a "Back" button)
Etc. For 99% of the planet's computer user population, there is simply _no_ need whatsoever for a highly unreliable mouse gesture, when far more efficient shortcuts already exist.
But somehow that doesn't stop the usual gang of elitist fanboys as mis-representing it as self-evident that the existing and far better ways are somehow nevertheless inferior. Just because Microsoft supports them. And, dunno, the whole "we're the super-humans because we have a browser with mouse gestures" attitude it's getting bloody tiresome already.
Well, good question. Doing one of those gestures really isn't any easier than just hitting a button or key. And downright useless to anyone using a trackball. _And_ it's entirely too easy to inadvertently do a gesture while just moving the mouse around, or while wiggling it to make the screensaver go away.
I guess it's one of those things which are supposedly cool just because Microsoft doesn't support it. Because, as we all know, Microsoft is evil;)
Or in less sarcastic terms: IE just works well, while Mozilla is a bloated unstable piece of crap. Whose devs thought it would be more funny to go into phantasy land and reinvent their own bug reporting tool, and their own widget set, and whatnot, instead of delivering a stable product on time. They started with the legacy of Netscape being practically a synonim to "Internet", and drove it into the ground, to the point where it has less than 1% of the market now.
And Opera has _real_ interface problems. As a random example, I'd have preferred if they spent half an hour to fix their combo boxes to accept PgUp and PgDown, like all Windows combo boxes. It's a real pain to scroll through a list of links one line at a time, or to have to reach for the mouse, instead of using perfectly standard keys. But instead of that, hey, they have mouse gestures.
Basically, in even less flattering terms: when you're a fan of an inferior product, you'll want to make a big fuss about every single "feature" it has. Especially about those who are uninspired and unneeded. Just because it really doesn't have anything else.
And, of course, because it's fashionable to post about how much Microsoft sucks.
If Opera or Mozilla tomorrow came up with a device to kick the user in the nuts, I do believe we'd see the same gang screaming about how cool that is. And how Microsoft sucks because it failed to implement it too.
Of course density has its own advantages, both for applying more kinetic energy over a smaller area on impact, and for losing less kinetic energy in flight. (A penetrator made of balsa wood would lose most energy in mere hundreds of meters in flight.)
However, rigidity does matter too. Think shooting a lead bullet against steel plating. It will just go splat. It doesn't even matter how sharp it was. Or think throwing a very sharp sponge at the wall. You get the idea. It will deform before it transfers any signifficant energy to the wall.
For that self-sharpening effect to even begin, that penetrator has to, well, be already travelling through that armour. Without enough rigidity, IMHO that just wouldn't even start to happen. (E.g., lead is also more dense than steel, yet noone makes lead penetrators.)
And if you look at the link you've kindly posted yourself, you'll notice it says: "the Brinell hardness of U-238 is 2,400, which is just shy of tungsten at 2,570. Iron is 490. Depleted uranium alloyed with a small amount of titanium is even harder."
I _know_ that Depleted Uranium APFSDS ammo was used there extensively. However, if you'll go back and read what I wrote, you'll notice that I've said APHE ammo is no longer used. I.e., you know, a completely different kind of ammo.
APHE (Armour-Piercing High-Explosive) ammo was a pre-WW2 idea.
The first kinds of armour-piercing rounds were neither sabot, nor HEAT. They were simply a normal, bullet shaped, steel round. Think a big rifle round, that's all.
APHE was an idea that you could combine a round with a hard tip, so it penetrates armour, and a smaller explosive charge in the back, so it explodes inside the tank after penetrating.
However, that idea was a dud. The projectile was poorer at penetrating armour than straight AP ammo, and the really small explosive charge (in that age's typically 20mm to 40mm AT guns) didn't do much. The simple act of a hard round breaking through steel armour pushed more shrapnel inside than that explosive charge anyway. And too often that charge didn't even detonate at all.
And later, tungsten tip ammo and APDS ammo proved to be even better.
... yet that doesn't keep you from judging and condemning something.
First of all, as was already said, the waste produced by fission plants is _not_ depleted uranium. It's not like "new batteries" and "used batteries", you know. When a uranium nucleus splits, it splits into much smaller nuclei. Ones which aren't uranium at all.
Second, I get this feeling that you don't understand how depleted uranium weaponry even works. I keep reading all sorts of SF (read: stupid) posts about how it explodes inside the tank, or how some shell's explosion spreads uranium dust and debris all over, and whatnot.
The only quality of depleted uranium is that it's an extremely hard material. Much harder than steel or even than tungsten penetrators. Its only quality is that a sharp tip made of depleted uranium, can go straight through armour made of steel. That's all.
It's also _not_ used in high explosive ammo. And APHE ammo (i.e., ammo which is both armour piercing and explosive) was last used by the Soviets in WW2. They discarded it as being useless.
The shells that tanks shoot at each other today are _not_ explosive. (Regardless of how it looks otherwise in computer games.) The preferred large caliber anti-tank ammo nowadays is APFSDS: Armour Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot. It basically shoots a thin sharp metal rod with fins. Much like a crossbow bolt, if you will.
This goes through armour by sheer kinetic energy, and by being sharp. Again, just like a medieval crossbow bolt would.
Why is it important that it's very hard? So it doesn't deform while going through armour. Think a crossbow bolt with a steel bodkin tip, and now think one with a rubber tip. The rubber one will deform and spread the impact over a larger surface, whereas the steel one might stay sharp as it goes through armour. (Thus keeping the impact concentrated on the small surface of the tip.)
Speak for yourself. Being a good programmer is not something comparable to being a cabbie or a burger flipper at MacDonalds. As much as every clueles PHB's dream is a world where "bah, it's just typing", it just isn't so, and never will be so.
First of all, it's not just learning the language syntax. Syntax is easy. It's also a matter of learning the core libraries. (Billions of man-hours each year go into rewriting something that already existed.) It's also a matter of learning the best practices.
And it's also a matter of having at least a minimum clue about security and of potential pitfalls. No, I don't mean being a cryptographer. But at least knowing basic stuff like:
- check array bounds
- always escape apostrophes when using a user input string in SQL (otherwise someone can basically rewrite your query). Or better yet, use prepared statements.
- entity-encode any user input before displaying it on a HTML page. (Otherwise someone may well inject JavaScript or VB script in your page.)
- don't trust parameters received from the user via HTTP. (E.g., if you stored some information as hidden inputs, expect to receive them changed or missing.)
- if you stored something in the session, what happens when the user opens something in a second window?
Etc. All that comes from experience and training, not from just dumping someone off the street in front of a computer and telling them "just read the tutorials." As many clueless PHBs discovered, when they went with hare-brained schemes like "we don't need skills, let's just hire the cheapest burger-flipper."
And finally, you have to have solid logic skills. You'd be surprised how many people just don't have the mental ability to program well. Or at all.
In fact, a large part of the drive behind outsourcing or "importing" skilled workers is precisely that. They have these skills. We're not talking expendable factory workers a la Nike, nor expendable supermarket clerks a la WalMart. We're talking extremely qualified workers. Which, yes, are far more qualified that the Americans you could hire without paying a fortune.
Who said she squeezed? Who said she "wrestled it off"? Oh, you did. I forgot for a moment your propensity for making up facts.
Ever paid attention to the physics classes in school? Obviously not.
If you pull at something upwards, and its own weight was not enough to get the lid off (or it would have come off with just one hand), what do you need? Right. Some additional downward force to hold down the cup. Where can that force come from, when holding it between the thighs? Well, blimey, the only available force is friction. What does physics tell you? Right. The force is equal to the friction coefficient, times the pressure applied to the surface.
I.e., and this time please pay attention: without squeezing, the cup doesn't stay down. It's as simple as that, newbie.
Of course, in a society where having D grades is cool, and being called "einstein" is an insult... that kind of lack of knowledge doesn't surprise me.
Now she's an "old lady." Ever notice how easily these made-up facts come to your lips? Everybody you know does.
If you bothered actually reading even only the links posted in this thread alone, e.g.:
http://www.vanfirm.com/mcdonalds-coffee-lawsuit.ht m ("a jury here awarded $2.9 million to an 81-year-old woman scalded by McDonald's coffee")
http://ballinlaw.com/mcdonald.htm ("Stella Liebeck, who is now approximately 81 years old")
... you'd at least have a fscking clue that she _is_ an old lady. (Or if by your standards 81 years old is young, you are... what? An elf?;) But you really have no clue what you're talking about, do you? You never actually RTFA before launching on your "corporations are evil and must pay" crusade, eh? Nah, don't let facts get in the way of your bias.
And all of us (even the rocket scientists) have spilled coffee on ourselves at one time or another. Even if Moraelin has some highly superior degree of manual dexterity which has somehow prevented this from ever happening personally, I'm sure he's noticed not everyone else is as graceful.
Ah, a jolly good straw man argument. Either that, or you just can't understand written text. Where did I write that it's about dexterity? It's about having the mental skills to figure out that if you squeeze a flimsy cup between your thighs, you _will_ spill the liquid out. Did you (even the rocket scientists) get burnt by squeezing a cup with your thighs?
That should tell you that their goal is not to prevent frivolous lawsuits, but to use the spectre of frivolous lawsuits to protect their clients (those guilty of negligence).[...]Why do these lobbyists continue to seek limits of damages in non-frivolous lawsuits? Because reducing the number of frivolous lawsuits is not their goal.
Ah, another straw man, eh? Where was I lobbying for lower damages on NONfrivolous lawsuits? Nowhere. What does it have to do with believing that this suit _is_ frivolous? Nothing.
Heh... ran out of meaningful stuff to say, and jumped to the insults, eh? Well, do go on.
I can't help noticing that you even answered your own question, but still went on a trolling spree. Catch:
In that real world, I suspect that those "hundreds of millions" probably included a great many who thought the coffee was way too hot. Some of them probably never came back. Some probably developed the habit of waiting to drink it. Some probably threw in an ice cube. Some probably complained verbally. Most probably just couldn't be bothered with writing a letter to complain.
Heck, I'll even be generous and give you some more: Some figured out that if they need caffeine, but don't want something hot, they can order a Coke. (MacDonalds _does_ sell that too.) Some figured out that it would be dumb to order hot liquid when you're in a car. And all of them were smarter than to put the hot coffee between their legs.
And that, my friend, is what separates those fine men and women from the retards. That is your answer. Those had the basic mental skills to figure that out. The old lady didn't. _That_ is what makes her an idiot.
As for the rest of your non-sequiturs and straw men arguments... meh. I have better stuff to do with my time.
Well, then here's an even more ludicrious lawsuit: http://theregister.co.uk/content/6/34075.html.
Short story: some guy surfs for hardcore porn at work, tallying a grand total of over 10,000$ in bandwidth costs. (With bandwidth costs these days, that's one helluva lot of porn.)
So he gets fired for it.
And now he sues his employer. He doesn't even say he wasn't surfing for porn. Yep, he did. Lots. But he thinks his employer should have paid to send him to therapy, instead of firing his lazy butt.
Look buddy, compassion is good and fine, but you're nevertheless pulling a straw man debate. So she got a skin transplant. So she has unsteady hands. But guess what? That's not the fscking point. So stop building straw men already.
The point is that:
1. She didn't just spill it because of shaking hands, she actually put a paper cup between her thighs and squeezed it to hold it while she was wrestling with the lid. How stupid is that? _That_ is why I'm calling her an idiot.
2. Either way, she did a mistake. _Her_ mistake. _Not_ MacDonald's.
Did a MacDonald employee come over and pour coffee on her? No. She did it to herself.
Did a MacDonald employee advise her to hold the cup tight with her thighs? No. It was her own idiocy.
Did MacDonald ever advertise their coffee as being at room temperature? No.
Etc.
So why the fsck should McDonald pay for that? What happened to the idea of personal responsibility? As in: she is responsible for her own mistakes.
Or is it just a case of "because they have the money, so wth, let's sue some money out of them"?
So as much as otherwise I have all the compassion for her pain, I _still_ don't see it as reason to award ludicrious sums of money to idiots. It was _her_ mistake. _She_ should be the one who pays for it, not MacDonald. Period.
This 79 year old woman made a mistake. It seems she realized that, since initially all she did was ask McDonalds to sell the coffee at a cooler temperature.
No, pal, what she did was immediately ask for $20,000 from McDonald. We're talking about a greedy _leech_ whose first thought was "hey, cool, I can sue someone for money."
_If_ she had simply asked McDonald to sell cooler coffee, _then_ she'd have a lot of sympathy from me. But no, this waste of genetic material instantly wanted money.
And _that_ is what's wrong with society today. Every single cretin wants to be awarded money for being utterly stupid. Instead of accepting "ok, I made a mistake", they instantly start thinking "wow, who can I sue for money?"
If some idiot jumps off a tree branch and breaks his leg, he (or his parents) want to sue whoever planted the tree. And immediately someone wants to push for legislation to limit the admissible height for tree branches.
Personal responsibility is no longer fashionable. Noone is to blame any more, noone wants to think for them any more, noone wants to talk to their children any more. They just want to sue someone instead.
No, she _is_ a total clueless idiot, even if she didn't get millions.
1. Coffee is prepared with boiling water, and some people actually like it hot. Even kids are supposed to know that.
2. So 700 out of _hundreds_ _of_ _millions_ served are total cretins. What does this tell you? Maybe that one has to be in the "0.1% most retarded" part of the bell curve to have trouble with it? Well, now you know where that old lady fits.
3. This is precisely what makes her a cretin. If you put a paper-cup between your thighs, and _squeeze_ it to hold it in place as you wrestle the lid off... what do you expect to happen? You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that you'll push the water out, all over yourself. Anyone who's not completely brain-dead should be able to figure that out.
4. Yes, and McDonald has all my respect for refusing to give in to that kind of extortion. If they paid $20,000 to every single leech that asks for it, they'd get a million such requests a day.
5. The fact that she made _any_ money as reward for being a complete cretin, is already a mockery of the justice system. It doesn't have to be millions. Even if they awarded her the cost of the coffee, it would still be too much. IMHO such leeches should be fined, not encouraged to abuse the legal system some more.
6. Which doesn't mean they had been doing anything wrong. It just means that in a society where the "american dream" is to sue someone for undeserved money, McDonald covered their asses against other leeches. If not, every single bum would have read about the lawsuit, then went and poured coffee on themselves to get some money.
7. See point 1, since you're essentially rehashing the exact same point.
I.e., basically I don't think that McDonald was guilty or anything, and didn't break any law. And forget about the old lady. The jury of cretins who awarded those damages are the saddest part.
Which part is so hard to understand? Coffee is made by boiling ground coffee beans in (surprise!) boiling water. Whether you boil it yourself the old fashioned way, or get it from the office's coffee machine, it _will_ be hot. Even kids know that.
So if anyone is retarded enough to put a paper-cup containing hot water between his/her thighs and squeeze it, they're officially too stupid to breathe. And awarding ludicrious sums of money to such f**ktards is a sad mockery of the whole justice system. Oh yeah, let's reward them for being complete morons.
20% her fault? Gee wizz... How about 100% her fault? And how about the old fashioned idea of "take responsibility for your mistakes"? Oh, wait, I forget that the new way is to blame (and sue) someone else instead. Personal responsibility went out of fashion a long time ago.
And I forget that it happened in a society where being a moron is cool, and being called "einstein" is an insult. Well, no wonder that she got a jurry of fellow cretins, eh?
You know what I'd really want to see? I'd want to see a system where these cretins and leeches are actually _fined_ for bringing up such idiotic claims to a court. Not even something as ridiculous as $200,000 or anything. Slap her with a $2000 fine. Just enough to make other morons think twice before thinking, "hey, cool, who can we sue for money today?"
Heck, if you think non-competing with _them_ is bad... I've even seen contracts that wanted the programmer to not compete with any of their customers, or even their customers' customers.
I.e., if that company ever coded a small servlet for a transport company, under that clause you'd be quite literally prohibited to take a job as a cab or truck driver for another company. (In addition to, of course, not taking any computer-related job.) If that company ever made a small web site for a mom-and-pop grocery shop that also sells newspapers, you'd technically be supposed to not take a job as a newspaper boy or grocery store clerk for 2 years either. If they ever made an applet for a pizza shop, then you're not supposed to work for a piza shop, nor for any company who's employees buy pizza at that shop.
I mean, wth? Is it stupid, or is it stupid? Or both?
That contract technically means selling yourself into slavery, because it basically says "if you quit us, we can sue your ass off if you get _any_ job whatsoever for the next 2 years. Not just computer jobs, but practically _any_ job." I.e., in other words, "your ass belongs to us, because it's either take any shit from us, or literally starve to death."
You have my respect. Not many people would put in weekends to stay up to date with the technology, once they're at a director level. (Or for that matter, some as soon as they're at project leader level.)
However, you probably do realize that most people are more like your boss. Get a 50,000 foot level view, and then decide based on that.
Nothing inherently wrong with that either, as long as they do ask. God knows we need people skilled in management too. Those who do ask when they have a question, got my respect too. Same as I'd respect any other skilled person, regardless of the field, really.
And I don't think many people actually have that belief that a manager should personally micro-manage everyone. If you notice, my objection was precisely more along the lines of "ffs, one doesn't need to pretend to be an all around specialist, one only needs to ask." So, yes, delegating and letting people do their job and use their expertise is good. The world would be a much better place if more managers trusted their subordinates' judgment, instead of pulling uninformed "strategic decisions" themselves. So, yes, you have a whole lot of respect from me in that aspect too.
However, well, we've all run into some boss who tries to look smart by throwing buzzwords around. Sometimes even demands buzzwords. (E.g., true case: asking for lists of which Java patterns were used. But not where or why or if it was even applicable there.) And who (unlike you) doesn't get his knowledge first hand, but thinks that reading some IT-for-dummies magazine once a month makes him _the_ most qualified IT specialist in the whole enterprise.
And then there's those who don't even try to read that magazine either. They just literally take an "I'm paid more than you, so nyah! It means I know it all better than you, including your job" attitude. (True story: I once had to go to a client, where the local PHB averaged more than once an hour of saying, literally, "The golden rule is: whoever has the gold makes the rules, and that's me." I initially thought he was the owner or something. Turned out he was just a hired joker, and they fired him a couple of months later, when he basically drove the whole department into the ground. Including causing all programmers _and_ designers to leave.)
That's all I'm saying. When you see some of us snapping at the first mention of management, well, it's just bad memories of these individuals. I know a few good managers myself, but, well, somehow often the first mental image is of that "golden rule" guy and the like.
Maybe you still actually program, and thus still have a clue. Most people don't, once they reach management level, and thus no longer do.
Any skill you don't use regularly, goes away. It doesn't matter if it's programming, skateboarding or riding a bycicle. I've programmed non-stop for the last 20 years. Yet some languages, which I haven't used in a long time, I'm no longer that good with. E.g., I'm now good at Java, but I'd need to re-learn Pascal if I wanted to program in it.
Also because knowing a language isn't just a matter of knowing the syntax. It's also a question of knowing the core libraries, _and_ the best techniques for that language. The Pascal of today (e.g., Delphi) is completely different in those aspects from the text mode Turbo Pascal of 10 years ago.
What's that have to do with the subject at hand?
Well, it has to do with believing some managers' claims to still know it all, although they haven't written a single line of code in 20 years. Sorry, in 20 years of total lack of practice, one would even forget how to _walk_. Even if they were great coders back then, by now they'd probably have trouble even writing a working "Hello World!"
And predictably enough you see some who don't even understand the terminology any more. Yet they still claim to be experts, and try to look like experts, by throwing big buzzwords around. In contexts where it's clear that they have _no_ fscking clue what those mean. It doesn't make them look like experts, it makes the look like a bunch of sad clowns.
Worse yet, that makes them vulnerable to ruthless salesmen who are actually trained to prey upon this kind of a buffoon. Think "the emperor's new clothes". No, literally. Such a clown will buy the snake oil with the most buzzwords, just so he doesn't look out of date with new technology. Never ask someone who actually knows, 'cause that would (God forbid) be admitting that there's one tiny detail His Managerial Highness doesn't already know.
And you know what's _really_ sad? That in reality most of us coders would actually hold them in much higher regard if they were honest, and _asked_ before making some totally retarded "strategic decision."
Are you such a manager? Maybe, or maybe not. I can't know. But in case you were wondering why some people have such a low opinion of managers, now you know. It's because this kind of clowns who try to look like supreme experts in domains they actually don't even start to understand. Those are the ones who give the rest of you a bad name.
Slashdot Mirror
... that just tells me that they recognize you as a sad geek with no self-respect. Not necessarily saying you are, just saying that's what they think of you. "Bah, he doesn't have anything better to do with his time, anyway."
Let me put this in perspective:
- if a car engineer lived next door, would they call him every month to fix their car for free? Nope.
- if an electronics engineer lived next door, would they call him every month to repair their TV for free? Nope.
- if a plumber lived next door, would they call him every month to unclog their toilet for free? Nope.
- if a skilled carpenter lived next door, would they call him every month to fix some piece of furniture for free? Nope.
Why? Basically because they have more respect for that plumber than for you. They can understand that:
1. Plumbing is real work, and it deserves compensation. On the other hand they likely see you not as an "expert", but rather as "bah, even kids know this stuff. If we only had a 10 year old, we'd ask him instead."
2. They can understand that the plumber has better stuff to do with his time. Like, dunno, grab a can of beer and watch the football game. Whereas what they think of you is more likely the exact opposite "some sad geek who surely has nothing to do with his time anyway."
3. Also because that plumber has enough self-respect to say "no". Whereas you seems to measure your worth by how much other people abused your time. Well, keep flattering yourself, and I'm sure they'll be more than happy to take advantage of you. Because that's all it is: taking advantage of someone who can't say no.
So, dunno, personally I'd rather be know as the "bad" guy who will _not_ fix your computer. (Well, not unless you're willing to pay my consultant fee.)
I don't give a flying ____ (sexual intercourse) if some random neighbour considers me an expert or not. What really matter is if my boss considers me an expert.
Actually, there is a way to make the O smaller.
The short story is that the more voltage you apply to the gate, the smaller the O becomes.
(If you want a more in depth explanation, as was pointed out, the "o" is really a fuzzy cloud without clear borders. The border of the "o" you need to visualize is not really the border of the electron, but the distance at which the tunnelling probability is low enough for your transistor to still work. Raising the potential barrier lowers that probability, so basically the effect is of shrinking the "o".)
However, raising the voltage has problems of its own. The main problem being power dissipation, as anyone who overclocked a CPU knows.
Skipping over the details: at those sizes, to make the "o" any smaller, would make the chip dissipate many kilowatts. Yes, more than a heater.
Even if you're rich enough to afford the energy bill for that, and even if you have the water cooling to pump it all away, will you want all that heat being pumped into your room? Or can you imagine being at the office in July, with several of those computers pumping kilowatts of heat each? Or can you picture the air conditioning costs to run a server farm of those?
2. Those legitimate uses still don't outweigh the sheer annoyances that JavaScript is used for on other pages. I.e., do expect some people to have it disabled. I.e., if those scripts are there for the _user_'s convenience, you'll want to make sure that the _user_ can still use your site even without the scripts.
3. If you can say with a straight face something along the lines of, "I don't give a damn if I lose some sales because some people disliked my overkill use of JavaScript/graphics/whatever", like your idol poster does, then again, you're missing the whole point. At that point that javascript isn't there for the user's convenience, it's there just for your ego. It's yet another way of saying "my ego is more important not only than the users' needs, but also than the company's money."
You may notice that he didn't say he'll do small quantities of helper functions, but take care that the site works with javascript disabled too. Nope. He's gonna have his 50k of funky javascript effects, goddamit, and whoever doesn't like them, can jolly well fsck off the site. Go away, he doesn't need your money if you don't like his funky use of scripts and flash.
And I honestly hope that one day the industry as a whole will one day wake up and kick this kind of retards out.
Catch:
1. "The Web Content Style Guide: An Essential Reference for Online Writers, Editors, and Managers" By Gerry McGovern, Rob Norton, Catherine O'Dowd. Addison Wesley, ISBN 0-273-65605-8
Quote: "Write for the reader, not for your ego" (This is actually a title.)
Quote: "What makes a website great is what is below the surface, not what is above. Too many Web designers focus on the shiny stuff, the fancy graphics, the clever animations. Study after study shows that people are just not interested in this surface sheen. In fact, in many cases this visual-driven design gets in the way of people doing what they want to do."
Quote: "Computer users are accustomed to seeing certain conventions on the web that help them know where to look, what to click, and how things work. For example, navigation bars are typically at the top or side of a page, links are often blue and underlined, and items need to be placed in a shopping cart to be purchased. This kind of familiarity makes browsing and buying easier because people know what to expect from sites in general and aren't required to learn how a site works each time they visit a new one."
Quote: "People see the Web as a single huge place. What they learn through navigating around one website, they like to bring with them to another website. Take hypertext, for example. The original design for hypertext was blue for unclicked and purple for clicked. People like it because they're used to it. So when they see a blue link, they know that's a part of the website they haven't been to. When they see a purple link, they know that's a part of the website they have visited. Changing the color of the hyperlinks just confuses people. It's like having red and green traffic signals in one part of town, and orange and yellow in another."
Quote: "All this experimentation might have been fun for the designer, but it was hell for the reader. The reality is that the eye finds it easiest to read black text on a white background. Small quantities of text are okay with different designs, but if you want someone to read more than 300 words, give it to them black on white. The Web pioneers learned that lesson? today, the vast majority of websites use black (or dark) type on white (or light) background."
2. "Submit Now: Designing Persuasive Web Sites" By Andrew Chak. New Riders Publishing, ISBN 0-7357-1170-4.
Quote: "So, in come the usability consultants (myself included) who get paid to tell you what's wrong with your site and how to fix it. Make your links blue and underlined. Make your buttons clickable. Structure your site according to how your users think."
Quote: "The other major competitor to your site is the offline world (i.e., real life). If your site doesn't make something easier or more convenient than its offline equivalent, it probably isn't worth the disk space it occupies." (Note how, like the whole book, it focuses on providing convenience to the user, not idiotic flash animations.)
Quote: "If your links aren't blue or at the very least underlined, users might never bother to move their mouse to click on them. If your buttons don't have any depth or at least an outline, they might sit on your page unused. By designing your site and its elements according to users' expectations, you can increase the likelihood that your site will be used as you intended it to be."
Get the idea already? Your average visitors are _not_ looking for a funky psychedelic experience, with an interface that fundamentally differs from any other site. (E.g., having your very own gestures.) They want something boring, plain, and which works like any other site. It's that simple.
But somehow I highly suspect that all this won't get you out of your "who the fsck are you to tell me what you expect on my site?!!" mentality.
Well, guess what? That's exactly what I meant by feeding your ego to the customers. You're not making that site for the readers, you're making it just for yourself. A site which basicaly just says, "fuck you! _I_ am the important one here." Common clueless manager mistake.
Actually, what I'm saying here is already in countless books and studies. Ever since someone first put up a web site, and with a boom during the dot-com era, there have been people who actually did studies. Just to actually determine what the people want. To see which sites actually sell stuff, and which just drive people away.
And, no, the studies were not done on technocrats, they really studied the average Joe.
Of course, that is assuming that someone's actually willing to read stuff. The more retarded the PHB or marketroid, the more convinced they'll be that "bah, all the world is wrong, and only I'm right." Sadly, they're never right.
See the other article today, with the book about managerial stupidity.
To put it bluntly: if you actually tried reading stuff, instead of putting your ego first, you would already know everything that was written in that message. It wouldn't come as a personal rant to you.
Basically, to put it even blunter: if you want to paint yourself into the clueless PHB role, be my guest. The world needs more fucktards with failed sites.
Sadly, they're not that easy to do with most non-English keyboards. On this here German keyboard, for example, the right Alt key is "Alt Gr" and is used as, well, a special shift key to obtain some extra symbols.
:P
:)
E.g., the square or curly brackets, or the vertical bar character, have been moved to funky positions, to make room for the national characters. And you need that Alt Gr key to obtain them. (Gnah. Whoever designed these national keyboards sure wasn't programming in C or Java.)
And strangely enough the Alt Gr key used together with the arrows has no effect whatsover in any browser. I.e., good luck trying to press an arrow key and the _left_ Alt key with one hand
Still, for whoever is lucky enough to be on an US keyboard, those are great shortcuts
No, actually what you can count on, is that a helluva lot of us have it disabled. Why? Because:
(1) it is used for pop-unders, on-close pop-ups, taking control of the browser, changing my home-page, adding crap to my links, and other annoyances.
(2) because in reality it's not needed. I know that to every clueless manager and newbie web designer, it may look like "hey, cool, we can make our site an exciting experience." In practice, most of us _don't_ want an exciting experience, we just want a comfortable and familiar experience, and to have an easy time getting to the actual information. We actually _want_ the text black on white, the links blue, and we also want it all to download quickly.
The same, incidentally, goes for the idiots who make an information site in flash. Like I go to simply find information about a PS2 game. I want the _information_. But I'm treating to a flash bonanza, which:
- is uncomfortable to navigate, _and_
- forces me to browse with some tiny text, in some tiny window, instead of letting me use the whole 1600x1200 on this big monitor and zoom the fonts, _and_
- treats me to a 30 second wait to download each page
So it's not that I don't know what it can do. I know. I've programmed JavaScript. (Against my vocal protests, I might add.) It's that I don't _want_ it in my browser.
If you're a web designer, take a look at some of the most successful sites. Slashdot, Google or Amazon, for example. What do you see? Plain black-on-white sites, without any flashy effects, without horrible JavaScript navigation, etc. And people like them that way.
Again, what Joe Average wants on that site, is simply to get to the information. No more, no less.
And the easiest for him is to have a consistent interface, so he can apply his existing skills immediately, instead of figuring it out again for each page. (E.g., if links are always blue and underlined, Joe instantly knows which are the links. That's comfortable.)
Here's some more free clue, for those clueless marketroid types: a web site is not a publicity clip, nor a marketing brochure. If someone is already on your site, you got his attention already. Now what you want to do is let him get quickly and easily to the information. Forcing him to go through a horribly funky scripted interface, is already testing his patience. Forcing him to go through pages of marketing bulls**t before he gets to the actual info, doubly so. And taking control of his browser is the easiest way to royally piss him off. So unless you're one of those scammers who just want to install spyware, don't even _think_ about it.
"But how does he know the info is even there? We must advertise it to him! We must make him interested in reading it!", I can already hear some of the clueless marketroid crowd. Not so, my friends. If he's already on the site, you'll _only_ want to provide him with plenty of opportunity to _find_ that information, if and when _he_ wants it. Such as having a clear index of products/articles/whatever. That's good. Full text search is a must too. A site map is also good. Etc.
But do _not_ force-feed your ego to the customer.
The point I was trying to make, perhaps in too many words, is that I rarely ever hear about those mouse gestures except as "proof" that "IE is the inferior product" and that "Microsoft isn't innovating." I've yet to read any pro-gestures article that isn't yet another anti-Microsoft fanboy rant. (Including fanboys posing as journalists, such as some of those on The Register.)
The fashionable karma-whoring moved from yesterday's "Microsoft is evil because they're a monopoly" (which at least has some truth in it) to today's elitism of "Microsoft's products are inverior anyway, because... erm... uhh... oh, I know, because they don't have gestures. People only buy MS stuff because they're clueless Redmond fanboys."
Heck, you don't even have to look further than the current thread to see such samples. Which is what triggered my rant in the first place.
The reality is that most people don't want gestures, for the exact reasons that you mention. Even if reaching for the big "Back" button on the toolbar was such a horrible effort:
- the standard IE right-click menu has a "Back" link, just a few pixels away from the current mouse position (i.e., with far less effort and far more reliable than a mouse gesture)
- there are mice with extra buttons (including one for "Back"),
- there are keyboards with extra buttons (including one for "Back")
- there are mouse drivers, such as Logitech's drivers, which include a handy menu of their own (including, you guessed, a "Back" button)
Etc. For 99% of the planet's computer user population, there is simply _no_ need whatsoever for a highly unreliable mouse gesture, when far more efficient shortcuts already exist.
But somehow that doesn't stop the usual gang of elitist fanboys as mis-representing it as self-evident that the existing and far better ways are somehow nevertheless inferior. Just because Microsoft supports them. And, dunno, the whole "we're the super-humans because we have a browser with mouse gestures" attitude it's getting bloody tiresome already.
Well, good question. Doing one of those gestures really isn't any easier than just hitting a button or key. And downright useless to anyone using a trackball. _And_ it's entirely too easy to inadvertently do a gesture while just moving the mouse around, or while wiggling it to make the screensaver go away.
;)
I guess it's one of those things which are supposedly cool just because Microsoft doesn't support it. Because, as we all know, Microsoft is evil
Or in less sarcastic terms: IE just works well, while Mozilla is a bloated unstable piece of crap. Whose devs thought it would be more funny to go into phantasy land and reinvent their own bug reporting tool, and their own widget set, and whatnot, instead of delivering a stable product on time. They started with the legacy of Netscape being practically a synonim to "Internet", and drove it into the ground, to the point where it has less than 1% of the market now.
And Opera has _real_ interface problems. As a random example, I'd have preferred if they spent half an hour to fix their combo boxes to accept PgUp and PgDown, like all Windows combo boxes. It's a real pain to scroll through a list of links one line at a time, or to have to reach for the mouse, instead of using perfectly standard keys. But instead of that, hey, they have mouse gestures.
Basically, in even less flattering terms: when you're a fan of an inferior product, you'll want to make a big fuss about every single "feature" it has. Especially about those who are uninspired and unneeded. Just because it really doesn't have anything else.
And, of course, because it's fashionable to post about how much Microsoft sucks.
If Opera or Mozilla tomorrow came up with a device to kick the user in the nuts, I do believe we'd see the same gang screaming about how cool that is. And how Microsoft sucks because it failed to implement it too.
Of course density has its own advantages, both for applying more kinetic energy over a smaller area on impact, and for losing less kinetic energy in flight. (A penetrator made of balsa wood would lose most energy in mere hundreds of meters in flight.)
However, rigidity does matter too. Think shooting a lead bullet against steel plating. It will just go splat. It doesn't even matter how sharp it was. Or think throwing a very sharp sponge at the wall. You get the idea. It will deform before it transfers any signifficant energy to the wall.
For that self-sharpening effect to even begin, that penetrator has to, well, be already travelling through that armour. Without enough rigidity, IMHO that just wouldn't even start to happen. (E.g., lead is also more dense than steel, yet noone makes lead penetrators.)
And if you look at the link you've kindly posted yourself, you'll notice it says: "the Brinell hardness of U-238 is 2,400, which is just shy of tungsten at 2,570. Iron is 490. Depleted uranium alloyed with a small amount of titanium is even harder."
APHE (Armour-Piercing High-Explosive) ammo was a pre-WW2 idea.
The first kinds of armour-piercing rounds were neither sabot, nor HEAT. They were simply a normal, bullet shaped, steel round. Think a big rifle round, that's all.
APHE was an idea that you could combine a round with a hard tip, so it penetrates armour, and a smaller explosive charge in the back, so it explodes inside the tank after penetrating.
However, that idea was a dud. The projectile was poorer at penetrating armour than straight AP ammo, and the really small explosive charge (in that age's typically 20mm to 40mm AT guns) didn't do much. The simple act of a hard round breaking through steel armour pushed more shrapnel inside than that explosive charge anyway. And too often that charge didn't even detonate at all.
And later, tungsten tip ammo and APDS ammo proved to be even better.
... yet that doesn't keep you from judging and condemning something.
First of all, as was already said, the waste produced by fission plants is _not_ depleted uranium. It's not like "new batteries" and "used batteries", you know. When a uranium nucleus splits, it splits into much smaller nuclei. Ones which aren't uranium at all.
Second, I get this feeling that you don't understand how depleted uranium weaponry even works. I keep reading all sorts of SF (read: stupid) posts about how it explodes inside the tank, or how some shell's explosion spreads uranium dust and debris all over, and whatnot.
The only quality of depleted uranium is that it's an extremely hard material. Much harder than steel or even than tungsten penetrators. Its only quality is that a sharp tip made of depleted uranium, can go straight through armour made of steel. That's all.
It's also _not_ used in high explosive ammo. And APHE ammo (i.e., ammo which is both armour piercing and explosive) was last used by the Soviets in WW2. They discarded it as being useless.
The shells that tanks shoot at each other today are _not_ explosive. (Regardless of how it looks otherwise in computer games.) The preferred large caliber anti-tank ammo nowadays is APFSDS: Armour Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot. It basically shoots a thin sharp metal rod with fins. Much like a crossbow bolt, if you will.
This goes through armour by sheer kinetic energy, and by being sharp. Again, just like a medieval crossbow bolt would.
Why is it important that it's very hard? So it doesn't deform while going through armour. Think a crossbow bolt with a steel bodkin tip, and now think one with a rubber tip. The rubber one will deform and spread the impact over a larger surface, whereas the steel one might stay sharp as it goes through armour. (Thus keeping the impact concentrated on the small surface of the tip.)
If you hadn't felt the need to go into the "you moron" part, I'd have modded you up.
Yes, it's sad that so many people don't have a fscking clue, and yet pass judgment. Then again, that's life.
Speak for yourself. Being a good programmer is not something comparable to being a cabbie or a burger flipper at MacDonalds. As much as every clueles PHB's dream is a world where "bah, it's just typing", it just isn't so, and never will be so.
First of all, it's not just learning the language syntax. Syntax is easy. It's also a matter of learning the core libraries. (Billions of man-hours each year go into rewriting something that already existed.) It's also a matter of learning the best practices.
And it's also a matter of having at least a minimum clue about security and of potential pitfalls. No, I don't mean being a cryptographer. But at least knowing basic stuff like:
- check array bounds
- always escape apostrophes when using a user input string in SQL (otherwise someone can basically rewrite your query). Or better yet, use prepared statements.
- entity-encode any user input before displaying it on a HTML page. (Otherwise someone may well inject JavaScript or VB script in your page.)
- don't trust parameters received from the user via HTTP. (E.g., if you stored some information as hidden inputs, expect to receive them changed or missing.)
- if you stored something in the session, what happens when the user opens something in a second window?
Etc. All that comes from experience and training, not from just dumping someone off the street in front of a computer and telling them "just read the tutorials." As many clueless PHBs discovered, when they went with hare-brained schemes like "we don't need skills, let's just hire the cheapest burger-flipper."
And finally, you have to have solid logic skills. You'd be surprised how many people just don't have the mental ability to program well. Or at all.
In fact, a large part of the drive behind outsourcing or "importing" skilled workers is precisely that. They have these skills. We're not talking expendable factory workers a la Nike, nor expendable supermarket clerks a la WalMart. We're talking extremely qualified workers. Which, yes, are far more qualified that the Americans you could hire without paying a fortune.
Who said she squeezed? Who said she "wrestled it off"? Oh, you did. I forgot for a moment your propensity for making up facts.
Ever paid attention to the physics classes in school? Obviously not.
If you pull at something upwards, and its own weight was not enough to get the lid off (or it would have come off with just one hand), what do you need? Right. Some additional downward force to hold down the cup. Where can that force come from, when holding it between the thighs? Well, blimey, the only available force is friction. What does physics tell you? Right. The force is equal to the friction coefficient, times the pressure applied to the surface.
I.e., and this time please pay attention: without squeezing, the cup doesn't stay down. It's as simple as that, newbie.
Of course, in a society where having D grades is cool, and being called "einstein" is an insult... that kind of lack of knowledge doesn't surprise me.
Now she's an "old lady." Ever notice how easily these made-up facts come to your lips? Everybody you know does.
If you bothered actually reading even only the links posted in this thread alone, e.g.:
http://www.vanfirm.com/mcdonalds-coffee-lawsuit.ht m ("a jury here awarded $2.9 million to an 81-year-old woman scalded by McDonald's coffee")
http://ballinlaw.com/mcdonald.htm ("Stella Liebeck, who is now approximately 81 years old")
... you'd at least have a fscking clue that she _is_ an old lady. (Or if by your standards 81 years old is young, you are... what? An elf?;) But you really have no clue what you're talking about, do you? You never actually RTFA before launching on your "corporations are evil and must pay" crusade, eh? Nah, don't let facts get in the way of your bias.
And all of us (even the rocket scientists) have spilled coffee on ourselves at one time or another. Even if Moraelin has some highly superior degree of manual dexterity which has somehow prevented this from ever happening personally, I'm sure he's noticed not everyone else is as graceful.
Ah, a jolly good straw man argument. Either that, or you just can't understand written text. Where did I write that it's about dexterity? It's about having the mental skills to figure out that if you squeeze a flimsy cup between your thighs, you _will_ spill the liquid out. Did you (even the rocket scientists) get burnt by squeezing a cup with your thighs?
That should tell you that their goal is not to prevent frivolous lawsuits, but to use the spectre of frivolous lawsuits to protect their clients (those guilty of negligence).[...]Why do these lobbyists continue to seek limits of damages in non-frivolous lawsuits? Because reducing the number of frivolous lawsuits is not their goal.
Ah, another straw man, eh? Where was I lobbying for lower damages on NONfrivolous lawsuits? Nowhere. What does it have to do with believing that this suit _is_ frivolous? Nothing.
And so on, and so forth.
I can't help noticing that you even answered your own question, but still went on a trolling spree. Catch:
In that real world, I suspect that those "hundreds of millions" probably included a great many who thought the coffee was way too hot. Some of them probably never came back. Some probably developed the habit of waiting to drink it. Some probably threw in an ice cube. Some probably complained verbally. Most probably just couldn't be bothered with writing a letter to complain.
Heck, I'll even be generous and give you some more: Some figured out that if they need caffeine, but don't want something hot, they can order a Coke. (MacDonalds _does_ sell that too.) Some figured out that it would be dumb to order hot liquid when you're in a car. And all of them were smarter than to put the hot coffee between their legs.
And that, my friend, is what separates those fine men and women from the retards. That is your answer. Those had the basic mental skills to figure that out. The old lady didn't. _That_ is what makes her an idiot.
As for the rest of your non-sequiturs and straw men arguments... meh. I have better stuff to do with my time.
Short story: some guy surfs for hardcore porn at work, tallying a grand total of over 10,000$ in bandwidth costs. (With bandwidth costs these days, that's one helluva lot of porn.)
So he gets fired for it.
And now he sues his employer. He doesn't even say he wasn't surfing for porn. Yep, he did. Lots. But he thinks his employer should have paid to send him to therapy, instead of firing his lazy butt.
Look buddy, compassion is good and fine, but you're nevertheless pulling a straw man debate. So she got a skin transplant. So she has unsteady hands. But guess what? That's not the fscking point. So stop building straw men already.
The point is that:
1. She didn't just spill it because of shaking hands, she actually put a paper cup between her thighs and squeezed it to hold it while she was wrestling with the lid. How stupid is that? _That_ is why I'm calling her an idiot.
2. Either way, she did a mistake. _Her_ mistake. _Not_ MacDonald's.
Did a MacDonald employee come over and pour coffee on her? No. She did it to herself.
Did a MacDonald employee advise her to hold the cup tight with her thighs? No. It was her own idiocy.
Did MacDonald ever advertise their coffee as being at room temperature? No.
Etc.
So why the fsck should McDonald pay for that? What happened to the idea of personal responsibility? As in: she is responsible for her own mistakes.
Or is it just a case of "because they have the money, so wth, let's sue some money out of them"?
So as much as otherwise I have all the compassion for her pain, I _still_ don't see it as reason to award ludicrious sums of money to idiots. It was _her_ mistake. _She_ should be the one who pays for it, not MacDonald. Period.
No, pal, what she did was immediately ask for $20,000 from McDonald. We're talking about a greedy _leech_ whose first thought was "hey, cool, I can sue someone for money."
_If_ she had simply asked McDonald to sell cooler coffee, _then_ she'd have a lot of sympathy from me. But no, this waste of genetic material instantly wanted money.
And _that_ is what's wrong with society today. Every single cretin wants to be awarded money for being utterly stupid. Instead of accepting "ok, I made a mistake", they instantly start thinking "wow, who can I sue for money?"
If some idiot jumps off a tree branch and breaks his leg, he (or his parents) want to sue whoever planted the tree. And immediately someone wants to push for legislation to limit the admissible height for tree branches.
Personal responsibility is no longer fashionable. Noone is to blame any more, noone wants to think for them any more, noone wants to talk to their children any more. They just want to sue someone instead.
No, she _is_ a total clueless idiot, even if she didn't get millions.
1. Coffee is prepared with boiling water, and some people actually like it hot. Even kids are supposed to know that.
2. So 700 out of _hundreds_ _of_ _millions_ served are total cretins. What does this tell you? Maybe that one has to be in the "0.1% most retarded" part of the bell curve to have trouble with it? Well, now you know where that old lady fits.
3. This is precisely what makes her a cretin. If you put a paper-cup between your thighs, and _squeeze_ it to hold it in place as you wrestle the lid off... what do you expect to happen? You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that you'll push the water out, all over yourself. Anyone who's not completely brain-dead should be able to figure that out.
4. Yes, and McDonald has all my respect for refusing to give in to that kind of extortion. If they paid $20,000 to every single leech that asks for it, they'd get a million such requests a day.
5. The fact that she made _any_ money as reward for being a complete cretin, is already a mockery of the justice system. It doesn't have to be millions. Even if they awarded her the cost of the coffee, it would still be too much. IMHO such leeches should be fined, not encouraged to abuse the legal system some more.
6. Which doesn't mean they had been doing anything wrong. It just means that in a society where the "american dream" is to sue someone for undeserved money, McDonald covered their asses against other leeches. If not, every single bum would have read about the lawsuit, then went and poured coffee on themselves to get some money.
7. See point 1, since you're essentially rehashing the exact same point.
I.e., basically I don't think that McDonald was guilty or anything, and didn't break any law. And forget about the old lady. The jury of cretins who awarded those damages are the saddest part.
Which part is so hard to understand? Coffee is made by boiling ground coffee beans in (surprise!) boiling water. Whether you boil it yourself the old fashioned way, or get it from the office's coffee machine, it _will_ be hot. Even kids know that.
So if anyone is retarded enough to put a paper-cup containing hot water between his/her thighs and squeeze it, they're officially too stupid to breathe. And awarding ludicrious sums of money to such f**ktards is a sad mockery of the whole justice system. Oh yeah, let's reward them for being complete morons.
20% her fault? Gee wizz... How about 100% her fault? And how about the old fashioned idea of "take responsibility for your mistakes"? Oh, wait, I forget that the new way is to blame (and sue) someone else instead. Personal responsibility went out of fashion a long time ago.
And I forget that it happened in a society where being a moron is cool, and being called "einstein" is an insult. Well, no wonder that she got a jurry of fellow cretins, eh?
You know what I'd really want to see? I'd want to see a system where these cretins and leeches are actually _fined_ for bringing up such idiotic claims to a court. Not even something as ridiculous as $200,000 or anything. Slap her with a $2000 fine. Just enough to make other morons think twice before thinking, "hey, cool, who can we sue for money today?"
The one being an ass is the PHB who thinks that just because you're in IT, that gives him the right to take control of your free time too.
Heck, if you think non-competing with _them_ is bad... I've even seen contracts that wanted the programmer to not compete with any of their customers, or even their customers' customers.
I.e., if that company ever coded a small servlet for a transport company, under that clause you'd be quite literally prohibited to take a job as a cab or truck driver for another company. (In addition to, of course, not taking any computer-related job.) If that company ever made a small web site for a mom-and-pop grocery shop that also sells newspapers, you'd technically be supposed to not take a job as a newspaper boy or grocery store clerk for 2 years either. If they ever made an applet for a pizza shop, then you're not supposed to work for a piza shop, nor for any company who's employees buy pizza at that shop.
I mean, wth? Is it stupid, or is it stupid? Or both?
That contract technically means selling yourself into slavery, because it basically says "if you quit us, we can sue your ass off if you get _any_ job whatsoever for the next 2 years. Not just computer jobs, but practically _any_ job." I.e., in other words, "your ass belongs to us, because it's either take any shit from us, or literally starve to death."
You have my respect. Not many people would put in weekends to stay up to date with the technology, once they're at a director level. (Or for that matter, some as soon as they're at project leader level.)
However, you probably do realize that most people are more like your boss. Get a 50,000 foot level view, and then decide based on that.
Nothing inherently wrong with that either, as long as they do ask. God knows we need people skilled in management too. Those who do ask when they have a question, got my respect too. Same as I'd respect any other skilled person, regardless of the field, really.
And I don't think many people actually have that belief that a manager should personally micro-manage everyone. If you notice, my objection was precisely more along the lines of "ffs, one doesn't need to pretend to be an all around specialist, one only needs to ask." So, yes, delegating and letting people do their job and use their expertise is good. The world would be a much better place if more managers trusted their subordinates' judgment, instead of pulling uninformed "strategic decisions" themselves. So, yes, you have a whole lot of respect from me in that aspect too.
However, well, we've all run into some boss who tries to look smart by throwing buzzwords around. Sometimes even demands buzzwords. (E.g., true case: asking for lists of which Java patterns were used. But not where or why or if it was even applicable there.) And who (unlike you) doesn't get his knowledge first hand, but thinks that reading some IT-for-dummies magazine once a month makes him _the_ most qualified IT specialist in the whole enterprise.
And then there's those who don't even try to read that magazine either. They just literally take an "I'm paid more than you, so nyah! It means I know it all better than you, including your job" attitude. (True story: I once had to go to a client, where the local PHB averaged more than once an hour of saying, literally, "The golden rule is: whoever has the gold makes the rules, and that's me." I initially thought he was the owner or something. Turned out he was just a hired joker, and they fired him a couple of months later, when he basically drove the whole department into the ground. Including causing all programmers _and_ designers to leave.)
That's all I'm saying. When you see some of us snapping at the first mention of management, well, it's just bad memories of these individuals. I know a few good managers myself, but, well, somehow often the first mental image is of that "golden rule" guy and the like.
Maybe you still actually program, and thus still have a clue. Most people don't, once they reach management level, and thus no longer do.
Any skill you don't use regularly, goes away. It doesn't matter if it's programming, skateboarding or riding a bycicle. I've programmed non-stop for the last 20 years. Yet some languages, which I haven't used in a long time, I'm no longer that good with. E.g., I'm now good at Java, but I'd need to re-learn Pascal if I wanted to program in it.
Also because knowing a language isn't just a matter of knowing the syntax. It's also a question of knowing the core libraries, _and_ the best techniques for that language. The Pascal of today (e.g., Delphi) is completely different in those aspects from the text mode Turbo Pascal of 10 years ago.
What's that have to do with the subject at hand?
Well, it has to do with believing some managers' claims to still know it all, although they haven't written a single line of code in 20 years. Sorry, in 20 years of total lack of practice, one would even forget how to _walk_. Even if they were great coders back then, by now they'd probably have trouble even writing a working "Hello World!"
And predictably enough you see some who don't even understand the terminology any more. Yet they still claim to be experts, and try to look like experts, by throwing big buzzwords around. In contexts where it's clear that they have _no_ fscking clue what those mean. It doesn't make them look like experts, it makes the look like a bunch of sad clowns.
Worse yet, that makes them vulnerable to ruthless salesmen who are actually trained to prey upon this kind of a buffoon. Think "the emperor's new clothes". No, literally. Such a clown will buy the snake oil with the most buzzwords, just so he doesn't look out of date with new technology. Never ask someone who actually knows, 'cause that would (God forbid) be admitting that there's one tiny detail His Managerial Highness doesn't already know.
And you know what's _really_ sad? That in reality most of us coders would actually hold them in much higher regard if they were honest, and _asked_ before making some totally retarded "strategic decision."
Are you such a manager? Maybe, or maybe not. I can't know. But in case you were wondering why some people have such a low opinion of managers, now you know. It's because this kind of clowns who try to look like supreme experts in domains they actually don't even start to understand. Those are the ones who give the rest of you a bad name.