Dude, you don't get it. Not agreeing with people who hate Islam (which is obviously out to DESTROY THE WEST!!!111) means you hate the West and all it stands for. It's all very logical;)
I have two lighting modes for (almost) every room in my apartment: Relaxing and Broad Fucking Daylight. Relaxing mode is generally provided by 60W incandescents on a dimmer and is great for watching TV, hanging out with friends, or reading. BFD is provided by compact fluorescents and useful for housework and other tasks requiring a lot of energy. I actually like it better than sticking to just one kind of light.
The company I work for did a pretty good job of interviewing me... there was a ten minute "let's see if we like you" part, followed by a reasonably rigorous (but fair) test of the language. The only drawback is that the managers would generally pick the most technically competent person and ignore soft skills like "can understand and follow directions", "has a good personality" and "can think for themselves."
Fortunately I'm now the final decision maker when it comes to hiring programmers on my project, and I place a lot of weight on soft skills - I know what it takes to get the job done, and once you're in the pool of technically qualified candidates you're judged (almost) entirely on the basis of whether or not you're a good worker. And I must say I'm quite proud of the team I've assembled, they are a bunch of freaks but they love their jobs and when we need to knock one out of the park we do it... unlike some of the other teams I have to work with;)
...who finds that I work LESS as a salaried employee than I did as a contractor? It used to be that they paid me for the work I did; now they pay me $X dollars a month plus $Y dollars a year not to leave them - and all because I'm really the only person who knows enough about the project to explain what needs to be done and how to do it to the contractors, and because I'm the only person who is willing to show up when something goes wrong at 3am... but nothing ever goes wrong at 3am simply because every decision I make includes the fact that if I fuck up I'm going to have to show up at 3am while the contractors dream about collecting their next paycheck.
Have fun working hard; I'm enjoying my 35 hour workweek and 2 hour lunches.
Seriously, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to participate in the political process. Just lay down a few rules for yourself and stick with them and take a little time to research some of the more important political positions / ballot initiatives. Your vote won't kill anyone, but it is your $0.02 and as a fellow citizen of this great country... I want your $0.02. It's the American way.
Personally, I follow a few simple rules:
For important positions, I vote Democrat, unless I hate the Democrat that's running (happens a lot, actually)... then I'll vote Republican, or sometimes I'll just vote for myself.
For positions I don't understand, I vote for the person with the job that seems most qualified... i.e. the chemical engineer probably knows how to run the water district better than the massage therapist / holistic healer. If nobody seems qualified, I vote for myself.
Laws in general suck, so all ballot propositions default to a "no" vote. If I understand the issue and agree that it needs to change, I'll vote yes.
I always vote to throw more money at roads, parks, education, and civic services like cops and firemen. We may one day actually fully fund such things, in which case I'll start voting no on such bond measures.
Any other bond measures get an automatic "no." See above for the approved list of things to spend money on.
No, that's the way normal human beings interact. Only people who have never really spent much time in a diverse, multiethnic environment get offended by such things... the rest of us tease each other constantly and have a grand old time.
...make a psychological diagnosis without any qualifications to do so.
Was the guy an asshole to include contact information? Yes. Whether he did it out of spite or laziness is irrelevant; it's not cool to post contact info for the world to see. Personally my punishment would be "$500 fine and think about what you done."
Is he a sociopath? Not necesssarily. I can think of many reasons why someone would think they were doing their community a service by doing this... the reasons are wrong, but they don't indicate a callous disregard for all of humanity, just a callous disregard for a certain subset of it - and I can understand that.
Still, posting contact information like that is Not Cool.
With the glaring exception of Prop. 65 warnings (THIS AREA CONTAINS CHEMICALS BLAH BLAH BLAH) we're actually pretty low on the "stupid warning nanny state" scale.
Personally I think we just did the entire English-speaking world a favor... I highly doubt companies will only put on the sticker and include directions on how to secure wireless routers destined for California, they'll just slap them on everything.
Next maybe we'll clean up the video game rating system... trust me, you'd MUCH rather have us do that instead of the US Congress;)
I meant "you" in the general sense, as if I were speaking to an audience.
In my experience, teachers in the public education system do much better at teaching kids how to think than private education does - I'm not saying it's perfect by any means, but unlike private schools they don't have to cater to the parents. Given the state of parenting in this country that is most definitely a Good Thing.
>If you want this debate to go away, there's a very simple solution: school vouchers. Give people who disagree with evolution another option and their interest will largely disappear.
Man, you know what's really screwed up? Public schools are brainwashing kids that 2+2=4... I happen to believe that 2+2=5 and the gummint has NO RIGHT to mandate that my kids learn otherwise!
On a more serious note: I'm sorry if the Universe didn't take your beliefs into account, but there is no way I'm going to let my tax dollars be used to pay for a private education just so some parents won't be offended by those darn facts of life.
When I used to do on-site technical support for home users and small businesses, this is the procedure I ALWAYS used to cancel AOL:
1. Call the credit card company. Tell them you are cancelling AOL and will no longer accept any charges from them. The credit card companies are all too familiar with AOL's billing practices and will thank you for calling ahead.
2. Call AOL and tell them you'd like to cancel your account. DO NOT ANSWER ANY OF THEIR QUESTIONS, just keep saying "I am cancelling my account. The credit card company has already been informed of this and will not accept any more charges from you. May I have the confirmation number please?"
3. Repeat #2 until AOL rep. gives in and gives you a confirmation number.
4. Verify that the confirmation number is, indeed, for cancelling your account.
5. Call the credit card company back with the confirmation number.
It was a serious pain in the ass and took from 45 minutes to an hour, but it worked.
All theoretical arguments aside, I've never had film come close to matching the sharpness of images I get from my 6MP DSLR, and I'm using the same lenses I used on my old 35mm SLR. Perhaps you're thinking medium format (120) film? That keeps up with digital in terms of sharpness, and beats it in dynamic range, but has the drawback of being... film.
Now that I read the story again, it was set to be a ginormous Wal*Mart, not a Sam's Club... still, I think it shows that the ruling mostly shifts the decision making from the courts to local governments. Since it's a lot easier to boot out shitty local governments than shitty judges, it's probably a positive thing.
Bit by bit, it seems, that America is changing into something quite different than I was taught in school. Like the supreme court ruling that allows local governments to sieze your land for a better purpose as just one of many examples.
Then by all means, teach with an IDE. Otherwise, the KISS rule would say "give them a choice of text editors and teach the basics."
IDEs are insanely useful when working on large projects, and should be introduced towards the end of the class, but IMHO if you use an IDE from the start you're going to end up with a bunch of students who understand the IDE instead of the core concepts they need to know.
One question that's been brought up, but hasn't been said loudly enough, is this - why not blend Java with the existing C++ code? A team at the company I work for was faced with a similar situation, and after a bit of experimentation and thought decided that the most sensible path forward was to rewrite the GUI in Java, design some nice JNDI wrappers for the components that the GUI would have to interface with, and leave the rest alone. By doing this they've given their customers the appearance of having a shiny new application (Swing looks a million times better than the godawful 90's hangover they had before), and at the same time they didn't have to throw out a bunch of thoroughly debugged code.
Do the cards actually work on any machine, but is not just not supported?
I can't speak for other carriers, but Verizon's tetherable phones show up as a USB Serial device and act just like a dialup modem. Their PC cards show up as a USB hub attached to a USB serial device and, again, act like a dialup modem... so anything that support USB serial devices and dialup modems should be able to connect:)
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Dude, you don't get it. Not agreeing with people who hate Islam (which is obviously out to DESTROY THE WEST!!!111) means you hate the West and all it stands for. It's all very logical ;)
A girl's gotta have her standards.
I have two lighting modes for (almost) every room in my apartment: Relaxing and Broad Fucking Daylight. Relaxing mode is generally provided by 60W incandescents on a dimmer and is great for watching TV, hanging out with friends, or reading. BFD is provided by compact fluorescents and useful for housework and other tasks requiring a lot of energy. I actually like it better than sticking to just one kind of light.
The company I work for did a pretty good job of interviewing me... there was a ten minute "let's see if we like you" part, followed by a reasonably rigorous (but fair) test of the language. The only drawback is that the managers would generally pick the most technically competent person and ignore soft skills like "can understand and follow directions", "has a good personality" and "can think for themselves."
Fortunately I'm now the final decision maker when it comes to hiring programmers on my project, and I place a lot of weight on soft skills - I know what it takes to get the job done, and once you're in the pool of technically qualified candidates you're judged (almost) entirely on the basis of whether or not you're a good worker. And I must say I'm quite proud of the team I've assembled, they are a bunch of freaks but they love their jobs and when we need to knock one out of the park we do it... unlike some of the other teams I have to work with ;)
...who finds that I work LESS as a salaried employee than I did as a contractor? It used to be that they paid me for the work I did; now they pay me $X dollars a month plus $Y dollars a year not to leave them - and all because I'm really the only person who knows enough about the project to explain what needs to be done and how to do it to the contractors, and because I'm the only person who is willing to show up when something goes wrong at 3am... but nothing ever goes wrong at 3am simply because every decision I make includes the fact that if I fuck up I'm going to have to show up at 3am while the contractors dream about collecting their next paycheck.
Have fun working hard; I'm enjoying my 35 hour workweek and 2 hour lunches.
In Atari BASIC the comma would spit out a tab while the semicolon just concatenated. I think most BASICs were like this.
Haha, I was going to say "a processor is not a big truck you can dump something on... it's a series of tubes!"
Personally, I follow a few simple rules:
You know, I don't even argue with guys like this IRL anymore. I just hit them. Hey, you want a fight, I'll give it to you :P
US law trumps contractual agreement, yes.
Those flat colors.... that film grain... the cheesy special effects... Lucas really should've cleaned it up with a computer or something.
No, that's the way normal human beings interact. Only people who have never really spent much time in a diverse, multiethnic environment get offended by such things... the rest of us tease each other constantly and have a grand old time.
Was the guy an asshole to include contact information? Yes. Whether he did it out of spite or laziness is irrelevant; it's not cool to post contact info for the world to see. Personally my punishment would be "$500 fine and think about what you done."
Is he a sociopath? Not necesssarily. I can think of many reasons why someone would think they were doing their community a service by doing this... the reasons are wrong, but they don't indicate a callous disregard for all of humanity, just a callous disregard for a certain subset of it - and I can understand that.
Still, posting contact information like that is Not Cool.
Personally I think we just did the entire English-speaking world a favor... I highly doubt companies will only put on the sticker and include directions on how to secure wireless routers destined for California, they'll just slap them on everything.
Next maybe we'll clean up the video game rating system... trust me, you'd MUCH rather have us do that instead of the US Congress ;)
I got a progressive-scan DVD / VHS combo for $99 a couple months ago.... I don't think a fivefold increase in price can be called "not much higher."
In my experience, teachers in the public education system do much better at teaching kids how to think than private education does - I'm not saying it's perfect by any means, but unlike private schools they don't have to cater to the parents. Given the state of parenting in this country that is most definitely a Good Thing.
Man, you know what's really screwed up? Public schools are brainwashing kids that 2+2=4... I happen to believe that 2+2=5 and the gummint has NO RIGHT to mandate that my kids learn otherwise!
On a more serious note: I'm sorry if the Universe didn't take your beliefs into account, but there is no way I'm going to let my tax dollars be used to pay for a private education just so some parents won't be offended by those darn facts of life.
Damn it! Why did I have to blow all my mod points before I saw this? :(
When I used to do on-site technical support for home users and small businesses, this is the procedure I ALWAYS used to cancel AOL:
1. Call the credit card company. Tell them you are cancelling AOL and will no longer accept any charges from them. The credit card companies are all too familiar with AOL's billing practices and will thank you for calling ahead.
2. Call AOL and tell them you'd like to cancel your account. DO NOT ANSWER ANY OF THEIR QUESTIONS, just keep saying "I am cancelling my account. The credit card company has already been informed of this and will not accept any more charges from you. May I have the confirmation number please?"
3. Repeat #2 until AOL rep. gives in and gives you a confirmation number.
4. Verify that the confirmation number is, indeed, for cancelling your account.
5. Call the credit card company back with the confirmation number.
It was a serious pain in the ass and took from 45 minutes to an hour, but it worked.
All theoretical arguments aside, I've never had film come close to matching the sharpness of images I get from my 6MP DSLR, and I'm using the same lenses I used on my old 35mm SLR. Perhaps you're thinking medium format (120) film? That keeps up with digital in terms of sharpness, and beats it in dynamic range, but has the drawback of being... film.
Now that I read the story again, it was set to be a ginormous Wal*Mart, not a Sam's Club... still, I think it shows that the ruling mostly shifts the decision making from the courts to local governments. Since it's a lot easier to boot out shitty local governments than shitty judges, it's probably a positive thing.
A city near me just used eminent domain to seize prime waterfront land owned by Wal*Mart and intended to be used for a Sam's Club... it will now be a mixture of small(er) businesses, restaurants, and apartments, with the waterfront set aside as a park. They cited the recent Supreme Court ruling in the process.
IDEs are insanely useful when working on large projects, and should be introduced towards the end of the class, but IMHO if you use an IDE from the start you're going to end up with a bunch of students who understand the IDE instead of the core concepts they need to know.
One question that's been brought up, but hasn't been said loudly enough, is this - why not blend Java with the existing C++ code? A team at the company I work for was faced with a similar situation, and after a bit of experimentation and thought decided that the most sensible path forward was to rewrite the GUI in Java, design some nice JNDI wrappers for the components that the GUI would have to interface with, and leave the rest alone. By doing this they've given their customers the appearance of having a shiny new application (Swing looks a million times better than the godawful 90's hangover they had before), and at the same time they didn't have to throw out a bunch of thoroughly debugged code.
I can't speak for other carriers, but Verizon's tetherable phones show up as a USB Serial device and act just like a dialup modem. Their PC cards show up as a USB hub attached to a USB serial device and, again, act like a dialup modem... so anything that support USB serial devices and dialup modems should be able to connect :)