Plavix says, "No matter how formidable you are, you're no match for a dangerous clot."
This is incredibly damaging. You know there's going to be some dock worker in New Jersey who desperately needs Plavix who's going to say "Oh yeah? Some fuckin' clot gets in my body I'll whoop its ass!" It's like a dare.
I wonder how many badasses are going to have to die before they pull this campaign.
Tax breaks for dependents? Eliminate them. If you have dependents, you are using more public resources than single folks or "married" people who have no children. If anything, you should pay MORE taxes, rather than relying on those who use few resources to give you a free ride on your children's education. Better yet, send your children to private schools; provide a higher-quality education for them, and leach less off of public resources.
Increasing the tax burden with the number of kids (or even keeping it the same, since kids place their own inherent economic burdens on their parents) could potentially be a very bad thing if it led to a decrease in the birthrate. Look at the situation we're facing when the baby boomers retire and their increasing burden on social services has to be supported by a smaller workforce. Or look at many of the nations of western Europe or Japan, where the population will actually decline over the coming decades unless a policy of aggressively increasing immigration is adopted. Governments want healthy population increases, hence the tax breaks. Kids today are taxpayers tomorrow.
I do agree with the point of your post, though, and I've been saying the same thing for a long time. Marriage is a religious construct, and it shouldn't be specifically recognized by our government. I think they should take what many moderates have been offering up to gays, "civil unions", and make that what the government recognizes, then allow people to define the religious term for their union themselves as long as they get their "civil union license" to make it legal.
It solves the terminology problem otherwise reasonable people seem to have with the government recognizing "gay marriage", and it allows gay people to get married, if that's what they want to call it. Simple, but the religious right will have a collective coronary if any mainstream politician ever seriously suggests it because it makes the nation "less Christian", I'm sure.
Would you consider a candidate's stand on privacy important enough to sway your vote?
Not hers. She's a US Senator, former First Lady, and the democratic front-runner for the presidential nomination in 2008. She's been in the public eye for years, she's wielded real power for years, is perhaps the most influential woman in the US after Oprah (seriously...); and yet our privacy has continued to be diminished on her watch without so much as a peep. You apparently have to go back to a talk she gave to the American Constitution Society to even know what her stance on personal privacy is, and I had to go to Wikipedia to find out who they are. Where's the public outrage if you care about privacy so much, Hillary? Lord knows you don't have a hard time getting in front of a TV camera with a chance to express it.
Will I support a candidate who's serious about protecting personal privacy? Hell yes. It's the most important issue I can think of. Hillary Clinton isn't that person, and neither is any other mainstream candidate. Pretty fucking sad.
You certainly wouldn't argue that there is anything better than Subversion for centralized version control?
Dunno. All I have to compare it against inside your narrow little corridor is CVS, so maybe it's the best of what I would contend is an inherently bad design. Lots of folks have nice things to say about Perforce, though, so maybe not.
You get the point, but don't seem to think it's a problem. BK puts it more eloquently than I would (of course, they're trying to sell you something):
Subversion loses information every time there is parallel development because you are forced to merge before you check in if someone else checked in first. The state of your workspace before the merge is lost forever. Another way to say this is that if there is N-way parallel development, Subversion loses N-1 events.
Maybe you don't think that's a big deal. That's cool. But you can't honestly say that svn gives you anything in return. After all, there's nothing stopping you from using a centralized repo with, say, monotone and following pretty much the same development model as you do with svn, except for the fact mtn won't nuke your workspace because it feels the work you've done since you last checked out is valuable enough to treat with respect. Having lost work to merges with svn after working for just a couple hours since I last updated, I agree with it.
Don't sit there masturbating to the thought of buying a PDA or some overpowered $300 math Frankenstein that you can't use on any tests. Just get a TI-8x or the equivalent HP like everybody else and use it for the tool it is. They're great and last forever (I've had my 85 since high school and it still sits on my desk), and you won't be in for a shock when you show up to a standardized test with a Palm and they turn you away.
I like shiny things too, but this is just a tool to help you do math. Just get the same good one everyone else gets and let your brain make it special.
Or maybe I just think darcs, arch, monotone, or -- hell, if you have to have some relationship with svn -- even svk (I don't know anything about BitKeeper since there are lots of adequate free solutions and everywhere I've worked has used CVS or; now, unfortunately, SVN) are a hell of a lot better. SVN is CVS "done right", which is still version control done wrong, and it has its own problems on top of CVS'.
If you must have specifics, the thing that bothers me the most is that you have to run a merge before you can check in changes to a file if you're not up to date with the latest repository revision. Right before a merge is the time I most want version control, because it's the easiest time to really fuck something up, and svn just pretends like the situation doesn't exist and makes you merge the changes into your unsaved working copy. Great idea!
Good version control software gets in the way of development as little as possible. SVN (and CVS) get in the way all the time, except when you really need them, then they can't do shit for you. They're good at forcing you to keep an updated copy of your source somewhere, and they're decent for finding out who's to blame for a problem. They're even nice at helping you generate nifty changelogs. They suck at the things that matter: helping you coordinate changes between multiple team members and allowing those folks to work as independently of each other as possible without duplicating effort or bumping heads.
I did read this book, because maybe I thought I was just giving it a bad rap based on the fact that CVS is crap and SVN is a logical continuation of the ideas in CVS. Nope.
Don't be mistaken, they're both better than nothing. But that's pretty much all they're better than.
Is this a US-thing ? That employees are to be treated as pre-school idiots ?
Yes. It's what you get when you live in the most retardedly litigious society in history. Every little thing has to be spelled out to the letter, and no leeway can ever be given, lest somebody should get fired for not using common sense and try -- and probably succeed -- to strike it rich with a lawsuit.
Of course, the fact that you're likely to encounter a few pre-school idiots in any reasonably sized working environment might have something to do with it, too.
It will do significantly less than other smart phones. The iPod does significantly less than many other MP3 players. The Mac runs significantly less software than a Windows PC. Apple stuff never succeeds because it does more, it succeeds because it does the actual important things better.
I don't know many people who have smartphones. Well, that's not true. I probably know more people with smartphones than anybody living outside northern California or Japan has any right to. I'm a nerd. I have nerd friends. We're into that stuff. For most people, a phone doesn't need to do any more than the iPhone does -- in fact, most people are probably using phones that do a hell of a lot less and are perfectly happy with it. Will the iPhone do those things better, and be a better video iPod to boot? Maybe. If it can pull that off, it will be a runaway success -- even at its premium pricepoint -- and Steve will look like a genius again and get a few more articles in Time magazine.
That's the way I feel about it as well. We use Mongrel for our intranet and it rocks, but I don't need it at all to code on my laptop. I'm glad that Rails doesn't require me to install it, and equally glad that it's basically drop-in when I do want to use it.
OT: I've been looking forward to 1.2 for a while now. I'm glad they got it out the door. Rails and Ruby really do make a lot of tasks much more enjoyable.
I don't necessarily agree with you about the "ease" of developing for Vista. I do, however, agree that this is a stupid argument against Vista. The whole system of the ESRB might be flawed, sure. Parents really should be the ones to determine whether a game is appropriate for their children or not. That's not reality. People want "parental controls" that don't require them to actually pay attention to their kids. There's a demand for that feature, even if most parents won't actually use it. Microsoft gives it to them, because it actually is a potentially useful new feature that they can tack onto their aging and unexciting product. There's no other way to accomplish the same thing without setting up a pseudo-ESRB of their own, which is equally pointless.
Besides, as you say, most parents won't use it. Those that do, well, their kids can complain that the game won't install/run, and if Microsoft did a good job (wishful thinking?) the parents will notice it's because there's no ESRB rating. Maybe the parents will take a look at the game and decide whether their kids should be allowed to play it or not. That can't be anything other than a very good thing.
IT may be seriously damaging the credibility of the profession.
So what? When people stop needing me, I won't have a job anymore. Until then, I could give a rat's ass about the "credibility of the profession."
I don't really like working in IT, anyway. I just happen to be good at it, get paid quite well, and don't have to suck up to anybody. I'd much rather do my programming on my own time, on projects that interest me. Maybe someday there won't be a place for assholes who get the job done like me, I'll go do something else, and I can return to those happy days when computers were just a hobby.
Then again, we still have plumbers and mechanics, even though people complain about being screwed by those people all the time.
I know that. I also know about ADODb and PEAR::DB. I also don't write exploitable DB code.
The people who give PHP its bad rap don't know about those things, or why they should use them, and they outnumber me 10:1. Unfortunately, when they go to http://us2.php.net/mysql_query to look up what is quite possibly the only PHP function they actually know, there's nothing except some gibberish in a comment halfway down the page with a poorly-written DIY solution and no link to the resources the clued folks know about.
Is it the programmers' fault for being an idiot? Sure. I'm no friend of the morons. Burn them at the stake. Is it the PHP developers' fault for not directing said morons to the right way of doing things? Yes, because they originally caused the problem by making the only installed-by-default mentioned-in-the-docs interface to the most popular database one step above the C library interface without drilling the possible security issues into their skulls (notice there's no mentioned about security on that page at all), while also billing the language itself as the grandma-easy web language.
I write PHP for a living (and Perl, Python, Java, or Ruby when I can sneak it into a project without making waves). I've been around it for several years. I know what I'm doing. Most of the people who are writing PHP, and even most of the people who are writing free PHP software that is being released to a wider audience don't meet those criteria. The PHP developers themselves share a large responsibility for creating this situation, and they need to be conscious of it every step of the way.
Maybe Sony could do a series of ads with Mohammed with dynamite on his chest playing a PSP before he blows himself up? Or perhaps run a series of ads on the Duke campus saying "It will rape your mind!".
... Brainbench was free. I don't know what the deal with it is at all now, but I got a ton certifications from them in things I barely knew anything about. Even put them on the resume for the first job I got in college. Good times.
If it's still that way, I would say you could -- at worst -- pick up a book and ace the thing.
If I buy this CD with my USA credit card and my USA address, will it count towards the total tally?
If it'll help get them in the top 40 without major label backing, I've got two bucks (or whatever 77 pence is in dollars nowadays), but I don't really like the song very much:P.
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Plavix says, "No matter how formidable you are, you're no match for a dangerous clot."
This is incredibly damaging. You know there's going to be some dock worker in New Jersey who desperately needs Plavix who's going to say "Oh yeah? Some fuckin' clot gets in my body I'll whoop its ass!" It's like a dare.
I wonder how many badasses are going to have to die before they pull this campaign.
Increasing the tax burden with the number of kids (or even keeping it the same, since kids place their own inherent economic burdens on their parents) could potentially be a very bad thing if it led to a decrease in the birthrate. Look at the situation we're facing when the baby boomers retire and their increasing burden on social services has to be supported by a smaller workforce. Or look at many of the nations of western Europe or Japan, where the population will actually decline over the coming decades unless a policy of aggressively increasing immigration is adopted. Governments want healthy population increases, hence the tax breaks. Kids today are taxpayers tomorrow.
I do agree with the point of your post, though, and I've been saying the same thing for a long time. Marriage is a religious construct, and it shouldn't be specifically recognized by our government. I think they should take what many moderates have been offering up to gays, "civil unions", and make that what the government recognizes, then allow people to define the religious term for their union themselves as long as they get their "civil union license" to make it legal.
It solves the terminology problem otherwise reasonable people seem to have with the government recognizing "gay marriage", and it allows gay people to get married, if that's what they want to call it. Simple, but the religious right will have a collective coronary if any mainstream politician ever seriously suggests it because it makes the nation "less Christian", I'm sure.
Not hers. She's a US Senator, former First Lady, and the democratic front-runner for the presidential nomination in 2008. She's been in the public eye for years, she's wielded real power for years, is perhaps the most influential woman in the US after Oprah (seriously...); and yet our privacy has continued to be diminished on her watch without so much as a peep. You apparently have to go back to a talk she gave to the American Constitution Society to even know what her stance on personal privacy is, and I had to go to Wikipedia to find out who they are. Where's the public outrage if you care about privacy so much, Hillary? Lord knows you don't have a hard time getting in front of a TV camera with a chance to express it.
Will I support a candidate who's serious about protecting personal privacy? Hell yes. It's the most important issue I can think of. Hillary Clinton isn't that person, and neither is any other mainstream candidate. Pretty fucking sad.
Dunno. All I have to compare it against inside your narrow little corridor is CVS, so maybe it's the best of what I would contend is an inherently bad design. Lots of folks have nice things to say about Perforce, though, so maybe not.
You get the point, but don't seem to think it's a problem. BK puts it more eloquently than I would (of course, they're trying to sell you something):
Maybe you don't think that's a big deal. That's cool. But you can't honestly say that svn gives you anything in return. After all, there's nothing stopping you from using a centralized repo with, say, monotone and following pretty much the same development model as you do with svn, except for the fact mtn won't nuke your workspace because it feels the work you've done since you last checked out is valuable enough to treat with respect. Having lost work to merges with svn after working for just a couple hours since I last updated, I agree with it.
Don't sit there masturbating to the thought of buying a PDA or some overpowered $300 math Frankenstein that you can't use on any tests. Just get a TI-8x or the equivalent HP like everybody else and use it for the tool it is. They're great and last forever (I've had my 85 since high school and it still sits on my desk), and you won't be in for a shock when you show up to a standardized test with a Palm and they turn you away.
I like shiny things too, but this is just a tool to help you do math. Just get the same good one everyone else gets and let your brain make it special.
As long as what you're trying to buy isn't pot.
Or maybe I just think darcs, arch, monotone, or -- hell, if you have to have some relationship with svn -- even svk (I don't know anything about BitKeeper since there are lots of adequate free solutions and everywhere I've worked has used CVS or; now, unfortunately, SVN) are a hell of a lot better. SVN is CVS "done right", which is still version control done wrong, and it has its own problems on top of CVS'.
If you must have specifics, the thing that bothers me the most is that you have to run a merge before you can check in changes to a file if you're not up to date with the latest repository revision. Right before a merge is the time I most want version control, because it's the easiest time to really fuck something up, and svn just pretends like the situation doesn't exist and makes you merge the changes into your unsaved working copy. Great idea!
Good version control software gets in the way of development as little as possible. SVN (and CVS) get in the way all the time, except when you really need them, then they can't do shit for you. They're good at forcing you to keep an updated copy of your source somewhere, and they're decent for finding out who's to blame for a problem. They're even nice at helping you generate nifty changelogs. They suck at the things that matter: helping you coordinate changes between multiple team members and allowing those folks to work as independently of each other as possible without duplicating effort or bumping heads.
I did read this book, because maybe I thought I was just giving it a bad rap based on the fact that CVS is crap and SVN is a logical continuation of the ideas in CVS. Nope.
Don't be mistaken, they're both better than nothing. But that's pretty much all they're better than.
Actually, it was more a crack that Subversion sucks. Of course, being "mysqlrocks", I don't expect you to recognize shit when you see it.
Passing around tarballs sounds silly until the only other option is Subversion.
Yes. It's what you get when you live in the most retardedly litigious society in history. Every little thing has to be spelled out to the letter, and no leeway can ever be given, lest somebody should get fired for not using common sense and try -- and probably succeed -- to strike it rich with a lawsuit.
Of course, the fact that you're likely to encounter a few pre-school idiots in any reasonably sized working environment might have something to do with it, too.
First, I show them how to use Outlook. Then I email them a picture of my ass, and tell them to get used to kissing it.
It will do significantly less than other smart phones. The iPod does significantly less than many other MP3 players. The Mac runs significantly less software than a Windows PC. Apple stuff never succeeds because it does more, it succeeds because it does the actual important things better.
I don't know many people who have smartphones. Well, that's not true. I probably know more people with smartphones than anybody living outside northern California or Japan has any right to. I'm a nerd. I have nerd friends. We're into that stuff. For most people, a phone doesn't need to do any more than the iPhone does -- in fact, most people are probably using phones that do a hell of a lot less and are perfectly happy with it. Will the iPhone do those things better, and be a better video iPod to boot? Maybe. If it can pull that off, it will be a runaway success -- even at its premium pricepoint -- and Steve will look like a genius again and get a few more articles in Time magazine.
That's the way I feel about it as well. We use Mongrel for our intranet and it rocks, but I don't need it at all to code on my laptop. I'm glad that Rails doesn't require me to install it, and equally glad that it's basically drop-in when I do want to use it.
OT: I've been looking forward to 1.2 for a while now. I'm glad they got it out the door. Rails and Ruby really do make a lot of tasks much more enjoyable.
I don't necessarily agree with you about the "ease" of developing for Vista. I do, however, agree that this is a stupid argument against Vista. The whole system of the ESRB might be flawed, sure. Parents really should be the ones to determine whether a game is appropriate for their children or not. That's not reality. People want "parental controls" that don't require them to actually pay attention to their kids. There's a demand for that feature, even if most parents won't actually use it. Microsoft gives it to them, because it actually is a potentially useful new feature that they can tack onto their aging and unexciting product. There's no other way to accomplish the same thing without setting up a pseudo-ESRB of their own, which is equally pointless.
Besides, as you say, most parents won't use it. Those that do, well, their kids can complain that the game won't install/run, and if Microsoft did a good job (wishful thinking?) the parents will notice it's because there's no ESRB rating. Maybe the parents will take a look at the game and decide whether their kids should be allowed to play it or not. That can't be anything other than a very good thing.
For a second there I thought I got Bel-Air'd on /.
So what? When people stop needing me, I won't have a job anymore. Until then, I could give a rat's ass about the "credibility of the profession."
I don't really like working in IT, anyway. I just happen to be good at it, get paid quite well, and don't have to suck up to anybody. I'd much rather do my programming on my own time, on projects that interest me. Maybe someday there won't be a place for assholes who get the job done like me, I'll go do something else, and I can return to those happy days when computers were just a hobby.
Then again, we still have plumbers and mechanics, even though people complain about being screwed by those people all the time.
This is fine with me, because HTML email fucking sucks anyway. Maybe if they make it suck even worse, everybody will go back to plain text.
I know that. I also know about ADODb and PEAR::DB. I also don't write exploitable DB code.
The people who give PHP its bad rap don't know about those things, or why they should use them, and they outnumber me 10:1. Unfortunately, when they go to http://us2.php.net/mysql_query to look up what is quite possibly the only PHP function they actually know, there's nothing except some gibberish in a comment halfway down the page with a poorly-written DIY solution and no link to the resources the clued folks know about.
Is it the programmers' fault for being an idiot? Sure. I'm no friend of the morons. Burn them at the stake. Is it the PHP developers' fault for not directing said morons to the right way of doing things? Yes, because they originally caused the problem by making the only installed-by-default mentioned-in-the-docs interface to the most popular database one step above the C library interface without drilling the possible security issues into their skulls (notice there's no mentioned about security on that page at all), while also billing the language itself as the grandma-easy web language.
I write PHP for a living (and Perl, Python, Java, or Ruby when I can sneak it into a project without making waves). I've been around it for several years. I know what I'm doing. Most of the people who are writing PHP, and even most of the people who are writing free PHP software that is being released to a wider audience don't meet those criteria. The PHP developers themselves share a large responsibility for creating this situation, and they need to be conscious of it every step of the way.
I find those funny :(
There should really be a provision in trademark law that says the coolest product gets the name. Piss off, Cisco, I want my iPhone. The real iPhone!
... Brainbench was free. I don't know what the deal with it is at all now, but I got a ton certifications from them in things I barely knew anything about. Even put them on the resume for the first job I got in college. Good times.
If it's still that way, I would say you could -- at worst -- pick up a book and ace the thing.
If I buy this CD with my USA credit card and my USA address, will it count towards the total tally?
:P.
If it'll help get them in the top 40 without major label backing, I've got two bucks (or whatever 77 pence is in dollars nowadays), but I don't really like the song very much
Maybe not in your neck of the woods!
Somebody get me a brain slug. Stat!