Actually it's correct. Despite the fact that we write it 100%, the actual value is 1.0. And...
sqrt(1) == 1
Actually it's correct. Despite the fact that we write it 100%, the actual value is 1.0. And...
sqrt(1) == 1
> If we subscribe to the belief that ideas can be judged within a vacuum, uninfluenced by the social weight of their proponents, we perpetuate a system in which arbitrary markers like race and gender influence the perceived correctness of ideas. We can't overcome prejudice by pretending it doesn't exist. Focusing on identity allows us to interrogate the process through which white males have their opinions taken at face value, while women, people of color, and non-normatively gendered people struggle to have their voices heard.I disagree.
Most arguments in this vein presuppose a social hierarchy that's a mirror image of the one decried by SJWs; that one's credibility is proportional to the amount of oppression one endures. Aside from being a shameless ad hominem, there's some beautiful irony at work there.
I believe both of you have read his statement exactly backward of what he's saying (It is badly worded.) A clearer expression:
If we assume that ideas are judged without regard to the social value of the proponent of that idea, we perpetuate the current system.
Essentially, he's saying that if we assume the words spoken by a black wearing a hoodie have the same value as a white male CEO, then there is no way to overcome prejudice. In this, a poor black person may complain that, "I suffer," but his complaint is ignored as having no value, overwhelmed by the perceived value of the white CEO's statement that, "Everything is fine just the way it is."
The opposite allows us to weigh each statement as having merit or not, and to reach a conclusion based on the relative merits. It does not evaluate ideas based on "who is more important."
Bottom line, arguments should not be won by social fiat.
@Tsaukpaetra said in đ The Evil Ideas thread:
@anotherusername said in đ The Evil Ideas thread:
OCR?
Speaking of, when converting an image pdf, word silently performs OCD on it in order to make it "editable". The results are... Less than astounding. I would have thought they just sucked up a company like ABBYY (or something, not sure if that's how it's spelled) and used that...
Microsoft never uses good things from other company: they "suck up" the company and then remake its products in their own crappy image. Visio, Skype.
I don't see the problem...looks perfectly normal to me even on Google. Even if you do happen to be driving northeast at the time.
It would bother me more that it's 34E/north and 10/west and 94/east and 10/east. That is, if I didn't live in the Orlando area, where I-4 is clearly north/south but is labeled east/west.
There's a place in Boston, or used to be, where you can be going east and west on the same highway at the same time. And even that isn't as bad as this:
I can't believe UEFI is designed to permit this on any O/S. This is a lovely target for hackers.
A nice explanation of the hazards of race conditions(Thanks to the kind soul that linked to thecodelesscode.com first here - alas, I don't know anymore who it was.)
The best line was from the predicessor page:
The nun asked: âHow will I know when I have learned enough to use threads wisely?â
Banzen replied: âWhen you no longer wish to use them.â
Clearly I must read more.
I don't deny, and never did, that the software isn't a
The thing is that this application started out as 3270 technology, similar to this...
As originally designed, when you wanted to change the status of the document, there was two strategies;
That was the technology until 1997 or so. Since that time, we've come up with progressively deeper layers of GUI overlay that provides niceties like drop-down lists (combo boxes), check boxes, active buttons and such. But to do an even halfway decent job of upgrading is intrusive to the underlying program logic as well as just overlaying GUI...because under the paint, this steenking app is still 3270.
So you're right, the design is bad...but that's because it grew that way. It was like Topsy, who was never born but just grew. And, worse, this particular app is one of "those" applications that doesn't fit the established architecture well and as a result is fragile and a maintenance nightmare. This bug I described...I spent 4 hours yesterday just figuring out how it could even happen.
So someone...at some point...did an incomplete job of upgrading the app. Approval was changed to a button and, once approved, un-approving is the same button with a different label. But the stupid status field survived and still is used to cancel the document when the user arrives at the conclusion they need to do that (literally, only "cancel" is still relevant of the theoretical four status codes you could choose). So in that area there are three things you can do: Approve, un-approve, and cancel. And cancel is comparatively rare, because it means you want to destroy the document and start over and there really is no longer a reason to do that.
Nevertheless, the user still actively (1) clicked on the combo box; (2) selected "cancel"; and (3) then clicked a button that says, explicitly, Approve Document. Which is kind of a wtf, even if a small one, no matter how bad the design is.
Understand that I am not defending the app. It is wrong, no matter which way you look at it. It's current design is bad, and probably should be revised. (But it isn't going to be, because we're in the middle of an ERP.) It is also wrong, because it responded to an inconsistent user action with a randomly chosen
But I started this because of a comment someone made about a user-driven ...and I'd just seen one, so I thought I would amuse a few people with my user's wtf. Never intended it to turn in to a full-scale discussion of the application , but here it is.
That would make a perfect frame for a mad-lib:
_______ man `had sex with ______ _______.
A __________ man with a bizarre sexual
attracton to ________ has been banned from
_______________ and forced to sign the
sex-offenders' register.______________, _____, was found by police
with his trousers around his ___________
___________ with a ____________ ___________
in a __________ near ___________.He was arrested on suspicion of outraging
public decency and admitted to having had
sex with _____________ ___________ all
___________ ____________.When officers searched his ______________
home they found a collection of more
than ______ ___________ ___________
on his _______________.
Because Joe Craig is maladroit with more than one aspect of modern social practices. Not only does he automatically assume screaming in a parked car can only be from a kidnap victim, he's unable to express himself in 140 characters.
You mean, something like...
Heard screaming and banging in boot, opened it to rescue, found couple â â â â â â â , said I was so sorry, then my hound jumped in boot. Mortified
Sometimes Twitter sucks. I'll take the longer story, thank you.
Now if your complaint is that he wrote the story in "93" parts on Twitter, well...
Aftermath...
[spoiler]Sorry for the "lolcat" thing, but it was the best picture I could find in a hurry showing the dogs whipped.[/spoiler]
I don't know for sure if they're doing it this way, but this is how a company like Bain Capital does it.
Now that you have pwned VictimCo--have a controlling interest--you can order the company to do anything. So now comes the raiding:
VictimCo goes bankrupt anyway, because it's hard to go from having $2 billion cash to being $2 billion in debt with no cash. Now that it's bankrupt:
Got it? That's how you buy out a $2 billion company and make $2 billion free and clear, with just $40 million starter cash.
So programmers don't need to be smart. You mean like this?
If religion isn't supposed to get special treatment, why are we giving religious books special treatment?
Religion is a set of beliefs. Religious books contain expressions of that belief but are not the religion unless the content is taught. But some people believe you can take a plant, smush it and dilute it with water by half 40 times and it still has effect; and some people evidently believe just touching Arabic calligraphy contaminates their children's faith on contact.
So these kids copied an Arabic expression of faith, that they couldn't read, but now they're all little Muslims.
But the real kicker is Christians will insist that religious teaching in schools would never have the same effect.
Not allowed per IT security policies. The official explanation is it used to be the most targeted browser for attacks or something with even less sense.
I bet they allow IE, though, right?
My bank, at least, runs the cash through a counter at the teller station if you go to the bank. I figure it records the serial numbers, too.
It should be possible, too, for both ATM and the counter. I was at a healthcare conference and they were showing off their mass document conveyor/scanner that:
...all of that, at 4 pages per second.
Should be a snap to count money, check for forgeries, and extract the serial numbers, even at--what--30 bills per second?
Oh, wait, we don't have to speculate. They're doing that, at 1600 mixed bills per minute:
...Marshmallow nighties...yum. Oh, wait...
Hey, it was a compromise. If they'd spelled it right, they'd either have had to shrink the font or it would have been all:
Mississippi's
literacy
program shows
improvement
... and who wants this or a smaller font?
Muslim kid turned in for extremism...because he drew a cucumber badly...and a knife to cut it with. What will Muslim kids think up next?
Concerns were raised after the youngster drew a picture of a man cutting the vegetable. [The child's mother] said she feared her children would be taken away from her and added: 'But I haven't done anything wrong... It was a horrible day." Teachers and public service workers have a legal obligation to report any concerns of extremist behaviour to the authorities since July.
Oh, yeah, forgot: the kid is 4 years old.
I think social media is on its way out; itâs a dead end in this form. Thereâs a variety of reasons for this, but the most important turn out to be two ends of the same common problem: there is no meaningful reward, but there are plenty of penalties.
No reward refers to the good feeling of trying to do a right thing: trying to improve the world, trying to improve human relationships, and/or trying to increase fairness (this is especially important to me). None of those can be done effectively in social media. If I present a simple, obvious idea, like âemployers should pay women fairlyâ, I immediately get two responses for my ârewardâ: A handful of âlikesâ from people who happen to agree; and few troll posts from people to inform Iâm (paraphrased) âa Liberal ignoramus.â
The likes are often pathetically overwhelmed by the troll posts. Gamergate is a perfect example: there were so many troll posts during that event (much less all the doxing) that many people simply stopped posting during that wreck; many left posting sites, apparently permanently. That was a big showy wreck, but the decline isnât just from that: Iâve seen similar declines in posting in xkcd forums, which I have followed for some time; and even in the Liberal sites I go to (where ostensibly posters shouldnât get trolled because weâre all of like mind).
There is no way to meaningfully contribute to anything useful in âmodernâ social media. My posts are ephemeral: those posts I write will be liked or trolled over a short period of time and after that forgottenâregardless of their merit. This very topic might be discussed for a whileâŚbut then it will drop into the depths of the âLatestâ list, never to be seen again.
Iâve followed âPolice misbehavior threadâ on xkcd for several years, which is a serious thread discussing police abuses. An objection raised there repeatedly is, âWhat good does it do to discuss this? It doesnât change anything.â Of course that is right, and exactly my complaint. There are 88 pages of posts (3500+) in that threadâŚand 85 of those pages (some including my posts) just as well not exist, water under the bridge; which emphasizes that those posts donât matter, also my complaint.
Iâve seen the same âwhat does it matterâ objection raised during arguments here on TDWTF. And the same thing is true about the threads: the âBAD IDEASâ thread (not really serious but serves as an example) has 7,233 postsâŚhow likely do any of you think it is that anyone will ever read post 4,116 again? (Besides those suckers who jump there to see if itâs something importantâŚitâs not, donât waste your time.)
So all I can do is post something to be read for ten minutes and then be forgottenâjokes, links, or sensations. Anything useful and worthy of a longer duration is a waste of time and often results in more kicks than kudos; even my jokes enjoy a brief flash andâŚgone. Perhaps someday someone will come up with a social media structure that supports people who have great ideas, so that those ideas can affect the world. That doesnât exist today: todayâs social media is designed to bury every post in a trackless wilderness, regardless of merit. To make it so no one will ever see that post again. (Hey @PJH you listening? You want to change the world, hereâs your chanceâŚbut Discourse isnât it.)
Yeesh. Obvious.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61tYASU4y6L.UX679.jpg
Ummm...you are Irish, right?
Requires wi-fi connection, as you'd expect since there is usually no cell hardware on a pad. But, if it's Android/Blackberry/iPhone, take a look at Google Voice. Google has an app.
And that is why you always get those things fixed in writing
I'd like more references. What is SAMAR? What city? Do you have a link?
It sounds like pretty typical behavior, though: companies are routinely given slap-on-the-wrist fines for misbehavior.
"Coming Soon: Valentine's Day"
Wow! That's a lot of foreplay!
'Fixed':
No, it's not. Now the speedometer and meters and logo are backwards. Ya gotta finish the job!
So my take on this is: Pure gloating on Microsoft's part. "Look what we done. We bought Skype and now y'all gonna know it! Because we're so great!" But that doesn't mean they would actually do a decent job of implementing it or, you know, adopt Skype's actual technology. And of course, they must implement it in their new, "Everything is a cellphoneâ˘" motif, because, you know, "FU, desktop users! FU, corporate users! Use your F'ing cellphone to do everything! F your productivity, nobody's going to have a job in this country anyway."
(Sorry for getting carried away.)
then it'd only be approximately 73 years 2 months real time...
Which doesn't improve the situation--it still seems like a bug where the game can't keep time.
But once a player is past the two hour mark, minutes become pretty irrelevant. Even if someone can legitimately (yeah, sure) rack up 7 million hours of game time, of what possible value is it to indicate plus "8M 3S"?
It's like that line from an old Don Martin comic: "Meanwhile, across the street and 500 miles to the west."
@Tsaukpaetra said in Quotes Out of Context:
@CoyneTheDup said in Quotes Out of Context:
@Tsaukpaetra wrote:
Every night. But it's just not fun anymore...
You're damn right.
Kelso: [While in the circle] But I was just amusing myself, you know? And that's the key to life, right? Never stop amusing yourself.
Fez: Unless it starts to chafe.
WTH is "1080p audio"? Does the sound have more pixels or something?
Apparently some people think so. There are different bit rates for audio when you're listening to streaming music or video. Some people are confused and think it has to do with the video resolution, which is actually entirely separate.
Maybe this idea originates with salesdroids? ("Unlike this low-priced model, this much more expensive TV is even better because it not only has 1080p video, it has 1080p sound!")
After consideration, I think all this pedantry could be murdered by rewording the joke a bit:
The optimist sees a glass that's half full. The pessimist sees a glass that's half empty. An engineer sees a glass that's twice as big as it needs to be; and that if it were correctly sized, the excess material could be used in the making of a backup glass.
@Sumireko said in âđ THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
Working with time is the bane of any programmer. So what do we use?
...Unix time?
...DateTime?
No, that's not trendy enough:
I think I mentioned this as a bad idea previously, but I had no knowledge of a working library that implemented such an idea.
In 2012 (because of the Mayan end times BS) at work, I did an April fools day joke about the upcoming adoption of the Mayan calendar. The centerpiece was a command I built that converted Gregorian dates to Mayan calendar dates and vice-versa.
Should still work.
But the joke was a bad idea...had to explain it to, like, everyone.
That's the trick here...
Oh.
That is truly creative, and I had a lot of trouble ferreting that out even on the second pass. There is just nothing like like truly "readable" code, is there?
What if it doesn't all come off and you end up with just a detached head?
Well, at the current time, my head does not detach. This is a good thing, because I'd have left it in some bus or left it under the bed or something and it would never be found again.
@cartman82 said in The Official Funny Stuff Threadâ˘:
!@$!!%**~#$!!!! broken-ass C syntax!!! And just where was the lint?
@Tsaukpaetra said in The Official Funny Stuff Threadâ˘:
@bb36e said in The Official Funny Stuff Threadâ˘:
It's get worse
I've stated at it for a while, it doesn't seem to be changing...
It doesn't have to change, to take a turn for the worse.
If a 610 pound psychic loses 510 pounds, the headline reads: Former Large Medium Small
This iteration of the platform is compiled anycpu, but with 32bit dependencies. So it won't run on 64bit. And we don't have source to half of it to do a proper build.And that's before you get to the 16bit dependencies.
Well there's your main there! When you're a development org, losing the source is like Coke losing the formula for their soda.
Paging @Yamikuronue ...
It's cause they're too lazy to walk around. The guy who did reported, "9."
But if you're running a distro before that option
Y'all are making too much of my choice of examples. I'm trying to complain about a general misdesign issue in software in general, and you're focused on the fact that rm
don't behave that way any more.
Okay, an example from another system, Hewlett Packard's MPE IV (not that any of you are familiar with that ancient artifact). There was this command in the manual, COND unit,SPACE
, which the manual stated would report the free space on a disk volume. So I tried it on disk unit 1, which was a system disk.
What I got was a message something like this: The SPACE option is not applicable to system volumes. Assuming you meant, COND 1,ALL
.
COND 1,ALL did a condense on disk space, it took 45 minutes, and no one could use the time-sharing system in the meantime; because (Duh!) the system disk volume is locked. Assuming it was necessary for the system to "fix" my command at all, assuming the ALL
option was the absolute worst possible choice, of all the options it could assume.
Why would anyone design such a critical command to "correct" itself? Why would anyone assume that the "correction" should be the worst possible option?
Bad design.
The original rm -rf *
was bad design. ~
expansion is bad design.
End venting.
@ScholRLEA said in What is the deal with "Your ____ ran into a problem"?:
@Luhmann said in What is the deal with "Your ____ ran into a problem"?:
but
t through a budgetary backdoor.
http://www.superdickery.com/the-gay-desperado/
http://www.superdickery.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/tuska_panel.jpg
The comic would have been better if the second guy had said, "He's been tailin' me,..."
@Lorne-Kates said in The Off By One Thread:
@hungrier said in The Off By One Thread:
President Trump's Net Order
President Trump's New Odor.
Fail! Off by 2.
The Official Runny Stuff Thread
Ok I know the kind of people who think flouride is some kind of conspiracy theory are not the sharpest tools, but do you really need an article that sums to "boil it and condense the steam, duh". They could have just written that in far less space than the ad takes up.
...but then how would they scam away all that moneymake a profit?
The "This Is Why We're In A Recession" series is particularly disturbing. For example:Customer: âWell, like I said, I donât understand this. I spent all the money on my credit card and I cut it up. WHY DID I RECEIVE A BILL FOR IT?!â
There's quite a few stories like that in the "Why we're in a recession" chain (this was part 40). I've heard of it before, once; someone I knew spent a whole evening explaining to a student, how bank accounts worked and that there wasn't necessarily money to spend just because there were check blanks in the checkbook.
Somehow I'm not getting the joy I used to get out of The Oof By One Thread.
Well, see, there's your first mistake. The money isn't yours...yet. It's theirs until you finish jumping through their bureaucratic hoops. You didn't really think they'd make that easy, did you?
You're lucky if the ticket doesn't expire the day after you bought it (Saturday, when they're closed).
We have access, so we know where all the bodies are buried.
That gives me BOFH jeebies.
@The_Quiet_One said in I HATE DESIGNERS:
CEO complained that if you create an article with just a sentence or two it resulted in a lot of "unsightly empty space" and that had to be fixed... designer tried things like making the text scale a little depending on the length of the content or adjusting the margin and centering it... CEO didn't like it and said " how hard can it be to just remove empty space?" Designer found a way, but it required a bit of work on our part for what we felt was such a petty problem.
Note from the CEO to God: "There is too much empty space in the universe. It is unsightly. Please remove."
@PWolff said:zero environmental carbon dioxide footprintThis cheeses me off to no end. For starters, sugar is probably already a net negative of CO2 given the vast quantities of CO2 sucked out of the atmosphere as it grows.
No, that's basically net zero. They put it on a doughnut, you eat the dougnut, then you breath all that CO2 exercising off that doughnut.