I call bullshit. We've heard enough of your stories to know that sanity and pragmatism would never prevail in your workplace.
Posts made by Justice
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RE: The emergency fix
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RE: I am on the ground I am on the ground I am on the ground I am on the ground HEY LISTEN
@dhromed said:
@Justice said:
So basically, if your definition requires specific goals and an opponent, then SimCity is more of a toy than a game.
I very clearly count "increase your numbers" as a goal, which means that SimCity, WoW and Minecraft and games, plain and simple.
Things only change when a player creates their own goals (or is invited or allowed to do so by the game). At that point, it is a self-made game or project, that uses the original game-software a medium, a tool, a means to an end.
So that puts Minecraft in the "little bit of both" meta-category.
I don't think we're in disagreement (if you were disagreeing, if not, my mistake). Anything where you have that degree of freedom starts getting into that weird grey area. I also find that most really great games (as in stand-the-test-of-time, Mario 64 great) have at least some opportunity to deviate from core gameplay or the prescribed path, whether it be by design or through glitches.
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RE: I am on the ground I am on the ground I am on the ground I am on the ground HEY LISTEN
@joe.edwards said:
Does this mean Will Wright doesn't design games?
<font size="1">Will Wright has long been an advocate of emergent gameplay and sandbox games.</font>
Depends on your perspective. Chris Crawford would say no. From the Wikipedia article:
In more open-ended computer simulations, also known as sandbox-style games, the game provides a virtual environment in which the player may be free to do whatever they like within the confines of this universe. Sometimes, there is a lack of goals or opposition, which has stirred some debate on whether these should be considered "games" or "toys". (Crawford specifically mentions Will Wright's SimCity as an example of a toy.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game#Video_games
So basically, if your definition requires specific goals and an opponent, then SimCity is more of a toy than a game. Same goes for the Minecraft stuff: if you're making circuits in Minecraft, you're definitely playing, but you're playing with a toy rather than formally playing a game.
That said, especially in the case of video-games-as-toys, 95% of the relevant populace probably isn't going to make that distinction, and will just say "I like Minecraft too, but the way you play is really weird." The other 5% love formal definitions and pedantic dickweedery (but hey, who doesn't?).
I'm probably part of that 5%, but I'm also a big fan of doing weird shit in video games just because you can. The point is not to "play a game," the point is to have some fun and get through another day without slitting your wrists.
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RE: I hate place-holder code
@blakeyrat said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@serguey123 said:
@morbiuswilters said:
I doubt I'd think the book is better than the movie
Perhaps, taste is very subjective, for the most part I really enjoy reading books and tends to favor this activity over othersI enjoy reading, too. And I don't usually like movies better than books, but The Godfather Parts I & II are such spectacular films that it's hard for me to imagine the books are better.
I only read history.
But the point is, the Godfather movies (well, the first two) are constantly brought up by everybody listing great movies. The Godfather novels are never brought up by people listing great novels. Case closed.
I read the book, then watched the first movie (haven't gotten around to watching the second), and enjoyed both. The book reads a bit like it was written with a film adaptation in mind (which often seems to be the case in crime novels). I wouldn't call it great literature, but it's a good read.
@morbiuswilters said:
Saw Serenity and it was so laughably stupid that it made me vow to never watch Firefly.
Same here. I've never understood Whedon fans. At all. The amount of attention Firefly got is so much greater than the amount of attention it deserved-- especially galling when another show that did basically everything Whedon did earlier and better (The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr) is completely ignored.
Agreed. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was also overhyped garbage. Joss Whedon is like the Steve Jobs of television: there's a certain segment of the population that will eat up whatever he dishes out, no questions asked.
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RE: JUnit "test"
@morbiuswilters said:
@Sutherlands said:
@Justice said:
This is an actual test. Regardless of either, there is no reason to SWALLOW THE EXCEPTION AND REPORT SUCCESS (printing "failure" to the console will not report a failure to JUnit)I could see this being a placeholder for a test to be implemented later.
Knowing your stories, though, this test has been in place for the last three years.
Srsly. If it's a placeholder it never should have been committed where other people could see it.
Oh, I agree; I was taking a stab at how/why this would have ended up in the codebase, not trying to defend it. My fault for not making that clear.
Of course, the more likely explanation is that somebody just doesn't understand how JUnit works.
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RE: JUnit "test"
I could see this being a placeholder for a test to be implemented later.
Knowing your stories, though, this test has been in place for the last three years.
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RE: But it wasn't there last night!
@Cassidy said:
Actually, thinking about it - I recall at a younger age watching someone splashing fuel on their shoes on a forecourt... so I'm guessing that the sensors stuff came in shortly before leaded (4-star) was phased out.
How long ago was leaded phased out in the UK? I'm too young to remember leaded gas in the US, but I still see gas tanks overflow fairly often when the sensors go bad (and the station owner is too cheap to fix it in a timely fashion).
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RE: Model ALL the controllers!
@Cassidy said:
That sounds like the urban legend about General Electric, where "we bring good things to life" got translated as "we bring your ancestors back from the dead" in China.@boomzilla said:
It reminds me of a tourist brochure a cow-orker picked up in Azerbaijan, encouraging the reader to, "Visit the Hairy Caspian!"
ObEngrish: BMW's tagline at one time was "guaranteed to move the spirit."
This was translated into "liable to reanimate your dead ancestors" on billboards over in Japan.
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RE: Why is every mortgage amortization calculator wrong?
@boomzilla said:
@TwoScoopsOfHot said:
What an interesting idea, charging an "overpayment fee", I assume you're not in the US, because I'm fairly sure that's illegal here. If I owe you a debt, and I want to pay that debt off, I can do so at any time prior to the agreed upon date, and you cannot tell me "no, you're paying me back too fast."
You're obviously not very familiar with US mortgages. It's common to have an early payment fee as part of the contract. After all, they make money off of the interest that you pay, and so paying down principle faster reduces the amount that they make.
I'm not positive about this, but I believe that varies by state. When I bought my car I was told that early payments fees are illegal in New York, so I paid it off straight away. Stories I've heard from homeowners suggest that it's also illegal here for mortgages.
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RE: The XML Report Engine
@Charleh said:
Just show them your version of the report, written in 5 minutes in SSDS and they will be blown away by the features such as context search, video, and random!!
SSTFY
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RE: But it can't be right!
@FrostCat said:
In this case, we're talking about what a farmer has a bull's...output...do to a cow.
Thanks, you've just given me a new favorite euphemism. I'm going to work on some "output" jokes for my next open mic.
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RE: Should I do what it says?
@blakeyrat said:
@bjolling said:
@dhromed said:
Don't be so harsh. Dilbert gives me AT LEAST one good chuckle a week@boomzilla said:
@boog said:
Geez, I don't know. Any ideas?
Goodness! You found a funny dilbert strip. I didn't know they existed.
It helps when you're up against Family Circus. The obituaries would get a chuckle opposite that.
Nah, I kid Scott Adams, I think Dilbert's still pretty good, too. Besides, how could anybody on this site, exposed to the horror that was Mandatory Fun Day, hate Dilbert?
Mandatory Fun Day had people submitting their own versions of the comic. Out of horror came hilarity.
I still like Dilbert too, but no newspaper comic tops reader-generated MFD (with the possible exception of Zippy).
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RE: Posting on the Something Awful Forums Costs $9.95???
@bridget99 said:
@Volmarias said:
The $10 pays for their hosting and bandwidth (which is not insignificant), and acts as a barrier to entry to fuckwits of all sorts. There's also effectively no spam, because it's not cost effective.
Arbitrary bans are pretty rare; usually it's for shit posting or some other dumb behavior. There are temporary bans called probations that you'll likely for minor offenses.
Also, the $10 is a one time fee, ever. I registered about 10 years ago, and that's still good (well I did something dumb and got myself banned but if I hadn't made a shit post while drunk it still would be)
Seriously, it's totally worth it, just pay the :tenbux: and get in.
I think you need a CT scan of your head. You "did something stupid" and they took your $10... and you'd recommend I do the same? Are you related to that German guy who posted an ad on Craigslist for someone to come eat them? I like SomethingAwful.com, but they can go fornicate with a wood chipper if they think I'm paying them even $0.10. In fact, I won't even be reading their forums any more. The "ass hats" are the people who paid to be in their club... NOT the people they're keeping out.
EDIT: And don't tell me about hosting expenses. There is no such thing. They could host their site in Dropbox and edit in Notepad. If they don't do that, they're engaging in resume-padding and gold-plating, which it is not my role to subsidize.
Wouldn't it be swell if Alex charged $10 for these forums?
Then he could get better forum software, too!
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RE: The most complicated captcha, ever. Maybe.
@serguey123 said:
@blakeyrat said:
@boomzilla said:
Soundly?@cconroy said:
How do you people sleep at night.@Justice said:
I don't know, but I maybe the woodchuck knows.@Xyro said:
How many alots are considered a lot of alots?@DCRoss said:
This is alot. It's not a lot, but it is alot.@aliquot said:
I've seen this alot, but not that one.Yeah, I see that alot.
I see the alot too.Loudly!
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RE: The most complicated captcha, ever. Maybe.
@Xyro said:
@DCRoss said:
@aliquot said:
I've seen this alot, but not that one.Yeah, I see that alot.
I see the alot too.This is alot. It's not a lot, but it is alot.
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RE: We need it for auditing
@blakeyrat said:
@snoofle said:
And it's only 9AM.
Wait... what happened to the emergency from yesterday? The app you got the specs late for with the crazy short timeline you have to ship no matter what?
Does your company pull you off one emergency to do another? Is the app just in limbo now? Or maybe you just work 18 hour days and dedicate 6 hours to each daily emergency that comes up? Or maybe Snoofle is actually 14 people!
He just does the work of 14 people.
Seriously, you need to move to the West Coast where this shit doesn't happen. At least, I can tell you this for sure: if I was managing one emergency, and I was pulled off it to manage another, I'd leave the office and walk out that fucking door and go to Hawaii for a week. Thankfully I live in a Right To Work state.
Possible Pedantry Alert: I think you mean at-will. Right-to-work laws deal with union membership, specifically prohibiting a closed shop (i.e. requiring union membership as a condition of employment). Now if your company is unionized, I am quite curious to hear about this. For some reason that particular misunderstanding is very common on programmer forums.
More to the point, as I recall, snoofle is a contractor, so walking out would probably have very unpleasant consequences.
I do like your proposed solution though, that's pretty clever. I have a feeling some auditor will drop the hammer on it though.
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RE: Lasagna Code
@bridget99 said:
@blakeyrat said:
[quote user="bridget99"]Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings
Quoting the relevant bit there.
Plenty of medical treatments and techniques aren't fully understood. The
Nobel Prize for Medicine went to the person who finally figured out how
Aspirin works in 1982. This is not even an extreme example.
Treatments are released for public consumption based on statistical
proof of their efficacy. Mechanism of action is a curiosity in
comparison. And I am sure you already knew this... are you trying
to troll me or are you so used to how stupid everyone else is that you
assume you can win arguments with spurious reasoning?[/quote]I have to partly agree here. It's important to understand the mechanism of action as much as possible, but that doesn't mean it's wise to disregard empirical evidence.
@blakeyrat said:
@bridget99 said:
Computers run like crap. They don't respond to user input, configuration is a nightmare, and their "security" features are basically legitimized viruses.
I agree, but I don't think the language is the problem, I think the programmers are. The best GUI ever built (to date) was built in PASCAL, with sprinklings of assembly.
Which would that be? I'm guessing you're referring to something from the earlier Mac era.
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RE: New Japanese Cars
@blakeyrat said:
@SilentRunner said:
Automobile design has been downhill ever since the late 1950s. That's the last time you could tell who manufactured the car just by looking at it.
I drive a PT Cruiser, you insensitive clod. (Hey, sue me. I like the look, and it has "command seating" or whatever buzzword that is now.)
I'll agree that they look cool, but I had one as a rental and good lord did I ever hate driving that thing. I don't think it was just that car; in every Chrysler I've ever driven, everything felt kind of loose and jumpy: steering, brakes, the works. It also didn't help that I was driving on a mountain highway, which is about the worst possible use of a PT Cruiser (short of off-roading).
My big car gripe is the shrinking of small to mid-size station wagon offerings. The last time I was looking at cars, I checked out a few hatchbacks; the vertical clearance was good, but they made up for it by shortening the trunk. The only new station wagons I could find were overpriced Volkswagens.
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RE: Sometimes I'm forced to agree with Blakey
@blakeyrat said:
3) The application would present you with the list of plugins-to-be-disabled before it disabled them, so you could make an informed decision about the upgrade
4) If a plugin has to be disabled, the application should attempt to find and install a newer version of that plugin, but in a single step in the background as to not annoy the userThese two could be combined: determine any incompatible plugins and find up-to-date versions. If anything can't be updated without hiccups, then show the user "Here's what is currently incompatible, here's what has updates, here's what you won't be able to use. Continue with update?"
As much as I agree about not having to annoy the users, I'm a little wary of auto-updating plugins, basically for the reason mentioned about third-party vendors removing features or breaking backwards compatibility or whatever. It's probably not an issue in Firefox*, but it might be a bigger deal in something like Photoshop.
Perhaps the real solution is to have something in the plugin architecture that forces plugins to identify any breaking changes they make between versions. I don't know much about plugin systems, so doing that could be fairly straightforward or it could be a giant pain in the ass.
* You just know that somewhere, there is a business-critical process that relies on version 1.5.1.7 of some obscure Firefox 2.5 plugin written by a guy in Romania who now raises goats for a living.
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RE: Sometimes I'm forced to agree with Blakey
@dcardani said:
@Scarlet Manuka said:
But really, why is any of that necessary? Can't you assume that if I was running certain addons, that I'd like the updated version if available? Is there any plausible reason why I might say "oh, now that I'm running version 1.10.1 I guess I don't really want to rip CDs any more"?
It would be nice if the app could make that assumption, but it can't because many companies do stupid shit like removing features from later versions of their products. So you have CD Ripper 1.0 plug-in, and it automatically upgrades you to CD Ripper 2.0, which it turns out is no longer free, and you have to pay for after 30 days, and now you can't rip CDs anymore. Or whatever stupid ideas stupid companies come up with. It's sad, but we really do have to worry about such shit.
That kind of makes sense, but Scarlet Manuka got it right earlier in the post: the application should check plugin compatibility before doing an upgrade, and ideally determine if updated versions exist. Even if you can't auto-update the plugins, or you're just safeguarding against the sort of situation you described, at least you're allowing the user to make an informed decision instead of just going ahead with an application update that breaks all the plugins. If they can't get an update to some essential plugin, then they're stuck looking for old versions of your software, which may or may not be readily available.
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RE: Sometimes I'm forced to agree with Blakey
@too_many_usernames said:
@henke37 said:
Why aren't you using a package manager to deal with this in one big swoop?
This is one of my pet peeves... when I obtain a program, I want all its necessary components to be included in its release package. I don't want to have to have a third-party "package manager" to use for installation, I don't want to go hunting for new plugins, etc.
Actually, the plugin thing is pretty awful - why aren't plugin APIs backwards compatible? Could you imagine if OSs were like most apps that support plugins, where when there was a single security update to the OS you needed to update every single app on your machine? After all, an application is essentially just a 'plug in' for the operating system.
So why on earth do the "common" plugin frameworks (commonly called 'browsers') break plugins with every single release? (Well, I know the technical reason why, but I cannot for the life of me understand why you'd choose such an architecture.)
And yes, I did feel the need to kick that horse corpse a few more times.
This. I hate it even more when this gets applied to development (i.e. dependency management).
My current project evolved out of an older project, which was headed up by a couple of guys who belonged the Church of Maven (not sure if it's the worst of the worst but it's close). We were also working with an open-source framework that relied on Maven to download a bunch of libraries it uses. Well, guess what: we're behind a proxy, and our build servers aren't going to connect all willy-nilly to any old repository server. So we go through the process of getting a bunch of weird packages added to our internal Maven repository and making sure that our build script only looks at that. And every time we upgrade the framework, we have to look at all the dependencies and make sure we have the correct version in place.
Now the real WTF was when we migrated to a new framework version, and suddenly every build was failing. Why? Because the lead developer on this framework fat-fingered something in a config file, thus requiring a nonexistent version of some library. Great job guys.
Bonus WTF: when the bug was filed on this, since, y'know, it basically prevents any automated build manager from ever succeeding, said lead developer basically said "screw it, we'll roll that fix into the next release." Which was scheduled for two months later.
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RE: Don't test, it gets in the way of code coverage
@token_woman said:
+1. Sorry I misunderstood you before. In fact you've just described, better than I could, the lesson I've learned from this whole sorry business.
No sweat, sorry I wasn't clear about it. How long have you been at the new gig? Maybe you have an opportunity to lead by example.
@TheCPUWizard said:
Consider a requirement that "Cusomer balance cna not exceed credet limit" as a requirement. There are thousands of way that individual methods, properties, etc. could be combined to avchieve this goal. From a unit testing perspective, the deteremination of if a specific method does what it should is largely irrelevant to the business goal.
Put another way...every refactoring of the code should impact multiple unit tests, but if the intention is that the refactoring should not change behaviour, then the behavioural tests should not require any updating.
Not sure I'm following you here...are you separating the "mock up an appropriate program state to test each function" sort of unit tests from automated behavioral testing? I've always just lumped them both under the "unit test" label. It seems like the former isn't particularly useful for ensuring that refactoring won't break existing functionality, and is more for testing complicated logic (math functions for instance). Having automated tests for that sort of thing is useful of course, but even then I'm not sure why refactoring would necessarily break that sort of thing; I would think those sorts of methods would rarely (if ever) be subject to refactoring.
(Not trying to argue against you here, I'm genuinely curious as to how your unit/automated testing is set up.)
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RE: Don't test, it gets in the way of code coverage
@token_woman said:
@Justice said:
So they start with unjustified, pointless dogma and then foolishly circumvent it by
selling indulgencesleaving out assertions.This sounds like somebody tried to enforce a test-driven process on a cowboy culture, and the barbarians played along but really just kept doing things their own way.
Obviously given what I said about TDD I personally disagree with the remark about pointless dogma.
But I have no issue with anyone choosing not to go the test-driven way.
What bugs the bejeezus out of me is that they spend time writing all this "coverage" and not spend the extra few minutes to make it actually do something. Might as well ya, know, Since it's THERE...??
(edited to hand-code line breaks in)
I have no issue with test-driven development; quite the contrary, I think it's a fine idea. The pointless dogma I was referring to is basing it on meaningless metrics, i.e. requiring 75% code coverage (I should have said something like "defeat the point" rather than circumvent).
You could get 95% code coverage in a lot of situations by testing the normal path of execution where everything works and the end product is puppies and rainbows, but the important, difficult part is the 5% of the code that handles edge cases and error conditions. Unit tests are great, and TDD has its merits, but the way to enforce it is through code reviews and development practices, not having some automated system block you from checking anything below an arbitrary code coverage threshold.
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RE: Don't test, it gets in the way of code coverage
So they start with unjustified, pointless dogma and then foolishly circumvent it by
selling indulgencesleaving out assertions.This sounds like somebody tried to enforce a test-driven process on a cowboy culture, and the barbarians played along but really just kept doing things their own way.
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RE: Morph, Everything
@snoofle said:
We have monetary amounts as BigDecimals, but depending upon another flag, they may be interpreted as dollars and cents, or dollars and 32nd's of a dollar, so 3.16 really means $3.50.
What the..? I don't know much about Wall Street or financial software, but what's the purpose of having 32nds of a dollar (represented like decimals no less)? Is that how credit default swaps work or something?
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RE: Signs you're underqualified: bubble sort on your resume
@sanath123 said:
Also it provides a free resume templates samples so that users may choose any one these resume sample and he can use it as a standard Resume format.
p { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; }</blockquote> </p><p>What a coincidence, my employer is looking for someone experienced in p { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; }!</p>
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RE: Joys of Outsourcing
@Lorne Kates said:
<AJAX 101>
Where is that image from originally? It looks like there's more to it (maybe out of a book?), and if the rest is as good as this example then it's a reference I could use.
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RE: Damn! I missed it!
So the WTF is that Rockstar is still milking GTA for everything it's worth, right?
(Also since the trailer is coming out this November they could have omitted the year entirely and just said "November 2nd" or something).
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RE: Thank you for dumbing me down, youtube
@MascarponeRun said:
Bear in mind that on here, spammers often register accounts, so even that doesn't stop people completely.
Very true, in fact we just saw that in another thread: http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/24855/269770.aspx#269770
I agree with your point, that in probably 95% of these scenarios there is no need for the levels of security/authentication that people are requiring. The issue for me was, how do you get them to stop? You'll have a very hard time convincing Brad and Tony that their little car forums aren't worth the trouble, and in the meantime it continues to be a pain for their users.
If something like OpenID is going to work, then the powers behind it have to
- gear it towards the unimportant stuff and stop pretending we should use it for online banking (but again, banks need to get their shit together) and
- make it easier than setting up usernames and passwords. Even Jeff Atwood has admitted that OpenID fails on this point.
Point 2 is the real hurdle here. I don't think arguing for a better user experience is going to sway Brad and Tony. Appealing to laziness pretty much always works.
- gear it towards the unimportant stuff and stop pretending we should use it for online banking (but again, banks need to get their shit together) and
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RE: The Wooden Table Approach - Updated for 2011
@Julia said:
Cue "Yo Dawg" meme in 3... 2... 1...
I heard you like screenshots, so I took a screenshot of yo' screenshot so you can Print Screen while you Print Screen.
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RE: Thank you for dumbing me down, youtube
@MascarponeRun said:
@dhromed said:
I write a spider, spend an afternoon filling it up with usernames I see (or automate that process as well) , and send it off to all popular sites changing people's bios and profiles to spam links
There's no reason why the profile-change url needs to be easily inferrable from username.That said, I wasn't pretending to offer finished solutions, and certainly some things - Twitter, perhaps, email, and so-on - will still need password protection. My point is just that a lot of stuff doesn't.
Where do you make the cutoff, though? And who decides that?
Really, I think the problem isn't even passwords, it's having to repeat the identity process time and time again. The more people who manage their own authentication, the more people there are who can screw it up, and suddenly your throwaway identity is compromised (which will be a pain in the ass to varying degrees). IIRC, that's what happened when Gawker was compromised, because so many people use the same username/password combination for every single thing, or at least everything that is of no real importance. The big gain of something like OpenID is being able to leave security to the security people, assuming of course that your provider knows what the hell they're doing.
I don't mind websites wanting some kind of authentication, because most sites would probably rather not turn into 4chan. What I do mind is having to create a username and password and go through email verification just to be able to use the search function or view image attachments on Brad's Honda Civic Modification Hub, and then having to do it again on Tony's Honda Accord Customization Depot. Even a perfect solution won't go anywhere until Brad and Tony recognize that their little communities are not particularly special, and 90% of their visitors are just doing research on parts compatibility.
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RE: Thank you for dumbing me down, youtube
@MascarponeRun said:
I think the chap with the article had the right idea, which is realising that the problem is... passwords. WTF he thought the answer was therefore... passwords is quite beyond me.
It's plain that the answer is actually to stop requiring people to log-in the whole bloody time.
Agreed, but if you allow anonymous posting at all, you have two choices:
1) Be diligent in moderation, or
2) Become 4chan.
As I see it, OpenID is useful for the same situations where being anonymous is useful: throwaway logins to esoteric forums that have some bit of information you want. You'll show up once, get what you need, and probably never visit the site again. In that case, I'd love to use OpenID so I can just log in as Joe Jack Zippycrow and then never worry about it again.
My problem with Atwood's take is that he seems to think we should be using OpenID for stuff that actually matters, like bank logins, and that we should be absolutely thrilled to have our entire online presence easily tied together by some dicey third party. Yeah, that's a real cool idea.
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RE: Use my schedule instead. Oh, and this one too.
@KrakenLover said:
So now I have three schedules to plan around: the ridiculously insane ultra fast schedule which the vendor is supposed to follow, the "real" schedule which I and my team are supposed to follow but not tell the vendor about, and the actual schedule which no one but management is supposed to know about.
I do not get paid anywhere near enough for this.
And yet you continue to turn down those calls you're getting for better employment. I cain understand how you're abel to handle this nonsense.
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RE: Wait for the contractor...
@frits said:
@Lorne Kates said:
@frits said:
@Lorne Kates said:
@Weng said:
To do this, I had to pass through no fewer than three security doors - each way.
Because you normally use the non-Euclidian Escher hallway?
Two different paths?
But if there's a path that has fewer security doors, which seem to be an obstacle Weng wants to avoid, why wouldn't he take that secondary path exclusively?
I thought we were talking about what is possible. I guess you want to change the subject to what is reasonable.
Also, there could be some one-way checks controlled by an automatic door.
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RE: You're now in charge of the schedule - but don't change it!
@KrakenLover said:
I get phone calls, emails, for job offers every day - and, also tbh, I don't think my CV is that great, or that I am all that technically skilled. And yet they're offering me nearly double what I make here. To top it off: even though I make jack-squat for the work I do, compared to other companies, and the cost of living where I am (Southern California, by the beach) is insanely high ($1,2000 dollar a month rent, anyone?) I am still one of the higher-paid non-management employees. My employer just does not pay competitively, and I'm amazed at all these people working here who could be making a lot more elsewhere with better working conditions.
Do these jobs require moving or something? Because I can sort of understand putting up with that crap to live near the beach, but if you can make twice as much and not have to move...
@KrakenLover said:
I think it's partly because I'm a masochist. I'm not happy unless I'm unhappy.
This is more on the level of those people who get their jollies inflicting permanent damage on their own body parts. WTF stories are a job perk if your name is snoofle and you get paid really well for dealing with it; otherwise they're an affliction, like having a splitting headache every single day.
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RE: Oh Google, what am I going to do with you?
@Master Chief said:
@Justice said:
Small probability of turning into a superhuman, high probability of turning into a horrible monster and having your face shot off by S.T.A.R.S. agents, exceptionally tiny probability of Milla Jovovich. Yeah, that's better than needing a Google account for YouTube.
Horrible monster greatly outweigh the other two, though.
That depends on the values you attach to each outcome. It's like the lottery: normally it's a lousy bet, but when the pot gets large enough it makes sense to play.
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RE: Oh Google, what am I going to do with you?
@nexekho said:
@El_Heffe said:
About a year ago I created a video, put it on YouTube and posted a link on a forum that I frequented at that time. Somebody decided they wanted to be a prick and made a copyright complaint to YouTube and the video was removed. I went through the process of filing a counter-claim since the video was 100% original content and the copyright complaint was completely bogus. When there was no response I sent an email complaining about the problem, and shortly aftter that my YouTube account was suspended along witht he GMial account that was linked to it. I eventually was able to jump through some hoops and get the GMail account back but I have never gotten a response about the YouTube account.
Indeed, it's sad that they just do not want to know. I picture they get flooded with people who do not understand but even so. What're we all using now? I hate Vimeo, it streams slowly and refuses to seek anywhere it hasn't streamed yet. Blip and Dailymotion are pretty good though the latter is pretty low-fi.
Dailymotion is ok now that they fixed the searching (seriously, it used to be so terrible I used the Google site: operator to search it). Forcing YouTube to tie in with a Google account was so dumb; I wonder if there are any stats on how many Gmail accounts were created right around that time and then completely neglected (I can count at least one).
@Master Chief said:
I swear Google is just trying as hard as they can to come off as the
most evil corporation on the planet. I'd rather give my information to
Umbrella.Small probability of turning into a superhuman, high probability of turning into a horrible monster and having your face shot off by S.T.A.R.S. agents, exceptionally tiny probability of Milla Jovovich. Yeah, that's better than needing a Google account for YouTube.
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RE: But it's in the logs
@serguey123 said:
@Sock Puppet 5 said:
@blakeyrat said:
Besides, what's a "neighbour"?
Jesus' answer to this question is legendary.
At first I was confused because I did not know to which jesus you were referring, then I saw the tags.... I did not know that in spanish it was Jesus Caminacielo instead (just like Bruce Wayne is Bruno Diaz), however it seems you time code for the movie (I assumed you mashed them up together) is wrong, there is nothing relevant there.
What in God's name are you talking about?
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RE: Autodesk Softimage Mod Tool brings the rageface
@blakeyrat said:
These products are hard-to-use because their developers do not give a shit about usability. That's the only reason.
Where's your sense of imagination? I see a vast conspiracy where the developers work hand-in-hand with "graphics professionals" to create impossible UIs and prevent the layman from ever becoming adept at even simple graphics work, thus guaranteeing steady employment for pierced-lip hipster d-bags all over the world.
Or, more likely: a lot of these products have a core user community that's been with them since version 1, and if it ever starts to feel non-shitty, it will seem less "professional grade" and said users will have a conniption because the product is being "dumbed down."
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RE: When NOT to take a stand
@tgape said:
@boomzilla said:
Granted,
a lotall of thatprobablycomes from the same actuarial tables as the insurance companies.FTFY. The premiums they need to pay to rent to an unmarried male under 25 are insane. Yes, they're supposed to be able to count on the driver's insurance. However, in practice, they can't. But that's actually a lot more about the ability of the unmarried male under 25 to pay the accident damage than it is about their driving ability. The 85 year-old legally blind bat who rents a car and rams it into the car in front of it - at the rental place - is pretty much guaranteed to have insurance, and the accident was at low speed, so the cost isn't so high. The 18 year-old punk who wrecks his rental car is much more likely to total it, and much more likely to not have effective insurance. (Sometimes, he may think he's covered under his dad's policy - but is only covered when driving the dad's vehicles. Other times, he may not have any coverage, and not be concerned by it, waiving the rental company insurance anyway because it's too expensive.)
As I understand it, companies that do rent cars to unmarried males under 25 are generally either self-insured, or they require unmarried males under 25 to purchase the normally optional insurance policy - which is as expensive for the unmarried male under 25 as you'd expect, given the actuarial tables previously mentioned. But some unmarried males under 25 take offense at that, and some rental car companies don't want to deal with that offense.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and my exposure to unmarried male under 25 rental policies is over a decade out of date, since I'm no longer an unmarried male under 25. But I'm certain the basic premise that the rental companies don't want to rent to them because of insurance costs is still true.
In my recent experience (I'm 27), there's usually just a huge premium charge. I believe Enterprise will rent to someone under 25 as long as the money keeps coming; I had a rental from them some years ago while my car was in the body shop, but that was all paid by the other driver's insurance, so I don't know what the exact premium was. The few times I did look into renting a car in my younger days, it usually just cost twice as much, regardless of gender or marital status.
Regarding the elderly, insurance, and lower collision rates: driving less helps tremendously, yes. I saved a bundle on my insurance because I walk to work, so my car gets classified as a pleasure vehicle. I don't know what the collision rates look like in the high age brackets, but from what I've heard, age 40-60 is about the lowest.
I'd have to ask an actuary about this, but I think the high rates for young men are partly based on high-risk lifestyle factors (PARTY HARD BRO), so little things like "being employed" can help with the premiums. Correlation is not causation and all that jazz, but tell that to the insurance companies.
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RE: When NOT to take a stand
@RHuckster said:
@mahlerrd said:
A simple thought experiment: Let's assume two cars. One car is a deathtrap. It is rigged up so that any bump - the lightest of impact with anything - will cause it to explode. The other is filled with features not yet invented yet and will absolutly guarantee that even crashing headlong into a tree at 120 mph will not even get your hair out of place - completely safe and secure. Now, would you drive those two cars the same way? Cars all fall at different points between those two extremes, and each person has a different opinion as to where on that continuum particular cars will fall. As such, all cars are driven differently, and IMO, the more safety features you pack into a car, the less carefully it will be driven.
In the first car, I would reckon millions of people would die of traffic accidents each year whereas in the second car zero traffic-related deaths would occur each year. Statistically speaking, regardless of driving skills, the second car is beneficial.
To be honest, I've driven with people who have not kept safe driving distance to the car ahead of them, and, being the asshole backseat driver I am, would point it out to them. None of them have ever said, "Oh, well, I just got awesome new brake pads, I'll be fine." or "I'm in a Lexus, don't worry, have you seen their safety commercials?" Usually they say, "Oh, now that you mention it you're right. I wasn't paying attention" or "Fuck you, this is my car, I drive it the way I want."
Therefore, I would argue that the rationale behind unsafe driving habits is more about simply not being aware of your environment (think highway hypnosis) or simply they're being an asshole.
Agreed. The "deathtrap car" thought experiment fails to consider the issue of who's driving the car. I'd be interested to see statistics on traffic collisions broken down by safety features, though. From what I've read, the crappy old deathtrap is more likely to be driven by someone in a higher-risk category (say, men under 25), who is more likely to have a collision regardless of the sort of vehicle they drive. I'd be very surprised if any empirical evidence showed that advanced safety features led to more collisions, regardless of fatality rates. The type of person who is interested in safety features is probably a risk-averse driver as it is.
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RE: Spasms of Google's Stock Ticker
Looks like some kind of foul-up in the graph drawing function. Did this by chance happen when you were shifting the timeframe in the viewer?
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RE: When NOT to take a stand
@TwelveBaud said:
@nexekho said:
I mean, seriously, you want ESC removed from cars? You troll, yea?
ESC was designed to handle situations where you went "oh sh*t" and yanked the wheel over hard to the side to avoid obstacles, in vehicles whose body type was never designed to tolerate that, in the same vein as ABS was designed to handle situations where you went "oh sh*t" and slammed your foot on the brakes, when normally that'd lock the wheels. These technologies were designed to convert emergency, panicked reactions into something the car could handle to save the driver's life.
However, then you get people who go "That them thur car don't stay flat on the ground with a pianer tied to the roof. I need them ESC thing there. Yup."
ESC was never designed to handle stupid, and frankly shouldn't be; the right tool for the piano job is a truck. And, according to too_many_usernames, the same is true for virtual machines: They have their place, but Silly Filesystem Shenanigans isn't it.
I agree with your analysis, except that isn't what he said:
@too_many_usernames said:
In the same vein I think that vehicle stability control is an overkill solution for people not willing or able to learn how to control their vehicles in handling maneuvers.
I don't know what "handling maneuvers" is supposed to mean exactly, but it sounds a bit like the situations you describe (panic-mode attempts at evasion). And from what you're saying, ESC and ABS are excellent things to have, because it means you can survive these situations without being a trained stunt driver. Nobody said anything about moving pianos, and besides, the correct solution is to hire professional piano movers, thus abstracting away the problem.
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RE: Not everything is solved with more technology
@Nook Schreier said:
@blakeyrat said:
@Nook Schreier said:
The rep came back with a brilliant idea that none of us had even considered: "Put the coupon in the direct mailing."
That's a lot more expensive than the QR codes for two reasons:
1) Additional printing costs[...]
That is true, but they'd already paid for a couple runs of snail mail marketing, so the printing costs are already sunk, if the coupon is a cut-out part of what's already going to be sent (rather than an additional piece of paper).
So what was the point of the QR code in the first place? Was it going to do anything besides give people a coupon? Or was this just a case of the marketing head saying "OH HAY SMARTPHONES"?
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RE: Rightmove email address confirmation
@dohpaz42 said:
you "tab" into the label and the screen reader can read aloud to the hearing impaired what the name of the field is.
Was that how you fulfilled your community service?
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RE: Columny name
@derula's tag script said:
Filed under: (Now it's 21)
This was written by your tag script. It writes the best posts on this entire forum, but it's still a word (I mean script).
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RE: More Java, sorry
@DaveK said:
Infinite GOTOs in ivory-tower beardsville.
Finally, a title for my experimental alt-rock album!
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RE: The status column
@derula said: Nah, all around!
@Justice said:
Alternate sides. Best of both worlds. @Xyro said: @fatbull said: How about side posting?
This is spectacular!!
+2+1i internets for you!!
(I would have given you +3+0i but we all know rightside posting is superior to leftside posting.)
I think this is spiraling out of control. -
RE: The status column
Alternate sides. Best of both worlds. @Xyro said: @fatbull said: How about side posting?
This is spectacular!!
+2+1i internets for you!!
(I would have given you +3+0i but we all know rightside posting is superior to leftside posting.)