Some love for the TI-85! Mine is sitting on my desk right now, still gets used regularly.
Posts made by RichP
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RE: Apple Watch
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RE: Coordinate conversion
@TGV said:
@Sutherlands said:
What in the world does that have to do with Excel? That just happens to be what he implemented the formulas in to convert the numbers. I don't remember the OP saying that was the problem.
Oh, come on! It's so obvious. Excel has to grid lines standard on the display. All you have to do is to paste in the picture, scale it properly, make a screen shot, and everything is hunky dory.1) Print the scaled image.
2) Place the scaled image on a wooden table.
3) Place a screen door over the table at height necessary to produce desired grid.
4) Take picture through the screen.
5) Bring film to 1-hour photo service.
6) Scan in developed picture.
7) Profit!
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RE: Making QR-Codes usefull
@bgodot said:
An apps that lets you turn on/off the lights from your phone (or a central server)? those don't look like standard light switches, maybe they are networked...
Looks like low-voltage switches. There are a bunch of manufacturers that make them. Makes it easier to do things like control the system using occupancy sensors, timers, ambient light sensors, etc. The switches themselves only have something like 24V on them, the high voltage to the lights is switched by relays that are mounted closer to the fixtures.
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RE: An early morning request for help
Sounds like the following sequence happened:
1) Someone from you dept. gave his business card to a girl at the bar while trying to hit on her.
2) Said girl leaves the card on the table.
3) Drunk guy #1, Drunk guy #2 and a few of their drunk friends take over the table (fill in cleaver names like the classic "Bob, Alice and Eve" from security discussions).
4) Drunk guy #1 goes to the bathroom but foolishly leaves his phone behind.
5) Drunk friends find the business card, convince Drunk Guy #2 to call the IT support line from Drunk Guy #1's phone and pretend to be him.
Be happy your IT support line can't recieve SMS messages or cell phone pictures!
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RE: Damn it another trick ad
@OldCrow said:
(snip)
I'm amazed by the fact that the one-in-6-billion idiot who buys the bottle of fake viagra is enough to fund the serving of all the ad-images.
Of course, this presumes that those who make the campaigns do not make a loss. But one would think that the scam artists learn from their mistakes.
...And this in turn is based on the presumption that the scam artists are not also fresh victims of a different scam, which might be a false assumption, true. But one should always err to the side of caution. Here, caution dictates that the opponent is intelligent, ruthless and flawless in their execution.
Edit: and making a profit. Always presume that the scammer makes a profit.
ISTR a write up from someone that located some inside info from a spammer some years back. The breakeven point was calculated to be something like 1 out of every 8 million spam messages needed to hit for the spammer to make a profit.
I also knew a guy who thought he was going to get rich off of spamming (well, more along the lines of hosting spammer's servers) many years ago. From listening to him talk, I got the idea that most of the spammers don't make squat (for that matter, I think the guy I knew ended up living out of a van...). The shady guys that sell the mailing lists and the software, however, may have done alright.
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RE: New-Google-Maps is, in fact, the real WTF
@pbean said:
@El_Heffe said:
@fennec said:
I've got a browser that's set to use new-Gmaps
How does someone find this "new" Google maps?In the main menu go to "Enter codes" and enter UP, UP, LEFT, A, LEFT, A, DOWN, B, RIGHT
Did anyone else reflexively mutter "up up down down left right left right B A B A Start"? No? very well, carry on then.
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RE: Got hacked do not open email from me
@Lorne Kates said:
@OzPeter said:
Anyone got any clever suggestions for what I should write?
Reply (not all): This happens. Change your email password. One other way to protect yourself is if you sign up for a website that uses your email address as a login, don't use the same password as you do to sign into your email. Often those sites get attacked, and the attacker will then have your password.
It's clever, as in it is a smart way to educate your friend on personal security, reduce the spread of malicious emails, and protect both you, him and everyone on his address book in the future.
I doubt that's the scenario that happened. The reply should be "Hey moron: your email service provider didn't really need you to email them your email and password 'in order to prevent your account from being locked out.'"
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RE: WTF-Inc is hiring
@joe.edwards said:
...I know Kung Fu.
Show me.
(door bursts open)
joe.edwards is fighting snoofle!
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RE: Anonymization
On the bright side.. now your company has plenty of time to implement all the required functions from your new release that were "left for later".
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RE: WTF\b\b\b
@Ronald said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@Ronald said:
(Of course it was a balding dude with severe eczema and a mouthbreather attitude.)
Was he morbidly obese or sickly thin?
Picture John Goodman with a Bruce Willis haircut, an apres-ski kind of sweater, pleather loafers and non-matching belt. And his hands looked like he got caught cheating in a Sierra Leone casino.
Ah, so an old Emacs user then, got it.
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RE: Left Hand: meet Right Hand
@flabdablet said:
@snoofle said:
I drove two nails into the wall right at the ceiling and raised the huge whiteboard all the way up. Then I got several sheets of giant meeting-room post-its and papered the wall beneath the main board, added all of these other projects and made management set priorities accordingly.
...
I put it all in a spreadsheet and sent it to the whole management crowd.
Project #733: War Room wooden table technology upgrade. Status: complete.
No no no... if you mark the status as complete, someone can either assign you more tasks to do or can get rid of you. Here's what you really need to say (bonus six-sigma friendly lingo optional):
Project #733: Enabling War Room wooden table technology lead. Duration: ongoing. Status: green.
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RE: Hooray data loss
@DrPepper said:
It bothers me a lot when someone who is 18 is in the
news for committing a violent crimeporn video I just downloaded; and they call him a "teen". Technically yes, he's under 20; but in reality he is an adult just like everyone else. It also bothers me that thenews peoplevideo posters seem to choose what to call them -- "A teen was caught" or "a 18 year old man was caught" - makes one seem lessseriousworth downloading than the other.FTFY.
(oh dear lord, I've been hanging around the sidebar way too long!)
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RE: The joys of studying at WTFU
You had the correct approach to the problem. Even though the guy was a royal ass, you needed the grade. Digging in wouldn't change his behavior, but could have cost you your degree. Only thing I would have done differently would be to leave with the robot. If they complained, I'd offer to sell it to them for the cost of materials plus labor, plus "reasonable" profit.
I don't know if it works the same in Poland as in the US, but here you get to look forward to your university pestering you for donations for the rest of your life. It's odd, I spent enough $$$ there to buy a very nice car and never felt like an appriciated customer. Years later, I donate $50 to a memorial scholarship fund for a friend's deceased sister and the U sends me a pretty calender.
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RE: Twl
@arh said:
According to "About" they're one engineer and one "Biz Dev". Why am I not surprised they have no designer?
The page is ugly, the interface is bad and it all reeks of amateur hour. But seriously, it wouldn't surprise me if they were able to sell some Twls in their local area. When you think about it, they're not that much worse than your average braindead "app company".
Judging from the pictures, I think he wants to nail her. And apparently, you can join too!
I've run across this type of company before. The "Founder/CEO/President/Unemployed techie guy who doesn't want a 9-5 job anymore" looks at bit.ly and decides "hey, I could totally code something like that and make my own company. I don't need to get *ALL* of bit.ly's business, I just need a little slice of it. I should be a millionaire by the end of they year".
Companies like that are lousy to work for. Can be fun for a while, but your paychecks will bounce eventually. They can be great to contract for, since they keep dreaming up new things the app should do (onscreen keyboard for better security!). Just make sure you get progress payments and stage the development to bite size chunks. Don't start stage n+1 development until the check for stage n clears.
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RE: So, that's how you deal with unique keys ...
I used to hang out at octothorpe unbroken bar back in college. It's too rowdy for my tastes nowadays...
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RE: Symbolic Screenshot
@DCRoss said:
Yeah, I can never seem to reach example.com either.
Just use example.com's IP address: 127.0.0.1. -
RE: Quick Firefox bug
Something's wrong with your .gif. If I hit escape, the flames keep moving!
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RE: So, that's how you deal with unique keys ...
@setasensei said:
@Sutherlands said:
Modify the javascript client side?
I tried to mess with the javascript, but apparently they get the random number server side. There's almost nothing on the original form.
The commercial ISP was the first solution we used (i've been working here for quite a time, now), we set it up and hid it as much as we could. We used a VPN to connect to the source controller But they figured out we were using an "unsafe" network (worse : we used a wireless router they never heard about) and cut it. All the consultants had to work from their home for a few days before they could find a solution (the special network).
Please sir, I am having contest assignment that involves random numberz and needing to get good random numbers from remote server. Can u send me teh codez?
I am much hoping to win the grand prize, and will share the coffee cup with you if you can help me!
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RE: Anyone from Germany?
Uh, most people smuggle contraband from countries where it'hias legal/easy-to-obtain INTO countries where it's illegal. Maybe you need to rethink your strategy!
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RE: Lotus Notes
Lotus Notes: (How it really works):
<font size="2">Use the following method to calculate the column number for lookup purposes:</font>
1) Count the columns in the view from left to right. Remember they start at 1.
2) Use that number to index the column.
3) find you get incorrect results, then remember to redo step 1&2 in design view.
4) WTF? still incorrect results, remember that there are some columns that don't get counted.
5) Write a test routine that prints out every column from index_i_thought_it_was - 5 to index_i_thought_it_was +5.
6) Use the index that looks about the best.
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RE: So I just took a few placement tests for my worthless Computer Science major
@Ben L. said:
I clicked on the link. It's a pdf that looks like it was made in the 90s.
Wouldn't be surprised if it was. My alma mater was a similar $BigstateU->$city place that seemed to be fairly tech savvy. Back in the 90s, most of the departmental web pages were pulled together with work-study student labor. I happened to be browsing their site a while back, and found my picture in the residence life section. Wasn't just the picture, but the entire section that was 10+ years old.
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RE: I think I've found where WTFs come from.
@spacecadet said:
No, it took me 30 posts to care.
If this text is blinking, it's 1997 again, and "Bob" help us all. (P.S. Buy AAPL).
If it's 1997 again, buy CSCO, hold until about March of 2000. Buy defense stocks then and ride out the next 18 months. Wait to buy AAPL until about 2003.
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RE: Not sure if bug or feature
Reminds me of the old "cheater" controllers for the original NES that would exploit the pause feature by repeatedly toggling the (start?) button. Of course, with the NES, you didn't get to blast bad guys in pause mode, the effect was to slow down the action enough to mentally process what was going on.
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RE: Siri fun
@El_Heffe said:
I can see where "fifteen" might sound like "fifty". My last name has "ss" in it and no matter how clearly I try to speak when spelling it for someone, they frequently think I am saying "ff".
Call youself "Das_Heße" instead?
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RE: Siri fun
@joe.edwards said:
@da Doctah said:
It failed miserably to understand the first thing I said in Mandarin, but when I set it to tell it which language to listen for, apparently my accent is good enough.)
I was going to demonstrate by counterexample why this is problematic, by coming up with a phonetic polyglot (a sentence that sounds identical which is valid in two or more different languages) but I was too lazy and/or dumb. Anybody?
Spell 'socks'
S O C K S
Congratulations! You're speaking Spanish!
(too many late-night TV commercials in the 90s for me, I guess).
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RE: Who wants to see game-related WTFs today!?
@joe.edwards said:
@blakeyrat said:
instead of reading "AMY-01" it reads "10-YMA"
I only missed this because all the glyphs involved are horizontally symmetrical (except the serif on the 1), and 10-YMA seemed just as likely as AMY-10.
It's ok, Blakey is always patient with the rest of us when we post things and assume that everyone else knows all of the relevant background information.
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RE: Who wants to see game-related WTFs today!?
@da Doctah said:
@Adanine said:
Or for the really retro players, the dog from Microsoft Bob....@blakeyrat said:
Someone needs to mod this so you can turn the flashlight into Clippy from MSOffice.It's Flashy! The magical hovering flashlight! Pointing out exactly where I need to go! Thanks, Flashy!
It looked like you're trying to explore this cave system...
Sorry, the dog appears to have a job as flagman on Sega All-Stars Racing.
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RE: Barracuda WTF
Well duh, Tweets are only 140 characters, that doesn't take up much bandwidth!
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RE: New job, horrible system.
@JimLahey said:
You've just accurately described how our core software deserializes an xml file off disk into a POCO. At home I water my plants with tears before standing naked in front of a mirror, carving C# code into my chest with a USB key.
This guy knows how to party!
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RE: One room, many exits
try {
return somefunc(whatever);
} catch (Exception e) {
throw new OurException("You have been eaten by a grue");
}
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RE: Triumverate of Fail
@Lorne Kates said:
In the end, I don't have the time, inclination or legal knowledge to be bothered with any of it. I'll stick with Vimeo, and wait until the industry burns itself to the ground.
Did anyone else picture that line in Jack Nicholson's voice?
next line?:
"You lousy legal punk, you messed with the wrong dance parent! I'll rip off your neck and shove a pointe shoe into your dead skull!"
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RE: Triumverate of Fail
@Lorne Kates said:
@joe.edwards said:
This could happen if the tooltip and web page are several light-seconds farther from the observer than the tab title. The event (35%) occurs simultaneously as observed from a point between them, but from your vantage point they are not synchronized.
Well, I did just get a new widescreen laptop. The distance between pixels is much greater now. That does make perfect sense.
BOFH excuse calendar for March 6th: Improper Lorentz Transformations due to the speed of light and the greater transit time for a widescreen monitor.
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RE: Triumverate of Fail
@ender said:
@RichP said:
*(Not certain on the news media point, I'm basing it on one experience working a pit orchestra. We were allowed to warm up while the news crew was there, but were instructed to make sure we weren't doing any recognizable songs from the show during that time).
IANAL, but this should be covered under fair use. Unfortunately, even if it is, fair use is just a defense, and they could still get sued over it, even if the court later found that they didn't infringe.Fair use was my thought at the time too, since they're reporting factual events and not rebroadcasting the show. It could be an overreaction to not wanting any headaches as the show opened (this was around the time the big RIAA file sharing lawsuits were breaking open). The production staff was well experienced in the logistics of a show, so they may have had a lot more knowledge of the background on the legal issues.
...or maybe we just sounded like crap in the dress rehearsals and they didn't want us on tape yet, and the copyright thing was a convenient excuse to avoid brused egos.
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RE: Triumverate of Fail
@Lorne Kates said:
<snip>
Youtube willingly gave the media cartel that much control over their system. I chose to walk away, taking my dollars and traffic with me.
That's the best option, and the only realistic way to effect change. Youtube's certainly looking at their copyright enforcement solutions with regards to the relative costs (enforcement $$$ versus being sued by the copyright holders being one comparison) and making a calculation like you did. If coarse automated tools are used and their traffic never suffers, well, the tools will never be improved.
Another option is to consider the source material. Try using material from artists/labels/associations that are less trigger happy with takedown notices. I'm guessing that the $60 to Vimeo is probably much less than the licensing fee paid to ASCAP, BMI, or whoever. Granted, the options are pretty limited today, and the format probably dictates that the studio needs to deal with the big players.
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RE: Triumverate of Fail
@Lorne Kates said:
<snip>
I started using Youtube, but fuck them with a copyrighted CD. Every video I put up got flagged. Yes it had copyrighted music. But the studio PAYS for the performance rights for every song. Not to mention that the music is low quality (ipod -> stereo system -> air -> built-in camera mic), heavily edited (2 minutes or less per routine), and in an unlisted, non-public video-- for which we have the goddamn rights for anyways. It was a "soft" warning-- no hit on my account, but it blocked the videos at random from being seen on mobile devices. Which is what about 99% of the dancers use to review the videos on.<snip>
IANAL, but if you re-read your studio's performance rights contract, you will almost certainly find that they paid for the rights to do a live performance (and corresponding rehearsals) only. Using the material in promotional material is not covered, broadcasting in other media is not covered (including Youtube), if your local TV station does a story on the upcoming show, the studio is supposed to make sure that none of the copyrighted material is used*, etc. From what I've been told in the past, parents making recordings in the audience at the recital is also a violation (although I've never heard of anyone actually getting in legal trouble for recording little Suzy's dance recital).
Of course, it's possible that the studio paid for full rights in perpetuity to use the music in any and all media, in any and all markets, for all time. If so, they either way overpaid, or the copyright holder way undersold their rights.
Even if you did have said rights, did you provide a copy to Youtube, so that they knew you had the rights and could tell anyone who complained?
It's one of those realities that we're left with after the RIAA and others threw their weight around for years. Yea, it's kind of stupid.
I'm trying to sound really smart, but I think I first became aware of the subtleties in copyright licensing when I noticed that Beavis and ButtHead's T-shirts said "Skull" and "Death Rock" on posters instead of the expected "Metallica" and "AC-DC".
*(Not certain on the news media point, I'm basing it on one experience working a pit orchestra. We were allowed to warm up while the news crew was there, but were instructed to make sure we weren't doing any recognizable songs from the show during that time).
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RE: It's critical that this is fixed!!!!1!!eleven!!
@Lorne Kates said:
The solution is to rename "minor", "low", "high" and "critical":
[ ] If this never got fixed, it wouldn't matter.
[ ] I can still get my work done, but it's annoying
[ ] If this was still an issue in a week, I wouldn't be able to meet an important deadline with my boss or our clients
[ ] I'd be willing to personally phone my boss and get him out of bed/bug him on vacation to discuss this issue.
I like that, but in most environments, there's an even more effective solution: Keep the same rating system, but (quietly) invert the resolution priority.
The self-important jerks that complain about the report being the incorrect shade of blue will always insist that they have a critical emergency that needs to take priority ASAP. Meanwhile, the meek worker drone down the hall that has to hand-edit a mangled report every week will still be sumbitting tickets that say "when I do ___ the output data gets corrupted, I can work around it, but when you get a chance, can you fix the application, please?"
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RE: Hit with the stupid branch...
Ugh. As others have said, source control is one of those topics that never really gets taught anywhere, it just gets absorbed. Got to plug Alex's page on the topic: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Source-Control-Done-Right.aspx Since I found that to be really helpful.
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RE: I just installed Windows 8 (2013 edition)
@dhromed said:
PDF is built-in as a Metro app, so no more Reader.
Now [b]that[/b] is a selling point!
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RE: Null pointers
@joe.edwards said:
A former colleague of mine once requested adamantly that if he accidentally passed null to one of my functions, it needed to log where the null came from. I had difficulty explaining that my function would have no idea where the null came from, as it was the only parameter passed into it. After some back-and-forth, I ended up grabbing a stack trace if debug symbols were enabled, and logging the frame above it.
You should have checked for null, then logged that it came from $colleague_name.
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RE: IRA limits: contribute dsdsdsd this year!
@LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet said:
Personally I always do a fresh install with a new copy of Windows. It's an opportunity to start clean. I do it roughly once a year too. So... yes, backups.
Yes, Linux users can find something to boast about, but I'm a gamer and I live in the real world.
I used to do the regular re-install routine. I decided that my computer needed to work for me, not the other way around. I didn't re-install every year, so I was always out of practice, needed to re-locate all the drivers, spent time trying to remember what misc. utilities I had forgotten to download, etc. Oh, and where did I leave my OEM copy of XP? Oh yea, I also need to find my service pack CD, etc
I have a few items that are a real pain to re-install (I need *this* exact version of CVI for a given customer, not the latest version) along with a few hardware drivers that might finally play nice with Windows 7 (oh wait, the API changed, so if I upgrade to the Win7 driver, I need to spend a couple of days re-writing the utility that talks to that driver, testing it, and deploying it, ugh).
So, I could spend several hours over several days every year or so re-installing Windows. In addition, I'll have to interrupt my workflow several times over the next few months as I stumble across the little things I forgot to include. For that benefit I'll shave a few seconds off of my reboot time. If I upgrade to Win 7, I'll also get translucent title bars. My payback just isn't there.
I'm due for an upgrade, probably to win 7. I'll buy a new machine, and will probably end up keeping the XP laptop for testing, given some of the legacy issues I'll need to support for a few years yet.
Granted, I'm not a gamer, so I don' t need to eke out a few more frames per second to stay alive. I can see the benefit in your situation.
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IRA limits: contribute dsdsdsd this year!
At the beginning of the calender year I like to review my IRA contributions and allocations. Long story short: I auto-contribute to my (Roth) IRA during the year, then after the 1st of the year I "top off" to my maximum allowable contribution. I wanted to double-check the contribution limit for this year, so I googled. One of the top hits gave me the following:
[url=http://postimage.org/image/qs5rth8k1/][img=http://s8.postimage.org/qs5rth8k1/ira_limit.jpg][/url]
I suppose if I made over $173K last year, my limit would be fdfdfdf?
Bonus WTF: Registering the domain with "2010" in the name. Did they really intend to go out of business after that year?
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RE: Your stock is worthless
@fennec said:
@RichP said:
I take it you're a big owner of BRK.A, then!TRWTF is stock splits. Oh look, KO is cheaper now, I can buy some!
Heh, I was going to include BRK.a as a counter-example. At some point, the price of an individual share does become relevant to the individual investor, since most trading is done in discrete shares (DRIPs or fractional shares held in an IRA coming to mind as examples where fractional share ownership is common, making the individual price less important).The other end of the spectrum is an over-diluted stock where individual trades have a disproportionate effect on the price, due to (most) trades being priced at a penny change (think SIRI, late 2008).
The more common scenario (and TRWTF) is thinking along the lines of "stock A is $5 and stock B is $10, therefore stock A is cheaper". That is an all too common theme in stock discussions.
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RE: Your stock is worthless
TRWTF is stock splits. Oh look, KO is cheaper now, I can buy some!
to OP: makes you feel good that your management fees have obviously gone to quality web coding, huh?
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RE: Best place to store business critical documents? Try Outlook deleted items!
@cconroy said:
J and U. If the Romans didn't need them, neither do we.
Yea, but they were nuts. N V T S, Nuts!
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RE: This is the sort of design sense you need to work for Microsoft
@Douglasac said:
@db2 said:
I warned him about the CAPSLOCK menus
Why do people complain about these? Seriously, they are not distracting or annoying. If you find all caps so distracting that you can't help to look at them you probably need help. ....
REALLY YOU DON'T MIND LOOKING AT ALL CAPS? I PERSONALLY FIND IT A BIT ANNOYING, AT LEAST AT FIRST. GRANTED IT DOES MAKE ME NOTSALGIC FOR MY DAYS OF WORKING ON AN AS/400.
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RE: Engineering
That makes every presentation a...
powerpoint presentation
Yeaaaaaaa!
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RE: Yet another "at least it has a password" WTF
That's amazing! 'hunter2' is not my real password either!