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Comment Don't buy it (Score 1) 425

I don't buy it for a minute. My kids have tons of Lego sets. Yes, they build the thing on the box, but then later, they tear it apart and build a million other things too.

Comment Re:If you can't beat 'em, sue 'em! (Score 1) 377

Re:If you can't beat 'em, sue 'em!

Looks like Apple has a new business model.

Actually Apple's business model is "beat 'em, then sue 'em anyway". As a shareholder of Apple, I approve.

If you think Apple is losing in the smartphone or the tablet market, you're not looking very closely.

Comment Blizzard says WRONG! (Score 4, Informative) 518

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5978861022?page=21

Clearly, as usual, nobody did their research. I quote the Blizzard Community Manager:

We’ve extensively tested for false positive situations, including replicating system setups for those who have posted claiming they were banned unfairly. We’ve not found any situations that could produce a false positive, have found that the circumstances for which they were banned were clear and accurate, and we are extremely confident in our findings. Playing the game on Linux, although not officially supported, will not get you banned – cheating will.

Comment Re:Be your own boss. (Score 1) 708

And fail, like 95% of those projects do. Entrepreneuring is the game of either the young or the rich; the young don't have enough commitments to make the risk really hurt, and the rich have enough assets to absorb the shock. If you're middle-aged, with a mortgage, and high ongoing costs in regard to the maintenance of your family, the risk just isn't worth it.

So what if you fail? You get up and try again. There is tons of VC and angel funding out there for people with a good work ethic and some new ideas. Honestly, the idea is the hard part. Once you get past that it's not really hard at all to make a living at it.

I'm at a startup now after 10+ years at large mega-corporations. It's fun to be back at a company where people actually like to come to work.

Comment No modern languages are hard (Score 1) 510

BASIC still exists, and so does Pascal, but honestly, why not use a real language?

Python has always been trivial to get started in. I taught my 9 year old to program in python in a few hours.
Java is easy to use, and the syntax is clean.
C# is basically a clone of java, so the same applies there.

You don't need to learn object orientation to use any of these languages. Sure, you probably SHOULD, but you can learn java programming solely in the main() if you just want to learn the basics. Even moreso with python, you can program in the interpreter at first, then move to running the code from files, then later migrate into an object oriented approach.

Comment Re:Sad, but I can see doing it too (Score 1) 950

Paying for yourself not practical? I don't smoke and I'm not overweight, and I pay $150/mo for full coverage. If I stay in the hospital, I'm never on the hook for more than $1500; my insurance pays the rest. Granted I am single and young, but I'm not exactly going bankrupt here. I'm sure if you have a large family or are otherwise unhealthy it can be a a huge burden, but if you can't afford that then it pays to not have kids and just take care of yourself.

I'm married with kids, 37 years old, and a non-smoker. I've never had surgery or any serious medical claim, nor has anyone in my family.

My insurance is roughly $14,000 per year, if you count what my employer pays, and the coverage isn't even that good. Tell me how that's reasonable. The only reason to have insurance anymore is to avoid catastrophic illness, to be honest, and if you do have that your insurance company will probably just try to drop you anyway. It's the most corrupt, immoral, evil institution in the business world.

Comment Re:Reading these comments (Score 1) 1008

Reminds me that Americans are assholes when it comes to labor rights.

Labor rights exist to prevent exploitation of workers, not to allow workers to screw over their employers and get unfair compensation.

Honestly, if you want to see labor unions in action, look at what happened to GM. They overcompensated their workers until they went bankrupt and nearly took the US economy with them.

Aside from jobs like mine and steel workers, there are hardly any good reasons for unions to exist in the US anymore.

Comment Re:This just in... (Score 1) 427

The only people I ever hear say something like that are people who don't install AV software and thus have no idea they're infected. They rely on the fact that their computer works to tell them that everything's honky dory. Not saying you're one of those people, but if you're not, you're the first, and I'd say your success is more attributable to luck than skill, like avoiding STDs by only having sex with people who appear to be upstanding citizens.

Either that or you avoid Windows. I had a virus on an old Mac IIsi running System 6, but I've never had one since. I've never gotten viruses on Linux or MacOS X, and it's not because I'm oblivious to the threats. It's because I made a conscious decision to avoid an insecure platform.

Comment Re:Bring-your-own platform (Score 1) 494

But for a big company with many lower-end users and the virus situation under control, it's hard for me to understand how TCO could be lower - though 3-4 years is a long time to make up a few hundred bucks.

But yeah, if I were setting up a bunch of new computers at a real estate office or something similar in scale, I might try Macs.

I work for a huge company (50k+ employees). We're all issued Windows laptops. In the 3.5 years I've worked here, I've had to have my laptop replaced or re-imaged 7 times. I don't run any nonstandard software, I don't download stuff off the internet, and honestly, I mostly use it for email, because I do my real work on a Linux desktop. These aren't some offbrand either, they're Lenovo and HP enterprise machines.

It's no wonder Apple is doing well in the enterprise. The few people who got Macs during one manager's brief stay never have issues with them, ever. If I could get one and run Parallels or VMWare Fusion, I'd do so in a heartbeat.

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