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Comment Re:Then ban Gambling (Score 1) 124

Seriously, not the same thing. The "internet cafe" is just a name. It's a big room with a bunch of slot machines. you use them to win Calling Cards (the kind you used to use to make long distance phone calls), and then trade the Cards for money once you're done. They call them internet cafes to skirt the law against gambling.

Comment Re:Political stunt (Score 1) 256

This is really the issue. We're breaking everything down to "for my wishes" and "against my wishes". What we should be voting for is a group of people who can break the country's wants and needs down to their base impulses, and then coming up with legislation that satisfies as many of those as they can.

It's basic project management, turning customer statements into a list of requirements. The worst project leads just write down everything the customer says in the requirements. This generally causes a project with logical fallacies. The best ones take what the customer says and tries to figure out what they really want out of their idea. Then they propose a solution that meets all their real needs. We need good project managers in congress.

Comment Re:Question for you liberals... (Score 1) 277

"We are not at war with" is now vague because of the situation. That is unfortunate, but we have to be aware of realities. Our military can't be hindered by "well, there might be an American citizen in that building we want to attack, who has the right to be arrested rather than executed". Again, the best possible solution is that this person is arrested and brought in front of a jury. But that's not a real possibility.

Comment Re:Question for you liberals... (Score 4, Insightful) 277

I hate when people say "you liberals", as if there's a conglomerate out to kill your babies and turn all your sons gay. Different people have different opinions. The things you hear on the radio that "liberals believe" or "conservatives argue" are mostly bullshit. It's like assuming Rush Limbaugh speaks for all conservatives (though...does he? His bullshit gets repeated as fact quite a bit on my FB feed).

Anyway, I'm fairly moderate. Drone strikes should probably be considered acts of war. Attacking Americans on American soil is wrong, we have a police force to arrest those people. Attacking Americans that have joined an enemy in a war zone, and are actively fighting or actively planning to fight our troops (maybe not directly. planning attacks counts), doesn't seem wrong. We don't have a police force to arrest those sorts of people. Bringing them in and putting them on trial is the best possible solution, but it's not really practical, and the military strategy has to account for them some other way.

Whether the war itself is just is another question entirely.

Comment Re:Political stunt (Score 5, Insightful) 256

I'd just like to see a politician with some convictions and backbone for a change.

See...you don't, really. People with convictions create standstills. What you want is people who are willing to compromise. People who are willing to see both sides of an argument and will try to get the best of all of it. You need "flip-floppers". You need people that will accept that they can't have everything they want. Stop voting for people that are "strong leaders". Vote for people that work well in groups.

Comment Just get your degree, dude (Score 1) 347

I used to think like you. I was a year and a half into my degree and was wondering why I'd ever need to learn what a B-Tree does. Or the algorithmic complexity of merge sort. Or why I'd need to learn Haskell. But, it turns out, you actually do need those things to be a good web developer. I know, because prior to my current job, I was a good web developer (I'm now working on a new test automation suite, but I do web dev on the side), working among a sea of awful web developers (yeah, I would think that maybe I sucked, but I was the person managers called on when they needed a project done on time, or to fix something that someone else screwed up. Customers specifically asked for me). Awful developers had 2 year degrees in CIS, or none at all, or a degree from the local school who has probably the worst CS department in the country (I'm looking at you, UCF. I had a person tell me they had never heard of a tree structure, and had no idea how to traverse one. WTF).

So here's the thing. You can go learn PHP or C# or Java and become a web developer without a degree. And you will probably think you are very good at your job, and you will probably be happy with your paycheck. But then you're going to turn out a piece of shit web app. It will happen, trust me. Everyone, even those with degrees, turns out a piece of shit at first. It won't work right, it will be too slow, it will not conform to UI standards, so on and so forth. Now you're going to have several problems. One, unless you're really bright (which statistically, you aren't), you won't know where to start with regards to making your app run faster, or work better, or do all the things that it needs to do to be a usable app. And that sucks for you, because it's going to take you time to learn that sort of thing, which you could have learned part of in college. And now your employer is going to wonder "why did we hire this kid when there are 10 kids with degrees waiting for jobs? He's no better, and he's costing us time and money". And that's going to suck for you because you are no longer going to be happy with your paycheck. And then someone like me is going to have to fix your shitty web app. So I guess it works out for me, cause I get paid, except that I hate fixing shitty web apps.

Comment Re:You wouldn't care.. (Score 1) 570

Says a guy who hasn't used it. If you have it in quick launch, it's "move mouse to bottom left corner, move to tile, click". All your commonly used apps are right there in front of you. If you want a-non commonly used app, it's "mouse to bottom left corner, click the programs tile, click your app tile". Not really any different than the start menu. It's just laid out a little differently and uses the whole screen. Takes a little getting used to, I'll admit, but it's not this crazy abomination that some people make it out to be.

Comment Or just f'ing use Win 8... (Score 2, Insightful) 570

Seriously. It's the same, with a small UI change. The Start Menu is now accessed by moving your mouse to bottom left corner of the screen, and it's redesigned in a tile format. Other than that small change (which people make way too big a deal of), and moving the Control Panel to the settings menu (bottom right corner, click Settings), it works exactly the same, in my experience.

Comment Re:I have a better idea... (Score 4, Insightful) 649

The car one is pretty easy to explain.

GM, Ford, and Chrysler all share US manufacturers for smaller parts of their cars. Ford did not take bailout money, but did argue for the other companies to be bailed out. Why? Because the smaller companies that they all share would suddenly have 2/3's of their customers cut out from under them, all at once. because economies of scale no longer work for the suppliers, parts prices go up severely and immediately. Demand for Ford cars may shift upwards, and increased production could be an outcome eventually, but the immediate price increases make Ford increase their prices, effectively pricing themselves out of their own market because their competitors failed too quickly. This leaves most of the state of Michigan completely devastated.

I'm not against the companies failing. In fact I would applaud it, because GMs and Chryslers have sucked so hard for so long. But it works out better for everyone if it's a more gradual process. This is the same case for the banks. Bad banks need to fail by customers moving their money out of them, so as to keep the least amount of innocent bystanders affected.

Comment Re:What a great thing (Score 1) 69

You'll note that those are all relatively new cities (even though you're wrong about Chicago, and probably Seattle). Older cities were built near rivers, on flood plains, because that's where they needed to be for shipping, food, and a clean water source. Even now these things are pretty important. Los Angeles wouldn't exist without a completely diverted river, for instance.

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