Just because the NSA is trying to weaken encryption standards, why do you have to pile on too!

As I've said before, if he's really this stand up guy, why did he run? IF he really had good and legal reasons to do what he did, take it to court and face the music.

I know, right? Like how the Sons of Liberty didn't disguise themselves as Indians before dumping a load of tea into Boston Harbor, and then when done, turned themselves in to the nearest British garrison? We need more heroes like those fine, upstanding, nametag-wearing gentlemen.


if you break the law to make your point that the law is unjust you should stand ready to be arrested, imprisoned and tried in court for what you choose to do.

"Ready to be" doesn't mean adopting a Gump level of naivete and making it easy for the government to remove you from the public view. By him fleeing the country (and seeking asylum in a country we traditionally mock for their lack of an open and fair government, no less), we continue to discuss Snowden's actions years later. If he had stuck around, we would all have forgotten about him as soon as the next weekly scandal distracted the media.

I admittedly don't usually look at the submitter. If the FP gets my attention, I'll click through to read the rest of the submission, and, maybe, even TFAs where appropriate.

In Bennett's case, I have to admit he has become a truly master-level troll, in that he has learned to write an opening paragraph that gets my attention but doesn't give away his essential Bennett-ness. By the third paragraph, though, I usually catch on, stop reading there, and just write the obligatory "fuck Bennett" post.

I think Bandai would say it's a "parody" of the IP they stole.

As in the original movies and cartoons that Power Rangers ripped off and spliced in "local content" to appear to be "original".

There is no stealing from crooks.

Cash, even though it's now traceable, is still much better.

If they don't accept cash, they don't get my business.

You make it sound like having a non-stupid, modern string class is a monstrosity that needs 16 cores to run.

You can split a string in any language. If you want to write in C++, write in C++. If you want to write in VB.Net, write in VB.Net.

C++ doesn't need to look like VB.Net just because you don't like the syntax.

Slashdot: News from Reddit, Bennett's Blog.

Did you?

Why, I did! Thanks for asking!

"The "mystery" is that nowhere in your code does it mention the word "split".


It's still a stupid argument, because any problem you can solve with a free and common library is not a real problem.

Well, I have to agree with the "stupid" part, insofar as if you can't figure out how to parse a simple delimited string without pulling in multi-MB frameworks, you have no place writing code. Beyond that, though, the whole conversation amounts to a holy war. Do you prefer Emacs or Vi? Top or bottom? Allah or Jesus? Pointy end or round end?


But to get back on topic - Do you prefer extensions or icons? Correct answer: "Why not both?"

Google Wallet / Android Pay. Apple Pay. CurrentC. Samsung Pay.

Competition works well when all players adhere to certain standards. It doesn't work well when everyone does their damnedest to lock out the competition.

Personally, I find Samsung's announcement the most interesting so far; because while Google and Apple require the clearly unreasonable expectation that merchants won't actively disable NFC on their card readers, Samsung plans to work with existing card-swipe readers.

That should lead to an interesting legal showdown, eventually, because CurrentC forces exclusivity terms on their retailers, while retailers can't block Samsung's approach as easily as they could Google and Apple's.

it might be time to admit that users need to understand, embrace and responsibly use the only plain-text, obvious indicator of what a file actually is.

Oh man, good one! You had me going until that line. Beautiful!

I just responded in another thread where actual programmers argued about whether or not it counts as "confusing" to split a delimited string without actually using the name "split" for the method that does the work.

And you want to try to get the average end user to understand the difference between ".XLS", ".XLSX", and ".XLSX.EXE"?

May as well swing for the fences, I suppose.

Three includes! Two methods! A loop! Six lines! And he didn't call it "George" like you would have!

...vs pulling in a massive amount of overhead with something like Boost or QT, complete with their own huge list of dependencies... For a program that may well do nothing more than parse a CSV file.

"What if" if needs to work on UTF-16? No, wrong question by a wide margin - What if it doesn't? Do you always use a CNC to cut a 2x4 in half, just because you have access to one? What if you have 5/4 lumber? What if you have cellular PVC? What if you have rebar? All valid questions - And all completely irrelevant if you just need to cut a 2x4 in half.

We can all agree that building some not-strictly-required flexibility into our code generally counts as a good thing, that will frequently save us time and effort down the road. We don't need to build a tilt-a-whirl for someone that wants a tire-swing, though.

They reported a hosted site where you sign on to exchange child porn. If accurate, that's a good thing for them to go after.

"Hosted" still doesn't mean "knew it existed". It just means that it happened to live on their servers.

For a rare non-car analogy, my GMail account "hosts" thousands of attachments I've received over the years, many encrypted (I don't send personal info through any third party in cleartext). Anyone who "knows the password" can get in and view them. Some of them, I've even shared from my GDrive, so someone doesn't even need to know my password, just have a valid GMail account.

How does that materially differ from the situation in TFA, other than in the nature of the content (which Google has no way to check)?