I am curious if they still have the property of not attracting insects. One of the things we discovered while in Texas is that LED bulbs were great for outdoor lighting when you didn't want to attract insects like a normal light bulb inevitably does. Apparently, it has to do with the LED lights not transmitting light at certain frequencies. With a warmer light, they may be transmitting frequencies now that will attract insects. It would be great for indoor lighting, but it loses the benefit when used outdoors.

Two C++ programmers will argue, 'What will my compiler do with this code?"

You have a very good point, but that's less about the language and more about the compiler. Arguably the most broken compiler was (and likely still is) Microsoft's Visual C++.

But somehow C# is "fixed". LOL.

Emacs lost that argument when it added a vi mode. :)
gVim FTW

Dude, the original poster who claimed that C++ is bloated probably loves him some Java or C#, both of which are arguably even more bloated that C++ is, since the "bloat" of C++ is the STL and Boost... which is comparably smaller than .NET, Swing, JavaFX, etc.

A better developer who understands what it is he or she is trying to accomplish would help more.

I'd say I've seen just as much piss poor code written in Java and C#, but that'd be a lie. I've seen FAR worse code written in Java and C# than I have in C++ because the level of entry is much lower.

When I was in college, not understanding pointers means you didn't graduate. Now... I interview "C# Developers" who claim 10+ years experience who can't tell me the difference between pass-by-value and pass-by-reference, and don't know the difference between the heap and the stack.

If you care about performance, the ability of C++ to "run on the iron" is a valuable tool to have in your arsenal. Add in inline assembler, and IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING you can write blazing fast code in C++ and still provide a sensible code architecture.

There's no sense in blaming the language for the abuses developers have written -- you might as well indict English for the horrible spelling and grammar of many Americans...

If you know what you're doing, C++ is a terrific, powerful language suitable for a plethora of projects. On the other hand, if you don't know what you're doing, well, I guess there's Visual Basic or C#.

Pretty sure both Rick Perry and Greg Abbott -- and especially Ted Cruz -- would wipe the floor with any Democrat on Jeopardy.

Especially the "brilliant" Sheila Jackson Lee.

I asked Barack Obama about Ms. Lee, he said he learned about her idiocy from the papers. You know, like he learned about Benghazi, Hillary's illegal email accounts, etc.

Being prevented from possessing a small class of items is obviously different from complete prohibition which was discussed above.

The problem with that is who decides where that line is?

Liberals want to ban "assault rifles", and by assault rifles they mean "black and scary looking". My AR-15 fires both .223 Remington and 5.56 NATO -- it's a small round, useful for hunting small game and Deer. AR-15's are popular because they're accurate, and have very low recoil. Meanwhile, because it's not a "assault rifle", you libs ignore my bolt action .308 Winchester... which is FAR NASTIER of a round, capable of taking down medium to large game -- Elk, Moose, etc.

Here's another example of stupidity -- I have a Springfield XDS chambered in .45 ACP. Single stack, 5 rounds. On the hard shell case it a huge label: "NOT LEGAL IN CALIFORNIA".

Why not? What the fuck is wrong with California?

somehow the CCW crowd missed violent crime dropping to its lowest level in decades

Here in Texas, this drop corresponded with former Governor George W. Bush signing the CCW law into place. All of the sudden, criminals didn't know if the person they were about to mug would shoot them.

It's an old truism -- an armed society is a polite society.

I agree, it is kind of sad. Most of the carriers have never really given it a chance or put it in a place in their stores where potential customers could look at and play with it. I'm in Western Washington, so I'm pretty certain it has a higher market penetration here. In my office (and no, I don't work at Microsoft), it seems like we have a fairly even mix between iPhone, Windows Phone, and Android devices (to be fair, many people in the office came from Microsoft and had their WP devices subsidized while there).

Outside of work, I have several friends who also use WP - a couple in the insurance industry, a couple students, etc. All of them seem pretty happy with them.

Each of the 3 OSs has some benefits over the others, but when compared side by side I wouldn't say any is at a clear disadvantage. WP probably has the best hardware quality available with the iPhone 6 a close second, Android is easily the most customizable, and iOS may win in the "mostly just works for everything you really want to do" department (has all the apps and the simplicity/consistency of UI).

So, to each their own, but counting out WP just because "it's Microsoft" or "because WP7 sucked" is shortsighted at best.

Among the people who use it, Windows Phone is already hugely popular. Every time I'm around people with iPhones or Android phones, I hear complaint after complaint about things that don't work right, underwhelming features, etc.

Everyone I know with a Windows phone loves it. Note that this was NOT true of WP7, but the latest WP8.1 phones are great! I've had a Lumia 521, Lumia 925, and now Lumia 830, and all have been excellent phones. The 521 is still my backup/travel phone.

How many models of phone does Microsoft make? Add to that, how many models of phones are available from other manufacturers running the Windows Phone OS?

How many models of phone does Apple make?

I don't think Microsoft is losing in the mobile space because of giving customers too few options.

So it's acceptable, then, because they've always done it. Gotcha.

The problem is that everybody seems to defend the politicians on their side, no matter how immoral or corrupt they've proven themselves to be. Confirmation bias, I suppose.... it's always worse when the other person does it.

That!

I've had a number of arguments against certain candidates because they quite obviously lied... and partisan apologists for that candidate would say "yeah, but all politicians lie!" This has happened, of course, for politicians from every party... but it shows that far too many of us not only accept it, but condone it. "It's OK because it's the one I support... but if your candidate lies I'll never stop mentioning it!"

I remember when Bill lied to a grand jury, and there were far too many people who said "yeah, but who wouldn't in that situation?" I wouldn't... I wouldn't have been in that situation, either. Which leads us to the fact that it's not just politicians, it's a large (and growing) segment of our society that believes that lying and deceitful behavior, immorality and selfishness are OK.

There is no sense or morality or common decency anymore. Sure, most kids lie about their bad behavior, but it used to be that parents would punish them even worse for lying about it. Nowadays so many people don't want to punish their kids - they want to be "friends," that kids get away with anything by lying about it... and those kids grow up, and breed more kids just the same; they grow up to be politicians, businessmen, police officers, and all manner of people that we are supposed to be able to trust. I even had an argument with someone boasting about screwing up someone else... their defense was "there's no law against it." I had to ask "since when to common decency and common sense need to be written into law?"