You're a node in a network of douches. It's nothing personal.

It's not just the ebook conversion. Book publishers and packagers have been cutting down on editors and the whole revision for the last couple of decades. "Fuck it," they say, "nobody will notice. And even if they do, they already bought the book. What are they gonna do, buy the next 'Shades of Gray' from another publisher next time?"

Because you know, its always just a choice between being a spineless pathetic guy or supporting stupidly expensive military hardware purchases that the country probably cannot afford but which get the PM some political cred in the US. Its black or white, there can't possibly be a different solution right? /sarcasm off

What a fucking moron

Good point. That makes sense for explosives, but I was thinking about currency. It's not like you want to destroy money or bearer bonds to determine whether they're genuine.

The idea is interesting, but once the particle has been melted, I assume that it can't be verified again. If that's the case then no matter how many of these tagging particles are added to a given object, it can only be verified a finite number of times.

Forget code names, they did it with an actual software title with AppleWorks for the Mac and AppleWorks for the Apple ][. Somehow, we survived.

Yes, Snowden would return to the US for a trial in a secret court, with nothing released to the public for "security reasons" and be placed in solitary confinement for the rest of his life. He would not get a fair trial. It would not and could not happen.

So yes, it would be interesting and beneficial for the US public if Snowden received a fair trial and was granted all his rights. It would be a chance to test the legality of various laws etc - but since it would have to be conducted in secret by a military tribunal, it would never reach the light of day, and thus no benefit would be had.

Snowden should stay where he is until the US changes its laws to make it safe for him to return. That will take some major changes I don't see ever happening.

In essence, Amazon is letting the authors write the books, the publishers and writers edit the books, and the publishers produce the books as well as promote them, then sidling in as the cheapest distributor with the greatest access to the customer and ensuring the prices are so low that no one makes a real profit except Amazon.

I don't buy from Amazon, I would if I had no other access to the book I need, but by and large I get my books from physical bookstores. I *like* authors I read and I want to see them continue to write.

Absolutely. A little blu-tack and a kid's drawing or take-out menu and it would be a perfectly fine fridge.

On the other hand, if the ads required me to interact with them periodically or else the frig/freezer would stop keeping things cool, then no.

for this guy who was willing to shut down his business rather than betray his principles and his customers. Note that the government doesn't appear to have wanted the passwords and encryption keys for specific individuals, they wanted the whole fucking lot.

I guess "Don't Tread on Me!" has been transformed to "Go Ahead and Trample Me!" :P

This. I saw Star Wars Ep IV when it came out. I was blown away by the movie. It had its faults but by and large was a good film and deserved the cult status. Ep V was also enjoyable, Ep VI was okay but the Ewoks ruined it for me as I didn't find them believable. Had they used Chewbaccas people as they originally planned it would have worked for me I suspect.

The prequels were badly acted, badly plotted, filled with unnecessary elements that destroyed the feel of the movies for me and Jar Jar Binks. They also wasted some great actors in those films feeding them really lousy lines. The immediate impression I got was "this was written to sell toys" and it was plotted accordingly.

My annoyance is primarily that the first films were (to me) aimed primarily at adults and I enjoyed them as such. The prequels were aimed at 8 year olds and I try very hard to enjoy them but usually can't. If your introduction to Star Wars was via the prequels, then you probably enjoy the whole set, if it was via Eps IV-VI then you probably don't.

As programmers get older they simply get less excited about the idea of pulling all nighters and doing "code sprints" because they have spouses and families they enjoy, responsibilities to others outside of work, and they know that this isn't a good process for long-term success. All nighters are fun and adventurous when you're in college or just out of school, but after a few decades in the working world you're seen it all before and simply refuse to get caught up in another "emergency" caused by poor planning, unrealistic expectations, and marketing promises.

I'm not saying that programming is a young person's game--far from it. However, inexperienced workers are not only cheaper, but also far more likely to put up with bullshit and bad management.

You missed the stages where the customer changes their mind (and thus the requirements) half way through the project because "they read an article" - but has no idea what the consequences would be, or the stage where the lead developer decides he *hates* one environment and decides the whole project has to be reimplemented in a different environment (with no cogent reasons to support it), or the testing phase for the program is abandoned because there isn't time. Been there with all 3 of these.

Similar story here. I signed up to be able to truthfully claim that I was familiar with Twitter for a job application. I looked at the user interface and I knew enough to talk about it if asked. Never posted, never followed, never went back.

Just like everyone in the late '80s was going to use desktop publishing to make a mint doing flyers and low-end restaurant menus and ten years later everyone was going to make a mint designing websites.