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Comment Re:Database? (Score 1) 371

Of course they do. Real Engineers design up front, before implementing. We understand the implications of our decisions. We optimize. We know that there are many orthogonal factors to consider in doing this. Shoud we optimize with an emphasis size or speed? If we optimize for size, how will that decision effect scalability and the ability to add functionality we may not have originally considered, or that the original design specification didn't call for?

Anybody who thinks that Engineers don't have a major impact on the entire business model have never worked in the real world, or have no idea the impact we have. "Why do we do thing X even though it no longer makes sense? ... because they system won't work if we don't, and it would cost too much and be too risky too change it!.

IS IT THE "Who you know" VERSUS "What you know" syndrome that these identify "Companies who do not understand Engineers?"
For example, companies getting contracts awarded because of friendships, election contributions, and stuff?

Comment Re:How many years could he be charged with? (Score 1) 299

Because Assange has said that if Britain and Sweden would put forth a good-faith promise not to extradite him he would happily travel to Sweden to face the molestation charges.

Which Government on this planet is willing to negotiate with accused criminals in order to bring them to trial? It doesn't happen, not in Democracies or Dictatorships. The most you might get is "I'll surrender at the station tomorrow morning so you don't have to haul me out of my house in handcuffs." but even that isn't a sure thing.

Comment Re:First World Problems (Score 1) 154

To "First World Problems" ... for enough people for it to matter, this isn't a first world problem any more than coding is a first world job (and these days it isn't). As someone with hereditary back issues since my teens that, after 25 years of pain and bad surgeries with severe complications, I am now on disability. I wouldn't have made it 25 years without an extreme ergonomic solution that I paid for out-of-pocket because until recently employers didn't recognize that even "ergo chairs" aren't enough.

For the original question ... you're probably not as bad off as I was. But if you're getting close you have a few solutions depending on how much you can spend (or get expensed). If you're not looking for this level of solution, hopefully the article attracted someone who did.

* Not a recliner, but for helping your back similar to how an exercise ball does but with more support for long coding, I have used a "SwingSeat" at my desk for a decade or more (http://www.swingseat.com/). This was good enough to get me by until the last round of surgery (which was actually a success) made it too hard to sit upright all day.

* A "Zero G" chair, like the ones by Human Touch (I use a Human Touch Perfect Chair), a bit pricey but not awful. Combined with a laptop table that can raise and angle the laptop you can actually do the vast majority of your work from a completely reclined position.

* For a desk, rather than reclining all the time, I assembled a custom desk from Anthro using their Console line that has a tray that can raise and pivot from sitting to reclining (which actually needs to be raised higher than sitting) to standing (great for those of you who don't have partial leg paralysis, good for me on rare occasions). The desk is HUGE but dang, it does everything. It is the Console with full pole extensions bringing it to almost 6' with monitors on a shelf 8" higher than the shelf that hosts the keyboard tray. Which means the monitors can raise up to standing position as well. I can, if I use a trackpad to avoid mouse problems, use this in combination with the Perfect Chair as a rigged solution similar to the next one.

* I couldn't afford this, or at least I could have before I needed it, but can't now. But if you can, the desks from ErgoQuest are perfect. And some of them are inexpensive enough to be not tooooo awful on the budget (if I had the money I spent on the SwingSeat, Anthro Console and Perfect Chair I could afford an ErgoQuest). You can -sometimes- find these on Ebay but not usually from someone willing to ship and often not for significantly less than having the right one built to your specs.

I sympathize with you. But different folks need differing solutions. I used the Staples recliners, and tilted them to different degrees, adjusted arm heights, changed heights, and even tried ergonomic chairs as prescribed by Chiropractors. I bought what was defined as a programmer's chair.

Still, I had cramps in the legs, burning sensations on my hips, and general back fatigue.

In the end, the $7.00 flat resin chair from the hardware store was the best solution. I bought a cushion for it, and it was the best investment I made. There are no wheels, and there is no height adjustment, just a cushion. I have no more backpain, no carpal tunnel pain for my arms and I am without the back issues.

My three other fancy chairs are now collecting dust.

Comment Should You Invest In Documentation, Or UX? (Score 1) 199

For the Support Person

My experience and my position about documentation management is to put the documentation into the source code. In this regard, I use doxygen and use it to scan source code documentation headers. Not all functions need documentation, but the critical ones do. Don't want doxygen, use whatever you like, as long as documentation is within the same source file that it is describing. Nothing is worse than completing some source code, and then having to start over again to document with a word processor, when both development and documentation can be done concurrently.

Where the documentation has to be the user interface, I would still use doxygen for each window. And if the Window or function changed, the documentation header would be revised.

Finally, I would also create a very few narrative documents to cover more of what the end-user expects from the application.

Comment Re:Libraries are one thing Amazon is not (Score 1) 165

Whereas Amazon has ample table space, quiet study areas, and you can browse through every part of every book in stock.

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise.
I was told that Quebec public libraries do not support the Kindle. They do support other readers, as long as the software is open source and can read the e-books, held by the library system. Kindle is proprietary end hence is a no-no.

Comment Re:Betteridge (Score 1) 248

You're right. It was time 10 years ago. Now it's way PAST time.

Ah don't worry, Comcast, AOL, Verizon, TimeWarner and NSA will come to the rescue. They will block EurAsia from the USA Shores and then there will be enough addresses available. There will be a new definition of Global Access.

If you want Europe, The defunct Net Neutrality rule will allow you to purchase "World" global access.

Comment Re: What for? (Score 1) 191

It likely won't, and its failure will be expensive on the device.

As a non-apple-fanboy, I do have to say that the lightning connector used on iPhones is a smarter connector. If it's going to break due to external force, it'll break the tongue off the plug, rather than damaging the socket, subsequently a lot cheaper and easier to fix. Replacing broken microUSB ( and soon Type-C ) sockets on phones, tablets and similar devices is rarely cheap and frequently has additional complications ( such as lifting tracks, broken PCBs or just nearly impossible to find a suitable replacement connector ).

It's a lot simpler extracting a broken off tongue from a lightning socket and getting a new cable.

Just because you have common sense, does not mean that others have it too. Have you thought that they want to start a new cottage industry, whose aim is to repair broken plugs? Why allow you to buy a $3.00 cable when you can pay $50.00 to replace the plug jack.

Comment Re:It's a still a nice PC. (Score 1) 337

For years I hated MS. But of late they are doing really nice work and getting mocked despite doing real innovation. It feels weird to like MS as an underdog, but that's what it's come to. And I will be be getting a Surface 3 - it's the one that finally kills it in terms of compact size and decent computing power. I just gotta save up cuz it's not a cheap machine.

My son-in-law has one (golf club prize), and likes it very very much. Likes it better than the Google or Apple tablet (of which he passed one to my daugher, and one to my granddaughter).

Now, we need the "price is right" to go for it.

Comment Re: There we go again (Score 1) 383

Off topic slightly How about swapping the position of two fields

One of my pet peeves is that the masked password field does not precede the logon field for the name. A good way is prevent the accidental revealing of a password to enter the password field, skip to the logon field (no message), enter the logon name and then discover that the pwd or logon name was wrong.

Why??? Why would I want to do that? Well....

When you have a logon name, but forget to move the cursor to it, and you are in a hurry, you end up entering the password in the logon name field before you noticed the error.
Someone standing behind your back, (as it almost always is, because they are waiting for you to do something for them), has full view of the revealed password as it is in plain view.

Logic can be used to block the logon field until the pwd field has an entry.
Validation to take place at completion of both fields.

Currently
As it is now, the logon field is wide open, without being blocked. Even if you do not want to flip the fields, it should be mandatory for the password field to be completed and then allow the user to have the logon field accessable. Of course, it means that logons without passwords would require a dummy password. Is there harm in that?

Justification My desk used to be in a large cubicle, shared with non-system adminstrators.

Comment Re: And so it begins... (Score 1) 252

The Shadows were directly responsible for President Clark's rise to power

Debatable, the takeaway I had from the show was that the Psi-Corps was largely responsible for it.

and wholly approved his slow transmutation of Earth society into something that bore an uncannily-prescient resemblance to what happened to the US after 9/11

I'm going to ignore the hyperbolic statement about 9/11 (really dude?) and just point out the fact that the Shadows never really seemed to give two shits about the domestic politics of any of their puppet races, least of all humanity. And in such a situation as the B5 universe, humanity would have to be incredibly stupid not to take advantage of any scraps of technology the Shadows were willing to dole out, particularly given the aforementioned issues on Minbar and the fact that the survival of the human race depends on being able to effectively defend it against aliens with many times our technology.

Comment Re: And so it begins... (Score 0) 252

FWIW, I never saw it that way. With the powerful races that are in play by that point in the show, it needed someone from the younger races to do something that appears miraculous from our perspective to put us in the same league and make the final outcome to the main plot arc credible.

Except it wasn't credible. That entire storyline was stupid and it was resolved by a deus ex machina ending. There wasn't even anything to get invested in as a viewer of the show. The Shadows are fucking with some minor races that we rarely see and don't care about as viewers. Yawn. The only time I genuinely cared about that entire story was when the Vorlons were about to waste Centauri Prime, otherwise it was all off screen minor races that nobody gave two shits about.

Comment Re: And so it begins... (Score 1) 252

Wars start for all sorts of stupid reasons.

There's a difference between a war and a holy quest for genocide. One would expect a race that's smart enough to go to the stars not to start the latter over a botched first contact. Failing that, one would expect them to actually wage a competent war of annihilation, but they couldn't even manage to do that.

Stalingrad, one lousy campaign in a war of annihilation, six months of fighting: 2,000,000 casualties on both sides
Earth-Minbari War, two years, conducted across light-years, including a last stand to save the human race: 250,000 casualties on one side, unstated (probably hundreds?) but low numbers on the other

It doesn't pass the smell test, and even if we excuse JMS' obvious lack of knowledge regarding geopolitics/military matters, the back story was laughable.

Comment Re: And so it begins... (Score 2) 252

The White Stars were joint creations of the Minbari and Vorlons and they didn't have to turn over a damn thing. Earth had no claim over them.

Who commanded them in a war against his own people? Who had previously sworn an oath to Earth? Who killed (rightly or wrongly) thousands of humans and left Earth nearly defenseless? Sheridan treated the White Stars as his own personal toys, with full support from Delenn, it's not a huge reach to imagine Earthforce getting their hands on one, particularly if Sheridan had actually upheld his oath once Clark was gone.

You want to know what would have been a good story in the B5 universe? The Minbari Warrior Caste nutjobs actually seizing power (hopefully killing that religious zealot Delenn in the process) and going on a vendetta against a weakened Earth. Let Sherdian reap what he sowed in leaving Earth nearly defenseless, then have him build an alliance to combat that threat, to save something we actually give a shit about. That would have been infinitely more compelling than trying to figure out why all these humans are fighting and dying to stop the Shadows, whom never really expressed any interest in harming humanity. All they did was stir up chaos amongst races that the audience rarely saw and was never overly invested in caring about. Yawn.

As it happened, the most compelling story JMS had (President Clark and the Civil War) was the one that got short shrift because of the looming threat of cancellation. More's the pity.

Comment Re: And so it begins... (Score 3, Interesting) 252

Star Dreck was shit from the start, and Rottenberry's "vision" was at best naive claptrap and at worst unredeemable drivel.

That was kind of the point of Star Trek, or at least the point of TNG and to a lesser extent TOS. I'm sorry that you didn't get that, it wasn't for everyone, but it was and is the reason why the reboot completely sucks ass and has nothing in common with Star Trek other than the title and character names.

Is the near-utopia presented in The Next Generation attainable? Probably not, human nature being what it is, though if anything made it possible it would be an abundance economy with virtually limitless supplies of energy that can literally make food and consumer goods out of thin air. The notion of people working towards the common good rather than personal enrichment is a lofty one, hence the fiction part of Science-Fiction.

It was a lot more enjoyable than the dark depressing crap that passes for entertainment these days, like Law and Order Rape (err, I'm sorry, Special Victims Unit) or even some of the darker Sci-Fi stuff, like the really misanthropic episodes of Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica. Yeah, I get it, character conflict is fun to write. Does anybody know how to write uplifting stories anymore? It'd be nice to have something more grown up than Frozen to turn to when I need to escape for two hours.

Bad "science" (only loserboy nerds known as "trekkie pedophile geeks" can delude themselves into believing any of that shitty technobabble can ever be related to real science)

Star Trek at its best was never about the "science". It was about the story and the characters. As long as they remained consistent about the fake science who cares? Go watch the third, fourth, and fifth seasons of TNG or any of DS9 or TOS. The technobabble was there, but it played by a known and consistent set of rules. The particle of the week deus ex machina technobabble crap was primarily a 7th season TNG problem (the writers clearly ran out of ideas) and long running Voyager phenomenon.

B5 was vastly superior to DS9 (which was a shameless ripoff)

The only parts of B5 that DS9 ripped off were the Messiah Complex/Emissary crap of the Commanding Officer. Coincidentally, that was also the least watchable part of DS9. I wanted to shove Sisko out an airlock when he stopped talking about "wormhole aliens" and started talking about "Prophets".

Comment Re:No, school should not be year-round. (Score 1) 421

Kids should have at least a couple of months out of the year when they can just not worry about their studies and have fun and BE KIDS.

I mean, jeez! You only get to be a kid once. Let them enjoy those summer vacations. When I think back to my childhood, my fondest memories are during those summer vacations! Why the heck should we take that away from our future generations?

Leave summer vacation in place. And stop freaking shortening it.

I agree that kids need play time. There is definitely a need to switch the brain to fun things. And yes, the same can be said for adults.
Instead of a continuous 8 weeks of time off, it could be arranged to have three periods of three weeks. (extra days would include legal holidays, Christmas, etc.).
That way, we learn, we have time to play, and we have time to travel and do what is mind broadening.

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