A few years back I made a pretty important report that listed percentages. At the time it didn't seem to matter what happened when data was missing, so I created a function that would take a numerator and denominator and spit out 0 if the denominator was 0. (This was in SSRS, so I couldn't use IF since it processes every part of the function regardless of the boolean outcome.) Looking back, while this hasn't caused any problems that I'm aware of, I regret the decision. Displaying -- is actually more informative than 0%, because it tells the user that the data is not available, not that it's 0%, which can be misleading.

Some day I'll fix it when I have time (and am not browsing Slashdot), but my word of warning to you is: don't. /0 is a special case, and should be treated specially. Don't care about the output? Check for a 0 denominator and just return 0 immediately. But don't try to do this globally, because one day you will need to handle /0 specially, forget to, and that kind of setup will bite you in the ass.

Slashdot was in "read only"/maintenance mode earlier today (at least, that's what the site told me.) I assume it's still trying to catch up.

I can't recall Slashdot going into maint. mode during the day even infrequently before Dice purchased them. Now it seems they do it once or thrice a week.

Why a tax? My understanding is that farmers get subsidies based on crops, particularly corn, in order to keep prices low. But the price of corn has been kept so low, apparently, that we can turn it into ethanol and a sugar substitute.

If my understanding is correct, just remove the subsidy (not instantly, but a gradual removal over three years.) Then all the other stuff you say will happen anyway.

(It also creates a nice paradox for Republicans: Stick to your guns about smaller government by removing subsidies, or lose the support and money of the ag lobby. At the moment the ag lobby would win that, though.)

How is that Utopia working out for all of you people that keep thinking more Government will solve all our problems?

I imagine about the same as we're seeing right now, as people try to push through less government. (Well, less government except where it concerns a woman's uterus or homosexual people wanting to get married.)

Perhaps the problem isn't more or less government? Perhaps the problem is religious indoctrination coupled with corrupt government and the people we elect, regardless of its size?

It also means there's far less time for the American people to actually read the bill and respond, assuming the administration even releases it after Fast-Track is approved.

Not that many care at the moment, but there's a chance that with the full text out there a few of the talking heads on each station might call it out for the crap that it is.

To make it clear, this fight isn't over. The House and Senate can still hash out something to grant Fast-Track. The House still passed the Fast-Track part, it was only the assistance that failed and took the Fast-Track with it.

I get the feeling that House Democrats voted they way they did knowing it would further stall the Fast-Track vote; it would be a lot easier to get Republicans to vote against that than the Fast-Track itself.

This might be a stupid question, but is the scar tissue the result of so many donations, or injuries unrelated to the donations?

Universal healthcare means everyone gets healthcare and it doesnt cost them anything.

While I agree with your sentiment in general, I think we need to avoid saying things like "it doesn't cost them anything". Universal healthcare most certainly does cost us something, but it costs us less in many ways than the current system (before or after ACA). When you say "it doesn't cost them/us anything", it gives the opposition something to latch on to because it is technically incorrect, though the underlying idea isn't. Then they'll crow and drown out arguments, and if someone responds "Well, yes, it does cost us something, but-" they'll exclaim "Aha! They've been lying to you this whole time!" Fallacies all over, but unfortunately fallacies work very well in society. Best to not give them that ammunition in the first place.

See also: "You didn't build that", "You have to pass it to find out what's in it", etc.

I can't speak for everyone, but when I was 18 I had 100% certainty that I would graduate, get into a good-paying job, and the debt would be easy-peasy. This certainty came from a mix of parents/relatives/teachers saying "Definitely go to college, you can do great things" and the university I selected having a heavily-integrated intern program and "facts" like 98% placement. So I went to this private, out-of-state, very expensive university, took out loans to cover not only tuition (I got very little in scholarships) but food, room, books, gas money, etc. I knew it was a lot of money, but it seemed like a temporary thing.

I was extremely stupid doing so, of course; I was blinded by the idea that getting a degree from this university somehow guaranteed me a nice job. Along the way, not a single person spoke up to say "Hey, making taking out $20-$30K in loans every year is a really bad idea." My parents even co-signed some of my early loans. And then I graduated into the 2008 recession.

Now, seven years later, I still owe $110,000. Minimum payment is $900 monthly, about 1/3 of my take-home pay.

In 2016, Microsoft will help both Democrats and Republicans streamline the process in a fashion that will hopefully avoid the embarrassing result from 2012, when Mitt Romney was declared the winner on caucus night only for Rick Santorum to emerge as the true victor when all votes were counted weeks later.

Or we could, you know, just not announce the winner for at least 24 hours, just to give everything time to come in. Just as accurate, far less wasted tech.

The problem here isn't some counting machine, it's Americans wanting to know right the fuck now about something that doesn't matter RTFN. (Thanks, 24 hour news channels!) Technology won't solve that; it will only mean that people clamp onto that first announced result harder, and after weeks when someone goes "whoops we had a bug" it will cause more consternation.

Loathe? American cable companies love Americans. Americans will put up with paying for dozens of channels that will never be watched, then paying more for a few extra channels that they actually want. Americans will complain about poor service/high price and threaten to leave and even go down to dial-up, but never do. Americans will happily vote against whatever the cable companies create a "grassroots" campaign to stop. If the cable company slows down service as a bribery tactic, Americans will blame the third party company if the cable company tells them it's the third party's fault.

It's only now that cable companies are somewhat starting to loathe Americans, who are increasingly demanding proper explanations for their bills, accountability for proper service, net neutrality, and fixing loopholes in corporate tax laws.

wide-spread /wid.spred/
adjective
affecting the affluent or oligarchy

Technically, it seems that it's not Disney hiring the H1-Bs; it's one of those consulting/contracting companies based in India that get the majority of them. The H1-Bs were approved for the consulting company, who can hire them out to any company that contracts with them in America.

And so we have a nice, giant loophole that means that, even if the government wasn't the pet of corporate interests and would make sure laws were followed, nothing can be done to either company.

(Disclaimer: This is all from my understanding; I could be wrong.)

Agreed. That's why it's good to find a niche in programming, where the tasks that the programming is for are the interesting things. For instance, I do Data Translation (I think that's the term), which means that I am taking data sent to my company in a wide variety of formats and turning it into data that our program(s) can read. This often requires research and planning, and at this point a lot of the Data Translation programming is rote implementation of stuff I've already written (perhaps a few adjustments here or there.)

I still have to do a lot of non-interesting stuff, but I try to focus on the interesting as much as possible and automate the rest.

At 30 years young, I would like to invest more in my 401K, but I'm far more focused on my massive student loans ($109,000 left to go!) at the moment and put only 1% into the program.