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Comment Re:This. SO MUCH This. (Score 2) 492

This is true and good, so long as you're interested in making software that can be done entirely with existing technologies. As soon as you hit the brick wall of "but there isn't anything in the standard library that does this," you need the old graybeards who spent their entire careers making the standard libraries you rely on.

Speaking as one of them, the pay and hours are both good and it keeps me on the cutting edge of some fascinating technologies.

The common idea is that we over-40s who've been doing this professionally for 25+ years can't adapt to modern software dev practices. Quite the opposite, really. Mostly we're kept so busy that we don't have the time.

None of this is meant to disrespect what the younger generation does with (as you say) "connect the dots library calls". That code needs to be written, and it's best if it's written by smart people who care about their work. :)

Comment Re:He'll win in a landslide (Score 3, Insightful) 120

Voter fraud is a nonissue fearmongered and blown out of proportion to enact the real disenfranchisement: Republicans pass laws making voting harder for blacks and the poor.

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

It's interesting because it's a last ditch desperate effort to preserve a voting base of old white conservative people which is quite literally dying off.

Then there is the gerrymandering to make sure the Republican voters always dominate in any given Rorschach ink blot of a voting "district."

But after that, Republicans have a real problem keeping and growing a voter base.

Long term, they either die off, or they radically change their ideology.

Comment CA requires commercial licenses for pickup trucks. (Score 4, Interesting) 216

No, but money changing hands (commerce) impacts whether it is "commercial", and requires a commercial license.

"Impacts", perhaps. But it's not definitive. Especially in California.

For instance: I bought a pickup truck, to use as a tow vehicle for my camper and my wife's boat. Then I discovered that CA requires pickup trucks to be tagged with a (VERY pricey) commercial license, regardless of whether they're used for business. (You CAN petition to tag a particular pickup truck as a personal vehicle - but are then subject to being issued a very pricey ticket if you are ever caught carrying anything in the truck bed - even if it's personal belongings or groceries, and regardless of whether you're being paid to do it. (Since part of the POINT of having a pickup truck is to carry stuff home from the store this would substantially reduce its utility.)

The one upside is that I get to park for short times in loading zones.

If we aren't going to require commercial licenses for commercial driving, then why even have them at all?

And if we ARE going to require them for clearly personal, non-commercial vehicles that happen to be "trucks", why NOT impose this requirement on putatively commercial vehicles that happen to be cars as well?

The real answer to your question is "because the state wants the tax money, and the legislators and bureaucrats will seek it in any way that doesn't threaten their reelection, reappointment, or election to higher office" - in the most jerrymandered state in the Union. The Uber case is one where an appraent public outcry arose, bringing the bureaucrats' actions, and public outcry about them, to the attention of elected officials.

The full form of the so-called "Chinese curse" is: "May you live in interesting times and come to the attention of people in high places."

Comment Overblown nonsense. (Score 2) 99

From TFS:

...there's no clear way within the law to actually declare something in the public domain. Instead, the public domain declarations are really more of a promise not to make use of the exclusionary rights provided under copyright.

Ok, so the statement is about a clear way to put something in the public domain. Here's how you clearly put something in within the law: (1) You declare it public domain. (2) Now, keeping it there: You simply exercise a level of ethics even a 5 year old understands: You don't go back on your word, because (for one thing) that would make you a major fucktarded scumbag. (3) Whatever it is, is in the public domain, stays there, totally within the law, end of story.

Sometimes the ideas of law -- which is a hugely flawed instrument -- and the result of actions taken/not-taken get all confused in people's minds. If you want to put something into the public domain, do so, and subsequently just exercise a minimal level of personal honor, and you can be sure that your intent will carry through. The only one who can screw this up is you, and to do that you have to act in a particular way which guarantees you are knowingly acting like a dickhead. So when this clown tells you that you can't get it done, he is impugning your honor, not describing reality, and the only reaction you should have to that is annoyance.

Given that you are honorable and simply don't go back on your word, the user has nothing to worry about either.

So this really isn't about law. This is about your behavior.

Now, I grant you that most an entire generation having grown up with the idea that it's ok to steal IP, and the toxic idiocy of the "information wants to be free" crowd additionally muddying the waters, and the proliferation of people who just can't seem to keep their word, one might have reason to be cynical about this. But remember: TFS is saying that it is hard to put something into PD. It isn't. There's no reason you or I have to act without honor, and there are many reasons, starting from simply sleeping better at night, that we ought to act with honor.

Yes, I've got stuff out there that is PD. No, I will never, ever revoke that status. See how easy that is? 100% effective, too.

Comment Re:What's the difference between China and EU? (Score 2) 222

so you're ok with child porn and death threats?

can i take photos of you having sex with your significant other and put it on a billboard in your hometown? it's just free speech dude

everything has limits. including free speech. not because i say so, but because of simple logic and reason: it ends where it impinges on the freedoms of others. classic example: yelling fire in a crowded theatre

the fact that i recognize that freedoms are not boundless, but logically constrained by other people's freedoms, does not make me an authoritarian, it just makes me smarter than you

Comment Re: Well (Score 1) 222

go to google news

type in "shooting"

and let's dip into the ocean today

http://www.newsday.com/news/ne...

http://www.post-gazette.com/lo...

http://www.ketv.com/news/omaha...

http://www.twincities.com/crim...

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2015...

http://www.whsv.com/home/headl...

etc.

etc.

tomorrow it will be another collection of dozens of shootings

every fucking day in the usa. oh it happens in other countries. at a much lower rate. because they make guns harder for douchebags to get

the usa enjoys no amazing lower rate of rape, robbery, assault, etc., because of owning lots of guns, as compared to our social and economic peers, we are no crime free paradise. so owning a gun doesn't confer magic anti-crime properties. it does confer something though: a massive increase in homicide. pointlessly. needlessly. every little confusion or altercation in the usa has to lead to death. and this is somehow better

completely unnecessary, completely fucking stupid, and completely ok according to my fellow countrymen who are fucking braindead douchebags

we need gun control in the usa badly

and we are going to get it

you can't ward off logic and common sense with stupidity, lies, and propaganda forever

Comment Re:Well (Score 1) 222

in London, you get in a fight and you get a broken arm or a broken nose

in New York City, you get in a fight and you get a body bag

whenever the homicide rate of the USA is compared to other Western countries, NRA propagandized morons change the subject and counter about *violence*. as if *violence* is the same as *homicide*

frankly, i'd love the violence rate in the usa to go up and the homicide rate to go down. because a broken arm is not a body bag

and you get that with better gun control

but too many of my fellow americans of the low iq and propagandized variety believe for some fucking ignorant reason that every little misunderstanding or conflict has to escalate to death

and that's exactly what we get:

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/...

rape? robbery? violence? about the same as our social and economic peers

easy guns do not protect us from those things. they just mean tens of thousands of extra body bags every year

if anything, owning a gun increases the chance of mortality for you and your loved ones, because you've raised the stakes in every little act of confusion/ misunderstanding/ anger/ accident/ etc. to death

Comment Re:What's the difference between China and EU? (Score 2) 222

like what? child porn? incitement to murder? sure. i live in the West and i support suppression of that

like political criticism? religious satire? no. i do not support that

the country that limits a few vicious topics is not at all like the country that locks down all political speech threatening the political status quo

the former is very much a free country, the latter very much not a free country, and the difference is substantive and real and very serious

if you think a country that censors child porn is exactly the same as one that censors political speech, you're only announcing yourself as a moron who doesn't understand the topic

Comment Re:What's the difference between China and EU? (Score 1) 222

no, ask most english speakers what 50 cents means and they think Curtis James Jackson III born July 6, 1975

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5...

you really do have to spread the word about astroturfers paid by the chinese government to vomit propaganda on social media, most english speakers really are not aware of them

Comment Re:What's the difference between China and EU? (Score 2) 222

you've listed a bunch of red herrings, tangential topics, and pointless observations to say nothing valid or interesting at all on the topic

it's as if you lack the capacity for critical thought... or you are demonstrating a weak timid mind taught that to approach certain taboo topics and verboten observations leads to punishment

hmmm...

so here we see the mediocre fruitless mental quality of someone raised in a walled garden of a "harmonious" society of cotton headed propaganda tools

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