Comment Re:mmmm... that feels good... (Score 1) 212
+1 Asimov
+1 Asimov
No not outlaw Walmart, simply tax Walmart.
FTFY
Walmart is quite subsidized to the point that it makes the 30% Mom & Pop pay downright mean.
I will write a script that locates ambiguous usage of commas, and will replace them with the correct oxford comma usage.
Sir, that is uncouth, uncivilized and incorrect.
There are legitimate grammar and usage debates, with cogent arguments on either side. But the Oxford Comma is the One True Way. The best argument I've ever heard against it is, "Well, it saves a few drops of ink on the printed page." Anti-Oxford Comma heathens should be drawn, quartered, and burned at the stake for befouling the language.
This guy's my hero - misuse of "comprised" is a pet peeve of mine.
Despite sounding vaguely similar to "composed", it's not a synonym. Comprised is a near-synonym for included, but implies totality. "The band comprised a guitarist, a bassist, and a drummer" means that was the entirety of the band. Since so few people actually understand this, I tend to avoid the word.
I believe you have that backwards. "Comprising" is open-ended, and means "including at least". "Consisting of" implies totality. At least in the legal world.
This is an important distinction for patent claims. If you say "A widget comprising a, b, and c," that means the widget includes a, b, and c, and anything else. If you say "A widget consisting of a, b, and c," that means it includes only a, b, and c (which is why you never see "consisting of" in a patent claim, except in Markush groups).
First: I doubt there are any Bible haters here. Why would anyone hate book?
I guess you would have to ask the many, many Slashdot posters who regularly mock the Bible, including the GP. (That said, there are plenty of books I hate, so it's not inconceivable.)
Second: you seem not to know much about what you are talking about, hint: read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
Um, did you read the page you linked to? Because it definitely supports exactly what I was saying. Whether you believe the Bible was divinely inspired, it was a near-contemporary account. The fact that a little blurb on Wikipedia mentions that some early-20th-Century archaeologists think Molech might have been made up is hardly conclusive evidence that Molech is "obviously" an invention of the Jews to denigrate their enemies. But regardless of what you think actually happened, the author of Chronicles was definitely saying, "Manasseh was an awful person because he sacrificed children to Molech." That's a far cry from the GP's original thesis of "Manasseh was an awful person because he did the equivalent of reading Harry Potter."
CDs/DVDs. No LPs, though
I have DVDs that I've burned as a teenager kept in a nice, high-quality soft "archival" binder for the last 18 years. Nearly all of them, of varying quality/expense, are unreadable due to degradation.
OTOH, I've got old 500MB harddrives that read/work just fine and are just as old. I'd expect sealed HDDs to be as good as it gets - tape is nice, but maintaining a supported/working tape drive was always difficult (used to have one). But, unlike every other type of storage, harddrives are actually capable of warning you of an impending failure. (I've been *saved* by S.M.A.R.T. at least twice, over the years.) Add some rudimentary RAID, and you're probably good. The only way I can think of to go further is to use two/three, and cycle them between your PC(often/all the time), a nearby firesafe(When you are heading in that direction), and a safety-deposit box (seasonally?).
The bulk of the laws involving surveillance pivoted on this "Close" work. It was hard to do, and it required some motive to be "worth the effort". So in the old days where you needed to intercept physical mail or actually enter a property to spy, the laws were in balance.
Of late the state has had a free ride, with the information being pumped into it at central stations and spycraft was just a click away. And the state has gotten fat and lazy, and with the decreased minimum effort the spying has become free. And the state, fat and happy, likes it that way.
But strong encryption would put the state back into the footrace. It would require the same work and effort as the old days. Boo farking hoo. It was _supposed_ to be hard to spy. The entire Big Brother 1984 idea was about the destructiveness of surveillance made too easy to bother being selective. The "just watch everybody" economy of effort leads to gluttony and abuse. We kwow that.
So Omand's "warning" is that of the plaintive child. But mom, then I'll have to _try_ and I want my participation trophy!
So Omand has made the case for why strong encryption should be universal so that the state cannot engage in universal surveillance.
You do understand that Pascal was first released in 1970, right? Many Pascal programmers in the 1970s asked the same question - why do we need C, with its dangerous string handling and obtuse preprocessor, if it doesn't solve any new problems?
Um, you realize that C came out at almost exactly the same time, don't you? Granted, I wasn't programming anything in the 1970s, but I know enough history to know that the Unix kernel was already being ported to C right around 1970.
I like the End-X style, such as VB's, because if the nesting gets messed up due to a typo, End-X carries info about which block ender went with which block starter. "End While" goes with "While", obviously, not an IF statement. Brackets lack this ability.
"Lacks" is a strong word; it's just not inherent. Back when I used to write software in C and C++ for money, I would religiously put "}//end if" to make sure I could keep track of which braces went where. If I needed even more context, I would put " }//end if(var1 == var2). It's not that hard. Like many things in C, you have plenty of rope to hang yourself if you really want to, but you can also make it tidy and sensible if you care to. C is not your friend, and is not your enemy.
C is like an M1 rifle. Sturdy, proved in battle many times over, occasionally finnicky, and ready to put a high-powered round precisely where you aim it without apology. Whether you aim at your foot is your business.
You entitled... You do realize companies often all but collude on this kind of thing? Once one gets away with it, it quickly becomes the norm "in order to stay competitive". IMO, Your rights shouldn't just apply to government - especially since bigger companies own it at some/any/every level anyway. You can't negotiate from unequal footing. If you say anything even approaching "no", the company will simply replace you without a single thought. Probably with someone cheaper. (Or, even better, give your former coworkers who couldn't afford to walk all of your work. Triple-win.)
You'd be wrong to think I disagree with you. It cuts both ways, and that's okay!
Going further, I'd like to know what hoaxes other people are being exposed to, so I have some clue before they start spouting fecal matter at the watercooler. Rather than suppress the hoax, I'd rather publicize it (preferably alongside proof.)
Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine. -- Andy Warhol