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Comment Re:yet if we did it (Score 1) 463

I feel the same, and recognize that any person would and should be calling for the officer's head.

However, there was no criminal negligence or intent. That would be necessary to charge. He was operating within the law. Now, we citizens need to push for laws that hold officers to the same distracted driving standards that citizens are bound by, because those laws are based on human nature, not government edict.

Comment I don't care about Java (Score 3, Interesting) 511

Java is moving into archaic irrelevance faster than ever. That is, the language itself.

The JVM, however, is now more useful and relevant than it ever was. It used to be naught but an implementation detail. Now, rather, it's central to an entire ecosystem of languages that will inevitably send Java the way of C: used only when the greatest speed is necessary.

Scala is basically a next-generation Java. Java with functional programming, or really, vice versa. JRuby make Ruby actually scalable, given the presence of native threads and interoperability with existing enterprise libraries that commonly only ship in the form of Java or C# libraries. Clojure enables LISPers of yore and Schemers of new import explore functional programming as it used to be, without having to drop the wealth of Java libraries available. Ceylon, Groovy, Jython, and dozen of others are paving a way to give the JVM much more to do after Java becomes obsolete.

Java will never die - it'll just become like COBOL, Fortran, and C before it: used in enterprise software, operating systems, and outdated educational assessments.

Comment They always told me I was so smart... (Score 5, Interesting) 243

The funny thing is I was told all the time growing up that I was "extremely smart" and "gifted", when in reality, I didn't FEEL like I was.

Sure, I could do things with computers that few of the other kids could do, like program and build things. But I don't think I was "smart". I just LIKED doing those things, so I did them all the time, and thus became really good at those things.

Meanwhile, you could ask me to cook a meal at the time and I'd completely fail because I never cooked. I didn't enjoy it, and was thus lousy at it.

I don't think I was unusually "smart" or "gifted". I just got obsessed with computers and technology, so I got good at those things.

Comment E-mail is the foundation of identity online (Score 3, Insightful) 235

Everything requires an E-mail account. You need an E-mail account to make a Facebook, Google, Apple, etc. account. It's the "out of band" communications method with which someone can be reached that is universal and not tied to any specific company or provider.

If E-mail has to go away, something else needs to replace it in this manner. Phone numbers could be one way; there's already services that exclusively use phone numbers to authenticate (Telegram messenger for instance). The problem is most people, including myself, don't want to give their phone number out to everyone. E-mail, I could care less, or create a throwaway account.

E-mail is too useful. It needs to stick around.

Comment CLA (Score 3, Insightful) 57

Having a solid Contributor License Agreement process in place would probably be a good idea. That way, it's clear who owns the code that comes in and encourages people to contribute while defining a (necessary evil) process for doing so. You'll lose random passers-by, but just one passer-by who gets litigious could be more of a headache than it's worth.

Comment Maybe this can be used against the bots (Score 5, Interesting) 100

Populate the net with files like this full of E-mail addresses that are not valid. Have dummy accounts on the appropriate servers that will accept the logins, allow the spambots to think they're successfully sending E-mails when in fact they're all going into the bit bucket.

For added effect, make the servers respond v e r y s l o w l y under these accounts, taking tens of seconds to "send" the E-mail, a minute or so to log in, etc. Basically, slow the spam bots down and waste their time. Of course, the bots will probably eventually evolve to detect such shenanigans, but why make spammers' jobs easy? :)

Comment No, school should not be year-round. (Score 5, Informative) 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.

Comment Be ready for a lot of frustration (Score 4, Insightful) 170

PalmOS is a rather antiquated system. No memory protection, no native multitasking, clunky APIs...

Depending on your personality type and the coding experience you have, it's either going to be a TON of fun, or you're going to want to smash and break things on the very first night.

Or maybe both. :) I don't have any pointers, but as a former Palm OS user, godspeed.

(Palm IIIxe from 2000-2005, Palm Treo 650 from 2005 to 2009)

Comment Just deal with problem users individually. (Score 3, Insightful) 98

Have these problems actually been happening a lot?

When I first started to help manage a computer lab, I was concerned users would behave really badly and do horrible things. The truth is, very few users did, and we just talked to those users and told them how to behave.

If you get the occasional repeatedly defiant user, locking out their account can be the final solution. But most people (at least at our site) aren't jerks and listen. Most "bad things" are due more to incompetence than malice, and educating students is easy.

Also, as someone with experience in these matters, allow me to recommend AGAINST Fedora for production systems. I like to call Fedora the self-breaking distro; updates break things CONSTANTLY. You're much better off running Ubuntu (even non-LTS is more stable than Fedora) or the RHEL clones like CentOS or Scientific Linux.

Comment Re:PR needs to talk to tech (Score 1) 390

It must be horrifyingly frustrating to work for a company like Verizon as a tech, know that you can fix a problem by adding a few more links between two switches, and being told my management that you cannot because of idiotic reasons.

I'd be half tempted to just fix the issue behind their back, but then of course I'd likely be fired for insubordination!

Imagine that, fired for improving network performance. Might even be worth it if the tech doing it had another job lined up at a company that isn't as evil.

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