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Comment Re:Mr. President (Score 4, Informative) 291

We spend more money on the military than every other country on earth combined. This with an existing nuclear arsenal that could destroy any country 10 times over. We should be slashing military spending to the bone- its just not needed. How about reducing military spending to even just say triple what China (the number 2 country) spends? We're fucking ridiculous.

Comment Re:Not gonna happen (Score 4, Insightful) 291

He wasn't trying to spend his way out of debt. He was trying to spend his way out of recession- something that does work if you borrow (or use savings) the money you do it on and the cause of the recession was lack of consumer confidence/demand or lack of capital (which this was in part). The trick is that you have to make up for it in good times by repaying the debt, something we've been bad at. Also, it helps if the extra money being spent is on things with long term results like infrastructure and R&D. Spending it on things like wars will give a short term bump but no long term advantages.

THe fact is right now our debt not only doesn't matter, any business leader in the world would be telling us to take on more of it. We're borrowing at about 1% interest. That means if we have anything to invest in that would pay better than 1% return, we ought to borrow to pay for it. Since the rate of inflation is higher than that, anything with any real long term value is a good buy, as the principal will be less when due than it is now. Debt really isn't a short term problem for us.

Comment Re:Read your employment contract for conflict (Score 1) 257

I understand and acknowledge that this Agreement is not intended to require assignment of any of my rights in an invention that I develop entirely on my own time without using the Company's equipment, supplies, facilities or trade secret information except for those inventions that either: (1) relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the Company's business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the Company; or (2) result from any work performed by me for the Company.

That's what I have now, or close enough (I googled for a similar clause so I could copy-paste). I also had one once that had this and further spelled out that minor uses of company time/resources (such as answering a related email while at work) did not count as using work resources, but case law has established that as well.

Comment Re:Read your employment contract for conflict (Score 1) 257

Typically not working for a competitor is a separate item in the contract. That's a reasonable restraint. But if I'm writing something not related to my job at your company? God damn right that's mine. I've heard of contracts that are more restrictive, but I've never been handed one and I'd refuse to sign if asked.

Comment Re:Pay the penalty where it is cheap. (Score 1) 330

1)Because wrapping also would have broken the UI. Printed page, remember? It would have pushed data off the page. And in that particular app, the printed page was a scantron, changing line positions would have moved bubbles and broken the parser. But even in a normal printed page there's a hard bottom and sides you can't write past.

2)Wrapping might take care of it- if there's room to wrap. And if you don't care about an ugly result. And if there's a place to wrap- you can't just wrap mid-word. And if you're in a wrappable language (can you wrap chinese/japanese?). And then we can deal with left to right vs right to left languages and how they'd have to be handled differently.

Translations aren't simple. There's good rules of thumb that will reduce problems, but just saying "oh, do this one thing and you're good" shows you don't understand the problem. Flexible sized fields in particular only work if either the screen scrolls (and you're ok with scrolling) or if you have lots of empty space in the design. A busy design and you're fucked, text will overrun each other.

Comment Re:Reality vs idealism (Score 1) 290

And a lot of them aren't. You can get a much cleaner, better UI in a native app than HTML, and you don't have to deal with the horrible GUI editing language that is XML or the utter pile of shit that is Javascript. So the user and programmer get better experiences. Native apps are always better, its just a matter of if its worth the cost to make one.

Comment Re:uh? Freelancing pays well (Score 1) 257

I think he was lookign at websites- rentacoder, freelancer.com, elance, etc. The hourly rates there are very low, because they're used to hire people in 3rd world countries and by people who have no real respect for your work. And plenty of high school/college kids who bid low thinking it will lead to future work. Freelancing pays well, but only if you drum up the work yourself.

Comment Re:Read your employment contract for conflict (Score 5, Insightful) 257

If an employer asks you to do this, don't fucking sign it. I've had many employers over the years. Every agreement I've ever signed has said anything done on my time with my equipment is mine. Done on work time with work equipment is theirs. Don't accept anything more restrictive than that, its not worth it. Make them change it or find another job, they'll get the idea pretty quickly.

Comment Re:Pay the penalty where it is cheap. (Score 1) 330

Not always possible. I once has a string that said "double". It was translated into about 20 languages just fine- until it went to polish where the string from the translater was a 16 character long word. There wasn't enough room on the control, or even in the control's parent to make it fit. We ended up rebasing just that language to use "2" instead of double. Always leave some extra room, but understand that we can't work miracles, and that translaters can't use completely different terms guessing what we need for a string (they don't know how its used in the app).

Comment Re:Why isn't Android more modular (Score 3, Funny) 171

Wouldn't matter. The problem is more political than technical. Carriers are the ones who push updates, and they don't care especially in the US. Check EU versions of US phones and you'll see many more updates that never make it out here.

Some of that is for a good reason. Carriers put phones through very rigorous acceptance testing that takes weeks to finish. It tests the phone as a whole, not individual modules. Trying to push out partial updates would screw with their process and cost tens of millions. It would also lead to people having versions of modules that were never tested together, an increased possibility of bricking your phone. When your device is seen as a consumer utility that just really isn't an option.

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