"members of the public to contact their Senators."
It might help if we knew who our senators were. We've just had an election, and the results haven't been certified yet.
Senators elected in November, 2024, will not be sworn in and seated until January 3, 2025. For now, contact the one who was not up for election or the one who ran for reelection, whether that person won or lost the bid.
The use of "literally" to mean "figuratively" still bugs me, but I suspect we're going to have to live with it, it's part of the language now.
And then there's the complete misunderstanding of the apostrophe:
And the problems with The Last Jedi were the kind that damaged the brand as a whole (because they signal the intent of decision makers at the top): deliberately antagonizing the core fanbase, openly going out of its way to hold the OT in contempt, prioritizing a political agenda over the quality of the story and characters, and wasting the rare (and now lost) opportunity to reunite the OT cast to properly say goodbye.
This is a problem overall and has been experienced in other franchises as well *cough*Doctor Who*cough*. The producers, show runners, etc, have been far more concerned with trying to satisfy a small segment of fans and push some agenda or message, all the while forgetting that they have to actually tell a good story too. Sci-fi stuff always waxes political... doesn't matter what you support or despise. If the story is good, people will watch or read it and keep coming back, and it will likely attract new fans too... even if you are pushing an agenda or message. If you're going to beat your audience over the head with said agenda or message every few minutes, lines, or whatever, they will get tired of it and walk away.
There's no reason for fans to think any of this has improved, even after five years of Disney being afraid to release another film.
That's because the House of the Mouse has been pooping on other franchises, hoping the audiences will forget about the first round of mouse poop on the Star Wars franchise while they work on the current victim(s).
Mostly is the stupidity of people who think they have to run their high beams all the time.
I swear there are people out there who would say, "But I thought that was the indicator telling me my headlights were on!"
Where I live I need to use a combination of low and high beams because there are no street lights in my neighborhood. Fortunately my car has "auto high beams" so when it detects enough light coming at me they cut down to low beams... but I am also attentive enough to turn them down manually when I see people walking (my neighborhood has no sidewalks either) so I don't blind them as well.
I think it would be no problem to add some software to popular phones so they can be asked "is the owner of this phone at least 18, and is the person holding the phone in posession of a finger print or face that allows them to use this phone". And nothing else.
You could always require the phone be tied to the parents'/legal guardians' phones and that the parents would have to do the authorization. For the edge cases of legally emancipated, something could always be worked out where the date of birth (and nothing else) is added by an official organization that would handle it. The parents would then be able to do the equivalent of MDM similar to how it is done when you get a corporate phone.
ZOMG! Zero-day exploit, in the first release of Windows 10.
Who on earth is still on that version of 10?
You never know. You may have an ID ten tee user error going on. You might have some honeypot machines looking to see whom they can trap, or maybe a testing lab that does regression testing. There are several reasons... some legitimate, some not. I've worked with systems in the past that had to use the original installation with no updates... as idiotic as I thought it was. It was some kind of "business decision" and like it or not, I did not have the authority to update the machines.
Btw, are you an expert on teenage boys and their behaviors? You spend a lot time privately with teenage boys?
Wow... you went from zero to super moron in no time flat. Try digging into your personal memories... or talk with your friends, if you have any... about your time back in school. Or has your programming wiped out all of your memories?
I don't know anyone who "is afraid of tampons in the boys' room", but I know of many men and women who are baffled about it. Can you please explain the purpose?
It's the law that Governor Tim Walz signed that requires tampon dispensers in all school lavatories, whether they are for the girls or the boys. I also think they're chasing the wrong bogeyman... putting them in the girls' lavatories and women's bathrooms for the adult faculty makes a lot of sense... and in a men's bathroom for the adult faculty probably won't faze many of them... but put them in the boys' lavatory and your janitorial staff will be unclogging toilets and sink drains a lot more frequently, and it will keep happening until those dispensers are empty and not refilled. Doing stuff like that is just second nature to a pre-teen and teenage boy.
If I were 20 years younger, I could probably write a doctoral dissertation on this.
No need, The paper "A principled approach to software Engineering Education, or Java considered Harmful" was written 16 years ago, see https://www.adacore.com/uploads/techPapers/principled_approach.pdf
Heh. That's what I get for not charging forward on that idea many years ago.
Idiot very much?
Yes, you are.
they actually hurt the ability to program because they took away the need to understand efficient program statements ????
Tell me you do not understand how Java or a scripting language works versus how a compiled language like C does without telling me.
Efficient code, in Java, or C, or C# or C++ or Ada or Pascal: is exactly the same.
Java, C# and in a degree Ada, frees you from the burden of memory management - in a certain sense - and that is all.
C++ on the other hand has neat tricks - but the learning curve for the syntax alone is quite steep.
Congratulations! You just proved my point. By abstracting stuff like that away, you lose the ability to keep it under direct control. Yes, it is extra work for the programmer, but it also means you can guarantee the efficiency of the final product versus writing stuff that goes into a black box that magically does things without telling you how it does them.
If I were 20 years younger, I could probably write a doctoral dissertation on this. No, you could not. Your idea is complete nonsense. No university would accept you as post graduate in a doctorate program.
You need to scroll up. Apparently someone did it 16 years ago.
A good programmer using the C language had all the tools necessary to build systems for many purposes without the black box abstraction. Of course with this power comes responsibility and top skills are required. Business frequently don't want to pay for such skills. Incoming down mods expected.
Down mod? Nah. I've actually held a similar opinion... that languages like Java were the start of this downfall because while they were great for product delivery speed, they actually hurt the ability to program because they took away the need to understand efficient program statements and ways to minimize resource usage while maximizing speed. If I were 20 years younger, I could probably write a doctoral dissertation on this.
Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
