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adammil

Re:How I Judge the Quality of Documentation on Thursday February 27, 2014 @12:22PM (#7313433)
I'm with the author until he says to encode extra information into the URL. If the docs and the site are built well, you should find everything you need while completely ignoring the URL structure.
Can anyone acquainted with the hard sciences comment on whether this paper passes even a basic sniff test? The title of the paper and so many references to other psychiatry journals seem like potential red flags.
Re:AI on Wednesday February 19, 2014 @06:15PM (#7267323)
Humans evolved for a long time before we understood anything about how our bodies work, so why would a brain have to understand itself to evolve?
Re:StackMob is shutting down on Tuesday February 11, 2014 @11:52PM (#7222575)
The announcement was good enough for pastebin but not their own homepage?
That's quite fluffy, ethereal "bad hire" criteria. Nothing about ability to get the job done, communication with the team, quality of deliverables, reliability, or really anything a reasonable person would use as objective criteria to identify a bad hire. I wish I could read between the lines and understand what the author is really saying here, because we occasionally see articles written like this. What is your magic criteria to be in cool club? Please just speak plainly!
Re:This is What it's Like to Be a Woman at a Bitcoin Meetup on Friday January 24, 2014 @05:40PM (#7118676)
I have two daughters and I would tell them to say forcefully "Get your hand off my waist/leg" so everyone can hear it, and then physically remove his hand from her body. Then it's her option whether or not to make it a police matter or stay at the event and blow it off, depending on how she felt about it.
Re:Female Founders Conference on Wednesday January 22, 2014 @01:52PM (#7104554)
I don't think it's equivalent. Handing out T-shirts that are clearly labeled "unisex" suggests you are trying to accomodate both men and women. Maybe you could accuse someone of ignorance about how unisex T-shirts fit women (I never knew unisex didn't fit women), but I wouldn't accuse them of sexism, quite the opposite because they clearly intended to accomodate.
Re:Female Founders Conference on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @06:53PM (#7099552)
You can have a female founders conference, whose purpose is to uplift women, and allow men to be there as well. True story: I once attended a "women in tech" style conference as a hiring manager looking for potential recruits, and I won a random drawing for a prize. It was a purse with a company logo on it. Yes, it felt pretty sexist that no one expected a man would be there.
Re:1-star reviews of 'Extreme Programming' on Thursday December 19, 2013 @03:24PM (#6937601)
It happens outside government too. It happens anytime your higher-level boss tells you: "Yes, I'm on board! You're right, a system like that would help us tremendously in several ways! Please estimate the costs for it so I can get us the money in our budget meeting next month." Happens all the time in enterprise businesses and the newer methodologies are extremely difficult to use in this sort of situation. In this case, I need some specs up front, create dev estimates, all to ultimately deliver a rough dollar amount or sometimes a "not to exceed" number for my boss...
Re:We Do Not Negotiate with Terrorists on Thursday December 05, 2013 @05:30PM (#6857841)
This sounds more like "We don't negotiate with customers." because even if the customer had been professional and polite about it, their policy is no refunds. Even considering the behavior of the customer, IgnitionDeck is getting some really bad PR for the sake of saving $300.
Re:Machine learning is easier than it looks on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @03:36PM (#6770997)
It is nice to read about this in plain language. But, can someone explain what the X and Y axis are meant to represent in the graph?
A useful survival strategy is to focus primarily on what you can control. I occasionally struggle to implement my own advice, however.
Re:American Airlines earned an enemy on Sunday November 17, 2013 @06:52AM (#6748533)
If you win in small claims court, what's the process to turn that win into an actual check from the company?
Re:That Guy with a Thousand Inconsequential Objections on Thursday November 07, 2013 @06:04PM (#6693108)
You'd better be sure the objections are inconsequential before you slap the ad-hominem "That Guy" label on someone out of frustration. Sometimes you're so committed to a particular course of action that someone who raises legitimiate objections is a theat to your baby, and you're just being blind to the ego dynamics at play.
Re:Could we kill the icon? on Friday October 04, 2013 @07:33PM (#6498725)
Icon consistency is far more important than flat/skewmorphic artistic concerns. For example, my kid has never seen a 3.5" disk, but knows the icon means "Save", probably because it is consistent among the UIs he uses. Even if you find the best icon metaphor for Settings, changing the gear icon to something else will cause pain for lots of people mainly because it is new, more than any other artistic consideration.
I just donated. If you want to fight government abuse of power, you literally have to start somewhere.
Re:Structure Sensor: Capture the World in 3D on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @06:24PM (#6402324)
You can buy several high quality, factory-made guns at any gun store for the cost of just one 3D printer, so why do you call out 3D printed guns as particularly dangerous? Unless you mean their likelihood of just exploding instead of firing properly?
Re:Click here, save a life, for real on Friday September 13, 2013 @01:58PM (#6382006)
If anyone from Watsi is reading, your auto-replies for Contact Us are still saying this:

"Thanks for the message! Our entire team is currently in Nepal and will be slow / unable to respond to email until Wednesday, 9/4.

Looking forward to connecting with you."

Re:Click here, save a life, for real on Friday September 13, 2013 @01:48PM (#6381949)
Watsi wants your credit card number including CVV to simply register for an account. This is before choosing anyone to fund. How about I only provide payment information at "check out" instead?
Re:Fucking Sue Me (2011) on Wednesday September 11, 2013 @01:54PM (#6368723)
After handling lots of contracts back and forth, my experience is that you avoid adding new conditions to a contract for a large company if you can, but you had better remove anything that you don't intend to actually comply with. As an independent contractor, I've had companies remove the insurance requirement, non-solicitation, any unusual IP ownership clauses, etc. and never lost a contract yet. I especially watch for clauses that affect my ability to do my normal business with other companies after this work is complete and anything that puts a weird reporting burden on myself. You'd be surprised what's hidden in the company's contract boilerplate text that even the company lawyers forgot about.

My overall goal when doing this is to ensure that when the work is done, the customer signs off and the checks stop coming, that I don't owe them anything more.

Re:(Trying To) Face Down The Evil At TechCrunch Disrupt on Monday September 09, 2013 @01:39PM (#6354871)
Elections are not the only place to drive change. I donate to the EFF monthly because I was impressed to see them actively challenging things in court, which in my opinion is far more effective at driving change long term.
Re:What Makes Employees Work Harder: Punishment or Pampering? on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @02:51PM (#6285368)
Many people I know, including me, simply need to know that the outcome of the work matters. Shipping product that results in zero feedback is a motivation killer. Even a little customer feedback provides an immediate productivity boost whether the feedback is good or bad. Similarly, a back-office project with no visibility or customer connection would be hell.
Re:Defeated on Monday August 26, 2013 @03:40PM (#6279394)
Sometimes they randomly open and close security lines between scanners and metal detectors. To avoid the hassle, I pick the lines that are obviously headed to a metal detector. When I opt out, I do it firmly but politely, and never had anyone say something except one time a TSA man said "You know this isn't dangerous radiation, right?" I just said "It doesn't matter. I'm opting out." I always take the pat-down in public and they vary a lot in quality.
Re:My Dinner With NSA Director Keith Alexander on Thursday August 22, 2013 @06:27PM (#6260501)
People do this when they feel stress and internal conflict for bending their own morals to do what they think might be best for their country overall. Sort of like the things you might do to save your own kid, even if immoral, but finding some comfort reminding yourself it's ultimately for a good cause. I'm not saying this is the right thing to do, only pointing it out.
Re:When Power Goes To Your Head, It May Shut Out Your Heart on Saturday August 10, 2013 @02:57PM (#6192224)
There's no rational reason for you to say that about a person you don't know. That's ignorant and textbook prejudice.
Re:When Power Goes To Your Head, It May Shut Out Your Heart on Saturday August 10, 2013 @02:36PM (#6192131)
It sounds like you are calling us gun owners trigger happy idiots and borderline sociopaths.
Re:When Power Goes To Your Head, It May Shut Out Your Heart on Saturday August 10, 2013 @02:15PM (#6192051)
I think you meant murder is bad for society, because gun ownership never killed anyone.
They are opening messages that don't cross borders.
Re:Kids can't use computers, and why it should worry you on Friday August 09, 2013 @03:28PM (#6187823)
He's mastered the arcane and delicate technology that we software people work with every day, but that doesn't make everyone else a moron. His experience blinds him to how bad the user interfaces are for most things we use. The sad fact is that most software products are simply not good enough if the general population is expected to be successful with them.
Re:The Curse of a New Building on Tuesday August 06, 2013 @01:14PM (#6167808)
Yeah, tell that to the architect we had.

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