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dinde

Re:What was your most painful realisation of 2012? on Monday December 31, 2012 @02:55PM (#4990620)
I agree in theory, but it's difficult to align values with someone whose strategy is to shift blame to clients and subordinates due to lack of planning and communication skills. These people create a toxic, reactive working environment and their damage needs to be managed. I don't believe that they bring good things to the table.

I realize that this sounds exceptionally bitter so I am open to the possibility that I have become cynical and am unable to see from outside the lense of my own vision.

Re:What was your most painful realisation of 2012? on Monday December 31, 2012 @02:03PM (#4990393)
Incompetent people will often take politically expedient decisions that cause more harm than good but protect their positions.
Re:First color photo from Mars Curiosity on Tuesday August 07, 2012 @10:43AM (#4350295)
Those are locusts.
Re:Things I Hate About Object-Oriented Programming on Friday January 06, 2012 @05:10PM (#3435281)
A lot of the things he hates about OOP are exactly the things I like about it!
Re:NASA Debunks 2012 Apocalypse With New FAQ on Monday January 02, 2012 @06:07PM (#3417796)
The people who believe in these types of predictions don't put much stock in science anyway. Someone who doesn't believe in carbon dating isn't going to listen to an argument regarding the Earth's age based on carbon dating.

If you really want to provide a counter in these types of discussions it is more helpful to speak in their language. My favorite example of this was when last year astronomers announced that the zodiac signs were incorrect due to a shift in the planet's position relative to the sun since the time that the zodiac was created. This produced more reverberations in the astrological community than any number of studies showing the falsehood of their predictions.

In this case, it may be helpful to point out that the December 21 is simply the date at which the next cycle in the Mayan calendar begins, as occurs every 400 years or so, and that the Mayans themselves made no predictions about cataclysmic events occurring on these dates.

Re:Steve Jobs biography -- Isaacson blew it on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @03:53PM (#3240159)
My main complaint from the book is that Isaacson injects his own opinion too strongly and too often. He writes it like a novel, with him guiding us to the conclusions he has prepared for us. Instead I would have preferred it be written like a well-written wikipedia entry, with numerous sources presented and the reader being granted the freedom to come to his own conclusions. This bothered me much more than any technical inaccuracies.

I think this touches on a larger social issue. I believe that the younger generation is more sensitive to being manipulated about what to think and feel. Before the internet, we relied on experts to present us with the facts and the conclusions; there is now greater awareness that there are always multiple sides to any story, and we prefer hearing all of them before making up our minds.

As an example, I recently watched an investigative journaling television show with my parents about the dangers of laser eye correction. I was struck by how unaware they were of the different methods that were being used in the show to guide their opinions (music, poor-quality hidden cameras, etc). To me, I wasn't given nearly enough objective facts to come to any sort of conclusion, but to my parents, the conclusions presented by the experts were enough.

Isaacson writes like an expert, but we don't want an expert, we want a fact-gatherer.

Re:Can Tim Cook fix what’s rotten at Apple? on Friday November 04, 2011 @02:24PM (#3197153)
The mobile version of this article is terrible. The scrolling "jerks" to whatever page it thinks I should be on - very strange.
Re:And Here It Is: The New Google Reader Revealed on Monday October 31, 2011 @07:17PM (#3179627)
I dislike how there is no visual difference between read and unread items.
Re:The iPod turns 10 years old, today. on Sunday October 23, 2011 @03:25PM (#3146992)
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
You can't get something for nothing, eventually we'll have to pay some price for these services and we're finally beginning to realize what that is.
Re:Ask HN: What API to the physical world do you wish existed? on Saturday September 24, 2011 @01:40PM (#3033808)
I want search functionality at the grocery store.
Re:The only secure password is the one you can’t remember on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @04:55PM (#2356438)
An even bigger problem than password reuse, in my opinion, is secret question formulas to reset your password. My banking site requires a strong password, which of course means that I often forget it, which means that resetting my password has become a regular part of the login process. The site allows me to reset my password directly from the site after answering my secret questions correctly. It does not send an email link to reset.

If a password can be reset by answering a series of secret questions, then the password itself is moot and the account is only as secure as its secret questions. Which in many cases aren't very secure to anyone who might know the person (What is the color of your first car? What is your first pet's name?).

Given the choice between being allowed a "weak" password that I might actually remember, and a "strong" password that I either have to write down or reset every time I log in via answering a series of questions that are even less secure than a weak password, I would take the weak password.

Re:Pacman in HTML5 / Canvas on Monday July 26, 2010 @04:36PM (#1549196)
Cool. The ghosts aren't very intelligent. :)
Re:That Misery Called Meditation on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @01:38PM (#1472140)
All the time!
Re:When the Day After Tomorrow Has Come on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @01:17PM (#1472073)
The day we are required to artificially manage the world's climate to survive is the day we become inevitably doomed.
Doesn't seem like a big deal to me. I think a lot of Zuckerberg's bad press comes from his age: i.e., people are jealous of his success.
Why do you think that? Jealousy is a human emotion and has no limits, and no level of success or achievement is a guarantee to be free of desire for more.
Those charts are terribly confusing.
I admit I've been curious about exactly it would look like and what would happen if the entire underground oil field were to somehow spill into the ocean at once.
I think the real metrics regarding the effects of these privacy issues are going to be much harder to measure. I don't think there will be a lot of people outright shutting down their Facebook account, but instead people will begin to self-censor more and more what they say on the site. I notice myself using the site much less frequently the last several months, and many of my friends report the same. It's actually hard to say for sure whether this is due to privacy concerns, or if people are just starting to get bored of it and realizing that having real contact with their real friends really does matter.
Re:Why Peak Oil Will Never Lead To $500/bbl Crude Oil on Monday May 03, 2010 @12:08PM (#1315065)
Demand has been lower due to the global recession -- there is no indication that oil production can't go higher than ever before, once demand starts picking back up.
Re:Why Peak Oil Will Never Lead To $500/bbl Crude Oil on Monday May 03, 2010 @11:15AM (#1314902)
I got pretty into peak oil circa 2006, when peak was supposedly already occurring or was going to occur by 2008. It will happen eventually, but I'm not going to get into playing this guessing game again.
Re:Timeline of Facebook Privacy Policies from 2005 to 2010 on Thursday April 29, 2010 @12:43AM (#1303600)
That paints a pretty telling picture. I took the opportunity to look through my privacy settings on Facebook. It seems that applications can now access certain information about me through my friends, even if I haven't made that information publicly accessible. It's checked by default and needs to be disabled.

http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=ap...

If you're using gchat over pidgin, then the OTR plugin.
Re:On Geeks and Gays on Monday April 26, 2010 @10:23PM (#1296978)
I love these things, as a gay coder I get to feel special and like I'm representing my kind with my views. ;) In my experience, it's not geeks specifically that are more accepting, but educated people in general. It seems obvious but I think that's all it is.
Maybe they meant a wifi stick; I know people who use these to connect to other wifi hotspots from work.
This has nothing to do with the SEC in specific, but with workplace internet policies in general. It amazes me how many people have no idea that their internet usage at work is being tracked.
Re:2 Steps to Becoming a Great Developer on Monday April 19, 2010 @10:59PM (#1278492)
I can definitely appreciate the fears listed in step one. I am about four years into my career and have recently begun realizing that I will not surpass what I consider mediocrity without taking steps beyond my 9-5 job. Now that I have begun looking seriously at my path, it is amazing to look back at the fears that have been holding me back. I have been afraid to start my own side projects, out of fear that I won't be able to contend with what other people can do. I had to have the very obvious realization that I will never get better if I don't try, and that everyone has to start exactly where they are. Since then it is like a light has gone off, and I have become much more appreciative of those who try, rather than hold back and criticize. Thanks for posting this.
Re:HTML5 presentation on Saturday April 17, 2010 @12:54AM (#1272642)
This is extremely cool. I admit it scared me a little bit just how easy it was to do the geolocation. The web is about to change dramatically, again. :)
Re:China Sets Ambitious Space Goals on Thursday April 15, 2010 @11:51AM (#1268104)
For the full article, set your referrer to google or do a google search:

http://www.google.com/search?q=china+sets+ambitious+space+go...

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