News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

gehar

Re:Banyan, the "GitHub of Science", is now in public beta on Tuesday April 30, 2013 @02:11PM (#5633913)
The easiest solution is to wait 10 years.
Re:Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer on Thursday April 25, 2013 @03:28PM (#5609318)
What do you call someone (like, say Jenny McCarthy), who honestly deludes herself into a position where their lies are both harmful and profitable? Does it matter what they really think?

We are who we pretend to be.

Re:Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer on Thursday April 25, 2013 @03:26PM (#5609307)
Movember isn't a billion dollar pinkwashing scam like Komen, though. It's grassroots awareness.
Re:When empathy becomes insulting on Thursday April 25, 2013 @03:25PM (#5609300)
No, honest rudeness is better than dishonest politeness. It wastes less time, for one, and sends a clear message that you will be happier elsewhere.
Re:When empathy becomes insulting on Thursday April 25, 2013 @03:22PM (#5609284)
Sorry, that's completely backwards.

Zappos can do it because they have HUGE profit margins on luxury/unique products, and those margins pay for customer service.

Whereas AA can't because they have negligible profit margins on a completely price-sensitive hightly competitive landscape

Re:When empathy becomes insulting on Thursday April 25, 2013 @03:19PM (#5609260)
"Oh.", with appropriate tone of voice. Works in a wide variety of circumstances.
Re:When empathy becomes insulting on Thursday April 25, 2013 @03:18PM (#5609255)
I learned recently that some companies will offer to waive accrued finance charges to get you off the phone, as part of the robo-system before the human agents answer.

I assume that in this case, they can afford to do so because the finance charges were fraudulent in the first place (Hello, GAP)

Re:What Broke My Father's Heart (2010) on Monday April 22, 2013 @01:37PM (#5590617)
Age cutoffs were not mentioned in parent post.

It doesn't matter who pays, the question still exists. Where to spend finite resources?

Re:What Broke My Father's Heart (2010) on Monday April 22, 2013 @01:36PM (#5590610)
"QALY": Quality-Adjusted Life Year

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year

"Under certain methods, such as the EQ-5D, QALY can be negative number."

Re:What Broke My Father's Heart (2010) on Monday April 22, 2013 @01:34PM (#5590593)
And what if don't, which is the common case?

Have you written your living will yet?

Re:What Broke My Father's Heart (2010) on Monday April 22, 2013 @01:33PM (#5590588)
You could make the same non-sensical argument against insurance companies in the US, or a symmetrical argument about providers torturing patients to run up the bills for more procedures.

Or you could stop trolling.

Re:What Broke My Father's Heart (2010) on Monday April 22, 2013 @01:32PM (#5590576)
> For six years, our weekends were visits to grandpa--never much of anything else.

Playing football or going to Disney World or whatever sounds like it would be more fun than sitting at home giving comfort, for sure, but being together is the main thing. You did good, which is the best anyone can do, and earned the respect and admiration of your peers.

Re:What Broke My Father's Heart (2010) on Monday April 22, 2013 @01:28PM (#5590543)
I'm sorry for your loss.

Medical technology is not yet at a state (and probably never will be) where we have foresight and skill to balance pain relief and life protection in the face of all the ways a body can succumb. Every choice is a gamble. There is still much to improve.

At the end of life, a body is wastage, and gives no one pleasure or comfort. Don't let that overshadow everything before.

May the memory of your mother's many years be a blessing for always, as your love for her comforted her for as long as she was conscious.

and that's why I uninstalled Messenger. I don't want messages (which is facebook's version of email) drawing on top of my other apps.
Yes, you can Disable (most of?) them (in the same place you would Uninstall another app.)

Disabling some of them, like the Google Play Services component (famous for killing batteries on Nexus 7 tablets), will cause apps (like G+) to nag you to Enable them.

Re:The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment on Monday April 15, 2013 @04:39PM (#5554178)
Government employee doesn't have to be bureaucrat. It could be street-sweeper.
Re:The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment on Monday April 15, 2013 @04:27PM (#5554081)
As a point of information,

that was a point of information, not a point of interest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_information

Re:"Put down the crack pipes" doesn't go so well on Friday April 12, 2013 @07:03PM (#5541624)
> "This is materially affecting your perf score."

No one said which direction the effect went.

Re:"Put down the crack pipes" doesn't go so well on Friday April 12, 2013 @06:54PM (#5541585)
s/software/group/
Re:Coffee meetings on Tuesday April 09, 2013 @06:38PM (#5521906)
No no no no. Take people seriously on the Internet, at face value, and eventually people will realize that sarcasm doesn't work and will stop using it.
Re:Coffee meetings on Tuesday April 09, 2013 @06:37PM (#5521899)
Good (if rare) example of why it is not appropriate to take information provided for one purpose (payment authorization) and use it for another purpose (general communication).

The same restraint should apply to dumping my payment information into spam marketing databases.

Re:Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998) on Tuesday April 09, 2013 @05:12PM (#5521419)
Why is that a reason to not take it serious? It's an order-of-magnitude estimate, like Carl Sagan's "billions and billions" of stars, or the Bible's "40"
Re:A $4.99 utility that might just have saved Windows 8 on Monday March 11, 2013 @04:04PM (#5359240)
and the TVs show cable and DVD content that don't come with the TV.

and the cereal boxes show pieces of fruit in the bowl.

it's a serving suggestion.

Being a DE corp really only affects disputes among members of the corporation, not between the corporation and outsiders.

http://www.calstartuplawfirm.com/business-lawyer-blog/califo...