Posts by Ben Boyle 131 publicly visible posts • joined 11 May 2007
I worked with one developer who absolutely hated using hyphens or underscores in identifiers because he swore it made them harder to read. His joy on learning that square brackets let him do almost anything in SQL Server was unbounded... much like the hatred of anyone who had to maintain his :poop:
Not C#, but Delphi has a distressing quirk where local boolean variables aren't initialized to a consistent value, so on one execution it could be false, and on another true depending on what garbage happens to be in that memory address at the time. Caught me out more times back in the day than I care to admit.
"Works on my machine!"
Or the joys of Outlook and Entra, where it logs you out every hour (probably our corporate settings) so you stop getting notifications at all until you authenticate, hoping you were looking at the phone screen in the three seconds the MFA code was on display before it switches to MS Authenticator. And then you have to kill the app and reopen it for it to sync.
My sister once called me shortly after finding that switch on a PC I'd bought set up for her only a couple of weeks before. If only she'd called me before she idly flipped it, or while the machine was powered down... Thankfully it was an older model Dell desktop that I'd acquired at auction to keep her going, but she sure as hell paid for the replacement.
Curiosity, thou art a fickle mistress!
2009 MBP here - probably wont be buying another unless they bring back the 17". Trying to use X Code on anything smaller is an exercise in frustration and while, yes, I could buy a larger display the point of the portable is that I can, well, PORT it and use it when I'm away from my comfy abode or uncomfy office.
Facebook are already doing that themselves with their constant switching people to the "Top Stories" feed and selective display of items in the "Most Recent" list.
E.g. SWMBO says to me "Why didn't you like my latest cute discovery I posted ten minutes ago?" and yet it's nowhere in my news feed. I go to her page to feast mine eyes upon her missive and have to wade through half a ton of "Posts I may not have seen yet" and stuff from two days ago before finally finding the post from ten minutes back.
Curation, my ass.
On your way home from the dealership: "You're driving a brand new BMW... would you like to buy a new BMW?"
Just picked up your daughter: "You recently searched for baby products, you should buy Pampers!"
In the car with the wife and she's looking a bit testy: "Try AshleyMadison.com, free for 30 days!"
We may expect targeted ads, because that's what's being shoved down our throats, but it doesn't mean that we *like* it.
@Kryptonaut
You'd have a fair point if the ads weren't obnoxious, invasive, or occasionally carrying a malware payload. Until the online ad industry can clean up its act, then blocking is the only way to stay safe.
Site owners should be applying pressure to the ad industry, not to their customers, if they want to keep the revenue stream.
