Posts by JohnFen 5648 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Feb 2015
One of the rules that I was taught in my youth about dealing with the police in the US: the police are dangerous and you should never argue with them. Assert your rights, yes. Voice your objection to whatever they're doing, yes. But be scrupulously calm and polite and comply with their demands. Arguing is pointless and only increases the risk to you. Save arguments for court.
In the US, this would arguably qualify as "battery".
From https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/battery:
"The following elements must be proven to establish a case for battery: (1) an act by a defendant; (2) an intent to cause harmful or offensive contact on the part of the defendant; and (3) harmful or offensive contact to the plaintiff."
Actual physical harm or intent to physically harm to the victim is not required.
"The second type of contact that may constitute battery causes no actual physical harm but is, instead, offensive or insulting to the victim. Examples include spitting in someone's face or offensively touching someone against his or her will.
Touching the person of someone is defined as including not only contacts with the body, but also with anything closely connected with the body, such as clothing or an item carried in the person's hand.
It is not necessary for the defendant's wrongful act to result in direct contact with the victim. It is sufficient if the act sets in motion a force that results in the contact."
"I find vanilla wordpress perfectly responsive."
I guess that depends on what you compare it to. When I switched to vanilla wordpress, I found it irritatingly slow. Not unusably so, though, so I did the switch anyway, because what wordpress lacks in performance, it makes up for in convenience.
I've since switched away from WP due to increased security concerns, though.
I'm an American. The attitude of Americans on any given issue can vary wildly depending on what part of the US you're talking about, making generalizations effectively impossible. That said, let me generalize about the Americans that I personally know.
Most of them are very concerned about privacy, including ad-related privacy. However, most of them are also resigned to this being a lost battle, so they aren't willing to put more effort than the occasional complaint into it.
Yes, but (at least in the dev world), bikeshedding is usually more a form of recreational combat than a real argument. Everyone knows these are trivial issues of minimal importance. That's part of what makes them safe to fight about.
On the other hand, in terms of pain points, the low-grade but constant irritations are often a bigger problem than the occasional crisis.
"I'm not sure that's true and the hyperbole doesn't help"
I don't really think that's hyperbolic. To my eyes, it appears to be accurate. Others may reasonably disagree, of course, but something isn't "hyperbolic" just because you don't agree with it.
I agree -- I very much prefer tabs for this exact reason.
However, in practice, most of the code I work with has been touched by numerous other developers, and regardless of stated style guidelines of a given company, some of those devs will be using spaces and some will be using tabs. Converting spaces to tabs is an error-prone and often time-consuming process. So, I'm resigned to this simply continuing to be a mess in the real world.
Me? I use whichever method the code I'm immediately working on already uses. Spaces are problematic, but not as problematic as mixing them with tabs in the same source file.
"So yes, they have gone through a lot of money, but all these technologies are expensive to develop."
Yes, but they've burned through 2.6 billion dollars. That goes WAY beyond "expensive". In order for that figure to make any sense at all, the thing has to be able to earn back much more than that. That seems like a ludicrous proposition.
Yes, Unlike Theranos, Segway is a real product that has real value. But it's also an example of how hype can kill a product -- the hype around those things was so extreme that there was no way for the actual product to be anything but a disappointment.
I'd bet that if they had toned down the hype machine by a couple of orders of magnitude, we'd be seeing as many Segways in general use as we see electric skateboards. I see those every day, but I've never seen a Segway being used in the wild by the general public. Their market is pretty niche.
"Hype can be a dangerous thing."
Indeed it can. If you have a real product that you're really about to release, a bit of hype can be an excellent thing. However, it's really easy to overdo it, which can kill a product that would otherwise have been successful. And if you don't have a real product that you're about to release, hype can kill the entire company.
I also think that the history of business generally clearly demonstrates that there is an inverse relationship here -- as a rule of thumb, it's pretty safe to say that the more hype there is around a thing, the less likely that thing is to ever exist as advertised.
"Even writing code in “lowest level” C there is some dependence on Libraries"
This isn't even close to being true. Libraries are a convenience and are in no way mandatory. I often write C code that doesn't use libraries for embedded projects.
Spot on.
It appears that this is going to be another one of those cyclic things. The newest generations weren't around when the shift to personal computers happened, so they didn't experience what a total game-changer it was to no longer have to rely on central servers. So, they want to move back to central servers.
Eventually, the obvious (to those of us who remember) downsides to that will bite them, and the new hotness will be to shift back toward local computing. When that happens, everyone will think of it as new, radical, and innovative.
"TPMs are still pretty rare in the average user's computer "
I believe this depends on how old the computer is. I'm not certain, but my understanding is that most new machines include a TPM chip on the motherboard. Interestingly, the documentation and salesfolks with at least one manufacturer (Dell) asserts that they don't -- but they do. If you care one way or another, it's probably best to ignore what the companies say and test for its presence yourself.
"Not all people have the same needs."
I never claimed otherwise. I was expressing what works for me. I was not asserting that it works for everybody. That said...
"If your annual 'vehicle needed' travel distance is 20,000 km/year (standard average driving distance for insurance estimates), divided over an average 1000 trips/year the taxi fare would come to $44,000, with no allowance for waiting time charges"
This is an erroneous way of computing things. My travel distance needs are not much different that the standard average, but I'm able to do the vast majority of that travel without a car. The "standard average" stat does not, all by itself, imply anything about the feasibility of being carless.
If you can't go without a car, that's fine. I'm not taking some sort of "nobody should drive" stance at all. However, for most people that I've personally known in my lifetime so far, going without a car is entirely feasible, and the statistics about standard trip length strongly imply that this is true for most people in the US.
Whether or not they'd want to actually do that is a different question, and that's one that everyone decides for themselves. I'm not going to say there's a universal right answer on this.
It also seems to me that there's a generational shift in play. I don't have statistics -- only my own observation of the people in my children's social circles -- but very few of them have any desire to own a car just to own a car. They do when they have a real need, otherwise they don't. A car is literally nothing more than a tool. I think this is a good shift.
This is different from my generation, where owning a car was a rite of passage and your car was an expression and reflection of your personality.
"and realised that paying a bloody fortune for a taxi ride was still less expensive than a car."
Yes. This is a weird thing about perceived economics. When I've talked with people about not owning a car and I mention that I use a taxi for those situations where a car is actually necessary, they often object with "that's expensive!". But it only takes a moment to explain that I'm saving so much money by not owning a car that I can take a lot of cab rides and still come out ahead.
In the US, the average length of all car trips combined is around 6 miles. If you just count intercity trips, this rises to about 200 miles, mostly because the bulk of this consists of things like recreational road trips (if you only count vacations, the average rises to a little over 300 miles).
"turn to newer and more affordable solutions to get about: ride hailing and car, bike and scooter sharing rather than being saddled with the expense of "owning an under-utilised car"."
I think it's a bit of a stretch to call bicycles "newer solutions", but that aside -- this is me.
I don't live in a large city, but I ditched my car a few years back, and have been nothing but happy that I did. Not only do I not have the expense, but (more importantly to me) I don't have the huge amount of hassle owning a car brings with it. I'm not deeply opposed to owning a car -- should that become the better solution for me, I won't hesitate -- but I won't buy a new car no matter what.
I've switched to using a bicycle for about 90% of all of my transportation needs. I use a car rental or a cab for the other 10%.
Yes, I wasn't talking about asking the doctors -- they often don't know. I was talking about asking the business side.
In a sense, this is little different than the increasing number of people who are asking medical providers about their religious stance, since the US is increasingly allowing discrimination on the basis of religious beliefs.
Yeah, this is the problem, and is why we need some actually strong and effective legislation that protects health information while allowing it to be accessed for the patient's benefit in situations where the patient may not be able to decide on consent.
"But how many of us are still holding out against all of their apps?"
I don't use Uber or Lyft in my town, because the normal taxi services are superior in every way except price. I avoid using Uber when I'm out of town as well, because they're an egregiously awful company.
"an extraordinary indication of the continued lack or morals or ethics at the ride-hailing company."
Indeed. Although Uber hasn't really given any other evidence that they've transformed into a company that operates legally and ethically, so this is not as shocking as it probably should be.
"Contractors love Java + Spring + Hibernate and everything they touch must use it."
A small nitpick -- not all contractors are like this (although far too many are). Good contractors are good developers, and will recommend using the best tool for the job, not just the tool they personally love the best.
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