jamieb's comments

>but the U.S. government stepping in to FORCE employers

Sounds like you're against the US Government.

>Unfortunately, because you are replaceable you don't have pull and SHOULD NOT have pull.

A clever businessman would organize all these replaceable parts into a cohesive whole, and then having cornered the market, set his own price. That's capitalism in action. The very people who decry it are the same ones cornering their own markets. When its telecoms, cable TV, healthcare, widgets, corn, DNA, etc, its ok, but when its "units of labor", oh, well now its anti-capitalist and anti-american.

So I'll go along with your idea that Unions are an illegal monopoly on labor after we've gotten rid of the government-created construct called the corporation.

"Lifetime" because his position is a lifetime position. Congress may in future change the law, but for now, his role in "shaping" the security state is Lifetime. Right now, this statement is accurate. The fact that you can imagine a possible future where this is no longer correct is irrelevant. Its about as useful as saying that copyright expires.

"Exclusive" does not mean "omnipotent". We negotiate "exclusive" agreements all the time. The fact that someone else agreed to give you that exclusivity doesn't make the "exclusive" part go away.

If not "Unaccountable", accountable to whom? Sure, there may be other individuals in the hegemony who can raise a flag, but its not you or I. The NSA can lie to the senate and it takes a brave senator to break ranks but even then all they can say is "I think the NSA lied on one of these points" but can't even say which one. There is real coercion going on here.

Seems perfectly accurate to me. You seem to be quibbling over "lifetime" and "power to shape" while at the same time getting bogged down with legal issues. I find this strange since you have a reputation for being good at security, so it seems odd that you are missing what is effectively a social engineering attack on our legal code base. Everything you said makes sense from a legal point of view, and yet, this shit is clearly 100% unconstitutional. How can that happen? Because one pro-police-state judge and his hegemony have everyone buying into the narrative.

"Hello sir, this is the IT dept, can you confirm your password please?" .. "Oh sure, I believe you..."

"Hello senator, this is the FISC, can you keep this secret please because its all legal?" ... "Oh sure, I believe you..."

The icing on the cake is we don't have standing to sue because we can't prove we've been directly affected, but we can't prove it because we can't sue. As soon as a judge held this to be a lawful argument, we got rooted. The People are no longer in control.

"Freer"? The number of citizens in prison has vastly accelerated in the last 20 years [1]. This alone is proof that we are not freer. No need to shoot someone in the head when you can throw them in jail for a joke on facebook [2], and best of all, hand the bill back to taxpayers.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...

[2] http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/07/03/198129...

"We have to...protect the general public and specifically, in this case, with it involving school children, we have to act."

This is disgusting. If someone says what he did it means one of two things:

1. He really meant it, and is about to go out and eat children.

2. He was being creative in a public medium.

It should be immediately obvious that in this case, we are dealing with situation #2 and the boy should be released. I am of the opinion that the burden of proof means that police should not be allowed to arrest someone even in the case of #1 unless there is more than just a public statement. It beggars belief that after discovering the facts in this case that the police still have him in custody.

This law must be found unconstitutional as soon as possible.

Wikipedia again:

"Originally a neutral term, since the mid-1960s it has acquired a somewhat derogatory meaning, implying a paranoid tendency to see the influence of some malign covert agency in events.[5] The term is sometimes used to automatically dismiss claims that are deemed ridiculous, misconceived, paranoid, unfounded, outlandish or irrational.[6][page needed] A proven conspiracy theory, such as the notion that United States President Richard Nixon and his aides conspired to cover up Watergate, is usually referred to as something else, such as investigative journalism or historical analysis."

Ironic, isn't it, that since the time when genuine conspiracies at the highest level have come to light, the term has been successfully modified in the general vernacular to mean a ridiculous or paranoid idea.

I'm not falling for the redefinition. You're welcome to.

Watergate "Scandal". From wikipedia: "On September 15, a grand jury indicted them, as well as Hunt and Liddy,[9] for conspiracy, burglary, and violation of federal wiretapping laws."

I find it interesting that when the Watergate "Conspiracy Theory" was proven, two things happened:

1. The perpetrators were charged with conspiracy (proving it was a conspiracy), and yet:

2. The Watergate Conspiracy was henceforth known as the Watergate Scandal.

In the Iran-Contra "Affair", "Fawn Hall, Oliver North's secretary was given immunity from prosecution on charges of conspiracy and destroying documents in exchange for her testimony."

Again:

1. Perpetrators charged with conspiracy.

2. The conspiracy is henceforth known as The Iran-Contra Affair.

Rinse, repeat.

2001: Planted Linden Trees. (hmmm. maybe toxic to bees)

2002: no dead bees.

2003: no dead bees.

...

2012: no dead bees.

2013:6/17 Sprayed Lindren trees with insecticides toxic to bees

2013:6/20 25,000 dead fucking bees

Conclusion: "It could be because Linden Trees are toxic to bees."

Seriously. Let's be honest. We used to torture people in extreme cases, but the person doing it knew that (a) it was illegal, and (b) if they were exposed they would be disavowed. (Of course, they might get away with it if they had some really good dirt on their boss, but that requires "using" a "card").

So the person doing the torturing had to be really fucking sure that this person was "guilty" and further that torturing would actually work (which is "not often"). The kind of operative doing this work was strongly personally committed to our country and extremely aware of their own personal investment.

Instead, we now have state-sponsored, legalized torture, and so any and all sociopaths can happily try their hand at torture just for the jolies, at no personal risk.

Spying must be illegal. A nation still needs to do it, but the brave few who do it, are braver still for doing it at personal risk.

I've witnessed first-hand three start-ups slowed or stopped by "ninja" developers using the start-up as an excuse to try some cool new technology that will look good on a resume. In two of them, they were paid the going rate. If you're not getting paid, or getting paid a stipend, then it may be fair to use the start-up as a sort of experiment - the cool experience may be all you get out of it - but this should at least be agreed upon. However, if you're getting paid the going rate, then this is a job, not a party, and your job is to get the job done.

Lets be honest, this sort of thing goes on at large companies too for two reasons: resume stuffing, and job security code. My favorite is when someone builds some really "cool" tech that only they understand, uses it to get a new job, and then quits. If a manager lets this happen, they ought to be fired too, in my opinion.

FTA: "Kathryn Olmsted, a historian at the University of California, Davis, says that conspiracy theories wouldn’t exist in a world in which real conspiracies don’t exist. And those conspiracies — Watergate or the Iran-contra Affair — often involve manipulating and circumventing the democratic process."

So the answer to the question "Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories" is "because sometimes they are true."

FTA: "if you think one of the theories above is plausible, you probably feel the same way about the others, even though they contradict one another. "

FTA: "“The best predictor of belief in a conspiracy theory is belief in other conspiracy theories,” says Viren Swami, a psychology professor who studies conspiracy belief at the University of Westminster in England."

Note how we suddenly switched from discussing people who think a theory is "plausible" to "belief". There are certainly nutjobs who swallow implausible theories whole. These people are not rational. Those who commit the crime of conspiracy would love to tar those rational people who find such theories plausible with the same brush.

"... I can’t really complain about the hours of entertainment I’ve gotten in exchange."

"Yet I still can’t help but cringe as I run into all the ways the game is intentionally crippled to get you to pay up, and the way its Pavlovian triggers to come back for more operate on fear."

So, sir, you like war games. You observe that this game makes you cringe, and is designed entirely to make you pay up through the experience of fear. Despite this you are willing to pay $4.99 "largely as a token of appreciation to the game’s makers".

Game companies that make games that don't intend to extort money out of you are laying people off left and right, and here you are "appreciating" developers that make you cringe. This makes me feel mad and sad.

If you are willing to pay $4.99 for a game that makes you cringe, might you be willing to pay $5.99 or even $39.99 for a game designed to make you experience joy?

The classic Master of Orion I&II are available for $5.99 from GoG. If you demand a modern experience, the latest XCOM is a bargain at $39.99 on Steam. The original XCOM is $4.99, also on Steam.

I understand completely.

"And all that is fantastically interesting, but completely beside the point. I just fell into the classic programmer trap of exploring and learning about (what I find) fantastically interesting things that will address all sorts of amazingly complex situations, but which the learning of said things resulted in absolutely nothing of tangible value being created."

http://www.jamiebriant.com/blog/2013/1/fireworks.html

Given all the "look how they let flickr languish" responses to the tumblr acquisition, I can't help but feel this was artfully timed. Well played yahoo. Well played.

Says wikipedia: The Onion AV Club interview calls the game "a sort of Apples To Apples for the crass and jaded."

i.e. perfect for parents =)

If start-up time is an issue for you then you aren't using eclipse as an IDE. Eclipse and now IntelliJ is my primary development environment. IntelliJ is basically running on my machine all the time. IntelliJ may have an advantage of eclipse here in that it can have multiple workspaces open - I don't know if eclipse can do that.

I use SlickEdit for C++ and it starts much faster, but while it can "do" java, its completely ineffective compared to IntelliJ or even eclipse. OTOH IntelliJ occasionally hugs all 8 cpu threads trying to grok spring bean usage across three maven projects. Its a price I'm willing to pay.

And finally theres TextMate and Joe or on these knackered solaris boxes, vim. Can't really beat vim for start-up time, but unlike some of my genius friends, I can't get my head around it for large projects.

My point is, if your use case is open editor, open file, edit file, close file, close editor, then you don't want an IDE, and there are plenty of great editors for your use case.

"If you're not paying for it, you're not the customer, you're the product." would seem to explain the complaints made here.

It appears this is the page in question: http://imgur.com/KSsinEq

What, so OnionMan77 not so good then?

http://www.theonion.com/articles/onion-twitter-password-chan...

Melatonin works for me. Unless you have DSPS, I cannot tell you how amazing it is for the alarm to go off at 7:30, once, and to be able to get out of bed. It has changed my life.

I take my girls to school. I check email before 8. At the weekends I can lie in till 10 and its a real lie in, not a normal weekday.