badman_ting

Yes, basically. It's ok to call the woo-woo stuff bullshit, I don't care about alien abductions and crystals. But to take that and then apply it to gun control and so-called "environmental hysteria" (their phrase) is no good, I say.

I mean, shit, they called the episode "environmental hysteria" and they pulled the old "dihydrogen monoxide" thing. In so many words: We found some dumb people that care about the environment, therefore if you care about the environment you're dumb.

Yeah, Penn & Teller started out debunking psychics and so on -- then they decided gun control and recycling are bullshit too.

I think one needs to be very careful about this business of "cutting through the bullshit" or whatever. It's easy to turn it into a self-righteous way of talking about whatever you disagree with. You're not just disagreeing, you're scoring a victory for the truth in a world full of crap, etc., etc. Also, it does nothing to analyze why certain social fictions are propagated and continue to function even if no one believes in them. You can just content yourself with thinking everyone is full of shit and stop thinking there.

Talk about burying the lede - the most important sentence in the whole article is the final one.

My father has been a salesman his whole career. A few years ago he was fired from a job where he grew the market for a particular product from $8 million to $25 million. They decided they didn't need him anymore. I figured that given what he did at the company, the numbers would speak for themselves and he'd have no trouble getting a new job. Instead what happened was that he was unemployed for a couple years, then underemployed.

After almost two years jobless, he interviewed for a job that seemed pretty good, and took it really hard when he didn't get it. Watching one's father go through this is traumatic. (Not to mention what it was like for him.) I mean, this is a smart, hardworking guy whose work made money. And none of that made a god damn difference. Why should I expect my future to look different, at all?

I think a lot of us still haven't woken up to the way things are now - it seems like you just never know what is going to happen, tomorrow your goose may be cooked. And the reason why doesn't have to make sense, at all. It's hard to have hope for the future this way. One day, I'll be considered to be too old to write code. And that will be that.

Some interesting points but I think this is poorly-conceived. Apple dropped a ton of new interesting things last week, I'd much rather think about that than how Jobs worshipers are dumb.

About Apple not deserving the scrutiny - if we're talking about some of the more mundane aspects of the company, I agree. The construction materials used in their retail stores, for example. But otherwise, it's a unique organization in many respects and that's why it gets so much attention. I used to get crabby about that too but I realize now that it's not worth fighting.

The fruit is doing interesting things. If the way people talk about the fruit is dumb or annoying, listen to a different conversation.

Much as I like many other things Apple makes, I haven't liked any of their mice and this version is no exception. However, I would perhaps say this one is the least-bad. I liked how clicking was simply pressing down on the whole mouse.

Even though I hate their mice I think their trackpads are great. I have no mice at all anymore.

I can't believe you two are talking about this crap. Come on.

Same here. I just mash various combos of shift, command, control, option, and 3 until it works.

I figured people would push back but I really don't see how. Everything about this company sounds totally screwed. It's funny that you bring up Blackberry because what you're saying now is pretty much what people were saying about Blackberry in 2011 or so.

They're discussing CloudKit now at WWDC. This sounds great - and could take a noticeable chunk of business from current cloud providers. This looks like a smart move from Apple. It only got about a minute and a half during the Keynote, ha.

Thanks for posting!

JS has exceptions though. I didn't notice that bit until just now… hmm. Could turn into lots of return-checking boilerplate. I'm still excited about this, very much so, but I think exceptions are worth keeping.

I don't think syntax is really the issue. Using objc these days is clunky for reasons besides syntax.

> After all, your Windows Phone already runs Windows, right?

A very philosophical question indeed.

Said no iOS developer ever.

I have my reservations about the startup world, but the question about risk management is strange. Young people shouldn't necessarily be worrying about that just yet.

Hell, worry about the risk of getting stuck in a situation where 50 hour weeks are "normal" and not a serious failure mode. Companies of all sizes know that young people a) have a lot of energy, and b) are easier to screw over salary-wise.

No, no - don't tax his income, tax his wealth :)

People say this because we are enjoined to "do what we love", find our passion. Well, what's so wrong with just doing something you like? Nothing (IMO), but it doesn't sound good. "Complacent" and "content" are dirty words.

The flipside of working in a field about which you are passionate typically goes unremarked upon - sometimes the realities of the job can destroy your love/passion for the thing itself. It's very sad.

My grandfather worked on machines in a factory his whole career, accumulating so much knowledge about the machines that he could know what was wrong with a machine just by listening to it. Then after he retired, companies kept hiring him as a consultant, flying him out to solve their problems. Of this he told my father, "All those years working with my hands, I should have been working with my head." I get to do that, and I have my whole career. I try not to lose sight of the value of that.

It seems they don't really care about people being able to actually purchase their devices. Bizarre, and frustrating.

The purchasing flow is confusing as shit. I paid with PayPal and entered all my info, now I'm going through again and adding the same info again, and it's asking me for payment info? Arggggggh.

And the only reason I went with Paypal was so I wouldn't have to create an account with whatever the hell "EverBuying.com" is. Argghghghgh.

Edit: I gave up. So probably, I will be charged for this phone because I completed the PayPal payment but didn't complete the crazy-ass purchasing flow. I'm kind of blown away by how shitty this is.

Oh, yeah. The word itself is pretty close to a dealbreaker for me.

Seriously? Pretty sure this has been in iPhone Safari since 1.0 (tap top bar to scroll to top), or at least as long as I can remember. I realize other browsers/platforms may not have this but that's a pretty big one to leave out...

Mobile web moves too quickly to care about what was true 2 entire years ago :) iOS got position: fixed a couple versions back, and iOS users upgrade rapidly.

So, the advice not to use position: fixed on mobile may still be good, but iOS isn't the reason why.

I like how this piece describes the tedium and pointless work involved in being a software developer, wasting time doing things to compensate for other people's mistakes and carelessness. You can be a developer without worrying about this stuff, but you can't be a good developer without worrying about this stuff.

Good point, sometimes the dread can be worse than the encounter itself. The only way out is through.

If the causation can't be proven, will it matter?

Serious question: What makes them fanboys but not you?

Cringely has written some interesting pieces about it. He seems to essentially think that the current management is just trying to suck the last bits of value from the organization. http://www.cringely.com/?s=ibm

I noticed a couple digs at Xbox here, particularly the one saying their division is "too cool" for the rest of MS. If I were that team I'd do the same thing -- wall off all the internal BS politics and other crap that causes so many good ideas to die. I suppose that leaves an opportunity for that division to manifest its own suboptimal behavior, but at least there's a chance at relative sanity. Maybe.

Yes, same here. My favorite rule in writing is "kill your darlings". If what you're saying isn't interesting when said plainly, perhaps vocabulary isn't the problem.