bollockitis

I bought a pair of Sennheiser earbuds through a third party vendor only to find that they were knock-offs. I paid the full retail price -- no "too good to be true" deals here -- and the purchase was Prime eligible. I lost my money and never recieved so much as an apology. I do my best to avoid all third party sellers now, but Amazon makes this difficult. The introduction of third party sellers has made Amazon far more difficult than it should be. You're never really sure what you're buying and from whom.

I thought the same thing. I thought the title was implying that they were offering "3D diffs for files," not "diffs for 3D files."

Possibly, but straightening of the cervical spine is a real condition and it can be treated. I know because I have it, and I was diagnosed by an orthopedic surgeon.

In other news, VPN usage in the UK skyrockets. Strict measures to be taken to reduce sexcrime.

Article title or not, "David Cameron cracks down on online pornography" is not news to me. I know this. But the submitted title was big news. That's why I clicked over and that's why I read the article. Otherwise I would have skipped it entirely.

That's an excellent point, and very eloquently written. The article does mention one other phenomenon though, and it's the selective nature of what we share. It has been discussed in the media that Facebook can make some people angry, envious, and depressed (http://ti.me/V9kKkd). By selectively broadcasting our successes to the world, whether it's a promotion at work or awesome tacos, we contribute to a tapestry of a superficial, though entirely false, view of the world. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't want to broadcast my failures any more than you do. It's natural to want to share only the good things.

I'll use myself for example. I'm not particularly prone to sharing or to envy (at least, that's what I thought). I rarely posted anything to Facebook, and when I did, it was science or news related. I even felt violated when others posted pictures of me. However, after about two years worth of Facebook use, mostly lurking, I was surprised to find that I was angry with just about all of my "friends." It seemed they were so much happier than me, wittier, more liked, more photogenic. Their families seemed so perfect, while mine was in smoldering ruins due to tragedy, divorce, and bitter grudges. Their posts got loads of likes and comments, while mine received few or none. They also seemed, well, so dumb: they wrote "are" for "our" and mixed up "they're," "their," "and "there." And they broadcast inane political rants, which, turns out, is a great way to ensure that I'll never want to hang out with them again.

So, in turn, for me at least, I found it had affected me negatively, so I quit using Facebook, and I think it made me much happier and a better friend. I stopped placing expectations upon my life by what I had seen on Facebook. And, most of all, I was shocked to discover how judgmental I had been toward these people. I'm the guy who is often jokingly referred to as the family shrink. Everyone comes to me with problems because I'm patient, I listen, and I don't judge. Well, on Facebook, I was a different person. I was brutal. And that attitude alienated me because I found that I couldn't like people in real life whom I couldn't respect in digital life, whether it be due to my own selfishness or their poor grammar. Perhaps that's why I rarely posted—I felt that I would be judged just as I had judged them, and I feared rejection.

Now when I talk to my friends, they seemed shocked that they have to fill me in on things that have been thoroughly covered on Facebook. But when we do talk, it isn't infused with the expectation to please. I can be honest, and so can they, and there's no need to feel like we're having a loud conversation while sitting at the center table in a crowded restaurant.

I don't think this applies to everyone. I have a friend who doesn't seem the least bit bothered by this. Maybe I'm emotionally weak, or overly sensitive, or more prone to envy than I would like to think. And I don't condemn Facebook entirely. Like you said, I think we're still working this whole thing out, and we have yet to figure out how to positively integrate it into our lives. Even so, I think for some people, no amount of sharing is good, not if we're only sharing the good bits.

I think people overestimate how much time they spend doing repetitive tasks like copying and pasting with definable patterns. I'm a Java programmer, and I certainly do this, but I can almost always use a simple search and replace to make it work in IntelliJ. But, for the sake of argument, let's say that if I were to do this once a week, maybe for five minutes, copying and pasting manually with a mouse, that five minutes might feel like an eternity. Vim would do this quickly, but it would also slow me down when I do project-level refactoring, like renaming a method, which IntelliJ does globally in a matter of seconds. Sure, you can configure Vim to do this kind of stuff, and you can combine it with other tools... but at what point are you getting diminishing returns?

On top of it, as a web developer, I already need to know so much, from front end with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, to Servlets and Spring MVC, to SQL and all of the glue that binds all of this mess together like XML and supporting tools like SCMs. My head is absolutely full of information. In this environment, I am convinced that Vim is a complete waste of my time. A good IDE is ten times better at handling the vast majority of tasks I encounter day-to-day.

If anything, I think Vim is like truck nutz for programmers. It's all about projecting an image of competence and bravado.

Clever idea. The only problem I see with this is that rare occasion when that poem you were writing for your Bronies is accidentally tagged as "Published."

But you're missing an important point. "Quality locally produced goods" are very expensive. I can get a "trashy" piece of furniture from IKEA for just a few hundred bucks. That same piece of furniture, produced by a local artisan, would cost me thousands. Most people don't buy cheap furniture because they choose to, they do it because I have to.

As the population grows, more people buy more stuff. Local woodworkers and cabinet makers cannot possibly fulfill demand using locally sourced materials and hand tools. If everyone is to get chairs and tables and cabinets, production must be automated. Once automated, production can scale, which usually reduces both quality and cost. Instead of local wood, wood is imported and turned into particle board because its dimensions make automation easier. But now a nightstand can be turned out in less than an hour, where a traditional artisan might spend a week or more, driving up labor costs.

In other words, it isn't that people need to "rethink" what's valuable. They have already done the thinking, and they value more affordable, lower quality goods over limited, expensive ones. And I don't blame them.

But, as others have noted, there is something to be said about the more personal nature of a telephone call. Also, we don't broadcast what we had for lunch to our friends and family via telephone. I think it's this shallow, group-level contact that the author is targeting, not necessarily one-on-one messaging, although "pixels" are undeniably less personal than voice, which is arguably less personal than face-to-face contact.

I think the big difference here is that quantum theory and string theory hold enormous implications for the nature of reality. Understanding these concepts, even on a basic level, ignites in us a sort of spiritual fascination with the universe. That's why they are sexy. It has nothing to do with science fiction novels. It's just that understanding the mechanics of a vacuum cleaner doesn't leave us in awe of the universe.

It's only insane if you think that every new law makes something illegal. A law can do just about anything: clarify or update the language of existing laws, create or amend a budget, add or revoke a subsidy for a product or economic activity, be a statement of purpose, or allocate funds for infrastructure projects. In other words, just claiming that "40,000" laws is insane doesn't really mean much. Governments work by way of laws, so this metric simply tells me that these governments are active. To determine whether or not their activity is insane, one must investigate the types of laws being passed.

At first, I didn't deal with it very well because I didn't realize what was happening. I thought I had gone crazy, or was in the process of going crazy. Back then, the Internet wasn't as helpful as it is today (or harmful, depending upon how you want to look at it), or I would have Googled it; but I had heard about panic attacks through film and TV (The Sopranos, for example) and I eventually dragged myself into a bookstore to browse the self-help section (something the "before" me never would have done), and there I stumbled across books about anxiety disorders. After a few months of suffering, this was enough to motivate me to see a doctor. Of course, the doctor was familiar with anxiety, and suggested that I see a psychiatrist. This totally blew my mind. A psychiatrist? I was "normal" just a few months before. I had never even considered seeing a psychiatrist for any reason, so I brushed it off, thinking that I just needed to get it under control by myself.

So I spent the next year reading about anxiety, going through workbooks, taking supplements (another thing I had never done before), and trying to "gain control." Turns out, trying to wrest control is a bad way to approach anxiety; it imposes impossible expectations upon yourself--"If only I were smarter and stronger I wouldn't have these panic attacks. I just need to get it together." This kind of thinking makes anxiety worse. And it got worse.

Eventually though, I was able to find a better approach that involved accepting anxiety as a part of my life. I was inspired by something I had read about Zen Buddhism, so I began trying to view my anxiety as an old friend, my old torturer, my own brand of human suffering. Believe it or not, this worked. I began to intentionally do things that made me anxious. Axiety is much less powerful once you acknowledge that its roots lie in the brain, in the evolutionary drive to protect oneself from danger, and you can't consciously control it. All you can do is acknowledge it and move on, or "Feel the fear and do it anyway." I forced myself to reengage in life. I never stayed home when feeling anxious (I found this was the worst possible thing I could do); I accepted invitations to parties, I traveled, I enrolled in college, I moved.

But I continued having recurring episodes of severe anxiety that would leave me crippled for weeks: I couldn't sleep, I could barely eat, I had difficulty doing simple things like grocery shopping. So, at the urging of my family, I saw a psychiatrist (who was not helpful at all, as all she wanted to do was find out whether someone had touched my peepee when I was a boy. Hint: no one had), a neurologist (who was very helpful and very knowledgeable about anxiety), and a new primary doctor. My doctors coordinated to find a suitable medication, an SSRI. With this, coupled with my learned coping skills, I eventually began to feel "normal" again. A few years later, after experiencing no severe anxiety, I dropped the medication and was able to move on with my life.

Something similar happened to me, but with weed. I was experienced with LSD, mushrooms, and marijuana, but one night, after watching Fight Club while high, I couldn't get the thought out of my head that my buddy (also high, who had suggested we watch the film) was merely a projection of my alternate personality. At first I found this odd thought funny and I brushed it aside; but it kept recurring and it turned into a multi-hour panic attack. Like you said, I used to think there was a "before" me, and an "after" me. It truly changed my life. I struggled with severe anxiety and panic attacks for many years afterward. To some degree, I still do.

I used to think of that night as the cause, but I later noticed that I had been building up to some kind of "breakdown" for months. I had always been a bit more tense, a bit more worried, and more sensitive than most. I had a deep belief that, if I tried hard enough, I could prevent bad things from happening. This sense of control is at the root of anxiety disorders. Most people don't think bad things will happen to them, so they lose no sleep about it. Those of us with anxiety issues are just the opposite: we're constantly trying to prevent and prepare for the worst, even though the majority of those feared events will never materialize.

Anyway, if you haven't already done so, I suggest that you not think about the mushrooms as being the cause but rather the trigger. Once anxiety attacks begin, they are very difficult to control. It wasn't the mushrooms specifically; rather, it was the anxiety that caused the downward spiral, as the conditioned fear response gains strength through repetition. (There's a load of good publications about this.) In short, there aren't two versions of you ("pre-mushroom you" and "post-mushroom you"); you just had a serious transformative experience.

The sad part is that most parents won't bat an eye while Junior guns down his opponents, but they would be up in arms at the sight of a nipple.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm actually glad they wanted to verify that your app worked as advertised before approving it. They should probably have peripherals on hand for testing though.

I don't think that analogy works very well. If anything, the App Store is more comparable to Facebook: despite all of its pitfalls and drawbacks, everyone is already so invested that switching seems impossible. Developers will go where the money is, and as long as Apple continues to sell millions of iDevices, most developers won't abandon a profitable platform.

I would never, under any circumstances, tell my interviewer to "stay on topic." How should I know what he believes to be relevant? If he no longer wants to quiz me on my abilities as a developer but would rather discuss the airspeed velocity of swallows, I would assume that he has a reason for doing so, and I would gladly share with him with my limited knowledge of avian aeronautics.