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dudifordMann

152 karma · joined November 13, 2014

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dudifordMann··on Build retro games using WebAssembly for a fantasy console
As a lefty who moves the mouse to the left side of keyboard, WADS is no more awkward than any other keyboard combination for left or right headed people. Just, you know, shift your keyboard a little bit more towards the right for comfortable spacing lol.
dudifordMann··on Why I'm not a big fan of Scrum
I agree that there are individuals and companies who have defined such ridged structure and expectation into their Scrum method that they can no longer be considered an agile approach missing two of the key purposes of agile approaches:

* Individuals and interactions over processes and tools * Responding to change over following a plan

Now, I cannot say that Scum abstractly is a bad approach to attempting to be more agile. Many of us have employed some form of it with varying degrees of success, but, the expectations on software developers from a business perspective are more rigid for business development and tracability purposes, which can,on occasion, omit the consideration of resource demands and complexities.

Often, i believe, it is that a lack of understanding the purpose of the agile manifesto and the poor implementation of a method at the top level of the developer and managment ladder which is the underlying cause.

In the post, the author cites 3 hour or more meeting where he feels there are too many people there. This would be an item for the retrospective feeding the next iteration, but he only says "Blergh" about the needed feedback.

He states that the standup is more ritualistic, but the point is to ensure each member understands where the sprint stands, inspire collaboration, but really take ownership of the code. It could be that the team size is too big, or that the team really has not taken ownership of their code.

When all is said and done, you have to buy into the Scrum process, the process has to be flexible, and the stakeholders have to not believe it is a magical development method that fixes all the issues of the software development process.

dudifordMann··on 9th Circuit: It’s a crime to visit a website after being told not to visit it
but in this case, the users, through the Power website, did give permission to receive, or send, the "snail mail".

From the article "Power users also authorized the software to send Facebook messages to other Facebook users for them"

So in your analogy. I created a business of sending snail mail to addresses I already had in my possession on my list of contacts. My contacts might not appreciate my snail mail, but I am not sending snail mail to the Facebook corporate Office -Or- if I am sending to the Facebook Corporate Office, then only though its mail routing department, which was set up to handle these very packages.

The C&D, I think, is equivalent to preventing contacts from communicating with each other, or, Postal Censorship[1], which I suppose is more a policy issue than a legal one. Which I suppose extends FB to be a governing body, which I guess leads us to CFAA...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_censorship

dudifordMann··on Why I’m Suing the US Government
i think it relates to this:

[1] http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere

[2]https://theamericangenius.com/business-news/farmers-cant-leg...

it seems to concern the idea, as mentioned above, of ownership vs a permanent license of the goods purchased or in their minds.. leased?

dudifordMann··on FBI Statement on Clinton Email System
I disagree because "practically policy" is not policy.

http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/tu-quoque/

dudifordMann··on Tiny Radar Chip Revolutionizing Gesture Recognition: Google ATAP’s Project Soli
Another great tool for touch-less interfaces. I think the odd aspect of this Google I/O demonstration is the novelty usage of the technology for a smart watch. This tech seems like it is more difficult than it's worth in that form factor, but for devices that must remain sanitary, say in a kitchen, or a medical device in an OR, I like the potential.
dudifordMann··on Mob Programming – The Good, the Bad and the Great
Perhaps this is good for feature development, or maintenance, but, what about contracts that deal with wholly new development of a complex system? It seems like you would want to operate in parallel at least for the initial push through the architecture and boilerplate structure. Perhaps I am being disingenuous.

I do love the idea of being able to not let the numerous tedious meetings interrupt progress.

[edit] Thanks everyone for adjusting my perspective. I am sure junior engineers (and seasoned stubborn ones) would learn a lot with cradle to grave development in such a fashion [/edit]

dudifordMann··on Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers
I am not sure if that is the right mind set:

"So around the time a lot of people have kids? ...you need to make a LOT of money to pay for daycare ... you might as well just stay home."

The "you" can be the other partner. Ensuring fair pay and opportunities for all qualified workers would encourage only a brief departure from a woman's career for maternity leave, allowing either partner to be the home support (as needed), instead of making the choice based on poor future earning opportunities vs their male peers.

dudifordMann··on Alan Kay's reading list
0 is no more than 20,000

100 is no more than 20,000

i don't think verification is needed...

[edited for carriage return]

dudifordMann··on Want to spell check? Read the fine print
That is a lot of trust in a corporate entity who in all honesty trys to profit from you wherever possible, and they would not be sued if such items were spelled out in the TOS. In this plug in, the plug-in author placed a notice where it could be found by anyone, not hidden away. Here, just as dspillett said, do your own due diligence and select products accordingly.

At the same time,even large trusted corporations can impose interesting license agreements (runtime or otherwise) that you better be well versed on before you start creating releases of your product.

dudifordMann··on Free the Public Universities
Right... so... if the coach is payed say less, than... could the students see a decrease in their tuition bill as the funds for the coach have freed up? Now, I am terrible at evaluating worth, especially for things as potentially complex as leading a sports team (was success due to the athletes? strategies? leadership? etc. Similarly for failure), but if Nick Saban is making 7.09 per year at Alabama, with a student population of 36k, the full salary divided by the population would be about $196 per year, which I am sure a student would love to see. (obviously my math is assuming full salary liquidation which is not realistic).
dudifordMann··on Free the Public Universities
Tuition has been on the rise, from what I can tell, due to excessive, frivolous and/or unchecked expenditures[1][2] with the guise of benefiting the universities and their students.

One example is the ridiculous salaries payed to the athletic staffs of these universities. Even the research universities like UC Berkley pay upwards of 5.4 million contracted salary[3]. The counter argument to this is that these sports programs pay for the research( though some believe that is more often not the case[4]) So even if I grant that this may be true, and I understand supply and demand principals of "talented" coaches, come the on, these are just sports. And many athletic department, not all , are doing a great disservice to many of the athletes who are not encourage to reap the academic benefits the schools have to offer[5], when a scant percentage even move on to Olympic or professional sports careers[6]

I think step 0 of this article's intended plan should be to look at spending, and have accountability, remove internal bureaucracy and reduce some of the ridiculous salaries (coaches, presidents, etc) and determine what a fair tuition looks like.

[1]http://www.texaspolicy.com/blog/detail/more-outrageous-spend...

[2]http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-spending-201...

[3] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6sm-b1X...

[4]http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2014/dec/22/ji...

[5]http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/college/2014/06/01/Do-col...

[6]http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/estimated-proba...

dudifordMann··on H-1B Willful Violator List of Employers
Looks like this was the reason for the 2011 violation:

http://www.today.com/id/44708445/ns/today-today_news/t/forei...

with the court ruling of:

http://h1blegalrights.com/2011/07/md-countys-public-schools-...

dudifordMann··on This Tech Bubble Is Bursting
Hmmm, this might just be a candidate for a conspiracy where they are in reality shorting the market?
dudifordMann··on Suspect jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives
wow... the grammar... what on earth did i write...
dudifordMann··on Suspect jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives
so... if a prosecutor has evidence has been gathered where a defendant has a drive with +n files that are encrypted. then the prosecutor has their evidence. However, if the files are when decrypted, then they have +n' -n files, which were not gathered during the initial investigation.

I recognize that the contempt is prior to formal charging, and thus "during" evidence gathering. but I feel like this is equivalent to the government saying: "hey, so we have no proof you did anything, but we have these 107374182400 items that might prove something. So, we want you to produce 107374182400 completely different items that might incriminate you because, well.... we cant". seems weird.

this is obviously not the first case that this has happened in[1][2]. each invoking the 5th, but it still seems strange.

[1] http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2012/01/decryp... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_re_Boucher

dudifordMann··on Mixpanel: Introducing JQL, a query language to analyze and learn from data
I was just about to post that!

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jira/advanced-searching-179...

dudifordMann··on The Fight for the Future of NPR
As with any reported data item, you should always diversify your sources. I have found that I get bias from NPR one direction and bias from my local AM talk-radio station the other way, it helps balance out my perspective.
dudifordMann··on Steve Miller: The Whole Music Industry Is Fuckin' Gangsters and Crooks
Great point, even if an artist had 'n' skilled people to facilitate those roles and produce the needed deliverables, what would happen to those people when the artist becomes unpopular? so even if there is no way around having these established entities for the purpose of essentially allowing the artist to create, then is it a matter of reform? which really means not signing to big labels in the hopes that if enough artists do the same that the face of the industry changes?

[grammar edit]

dudifordMann··on Steve Miller: The Whole Music Industry Is Fuckin' Gangsters and Crooks
I always thought the age of the internet, especially with modern bandwidths, could be the end of large labels for the music industry (or publishing houses for literature). I understand (to a naive degree) that the labels establish large networks, and complex licensing with public avenues like the radio or concert halls.

It is also interesting that that most self published artists get the semi-derogatory term of "Indie-artist", and that there may even be a public opinion which has been molded into expecting a "quality filter" through labels.

The question I always come to is how big can you get without a label? and will there ever be a day when artists have full creative control of their craft? This would mean that the artist would need to value and understand business practices, distribution methods, contracting, etc.

[edit] and the artists that do appreciate this seem to start labels (see epitaph records or Bad Boy Entertainment)

dudifordMann··on Qt 5.6.0 released
I would download the latest Qt with their IDE QtCreator. QtCreator comes default with tons of examples that range from their very early Qt4.x days to the latest Qt5 content. The examples heavily emphasize QML, which I tend to not use for performance reasons, but all of the examples are well documented.
dudifordMann··on Fitt's Law
I donot understand your point. As a SW engineer who focuses on UI design and implementation, my desk has three screens. One screen dedicated to execution, one dedicated to code, and one dedicated to spreadsheets or design documents, etc.

My Fitts's law analysis happens on a target platform and not my development system.

Could you elaborate?

dudifordMann··on Microsoft, Google, Facebook Back Apple in Blocked Phone Case
I was about to post that that is disingenuous and that they are backing apple due to the case at hand, which a software person knows relates to the intrusion matter at large, but... the majority of the population only cares about headlines and political platitudes that they can obtain in 10 seconds or less. "TLDR" is not just a meme, but a sad reality.

[edit] As in some might interpret this to be: "Wow the headline says Microsoft supports Terrorism too!!!" instead of appreciating that the request has much farther reaching implications.

dudifordMann··on Show HN: Yet another (faster) way to discover events nearby
It looks great.Simple and to the point.

Feature suggestion (or feature creep): I think as one other poster mentioned, for people that are in a suburban setting, it might be a neat idea to concatenate search locations: my university, my local city, a local town that i am willing to drive to, and my current position could all be contributors to one "list of interest".

dudifordMann··on Lasers should be classed as offensive weapons – British pilots' union
Sounds like a fun OpenCV type project to use a camera onboard in conjunction with the airplane's gps position,altitude, and camera's orientation to locate the source of the laser and prosecute accordingly.
dudifordMann··on Valentine's Day Special: Bye Bye Tinder, Flirting in the Support Channel
But that's just it, attraction is an inward feeling/biochemical reaction/etc. I am by no means saying that you cannot feel attracted no one can tell you how to feel. Rather, it is a matter of how you act on that attraction. That is where society says it is or is not okay to harass/act aggressive/etc.

in the context of the original post, a customer was attracted to the image of the fictitious support staffer. How the customer acted shows a perhaps a lack of control. In this case it was "innocent" hitting on (not flirting as one of the other comments suggested). But the fact that the customer felt compelled to is strange in the context of customer support.

Like I said, this is an interesting topic.

dudifordMann··on Valentine's Day Special: Bye Bye Tinder, Flirting in the Support Channel
I actually had a rather lengthy debate about clothing with my fiance. It comes down to perspectives and social norms which may need to change to have equality.

Disclaimer: I do understand that this is sociologically complex topic

A woman may choose to wear what someone might consider a revealing piece of clothing for no other reason than she wants to and finds it "cute" (omitting why she has gotten to that conclusion e.g. marketing, etc). To that woman, she chose to wear something that make her happy. She is NOT responsible for the actions of the people around her based on how they view that article of clothing. This ends up always with either victim blaming or claims of "common sense" when really she should be able to go around topless if she so chooses without having to fear others' actions.

In your case, you are already assuming reactions from others which is a whole other route in this conversation. When all is said and done, I find this to be a terribly interesting and complex topic.

dudifordMann··on Valentine's Day Special: Bye Bye Tinder, Flirting in the Support Channel
"an insult to their manhood." "can literally be dangerous to you."

Is that not indicative of being the product of a sexist environment? A man that cannot accept rejection and therefor feels he has a right to behave in a dangerous way, seems to be a problem with his view of himself, and men as a whole, the world.

dudifordMann··on Valentine's Day Special: Bye Bye Tinder, Flirting in the Support Channel
Aww that was so cute, and only a hint of stalking... That whole entry read much creepier than I bet they intended, and might speak to sexism on the web (due to the fact that this is supposed to be a support channel). It would be interesting if they did this experiment with a fictitious "Carl" employee, to see if female users flirted in the same way.
dudifordMann··on Women view professional advancement equally attainable, but less desirable [pdf]
I would contend that you are a product of your experiences, and that you are a participant in society.

Unless you are alone on an island, one person is not a society. One's thoughts and actions are inputs into society. Society itself would then be comprised of an aggregate of everyone's thoughts and actions. There would then be some sort bell curve for thoughts and actions, leading to an accepted norm for the society within some sigma value. Holding a position significantly distance from that sigma does make it part of society, would make it absolutely on conflict with societal norms.

Holding to the emergent norm theory, i would think that, yes, there is not an evil society judging you, but rather the society you participate in itself that will emphasize your contrast to the norms allowing others to judge you. Even if people are egocentric, a visible contrast to norms would be noticed and at best avoided, or at worst confronted.

The social cost is the degree in the action of others impacts an individual. there is a cost in dealing with the resulting time/resource/emotional effort with what ever action or inaction the judgmental individual(s) takes to address/correct/ignore you, directly or indirectly.

and... as other posters stated, i believe you missed the purpose of the previous post.

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