408 karma · joined October 29, 2021
What changed this generation? Game Pass? Maybe consumers becoming accustomed to streaming services and being held hostage by monthly fees?
It's quite curious.
As you might know, finger is an old protocol (actively used well before my time) which in essence showed information about the users on a server running a finger daemon (usually a Unix-like system).
As I understand it, when you queried for information about a user, a piece of the information you got back would be the contents of a ".plan" file in the user's home directory.
In this file a user could provide what we now call "status updates", which would then be promulgated by finger. You might have put your location, or what you were working on.
To avoid doubt, you can do all of this on the website and don't need to actually use the finger protocol at all. But for true nostalgia you'll need to use the finger command - which works!
My mother wasn't very happy with my experiments with group policy, which included adding the secure attention sequence (control alt delete) to her login screen. And various lockdowns of the start menu and Windows Explorer :)
Overkill is an apt description.
I was in elementary school and was obsessed with the 'Log on to' dropdown box on Windows login screens, and how you could use the same credentials on any PC.
Somehow I managed to salvage an old computer and source myself a copy of the ISO and managed to setup an ADDS domain controller and join my mother's laptop to the domain.
I went and asked the IT guy for advice on doing a multi forest configuration and I think it blew his mind. Why did I want multi forest? Guess I was preoccupied with whether or not I could, and didn't stop to think if I should. : )
I called Apple Support and didn't tell me this information and simply said they can't bypass or disable 2FA. It was only by researching that I discovered this workaround.
This was one of the worst user experiences I have experienced on an Apple product.
* Never pay anything in the way of fees or interest, including international fees.
* Never have a positive balance sitting in a transaction account earning zero interest (or as Americans would say, checking account).
* Never worry about overdrawing my transaction account.
* Card authorisations don't deprive me of my own money (eg hotel security bond).
* Importantly, in the event of fraudulent use of the card, the bank wears the damage while an investigation is underway.
A debit card might tick the first item on this list, but not the rest.
I'm not qualified in computer science or programming but I could easily follow along with his explanation about challenging CPU architectural concepts. Gives me a great deal of confidence that AWS not only know what they're doing, but can communicate it well to management.
More generally, I think publicly shaming individuals is a nasty thing to do.
Another factor is you're far less likely to encounter modders. First thing I do is disable PC crossplay, if the game lets me.
Sometimes it's fairly confined. Usually they don't need to understand the whole thing.
But the interpretation isn't piecemeal and usually requires understanding the background.
Legalisms don't make for particularly hard contracts.
In the real world, I've found complexity is often caused by attempts to simplify the contract. Or perhaps to simplify its drafting.
The most common offender is the overuse of Definitions which are often Capitalised Definitions. Interestingly in code you might compare it to the use of a function (); except that in the real world you can't easily call a function - you physically have to flick back and forth between pages to understand what the contract means.
The other cause of complexity is when parts of the contract aren't written by lawyers, but by engineers or risk analysts. Which the lawyers will do to simplify their job. I've seen some of these contracts and after weeks I can't understand them. A judge interpreting this contract basically has to become an expert in the relevant subject area. I don't envy them.
You're going further than that, though, aren't you? You're impliedly suggesting they're a hypocrite. You're doing that to cast doubt on whether it's correct to invoke personal feelings when enforcing software licences by saying they are invoking personal feelings themselves when discussing that issue.
I suggest to you that this is an argument, and a blatant fallacy.
>For instance, if someone who eats steak tells me that studies show eating red meat causes heart disease, it’s not a fallacy to suggest that they should stop eating red meat
In your example, if you used the fact that someone who said red meat was bad ate red meat in support of the proposition that it is not bad to eat red meat, that would be a perfect example of the fallacy.
In my view, it is OK to invoke personal feelings about whether personal feelings should be invoked in relation to the enforcement of a software license.
Also, let's not lose sight that this arises in a context of criticism of the model adopted for programming a simple form. This is just a simple one page form. More complex or abstract paradigms or design patterns is overkill.
Are you suggesting that it is bad that PHP applications often have a request path that relates to the folder structure?
In other words, are you suggesting that simplicity means an application should not have a request path that relates to the folder structure?
To give an example, are you saying it's a bad thing that example.com/profile/ loads /profile/index.php, rather than passing /profile through a single controller function to identify what code should be responsible for handling it?
The first approach actually seems pretty straightforward paradigm and it's what most new programmers would expect. Adopting a MVC/routes method is more complex and arguably overkill for a simple application.
If that is what you are contending, it should be said that PHP does not require this approach. Although it is often a preferred approach, because it doesn't depend on additional web server configuration.
I don't understand your criticism and I suggest you might not either.
Also, with respect, you could also have made the point that my experience might not be the experience of everyone without dressing it up in statistical speak. I can assure you that I understand basic statistical principles.
This would in practice be violating the terms of service of the WiFi network and possibly also be illegal?