russgray

You advocate, in your own words, allowing people to die on the street unless private citizens decide to render assistance. I would far, far rather have state aid than that.

I think that your worst-case doomsday prophecies for what our current system will lead to are hugely, overwhelmingly preferable to your alternative.

You seem to think that anyone who disagrees with you is a fanboy who doesn't want to hear alternative viewpoints due to fear. It's amusing, because you yourself are the worst offender here on all three counts.

I think that depends on your priorities. You couldn't pay me enough to relocate to California.

It doesn't have to be dramatic, but I would at least have made it clear that I was leaving rather than being fired. I couldn't stand there silently at a standup whilst some jerk insinuates to my team that I'm being shown the door.

"My bank has fraud protection but if I use my debit card and the transaction goes through, it is very unlikely I will ever see those funds again"

Why would you think that? My wife had a couple of fraudulent transactions on her debit card earlier this year, and they were refunded the same day we reported them.

Yes, those ST movies.

The only drinking problem I see here is that people are drinking whiskey out of plastic cups. Philistines.

5 guys in a 4BR? So are two of them in a relationship and sharing a room, or is one paying $1200 to sleep on a couch?

This whole 'deathbed' theory has always seemed entirely bunk to me. At 35, my values and thought processes are almost entirely different to what I /thought/ they would be when I was 20, and so any decisions I'd made at 20 to please the 35-year-old 'me' would almost certainly have missed the mark.

The idea that at 35 I can predict what will or won't please my 80-year-old self is preposterous. The best thing I can do for that guy is make sure he has the resources available to do what makes him happy.

I agree that the new iPhone camera will be no substitute IQ-wise for a half-decent point-n-shoot, and it probably will not be enough to convince me to upgrade from my 4S. On the other hand, I am very impressed with the path Apple are taking regarding automatic modes. Automatically bracketing exposure and shooting in burst-mode, then analysing the results in real time for highlight/shadow clipping and sharpness, and then presenting the 'best' photo to the user? Automatically combining twin tinted flashes for tone without mucking about with gels? That's great stuff (assuming it works), and orders of magnitude more advanced than the 'auto' modes on pretty much all other cameras.

It's not going to replace good cameras used by enthusiasts who know their aperture from their ISO, but it has the potential to make huge waves in the snapshot category. I'd love to see that tech make its way to, say, the successor to the Canon S110 or the next Ricoh GRD.

> in a PIN system if I know your PIN and get your card I can loot your account and you are SOL

That's not entirely true - legally the bank has to carry out an investigation and prove fraud or negligence on your part. Simple use of the PIN is not sufficient evidence. Sadly, however, this legislation is not always followed to the letter and many customers do not force the issue.

"So what's my incentive to work? Screw this, I quit"

Your incentive to work is that you earn $100k instead of $12k. I certainly wouldn't quit my job if it means that much of an income hit. This is actually a real situation for me - I could quit my job tomorrow and get more than $12k in benefits, but I won't.

"I'm just saying you cannot give people free money and not take that money from somewhere else"

No-one is saying that you should. A theoretical BIG would be funded by the money that is currently spent on inefficient and mismanaged state welfare. It's money that is already being spent, used in a different way.

My other gripe with it is that as a member of a non-hunter-gatherer society I value the fact that my diet is more interesting and varied than just mongongo nuts.

From my visits to Paris, I'd say the biggest detriment to driving there is other drivers. It's common to see parked cars completely blocked in (cars in front and behind leaving literally a centimeter of space between bumpers), and an obscenely high percentage of cars have all sorts of scuffs and bumps (presumably from having to force their way out of parking spaces when blocked in). I'm no car nut, but I wouldn't dream of taking my own car there.

I'm not a banker and never wanted to be one; but some of the things on that feed are hilarious.

I assume he was performing some sort of authenticated action - e.g. against the svn repository - and providing the password as a command-line argument rather than interactively. This would not only leave the password in the history, but would make it visible to anyone else on the machine who runs ps whilst the command is executing. It's terrible security practice, but I've seen it done more times than I can count.

Yes. Robocop.

Well I googled myself just now, as a direct result of reading this thread. The last time must be well over a year ago. I don't think I even bothered the last time I looked for a new job.

Do people really google themselves that often?

After step 5, I was sure you were about to say that a remote operator could then activate the nearest turret and shoot the mugger.

That's an entirely reasonable trade-off. Freedom may be the destination but there's no reason that the journey has to suck.

To be fair, exactly this happened to a friend of mine living in Fulham, London. His laptop (a very pricey MacBook) was visible through the window from the street. Someone was in through the (old, poorly-secured) window and back out with the laptop within a couple of minutes whilst my friend was in the shop across the street. Didn't check the bedroom for jewelry, didn't take his expensive decks or TV - just grabbed the laptop and left. It seems some thieves do specialise - either that, or my mate is into some other stuff I don't know about and had just been told he was going to receive an encrypted file...hmmm.

This blog post helped me when I took a look last year: http://geek.michaelgrace.org/2011/09/installing-statsd-on-ub...

It's a commitment I made happily. I've bought a house I love, near to both my family and my wife's family, in a nice neighbourhood, near a train station that gets me into London (for huge career flexibility and opportunity) in 35 minutes. I probably will move again one day, when the kids are out and we want to downsize, but if I was told I would never move again in my life I'd be entirely content.

I've worked in the UK tech industry for 15 years, none of it for an investment bank, and I don't recognise your description at all.

Out of interest, what does qualify someone to decide what is best for a country?

I dunno, less than many people I suspect. 100 or so per day (not counting spam)? Search works well enough for me at the moment, though I do confess to tagging things like order confirmations and shipping notifications.

I thought the point of gmail was that you didn't need to organize. Just search.