Posts by John H Woods 3577 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Nov 2007
"A good Smalltalk method probably only has one comment, which describes what the method does. Everything else should be pretty understandable from reading the code. If it isn't, that's usually the fault of the coders (the reader, the writer or both) rather than the language. Any method big enough to need inline comments is usually too big to be a single method, and should be a considered a candidate for refactoring."
^self commentOnly
Yes, I've always wondered why USians think "could care less" is a synonym for "couldn't care less" but then I'm told they believe that "buried at sea" is how you say "chained to a radiator in a secret prison with electrodes on his testicles"
Terry, you're right, but - if you want an app you usually have to compromise. I have a dashcam app on an old Android. I had to give it permissions to make calls (e.g. to the emergency services or a specified contact) so that its call-on-collision function can work, even though I keep this function switched off. But if I'd said 'no' I'd have to do without the app.
The primary defence is economic. The dashcam phone has no SIM, so it can't cost me money. My own phone is PAYG, so the highest cost I could incur is exhausting my call or text credit before the end of the month.
In terms of privacy, Google could tighten up some rules: for instance when an app asks for permission to use contacts, one should be able to deny that without forgoing access to the app, perhaps my having an OS level option to restrict the contacts available to that app to a specific group of those on the phone.
"You know you are eating toxic muck when even the *microbes* won't have at it!!"
I'm afraid this is bogus. How long can you leave a bag of flour in your cupboard? A pot of sugar? A sack of rice? If the fries aren't moist, and they go into a clean dry environment, they will probably dry before they rot. See also drying flowers, naturally mummification, etc.
... although these things are normally litigated in the US, does anyone have any insight into whether the existence of a deliberately introduced massive security flaw (into a device whose function is partly to implement security between the WAN and the LAN) could count as the goods being unfit for purpose in the UK? Any law students fancy a go at a UK test case?
... who told me that Rockstar's morals were awful: he found out his 12 year old nephew was bragging about murdering prostitutes for money in GTA IV. I told him that as it was an 18-cert open world game where you were able to do a vast number of non-mission activities, and - to a large extent - make your own choices about how you play the game, the only morals that appeared to be at fault were the parents' and the child's.
He never spoke to me again.
... is obvious shorthand for the thing you are most likely to do with two clicks - select icon, then launch, for instance. Yes it gets overused (Bethesda, I'm looking at you with your ridiculous check boxes on the GECK which have to be double-clicked to toggle the tick) but I think it makes perfect sense in many scenarios.
As do the two single clicks to rename a file. First click to select. Second click on a selected item, start editing. As with all of these things, if you explain to people why they happen, they can learn them. Same with kids and maths: you can just teach them formulae and hope they remember them as if they were mystical incantations - or you can show them why they really work. The latter is teaching maths, the former merely teaching them to pass maths tests.
Interesting point about moving gaze. Horses are particularly prone to looking at things that their riders or handlers look at. I've also once seen it the other way round: we had a pony that never spooked at anything - unless you were carrying a sandwich or sausage roll. She'd stand or walk quietly for an unpredictable period, and then suddenly snap her head to one side - if you followed her gaze she'd use that split second to grab your lunch.
@JeevesMkII
"dogs look at your finger" --- this is only true of dogs that are thick or untrained. Ever met an assistance dog, a police dog or a military dog?
Even our dog understands pointing, "get that over there". etc. She understands that "hide" means go out of the room till I say "seek" and she understands "warmer" and "colder" when she's searching. Her expertise is food words -- she knows about 20 including "kitchen" and she knows that the tune "tasty, tasty, very very tasty" [Cockney Waiters] means that she's going to get some bran flakes.
My parents dog understood "seek [noun]" for about 30 items, including 5 people. he understood how to play cricket (sit at leg off, ignore ball when thrown by bowler, fetch - or try to catch -- ball if hit by batsman and return it to bowler). He understood "not that one, get the other one" whether it was remote controls or shoes. He understood that if you pointed at him and said "bang" he should roll over, groan and lie still.
Natalie Gritpants: "American Express isn't a credit card, it's a charge card and that's (one of the reasons) why lots of businesses don't accept it."
But, like Grogan, I still don't understand. If a business *does* accept it, and they charge it, surely they have *already* been paid, rather than issued some kind of IOU? Whether the card holder then repays the financial institution responsible is between them and it, rather than the original merchant?
“If PEOPLE WHO CAN'T UNDERSTAND leap seconds are eliminated from U̶T̶C̶ MAKING ANY DECISIONS OR POLICY WHATSOVER, there will be no perceptible impact on social activities and conventions ... but there will be significant reduction in the risk to national and international infrastructure and significant cost reduction in their implementation.”
justincormack: "My computer does not need to measure the rotation of the earth. It does however need to agree what the time is with other computers for security reasons. It might also have to tell humans to do stuff at particular times, but that need not be that precise."
I'm not sure whether you are agreeing with the previous poster or not. But the key point is "agreeing with other computers". This implies a shared authoritative source of time: if not from the internet, then from GPS, and if not from GPS then one of the computers' relatively inaccurate on-board clocks will have to be considered the authorative time on that isolated network.
"Most people here dissing iPhones seem to have never done a use case of the AVERAGE block/ette in the street (or even on the Clapham Omnibus)"
My wife uses an iPhone, and is a total fangirl. Here's a couple of recent use cases for you
(1) How do I ring this number of someone who has messaged me?
Press and hold the message. No? Oh.
(2) *looking at missed call* How come I have managed to block some caller?
Ah, let me see. *fiddles for several minute looking for list of Blocked Callers, then Googles*. Ah, you can't actually block callers on iOS6 (without an app), it's Apple-ese for Withheld Number.
"You do realize you come over as sad gits gutted that the pretty girl won't go out with you yet again , don't you ??"
I suppose you think Jeremy Clarkson disses the Vauxhall Vectra because he can't afford one, rather than because he is relatively knowledgable about cars, passionately interested in them, and is opinionated enough to express a view that he has developed as a result?
Most of the people here dissing the iPhone could have bought one for cash on launch day, for goodness sake. who do you think the commentarderate are if not mostly relatively well-paid IT professionals? It is perfectly valid for you to believe the anti-Apple and anti-iPhone sentiments you see are wrong, just as people may feel about JC's opinion about the VV; but to suggest they can only originate from envy arising from inability to afford one (or the lack of foresight that they might sell out) appears to indicate a very severe lack of understanding on your part.
Quite possibly done on purpose. Scammers do not want to waste time with people who are sufficiently clued-up to catch on before they have fallen victim, and it has been suggested that poor grammar and spelling are de rigeur in order to ensure people who will be more difficult to con do not engage.
"In choosing a wording to dissuade all but the likeliest prospects the scammer reveals a great sensitivity to false positives."
http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/167719/WhyFromNigeria.pdf
... that this wouldn't count as an offense under the UK Computer Misuse Act. I seem to recall that it is also an offense to perform an act on a computer that would impair its safety even if it is not deliberate, but merely reckless as to whether such an impairment is caused.
fandom: "Isn't it kind of counter intuitive? They thrived when there was little food and died off when it was abundant."
If a species that is adapted to survival when food is scarce, some evolutionary compromises (for instance, slower metablolism) could easily make it less competitive when food is more abundant.
"Anyway, didn't elephants evolve from mammoths or are they only distant cousins?"
I would say close cousins might be a better analogy, but wikipedia has what seems to be a reasonable family tree here.
Anyone else spot this? https://www.usenix.org/blog/my-daughters-high-school-programming-teacher
I was pretty horrified.
In the UK polygraphs appear to be the reserve of reality TV shows. I was particulary amused by Jeremy Kyle using polygraphy to determine which of 7 people had stolen some money, assuring us that the "Lie Detector" was "90 to 95% accurate". I don't believe that for a moment, but even if it were, the chances of any 7 tests being accurate is less than 70% at best and could be worse than evens.
I can understand how they can be used as interogation tools, but the idea that they can be used in evidence simply smacks my gob.
I know many people who consider the BBC to be biased against their own political leanings - the leftwingers think it is right wing, and vice versa. It also seems likely to me that a person with strong political opinions is more likely to view an approximately neutral stance as further down the spectrum of bias against their own views. And for this reason, I understand that many might be suspicious about someone with an acknowledged political axe to grind creating a report, certainly I'm tempted to agree with the first poster about commissioning the Pope to write a report on atheists.
Nevertheless, evidence is evidence, and I think we need to surpress our instinctive reactions somewhat and challenge the report with further evidence rather than simply dismissing it with a 'they would say that wouldn't they" argument. In particular, the statement quoted does seem to have some basis in truth:
"On the issues of immigration and the EU in 2012, out of 806 source appearances, not one was allocated to a representative of organised labour," the study concludes. In coverage of the banking crisis "opinion was almost completely dominated by stockbrokers, investment bankers, hedge fund managers and other City voices".
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