This thread is one of the best I've seen on HN. 1001 ways to screw yourself in bash. Love it. My contribution is a message from Mr. Odus himself- also a Reverend.
I usually don't alias the command itself; that's bad form. It limits what you can do and screws you when you are using an environment without your alias when you forget it. Live and learn.
From what I've read, it is better to get calcium from milk, vegetables like Spinach, Kale, Okra, Collards, or Soy or White beans, or some fish rather CaCO3. The Mayo clinic suggests taking CaCO3 with food, because stomach acid helps with the absorption: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/calcium-supplements/AN01428 Otherwise, Calcium Citrate may be a better choice.
The thing that worries me most about this diet is that, while in some ways it may be of great benefit in energy, etc., some of the side effects may not be seen for months, years, or perhaps a few decades.
It is an interesting experiment, but I think it would be a good idea if it were controlled and monitored by a doctor.
Also he said, "This is one case and it's only been a month". I ate almonds, peanuts, cheese, meat, and veggies for a few months, lost 15 lbs. But, since I've gained it all back and then some. One month at a new diet something hardly makes one an expert.
Some of the things he said made sense though. Basically, if this guy wanted such rigid requirements, he should have stuck with a high-end custom publishing house. O'Reilly has never tried to make its name synonymous with a quality publishing house; they are known because they gave a voice to smart people in the tech world. Since then, it has expanded, mostly because techs no longer buy books in print as much as they did, and because to be profitable in a down market, you have to cut corners. The problem that plagued this author is that he associated the O'Reilly name with "high design quality" and that just isn't true. O'Reilly should be used when you want a recognizable publisher for tech books and to be included in their collection. If you are smart, you will also use the standard cover with an animal on it, such as a chinchilla.
That is the opposite of what I'd think. Nonfiction includes current topics like books on political figures. Fiction is all over the map and, with the exception of crossover titles like Primary Colors that were about current political figures but written as fiction, typically isn't tied to a current event in such a way that it matters what week it was on the NY times bestseller list for others to see that they might want to read it and buy it.
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Offtopic: everyone reading this stuff up here- scroll down to Tim O'Reilly's comment below before you jump on the O'Reilly bashing train.
In addition, based on what Tim O'Reilly said in response, it sounds like the author was incredibly overdemanding compared to their typical author, and would have benefited from a small high-end custom publishing house. O'Reilly would be a great way to get published for anything that is primarily print; not a book on design with precise requirements, it would seem.
Soulless? Now, look. O'Reilly has gone downhill, but so has just about everything. The economy made people cut corners and care less about quality or customer service (where the customer in this case is you, the writer). But if they kept the same standards they had before while book sales dwindled, they would be bankrupt. That is the cold hard fact of it, and it is sad. We'd like to think that quality is always rewarded, but paper is becoming less relevant, and ebooks can be hacked and torrent'd + magnet'd or just plain shared. Any data based business whether it is books, music, or otherwise, is in the shitter and looking for a new gig. I by no means think that litigation and DRM are the answer; fear and bad cryptography are never the answer. But, these people don't have many options, and they are going to make bad choices.
You're a good guy, Paul. And I agree that things get too cynical and too negative.
Please continue to foster an environment that is positive and provide a good example, but if people feel like they are being manipulated, they are going to get pissed off. I used to get more pissed off than I do now, but I still get upset. I wish I didn't. I wish that everyone could live in peace and work together.
Maybe if HN we're self-policing via ability to flag comments and posts where enough flags means that it shows as username only with no post title/comment show unless "show" is clicked, no downvoting (a flagged and hidden post or comment could rank at the top), and without the user banning/ghosting stuff...
It would be nice next time to direct to a static status page with info on what is going on, if possible, and keep that site up all the time, e.g.: status.news.ycombinator.com.
I'm all for diversity on the team. Strong efforts should be put forth to hire the best person for the job, regardless of their sex, etc., though. I have all daughters, so I want them to be able to be considered, hired, etc. on an even playfield with men. I don't expect special treatment for them, just respect and equal opportunity.
And, I like almost everything in this post, except that I think the OP might be playing to stereotypes a little too much; some of these are not problems specific to women. Like not playing oneself up as much or focusing on the actual monetary results of work.
Something I experienced that wasn't mentioned related to hiring women was "same sex competition" (which I'm sure is not specific to women, but I've never worked on a team with all women where I was the only male). When only one woman was on a team with a bunch of other men for a long time, that woman was much more critical of female interviewees. After the hire of another woman on the team, this competition continued for the first several months, before they became friends.
Basic is obviously not a bug. It is the reason many of us got started, and Atari Basic is no exception. My point was that people that speak of bugs of software, OS's, language interpreters, etc. of that time have no clue how difficult it was to write them get them to do all of the things they needed to do. Ridiculous I got downvoted for that. Pfft.
Dad of all/only girls here. Dying to get a hold of this rom. Hoping the author will post it and that Nintendo won't give him a hard time about his homebrew, considering the attention it is bringing Donkey Kong and Nintendo.
> That was a bug in Atari BASIC that I never tracked down.
Never assume it was a bug in BASIC. A bug indicates it was a mistake. Very often code of that age had "tricks" to workaround hardware/limited resources that could be perceived as a bug when it kept something else from happening as intended, but it was required. That is the difference between a hacker then and one today- they didn't bitch and complain about bugs, they just made it work. I know you were coding back then- I was too, but I have a feeling you weren't well versed with the ins and outs of how BASIC interpreters of the time were written from reading things in your blog like:
"I’m not a programmer. Or a hardware guru. I’ve come to believe myself the amateur anthropologist. I like rummaging through the midden mound of the techpress reading what the tribespeople have to say. I’m bookish."
Spiritually it may as well not be. They usually stand on their own and stay out of the news when it comes to politics of Western Europe as a whole, since they were kept out of the UN post WWII. The biggest tie to the rest of Western Europe recently is that of organized crime; the Garduña of old evolved into the Comorra of today, well known across Europe, especially in Italy, obviously.
There weren't many patterns presented, so here are a few of those and some more:
Some evil UX patterns are:
* Opt-in: Prepopulating option with more expensive or recurring payment. (example was a donation, but Amazon does this when not defaulting to free 5-7 day ground shipping after promising free shipping prior to putting it in cart! which is much worse since they are bait and switching)
* Opt-in, part 2: Making changes subtle changes can be evil. By switching around buttons, etc. after having it work a certain way a long time and not changing the interface enough, you trigger muscle memory to do the wrong thing. Amazon has exploited this as well with the (not) free shipping option.
* Difficult to quit/cancel: also mentioned in the OP's linked presentation. In addition to more steps or having to email, etc. they don't even give you a documented option, e.g. you have to email them so they will delete your account and they say that nowhere in the site.
* Glossing over legal: Small text or less readable font to hide details is evil.
* Hiding legal: putting legal disclaimers in an area of the site that is hard to get to is evil.
* Unnecessary login: making the user login because they might want to retain info about something, when really the site owner is getting more benefit (selling email address or lead info, mining it themselves, etc.).
* Asking for more than is needed for user to accomplish what they want: asking the user for more info than they need to provide in order to get lead info when they are not aware you will contact them is evil.
* Unintended use of data: Worked for a telecom that had page to get phone# to look up service availability and then they would use that for lead info.
* Easy to determine security questions: this is just stupid. Many are easy to find out and they do little more than make the uninformed user feel more secure. Examples: birthday, street you grew up on, etc. that can be learned even without social engineering.
* Passwords: one of the most archaic and stupid constructs ever. Passwords encourage people to use the same password across sites, so if one is compromised, they all are. An autogenerated passkey and a more secure way to reset it with a new one if your passkey was lost or stolen would beat passwords anyday. SSO only compounds this idiotic UX we can't get rid of. (And we put abusable/hackable cameras in every laptop instead of adding retinal scanners or thumbprint readers in every laptop, which could be viable alternatives.)
Don't do this unless you want a bad day: :)