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Comment Counter-example (Score 1) 1

As a counter-example, I once worked for an ISP which had originally assigned all its customers randomly-generated *strong* passwords. Five years later, just under half of the customers were still using the strong passwords. I know because I had to migrate all the accounts to an incompatible password system, and John the Ripper could only crack around 60% of them. Lesson learned: Many customers will stick with whatever you give them, even if it's inconvenient.

Comment Re:Javascript vs. Jquery (Score 1) 240

So ... how is the jquery version superior in any way to the plain vanilla javascript version?

It's shorter, both in original code size and in the number of documentation pages required to understand it.

Sorry, there is absolutely no reason to use that poorly-written pile of garbage.

I disagree. So do most of the posters in the thread you referenced.

As for a reference, you might start with JavaScript: The Good Parts.

Thanks. I assume you mean this one. I'll check it out.

Comment Re:Javascript vs. Jquery (Score 2) 240

In jquery, if I wanted to do something with each element with a particular tag contained inside another dom element, I'd do something like this:

$("#myid input").each(doSomething);

Or perhaps like this:

$("#myid input").each(function(){$(this).doSomething();});

In bare javascript I'd have to write a loop, either recursively or iteratively.

Anyway, I don't see javascript libraries going away anytime soon. Bloated? Maybe. Useless? Depends on your point of view. If you're really dedicated to luring programmers away from jQuery, I suggest you write (or recommend) a reference such as I suggested. Otherwise, you're just making noise in an inappropriate forum.

Comment Re:WORA.... (Score 1) 240

In 1985, I took a Fortran course at EdCC. Their p-System-based compiler took a full hour to parse a hundred-line program and report (only) the first syntax error. So I wrote and debugged all my Fortran programs in Turbo Pascal, which compiled the same hundred-line program compiled in less than a second.

That's over three orders of magnitude difference between "portable" and native code. Today the difference is between one and two orders of magnitude, but the cost is still prohibitively expensive for many applications.

Comment I'm keeping my access logs. (Score 1) 363

They can have my access logs when they pry them out of my cold, dead fingers.

Seriously -- I run a small website and I'm just not gonna bother installing special software to purge certain IP addresses from my logs upon request, then forget that I purged those IP addresses (because that would be tracking), then somehow un-forget them on a regular basis so I can purge them again, then forget them again, ....

I agree with Google, Facebook, et al. The bill is quite simply unenforceable, and thus has no force of law, whether passed or not.

Comment Playing it "safe" (Score 1) 566

I haven't paid into the medical system for over ten years, and am looking forward to defending myself against criminal charges for my "negligence". During the same period, my neighbor has received three elective surgeries, courtesy of the health care system, and is under no such danger of prosecution. It's not just the doctors who are playing it safe.

Comment I've been saying this for a long time. (Score 1) 2

I haven't paid into the medical system for over ten years, and am looking forward to defending myself against criminal charges for my "negligence". During the same period, my neighbor has received three elective surgeries, courtesy of the health care system, and is under no such danger of prosecution. It's not just the doctors who are playing it safe.

Medicine

Submission + - Doctors Are Creating Too Many Patients 2

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "H. Gilbert Welch writes in the LA Times that the threshold for diagnosis has fallen too low with physicians making diagnoses in individuals who wouldn't have been considered sick in the past, raising healthcare costs for everyone. Welch, a a practicing physician and professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, says that part of the explanation is technological: diagnostic tests able to detect biochemical and anatomic abnormalities that were undetectable in the past. "But part of the explanation is behavioral: We look harder for things to be wrong. We test more often, we are more likely to test people who have no symptoms, and we have changed the rules about what degree of abnormality constitutes disease (a fasting blood sugar of 130 was not considered to be diabetes before 1997; now it is)." Welch says that the problem is that low thresholds have a way of leading to treatments that are worse than the disease and while clinicians are sued for failure to diagnose or failure to treat, there are few corresponding penalties for overdiagnosis or overtreatment so doctors view low thresholds as the safest strategy to avoid a courtroom appearance. "We are trained to focus on the few we might be able to help, even if it's only 1 out of 100 (the benefit of lowering cholesterol in those with normal cholesterol but elevated C-reactive protein) or 1 out of 1,000 (the benefit of breast and prostate cancer screening)," writes Welch. "But it's time for everyone to start caring about what happens to the other 999.""

Comment Re: H.L. Mencken quote (Score 2) 281

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

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