mdpopescu

7 ms·

31.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Maybe "public trust in science" SHOULD be undermined? I mean, I can definitely understand the appeal of "but my priest / pastor / president / doctor / scientist said that...", but I think it leads to
32.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Yep. We should glorify yesterday's slaveowners, because they built the society we benefit from. /sarc
33.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Sorry, my bad. "Out of hand" was supposed to go with "dismiss". "We dismiss without analyzing it because it's un-respectful." As for the second part, I will reuse an answer I've given before: I am tir
34.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Why, exactly, is one supposed to be respectful of - to put it mildly - people who are "not even wrong"? What is the purpose of that respect or, conversely, what is gained if we dismiss out of hand criticism because it is not respe
35.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
I would refer you to my previous comment but - for once! - I don't want to be an asshole. (Plus, dang would probably ban me.) This is possible in the same way as it's possible to build a nuclear weapon in a garage. There is no the
36.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
There is a reason why companies often buy licenses to third-party software that include source code. It's not because their programmers have a burning desire to slog through other people's code. It's because they want the OPT
37.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Somewhat off-topic, but THANK YOU! I thought I was the only one that didn't buy the common saying "do not attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence" (the "I was stupid" defense). No, there's no
38.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Yeah, that's how I look at people who work for the gangs that killed 200 million people last century, and continue to do most of the killing even today. Most people call them governments and they find nothing wrong with working for the
39.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Huh. While I was using Twitter I was mostly exclusively following people I agreed with. I was still angry all the time, because those people were posting stuff like "another cop kills another civilian" or "the US military def
40.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
I don't know where this idea that the "ci" group is pronounced "ki" came from (or "cae" / "ce" is pronounced "ke"). Given that both Italian and Romanian preserved them as "tch
41.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Yep. When I tell people "if I cared about my children's education I wouldn't have sent them to school" they act horrified. However, while I could lie and say that I do care about their education very much, my actions say
42.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Let's build a system that's pretty much indistinguishable from socialism, but call it capitalism. That way, when it inevitably fails, we'll blame capitalism. Yep. I saw this movie before.
43.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
In Romania I'm paying about 45% of the gross salary to the state, and about 55% to my employee. The higher the salary, the worse that ratio gets. Of course, the employee then has to pay VAT (19%) on everything they spend those 55% on.
44.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Like with every "why does X do Y?" question, the answer is "because (and up to the limit that) they can get away with it". Most people seem to accept the "meh, it's good enough" mantra. Perfectionism is co
45.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Or, if the parent is correct, the rest of the world will never catch up - because the US will keep adding regulations to keep itself more expensive.
46.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
You're told to by someone you trust.
47.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Censoring? I've had posts EDITED on a stack exchange platform. Multiple times, with the result saying the opposite of what I said. I did the only thing I could do, stopped using that site. Just like with Facebook :)
48.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Something which I've used in the past (edited because I spotted some mistakes while re-reading the code [grin]): public readonly struct Option<T> { public static readonly Option<T> NONE = new Option<T&g
49.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
I don't believe in Imaginary Property (aka Intellectual Property). It's not what I was talking about. Someone bought the right to use a specific domain from a specific domain name provider. It was a private transaction between t
50.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
This [1] is by far the best answer I have ever seen to that question / request. Since it is quite long, I will attempt to summarize: that is what I start from. I am more certain of the existence of God than I am of my own existence - t
51.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
> ... rights to property would seem to derive from government... Yeah, this is the fundamental disconnect I have with (apparently) most people. Rights come from God. The idea that they come from governments is, in the words of a famous p
52.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Someone else had the right to use a domain. They had paid for that right. You appealed to some people with guns, they decided to use the threat of force to revoke that right, and you benefitted. What exactly is difficult to understand here?
53.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
I stole something from someone, but I benefitted so all is good! I fail to understand this mentality. It's extremely common, of course, but I just can't wrap my head around it.
54.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Yes, it is bad design, because you have one Sql.RunQuery method returning a DataTable and it's used every-freaking-where. Then you have to convert the data in every place back to the proper objects, paying special attention to the diff
55.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Huh. I had a client once who complained that I was adding database indirection layers to some application. "When are we ever going to change databases?" I had to remind him that, in the few years I worked for him, we had actually
56.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
> ... speculative instruments like baseball or pokemon cards. Or paintings, or pretty baubles. People like what they like. If the number of people liking something grows large enough, the "something" can apparently become an ex
57.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Sure, the experiment failed everywhere / everyWHEN else, but we're special. /more sarcasm
58.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Your name hints that you had that, just as I had. It didn't work out so well anywhere it was tried, but I'm sure the next time will be different. /sarc
59.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Money is a measure of importance. Without it you make it VERY hard to determine what to do next, or whether what you did so far is sustainable. For example, at the end of the current month I "spent" five chicken and twenty bushes
60.
by mdpopescu 6y ago
Out of curiosity, why is it "endblock content" everywhere but the base.html page (where it's just "endblock")?

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