Recent submissions

Comment · 14 years ago
My apologies.
Comment · 14 years ago
So tell me, is two names United States, or any US state's law, or is it just a common assumption?

Do programmers routinely look up the law for common assumptions? I'm guessing no.

And by the way, the tone of your responses in this thread is the first time in my years of HN participation (under various user names) that I've wished for a plonk file. Everything you've said has the core of a relevant argument, wrapped in condescension.

Comment · 14 years ago
I don't fly much. When I have, it's a brief conversation with the TSA supervisor, followed by the miracle of flight.
Comment · 14 years ago
Essentially true.
Comment · 14 years ago
I usually use the same name in both fields. My question was more rhetorical to the person I responded to.
Comment · 14 years ago
"Programmers should already handle that."

Except they don't. I have a one-word legal name and I have rarely found any online from that allowed me to have less than two names. I realize I'm an edge case, so I just make up something for the other field.

Ironically, I practically begged Google+ to allow me to use my real name, which they require for their "fine dining experience" (<cough>advertisers<cough>), but they refused because it was less than two names and looked fake. They may have finally worked that out by now, I left the building long ago.

Comment · 14 years ago
I have a one-word legal name.

Some people have two, three or more names.

Now what?

Comment · 14 years ago
In addition to randomly generating a man page from /bin, consider mining your command line history and randomly selecting anything whose man page you haven't yet read. You'll want to keep a file of man pages that you've read, to help with that.

And since you're stocking up on C, don't forget that C's standard library is documented via man pages, e.g.

  man -k sprintf
  asprintf (3)         - print to allocated string
  sprintf (3)          - formatted output conversion
  vasprintf (3)        - print to allocated string
  vsprintf (3)         - formatted output conversion
  XtAsprintf (3)       - memory management functions
Comment · 14 years ago
Vim is too big to learn. Eventually you'll muscle-memory a set of actions, for the way that you uniquely use vim, that you don't even know how to explain without thinking about it.

Rather than trying to go through one end of a tutorial or reference to the other (don't know if that's you), find a site or two of vim tips, and let them randomly trigger your mind. I think it's more interesting than going through anything beyond page/chapter 1 of a reference.

Coupled with that, whatever you find yourself doing in vim, take some time to understand what it is and the alternatives. Becoming familiar with :help's table of contents, rather than the contents of every chapter, is probably helpful here.

Similarly, when you do something accidentally, try to understand what happened. Sometimes you'll discover a feature. q: for example is discovered by accident by many people, including me.

Comment · 14 years ago
Some tasks contribute directly to goals, other tasks just get you through the day.

Don't know what to make of that, other than to think that those two types of tasks are probably managed differently, and they probably give you different emotional payoff.

Comment · 14 years ago
"1. May work on a central tool to show same clean graph for ANY stock symbol. Thinking of a good domain name ... hmmm."

cleanstockcharts.com is available. For now.

Comment · 14 years ago
Except we won't. We rarely do, and only at onesies and twosies.

Besides, they aren't working on the fiscal cliff anyway, even if it looks like they are. They're wielding a tool which they created which gives them another way to make the other side look bad. That's the entire point. Governing is a side effect.

Tip O'Neill said that all politics is local. That may be true for elections. But it is certain that all government is politics.

Comment · 14 years ago
Except you don't do that to people.

If you want to truly understand someone's condition, first be their friend and earn the right to talk to them about it. Or jump on wikipedia.

But don't stare. People are not here for your edu-porn.

Comment · 14 years ago
Are you OK with losing me as a customer? Because I don't have a smart phone.
Comment · 14 years ago
You have a reasonable approximation of life security: food, shelter, health/healthcare, and financial flexibility.

You have a goal and are substantially achieving it.

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