bullseye

Namo Media. Nothing to do with little machines.

Why deliberately change the title to "Nano"?

In the context of the conversation, we've been talking about Amazon. You're right... I don't agree with their usage. This isn't some small little guy bravely trying to fight off the wolves with a few patents they got their hands on. I don't see many examples of them using patent system to do "what it was built to do".

I don't care if you want to call it moral vs. immoral. Software at the high level has become a game of who can get a patent and sue everyone else. I think it sucks, and yes, I think it is broken.

I don't fault them for it if they don't. "The Bitly security team learned of the potential compromise..." sounds much better than "our programmer, Joe, got an email..."

>> Maybe it was only patented to be able to defend against patent trolls.

It seems like this has been the standard rationale given by companies when they are awarded these kinds of patents. A few years later, we see lawsuits "defending" these ludicrous patents.

The system is certainly broken, but a broken lock does not justify a burglar's actions.

Should we stop referring to adhesive bandages as Band-Aids? J&J has certainly made its share of controversial moves over the years.

Replying to yourself to take a snipe at someone else, with no data of your own, is pretty weak. Especially when you are wrong. In just 30 seconds of searching, I found a 2011 long term study conducted in Sweden that concluded the "overall mortality for sex-reassigned persons was higher... particularly death from suicide".

I have no stake in this discussion, and if anything, am generally opposed to the topic/lifestyle/whatever. But I have empathy for anyone going through such depression that they ultimately take their own lives. When the primary end goal for many is SRS/GCS, and when the data suggests that leads to higher suicide rates, I find it deplorable that anyone would try to suppress that information.

Some might even say that is good example of cocksure, willful ignorance.

How is this argument any different than the absurd Affluenza argument that gained popularity this week? Successful/great people rise above all kinds of adversity and come from all sorts of backgrounds. Criminals likewise span every demographic in the U.S. The "poor" in our country live an order of magnitude better than many in the world and some of our most affluent groups have some of the highest suicide rates.

I don't even know what my point was anymore... I just get so tired of hearing everyone blame everyone else except themselves for the directions of their lives.

Note that the gun you linked is 4-5 inches in total length. It's still quite small, but not similar enough in my opinion to a 2-inch prop gun.

EDIT: The gun is 3 5/8" in length.

At any rate, my problem is not the TSA agent's actions anyway, but her justification. If she had just shrugged and said "I know it's stupid but I have to confiscate this", then we wouldn't be talking about her. Instead, she heaped more coals on the already absurd security panic fire by suggesting that someone could be menacing with a 2-inch gun. This is the kind of crap that spawns memes.

I think you give the agent too much credit, but perhaps that was the thought process. I'll concede that point.

However, I still think it was a dumb argument. Note that the closest small gun you linked with any chance at being lethal was 4-5 inches long. A gun half that size, which someone would have to basically hold with their thumb and forefinger, cannot possibly be menacing in any circumstance unless you are a Smurf.

> I read this as "A two inch gun was taken because the TSA agent followed procedure over common sense and logic".

This defense fell apart the moment the TSA agent said "If I held it up to your neck, you wouldn’t know if it was real or not." In other words, she graduated from blindly following protocol to being an idiot.

I know you weren't asking for other IDE recommendations, but I thought I'd give you perspective from someone who is almost exclusively a VS user and loves the IDE (well, up to VS2010, or VS2012 with 2010 colors and icons).

When it comes to the occasional PHP project, I just use an IDE geared toward PHP development. Admittedly, it has been a while, but when I tried using PHP extensions for VS in the past, debugging, unit tests, etc... all seemed to require a ton of effort or didn't quite work the way I wanted them to. I would have loved to use VS for all development, but in this case, I felt like the tool was too weighty and not quite compatible.

In my particular case, I use Netbeans because it is free, lightweight, and it just works. My projects are more portable to other non-VS developers and adding PHPDocs and PHPUnit support was really easy. I'm sure there are other good IDEs as well.

> I don't understand this one at all.

I suspect it had something to do with driving a "company vehicle" to Louisiana from Florida, without telling the actual owner of the vehicle. There are some details missing obviously.

His prior convictions were armed robbery, negligent homicide, and issuing worthless checks. According to the ACLU, the docket number for the LA court of appeals is supposedly: 2000-KA-2117. I couldn't find anything on it though.

> The winning variation was Google Hover Clone

I was enjoying the article, but feel like it just abruptly ended. Why was the clone the winner? I would have loved to hear more about your process for judging the successful mockup.