Dick move by the jerks in the red car.
I hate bad or selfish parking myself with a passion but in this case she just may have over compensated for the railing and judging by how empty the lot looks it probably didn't seem like a big deal to her at the time.
Either way it's not like she parked in the center of 2 spots which is the one that gets me.

I think we can all tone down on the insults in these already over-heated times... They speak in their regional accents, I speak my own... no big deal.

My blood boils easily too during conversation, but online, I try to be calmer.

IMO when throwing insults we usually end up just speaking pass each other, nothing constructive gets done.

But get ya, I'm 100% with you. Analogy well articulated.

I would like to think "punch a nazi" isn't especially extreme though, certainly not extremely leftist. You can certainly pickup a large number of right leaning people who are on board for punching nazis.

It's other things from the left that I fear are needlessly driving away right leaning folks.

Calls for halting parts of the economy to save the world from catastrophic climate change, be that banning coal or oil or to a lesser extent carbon taxes. Instead taking the positive approach of promoting non-fossil fuels on the power grid and electric vehicles accomplishes more and doesn't directly attack the industry and livelihood of a large part of middle America.

Anything that amounts to calling it immoral to define a man as a human with a penis and a woman as a human with a vagina. How many voters do you really need to alienate over semantics?

Anything that amounts to demanding everybody accept and encourage your life choices, sexual or otherwise. The notion of judging one another based on our decisions and behaviours is a big deal to right leaning people, telling them that certain behaviours or choices are not only unquestionable but must be approved of is again pointless and needlessly drives away voters. There is common ground in love and let live, pushing beyond that to get back at the old guard is driving away potential allies at a time that can't be afforded.

Labelling any criticism of Islam as Islamaphobia. For that matter, use of pretty much all the morality-a-phobias should be done away with. Go back to demanding people live and let live without the requirement everyone embrace or endorse other people's decisions without being shouted down as immoral.

BLM

Refusing to allow rational discussion of statistically factual trends or differences between populations because it's racist or sexist. Those differences are a part of our reality and just demanding everyone put their heads in the sand drives many people unwilling to do so away. It also is damaging because many problems in society that we need to fix are informed by that data.

First piece of advice. "Clever" code is usually bad code. If I saw that line of code in a code review, I would have to have words with the programmer.

More seriously, it depends where you are. There area lot of jobs right now. If by no professional experience you mean no internship experience, that can make things harder but isn't a huge obstacle at all (the experience itself doesn't often count for much, it's really more of a "why didn't you get an internship?" sort of thing). A good way to start in that case is to look for contract-to-hire positions, possibly through a recruiting/placement agency (look for ones that specialize in engineers). They generally know what they are doing, and will work hard to find a good place for you and they are genuinely on your side. We like to use these where I work because you can hire someone on a three month or whatever contract, and if it doesn't work out, it's a relatively painless separation for everyone (ie, you weren't "fired" you just finished the term of your contract). It's easier to get your foot in the door through a CTH, and then you just have to diligently and prove yourself.

As for preparing for real work (the actual coding part), that's harder. Since you really don't know what you'll be doing, it's not easy to prepare for it. You really have to learn software engineering on the job, and companies hiring entry level talent know that. That said, if you have a particular field in mind, looking for *good* open source projects along the lines of what you want to do and studying the source is good idea. Exposure to real-world, non-academic code is very useful. Getting involved and maybe becoming a contributor is a great idea (and looks good on a resume and gives you something to talk about in an interview). Working on personal hobby projects is a good thing too (though not as good as working on larger projects with other people), which again, gives you something to talk about in an interview. Keep your hand in. Have something to talk about at your interviews.

There are some good books. "The Pragmatic Programmer" by Hunt/Thomas is an excellent general-purpose programming practices book (more about mindset and approach and good patterns than technical details), and I can't recommend it enough. There are some others, but they escape me at the moment. Google is probably your friend here. If you can find a second hand set of Knuth for a reasonable price, buy it up. It's not even remotely worth actually reading, but it looks good on a shelf.

Good luck and don't sweat it. You have a degree that makes you very employable. You'll find something that you like without a doubt. If you're lucky it will be your first job, if not, no big deal--move on to the next thing.

Ha! I often ask FizzBuzz in interviews if I have a hint that someone's blowing smoke. Often, they'll whiteboard a solution which is a giveaway that they've rehearsed this one (going straight to mod 15 instead of mucking around with 3 and 5 first), but that's no big deal. Where people usually utterly fail is when I ask them how they'd test it.

The vast majority of people end up saying that they'd run it and examine the output or something stupid; relatively few go straight to a unit test, and of those that do, even fewer immediately see that they have to refactor the simple solution to separate application from logic from presentation.

First, I'm not talking about smoking outdoors. The conversation specifically relates to pubs (and restaurants, I guess). If you want to smoke outdoors, it's not such a big deal.

Second, cars have utility. Whether you think more people should cycle or use public transport or whatever, you can't argue that banning cars wouldn't be a massive shock to the economy, and the way people live. Smoking? Not so much.

Finally, smoking tends to get it in the neck, because it's EASY to regulate. Regulating healthy food is a nightmare, considering there isn't even universal agreement on what constitutes a healthy diet. But there's no positive side to smoking, so it tends to get regulated.

@Diogenes

Thank you for your detailed answer. I do agree with you that context matters and that words are neither inherently good or bad by themselves. However, I think you’re looking at the situation from a more microscopic point of view as a simple joke between two people. I prefer to take a more macroscopic view of the situation. Allow me to explain.

Going back to my hypothetical example, it’s true that I didn't mean any harm when I used the term "retard" towards my brother. I think all people like to think of themselves as "good" people. For example, I would never in my life point at person with Down Syndrome and scream "Retard!" at the top of my lungs or attempt to belittle someone with an actual mental disability. The problem, however, is that by using the word in the way I did in the example I am tacitly--and quite publicly (remember this is happening in a parking lot)--endorsing the equating of people with mental disabilities to stupidity. I may be making a joke towards my brother but it isn’t just my brother that winds up being the butt of the joke.

Now maybe from your perspective, it’s just one person saying a joke. Look at the context, you might say. It’s a distasteful joke but no big deal, right? And I could agree with that if it was just some off-color joke limited to a single individual. Unfortunately, and I think we can both agree on this, the use of “retard” to mean “stupid” is a relatively common occurrence in American vernacular. You couple that with the stigma against mental illness and mental disability and I think it becomes fairly plain to see that on the macroscopic level (i.e. society) we have a problem: a group that is socially disadvantaged and historically discriminated against is even further marginalized by the language people use in their everyday lives. Now, if you don’t agree this is a problem, I’m afraid the conversation has to end here since the logical conclusion of such a stance is that people should be free to say whatever they want and be immune to criticism, damn the consequences.

But if you do agree it is a problem, how are we going to solve it? My take on the situation is that doing absolutely nothing when witnessing a situation like the one I've described is unlikely to improve society in any way. The status quo will be maintained if people are not confronted about their language use.

That being said, people often say things without fully comprehending the implications of what they are saying. They often talk the way they were raised and never once questioned whether what they were saying was actually harmful or not. I don’t think people should be pilloried for that, but in the event that they are unaware of how they are contributing to the discrimination and oppression of others they certainly need to be educated.

This necessarily entails confrontation, although that confrontation might be very low key. Continuing the example above, I think a good way for the woman in the example to “enlighten” me about my misguided use of the word “retard” would be something along the lines of this:

“Excuse me. I really wish you wouldn’t equate having a mental handicap with stupidity. My nephew has Down Syndrome and even though, yes, he can’t do everything that a person without an intellectual handicap can do he is most certainly not stupid.”

Now, all of that said, I see nothing wrong with publicly shaming those who clearly understand the implications of what they are saying and out of either stubbornness, a need for attention, or actual spite willfully continue to use language that is degrading or oppressive. A white person frequently using the N-word in public to describe black people, for instance, is a situation where I’d be completely fine with them getting verbally eviscerated. We don't always have to be polite, even when being politically correct.

As a final note, I want to make it clear that I believe in free speech in the sense that everyone should be free to say whatever they wish. However, as a caveat to that I also believe that free speech comes with the responsibility that people must own everything they say. If someone wishes to use offensive, degrading, or oppressive language that is their choice. Free speech in no way gives them a free pass from criticism of that choice, however.

Lifting your visor is a sign to the track marshals that you aren't seriously injured so that's all to the good, but it seems to me he lifted it a little too soon. I'd be inclined to keep it down until the debris has stopped flying around and my car has stopped sliding across the track.

Anyways, it's a good thing that in the 60's and 70's they averaged one fatality for every two races or so, and these days it's a big deal when someone is seriously hurt (like Bourdais in qualifying), and a huge deal when someone is killed--like name cars and turns and stuff after them kind of a big deal.

I have been in this spot with other viruses.

This is a big deal for medical manufactures.

In the US even if I was handed a fix It can not be installed. It has to go through all the regulations and deemed "safe" by all the agencies involved in getting an product to market. Then the manufactures can release it.


To be clear it is the facility responsibility to have a "safe" network because of the above reasons.

My only recourse is to reload the software, which will still have this security hole until a fix is officially released by the manufacture.

One of the things that makes me anti-nuclear is the radioactive and toxic waste. Weaponization, accidents and disasters all have a chance to happen, but are hypothetical. However, nuclear waste is created when things are running perfectly as planned, it's part of the plan.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-waste-management.aspx
"Direct disposal (after storage) to a geological repository. The material has very long-lived radioactivity, and will take about 300,000 years to reach the same level as the original ore.
Aqueous reprocessing to remove only uranium and plutonium. The material then only takes about 9000 years to reach the same level of radioactivity as the original ore."

I love how they say "only about 9000 years" like it's not a big deal hahah

Renewable green energy all the way :-)

Thats crazy. @oritteropo must have been a big deal in your city. Sounds scary.

**EDIT**
I'm finding other sources that say that sterile "terminator seeds" are a patented technique, but that Monsanto has promised not to use it. Straight from the horse's mouth:
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/terminator-seeds.aspx

So it appears that my info below is wrong. I will try to talk with my family and get the full story. That being said, I'll leave my original comment and the followup below unaltered.
*********


My firsthand knowledge of this stuff was from more than 10 years ago, and also when I was pretty young (early 20's). So I did some web searching to try to get updated since your question is a very interesting one:

http://web.mit.edu/demoscience/Monsanto/about.html

According to that, Monsanto is the company behind "Roundup Ready", and their corn (and other crops in the line) do use sterile "terminator seeds". It also mentions that farmers "must purchase the most recent strain of seed from Monsanto" each year.

I was never in the decision-making structure of my family farm, but I did remember that we couldn't just buy the Roundup Ready seed *once* and then hold a small amount back as seed for the next year and continue to get the benefits.

I'm not 100% sure exactly how the modification for sterility works -- I don't know if the plant will sprout if you plant the sterile seeds and just fail to produce any ears / fruit, or if it just won't germinate at all. I do remember that we had to be quite careful to fully clean out the corn grown from the GM seeds from our storage bins, and better yet to store our non-GM corn to be used for future seed in entirely different bins. That was done to make sure that we didn't end up planting any of the sterile stuff.

I'm sure that the seed dealers that sell the GM stuff really push farmers to buy and plant it every year, as hinted to in that link. But you certainly don't *have* to. On the other hand, if you go back to non-GM seed for a year or two or more, you can't use a strong herbicide like Roundup if you have an unexpected outbreak of weeds or other pest plants -- the Roundup would kill the non-GM crop along with everything else.

Basically, I don't specifically begrudge companies like Monsanto for their practices concerning these GM crops. The "terminator seeds" are controversial, but don't seem like a big deal to me. If you could buy GM seeds once and then just hold back some of your harvest for next season's seed, they'd only get your money once AND we'd probably lose the original strains. So I see that as kinda win-win, especially if you don't 100% buy into their sales department urging you to use GM seed every single year.

I don't want to sound like a shill for Monsanto -- some of their other practices are pretty shady, particularly political lobbying. But from the perspective of my family farm, the GM corn that we use was/is a real beneficial thing. Significantly less pesticide/herbicide use over time, and it allows for expanded low/no till farming. Before herbicides, tilling was one of the only ways to kill off pest plants. But, it also makes the fields lose some moisture and nutrients. Expanded farming and ubiquitous tilling was largely the cause of the "dust bowl" dirty 30's. Anyway, I'd say that a lot of good has come out of modernized techniques and technology like GM crops.

Again,

If you want to take a book of rules and ignore it take American law and only read a portion of it like:
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death

I suppose that in isolation suggests that American law justifies citizen's pulling out a gun and shooting people providing comfort to Americas enemies. Of course, if you read the WHOLE of American law you find there are things about due process and courts and other checks and balances in place. In fact, that the naive original reading is completely the anti-thesis of what American law advocates.

The point of course being that is EXACTLY the same thing you've done with the bible by entirely ignoring the existence of other parts in that address alter, or provide context on the pieces you picked out. You know, like some guy named Jesus that came along later and some folks have made a big deal about following the teachings of.

I've found whenever I make a big deal about how long a site has been up, it quickly dies.

So yeah... 11 years... whatev... (hint hint)

ok,first off?
this is heritage foundation,a right wing think tank.
this by itself is not terribly damning.

however.

bridgette gabriel is a spokeswoman for the FRC:family research center.

the FRC,along with james dobson's "focus on the family" ,were both funded with seed money from the families of betsy devos and erik prince,the amway pyramid scheme dynasty.

so what enoch?
what's the big deal?

well,when you understand the underlying religious philosophies of the the devos/prince family.you know that they are christian supremacists who wish to install an amercian government that adheres to "christian" laws and "christian" values.

yeah..you know that whole "sharia" law that has rightwingers pissing themselves? same thing,but this is with JESUS,so it has to be good,right?

and what this gabriel woman does is utter revisionist history to fit her own narrative and agenda.i am talking fucking blatant,but since most americans don't even know their OWN history,never mind the history of a religion they profess to love and worship,they just lap this womans bullshit up as if it were spoken from god's own lips.

because let us be frank,and clear.

christian right wingers literally piss themselves at the thought of muslims.and this woman hand feeds that fear.

this woman is a fucking disgrace.
9/11!
benghazi!

this woman feeds on your ignorance.
stop being a fucking tool to demagogues like this fucking twat waffle.