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HopelessN00b

 Discussion on answer by T.E.D.: Were …

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HopelessN00b
Jun 25, 2021 00:40
@JAB No, not at all. English is a common use language and phrases like a "a well regulated watch" (meaning a well-functioning watch) have fallen out of common usage. The word simply means something different now that it did a couple hundred years ago... which not all that uncommon. Once upon a time, "coffin" was a synonym for "box", but not anymore... now it means something different.
HopelessN00b
Jun 25, 2021 00:40
@T.E.D. I was referring to your statement: That's how you get "well-regulated" and an absolute right in the same sentence. They are referring to two different regulating entities. by pointing out that "well-regulated" wasn't actually referring to any regulating entity at all, because the definition of the term has changed entirely over the couple hundred years since then and now. But yeah, it doesn't matter. People (SCOTUS judges included) interpret things however the hell they want.
HopelessN00b
Jun 25, 2021 00:40
Worth noting as well that the phrase "well-regulated" had a different meaning in the 18th century than it does today. The common usage of the term at the time the constitution was written referred to functionality, not governmental oversight. At least as far as the original intent is concerned, there's nothing in the 2nd amendment about governmental oversight, or what we now call "regulation".
 

 Discussion on answer by ohwilleke: Wh…

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HopelessN00b
Sep 30, 2019 03:59
You can sue anyone for anything. +1. Probably my favorite example of that is the guy who sued Michael Jordan and Nike founder Phil Knight for 832 million dollars as a result of allegedly being repeatedly mistaken for the famous basketball star.
 

 Discussion on question by PI Ip: Can …

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HopelessN00b
Apr 2, 2019 20:19
Worth being aware that China is rather irate with Canada at the moment, and Canadian citizens have been caught in the middle, including one who was sentenced to death for what appear to be political reasons. I... would seriously reconsider entering Chinese jurisdiction as a Canadian citizen for the near future. Late on Monday, Canada’s foreign ministry updated its travel advisory for China to warn citizens about “the risk of arbitrary enforcement of local laws.”
 

 Discussion on question by Elliot Nels…

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HopelessN00b
Feb 7, 2019 06:49
@TheLoneMilkMan The implication of a "diversity hire" label is that the person got the job because of their race or gender (or so on), rather than their ability, and it applies to self-perception as well. (Michelle Obama mentioned the phenomenon about her experience at Harvard in her recent book - being unsure if she "deserved" her admission, or if she just got in because she was black.) It's a bad thing for all involved, as RichardU stated.
HopelessN00b
Feb 7, 2019 06:49
What (if anything) have you or your company tried to increase diversity in your recruiting process? (I see a problem statement, but the three options you presented don’t give me the impression you’ve actually done anything beyond hoping you’ll luck into good candidates who happen to be “diverse”.)
 

 Discussion on answer by Joe Strazzere…

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HopelessN00b
Jan 19, 2019 07:25
@PeterM probably tears of joy, from the description of this coworker.
 

 Discussion on answer by thursdaysgeek…

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HopelessN00b
Jan 17, 2019 16:42
@glglgl Sure, but when discussing etiquette and politeness/rudeness, you base things on what a reasonably well adjusted adult would do or feel. It doesn’t matter if a bigoted sexual harasser might take offense to being excluded, and flip side to that is that the 8 other well adjusted people (the OP and his 7 non-bigoted coworkers) have feelings as well, and I assert it would be rude to them to invite one poorly adjusted jackass to ruin their good time. The OP, who is throwing the party and the 7 other coworkers deserve more consideration than the 1 bigot.
HopelessN00b
Jan 17, 2019 16:42
@Echox I disagree. It would be rude to draw attention to it (announcing something like everyone who isn’t a bigoted, sexually harassing asshole is invited to my house warming party), but simply excluding an unpleasant coworker from your social activities isn’t rude... it’s normal. In adult life, outside of an elementary school classroom, there’s just no obligation to include everyone or no one in a social activity - invite the people you want to invite, and any “socially well adjusted” adult is going to get that and not have a problem with it.
 

 Discussion on question by CFL_Jeff: H…

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HopelessN00b
Jan 16, 2019 04:36
Are you limited to free words, or can you actually do anything of value for this guy?
 

 Discussion on question by Dave: How t…

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HopelessN00b
Dec 9, 2018 02:23
“Now I'm no expert, but that doesn't seem to be a smart move.” I suppose that depends on your career goals. Do you want to spend your career working on temp contracts at $15 an hour doing work that a small script could do, or do you want to get a permanent job making much more, writing small scripts?
 

 Discussion on question by Muze: Can w…

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HopelessN00b
Dec 2, 2018 19:31
“There is a biological difference between men and women.” Can you cite precedent? @gnasher729
 

 Discussion on question by LN6595: Why…

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HopelessN00b
Nov 12, 2018 12:04
Why would anyone discriminate based on any of the many, trivial differences we’ve historically discriminated against? Seems to me like we’ve never needed a reason before, and petty tribalism is something deeply engrained in our species.
 

 Discussion on answer by pela: Simple …

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HopelessN00b
Oct 16, 2018 08:22
All physicists of the world are in some evil plot against humanity ... well, that does match up with my memories of AP physics, so maybe it's not such an outlandish proposition.
 

 Discussion on question by Joeri Hendr…

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HopelessN00b
Oct 14, 2018 06:04
Spoiler alert, they actually do contribute to global warming, The significant effect has nothing to do with waste heat or heat absorption though, and everything to do with the significant amount of energy and resources used in their manufacture... especially with so many being manufactured in China, most of that is done with pretty dirty and in efficient coal power plants. I read a paper I can’t locate at the moment about 10 years ago estimating that each residential sized solar panel created results in 650 tones of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. Eep.
 

 Discussion on question by Hankrecords…

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HopelessN00b
Oct 12, 2018 15:56
Build a solid, 1 km cube of pure tungsten. No one’s getting inside there, or even denting it with midieval technology, and since it’s a solid metal cube, it’s also immune to siege warfare techniques. Problem solved.
 

 Discussion on question by Robusto: Wh…

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HopelessN00b
Sep 20, 2018 11:04
I’ve heard this usage in both the US (Midwest) and Canada (Western), from maybe the ‘90s on, so it’s definitely been around. Always made sense to me. If it means 100 cents, why why not 100 pounds or 100 thousands, too?
 

 Discussion on answer by Jared Smith: …

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HopelessN00b
Sep 7, 2018 21:13
@WoJ Like the rest of Europe, France has some pretty vicious religious conflicts in its past: The French Wars of Religion were a prolonged period of war and popular unrest between Roman Catholics and Huguenots (Reformed/Calvinist Protestants) in the Kingdom of France between 1562 and 1598. It is estimated that three million people perished in this period from violence, famine, or disease in what is considered the second deadliest religious war in European history (surpassed only by the Thirty Years' War, which took eight million lives).
 

 Discussion on question by cearl: Why …

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HopelessN00b
Aug 31, 2018 16:59
I dunno. A related question is “why do people spend so much and risk being old, destitute and unable to earn enough money to have a comfortable old age?”
 

 Discussion on question by Kepotx: I t…

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HopelessN00b
Aug 7, 2018 02:37
How are the people in this simulation expected to act? ...in that, the "normal" historical response to a bizarre looking person gibbering incomprehensibly in Western Europe probably involves the villagers busting out their torches and pitchforks and trying to kill the witch/exorcise the demon (or maybe "free slave"/drive off the interloper, going further back in time). Obviously, depending on the expected response to interacting with the locals, different strategies would be advisable.
 

 Discussion on answer by AndreiROM: Go…

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HopelessN00b
Jun 21, 2018 20:02
@jonh It sounds to me like you already know the answer from this employee. I didn't read her as manipulative, but rather upfront. When you bring up her tardiness and she says "my children come first", that sounds to me like her telling you that she'll choose her children over her job, which puts you in the position of needing to make a decision about whether you'd rather have her as an employee and handle the issues she brings, or replace her and handle the issues that brings. By all means, make sure you're clear with her about the gravity of her situation, but you can't have it both ways.
 

 Discussion on question by AndyD273: M…

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HopelessN00b
Jun 13, 2018 15:07
I think we need more information. How much does 120 miles of fence cost, and what options are available for industrial-scale frog procurement?
 

 Discussion on question by Cuntimus Pr…

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HopelessN00b
Jun 7, 2018 16:22
Why the question about Wehrmacht soldiers, specifically? It's not like they're a special case. There are documented examples of soldiers murdering civilians in just about every army and war there's ever been.
 

 Discussion on question by durantjm198…

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HopelessN00b
Apr 21, 2018 01:39
My current employer is asking me to design and implement a relatively advanced information security schema, and it makes me somewhat uncomfortable. Have you asked why they're asking you to do this, rather than an experienced specialist? (An all-too-common answer is that you are as much expert as they're willing to pay to do the job, although there are other possibilities that reflect better on them.)
 

 Discussion on question by LordScree: …

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HopelessN00b
Apr 15, 2018 03:50
What, if anything, have you tried? Makes a difference to the the answer.
 

 Discussion on answer by SoylentGray: …

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HopelessN00b
Apr 12, 2018 09:04
Unless you are going to conquer the land for the spoils, war is a loss. Even then... "spoils" rarely cover the costs, to be realistic.
 

 Discussion on question by dgrat: Why …

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HopelessN00b
Apr 12, 2018 07:22
TKK’s erroneous assertions and proclamations to the contrary is what I took issue with.
HopelessN00b
Apr 12, 2018 07:20
@userLTK that may be true (may not ... I personally think that saying Trump knows what he wants is generally giving him too much credit), but none of that is what I objected to. A no fly zone is not the same thing as a military intervention, a no fly zone has not been established in every recent US military intervention, and a military intervention does not necessarily mean a risk of a direct conflict with another third party.
HopelessN00b
Apr 11, 2018 19:15
@TKK is that why America has already established no-fly zones in Syria, or is there a possibility that you’re not nearly as right about all this as you think you are?
HopelessN00b
Apr 11, 2018 19:15
@TKK A no fly zone has been a component of every recent US intervention. No, that's not accurate. It would be accurate to state that airstrikes have been a component of every recent US intervention, though, and there's no reason to think airstrikes would risk a conflict with Russia. On the bright side, we've identified your problem. Randomly conflating broad words like "intervention" into specific implementations like "no fly zones" and "shooting down Russian aircraft". And now that we've identified the problem, we're halfway to the solution. You can work on that other half.
HopelessN00b
Apr 11, 2018 19:15
@TKK Only if someone conflates "military interventions" in "Syria" to "shooting down Russian aircraft." Sounds more like that conflation is the extraordinary claim in need of mockery... or proof, or whatever.
HopelessN00b
Apr 11, 2018 19:15
@TKK Actually, not different at all. All you have to assert that there's a significant risk of war is the opinion of some government official(s), aired publicly in a forum where we know that government officials go to publicly air lies and erroneous opinions. You can say that's "obvious" proof of your assumption until you're blue in the face, but it doesn't make it so. More importantly, that unprovable assumption is the foundation for this... whatever it is, masquerading as a question, from the OP. That's the point, not whether or not you can get people to bicker over any assumption you make.
HopelessN00b
Apr 11, 2018 19:15
@TKK I see. Is that like how Clapper testified before Congress that intelligence agencies don't do bulk data collection on domestic targets, and that fact is so obvious it would be up to critics to prove it... or is it different somehow? Or is it maybe more like the fact that Russia risked a war with NATO over annexing the Ukraine? (etc.)
HopelessN00b
Apr 11, 2018 19:15
Why do you assume the USA is risking a conflict with Russia over this? (You have a lot of other unfounded assumptions, but that seems like the biggest one to me).
 

 Discussion on answer by AquaticFire: …

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HopelessN00b
Apr 10, 2018 19:14
@gerrit That's a common critique of capitalism by people who don't appreciate how the term came to be. It was popularized by Karl Marx as a pejorative way to refer to free-market enterprise. There are countless people who built their fortunes from 0 capital - Dell, Gates, Zuckerberg, etc. started their businesses and went on to make billions from their dorm rooms or garages. All that to say, your definition of what capitalism is, is incorrect. It's making money in a free market system. If one of its greatest opponents hadn't popularized the term, it would be better referred to as "marketism".
 

 Discussion on question by SK19: How l…

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HopelessN00b
Mar 16, 2018 16:10
This is a philosophical/metaphysical inquiry, not a world-building question. It's also not a question, so much as an attempt to put a concept like "eternity" into terms that are familiar to humans, so that it can be better understood.
 

 Discussion on answer by Michael_B: Wh…

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HopelessN00b
Mar 1, 2018 18:34
@DrunkCynic Japanese internment, just for starters. Jim Crow, Trail of Tears, slavery in general, countless others too. The statement that the US hasn't exercised its authority in a totalitarian way is a dangerous fiction, that detracts from the (largely correct) thrust of this answer that the 2nd amendment was intended as a final check against government tyranny ("There are four boxes to be used in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Please use in that order.")
 

 Discussion on question by Hankrecords…

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HopelessN00b
Feb 22, 2018 17:12
@Hankrecords the historical record doesn’t bear that out. The big ideas like “queen and country” (so nationalism or species...ism, I guess) might get people to the recruiter’s office, but mean less and less the closer you get to combat, it turns out.
HopelessN00b
Feb 22, 2018 17:12
Why would a long lived race decide to wage war and fight others, knowing that (regardless of the outcome) they will be losing many more people than they will be able to give birth to in a long time? That description seems like it fits the human experience with war, too. (Modern wars especially, but even older wars set back population grow, economies, progress and so on by generations too.) Your implicit assumption here that people actually consider such things before going to war (or are generally rational, for that matter) is completely unfounded.
 

 Discussion on answer by Todd Wilcox: …

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HopelessN00b
Feb 22, 2018 16:33
@michi context matters. And... yeah, I'd totally use that (or something very similar) to mock an abusive moron to his face. Actually, I have.
 

 Discussion on question by Luke: Is us…

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HopelessN00b
Feb 20, 2018 20:08
So, since no one's come right out and said it yet, you're asking the wrong question. It's not "using internet proxies" that's the big deal, it's "deliberately bypassing IT/security restrictions". It's like you're going into court and defending yourself against a murder charge by saying there's no law against using a hammer. Maybe you're really that naive, but it sounds pretty disingenuous to me.
 

 Discussion on question by professor o…

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HopelessN00b
Feb 17, 2018 10:40
when what we really want is for the people on my team to go and speak to the tester who raised the bug so that they can see for themselves what the problem is. This seems kind of ass-backwards. Why do you want that? Wouldn't the better approach be for the testers to include sufficient details for the developers to reproduce the bug? (So far as that's possible, or reasonable... bugs are often unreproducible, and no amount of communication will fix that.) In general, why do you think this is a communication problem? Is it possibly something else?
 

 Discussion on question by kingledion:…

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HopelessN00b
Feb 7, 2018 16:45
I have it on good authority that Kronos, the god of time was born tomorrow. Is that recent enough?
 

 Discussion on answer by WS2: Cloth wo…

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HopelessN00b
Jan 28, 2018 23:15
"Sarong" is definitely not just British. It's the most common word (maybe even the word) used to refer to this type of garment in the US, too.
 

 Discussion on question by akaioi: Psy…

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HopelessN00b
Nov 24, 2017 21:32
Most land predators on Earth use their mouths to kill their prey. They do? Are you sure about that? Seems to me like most land-based predators prefer to use their limbs (or the claws on them) to disable their prey. Once the prey is disabled, using their mouth to tear chunks of meat out of it is more about eating behavior than predation.
 

 Discussion on answer by Anders: Is it…

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HopelessN00b
Nov 23, 2017 22:53
@gaazkam Maybe wait and see how you feel after you've walked a mile in those shoes before being so judgmental. Sure, maybe this one particular thing was important and deserved prompter action. But the 86 other things that blew up this guy's phone on vacation or after hours probably weren't. ...and either way, it's not fair to attack someone's character for avoiding work-related duties while he's on vacation. Which illustrates that the right way to contact a company about security isn't by reaching out to random employees, but alerting their security team.
HopelessN00b
Nov 23, 2017 22:53
your response shouldn't be "I'll get back to you after my vacation." Why ever not? The attitude that expects IT resources to make themselves available 24/7/365 without compensation is completely horrible in every way. If the company has set itself up such that the only person who can do this is on vacation, that's a structural problem it needs to address, rather than continuing on with a bus factor of 1 and relying on unreasonably burdening its technical staff.
 

 Discussion on question by akaioi: Far…

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HopelessN00b
Nov 9, 2017 17:48
@akaioi you don't need extremes scarcity to have a scramble for resources... competition works too. Like the humans and Neanderthals - more than one species in the same niche, competing for the same resources results in one of the species surviving, and the others dying out or leaving. If you really want them in the abyssal plain, it would make more sense to have them evolve somewhere else and be driven out by another species or natural disaster.
HopelessN00b
Nov 9, 2017 17:48
Worth considering that the abyssal plains are the deserts of the ocean, so probably not where you'd see intelligent life or civilization forming. I could see it getting there later, for trade routes or mining or what have you (as happened for humans on land), but intelligence takes a lot of energy, which is why it seems to be over-represented in areas of abundance in the real world. Once you've got it, you can expand to less hospitable areas and use it to survive there, but evolving it in such a barren place seems like a stretch.