Hacker News: CamperBob

New comment by CamperBob in "Go is amazing, period."

CamperBob — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 00:46:09 +0000

Holy @#$@, people. Did I wake up in a naïveté vortex?

No, C doesn't define sizeof(int). It is implementation defined. But you don't change it once you implement it in a given development environment... not if you want people to create and maintain production code with your tools. You don't speculate that one day you might want to change sizeof(int). It's just not something you do if you want to be taken seriously.

Is anyone in this thread over the age of 16?

New comment by CamperBob in "Go is amazing, period."

CamperBob — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 17:36:01 +0000

You seem very ignorant

Yeah, that must be it.

New comment by CamperBob in "Go is amazing, period."

CamperBob — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:25:40 +0000

Fantastically dumb comment. FWIW int in C is also 32 bit on all mainstream 64 bit operating systems, and Go has int64.

ROFL. I challenge you to find documentation for the C language or any other language commonly used in production where they speculate that they might wake up one day and change sizeof(int) on an existing platform.

"Fantastically dumb," indeed.

New comment by CamperBob in "Go is amazing, period."

CamperBob — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 12:15:02 +0000

From that page: "At the moment, all implementations use 32-bit ints, an essentially arbitrary decision. However, we expect that int will be increased to 64 bits on 64-bit architectures in a future release of Go."

So, in other words, it's Amateur Hour. All righty, then.

/backs toward door, reaches for doorknob, still smiling and nodding

New comment by CamperBob in "Go is amazing, period."

CamperBob — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 05:42:30 +0000

I'm historically a braces-on-their-own-line guy, so getting used to the strict enforcement of the other style was a pain for me

Wait, what?

New comment by CamperBob in "Ever heard of "Low orbit server stations"?"

CamperBob — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 02:29:05 +0000

As their first business venture together, he and Jobs sold blue boxes.

So, the irony level that was reached when Jobs ordered the creation of a locked-down cell phone platform wrapped clear around 2^32-1 and back to zero.

New comment by CamperBob in "This American Life Retracting "Mr. Daisey & The Apple Factory""

CamperBob — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 01:59:36 +0000

If there is a famine in an area, and people are dying, is it OK to offer them food and water in exchange for slave labour? No pay, just food and water, and everybody that doesn't like can go and die of hunger. How does this deal sound?

My impression is that like most Westerners living today, you have no earthly idea what the term "slave labor" actually means, so we'll leave it at that. Peace.

New comment by CamperBob in "This American Life Retracting "Mr. Daisey & The Apple Factory""

CamperBob — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 03:32:57 +0000

My wife and I used to live in China, and we did traveling in both the high and the low places.

What was your impression of working conditions on the rural farms that are one of the most often-cited alternatives for many of the Foxconn workers?

New comment by CamperBob in "The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)"

CamperBob — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 04:26:50 +0000

That said, the various security clearances you'd have to pick up would virtually guarantee serious compensation in the private sector, if/when you chose to leave. There are a lot of positions that can't possibly be outsourced or filled with H1-B workers.

New comment by CamperBob in "The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)"

CamperBob — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 04:24:05 +0000

If they weren't using all that power to spy on US citizens, it might be a bit more palatable. You can make a case for being nosy when it comes to people who aren't covered by our own Constitutional guarantees, but when it comes to US citizens, due process is something I consider awfully important. (And no, "national security letters" are not what I consider due process.)

Obviously not everything the NSA does is a problem from a Constitutional standpoint, but still... the odds of being ordered to do something I would find grossly unethical are too high for me to want to work there.

Worse still, I could see myself modifying my own ethics over time for the sake of staying in my employer's good graces. How many people can honestly say they would never fall prey to that temptation?

A shame, too, because I'll bet they still have some of the coolest toys around, even in the present age of commoditized supercomputing.

New comment by CamperBob in "Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days"

CamperBob — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 01:00:17 +0000

have yet to see any of the loud-mouths spouting off about patents offer to do something like put together a fund to be used in pursuing changes to the laws. An, of course, none of them will write a check for a few million to fund it.

Jeff Bezos was talking a good game there for a while, but nothing ever came of it.

New comment by CamperBob in "A Patent Lie: How Yahoo Weaponized My Work"

CamperBob — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 03:21:45 +0000

Except someone else is likely to patent the same thing.

Not if the invention is published or otherwise disclosed in any other form. You don't have to claim ownership of an idea to keep someone else from patenting it.

New comment by CamperBob in "Yahoo Crosses The Line"

CamperBob — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 02:46:21 +0000

Corporations are like nations: they don't have friends, they have interests.

New comment by CamperBob in "Yahoo Crosses The Line"

CamperBob — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 02:44:38 +0000

With treble damages, that could turn into an expensive hobby.

New comment by CamperBob in "Yahoo Crosses The Line"

CamperBob — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 02:41:31 +0000

Things worth being made would be prefunded

Prefunding isn't going to get us flying cars, just faster horses.

New comment by CamperBob in "The Last Question - Isaac Asimov"

CamperBob — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:23:31 +0000

Translation: "We need to clean up our act in this cave before we try building grass huts. Otherwise we'll just make the same mistakes out there that we're making in here."

New comment by CamperBob in "The Last Question - Isaac Asimov"

CamperBob — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:21:50 +0000

True... and yet again, we're reminded that failing to give J. L. Borges the Nobel in literature after a lifetime spent anticipating this very phenomenon was every bit as silly as giving President Obama the Peace Prize during his first year in office.

New comment by CamperBob in "Middle-aged prodigies: Seven poster children over 40"

CamperBob — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:58:43 +0000

For definitions of "personal computer" that don't involve toggle switches and #47 pilot lamps, yes, they invented the personal computer.

New comment by CamperBob in "Kara Is Self-Aware"

CamperBob — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:45:47 +0000

What would've been even creepier:

"Fight/flight response, check. Reattach components. OK, this one's good to go."

New comment by CamperBob in "After Ratings Drop, Ford Reworks Unpopular Touch Screens"

CamperBob — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 05:03:24 +0000

Where, oh where is the Apple of this space?