a fish

Eddy Vluggen wrote:

Evolution is contrary to design. It is trial and error.

Could it have been designed to be trial and error? That's what some "AI" systems are designed to do.

Eddy Vluggen wrote:

There is no design.

Could you provide support for this statement?

But I would know. When I sign a contract I'm giving my word.

I tried it when I was laid off for several months about 2 years ago. I put some time into creating a profile as they suggested and then set aside time each day to review job listings and submit proposals. It didn't really pan out. The majority of listings equate to less then minimum wage here in the US. Several are those who want a complete clone of popular web sites, or some fantastic app they dreamed up, but only offer $100 and want it done in one week. Even for those listings that are reasonable, responses to my proposals were few, and those who did were people who seemed to be fishing for "partners" - in other words, they didn't actually have any funding. There was one opportunity that seemed promising and they offered me the work. Then I read the contract they wanted me to sign. Basically it said any project I have ever worked or will be working on belonged to them, regardless of whether it was contracted with them. There was a place to list all projects that I deemed "prior" work that would have excluded those. I explained to them that this was an unreasonable request. For one reason, there are projects I have worked on that I do not have ownership over and for confidentiality reasons I could not list these. Plus they were only looking for part-time to start, so this would have locked me out of other work. If those were not enough to keep me from signing, there was an actual statement that they "can exploit any and all of my work". I guess they were at least being honest about it. When I suggested we use the standard UpWork contract instead, their response was "All of our employees sign this." They reassured me that their lawyer insists this is perfectly fine, so I shouldn't worry. Well, I worried. I tried a couple of other freelance type sites as well, but I never had any luck with any of them either. Maybe if you are willing to work for very low returns, you might build up a reputation which could then lead to better paying gigs. I think they also have a "premium" membership. That might get you access to better listings. I only tried the free version. If you give it a try, I would be curious if much has changed.

A snarl, a sneer, a whip that stings... these are a few of my favorite things. One of the t-shirts someone wore in high school. I don't remember many of the things from then, but this sticks with me for some reason.

I realize this is an older post, but I had fallen behind a bit on my codeproject reading. It all sounds innocent enough, and at the start it was. But now things have progressed. I'll try to provide some possible cases to your points. Link clicks: Say I know you have been looking at reviews for a new tv. I can see you've been to review sites three times this past week. Now when you go to a site to order the tv. The selling site had purchased your click information. They now know you are interested in the tv and add 20% to the price when you visit. Is this legal? ethical? Now for a bit of big brother conspiracy - you regularly visit a site that supports a political view. The next election, the opposing party wins and manages to push through legislation that makes that view illegal. They gather the information of everyone who has visited sites that support that view. Tracking: There is also a device id that is now being sent. This is specific to the device. There are companies who use this id and claim they are more private and secure because they are not using a cookie. However, you can delete your cookies, but not the device id. (there are now ways to reset the id, but only after user complaints) You know those apps that "require" you to give them access to your location, though you don't know what for. They also send your location along with this device id. Companies buy this information and use it to essentially track the devices location. Your device location is now being tracked without ever visiting a site. Usually when you run one of these applications. Worse is that they take the location information, and can map that to your home address. Now they can lookup all device ids that connect at that location. They are now able to send you ads on your laptop for things you were looking at on your phone. They can even look at the device ids for your neighbors and assume that maybe you told them about your new tv. So they can send ads to your neighbors device about that tv. Then when they click to buy, it is now marked up 30%.

How do I go about that? The member does not have the Email option on their posts, only the Reply.

Right, which is why I don't normally visit the Lounge, and this is not the board I frequent. That would be the Insider News. I expect all manner of comments on the lounge.

No, this is my account. I'm definitely a lurker, but I'm a consistent lurker. I usually visit every weekday to get updates on tech news.

General attitude of the messages. Most member postings I have no problems with, but this individual's just always seems negative, often derogatory and of no use in advancing the commentary. I get that happens from time to time, but most members have something to contribute eventually. I visit daily to get my tech updates and I'm just getting annoyed by this one individual, so I thought if I had an option to ignore, that would be best. I've tried not reading comments from this member, but often I read the comment before reading who posted.

these aren't in the soapbox

Nope, not you...

Is there a way to automatically hide or block posts made by certain members? Or should I post to the bug/suggestion forum?

In personal code, I begin my object variable names with obj. This allows all the objects I instantiate to be easily located with autocomplete. Plus when I am scanning through my code, its easily recognized as a variable I created. I usually do not do this in shared code as this is one of those things will annoy some developers.

Eddy Vluggen wrote:

It is not a diary; your code will not be published to the larger public.

Perhaps not published by yourself - The Weird and The Wonderful[^]

the link is to the prior chatbot article.

"Edge" - It's the new buzzword for the device in front of you. "Edge" is to "Cloud" as "Client" is to "Server"...

Sorry, should have clarified that. I didn't mean not to show the existing questions/answers, but to not allow new questions being submitted to the author, if they no longer wish to receive them. This would still be allow a reference to the existing questions.

Though if they are a new programmer trying to learn, should they necessarily know its a deprecated framework? Is there a way to flag old articles as such so when a person wants to ask a question, this is explicitly explained to them beforehand? Or perhaps they want to understand the old framework merely to satisfy curiosity? Can older articles question submissions be turned off, or redirected to a general forum if the author no longer wishes to respond? I understand the frustration, and I'm guessing you posted this in the Lounge as more of a rant. I have not seen the question and following exchange, so maybe the questioner should have known better, but how can we be more encouraging for those who do not?

Sorry, not a pun as the career change thread before, but I'm thinking about redirecting my career and try to start teaching at a college level. I've been developing for a number of years and am thinking a change might be in order. Does anyone have experience with this type of shift? Good or bad?