and I was trying and failing to do a daily post. so I'll have at it again.
Watched: Bull Durham and The Razor's Edge, and The Daily Show with John Stewart
Read: Finished the second book in The Traveler series and started the third "The Golden City"
Played: Indoor soccer (with former coworkers) and at home with the wife played the DC comics deck building game (it's real fun)
The world... the main news is still Syria. I find this mildly disturbing. The war has been going on for years now, and the chemical weapons usage was a while ago as well. I hope that the theory that this conflict is largely a tool to distract from the NSA scandals is wrong, but it seems like its filled that slot from the news. But I digress.
After watching the Razor's edge I felt the need to check if I was missing something. I put it in the queue because Bill Murray is awesome and he apparently had some particular affection for the book ... the only reason he did ghostbusters was as a trade to get the studio to make this movie... but it seemed a little weak. There was something there, but it was a bit lost in translation. But, it wasnt bad... the reason I mentioned this is I went to wikipedia and the plot section of the page was blank, so I wrote one... and ... it felt weird, partially because I felt like I was missing something from the movie and wasn't sure how fit I was to write the plot description (mainly because if you dont really get the point how can you write a reasonable outline and hit the main points), but partially because it is a book, and Ive not read the book, and Im not entirely clear on the wiki guidelines for repeated content between related pages. I read a lot of wikipedia, and this isnt clear to me, maybe something is wrong.
Yay a rambling link which meets my general criteria for writing. There are almost certainly guides about how to write wiki entries and what content should go there. But is the average contributor expected to read through them all. What is the barrier to entry and how realistic is it? The reason I think of this as a rambly topic is that it relates directly to 1) the internet B] terms of service and 4: programming.
What percentage of people check to see if the ToS has changed on every website they visit since the last time they visited the website? How are these contracts legally enforceable with the recognition that not a single person actually does this?
The programming example always bothered me. After I learned my first language I started trying to learn others and was immediately frustrated by the basic level I was asked to start at, so I started trying to skip things, but the information was presented in such a way that it was 'impossible' to learn everything needed to know without covering all the rote details. RTFM as the saying goes is a tremendously useful thing. The problem is when your printer has a 100 page manual, and you use 40 programs or tools a day and then each tool is written in a different language how much information can you conceivably hold in your head such that you can carry on in a reasonable manner while getting all the details. So ... you stop getting the details, or you never commit anything to memory... I think the problem has been presented clearly enough to understand, but I'm not sure if everybody else has the same reference points or pushback that I do against the prevailing theory.
But in my life, this has been an overarching problem. Should I learn vim, or emacs? Or just stick with visual studio, or eclipse? Some of each? none of the above? some of column A all of column B? To know enough to make the informed decision you need to know more than you want to know, and at the end of the day there is a good chance you could just get by with a random selection and live with whatever the issues are.
A concrete example would be a selection of a bank account, how many hours should you spend investigating a savings account when the interest rate difference on a small savings account will be only a few dollars after a year or two.
Meh. Life is complicated. Approach it with your own methodology.
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