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Only because they are so damn thick!
Coming soon: "Harry Potter and the Structurally Reinforced Bedside Table"!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I used to have a how to book, given to me by my father when I was a sprat, half a century ago. I loved reading it, things like how to make soap, concrete, how to build things and all sorts of traps and survival stuff.
I have since forgotten 95% of it and the book is now gone so I would probably die rather rapidly.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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Well, I have this book, but that might help me more in the future ... 
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I would go back 8 years and buy a sh*t load of Taylor Wimpey stock. It was 4p a share, now it is 180.
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I'd go back ~35 years and invent managed flash memory before Eli Harari et al did so. That would make me rich and famous enough for my tastes. 
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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Well, language would be a barrier, but I would be quite interested in going back to the time of Christ or Buddha and experiencing that part of history in first person.
Any knowledge I bring would really be quite useless, and therefore I would most likely be quite useless, and therefore die destitute from some nasty disease or starvation.
Marc
Latest Article - Create a Dockerized Python Fiddle Web App
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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Marc Clifton wrote: I would be quite interested in going back to the time of Christ or Buddha and experiencing that part of history in first person
Sweet. And as usual, the whole lot of us on CP would be looking forward to reading your article based on your first-hand experience with the matter.
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On a related thought:
Assume you went back to a point before they were using your current calendar. How would you work out what time period you'd landed in?
If you were lucky, and able to speak the language, you might be able to get someone to tell you about recent events, which might give you a clue. But given how slowly news would travel, and how little most people would have known about events beyond their own village, it's a long-shot.
And what if the events they thought were important at the time aren't the events that made it into the history books? Or if you've landed before recorded history (or at least the part of it you remember from school)?
There's rather a lot of history, and only a tiny window where an unprepared time traveller could reliably determine the period.
Putting Time In Perspective - UPDATED - Wait But Why[^]
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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V. wrote: You assume they speak English or a language you know, but it might be the form they used at that time.
So, if I went back in time in the Netherlands, I'd end up in Medievel England? Depending on the time-period, there would only be some grunts in a proto-language.
V. wrote: You assume tools and the likes are limited to that time, you didn't bring anything you can't carry with you (on foot)
Most raw materials will be on site available.
V. wrote: You assume you have to build a life there: earn money, marry, ... You cannot go back.
Building a life does not require marriage(s).
V. wrote: You have the knowledge you have today, but of course, you can learn there.
..yeah, sitting around the campfire as a caveman, huddled in a bearskin, explaining how OOP is far better than procedural programming.
V. wrote: Do indicate where in history you landed (ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, Roman empire, Middle Ages, ...)
The stone age.
First introducing hygiene (soap is easy to make), next stop iron-age (skipping bronze). Once done, the race would be on to develop bread and search for chickens (or similar tasting animals) - no other way to introduce KFC in the new post-stone-age.
Yeah, sounds great, until you realize you're on the wrong continent and there will not be any coffee around for another 13000 years. Imagine those mondays..
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: Imagine those mondays..
If you go far enough back in time, you end up before the seven day week became common. No more Mondays but no more weekends either.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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Sunday or monday would make no difference in the stone-age, but without coffee every day would be a monday-morning.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Walk around searching for a Starbucks.
It it more fun to ponder the opposite, which was roughly done in the movie Encino man.
Or dropping someone from the middle ages all alone in times square and watch from across the street. 
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Given the choice of when and where, I'd simply relive my childhood, knowing that those were the best days of my life, and through the years make better choices...of course, I'd have to make sure that I still found my wife, just earlier.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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Paradoxes being what they are, how do you know the advice you'd give your younger self would lead to "better" decisions?
Personally if I was still a kid and met some loon who claimed to be from the future, I'd probably do the exact opposite of whatever advice he'd want to give me...
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With my luck, I'd probably manage to get to the correct time, but due to some bad assumptions, somebody would forget to compensate for the movement of the Earth and I'd end up floating in space and suffocate within a few seconds.
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An alchemist turned Knights' Templar crusader who went AWOL in Anatolia and became a wandering Sufi darvesh, and poet.
«Differences between Big-Endians, who broke eggs at the larger end, and Little-Endians gave rise to six rebellions: one Emperor lost his life, another his crown. The Lilliputian religion says an egg should be broken on the convenient end, which is now interpreted by the Lilliputians as the smaller end. Big-Endians gained favor in Blefuscu.» J. Swift, 'Gulliver's Travels,' 1726CE
modified 14-Jul-17 14:29pm.
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From the news articles on the front page today:
Quote: One in three security professionals lack effective intelligence to detect and action cyber threats,
That's blunt. Ok, most lack effective intelligence for many things, often even getting from A to B is a major problem when they are digesting at the same time. Please be more polite and don't let them feel it. 
On second thought: Ol' Pointy Hair will never have a clue, even if it sneaks up on him and bites him into the office chair flattener.
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It sometimes seems as though 4 in about 5 developers lack effective intelligence to write code resembling a program.
Friggin' 1000 line functions are NOT acceptable in an object-oriented programming language (or probably any language for that matter).
Having a helper class, instantiated with DI, with one line of code to create some object through DI that could already have been created using DI is NOT proper design, it's just stupid and completely unnecessary.
Speaking of DI, MEF is not a DI library.
Also, a hash isn't some randomly generated key.
"Not doing software architecture because it's not for us" is not how it works.
Creating a unit test that only checks if an exception is thrown because some third party component is unavailable and cannot be mocked is not a good unit test.
Also, a unit test that tests whether int.Parse really parses a string to an int is not a good unit test (why the hell are you testing .NET!? If that test fails you've got bigger problems than that failing test!).
Unfortunately, I could go on for quite some time 
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Those that are simply dumb are surprisingly rare. There are 2.5 distinct types that you can meet at every corner:
1) The guys with more ego than brains. They think they are so smart that they don't have to learn anything and that the stuff they come up with automatically has to be the best solution. Period. No discussions. And no questions why nobody in the entire world does anything this way.
2a) The poor sobs who did not have enough ego to keep type 1 from beating them into submission. They know every 'rule', 'convention', 'law', 'dogma' or 'standard' type 1 has thrown at them and proudly recite them when they are thrown a bone. Like any good dog, they are trained not to think themselves or asking any questions.
2b) Very well trained types 2a who have memorized all rules and conventions may ascend to be the right hand to some type 1. They will do the beating into submission part for him, so that he needs not to get the hands dirty anymore.
In a profession that requires the ability to think and solve problems, we have countless people who avoid thinking at all cost.
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Is there the kind that just doesn't care and don't really like programming and haven't learned anything new in 20 years?
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I see, maybe I was wrong then and we're really just writing Sinclair BASIC.NET rather than C#
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Sander Rossel wrote: Unfortunately, I could go on for quite some time
You make some excellent points, and the most disturbing hidden point is that I imagine you are speaking from the experience of working with other developers. 
Marc
Latest Article - Create a Dockerized Python Fiddle Web App
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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Marc Clifton wrote: you are speaking from the experience of working with other developers
Young developers, old developers, developers with a formal education, certified developers, developers from multiple companies...
One of my favorites, without a doubt, is this gem:
string newHashCode =
Guid.NewGuid().ToString().Replace("-", "") +
Guid.NewGuid().ToString().Replace("-", "") +
Guid.NewGuid().ToString().Replace("-", "") +
Guid.NewGuid().ToString().Replace("-", "");WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND...!? 
This was written by a programmer with about 20 years of experience who probably makes more than I do. Go figure
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The problem is, we, including my girlfriend, my mom and my aunt (just for the record, those are 3 separate people!), are forced into the role of being a security professional. Install anti-virus/anti-malware. Check that the site is https. Check that icon (if your browser supports it) for the https site you're about to enter your credit card indicates something higher than a domain level cert. Keep your anti-virus/malware up to date. Check your email before clicking on a link, who's it from, where does the link take you, report email spam. Report Skype invites from beautiful women that claim to know me, some of which even go so far as to say something nice about a blog post or an article (I kid you not.)
Because, ironically, those who know absolutely nothing about cyber threats cannot trust the security professionals that supposedly do.
Marc
Latest Article - Create a Dockerized Python Fiddle Web App
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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