I would have posted this in tech help, but they don't have an LC thread.

I recently ordered an open box Dell U2412M 24 inch from techforless.com, and they sent me a Dell P2412H. The main difference being the vertical pixels...I ordered 1200 and got 1080.

This was my first time with this site. I was suspicious that they sent me the same size and brand monitor...like they hoped I wouldn't notice. Is this possible?

CTH LC Thread Link

To answer your question, I think it is more likely just a mistake. I've had several mistakes from reputable websites, and usually in my favor.

Dell once sent me two laptops when I ordered one.

A reputable online AV store once sent me two subs when I only paid for one.

Both times they let me keep the extra units

Ahh you call your low content threads no content. Threw off my scanning eyes.

Thank you for easing my mind. Although dealings with Dell is different than some techforless that sells open box Dells.

I guess I just worry because I didn't do the proper research as to if techforless was reputable. I found them on Google Shopping...

Sidebar: In the salad days of online poker and 800x600 tables, I bought 2 Dell 2001FPs (then the official monitor of 2p2).

EIGHT years later, one of them stopped working. The other I use now. Pretty dope record in my case just saying.

The two 2007FPs that I bought a few months ago from Dell on Ebay each have >30,000 hours and run awesome. Dell monitors are great.

Now that my question is in the proper forum...I have a question for you all:

Have any of you had an ethical problem with what you were developing for your employer? The most obvious example would be adware, but could apply to any software that is clearly made to exploit the user and not enhance their experience. e.g. toolbars, ad injectors, dns hijackers, etc etc.

If so, how did you deal with it? Not give a ****. Look for other work. Cared...but money was too good. Quit immediately.

Lol nice that's nice. Totally forgot about curl yeah that should be a bit easier than good old telnet (though I will say that playing around with HTTP stuff in telnet was a pretty educational experience as well)

You do. One view of these ridiculous job ads is that companies put them out there with the intent not to fulfill them and thus can demand more H1-Bs be granted. I actually think its more of companies lacking a sense of urgency, a nice to have employee as opposed to a have to have employee. I read and here a lot about shortages but I wonder how acute the shortages really are.

I think this is probably true. It took us between 6-9 months to fill all of our positions not because we literally couldn't find anyone that would be able to help but because we were being pretty picky and wanted to pass a higher bar than just adds some value.

Edit: I think the H1B thing is just wrong though and there's definitely a legitimate shortage. If companies could fulfill all of their hiring needs without needing H1Bs they would.

Anyone have a recommendation for a good wireless keyboard and mouse?

Here's one:

I meant to put in the part about "part time to start (15 to 20 hours per week) with opportunity to advance to a full time position" in my mock ad, but at least there it is in writing.

It's not serious since I'm not looking, but I do like to look at these things and ponder where the local industry is heading. I have a feeling that Monster / Craigslist / etc. aren't really representative of what is actually trending. I do look at the marketing and writing positions and those are quite a bit worse... "programming background" is helpful of course.

As far as this ad goes: I'm totally mystified. They call themselves a web firm but the ad reads like they typed "What are some of the common, hot and upcoming, and preferred languages and development environment of a web programmer?" into Google and then copy/pasted whatever popped up off the front page. To add insult to injury, they ask this guru to work part time and don't even bother entering a salary. I thought the programming world was hot, where people with no programming background can get a job in 8 months. Interesting to note the diametric trends.

I've never been in this situation, but what you believe morally is not for me or anyone to judge. If you have ethical issues about what you do for work, then you probably shouldn't do it because you'll eventually start losing sleep or finding some justification for turning into someone you don't like.

I think it is much healthier if you are more morally loose than your employer. At least, hearing "no" for the ideas I used to present that were a bit edgy was fine for me. I did have some moral issues with some things they asked me to do and I didn't do it, but at least the ability to say "no" and not be disliked or risking your job over it is more healthy than you having no option to say it.

The point is that we all have our lines and that is a deeply personal decision. I like to use data to "enhance our understanding of our customer base and focus on offering our clients the best products via our customer service channels." Another person would call it the bull-**** it is and say I am using data to manipulate people by exploiting our sales history and salespeople, which is a perfectly reasonable opinion. Similarly, I would never sell sex before product. That is a line I won't cross into, but I don't begrudge those that do.

So I'm currently working through a problem set in C from Harvard's CS50 course, and have a question.

The pset has you working with credit cards. There are rules behind what makes a credit card number "valid"; to check, you must add every other digit in a larger number. The instructions have you start by getting a "longlong" data type.

I'm new to C. Can anyone point me in the right direction for working with individual digits of a longlong value?

This is the Luhn algorithm right? I haven't learned C but I did do it in JavaScript if you need any help with the logic.

http://cdn.cs50.net/2012/fall/psets/1/hacker1.pdf

^ Link to problem set specifications if anyone wanted to see them. The credit card question starts on page 9.

It is the same as working with individual digits in an int.

what does the fact that it's a longlong have to do with getting individual digits out of it?

This is begging to be in a class ccnumber . Then the details of how you store it aren't exposed.

object orientation is only sort of available in c. you can sort of fake it with structs and function pointers but that's not at all fair for a beginner.

No reason longlong changes it. I am new to C and wasn't sure if there was any built-in way to access digits. Explaining it helped clear my head, and I searched and found the %10 approach. Makes sense now

That book I linked to has a section on doing the same thing with UPC Codes. Nothing wrong with using other similar walk-thrus to enhance your understanding of the problem.

Yeah. Was on phone, forgot the language.

Cool I'll take a look. I've read the first couple chapters and it was great, but sometimes I can get lost / frustrated clicking through the pages. I may need to buy a physical copy.

Or maybe some sort of scribd page navigation is an idea for a script to code? I have yet to just write some code for personal use like that. Would that sort of script be possible, and if so how would you write it? (Interacting with a web page in some manner.)

I just use arrow up / down. There's also the page number box up top. I haven't had any issues navigating it, really, except that I generally use it on my VB and that makes it scroll and load a little slow.

Plus, that book is >$100 on Amazon. You could double that and buy a cheap netbook instead.

dave,

so i just found another article from my hero bret victor that i somehow missed, and, without mentioning C at all, it expresses my annoyance with C more eloquently than i did, and sums up everything bad about modern programming by showing what it should be. sort of a companion piece to his video inventing on principle. i think you'll enjoy it. oh and it has some hilarious sidebars as well....