Compared to Linux (xwindows) making GUI applications with.NET and Visual Studio is a lot easier. I have seen projects with the Raspberry pi such as smart mirrors or low end kiosks. Which being able to make GUI applications, or that hook up to Microsoft type services such as Active Directory or even SQL server. Just that much easier to accomplish.
Having said that, doing this in Linux isn't too much more difficult, but if you are primarily a Microsoft Developer, thinking Linux Like is a learning curve you may not want to deal with.
That is more of a case of Administration then Religion. For nearly all religions their key marketing point is that they are more moral, then the other religion. This fact that "we are better then that", in essence puts priests and ministers into high-power jobs. Power, Status with a high community standing, gives them the ability to often get away with it, without much outrage. And when it comes down to who we should believe a Priest or a troubled teenager, the victim would be punished by the community. Now this type of stuff would happen in every religion, schools, youth services... Now what the Administration mistake that has been happening, was the fact they wouldn't fire, prosecute, or put them in a spot where they are no longer empowered to perform such acts, when suspicions arise. Mostly because the Administration wasn't concerned about the religion or the people, but the PR Press for the Organization. So they tried to shove the sins from their members under the table, hoping they would just stop. This actually creates a feedback loop, because now they know they can get away with it, and do it again.
I am sure some people do, they just want to show off their fancy new phones, to make them seem special. Much like how some people drive fancy cars. However the difference between a Phone and a Car is the degree of price from Premium Luxary and low end. We still have the same factors as with smart phones 10x budget cars, 2x mid range, 1 for premium. But the issue is how much paying for the cost will affect someones life.
Paying thousands per month for car, to have a premium car, will mean that a middle class or lower middle class person will need to make long term sacrifices. A premium phone vs a budget phone, is just short term sacrifices.
Well not all Churches are so focused on Satan. There are a number of moderate churches out there. Like it or not America is Amazons biggest customer base, and is also a very religious country. I myself wouldn't want Alexa to read the sermon, but make it cheap and easy for the local churches to record them onto Amazon, and have Alexa rebroadcast it on demand, I think would be a good use of the technology.
From listening to some of the religious people (poor) arguments about atheism. It makes me worry, that the only thing stopping some religion people from being mass murders is the fact they have religion. So having Alexa, broadcast these sermons, to keep such people morals aligned, it probably a net positive.
It is more like insurance. In some ways insurance is like gambling, except for the fact the reward for "winning" a settlement, is often offset from the damage that has occurred, and it is there as way to protect yourself from falling too far.
Now having insurance on a sports team ticket seems rather silly, because sure you can get a refund, but also watching your sports team play is still a leisure activity, and you shouldn't be paying so much for a ticket that if you didn't get an optimal experience, that you would hurt yourself too much financially.
Heck perhaps movie companies can make a few extra bucks by offering insurance on the Movie tickets, if they walk out of the movie in 1/2 hour they get a full refund, charge an extra $3 a ticket for it.
Here is the problem. Premium phones can cost about $1,000 a budget phone costs about $100
The problem is even though a premium cost about twice as much as a mid-ranges and ten times as much as a budget. The fact that for many peoples lives, these phones are integrated into their lives, they are going to splurge on the premium, because they can afford it, 1k may be an expensive purchase, but for the use out of it, it may be worth it to them.
The people who don't have phones integrated into their live would spring for the budget model. Calls, Text, Emails, and Simple browsing, is more then enough for their use in 2019.
Mid-Range is tough, because it would be mostly for the people who just need a more advanced phone for work, but would be happy with a budget phone. Because their life style doesn't demand a premium phone, however there are practical reasons, where a budget just will not do.
There were phones that were more expandable. Like the Moto Z. However they never really caught on. Wireless technology, availability and speed, have skyrocketed lately, so getting such expansion modules, like your SD card slot soon become a wasted investment.
Now as a tech guy, I would love to be able to tweak my phone, take a safe backup of the factory condition. Mess with my device until it is broke and restore back. But in reality that isn't going to happen, unless we want to live like in the 1990's where every phone is getting infected with viruses and spyware. Sure google is spying on us. But at least we have some degree of trust they will not blackmail us with the data they collect.
I expect he sees the nation from the California perspective. (like we see in Hollywood) The Standard Good American life, California. (Full House) The tough inner city life style with oddly very large appartments, New York City (Friends/Sienfield) Hillbillies, and struggling lower middle class. The rest of America. (Married with Children/Rosane)
Either that his post was meant to be sarcastic to try to show how Liberal California is, because Fox News is based in New York City, so California is the whipping boy of the LiBeRaL Agenda.
H-1B population, they will go where the jobs are. If major tech companies move to some small rural town in Arkansas, they will move there. Being on a Visa, usually means the Visa holder isn't as settled as citizen are so getting up and moving to where ever the work is, is nearly their lifestyle.
Housing costs is a MAJOR issue in California, such tight control isn't needed in states where you can buy a home with over 2000sq/ft and and acre of land pay less then two thousand dollars a month on a normal 30 year mortgage.
By what other amenities are you talking about? How does this compared to other well populated states, New York, New England states, New Jersey.... New York State, actually has a stricter gun safety law.
California isn't bad, but tech companies are not stuck there, and if California makes life too difficult or unprofitable, companies can move out without major consequences.
This one will be incompatible with Watson. Not that I have a beef with IBM per say. But just because they say it will work on any cloud, just pings my marketing BS meter. Because it rely meant to say it will now work the the Major Cloud services. Not any one that can come up.
No, I actually don't. I see you had replace Apple with Microsoft. I guess you are expecting the Apple Fanboy to be all Hating on Microsoft... For the same occurrences.
Unlike Microsoft, Apple has always had a closed ecosystem for the iOS platform. When you buy an iOS device you know this, and a lot of people delightfully take this trade-off so they are more comfortable that their app that they download isn't going to cause undue harm to their device, their information or their finance.
As a tech guy, I would love my Phone, to be able to install any App I want. But if I want to give my phone to Wife, Kids, or other family member who doesn't have the same degree of tech skills, they will be walking around with a virus spreading device.
Would I want this on my PC... No I want to run any app I get my hand on, but I will also not be sharing my PC like my phone, plus the PC has more power for multiple users and profiles, to help manage multiple users.
I would say that it is the airlines problem to be sued not the passenger. Now, I don't approve of this guys behavior, these tricks to cheat the system, normally always end up making us pay more. However, why did the plane wait so long for the passenger to arrive? It seems to me if you miss your flight, then you miss your flight. Then you will need to get a new ticket, (the company may give you one if it was from conditions out of your control) and be on your way on the next flight. Then there is the complex pricing model, if a direct flight is more expensive, then a layover stop, (with a direct flight) then there is a problem with your pricing model. The more complex pricing you make, the more apt some one will find a loophole and trick it. While I think this guy was a jerk for cheating the system, the airline shouldn't had double down and sit and waited for him to arrive.
We all love to laugh at the farming industry, we picture rednecks with their pickup trucks, and their guns, just doing heavy labor. However the farming industry is rather high tech, there is a lot more technology that goes on then a lot of silicon valley companies. A lot of the Big Data, AI, Automation and Robotics technology that we are seeing going out to the normal public, have often been implemented in farms for years.
Being that these places need a lot of land to operate, they are often in remote locations, so tools like this article states, is a useful too to farmers to help cordenate their livestock with others.
It isn't about being owed anything, it is just an impractical use of consultants, to tread them a second hand employees, while they work on important jobs as well.
You seem to be in some sort of idealistic world. Real life is makes this more complex.
Question: Why are we doing "Impossible, Career-ending, high-risk" projects? Answer: Because they are highly lucrative. Otherwise, there's no point.
Not necessarily highly lucrative, often it is just a whim of some executive at the time. The idea itself may be stupid, and all the department managers have found a way to say we cannot do it. So they bring in a contractor to do the job, because no one else is willing to touch it with a 100ft pool.
Question: How do you take the risk out of a project? Answer: By planning it out. You do the R&D, Proof of Concept Studies, Project Scope and Decomposition review, and Market analysis on the hard pieces first. Employee's have no issue doing proof of concept work on a side project if you need specialist work done, and if not, you hire a real hacker who can polymorph themselves into whatevery ou need. There is no end of proof of concept work.
I have taken MBA Classes that tell me that is what we should do... However I never worked at a company willing to put up the money for R&D and proof of concept. The company would like to fine someone specialized in such area, then have their staff tinkering with a new concept. Because tinkering isn't profitable. Now granted the Contractor may not be any more specialized, but at least his consulting firm will sell them as such. Getting this real hacker, is usually tough to find one professional enough to work with the company, they tend to be too much of a loose cannon (they are exceptions).
Question: Why are you using contracting staff on highly lucrative difficult projects? Answer: Who has the employee under a NDA and Non-Compete? If sure as heck won't be you. It'll be the contracting firm. Who will sell your employee's to the highest bidder, and that will be your competition.
Working as a contractor, we are there to take the blame for failure. While most of the staff I have worked with work very hard to prevent failure, sometimes we are just given a dud job, that there isn't a good way to make it a success, because it was a stupid idea. For example (luckily we actually refused such a product) there was a customer wanted us to write a program that scans their hard drive of scanned legal documents, try to extract the date of the document from OCR, then decide if it is good to delete them or not. The potential customer, figured this would save him time in his job, and didn't realize the difference between searching for an OCR data, vs having automatic rule based on its search. Especially deleting legal documents. As a consultant we are use to take the blame, but the company wasn't big enough to take the blame of such a cluster idea of a project, where having groups of lawyers suing us, just didn't make it possible.
Not nefarious but still kinda dodgy. Apple like the idea that their employees are working in collaboration in this big building. While a lot of the work that gets done happens in a run down building.
That was actually a long awaited product. If Apple was able to get that made, it would had been the first mass produced 64bit laptop. But it seems the Power PC development started to seriously lag behind Intel. So I would expect the other Black Experiment was the the OS X for Intel Platform. Which seemed to be something that Apple was keeping on the back burner just in case they needed to switch CPU's which they did.
Having worked as a consultant and contractor myself (not for Apple). It always bugs me how I was treated like a second hand employee. Yes, I got paid more then the normal employees, but that is to cover the risk of being dropped at any time, and for me to find new business.
Contractors are often hired to work on "Career ending" projects, where a failure would cost your job and reputation (However working via a consulting firm, the individual gets isolated, as the firm takes the blame, and then just gets their licensed renew after the problem settles down). These jobs are often very complex, where a lot of things can go wrong.
That all said, there is often animosity towards the contractors. Which makes working cross departments difficult in general difficult, and often being blocked from accessing the companies soft employee benefits, such as the cafeteria, or the gym, in essence all these features designed to help improve productivity and moral. Means the contractors now are further hindered because they can access features to help improve their productivity and moral. Because being charged $250 an hour, you don't want to be caught at the Ping-Pong table, getting some exercise while you are thinking about how to solve the next problem.
Hearing that Apple Maps is primarily done by the contractors, I can see why it is a mess, not because of the lack of skill from these contractors, but because of the conditions they are working in. Granted what we hear isn't bad, but it is isolated from the Apple culture, so the Apple (lack of a better term) soul isn't there.
Hey this is Slashot! We want to bask in schadenfreude. Because we were too conservative with out money to invest it, so are in joy validating out plan worked out. Much like how Zoiberg rejoiced in his sandwich heavy portfolio.
Gambling addiction is a serious problem. What makes it worse, is when it is classified as investing. Real good financial advisers advise to only invest as much as you can safely loose, many will just say you are not investing enough. And make you feel like you are a sub human, because by 40 you do not have a million dollars in your investments.
Cryto Currency is one of those get rich quick schemes, which is a bastardization on how capitalism should be working.
The way investment suppose to work. We have a company that produces X or will want to produce X, but they don't have enough capital to continue on and expand. They sell you shares to the company, now based on their business plan and general forecast you can determine if X is a safe bet or not. Now if X is a hit, other people will want in, and raise the price of the stock, which you then can sell and make a profit off your investment, if X fails, then you can sell the stock for less and loose out, but perhaps prevent from loosing more.
The problem that seems to happen is there are too many companies that no longer make product X, they just make money off of the valuation. We no longer invest in Apple, because Apple is trying to make the next big thing, we invest in Apple because its stock has historically risen. Crypto-Currency is trying to make money of the rarity of that unique number, that matches an algorithm. It isn't tied to anything, and without any controls their prices rise and fall sharply. Which means if such a company goes out of business, people will be at loss without having anything real to help protect themselves.
For most healthy humans, they know how to draw the line between imagination and reality. In a video game there is no lasting life consequence for your action, if you die, then you start the game over again or just respawn. In real life we don't see Gen Xers jumping off buildings because of all the platform games they played. Because we know it isn't real, and much of the violence in video games, is often played to see what will happen, because there are no consequences, and there is always a reset switch ready for any major mistake. I can play a game where I wipe out woodland creatures, however in real life I feel bad for having to setup a kill trap for that mouse which is chewing threw the back seat in my car (After numerous human traps have failed), heck I would normally just take a spider and put it outside vs just killing it.
Now if Grand Theft Auto was setup where you had to learn the life story of every person you have ran over, spend the rest of the game with a non-save, non-restart and non-quit state. Learning about the harm you have done, spending years of game time in jail. For those who played the game would be playing it like in real life.
Video games give us an outlet for a what if, nothing mattered, we are able to take risks in games that we wouldn't in real life. Heck just running down a mountain in Fallout isn't something I would do in real life, because a simulated fall where you loose 100HP vs a real fall where you may survive, but you will be hurting for much longer.
How many people actually have driven themselves into danger because they followed the GPS over their common sense.
Now I can see accidents because someone was staring at the GPS Screen for too long and not on the road, but ignoring do not enter signs, or going off road confident in the GPS map, that you are willing to drive off a cliff, doesn't seem likely. And besides some bad Sci-Fi stories, I havn't heard much about that. I have heard stories of people getting lost on a long driveway thinking it was a road (They use to do that with paper maps too) or getting lost, because the GPS map didn't give them the last mile road to get to that location. But not driving off the cliff because the GPS told them so.
Lets put the Science back into Computer Science. A good portion of Science is doing things that may not necessarily make a good product, but advancements and progress happen from learning from the action of doing this.
I have written hundreds of programs, that I play with, end delete, including small OS's, different data collection and storage methods, opening up a new language and see what I can do with it. Nothing that can become a product to sell, as there are already built applications which do the same job, or it just isn't fully baked.
But what that does is keep my mind sharp, and agile to the changing environment. We are going to dump this.NET stuff and switch to NodeJS. Thats fine, because I have played with NodeJS and have a good idea on what I am doing. We stopped dealing with SOAP and going towards Restful Web Services, that is good too, as I was already experimenting with them and know how to handle them.
This guy went a little further, and basically made a product out of it, which I expect he had learned a lot of it, and given an odd task he would probably be able to jump onto it.
Have we as Capitalist Americans become so jaded on the Economy that learning for the sense of learning is a foreign concepts. Are all our home improvements designed to increase the value of our home, not something we would like to have ourselves. Do all our hobbies need to have a measurable benefit to our lives?
There is always that probability, however the bones shown seem rather smooth diseased bone normally is more rough. However, I don't see having bones on your neck as a great evolutionary advantage. Using them for defensive purposes would mean what doesn't impail, will either break (which is bad) or apply a leaver action on the vertebrate and twist the next, possibly severing the spinal cord.
Perhaps Sauropods have much bulkier necks then what is considered as plausible.
Slashdot Mirror
However most of Twitter is sharing the details of someone else's live with complete strangers.
Compared to Linux (xwindows) making GUI applications with .NET and Visual Studio is a lot easier. I have seen projects with the Raspberry pi such as smart mirrors or low end kiosks. Which being able to make GUI applications, or that hook up to Microsoft type services such as Active Directory or even SQL server. Just that much easier to accomplish.
Having said that, doing this in Linux isn't too much more difficult, but if you are primarily a Microsoft Developer, thinking Linux Like is a learning curve you may not want to deal with.
That is more of a case of Administration then Religion.
For nearly all religions their key marketing point is that they are more moral, then the other religion.
This fact that "we are better then that", in essence puts priests and ministers into high-power jobs. Power, Status with a high community standing, gives them the ability to often get away with it, without much outrage. And when it comes down to who we should believe a Priest or a troubled teenager, the victim would be punished by the community.
Now this type of stuff would happen in every religion, schools, youth services...
Now what the Administration mistake that has been happening, was the fact they wouldn't fire, prosecute, or put them in a spot where they are no longer empowered to perform such acts, when suspicions arise. Mostly because the Administration wasn't concerned about the religion or the people, but the PR Press for the Organization. So they tried to shove the sins from their members under the table, hoping they would just stop.
This actually creates a feedback loop, because now they know they can get away with it, and do it again.
I am sure some people do, they just want to show off their fancy new phones, to make them seem special. Much like how some people drive fancy cars.
However the difference between a Phone and a Car is the degree of price from Premium Luxary and low end.
We still have the same factors as with smart phones 10x budget cars, 2x mid range, 1 for premium. But the issue is how much paying for the cost will affect someones life.
Paying thousands per month for car, to have a premium car, will mean that a middle class or lower middle class person will need to make long term sacrifices.
A premium phone vs a budget phone, is just short term sacrifices.
Well not all Churches are so focused on Satan. There are a number of moderate churches out there. Like it or not America is Amazons biggest customer base, and is also a very religious country.
I myself wouldn't want Alexa to read the sermon, but make it cheap and easy for the local churches to record them onto Amazon, and have Alexa rebroadcast it on demand, I think would be a good use of the technology.
From listening to some of the religious people (poor) arguments about atheism. It makes me worry, that the only thing stopping some religion people from being mass murders is the fact they have religion. So having Alexa, broadcast these sermons, to keep such people morals aligned, it probably a net positive.
It is more like insurance. In some ways insurance is like gambling, except for the fact the reward for "winning" a settlement, is often offset from the damage that has occurred, and it is there as way to protect yourself from falling too far.
Now having insurance on a sports team ticket seems rather silly, because sure you can get a refund, but also watching your sports team play is still a leisure activity, and you shouldn't be paying so much for a ticket that if you didn't get an optimal experience, that you would hurt yourself too much financially.
Heck perhaps movie companies can make a few extra bucks by offering insurance on the Movie tickets, if they walk out of the movie in 1/2 hour they get a full refund, charge an extra $3 a ticket for it.
Here is the problem.
Premium phones can cost about $1,000
a budget phone costs about $100
The problem is even though a premium cost about twice as much as a mid-ranges and ten times as much as a budget. The fact that for many peoples lives, these phones are integrated into their lives, they are going to splurge on the premium, because they can afford it, 1k may be an expensive purchase, but for the use out of it, it may be worth it to them.
The people who don't have phones integrated into their live would spring for the budget model. Calls, Text, Emails, and Simple browsing, is more then enough for their use in 2019.
Mid-Range is tough, because it would be mostly for the people who just need a more advanced phone for work, but would be happy with a budget phone. Because their life style doesn't demand a premium phone, however there are practical reasons, where a budget just will not do.
There were phones that were more expandable. Like the Moto Z. However they never really caught on. Wireless technology, availability and speed, have skyrocketed lately, so getting such expansion modules, like your SD card slot soon become a wasted investment.
Now as a tech guy, I would love to be able to tweak my phone, take a safe backup of the factory condition. Mess with my device until it is broke and restore back. But in reality that isn't going to happen, unless we want to live like in the 1990's where every phone is getting infected with viruses and spyware. Sure google is spying on us. But at least we have some degree of trust they will not blackmail us with the data they collect.
I expect he sees the nation from the California perspective. (like we see in Hollywood)
The Standard Good American life, California. (Full House)
The tough inner city life style with oddly very large appartments, New York City (Friends/Sienfield)
Hillbillies, and struggling lower middle class. The rest of America. (Married with Children/Rosane)
Either that his post was meant to be sarcastic to try to show how Liberal California is, because Fox News is based in New York City, so California is the whipping boy of the LiBeRaL Agenda.
I don't follow your logic:
H-1B population, they will go where the jobs are. If major tech companies move to some small rural town in Arkansas, they will move there. Being on a Visa, usually means the Visa holder isn't as settled as citizen are so getting up and moving to where ever the work is, is nearly their lifestyle.
Housing costs is a MAJOR issue in California, such tight control isn't needed in states where you can buy a home with over 2000sq/ft and and acre of land pay less then two thousand dollars a month on a normal 30 year mortgage.
By what other amenities are you talking about? How does this compared to other well populated states, New York, New England states, New Jersey....
New York State, actually has a stricter gun safety law.
California isn't bad, but tech companies are not stuck there, and if California makes life too difficult or unprofitable, companies can move out without major consequences.
This one will be incompatible with Watson. Not that I have a beef with IBM per say. But just because they say it will work on any cloud, just pings my marketing BS meter. Because it rely meant to say it will now work the the Major Cloud services. Not any one that can come up.
No, I actually don't. I see you had replace Apple with Microsoft. I guess you are expecting the Apple Fanboy to be all Hating on Microsoft... For the same occurrences.
Unlike Microsoft, Apple has always had a closed ecosystem for the iOS platform. When you buy an iOS device you know this, and a lot of people delightfully take this trade-off so they are more comfortable that their app that they download isn't going to cause undue harm to their device, their information or their finance.
As a tech guy, I would love my Phone, to be able to install any App I want. But if I want to give my phone to Wife, Kids, or other family member who doesn't have the same degree of tech skills, they will be walking around with a virus spreading device.
Would I want this on my PC... No I want to run any app I get my hand on, but I will also not be sharing my PC like my phone, plus the PC has more power for multiple users and profiles, to help manage multiple users.
I would say that it is the airlines problem to be sued not the passenger.
Now, I don't approve of this guys behavior, these tricks to cheat the system, normally always end up making us pay more. However, why did the plane wait so long for the passenger to arrive? It seems to me if you miss your flight, then you miss your flight. Then you will need to get a new ticket, (the company may give you one if it was from conditions out of your control) and be on your way on the next flight. Then there is the complex pricing model, if a direct flight is more expensive, then a layover stop, (with a direct flight) then there is a problem with your pricing model. The more complex pricing you make, the more apt some one will find a loophole and trick it.
While I think this guy was a jerk for cheating the system, the airline shouldn't had double down and sit and waited for him to arrive.
We all love to laugh at the farming industry, we picture rednecks with their pickup trucks, and their guns, just doing heavy labor.
However the farming industry is rather high tech, there is a lot more technology that goes on then a lot of silicon valley companies.
A lot of the Big Data, AI, Automation and Robotics technology that we are seeing going out to the normal public, have often been implemented in farms for years.
Being that these places need a lot of land to operate, they are often in remote locations, so tools like this article states, is a useful too to farmers to help cordenate their livestock with others.
It isn't about being owed anything, it is just an impractical use of consultants, to tread them a second hand employees, while they work on important jobs as well.
You seem to be in some sort of idealistic world. Real life is makes this more complex.
Question: Why are we doing "Impossible, Career-ending, high-risk" projects?
Answer: Because they are highly lucrative. Otherwise, there's no point.
Not necessarily highly lucrative, often it is just a whim of some executive at the time. The idea itself may be stupid, and all the department managers have found a way to say we cannot do it. So they bring in a contractor to do the job, because no one else is willing to touch it with a 100ft pool.
Question: How do you take the risk out of a project?
Answer: By planning it out. You do the R&D, Proof of Concept Studies, Project Scope and Decomposition review, and Market analysis on the hard pieces first. Employee's have no issue doing proof of concept work on a side project if you need specialist work done, and if not, you hire a real hacker who can polymorph themselves into whatevery ou need. There is no end of proof of concept work.
I have taken MBA Classes that tell me that is what we should do... However I never worked at a company willing to put up the money for R&D and proof of concept. The company would like to fine someone specialized in such area, then have their staff tinkering with a new concept. Because tinkering isn't profitable. Now granted the Contractor may not be any more specialized, but at least his consulting firm will sell them as such. Getting this real hacker, is usually tough to find one professional enough to work with the company, they tend to be too much of a loose cannon (they are exceptions).
Question: Why are you using contracting staff on highly lucrative difficult projects?
Answer: Who has the employee under a NDA and Non-Compete? If sure as heck won't be you. It'll be the contracting firm. Who will sell your employee's to the highest bidder, and that will be your competition.
Working as a contractor, we are there to take the blame for failure. While most of the staff I have worked with work very hard to prevent failure, sometimes we are just given a dud job, that there isn't a good way to make it a success, because it was a stupid idea. For example (luckily we actually refused such a product) there was a customer wanted us to write a program that scans their hard drive of scanned legal documents, try to extract the date of the document from OCR, then decide if it is good to delete them or not.
The potential customer, figured this would save him time in his job, and didn't realize the difference between searching for an OCR data, vs having automatic rule based on its search. Especially deleting legal documents. As a consultant we are use to take the blame, but the company wasn't big enough to take the blame of such a cluster idea of a project, where having groups of lawyers suing us, just didn't make it possible.
Not nefarious but still kinda dodgy. Apple like the idea that their employees are working in collaboration in this big building. While a lot of the work that gets done happens in a run down building.
That was actually a long awaited product. If Apple was able to get that made, it would had been the first mass produced 64bit laptop. But it seems the Power PC development started to seriously lag behind Intel. So I would expect the other Black Experiment was the the OS X for Intel Platform. Which seemed to be something that Apple was keeping on the back burner just in case they needed to switch CPU's which they did.
Having worked as a consultant and contractor myself (not for Apple). It always bugs me how I was treated like a second hand employee. Yes, I got paid more then the normal employees, but that is to cover the risk of being dropped at any time, and for me to find new business.
Contractors are often hired to work on "Career ending" projects, where a failure would cost your job and reputation (However working via a consulting firm, the individual gets isolated, as the firm takes the blame, and then just gets their licensed renew after the problem settles down). These jobs are often very complex, where a lot of things can go wrong.
That all said, there is often animosity towards the contractors. Which makes working cross departments difficult in general difficult, and often being blocked from accessing the companies soft employee benefits, such as the cafeteria, or the gym, in essence all these features designed to help improve productivity and moral. Means the contractors now are further hindered because they can access features to help improve their productivity and moral. Because being charged $250 an hour, you don't want to be caught at the Ping-Pong table, getting some exercise while you are thinking about how to solve the next problem.
Hearing that Apple Maps is primarily done by the contractors, I can see why it is a mess, not because of the lack of skill from these contractors, but because of the conditions they are working in. Granted what we hear isn't bad, but it is isolated from the Apple culture, so the Apple (lack of a better term) soul isn't there.
Hey this is Slashot! We want to bask in schadenfreude. Because we were too conservative with out money to invest it, so are in joy validating out plan worked out.
Much like how Zoiberg rejoiced in his sandwich heavy portfolio.
Gambling addiction is a serious problem. What makes it worse, is when it is classified as investing. Real good financial advisers advise to only invest as much as you can safely loose, many will just say you are not investing enough. And make you feel like you are a sub human, because by 40 you do not have a million dollars in your investments.
Cryto Currency is one of those get rich quick schemes, which is a bastardization on how capitalism should be working.
The way investment suppose to work.
We have a company that produces X or will want to produce X, but they don't have enough capital to continue on and expand.
They sell you shares to the company, now based on their business plan and general forecast you can determine if X is a safe bet or not. Now if X is a hit, other people will want in, and raise the price of the stock, which you then can sell and make a profit off your investment, if X fails, then you can sell the stock for less and loose out, but perhaps prevent from loosing more.
The problem that seems to happen is there are too many companies that no longer make product X, they just make money off of the valuation. We no longer invest in Apple, because Apple is trying to make the next big thing, we invest in Apple because its stock has historically risen. Crypto-Currency is trying to make money of the rarity of that unique number, that matches an algorithm. It isn't tied to anything, and without any controls their prices rise and fall sharply. Which means if such a company goes out of business, people will be at loss without having anything real to help protect themselves.
For most healthy humans, they know how to draw the line between imagination and reality. In a video game there is no lasting life consequence for your action, if you die, then you start the game over again or just respawn. In real life we don't see Gen Xers jumping off buildings because of all the platform games they played. Because we know it isn't real, and much of the violence in video games, is often played to see what will happen, because there are no consequences, and there is always a reset switch ready for any major mistake. I can play a game where I wipe out woodland creatures, however in real life I feel bad for having to setup a kill trap for that mouse which is chewing threw the back seat in my car (After numerous human traps have failed), heck I would normally just take a spider and put it outside vs just killing it.
Now if Grand Theft Auto was setup where you had to learn the life story of every person you have ran over, spend the rest of the game with a non-save, non-restart and non-quit state. Learning about the harm you have done, spending years of game time in jail. For those who played the game would be playing it like in real life.
Video games give us an outlet for a what if, nothing mattered, we are able to take risks in games that we wouldn't in real life. Heck just running down a mountain in Fallout isn't something I would do in real life, because a simulated fall where you loose 100HP vs a real fall where you may survive, but you will be hurting for much longer.
How many people actually have driven themselves into danger because they followed the GPS over their common sense.
Now I can see accidents because someone was staring at the GPS Screen for too long and not on the road, but ignoring do not enter signs, or going off road confident in the GPS map, that you are willing to drive off a cliff, doesn't seem likely. And besides some bad Sci-Fi stories, I havn't heard much about that. I have heard stories of people getting lost on a long driveway thinking it was a road (They use to do that with paper maps too) or getting lost, because the GPS map didn't give them the last mile road to get to that location. But not driving off the cliff because the GPS told them so.
Lets put the Science back into Computer Science.
A good portion of Science is doing things that may not necessarily make a good product, but advancements and progress happen from learning from the action of doing this.
I have written hundreds of programs, that I play with, end delete, including small OS's, different data collection and storage methods, opening up a new language and see what I can do with it. Nothing that can become a product to sell, as there are already built applications which do the same job, or it just isn't fully baked.
But what that does is keep my mind sharp, and agile to the changing environment. We are going to dump this .NET stuff and switch to NodeJS. Thats fine, because I have played with NodeJS and have a good idea on what I am doing. We stopped dealing with SOAP and going towards Restful Web Services, that is good too, as I was already experimenting with them and know how to handle them.
This guy went a little further, and basically made a product out of it, which I expect he had learned a lot of it, and given an odd task he would probably be able to jump onto it.
Have we as Capitalist Americans become so jaded on the Economy that learning for the sense of learning is a foreign concepts. Are all our home improvements designed to increase the value of our home, not something we would like to have ourselves. Do all our hobbies need to have a measurable benefit to our lives?
There is always that probability, however the bones shown seem rather smooth diseased bone normally is more rough.
However, I don't see having bones on your neck as a great evolutionary advantage. Using them for defensive purposes would mean what doesn't impail, will either break (which is bad) or apply a leaver action on the vertebrate and twist the next, possibly severing the spinal cord.
Perhaps Sauropods have much bulkier necks then what is considered as plausible.
Nerd stuff... Whatever, sign the paper. Just don't mention that a bulk of AI research is done in China.