I agree Ballmer seems pretty pig headed. But, and this is a big on, even successful commercial companies like Apple insist that you can't rely on customer input for new products. Customers simply didn't know they needed an iPhone until it existed. if you asked them they probably would have told you a bigger physicial keyboard, or bigger screen etc. Apple threw away the keyboard and made a device with a nice big touch screen. Similarly with iPad, what's the big deal just a big iPhone, but it is different. Even discounting for the fanboys that buy everything that Apple makes clearly there is a huge market of people that wanted something like an iPad but no one gave it to them. You didn't hear a lot of people saying "I really which I had a tablet" because no one had really given them one that make a case for itself being a ~3rd form factor that has a different use case than "really portable computer".
This is also a case of the bias MS has towards developers: Metro promises to make building tablet, phone and desktop versions of the same app trivial. Simply right to metro and other than fiddle around to make the UI layout nicely at the different form factors your done. The problem is a desktop user doesn't want to be limited in the ways that someone on a phone is. A phone user probably doesn't want to have to try to navigate a desktop on a tiny phone screen etc. Great for developers sucks for users.
The whole idea of the full screen launch apps thing is that the tiles can show you some info like updates, weather etc without needing to be launched. Similar to the dashboard concept in OS X. This is the biggest reason why I don't like it: privacy. Think about it MS wants people to make line of business apps to use with Metro, Outlook tiles, etc and this is going to be the first screen you go to when you login/go to find something. So customer is looking over your shoulder while you launch word to view their quote, oh wait while you are in the start menu why not show them that your deal with their competitor is going ahead too? I don't like apps deciding what they are going to broadcast everytime someone sees me open another app. if I want to view info from an app I'll open it.
Well in theory you could set up security on your FB page so that people you don't trust can't see that info. But the problem is your cousin could have no security and have the information on their page. That is the problem with FB and the like IMHO not just lack of privacy but even if you set the privacy settings the way you want there is nothing stopping your friends from posting and tagging drunken photos of you.
For those that are in your "circle" in the social sites: it doesn't matter. Thinks like what was your mothers maiden name might come up in conversation. If you know someone well you probably know their favorite teacher, pets name, family members name, favorite food etc. The security questions are predicated on the idea that things like your favorite thing is something that you keep secret from friends. Not going to happen. If it is a bank website there is no reason why they can't require you to go to a branch or call in to reset your password. Having a plain text with public information question to reset an account to save on a phone call is just silly.
The problem is that the security questions are often used to reset your password and at least in my experience no one makes the entry field for the security question into a password field. So it is plan text. Sure hope you don't us those strings as other passwords but even if you don't anyone looking over your shoulder/screenscraping etc can get your security question answers.
I think a better, not perfect just better, is for the bank to assign you a password and call you once a year to come into a branch with id to get your new password. No weak passwords, passwords have nothing to do with the users, they must be changed regularly etc. Website only things (like Amazon account) is a bit more of a pain but even they have 1-800 numbers to call for help when the net doesn't do it for you.
Mah I can see someone having both: textbooks + fun reading on the ereader. Admittedly not an extensive test but I dropped a Kindle 3 from about 6' onto a cement surface screen down, picked it up and not a scratch. Still you'll want a case and if you are actually using the thing in the dust or rain storms than you'll want something like a freezer bag over the screen. I'd vote for bringing a microfiber rag or something to clean the screen too. Don't use your hand or something I've gotten a few minor scratches on my screen from using papertowels or such. I guess it drags the dirt across the surface rather than picking it up properly.
Than try selling linux systems. Seriously Apple has done this since day one. They are usually called beautifully designed, innovative etc etc. Not saying MS is likely to match Apple in design but as long as MS continues to make most of their money on selling software their is no worries of them having a product of their own. It just might be the next Zune.
You can already find the ebook pirated for a lot of things. If you aren't too picky (ie it must be books 1-5 of this particular scifi series) you can easily download a lifetime of stuff to read in a weekend and not pay a dime. I think you're right in the wrong way. As long as paper copies exist there will be people that collect them just because they have a mild form of hording behaviour, or prefer paper to electronic and it is a pain to find the paper copy so buy it by default. What could/probably will make piracy so large when it is only ebook format isn't that they'll be available/crackable in ebook format it will be that the pirated copy is identical to the one you could purchase. As long as there are paper copies there is a qualitative difference between buying/borrowing paper and pirating an ebook, afterwards it becomes iTunes-esque: you need to be so ridiculously easy to use that people don't bother learning or using the free way of getting things.
I think you are right on there. Open sourcing things sometimes is just a matter of saying "hey we don't want to be responsible for this anymore it's been ~20 years now it is your turn". Supporting something that has little in the way of generating new press releases with shinny new toys that draw new revenue is just a cost centre.
It is still used for some things. For example Philips Pinnacle radiation therapy planning system uses Sun/CDE and sells for 80k a pop ~1-2M for a typical sized cancer centre to have a dozen or so stations). Yes it is ugly, but it works and saves people in highly regulated industries from having to rewrite a crapload of things and suffer through FDA, few generations of serious bugs (always bugs but when you change widget framework/potentially OS flavor you are asking for it) etc.
Someone has already thought to use the name Metro for a company who would have thought?
Seriously though there is a crap load of "Metro" companies that I know of:
LA Metro (among others) Metro PCS Metro a grocery chain in Toronto area Metro in Germany Metro (a collection of urban newspapers in Canada (and probably elsewhere))
I realise the law is ridiculous but it seems silly that you could get sued for a name of feature of a product because someone's regional company has the same name. I'm pretty sure someone has a company named Windows.
The bug could have had less affects if the operators actually used their minds like set a limit on number of transactions allowed per day. Or, this will blow high speed traders minds, actually hold securities for weeks/months/years and issue transactions recommended by the software by using real people. Maybe it is the value investor in me showing, but in my mind if your investment strategy isn't "this is a great company to own" but instead is "I think I can sell this to another sucker for more even though I have no clue if the company is good" you have a problem.
mah probably a different mans army for me but I guess techinically my CO was in charge of our PT and marksmanship testing. He was the RSO (range safety officer) during our annual marksmenship training and he drove in a jeep behind our company when we did our 13k forced march annual tests. He was there and technically in charge but I highly doubt he ever bothered to walk down range and count holes in targets personally. (funny fact I was in army reserves, the CO was a kindergarden teacher in his day job I think:)).
To be fair there is no guarantee with elite athletes that there is much of a mind to mess up the mindset. All we know about most of these guys is that they run fast and come from different countries:)
The stock did sell at 38 though right? Once the shares are on the market you've already gotten your money so to at least to the extent that those are a significant portion of your holdings why do you care anymore? It would be like selling a used car to a dealership for $1000 and then feeling bad that the guy that you sold it to only managed to sell it for $500. It's not yours anymore so why should you care?
The B2 does mach 0.95 I'm guessing there is a reason they didn't try for 1.05. The size of the surface of the wing makes it harder to go supersonic I think.
More like 3 vs 6 but I agree. Unless they cut out the 2+ hours on the departing end and ~45min on the customs/getting bags you are looking at real total time from airport to airport at ~6 vs 9. Either way your day is mostly pouched.
Given a choice between more fuel efficiency and likely more seats and a ~25% speed improvement I agree money wise it made sense. Lets be realistic here: supersonic will almost certainly mean narrow hauls/fewer rows of passengers. That combined with the few people willing to cough up 10k for a flight on something faster and the general public will never see it because they won't want to pay 5X or more for a ticket to save 3 hrs on either side of their vacation. Something would have to come mainstream where it was actually better fuel efficiency compared to sub-sonic or ridiculously fast so the transatlantic passenger trips per day for the plane worked out better than a giant slower beast. Something like mach 4 with same fuel efficiency would probably be the tipping point.
Yep I agree the laws need to change. They are essentially now up to the person making the complaint: if you feel harassed you were. Liability then just comes from how the company deals with it after you make your claim vs actually looking critically to see if it is reasonable to feel harassed in that situation. While I agree with most people that we should be professionals if you have a room full of brogrammers that honestly have a lot of fun kidding around and getting stuff done should the culture really have to change to accommodate one person? Shouldn't the one person use it to decide whether the work environment is what they want not force it to change by claiming harassment?
UK vs US who is more paranoid. Perfect/. poll topic I think. To give up your freedom to protect your freedom is the silliest and one of the most silly and expensive things government can spend money on. At least when you build a bridge to nowhere you have a bridge afterwords.Track everyone on the internet and 99.99% of what you got is lol cats and porn or equally useless info like "Do you think Cindy is fat?".
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I agree Ballmer seems pretty pig headed. But, and this is a big on, even successful commercial companies like Apple insist that you can't rely on customer input for new products. Customers simply didn't know they needed an iPhone until it existed. if you asked them they probably would have told you a bigger physicial keyboard, or bigger screen etc. Apple threw away the keyboard and made a device with a nice big touch screen. Similarly with iPad, what's the big deal just a big iPhone, but it is different. Even discounting for the fanboys that buy everything that Apple makes clearly there is a huge market of people that wanted something like an iPad but no one gave it to them. You didn't hear a lot of people saying "I really which I had a tablet" because no one had really given them one that make a case for itself being a ~3rd form factor that has a different use case than "really portable computer".
Brilliant comment +1 vote if I had one.
This is also a case of the bias MS has towards developers: Metro promises to make building tablet, phone and desktop versions of the same app trivial. Simply right to metro and other than fiddle around to make the UI layout nicely at the different form factors your done. The problem is a desktop user doesn't want to be limited in the ways that someone on a phone is. A phone user probably doesn't want to have to try to navigate a desktop on a tiny phone screen etc. Great for developers sucks for users.
The whole idea of the full screen launch apps thing is that the tiles can show you some info like updates, weather etc without needing to be launched. Similar to the dashboard concept in OS X. This is the biggest reason why I don't like it: privacy. Think about it MS wants people to make line of business apps to use with Metro, Outlook tiles, etc and this is going to be the first screen you go to when you login/go to find something. So customer is looking over your shoulder while you launch word to view their quote, oh wait while you are in the start menu why not show them that your deal with their competitor is going ahead too? I don't like apps deciding what they are going to broadcast everytime someone sees me open another app. if I want to view info from an app I'll open it.
Well in theory you could set up security on your FB page so that people you don't trust can't see that info. But the problem is your cousin could have no security and have the information on their page. That is the problem with FB and the like IMHO not just lack of privacy but even if you set the privacy settings the way you want there is nothing stopping your friends from posting and tagging drunken photos of you.
For those that are in your "circle" in the social sites: it doesn't matter. Thinks like what was your mothers maiden name might come up in conversation. If you know someone well you probably know their favorite teacher, pets name, family members name, favorite food etc. The security questions are predicated on the idea that things like your favorite thing is something that you keep secret from friends. Not going to happen. If it is a bank website there is no reason why they can't require you to go to a branch or call in to reset your password. Having a plain text with public information question to reset an account to save on a phone call is just silly.
The problem is that the security questions are often used to reset your password and at least in my experience no one makes the entry field for the security question into a password field. So it is plan text. Sure hope you don't us those strings as other passwords but even if you don't anyone looking over your shoulder/screenscraping etc can get your security question answers.
I think a better, not perfect just better, is for the bank to assign you a password and call you once a year to come into a branch with id to get your new password. No weak passwords, passwords have nothing to do with the users, they must be changed regularly etc. Website only things (like Amazon account) is a bit more of a pain but even they have 1-800 numbers to call for help when the net doesn't do it for you.
Mah I can see someone having both: textbooks + fun reading on the ereader. Admittedly not an extensive test but I dropped a Kindle 3 from about 6' onto a cement surface screen down, picked it up and not a scratch. Still you'll want a case and if you are actually using the thing in the dust or rain storms than you'll want something like a freezer bag over the screen. I'd vote for bringing a microfiber rag or something to clean the screen too. Don't use your hand or something I've gotten a few minor scratches on my screen from using papertowels or such. I guess it drags the dirt across the surface rather than picking it up properly.
Than try selling linux systems. Seriously Apple has done this since day one. They are usually called beautifully designed, innovative etc etc. Not saying MS is likely to match Apple in design but as long as MS continues to make most of their money on selling software their is no worries of them having a product of their own. It just might be the next Zune.
You can already find the ebook pirated for a lot of things. If you aren't too picky (ie it must be books 1-5 of this particular scifi series) you can easily download a lifetime of stuff to read in a weekend and not pay a dime. I think you're right in the wrong way. As long as paper copies exist there will be people that collect them just because they have a mild form of hording behaviour, or prefer paper to electronic and it is a pain to find the paper copy so buy it by default. What could/probably will make piracy so large when it is only ebook format isn't that they'll be available/crackable in ebook format it will be that the pirated copy is identical to the one you could purchase. As long as there are paper copies there is a qualitative difference between buying/borrowing paper and pirating an ebook, afterwards it becomes iTunes-esque: you need to be so ridiculously easy to use that people don't bother learning or using the free way of getting things.
I think you are right on there. Open sourcing things sometimes is just a matter of saying "hey we don't want to be responsible for this anymore it's been ~20 years now it is your turn". Supporting something that has little in the way of generating new press releases with shinny new toys that draw new revenue is just a cost centre.
It is still used for some things. For example Philips Pinnacle radiation therapy planning system uses Sun/CDE and sells for 80k a pop ~1-2M for a typical sized cancer centre to have a dozen or so stations). Yes it is ugly, but it works and saves people in highly regulated industries from having to rewrite a crapload of things and suffer through FDA, few generations of serious bugs (always bugs but when you change widget framework/potentially OS flavor you are asking for it) etc.
Someone has already thought to use the name Metro for a company who would have thought?
Seriously though there is a crap load of "Metro" companies that I know of:
LA Metro (among others)
Metro PCS
Metro a grocery chain in Toronto area
Metro in Germany
Metro (a collection of urban newspapers in Canada (and probably elsewhere))
I realise the law is ridiculous but it seems silly that you could get sued for a name of feature of a product because someone's regional company has the same name. I'm pretty sure someone has a company named Windows.
The bug could have had less affects if the operators actually used their minds like set a limit on number of transactions allowed per day. Or, this will blow high speed traders minds, actually hold securities for weeks/months/years and issue transactions recommended by the software by using real people. Maybe it is the value investor in me showing, but in my mind if your investment strategy isn't "this is a great company to own" but instead is "I think I can sell this to another sucker for more even though I have no clue if the company is good" you have a problem.
mah probably a different mans army for me but I guess techinically my CO was in charge of our PT and marksmanship testing. He was the RSO (range safety officer) during our annual marksmenship training and he drove in a jeep behind our company when we did our 13k forced march annual tests. He was there and technically in charge but I highly doubt he ever bothered to walk down range and count holes in targets personally. (funny fact I was in army reserves, the CO was a kindergarden teacher in his day job I think :)).
To be fair there is no guarantee with elite athletes that there is much of a mind to mess up the mindset. All we know about most of these guys is that they run fast and come from different countries :)
All I care is do they knock down all the pins when I throw them down the lane.
I'll take a British pint over an American one anyday :-)
The stock did sell at 38 though right? Once the shares are on the market you've already gotten your money so to at least to the extent that those are a significant portion of your holdings why do you care anymore? It would be like selling a used car to a dealership for $1000 and then feeling bad that the guy that you sold it to only managed to sell it for $500. It's not yours anymore so why should you care?
The B2 does mach 0.95 I'm guessing there is a reason they didn't try for 1.05. The size of the surface of the wing makes it harder to go supersonic I think.
More like 3 vs 6 but I agree. Unless they cut out the 2+ hours on the departing end and ~45min on the customs/getting bags you are looking at real total time from airport to airport at ~6 vs 9. Either way your day is mostly pouched.
Given a choice between more fuel efficiency and likely more seats and a ~25% speed improvement I agree money wise it made sense. Lets be realistic here: supersonic will almost certainly mean narrow hauls/fewer rows of passengers. That combined with the few people willing to cough up 10k for a flight on something faster and the general public will never see it because they won't want to pay 5X or more for a ticket to save 3 hrs on either side of their vacation. Something would have to come mainstream where it was actually better fuel efficiency compared to sub-sonic or ridiculously fast so the transatlantic passenger trips per day for the plane worked out better than a giant slower beast. Something like mach 4 with same fuel efficiency would probably be the tipping point.
Dev-treadmills: nice.
You want the build to run faster than you better too :)
Code monkey think maybe manager want to right goddamn login page himself.
Yep I agree the laws need to change. They are essentially now up to the person making the complaint: if you feel harassed you were. Liability then just comes from how the company deals with it after you make your claim vs actually looking critically to see if it is reasonable to feel harassed in that situation. While I agree with most people that we should be professionals if you have a room full of brogrammers that honestly have a lot of fun kidding around and getting stuff done should the culture really have to change to accommodate one person? Shouldn't the one person use it to decide whether the work environment is what they want not force it to change by claiming harassment?
N'Sync for president then?
UK vs US who is more paranoid. Perfect /. poll topic I think. To give up your freedom to protect your freedom is the silliest and one of the most silly and expensive things government can spend money on. At least when you build a bridge to nowhere you have a bridge afterwords.Track everyone on the internet and 99.99% of what you got is lol cats and porn or equally useless info like "Do you think Cindy is fat?".