I don't mind the look. Minimal is good. I use Windows 8.1 with some registry tweaks and I far prefer that look to the overly glossy Windows 7 which has so much gloss it's like it's trying to pick up users on a street corner. I prefer OSX even more, gets rid of the pointless borders altogether. The start menu in Windows 10 sucks though, as well as the phone-line apps store and metro UI, but for desktop look I like it.
Everything else in Windows 10 sucks though.
Maybe that's part of the problem - the user is given no choice. Choice is a good thing but Microsoft feels like choice is an enemy and constantly seeks to thwart user choice. We should have a choice of a flat minimalist look or a high gloss aero look, and all sorts of tweaks in between. Why should anyone's desktop be forced to look like their neighbor's? (I'm still surprised at the few windows 10 users at work who never even bother to change from the default background image)
Many of Microsoft's updates have ADDED security holes. Ie, updates to Outlook that would automatically allow executing programs attached to mail - who would ever trust the security credentials of a company that did that? Most Windows updates are not related to security. Get the security updates, sure, thats great, but you do not need all the crap they push out as updates, not even things listed as "important". Remember how their Get Windows 10 updates caused more problems for users than the average malware. Even those running Windows 10 have had mandatory upgrades that have bricked their computers.
Your ideas make sense when dealing with a respectable and trustworthy manufacturer. They don't make sense when talking about Microsoft.
Switching companies on H1B apparently isn't that hard. Had one worker get our company to renew his H1B and do all the necessary paperwork, and as soon as the processing was done he quit and went to a different company.
I think H1B is really a small visa problem, there are lots of other abuses of visas elsewhere. Like the rotation of workers into the US for temporary work, overstays of student visas,etc. Outsourced workers are not visa holders either, but whenever I hear people gripe about H1Bs they start talking about outsourcing firms.
Too hard to define what those firms are in legal terms. There are many multinational companies out there with workers in many countries. Are they outsourcing or not? I used to work for Nokia, they had workers in the US, Finland, Germany, Sweden, Poland, China, India, etc. Were the an outsourcing company? Then there's a real outsourcing company in my view, who has workers in the US, Europe, and India. The only thing that says to me that they're an outsourcing firm and Nokia isn't is that their primary product is cheap lower skilled tech workers. So would a law define the difference here, if all the outsourcing firm has to do is manufacture something then that's not hard to do. Some of these outsourcing firms have their headquarters in the US as well.
To outsourcing firms, H1B is a minor issue - they only want a few workers in the US on visas to be team leaders to all the grunts back home. Cut out the H1Bs then they just move to having daily 6am conference calls instead.
Cut military spending by 1/3 and we could afford health care without losing any military superiority. Other countries have good health care because that is what their government decided is important. The US government doesn't really think health care is that important, or jobs, or quality of life, etc. The US government is mostly interested in federal programs to the military industrial complex and a few other industries. Toss in a few local issues to keep certain senators in office. They may make it sound like they care about the citizens but have not really shown it for many decades.
I agree there. I have used many programming languages and so many of them make up their own terms for things that were previously well known by different names in the industry. Most of these new terms were for things that were known in the 70s and 80s. I think a lot of people who are in their own bubble, making up their own terms, without knowing what goes on elsewhere.
For some of this I disagree. Liskov Substituion principle is not the sort of thing you run across in school or in the workplace, unless you hang out with the sorts of people who have memorized all the design patterns by name. Now if you're in a specialized field of sofware design then you're much more likely to know Liskov substitution prinicple but outside of that I think it's rare.
Analogously I ask about Priority Inversion and Deadlock, because that's the context I'm dealing with. I am not surprised if some people don't know priority inversion but I am a bit dismayed if they don't know deadlock (and didn't take the time ot cram before the interview) because it occurs everywhere and not just on low level systems. Then I meet a guy who says he's building his own RTOS and yet admits he doesn't know what a deadlock is during an interview and I have to struggle to keep a straight face.
If you're a senior programme who claims to be programming every day, then a coding problem on an interview should be a piece of cake. If the candidate struggles at this then the message being sent is that the candidate will need hand holding and remedial training and will not be able to function as a mentor.
White flight never really left. They just call it something different now, like "I just want a good school". Public schools get dumped on, those new "gentrification" people still go and send the kids to private schools if they can, or home school if they can't, while those in more affluent neighborhoods already have good public schools with tons of funding and iron clad resistance to bussing. And then to top if off they blame the whole thing on teachers.
I don't necessarily want a big hour or a big lot. I dont have kids though. Families however have a greater need those things. For me I don't want the oppressive inner city full of trash, noise, crime, smog, etc. Give me a small condo in the suburbs and I'm ok being far from the madding crowd.
Depends on the locale. ie, most high tech jobs in the SF Bay Area are in the medium density suburbs, not in the high density urban centers. The commute from low density suburban to medium density suburban can be a lot better than from urban to suburg. Although in the Bay Area most traffic is due to not enough roads in too cramped an area so that traffic jams are inevitable. Compare to a lot of other urban areas that are more open geographically, a lot of major corporate and industrial work areas are out along the ring roads and suburban areas and not in the increasingly decaying urban cores.
They haven't prevented a lot of acts of aggression, small wars, etc. The threat of nuclear war keeps other countries from interfering, such as sitting back and chewing on fingernails while Russia invades Georgia and Ukraine.
Not just Silicon Valley. Almost everywhere I've worked since the 80s, the work place is not near what one would call normal restaurants. Most cubical farms, labs, and manufacturing areas are not located in dense urban hubs. Within walking distance it's either a grubby corporate cafeteria, an overcrowded sandwich place squeezed in among the warehouses, or a roaming roach coach. So the majority of workers who didn't bring in their lunches got in their cars and drove elsewhere. This is a big loss of productivity for companies. So getting and improving the cafeteria is not just a perk it's a way to get more value out of the employees.
Pneumatic tubes was still in common use even 20 years ago. The problem is that "state of the art" takes a very long time to get into common use, and when it is in use it's often nowhere as good as proponents claim. Capital costs and training costs will suck up the majority of savings here anyway, meanwhile the actual workers will be clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking, pounding the side of the machine, clicking again, and just for one order.
I hated it and loved it at the same time. I guess I rate it high because I had to stop and think about it, and that automatically makes it better than the majority of stuff from Hollywood. Trouble is, if you rate it high on Netflix then suddenly they start suggesting more quirky comedies with unlikeable protagonists from the early 2000's. Even if you just watch it then Netflix figures you want more of the same (you had Chicken Cacciatore today, so clearly you want a Chicken dinner every single night).
Ie, because I "recently watched Attack on Titan" it has a category which appears to be all the kawaii anime from the last decade, ugh. They need to figure out that I don't want to watch the same thing all the time. They haven't figured out how to be random I think, they want to pigeon hole the viewer. One of my favorite channels pre-cord-cutting was IFC, because there were so many thing that I found unexepectedy good, different from the standard fare, off beat, high quality or low quality, etc. From Citizen Kane to the Three Stooges. Netflix will never figure that sort of thing out if they rely on a formula.
I see something that looks slightly interesting, maybe I'll waste a couple hours on it. Then I see the 1/2 star rating and I stop. Maybe it really is bad. Or maybe people are just stupid and rating it without seeing it, or rating it to get it off their queues, or... Popularity isn't a good indicator of quality or enjoyment. Sometimes a really bad movie is just the thing for saturday morning. I need to train myself not to look at the ratings.
It does get a bit better over time. Overall rates aren't so great because you never rate something you'd never even bother to watch. Why should I put one stars on all the Rob Schneider movies if I never watch them? But I don't want to rate them either if I haven't seen them (there's gotta be one that's 2 stars, even Jim Carrey had a couple good movies). So Netflix doesn't know to never show them to me.
Likewise I don't uprate a movie unless I was pleasantly surprised that it was actually a lot better than I expected or was otherwise motivated. I don't rate movies based upon whether I want to see them or not, but whether I liked them more than average or something is high quality about them. I'll still slum around with some really mediocre fare even if Netflix thinks I want to see more like Citizen Kane. Up-rating can backfire badly though, they don't know why I liked the show. If I uprated Jessica Jones it does not mean that I would be interested in Supergirl.
A drawback of Netflix getting better at figuring out what I like is that it very often suggests shows I have already watched; sometimes if I've already seen then on Netflix itself... And it won't suggest titles that I may find good but which don't fit the formula Netflix has for me; instead I seem to get broad categories like 50s scifi or quirky mysteries.
Not just only in the USA, this is only in the USA and only with the ADA. In an attempt to make it easier to enforce, the ADA allowed third parties to sue and this is what has backfired.
Microsoft does not "support" it's operating systems. Just try calling them up and getting a bug fixed and they'll laugh at you. Their "support" means they'll occasionally shove out some bug fixes hidden in a mass of useless updates. My Windows 8.1 hasn't seen a big fix in months. It's "supported" until 2024 but I have no misconceptions about Microsoft actually supporting it with up to date bug fixes and modern features; it will most certainly see only the occasional security bug fix every month or two until then.
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I don't mind the look. Minimal is good. I use Windows 8.1 with some registry tweaks and I far prefer that look to the overly glossy Windows 7 which has so much gloss it's like it's trying to pick up users on a street corner. I prefer OSX even more, gets rid of the pointless borders altogether. The start menu in Windows 10 sucks though, as well as the phone-line apps store and metro UI, but for desktop look I like it.
Everything else in Windows 10 sucks though.
Maybe that's part of the problem - the user is given no choice. Choice is a good thing but Microsoft feels like choice is an enemy and constantly seeks to thwart user choice. We should have a choice of a flat minimalist look or a high gloss aero look, and all sorts of tweaks in between. Why should anyone's desktop be forced to look like their neighbor's? (I'm still surprised at the few windows 10 users at work who never even bother to change from the default background image)
Many of Microsoft's updates have ADDED security holes. Ie, updates to Outlook that would automatically allow executing programs attached to mail - who would ever trust the security credentials of a company that did that? Most Windows updates are not related to security. Get the security updates, sure, thats great, but you do not need all the crap they push out as updates, not even things listed as "important". Remember how their Get Windows 10 updates caused more problems for users than the average malware. Even those running Windows 10 have had mandatory upgrades that have bricked their computers.
Your ideas make sense when dealing with a respectable and trustworthy manufacturer. They don't make sense when talking about Microsoft.
But their systems are compromised by the updates, so this is a lose-lose issue?
It is a relevant feature, for some mission critical applications. Not for general desktop use, no. Widen the world view.
Switching companies on H1B apparently isn't that hard. Had one worker get our company to renew his H1B and do all the necessary paperwork, and as soon as the processing was done he quit and went to a different company.
I think H1B is really a small visa problem, there are lots of other abuses of visas elsewhere. Like the rotation of workers into the US for temporary work, overstays of student visas,etc. Outsourced workers are not visa holders either, but whenever I hear people gripe about H1Bs they start talking about outsourcing firms.
Too hard to define what those firms are in legal terms. There are many multinational companies out there with workers in many countries. Are they outsourcing or not? I used to work for Nokia, they had workers in the US, Finland, Germany, Sweden, Poland, China, India, etc. Were the an outsourcing company? Then there's a real outsourcing company in my view, who has workers in the US, Europe, and India. The only thing that says to me that they're an outsourcing firm and Nokia isn't is that their primary product is cheap lower skilled tech workers. So would a law define the difference here, if all the outsourcing firm has to do is manufacture something then that's not hard to do. Some of these outsourcing firms have their headquarters in the US as well.
To outsourcing firms, H1B is a minor issue - they only want a few workers in the US on visas to be team leaders to all the grunts back home. Cut out the H1Bs then they just move to having daily 6am conference calls instead.
Cut military spending by 1/3 and we could afford health care without losing any military superiority. Other countries have good health care because that is what their government decided is important. The US government doesn't really think health care is that important, or jobs, or quality of life, etc. The US government is mostly interested in federal programs to the military industrial complex and a few other industries. Toss in a few local issues to keep certain senators in office. They may make it sound like they care about the citizens but have not really shown it for many decades.
I agree there. I have used many programming languages and so many of them make up their own terms for things that were previously well known by different names in the industry. Most of these new terms were for things that were known in the 70s and 80s. I think a lot of people who are in their own bubble, making up their own terms, without knowing what goes on elsewhere.
For some of this I disagree. Liskov Substituion principle is not the sort of thing you run across in school or in the workplace, unless you hang out with the sorts of people who have memorized all the design patterns by name. Now if you're in a specialized field of sofware design then you're much more likely to know Liskov substitution prinicple but outside of that I think it's rare.
Analogously I ask about Priority Inversion and Deadlock, because that's the context I'm dealing with. I am not surprised if some people don't know priority inversion but I am a bit dismayed if they don't know deadlock (and didn't take the time ot cram before the interview) because it occurs everywhere and not just on low level systems. Then I meet a guy who says he's building his own RTOS and yet admits he doesn't know what a deadlock is during an interview and I have to struggle to keep a straight face.
If you're a senior programme who claims to be programming every day, then a coding problem on an interview should be a piece of cake. If the candidate struggles at this then the message being sent is that the candidate will need hand holding and remedial training and will not be able to function as a mentor.
That's why rapid prototyping skills are good for prototyping but are horrible at making a product.
White flight never really left. They just call it something different now, like "I just want a good school". Public schools get dumped on, those new "gentrification" people still go and send the kids to private schools if they can, or home school if they can't, while those in more affluent neighborhoods already have good public schools with tons of funding and iron clad resistance to bussing. And then to top if off they blame the whole thing on teachers.
I don't necessarily want a big hour or a big lot. I dont have kids though. Families however have a greater need those things.
For me I don't want the oppressive inner city full of trash, noise, crime, smog, etc. Give me a small condo in the suburbs and I'm ok being far from the madding crowd.
Depends on the locale. ie, most high tech jobs in the SF Bay Area are in the medium density suburbs, not in the high density urban centers. The commute from low density suburban to medium density suburban can be a lot better than from urban to suburg. Although in the Bay Area most traffic is due to not enough roads in too cramped an area so that traffic jams are inevitable. Compare to a lot of other urban areas that are more open geographically, a lot of major corporate and industrial work areas are out along the ring roads and suburban areas and not in the increasingly decaying urban cores.
Well sure, but you lose that 5 minute walk to the hipster cupcake bakery in the morning.
They haven't prevented a lot of acts of aggression, small wars, etc. The threat of nuclear war keeps other countries from interfering, such as sitting back and chewing on fingernails while Russia invades Georgia and Ukraine.
Not just Silicon Valley. Almost everywhere I've worked since the 80s, the work place is not near what one would call normal restaurants. Most cubical farms, labs, and manufacturing areas are not located in dense urban hubs. Within walking distance it's either a grubby corporate cafeteria, an overcrowded sandwich place squeezed in among the warehouses, or a roaming roach coach. So the majority of workers who didn't bring in their lunches got in their cars and drove elsewhere. This is a big loss of productivity for companies. So getting and improving the cafeteria is not just a perk it's a way to get more value out of the employees.
But how do I staple my phone to the expense report?
Pneumatic tubes was still in common use even 20 years ago. The problem is that "state of the art" takes a very long time to get into common use, and when it is in use it's often nowhere as good as proponents claim. Capital costs and training costs will suck up the majority of savings here anyway, meanwhile the actual workers will be clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking, pounding the side of the machine, clicking again, and just for one order.
I hated it and loved it at the same time. I guess I rate it high because I had to stop and think about it, and that automatically makes it better than the majority of stuff from Hollywood. Trouble is, if you rate it high on Netflix then suddenly they start suggesting more quirky comedies with unlikeable protagonists from the early 2000's. Even if you just watch it then Netflix figures you want more of the same (you had Chicken Cacciatore today, so clearly you want a Chicken dinner every single night).
Ie, because I "recently watched Attack on Titan" it has a category which appears to be all the kawaii anime from the last decade, ugh. They need to figure out that I don't want to watch the same thing all the time. They haven't figured out how to be random I think, they want to pigeon hole the viewer. One of my favorite channels pre-cord-cutting was IFC, because there were so many thing that I found unexepectedy good, different from the standard fare, off beat, high quality or low quality, etc. From Citizen Kane to the Three Stooges. Netflix will never figure that sort of thing out if they rely on a formula.
I see something that looks slightly interesting, maybe I'll waste a couple hours on it. Then I see the 1/2 star rating and I stop. Maybe it really is bad. Or maybe people are just stupid and rating it without seeing it, or rating it to get it off their queues, or... Popularity isn't a good indicator of quality or enjoyment. Sometimes a really bad movie is just the thing for saturday morning. I need to train myself not to look at the ratings.
It does get a bit better over time. Overall rates aren't so great because you never rate something you'd never even bother to watch. Why should I put one stars on all the Rob Schneider movies if I never watch them? But I don't want to rate them either if I haven't seen them (there's gotta be one that's 2 stars, even Jim Carrey had a couple good movies). So Netflix doesn't know to never show them to me.
Likewise I don't uprate a movie unless I was pleasantly surprised that it was actually a lot better than I expected or was otherwise motivated. I don't rate movies based upon whether I want to see them or not, but whether I liked them more than average or something is high quality about them. I'll still slum around with some really mediocre fare even if Netflix thinks I want to see more like Citizen Kane. Up-rating can backfire badly though, they don't know why I liked the show. If I uprated Jessica Jones it does not mean that I would be interested in Supergirl.
A drawback of Netflix getting better at figuring out what I like is that it very often suggests shows I have already watched; sometimes if I've already seen then on Netflix itself... And it won't suggest titles that I may find good but which don't fit the formula Netflix has for me; instead I seem to get broad categories like 50s scifi or quirky mysteries.
Hopefully a handful of the names that Google turns over are "DuckDuckGo".
Not just only in the USA, this is only in the USA and only with the ADA. In an attempt to make it easier to enforce, the ADA allowed third parties to sue and this is what has backfired.
Microsoft does not "support" it's operating systems. Just try calling them up and getting a bug fixed and they'll laugh at you. Their "support" means they'll occasionally shove out some bug fixes hidden in a mass of useless updates. My Windows 8.1 hasn't seen a big fix in months. It's "supported" until 2024 but I have no misconceptions about Microsoft actually supporting it with up to date bug fixes and modern features; it will most certainly see only the occasional security bug fix every month or two until then.