Consumers helped to make this decision a long time ago when they decided that it was better to replace than to repair. Yes, there were external factors. This includes things like the cost of getting someone to make repairs and the faster turn around of buying a replacement. On the other hand, their inability to conduct the most basic repairs on their own (e.g. fixing a frayed cable or swapping a replaceable component) went a long way in convincing manufacturers that planned obsolescence can be a viable business model. The prioritization of compact and more integrated devices over serviceability is also a huge factor. Computers are an excellent example of that. Contrast an early 80's computer, where nearly everything was in a socket or soldered through-hole, to a modern phone where there is barely enough space for a plug and socket for the battery.
We also can't claim that consumers didn't see this coming. Again to the computer example: there was a shift from the early 80's computers to modular desktops of the late 80's and early 90's (where the modules were more or less standardized), to the laptops of the late 90's and early 2000's (where the modules were less standard), to the present day. Ah, the present day: a time when a replaceable battery or an SD card for memory expansion (not so much to repair as to extend the service life of a product) is considered an anti-feature by some.
Manufacturers may have implemented these decisions, but it was the consumer who made the decision.
Revisionist history here? NeXT had nothing to do with the Macintosh system software until the company was bought out by Apple. It is an entirely different design that is intended for an entirely different customer base. Getting NeXT to run on Macs and to provide compatibility for existing Mac software was a non-trivial process that took place internally then across many years of public releases. Indeed, there was very little consensus about which version of OS X was ready to be the true successor to the classic system software. (Tthe debate seemed to settle down around 10.3 or 10.4.)
As for Mac OS 9 being "shit", it had one thing that early versions of OS X didn't: application support. Commercial developers were not keen on OS X in the early days simply because OS X users were a subset of the users on a platform that offered a tiny market share. (Existing users may have wanted the improvements of OS X as well, but application software is king.) While developers would appreciate the technical improvements to OS X, the early API was incomplete. All of that was resolved with time, but it took years to resolve.
Apple would have collapsed even if Jobs stuck around. It was a company that grew too big, too fast. It was a feeding ground for people with grand ideas and even more grandiose egos. Like many of it's contemporaries, it was doomed to fall.
Jobs' return was a different story, but a lot can still be attributed to luck. To Jobs credit, he was a more mature businessman and he reentered at a time when Apple realized that it had to be more humble. He probably would have saved the company regardless of what happened. Yet there was a lot of luck. Things like the iPod were initially directed at Apple's existing customers. The growth that it triggered and the products that it enabled were far from a bygone conclusion.
If you're cycling 50 km/day, it is likely that you are making ongoing lifestyle choices that contribute to your health. You probably don't have to attribute those choices to genetics or micro-organisms.
On the other hand, why pay for stuff you don't need?
Low end phones are fine for making and receiving phone calls, playing audio and video, reading in a variety of formats (both local and online), taking photos to document something, alarm clock and scheduling, a simple notepad, serving as a flashlight or a level, as well as a heck of a lot more. Sure, it is possible to do a bit more on higher end phones, but there are definitely diminishing returns.
Money is money. It can't treat a person well and it can't treat a person poorly. People on the other hand is another issue, especially people who you don't know yet who know you (or think they know you).
Money can be buried in investments, or dispersed if you want to go to the trouble too. Bury a person though, that will get you in trouble with the law. Disperse people, and they will think you're antisocial.
I can't honestly say what I would do if I had that much money. I would like to think that I'd bury it in investments, skimming just enough off the top to behave like a typical person. Yet I would do my best to avoid the fame bit. Relationships are awkward enough when you know them and they know you. Having the imbalance where people know you, but not the other way around, is something to be avoided.
"Hey kiddo! You know I've always been there for you and I will always be there for you. But I've gotta tell ya, you were a disappointment as a kid and you're a disappointment as a young adult. Yet, in spite of all of that, I'm still holding out hope for you in middle age."
The "techies" should submit a report, in writing, outlining the implications of a decision. No matter how much people hate writing reports, it does have a degree of accountability that casual consultations do not have. The writer is more inclined to provide both the benefits and the drawbacks of the decision as well as providing the rationale for approving or rejecting the decision. Documentation also forces accountability on senior management, since they have information upon which to base their decision. This is information that they have to take to their bosses if called upon.
This is not to say that the techies will agree with the outcome, but it can soften the blow. I have certainly written proposals for things that I did not approve of, but it was better than their alternative. (That original plans would have resulted in my resignation since they were planning to do something illegal. The alternative accepted their goals, but brought them in line with the law.))
Jobs clearly made "one more thing" work for Apple. But that was for product announcements and it seemed to be an in-joke by a secretive company that couldn't keep its secrets very well.
Other than that, the expression seems to have more negative connotations than positive ones. It is the sort of thing that people say when they cannot stop talking, or when someone wants to emphasize a piece of bad news. It is the sort of thing that implies excess or redundancy. It is not the thing that many smart companies say unless they carefully engineer it to be an advantage.
Because the tech is invariably based on open Source and written by some unpaid intern.
Though it's probably not in the way that you intended, you do have a valid point. Far too many companies seem to piece together open source software then slap on some proprietary code, without adequately testing it. Since they are doing so to save development and licensing costs, it frequently ends up as a disaster.
That being said, many companies do spend some time in integrating open source software and do thorough testing. So the success or failure of open source software in such circumstances is more a product of the company's motivation and culture than an indicator of the quality of open source software.
We're talking about something that happened 20 years ago in the basement of a library. Some representatives from O'Reilly were talking about one of the latest developments, ELF, and brought along some free goodies. Soon thereafter I bought a thick book from a competing publisher that included Slackware on CD-ROM. I marveled at how easy it was to install compared to OS/2 (involving only a boot disk and kernel parameters, rather than custom boot disks) and set about learning the thing.
By arming yourself, expressing your opinion, and being fully prepared to kill when necessary to defend your rights. That's too "scary" for most people
You're damn right about it scaring me. Far too many of those people who are "fully prepared to kill when necessary to defend their rights" see their rights as being more important than the rights of others. Defending your rights at the expense of others is fine, provided that you have a way to mediate between parties. Killing is not a form of mediation. It may "solve the problem", but it is murder nevertheless.
If you're actually concerned about this, rewrite the tutorials rather than complaining about them. A big part of the reason why reach for those parts is because someone taught them how to use them.
No. It's like saying that your new car sucks because it's performance on highways is sub par. After all, why should we be concerned with designing cars that perform well on highways when most people live in cities?
I'll let the military types decide what they actually need. Yet when it comes down to making comparisons, choose something that is more appropriate than cranks and horses.
When I read "the up-goer V", I received the message that technical language is a good thing since it helps to clarify concepts. (At least to a degree. I'm sure that we have all run across texts that use jargon to such a degree that it obscures concepts.) Just look at that cartoon. It is almost impossible to figure out what the Saturn V actually does because the language is so simple that it fails to convey the purpose of the various parts.
Making that point only takes a single cartoon. Anything more is tedious.
Vancouver (Canada) has a few bidirectional bike lanes, and I agree that they are a bit problematic. That's particularly true when making left turns.
As for overtaking other cyclists, just do what you would do on a pathway (or as an automobile would do on a side street or highway): ensure the oncoming lane is clear and pass. Unfortunately, there is not enough bike traffic to justify a passing lane.
For the most part, I prefer riding on roads without bike lanes. But I'm an experienced cyclist who would much rather be in the traffic than invisible to the traffic.
You can reduce those risks by becoming familiar with your route and how motorists behave at different times of day, then adjusting your riding habits accordingly.
To give you an example of what I mean: there is a particular 3-way stop in my city where I always pull over to the left hand side of the lane. This is because the driver's view on one of the streets is obstructed by a large tree, so a cyclist on the right would go unseen. While my first couple of trips through that intersection were scary, because I was sticking to the right, becoming familiar with the intersection and modifying my riding habits accordingly made the trip much safer.
It depends upon the commute. One of the sites I work at is a 10 minute ride with a small downhill stretch. I'm not covered by sweat, and I doubt that I smell any different than I normally would.
Another job is a 25 minute ride with a 60 meter high hill at the end. I sweat. Oddly enough though, people only notice when they're uncomfortably close to me. The obvious solution to that is to respect my personal space.
As for the rain and snow. Dress for the weather. Or do what a lot of cyclists do: bus or drive during bad weather.
That depends upon how many people choose to cycle. Bikes take considerably less space both on the road and for parking. In the long term, it may also makes the length of trips for both cyclists and motorists since businesses will find it desirable to be closer to their workers and consumers. Of course, all of that depends upon uptake. Only time will tell.
It is also worth considering that "halve the size of a busy street" is also incredibly misleading. Considering that you can support bidirectional bike traffic in less space than a single lane for motor vehicles and that bike lanes tend to be along corridors (rather than on every street), you are dedicating significantly less than 50% of the infrastructure to bikes. Indeed, it would be surprising if the percentage of the infrastructure dedicated to cycling would be anywhere close to the percentage of the population that cycle.
Actually, Apple does have the settings. In OS X, since 10.10, it has been due to Spotlight doing online queries. In iTunes, for many years, it has been due to their suggestions system and retrieving additional data about your music.
It is, as the article suggests, the price of convenience. It would be nice though if you had the option to turn off those conveniences if you don't want them.
This is the same mentality which leads to so much being added to the curriculum that neither the teacher nor the student can handle it. Rather than having every special interest trying to get their bits into the curriculum, decide what is important in a particular field and focus on that. Then give the learner the option to pursue a STEM, arts, or blended education. The arts aren't going to die off because everyone is interested in STEM, because you're never going to run into a situation where everyone is interested in STEM. Likewise, STEM isn't going to die off because of the arts. You're even going to have people who are interested in a mix of the two because no one completely fits into those silos.
Slashdot Mirror
Consumers helped to make this decision a long time ago when they decided that it was better to replace than to repair. Yes, there were external factors. This includes things like the cost of getting someone to make repairs and the faster turn around of buying a replacement. On the other hand, their inability to conduct the most basic repairs on their own (e.g. fixing a frayed cable or swapping a replaceable component) went a long way in convincing manufacturers that planned obsolescence can be a viable business model. The prioritization of compact and more integrated devices over serviceability is also a huge factor. Computers are an excellent example of that. Contrast an early 80's computer, where nearly everything was in a socket or soldered through-hole, to a modern phone where there is barely enough space for a plug and socket for the battery.
We also can't claim that consumers didn't see this coming. Again to the computer example: there was a shift from the early 80's computers to modular desktops of the late 80's and early 90's (where the modules were more or less standardized), to the laptops of the late 90's and early 2000's (where the modules were less standard), to the present day. Ah, the present day: a time when a replaceable battery or an SD card for memory expansion (not so much to repair as to extend the service life of a product) is considered an anti-feature by some.
Manufacturers may have implemented these decisions, but it was the consumer who made the decision.
Revisionist history here? NeXT had nothing to do with the Macintosh system software until the company was bought out by Apple. It is an entirely different design that is intended for an entirely different customer base. Getting NeXT to run on Macs and to provide compatibility for existing Mac software was a non-trivial process that took place internally then across many years of public releases. Indeed, there was very little consensus about which version of OS X was ready to be the true successor to the classic system software. (Tthe debate seemed to settle down around 10.3 or 10.4.)
As for Mac OS 9 being "shit", it had one thing that early versions of OS X didn't: application support. Commercial developers were not keen on OS X in the early days simply because OS X users were a subset of the users on a platform that offered a tiny market share. (Existing users may have wanted the improvements of OS X as well, but application software is king.) While developers would appreciate the technical improvements to OS X, the early API was incomplete. All of that was resolved with time, but it took years to resolve.
Apple would have collapsed even if Jobs stuck around. It was a company that grew too big, too fast. It was a feeding ground for people with grand ideas and even more grandiose egos. Like many of it's contemporaries, it was doomed to fall.
Jobs' return was a different story, but a lot can still be attributed to luck. To Jobs credit, he was a more mature businessman and he reentered at a time when Apple realized that it had to be more humble. He probably would have saved the company regardless of what happened. Yet there was a lot of luck. Things like the iPod were initially directed at Apple's existing customers. The growth that it triggered and the products that it enabled were far from a bygone conclusion.
If you're cycling 50 km/day, it is likely that you are making ongoing lifestyle choices that contribute to your health. You probably don't have to attribute those choices to genetics or micro-organisms.
On the other hand, why pay for stuff you don't need?
Low end phones are fine for making and receiving phone calls, playing audio and video, reading in a variety of formats (both local and online), taking photos to document something, alarm clock and scheduling, a simple notepad, serving as a flashlight or a level, as well as a heck of a lot more. Sure, it is possible to do a bit more on higher end phones, but there are definitely diminishing returns.
Money is money. It can't treat a person well and it can't treat a person poorly. People on the other hand is another issue, especially people who you don't know yet who know you (or think they know you).
Money can be buried in investments, or dispersed if you want to go to the trouble too. Bury a person though, that will get you in trouble with the law. Disperse people, and they will think you're antisocial.
I can't honestly say what I would do if I had that much money. I would like to think that I'd bury it in investments, skimming just enough off the top to behave like a typical person. Yet I would do my best to avoid the fame bit. Relationships are awkward enough when you know them and they know you. Having the imbalance where people know you, but not the other way around, is something to be avoided.
"Hey kiddo! You know I've always been there for you and I will always be there for you. But I've gotta tell ya, you were a disappointment as a kid and you're a disappointment as a young adult. Yet, in spite of all of that, I'm still holding out hope for you in middle age."
Life of the party indeed! ;)
The "techies" should submit a report, in writing, outlining the implications of a decision. No matter how much people hate writing reports, it does have a degree of accountability that casual consultations do not have. The writer is more inclined to provide both the benefits and the drawbacks of the decision as well as providing the rationale for approving or rejecting the decision. Documentation also forces accountability on senior management, since they have information upon which to base their decision. This is information that they have to take to their bosses if called upon.
This is not to say that the techies will agree with the outcome, but it can soften the blow. I have certainly written proposals for things that I did not approve of, but it was better than their alternative. (That original plans would have resulted in my resignation since they were planning to do something illegal. The alternative accepted their goals, but brought them in line with the law.))
Jobs clearly made "one more thing" work for Apple. But that was for product announcements and it seemed to be an in-joke by a secretive company that couldn't keep its secrets very well.
Other than that, the expression seems to have more negative connotations than positive ones. It is the sort of thing that people say when they cannot stop talking, or when someone wants to emphasize a piece of bad news. It is the sort of thing that implies excess or redundancy. It is not the thing that many smart companies say unless they carefully engineer it to be an advantage.
Because the tech is invariably based on open Source and written by some unpaid intern.
Though it's probably not in the way that you intended, you do have a valid point. Far too many companies seem to piece together open source software then slap on some proprietary code, without adequately testing it. Since they are doing so to save development and licensing costs, it frequently ends up as a disaster.
That being said, many companies do spend some time in integrating open source software and do thorough testing. So the success or failure of open source software in such circumstances is more a product of the company's motivation and culture than an indicator of the quality of open source software.
Shouldn't the threshold be based upon the size of the institution? Two reasons:
Larger institutions have much more infrastructure to maintain if there is a decline.
A common threshold would benefit small, well endowed, and arguably elitist institutions.
We're talking about something that happened 20 years ago in the basement of a library. Some representatives from O'Reilly were talking about one of the latest developments, ELF, and brought along some free goodies. Soon thereafter I bought a thick book from a competing publisher that included Slackware on CD-ROM. I marveled at how easy it was to install compared to OS/2 (involving only a boot disk and kernel parameters, rather than custom boot disks) and set about learning the thing.
By arming yourself, expressing your opinion, and being fully prepared to kill when necessary to defend your rights. That's too "scary" for most people
You're damn right about it scaring me. Far too many of those people who are "fully prepared to kill when necessary to defend their rights" see their rights as being more important than the rights of others. Defending your rights at the expense of others is fine, provided that you have a way to mediate between parties. Killing is not a form of mediation. It may "solve the problem", but it is murder nevertheless.
If you're actually concerned about this, rewrite the tutorials rather than complaining about them. A big part of the reason why reach for those parts is because someone taught them how to use them.
No. It's like saying that your new car sucks because it's performance on highways is sub par. After all, why should we be concerned with designing cars that perform well on highways when most people live in cities?
I'll let the military types decide what they actually need. Yet when it comes down to making comparisons, choose something that is more appropriate than cranks and horses.
Imagine the extra challenge for combat simulators!
When I read "the up-goer V", I received the message that technical language is a good thing since it helps to clarify concepts. (At least to a degree. I'm sure that we have all run across texts that use jargon to such a degree that it obscures concepts.) Just look at that cartoon. It is almost impossible to figure out what the Saturn V actually does because the language is so simple that it fails to convey the purpose of the various parts.
Making that point only takes a single cartoon. Anything more is tedious.
Then bike in the rain. I frequently do since the transit in this city is very poor, though not quite as poor as your city.
I don't drive either, but the majority of adult cyclists do. Hence the suggestion.
Vancouver (Canada) has a few bidirectional bike lanes, and I agree that they are a bit problematic. That's particularly true when making left turns.
As for overtaking other cyclists, just do what you would do on a pathway (or as an automobile would do on a side street or highway): ensure the oncoming lane is clear and pass. Unfortunately, there is not enough bike traffic to justify a passing lane.
For the most part, I prefer riding on roads without bike lanes. But I'm an experienced cyclist who would much rather be in the traffic than invisible to the traffic.
You can reduce those risks by becoming familiar with your route and how motorists behave at different times of day, then adjusting your riding habits accordingly.
To give you an example of what I mean: there is a particular 3-way stop in my city where I always pull over to the left hand side of the lane. This is because the driver's view on one of the streets is obstructed by a large tree, so a cyclist on the right would go unseen. While my first couple of trips through that intersection were scary, because I was sticking to the right, becoming familiar with the intersection and modifying my riding habits accordingly made the trip much safer.
It depends upon the commute. One of the sites I work at is a 10 minute ride with a small downhill stretch. I'm not covered by sweat, and I doubt that I smell any different than I normally would.
Another job is a 25 minute ride with a 60 meter high hill at the end. I sweat. Oddly enough though, people only notice when they're uncomfortably close to me. The obvious solution to that is to respect my personal space.
As for the rain and snow. Dress for the weather. Or do what a lot of cyclists do: bus or drive during bad weather.
That depends upon how many people choose to cycle. Bikes take considerably less space both on the road and for parking. In the long term, it may also makes the length of trips for both cyclists and motorists since businesses will find it desirable to be closer to their workers and consumers. Of course, all of that depends upon uptake. Only time will tell.
It is also worth considering that "halve the size of a busy street" is also incredibly misleading. Considering that you can support bidirectional bike traffic in less space than a single lane for motor vehicles and that bike lanes tend to be along corridors (rather than on every street), you are dedicating significantly less than 50% of the infrastructure to bikes. Indeed, it would be surprising if the percentage of the infrastructure dedicated to cycling would be anywhere close to the percentage of the population that cycle.
Actually, Apple does have the settings. In OS X, since 10.10, it has been due to Spotlight doing online queries. In iTunes, for many years, it has been due to their suggestions system and retrieving additional data about your music.
It is, as the article suggests, the price of convenience. It would be nice though if you had the option to turn off those conveniences if you don't want them.
The video make it clear. They said that they are using components designed for tablets in order to take advantage of the economies of scale.
This is the same mentality which leads to so much being added to the curriculum that neither the teacher nor the student can handle it. Rather than having every special interest trying to get their bits into the curriculum, decide what is important in a particular field and focus on that. Then give the learner the option to pursue a STEM, arts, or blended education. The arts aren't going to die off because everyone is interested in STEM, because you're never going to run into a situation where everyone is interested in STEM. Likewise, STEM isn't going to die off because of the arts. You're even going to have people who are interested in a mix of the two because no one completely fits into those silos.