I got my job by going above and beyond, programming when I was supposed to be simply a walking reference book. It made my job faster, and more available. The more I automated, the more time I had to automate more things.
I got hired on a help desk team, 12 or so people like me who just wrote stuff and gradually became a recognized team. The team didn't set out to get recognized, just get faster. Management did not realize how important it was to automate until it was already done. Then we were indispensible, actually before I even joined the team.
But, they didn't pay to retain, and the team fell apart. We were all essentially help desk people doing real programming work, above our pay grade. Many people went for better opportunities when upper upper management had to meet stock-related goals, some involuntarily.
You can know the people are better off, no matter what you get out of it. You can know when you leave, the system you built will be virtually unmaintainable even if you document the crap out of it, because whoever tries to replace you statistically won't be a good code reader. You can know that you could have helped, but didn't because it didn't suit your philosophy.
I suggest proposing the system, with statistics on how much money will be saved, and most likely how many jobs can be eliminated as a result. If it is approved, negotiate payment and come up with the solution well under the deadline. If not, do what you feel is right.
No it was not, but that's not the point. Congress can order technology to restrict freedoms outside America. That was only theoretically the case before SOPA and similar bills. Now, there is no reason to assume that the American government is not interfering with any technology you can't inspect yourself.
Or to remove the double negatives: Now there is reason to assume the American government is interfering with any technology you can't inspect yourself.
TL;DR: This now gives two results: gpg --recv-key 70096AD1
I read the whole thing, hoping to figure out why I care. Looks like there's a bug in Gnu PG, if you know someone's short key you can possibly do something or other, possibly replace their key with yours in some way. Surely it wouldn't authenticate, or it should at least say the message came from someone else if you check someone's signature. Is there any actual problem here?
I think the argument is perfectly valid. There are large numbers of people who believe that abortions should not happen, and very passionately. I disagree, but when you have that many people against an idea and willing to take extreme action hoping to prevent it, there is something to it.
After all, the idea of what is evil differs between cultures, and therefore fairly relative. In a country made of immigrants from different nations, like the USA, you will have different subpopulations with different ideas of what is right.
That doesn't necessarily make someone automatically evil to the entire population, but to a significant portion you certainly can be. The conclusion is essentially the same. If you're doing something to piss enough people off, something isn't right. We have the #occupy protests, which pit the 99% against the 1%. Most of the 1% got there just by engaging in capitalism, or being born to someone who did. They got money that people legitimately wanted to part with, in trade for something the people wanted. In the eyes of the government and economy, they are acting as expected and therefore should not be considered evil by anyone voluntarily living in the economy.
The difficulty is that owner versus worker salary is disproportionate, and company profits are recovering while the worker shares are stagnant. By acting as expected, the 1% are pretty much by definition not evil. But by consolodating the wealth of the 99%, offshoring jobs, layoffs and consolidation of the workload, a large number of people see them as being evil. They are at the same time evil and not evil, but a large number of people have an axe to grind.
The mob is angry, and they have a point. That doesn't make them right, the mob are evil to someone else, who is just trying to make a living according to the rules. And as long as we have disparity from a source other than personal choice alone, people will remain on opposing sides, and be evil to each other
gp said nothing about C, the quote was "Microsoft seems to be content to let standard C wither and die." They release free versions of their compilers, and lots of open source projects provide Visual C solution files as their Windows option.
When lots of code uses non-standard C, and is difficult if not annoying to port, Microsoft has you boxed in. And here's the thing. If you're on Windows, you want Microsoft's IDE and references and everything that comes with it, so Windows users tend to be comfortable with MSVC, personal anecdotes aside.
I remember trying to compile eMule at home, and it required MSVC. I was shocked. An open source app requiring a proprietary tool? Well, when you have the desktop advantage and the primary audience will be computer users, meansing Windows users, why not just go with the OS maker's compiler? And all of its quirks, of course. The compiler is free, it's "native", and it has an effective monopoly for desktop app development. So what Microsoft decides is what you will see in a random code example.
People who have been proven right time after time, such as Snopes or the Bad Astronomy guy, are frequently cited as rebuttals.
Having an internet-wide identity, such as Open ID (and specifically not FaceBook or a government supplied ID), allowing people to gain reputation, and override other peoples' posts, or at least be placed higher, is really the only way to do this everywhere.
Just as with slashdot moderation, it will be possible to game the system, if you respond rationally everywhere except one issue where you feel strongly about. And it would be nice if your reputation could be classified so that you can have a good reputation on some subjects, but automatically junkpiled on other topics.
As it stands, fact checkers who don't have an axe to grind are the only voices of reason, and you basically have to educate people about the fact checker being cited, but not so much that it looks like you are unquestioning of their lack of bias.
Making the internet personal again, so you are talking with actual people (virtually, not their real identities necessarily). Not arguing with text on a page.
What type of spying? So far, no one has shown that anything invasive has been sent. Only videos of event triggers, not actual storage or sending. The profile example for my phone looks innocuous enough, and the more I read about CIQ the more I think it does exactly what it says - help the carrier improve the network.
So what exactly is it you want protection against?
My carrier has already asked that it be removed from devices. The free market worked. Mostly because Sprint has been trying very hard to keep customer satisfaction high.
My phone would have been $550, with Android. If they licensed another operating system, it would still have been the same price, because that's what the market would pay for it. Of course mine was subsidized by several incentives.
Andoird being free (or $5 if you pay Microsoft's protection money) means it's more profit for the maker. It is entirely possible to argue that it being free makes it an attractive option for manufacturers. Throw in a little in-house customization like HTC's Sense on top of it, make sure people know there are piles of free apps, and users will flock to it.
If it cost money, we would likely have fewer phones with it available.
The problem is, Microsoft almost certainly did not bring their whole war chest to the table. They only needed 1 patent to win. So they probably brought 2 of their strongest, and threw in a few others hoping they would survive.
Now they can bring a suit against anyone else with that one patent, and a handful of others they aren't sure about. Even if they ultimately lose this 1 patent somehow, they can start over with a new batch.
It's called throw something to a wall and see if it sticks. That's how they file patents, and that's how they file patent lawsuits.
PKD has been in every movie everywhere. Perhaps that was an exaggeration, but read him. If you don't, I will find you and kick you in the balls. Not because I get a royalty check, or because I think you have balls, but because I read my roommate's PKD collection. And it is awesome. The movies he inspired are incredible.
I will KHITBASH if needed. But please read PKD. One book from the public library should convince you to buy everything, ever. If not, the library got another rental, BFD.
I installed it on the desktop connected to the (1080p) TV because of Angry Birds. They released an HTML 5 version to promote the browser.
I tried it out at work, brought it home.
Chrome doesn't annoy me with updates and incompatibilities. It's easy, it's simple. FireFox is a language (XUL) written in another language (C/++), and a memory or disk hog.
I don't care how it does stuff, I want my browser to show stuff quickly. IE doesn't, FF doesn't, Chrome does. Click, boom, book it, done.
Oh! Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? FireFox Users!
Oh, that was not the expected answer. IE 9 isn't too terribly bad, and it has a lot of security fixes since IE 6, 7, and 8.
Microsoft hasn't been doing too badly since IE 8. I have to use IE at work, and at home I have updated to 9, and haven't had problems.
Except with Mashable, which seems to be a terriblly written website. I have "Display notificatio for all errors" enabled, becaue I make websites, and it took me forever to even turn it off. Mashable sucks.
Actually, wait. A lot of poeple have been trying to figure that out. It's just a checkbox somewhere, I assume, otherwise you would have detailed exactly what you did to achieve that, some link or other reference.
It's rather intuitive. The people right at the line go on. The people who are close try to make it under the light. The people who have plenty of time figure they are unlikely to make the light and slow down. If I see the yellow and barely have to brake in order to stop by the line, there's no need to push my luck.
You will still have instances of people not paying attention and blowing right through a red light. But giving more people the opportunity to squeeze under just makes sense, if you're most interested in safety.
Yellow light timing is important, but it has to be balanced so that people who do stop don't feel like they are waiting "forever" for the green to come back around. A longer yellow adds to the cycle length, unless the green is shortened to match. There are two intersections where I will risk running a red so I don't get stuck for what feels like an eternity. Especially when cross traffic is light, and I'm waiting for no reason.
Dynamic green lengths depending on traffic and longer but not excessive yellows are the best ways for drivers to feel like driving is "fair" for everyone. Waiting a cycle, then moving forward but getting stopped again because the green was too short is where I see people try to stretch the yellow, it just doesn't feel fair.
Because that's a lot of content to lose. They want to make friends with everyone, despite users using Google services to share everyone's content. The last thing they need is big media, under the umbrella of MAFIAA, trying to build a competing service. Even if it were found to be a collusion, the Justice Department takes so long to bust those up Youtube would be flushed down the PoopTube by the time anything remotely interesting happened.
How would that work? Easy, someone uploads a crappy version of something, fingerprinting identifies it and replaces it with a 1080p or 256kb crystal clear copy, with ads and links to places to buy it.
Google is in a nebulous area, protected but not appreciated. They don't want enemies.
Was it actually connecting? What I read was that domains existed, implying that connections could be made. I'd really like to see some actual info about actual connections, because that might make me flip my opinions. Right now, all I have read is conjecture by financially incentivised parties.
I'd mod you up but I already commented. I have seen a video of CIQ catching events. Nowhere does it show a log file, or what data is being stored, or what data is being sent. I have no doubt as to the potential for misuse of this software, based on the carrier's configuration for that install. But the guy has only shown the front end, nothing worth all fo this fuss.
And yes, he is selling something related. Unless he goes deeper and shows what's being logged, or sent, he deserves no money or recognition.
This again? Take a look at your terms of service. They reserve the right to hand over data to law enforcement. Given the number of times any crime drama leans on someone to turn over information without a warrant, I'm surprised anyone but a pedant would expect otherwise.
People didn't know when they signed up for service that their GPS information might be turned over to LEA. That's ignorance. Any new technology that comes out, you need to know what information is private and what is not. If it's not spelled out clearly, then you have no claim.
If you use twitter, and complain that people can see your tweets, whose fault is it? If you think you are sending someone a private message on FaceBook but you post it on their wall, whose fault is it? You use a phone, where the phone company has to know where you are, but you didn't think that they had your location, whose fault is it? Now, LEA asks for the information which the contract says may be shared with LEA. You just didn't think it all the way through, and did not have a concrete argument.
The split internet in a locked room of AT&T (maybe Verizon, pretty sure ATT though) concerns me. "We will send a copy of everything to the feds" is quite a bit different from "we will send stuff if they ask."
Having worked near them, I watched their news carefully. Customers were not happy, and they did a lot of work to turn that around. They aren't perfect, but a large company will never be.
I hate to go all tin-foil hat on you here, but I'm probably about to. I look at TV, and we have basically three genres to choose from, in mainstream media at least. One is comedy, escapism at its finest. Another is reality TV, where you see everything someone else does. The last is the crime drama (Law and Order and CSI franchises, Maybe the Cold Case types, and one-offs like The Mentalist, Criminal Minds, Unforgettable, Castle, Blue Bloods). There is very little else on.
Look at the progression of the majority of programming - the crime drama has taken over, and always "chasing the bad guys" . Even L&O Criminal Intent, which is supposed to show the bad guys' perspectives, shows them in a terrible light.
And the progression of technology, so that now CSI has become the butt of jokes with all of its impossible tech, which is no longer so impossible.
I'm not saying this is the case, but I can't prove otherwise. We are gradually, whether intentional or not, becoming used to the idea that an ever-present layer of surveillance is good for us. As long as it helps bad guys get caught, it's good. You never see it being misused, unless it's part of the plot and the bad guy gets it in the end.
And then there is "Person of Interest". I was oddly interested in this based on the previews, to see how they treated it. And to my dismay, a single guy can eavesdrop on any conversation and track any person, almost as bad as Morgan Freeman's Batman machine. With limits where it makes the plot more interesting.
USA is being conditioned, whether it is intentional or a fluke, to accept that recording everything is good for us, through entertainment. I watch these shows and I am horrified, others probably don't pick up on the big brother aspect. Call me a nutter, I'll call this a hypothesis.
Pracle sells a product that is "capable" of anything the buyer wants. The trick is, it costs more money to make that capability into a functionality. They sell software and customization, with the base software nearly incapable of doing anything. And they try to avoid trining your people on how to customize it, they want to charge for it if possible. This is how Oracle and SAP and any other large services provider really makes their "software" money.
I sell you a copy of the.NET framework saying it can query your schedules and people and preferred times, and come out with a per-person schedule which best fits the peoples' preferences and still covers your hours. Then I say it needs customization, where I actualy write that part. Or copy it from existing modules we made for other customers.
There's a list of top selling e-books and a list of top selling print books. Is someone surprised that they are different? That's the story here?
I read it twice and it still doesn't make sense. Shittiest summary ever on slashdot, and assuming it comes from the link, which I won't click, a hearty "your blog sucks".
because i want to sell them to someone else for extra money.
bzzt, wrong. "because they posed a safety risk" would have worked. Especially because you weren't clear about whether it is the user's safety or you (the seller's) safety. Car manufacturers often do post recalls to fix safety issues, and if it happens to change the functionality of the car, well too bad. Although I think you'd have more of a case with a car than a console. Judges understand cars.
Slashdot Mirror
I got my job by going above and beyond, programming when I was supposed to be simply a walking reference book. It made my job faster, and more available. The more I automated, the more time I had to automate more things.
I got hired on a help desk team, 12 or so people like me who just wrote stuff and gradually became a recognized team. The team didn't set out to get recognized, just get faster. Management did not realize how important it was to automate until it was already done. Then we were indispensible, actually before I even joined the team.
But, they didn't pay to retain, and the team fell apart. We were all essentially help desk people doing real programming work, above our pay grade. Many people went for better opportunities when upper upper management had to meet stock-related goals, some involuntarily.
You can know the people are better off, no matter what you get out of it. You can know when you leave, the system you built will be virtually unmaintainable even if you document the crap out of it, because whoever tries to replace you statistically won't be a good code reader. You can know that you could have helped, but didn't because it didn't suit your philosophy.
I suggest proposing the system, with statistics on how much money will be saved, and most likely how many jobs can be eliminated as a result. If it is approved, negotiate payment and come up with the solution well under the deadline. If not, do what you feel is right.
No it was not, but that's not the point. Congress can order technology to restrict freedoms outside America. That was only theoretically the case before SOPA and similar bills. Now, there is no reason to assume that the American government is not interfering with any technology you can't inspect yourself.
Or to remove the double negatives: Now there is reason to assume the American government is interfering with any technology you can't inspect yourself.
I read the whole thing, hoping to figure out why I care. Looks like there's a bug in Gnu PG, if you know someone's short key you can possibly do something or other, possibly replace their key with yours in some way. Surely it wouldn't authenticate, or it should at least say the message came from someone else if you check someone's signature. Is there any actual problem here?
TL;DR, your blog sucks.
I think the argument is perfectly valid. There are large numbers of people who believe that abortions should not happen, and very passionately. I disagree, but when you have that many people against an idea and willing to take extreme action hoping to prevent it, there is something to it.
After all, the idea of what is evil differs between cultures, and therefore fairly relative. In a country made of immigrants from different nations, like the USA, you will have different subpopulations with different ideas of what is right.
That doesn't necessarily make someone automatically evil to the entire population, but to a significant portion you certainly can be. The conclusion is essentially the same. If you're doing something to piss enough people off, something isn't right. We have the #occupy protests, which pit the 99% against the 1%. Most of the 1% got there just by engaging in capitalism, or being born to someone who did. They got money that people legitimately wanted to part with, in trade for something the people wanted. In the eyes of the government and economy, they are acting as expected and therefore should not be considered evil by anyone voluntarily living in the economy.
The difficulty is that owner versus worker salary is disproportionate, and company profits are recovering while the worker shares are stagnant. By acting as expected, the 1% are pretty much by definition not evil. But by consolodating the wealth of the 99%, offshoring jobs, layoffs and consolidation of the workload, a large number of people see them as being evil. They are at the same time evil and not evil, but a large number of people have an axe to grind.
The mob is angry, and they have a point. That doesn't make them right, the mob are evil to someone else, who is just trying to make a living according to the rules. And as long as we have disparity from a source other than personal choice alone, people will remain on opposing sides, and be evil to each other
gp said nothing about C, the quote was "Microsoft seems to be content to let standard C wither and die." They release free versions of their compilers, and lots of open source projects provide Visual C solution files as their Windows option.
When lots of code uses non-standard C, and is difficult if not annoying to port, Microsoft has you boxed in. And here's the thing. If you're on Windows, you want Microsoft's IDE and references and everything that comes with it, so Windows users tend to be comfortable with MSVC, personal anecdotes aside.
I remember trying to compile eMule at home, and it required MSVC. I was shocked. An open source app requiring a proprietary tool? Well, when you have the desktop advantage and the primary audience will be computer users, meansing Windows users, why not just go with the OS maker's compiler? And all of its quirks, of course. The compiler is free, it's "native", and it has an effective monopoly for desktop app development. So what Microsoft decides is what you will see in a random code example.
People who have been proven right time after time, such as Snopes or the Bad Astronomy guy, are frequently cited as rebuttals.
Having an internet-wide identity, such as Open ID (and specifically not FaceBook or a government supplied ID), allowing people to gain reputation, and override other peoples' posts, or at least be placed higher, is really the only way to do this everywhere.
Just as with slashdot moderation, it will be possible to game the system, if you respond rationally everywhere except one issue where you feel strongly about. And it would be nice if your reputation could be classified so that you can have a good reputation on some subjects, but automatically junkpiled on other topics.
As it stands, fact checkers who don't have an axe to grind are the only voices of reason, and you basically have to educate people about the fact checker being cited, but not so much that it looks like you are unquestioning of their lack of bias.
Making the internet personal again, so you are talking with actual people (virtually, not their real identities necessarily). Not arguing with text on a page.
What type of spying? So far, no one has shown that anything invasive has been sent. Only videos of event triggers, not actual storage or sending. The profile example for my phone looks innocuous enough, and the more I read about CIQ the more I think it does exactly what it says - help the carrier improve the network.
So what exactly is it you want protection against?
My carrier has already asked that it be removed from devices. The free market worked. Mostly because Sprint has been trying very hard to keep customer satisfaction high.
http://informationweek.com/news/mobility/smart_phones/232300799
My phone would have been $550, with Android. If they licensed another operating system, it would still have been the same price, because that's what the market would pay for it. Of course mine was subsidized by several incentives.
Andoird being free (or $5 if you pay Microsoft's protection money) means it's more profit for the maker. It is entirely possible to argue that it being free makes it an attractive option for manufacturers. Throw in a little in-house customization like HTC's Sense on top of it, make sure people know there are piles of free apps, and users will flock to it.
If it cost money, we would likely have fewer phones with it available.
The problem is, Microsoft almost certainly did not bring their whole war chest to the table. They only needed 1 patent to win. So they probably brought 2 of their strongest, and threw in a few others hoping they would survive.
Now they can bring a suit against anyone else with that one patent, and a handful of others they aren't sure about. Even if they ultimately lose this 1 patent somehow, they can start over with a new batch.
It's called throw something to a wall and see if it sticks. That's how they file patents, and that's how they file patent lawsuits.
PKD has been in every movie everywhere. Perhaps that was an exaggeration, but read him. If you don't, I will find you and kick you in the balls. Not because I get a royalty check, or because I think you have balls, but because I read my roommate's PKD collection. And it is awesome. The movies he inspired are incredible.
I will KHITBASH if needed. But please read PKD. One book from the public library should convince you to buy everything, ever. If not, the library got another rental, BFD.
So...Aliens?
I installed it on the desktop connected to the (1080p) TV because of Angry Birds. They released an HTML 5 version to promote the browser.
I tried it out at work, brought it home.
Chrome doesn't annoy me with updates and incompatibilities. It's easy, it's simple. FireFox is a language (XUL) written in another language (C/++), and a memory or disk hog.
I don't care how it does stuff, I want my browser to show stuff quickly. IE doesn't, FF doesn't, Chrome does. Click, boom, book it, done.
Oh! Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
FireFox Users!
Oh, that was not the expected answer. IE 9 isn't too terribly bad, and it has a lot of security fixes since IE 6, 7, and 8.
Microsoft hasn't been doing too badly since IE 8. I have to use IE at work, and at home I have updated to 9, and haven't had problems.
Except with Mashable, which seems to be a terriblly written website. I have "Display notificatio for all errors" enabled, becaue I make websites, and it took me forever to even turn it off. Mashable sucks.
You're right it wasn't worth a post.
Actually, wait. A lot of poeple have been trying to figure that out. It's just a checkbox somewhere, I assume, otherwise you would have detailed exactly what you did to achieve that, some link or other reference.
It's rather intuitive. The people right at the line go on. The people who are close try to make it under the light. The people who have plenty of time figure they are unlikely to make the light and slow down. If I see the yellow and barely have to brake in order to stop by the line, there's no need to push my luck.
You will still have instances of people not paying attention and blowing right through a red light. But giving more people the opportunity to squeeze under just makes sense, if you're most interested in safety.
Yellow light timing is important, but it has to be balanced so that people who do stop don't feel like they are waiting "forever" for the green to come back around. A longer yellow adds to the cycle length, unless the green is shortened to match. There are two intersections where I will risk running a red so I don't get stuck for what feels like an eternity. Especially when cross traffic is light, and I'm waiting for no reason.
Dynamic green lengths depending on traffic and longer but not excessive yellows are the best ways for drivers to feel like driving is "fair" for everyone. Waiting a cycle, then moving forward but getting stopped again because the green was too short is where I see people try to stretch the yellow, it just doesn't feel fair.
Because that's a lot of content to lose. They want to make friends with everyone, despite users using Google services to share everyone's content. The last thing they need is big media, under the umbrella of MAFIAA, trying to build a competing service. Even if it were found to be a collusion, the Justice Department takes so long to bust those up Youtube would be flushed down the PoopTube by the time anything remotely interesting happened.
How would that work? Easy, someone uploads a crappy version of something, fingerprinting identifies it and replaces it with a 1080p or 256kb crystal clear copy, with ads and links to places to buy it.
Google is in a nebulous area, protected but not appreciated. They don't want enemies.
Was it actually connecting? What I read was that domains existed, implying that connections could be made. I'd really like to see some actual info about actual connections, because that might make me flip my opinions. Right now, all I have read is conjecture by financially incentivised parties.
I'd mod you up but I already commented. I have seen a video of CIQ catching events. Nowhere does it show a log file, or what data is being stored, or what data is being sent. I have no doubt as to the potential for misuse of this software, based on the carrier's configuration for that install. But the guy has only shown the front end, nothing worth all fo this fuss.
And yes, he is selling something related. Unless he goes deeper and shows what's being logged, or sent, he deserves no money or recognition.
This again? Take a look at your terms of service. They reserve the right to hand over data to law enforcement. Given the number of times any crime drama leans on someone to turn over information without a warrant, I'm surprised anyone but a pedant would expect otherwise.
People didn't know when they signed up for service that their GPS information might be turned over to LEA. That's ignorance. Any new technology that comes out, you need to know what information is private and what is not. If it's not spelled out clearly, then you have no claim.
If you use twitter, and complain that people can see your tweets, whose fault is it? If you think you are sending someone a private message on FaceBook but you post it on their wall, whose fault is it? You use a phone, where the phone company has to know where you are, but you didn't think that they had your location, whose fault is it? Now, LEA asks for the information which the contract says may be shared with LEA. You just didn't think it all the way through, and did not have a concrete argument.
The split internet in a locked room of AT&T (maybe Verizon, pretty sure ATT though) concerns me. "We will send a copy of everything to the feds" is quite a bit different from "we will send stuff if they ask."
Having worked near them, I watched their news carefully. Customers were not happy, and they did a lot of work to turn that around. They aren't perfect, but a large company will never be.
I hate to go all tin-foil hat on you here, but I'm probably about to. I look at TV, and we have basically three genres to choose from, in mainstream media at least. One is comedy, escapism at its finest. Another is reality TV, where you see everything someone else does. The last is the crime drama (Law and Order and CSI franchises, Maybe the Cold Case types, and one-offs like The Mentalist, Criminal Minds, Unforgettable, Castle, Blue Bloods). There is very little else on.
Look at the progression of the majority of programming - the crime drama has taken over, and always "chasing the bad guys" . Even L&O Criminal Intent, which is supposed to show the bad guys' perspectives, shows them in a terrible light.
And the progression of technology, so that now CSI has become the butt of jokes with all of its impossible tech, which is no longer so impossible.
I'm not saying this is the case, but I can't prove otherwise. We are gradually, whether intentional or not, becoming used to the idea that an ever-present layer of surveillance is good for us. As long as it helps bad guys get caught, it's good. You never see it being misused, unless it's part of the plot and the bad guy gets it in the end.
And then there is "Person of Interest". I was oddly interested in this based on the previews, to see how they treated it. And to my dismay, a single guy can eavesdrop on any conversation and track any person, almost as bad as Morgan Freeman's Batman machine. With limits where it makes the plot more interesting.
USA is being conditioned, whether it is intentional or a fluke, to accept that recording everything is good for us, through entertainment. I watch these shows and I am horrified, others probably don't pick up on the big brother aspect. Call me a nutter, I'll call this a hypothesis.
Obligatory Conan analogy:
Britney Spears is to 115 lbs of energy as Christina Aguilera is to 115 lbs of clown whore make up.
Pracle sells a product that is "capable" of anything the buyer wants. The trick is, it costs more money to make that capability into a functionality. They sell software and customization, with the base software nearly incapable of doing anything. And they try to avoid trining your people on how to customize it, they want to charge for it if possible. This is how Oracle and SAP and any other large services provider really makes their "software" money.
I sell you a copy of the .NET framework saying it can query your schedules and people and preferred times, and come out with a per-person schedule which best fits the peoples' preferences and still covers your hours. Then I say it needs customization, where I actualy write that part. Or copy it from existing modules we made for other customers.
There's a list of top selling e-books and a list of top selling print books. Is someone surprised that they are different? That's the story here?
I read it twice and it still doesn't make sense. Shittiest summary ever on slashdot, and assuming it comes from the link, which I won't click, a hearty "your blog sucks".
bzzt, wrong. "because they posed a safety risk" would have worked. Especially because you weren't clear about whether it is the user's safety or you (the seller's) safety. Car manufacturers often do post recalls to fix safety issues, and if it happens to change the functionality of the car, well too bad. Although I think you'd have more of a case with a car than a console. Judges understand cars.