Also, if only 10% of an African country has broadband, but those who have it have very high speed, that country would still rank higher than the US in this report. Perspective is everything.
Microsoft has offered a headless WebBrowser component since Internet Explorer 4. Headless Chrome doesn't really give bot-makers a tool that has never existed before, just a bit of competition.
ObjectVision was designed to build working code just by drawing flow charts. For the very small subset of things it could do, it worked fine. But for anything else (like renaming a file, for example), you had to write "normal" DLL entry points, which you could call from ObjectVision.
It was a perfect illustration of why you DON'T want to write code this way.
There is obviously a market for devices that cost more than they need to. Apple has proven this by selling its devices at a much higher markup than other brands. Who wouldn't want to be in that kind of business! Microsoft has seen an opportunity here, and went for it. Unfortunately for them, most of us consider price an important factor when buying our hardware, and naturally choose something else.
People in the US seem not to think of vacation as a priority. They often sacrifice everything on the altar of getting ahead at the office. While this kind of competitive attitude is (I think) partly responsible for the way the US dominates the world economy, it also takes a toll on the people who prioritize their time this way.
I've always made it a priority to take time off. When I work, I work hard. When I'm on vacation, I'm really on vacation. That philosophy has never cost me at work, I've had no problems climbing the corporate ladder. I'd guess that if more people looked at it this way, they would find that they too don't suffer at work for taking time off.
Outside of Silicon Valley, IT is already a profession. Houston, for example, is not known for high tech. But plenty of businesses of all types do need IT staff. They aren't looking for insane hours or "heroic" efforts. Instead, they are looking for stable people who get things done. I'm 50, and so far, I haven't felt this bias against older programmers.
Silicon Valley is one of the most expensive places in the US to live. That's not so much because it has to be expensive, but more because of stifling regulations about who can build what where. The rich in Silicon Valley don't want the poor living among them. They want them at arm's length, just close enough to do their work, just far enough to be out of sight. How about relaxing some of those regulations so people can actually afford to live there, instead of just handing out "free money"! (After all, we know that money grows on trees, right?)
Even if programmers always followed best practices, this would not eliminate vulnerabilities.
It's easiest to understand this through analogy. Your house has security vulnerabilities. A thief can kick in a door, or break a window, or just ring your doorbell pretending to be a neighbor. No matter how solid the construction, there's always a way in, given enough will and determination.
Code is no different. It's really just an arms race. You can fortify your code, but then so will the intruders.
This is true. However, when it comes to surgery, there are often different ways of treating the same condition, each having a different level of complexity, and a different price point. Surgeons might well have a financial motive to use a robot where none is needed, if that means higher fees to them.
The way government works, the source code will be there available for reuse. But when another agency wants to do something similar, one of two things will happen: 1) They will commission new code to be written anyway, or 2) The government contractor will reuse the code and still charge the government full price, as if they developed it from scratch.
It's still a good idea, even if they can't figure out how to spend less money.
My first real computer-related job was "computer operator." I ran decks of punch cards through readers, ran jobs on the mainframe, loaded tapes and hard drives, and so on. Specific computer-related jobs will continue to come and go, but the need for technical people in the software and hardware industry isn't going anywhere.
I think such specialized fields are extremely rare. I've worked in the medical industry, construction, education, and even DNA analysis. In every case, I've been able to pick up the domain knowledge after being hired. I have friends who have gotten jobs with NASA literally learning rocket science on the job. It's hard to imagine a field where this would not be possible.
This works because, as a programmer in any field, you work with a subject matter expert who works with you to develop the software. It's not necessary for the programmers to understand the intricacies, they just have to be able to write code to spec.
You seem to be misinformed about wages in the 1700s. According to this book, a typical laborer's wage (construction work) was between 40 and 80 cents per day, or (given today's 5-day work week) about $208 per year. According to this inflation calculator, $100 in 1770 would be worth about $2,700 today. So at the high end, inflation-adjusted wages for a construction laborer would be in the neighborhood of $5,000 to $6,000 per year.
Of course there were reasons that most people back then were farmers. And today there are reasons that most people have jobs in retail or the restaurant industry, or other jobs that will one day be done by robots. And there are reasons why most people aren't farmers today, just as in the future there will be reasons that people won't do the menial jobs of today. Just as all those people who used to be farmers found other work, future people will find other work too.
If you're so upset about CEO's getting so much more than you, instead of complaining, why don't you instead become a CEO! Oh wait, it's really hard to be a successful CEO. Maybe there's a reason they make so much money. (No, I'm not one, nor do I want that kind of headache!)
The real reason that incentive to work goes down is because people no longer have to work. They can always fall back on government programs. People used to understand that getting ahead comes from hard work. Today, too many people want to get ahead...without the work. Sorry, it just doesn't work that way.
From the 1900s: If farm tractors and combines replace dozens of farm workers, how do we teach people how to work?
Guess what, though farm work has dropped from 70% of the labor force to under 2%, we still managed to find things to do, including entry-level jobs. If the job of cashier takes the same path, we will again find new things for our teenage workers to do.
Eight years is a blink of an eye in terms of car history. It takes that long just to design a new model and bring it to market. All the major car companies have been struggling for a couple of decades to get electric cars right. Only Tesla has come close, and even their cars are limited to commuting because of their limited range. Maybe in eight decades we will have abandoned fossil fuel cars, but even that is not a foregone conclusion.
It's interesting to me that your experience with Google seems so different from mine. I almost always find what I want in the first 5 results. Bing, not so much. Haven't tried DuckDuckGo, mainly because I have no reason to try something else.
These booklets do satisfy music nerds. But for the most part, I think they were included as a way to try to justify the high price of CDs. After all, you were getting a lot more than just audio for 10 songs! Now that music has been decoupled from the CD medium, and people buy music a-la-carte, the motivation for spending the time and money to create the booklets (or some digital equivalent) is no longer there.
Sure, we've been to the moon, but we haven't established a presence there, like we would be required to do on Mars. We would learn a lot about what to do and not do by establishing a permanent presence on the moon. Because it's a lot closer, it will be a lot easier to rescue a moon-dweller in trouble, than somebody on Mars. Also, with infrastructure on the moon, getting to Mars will become a lot easier.
I like the notion of going to Mars, but I think we missed a step!
The point was not about privacy. The point was about the nature of a monopoly. A monopoly is a company that so dominates an industry that customers have no real choice about where to go. Since this is true for Web advertisers in every practical way, Google is indeed a monopoly. The fact that you can switch to another search provider doesn't change that...they also send you to pages where Google serves ads.
Google doesn't need you to use their search engine. Every time you click a link on a search result, you are viewing ads served by Google. And through those ads, they track your movements through the Web. And THAT is Google's real product.
You are not the customer, you are the product. Even if you use Duck Duck Go, you are viewing Google ads.every time you visit a Web site. And once there, Google does indeed track you.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, if only 10% of an African country has broadband, but those who have it have very high speed, that country would still rank higher than the US in this report. Perspective is everything.
by having the most IPv4 addresses of any country in the world!
Microsoft has offered a headless WebBrowser component since Internet Explorer 4. Headless Chrome doesn't really give bot-makers a tool that has never existed before, just a bit of competition.
ObjectVision was designed to build working code just by drawing flow charts. For the very small subset of things it could do, it worked fine. But for anything else (like renaming a file, for example), you had to write "normal" DLL entry points, which you could call from ObjectVision.
It was a perfect illustration of why you DON'T want to write code this way.
Since Apple takes 30% from AppStore sales.
There is obviously a market for devices that cost more than they need to. Apple has proven this by selling its devices at a much higher markup than other brands. Who wouldn't want to be in that kind of business! Microsoft has seen an opportunity here, and went for it. Unfortunately for them, most of us consider price an important factor when buying our hardware, and naturally choose something else.
People in the US seem not to think of vacation as a priority. They often sacrifice everything on the altar of getting ahead at the office. While this kind of competitive attitude is (I think) partly responsible for the way the US dominates the world economy, it also takes a toll on the people who prioritize their time this way.
I've always made it a priority to take time off. When I work, I work hard. When I'm on vacation, I'm really on vacation. That philosophy has never cost me at work, I've had no problems climbing the corporate ladder. I'd guess that if more people looked at it this way, they would find that they too don't suffer at work for taking time off.
Outside of Silicon Valley, IT is already a profession. Houston, for example, is not known for high tech. But plenty of businesses of all types do need IT staff. They aren't looking for insane hours or "heroic" efforts. Instead, they are looking for stable people who get things done. I'm 50, and so far, I haven't felt this bias against older programmers.
Silicon Valley is one of the most expensive places in the US to live. That's not so much because it has to be expensive, but more because of stifling regulations about who can build what where. The rich in Silicon Valley don't want the poor living among them. They want them at arm's length, just close enough to do their work, just far enough to be out of sight. How about relaxing some of those regulations so people can actually afford to live there, instead of just handing out "free money"! (After all, we know that money grows on trees, right?)
Even if programmers always followed best practices, this would not eliminate vulnerabilities.
It's easiest to understand this through analogy. Your house has security vulnerabilities. A thief can kick in a door, or break a window, or just ring your doorbell pretending to be a neighbor. No matter how solid the construction, there's always a way in, given enough will and determination.
Code is no different. It's really just an arms race. You can fortify your code, but then so will the intruders.
This is true. However, when it comes to surgery, there are often different ways of treating the same condition, each having a different level of complexity, and a different price point. Surgeons might well have a financial motive to use a robot where none is needed, if that means higher fees to them.
I agree also, to a point.
The surgeon might well be motivated to inflate his bill for services rendered, and choose to use a robot where none is actually needed.
The way government works, the source code will be there available for reuse. But when another agency wants to do something similar, one of two things will happen:
1) They will commission new code to be written anyway, or
2) The government contractor will reuse the code and still charge the government full price, as if they developed it from scratch.
It's still a good idea, even if they can't figure out how to spend less money.
My first real computer-related job was "computer operator." I ran decks of punch cards through readers, ran jobs on the mainframe, loaded tapes and hard drives, and so on. Specific computer-related jobs will continue to come and go, but the need for technical people in the software and hardware industry isn't going anywhere.
I think such specialized fields are extremely rare. I've worked in the medical industry, construction, education, and even DNA analysis. In every case, I've been able to pick up the domain knowledge after being hired. I have friends who have gotten jobs with NASA literally learning rocket science on the job. It's hard to imagine a field where this would not be possible.
This works because, as a programmer in any field, you work with a subject matter expert who works with you to develop the software. It's not necessary for the programmers to understand the intricacies, they just have to be able to write code to spec.
You seem to be misinformed about wages in the 1700s. According to this book, a typical laborer's wage (construction work) was between 40 and 80 cents per day, or (given today's 5-day work week) about $208 per year. According to this inflation calculator, $100 in 1770 would be worth about $2,700 today. So at the high end, inflation-adjusted wages for a construction laborer would be in the neighborhood of $5,000 to $6,000 per year.
Of course there were reasons that most people back then were farmers. And today there are reasons that most people have jobs in retail or the restaurant industry, or other jobs that will one day be done by robots. And there are reasons why most people aren't farmers today, just as in the future there will be reasons that people won't do the menial jobs of today. Just as all those people who used to be farmers found other work, future people will find other work too.
If you're so upset about CEO's getting so much more than you, instead of complaining, why don't you instead become a CEO! Oh wait, it's really hard to be a successful CEO. Maybe there's a reason they make so much money. (No, I'm not one, nor do I want that kind of headache!)
The real reason that incentive to work goes down is because people no longer have to work. They can always fall back on government programs. People used to understand that getting ahead comes from hard work. Today, too many people want to get ahead...without the work. Sorry, it just doesn't work that way.
From the 1900s: If farm tractors and combines replace dozens of farm workers, how do we teach people how to work?
Guess what, though farm work has dropped from 70% of the labor force to under 2%, we still managed to find things to do, including entry-level jobs. If the job of cashier takes the same path, we will again find new things for our teenage workers to do.
Your friend can find "dumb" TV's by adding "-smart" to their keyword search terms. There are still a lot of them out there, even on Amazon.
Eight years is a blink of an eye in terms of car history. It takes that long just to design a new model and bring it to market. All the major car companies have been struggling for a couple of decades to get electric cars right. Only Tesla has come close, and even their cars are limited to commuting because of their limited range. Maybe in eight decades we will have abandoned fossil fuel cars, but even that is not a foregone conclusion.
It's interesting to me that your experience with Google seems so different from mine. I almost always find what I want in the first 5 results. Bing, not so much. Haven't tried DuckDuckGo, mainly because I have no reason to try something else.
These booklets do satisfy music nerds. But for the most part, I think they were included as a way to try to justify the high price of CDs. After all, you were getting a lot more than just audio for 10 songs! Now that music has been decoupled from the CD medium, and people buy music a-la-carte, the motivation for spending the time and money to create the booklets (or some digital equivalent) is no longer there.
Sure, we've been to the moon, but we haven't established a presence there, like we would be required to do on Mars. We would learn a lot about what to do and not do by establishing a permanent presence on the moon. Because it's a lot closer, it will be a lot easier to rescue a moon-dweller in trouble, than somebody on Mars. Also, with infrastructure on the moon, getting to Mars will become a lot easier.
I like the notion of going to Mars, but I think we missed a step!
The point was not about privacy. The point was about the nature of a monopoly. A monopoly is a company that so dominates an industry that customers have no real choice about where to go. Since this is true for Web advertisers in every practical way, Google is indeed a monopoly. The fact that you can switch to another search provider doesn't change that...they also send you to pages where Google serves ads.
Google doesn't need you to use their search engine. Every time you click a link on a search result, you are viewing ads served by Google. And through those ads, they track your movements through the Web. And THAT is Google's real product.
You are not the customer, you are the product. Even if you use Duck Duck Go, you are viewing Google ads.every time you visit a Web site. And once there, Google does indeed track you.