tl;dr: There is no shortage of bodies in STEM fields. However, there is a shortage of good people who also have a solid education in and understand of their field. This is true in computer science, and almost certainly in every other STEM field out there.
If that was true, it would show in rising salaries for those jobs. Companies don't believe they can continue to attract a sufficient number of employees, by paying wages which have stagnated for a decade.
I know there are horrible inefficiencies in the recruiting/hiring process... that may make it seem like there's no-one when you need them, but the majority of open positions seem to be big companies that are doing just fine, but leaving it open in case a hot-shot or someone with ridiculously-low salary expectations comes along.
Yes you could do video with native plugins like WMPlayer. Do you remember how terrible that was?
No, I remember how my 233MHz computer could play full-screen video from a web page, with no tearing and my browser never crashing... Something my 2.4GHz P4 couldn't manage using Flash.
They make it hard to find, but I wouldn't use anything else... Those are the REAL stable releases, while their numbered releases are just betas.
With distros like CentOS/RHEL, the ESR version is in the yum repo, so you get a stable browser, updates are seamless, and you may not even notice the change when a new version gets installed.
If back in 1995, you had told people that every single channel, including re-broadcast Broadcast TV, in both the US and Canada would be "Scrambled" like HBO, Cinemax, Disney, and Showtime, requiring a cable box be present in every room, and that VCRs would be next to useless (you can still use a VCR, technically.) and that we would be paying $150+ in bills for it, we would be in outrage mode
Before '95, people EXPECTED to need a cable box on every TV, just because TV tuners didn't have a "cable" mode to tune in channels above 13.
You can't really fault cable companies for doing it too much, since DirecTV/DishNet get to encrypt all their local channels and force you to rent a box from them to watch... And works just as poorly with your VCR...
Not to mention that encryption across the board allows them to completely eliminate the installation step, which is an extremely common source of complaints and frustration from customers.
And complaining that your VCR doesn't work in 2014??? You might as well yell at the cashier at Wal-mart for not carrying blank 8-track tapes... You can't even BUY a VCR in stores today that has an ATSC/QAM tuner in it at all!
Complaining about your DVR not working would be a more reasonable complaint, but CableCard is an option available on Tivos and the like.
And frankly, it's ridiculous to pay for cable or satellite, when the overwhelming majority of people in the US can get a huge number of local broadcast channels, with content far better than those hundreds of cable channels, with just a modest antenna system, costing less than $200 up-front... Perhaps 3 months of cable/satellite subscription fees.
As a result, OTA is growing, especially with younger people:
"The number of households relying on OTA reception only is also growing, [...] Growth is especially strong amongst younger households,"
"One in five young households never bothered to get a TV subscription to begin with."
"Also, 28 percent of all households with a head of household under the age of 35 use an antenna instead of a pay-TV subscription."
Thanks so much for the very interesting chart. It's most interesting feature is the remission from banking crises during the time of the Bretton Woods system.
The Savings and Loan Crisis was during that (supposedly-stable) period. There were likely many, many others.
I needed a 12 foot HDMI cable a while back. It was going to cost me $10 on Amazon, but I wanted it right now. I went to Best Buy, half a mile down the road. They wanted $40 for the same cable.
The nearest Walmart would have had one for about $15... Still more expensive than Amazon, with all those Chinese sellers doing cut-throat pricing to get your order, but reasonable. Of course it's probably the existence of Amazon that's keeping them honest.
Blackmail is a gun you can only shoot once... Plenty of politicians have survived bigger scandals.
And don't forget the public is savvy enough about digital image manipulation that the evidence could be put into question long enough to get everyone through to the next budget vote, where all the three letter agencies get axed. Besides, a scandal only means no reelection... If you're obstant enough, you still finish out your term, and get to keep making laws.
The GPLv3 is "arguably more friendly for businesses" in the same way the Earth is argueably flat... You COULD argue that, yes, but overwhelming evidence points to the contrary, and no sane person will agree with you...
Based on your explanation of how patents are necessary for tempramental physical devices, it seems obvious that would apply to tempramental physical objects being controlled by software designed to accomplish the same thing.
If TV had been developed just the same, BUT a digital circuit was used in there to control the electron gun or whatnot, how would that be less valuable, and less worthy of a patent?
Absolutely NONE of that is true. I was browsing full desktop websites, and getting full imap mail, circa 2000. There was some popularity of WAP and active sync, and similar, but only because devices at the time didn't have always-on internet access, so people were reduced to reading a few preselected web pages on the road, and then syncing up at the end of the day.
So what kind of protection would you feel is reasonable for a [...] refined design that makes all its competitors look like they were designed by idiots
The exact same kind of protection that clothing designers get on their designs, perfume makers get on their scents, and Harley Davidson gets on their engine sounds...
None of this was "obvious." It's obvious in retrospect, sure, but obvious then?
Were you around for the dawn of smart phones?
If Compaq had put a cellular radio in an iPaq, we would have had Windows Phones circa 2000, LONG before the iPhone.
Apple did for the iPhone the exact same thing they did for the iPod... They made it a bit more user-friendly, and advertised the hell out of it. The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, and the iPhone wasn't the first mobile computer.
Those nice mobile web browsers like Opera, that you can use on your iPhone... They were developed for PDAs. Fitting a desktop web page to a tiny screen is a hard problem, and one that PDA developers kept working on for years. Apple was lucky they had all that R&D available to steal, because the guys at Opera and other companies didn't file hundreds of patents.
Software development does involve testing cycles, but otherwise almost never involves the kind of experimentation involved in the invention of television, because the exact properties of computer operations are previously known.
So you FULLY support software patents, wherever the software in question controls a (finicky) physical object?
But not where hundreds of millions of dollars in research has been spent studying human perception, and designing a lossy audio codec, because, hey, interfacing with a speaker is simple...
Porting a huge GTK-2 application to QT is substantially more work than just forking GTK-2 with a new name, and maybe some small modifications.
And adopting and modifying GTK-3 seems like a battered woman going back to her abusive husband... The FSF has a sorry track record of destroying everything they touch, and the GPLv3 getting forced on all their software is making individuals and companies run for the hills at a record pace.
Hey, if Google makes Aurora a distributable package, I'll compile all the GTK-2 apps I use against it, and just keep using it. I even still depend on a few GTK-1 apps...
We will see who is more power, Congress or the CIA. The answer will be the CIA.
There have been plenty of times before that congress has had to punish agencies that have gone too far. See: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978
I fail to see how this time will be any different.
If you REALLY manage to piss-off Congress, you don't get ANY more money. NONE. Three-letter agencies with no money don't have power for long.
Federal law has said the exact and complete opposite, at least since the 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, and other related acts.
Your continual assertions that fly in the face of all reality, has been a complete waste of my time. I see every reason to believe you don't posses the knowledge or position you claim to, and are actually quite ignorant of the subject.
The loss prevention organization has it within their authority to gather their equipment, forcibly terminate service, and add the contractual disconnect fee to be made against the bill, or by forfeiture of the deposit for leasing the equipment
That may be written in the contract, but it would never stand up in court. You can't rent out defective products, then instead of fixing them during their mandatory warranty period, *charge* the customer for the broken equipment and additional fees. And you've got a high burden to prove that the customer's actions caused irreparable damage.
its name changed to BP Amoco plc in 1998 and to BP plc in 2001.
So it's not fair to call them by the name they've used for the overwhelming majority of their existence, because they very quickly changed their name, not once but TWICE in 3 years?
I think what you just described is called fraud, though
Nope. The user is under no obligation to say if they've done anything to the device to cause it to stop working, while the company that provided it, IS obligated to fix it.
When the problem repeats a few times, they are eventually going to figure out that the user is breaking it.
Doesn't matter what they assume is happening. Legally, they need to PROVE the cause of the problem is nothing even incidental to the equipment, and the user even doing reasonable amounts of dicking around with it won't qualify.
The company is on legally indefensible ground, if they're doing what you've claimed.
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If that was true, it would show in rising salaries for those jobs. Companies don't believe they can continue to attract a sufficient number of employees, by paying wages which have stagnated for a decade.
I know there are horrible inefficiencies in the recruiting/hiring process... that may make it seem like there's no-one when you need them, but the majority of open positions seem to be big companies that are doing just fine, but leaving it open in case a hot-shot or someone with ridiculously-low salary expectations comes along.
Never understood why Bill's TV show was ever popular. Beakman predates him, and that show was both sciency and a lot more fun.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
OpenSUSE users beta test EVERYTHING for everyone. I thought Fedora was bad, but OpenSUSE puts them to shame...
No, I remember how my 233MHz computer could play full-screen video from a web page, with no tearing and my browser never crashing... Something my 2.4GHz P4 couldn't manage using Flash.
Unless you're going to be submitting bug reports about the browser, or need bleeding-edge features (like VP9), you should just stay on the ESR branch:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/...
They make it hard to find, but I wouldn't use anything else... Those are the REAL stable releases, while their numbered releases are just betas.
With distros like CentOS/RHEL, the ESR version is in the yum repo, so you get a stable browser, updates are seamless, and you may not even notice the change when a new version gets installed.
Before '95, people EXPECTED to need a cable box on every TV, just because TV tuners didn't have a "cable" mode to tune in channels above 13.
You can't really fault cable companies for doing it too much, since DirecTV/DishNet get to encrypt all their local channels and force you to rent a box from them to watch... And works just as poorly with your VCR...
Not to mention that encryption across the board allows them to completely eliminate the installation step, which is an extremely common source of complaints and frustration from customers.
And complaining that your VCR doesn't work in 2014??? You might as well yell at the cashier at Wal-mart for not carrying blank 8-track tapes... You can't even BUY a VCR in stores today that has an ATSC/QAM tuner in it at all!
Complaining about your DVR not working would be a more reasonable complaint, but CableCard is an option available on Tivos and the like.
And frankly, it's ridiculous to pay for cable or satellite, when the overwhelming majority of people in the US can get a huge number of local broadcast channels, with content far better than those hundreds of cable channels, with just a modest antenna system, costing less than $200 up-front... Perhaps 3 months of cable/satellite subscription fees.
As a result, OTA is growing, especially with younger people:
"The number of households relying on OTA reception only is also growing, [...] Growth is especially strong amongst younger households,"
"One in five young households never bothered to get a TV subscription to begin with."
"Also, 28 percent of all households with a head of household under the age of 35 use an antenna instead of a pay-TV subscription."
http://www.tvtechnology.com/rf...
Your stated argument is not self-consistent... That is all.
Mega has been up far more than six months already, and Google is the last place I'd ever go for longevity of their flavor of the week projects...
The Savings and Loan Crisis was during that (supposedly-stable) period. There were likely many, many others.
If that's "cheap" what would you call https://mega.co.nz/
They offer 50GBytes for FREE...
50 / 0 = !@#%$^*&^&(*$%^&
The nearest Walmart would have had one for about $15... Still more expensive than Amazon, with all those Chinese sellers doing cut-throat pricing to get your order, but reasonable. Of course it's probably the existence of Amazon that's keeping them honest.
Blackmail is a gun you can only shoot once... Plenty of politicians have survived bigger scandals.
And don't forget the public is savvy enough about digital image manipulation that the evidence could be put into question long enough to get everyone through to the next budget vote, where all the three letter agencies get axed. Besides, a scandal only means no reelection... If you're obstant enough, you still finish out your term, and get to keep making laws.
The GPLv3 is "arguably more friendly for businesses" in the same way the Earth is argueably flat... You COULD argue that, yes, but overwhelming evidence points to the contrary, and no sane person will agree with you...
Based on your explanation of how patents are necessary for tempramental physical devices, it seems obvious that would apply to tempramental physical objects being controlled by software designed to accomplish the same thing.
If TV had been developed just the same, BUT a digital circuit was used in there to control the electron gun or whatnot, how would that be less valuable, and less worthy of a patent?
Absolutely NONE of that is true. I was browsing full desktop websites, and getting full imap mail, circa 2000. There was some popularity of WAP and active sync, and similar, but only because devices at the time didn't have always-on internet access, so people were reduced to reading a few preselected web pages on the road, and then syncing up at the end of the day.
The exact same kind of protection that clothing designers get on their designs, perfume makers get on their scents, and Harley Davidson gets on their engine sounds...
If Compaq had put a cellular radio in an iPaq, we would have had Windows Phones circa 2000, LONG before the iPhone.
Apple did for the iPhone the exact same thing they did for the iPod... They made it a bit more user-friendly, and advertised the hell out of it. The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, and the iPhone wasn't the first mobile computer.
Those nice mobile web browsers like Opera, that you can use on your iPhone... They were developed for PDAs. Fitting a desktop web page to a tiny screen is a hard problem, and one that PDA developers kept working on for years. Apple was lucky they had all that R&D available to steal, because the guys at Opera and other companies didn't file hundreds of patents.
So you FULLY support software patents, wherever the software in question controls a (finicky) physical object?
But not where hundreds of millions of dollars in research has been spent studying human perception, and designing a lossy audio codec, because, hey, interfacing with a speaker is simple...
Porting a huge GTK-2 application to QT is substantially more work than just forking GTK-2 with a new name, and maybe some small modifications.
And adopting and modifying GTK-3 seems like a battered woman going back to her abusive husband... The FSF has a sorry track record of destroying everything they touch, and the GPLv3 getting forced on all their software is making individuals and companies run for the hills at a record pace.
Hey, if Google makes Aurora a distributable package, I'll compile all the GTK-2 apps I use against it, and just keep using it. I even still depend on a few GTK-1 apps...
There have been plenty of times before that congress has had to punish agencies that have gone too far. See: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978
I fail to see how this time will be any different.
If you REALLY manage to piss-off Congress, you don't get ANY more money. NONE. Three-letter agencies with no money don't have power for long.
Federal law has said the exact and complete opposite, at least since the 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, and other related acts.
Your continual assertions that fly in the face of all reality, has been a complete waste of my time. I see every reason to believe you don't posses the knowledge or position you claim to, and are actually quite ignorant of the subject.
That may be written in the contract, but it would never stand up in court. You can't rent out defective products, then instead of fixing them during their mandatory warranty period, *charge* the customer for the broken equipment and additional fees. And you've got a high burden to prove that the customer's actions caused irreparable damage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
So it's not fair to call them by the name they've used for the overwhelming majority of their existence, because they very quickly changed their name, not once but TWICE in 3 years?
Nope. The user is under no obligation to say if they've done anything to the device to cause it to stop working, while the company that provided it, IS obligated to fix it.
Doesn't matter what they assume is happening. Legally, they need to PROVE the cause of the problem is nothing even incidental to the equipment, and the user even doing reasonable amounts of dicking around with it won't qualify.
The company is on legally indefensible ground, if they're doing what you've claimed.