What's weird with the Leaf is that while it definitely looks like an underpowered subcompact, its physically a good 30% larger than one. (Or at least that's been my impression, seeing a lot of them on the highway.)
Sure you haven't gotten your Disney parks mixed up? Widely available churros are at Disneyland, while widely available electric scooters carrying large people are at Disney World:-)
It does seem like Tesla Motors is the only company that believes an electric car should look like a "normal full-size car," rather than some dinky ugly econo-box. I guess this is the result of the company not having any ulterior motives or competing product lines, so they're actually motivated to do the best job they possibly can.
And Apple's been doing this for longer. Even though Objective-C is technically not a platform-exclusive language, it currently is for all practical purposes. That's why I never bothered to spend any time learning it.
I have done C#, but only when someone was paying me to do it. Haven't really done it on my own time. (Even if it is also technically cross-platform, its still 99% a Microsoft-universe language. At least its similar enough to other languages that it wasn't much trouble to pick up.)
Given the choice, its generally been C, C++, or Java. My selection between those tends to depend more on the application/platform that arbitrary preference.
Unfortunately, now that BlackBerry has given up their pathetic attempts at trying to market, sell, and support their new platform, I'm worried that we won't have this option for as long as we'd like. The platform is actually good, but no one seems to know or care that it exists. (Seriously, just look at how many comments on a BB-related article here are from people who are completely ignorant of the new OS, and continue to make completely valid criticisms of the old OS,.)
These days, they seem far more focused on wining and dining CEOs and CIOs to sell BES licenses, than on furthering the development of their own smartphone platform. I wouldn't be surprised of that eventually becomes 100% of their business.
I sure hope they get their act together, since I really like BlackBerry 10 as both a developer and a user, but I'm getting increasingly pessimistic.
Pretty much all Unicode handling in framework libraries is UTF-16, and has been for quite a long time. Windows "wide" strings, Java String,.NET String, Qt QString, ICU UnicodeString, etc. Of course some libraries may support choosing between the two, and many newer libraries do opt for UTF-8. Serialized formats are also more likely to be UTF-8. However, UTF-16 is still far more common as the "in memory" representation.
Since multi-element characters are far less common in UTF-16 than in UTF-8, I can see how one could forget something about that in their implementation. Then again, between Emoji and Asian languages, its kinda hard to ignore dealing with those.
AOL has always been the mark of an Internet dunce. There was never a time when it didn't have a negative connotation, among those with a clue. No self-respecting techie would be caught dead with an AOL Email address.
Gmail usually just means you're too lazy to explore your options, or to setup your own domain name. It doesn't really have anywhere near the level of taint.
And people who get nit-picky about all these gender terms in English, especially when their gender-of-choice appears favored, should be grateful that they speak a language that offers the luxury of gender-neutral words. Many other languages assign gender to everything and have no such luxury.
Don't kid yourself. XP was just as bad as Vista at first, but everyone forgets that. It didn't become the "Windows to stand the ultimate test of time" until XP SP2.
Windows 2000 was also one of the best versions, IMHO. It just often gets left out, because it wasn't marketed to "the average home user." (But I wish it had been, instead of that trash called ME.)
Remember that many places are still running older devices (e.g. Bold 9900) with their old operating system (OS 7.x or below). This old OS is what everyone continues to point to and make an example of when complaining about the company and their products. Often this is done in an atmosphere of complete denial at the very existence of their newer OS and products.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the Whitehouse has not yet upgraded their devices and infrastructure from BB7 to BB10.
Some comparable jumps in the computer world would be Mac OS 9 to 10, or Windows 3.x to NT/2000. Yes, its that big a change. No, it doesn't happen quickly. In the interim, there's a lot of overlap and strong opinions that are dismissive of the newer product.
There are other options in this market, not all of which require proprietary consumables. We've been using the LitterRobot which, while more expensive (~$300), requires no further financial commitment to the manufacturer. You just need to buy normal cat litter and periodically replace a normal garbage bag in the base.
I ended up at a startup run by adults, actually in Silicon Valley. Contrary to the usual stereotypes, we do value experience and actually have a lot of engineers who are over 40. We have hardly anyone in a "management" role, so many of them had to make the transition from management back to actual development when coming to us. In fact, its only been very recently that we've hired any notable number of engineers who didn't already have some post-college work experience under their belt.
Of course we function by having a relatively small number of good people, rather than a large number of mediocre people, so all that experience really does benefit our environment.
That reminds me of some research paper I once had to do during high school. It was an involved project with multiple deliverables over the course of several weeks. Typed was fine for the final submission, but they wanted us to turn in a hand-written rough draft first.
I typed up my rough draft reasonably quickly, then spent the next several hours painstakingly transcribing it to that "hand written" form.
A regular silicon valley salary would be an insanely good income in Florida, at least for someone in the tech industry. I left Florida to move to silicon valley, and got a very nice bump (which exceeded the living expense difference) in the process.
Of course having left Florida, I'm not sure I'd want to move back there.
I actually do really like it, for exactly that use case. Considering that the process of settling the bill at a restaurant consists of: 1. Get the server to pay attention to you, and ask for the check 2. Have them deliver the check, and (as if by policy) say "take as much time as you like" and vanish 3. Have them notice that you've put down a card, and take it 4. Have them return with the receipt, you sign, and leave.
Usually steps 3-4 are near instance. However, steps 1-3 can take way too long sometimes. (I wish doing 2 and 3 within the same minute was possible, but that's rare.)
The new BlackBerry 10 platform doesn't have any Java shit to get fucked up.
One of BlackBerry's biggest marketing problems with BlackBerry 10 is that they're not getting the message across that BB10 is *not* the same platform as BB7. The only thing they really have in common is the brand name associated with them.
Storm 2 was an OS 5 phone. I'm amazed that people still hold a grudge against the company's entire product line because of it. I thought folks had forgotten about that by now.
Its honestly not all that surprising. For a few years now, the majority opinion in the tech press has been that you can't post anything about BlackBerry unless its bad news or has negative commentary injected into it.
It might have been an older version in 10.0, but we're up to 10.3 now which is pretty much up-to-date in terms of Android support. (Even 10.2.1, which most currently-shipping devices run, is fairly up-to-date.)
I still wonder what platform(s) those numbers lump into the "Java ME" bucket, since that's not really a platform as much as a category. A category that the older BlackBerry OS "technically" was compatible with, but is rarely counted as part of. I'm also suspicious of any mobile marketshare stats, since they vary from hour to hour and always seem to support the point being made in whatever blog post or presentation they're cited in.
I did feel the earthquake on the south side of San Jose, but it didn't get me out of bed. Felt like the house was shaking for a bit, but nothing got knocked over. (And yes, we have plenty of things in the house that could get knocked over quite easily.)
I've been around such graduate departments before. Having a department of 50+ students where you can count the Americans on one hand actually seems exactly like what I remember.
With many of these odd job descriptions you speak of, I suspect many of them are cases where said company has already identified the specific individual they want to get an H-1B visa for. So this is essentially a copy of their unique resume. They just need to publicly post the job to fulfill a legal requirement before they can get them the visa.
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What's weird with the Leaf is that while it definitely looks like an underpowered subcompact, its physically a good 30% larger than one. (Or at least that's been my impression, seeing a lot of them on the highway.)
Sure you haven't gotten your Disney parks mixed up? Widely available churros are at Disneyland, while widely available electric scooters carrying large people are at Disney World :-)
It does seem like Tesla Motors is the only company that believes an electric car should look like a "normal full-size car," rather than some dinky ugly econo-box. I guess this is the result of the company not having any ulterior motives or competing product lines, so they're actually motivated to do the best job they possibly can.
And Apple's been doing this for longer. Even though Objective-C is technically not a platform-exclusive language, it currently is for all practical purposes. That's why I never bothered to spend any time learning it.
I have done C#, but only when someone was paying me to do it. Haven't really done it on my own time. (Even if it is also technically cross-platform, its still 99% a Microsoft-universe language. At least its similar enough to other languages that it wasn't much trouble to pick up.)
Given the choice, its generally been C, C++, or Java. My selection between those tends to depend more on the application/platform that arbitrary preference.
Unfortunately, now that BlackBerry has given up their pathetic attempts at trying to market, sell, and support their new platform, I'm worried that we won't have this option for as long as we'd like. The platform is actually good, but no one seems to know or care that it exists. (Seriously, just look at how many comments on a BB-related article here are from people who are completely ignorant of the new OS, and continue to make completely valid criticisms of the old OS,.)
These days, they seem far more focused on wining and dining CEOs and CIOs to sell BES licenses, than on furthering the development of their own smartphone platform. I wouldn't be surprised of that eventually becomes 100% of their business.
I sure hope they get their act together, since I really like BlackBerry 10 as both a developer and a user, but I'm getting increasingly pessimistic.
Pretty much all Unicode handling in framework libraries is UTF-16, and has been for quite a long time. Windows "wide" strings, Java String, .NET String, Qt QString, ICU UnicodeString, etc. Of course some libraries may support choosing between the two, and many newer libraries do opt for UTF-8. Serialized formats are also more likely to be UTF-8. However, UTF-16 is still far more common as the "in memory" representation.
Since multi-element characters are far less common in UTF-16 than in UTF-8, I can see how one could forget something about that in their implementation. Then again, between Emoji and Asian languages, its kinda hard to ignore dealing with those.
AOL has always been the mark of an Internet dunce. There was never a time when it didn't have a negative connotation, among those with a clue. No self-respecting techie would be caught dead with an AOL Email address.
Gmail usually just means you're too lazy to explore your options, or to setup your own domain name. It doesn't really have anywhere near the level of taint.
I've also had a Passport for a similar amount of time.
The two main things I love about it are:
- I get a keyboard, without having to compromise on screen size
- The battery lasts a really long time
And people who get nit-picky about all these gender terms in English, especially when their gender-of-choice appears favored, should be grateful that they speak a language that offers the luxury of gender-neutral words. Many other languages assign gender to everything and have no such luxury.
Its that social network your one friend who flat-out refuses to use Facebook, signed up for without a second thought and posts on all the time.
Don't kid yourself. XP was just as bad as Vista at first, but everyone forgets that. It didn't become the "Windows to stand the ultimate test of time" until XP SP2.
Windows 2000 was also one of the best versions, IMHO. It just often gets left out, because it wasn't marketed to "the average home user." (But I wish it had been, instead of that trash called ME.)
Remember that many places are still running older devices (e.g. Bold 9900) with their old operating system (OS 7.x or below). This old OS is what everyone continues to point to and make an example of when complaining about the company and their products. Often this is done in an atmosphere of complete denial at the very existence of their newer OS and products.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the Whitehouse has not yet upgraded their devices and infrastructure from BB7 to BB10.
Some comparable jumps in the computer world would be Mac OS 9 to 10, or Windows 3.x to NT/2000. Yes, its that big a change. No, it doesn't happen quickly. In the interim, there's a lot of overlap and strong opinions that are dismissive of the newer product.
There are other options in this market, not all of which require proprietary consumables. We've been using the LitterRobot which, while more expensive (~$300), requires no further financial commitment to the manufacturer. You just need to buy normal cat litter and periodically replace a normal garbage bag in the base.
I ended up at a startup run by adults, actually in Silicon Valley. Contrary to the usual stereotypes, we do value experience and actually have a lot of engineers who are over 40. We have hardly anyone in a "management" role, so many of them had to make the transition from management back to actual development when coming to us. In fact, its only been very recently that we've hired any notable number of engineers who didn't already have some post-college work experience under their belt.
Of course we function by having a relatively small number of good people, rather than a large number of mediocre people, so all that experience really does benefit our environment.
That reminds me of some research paper I once had to do during high school. It was an involved project with multiple deliverables over the course of several weeks. Typed was fine for the final submission, but they wanted us to turn in a hand-written rough draft first.
I typed up my rough draft reasonably quickly, then spent the next several hours painstakingly transcribing it to that "hand written" form.
A regular silicon valley salary would be an insanely good income in Florida, at least for someone in the tech industry. I left Florida to move to silicon valley, and got a very nice bump (which exceeded the living expense difference) in the process.
Of course having left Florida, I'm not sure I'd want to move back there.
I actually do really like it, for exactly that use case. Considering that the process of settling the bill at a restaurant consists of:
1. Get the server to pay attention to you, and ask for the check
2. Have them deliver the check, and (as if by policy) say "take as much time as you like" and vanish
3. Have them notice that you've put down a card, and take it
4. Have them return with the receipt, you sign, and leave.
Usually steps 3-4 are near instance. However, steps 1-3 can take way too long sometimes.
(I wish doing 2 and 3 within the same minute was possible, but that's rare.)
The new BlackBerry 10 platform doesn't have any Java shit to get fucked up.
One of BlackBerry's biggest marketing problems with BlackBerry 10 is that they're not getting the message across that BB10 is *not* the same platform as BB7. The only thing they really have in common is the brand name associated with them.
Storm 2 was an OS 5 phone. I'm amazed that people still hold a grudge against the company's entire product line because of it. I thought folks had forgotten about that by now.
Its honestly not all that surprising. For a few years now, the majority opinion in the tech press has been that you can't post anything about BlackBerry unless its bad news or has negative commentary injected into it.
It might have been an older version in 10.0, but we're up to 10.3 now which is pretty much up-to-date in terms of Android support. (Even 10.2.1, which most currently-shipping devices run, is fairly up-to-date.)
I still wonder what platform(s) those numbers lump into the "Java ME" bucket, since that's not really a platform as much as a category. A category that the older BlackBerry OS "technically" was compatible with, but is rarely counted as part of.
I'm also suspicious of any mobile marketshare stats, since they vary from hour to hour and always seem to support the point being made in whatever blog post or presentation they're cited in.
I did feel the earthquake on the south side of San Jose, but it didn't get me out of bed. Felt like the house was shaking for a bit, but nothing got knocked over. (And yes, we have plenty of things in the house that could get knocked over quite easily.)
I've been around such graduate departments before. Having a department of 50+ students where you can count the Americans on one hand actually seems exactly like what I remember.
With many of these odd job descriptions you speak of, I suspect many of them are cases where said company has already identified the specific individual they want to get an H-1B visa for. So this is essentially a copy of their unique resume. They just need to publicly post the job to fulfill a legal requirement before they can get them the visa.