I mean, change is alright as long as it is backward compatible, but completely rearranging functions I use every day gets annoying. Excel changed their keyboard shortcuts at one point. I used to be able to do pretty much everything in Excel without touching my mouse, then something changed and I had to use the ribbon for way too much, rather than fast keyboard combos.
They also should have experience on how to handle the situation. Last time it was the radar altimeter that caused unexpected crashes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I don't understand why people insist that the way of the future is to fork over a few percent of your income to credit card companies.
The merchant pays that fee, not you. Either they pass it on to all their customers in pricing or eat it, so whether you use cash or card makes no difference to how much you pay.
I assume by "your income" you mean the income of the buyer, not the income of the merchant. Obviously there are good reasons to accept credit and debit cards as a merchant.
Plus I doubt many merchants "eat it", I'm pretty sure they all set prices to account for credit card fees, including prices paid by cash customers (though one of our family run businesses started passing the fee on to CC users, which is fine with me as I pay them cash to help them out). So I suspect everyone gets to deal with the CC fees, except those getting cash back get a small portion of the fees back...
I'll worry about that when we achieve a full digital office that has been predicted for a long time. As it is, I still see plenty of notebooks at meetings and documents printed out for reviews with a pen. Even in places that have almost eliminated paper, physical white boards are still a major thing that hasn't been replaced by a digital version.
I see physical money as the same. There are certain conveniences that digital versions cannot yet overcome without a notable expense (I would love tablet and digital whiteboard replacements for physical devices, and so would security when they put notes on our whiteboard to not leave potential export information on a whiteboard, but the cost and reliability of a digital version make this impractical. It is hard enough to get the company to even get me a good enough laptop to do my job).
Sears went out of business because their customers were the middle class - which is rapidly disappearing in the US. JC Penny is in the same boat. Sears got big because of all those high paying UNION manufacturing jobs during the most economic vibrant and highest taxed time in US history.
And what none of the arm-chair economists here don't know is that housing has become too expensive for many many people. On average, one needs to make $38,000 per year just to have a place to live in most place in the USA - it's over six figures in the SF Bay Area and NYC.
And the arm-chair economists don't know is that those shit jobs don't have healthcare. Nor could the workers afford it from the exchanges - especially if they live in some shit Republican controlled state that didn't expand Medicaid because - Obama!. Healthcare is now a luxury in the USA - just like some shithole third World country.
It's easy to pontificate about wages when one has a cushy overpaid STEM job that, for now, is in high demand.
I'm solidly middle class and never shopped at Sears because their prices are too high. Much lower cost options around for similar quality products.
From what I heard, Nathan Lowell (https://nathanlowell.com/) self published chapters of his book as self narrated audio books on his own website. Maybe he used $200 worth of gear but I'd be surprised. Once it started growing in popularity he moved into more professional publishing.
I bought a new iPod last year. I prefer my music player and phone having separate batteries and storage. Though the iPod has not aged as well as I'd like (seem to have consistent interface and music app glitches and the battery life is horrid vs what it used to be).
Awesome! I can't wait to yell "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater. When the police come to arrest me, I'll tell them that Nuh-uh! Drethon said I have Free Speech!!!
Hmm, didn't think I had to be explicit that yelling "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater was one of the blindingly obvious examples I was referring to.
The Right of stupid people to say what they like? Yeah, I think that that fits. Note that once you've decided that stopping stupid people from saying whatever they like, it's pretty easy to expand the definition (gradually, mind you!) of "stupid people" till the government is restricting anything they don't want to hear in public.
And remember, you may agree with the gov at first, but sooner or later, their definition of "stupid people saying the wrong thing(s) in public" will include things YOU want to say in public....
No, I'm not anti-vax. I wish that measles had been available when *I* was an infant. Alas, I was four or five before it was developed, much less available to the general public, much less mandatory.
Nor am I pro-stupid-people. I am, however, rather fond of the First Amendment. And restricting speech I disagree with isn't one of the exceptions listed in the First....
However restricting speech that represents a clear and present danger has never been part of the first amendment... though I'm not about to claim to be smart (dumb?) enough to try to apply that outside of the most blindingly obvious examples.
Can someone now put the 1/x button back where it is easily accessible and make the programmer version allow floating point numbers? I get really annoyed when I'm dealing with hex values that are whole numbers, where 1 represents 2^(-8), and I can get the integer value from the hex, but then have to copy the value to the scientific calculator to convert to the floating point value...
they also can lead to people who are allergic to vaccines, or otherwise cannot be vaccinated, to be infected with these controllable diseases?
It may seem heartless, but from a Darwinian perspective, this is also a self correcting problem.
I suppose so, slowly killing off the population that cannot be vaccinated? Though I question the value of Darwin in modern days. A person's contribution to the future is not always in genes these days but in knowledge added to humanity. Of course it can be argued this is also weakening the gene pool. I guess only the future will tell what is the right perspective.
Because people who don't get vaccines don't just kill/maim themselves, they also can lead to people who are allergic to vaccines, or otherwise cannot be vaccinated, to be infected with these controllable diseases?
So you're claiming that iTunes is a better way of preserving music than CD because you can use iTunes to convert your music to a CD and store it so you don't lose it when it disappears from iTunes.
My only question about all that is "how high were you when you posted that?
Which part of my post said anything was better? I'm just stating that there is a drm free backup method in iTunes for those who's primary concern is iTunes will remove their music. Personally, I just don't like having a bunch of physical CDs sitting around anymore so went digital with everything.
I find using intramental music works the best to keep focused. I know anything with lyrics engages my brain in a different way that makes it hard to concentrate on a task.
This is one of the big things for me. When I've heard the song enough times to memorize it, instrumental or lyrics (instrumental more so), it seems to just kind of put the listening type of my brain into a flow. This makes it easier to filter out the background noise and think about what I'm working on, not thinking about what someone just said. Maybe I'm just deluding myself but this has always worked best in the office, no music at home.
Anyone who has worked in retail knows the torturous effects of Christmas music. It's hard to be festive or jolly when you have heard Jingle Bell Rock too many times.
Not to mention as a shopper, after the first couple day of hearing Christmas music starting after Halloween (OK, more like around Thanks Giving), I just want to get into the store, buy what I need, and get away from there as fast as possible.
The chip sets are shipping, phones are being engineered and built, carriers are buying spectrum space, vendors are starting to ship the equipment and the marketing blitz is already on.
It doesn't matter if you are ready or not, it's going to happen unless there is some huge unforeseen world/national event that makes it financially impossible. It's happening, like it or not.
Where is it happening? 4g networks only partially qualify for the 4g defintion right now. 4g networks are supposed to be 10Mb minimum (OK we hit that), 100Mb typical with speeds up to 1Gb. The best downloads per tomshardware are 85Mb which is not enough to meet the average 4g defintion. Verizon's average is 53.3, which is half the 4g definition.
"Do this arbitrary coding problem" is usually a good sign that you don't want that job anyway. Such things have little relevant to the job or to producing good software most of the time.
The only exception is on embedded where you actually do need to know the ins and outs of the compiler and stuff like that. But for Javascript or C# devs they should use String.Reverse() because whatever they code on their own will be worse and a waste of time. And even for embedded I would only ask by way of some questions about some sample code the candidate was showing me.
The last interview I was given a coding problem, I wasn't asked to code a solution, I was asked to give my thought process I would use to go about solving the problem. As soon as I started on the right direction the interviewer said that was good enough. I liked that approach.
Sounds like you missed Kerbal Space Program - don't overlook it if you like the games you listed.
Landed and returned from every body in the Kerbin system, except Eve and Jool. Working next on setting up stations around every body and reusable "taxis" between them, rather than direct from kerbol missions. Haven't been back for a while as I've gone back to school and the design part of my brain for KSP seems to conflict with the part for school, the other game does seem to have quite as much mental design requirements.
Basically it sounds like he just took an existing process/job and did it on a computer. Prior to this a person would've gone into the contact spreadsheet or database and marked the entries as invalid. All he did was take that existing job and put a computer readable barcode on stuff and had the computer do it faster. Very useful for the companies as it saves payroll, but it does not sound like something that should've been patentable to me.
I feel kind of bad for him that he implemented a great idea, then the post office decided to do it themselves. But if you can't provide a better/cheaper service, being first isn't going to sustain a business.
So I have a choice with my leisure time, do I play the latest Medal of Snorefare 78 Rehashed edition where for £44 I can buy half a game and be expected to front up another 9 £6 transactions to get the full game...
Or I can play a game from a studio that interacts with it's community, cares about game-play, balance and re-playability, provides free content updates and fixes bugs (well, mostly)... Is it little wonder Paradox, Eleon and System Era see more of my money?
EA wen't off to chase the casual crowd with dumbed down "everyone gets a prize" and pay to win games. This had the nasty effect of alienating actual gamers who spend their money on games. Generic Sports 20XX isn't bringing in the money now they have to spend millions on advertising and people are realising that its the same game as last year.
Another problem is that they expect me to install yet another resource sucking, update popup producing crapware client to run their games. I refuse to do this, ergo EA lost me long ago, as did Ubisoft.
Yeah, most of my gameplay is Mount and Blade, Factorio, RimWorld, Kenshi, Oxygen Not Included and trying to get into Astroneer. I still play some Fallout 4 for settlement building and a new survival play through and doing the original Mass Effect series again. The major studios just don't have any new releases I care about, The Outer Worlds has my attention and I'm hopeful for Starfield and the next Elder Scrolls, but otherwise most of my money goes to small and indie developers.
Maybe I'm just getting old but to me, Silicon Valley is still about technology. Most of these concerns seem more about social networking and other personal data gathering, which I consider to be much older human activities that just happen to be easier to do when done on computers, not something that actually requires technology.
Though I suppose a good portion of the old Silicon Valley technology development has been moved to China already, so the above may be moot anyway.
At first I read this to mean "read blog posts and then broadcast church sermons". I want to see what kind of sermons an AI comes up with after reading random blog posts.
I've read some theories that people who can't save money are people who can't picture the future where they will need that money, I wonder if other moral issues are similar where people just can't think out and picture the consequences of their actions. By playing through moral scenarios of any kind, people are kind of forced to think about the situation and can see it somewhat in real life.
I think there's something to that, but I think you missed something more basic here. In order to enjoy video games (or movies) you require a certain minimum level of ability to think abstractly. Some percentage of the population simply can't. People who play video games are going to be able to reason about anything slightly better than the general public, statistically, but it's just correlation without causation.
Games that require any sort of problem solving (as opposed to just action in the moment) will raise the bar some more, and you'd get a larger statistical correlation with ability to reason about anything.
Good point, I'm being guilty of correlation without causation in my theory here too. The question of does something cause something else, or are people better at something else also attracted to that first something.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, change is alright as long as it is backward compatible, but completely rearranging functions I use every day gets annoying. Excel changed their keyboard shortcuts at one point. I used to be able to do pretty much everything in Excel without touching my mouse, then something changed and I had to use the ribbon for way too much, rather than fast keyboard combos.
They also should have experience on how to handle the situation. Last time it was the radar altimeter that caused unexpected crashes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I don't understand why people insist that the way of the future is to fork over a few percent of your income to credit card companies.
The merchant pays that fee, not you. Either they pass it on to all their customers in pricing or eat it, so whether you use cash or card makes no difference to how much you pay.
I assume by "your income" you mean the income of the buyer, not the income of the merchant. Obviously there are good reasons to accept credit and debit cards as a merchant.
Plus I doubt many merchants "eat it", I'm pretty sure they all set prices to account for credit card fees, including prices paid by cash customers (though one of our family run businesses started passing the fee on to CC users, which is fine with me as I pay them cash to help them out). So I suspect everyone gets to deal with the CC fees, except those getting cash back get a small portion of the fees back...
I'll worry about that when we achieve a full digital office that has been predicted for a long time. As it is, I still see plenty of notebooks at meetings and documents printed out for reviews with a pen. Even in places that have almost eliminated paper, physical white boards are still a major thing that hasn't been replaced by a digital version.
I see physical money as the same. There are certain conveniences that digital versions cannot yet overcome without a notable expense (I would love tablet and digital whiteboard replacements for physical devices, and so would security when they put notes on our whiteboard to not leave potential export information on a whiteboard, but the cost and reliability of a digital version make this impractical. It is hard enough to get the company to even get me a good enough laptop to do my job).
I'm betting on the latter, personally.
I'm betting one of the choices you left out: not enough profit means the business will close
Sears went out of business because their customers were the middle class - which is rapidly disappearing in the US. JC Penny is in the same boat. Sears got big because of all those high paying UNION manufacturing jobs during the most economic vibrant and highest taxed time in US history.
And what none of the arm-chair economists here don't know is that housing has become too expensive for many many people. On average, one needs to make $38,000 per year just to have a place to live in most place in the USA - it's over six figures in the SF Bay Area and NYC.
And the arm-chair economists don't know is that those shit jobs don't have healthcare. Nor could the workers afford it from the exchanges - especially if they live in some shit Republican controlled state that didn't expand Medicaid because - Obama!.
Healthcare is now a luxury in the USA - just like some shithole third World country.
It's easy to pontificate about wages when one has a cushy overpaid STEM job that, for now, is in high demand.
I'm solidly middle class and never shopped at Sears because their prices are too high. Much lower cost options around for similar quality products.
From what I heard, Nathan Lowell (https://nathanlowell.com/) self published chapters of his book as self narrated audio books on his own website. Maybe he used $200 worth of gear but I'd be surprised. Once it started growing in popularity he moved into more professional publishing.
I bought a new iPod last year. I prefer my music player and phone having separate batteries and storage. Though the iPod has not aged as well as I'd like (seem to have consistent interface and music app glitches and the battery life is horrid vs what it used to be).
Well the sun is prejudiced against light skinned people because it gives them more sun burns /s
Awesome! I can't wait to yell "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater. When the police come to arrest me, I'll tell them that Nuh-uh! Drethon said I have Free Speech!!!
Hmm, didn't think I had to be explicit that yelling "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater was one of the blindingly obvious examples I was referring to.
The Right of stupid people to say what they like? Yeah, I think that that fits. Note that once you've decided that stopping stupid people from saying whatever they like, it's pretty easy to expand the definition (gradually, mind you!) of "stupid people" till the government is restricting anything they don't want to hear in public.
And remember, you may agree with the gov at first, but sooner or later, their definition of "stupid people saying the wrong thing(s) in public" will include things YOU want to say in public....
No, I'm not anti-vax. I wish that measles had been available when *I* was an infant. Alas, I was four or five before it was developed, much less available to the general public, much less mandatory.
Nor am I pro-stupid-people. I am, however, rather fond of the First Amendment. And restricting speech I disagree with isn't one of the exceptions listed in the First....
However restricting speech that represents a clear and present danger has never been part of the first amendment... though I'm not about to claim to be smart (dumb?) enough to try to apply that outside of the most blindingly obvious examples.
Can someone now put the 1/x button back where it is easily accessible and make the programmer version allow floating point numbers? I get really annoyed when I'm dealing with hex values that are whole numbers, where 1 represents 2^(-8), and I can get the integer value from the hex, but then have to copy the value to the scientific calculator to convert to the floating point value...
they also can lead to people who are allergic to vaccines, or otherwise cannot be vaccinated, to be infected with these controllable diseases?
It may seem heartless, but from a Darwinian perspective, this is also a self correcting problem.
I suppose so, slowly killing off the population that cannot be vaccinated? Though I question the value of Darwin in modern days. A person's contribution to the future is not always in genes these days but in knowledge added to humanity. Of course it can be argued this is also weakening the gene pool. I guess only the future will tell what is the right perspective.
So why the moral panic?
Because people who don't get vaccines don't just kill/maim themselves, they also can lead to people who are allergic to vaccines, or otherwise cannot be vaccinated, to be infected with these controllable diseases?
So you're claiming that iTunes is a better way of preserving music than CD because you can use iTunes to convert your music to a CD and store it so you don't lose it when it disappears from iTunes.
My only question about all that is "how high were you when you posted that?
Which part of my post said anything was better? I'm just stating that there is a drm free backup method in iTunes for those who's primary concern is iTunes will remove their music. Personally, I just don't like having a bunch of physical CDs sitting around anymore so went digital with everything.
What I do (and I suspect I'm not alone):
Insert CD into PC.
Rip CD to mp3
Remove CD, store in case in CD library.
Listen to mp3 forever. ...
What is the issue here? What are are you failing to comprehend?
And iTunes provides the ability to convert their music to a CD, so for people who are concerned about iTunes removing music, there is a solution.
I find using intramental music works the best to keep focused. I know anything with lyrics engages my brain in a different way that makes it hard to concentrate on a task.
This is one of the big things for me. When I've heard the song enough times to memorize it, instrumental or lyrics (instrumental more so), it seems to just kind of put the listening type of my brain into a flow. This makes it easier to filter out the background noise and think about what I'm working on, not thinking about what someone just said. Maybe I'm just deluding myself but this has always worked best in the office, no music at home.
Anyone who has worked in retail knows the torturous effects of Christmas music. It's hard to be festive or jolly when you have heard Jingle Bell Rock too many times.
Not to mention as a shopper, after the first couple day of hearing Christmas music starting after Halloween (OK, more like around Thanks Giving), I just want to get into the store, buy what I need, and get away from there as fast as possible.
The chip sets are shipping, phones are being engineered and built, carriers are buying spectrum space, vendors are starting to ship the equipment and the marketing blitz is already on.
It doesn't matter if you are ready or not, it's going to happen unless there is some huge unforeseen world/national event that makes it financially impossible. It's happening, like it or not.
Where is it happening? 4g networks only partially qualify for the 4g defintion right now. 4g networks are supposed to be 10Mb minimum (OK we hit that), 100Mb typical with speeds up to 1Gb. The best downloads per tomshardware are 85Mb which is not enough to meet the average 4g defintion. Verizon's average is 53.3, which is half the 4g definition.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.o...
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/b...
"Do this arbitrary coding problem" is usually a good sign that you don't want that job anyway. Such things have little relevant to the job or to producing good software most of the time.
The only exception is on embedded where you actually do need to know the ins and outs of the compiler and stuff like that. But for Javascript or C# devs they should use String.Reverse() because whatever they code on their own will be worse and a waste of time. And even for embedded I would only ask by way of some questions about some sample code the candidate was showing me.
The last interview I was given a coding problem, I wasn't asked to code a solution, I was asked to give my thought process I would use to go about solving the problem. As soon as I started on the right direction the interviewer said that was good enough. I liked that approach.
Sounds like you missed Kerbal Space Program - don't overlook it if you like the games you listed.
Landed and returned from every body in the Kerbin system, except Eve and Jool. Working next on setting up stations around every body and reusable "taxis" between them, rather than direct from kerbol missions. Haven't been back for a while as I've gone back to school and the design part of my brain for KSP seems to conflict with the part for school, the other game does seem to have quite as much mental design requirements.
Good suggestion though!
Basically it sounds like he just took an existing process/job and did it on a computer. Prior to this a person would've gone into the contact spreadsheet or database and marked the entries as invalid. All he did was take that existing job and put a computer readable barcode on stuff and had the computer do it faster. Very useful for the companies as it saves payroll, but it does not sound like something that should've been patentable to me.
I feel kind of bad for him that he implemented a great idea, then the post office decided to do it themselves. But if you can't provide a better/cheaper service, being first isn't going to sustain a business.
EA, Ubisoft, et al. are not.
So I have a choice with my leisure time, do I play the latest Medal of Snorefare 78 Rehashed edition where for £44 I can buy half a game and be expected to front up another 9 £6 transactions to get the full game...
Or I can play a game from a studio that interacts with it's community, cares about game-play, balance and re-playability, provides free content updates and fixes bugs (well, mostly)... Is it little wonder Paradox, Eleon and System Era see more of my money?
EA wen't off to chase the casual crowd with dumbed down "everyone gets a prize" and pay to win games. This had the nasty effect of alienating actual gamers who spend their money on games. Generic Sports 20XX isn't bringing in the money now they have to spend millions on advertising and people are realising that its the same game as last year.
Another problem is that they expect me to install yet another resource sucking, update popup producing crapware client to run their games. I refuse to do this, ergo EA lost me long ago, as did Ubisoft.
Yeah, most of my gameplay is Mount and Blade, Factorio, RimWorld, Kenshi, Oxygen Not Included and trying to get into Astroneer. I still play some Fallout 4 for settlement building and a new survival play through and doing the original Mass Effect series again. The major studios just don't have any new releases I care about, The Outer Worlds has my attention and I'm hopeful for Starfield and the next Elder Scrolls, but otherwise most of my money goes to small and indie developers.
Maybe I'm just getting old but to me, Silicon Valley is still about technology. Most of these concerns seem more about social networking and other personal data gathering, which I consider to be much older human activities that just happen to be easier to do when done on computers, not something that actually requires technology.
Though I suppose a good portion of the old Silicon Valley technology development has been moved to China already, so the above may be moot anyway.
At first I read this to mean "read blog posts and then broadcast church sermons". I want to see what kind of sermons an AI comes up with after reading random blog posts.
I've read some theories that people who can't save money are people who can't picture the future where they will need that money, I wonder if other moral issues are similar where people just can't think out and picture the consequences of their actions. By playing through moral scenarios of any kind, people are kind of forced to think about the situation and can see it somewhat in real life.
I think there's something to that, but I think you missed something more basic here. In order to enjoy video games (or movies) you require a certain minimum level of ability to think abstractly. Some percentage of the population simply can't. People who play video games are going to be able to reason about anything slightly better than the general public, statistically, but it's just correlation without causation.
Games that require any sort of problem solving (as opposed to just action in the moment) will raise the bar some more, and you'd get a larger statistical correlation with ability to reason about anything.
Good point, I'm being guilty of correlation without causation in my theory here too. The question of does something cause something else, or are people better at something else also attracted to that first something.