Unless you have a 1st gen iPad because they dropped support for those after iOS 5. Which is why I now own an Android tablet,...
Hopefully that Android tablet is not a 1st gen Kindle Fire because they were release with Android 2.3 and were never upgraded. Now if you buy a brand new Kindle Fire you can have Android 4. Many other Android devices have also never been updated to 4.0.
In contrast to the first gen Kindle Fire that never got upgraded from Android 2.3 the first gen iPad shipped with iOS 3.2 and was upgraded to 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 5.0 and 5.1.
In truth, extraordinary claims without an explanation of how such information was obtained is a warning sign. How would a low level employee dealing with email surveillance know anything about stuxnet? Frankly claiming such knowledge without any real proof or credible explanation reduces his credibility.
As was pointed out above how did a buck private in the Army posted in Iraq (Bradley Manning) get access to diplomatic cables? Because not only is the system corrupt and criminal, it has the actual security of an unlocked screendoor.
Note that I said extraordinary claims should be accompanied with evidence or explanation. Manning provided the evidence. He did not merely make a **claim** about what was in diplomatic cables, he provided the cables themselves.
Assuming that Snowden had access to stuxnet because Manning had access to diplomatic cables is a huge **leap of faith**.
Diplomatic cables are routinely shared with the military and intelligence agencies. Why would this suggest that the stuxnet team would be sharing its work with the email analysis team?
How is being skeptical of extraordinary claims made without proof or explanation being conservative?
Embracing such a claim because it agrees with your political or philosophical orientation is something that those who practice deception count on. If you don't want to be manipulated you should be skeptical whether the extraordinary claim agrees or disagrees with your politics or philosophy.
At this point, I'd say he's proven himself to be a credible source. Confirming something that was already believed to be true doesn't change that, or make it any less true.
Actually no. Confirming something **believed** to be true is a tactic of deception, a tactic of creating the **perception** of credibility. Perception may not match reality.
In truth, extraordinary claims without an explanation of how such information was obtained is a warning sign. How would a low level employee dealing with email surveillance know anything about stuxnet? Frankly claiming such knowledge without any real proof or credible explanation reduces his credibility.
But for the same price [as an Atari 5200 console], you could just buy a Commodore.
Including the 1541 disk drive? And how long did it take for games to load on a C64 compared to the second- and third-generation consoles?
The C64 had a cartridge port.
Regarding loading games from a floppy disk... it took a trivial, inconsequential amount of time for games that were cartridge sized. Plus it allowed games that were much larger than an 8K cartridge could allow.
I doubt they are selling the Kindle line at a loss, given the pricing is comparable to similar devices from other mfg's.
When the Kindle Fire was released various analysts looked at the components, did the math, and determined that it was basically being sold at cost. The various google nexus products also seem to be sold at cost. It seems that neither Amazon nor Google look at their devices as profit centers. Their pricing also puts incredible pricing pressure on other tablet vendors.
Unfortunately the Ouya doesn't use the Play store...
It is not unfortunate. It allow OUYA to have their own store that requires that *all* games have a free to play component. You can therefore try out *every* game on OUYA before updating it to the full game with in-app purchases. This greatly reduces buyer remorse.
Ever wonder why your purchases via credit card three states removed from home after a day full of driving aren't flagged for a fraud alert? This is why.
Because I've been to that state before and purchased something on that credit card?
Because I left a "breadcrumb trail" of purchases at gas stations and restaurants using that credit card?
Because fraud alerts use statistical data from past fraudulent purchases to rank the risk of a new purchase and I'm in a particular neighborhood, at a particular vendor, purchasing a particular class of item that is considered a low risk?
Credit card companies can do a lot with only their own database. I'm not sure subscribing to this license plate database would add much to their existing fraud risk scoring system.
funny I was just thinking of creating my own plate recorder using a dash base raspberry pi.
VCs start throwing your money NOW!
You are too late. A private service with many subscribers and a huge database already exist. Tens of thousands of autos are located and repossessed each year with this system. If you parked at a Wal Mart, a mall, etc in the U.S. then your license plate has probably already been scanned and recorded in this private database as an auto repo guys drive through the parking lot scanning all the plates.
I believe businesses are doing it too. Auto repossessors, bail bondsmen and others have mounted cameras on their cars to scan and record the license plates of vehicles around them and enter the data into a private central database that they all subscribe too. The driver receives an alert if a nearby license plate is tagged in the database. Previous location information is also available.
If you have parked in Wal Mart parking lot a local auto repo guy has probably scanned you and you have been entered into the database.
I believe the number of vehicles recovered using this technology is currently in the tens of thousands per year in the U.S.
You expect, but it's not at all required. If you want code back, use a different license.
Many commercial vendors using BSD in closed environments do in fact have a track record of giving code back, contributing fixes, etc. A current notable example is Apple. They have submitted patches to BSD projects they use, they have released some of their internally developed projects.
Equally important, and admittedly a little strange to some, it to ask about their personal programming projects. Nothing work related, nothing school related, just things that they sat down and programmed motivated by their own personal needs or curiosity.
Hmm... I manage a large mainframe complex at a financial institution... been doing this for almost 15years. I don't have one at home... guess you wouldn't hire me...
So you are saying that in the past 15 years you did not do any coding at all on a personal computer, tablet or smart phone outside of work or school assignments? Nothing to satisfy a bit of curiosity, nothing to have a little fun with, nothing related to any home/personal use, nothing to give those old programming "neurons" a little workout, nothing to familiarize yourself with a new languages or technology, etc? The thought of any such thing never occurs to you at home?
Actually, speaking as a doctor in the UK (general surgery), on paper a lot of doctors look very similar from a training/logbook point of view. Prestigious jobs are very competitive and traditionally the most important way of discriminating between them is their publishing of academic papers, attendance at relevant conferences, hospital audits, completion of extra courses - usually done (at least in the UK) in their spare time. This shows interest in their field and is analogous to computer programmers having hobby projects. I'm a doctor who makes computer programs in his spare time which makes me a little odd.
Don't get me wrong. I thought OS/2 1.x was far better than DOS and OS/2 2.0 better than Win 3.1. OS/2 2.0's contemporary was Win 3.1 not Win NT. However I preferred Windows NT to OS/2 2.0.
I loved how the retail Windows NT 4 CD shipped with Intel, MIPS, Alpha and PowerPC binaries. In grad school the architecture class was focusing on Alpha. Personally I was looking forward to CHRP systems (PowerPC) that would boot either Windows NT or Mac OS. Strange how both operating systems came to eventually exists on a single system (x86, Apple's Boot Camp).
I only booted to Win 9x to test code or play games. I could also boot into OS/2, but until there was a market it was just fooling around and compatibility testing. At work our Win 3.1 binaries ran so well under OS/2 we saw little point in doing a native OS/2 port.
That said I have a faint recollection of an NT 3.1 beta reporting that OS/2 had a problem. Given Win NT's start as OS/2 NT its a bit hard not to give OS/2 some credit for that cross platform goodness.
I also have no illusions about IBM being a pain in the ass to work with. I agree that OS/2 1.x should have had a 32-bit version.
That's a load of crap. People have lives outside of work. Most of the brilliant programmers I've know do nothing outside of work related to coding. I've known great programmers whose passion outside of work is music...
Check with those brilliant programmers you know and tell me that they *never* wrote something outside of work or school assignments.
I do not expect such personal projects to be current, nor do I expect them to be big. If a person did such projects during college days (or even high school) but life's recent circumstances now prevent such indulgences that is fine. I am merely hoping to see that the person had a genuine interest and curiosity regarding programming. That is something that is there or it is not, and I believe such interest/curiosity highly correlates with great programmers.
Equally important, and admittedly a little strange to some, it to ask about their personal programming projects. Nothing work related, nothing school related, just things that they sat down and programmed motivated by their own personal needs or curiosity.
Would you hire a doctor based on how many "hobby appendectomies" the candidate has performed in their garage? No.
I think your suggestion biases you towards "developer as tinkerer/craftsperson", rather than "developer as professional". I think there's room and need for both.
Admittedly the question regarding personal projects is more relevant to someone without a track record, say a recent college grad. However even with experienced professionals it is a valuable line of inquiry. There are experienced professionals who have a genuine interest in programming, and there are those who do not, who consider it just another job. Even in college I knew some of the later who wanted to have a couple of quick jobs as developers and then get into management. While professional, their code tended to suck.
Plus the personal projects can give insight into professional behaviors with the right sort of followup questions.
Also I didn't require the personal project to be current. If a person had that interest and curiosity regarding programming back in college and had no time for such stuff once that first child was born that was fine. I'm just looking to spot those who never had such interest or curiosity. I've rarely met a great programmer who completely lacked such interest or curiosity. I've known some professionals who took the classes, got the degree, and never were very good.
Actually dismissing a question as stupid can work too. I was once asked a bunch of questions regarding the performance of a half dozen sorting algorithms, I recalled the details of only a couple. My answer: "Sorry, its been years since my data structures and algorithms exam. I bought the Knuth books so I can look up this stuff rather than have to memorize it."
I view interviews as two way. I'm evaluating the company. For example if the "senior engineer" giving me the above test doesn't know who Knuth is I probably don't want to work there. He did, but he pointed out my unconventional answer to the manager of the team. A person with a business background not a technical background. This manager asked what "Knuth" was and I explained. He then got a big smile, he loved my answer. A few days later I got a job offer. I worked there for four years, he was a suit, but he was a good one. He shielded us from as much BS as he could and he trusted and generally accepted our technical recommendation even when he personally had doubts.
GPAs are sometimes ignored by corporations. They often waive their official GPA requirements if you worked in the field while earning your degree. 25-30 hours a week as a programmer while going to college full time and most corps won't care whether your GPA was 2.5 or 3.5 when applying for a development job.
Innovation sometimes leads to a dead end. Doesn't mean it's not worth trying.
You can innovate. Or that new competitor can innovate as you leave an opportunity, a void to be filled. Its a classic business problem. "Old" successful companies tend to focus too much on their existing customer and products, providing only incremental improvements.
"Have you ever built something that worked, show me, explain it." IMHO that is key to successfully hiring developers.
Equally important, and admittedly a little strange to some, it to ask about their personal programming projects. Nothing work related, nothing school related, just things that they sat down and programmed motivated by their own personal needs or curiosity. If a person can not offer "something" a warning bell is going off. I don't care how small, trivial, silly, etc the personal project is. I mostly want to see that personal projects exist. To me they are an indicator that the interviewee is someone who has a genuine interest in programming, that they are not merely someone who got a degree because a parent or guidance counselor told them it was a good career path.
>>...However MS Windows really took off in popularity and...
Windows "popularity" was helped along by aggressive MS marketing (!).
It was hard for a manufacturer not to pre-load Windows on their PC clone when MS contracts were per computer, whether it had Windows or not (example: pay MS $35 per computer loaded with Windows, or $7 for each PC you sold regardless of OS).
This practice was found illegal, but they kept doing it.
No, MS Windows 3.0 was genuinely popular with users. MS could play games to get it on the hard drive but it couldn't make users use it. People at the time generally agreed it was a great improvement over MS DOS, they overwhelmingly wanted a GUI based environment.
You got the time frame wrong.
When OS/2 appeared Windows was already in use.
So OS/2 was competing with Windows from the start.
16-bit OS/2 1.x predated Windows (well Win 3.0, not sure about the Win 1.0 or 2.0 that no one used). 32-bit OS/2 2.0 was a contemporary of 16-bit Win 3.1 and predated 32-bit Win 95.
I'm with you on OS/2 2.0's technical superiority over Win 3.1 and Win 9x. A true 32-bit OS, real multitasking, real multithreading, real memory protection, etc.
Except for the fact that OS/2 2.0 was still 16-bit, sure.
OS/2 2.0 and OS/2 3.0 were being developed side-by-side before the MS/IBM split, with 2.0 remaining 16-bit while 3.0 being a full 32-bit OS (remember that there was a 16-bit protected mode available starting with the 80286, which is what OS/2 2.0 used)
Parts of the internal graphics engine were 16-bit, some drivers, and it did after all have full 16-bit Windows support. The graphics engine was 32-bit by OS/2 2.1. 16-bit code was temporary, just something to let them ship earlier, something fixed in an update, it was not inherently part of the design as in the Win 9x case. In any case this was irrelevant to the programmer. From the programmer's and user's perspective it was a 32-bit OS. Multitasking, multithreading, memory protections were are using 386 functionality. Only 1.x used 286 functionality in this sense.
Microsoft never had any intention of migrating people to OS/2 because IBM controlled the IP rights to OS/2 in a way that they did not with DOS. From the beginning Windows was intended to compete with OS/2.
That is not what Microsoft was telling developers in the early days. I got to watch some Microsoft OS/2 developer training videos at work. They clearly told us that Windows was a temporary bridge to ease/facilitate the ultimate transition to OS/2.
which at the time was Win95
I am referring to things way before Win95. In the earliest days of Win 3, maybe even a little before the commercial release of Win 3.
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Unless you have a 1st gen iPad because they dropped support for those after iOS 5. Which is why I now own an Android tablet, ...
Hopefully that Android tablet is not a 1st gen Kindle Fire because they were release with Android 2.3 and were never upgraded. Now if you buy a brand new Kindle Fire you can have Android 4. Many other Android devices have also never been updated to 4.0.
In contrast to the first gen Kindle Fire that never got upgraded from Android 2.3 the first gen iPad shipped with iOS 3.2 and was upgraded to 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 5.0 and 5.1.
In truth, extraordinary claims without an explanation of how such information was obtained is a warning sign. How would a low level employee dealing with email surveillance know anything about stuxnet? Frankly claiming such knowledge without any real proof or credible explanation reduces his credibility.
As was pointed out above how did a buck private in the Army posted in Iraq (Bradley Manning) get access to diplomatic cables? Because not only is the system corrupt and criminal, it has the actual security of an unlocked screendoor.
Note that I said extraordinary claims should be accompanied with evidence or explanation. Manning provided the evidence. He did not merely make a **claim** about what was in diplomatic cables, he provided the cables themselves.
Assuming that Snowden had access to stuxnet because Manning had access to diplomatic cables is a huge **leap of faith**.
Diplomatic cables are routinely shared with the military and intelligence agencies. Why would this suggest that the stuxnet team would be sharing its work with the email analysis team?
He was a sysadmin at the NSA ...
You are expecting that all servers at the NSA have the same admin passwords? That one admin has access to everything, all departments, all projects?
You conservatives crack me up.
How is being skeptical of extraordinary claims made without proof or explanation being conservative?
Embracing such a claim because it agrees with your political or philosophical orientation is something that those who practice deception count on. If you don't want to be manipulated you should be skeptical whether the extraordinary claim agrees or disagrees with your politics or philosophy.
At this point, I'd say he's proven himself to be a credible source. Confirming something that was already believed to be true doesn't change that, or make it any less true.
Actually no. Confirming something **believed** to be true is a tactic of deception, a tactic of creating the **perception** of credibility. Perception may not match reality.
In truth, extraordinary claims without an explanation of how such information was obtained is a warning sign. How would a low level employee dealing with email surveillance know anything about stuxnet? Frankly claiming such knowledge without any real proof or credible explanation reduces his credibility.
But for the same price [as an Atari 5200 console], you could just buy a Commodore.
Including the 1541 disk drive? And how long did it take for games to load on a C64 compared to the second- and third-generation consoles?
The C64 had a cartridge port.
... it took a trivial, inconsequential amount of time for games that were cartridge sized. Plus it allowed games that were much larger than an 8K cartridge could allow.
Regarding loading games from a floppy disk
I doubt they are selling the Kindle line at a loss, given the pricing is comparable to similar devices from other mfg's.
When the Kindle Fire was released various analysts looked at the components, did the math, and determined that it was basically being sold at cost. The various google nexus products also seem to be sold at cost. It seems that neither Amazon nor Google look at their devices as profit centers. Their pricing also puts incredible pricing pressure on other tablet vendors.
Unfortunately the Ouya doesn't use the Play store ...
It is not unfortunate. It allow OUYA to have their own store that requires that *all* games have a free to play component. You can therefore try out *every* game on OUYA before updating it to the full game with in-app purchases. This greatly reduces buyer remorse.
Ever wonder why your purchases via credit card three states removed from home after a day full of driving aren't flagged for a fraud alert? This is why.
Because I've been to that state before and purchased something on that credit card?
Because I left a "breadcrumb trail" of purchases at gas stations and restaurants using that credit card?
Because fraud alerts use statistical data from past fraudulent purchases to rank the risk of a new purchase and I'm in a particular neighborhood, at a particular vendor, purchasing a particular class of item that is considered a low risk?
Credit card companies can do a lot with only their own database. I'm not sure subscribing to this license plate database would add much to their existing fraud risk scoring system.
funny I was just thinking of creating my own plate recorder using a dash base raspberry pi. VCs start throwing your money NOW!
You are too late. A private service with many subscribers and a huge database already exist. Tens of thousands of autos are located and repossessed each year with this system. If you parked at a Wal Mart, a mall, etc in the U.S. then your license plate has probably already been scanned and recorded in this private database as an auto repo guys drive through the parking lot scanning all the plates.
I believe businesses are doing it too. Auto repossessors, bail bondsmen and others have mounted cameras on their cars to scan and record the license plates of vehicles around them and enter the data into a private central database that they all subscribe too. The driver receives an alert if a nearby license plate is tagged in the database. Previous location information is also available.
If you have parked in Wal Mart parking lot a local auto repo guy has probably scanned you and you have been entered into the database.
I believe the number of vehicles recovered using this technology is currently in the tens of thousands per year in the U.S.
You expect, but it's not at all required. If you want code back, use a different license.
Many commercial vendors using BSD in closed environments do in fact have a track record of giving code back, contributing fixes, etc. A current notable example is Apple. They have submitted patches to BSD projects they use, they have released some of their internally developed projects.
Equally important, and admittedly a little strange to some, it to ask about their personal programming projects. Nothing work related, nothing school related, just things that they sat down and programmed motivated by their own personal needs or curiosity.
Hmm... I manage a large mainframe complex at a financial institution... been doing this for almost 15years. I don't have one at home... guess you wouldn't hire me...
So you are saying that in the past 15 years you did not do any coding at all on a personal computer, tablet or smart phone outside of work or school assignments? Nothing to satisfy a bit of curiosity, nothing to have a little fun with, nothing related to any home/personal use, nothing to give those old programming "neurons" a little workout, nothing to familiarize yourself with a new languages or technology, etc? The thought of any such thing never occurs to you at home?
Actually, speaking as a doctor in the UK (general surgery), on paper a lot of doctors look very similar from a training/logbook point of view. Prestigious jobs are very competitive and traditionally the most important way of discriminating between them is their publishing of academic papers, attendance at relevant conferences, hospital audits, completion of extra courses - usually done (at least in the UK) in their spare time. This shows interest in their field and is analogous to computer programmers having hobby projects. I'm a doctor who makes computer programs in his spare time which makes me a little odd.
Wish I could mod this one.
Don't get me wrong. I thought OS/2 1.x was far better than DOS and OS/2 2.0 better than Win 3.1. OS/2 2.0's contemporary was Win 3.1 not Win NT. However I preferred Windows NT to OS/2 2.0.
I loved how the retail Windows NT 4 CD shipped with Intel, MIPS, Alpha and PowerPC binaries. In grad school the architecture class was focusing on Alpha. Personally I was looking forward to CHRP systems (PowerPC) that would boot either Windows NT or Mac OS. Strange how both operating systems came to eventually exists on a single system (x86, Apple's Boot Camp).
I only booted to Win 9x to test code or play games. I could also boot into OS/2, but until there was a market it was just fooling around and compatibility testing. At work our Win 3.1 binaries ran so well under OS/2 we saw little point in doing a native OS/2 port.
That said I have a faint recollection of an NT 3.1 beta reporting that OS/2 had a problem. Given Win NT's start as OS/2 NT its a bit hard not to give OS/2 some credit for that cross platform goodness.
I also have no illusions about IBM being a pain in the ass to work with. I agree that OS/2 1.x should have had a 32-bit version.
That's a load of crap. People have lives outside of work. Most of the brilliant programmers I've know do nothing outside of work related to coding. I've known great programmers whose passion outside of work is music...
Check with those brilliant programmers you know and tell me that they *never* wrote something outside of work or school assignments.
I do not expect such personal projects to be current, nor do I expect them to be big. If a person did such projects during college days (or even high school) but life's recent circumstances now prevent such indulgences that is fine. I am merely hoping to see that the person had a genuine interest and curiosity regarding programming. That is something that is there or it is not, and I believe such interest/curiosity highly correlates with great programmers.
Equally important, and admittedly a little strange to some, it to ask about their personal programming projects. Nothing work related, nothing school related, just things that they sat down and programmed motivated by their own personal needs or curiosity.
Would you hire a doctor based on how many "hobby appendectomies" the candidate has performed in their garage? No.
I think your suggestion biases you towards "developer as tinkerer/craftsperson", rather than "developer as professional". I think there's room and need for both.
Admittedly the question regarding personal projects is more relevant to someone without a track record, say a recent college grad. However even with experienced professionals it is a valuable line of inquiry. There are experienced professionals who have a genuine interest in programming, and there are those who do not, who consider it just another job. Even in college I knew some of the later who wanted to have a couple of quick jobs as developers and then get into management. While professional, their code tended to suck.
Plus the personal projects can give insight into professional behaviors with the right sort of followup questions.
Also I didn't require the personal project to be current. If a person had that interest and curiosity regarding programming back in college and had no time for such stuff once that first child was born that was fine. I'm just looking to spot those who never had such interest or curiosity. I've rarely met a great programmer who completely lacked such interest or curiosity. I've known some professionals who took the classes, got the degree, and never were very good.
Actually dismissing a question as stupid can work too. I was once asked a bunch of questions regarding the performance of a half dozen sorting algorithms, I recalled the details of only a couple. My answer: "Sorry, its been years since my data structures and algorithms exam. I bought the Knuth books so I can look up this stuff rather than have to memorize it."
I view interviews as two way. I'm evaluating the company. For example if the "senior engineer" giving me the above test doesn't know who Knuth is I probably don't want to work there. He did, but he pointed out my unconventional answer to the manager of the team. A person with a business background not a technical background. This manager asked what "Knuth" was and I explained. He then got a big smile, he loved my answer. A few days later I got a job offer. I worked there for four years, he was a suit, but he was a good one. He shielded us from as much BS as he could and he trusted and generally accepted our technical recommendation even when he personally had doubts.
GPAs are sometimes ignored by corporations. They often waive their official GPA requirements if you worked in the field while earning your degree. 25-30 hours a week as a programmer while going to college full time and most corps won't care whether your GPA was 2.5 or 3.5 when applying for a development job.
Innovation sometimes leads to a dead end. Doesn't mean it's not worth trying.
You can innovate. Or that new competitor can innovate as you leave an opportunity, a void to be filled. Its a classic business problem. "Old" successful companies tend to focus too much on their existing customer and products, providing only incremental improvements.
"Have you ever built something that worked, show me, explain it." IMHO that is key to successfully hiring developers.
Equally important, and admittedly a little strange to some, it to ask about their personal programming projects. Nothing work related, nothing school related, just things that they sat down and programmed motivated by their own personal needs or curiosity. If a person can not offer "something" a warning bell is going off. I don't care how small, trivial, silly, etc the personal project is. I mostly want to see that personal projects exist. To me they are an indicator that the interviewee is someone who has a genuine interest in programming, that they are not merely someone who got a degree because a parent or guidance counselor told them it was a good career path.
>>...However MS Windows really took off in popularity and...
Windows "popularity" was helped along by aggressive MS marketing (!). It was hard for a manufacturer not to pre-load Windows on their PC clone when MS contracts were per computer, whether it had Windows or not (example: pay MS $35 per computer loaded with Windows, or $7 for each PC you sold regardless of OS). This practice was found illegal, but they kept doing it.
No, MS Windows 3.0 was genuinely popular with users. MS could play games to get it on the hard drive but it couldn't make users use it. People at the time generally agreed it was a great improvement over MS DOS, they overwhelmingly wanted a GUI based environment.
You got the time frame wrong. When OS/2 appeared Windows was already in use. So OS/2 was competing with Windows from the start.
16-bit OS/2 1.x predated Windows (well Win 3.0, not sure about the Win 1.0 or 2.0 that no one used). 32-bit OS/2 2.0 was a contemporary of 16-bit Win 3.1 and predated 32-bit Win 95.
I'm with you on OS/2 2.0's technical superiority over Win 3.1 and Win 9x. A true 32-bit OS, real multitasking, real multithreading, real memory protection, etc.
Except for the fact that OS/2 2.0 was still 16-bit, sure. OS/2 2.0 and OS/2 3.0 were being developed side-by-side before the MS/IBM split, with 2.0 remaining 16-bit while 3.0 being a full 32-bit OS (remember that there was a 16-bit protected mode available starting with the 80286, which is what OS/2 2.0 used)
Parts of the internal graphics engine were 16-bit, some drivers, and it did after all have full 16-bit Windows support. The graphics engine was 32-bit by OS/2 2.1. 16-bit code was temporary, just something to let them ship earlier, something fixed in an update, it was not inherently part of the design as in the Win 9x case. In any case this was irrelevant to the programmer. From the programmer's and user's perspective it was a 32-bit OS. Multitasking, multithreading, memory protections were are using 386 functionality. Only 1.x used 286 functionality in this sense.
Microsoft never had any intention of migrating people to OS/2 because IBM controlled the IP rights to OS/2 in a way that they did not with DOS. From the beginning Windows was intended to compete with OS/2.
That is not what Microsoft was telling developers in the early days. I got to watch some Microsoft OS/2 developer training videos at work. They clearly told us that Windows was a temporary bridge to ease/facilitate the ultimate transition to OS/2.
which at the time was Win95
I am referring to things way before Win95. In the earliest days of Win 3, maybe even a little before the commercial release of Win 3.