I was a Linux user beginning with Redhat 3. I went through Redhat, Mandrake, Fedora, Gentoo and Ubuntu. I've also used Solaris for a daily workstation.
Then I was assigned a Mac at a new job (running Tiger), and have never used anything else for a desktop since. I've had no reason to. I still keep an Ubuntu box in the house, but it's a server.
My name is Anecdotal Evidence, it's true, but whatever. I went Mac, and never looked back.
Your experience is so common it goes beyond anecdotal. Many Linux users just wanted a *nix environment. They did not care about the FSF, the GPL, the free software movement, etc. They just wanted to run some *nix applications and tools. Linux was originally their only affordable option to workstations back in the day. Mac OS X comes along and they have another affordable *nix option. One that also gives them a consumer oriented desktop and off-the-shelf consumer and business productivity software. Mac OS X basically offers a superset of the software they can run under Linux.
No Mac OS X has not killed desktop Linux. However it has halted Linux's advance into the desktop market. Much like Linux did not kill MS Windows Server, it halted the advance of Windows Server into what had been traditional *nix server territory.
That said...
So he argues that Mac OS X has not displaced Linux because its overall marketshare has only gone from 5 to 7.5%?
That seems to be an odd conclusion. That growth is nearly twice the entire Linux marketshare according to his cited numbers. If he wanted to argue Mac OS X is not displacing Windows he would have a point. As for Linux he really offers no evidence.
Yet the number of Mac laptops seen at Linux specific conferences, and the number long term Linux users confessing they moved to Mac OS X, are so common as to be far more than mere anecdotes.
The truth is that a bunch of people out there wanted a *nix environment. Workstations were beyond their reach and Linux filled an empty niche by delivering *nix on PC hardware. Many historic Linux users just want an affordable *nix and didn't care about the politics and drama of the FSF and the "free software" movement. So when Mac OS X delivered another affordable *nix implementation that runs side by side with a nice consumer GUI environment that has support from many commercial software publishers they switched. It also helped that the Mac hardware delivers the "holy grail" of running Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Sure you can emulate but for things like games you are probably better off booting into Windows. Something many Linux users do too.
Assuming there would be no possible way for the government to use this information...
"No possible way"? If this information exists then the government is always one small step away from accessing it.
... how is being able to have more relevant ads directed at you a bad thing?
You might want to ask the teenager who wasn't ready to tell her parents she was pregnant, whose home started receiving pregnancy related targeted advertising. Pick something you are not ready to share with parents or a spouse or your boss (advertising goes to work not home - for example ads in a browser when your boss walks in), reapply the preceding.
Back in the 80s when I was in college, everybody signed up for Computer Science because there was money to be made, it was the thing to do. I noticed that few people made C's...people either made straight A's or flunked out. They got it, or they didn't. Now, as a long-time programmer and hiring manager, I find the same trend: people are either naturally really good at programming, or they just don't get it. As with any art form, reading books and education can only go so far.
Some get it enough to get that CS degree but they are just not into it. IMHO many grads seem to fall into this category, they even have good grades. They entered the CS program not because they had an inherent interest in programming but because someone told them it was a good career path. Its just a job to them.
I found what may be a simple way to tell those who have an inherent interest from those who do not. In an interview I like to ask about projects a candidate did on their own, for their own amusement or to satisfy their own curiosity. Sometimes I have to drag it out of them, they think their projects to too small or too trivial or too silly to be mentioned. If a recent graduate has written nothing other than class projects then I get a bit suspicious. It seems that the people who "get it" and are "into it" always have little side projects they can talk about.
Your examples do more to show how relatively outdated the iPhone 4S is than anything. Hopefully the 5 at least brings a 720p screen. Also the Droid 4 should not be considered a successor since it has a locked bootloader and a low res screen. At the time the D1 was released it was a high res screen, higher than the 3GS by the way.
The point is not that the iPhone 4S is behind the Droid 4. The claim was made that an iPhone 3GS is painfully slow compared to the current model. My argument is merely pointing out that this is even more of an issue for the Droid 1.
If we accept your argument about the Droid 3 being the true successor then we have a device with the same RAM as the iPhone 4S and a 1GHz dual core CPU vs the 4S's 800 MHz dual core. My point seems to still hold.
Yes Apple seems to be releasing updated hardware months later than Motorola. If the iPad 3rd gen is a clue then a 1GHz CPU and 1GB RAM would be likely for the iPhone 5. I don't think the screen will go 720p. The previous screen update exactly doubled the resolution. That made software compatibility very high as the automatic scaling of graphics worked very well. I suppose they could just run existing apps in a 960x640 subset of the screen with a black frame filling out the rest of the 1280x720 display. That is similar to what happens when running an iPhone app on an iPad.
About sales: the game is still available in box form from game stores and online (such as Amazon). The digital sale stop was not meant to completely stop incoming player population, just to slow it down.
But are they shipping new boxes to stores? They can't do much about what stores already have in inventory.
Your 2009 Droid 1 is running at 1.2GHz rather than the 550MHz (underclocked from 600MHz) stated on Wiki and various other sites and the up to 600MHz stated on Motorola's developer site?
The lack of ram is a far bigger issue for the D1 and the 3GS than the CPU.
In terms of RAM the iPhone 3GS has 256MB compared to 512MB in the 4 and 4S. In comparison the Droid 1 has 256MB as well but the Droid 4 has 1GB.
Either way you look at it, CPU or RAM, the Droid 1 to Droid 4 comparison seems more painful than the iPhone 3GS to iPhone 4S comparison.
My Droid 1 is running ICS and will soon run JB.
That is the advantage of an open source OS.
What advantage? The iPhone 3GS was released a few months before the Droid and the 3GS runs the latest version of iOS 5 and will soon be running iOS 6.
The 3GS is painfully slow in iOS5. It's good that it works, but users should be warned before upgrading.
And the Droid 1 is not painfully slow in Android 4 (ICS) compared to the Droid 4?
The Droid 1 suffers even more than the iPhone 3GS. The Droid going from a 550 MHz single core CPU to a 1.2 GHz dual core while the iPhone goes from 600 MHz single core to 800 MHz dual core.
Actually it all depends on the application. I test on a 3GS running iOS 5. Slower but not painfully so. If your app does not take advantage of dual core (or more accurately threading) the boost is not that great. Keep in mind that a snappier more responsive user interface does not necessarily indicate performance. The user interface may update more quickly on a dual core but the task initiated by the previous action may still take about the same amount of time. User interface design and coding is sometimes about manufacturing the perception of performance.
My understanding is that kit airplanes fall under the category of experimental aircraft and a different large body of regulations do apply. Including regulations limiting where an experimental aircraft can be flown.
The limitations on where you can fly have been eliminated, at least once you are out of the flight-test phase (7 hours for E-LSA, 25 for E-AB with certified engines, 40 for E-AB with non-certified engines). The prohibition on flying for commercial purposes is still in place.
When googling around last night I found that regional FAA officials can and have prohibited normal operations in certain areas.
"The Van Nuys Flight Standards District Office (FSDO) has prohibited experimental flight tests and normal operations (Phase 1 and Phase 2 flights) at Burbank, Van Nuys, Whiteman, and Santa Barbara airports." http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/newsitems/2006/060118experimental.html
Wonder what the change in perspective does to the pilot and passengers...
Makes the pilots feel like passengers. Makes half the passengers feel like pilots, the other half feel like tail gunners, refueling boom operators, etc.
... and how fast the rotation is.
Slow enough that the forces are a fraction of a G.
In the past some planes could achieve supersonic flight by rotating the whole plane 90 degrees (from level flight) Getting back to subsonic flight was sometimes a bit more difficult...
In those circumstances getting subsonic was trivial, just a matter of waiting a brief time period.
What is the big need for insurance? I guess they could have tripped in the studio, or had a light fall on them.
Apparently you never saw the movie Capricorn One, where a faked Mars landing occurs. This movie's plot demonstrates how even a faked landing can be severely life threatening to the astronauts.
And yes I know the Apollo missions were *real*. I also support legislation giving Buzz Aldrin lifetime immunity for punching deniers in the face.
Basically, when you complete a kit plane, you get it certified by the FAA as an experimental aircraft. Those can be flown anywhere that's permitted by their equipment and your licensing; for instance, the plane has to have its minimum equipment list to fly at all and navigational aids to fly in IFC. The major restriction on an experimental aircraft special airworthiness certificate is that it can't be used for commercial cargo or passenger operations.
Unless an FAA bureaucrat feels otherwise:
"The Van Nuys Flight Standards District Office (FSDO) has prohibited experimental flight tests and normal operations (Phase 1 and Phase 2 flights) at Burbank, Van Nuys, Whiteman, and Santa Barbara airports." http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/newsitems/2006/060118experimental.html
Making airplanes isn't about technology, it is all about regulation and certification of components and complete product. Open sourcing wont help you with that.
Making planes is also about getting sued. Lawsuits destroyed the private light aircraft market in the U.S.
You do not even have to make an error to lose a lawsuit. A lawyer merely needs to convince a jury that a "better" design choice could have been made. Your choice may have been the better choice in a broad overall sense but the lawyer just needs to argue that in a specific narrow sense something else would have been better. For example a fuel injected engine vs a carbureted engine. In a specific narrow sense fuel injection might have avoided an icing related crash. Never mind the pilot failed to apply carb heat. Never mind all the complications and issues fuel injection raises in other areas.
Making airplanes isn't about technology, it is all about regulation and certification of components and complete product. Open sourcing wont help you with that.
Not necessarily in the United States, where the Federal Aviation Administration "... does not certify, certificate, or approve aircraft kits. Also, the FAA does not approve kit manufacturers." Though I'm sure there are regulations for the person piloting the aircraft.
I think all that quote is saying is that the normal certification and approval process does not apply. My understanding is that kit airplanes fall under the category of experimental aircraft and a different large body of regulations do apply. Including regulations limiting where an experimental aircraft can be flown. Of course things may be quite different from long ago when I became acquainted with such things.
So they'll just re-introduce the 55 MPH speed limit, which was done to save energy.
It depends entirely on the design of the car and engine. I get 4 additional miles per gallon (mpg) when cruising at 65 rather than 55. I was surprised and repeated the measurements several times. Verified the onboard computer's reported mpg against the odometer and actually gas consumed (top off at same fuel pump before and after).
Perhaps 55 was some sort of average efficiency point for vehicles of the 1970s but I expect a higher efficiency point with today's designs.
Even if one partner does absolutely nothing but LOOK at the code the other partner is writing, it is the equivalent of a code review by a peer.
It is not equivalent. Two people working together in real time are more subject to group think than when a second person does an independent review after the first person finishes coding. Plus as another poster points out, the code review is taking much more time than it would otherwise.
The concept of using a helper is not a fad, trend, or technique. A better term for it would be "no brainer."
You misunderstand. The "elders" use helpers but they may only do so when it is actually productive to do so. We have two options. (1) Use experience and judgement to decide which tasks need more than one person. (2) Have an absolute rule where two people are assigned to all tasks. Case (2) sounds more like "no brain" rather than "no brainer".
Secondly. From a code review point of view it may be best to have the coding and reviewing done independently. Even when there are only two people there is still an opportunity for group think.
But most of the elder wizards of the programming community (at least the ones I know) tend to shy away from the pair programming mentality. Younger folks (especially people in their 20s) don't seem to mind as much. I wonder if this has something to do with the nature of the people who went into programming 20 years ago (compared to today), or what...?
Or it has something to do with experience. The elder programmers have seen many programming fads come and go, many claims for the "one true way" to greater efficiency and reducing bugs. Like most fad/pop things, pair programming probably worked in a specific environment, with specific people doing a specific type of task... but is probably not a universal solution. It is merely hyped as such by the "training" industry, book sellers, etc.
Elders may realize when working in pairs will help and when it will not. I've seen plenty of instances when elders call in a peer for an hour or two for a particular bit of code and then part when returning to the more mundane parts of the code. Or ask a peer to review a bit of code they just wrote.
English: "way to create a paper loss to avoid tax".
No. It is common to cite financial performance before taxes and other things. Hence the common use of acronyms like EBITDA, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. These things muddy the water when trying to determine income, comparing one year to another, one company to another, etc.
Think of it like reporting your salary rather than the adjusted gross income (AGI) from your tax return.
Also, what makes you think there is a paper loss. Shutting down a plant does have costs. That is why some money losing plants are not shut down when their losses are significantly less than their shutdown costs.
Who cares about opportunity? The fact is the car is cleaner now, and until there is a real effort to sequester Co2 it seems pretty ridiculous to make engineering decisions based on this.
Did you miss the original post where someone mentioned the need to build additional power generation plants to support the new demand? The poster pointed out these new plants will probably be coal fired. So the opportunity to introduce filtering, capture, sequestration is quite relevant. Also making engineering decisions before building such new plants would seem quite relevant.
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I was a Linux user beginning with Redhat 3. I went through Redhat, Mandrake, Fedora, Gentoo and Ubuntu. I've also used Solaris for a daily workstation.
Then I was assigned a Mac at a new job (running Tiger), and have never used anything else for a desktop since. I've had no reason to. I still keep an Ubuntu box in the house, but it's a server.
My name is Anecdotal Evidence, it's true, but whatever. I went Mac, and never looked back.
Your experience is so common it goes beyond anecdotal. Many Linux users just wanted a *nix environment. They did not care about the FSF, the GPL, the free software movement, etc. They just wanted to run some *nix applications and tools. Linux was originally their only affordable option to workstations back in the day. Mac OS X comes along and they have another affordable *nix option. One that also gives them a consumer oriented desktop and off-the-shelf consumer and business productivity software. Mac OS X basically offers a superset of the software they can run under Linux.
No Mac OS X has not killed desktop Linux. However it has halted Linux's advance into the desktop market. Much like Linux did not kill MS Windows Server, it halted the advance of Windows Server into what had been traditional *nix server territory.
...
That said
So he argues that Mac OS X has not displaced Linux because its overall marketshare has only gone from 5 to 7.5%?
That seems to be an odd conclusion. That growth is nearly twice the entire Linux marketshare according to his cited numbers. If he wanted to argue Mac OS X is not displacing Windows he would have a point. As for Linux he really offers no evidence.
Yet the number of Mac laptops seen at Linux specific conferences, and the number long term Linux users confessing they moved to Mac OS X, are so common as to be far more than mere anecdotes.
The truth is that a bunch of people out there wanted a *nix environment. Workstations were beyond their reach and Linux filled an empty niche by delivering *nix on PC hardware. Many historic Linux users just want an affordable *nix and didn't care about the politics and drama of the FSF and the "free software" movement. So when Mac OS X delivered another affordable *nix implementation that runs side by side with a nice consumer GUI environment that has support from many commercial software publishers they switched. It also helped that the Mac hardware delivers the "holy grail" of running Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Sure you can emulate but for things like games you are probably better off booting into Windows. Something many Linux users do too.
If it works as well as the current round of 'targeted advertising' your pregnant teenager might well get Viagra adverts.
Humor aside, you are confusing spam with targeted advertising. Spam is about as non-targeted as you can get.
Assuming there would be no possible way for the government to use this information ...
"No possible way"? If this information exists then the government is always one small step away from accessing it.
You might want to ask the teenager who wasn't ready to tell her parents she was pregnant, whose home started receiving pregnancy related targeted advertising. Pick something you are not ready to share with parents or a spouse or your boss (advertising goes to work not home - for example ads in a browser when your boss walks in), reapply the preceding.
Back in the 80s when I was in college, everybody signed up for Computer Science because there was money to be made, it was the thing to do. I noticed that few people made C's...people either made straight A's or flunked out. They got it, or they didn't. Now, as a long-time programmer and hiring manager, I find the same trend: people are either naturally really good at programming, or they just don't get it. As with any art form, reading books and education can only go so far.
Some get it enough to get that CS degree but they are just not into it. IMHO many grads seem to fall into this category, they even have good grades. They entered the CS program not because they had an inherent interest in programming but because someone told them it was a good career path. Its just a job to them.
I found what may be a simple way to tell those who have an inherent interest from those who do not. In an interview I like to ask about projects a candidate did on their own, for their own amusement or to satisfy their own curiosity. Sometimes I have to drag it out of them, they think their projects to too small or too trivial or too silly to be mentioned. If a recent graduate has written nothing other than class projects then I get a bit suspicious. It seems that the people who "get it" and are "into it" always have little side projects they can talk about.
Your examples do more to show how relatively outdated the iPhone 4S is than anything. Hopefully the 5 at least brings a 720p screen. Also the Droid 4 should not be considered a successor since it has a locked bootloader and a low res screen. At the time the D1 was released it was a high res screen, higher than the 3GS by the way.
The point is not that the iPhone 4S is behind the Droid 4. The claim was made that an iPhone 3GS is painfully slow compared to the current model. My argument is merely pointing out that this is even more of an issue for the Droid 1.
If we accept your argument about the Droid 3 being the true successor then we have a device with the same RAM as the iPhone 4S and a 1GHz dual core CPU vs the 4S's 800 MHz dual core. My point seems to still hold.
Yes Apple seems to be releasing updated hardware months later than Motorola. If the iPad 3rd gen is a clue then a 1GHz CPU and 1GB RAM would be likely for the iPhone 5. I don't think the screen will go 720p. The previous screen update exactly doubled the resolution. That made software compatibility very high as the automatic scaling of graphics worked very well. I suppose they could just run existing apps in a 960x640 subset of the screen with a black frame filling out the rest of the 1280x720 display. That is similar to what happens when running an iPhone app on an iPad.
About sales: the game is still available in box form from game stores and online (such as Amazon). The digital sale stop was not meant to completely stop incoming player population, just to slow it down.
But are they shipping new boxes to stores? They can't do much about what stores already have in inventory.
My droid 1 is clocked at 1.2Ghz.
Your 2009 Droid 1 is running at 1.2GHz rather than the 550MHz (underclocked from 600MHz) stated on Wiki and various other sites and the up to 600MHz stated on Motorola's developer site?
The lack of ram is a far bigger issue for the D1 and the 3GS than the CPU.
In terms of RAM the iPhone 3GS has 256MB compared to 512MB in the 4 and 4S. In comparison the Droid 1 has 256MB as well but the Droid 4 has 1GB.
Either way you look at it, CPU or RAM, the Droid 1 to Droid 4 comparison seems more painful than the iPhone 3GS to iPhone 4S comparison.
My Droid 1 is running ICS and will soon run JB. That is the advantage of an open source OS.
What advantage? The iPhone 3GS was released a few months before the Droid and the 3GS runs the latest version of iOS 5 and will soon be running iOS 6.
The 3GS is painfully slow in iOS5. It's good that it works, but users should be warned before upgrading.
And the Droid 1 is not painfully slow in Android 4 (ICS) compared to the Droid 4?
The Droid 1 suffers even more than the iPhone 3GS. The Droid going from a 550 MHz single core CPU to a 1.2 GHz dual core while the iPhone goes from 600 MHz single core to 800 MHz dual core.
Actually it all depends on the application. I test on a 3GS running iOS 5. Slower but not painfully so. If your app does not take advantage of dual core (or more accurately threading) the boost is not that great. Keep in mind that a snappier more responsive user interface does not necessarily indicate performance. The user interface may update more quickly on a dual core but the task initiated by the previous action may still take about the same amount of time. User interface design and coding is sometimes about manufacturing the perception of performance.
My understanding is that kit airplanes fall under the category of experimental aircraft and a different large body of regulations do apply. Including regulations limiting where an experimental aircraft can be flown.
The limitations on where you can fly have been eliminated, at least once you are out of the flight-test phase (7 hours for E-LSA, 25 for E-AB with certified engines, 40 for E-AB with non-certified engines). The prohibition on flying for commercial purposes is still in place.
When googling around last night I found that regional FAA officials can and have prohibited normal operations in certain areas.
"The Van Nuys Flight Standards District Office (FSDO) has prohibited experimental flight tests and normal operations (Phase 1 and Phase 2 flights) at Burbank, Van Nuys, Whiteman, and Santa Barbara airports."
http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/newsitems/2006/060118experimental.html
My Droid 1 is running ICS and will soon run JB. That is the advantage of an open source OS.
What advantage? The iPhone 3GS was released a few months before the Droid and the 3GS runs the latest version of iOS 5 and will soon be running iOS 6.
Wonder what the change in perspective does to the pilot and passengers ...
Makes the pilots feel like passengers. Makes half the passengers feel like pilots, the other half feel like tail gunners, refueling boom operators, etc.
... and how fast the rotation is.
Slow enough that the forces are a fraction of a G.
Which direction does the wing rotate 90 degrees?
In the past some planes could achieve supersonic flight by rotating the whole plane 90 degrees (from level flight) Getting back to subsonic flight was sometimes a bit more difficult...
In those circumstances getting subsonic was trivial, just a matter of waiting a brief time period.
What is the big need for insurance? I guess they could have tripped in the studio, or had a light fall on them.
Apparently you never saw the movie Capricorn One, where a faked Mars landing occurs. This movie's plot demonstrates how even a faked landing can be severely life threatening to the astronauts.
And yes I know the Apollo missions were *real*. I also support legislation giving Buzz Aldrin lifetime immunity for punching deniers in the face.
Nope.
Basically, when you complete a kit plane, you get it certified by the FAA as an experimental aircraft. Those can be flown anywhere that's permitted by their equipment and your licensing; for instance, the plane has to have its minimum equipment list to fly at all and navigational aids to fly in IFC. The major restriction on an experimental aircraft special airworthiness certificate is that it can't be used for commercial cargo or passenger operations.
Unless an FAA bureaucrat feels otherwise:
"The Van Nuys Flight Standards District Office (FSDO) has prohibited experimental flight tests and normal operations (Phase 1 and Phase 2 flights) at Burbank, Van Nuys, Whiteman, and Santa Barbara airports."
http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/newsitems/2006/060118experimental.html
Making airplanes isn't about technology, it is all about regulation and certification of components and complete product. Open sourcing wont help you with that.
Making planes is also about getting sued. Lawsuits destroyed the private light aircraft market in the U.S.
You do not even have to make an error to lose a lawsuit. A lawyer merely needs to convince a jury that a "better" design choice could have been made. Your choice may have been the better choice in a broad overall sense but the lawyer just needs to argue that in a specific narrow sense something else would have been better. For example a fuel injected engine vs a carbureted engine. In a specific narrow sense fuel injection might have avoided an icing related crash. Never mind the pilot failed to apply carb heat. Never mind all the complications and issues fuel injection raises in other areas.
Making airplanes isn't about technology, it is all about regulation and certification of components and complete product. Open sourcing wont help you with that.
Not necessarily in the United States, where the Federal Aviation Administration "... does not certify, certificate, or approve aircraft kits. Also, the FAA does not approve kit manufacturers." Though I'm sure there are regulations for the person piloting the aircraft.
I think all that quote is saying is that the normal certification and approval process does not apply. My understanding is that kit airplanes fall under the category of experimental aircraft and a different large body of regulations do apply. Including regulations limiting where an experimental aircraft can be flown. Of course things may be quite different from long ago when I became acquainted with such things.
So they'll just re-introduce the 55 MPH speed limit, which was done to save energy.
It depends entirely on the design of the car and engine. I get 4 additional miles per gallon (mpg) when cruising at 65 rather than 55. I was surprised and repeated the measurements several times. Verified the onboard computer's reported mpg against the odometer and actually gas consumed (top off at same fuel pump before and after).
Perhaps 55 was some sort of average efficiency point for vehicles of the 1970s but I expect a higher efficiency point with today's designs.
Even if one partner does absolutely nothing but LOOK at the code the other partner is writing, it is the equivalent of a code review by a peer.
It is not equivalent. Two people working together in real time are more subject to group think than when a second person does an independent review after the first person finishes coding. Plus as another poster points out, the code review is taking much more time than it would otherwise.
The concept of using a helper is not a fad, trend, or technique. A better term for it would be "no brainer."
You misunderstand. The "elders" use helpers but they may only do so when it is actually productive to do so. We have two options. (1) Use experience and judgement to decide which tasks need more than one person. (2) Have an absolute rule where two people are assigned to all tasks. Case (2) sounds more like "no brain" rather than "no brainer".
Secondly. From a code review point of view it may be best to have the coding and reviewing done independently. Even when there are only two people there is still an opportunity for group think.
Yes, it's common Executive Speak, which was the point.
Actually the point of the original post was humor and to gain some karma.
If you thought the original post was serious then its point would have been to translate "executive speak" and it did so erroneously.
But most of the elder wizards of the programming community (at least the ones I know) tend to shy away from the pair programming mentality. Younger folks (especially people in their 20s) don't seem to mind as much. I wonder if this has something to do with the nature of the people who went into programming 20 years ago (compared to today), or what...?
Or it has something to do with experience. The elder programmers have seen many programming fads come and go, many claims for the "one true way" to greater efficiency and reducing bugs. Like most fad/pop things, pair programming probably worked in a specific environment, with specific people doing a specific type of task ... but is probably not a universal solution. It is merely hyped as such by the "training" industry, book sellers, etc.
Elders may realize when working in pairs will help and when it will not. I've seen plenty of instances when elders call in a peer for an hour or two for a particular bit of code and then part when returning to the more mundane parts of the code. Or ask a peer to review a bit of code they just wrote.
Executive: "restructuring cost before tax"
English: "way to create a paper loss to avoid tax".
No. It is common to cite financial performance before taxes and other things. Hence the common use of acronyms like EBITDA, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. These things muddy the water when trying to determine income, comparing one year to another, one company to another, etc.
Think of it like reporting your salary rather than the adjusted gross income (AGI) from your tax return.
Also, what makes you think there is a paper loss. Shutting down a plant does have costs. That is why some money losing plants are not shut down when their losses are significantly less than their shutdown costs.
Why would firefighters need clear? So what if they painted their faces with some particular color?
Plus would clear actually work as well? Opaque would seem to be a better blocker than transparent or translucent?
Who cares about opportunity? The fact is the car is cleaner now, and until there is a real effort to sequester Co2 it seems pretty ridiculous to make engineering decisions based on this.
Did you miss the original post where someone mentioned the need to build additional power generation plants to support the new demand? The poster pointed out these new plants will probably be coal fired. So the opportunity to introduce filtering, capture, sequestration is quite relevant. Also making engineering decisions before building such new plants would seem quite relevant.