Jeez.. would it really take that much more to keep the EXISTING MENUS but add an option to use a ribbon for those that like them or are new users??? I thought Windows and C++ was supposed to support some type of modular programming, it should be a piece of cake to chose one widget over another one. Just plug it in. I know it's pretty easy in Java to do it.....
Any benefit from ribbons (which I haven't seen any yet) is lost from me not being able to find stuff. Excel was just plain nasty trying to find things in. I still have a difficult time finding things that I don't use very often, but had used enough to make some sense about why they were in a specific menu.
Knowing when it wasn't a hurricane won't help those injured or killed, or fix the damage. Just someone interested in playing Monday Morning Quarterback....
It didn't take me too long to figure out the road I drive down has the signals set so that if someone drives 45mph (i.e. the speed limit in that area), they will hit them all green. It also didn't take too long to figure out that one cross street didn't follow that rule, probably because it's a busier street, has more lanes, and more left turns. I also observed that the left turn lanes go first, so if someone was sitting in the left turn lane facing towards me, I'd catch the light. And that a few of the lights between major intersections are on switches so it didn't matter what speed I went. And that 'walk' signs are great indicators of when a light is about to change to yellow and red, so I could figure out if I was going to catch a light red or not and if it was possible to speed up a little bit to catch it green.
Maybe what is really needed is for more drivers to just pay fucking attention.....
Sorry.. ain't buying it. No machine controls me. My GPS suggests a route, I decide if I want to take it. My trading software gives me the ability to set rules for trading, but I set the rules, it doesn't. And I can turn them off if I want to. My phone uses a remote system to set it's own time, but I decide to set the alarm for 5:30am, and then even decide if I want to hit the snooze, turn it off, or sometimes I just wake up 15 minutes early and decide to just stay up.
NetFlix doesn't tell me what to watch, it presents options. Sometimes I'll just go search for a movie on my own. Often, I'll browse through what they offer and add it to my queue, but I rarely find something I have to watch right now. Amazon isn't even close in their suggestions most of the time, so for the most part I ignore them. I don't recall ever buying anything on Amazon because of a suggestion.
I do agree that SOME people tend to loose skills because they get lazy and let machines do the work. I discovered that when I used a GPS to go everywhere, my ability to come up with effective routes degraded quickly. I watched someone trying to teach a young girl how to make change, and she was clueless. That isn't the fault of the calculator, it's the fault of her lazy parents.
The wall street algorithm comment is just plain stupid. The algorithms attempt to predict human behavior so that trades can be made in advance of change. But the decision to trade using an algorithm then changes the conditions the original algorithm was based on, so it's assumptions are no longer valid and requires a new algorithm. Trading algorithms rarely last very long as they are unable to accurately and quickly quantify and utilize external information, such as news stories.
It is true that some people turn over their decision making ability to machines sometimes. I know a woman who won't drive without her GPS. Yet she is in her 40s, and I know she had to drive for years without one. That's not the fault of the GPS.
That's just someone who is too lazy. On a recent 5 day motorcycle trip, I programmed my GPS, but also studied a map. I was fairly confident I knew most of the turns. My GPS served me well, but if it broke at any point along the way, I could have found my way home.
Umm...someplace far more comfortable to use them without having to plug in a bunch of junk every time I want to use it. Seven disk bays and two DVD bays without any wires or cables strewn across the desk so I can continue to use old disk drives when I need new space instead of buying a 2TB disk drive and filling it up with old crap from old drives. Cheaper to buy, less expensive to fix or upgrade. As many monitors as I need and can buy video cards for. A real keyboard and mouse to use, or in my case, an ergonomic keyboard, a mouse, and a tablet to use. A more comfortable place to sit than the couch, a real office chair at a real desk so my back doesn't hurt.
I'm happy your laptop is all that you need. But I need something different for the way I work. If you don't understand that, I hope you remain happy in your ignorance.
What BS.. I have desktop because I PREFER a desktop. I have a real keyboard, two full sized monitors, and a real mouse. I sit at my desk and use my computer when I NEED to, I have no need to have it anywhere else in the house. If I need instant internet access, I'll use my phone to look up something really quick. I'll read emails on my phone, but I don't answer them if it's more than a couple of lines of text. I've had the tower case for 5 years and I just rebuilt it last year with a quad-core, high-end motherboard when the prior motherboard failed. Only cost me a couple hundred bucks. I'm sure it will get some good use for another 5 years. So my desktop is cheaper, more maintainable, faster, and more comfortable to use than any laptop. And far easier to upgrade.
My desktop computer is where I surf the web, answer my emails, play games, do the household budgets, and pay the bills. It's where I design where the pool table and the rest of the furniture is going in the front room, and how I'm going to landscape the back yard. It's where I play games and record the weather from my weather station. Why would I want to do that on a laptop in the living room??? Or on my phone??
Oh, I could get monitors and keyboards and such for a laptop. But then it's back on the same desk I have my desktop computer, so why bother??? It's extra cost and bother, because now in order to use the laptop as a laptop, I have to disconnect everything or purchase a docking station. I'd rather have a full sized desktop and no laptop than a laptop that pretends it's a desktop.
My wife also has her own computer on it's own desk. She prefers a wide-screen monitor to two full sized monitors. But she uses it very similarly to how I use it.
We have two laptops, that rarely get used. One is two years old with a wide screen, the other is closer to 10. I will be buying a tablet when the price/features I want drops to around $200 simply because I want to be able to take it on trips, or keep it in the living room for quick uses.
The laptops will probably get relegated to the recycling pile long before either desktop will.
I have purchased DVDs in the past that were censored. I knew this because I had seen the originals and the dub didn't match the lip movements, and a couple of scenes were missing. Upon inspection, it mentioned it on the box in very small print.
I don't buy CDs or DVDs from WalMart anymore for that very reason. It's just wrong to get a movie with all the bad language dubbed over, it takes a lot of the edge of out some movies. There are too many other places that only sell the originals at the same price for me to bother.
NetFlix is cheap enough for me. At $17/month for streaming and one DVD, I have plenty of choices. There are tons of old movies I haven't seen or TV shows that I want to watch again that keep my instant queue filled up. And in Phoenix, I get three day turnaround on movies, if I get a movie today, watch it tonight, and put it in the mail tomorrow, I'll get my next one three days after I got the first one (excluding Sundays and holidays of course). So without too much effort, that's 5 or 6 DVDs a month. It may not be the cheapest deal, but it's good enough for me and I am pretty far from running out of things to watch.
Eyes ... can't ... focus ... everything ... blurry
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3D Hurts Your Eyes
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I don't go to 3D movies anymore because of the eye strain. I think it's because my eyes want to focus on things other than what the director has chosen to be the point of focus, and they can't. In Avatar, the scenes where there were bugs in 'front' of the screen caused my eyes to water.
My brain knows it can't focus, but the instinct is to try and focus. Possible if I viewed enough 3D-like movies, I could overcome that instinctual urge.
Avatar was visually stunning, but I've seen it again at home and don't think the 3D effect really added that much to it.
Went to see Harry Potter earlier this week, and decided to wait a half hour and not see it in 3D. So it looks like I won't get to continue my own personal experiment.
What's funny is I don't think this is going to save them a dime. I will still get the same number of movies because I'll be sending them back as soon as I'm done watching one movie, instead of waiting until I'm done watching two movies. So their cost for me is going to remain exactly the same.
Maybe even a little more, because my wife used to send back two movies in one mailer.
So, out of curiosity, what plan did you have? I had the streaming with 2 DVDs out at a time, and mine was only going up abut 25%. I decided to drop from 2 DVDs to 1 DVD and get better at sending them back (I usually wait until I've already watched both). I figure it will only cost me about a buck more a month, and I should still be able to watch just as many DVDs as I did before.
With NetFlix, I get to load up my queue with DVDs I actually want to watch, from the convenience of my computer. I don't have to go to the store, and hope there is something there I want to watch.
And when I'm done with the movie, I drop it in the post box at work, and 2-3 days later have another one at home. If the one at the top of my list isn't available, they still send me something.
I'm far more likely to be able to actually use 14 movies a month from NetFlix than from RedBox. And don't forget, if you don't take your RedBox movie back the next day, you still pay for it. So the real scenario for Redbox is to go get a movie today, take it back tomorrow, not get something, wait a couple of days, then repeat. Or spend $30 a month for 10-14 movies because you always get one when you take one back.
No thanks, I think I'll keep NetFlix, drop to 1 movie out at a time, and get better at sending them back as soon as I watch them. That's about the same price I pay now, and I'll probably watch just as many movies.
Plus I have over 100 movies, TV shows, and documentaries in my instant watch queue to keep me entertained. Seems every time I watch one, I end up adding 3 or 4 new ones. Sure, they are older movies. But so what, there are thousands of old movies I haven't watched that are great movies
Ummm...I don't have a black asphalt roof on my home in Mesa, AZ. I have clay tiles.
A couple of weeks ago the power went out during a day when the heat was around 108 for several hours. At 1pm. The house temp rose from 74 to 84 degrees in 4 hours. Sounds like those tiles do a pretty good job already.
But I don't think those tiles would do very well in climates with snow.
We sat outside in the shade with the misters on and were quite comfortable.
And yes, I keep my home at 74 instead of 78 or 80. I've had it set higher and haven't really seen much of a difference in electrical costs. I've saved over 33% on my utility bill by replacing the A/C with a more efficient unit, installing more efficient pool pumps, and replacing the refrigerator, washer, and dryer with more efficient units. Units were replaced as they failed, or were past their useful life. (I log both the usage and cost of my electric bill every month as well as my water usage. I can go back over 10 years and chart my electrical and water usage.)
Next up is the hot water heater. Probably go solar, makes sense here in the Valley of the Sun.
Yes I was.. which was 2pm where I was at. Anyway, I was eating my lunch at my desk because I rarely go out for lunch and didn't get a chance to go out to grab lunch until... 2pm. And, as you will note, I'm posting this at 3amMST on a Sunday. I've been awake since 12:30am doing an install and things are finally running along.
Surprising, no code problems. Only issues were with operations loading stuff into the schedule. Seems when they migrated it from test they missed a few things, and got a couple others wrong.
So far, it looks like a code review would have been.. a complete waste of time....
But maybe operations could have had someone review the work of the guy on their staff who only has 6 months of experience and put all this stuff in. It does appear that inexperienced people need some type of peer review of their work.
If I had all the time in the world, I would test more thoroughly, and do more post-production audits too.
But I don't have all the time in the world, so I do what I can given the time that I've been given to get work done. I consult my peers often enough that reviewing all the code all the time is a waste of both my time and theirs.
It shouldn't be necessary to review every scrap of code. I think I've written enough that I have the basics down pretty well. And when I get into new subjects, I always talk it over with someone to see if we can find an optimal way of doing something.
If two people have already agreed on the best way to code a specific task, having them review each others work all the time is a waste of time.
Thank you. I have yet to see any Apple product that is groundbreaking. Pretty, yes. Groundbreaking... no. Everything they have come out with had already been made by someone else, Apple just put a pretty face on it. Or bundled already available concepts together a little differently.
I would classify Apple more as innovative. For instance, they control their Apple computer market through egregious licenses. Today's Apple is no more than a PC, yet where are the clones?? Apple simply created a license that makes it illegal to run the Apple OS on anything without an Apple sticker. MP3 market?? Yawn.. they put on a clever jog wheel that people either loved or hated, and was quickly duplicated. iPhone?? Competition was out within months, which means other manufacturers were already working on it. Windows had a similar phone years earlier, but due to tech limitations (and that it ran on Windows), it never took off.
Apple is clever. Apple makes pretty toys. But groundbreaking??
We barely pay any attention to a person's education when we hire. We look at their experience. If you have been programing for 8 years and can prove that you understand it, go take night courses to get the education you want. Go to school part time and start looking for a job. Our job interview consists of asking real world questions about real world programming, which filters out most of those just out of college anyway. By the time your fellow high school students are out of college, you could already have 4 years of experience.
Those trying to tell you that you have to get a degree to get a job are only trying to justify their own waste of time and money.
If you have been programing for that long, you probably already know a lot of people. Contacts get you jobs because they get you past the HR department. Get your resume to them. Find a company that understands a BA, BS, masters, and PhD really don't account for much, anyone with enough money and time can get one. Find a company that understands that smart people make the best employees, and smart people don't need degrees. Do you really want to work for a company that is so myopic that all they care about is if you have a degree, and won't listen to an employee about a talented person they know???
College degrees are for average people who need a piece of paper to prove they know something. Smart people can learn things on their own, and are smart enough to know when a single college course is needed for something they DO need to go to school for. These people telling you that a CS degree is necessary to design and code simply didn't have an aptitude. Designing and coding are common sense for the most part, and smart people can pick up on the principles very quickly. You don't need a three month course to learn a computer language. You just need to sit down and start writing with many of the excellent books out there as a guide.
As far as enriching your life, if you find an elective that speaks to you, take it. If you don't write well, take some English courses. If you want to know more about history, take some history courses. If you have trouble with finances, take an accounting course. But most of the people that take these courses simply because they have to forget most of what they have learned by the time they are 30. I couldn't tell you what a past perfect predicate is anymore, and I have never needed to.
Nothing in the statistics comes even close to say people are 'shunning' face book. All the statistics point to is that some people are using it less, or have stopped using it. I still see people I know join up, and no one I know that uses face book regularly has dropped it (anecdotal evidence.. not post it as an overall Facebook trend.)
I check it at least twice a day (morning and evening), and sometimes at work if time permits. My wife only checks hers every day or so. Different people have different ways they use it. I rarely post anything, some seem to post every random thought that come into their heads. Some have learned how to use the 'ignore post by' button, others haven't and some drop it because of all the noise.
I've added a motorcycle group that I lead that uses Meetup.com as it's primary communication point. Since adding the Facebook page, there has seen a significant increase in activity in the group. My guess is that since Facebook is 'real time', people can communicate better than when using a normal blog or email. I can't prove Facebook is the reason, I can only correlate the activity.
And your debating is accomplishing... what??? Is your ego so big that you really think anyone of any importance is listening to you and going to say 'I didn't think about that! Quick.. let's do what this guy says!' All you are doing is either inflaming those that disagree, or sharing with 'like minded folk' who already agree with you. Very few have actually changed their minds while reading this type of intercourse, and Microsoft doesn't even know you or I exist.
Your innocence is cute.. but every single programming change has been met with EXACTLY the same debate. COBOL, FORTRAN, C, C++, Java, C#, and all of the script languages have always been derided when they first came out. Remember.COM??? That was supposed to solve everything. Well...NET doesn't solve everything and evolution will take it's course. No matter what point you take, others will share their opinions of why you are wrong, so the net result is... zero. Everything is an opinion, and unless you can show provable MS dollar based reasons why they need to do something, they will ignore you.
Your 'debate', which is really more like two kids arguing over whether Coke or Pepsi is better, doesn't amount to jack. If you are serious about it, go to work at Microsoft where you might have at least a snowball's chance in hell of making any difference.
... who as at some time wrote programs of varying complexity in assembler, NEAT/3, COBOL, FORTRAN, Java, C, C++, C#, JavaScript, PERL, various Unix shell scripts, DOS and many others that time have passed on, there is only one thing I have to say about anyone lamenting the passing of anything...
Adapt.. or become the most expendable at layoff time.
The.NET and Java and Ruby and Python programmers today will suffer the same fate as the FORTRAN and COBOL programmers of the 60s and 70s. If you are too afraid to learn new things, you will become obsolete. You will become a dime-a-dozen programmer stuck with maintaining obsolete, legacy code that was so poorly written that no one wants to touch it. You will become the first person to be let go as the new kids get hired on.
It doesn't happen overnight. Today, you can tell your boss that you don't know how to do that and he will get someone else to do it. You can whine about what an abomination it is to use that new stuff when the old stuff is just fine. And he will get someone else to learn it. There is enough work to keep you around for a few more years, so keep it up.
But soon, after a few more new technologies have shown up, based on the stuff you originally didn't think was worth looking at, you will look around and realize you don't know jack schit anymore. I've seen it happen over and over again, because *I* was the one willing to step up and learn new stuff by saying "I don't know, but I can figure it out." No matter what a pile of donkey dung I thought it was. Now, I'm 52, employed, and still working on new tech.. and loving it! *AND* I know all of the old crap and can get in there and play hero when some POS C code written 15 years ago by a librarian fails.
Stop whining and do something about it by learning the new tools.
Yes... I did have kids at one time. Two wonderful, well adjusted kids that are doing extremely well as adults. Went out with my wife a few times when they were young, and hired a babysitter I knew and trusted. In those days, we didn't have cell phones. So I gave her the phone numbers of the places we would be at in case of an EMERGENCY. If it wasn't an emergency, well, she would just have to deal with it the best she can. I wasn't so insecure that I felt that no one but me and my wife were capable of watching a small child for a couple of hours. While I was out, I enjoyed the evening with my wife and didn't worry about the kids because I knew they were in good hands, worrying about something I have little control over would ruin the evening, and I wanted to help my wife have a great time out of the house. Shame you can't help your wife have a great time out of the house away from the kids.
This coming from a guy who says I shouldn't go out because I might disturb his evening. I'm so sorry. I thought I could take my wife out for an evening out. She had worked so hard raising our kid and I had worked so hard keeping us fed and clothed and insured that I thought we could spend a little money as a thank you to each other for all we mean to each other. How selfish of us to do so knowing that there was the most slightest chance that our muffled vibrating phone in the back row by the door that people walk in and out of might catch your attention and ruin YOUR evening. I'm so sorry. That was very self-centered, and inconsiderate of us. Next time we'll just stay home as to not risk disturbing you.
This very quote shows how self-centered and inconsiderate you are. You feel no shame in bothering other people for YOUR time, no matter whether if it's even one person. A considerate person won't bother even one. No matter how much they feel they deserve it. I wouldn't have said a word if you were next to me checking your phone. Except all the way home, telling my wife how the asshat next to me had his cell phone going off every 10 minutes and he had to check it, lighting up his whole face (you can't read the screen without looking at it idiot). And then tomorrow at work, we would have a good time laughing at your expense. And you wouldn't even know it.
Maybe you have the magical way of looking at your phone without disturbing someone. Now if you can tell the other morons that can't, I'd appreciate it. But consider this.. if no one can see your phone, then no one will kick you out of the theater.
So I guess you have nothing to worry about then, do you. Go ahead and go with the confidence that you won't bother anyone.
So you admit that you didn't have to go see a movie, but you did anyway and don't see anything wrong with bothering anyone around you while you are paranoid about your kid. Ya know.. my phone vibrates differently for a text message and email than it does a phone call. One would think that if your kid got hurt, someone would CALL you. In fact, if I get a phone call and don't answer it, it vibrates for several seconds. Then, when a voice mail is left, it vibrates again. So I know if someone that just called me left a voice mail.
So NO ONE needs to check email or text messages during a movie. Tell someone if they really need to get hold of you to CALL YOU and leave a voice mail. NOW you know it's important and you can slip out, check your voice mail.
Your petty, self-centered excuses (along with others on this board) only show how inconsiderate, self centered, or technologically ignorant you are.
At least if you are technologically ignorant about your phone, you can learn....
7... Get sued for non-competitive practices, have millions of current Android owners get pissed off, see small businesses everywhere turn to Google mail, and loose profit.
It's not up to Verizon, AT&T, or anyone else to take a gamble on something they don't want to. They are already turning a profit on iPhones, Android phones, and numerous other phones. Why should they give that up to help MS make a buck unless they get some kind of guarantee they will make MORE money by selling MS phones?
On the other hand, Microsoft COULD pay them big bucks to provide shelf space... just like producers do at a supermarket. You think the store arbitrarily decides who gets what placement on the shelves?? He who pays most and gets biggest profit gets the most room. If someone wants a store to carry their untested product, they had better be ponying up the bucks to get them to move items already making money out of the way.
Christina Heller. 'These cameras remove our fundamental right in this country to confront our accuser. And they do not do anything to improve safety.'"
Bzzt!!! Wrong. It is common practice that each ticket is signed by a real person who has reviewed the evidence gathered by the camera. That person may be called to the stand. The staff that maintain the cameras may be called to the stand to discuss how they are maintained. Experts can be brought to the stand to discuss how the cameras work. Each camera has a video camera that may be brought forth into evidence. There are MORE people and evidence that can be brought to the stand with a red light camera than when a cop just gives you a ticket. Cameras do not issue tickets, they collect evidence. Just as a radar gun in a police car does. In fact, they collect MORE evidence that is well documented and provides even better opportunities for those truly innocent to fight a ticket. That also means the guilty have fewer capabilities to fight the tickets also. Seems like a win-win to me.
As for safety, a recent study by the Institute for Highway Safety found that fatal crashes and the number of injured went down significantly in the 14 largest cities that installed red light cameras. In Chandler, Arizona, the number of fatalities dropped 79%. Arizona has three of cities where red light running is most common. Yes, there are more fender benders. I'll trade less fatal crashes for more fender benders anyday. *AND* the reason there are more fender benders is because the guy behind the car that stopped was following too closely or was trying to get through the light. So he deserves a ticket and increased insurance costs also.
This post and it's parent are why I so rarely read Slashdot anymore. It's occupied by a bunch of self-centered elitists who cannot think outside of their own warped sense of reality based on only paying attention to articles they agree with so they don't have to think, they just repeat sound bites heard elsewhere. Please score them both as -20... no content worth reading.
Slashdot Mirror
... OFFER BOTH OF THEM!!!!
.. would it really take that much more to keep the EXISTING MENUS but add an option to use a ribbon for those that like them or are new users??? I thought Windows and C++ was supposed to support some type of modular programming, it should be a piece of cake to chose one widget over another one. Just plug it in. I know it's pretty easy in Java to do it.....
Jeez
Any benefit from ribbons (which I haven't seen any yet) is lost from me not being able to find stuff. Excel was just plain nasty trying to find things in. I still have a difficult time finding things that I don't use very often, but had used enough to make some sense about why they were in a specific menu.
Knowing when it wasn't a hurricane won't help those injured or killed, or fix the damage. Just someone interested in playing Monday Morning Quarterback....
It didn't take me too long to figure out the road I drive down has the signals set so that if someone drives 45mph (i.e. the speed limit in that area), they will hit them all green. It also didn't take too long to figure out that one cross street didn't follow that rule, probably because it's a busier street, has more lanes, and more left turns. I also observed that the left turn lanes go first, so if someone was sitting in the left turn lane facing towards me, I'd catch the light. And that a few of the lights between major intersections are on switches so it didn't matter what speed I went. And that 'walk' signs are great indicators of when a light is about to change to yellow and red, so I could figure out if I was going to catch a light red or not and if it was possible to speed up a little bit to catch it green.
Maybe what is really needed is for more drivers to just pay fucking attention.....
Sorry .. ain't buying it. No machine controls me. My GPS suggests a route, I decide if I want to take it. My trading software gives me the ability to set rules for trading, but I set the rules, it doesn't. And I can turn them off if I want to. My phone uses a remote system to set it's own time, but I decide to set the alarm for 5:30am, and then even decide if I want to hit the snooze, turn it off, or sometimes I just wake up 15 minutes early and decide to just stay up.
NetFlix doesn't tell me what to watch, it presents options. Sometimes I'll just go search for a movie on my own. Often, I'll browse through what they offer and add it to my queue, but I rarely find something I have to watch right now. Amazon isn't even close in their suggestions most of the time, so for the most part I ignore them. I don't recall ever buying anything on Amazon because of a suggestion.
I do agree that SOME people tend to loose skills because they get lazy and let machines do the work. I discovered that when I used a GPS to go everywhere, my ability to come up with effective routes degraded quickly. I watched someone trying to teach a young girl how to make change, and she was clueless. That isn't the fault of the calculator, it's the fault of her lazy parents.
The wall street algorithm comment is just plain stupid. The algorithms attempt to predict human behavior so that trades can be made in advance of change. But the decision to trade using an algorithm then changes the conditions the original algorithm was based on, so it's assumptions are no longer valid and requires a new algorithm. Trading algorithms rarely last very long as they are unable to accurately and quickly quantify and utilize external information, such as news stories.
It is true that some people turn over their decision making ability to machines sometimes. I know a woman who won't drive without her GPS. Yet she is in her 40s, and I know she had to drive for years without one. That's not the fault of the GPS.
That's just someone who is too lazy. On a recent 5 day motorcycle trip, I programmed my GPS, but also studied a map. I was fairly confident I knew most of the turns. My GPS served me well, but if it broke at any point along the way, I could have found my way home.
Eventually....
Umm...someplace far more comfortable to use them without having to plug in a bunch of junk every time I want to use it. Seven disk bays and two DVD bays without any wires or cables strewn across the desk so I can continue to use old disk drives when I need new space instead of buying a 2TB disk drive and filling it up with old crap from old drives. Cheaper to buy, less expensive to fix or upgrade. As many monitors as I need and can buy video cards for. A real keyboard and mouse to use, or in my case, an ergonomic keyboard, a mouse, and a tablet to use. A more comfortable place to sit than the couch, a real office chair at a real desk so my back doesn't hurt.
I'm happy your laptop is all that you need. But I need something different for the way I work. If you don't understand that, I hope you remain happy in your ignorance.
What BS .. I have desktop because I PREFER a desktop. I have a real keyboard, two full sized monitors, and a real mouse. I sit at my desk and use my computer when I NEED to, I have no need to have it anywhere else in the house. If I need instant internet access, I'll use my phone to look up something really quick. I'll read emails on my phone, but I don't answer them if it's more than a couple of lines of text. I've had the tower case for 5 years and I just rebuilt it last year with a quad-core, high-end motherboard when the prior motherboard failed. Only cost me a couple hundred bucks. I'm sure it will get some good use for another 5 years. So my desktop is cheaper, more maintainable, faster, and more comfortable to use than any laptop. And far easier to upgrade.
My desktop computer is where I surf the web, answer my emails, play games, do the household budgets, and pay the bills. It's where I design where the pool table and the rest of the furniture is going in the front room, and how I'm going to landscape the back yard. It's where I play games and record the weather from my weather station. Why would I want to do that on a laptop in the living room??? Or on my phone??
Oh, I could get monitors and keyboards and such for a laptop. But then it's back on the same desk I have my desktop computer, so why bother??? It's extra cost and bother, because now in order to use the laptop as a laptop, I have to disconnect everything or purchase a docking station. I'd rather have a full sized desktop and no laptop than a laptop that pretends it's a desktop.
My wife also has her own computer on it's own desk. She prefers a wide-screen monitor to two full sized monitors. But she uses it very similarly to how I use it.
We have two laptops, that rarely get used. One is two years old with a wide screen, the other is closer to 10. I will be buying a tablet when the price/features I want drops to around $200 simply because I want to be able to take it on trips, or keep it in the living room for quick uses.
The laptops will probably get relegated to the recycling pile long before either desktop will.
I have purchased DVDs in the past that were censored. I knew this because I had seen the originals and the dub didn't match the lip movements, and a couple of scenes were missing. Upon inspection, it mentioned it on the box in very small print.
I don't buy CDs or DVDs from WalMart anymore for that very reason. It's just wrong to get a movie with all the bad language dubbed over, it takes a lot of the edge of out some movies. There are too many other places that only sell the originals at the same price for me to bother.
NetFlix is cheap enough for me. At $17/month for streaming and one DVD, I have plenty of choices. There are tons of old movies I haven't seen or TV shows that I want to watch again that keep my instant queue filled up. And in Phoenix, I get three day turnaround on movies, if I get a movie today, watch it tonight, and put it in the mail tomorrow, I'll get my next one three days after I got the first one (excluding Sundays and holidays of course). So without too much effort, that's 5 or 6 DVDs a month. It may not be the cheapest deal, but it's good enough for me and I am pretty far from running out of things to watch.
I don't go to 3D movies anymore because of the eye strain. I think it's because my eyes want to focus on things other than what the director has chosen to be the point of focus, and they can't. In Avatar, the scenes where there were bugs in 'front' of the screen caused my eyes to water.
My brain knows it can't focus, but the instinct is to try and focus. Possible if I viewed enough 3D-like movies, I could overcome that instinctual urge.
Avatar was visually stunning, but I've seen it again at home and don't think the 3D effect really added that much to it.
Went to see Harry Potter earlier this week, and decided to wait a half hour and not see it in 3D. So it looks like I won't get to continue my own personal experiment.
Thanks for the info, I was curious
What's funny is I don't think this is going to save them a dime. I will still get the same number of movies because I'll be sending them back as soon as I'm done watching one movie, instead of waiting until I'm done watching two movies. So their cost for me is going to remain exactly the same.
Maybe even a little more, because my wife used to send back two movies in one mailer.
So, out of curiosity, what plan did you have? I had the streaming with 2 DVDs out at a time, and mine was only going up abut 25%. I decided to drop from 2 DVDs to 1 DVD and get better at sending them back (I usually wait until I've already watched both). I figure it will only cost me about a buck more a month, and I should still be able to watch just as many DVDs as I did before.
With NetFlix, I get to load up my queue with DVDs I actually want to watch, from the convenience of my computer. I don't have to go to the store, and hope there is something there I want to watch.
And when I'm done with the movie, I drop it in the post box at work, and 2-3 days later have another one at home. If the one at the top of my list isn't available, they still send me something.
I'm far more likely to be able to actually use 14 movies a month from NetFlix than from RedBox. And don't forget, if you don't take your RedBox movie back the next day, you still pay for it. So the real scenario for Redbox is to go get a movie today, take it back tomorrow, not get something, wait a couple of days, then repeat. Or spend $30 a month for 10-14 movies because you always get one when you take one back.
No thanks, I think I'll keep NetFlix, drop to 1 movie out at a time, and get better at sending them back as soon as I watch them. That's about the same price I pay now, and I'll probably watch just as many movies.
Plus I have over 100 movies, TV shows, and documentaries in my instant watch queue to keep me entertained. Seems every time I watch one, I end up adding 3 or 4 new ones. Sure, they are older movies. But so what, there are thousands of old movies I haven't watched that are great movies
Ummm...I don't have a black asphalt roof on my home in Mesa, AZ. I have clay tiles.
A couple of weeks ago the power went out during a day when the heat was around 108 for several hours. At 1pm. The house temp rose from 74 to 84 degrees in 4 hours. Sounds like those tiles do a pretty good job already.
But I don't think those tiles would do very well in climates with snow.
We sat outside in the shade with the misters on and were quite comfortable.
And yes, I keep my home at 74 instead of 78 or 80. I've had it set higher and haven't really seen much of a difference in electrical costs. I've saved over 33% on my utility bill by replacing the A/C with a more efficient unit, installing more efficient pool pumps, and replacing the refrigerator, washer, and dryer with more efficient units. Units were replaced as they failed, or were past their useful life. (I log both the usage and cost of my electric bill every month as well as my water usage. I can go back over 10 years and chart my electrical and water usage.)
Next up is the hot water heater. Probably go solar, makes sense here in the Valley of the Sun.
Yes I was .. which was 2pm where I was at. Anyway, I was eating my lunch at my desk because I rarely go out for lunch and didn't get a chance to go out to grab lunch until ... 2pm. And, as you will note, I'm posting this at 3amMST on a Sunday. I've been awake since 12:30am doing an install and things are finally running along.
.. a complete waste of time....
Surprising, no code problems. Only issues were with operations loading stuff into the schedule. Seems when they migrated it from test they missed a few things, and got a couple others wrong.
So far, it looks like a code review would have been
But maybe operations could have had someone review the work of the guy on their staff who only has 6 months of experience and put all this stuff in. It does appear that inexperienced people need some type of peer review of their work.
If I had all the time in the world, I would test more thoroughly, and do more post-production audits too.
But I don't have all the time in the world, so I do what I can given the time that I've been given to get work done. I consult my peers often enough that reviewing all the code all the time is a waste of both my time and theirs.
It shouldn't be necessary to review every scrap of code. I think I've written enough that I have the basics down pretty well. And when I get into new subjects, I always talk it over with someone to see if we can find an optimal way of doing something.
If two people have already agreed on the best way to code a specific task, having them review each others work all the time is a waste of time.
Thank you. I have yet to see any Apple product that is groundbreaking. Pretty, yes. Groundbreaking ... no. Everything they have come out with had already been made by someone else, Apple just put a pretty face on it. Or bundled already available concepts together a little differently.
.. they put on a clever jog wheel that people either loved or hated, and was quickly duplicated. iPhone?? Competition was out within months, which means other manufacturers were already working on it. Windows had a similar phone years earlier, but due to tech limitations (and that it ran on Windows), it never took off.
I would classify Apple more as innovative. For instance, they control their Apple computer market through egregious licenses. Today's Apple is no more than a PC, yet where are the clones?? Apple simply created a license that makes it illegal to run the Apple OS on anything without an Apple sticker. MP3 market?? Yawn
Apple is clever. Apple makes pretty toys. But groundbreaking??
Only to an iDrone....
We barely pay any attention to a person's education when we hire. We look at their experience. If you have been programing for 8 years and can prove that you understand it, go take night courses to get the education you want. Go to school part time and start looking for a job. Our job interview consists of asking real world questions about real world programming, which filters out most of those just out of college anyway. By the time your fellow high school students are out of college, you could already have 4 years of experience.
Those trying to tell you that you have to get a degree to get a job are only trying to justify their own waste of time and money.
If you have been programing for that long, you probably already know a lot of people. Contacts get you jobs because they get you past the HR department. Get your resume to them. Find a company that understands a BA, BS, masters, and PhD really don't account for much, anyone with enough money and time can get one. Find a company that understands that smart people make the best employees, and smart people don't need degrees. Do you really want to work for a company that is so myopic that all they care about is if you have a degree, and won't listen to an employee about a talented person they know???
College degrees are for average people who need a piece of paper to prove they know something. Smart people can learn things on their own, and are smart enough to know when a single college course is needed for something they DO need to go to school for. These people telling you that a CS degree is necessary to design and code simply didn't have an aptitude. Designing and coding are common sense for the most part, and smart people can pick up on the principles very quickly. You don't need a three month course to learn a computer language. You just need to sit down and start writing with many of the excellent books out there as a guide.
As far as enriching your life, if you find an elective that speaks to you, take it. If you don't write well, take some English courses. If you want to know more about history, take some history courses. If you have trouble with finances, take an accounting course. But most of the people that take these courses simply because they have to forget most of what they have learned by the time they are 30. I couldn't tell you what a past perfect predicate is anymore, and I have never needed to.
Except in English class.
Nothing in the statistics comes even close to say people are 'shunning' face book. All the statistics point to is that some people are using it less, or have stopped using it. I still see people I know join up, and no one I know that uses face book regularly has dropped it (anecdotal evidence .. not post it as an overall Facebook trend.)
I check it at least twice a day (morning and evening), and sometimes at work if time permits. My wife only checks hers every day or so. Different people have different ways they use it. I rarely post anything, some seem to post every random thought that come into their heads. Some have learned how to use the 'ignore post by' button, others haven't and some drop it because of all the noise.
I've added a motorcycle group that I lead that uses Meetup.com as it's primary communication point. Since adding the Facebook page, there has seen a significant increase in activity in the group. My guess is that since Facebook is 'real time', people can communicate better than when using a normal blog or email. I can't prove Facebook is the reason, I can only correlate the activity.
And your debating is accomplishing ... what??? Is your ego so big that you really think anyone of any importance is listening to you and going to say 'I didn't think about that! Quick .. let's do what this guy says!' All you are doing is either inflaming those that disagree, or sharing with 'like minded folk' who already agree with you. Very few have actually changed their minds while reading this type of intercourse, and Microsoft doesn't even know you or I exist.
.. but every single programming change has been met with EXACTLY the same debate. COBOL, FORTRAN, C, C++, Java, C#, and all of the script languages have always been derided when they first came out. Remember .COM??? That was supposed to solve everything. Well .. .NET doesn't solve everything and evolution will take it's course. No matter what point you take, others will share their opinions of why you are wrong, so the net result is ... zero. Everything is an opinion, and unless you can show provable MS dollar based reasons why they need to do something, they will ignore you.
Your innocence is cute
Your 'debate', which is really more like two kids arguing over whether Coke or Pepsi is better, doesn't amount to jack. If you are serious about it, go to work at Microsoft where you might have at least a snowball's chance in hell of making any difference.
... who as at some time wrote programs of varying complexity in assembler, NEAT/3, COBOL, FORTRAN, Java, C, C++, C#, JavaScript, PERL, various Unix shell scripts, DOS and many others that time have passed on, there is only one thing I have to say about anyone lamenting the passing of anything ...
.. or become the most expendable at layoff time.
.NET and Java and Ruby and Python programmers today will suffer the same fate as the FORTRAN and COBOL programmers of the 60s and 70s. If you are too afraid to learn new things, you will become obsolete. You will become a dime-a-dozen programmer stuck with maintaining obsolete, legacy code that was so poorly written that no one wants to touch it. You will become the first person to be let go as the new kids get hired on.
.. and loving it! *AND* I know all of the old crap and can get in there and play hero when some POS C code written 15 years ago by a librarian fails.
Adapt
The
It doesn't happen overnight. Today, you can tell your boss that you don't know how to do that and he will get someone else to do it. You can whine about what an abomination it is to use that new stuff when the old stuff is just fine. And he will get someone else to learn it. There is enough work to keep you around for a few more years, so keep it up.
But soon, after a few more new technologies have shown up, based on the stuff you originally didn't think was worth looking at, you will look around and realize you don't know jack schit anymore. I've seen it happen over and over again, because *I* was the one willing to step up and learn new stuff by saying "I don't know, but I can figure it out." No matter what a pile of donkey dung I thought it was. Now, I'm 52, employed, and still working on new tech
Stop whining and do something about it by learning the new tools.
What a bunch of babies....
This very quote shows how self-centered and inconsiderate you are. You feel no shame in bothering other people for YOUR time, no matter whether if it's even one person. A considerate person won't bother even one. No matter how much they feel they deserve it. I wouldn't have said a word if you were next to me checking your phone. Except all the way home, telling my wife how the asshat next to me had his cell phone going off every 10 minutes and he had to check it, lighting up his whole face (you can't read the screen without looking at it idiot). And then tomorrow at work, we would have a good time laughing at your expense. And you wouldn't even know it.
.. if no one can see your phone, then no one will kick you out of the theater.
Maybe you have the magical way of looking at your phone without disturbing someone. Now if you can tell the other morons that can't, I'd appreciate it. But consider this
So I guess you have nothing to worry about then, do you. Go ahead and go with the confidence that you won't bother anyone.
So you admit that you didn't have to go see a movie, but you did anyway and don't see anything wrong with bothering anyone around you while you are paranoid about your kid. Ya know .. my phone vibrates differently for a text message and email than it does a phone call. One would think that if your kid got hurt, someone would CALL you. In fact, if I get a phone call and don't answer it, it vibrates for several seconds. Then, when a voice mail is left, it vibrates again. So I know if someone that just called me left a voice mail.
....
So NO ONE needs to check email or text messages during a movie. Tell someone if they really need to get hold of you to CALL YOU and leave a voice mail. NOW you know it's important and you can slip out, check your voice mail.
Your petty, self-centered excuses (along with others on this board) only show how inconsiderate, self centered, or technologically ignorant you are.
At least if you are technologically ignorant about your phone, you can learn
7 ... Get sued for non-competitive practices, have millions of current Android owners get pissed off, see small businesses everywhere turn to Google mail, and loose profit.
It's not up to Verizon, AT&T, or anyone else to take a gamble on something they don't want to. They are already turning a profit on iPhones, Android phones, and numerous other phones. Why should they give that up to help MS make a buck unless they get some kind of guarantee they will make MORE money by selling MS phones?
... just like producers do at a supermarket. You think the store arbitrarily decides who gets what placement on the shelves?? He who pays most and gets biggest profit gets the most room. If someone wants a store to carry their untested product, they had better be ponying up the bucks to get them to move items already making money out of the way.
On the other hand, Microsoft COULD pay them big bucks to provide shelf space
Bzzt!!! Wrong. It is common practice that each ticket is signed by a real person who has reviewed the evidence gathered by the camera. That person may be called to the stand. The staff that maintain the cameras may be called to the stand to discuss how they are maintained. Experts can be brought to the stand to discuss how the cameras work. Each camera has a video camera that may be brought forth into evidence. There are MORE people and evidence that can be brought to the stand with a red light camera than when a cop just gives you a ticket. Cameras do not issue tickets, they collect evidence. Just as a radar gun in a police car does. In fact, they collect MORE evidence that is well documented and provides even better opportunities for those truly innocent to fight a ticket. That also means the guilty have fewer capabilities to fight the tickets also. Seems like a win-win to me.
As for safety, a recent study by the Institute for Highway Safety found that fatal crashes and the number of injured went down significantly in the 14 largest cities that installed red light cameras. In Chandler, Arizona, the number of fatalities dropped 79%. Arizona has three of cities where red light running is most common. Yes, there are more fender benders. I'll trade less fatal crashes for more fender benders anyday. *AND* the reason there are more fender benders is because the guy behind the car that stopped was following too closely or was trying to get through the light. So he deserves a ticket and increased insurance costs also.
The IHS has also noted that other measures can be done to reduce crashes at red lights, such as a period when all lights are red and longer yellow periods.
This post and it's parent are why I so rarely read Slashdot anymore. It's occupied by a bunch of self-centered elitists who cannot think outside of their own warped sense of reality based on only paying attention to articles they agree with so they don't have to think, they just repeat sound bites heard elsewhere. Please score them both as -20 ... no content worth reading.
Then add this post to the same list.