The US Senate just voted on whether climate change is a hoax, knowing full well that debates or votes don't change what is or isn't scientifically true or valid.
You think this vote had anything to do with science? This is about power and policy. It's about pandering to a group of voters. It's about setting a stage for the next election. It's about getting votes. It has nothing to do with science and everything to do with power.
Science should inform public policy but nothing forces politicians to actually care what scientists tell them if the facts diverge from political needs. If a politician needs to proclaim that gravity is a hoax to get votes then they will do that and do it with a straight face.
I don't have a Facebook account. I don't have a Twitter account. I don't have accounts on these services because they don't provide me any services I need or want. Maybe they're valuable to you and that's fine but for me they are not useful. Google+ is pretty much in the same boat for me. There is no clear value proposition for me but there is a very clear value to Google. Hence I do not foresee me using Google+ in any social media capacity. All it seems to do is provide Google a way to track what I do and profit from it even better than the already creepy amount they do now. No thanks...
Stop trying (for now) to make it into a product for the general consumer. Focus on industrial uses to develop the technology. Work instructions, stock picking, etc. Keep working on shrinking the product down further.
As a consumer item this suffers from several problems. 1) It's still bulky, conspicuous and not attractive. Fashion matters like it or not. 2) People don't like talking to their devices out loud unless it is a phone call to another person. Yes some people are ok with it (see Siri) but you rarely see it in the real world. I REALLY do not want to walk around saying "Ok Google" constantly. I honestly don't think I've seen anyone use Siri in public ever. 3) It doesn't really solve most problems people have better than a smartphone already does. How often do your really truly need a screen in view at all times? For most people the answer is seldom. There are very very few use cases in real life where google glass provides a real world advantage of a smartphone. 4) Glasses are not so terribly comfortable. I wore them for 17 year (until lasik) and have NO interest in wearing them again unless I absolutely must. 5) Voice interfaces are coming along but still quite unreliable.
Sure, it is customary to give a modest bonus/etc to those who succeed, but if all 100 engineers worked equally hard but most were just unlucky to be on the project that didn't work out, does it make sense to compensate the 10 on the successful project so much more? They all did what the
You are presuming that the engineers have no control over the success or failure of the project or that they have no role in determining the course of the project. You need to think of the engineer as more of an independent contractor rather than a salaried employee. It's the responsibility of the engineer to figure out whether they think they can create a valuable product or whether they are wasting their time. Fail fast if necessary. Find another company if this one is a dead end. A salesman can't sell ice to Eskimos in the real world. Engineers usually have a pretty good idea (or should) whether a product they are working on is useful or not. If they don't then they probably aren't a very good engineer.
You are also presuming effort is an important factor here. Capitalism rewards success, not effort. If the engineers work hard but don't solve a problem that matters then no, they will not see any rewards for their efforts. You want big rewards? You're going to have to take a risk and solve a problem that really matters. How hard you work is pretty much irrelevant unless it brings financial results. Maybe hard work will make the difference but FAR more important is talent applied appropriately and in a timely manner.
If you really want to get rewarded for your work, then go work for a startup. You'll get paid next to nothing, and most likely you'll go out of business receiving nothing for your work. However, if you do succeed you will own a substantial portion of the company and thus get a substantial portion of the reward.
Or work in sales or finance where you get payment commensurate with the financial results you are responsible for. Working for a startup is one way to financial success but hardly the only one. Engineers tend to be very bright except when it comes to selling their services. Many could earn far more than they do but are afraid to try.
Bottom line is that I think there needs to be a balance between risk and reward.
There already is a balance. If you don't take any risks, don't expect any rewards. If you want the steady salary and the sure-thing job, that's fine but don't expect anyone to pay you millions for it either. If you want the big payday you'll probably have to forgo the steady low-paying sure-thing and work on commission or for equity. Sales people take a risk when they work on commission. Why should engineers enjoy greater job security for the same rewards?
And herein lies the great virtue and vice of capitalism: the assignment of profits to the owner of capital, rather than the one who made the capital useful.
Close but I don't think that is quite correct. Capitalism rewards control of resources necessary to utilize capital, of which capital ownership itself is merely one. Things like client relationships, product development, labor availability, and the like all can make or break whether capital can be employed productively to generate profits.
Sales people tend to be well compensated because they generate capital and they have historically structured their compensation (via commissions) to participate in the upside if they are successful in bringing in clients. They control a vital resource (the client relationship) and they know it. There is no fundamental reason why engineers could not in principle do the same if they were willing to take similar risks. I know employers would would jump at an engineer willing to work on commission. But that does involve taking a risk and I know very few engineers who are willing to take such risks. Sales people control a vital resource (the client relationship) and engineers could do the same (product development) if they cared to do so and were willing to take some risks.
Furthermore groups like unions are able to demand a portion of the profits by controlling the availability of labor. If there is no labor available to do the work, it doesn't matter who owns the capital because a vital resource to utilize that capital has been removed. And there is nothing inherently wrong with employees unionizing to demand a reasonable amount of upside participation if their work proves valuable. (The problem with unions is that they tend to value certainty of employment and wages regardless of competence over all other concerns which can incur costs with no upside benefit to the company. If a union prioritized upside participation and was willing to share in the investment risk they probably would see a lot more interest in unionizing.)
Your incentive to invent while being employed is staying employed. Companies fund R&D so that they can profit from the discoveries.
That doesn't mean the company cannot share a portion of the profits from those discoveries with the people who made them possible. It is hardly unreasonable to throw a big fat bonus at someone who creates a technology that generates millions in profits for the company. It's no different than paying a big commission check to a sales person who lands a big account. It rewards success and helps motivate other employees by showing them than they will benefit directly by creating something valuable. Would you bother to create something worth millions if you weren't going to see any of the upside but someone else would? If you do I think you are either naive or a fool.
Honestly engineers *should* take a lesson from sales and demand upside participation if their work generates profits for the company. Creating the product is every bit as important as selling it. I think a company could get very interesting results by providing upside participation to engineering staff.
Patent and copyright laws have never been about compensating inventors or creators. If they had been, they would be mandating actual payment to them.
Patents and copyrights are mechanisms that create the OPPORTUNITY for inventors or creators to profit from their work. If the inventors sell their work or assign it as a condition of employment to a third party, that is a separate issue. If they cannot or will not profit from their work, that is their problem. The idea is to give them a "temporary" (yeah, I know...) monopoly on their work as a reward for creating something valuable to society. The entire purpose is to combat the free rider problem. Find a better solution to the free rider problem and there is no need whatsoever for patents or copyrights.
Inventions are rare. Corporations invest in an uncountable number of inventions that go absolutely nowhere.
That's not a logical argument against post-hoc compensating the talented folks who do create the inventions that actually do turn out to be worth millions. If you have a star player, you pay that player according to their contributions. To do otherwise is both unfair and disrespectful. There is no reason this company could not provide this guy a very substantial bonus as thanks for his contributions if the invention really was worth millions.
Put it this way. Would you work hard for an employer who you knew was going to keep all the upside of your work or would you rather work hard for an employer with a track record of rewarding success proportionate to the success?
In those situations you dont hear "Well Mr Employee, the work we have been working on has turned out to be a massive dead end. As a result we need you to sell your house to put towards the costs.
The company is not taking the same amount of risk. If the company and the officers of the company were taking an equal amount of risk to their personal fortunes then fine. But the company is simply making investments like I buy stocks for my portfolio. Some work out, some don't but those that don't aren't going to put me into poverty. It's not even remotely the same level of risk as someone who has hocked their house.
You don't get to renegotiate afterwards. Your incentive to do stuff at work is your salary.
Why not? If you have the bargaining position to negotiate a better deal after the fact why shouldn't you? Some naive sense of obligation or fairness to a company that doesn't reciprocate? Don't be absurd. Some work cannot be done without having the resources of a company behind you and no one ever knows if they are going to create something really valuable ahead of time. Maybe the guy was in a tough situation when he was first employed and wasn't in a position to walk away despite some odious contractual terms. If the guy has the ability to get paid for the full value of his work then he should seek to do so.
I run a company and if someone were to unexpectedly create something that benefited the company greatly, I'd be a selfish prick to not share substantially of the rewards with that person. It doesn't mean the company has to hand over all the benefits but sharing a substantial percent of the rewards with an inventor is quite fair.
If you are writing code for a living you will create new things ever day to solve the problem you encounter.
That doesn't mean every problem you solve will be worth millions to the company. This guy did something FAR beyond the expected value of his services and it's not unreasonable for him to ask to be compensated accordingly even after the fact. While the company doesn't legally have to do anything, it doesn't follow that they shouldn't make sure the guy is well compensated for his efforts.
How do you folks deal with thousands of bookmarks?
If you "need" to deal with thousands of bookmarks you are Doing It Wrong. Help me out here because I honestly cannot even imagine a (sane) use case or work flow where I would actually need (much less want) to deal with that many bookmarks.
well the mac app-menu-at-top-of-screen is just stupid if there's multiple apps in view at a time...
Why? You cannot physically perform actions on more than one app at a single time. The menu is active for the one you are presently using as indicated by where you have clicked the mouse pointer. It's not the only way to do things (or even necessarily the best) but it's perfectly sensible and logical and consistent.
What annoys me about the mac interface is that choosing the close window button on the window frame doesn't actually close the app if there are no windows left open. I have to either close the app from the pull down menu (two clicks) or use a keyboard shortcut. I have never once wanted to close all the windows of an app and still leave the app running. It' just not an interface choice I truly grok.
"We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers"
It was VERY much about maintaining control over how applications were developed for iOS.
Hell, Google bent over backwards to give Adobe everything they claimed Apple denied them and couldn't get it to run in a stable or usable manner on Android.
Yes they did and there were a lot of people loudly crowing about how having Flash somehow made Android better than iOS. There were/are plenty of reasons to prefer Android but Flash has never been one of them.
I think the reason Apple refused Flash was a bit more mundane; it sucked energy and would have made the iThings unviable in a consumer market addicted to Flash.
The biggest reason Apple refused flash was because it would have circumvented their requirement that developers code natively for iOS. At the time iOS was still young, Flash was still important on PC browsers and Apple essentially would have abdicated control of their development environment to Adobe.
Define 'viable' -- do you mean it was the only sufficiently insecure platform which allowed arbitrary execution of code on the host machine?
It was the only platform available at the time to do certain tasks on the web the way people ("developers" especially) wanted to do them particularly tasks relating to video. There was nothing else comparable at the time. I never claimed it was a good or secure solution, merely that it was the only game in town. Warts and all. A lot of code was written to utilize flash and that sort of thing doesn't go away overnight even when it should.
Flash is a great example of private technology and interests getting ahead of standards. Internet Explorer 6 is another great example.
Why in the world are we still using this completely unnecessary software?
Because at a point a few years back it was the only viable solution available to do some of the things flash does. There was no realistic alternative for several years. That gave it a very large installed base and large installed bases don't go away just because they later become inconvenient.
One of the smartest things Apple did in recent years was to keep flash out of iOS so it could never get an installed base on that platform. Solved a whole host of inevitable security and performance problems AND it pushed the rest of the net somewhat away from flash. Apple had other less altruistic reasons to do this besides just the security problems with flash but on the whole I think we have all benefited from flash being pushed aside.
We could have space under the hoods of our modern cars, if they wanted to waste space. But they don't do that any more.
We don't waste space on aesthetics? Are you kidding me? Maybe not under the hood we love our big cars with lots of wasted space.
And no we really couldn't truly have the kind of wasted space we used to. Engines and related components take up WAY more space than they once did. I suppose you could make the car ludicrously huge but that would be pretty dumb.
I worked on a PDA-phone hybrid 15 years ago. These things are ugly and useless and expensive and will never take off!
Ok prove me wrong. Tell me what the killer app for immersive VR is that will make it something more than a geeky niche toy. I'd be happy to be proven wrong so dazzle me with the use case that I'm not thinking of. Show me with examples specific to VR rather than snarky examples of unrelated technologies. I'm all ears.
Seriously, I'd be happy to be wrong but I doubt I will be.
Do you believe that the dizziness has more to do with tracking latency, 3D display perspective, or a combination of both?
It's a combination effect and you forgot the disconnect between perceived motion and actual motion which is what gives most people motion sickness. The proportions of each depend on the particular person. I used to work with this stuff in my day job some years back. The stronger you make the 3D effect (increasing perspective) the harder it is for people to adjust and the more likely you are to cause headaches and disorientation. I know for me I could increase it to a point and then my brain simply had problem adapting to/from the VR environment. Tended to cause a splitting headache for me kind of like putting on the glasses of someone with a strong prescription. If you are doing a motion simulation that is reasonably realistic it isn't hard to cause motion sickness. Your butt is telling you something different than your eyes and that makes a lot of people motion sick. Latency can have a similar effect. It's not a problem you can really solve for everyone though you can minimize it with improved tech.
Basically if you are prone to motion sickness in the real world, odds are good you will be prone to it in a VR environment too.
VR seems to be more work than fun, especially if you want to get the fully immersive shebang, which will likely require that 360-degree treadmill thingy and a nice surround sound system.
It is more work than most realize. I was working on VR tech 15 years ago. The graphics have gotten better but the fundamental problems with it remain. Foremost is that the use cases for it are VERY limited and even as a piece of kit for entertainment the novelty wears of very quickly. It's one of those technologies that sounds pretty cool (and is cool up to a point) but most people are going to go "huh, neat" and then never bother with it again. There is almost no use for it in most businesses aside from some high end simulations which very few businesses need. There is no use for it in the home except for some computer games which will only appeal to a relatively small group. Maybe some uses in virtual tours like for museums but that's pretty tiny too.
I think there is a potentially huge market for augmented reality. I can think of all kinds of applications that most people would find useful. I think the market for immersive VR is quite small and mostly centers around computer games for geeks like us.
My father and grandfather lived in an era where most people knew how a car worked and how to fix it, but in my generation that's a mystery.
I assure you that at no time in history did "most people" know how cars worked or how to fix them. Perhaps a higher percentage of the population than now but it never was "most". Not ever.
Most people have always been clueless to varying degrees about many technologies they depend on. Furthermore, while the basic principles of how cars work hasn't really changed much, there is a LOT more technology involved these days so there is much more to learn. I have owned cars where you could almost literally stand in the engine compartment with the engine still in the vehicle. You could do that because they were very simple compared to today's vehicles. Now you have to deal with a myriad of sensors, ECUs, emissions control equipment, electronics and other stuff that simply didn't even exist 40+ years ago. An engine compartment is packed very tightly now and there is a lot more to know about.
I understand how computers work and how to fix them, but the next generation treats them as black boxes.
No more than they ever did. However the same thing applies. When I was younger it was actually possible to have a fairly complete understanding of how the 8088 computer on your desk worked. The technology now is quite a bit more complex "under the hood" (so to speak) and it's a lot harder to understand more than basic principles. It can still be done but there is more to learn than there once was.
GM probably could buy Tesla outright with their coffee and bagel budget.
Tesla has a market cap roughly half of GMs ($25B vs $57B) so no, GM could not afford to buy Tesla. Not even close. Tesla is WAAAYY overpriced.
As Jeremy Clarkson once said of an American car - "It's just that everything inside looks like it was made by the lowest bidder."
That's because it WAS made by the lowest bidder. I'm in the industry. GM (and Ford and Chrysler) beat up their suppliers on price pretty hard. They do stupid things like demand 5% price reductions each year which merely results in suppliers marking up the price up front. They try to keep their suppliers with one foot in a bankruptcy court instead of working with them to keep their supply chain strong.
That said Clarkson is not actually even attempting to be fair. He's saying things to be provocative and entertaining. He reviews cars made by Ford and GM all the time and says positive things about them (Opel and Vauxhall and Holden are GM) including about their interiors. Comparing a BMW with a Chevy is a ridiculous comparison. Different cars intended for different audiences. I currently drive a Japanese car and the interior on it is no better than most US makes. The only place I think Clarkson's comparison is fair is in luxury makes. Cadillac and Buick and Lincoln really need to step their game up, especially Lincoln.
What does a Tesla have, that *ALL* other electrics don't? Style. The Tesla cars look great, like cars you WANT to drive. The others - Chevy, Ford, Nissan, all scream "Hey I'm a cheap piece of shit with an electric motor!"
THIS! All these little electric hatchbacks are really quite unattractive vehicles. Functional? Within their limitations sure. Attractive? Hell no. Something I'd look forward to driving? Double hell no.
It stops new investment, meaning projects will be set back by years. You dont just start and stop drilling operations at the drop of a hat.
True but this isn't a short run game either. The oil companies in North America aren't going to go away even if they have to delay for a few years for near term economic headwinds. The oil is still there and sooner or later it will become economical to pump it again. Saudi Arabia can push the price down for a time but not forever.
No it wouldn't because it doesn't account for engines of differing power. If you have a gasoline engine and a diesel engine of roughly equivalent HP, diesel will generally be 10-20% more efficient for the same volume of fuel. (The torque number doesn't really matter here for the most part)
The reason price per mile doesn't work is that if you are comparing a Cummins 6 liter diesel with a 1 liter I-4 gasoline engine they are too different to be a fair comparison and the price per mile will be far different because the diesel will consume more fuel simply because the engine is larger. It's not the MPG is a useless measure but it isn't always a fair one for certain comparisons.
Slashdot Mirror
The US Senate just voted on whether climate change is a hoax, knowing full well that debates or votes don't change what is or isn't scientifically true or valid.
You think this vote had anything to do with science? This is about power and policy. It's about pandering to a group of voters. It's about setting a stage for the next election. It's about getting votes. It has nothing to do with science and everything to do with power.
Science should inform public policy but nothing forces politicians to actually care what scientists tell them if the facts diverge from political needs. If a politician needs to proclaim that gravity is a hoax to get votes then they will do that and do it with a straight face.
I don't have a Facebook account. I don't have a Twitter account. I don't have accounts on these services because they don't provide me any services I need or want. Maybe they're valuable to you and that's fine but for me they are not useful. Google+ is pretty much in the same boat for me. There is no clear value proposition for me but there is a very clear value to Google. Hence I do not foresee me using Google+ in any social media capacity. All it seems to do is provide Google a way to track what I do and profit from it even better than the already creepy amount they do now. No thanks...
Stop trying (for now) to make it into a product for the general consumer. Focus on industrial uses to develop the technology. Work instructions, stock picking, etc. Keep working on shrinking the product down further.
As a consumer item this suffers from several problems.
1) It's still bulky, conspicuous and not attractive. Fashion matters like it or not.
2) People don't like talking to their devices out loud unless it is a phone call to another person. Yes some people are ok with it (see Siri) but you rarely see it in the real world. I REALLY do not want to walk around saying "Ok Google" constantly. I honestly don't think I've seen anyone use Siri in public ever.
3) It doesn't really solve most problems people have better than a smartphone already does. How often do your really truly need a screen in view at all times? For most people the answer is seldom. There are very very few use cases in real life where google glass provides a real world advantage of a smartphone.
4) Glasses are not so terribly comfortable. I wore them for 17 year (until lasik) and have NO interest in wearing them again unless I absolutely must.
5) Voice interfaces are coming along but still quite unreliable.
Sure, it is customary to give a modest bonus/etc to those who succeed, but if all 100 engineers worked equally hard but most were just unlucky to be on the project that didn't work out, does it make sense to compensate the 10 on the successful project so much more? They all did what the
You are presuming that the engineers have no control over the success or failure of the project or that they have no role in determining the course of the project. You need to think of the engineer as more of an independent contractor rather than a salaried employee. It's the responsibility of the engineer to figure out whether they think they can create a valuable product or whether they are wasting their time. Fail fast if necessary. Find another company if this one is a dead end. A salesman can't sell ice to Eskimos in the real world. Engineers usually have a pretty good idea (or should) whether a product they are working on is useful or not. If they don't then they probably aren't a very good engineer.
You are also presuming effort is an important factor here. Capitalism rewards success, not effort. If the engineers work hard but don't solve a problem that matters then no, they will not see any rewards for their efforts. You want big rewards? You're going to have to take a risk and solve a problem that really matters. How hard you work is pretty much irrelevant unless it brings financial results. Maybe hard work will make the difference but FAR more important is talent applied appropriately and in a timely manner.
If you really want to get rewarded for your work, then go work for a startup. You'll get paid next to nothing, and most likely you'll go out of business receiving nothing for your work. However, if you do succeed you will own a substantial portion of the company and thus get a substantial portion of the reward.
Or work in sales or finance where you get payment commensurate with the financial results you are responsible for. Working for a startup is one way to financial success but hardly the only one. Engineers tend to be very bright except when it comes to selling their services. Many could earn far more than they do but are afraid to try.
Bottom line is that I think there needs to be a balance between risk and reward.
There already is a balance. If you don't take any risks, don't expect any rewards. If you want the steady salary and the sure-thing job, that's fine but don't expect anyone to pay you millions for it either. If you want the big payday you'll probably have to forgo the steady low-paying sure-thing and work on commission or for equity. Sales people take a risk when they work on commission. Why should engineers enjoy greater job security for the same rewards?
And herein lies the great virtue and vice of capitalism: the assignment of profits to the owner of capital, rather than the one who made the capital useful.
Close but I don't think that is quite correct. Capitalism rewards control of resources necessary to utilize capital, of which capital ownership itself is merely one. Things like client relationships, product development, labor availability, and the like all can make or break whether capital can be employed productively to generate profits.
Sales people tend to be well compensated because they generate capital and they have historically structured their compensation (via commissions) to participate in the upside if they are successful in bringing in clients. They control a vital resource (the client relationship) and they know it. There is no fundamental reason why engineers could not in principle do the same if they were willing to take similar risks. I know employers would would jump at an engineer willing to work on commission. But that does involve taking a risk and I know very few engineers who are willing to take such risks. Sales people control a vital resource (the client relationship) and engineers could do the same (product development) if they cared to do so and were willing to take some risks.
Furthermore groups like unions are able to demand a portion of the profits by controlling the availability of labor. If there is no labor available to do the work, it doesn't matter who owns the capital because a vital resource to utilize that capital has been removed. And there is nothing inherently wrong with employees unionizing to demand a reasonable amount of upside participation if their work proves valuable. (The problem with unions is that they tend to value certainty of employment and wages regardless of competence over all other concerns which can incur costs with no upside benefit to the company. If a union prioritized upside participation and was willing to share in the investment risk they probably would see a lot more interest in unionizing.)
Your incentive to invent while being employed is staying employed. Companies fund R&D so that they can profit from the discoveries.
That doesn't mean the company cannot share a portion of the profits from those discoveries with the people who made them possible. It is hardly unreasonable to throw a big fat bonus at someone who creates a technology that generates millions in profits for the company. It's no different than paying a big commission check to a sales person who lands a big account. It rewards success and helps motivate other employees by showing them than they will benefit directly by creating something valuable. Would you bother to create something worth millions if you weren't going to see any of the upside but someone else would? If you do I think you are either naive or a fool.
Honestly engineers *should* take a lesson from sales and demand upside participation if their work generates profits for the company. Creating the product is every bit as important as selling it. I think a company could get very interesting results by providing upside participation to engineering staff.
Patent and copyright laws have never been about compensating inventors or creators. If they had been, they would be mandating actual payment to them.
Patents and copyrights are mechanisms that create the OPPORTUNITY for inventors or creators to profit from their work. If the inventors sell their work or assign it as a condition of employment to a third party, that is a separate issue. If they cannot or will not profit from their work, that is their problem. The idea is to give them a "temporary" (yeah, I know...) monopoly on their work as a reward for creating something valuable to society. The entire purpose is to combat the free rider problem. Find a better solution to the free rider problem and there is no need whatsoever for patents or copyrights.
Inventions are rare. Corporations invest in an uncountable number of inventions that go absolutely nowhere.
That's not a logical argument against post-hoc compensating the talented folks who do create the inventions that actually do turn out to be worth millions. If you have a star player, you pay that player according to their contributions. To do otherwise is both unfair and disrespectful. There is no reason this company could not provide this guy a very substantial bonus as thanks for his contributions if the invention really was worth millions.
Put it this way. Would you work hard for an employer who you knew was going to keep all the upside of your work or would you rather work hard for an employer with a track record of rewarding success proportionate to the success?
In those situations you dont hear "Well Mr Employee, the work we have been working on has turned out to be a massive dead end. As a result we need you to sell your house to put towards the costs.
The company is not taking the same amount of risk. If the company and the officers of the company were taking an equal amount of risk to their personal fortunes then fine. But the company is simply making investments like I buy stocks for my portfolio. Some work out, some don't but those that don't aren't going to put me into poverty. It's not even remotely the same level of risk as someone who has hocked their house.
You don't get to renegotiate afterwards. Your incentive to do stuff at work is your salary.
Why not? If you have the bargaining position to negotiate a better deal after the fact why shouldn't you? Some naive sense of obligation or fairness to a company that doesn't reciprocate? Don't be absurd. Some work cannot be done without having the resources of a company behind you and no one ever knows if they are going to create something really valuable ahead of time. Maybe the guy was in a tough situation when he was first employed and wasn't in a position to walk away despite some odious contractual terms. If the guy has the ability to get paid for the full value of his work then he should seek to do so.
I run a company and if someone were to unexpectedly create something that benefited the company greatly, I'd be a selfish prick to not share substantially of the rewards with that person. It doesn't mean the company has to hand over all the benefits but sharing a substantial percent of the rewards with an inventor is quite fair.
If you are writing code for a living you will create new things ever day to solve the problem you encounter.
That doesn't mean every problem you solve will be worth millions to the company. This guy did something FAR beyond the expected value of his services and it's not unreasonable for him to ask to be compensated accordingly even after the fact. While the company doesn't legally have to do anything, it doesn't follow that they shouldn't make sure the guy is well compensated for his efforts.
How do you folks deal with thousands of bookmarks?
If you "need" to deal with thousands of bookmarks you are Doing It Wrong. Help me out here because I honestly cannot even imagine a (sane) use case or work flow where I would actually need (much less want) to deal with that many bookmarks.
well the mac app-menu-at-top-of-screen is just stupid if there's multiple apps in view at a time...
Why? You cannot physically perform actions on more than one app at a single time. The menu is active for the one you are presently using as indicated by where you have clicked the mouse pointer. It's not the only way to do things (or even necessarily the best) but it's perfectly sensible and logical and consistent.
What annoys me about the mac interface is that choosing the close window button on the window frame doesn't actually close the app if there are no windows left open. I have to either close the app from the pull down menu (two clicks) or use a keyboard shortcut. I have never once wanted to close all the windows of an app and still leave the app running. It' just not an interface choice I truly grok.
One of the last footholds of Flash is the ability to write a Native App for iOS and Android with Adobe AIR.
That is by definition not a native app. It can behave like one but it's not the same thing.
What Steve Jobs was talking about was the Flash Browser plug-in -- which was unviable as a mobile browser experience.
Here is what Jobs said about Flash. Note the bit where he said:
"We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers"
It was VERY much about maintaining control over how applications were developed for iOS.
Hell, Google bent over backwards to give Adobe everything they claimed Apple denied them and couldn't get it to run in a stable or usable manner on Android.
Yes they did and there were a lot of people loudly crowing about how having Flash somehow made Android better than iOS. There were/are plenty of reasons to prefer Android but Flash has never been one of them.
I think the reason Apple refused Flash was a bit more mundane; it sucked energy and would have made the iThings unviable in a consumer market addicted to Flash.
The biggest reason Apple refused flash was because it would have circumvented their requirement that developers code natively for iOS. At the time iOS was still young, Flash was still important on PC browsers and Apple essentially would have abdicated control of their development environment to Adobe.
Define 'viable' -- do you mean it was the only sufficiently insecure platform which allowed arbitrary execution of code on the host machine?
It was the only platform available at the time to do certain tasks on the web the way people ("developers" especially) wanted to do them particularly tasks relating to video. There was nothing else comparable at the time. I never claimed it was a good or secure solution, merely that it was the only game in town. Warts and all. A lot of code was written to utilize flash and that sort of thing doesn't go away overnight even when it should.
Flash is a great example of private technology and interests getting ahead of standards. Internet Explorer 6 is another great example.
Why in the world are we still using this completely unnecessary software?
Because at a point a few years back it was the only viable solution available to do some of the things flash does. There was no realistic alternative for several years. That gave it a very large installed base and large installed bases don't go away just because they later become inconvenient.
One of the smartest things Apple did in recent years was to keep flash out of iOS so it could never get an installed base on that platform. Solved a whole host of inevitable security and performance problems AND it pushed the rest of the net somewhat away from flash. Apple had other less altruistic reasons to do this besides just the security problems with flash but on the whole I think we have all benefited from flash being pushed aside.
We could have space under the hoods of our modern cars, if they wanted to waste space. But they don't do that any more.
We don't waste space on aesthetics? Are you kidding me? Maybe not under the hood we love our big cars with lots of wasted space.
And no we really couldn't truly have the kind of wasted space we used to. Engines and related components take up WAY more space than they once did. I suppose you could make the car ludicrously huge but that would be pretty dumb.
I worked on a PDA-phone hybrid 15 years ago. These things are ugly and useless and expensive and will never take off!
Ok prove me wrong. Tell me what the killer app for immersive VR is that will make it something more than a geeky niche toy. I'd be happy to be proven wrong so dazzle me with the use case that I'm not thinking of. Show me with examples specific to VR rather than snarky examples of unrelated technologies. I'm all ears.
Seriously, I'd be happy to be wrong but I doubt I will be.
Do you believe that the dizziness has more to do with tracking latency, 3D display perspective, or a combination of both?
It's a combination effect and you forgot the disconnect between perceived motion and actual motion which is what gives most people motion sickness. The proportions of each depend on the particular person. I used to work with this stuff in my day job some years back. The stronger you make the 3D effect (increasing perspective) the harder it is for people to adjust and the more likely you are to cause headaches and disorientation. I know for me I could increase it to a point and then my brain simply had problem adapting to/from the VR environment. Tended to cause a splitting headache for me kind of like putting on the glasses of someone with a strong prescription. If you are doing a motion simulation that is reasonably realistic it isn't hard to cause motion sickness. Your butt is telling you something different than your eyes and that makes a lot of people motion sick. Latency can have a similar effect. It's not a problem you can really solve for everyone though you can minimize it with improved tech.
Basically if you are prone to motion sickness in the real world, odds are good you will be prone to it in a VR environment too.
VR seems to be more work than fun, especially if you want to get the fully immersive shebang, which will likely require that 360-degree treadmill thingy and a nice surround sound system.
It is more work than most realize. I was working on VR tech 15 years ago. The graphics have gotten better but the fundamental problems with it remain. Foremost is that the use cases for it are VERY limited and even as a piece of kit for entertainment the novelty wears of very quickly. It's one of those technologies that sounds pretty cool (and is cool up to a point) but most people are going to go "huh, neat" and then never bother with it again. There is almost no use for it in most businesses aside from some high end simulations which very few businesses need. There is no use for it in the home except for some computer games which will only appeal to a relatively small group. Maybe some uses in virtual tours like for museums but that's pretty tiny too.
I think there is a potentially huge market for augmented reality. I can think of all kinds of applications that most people would find useful. I think the market for immersive VR is quite small and mostly centers around computer games for geeks like us.
My father and grandfather lived in an era where most people knew how a car worked and how to fix it, but in my generation that's a mystery.
I assure you that at no time in history did "most people" know how cars worked or how to fix them. Perhaps a higher percentage of the population than now but it never was "most". Not ever.
Most people have always been clueless to varying degrees about many technologies they depend on. Furthermore, while the basic principles of how cars work hasn't really changed much, there is a LOT more technology involved these days so there is much more to learn. I have owned cars where you could almost literally stand in the engine compartment with the engine still in the vehicle. You could do that because they were very simple compared to today's vehicles. Now you have to deal with a myriad of sensors, ECUs, emissions control equipment, electronics and other stuff that simply didn't even exist 40+ years ago. An engine compartment is packed very tightly now and there is a lot more to know about.
I understand how computers work and how to fix them, but the next generation treats them as black boxes.
No more than they ever did. However the same thing applies. When I was younger it was actually possible to have a fairly complete understanding of how the 8088 computer on your desk worked. The technology now is quite a bit more complex "under the hood" (so to speak) and it's a lot harder to understand more than basic principles. It can still be done but there is more to learn than there once was.
GM probably could buy Tesla outright with their coffee and bagel budget.
Tesla has a market cap roughly half of GMs ($25B vs $57B) so no, GM could not afford to buy Tesla. Not even close. Tesla is WAAAYY overpriced.
As Jeremy Clarkson once said of an American car - "It's just that everything inside looks like it was made by the lowest bidder."
That's because it WAS made by the lowest bidder. I'm in the industry. GM (and Ford and Chrysler) beat up their suppliers on price pretty hard. They do stupid things like demand 5% price reductions each year which merely results in suppliers marking up the price up front. They try to keep their suppliers with one foot in a bankruptcy court instead of working with them to keep their supply chain strong.
That said Clarkson is not actually even attempting to be fair. He's saying things to be provocative and entertaining. He reviews cars made by Ford and GM all the time and says positive things about them (Opel and Vauxhall and Holden are GM) including about their interiors. Comparing a BMW with a Chevy is a ridiculous comparison. Different cars intended for different audiences. I currently drive a Japanese car and the interior on it is no better than most US makes. The only place I think Clarkson's comparison is fair is in luxury makes. Cadillac and Buick and Lincoln really need to step their game up, especially Lincoln.
What does a Tesla have, that *ALL* other electrics don't? Style. The Tesla cars look great, like cars you WANT to drive. The others - Chevy, Ford, Nissan, all scream "Hey I'm a cheap piece of shit with an electric motor!"
THIS! All these little electric hatchbacks are really quite unattractive vehicles. Functional? Within their limitations sure. Attractive? Hell no. Something I'd look forward to driving? Double hell no.
Does that not change the name from Colt to Pinto?
Not unless you can magically change a Dodge to a Ford.
It stops new investment, meaning projects will be set back by years. You dont just start and stop drilling operations at the drop of a hat.
True but this isn't a short run game either. The oil companies in North America aren't going to go away even if they have to delay for a few years for near term economic headwinds. The oil is still there and sooner or later it will become economical to pump it again. Saudi Arabia can push the price down for a time but not forever.
A better figure would be price per mile
No it wouldn't because it doesn't account for engines of differing power. If you have a gasoline engine and a diesel engine of roughly equivalent HP, diesel will generally be 10-20% more efficient for the same volume of fuel. (The torque number doesn't really matter here for the most part)
The reason price per mile doesn't work is that if you are comparing a Cummins 6 liter diesel with a 1 liter I-4 gasoline engine they are too different to be a fair comparison and the price per mile will be far different because the diesel will consume more fuel simply because the engine is larger. It's not the MPG is a useless measure but it isn't always a fair one for certain comparisons.