The whole point of the "branding" was that it was MS WIndows, it ran MS Office, and was fully compatible with the MS stack. This is why you bought the Surface, so you could remain locked in the MS ecosystem. It was not just a tablet, it was a MS product that allowed you to do everything you did at work. Of course, as many pundits have pointed out, you don't buy a tablet to work, you buy a tablet to play, and pretend to do work.
But the fact remains is what differentiated MS Surface from all the other tablets was that it ran Office. This is what all the commercials said. So saying that it should have been re branded or differentiated is saying that it really had no advantages over the competitors and all the disadvantages of being a MS product. Like Zune. Or Kin.
What MS needs to do is take some of those billions and make a tablet that is $500 and runs MS office. There is really no recourse. And it should not be impossible. MS Office was designed to run on a 1985 hardware, that is an 8 MHz processor and 2 MB RAM. Yes there has been functionality added and eye candy, but honestly it should be able to be done. But here is hwy I think it will be very difficult. MS does not seem to very good about API control or format management. We see this in the flaky way the programs work between the MS OS and the way that files often don't work very well between the MS Office versions. Therefore creating something that works seamlessly between the Surface and other OS is obviously a very hard problem for them. Maybe it is non trivially hard. After all I have not gotten files to work very well between the iPad and Mac on Apple apps. But then Apple never branded the iPad with a keyboard and said that everything was going to work seamlesslly.
Every time I have flown through New England, or had a plane come there, there has always been a delay. On the other hand, flying out of or through other places there is seldom a delay. So what we need is a ratio of number flight that are delayed now to flights to flights that are normally delayed. I think for some places in might look worse, but for other it is just status quo
Money is a way to attract contestants, that is people who will compete against each other to prove an often arbitrary and minor superiority. A contest that actually well designed can function without direct monetary rewards. However, this competition sounds like it is there to promote and possible create products that are a benefit to one particular firm. Therefore it is not unreasonable to assume the winner would be the product that is going to provide functionality and growth for the firm, not the product that is deemed the best by the also arbitrary standards of the contestants.
The danger is, of course, that the game will no longer have any participants. This of course is a foolish conclusion. One everyone understands how to win the million dollars, then the contestants will adjust their strategies, in the same way that most major sports have adjusted their strategies to become good TV rather than fierce competitions.
Here is the thing with lojack. There is no real way to know it is working. I have it installed, and really it seems like a waste of moneyu as there is not feedback on functionality. I could waste another $100 dollars every year. Now, in one of my cars I can pay $300 a year for telematics, and this at least has some benifits. I can know it is working because at any time I can look up the car at anytime, and even unlock doors and such. It sounds like this is what Lojack is trying to do, but really, they are a bit late to the markett. Pretty much what they have done in the past is sell expensive insurance, and count on the fact that it mostly won't be used. I don't know if I would have any legal recourse if the system failed as I have not paid their yearly maintenance fee.
In any case for consumers there a bunch of cheaper alternatives. For not very much you can get a smart phone app and a dongle for the ODB that will keep detailed track of driving patterns. If a parent were concerned about this stuff it is a simple matter of an iphone, something like Bluedriver, and turning on find my iPhone. This leverages stuff that is already paid for. Of course i think most parents know the value of giving kids increasing responsibility and freedom, and most I know aren't this intrusive.
In fact when Apple moved to iCloud, it did not transfer data from Mobileme though there appeared to be no technical reason not to, and this was for paying customers. There was plenty of warning, but if data was not backed up it was gone.
Then there were all the accounts Google was deleting a couple years ago. They have never been of the tact that customer support, even for customers, is important. Getting back data is no their concern.
MS has not been in the free online data store biz for long. Yes they have some commercial offering, but they are only just entering the consumer space depends on the success of the new new Surface. Otherwise it will just be an MS Office feature. MS had no problem ending play for sure and all the customer data associated with it, which represented real money, not just easily backed up data.
Re:No real reason to buy until games come out
on
Xbox One Released
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· Score: 1
And wait and see how the network issues work out. Not a good sign the virtually all of MS was out yesterday.
Actually did get a Xbox 360 eventually for a couple hundred dollars. It is a good home media machine, and has some good games. Have to see how the monetize the One though.
The antibiotic resistant threat of some organisms is real. Princeton is currently having a situation with drug resistant meningitis, and is asking to use an unapproved, in the US, drug to treat it.
A likely cause of this drug resistance is use of antibiotics to increase growth rate in livestock. It has been recently shown that for certain livestock simple sanitation methods can be superior to the use of antibiotics. It is also likely that there are superior methods to antibiotics for all livestock,
To follow your profit motive, most of the antibiotics in the US, 80%, are sold for agriculture. While we can assume that antibiotics for agriculture are sold for less than human use, and so the pharmaceuticals firms will not go immediately bankrupt if agricultural uses are outlawed, we can assume the shock to the sector will be significant.
Given that antibiotics in humans has become a minor part of the business, it is not unreasonable to assume that researchers must find an alternative.
Which is why everyone freaks when something like Ribbons comes out.
It would be nice if we could train people, maybe in high school, to use technology and not just how to use a specific version of technology. I learned to use a computer, so when the different spreadsheets came out I was able to pick them up. Never have been able to pass a MOS certification, but I can use MS Office. Students now have to pass such a certification, but have trouble using Google Docs. So what has really been accomplished?
It does matter because Google Play is supposed to be the walled garden. It doesn't matter that 99% of the people in the school yard are supposed to be there, all it takes is few to turn the school yard into chaos.
It also matters to the developers who wants to make a profit. If someone else can repackage your app and place it on the preeminent platform for Android Apps in exchange for ad revenue, that is bad. It also hurts the reputation of the original developer if that app is violating real of perceived privacy expectations.
This is different from script kiddie or organized crime putting a pirated App on some open repository to be nice or steal identities. This is Google Play. People use it instead of more open repositories because they expect a level of security.
It is for their safety. If they are in one spot for a few minutes, and not responding, help can be sent immediately. There is no reason why we should put these hero first responders in unnecessary jeopardy.
which is the point I was getting at. Really, this is why/. is still relevant. One can ask a simple question and often get a simple answer instead of a flamewar of why the question is stupid. In this case there seem to be technical reasons why the installer can't do a backup. OTOH, it seems possible to do a backup or a partition that would allow one to test the mod, then revert. The original post did seem to make something big about the installer not uninstalling, but I agree, it is not an installer issue. The instructions should include some indication of how the user can backup or partition.
There is no substance in the blog post, so it is unclear what is going on. This cannot be published research because the participants are not given a consent form detailing the parameters of the experiment and what is to be collected and what personal information will be exposed. Furthermore, as participation is mandatory any data will be suspect.
Which leads me to believe that this is just some sort course development thing. This is quite common. For instance any time one takes a standardized test, be it an AP test, a college entrance test, a college placement test, a certification test, there are always some questions on there that are being researched, that do not count towards your score. This is mandatory research, and in some cases you have paid to take the test. At the end of an increasing number of college course, there is an exit survey, and since most people fill it out there is little need to make it mandatory.
But of course MOOC do tend to have students will less vested interest in the course. It is not like real classes where so much work has been done that one final sheet of paper seems like a massive inconvenience. Next these people are going to complain that one has prove that one gained some knowledge in order to get a certificate.
There is much evidence to suggest that the aggressive fire management is the reason we have such big fires. Fires are a natural part of the forest. Some trees have even evolved to depend on fire for the life cycle. Be it lightening or accidentally human fire there is no reason why a fire in the forest needs to be put out. Maybe limited with fire break, but not put out. The damage of a fire is often caused when it has been prevented so often that it burns so hot that the forest cannot regenerate.
In am also not sure what the value is of risking human lives to save property. It seems every year so family has lost a loved one fighting a forest fire. Why? So someone's replaceable home can be saved? A forest fire should be treated like a hurricane. There is time secure the belongings and evacuate.
Yes, and the same federal government that says hospitals cannot deny care to an injured person, and sets a policy that gun shots must be investigated. If we lived in a world where parents accidentally shot their kid, and if they did not have a way to pay for treatment, the parents had to find a way to a way to treat the kid not at the taxpayer expense, and the taxpayer were not paying police to investigate it, then the argument would be fair. The problem with dope, and even crack and meth, is that the taxpayer is paying huge amounts to do basically nothing. OTOH, the taxpayer will likely be on the hook when a gun explodes, so doing tests for guns that routinely explode is beneficial to everyone. It like testing cars for flaws. Sure, cars will roll over, but we really don't want cars that roll over by design.
I suppose if I had breakfast in school I might have been easier to handle, but I am was a stubborn child and night owl so I never wanted food before like 10am. Of course I watched too much tv and learned quite a bit from it, considering how put down it is. And don't get started on how I went to summer camp on a college campus at 11 where we put in front of teletype and taught to type in and compile basic programs because it was kind of cheaper babysitting for working parent. I mean that was awful for my future. Or learning how to type at 12 instead of endless math tutorials. Or the fact that my high school threw money away on a mainframe that we all learned Fortran when we were 14. I mean we could have been sitting there reading textbook, filling out worksheets, preparing for standardized tests, focusing on the fact that I did not always have all I wanted to eat. Instead I was learning how to draw, program computers, build things with tools. That you for reminding me how lucky I am to escape the education that everyone else seems to want.
There are high school programs that have 3D printers. The kids develop the skills over a number of years to do useful things with them. The 3D printer is one of the many carrots for learning the skills.
Here is one area where a 3D printer can encourage students to learn a skill. Suppose that you were reverse engineering some object with many pieces Each student would have to measure and design a piece in the CAD software. Now, most students do not understand why good measurement is necessary, or why they need to make an effort to draw the object exactly, or how many measurements are really needed. So each student draws and the pieces are put together in the software, and adjustments are made because the pieces are not going to fit exactly. Eventually the group of students gets something that fits together in the software and prints. Inevitably one or two pieces are not going to fit together in the physical prototype, debugging will have to happen, and much learning will go on.
The problem is that such a process is long, there are not many grades involved, and students who are not motivated and curios tend not to benefit very much. There has to be a reason to have a tool in the classroom, and a understanding of how it is going to be used. otherwise it will, like the laser printer, be used to print shoes.
I recall reading an article about the guy who built blockbuster. He was originally in trash. That is, he rented the big bins for commercial trash. He stated that blockbuster and trash collection were basically the same thing. One has some initial investment that does not degrade much over time, and after a while that investment is covered with rental fees. After that it is pure profit. So the idea of blockbuster was to turn over product as quickly as possible to pay for the initial product and get into a profit position. Obviously things like late fees helped. The idea of paying a flat fee for as much product as you wanted for as long as you wanted did not.
Of course this guy has long left Blockbuster and is doing other things, so there was room for new management to do other things. OTOH, I can see how blockbuster might be attached to their original business model, brick and mortar and all that. Really what has killed them is the long term decline in the value of movie you watch at home. There was a time when you were paying $50-100 to buy a video, so paying $5 to rent it was a value. Eventually studios realized how much money they were leaving on the table, dropped prices for many movies, and cut sweetheart deals with blockbuster, which further eroded the value of home video, and made Blockbuster prices seem expensive. Finally the internet made movies free, Netflix figured out how to compete with free, and blockbuster did not. Really, blockbuster, like other firms simply could not keep the legacy structure and succeed.
And how. I recall once when I was refactoring some code written in relatively low level language. I printed it off, physically cut it up, and played with the pieces until I could imagine what I wanted to do. Seriously, there has been more than once when creating a physical space with code helped me solve some complex problems.
In theory, if the job market is mobile and there is funding to hire and train new people all the time, this is not a horrible rational. The attrition of the bottom 25% assures that everyone has to be at their best all the time, and those who just want to slack get left behind. There is a new set of graduates every year, experienced people who want a lateral move, and internal promotions. This is, in fact, what some in public education propose as a way to improve the teaching pool. Any large organization can use this not only to improver overall quality but also to refresh and innovate. The theory says, statistically speaking, is the median will move to the right, while the standard deviation decreases or, in the best case scenario, remains constant.
However, theory is not practice. Highly competent professionals are not necessarily going to wait around to be arbitrarily fired or given a poor evaluation. Such things can effect long term earning. A proactive professional will look for ways to exit gracefully before any damage can be done. In other words, at a certain level of experience, the incentive will be to find another position. The result therefore is case where the median, best case scenario, remains constant while the curve skews to the left as less experienced people replace the high performers who can go elsewhere.
I recall when web pages began to become popular technology. Everyone would ask me how I could possible be paid so much money to develop software when anyone with GoLive could put up a website in an evening.
On the flip side of this, when one talks to a user, they tend to have an idea of the ways have been done, or the way they want to do things, so you get a solution oriented meant to solve discussion instead of problem oriented discussion trying to solve a problem. However, if you watch people work then the front facing problems become evident, and one can use knowledge and skills that most users do not have to fix them.
For instance one program I am using now does a very literal translation of the physical workflow into software, much like the retail chain cited above. However my typical workflow does not, in fact, mimic the physical structure. Anyone observing what actually happens would know this, but because the software was designed from surveys and corporate structure the software is incredibly inefficient with very little flexibility.
Look, higher efficiencies have tended to lead to less hours dedicated to survival. While some research has indicated that a hunter gatherers actually worked less those based of fixed agriculture, for recorded history is does seem that the average number of hours required to subsist has decrease. For much of history those that worked worked all the time. When formal government and royalty emerged, peasants certainly never got a day off. Judism may be several centuries old, but we don't know when anyone started getting a day of rest. Certainly Christianity has only been giving some workers a day of rest for a couple thousand years. I suppose the American slaves worked seven days a week, at least a partial day.
So through the 19th century we has a 60-100 hour work week, with one day off. Kids worked. In fact kids working were such a ingrained part of the time that in some places when a kid was accidental killed there was a statutory payment made by the culprit representing the value the he had to the family.
So that is another thing. Fewer people working. When we gained sufficient efficiencies, and enough wealth, we implement child worker laws. So four year old kids were no longer employed in factories during the industrial revolution. In 1904 children were regularly employed int he textile industry in the US. Want to know what killed manufacturing in the US? Cheap child labor. Wan to to know why we have child labor laws in the US. Because increases in efficiencies and a bad economy meant there were not enough jobs to go around for everyone. Except for agriculture which no one wanted to do. Which children continued to do until the later quarter of the 20th century. At which point immigrants became the primary agricultural worker.
In the mid 19th century though, professionals enjoyed a 10 hour work day. and federal workers had an 8 hour work day. By the turn of the 20th century we had an 8-10 hour work day for most people, and many firms increased wages to account for the decreased time. It proved beneficial for profits, so the movement grew. Around the time that we stopped employing children in factories, the US also required employers to generally only ask for 40 hours of work, pay overtime, and pay a minimum wage. Again, because efficiencies to productivity were not being pass on the workers, unemployment was high, and clearly that many firms did this voluntarily indicated it was not bad for bidness.
We do have a similar situation now. Gains in efficiencies are not being passed on to workers. In a generation or two many studies have suggested that most manual labor, even professional trades like lawyers, who have already taken a significant hit, will be greatly diminished as viable work. Engineering is expected to take a hit soon after that. The reduction from 16 to 8 was quick as the industrial revolution progressed. I have seen offices go to a four day week, and time will show that nomore work gets done in 10 hours than 8. It will be 32 hour week, then 28 hour week.
As I said before, Google has the idea that they are the only ones who honest, professional, good enough at generating profits to so they should collect data. Collecting data just to prevent someone from blowing up downtown is just frivolous.
A handful of agency employees who gave their login details to Snowden were identified, questioned and removed from their assignments.
No, it is a consequences problems. Snowden has been charged with espionage, which can put a capital punishment situation on the table. If these guys aided and abetted, they should be charged as an accessory, not moved to a new assignment. If the NSA were interested in security, and not just optics, this is what they would do.
All too often officials are just interested in protecting the pensions and benefits of everyone involved, not solving problems. For instance is was recently reported that the militiary, in this case the Navy, is once again in the middle of scandal where millions of dollars of taxpayers money was stolen by a foreign interest. In this case, a few officers traded state secrets for hookers and travel and money. Given that the military has previously promised to clamp down on such behavior, we should expect a maximal charge against officers who aided a foreign agent to defraud the American taxpayer. Something like stripping rank and benefits, what used to be done to gay folks, as well as a life sentence might keep others from doing the same thing. We will see if they do so.
Slashdot Mirror
But the fact remains is what differentiated MS Surface from all the other tablets was that it ran Office. This is what all the commercials said. So saying that it should have been re branded or differentiated is saying that it really had no advantages over the competitors and all the disadvantages of being a MS product. Like Zune. Or Kin.
What MS needs to do is take some of those billions and make a tablet that is $500 and runs MS office. There is really no recourse. And it should not be impossible. MS Office was designed to run on a 1985 hardware, that is an 8 MHz processor and 2 MB RAM. Yes there has been functionality added and eye candy, but honestly it should be able to be done. But here is hwy I think it will be very difficult. MS does not seem to very good about API control or format management. We see this in the flaky way the programs work between the MS OS and the way that files often don't work very well between the MS Office versions. Therefore creating something that works seamlessly between the Surface and other OS is obviously a very hard problem for them. Maybe it is non trivially hard. After all I have not gotten files to work very well between the iPad and Mac on Apple apps. But then Apple never branded the iPad with a keyboard and said that everything was going to work seamlesslly.
Every time I have flown through New England, or had a plane come there, there has always been a delay. On the other hand, flying out of or through other places there is seldom a delay. So what we need is a ratio of number flight that are delayed now to flights to flights that are normally delayed. I think for some places in might look worse, but for other it is just status quo
The danger is, of course, that the game will no longer have any participants. This of course is a foolish conclusion. One everyone understands how to win the million dollars, then the contestants will adjust their strategies, in the same way that most major sports have adjusted their strategies to become good TV rather than fierce competitions.
In any case for consumers there a bunch of cheaper alternatives. For not very much you can get a smart phone app and a dongle for the ODB that will keep detailed track of driving patterns. If a parent were concerned about this stuff it is a simple matter of an iphone, something like Bluedriver, and turning on find my iPhone. This leverages stuff that is already paid for. Of course i think most parents know the value of giving kids increasing responsibility and freedom, and most I know aren't this intrusive.
Then there were all the accounts Google was deleting a couple years ago. They have never been of the tact that customer support, even for customers, is important. Getting back data is no their concern.
MS has not been in the free online data store biz for long. Yes they have some commercial offering, but they are only just entering the consumer space depends on the success of the new new Surface. Otherwise it will just be an MS Office feature. MS had no problem ending play for sure and all the customer data associated with it, which represented real money, not just easily backed up data.
Actually did get a Xbox 360 eventually for a couple hundred dollars. It is a good home media machine, and has some good games. Have to see how the monetize the One though.
A likely cause of this drug resistance is use of antibiotics to increase growth rate in livestock. It has been recently shown that for certain livestock simple sanitation methods can be superior to the use of antibiotics. It is also likely that there are superior methods to antibiotics for all livestock,
To follow your profit motive, most of the antibiotics in the US, 80%, are sold for agriculture. While we can assume that antibiotics for agriculture are sold for less than human use, and so the pharmaceuticals firms will not go immediately bankrupt if agricultural uses are outlawed, we can assume the shock to the sector will be significant.
Given that antibiotics in humans has become a minor part of the business, it is not unreasonable to assume that researchers must find an alternative.
It would be nice if we could train people, maybe in high school, to use technology and not just how to use a specific version of technology. I learned to use a computer, so when the different spreadsheets came out I was able to pick them up. Never have been able to pass a MOS certification, but I can use MS Office. Students now have to pass such a certification, but have trouble using Google Docs. So what has really been accomplished?
It also matters to the developers who wants to make a profit. If someone else can repackage your app and place it on the preeminent platform for Android Apps in exchange for ad revenue, that is bad. It also hurts the reputation of the original developer if that app is violating real of perceived privacy expectations.
This is different from script kiddie or organized crime putting a pirated App on some open repository to be nice or steal identities. This is Google Play. People use it instead of more open repositories because they expect a level of security.
It is for their safety. If they are in one spot for a few minutes, and not responding, help can be sent immediately. There is no reason why we should put these hero first responders in unnecessary jeopardy.
which is the point I was getting at. Really, this is why /. is still relevant. One can ask a simple question and often get a simple answer instead of a flamewar of why the question is stupid. In this case there seem to be technical reasons why the installer can't do a backup. OTOH, it seems possible to do a backup or a partition that would allow one to test the mod, then revert. The original post did seem to make something big about the installer not uninstalling, but I agree, it is not an installer issue. The instructions should include some indication of how the user can backup or partition.
So what happened to back up before upgrade. Can' t the installer backup, and then revert.
Which leads me to believe that this is just some sort course development thing. This is quite common. For instance any time one takes a standardized test, be it an AP test, a college entrance test, a college placement test, a certification test, there are always some questions on there that are being researched, that do not count towards your score. This is mandatory research, and in some cases you have paid to take the test. At the end of an increasing number of college course, there is an exit survey, and since most people fill it out there is little need to make it mandatory.
But of course MOOC do tend to have students will less vested interest in the course. It is not like real classes where so much work has been done that one final sheet of paper seems like a massive inconvenience. Next these people are going to complain that one has prove that one gained some knowledge in order to get a certificate.
In am also not sure what the value is of risking human lives to save property. It seems every year so family has lost a loved one fighting a forest fire. Why? So someone's replaceable home can be saved? A forest fire should be treated like a hurricane. There is time secure the belongings and evacuate.
Yes, and the same federal government that says hospitals cannot deny care to an injured person, and sets a policy that gun shots must be investigated. If we lived in a world where parents accidentally shot their kid, and if they did not have a way to pay for treatment, the parents had to find a way to a way to treat the kid not at the taxpayer expense, and the taxpayer were not paying police to investigate it, then the argument would be fair. The problem with dope, and even crack and meth, is that the taxpayer is paying huge amounts to do basically nothing. OTOH, the taxpayer will likely be on the hook when a gun explodes, so doing tests for guns that routinely explode is beneficial to everyone. It like testing cars for flaws. Sure, cars will roll over, but we really don't want cars that roll over by design.
I suppose if I had breakfast in school I might have been easier to handle, but I am was a stubborn child and night owl so I never wanted food before like 10am. Of course I watched too much tv and learned quite a bit from it, considering how put down it is. And don't get started on how I went to summer camp on a college campus at 11 where we put in front of teletype and taught to type in and compile basic programs because it was kind of cheaper babysitting for working parent. I mean that was awful for my future. Or learning how to type at 12 instead of endless math tutorials. Or the fact that my high school threw money away on a mainframe that we all learned Fortran when we were 14. I mean we could have been sitting there reading textbook, filling out worksheets, preparing for standardized tests, focusing on the fact that I did not always have all I wanted to eat. Instead I was learning how to draw, program computers, build things with tools. That you for reminding me how lucky I am to escape the education that everyone else seems to want.
Here is one area where a 3D printer can encourage students to learn a skill. Suppose that you were reverse engineering some object with many pieces Each student would have to measure and design a piece in the CAD software. Now, most students do not understand why good measurement is necessary, or why they need to make an effort to draw the object exactly, or how many measurements are really needed. So each student draws and the pieces are put together in the software, and adjustments are made because the pieces are not going to fit exactly. Eventually the group of students gets something that fits together in the software and prints. Inevitably one or two pieces are not going to fit together in the physical prototype, debugging will have to happen, and much learning will go on.
The problem is that such a process is long, there are not many grades involved, and students who are not motivated and curios tend not to benefit very much. There has to be a reason to have a tool in the classroom, and a understanding of how it is going to be used. otherwise it will, like the laser printer, be used to print shoes.
Of course this guy has long left Blockbuster and is doing other things, so there was room for new management to do other things. OTOH, I can see how blockbuster might be attached to their original business model, brick and mortar and all that. Really what has killed them is the long term decline in the value of movie you watch at home. There was a time when you were paying $50-100 to buy a video, so paying $5 to rent it was a value. Eventually studios realized how much money they were leaving on the table, dropped prices for many movies, and cut sweetheart deals with blockbuster, which further eroded the value of home video, and made Blockbuster prices seem expensive. Finally the internet made movies free, Netflix figured out how to compete with free, and blockbuster did not. Really, blockbuster, like other firms simply could not keep the legacy structure and succeed.
And how. I recall once when I was refactoring some code written in relatively low level language. I printed it off, physically cut it up, and played with the pieces until I could imagine what I wanted to do. Seriously, there has been more than once when creating a physical space with code helped me solve some complex problems.
However, theory is not practice. Highly competent professionals are not necessarily going to wait around to be arbitrarily fired or given a poor evaluation. Such things can effect long term earning. A proactive professional will look for ways to exit gracefully before any damage can be done. In other words, at a certain level of experience, the incentive will be to find another position. The result therefore is case where the median, best case scenario, remains constant while the curve skews to the left as less experienced people replace the high performers who can go elsewhere.
I recall when web pages began to become popular technology. Everyone would ask me how I could possible be paid so much money to develop software when anyone with GoLive could put up a website in an evening.
For instance one program I am using now does a very literal translation of the physical workflow into software, much like the retail chain cited above. However my typical workflow does not, in fact, mimic the physical structure. Anyone observing what actually happens would know this, but because the software was designed from surveys and corporate structure the software is incredibly inefficient with very little flexibility.
Look, higher efficiencies have tended to lead to less hours dedicated to survival. While some research has indicated that a hunter gatherers actually worked less those based of fixed agriculture, for recorded history is does seem that the average number of hours required to subsist has decrease. For much of history those that worked worked all the time. When formal government and royalty emerged, peasants certainly never got a day off. Judism may be several centuries old, but we don't know when anyone started getting a day of rest. Certainly Christianity has only been giving some workers a day of rest for a couple thousand years. I suppose the American slaves worked seven days a week, at least a partial day.
So through the 19th century we has a 60-100 hour work week, with one day off. Kids worked. In fact kids working were such a ingrained part of the time that in some places when a kid was accidental killed there was a statutory payment made by the culprit representing the value the he had to the family.
So that is another thing. Fewer people working. When we gained sufficient efficiencies, and enough wealth, we implement child worker laws. So four year old kids were no longer employed in factories during the industrial revolution. In 1904 children were regularly employed int he textile industry in the US. Want to know what killed manufacturing in the US? Cheap child labor. Wan to to know why we have child labor laws in the US. Because increases in efficiencies and a bad economy meant there were not enough jobs to go around for everyone. Except for agriculture which no one wanted to do. Which children continued to do until the later quarter of the 20th century. At which point immigrants became the primary agricultural worker.
In the mid 19th century though, professionals enjoyed a 10 hour work day. and federal workers had an 8 hour work day. By the turn of the 20th century we had an 8-10 hour work day for most people, and many firms increased wages to account for the decreased time. It proved beneficial for profits, so the movement grew. Around the time that we stopped employing children in factories, the US also required employers to generally only ask for 40 hours of work, pay overtime, and pay a minimum wage. Again, because efficiencies to productivity were not being pass on the workers, unemployment was high, and clearly that many firms did this voluntarily indicated it was not bad for bidness.
We do have a similar situation now. Gains in efficiencies are not being passed on to workers. In a generation or two many studies have suggested that most manual labor, even professional trades like lawyers, who have already taken a significant hit, will be greatly diminished as viable work. Engineering is expected to take a hit soon after that. The reduction from 16 to 8 was quick as the industrial revolution progressed. I have seen offices go to a four day week, and time will show that nomore work gets done in 10 hours than 8. It will be 32 hour week, then 28 hour week.
As I said before, Google has the idea that they are the only ones who honest, professional, good enough at generating profits to so they should collect data. Collecting data just to prevent someone from blowing up downtown is just frivolous.
No, it is a consequences problems. Snowden has been charged with espionage, which can put a capital punishment situation on the table. If these guys aided and abetted, they should be charged as an accessory, not moved to a new assignment. If the NSA were interested in security, and not just optics, this is what they would do.
All too often officials are just interested in protecting the pensions and benefits of everyone involved, not solving problems. For instance is was recently reported that the militiary, in this case the Navy, is once again in the middle of scandal where millions of dollars of taxpayers money was stolen by a foreign interest. In this case, a few officers traded state secrets for hookers and travel and money. Given that the military has previously promised to clamp down on such behavior, we should expect a maximal charge against officers who aided a foreign agent to defraud the American taxpayer. Something like stripping rank and benefits, what used to be done to gay folks, as well as a life sentence might keep others from doing the same thing. We will see if they do so.