Over 1000 civilians were killed or injured in that attack. Only a warhead could deliver that much of a blow which is something the rebels do not have. This was not a truck bomb.
I am still conflicted, but I wanted to give slashdotters the other side of the story here since I predicated that 90% would be railing agaisn't intervention with politically with little information like how all the rebels are 100% terrorists and the will of the people is Sharia law etc. That is not true and the rebels are being hijacked which is another problem slashdotters are ignoring too.
It is a mess and I wonder if getting involved would be bad? I thought my answer would be a 100% yes, but part of me says no could also be a wrong answer.
What if our worst fears happen and another Afghanistan arises and all Alowites, Christians, Druze, in the millions are genocide and a scary unstable power of hijacked Al Quada government comes in and destabilizes other countries? The majority of Syrians do not want this but this minority did effectively hijack Egypt's freedom revolution.
This is about a conflict about those who want freedoms and a democracy. Not another dictatorship with a ruler on their version of Islam.... with crazies from other countries fighting along side those who want freedom and are defending themselves. This was not started as a conflict to establish another dictator to eliminate and genocide different groups of people.
One of the arguments for involvement means a control on the rebels to make sure the crazies do not be the answer of the opposition. Whether that is a good idea or will work vs the cost of not doing anything and let it turn into that is worth debating? Assad is not stupid and is only targetting liberal elements of the free Syrian Army to make a battle of extremist vs extremist. If he losses he can have a told you so and it feeds propaganda to himself otherwise.
Re:We would have Office and .NET on Linux
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Break Microsoft Up
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In an ideal world I think Linux might have won the desktop if MS was split by now? Who knows.
But if we had Visual Studio and Office for Linux things would be radically different. With MFC and.NET winforms and COM all these proprietary Windows apps could be recompiled to run on MacOSX and Linux easily. Many win32 apps we all depend on would be on other platforms as a result too even if you are not a developer writing your own stuff.
I am not a big fan of Java and it would be nice to use.NET and ASP.net on Apache too and have an answer from the hackish PHP. Windows Server would not be as popular understandably.
It is possible without infighting within MS that Metro could have come out for the Windows phone as early as 2007 and could have been neck and neck with Google and Android.
But this universe never happened so who knows. At this point who cares. The desktop is dying anyway and it would be futile as any changes would take many years for these to be decoupled from each other and by then the tablets will ahve keyboards and monitor hookups complete with a functional office replacement and the need for visual studio will not matter as all the cool apss will be made in goo, java, and objective C. c# wont matter unless Windows Phone has a radical upswing!
the ipod had a black and white green screen that resembled the early 1980s before the iPhone.
The iphone was fucking gorgeous and was many years ahead of its time and nothing matched it back in 2007. I remember someone showing me theres back then and I was used to low grade screens and resolutions and seeing it flip screen, the high DPI, the apps, the HTML 5 (still used to IE 6 at work and Firefox 1.5), it didn't need a keypad WOW.
But sadly I see phones like desktops as maturing products where each release offers less and less from the initial shock of innovation. Which is why XP is so damned popular by loyalists today. As nice as Windows 7 is it is tiny compared to the upgrade from Windows 98 to XP, which that was a big upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows 3.1, which in return was even more radical than the switch from DOS a generation before.
Things do not move as fast once something matures and phones are minor upgrades now compared to the first radical ones of the Iphone and Android eras.
I can't see any successful big ideas which have come out of Google in the last 5 years. The last good big idea was probably Android in 2007 and even that emerged partly from an acquisition. Apple's last good big idea was again in 2007.
??
Google Docs, Chromecast, Chrome, Voice navigation in Android, Map integration in Android, Social apis, Chrome frame, Google glass, Chrome OS.
The problem Microsoft has is divisions sabotaging each other and their products. Google the LCD font for XP tablet edition?
The VP of office didn't like the Tablet so he made them look ugly on purpose to show the Windows team a thing or two!... what how did the IPAD happen?! Idiots!
Bill Gates is known to trash anyone with an opinion and to set groups and people against' themselves in a way to win over and make them strong in his mind. This shows poor management and MS actively participating in the Roman divide and conquer strategy. Apple was ripe for the taking indeed.
They think like a monopoly and have no idea there decisions are going to challenged by competitors. Competitors will come who are agile and polished as their products are not sabotaged.
In many ways if the DOJ won and split MS up the were already functioning like 3 different companies anyway.
One of the most successful companies of all time, which is still doing billions in business, and everyone can't wait to tell them how they are fucking it up...
Why don't all these brilliant analysts go make billions if they are so smart?
... with a smaller and smaller slices of the pie which is only being inflated due to the rise of China and India whom previously couldn't afford computers. If you purchased $1000 worth of stock in 2000 it would only be worth like $750 today!
Apple and Google are making new products and these so called billions in business are not about to be hit.
Read all the XP loyalist comments here? Their 10 year old systems work fine. Why change? Or if their Pentium IVs with 512 megs of ram die, they buy an IPAD to replace it. Yeah yeah at work you need a PC argument... but how often does work change anything today in 2013? Compared to 2003 it is fucking glacial now.
The same arguments were made for IBM mainframes. Remember those? Real work is for the mainframe not these piddily minis that only small business uses or PCs that consumers use.
Once Windows falls away Office will be next. Now where does that leave Microsoft? Oh they can just use a tie in game because... oh wait most people do ot buy other MS products anymore and tie in makes them less likely to work with Apple's office suite and their IPADs. MS is done at this point and Balmer is at the helm.
What if we did not? Do you have any idea what Syria is doing? They are targeting just the civilian and liberal elements of the opposition and purposely ignoring the Islamic militants who are jihading and sadly they are winning.
This means by next year we have the Taliban vs the dictator left and is a lose lose situation at this point. So the argument is if we get involved and stop Asad from murdering his own people and influencing the opposition we can have a pro western and stable democracy similar to Libya now which is the most liberal country int he middle east.
The question is will this happen? Or will we be aiding Al Quada militants and forming more hatred and another 9-11 attack in which we seek to avoid? We thought we did a great thing for the Iraqis and Iranians too in the old days. Boy, did that backfire!
I do not know what at this point? That video link really has influenced me in wanting to do something though.
we will be damned for isolationism and disregard for human suffering if we do not act
Yes, it is too bad we were ordained by God to police the world. It would be so much better if there was some sort of organization that could represent the collective will of the nations of the world in situations like this. Maybe we could set up something like that. New York City might be a good place.
Devil's advocate What if the US just did nothing?
I previously opposed any intervention PERIOD! Reason, being who is the opposition? Each time we get involved to stop the spread of evil communism like in Iran or the Iraq the situation always becomes worse and we are the bad guys.
Obama's argument is yes we do not know who the opposition will be (there are 2 parties in involved) and who will be there. However, if we don't get involved Al Quada will make up the opposition and form another Afghanistan. The Syrian government is only targeting liberal activitists and citizens defending themselves and ignoring the Islamic militants from foreign countries fighting in Jihad on purpose.
If this war continues there will be too sides. One is Al Quada. The other is this monster who is Shia who gasses his own people! Worse, this violence is spreading in Iraq and Lebanon and is involving Iran and Saudi Arabia.
This could very easily turn into another World War I based on Shia and Sunni lines.
If we do get involved and play our cards right we stop Al Quada, and help the liberal and citizen oriented people wanting freedom, stop the killing dictator, and hopefully Lebanon and Iraq stabilize and we stop Hezbollah who is not fighting onside and we stop the 7 million refugees who left who are draining neighboring countries.
The question is what will happen if we do and will it make the situation worse and actually start another WW1 with a Muslim holy war between the 2 sides? Or will it prevent it. Not to sound like an American Idiot here, but I was there right at the base of the WTC on that fatefully day 9-11. We can't have any nation as a safe haven for such groups.
I had an uncle that tried to do that. Turned out that his physics degree was so esoteric that he had trouble finding a job.
He ended up being a produce clerk.
Well worse case scenario he can apply to be a science teacher. Not a glamour job but almost anything fucking pays better and would give benefits than being a produce clerk.
Same states even have programs for non teaching majors to enter the field. Yes you have rotten kids but at least you do not have to pay for healthcare and cost actually teach science and have a somewhat middle class salary.
This is why I didn't go into computer engineering as a young lad. I recognized that computers were tools, and the people trained to maintain and program them were going to end up as essentially service personnel. The high-level managers consider sysadmins to be one notch above a janitor. Shameful, but true. I realized this quite young.
Instead, I went into physics. I'm not appreciably higher in the corporate architecture, but what I do is so arcane nobody believes that I'm easily replaced. If sysadmins are treated like janitors, a scientist is treated like a skilled seamstress -- I'm still 'labor', but it costs so much to find someone who can do my job they're willing to cut me a little slack.
Until your boss realizes he can get scientists in China and India with no plumbing who would happily work for peanuts.
Unless a job needs to be done physically here you will be viewed as a cost. I notice a rise in people becoming teachers recently. It is because those jobs are not considered valuable where as before the great recession no one would dare think this unless they had a passion for it or were moms and wanted the same days off as their kids. But it is a job that needs to be here and can't be outsourced.
I suggest you read the article. It talks about a specific subset of trades that were affected due to a problem resulting from an upgrade. It further discusses the impact in a company which prides itself on risk management.
That would seem to imply that it is thought possible an IT upgrade was performed without adequate backout provisions or due diligence.
I have read other comments from HFT programmers on slashdot and their bosses do not care about risk management. They want rewrites by the hour 100% bugfree 100% of the time so they can earn their money and beat the other HFT systems FIRST.
Perhaps one can comment, but I distrust officials from Wall Street claiming this as their actions dictate otherwise with unreasonable demands as their only performance metric is how much growth per hour.
Do these guys have contracts or something? Most of us are at-will hires. We don't get administrative leave, we get fired. Could also be that they have specialized knowledge and they are going to give them cash when they leave in exchange for transferring knowledge. The only time I have heard of 'administrative leave' is with government/union people. With at-will employment, you can be fired just because management feels like it.
As much as we love to bash big banking for looking at anyone not a pyschopath trader as a cost center, they need top talent.
Basically other slashdotters who work on these systems are on demands to change whole algorithms of the system within the hour by the traders whim with no QA, GET IT OUT FAST, but whoa if has a bug! You can't negotiate with these kinds of people who in their opinion generate real money and view themselves as supperior.
But they are not stupid and realize such great demands require a 6 figure salary, plus a bonus, plus being selective on a contract that the programmer will find more favorable. If they all said $12/hr take it or leave it and fire at will they will get crappy talent that could sink them fast. So the programmers here know the drill and the lack of job security so they negotiate it in a contract.
If you are in a job where your employer treats you like this then you are not valuable. Not to mean to insult as we all started out this way until we had to prove ourselves and or get a skill that made us more rare. Go find another employer who values your skills more if you have the experience by now or go do something about your skillset? Capitalism 101, both buyers and sellers will always take advantage of a weakness. If there are 10 folks begigng your job then your employer can do whatever the fuck he wants. If there are 10 jobs and you are the only one qualified, then you exploit the employers by walking if they do not offer you 6 figure salary, bonuses, own office etc.
Look the CEO's and senior traders who play games of golf and have 2 hour elaborate lunches at the best NYC restaurants create all this value through their handwork.
They do not need to be distracted by the mundane details of actually trading and need to just think of ideas all day instead. Distractions need to be minimized as do work.... now these IT guys who program the computers that earn them the flash trading? They are greedy COST CENTERS. They have no value! Lazy! Can be replaced by H1B1 visas faster than you can say campaign contribution. Fire them as they do not create value at all.
By playing golf and thinking mysterious powers are telepathically entered into the HFT systems and money is just generated out of thin air. I think these guys need a big bonus for being so smart for this? Don't you?
Well, leaving aside the fact that neither of them will compile because of lack of whitespace. Editors, you might want to think about when use of the <pre> tag is appropriate.
I still wish the parrot project took off and combined with Perl. Just imagine the poor joy using Lambda's combined with Perl and white spaces? Sounds like a pure paradise.
no.. it's that there's a chance you won't buy, rent, or subscribe to any media through their store or one operated by one of their partners.. it's all about the money.. google's money, they don't give a shit about piracy, exactly.. they don't want you playing local content at all, legit or not, when there's perfectly good pay-for media available through the device for which google gets their cut.
NFL CEO: "... phone rings
Schmidt: Hello
NFL CEO: Hey Schmidt, what is this crap I hear that your device is an illegal circumvention device designed to steal money from me, but obeying my wishes to rip off consumers!
Schmidt: Google Cast is just a simple device to enable streaming. It is not different than someone using a webcam and uploading their own videos to where ever he or she wants.
NFL CEO: What?! This could pirated content and would mean I can't fucking scalp my users at the stadiums! My shareholders will have a fucking fit. Fix it now!
Schmidt: No
NFL CEO: SCHMIDT!!! You know it would be a shame if somehow we used DRM flags in our content to make your device useless. Under the DMCA your device must obey our shareholder wishes. I have friends in CNN, NBC, Universal, and others who would happily make your device useless. I guess we can work with Apple and Microsoft instead. They too understand the meaning of protected intellectual property.
Schmidt: Oh yes oh great masters. We would never want to make the great cartel of the MPAA and NFL unhappy. We want to build a successful relationship
NFL CEO: Grins. Ok very good then. Do what you need to do then to make it happen. FYI how would you like some private rooms at the SuperBowl next year for your family for being so nice to us?
Google is not the evil one here but, but the broadcasters. Remember the NFL with every media mongul on the planet wrote the DMCA and just had the senators approve it and rubber stamp it!
If Google will not play nice and suck it then they will use the DMCA and DRM to ban the device and will sue and arrest any Google developer who wont obey them. This my friends is why we opposed the DMCA back in 2000. If you didn't write your senators back then tough shit you deserved this law for not standing up to yourself.
Until Google is powerful enough to make its own content the content owners have IP laws, DMCA, and use monopoly powers over companies like Google. A ruined relationship with them is death. Microsoft would happily comply if Google wont and then people will bitch and whine how the Chromecast wont stream their favorite football games.
I thought of that and not to mention the waste of having 2 gigs for a DNS server I then have the complexity of setting up my host to use it. If the DNS VM is not on then I loose internet access.
My computer's ATi 5750 which is not too old doesn't work properly with DirectX 11.1 and crashes and ATI wont make drivers for it anymore as they only care about hardware less than 2 years old now to save money!
Second, I am working on a project at home where I need virtual machines with hostnames so I can type in the name of the servers in an url in all 3 browsers. I can't do this in Windows 8 as it will ignore my custom HOSTS file.
I wont hardcode IP addresses before I release it onto the net for obvious dumb reasons. This hurts it being adopted by web developers.
I did upgrade my computer to an ATi 7850 last month so the driver issue should be fixed, but my computer was designed and QAd with Windows 7. What else will it break? Also, with updates happening every year how do I know Windows 8.3 in 2015 wont break my computer again if I upgraded to Windows 8?
Windows 8!= Windows 7 driver compatible but pretty close. Unlike Windows 7 which could run on a Vista system it is not apples to apples with changes in the kernel. Yes I agree with Roc it is butt ugly too! Maybe I hate change which I criticize XP users over, but even with a new start menu the control panels and many apps are now applets designed for Metro. It is a hack rather than a tool with Windows 8.1 as more desktop settings are METRO only.
I will only upgrade when this machine dies. It works so why change? Windows 7 is a good release and I would rather stick with the devil I know where its weaknesses is then risk change for new issues like metro and driver incompatibilities.
Yeah. I think people resort to typing program names as it's so clunky to find the programs using mouse in the Start Screen.
Give it a shot? I can open 5 applications or files before you can open one with a mouse. Type Windows Key and the name of something in a file you had open? Intellsense will autocomplete and it is open very fast. It is amazingly efficient and not clunky.
The mouse too me is too clunky too practical for real business use and its a real productivity killer. Especially for people like Admin assistants who get strange requests for pictures of that party back in 2011 and what was the last name with that guy we had a sales meeting last year etc? Instant search indexes tags from subjects and metadata in each file like emails, pictures, file names, etc.
After a week getting used to this it will feel natural. You can even open tasks and subjects of email in Outlook with this feature like my example with the admin assistant.
This was what Longhorn was supposed to be with WinFS and instant search is the only remaining legacy of that left in Windows 7 today. Windows 8 might not implement in a friendly way, but it is nice and to me an essential feature.
Windows 7 is a decent OS and in my opinion the best OS MS has ever produced.
It does lack some gui enchancements that MacOSX has and its security improvements like kernel level sandboxing where any app including Firefox and Chrome can use make it nice plus it has ASLR (Linux still does not have this), DEP for all services, and other enchancements make it MUCH more secure than XP.
Instant search, areo peak, and aero snap are nice too. I like it, but that is just me.
To all the Microsoft Shills who insist on listing 100 different windows key combinations to replicate what was available from the old start menu, or if you are going to advise me to start typing in program names to launch programs on my mouse operated graphical user interface:
YOU ARE FUCKING WRONG, AND STUPID IN THE HEAD.
Have you even tried it?
Mouse really does suck. Ask any Unix geek here on slashdot?
FYI I hate Metro and I am on Windows 7 right now. When I first got Vista I hated it until my professor told me that I had instant search with the Windows key and that with the ribbons in Office it made keyboard shortcuts even nicer.I gave it just 1 week and from there decided I would either put XP back on my laptop or stick with the slow Vista.
I had 100+ files from work and all my classes. Many for my finance class had a word document and excel spreadsheets. Now I could use both and keeping my word document open with instant search!
I can't use XP anymore or Linux with Beagle. It is just so intollerable and do not give me the mouse is what it is designed for. Do you use Google? Same concept.
I hit Windows Key mar (for Marsh Project)and boom 4 excel files popped up with inventory forcecasting and basic data. I hit tab and enter DONE.
Go try it right now? If you use MacOSX or Linux open your VM with Windows 7 and hit the Windows key and type something from 2 years ago? Type WOR and enter and you are in word. After 1 week of this you will swear when you go to an XP box as it will seem quite dated.
If you have lots of files this is a life saver rather than fucking around My Documents in a million different folders and opening and closing files to find that rare gem. I rarely even use the startmenu anymore on Windows as I am so reliant on this feature. Metro may suck for the desktop, but that doesn't mean instant search for Vista/Windows 7 does as it was the number #1 reason to upgrade from XP besides security improvements.
If you rely on a third world sheeper for your core infrastructure then you are quite fucked! Penny wise pound foolish if something happens and they can't figure it out fast enough. I can see help desk going over there, but the loss of productivity from one user to the whole fucking enterprise is HUGE.
Things never are the same and consisent everyday. One example is when a client moved to Windows 7 a whole fucking group of people just got a hang on the welcome screen/can not estable trust relationship error for 3 days. It was annoying and our admin worked like mad to solve it. Turns out a bug from Windows Vista still in Windows 7 had an issue with a TCP ARP entry from an old OU where the group still had members of both
Name a brochure or a stack of proceedures for something like this? There is none. You need to be a pretty damn advanced know it all to be a compotent admin.
I think for advanced users METRO is not a big deal as I could theoretically get shit done on Windows 8. It just takes longer to do the same task but that is because I use the gui all day if I use it as a desktop and the start screen blocks everything and forces the human brain to switch context when I am in the train of thought unlike Windows 7's version of instant search. 8.1 at least matches its featureset ugh. But, we are advanced users and so are admins. All the stuff is there you just have to go page page page and click the hot corners to find a gui app. Most of Microsofts new server products really need powershell such as exchange. But that is just setup once up and running it is back to Windows 7 via MMC and powershell terminals at their desks.
I never see the guis of Windows server except when I walk in the room so it is different and if they need a gui tool they can still find it with Metro but it might take longer, but this is different than a desktop usage.
If your admins do not know how to use it still then FIRE THEM. It is not worth millions on hour if they are not certified and know how to do these things via automation in a real production environment. There are books, VMWare is fairly cheap, and there is virtualbox too if you are dirtcheap where you can learn this over the course of a year at home where you can setup virtual networks. That is how I learned Exchange 2007 and setting up OWA etc. Yes they need to be professionals cooks and not chefs using a recipe unless it is a small business server.
But that is just me. I would prefer to keep Windows 7 but would love Windows 2012 server as long as I do not have to sit physically in front of it.
Slashdot Mirror
Al Jazeera did an article on this.
Over 1000 civilians were killed or injured in that attack. Only a warhead could deliver that much of a blow which is something the rebels do not have. This was not a truck bomb.
I am still conflicted, but I wanted to give slashdotters the other side of the story here since I predicated that 90% would be railing agaisn't intervention with politically with little information like how all the rebels are 100% terrorists and the will of the people is Sharia law etc. That is not true and the rebels are being hijacked which is another problem slashdotters are ignoring too.
It is a mess and I wonder if getting involved would be bad? I thought my answer would be a 100% yes, but part of me says no could also be a wrong answer.
What if our worst fears happen and another Afghanistan arises and all Alowites, Christians, Druze, in the millions are genocide and a scary unstable power of hijacked Al Quada government comes in and destabilizes other countries? The majority of Syrians do not want this but this minority did effectively hijack Egypt's freedom revolution.
This is about a conflict about those who want freedoms and a democracy. Not another dictatorship with a ruler on their version of Islam. ... with crazies from other countries fighting along side those who want freedom and are defending themselves. This was not started as a conflict to establish another dictator to eliminate and genocide different groups of people.
One of the arguments for involvement means a control on the rebels to make sure the crazies do not be the answer of the opposition. Whether that is a good idea or will work vs the cost of not doing anything and let it turn into that is worth debating? Assad is not stupid and is only targetting liberal elements of the free Syrian Army to make a battle of extremist vs extremist. If he losses he can have a told you so and it feeds propaganda to himself otherwise.
In an ideal world I think Linux might have won the desktop if MS was split by now? Who knows.
But if we had Visual Studio and Office for Linux things would be radically different. With MFC and .NET winforms and COM all these proprietary Windows apps could be recompiled to run on MacOSX and Linux easily. Many win32 apps we all depend on would be on other platforms as a result too even if you are not a developer writing your own stuff.
I am not a big fan of Java and it would be nice to use .NET and ASP.net on Apache too and have an answer from the hackish PHP. Windows Server would not be as popular understandably.
It is possible without infighting within MS that Metro could have come out for the Windows phone as early as 2007 and could have been neck and neck with Google and Android.
But this universe never happened so who knows. At this point who cares. The desktop is dying anyway and it would be futile as any changes would take many years for these to be decoupled from each other and by then the tablets will ahve keyboards and monitor hookups complete with a functional office replacement and the need for visual studio will not matter as all the cool apss will be made in goo, java, and objective C. c# wont matter unless Windows Phone has a radical upswing!
the ipod had a black and white green screen that resembled the early 1980s before the iPhone.
The iphone was fucking gorgeous and was many years ahead of its time and nothing matched it back in 2007. I remember someone showing me theres back then and I was used to low grade screens and resolutions and seeing it flip screen, the high DPI, the apps, the HTML 5 (still used to IE 6 at work and Firefox 1.5), it didn't need a keypad WOW.
But sadly I see phones like desktops as maturing products where each release offers less and less from the initial shock of innovation. Which is why XP is so damned popular by loyalists today. As nice as Windows 7 is it is tiny compared to the upgrade from Windows 98 to XP, which that was a big upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows 3.1, which in return was even more radical than the switch from DOS a generation before.
Things do not move as fast once something matures and phones are minor upgrades now compared to the first radical ones of the Iphone and Android eras.
I can't see any successful big ideas which have come out of Google in the last 5 years. The last good big idea was probably Android in 2007 and even that emerged partly from an acquisition. Apple's last good big idea was again in 2007.
??
Google Docs, Chromecast, Chrome, Voice navigation in Android, Map integration in Android, Social apis, Chrome frame, Google glass, Chrome OS.
The problem Microsoft has is divisions sabotaging each other and their products. Google the LCD font for XP tablet edition?
The VP of office didn't like the Tablet so he made them look ugly on purpose to show the Windows team a thing or two! ... what how did the IPAD happen?! Idiots!
Bill Gates is known to trash anyone with an opinion and to set groups and people against' themselves in a way to win over and make them strong in his mind. This shows poor management and MS actively participating in the Roman divide and conquer strategy. Apple was ripe for the taking indeed.
They think like a monopoly and have no idea there decisions are going to challenged by competitors. Competitors will come who are agile and polished as their products are not sabotaged.
In many ways if the DOJ won and split MS up the were already functioning like 3 different companies anyway.
One of the most successful companies of all time, which is still doing billions in business, and everyone can't wait to tell them how they are fucking it up...
Why don't all these brilliant analysts go make billions if they are so smart?
... with a smaller and smaller slices of the pie which is only being inflated due to the rise of China and India whom previously couldn't afford computers. If you purchased $1000 worth of stock in 2000 it would only be worth like $750 today!
Apple and Google are making new products and these so called billions in business are not about to be hit.
Read all the XP loyalist comments here? Their 10 year old systems work fine. Why change? Or if their Pentium IVs with 512 megs of ram die, they buy an IPAD to replace it. Yeah yeah at work you need a PC argument ... but how often does work change anything today in 2013? Compared to 2003 it is fucking glacial now.
The same arguments were made for IBM mainframes. Remember those? Real work is for the mainframe not these piddily minis that only small business uses or PCs that consumers use.
Once Windows falls away Office will be next. Now where does that leave Microsoft? Oh they can just use a tie in game because ... oh wait most people do ot buy other MS products anymore and tie in makes them less likely to work with Apple's office suite and their IPADs. MS is done at this point and Balmer is at the helm.
MS needs an answer fast to Apple and Google.
why we keep spending money interfering with civil wars 1/2 way around the world??
Watch this and tell me if you still think this?
What if we did not? Do you have any idea what Syria is doing? They are targeting just the civilian and liberal elements of the opposition and purposely ignoring the Islamic militants who are jihading and sadly they are winning.
This means by next year we have the Taliban vs the dictator left and is a lose lose situation at this point. So the argument is if we get involved and stop Asad from murdering his own people and influencing the opposition we can have a pro western and stable democracy similar to Libya now which is the most liberal country int he middle east.
The question is will this happen? Or will we be aiding Al Quada militants and forming more hatred and another 9-11 attack in which we seek to avoid? We thought we did a great thing for the Iraqis and Iranians too in the old days. Boy, did that backfire!
I do not know what at this point? That video link really has influenced me in wanting to do something though.
we will be damned for isolationism and disregard for human suffering if we do not act
Yes, it is too bad we were ordained by God to police the world. It would be so much better if there was some sort of organization that could represent the collective will of the nations of the world in situations like this. Maybe we could set up something like that. New York City might be a good place.
Devil's advocate
What if the US just did nothing?
I previously opposed any intervention PERIOD! Reason, being who is the opposition? Each time we get involved to stop the spread of evil communism like in Iran or the Iraq the situation always becomes worse and we are the bad guys.
But anyone reading with any sense of humanity has to have some sort of emotional response to this?
Obama's argument is yes we do not know who the opposition will be (there are 2 parties in involved) and who will be there. However, if we don't get involved Al Quada will make up the opposition and form another Afghanistan. The Syrian government is only targeting liberal activitists and citizens defending themselves and ignoring the Islamic militants from foreign countries fighting in Jihad on purpose.
If this war continues there will be too sides. One is Al Quada. The other is this monster who is Shia who gasses his own people! Worse, this violence is spreading in Iraq and Lebanon and is involving Iran and Saudi Arabia.
This could very easily turn into another World War I based on Shia and Sunni lines.
If we do get involved and play our cards right we stop Al Quada, and help the liberal and citizen oriented people wanting freedom, stop the killing dictator, and hopefully Lebanon and Iraq stabilize and we stop Hezbollah who is not fighting onside and we stop the 7 million refugees who left who are draining neighboring countries.
The question is what will happen if we do and will it make the situation worse and actually start another WW1 with a Muslim holy war between the 2 sides? Or will it prevent it. Not to sound like an American Idiot here, but I was there right at the base of the WTC on that fatefully day 9-11. We can't have any nation as a safe haven for such groups.
Walmart quickly changed that. I dated a girl who did that and she got paid minimum wage with no benefits and she has worked there for 5 years.
If anyone can do it included an undocumented worker then it pays to pay the least amount of money possible.
I had an uncle that tried to do that. Turned out that his physics degree was so esoteric that he had trouble finding a job.
He ended up being a produce clerk.
Well worse case scenario he can apply to be a science teacher. Not a glamour job but almost anything fucking pays better and would give benefits than being a produce clerk.
Same states even have programs for non teaching majors to enter the field. Yes you have rotten kids but at least you do not have to pay for healthcare and cost actually teach science and have a somewhat middle class salary.
This is why I didn't go into computer engineering as a young lad. I recognized that computers were tools, and the people trained to maintain and program them were going to end up as essentially service personnel. The high-level managers consider sysadmins to be one notch above a janitor. Shameful, but true. I realized this quite young.
Instead, I went into physics. I'm not appreciably higher in the corporate architecture, but what I do is so arcane nobody believes that I'm easily replaced. If sysadmins are treated like janitors, a scientist is treated like a skilled seamstress -- I'm still 'labor', but it costs so much to find someone who can do my job they're willing to cut me a little slack.
Until your boss realizes he can get scientists in China and India with no plumbing who would happily work for peanuts.
Unless a job needs to be done physically here you will be viewed as a cost. I notice a rise in people becoming teachers recently. It is because those jobs are not considered valuable where as before the great recession no one would dare think this unless they had a passion for it or were moms and wanted the same days off as their kids. But it is a job that needs to be here and can't be outsourced.
I suggest you read the article. It talks about a specific subset of trades that were affected due to a problem resulting from an upgrade. It further discusses the impact in a company which prides itself on risk management.
That would seem to imply that it is thought possible an IT upgrade was performed without adequate backout provisions or due diligence.
I have read other comments from HFT programmers on slashdot and their bosses do not care about risk management. They want rewrites by the hour 100% bugfree 100% of the time so they can earn their money and beat the other HFT systems FIRST.
Perhaps one can comment, but I distrust officials from Wall Street claiming this as their actions dictate otherwise with unreasonable demands as their only performance metric is how much growth per hour.
Do these guys have contracts or something? Most of us are at-will hires. We don't get administrative leave, we get fired. Could also be that they have specialized knowledge and they are going to give them cash when they leave in exchange for transferring knowledge. The only time I have heard of 'administrative leave' is with government/union people. With at-will employment, you can be fired just because management feels like it.
As much as we love to bash big banking for looking at anyone not a pyschopath trader as a cost center, they need top talent.
Basically other slashdotters who work on these systems are on demands to change whole algorithms of the system within the hour by the traders whim with no QA, GET IT OUT FAST, but whoa if has a bug! You can't negotiate with these kinds of people who in their opinion generate real money and view themselves as supperior.
But they are not stupid and realize such great demands require a 6 figure salary, plus a bonus, plus being selective on a contract that the programmer will find more favorable. If they all said $12/hr take it or leave it and fire at will they will get crappy talent that could sink them fast. So the programmers here know the drill and the lack of job security so they negotiate it in a contract.
If you are in a job where your employer treats you like this then you are not valuable. Not to mean to insult as we all started out this way until we had to prove ourselves and or get a skill that made us more rare. Go find another employer who values your skills more if you have the experience by now or go do something about your skillset? Capitalism 101, both buyers and sellers will always take advantage of a weakness. If there are 10 folks begigng your job then your employer can do whatever the fuck he wants. If there are 10 jobs and you are the only one qualified, then you exploit the employers by walking if they do not offer you 6 figure salary, bonuses, own office etc.
Look the CEO's and senior traders who play games of golf and have 2 hour elaborate lunches at the best NYC restaurants create all this value through their handwork.
They do not need to be distracted by the mundane details of actually trading and need to just think of ideas all day instead. Distractions need to be minimized as do work. ... now these IT guys who program the computers that earn them the flash trading? They are greedy COST CENTERS. They have no value! Lazy! Can be replaced by H1B1 visas faster than you can say campaign contribution. Fire them as they do not create value at all.
By playing golf and thinking mysterious powers are telepathically entered into the HFT systems and money is just generated out of thin air. I think these guys need a big bonus for being so smart for this? Don't you?
Well, leaving aside the fact that neither of them will compile because of lack of whitespace. Editors, you might want to think about when use of the <pre> tag is appropriate.
I still wish the parrot project took off and combined with Perl. Just imagine the poor joy using Lambda's combined with Perl and white spaces? Sounds like a pure paradise.
no.. it's that there's a chance you won't buy, rent, or subscribe to any media through their store or one operated by one of their partners.. it's all about the money.. google's money, they don't give a shit about piracy, exactly.. they don't want you playing local content at all, legit or not, when there's perfectly good pay-for media available through the device for which google gets their cut.
NFL CEO: "... phone rings
Schmidt: Hello
NFL CEO: Hey Schmidt, what is this crap I hear that your device is an illegal circumvention device designed to steal money from me, but obeying my wishes to rip off consumers!
Schmidt: Google Cast is just a simple device to enable streaming. It is not different than someone using a webcam and uploading their own videos to where ever he or she wants.
NFL CEO: What?! This could pirated content and would mean I can't fucking scalp my users at the stadiums! My shareholders will have a fucking fit. Fix it now!
Schmidt: No
NFL CEO: SCHMIDT!!! You know it would be a shame if somehow we used DRM flags in our content to make your device useless. Under the DMCA your device must obey our shareholder wishes. I have friends in CNN, NBC, Universal, and others who would happily make your device useless. I guess we can work with Apple and Microsoft instead. They too understand the meaning of protected intellectual property.
Schmidt: Oh yes oh great masters. We would never want to make the great cartel of the MPAA and NFL unhappy. We want to build a successful relationship
NFL CEO: Grins. Ok very good then. Do what you need to do then to make it happen. FYI how would you like some private rooms at the SuperBowl next year for your family for being so nice to us?
Google is not the evil one here but, but the broadcasters. Remember the NFL with every media mongul on the planet wrote the DMCA and just had the senators approve it and rubber stamp it!
If Google will not play nice and suck it then they will use the DMCA and DRM to ban the device and will sue and arrest any Google developer who wont obey them. This my friends is why we opposed the DMCA back in 2000. If you didn't write your senators back then tough shit you deserved this law for not standing up to yourself.
Until Google is powerful enough to make its own content the content owners have IP laws, DMCA, and use monopoly powers over companies like Google. A ruined relationship with them is death. Microsoft would happily comply if Google wont and then people will bitch and whine how the Chromecast wont stream their favorite football games.
Yep I do not know what I am talking about at all.
I thought of that and not to mention the waste of having 2 gigs for a DNS server I then have the complexity of setting up my host to use it. If the DNS VM is not on then I loose internet access.
That is silly.
Me included.
My computer's ATi 5750 which is not too old doesn't work properly with DirectX 11.1 and crashes and ATI wont make drivers for it anymore as they only care about hardware less than 2 years old now to save money!
Second, I am working on a project at home where I need virtual machines with hostnames so I can type in the name of the servers in an url in all 3 browsers. I can't do this in Windows 8 as it will ignore my custom HOSTS file.
I wont hardcode IP addresses before I release it onto the net for obvious dumb reasons. This hurts it being adopted by web developers.
I did upgrade my computer to an ATi 7850 last month so the driver issue should be fixed, but my computer was designed and QAd with Windows 7. What else will it break? Also, with updates happening every year how do I know Windows 8.3 in 2015 wont break my computer again if I upgraded to Windows 8?
Windows 8!= Windows 7 driver compatible but pretty close. Unlike Windows 7 which could run on a Vista system it is not apples to apples with changes in the kernel. Yes I agree with Roc it is butt ugly too! Maybe I hate change which I criticize XP users over, but even with a new start menu the control panels and many apps are now applets designed for Metro. It is a hack rather than a tool with Windows 8.1 as more desktop settings are METRO only.
I will only upgrade when this machine dies. It works so why change? Windows 7 is a good release and I would rather stick with the devil I know where its weaknesses is then risk change for new issues like metro and driver incompatibilities.
Windows key ufs or windows key disk
Yeah. I think people resort to typing program names as it's so clunky to find the programs using mouse in the Start Screen.
Give it a shot? I can open 5 applications or files before you can open one with a mouse. Type Windows Key and the name of something in a file you had open? Intellsense will autocomplete and it is open very fast. It is amazingly efficient and not clunky.
The mouse too me is too clunky too practical for real business use and its a real productivity killer. Especially for people like Admin assistants who get strange requests for pictures of that party back in 2011 and what was the last name with that guy we had a sales meeting last year etc? Instant search indexes tags from subjects and metadata in each file like emails, pictures, file names, etc.
After a week getting used to this it will feel natural. You can even open tasks and subjects of email in Outlook with this feature like my example with the admin assistant.
This was what Longhorn was supposed to be with WinFS and instant search is the only remaining legacy of that left in Windows 7 today. Windows 8 might not implement in a friendly way, but it is nice and to me an essential feature.
Windows 7 is a decent OS and in my opinion the best OS MS has ever produced.
It does lack some gui enchancements that MacOSX has and its security improvements like kernel level sandboxing where any app including Firefox and Chrome can use make it nice plus it has ASLR (Linux still does not have this), DEP for all services, and other enchancements make it MUCH more secure than XP.
Instant search, areo peak, and aero snap are nice too. I like it, but that is just me.
No, no and no.
To all the Microsoft Shills who insist on listing 100 different windows key combinations to replicate what was available from the old start menu, or if you are going to advise me to start typing in program names to launch programs on my mouse operated graphical user interface:
YOU ARE FUCKING WRONG, AND STUPID IN THE HEAD.
Have you even tried it?
Mouse really does suck. Ask any Unix geek here on slashdot?
FYI I hate Metro and I am on Windows 7 right now. When I first got Vista I hated it until my professor told me that I had instant search with the Windows key and that with the ribbons in Office it made keyboard shortcuts even nicer.I gave it just 1 week and from there decided I would either put XP back on my laptop or stick with the slow Vista.
I had 100+ files from work and all my classes. Many for my finance class had a word document and excel spreadsheets. Now I could use both and keeping my word document open with instant search!
I can't use XP anymore or Linux with Beagle. It is just so intollerable and do not give me the mouse is what it is designed for. Do you use Google? Same concept.
I hit Windows Key mar (for Marsh Project)and boom 4 excel files popped up with inventory forcecasting and basic data. I hit tab and enter DONE.
Go try it right now? If you use MacOSX or Linux open your VM with Windows 7 and hit the Windows key and type something from 2 years ago? Type WOR and enter and you are in word. After 1 week of this you will swear when you go to an XP box as it will seem quite dated.
If you have lots of files this is a life saver rather than fucking around My Documents in a million different folders and opening and closing files to find that rare gem. I rarely even use the startmenu anymore on Windows as I am so reliant on this feature. Metro may suck for the desktop, but that doesn't mean instant search for Vista/Windows 7 does as it was the number #1 reason to upgrade from XP besides security improvements.
If you rely on a third world sheeper for your core infrastructure then you are quite fucked! Penny wise pound foolish if something happens and they can't figure it out fast enough. I can see help desk going over there, but the loss of productivity from one user to the whole fucking enterprise is HUGE.
Things never are the same and consisent everyday. One example is when a client moved to Windows 7 a whole fucking group of people just got a hang on the welcome screen/can not estable trust relationship error for 3 days. It was annoying and our admin worked like mad to solve it. Turns out a bug from Windows Vista still in Windows 7 had an issue with a TCP ARP entry from an old OU where the group still had members of both
Name a brochure or a stack of proceedures for something like this? There is none. You need to be a pretty damn advanced know it all to be a compotent admin.
I think for advanced users METRO is not a big deal as I could theoretically get shit done on Windows 8. It just takes longer to do the same task but that is because I use the gui all day if I use it as a desktop and the start screen blocks everything and forces the human brain to switch context when I am in the train of thought unlike Windows 7's version of instant search. 8.1 at least matches its featureset ugh. But, we are advanced users and so are admins. All the stuff is there you just have to go page page page and click the hot corners to find a gui app. Most of Microsofts new server products really need powershell such as exchange. But that is just setup once up and running it is back to Windows 7 via MMC and powershell terminals at their desks.
I never see the guis of Windows server except when I walk in the room so it is different and if they need a gui tool they can still find it with Metro but it might take longer, but this is different than a desktop usage.
If your admins do not know how to use it still then FIRE THEM. It is not worth millions on hour if they are not certified and know how to do these things via automation in a real production environment. There are books, VMWare is fairly cheap, and there is virtualbox too if you are dirtcheap where you can learn this over the course of a year at home where you can setup virtual networks. That is how I learned Exchange 2007 and setting up OWA etc. Yes they need to be professionals cooks and not chefs using a recipe unless it is a small business server.
But that is just me. I would prefer to keep Windows 7 but would love Windows 2012 server as long as I do not have to sit physically in front of it.