Hopefully by the time 8.1 (if not 7) is reaching EOL they will have given Nutella his walking papers, if they haven't? Well I don't think there will be a Windows business to worry about really, it'll just be legacy installs while everyone is on Google or Apple OSes.
I'm sorry, I completely disagree.
First, I applaud Nadella; he's doing a great job. I for one am really enjoying watching this shit-show. It's very entertaining watching Windows users suffer.
But this idea that MS will go under due to this is silly. We're already seeing it now: Win10 is a semi-disaster, but it doesn't matter because customers are sticking with it anyway. It really doesn't matter what MS does, as long as Windows mostly works (just like old British cars mostly worked, they only needed to visit the mechanic a few times a month or so, but they could probably be counted on to work about 50% of the time); most customers simply will not abandon the Windows platform, no matter what. Some home customers might, going to either OSX, iOS, Android, or Chomebooks, but enterprise customers absolutely will not. After all, if your business gets its IT support from HP Enterprise, you already have bigger problems with reliability than Windows 10.
I'm just surprised it took MS this long to realize they had free reign to screw over their customers without any repercussions. It's about time. This will be good for their profitability and their stock price.
The least they could do for this compilation of fail is give us machines that are reliable.
Why should they? Reliability costs money: it takes more engineering resources (and higher quality ones too) to make software reliable instead of just slapping features in . Why should MS do this? It'll just detract from their bottom line. They can be more profitable by doing less engineering (and having less engineering staff too), and just letting customers deal with the problems. It's not like the customers are going to abandon Windows.
What's really funny is that the apologists/shills (I think most of them are really apologists, not paid shills) have long trotted out the tired old meme about Linux "not having drivers", even though it's mostly BS. Yet Linux never has problems like this where drivers actually get broken in new releases, whereas apparently it's now a real issue with Windows.
I can think of a few more: the A-10 Thunderbolt II ("Warthog"), and a couple of WWII bombers. Not to mention various other airplanes made during the 50s-60s which are now retired. Back then, it seems they were able to go from a vague idea to an excellent military aircraft design in full production in 4 years, back when design had to be done on paper/vellum rather than CAD. These days it takes 15 years and the final product has all kinds of problems.
I think another factor is that in private industry, you can jump around pretty easily if you're any good at all. Tired of the horrible upper management at your company? No problem, just start interviewing and get a new job. Your company drives itself into the ground (or just your division)? No problem, just go find a new job. Your pay is stagnant, and/or you're tired of the incompetence or the IT infrastructure at your job? Start looking. Of course, getting a new job isn't *that* easy, but in a tech hub with lots of openings for your skillset it's not that hard. But when you work for the government, there is no jumping around, not that easily, and you won't get a big pay raise for doing so (unless you defect to the private sector of course).
MS seems to have decided that they have the rights to: 1) Monitor all windows uses, without consent; 2) Force any software changes they wish, overriding our own settings or expressed wishes; 3) Turn windows into adware by pushing ads out to windows users - probably related to point 1;
They absolutely DO have these rights (and they DO have consent: it's in the EULA you agreed to and which has the force of law as proven in court cases). If you don't agree with these terms, then it's your job as the customer to find a better vendor.
My primary OS now is Linux, installed on multiple computers, and it would continue to be regularly updated. MS has made dumping their OS one of the easiest decisions to make.
Too bad all MS users aren't as smart as you; most of them will just bend over and take it.
Just imagine 100 applications and 70,000 computers all with different needs filled with very old quirky shit taped up where customers still demand we use IE 6 for much of it. We have a hack to get it to work under Windows 7 with Citrix. These patches break TLS 1.0 which is insecure yes, but our clients can not run without it!
Explain how we can move to Linux and use active directory and group policy and security auditing and SCCM to push applications that are all win32 based in such an environment?
I'm not sure how you're going to succeed in getting that mess to work reliably on Windows 10, much less Linux.
With the situation that bad, you need to go back to those vendors and demand better software (esp. Linux versions). If they can't deliver, it's time to migrate to new vendors who can. We can blame MS for a lot of stuff, but I don't really see how we can blame them for shitty 3rd-party software vendors requiring IE6 for their "enterprise" application to work. The blame rightly goes to the customer for selecting this crap, and then not keeping on top of things and making sure mission-critical applications will continue to work on newer OSes, and not switching to vendors who have better products (or just building your own in-house if the ISVs are this bad).
When MS released the Modern/Metro interface they got ripped, big time. When Linux screwed up with KDE 4/Gnome 3 fiascos, a LOT (far too many) of FOSS advocates were quick to make every excuse in the book. "Oh, it's OK because it is Linux." A lot of that happened right here on/.
Oh, BS. I remember it quite differently: there was no end to the bitching and complaining about both KDE4 and Gnome3, and for good reason too. Gnome3 was so disliked that it directly spawned not one, but two new DEs: MATE and Cinnamon, because people were so mad about it and wanted Gnome2 (or something close to it) back. KDE4 was a disaster (though many blame part of it on distros making it the main KDE version even though KDE themselves said it wasn't ready for primetime use) that many people abandoned KDE and never came back. Both these fiascos were hugely controversial and generated a lot of ill feelings.
However this is probably the first time ever, that I've heard the FOSS community really get upset, I mean upset at Linux itself, not at MS. Not that it seems to be doing much to stop (or redirect) the systemd juggernaut.
Then you're either a liar or you haven't been paying attention. Gnome3 and KDE4.0 both caused just as much upset as systemd, if not more so (I'm leaning towards more so, because regular users notice their DE a whole lot more than they notice their init system). Personally, it sounds like you're a liar who's on the anti-systemd bandwagon and is trying to twist things there to get more people on your side.
It wasn't just there...at major sites all over town all last weekend, I saw a surprisingly LARGE amount of people out all times of day and especially late night playing it...
Am I the only one who's reminded of the ST:TNG episode about Riker finding the head-mounted video game on Risa and the whole crew of the Enterprise becoming addicted to it?
Good point. I've never actually used Ubuntu after they moved to Unity (I started with SUSE KDE, went to Kubuntu, and landed at Mint/KDE but I have a CNC machine running Ubuntu with Gnome2), so I just assumed they only put the 'X' button on the left since that's what the OP complained about (though I see now I misread what he wrote).
No, I'm quite sure there's no easy way to move the buttons around on Windows. On KDE, however, it's pretty easy and extremely configurable; you can put space in between buttons, you can move them around anywhere on the bar, you can put in different buttons for more functionality, etc.
So mea culpa; I really don't see a good reason to move all three buttons to the left since that just gives you the same problem but in a different location. However, if they'd make it configurable (and according to you it is on Unity, I don't know about others except KDE), that's a great feature.
If you've decided you trust Microsoft to provide you the operating system that controls your computer and gives you access to all your critical data, then why are you doubting them when it comes to telemetry and spyware and advertising? Your chosen vendor has decided these things are best for you. It's asinine for you to say otherwise.
If you disagree with your vendor about the software they provide you to this extent, then why are you still using them and their product? You don't trust them with their spyware, but you do trust them to give you a secure OS to protect your data? Is it not obvious how twisted that thinking is?
The problem is that we still have to actually use Windows at work, which sucks. But oh well, the way I look at it, that's part of what I'm getting paid for: to put up with bullshit. It's called "work" for a reason.
Hopefully I can get back to an all-Linux job sometime in the near future. But for now, I'll collect my nice paycheck and put up with the bullshit; if there's a problem with Windows, I call the IT people and let them deal with it, then make sure my manager knows that's why my work is late so the blame is assigned properly.
Frankly, I'm all for this latest brain dead move by Microsoft.... Same result in both cases; more pain for using Windows and a greater chance that alternatives will be considered, and anything that disrupts the Microsoft monoculture is fine by me.
Me too, but after so many years of seeing what MS users are willing to put up with, and how few people ever actually do try any alternatives, I seriously doubt MS is going to lose any significant number of customers with these user-hostile moves. They're getting bolder and bolder, and do we see anyone actually switching? No, not really. Most likely, they've finally figured out (as I've been advocating for quite a while) that they can easily screw over their customers for greater profits and still afford to lose a few; the greater profits from the remaining customers will more than make up for the loss, and since most people (and especially businesses) are completely unwilling to leave the Windows ecosystem, there's really not much limit to how much they can be screwed, so MS might as well do so. It's every corporation's mission to maximize profit, and MS has the somewhat-unique position that their customers are locked-in and won't leave, so it's to their advantage to screw them over however they can for more money: higher license fees, advertising, spyware, etc. The biggest problem MS has, and the biggest competitor, is their older Windows versions, so the biggest danger is people just sticking with old versions. Well MS has figured out how to deal with that: forcibly push everyone to Win10 and then force-feed them advertising and spyware and use that to make more money on them. Maybe they'll intentionally break old hardware with Windows updates to get people to buy new PCs, which means new Windows licensing fees.
Anyway, I don't expect them to lose very many users no matter how awful they get, but things have gotten easier for Linux users (such as things like online tax prep services, Firefox/Chrome taking over the web browser market, etc.), so I'm enjoying sitting back with some popcorn and watching all the Windows users suffer with some new outrage every week. It's a lot like watching Game of Thrones and seeing people constantly getting murdered or brutalized; most of them are jerks anyway so I don't feel too bad for them, and the same goes for Windows users: they made that choice, so they have to suffer the consequences.
I've read similar stories too. On Slashdot, I totally dismiss them; Slashdot readership is not representative of computer users in the slightest. I haven't used Windows for years for personal machines, but I also don't think of myself as a typical computer user; if I were, Microsoft would have been out of business ages ago.
I've read similar stories elsewhere too, but only a handful. Guess what? They really don't matter. 0.1% of MS users defecting to Mint or Ubuntu or OSX just isn't going to affect them significantly, when they're using their new techniques (spyware, advertising, Windows Store) to significantly increase their profits on the users who do remain, which is almost all of them.
I applaud the tiny, tiny minority of Windows users who have finally decided enough is enough and at least tried switching to something else. I wish they had done it sooner instead of waiting until the abuses were this bad, but I guess it's better late than never. But there's just no evidence that these people are really that significant in number. MS doesn't need 100.0% marketshare to continue its evil ways; a nice 94% or so is plenty. With so many customers absolutely refusing to leave them no matter what, it's entirely to their advantage to abuse them as much as they want instead of trying to keep them happy. I'm really not sure what took them this long to figure out they have a captive audience.
I think it's less laziness than the efficiency of familiarity, combined with the fact that "alternative OSes" historically presented a far more different UI than has become the case with many today.
WTF are you talking about? Have you not seen Windows 8 or 10?
This argument made *some* sense back in the XP-Vista-7 days, as those three releases were all very similar to each other UI-wise. But even there there was a significant jump between Win9x/2000 and WinXP, not to mention the enormous difference between Win3.x and Win9x. Win8 was a complete sea-change from Win7.
If you can figure out how to adapt from Win7 to Win8/10, then you can certainly figure out how to adapt to an alternative OS's UI.
take the window min/max/close buttons on MacOSX and Ubuntu, which for some reason they decided to put on the left instead of the right which everyone has been made familiar with over the last couple decades.... And to what end?
That's pretty simple: the original Windows design is poor, because it's very easy to mis-click when trying to maximize and instead close your program, because some moron at MS though it'd be a great idea to stick the two tiny buttons right next to each other.
If you have a hard time figuring out how to use a window-close button on the left side, you're going to have a real problem when you're sat down at a Windows 8 or 10 computer with its "charms" and touchscreen-oriented UI.
I'm sorry, but your arguments are all completely stupid. I can't put it any more charitably than that. Your arguments sounded good back in the mid-2000s, but Windows 8 and Windows 10 have completely invalidated them.
Your daughter has never watched a Disney movie? Kids are shaped by their environments; they don't grow up in vacuums, nor do they get exposed to only the things their parents want them to see, unless they're sequestered in some weird rural cult or something.
Finally, I never said kids *should* be encouraged to go into anything, I just pointed out that our (American) culture does not assign prestige to programming or engineering careers the way it does for doctors and lawyers and CEOs. So any parent trying to encourage their kid to go into programming or engineering will actually be fighting against general society and its values. I was explaining why I think a lot of people avoid these professions; I never made a judgment about what parents should or shouldn't do, nor did I even claim these careers were great or that the "shortage" is actually a problem. Did you even read my comment?
Then you're an idiot. Please point to any evidence that there was ever a problem with this. Even Donald Trump doesn't think it's a problem.
Personally, I wouldn't want my kids sharing a bathroom with religious nuts like you, since you might try to convert them, but unfortunately the law doesn't allow us to forbid religious nuts from using public restrooms.
Why is this a bad thing? Believe it or not, there's plenty of other work out there. Uber was just the natural choice of many who already had a car and knew how to drive, but as one of people from TFA noted, it's not a good way to make a living.
So what exactly IS a good way to make a living if you're a 60+ paralegal who lost her job just before retirement? You're too old to get hired someplace new most likely, and you're too young to start drawing on Social Security. So tell me, what is your advice for someone like that? Go back to school? Get a job as a greeter at Walmart?
The obvious answer to all of this is that we need a Universal Basic Income.
The NSA have the money, the soldiers and all forms of resources though.
They do?
I realize the US government controls a large amount of money, for fairly obvious reasons, but it's also infamous for government jobs not paying very well compared to private-sector jobs. This has been a big problem for some time now with the government unable to effectively recruit and retain tech workers. The main draw of a government job is stability, not pay, so this results in the government having a lot of not-so-competent workers, while all the best people go to work in private industry somewhere where they can get a lot more money.
I have a hard time believing that the NSA is somehow exempt from this problem. Federal government compensation is, to my knowledge, standardized across all the agencies.
Having soldiers isn't any help here, we're talking about malware, hacking tools, etc. If your goal is to hack into some computer on the other side of the planet, without being detected, so that you can spy on someone, having a gun isn't going to help you.
The OPM data breech last year should have been a good indicator about how incompetent the US government is at computer security. When you can't hire and retain the best people, but you're trying to protect one of the most valuable targets in the world, disaster is imminent. And due to the utterly broken nature of the government (basically, good luck getting Congress to agree to pass a law fixing this problem), there is no solution.
You've pointed out the problem right here, along with the other responder's comment about white teachers.
Change in a community has to come from within.
And it's not just black Americans; I saw the same stupid attitudes among poor white kids when I was young. But people like you don't pay attention to them because 1) they're white and not a minority so you don't really care, and 2) since they're not substantially ethnically different and their numbers are buoyed by their richer white counterparts (who usually come from entirely different regions and socioeconomic backgrounds), they don't attract any attention from do-gooders.
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Hopefully by the time 8.1 (if not 7) is reaching EOL they will have given Nutella his walking papers, if they haven't? Well I don't think there will be a Windows business to worry about really, it'll just be legacy installs while everyone is on Google or Apple OSes.
I'm sorry, I completely disagree.
First, I applaud Nadella; he's doing a great job. I for one am really enjoying watching this shit-show. It's very entertaining watching Windows users suffer.
But this idea that MS will go under due to this is silly. We're already seeing it now: Win10 is a semi-disaster, but it doesn't matter because customers are sticking with it anyway. It really doesn't matter what MS does, as long as Windows mostly works (just like old British cars mostly worked, they only needed to visit the mechanic a few times a month or so, but they could probably be counted on to work about 50% of the time); most customers simply will not abandon the Windows platform, no matter what. Some home customers might, going to either OSX, iOS, Android, or Chomebooks, but enterprise customers absolutely will not. After all, if your business gets its IT support from HP Enterprise, you already have bigger problems with reliability than Windows 10.
I'm just surprised it took MS this long to realize they had free reign to screw over their customers without any repercussions. It's about time. This will be good for their profitability and their stock price.
The least they could do for this compilation of fail is give us machines that are reliable.
Why should they? Reliability costs money: it takes more engineering resources (and higher quality ones too) to make software reliable instead of just slapping features in . Why should MS do this? It'll just detract from their bottom line. They can be more profitable by doing less engineering (and having less engineering staff too), and just letting customers deal with the problems. It's not like the customers are going to abandon Windows.
What's really funny is that the apologists/shills (I think most of them are really apologists, not paid shills) have long trotted out the tired old meme about Linux "not having drivers", even though it's mostly BS. Yet Linux never has problems like this where drivers actually get broken in new releases, whereas apparently it's now a real issue with Windows.
I can think of a few more: the A-10 Thunderbolt II ("Warthog"), and a couple of WWII bombers. Not to mention various other airplanes made during the 50s-60s which are now retired. Back then, it seems they were able to go from a vague idea to an excellent military aircraft design in full production in 4 years, back when design had to be done on paper/vellum rather than CAD. These days it takes 15 years and the final product has all kinds of problems.
I think another factor is that in private industry, you can jump around pretty easily if you're any good at all. Tired of the horrible upper management at your company? No problem, just start interviewing and get a new job. Your company drives itself into the ground (or just your division)? No problem, just go find a new job. Your pay is stagnant, and/or you're tired of the incompetence or the IT infrastructure at your job? Start looking. Of course, getting a new job isn't *that* easy, but in a tech hub with lots of openings for your skillset it's not that hard. But when you work for the government, there is no jumping around, not that easily, and you won't get a big pay raise for doing so (unless you defect to the private sector of course).
MS seems to have decided that they have the rights to:
1) Monitor all windows uses, without consent;
2) Force any software changes they wish, overriding our own settings or expressed wishes;
3) Turn windows into adware by pushing ads out to windows users - probably related to point 1;
They absolutely DO have these rights (and they DO have consent: it's in the EULA you agreed to and which has the force of law as proven in court cases). If you don't agree with these terms, then it's your job as the customer to find a better vendor.
My primary OS now is Linux, installed on multiple computers, and it would continue to be regularly updated. MS has made dumping their OS one of the easiest decisions to make.
Too bad all MS users aren't as smart as you; most of them will just bend over and take it.
Just imagine 100 applications and 70,000 computers all with different needs filled with very old quirky shit taped up where customers still demand we use IE 6 for much of it. We have a hack to get it to work under Windows 7 with Citrix. These patches break TLS 1.0 which is insecure yes, but our clients can not run without it!
Explain how we can move to Linux and use active directory and group policy and security auditing and SCCM to push applications that are all win32 based in such an environment?
I'm not sure how you're going to succeed in getting that mess to work reliably on Windows 10, much less Linux.
With the situation that bad, you need to go back to those vendors and demand better software (esp. Linux versions). If they can't deliver, it's time to migrate to new vendors who can. We can blame MS for a lot of stuff, but I don't really see how we can blame them for shitty 3rd-party software vendors requiring IE6 for their "enterprise" application to work. The blame rightly goes to the customer for selecting this crap, and then not keeping on top of things and making sure mission-critical applications will continue to work on newer OSes, and not switching to vendors who have better products (or just building your own in-house if the ISVs are this bad).
When MS released the Modern/Metro interface they got ripped, big time. When Linux screwed up with KDE 4/Gnome 3 fiascos, a LOT (far too many) of FOSS advocates were quick to make every excuse in the book. "Oh, it's OK because it is Linux." A lot of that happened right here on /.
Oh, BS. I remember it quite differently: there was no end to the bitching and complaining about both KDE4 and Gnome3, and for good reason too. Gnome3 was so disliked that it directly spawned not one, but two new DEs: MATE and Cinnamon, because people were so mad about it and wanted Gnome2 (or something close to it) back. KDE4 was a disaster (though many blame part of it on distros making it the main KDE version even though KDE themselves said it wasn't ready for primetime use) that many people abandoned KDE and never came back. Both these fiascos were hugely controversial and generated a lot of ill feelings.
However this is probably the first time ever, that I've heard the FOSS community really get upset, I mean upset at Linux itself, not at MS. Not that it seems to be doing much to stop (or redirect) the systemd juggernaut.
Then you're either a liar or you haven't been paying attention. Gnome3 and KDE4.0 both caused just as much upset as systemd, if not more so (I'm leaning towards more so, because regular users notice their DE a whole lot more than they notice their init system). Personally, it sounds like you're a liar who's on the anti-systemd bandwagon and is trying to twist things there to get more people on your side.
It wasn't just there...at major sites all over town all last weekend, I saw a surprisingly LARGE amount of people out all times of day and especially late night playing it...
Am I the only one who's reminded of the ST:TNG episode about Riker finding the head-mounted video game on Risa and the whole crew of the Enterprise becoming addicted to it?
Good point. I've never actually used Ubuntu after they moved to Unity (I started with SUSE KDE, went to Kubuntu, and landed at Mint/KDE but I have a CNC machine running Ubuntu with Gnome2), so I just assumed they only put the 'X' button on the left since that's what the OP complained about (though I see now I misread what he wrote).
No, I'm quite sure there's no easy way to move the buttons around on Windows. On KDE, however, it's pretty easy and extremely configurable; you can put space in between buttons, you can move them around anywhere on the bar, you can put in different buttons for more functionality, etc.
So mea culpa; I really don't see a good reason to move all three buttons to the left since that just gives you the same problem but in a different location. However, if they'd make it configurable (and according to you it is on Unity, I don't know about others except KDE), that's a great feature.
HELL YES.
If you've decided you trust Microsoft to provide you the operating system that controls your computer and gives you access to all your critical data, then why are you doubting them when it comes to telemetry and spyware and advertising? Your chosen vendor has decided these things are best for you. It's asinine for you to say otherwise.
If you disagree with your vendor about the software they provide you to this extent, then why are you still using them and their product? You don't trust them with their spyware, but you do trust them to give you a secure OS to protect your data? Is it not obvious how twisted that thinking is?
The problem is that we still have to actually use Windows at work, which sucks. But oh well, the way I look at it, that's part of what I'm getting paid for: to put up with bullshit. It's called "work" for a reason.
Hopefully I can get back to an all-Linux job sometime in the near future. But for now, I'll collect my nice paycheck and put up with the bullshit; if there's a problem with Windows, I call the IT people and let them deal with it, then make sure my manager knows that's why my work is late so the blame is assigned properly.
Frankly, I'm all for this latest brain dead move by Microsoft. ... Same result in both cases; more pain for using Windows and a greater chance that alternatives will be considered, and anything that disrupts the Microsoft monoculture is fine by me.
Me too, but after so many years of seeing what MS users are willing to put up with, and how few people ever actually do try any alternatives, I seriously doubt MS is going to lose any significant number of customers with these user-hostile moves. They're getting bolder and bolder, and do we see anyone actually switching? No, not really. Most likely, they've finally figured out (as I've been advocating for quite a while) that they can easily screw over their customers for greater profits and still afford to lose a few; the greater profits from the remaining customers will more than make up for the loss, and since most people (and especially businesses) are completely unwilling to leave the Windows ecosystem, there's really not much limit to how much they can be screwed, so MS might as well do so. It's every corporation's mission to maximize profit, and MS has the somewhat-unique position that their customers are locked-in and won't leave, so it's to their advantage to screw them over however they can for more money: higher license fees, advertising, spyware, etc. The biggest problem MS has, and the biggest competitor, is their older Windows versions, so the biggest danger is people just sticking with old versions. Well MS has figured out how to deal with that: forcibly push everyone to Win10 and then force-feed them advertising and spyware and use that to make more money on them. Maybe they'll intentionally break old hardware with Windows updates to get people to buy new PCs, which means new Windows licensing fees.
Anyway, I don't expect them to lose very many users no matter how awful they get, but things have gotten easier for Linux users (such as things like online tax prep services, Firefox/Chrome taking over the web browser market, etc.), so I'm enjoying sitting back with some popcorn and watching all the Windows users suffer with some new outrage every week. It's a lot like watching Game of Thrones and seeing people constantly getting murdered or brutalized; most of them are jerks anyway so I don't feel too bad for them, and the same goes for Windows users: they made that choice, so they have to suffer the consequences.
I've read similar stories too. On Slashdot, I totally dismiss them; Slashdot readership is not representative of computer users in the slightest. I haven't used Windows for years for personal machines, but I also don't think of myself as a typical computer user; if I were, Microsoft would have been out of business ages ago.
I've read similar stories elsewhere too, but only a handful. Guess what? They really don't matter. 0.1% of MS users defecting to Mint or Ubuntu or OSX just isn't going to affect them significantly, when they're using their new techniques (spyware, advertising, Windows Store) to significantly increase their profits on the users who do remain, which is almost all of them.
I applaud the tiny, tiny minority of Windows users who have finally decided enough is enough and at least tried switching to something else. I wish they had done it sooner instead of waiting until the abuses were this bad, but I guess it's better late than never. But there's just no evidence that these people are really that significant in number. MS doesn't need 100.0% marketshare to continue its evil ways; a nice 94% or so is plenty. With so many customers absolutely refusing to leave them no matter what, it's entirely to their advantage to abuse them as much as they want instead of trying to keep them happy. I'm really not sure what took them this long to figure out they have a captive audience.
There's a whole slew of online competitors to TurboTax. All you need is a web browser.
I think it's less laziness than the efficiency of familiarity, combined with the fact that "alternative OSes" historically presented a far more different UI than has become the case with many today.
WTF are you talking about? Have you not seen Windows 8 or 10?
This argument made *some* sense back in the XP-Vista-7 days, as those three releases were all very similar to each other UI-wise. But even there there was a significant jump between Win9x/2000 and WinXP, not to mention the enormous difference between Win3.x and Win9x. Win8 was a complete sea-change from Win7.
If you can figure out how to adapt from Win7 to Win8/10, then you can certainly figure out how to adapt to an alternative OS's UI.
take the window min/max/close buttons on MacOSX and Ubuntu, which for some reason they decided to put on the left instead of the right which everyone has been made familiar with over the last couple decades. ... And to what end?
That's pretty simple: the original Windows design is poor, because it's very easy to mis-click when trying to maximize and instead close your program, because some moron at MS though it'd be a great idea to stick the two tiny buttons right next to each other.
If you have a hard time figuring out how to use a window-close button on the left side, you're going to have a real problem when you're sat down at a Windows 8 or 10 computer with its "charms" and touchscreen-oriented UI.
I'm sorry, but your arguments are all completely stupid. I can't put it any more charitably than that. Your arguments sounded good back in the mid-2000s, but Windows 8 and Windows 10 have completely invalidated them.
Your daughter has never watched a Disney movie? Kids are shaped by their environments; they don't grow up in vacuums, nor do they get exposed to only the things their parents want them to see, unless they're sequestered in some weird rural cult or something.
Finally, I never said kids *should* be encouraged to go into anything, I just pointed out that our (American) culture does not assign prestige to programming or engineering careers the way it does for doctors and lawyers and CEOs. So any parent trying to encourage their kid to go into programming or engineering will actually be fighting against general society and its values. I was explaining why I think a lot of people avoid these professions; I never made a judgment about what parents should or shouldn't do, nor did I even claim these careers were great or that the "shortage" is actually a problem. Did you even read my comment?
Then you're an idiot. Please point to any evidence that there was ever a problem with this. Even Donald Trump doesn't think it's a problem.
Personally, I wouldn't want my kids sharing a bathroom with religious nuts like you, since you might try to convert them, but unfortunately the law doesn't allow us to forbid religious nuts from using public restrooms.
Yes, but it's true. US news is mostly a bunch of BS about the Kardashians and the like.
Why is this a bad thing? Believe it or not, there's plenty of other work out there. Uber was just the natural choice of many who already had a car and knew how to drive, but as one of people from TFA noted, it's not a good way to make a living.
So what exactly IS a good way to make a living if you're a 60+ paralegal who lost her job just before retirement? You're too old to get hired someplace new most likely, and you're too young to start drawing on Social Security. So tell me, what is your advice for someone like that? Go back to school? Get a job as a greeter at Walmart?
The obvious answer to all of this is that we need a Universal Basic Income.
Oh BS. We're about to happily elect Hillary, who is blatantly corrupt. We, the voters, are entirely to blame for this fine mess.
The NSA have the money, the soldiers and all forms of resources though.
They do?
I realize the US government controls a large amount of money, for fairly obvious reasons, but it's also infamous for government jobs not paying very well compared to private-sector jobs. This has been a big problem for some time now with the government unable to effectively recruit and retain tech workers. The main draw of a government job is stability, not pay, so this results in the government having a lot of not-so-competent workers, while all the best people go to work in private industry somewhere where they can get a lot more money.
I have a hard time believing that the NSA is somehow exempt from this problem. Federal government compensation is, to my knowledge, standardized across all the agencies.
Having soldiers isn't any help here, we're talking about malware, hacking tools, etc. If your goal is to hack into some computer on the other side of the planet, without being detected, so that you can spy on someone, having a gun isn't going to help you.
The OPM data breech last year should have been a good indicator about how incompetent the US government is at computer security. When you can't hire and retain the best people, but you're trying to protect one of the most valuable targets in the world, disaster is imminent. And due to the utterly broken nature of the government (basically, good luck getting Congress to agree to pass a law fixing this problem), there is no solution.
Studious kids are picked on for "acting white"
You've pointed out the problem right here, along with the other responder's comment about white teachers.
Change in a community has to come from within.
And it's not just black Americans; I saw the same stupid attitudes among poor white kids when I was young. But people like you don't pay attention to them because 1) they're white and not a minority so you don't really care, and 2) since they're not substantially ethnically different and their numbers are buoyed by their richer white counterparts (who usually come from entirely different regions and socioeconomic backgrounds), they don't attract any attention from do-gooders.
Sorry, I agree with the other commenter here, and George Takei.
What good are incentives if any man who takes them has to worry about being falsely accused of molestation and constantly looked at strangely?