I'm the same way. I still have a full up desktop in addition to my laptop, not to mention my servers. Planning world domination takes a lot of resources after all. But we're uncommon among average households. The average household is content watching cat videos on a tablet. Which, by the way, will make them far easier to dominate when my plans come to fruition...
There is a huge difference between content production and content consumption. I do both. When I'm out and about checking Facebook or reading my email and so forth, I don't need a desktop app. I can get by just fine doing all of my online shopping with a tablet or even my phone. Hell, I use the built in app on my Blu-ray player to stream my Netflix movies. Outside of some very specific tasks (and not counting work), I live most of my life without having to touch a desktop app.
But when I'm at work or when I'm doing some very specific development tasks at home, there is nothing better than a desktop application. There's absolutely no need for an online web based system for developing and integrating the embedded software I work on. In fact, having to use a web service would just be an extra level of complexity that does nothing but get in the way. That's not to say that having a local network to work over is bad. In fact, local networking capable tools greatly eases the job. But having to go through some 3rd party's web server for everything we did would get in the way more than help. The ancillary tools also have no need to be anything but a standard desktop application. A good quality desktop publishing system that makes Word look like the child's toy that it is would be best suited to being a desktop application. Again, there's no benefit to going through someone's web server to do tasks that can easily be done locally. The added layer of complexity would just add one (or more) extra failure point(s) that have no business getting in the way of getting work done. And that's all before you get into the limited UI that you get through a web interface compared to a dedicated desktop application.
The desktop is going away in the home. While it was all you had back in the days of 486's and Pentiums, the entire industry has evolved. For personal home use, there's really no need to have much beyond a tablet. Throw in a docking keyboard and you can pretty much do everything you want at home with web based services and simple tablet apps. So for the average home user there's nothing wrong with the desktop going away. But when it comes to getting real work done, like professional software development, video editing, and any number of other complex work, the desktop is basically impossible to beat and it's not going anywhere.
Sure, this is a good thing if you're already in the EU. But how are you going to get your data from the US to the EU without the NSA capturing the entire stream? What good will this do for anyone on this side of the pond?
Exactly. I was a self styled libertarian when I was a kid and only cared about myself. As I grew up I figured out that you can't form a functioning society on the "F**k everyone else, I got mine" ideals.
As much as I hate it being true, there's nothing I can change about the fact that other people are selfish and stupid and will stab you in the back just as soon as they shake your hand. That's just part of human nature. And for that reason, "pure" libertarianism can never work. It's the exact same reason why "pure" capitalism won't work. (why shouldn't I exploit the system to take as much as I can from as many people as I can?) It's also why "pure" communism won't work. (why should I work harder if I never receive any benefit?)
I just wish more people were smart enough to figure that out. But that would require them to give up their willful ignorance, which is one of the most impossible things to overcome.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the style. But I understand that others are. And if that's a style that's popular right now, why not build it? At the very least, they look a lot better than the run down cheap houses that they are replacing. While those older houses may have been nice at one time, they weren't built to last and the neighborhoods are better off with new housing, whatever the style.
Thing is, modern libertarianism is nothing more than "I want to get my way whatever the issue." Anything that stops you from doing what you want is evil government interference. Anything that lets your neighbor do anything you don't want is the government letting others infringe your freedom.
Starbucks is proof that great advertising can sell mediocre product to the masses. It's not that Starbucks is bad. It's just not all it's hyped up to be. Thing is, it doesn't have to be. When you make coffee flavored chocolate milk like most of the people buy, the coffee takes a back seat and you can get away with mediocre flavor.
Honestly, I didn't care enough to pay attention when this "controversy" broke. Given the fact that they scored more points after the balls were inflated properly, not to mention the fact that the outcome of a football game has zero real impact on my life, I found this whole flap to be little more than noise on my Facebook feed. The only reason I even knew about the decision is that a story showed up on the news. And then it showed up here. I still don't care enough to go and read all of the history of this whole thing. I was just making an observation about the part that was quoted. It's just not important enough to most people to pay attention to the details.
Now, if this was a forum for sports lovers, I'd expect that far more people would know the ins and outs of the decision and what standards were set ahead of time. But this is/. There may be some big sports fans that also post here but seriously, how much overlap is there between geeks on/. and devoted sports fans?
Given the flow of money in the NFL, I'm surprised there aren't more incidents like this happening all the time. I suspect every team of constantly pushing the rules, if not outright cheating any chance they get. Which ends up keeping everyone at a more or less level playing field. If everyone is cheating, is any real advantage gained?
"What I'm worth" to an employer is pretty much defined by "what is the lowest that a person they really want to hire [NOT "the person they think they want to hire"] will accept."
Not really. Starting about 10-15 years ago, the biggest rage in consulting was telling a CEO that engineering hours were interchangeable and that one engineer was just as good as any other. Trouble is, most upper level management is so disconnected from the reality of engineering that they believed the consultants. They have no idea that some engineers are better than others and what makes an experienced engineer more valuable than a junior engineer. So to them, engineers became nothing more than a line item on a balance sheet to be optimized. Drive the cost down and you increase your profits. It's that simple to them.
What they didn't understand, and most haven't yet figured out, is that by driving down the cost of engineering they're driving out all of the engineering talent that made the products great. At this point, they have low cost, low talent engineers who have no hope of building great things for the company. So the company flounders. They run off the CEO but he gets some huge severance because he was smart to write it into his contract. But the real failure is that they hire a carbon copy of the guy they just ran off. The new CEO makes all of the same bad decisions and the company continues to flounder. How many really great companies are now completely gone because their product offerings suddenly turned to s#!t?
It's all flowing from the lack of understanding at higher levels of management just what a good engineer really is worth. Sure, you can have your HR team (who barely know that an engineer isn't the guy on the train) grab anyone right out of school and dump them in an engineering position. But if you do that, you get what you pay for. It takes someone who actually understands engineering to be able to differentiate between the great, the average, and the mediocre. The fact that management doesn't care to differentiate at all between those types of engineers is what's going wrong. It's a complete failure by management to understand that different engineers have a different "worth" to a company in the first place. But to them it's all about the bottom line this fiscal quarter. That's the only thing that matters to most corporations out there. (and yes, I know there are exceptions but they are few and far between.)
A "computer company" is one which makes something computer related for sale (hardware or software) as it's primary business.
And Uber does that.
What computer software or hardware do they sell? Or, what computer software or hardware do they service for a fee?
The answer is, they don't. They use their own software in order to provide a different service. They don't sell software. They don't sell hardware. They don't sell any service for software or hardware. They sell a ride sharing service that just so happens to be facilitated by computers
Using computers extensively to provide your primary service (in this case, ride sharing/taxi service) does not make you a "computer company".
And Uber doesn't provide a taxi service. They own not a single car. Not a single driver is on their payroll. They provide a software service that connects riders and drivers. That's what they do. They're a software service company.
How is any of this relevant? There's plenty of companies who hire subcontractors for all sorts of things. It doesn't change the job being done. Lots of companies lease the building they operate in and hire a company to provide janitorial services rather than buy the building and hire the staff to do the work directly. When I was a kid I delivered newspapers. Every one of the people delivering newspapers was an independent contractor. That didn't change the fact that we were paper carriers. The entire distribution network was made up of independent contractors but that's how that particular newspaper operated. But whether they hired direct employees and provided the transportation or not, the job that was being done wouldn't change one iota. The paperwork in the main office would change but the job being done would remain the same.
As I've already noted above, I completely forgot about their cloud/web service division. That part of the company is what I would call a "computer company" because that's their entire product line. Had I remembered that from the beginning, I would have had a different initial response. But I'm human and I forgot. Thank you for being the second person to point out my misstep.
The division of Amazon that does retail sales I would not classify as a "computer company". They're a retail store, albeit a very large one with a significant investment in automation. But they are still just a retail store.
As far as Uber, there's no way you can stretch so far as to classify it as a computer company. Sure, they use computers to facilitate their business. But so what? So do 99% or more of the companies operating in this country. That doesn't make them a "computer company" any more than any other company that gives away a free app to make patronizing their primary business easier.
I can redefine terms and claim I'm right too. Doesn't mean I am.
Convention dictates that when you describe a company, you describe what it sells. Not what they have in the back office that they use to create what they sell. I'm sure Uber has a bunch of office space and cubicles. They couldn't get the job done without that but you don't call them a cubicle company because they don't sell cubicles.
Summit Racing uses computers to sell car parts in the retail market. They are an auto parts retailer. Tesla uses computers to design cars. They are a car manufacturer. Facebook uses computers to collect data on people to sell to advertisers. They are a social media company. Uber uses computers to sell their ride sharing/taxi service. They are a ride share/taxi service.
None of these companies are "computer companies" yet computers are fundamental to them being able to do what they do.
Is a plumber a tool company? I mean, he exists solely on top of his tools.
The obvious answer to that question is no, he's not a tool company. But by the same token, Uber is not a computer company. Uber is a service company. They sell a service. That they use computers to do so does not make them a computer company.
Slashdot Mirror
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Ah yes. I forgot to point out that it was a joke before the overly pedantic nit-pickers showed up.
It's a joke. Laugh. It's funny. Trust me.
I'm the same way. I still have a full up desktop in addition to my laptop, not to mention my servers. Planning world domination takes a lot of resources after all. But we're uncommon among average households. The average household is content watching cat videos on a tablet. Which, by the way, will make them far easier to dominate when my plans come to fruition...
PCs have already been supplanted by consoles in the "entertainment platform" arena. Where have you been?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
That's because they already have you. The only way to really keep your salary up to average or better is to jump companies every once in a while.
A full half of the population is below average.
Absolutely this.
There is a huge difference between content production and content consumption. I do both. When I'm out and about checking Facebook or reading my email and so forth, I don't need a desktop app. I can get by just fine doing all of my online shopping with a tablet or even my phone. Hell, I use the built in app on my Blu-ray player to stream my Netflix movies. Outside of some very specific tasks (and not counting work), I live most of my life without having to touch a desktop app.
But when I'm at work or when I'm doing some very specific development tasks at home, there is nothing better than a desktop application. There's absolutely no need for an online web based system for developing and integrating the embedded software I work on. In fact, having to use a web service would just be an extra level of complexity that does nothing but get in the way. That's not to say that having a local network to work over is bad. In fact, local networking capable tools greatly eases the job. But having to go through some 3rd party's web server for everything we did would get in the way more than help. The ancillary tools also have no need to be anything but a standard desktop application. A good quality desktop publishing system that makes Word look like the child's toy that it is would be best suited to being a desktop application. Again, there's no benefit to going through someone's web server to do tasks that can easily be done locally. The added layer of complexity would just add one (or more) extra failure point(s) that have no business getting in the way of getting work done. And that's all before you get into the limited UI that you get through a web interface compared to a dedicated desktop application.
The desktop is going away in the home. While it was all you had back in the days of 486's and Pentiums, the entire industry has evolved. For personal home use, there's really no need to have much beyond a tablet. Throw in a docking keyboard and you can pretty much do everything you want at home with web based services and simple tablet apps. So for the average home user there's nothing wrong with the desktop going away. But when it comes to getting real work done, like professional software development, video editing, and any number of other complex work, the desktop is basically impossible to beat and it's not going anywhere.
I'll take that as a no.
Sure, this is a good thing if you're already in the EU. But how are you going to get your data from the US to the EU without the NSA capturing the entire stream? What good will this do for anyone on this side of the pond?
Do you have anything more than a petulant "Nuh Uh! You're wrong because I say so!" to "trot out"?
Exactly. I was a self styled libertarian when I was a kid and only cared about myself. As I grew up I figured out that you can't form a functioning society on the "F**k everyone else, I got mine" ideals.
As much as I hate it being true, there's nothing I can change about the fact that other people are selfish and stupid and will stab you in the back just as soon as they shake your hand. That's just part of human nature. And for that reason, "pure" libertarianism can never work. It's the exact same reason why "pure" capitalism won't work. (why shouldn't I exploit the system to take as much as I can from as many people as I can?) It's also why "pure" communism won't work. (why should I work harder if I never receive any benefit?)
I just wish more people were smart enough to figure that out. But that would require them to give up their willful ignorance, which is one of the most impossible things to overcome.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the style. But I understand that others are. And if that's a style that's popular right now, why not build it? At the very least, they look a lot better than the run down cheap houses that they are replacing. While those older houses may have been nice at one time, they weren't built to last and the neighborhoods are better off with new housing, whatever the style.
Thing is, modern libertarianism is nothing more than "I want to get my way whatever the issue." Anything that stops you from doing what you want is evil government interference. Anything that lets your neighbor do anything you don't want is the government letting others infringe your freedom.
She's sexist. Not classist.
A good number of people watched Honey Boo Boo too.
So is every brand of junk food.
Starbucks is proof that great advertising can sell mediocre product to the masses. It's not that Starbucks is bad. It's just not all it's hyped up to be. Thing is, it doesn't have to be. When you make coffee flavored chocolate milk like most of the people buy, the coffee takes a back seat and you can get away with mediocre flavor.
Honestly, I didn't care enough to pay attention when this "controversy" broke. Given the fact that they scored more points after the balls were inflated properly, not to mention the fact that the outcome of a football game has zero real impact on my life, I found this whole flap to be little more than noise on my Facebook feed. The only reason I even knew about the decision is that a story showed up on the news. And then it showed up here. I still don't care enough to go and read all of the history of this whole thing. I was just making an observation about the part that was quoted. It's just not important enough to most people to pay attention to the details.
Now, if this was a forum for sports lovers, I'd expect that far more people would know the ins and outs of the decision and what standards were set ahead of time. But this is /. There may be some big sports fans that also post here but seriously, how much overlap is there between geeks on /. and devoted sports fans?
Given the flow of money in the NFL, I'm surprised there aren't more incidents like this happening all the time. I suspect every team of constantly pushing the rules, if not outright cheating any chance they get. Which ends up keeping everyone at a more or less level playing field. If everyone is cheating, is any real advantage gained?
"What I'm worth" to an employer is pretty much defined by "what is the lowest that a person they really want to hire [NOT "the person they think they want to hire"] will accept."
Not really. Starting about 10-15 years ago, the biggest rage in consulting was telling a CEO that engineering hours were interchangeable and that one engineer was just as good as any other. Trouble is, most upper level management is so disconnected from the reality of engineering that they believed the consultants. They have no idea that some engineers are better than others and what makes an experienced engineer more valuable than a junior engineer. So to them, engineers became nothing more than a line item on a balance sheet to be optimized. Drive the cost down and you increase your profits. It's that simple to them.
What they didn't understand, and most haven't yet figured out, is that by driving down the cost of engineering they're driving out all of the engineering talent that made the products great. At this point, they have low cost, low talent engineers who have no hope of building great things for the company. So the company flounders. They run off the CEO but he gets some huge severance because he was smart to write it into his contract. But the real failure is that they hire a carbon copy of the guy they just ran off. The new CEO makes all of the same bad decisions and the company continues to flounder. How many really great companies are now completely gone because their product offerings suddenly turned to s#!t?
It's all flowing from the lack of understanding at higher levels of management just what a good engineer really is worth. Sure, you can have your HR team (who barely know that an engineer isn't the guy on the train) grab anyone right out of school and dump them in an engineering position. But if you do that, you get what you pay for. It takes someone who actually understands engineering to be able to differentiate between the great, the average, and the mediocre. The fact that management doesn't care to differentiate at all between those types of engineers is what's going wrong. It's a complete failure by management to understand that different engineers have a different "worth" to a company in the first place. But to them it's all about the bottom line this fiscal quarter. That's the only thing that matters to most corporations out there. (and yes, I know there are exceptions but they are few and far between.)
Companies are defined by what they sell. Not what they use to create what they sell.
A plumber owns no plumbing systems. He owns tools. That doesn't make a plumber a "tool company".
And Uber does that.
What computer software or hardware do they sell? Or, what computer software or hardware do they service for a fee?
The answer is, they don't. They use their own software in order to provide a different service. They don't sell software. They don't sell hardware. They don't sell any service for software or hardware. They sell a ride sharing service that just so happens to be facilitated by computers
And Uber doesn't provide a taxi service. They own not a single car. Not a single driver is on their payroll. They provide a software service that connects riders and drivers. That's what they do. They're a software service company.
How is any of this relevant? There's plenty of companies who hire subcontractors for all sorts of things. It doesn't change the job being done. Lots of companies lease the building they operate in and hire a company to provide janitorial services rather than buy the building and hire the staff to do the work directly. When I was a kid I delivered newspapers. Every one of the people delivering newspapers was an independent contractor. That didn't change the fact that we were paper carriers. The entire distribution network was made up of independent contractors but that's how that particular newspaper operated. But whether they hired direct employees and provided the transportation or not, the job that was being done wouldn't change one iota. The paperwork in the main office would change but the job being done would remain the same.
As I've already noted above, I completely forgot about their cloud/web service division. That part of the company is what I would call a "computer company" because that's their entire product line. Had I remembered that from the beginning, I would have had a different initial response. But I'm human and I forgot. Thank you for being the second person to point out my misstep.
The division of Amazon that does retail sales I would not classify as a "computer company". They're a retail store, albeit a very large one with a significant investment in automation. But they are still just a retail store.
As far as Uber, there's no way you can stretch so far as to classify it as a computer company. Sure, they use computers to facilitate their business. But so what? So do 99% or more of the companies operating in this country. That doesn't make them a "computer company" any more than any other company that gives away a free app to make patronizing their primary business easier.
I can redefine terms and claim I'm right too. Doesn't mean I am.
Convention dictates that when you describe a company, you describe what it sells. Not what they have in the back office that they use to create what they sell. I'm sure Uber has a bunch of office space and cubicles. They couldn't get the job done without that but you don't call them a cubicle company because they don't sell cubicles.
Summit Racing uses computers to sell car parts in the retail market. They are an auto parts retailer. Tesla uses computers to design cars. They are a car manufacturer. Facebook uses computers to collect data on people to sell to advertisers. They are a social media company. Uber uses computers to sell their ride sharing/taxi service. They are a ride share/taxi service.
None of these companies are "computer companies" yet computers are fundamental to them being able to do what they do.
Is a plumber a tool company? I mean, he exists solely on top of his tools.
The obvious answer to that question is no, he's not a tool company. But by the same token, Uber is not a computer company. Uber is a service company. They sell a service. That they use computers to do so does not make them a computer company.
Doh! I forgot about their cloud services. So fine. That division is a computer company. But that's not the whole company.