After reading your thoughtful and well-considered comment, I'm abashed. I just went ballistic on an AC who suggested knowledge of Amelia Earhart was merely the product of her being American. : P
(I'm going to make my reply here as it's about midway on the page and I haven't seen anyone make this very obvious point.)
You can teach just about anyone to write usable Python, PHP, or Ruby. Fast. You can teach people with high school diplomas how to code in these languages especially if you have a framework in place.
Java not so much.
If you want to get started fast and have access to potential talent, go with the more accessible skill set. If you want to do it *just* right (and have, imo, a needlessly complicated code base) you can go with Java, C++, or PERL.
If you paid $1200 for your bike, you probably should stay in the ghetto with the other chumps.</sarcasm>
Spending is out of control among the wealthy and, in particular, Silicon Valley yuppies. One fairly popular bike store here in the Bay Area/SF has a dozen "bikes on sale" none of which are priced lower $5000 and, believe it or not, these bicycles are priced to move.
Take a stroll in the Marina any day of the week, but Sundays are especially good. You'll see dozens of spandex-clad superheroes riding these carbon-frame bicycles that cost more than some automobiles. The population of super-cyclists is much higher in places like Sausalito.
In short, the GP actually underestimates the cost of pricey biking by an order of exponent.
I am not in the least advocating the use of nuclear weapons anywhere. I am just pointing out the hypocrisy of the people who somehow think they are exceptional. I'm mostly pointing out it doesn't matter how you do it, once you start killing civilians, and rationalizing it, you are pretty seriously fucked up and you don't deserve a free pass no matter who you are or how righteous you think you are.
I'm pretty down with what you've stated here. Thanks for putting it so directly and succinctly.
I do still think that you underestimate how much collective regret Americans have about Hiroshima and Nagasaki but it's not like I have concrete data either.
Free speech doesn't mean you are able to say anything you want in any way you want
Actually, it does.
However, in practice there are limitations on free speech which most reasonable (and some unreasonable) people would agree are necessary to a functioning civil society, limitations that prevail even in countries that claim to be committed to freedom of expression.
It's the limitations most people feel are unacceptable that cause the problem. Right here, right now, right in what many of us consider to be "the free world", such unacceptable limitations exist, and many of us are pretty pissed about it.
I'll take a stab (re: your challenge to AC) at what's wrong with your thinking.
Killing 50,000 people is a tragedy any way you cut it. Killing 50K people inside of a week is horrible. Killing that many people in less than 5 seconds exceeds our human capacities for moral understanding. I think any human being whose sense of empathy is intact instinctively recoils from the idea of instantaneously annihilating, say, 2,000,000 people.
I believe the US has suffered great psycho-social repercussions for detonating nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Have you ever watched the opening of Gojira or Akira and not felt pain knowing the historical source of these holocaust scenarios?
I think the collective guilt Americans feel about how the US treated some Japanese during WW II (internment, nuclear detonations) is one of the reasons Japanese and Japanese culture are so well-loved by people many Americans. Not only are Japanese people as various and beautiful as we imagine them to be--which imagining makes the instantaneous loss of so many people painful to contemplate--but many of us are deeply regretful our country chose to use nuclear weapons on fellow human beings, however despicable the actions of its government. I personally hope neither we nor anyone else ever does such a thing again.
But given there are people who actually believe as you do, I'd lay better than even odds my hopes will one day be crushed by the news that the US has deployed a nuclear warhead over a Middle Eastern peoples.
They want to offer a super-cheap model so that the people who will simply buy the cheapest thing they can will have something to buy, but they don't want you to know what's wrong with their cheapo laptop. They want to offer a super expensive laptop, but they don't want you to know that there's a cheaper laptop available that will still do everything that you want. Instead they want you to buy something more expensive than what you need for fear that you're missing something.
This series of sentences taken together make no sense at all. How can a company that sells low-quality inexpensive laptops "want you to buy something more expensive than what you need for fear that you're missing something"?
Maybe computer manufacturers don't have so cynical and paradoxical an attitude towards their customers. Maybe manufacturers are merely trying to capture as much of the market as possible, both low- and high-end, and their strategy with the high-end doesn't work because people shopping in the high-end buy Apple. So the computer manufacturers (except Apple) end up fighting each other for the market's low-profit low-end (which counterintuitively comprises about 80% of the entire PC market).
In contrast I have my work provided HP Elitebook from 2009 (a fairly high-end business model) that creaks, groans, has plastic panels that don't seamlessly match up, a lower quality LCD, weighs more than the MBP, has fan exhausts in truly bizarre places and trackpad buttons that fire randomly sometimes. In it's favour it has slightly superior specs to the MBP, more ports and slots for various things, and it's relatively easier to disassemble (removable keyboards are great). However despite being 2 years younger in age I fully expect the MBP to be chugging along long after this thing is dead.
I appreciate that this is only an anecdote, and plenty of good reasons exist to hate on Apple, but in my experience the build quality of their gear is not one of them. An MBP is definitely worth a look IMHO.
You know, reading this and realizing that, yeah, Apple finally proved they could build a better machine for a premium price and still turn a fat profit, I really wish another company would step up to the plate.
I dunno, like why doesn’t MS start a small team of people to look into and research manufacturing a line of laptops and mobile devices whose build qualities are right up there with Apple's? Fuck it, why not give them the directive to SURPASS Apple? I think it can be done (no, I don't think it's easy but I know there are enough smart and talented people to do this) and I'd love to see it happen. Imagine having two (or more) companies making computing gear as sexy as Apple’s.
Somebody please do this. I will spend money on your stuff. In fact, lots of people will.
Ever try and build something from Ports only to have it *not* friggin work when you upgrade?
Nope.
I'm not a hardcore developer and even I go through the trouble of compiling and installing from source. Depending on homebrew/ports/${random_group_of_bros} for my geek software needs is just asking for trouble when your OS vendor (Apple) does whatever it's gotta do and your homebros are just too busy with their lives to fix your install of libpng and ImageMagick.
And, yeah, stuff breaks even if you have an extensive independent framework in/opt.
Or, you need to branch out and engage in the kinds of things other people like to do.
Or maybe you need to branch out and get some reading comprehension. The GP explicitly said
As good (and intelligent) as my friends are, most of them wouldn't want to spend an afternoon learning something interesting in Perl or building a robot for the fuck of it. We go out for drinks or to a diner or something like that. I'm finding that I have to divorce "intellectually stimulating" from "social interaction" more and more every day.
That is, he does "branch out and engage in the kinds of things other people like to do." The issue is that doing so presents a dichotomous life where his social interaction doing things others like is not intellectually fulfilling.
Somewhat related, there really needs to be a universal "I'm Sorry" hand signal.
I usually flash a peace sign (index and middle finger in a V, as if displaying the number two, thumb over ring and pinky). I use it also to signal thanks.
I see a lot of participation with the photography community within G+ - something I don't really see on Facebook, although my FB set of friends is pretty small, and I know all of them in real life.
I'm pretty much the same camp. I don't use my normal browser when I need to do something in Facebook as Facebook have proven themselves very interested in playing the shell game with users' privacy settings. Not interested.
However I use/surf G+ pretty regularly. The people in my circles are mainly users I know from a web-based discussion forum (not/.) and the posts are decidedly more intellectually engaging. I prefer G+'s pace where posts come in at about the rate of a dozen or so per day. The people in my circles are more thoughtful in their posts and the posts are of greater topical interests (as opposed to "Here's a pic of my cat eating my adorable offspring").
If preferring G+ to Facebook is wrong I don't want to be right.
I love that they could indefinitely detain for "unknowingly supporting terrorism."
To say nothing about the ways in which US politicians and government operatives make back-channel deals that support terrorism they find politically expedient. You won't see anyone being detained for that.
I buy a computer, or laptop, or phone, to help ME out with attaining knowledge not to serve the corporate master who built the computer/laptop/phone.
If you were looking for the "best" computer or the "best" MP3 player would you *really* go to Google/Siri/Bing/${random_ILS} and type a question like "What is the best ${device_or_service}?"
I didn't think so.
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
on
Diablo III Released
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· Score: 1
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or if you genuinely have no idea what you're talking about.
Is the mood of your writing blank irony, blankly ironic?
I'm thinking about Ballmer's undeserved coronation as "Worst CEO" by Forbes, especially given all the worse-performing candidates. I think a lot of the hate is also due to the unconsciously held idea that Ballmer (and Microsoft management in general) had the audacity to outlive one of his greatest nemeses (whose company continues to flourish even after the death of said nemesis) but not do something "great" in the aftermath.
I have disliked Windows and Microsoft since Windows 3.1. Everything about the company triggers my mediocre-, kludgey-, and clunky-alarms. I find the behaviorally expressed principles and ethics of the company's founders reprehensible.
With all this, your analysis of Ballmer's accomplishments as CEO intrigues me and makes me reevaluate my long-standing distrust of Microsoft. The forces inside Microsoft responsible for killing Netscape, for releasing year-after-year incompatible Office formats, and for attempting to destroy web standards are likely losing influence in Microsoft and, admittedly, Microsoft is becoming a better company for it.
Your comment helps me realize Microsoft is in the process of becoming a better company, despite the naysayers at Forbes. As a long-time opponent of Microsoft, I am glad to see Microsoft becoming a better, wiser company under the guidance of a somewhat battle-hardened CEO who, according to your account, is keeping the company in the black and greenlighting risky projects. As the cliche goes: nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I really hope Microsoft successfully makes the transition from convicted monopolist and technology also-ran to respected competitor and technical innovator. I think they can and your summary suggests Microsoft has made some important changes in this direction. Few things would please me more than one day embracing Microsoft as an alternative rather than avoiding them as an enemy.
MS could have paid millions to politicians to force the.mil to buy MS licenses for every Iraqi owned PC in Iraq, that would probably have a pretty good profit.
Which OSes do you imagine has actual dominance on "every Iraqi owned PC in Iraq"? Which OS do you imagine has the dominant position on any PC, period? Here's a hint: it's not Linux and it's not Mac OS.
(Basically, you're saying corruption would have helped MS rather than merely costing MS money for nothing.)
...and some vendors (mostly Apple, a little bit Google) have an interest in that not happening. So good luck waiting.
What evidence do you have for this claim? Apple and Google use the same browser engine and both companies seem quite committed to having markup, CSS, and JavaScript render identically in their browsers.
In other words, Apple and Google are fierce competitors but they are both sane enough to understand the benefit of shared web standards and both companies are leading the way in browser innovation. Have you taken a look at what Mobile Safari is capable of? Have you checked Google+ recently and seen its graceful and effective implementation of JavaScript?
My guess is you're trolling or reacting in accordance with unspecified and cult-like prejudices.
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Well put.
After reading your thoughtful and well-considered comment, I'm abashed. I just went ballistic on an AC who suggested knowledge of Amelia Earhart was merely the product of her being American. : P
I'm sure you talk a lot about her in US, but the world is not limited to US (common knowledge in the rest of the world).
That's right, bitch, USians only care about Amelia Earhart because she's Amuhrican, not because she's the FIRST WOMAN TO SOLO ACROSS THE ATLANTIC.
Make sure you KEEP your sexist, ethnocentric, xenophobic ass in that backwater you call a country and stay the hell away from us.
(I'm going to make my reply here as it's about midway on the page and I haven't seen anyone make this very obvious point.)
You can teach just about anyone to write usable Python, PHP, or Ruby. Fast. You can teach people with high school diplomas how to code in these languages especially if you have a framework in place.
Java not so much.
If you want to get started fast and have access to potential talent, go with the more accessible skill set. If you want to do it *just* right (and have, imo, a needlessly complicated code base) you can go with Java, C++, or PERL.
If you paid $1200 for your bike, you probably should stay in the ghetto with the other chumps.</sarcasm>
Spending is out of control among the wealthy and, in particular, Silicon Valley yuppies. One fairly popular bike store here in the Bay Area/SF has a dozen "bikes on sale" none of which are priced lower $5000 and, believe it or not, these bicycles are priced to move.
Take a stroll in the Marina any day of the week, but Sundays are especially good. You'll see dozens of spandex-clad superheroes riding these carbon-frame bicycles that cost more than some automobiles. The population of super-cyclists is much higher in places like Sausalito.
In short, the GP actually underestimates the cost of pricey biking by an order of exponent.
I'm pretty down with what you've stated here. Thanks for putting it so directly and succinctly.
I do still think that you underestimate how much collective regret Americans have about Hiroshima and Nagasaki but it's not like I have concrete data either.
Actually, it does.
However, in practice there are limitations on free speech which most reasonable (and some unreasonable) people would agree are necessary to a functioning civil society, limitations that prevail even in countries that claim to be committed to freedom of expression.
It's the limitations most people feel are unacceptable that cause the problem. Right here, right now, right in what many of us consider to be "the free world", such unacceptable limitations exist, and many of us are pretty pissed about it.
I don't have any more to add right now.
I'll take a stab (re: your challenge to AC) at what's wrong with your thinking.
Killing 50,000 people is a tragedy any way you cut it. Killing 50K people inside of a week is horrible. Killing that many people in less than 5 seconds exceeds our human capacities for moral understanding. I think any human being whose sense of empathy is intact instinctively recoils from the idea of instantaneously annihilating, say, 2,000,000 people.
I believe the US has suffered great psycho-social repercussions for detonating nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Have you ever watched the opening of Gojira or Akira and not felt pain knowing the historical source of these holocaust scenarios?
I think the collective guilt Americans feel about how the US treated some Japanese during WW II (internment, nuclear detonations) is one of the reasons Japanese and Japanese culture are so well-loved by people many Americans. Not only are Japanese people as various and beautiful as we imagine them to be--which imagining makes the instantaneous loss of so many people painful to contemplate--but many of us are deeply regretful our country chose to use nuclear weapons on fellow human beings, however despicable the actions of its government. I personally hope neither we nor anyone else ever does such a thing again.
But given there are people who actually believe as you do, I'd lay better than even odds my hopes will one day be crushed by the news that the US has deployed a nuclear warhead over a Middle Eastern peoples.
$299? I'm guessing your computer won't even last the time it takes for this thread to be archived.
This series of sentences taken together make no sense at all. How can a company that sells low-quality inexpensive laptops "want you to buy something more expensive than what you need for fear that you're missing something"?
Maybe computer manufacturers don't have so cynical and paradoxical an attitude towards their customers. Maybe manufacturers are merely trying to capture as much of the market as possible, both low- and high-end, and their strategy with the high-end doesn't work because people shopping in the high-end buy Apple. So the computer manufacturers (except Apple) end up fighting each other for the market's low-profit low-end (which counterintuitively comprises about 80% of the entire PC market).
In contrast I have my work provided HP Elitebook from 2009 (a fairly high-end business model) that creaks, groans, has plastic panels that don't seamlessly match up, a lower quality LCD, weighs more than the MBP, has fan exhausts in truly bizarre places and trackpad buttons that fire randomly sometimes. In it's favour it has slightly superior specs to the MBP, more ports and slots for various things, and it's relatively easier to disassemble (removable keyboards are great). However despite being 2 years younger in age I fully expect the MBP to be chugging along long after this thing is dead. I appreciate that this is only an anecdote, and plenty of good reasons exist to hate on Apple, but in my experience the build quality of their gear is not one of them. An MBP is definitely worth a look IMHO.
You know, reading this and realizing that, yeah, Apple finally proved they could build a better machine for a premium price and still turn a fat profit, I really wish another company would step up to the plate.
I dunno, like why doesn’t MS start a small team of people to look into and research manufacturing a line of laptops and mobile devices whose build qualities are right up there with Apple's? Fuck it, why not give them the directive to SURPASS Apple? I think it can be done (no, I don't think it's easy but I know there are enough smart and talented people to do this) and I'd love to see it happen. Imagine having two (or more) companies making computing gear as sexy as Apple’s.
Somebody please do this. I will spend money on your stuff. In fact, lots of people will.
Comparable in every way except being able to run any modern OS in the world, including Mac OS X.
Nope.
I'm not a hardcore developer and even I go through the trouble of compiling and installing from source. Depending on homebrew/ports/${random_group_of_bros} for my geek software needs is just asking for trouble when your OS vendor (Apple) does whatever it's gotta do and your homebros are just too busy with their lives to fix your install of libpng and ImageMagick.
And, yeah, stuff breaks even if you have an extensive independent framework in /opt.
Waste of freaking time.
Or maybe you need to branch out and get some reading comprehension. The GP explicitly said
That is, he does "branch out and engage in the kinds of things other people like to do." The issue is that doing so presents a dichotomous life where his social interaction doing things others like is not intellectually fulfilling.
I usually flash a peace sign (index and middle finger in a V, as if displaying the number two, thumb over ring and pinky). I use it also to signal thanks.
I'm pretty much the same camp. I don't use my normal browser when I need to do something in Facebook as Facebook have proven themselves very interested in playing the shell game with users' privacy settings. Not interested.
However I use/surf G+ pretty regularly. The people in my circles are mainly users I know from a web-based discussion forum (not /.) and the posts are decidedly more intellectually engaging. I prefer G+'s pace where posts come in at about the rate of a dozen or so per day. The people in my circles are more thoughtful in their posts and the posts are of greater topical interests (as opposed to "Here's a pic of my cat eating my adorable offspring").
If preferring G+ to Facebook is wrong I don't want to be right.
To say nothing about the ways in which US politicians and government operatives make back-channel deals that support terrorism they find politically expedient. You won't see anyone being detained for that.
I just finished Googling for a "Klom Dark" meme I hate you.
If you were looking for the "best" computer or the "best" MP3 player would you *really* go to Google/Siri/Bing/${random_ILS} and type a question like "What is the best ${device_or_service}?"
I didn't think so.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or if you genuinely have no idea what you're talking about.
Is the mood of your writing blank irony, blankly ironic?
I'm thinking about Ballmer's undeserved coronation as "Worst CEO" by Forbes, especially given all the worse-performing candidates. I think a lot of the hate is also due to the unconsciously held idea that Ballmer (and Microsoft management in general) had the audacity to outlive one of his greatest nemeses (whose company continues to flourish even after the death of said nemesis) but not do something "great" in the aftermath.
What chutzpah! Good on him.
I have disliked Windows and Microsoft since Windows 3.1. Everything about the company triggers my mediocre-, kludgey-, and clunky-alarms. I find the behaviorally expressed principles and ethics of the company's founders reprehensible.
With all this, your analysis of Ballmer's accomplishments as CEO intrigues me and makes me reevaluate my long-standing distrust of Microsoft. The forces inside Microsoft responsible for killing Netscape, for releasing year-after-year incompatible Office formats, and for attempting to destroy web standards are likely losing influence in Microsoft and, admittedly, Microsoft is becoming a better company for it.
The first real sign of such improvement is Windows Phone 7 (the name has GOT to go, though). Other signs include recent moves by Microsoft to embrace open source.
Your comment helps me realize Microsoft is in the process of becoming a better company, despite the naysayers at Forbes. As a long-time opponent of Microsoft, I am glad to see Microsoft becoming a better, wiser company under the guidance of a somewhat battle-hardened CEO who, according to your account, is keeping the company in the black and greenlighting risky projects. As the cliche goes: nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I really hope Microsoft successfully makes the transition from convicted monopolist and technology also-ran to respected competitor and technical innovator. I think they can and your summary suggests Microsoft has made some important changes in this direction. Few things would please me more than one day embracing Microsoft as an alternative rather than avoiding them as an enemy.
Which OSes do you imagine has actual dominance on "every Iraqi owned PC in Iraq"? Which OS do you imagine has the dominant position on any PC, period? Here's a hint: it's not Linux and it's not Mac OS.
(Basically, you're saying corruption would have helped MS rather than merely costing MS money for nothing.)
YOUR HEAD A SPLODE! top 4 features:
What evidence do you have for this claim? Apple and Google use the same browser engine and both companies seem quite committed to having markup, CSS, and JavaScript render identically in their browsers.
In other words, Apple and Google are fierce competitors but they are both sane enough to understand the benefit of shared web standards and both companies are leading the way in browser innovation. Have you taken a look at what Mobile Safari is capable of? Have you checked Google+ recently and seen its graceful and effective implementation of JavaScript?
My guess is you're trolling or reacting in accordance with unspecified and cult-like prejudices.