Ubuntu, arguably the most popular distro for end-users (and less arguably, the highest profile), logs everything you type into dash. They don't even warn you. I've only just learned this. Their is even a privacy entry in dash with NO mention of this (and most of those controls don't do what you expect, even worse than any facebook privacy controls I've used). Does Windows 8 do this? I doubt it. And, you think linux is going to win the hearts and minds of the people because they are concerned with privacy. I, for one, will be screaming caveats and warnings if anyone EVER suggests that some popular linux distro has better privacy control than Windows.
The other popular end-user linux variant is Android, and it's a privacy nightmare.
I'll admit that this is distro specific, but if your argument does not apply to a user friendly distro, it's moot. Linux COULD differentiate itself on good privacy, but the one big user friendly distro definitely does not right now, and it's only getting worse. Sadly, I really don't see this happening. Linux distros are always playing catch up because they're always following.
Possibly. Are you wishing 'happy birthday' to people you never talk to? I used to get those errant happy birthdays from about 5-10 idiots once a year on my myspace and 5-10 more on my facebook on some other random date. (Now, I just don't use those sites.)
I don't think that we will see this as the Lenovo Thinkpads age. People have talked about the rollcage design, and I actually agree that the lenovo enclosures are a step up. However, as for the rest of the product, they are not the products of superior design that the IBMs were.
I have a T60 and a T420s (and I've owned a T23, T40 and another T60p). The T420s has an abysmal screen, extraordinarily weak speakers, a lesser keyboard, poor battery life from day 1, terrible bluetooth range (noticeably worse than the T60), and the keyboard damages the screen like so many low quality laptops (I keep a sheet of A4 paper in mine to prevent this). Who cares about the Thinkpad brand? It's effectively dead. They're terrible now.
Indeed. Sony is one of currently three companies I would not buy any digital equipment or software from (the other two are Apple and Activision Blizzard).
I'll bite. Why Apple? (Other than the fact that you are required to say this as a slashdotter). If it's these recent legal battles, I think your list needs to be A LOT longer.
I'm a grad student, and my life sounds a lot like that. Or, well, it used to. I decided one semester in that there was no way I was staying for a PhD. Even my research-heavy MS is overload. But, I've learned to avoid the people that I love unless I am in a stress-free state (the light day of the weekend or semester break or whatever). My girlfriend and I have had to set ground rules (my proposal) so that I don't unload all my stress on her. They mostly revolve around me taking some time to decompress before we see each other.
Simple things like buying a birthday present or getting my car serviced are impossible to fit into my ridiculous schedule. Even if you can exist like this (as AC describes), why would you WANT to? This is not a normal or healthy lifestyle. I like to joke that all the really smart students are smart enough not to get a PhD. Two of our department's most promising students recently bailed with only an MS (well, one bailed early and the other never even applied for the PhD program despite pleadings from his undergraduate research advisor). He had published a full on research paper as first author as an undergrad at a top conference (we're talking real, graduate level research). Now, THAT is a man smart enough to know a PhD is a bad idea.
Fortunately for the people, we live in a time when we don't have to fight ridiculous copyright laws, we can just ignore them. Entire IP industries ignore our fair use rights and abuse OUR legal rights and protections. Well, the tables have turned, haven't they.
It sounds to me like you've already got the tools you need. You're telling me that you A) need work " sooner rather than later" and B) already have a good amount of experience and know modern marketable technologies. To quote a Kevin Smith movie, this is not the path of least resistance. On your resume, just downplay the "undesireables" like Basic and VB (arguably the ancient Z80 stuff, but more because it was so long ago more than it's not respectable). Ageism does exist, and you want to look fresh, especially on paper. The C and the C++ are very marketable skills if you actually can program in those languages (no offense; I don't know you, I'm just adding the disclaimer).
Finally, and I cannot stress this enough, there's no shortage of work for a good C programmer (probably not even for a suspect one). All the better if you can build things on your own. The same goes for C++.
I can agree with most of your pedantry, except the earth critique. The word "earth" is technically a proper noun, but is in such common usage that it almost makes sense not to capitalize it. On top of that, we DO say "the earth". No one says "the center of Earth" like we would for Jupiter or Mars. Rather, we would say "the center of the earth."
It is nigh impossible to brick your phone in an attempted jailbreak. There was an unlock solution a while back that would brick your phone if it was not compatible, but there were warnings everywhere on the jailbreak sites.
I was in China for 10 months, and I used a "shady" roll my own linux vpn (I mean, I didn't roll my own software, I used OpenVPN), and it worked fine. It was faster and cheaper than my friends' solutions.
Obviously, it's a good idea to have a backup to access the web for debugging (openvpn.net is blocked in China, go figure!). Ixquick.com or Startpage.com are great for a super simple proxy fallback.
I worked at a company that did something similar. Every minute of the day had to be assigned to a project. I have two points. The main one is that overhead is of course billable to the customer. Someone has to pay for it, and sales is the only inflow of money (or investment). That time is not magically free; those employees need to be paid. You raise a good point about remaining competitive, but many businesses aren't in great threat of competition undercutting them for the same product or service any time soon.
The second point is that I think it's better to track overhead as just that... overhead. That way, it can be more fairly split amongst the projects on which that employee is working by some reasonable metric. Just having the employee choose which projects to assign overhead to is almost the worst possible algorithm, because at the end of a friday, employees just don't care that much. It's untraceable, unreproduceable and just not a very deterministic way to assign that time. When I wasn't allowed to track overhead time, I'd just pick any old project to put my overhead time into (usually, doing it as quickly as possible, not as thoroughly as possible). Sure, I kinda tried to do it evenly or fairly. For example, say 90% of my reading and answering email time is related to one project, then all email time goes to that project, not X/N where X is the email reading time and N is the number of projects. But, then that time probably should be binned with that project regardless of the system used. But sometimes, there are company meetings or trainings or whatever. That time should be split up and assigned to the different customer projects from which I am paid. And, the process for doing that should be deterministc and well thought out and consistent.
Slashdot Mirror
Ubuntu, arguably the most popular distro for end-users (and less arguably, the highest profile), logs everything you type into dash. They don't even warn you. I've only just learned this. Their is even a privacy entry in dash with NO mention of this (and most of those controls don't do what you expect, even worse than any facebook privacy controls I've used). Does Windows 8 do this? I doubt it. And, you think linux is going to win the hearts and minds of the people because they are concerned with privacy. I, for one, will be screaming caveats and warnings if anyone EVER suggests that some popular linux distro has better privacy control than Windows.
The other popular end-user linux variant is Android, and it's a privacy nightmare.
I'll admit that this is distro specific, but if your argument does not apply to a user friendly distro, it's moot. Linux COULD differentiate itself on good privacy, but the one big user friendly distro definitely does not right now, and it's only getting worse. Sadly, I really don't see this happening. Linux distros are always playing catch up because they're always following.
I think we're going to finally see end-to-end encryption popularized for email. You can now mod me funny.
CO != CO2
Possibly. Are you wishing 'happy birthday' to people you never talk to? I used to get those errant happy birthdays from about 5-10 idiots once a year on my myspace and 5-10 more on my facebook on some other random date. (Now, I just don't use those sites.)
There's no law against providing Facebook with false information...
We're talking about pre-loading a cache, or pre-computing. This is NOT a grand idea. It's a pretty common thing.
Maybe? Definitely. It was his actions that were wrong.
I don't think that we will see this as the Lenovo Thinkpads age. People have talked about the rollcage design, and I actually agree that the lenovo enclosures are a step up. However, as for the rest of the product, they are not the products of superior design that the IBMs were.
How many android phones ship without a locked bootloader?
I have a T60 and a T420s (and I've owned a T23, T40 and another T60p). The T420s has an abysmal screen, extraordinarily weak speakers, a lesser keyboard, poor battery life from day 1, terrible bluetooth range (noticeably worse than the T60), and the keyboard damages the screen like so many low quality laptops (I keep a sheet of A4 paper in mine to prevent this). Who cares about the Thinkpad brand? It's effectively dead. They're terrible now.
Indeed. Sony is one of currently three companies I would not buy any digital equipment or software from (the other two are Apple and Activision Blizzard).
I'll bite. Why Apple? (Other than the fact that you are required to say this as a slashdotter). If it's these recent legal battles, I think your list needs to be A LOT longer.
EVERYBODY wants more RAM. It's universal among software programmers. As an embedded person myself, let me just say: Give me RAM or give me death.
I'm a grad student, and my life sounds a lot like that. Or, well, it used to. I decided one semester in that there was no way I was staying for a PhD. Even my research-heavy MS is overload. But, I've learned to avoid the people that I love unless I am in a stress-free state (the light day of the weekend or semester break or whatever). My girlfriend and I have had to set ground rules (my proposal) so that I don't unload all my stress on her. They mostly revolve around me taking some time to decompress before we see each other.
Simple things like buying a birthday present or getting my car serviced are impossible to fit into my ridiculous schedule. Even if you can exist like this (as AC describes), why would you WANT to? This is not a normal or healthy lifestyle. I like to joke that all the really smart students are smart enough not to get a PhD. Two of our department's most promising students recently bailed with only an MS (well, one bailed early and the other never even applied for the PhD program despite pleadings from his undergraduate research advisor). He had published a full on research paper as first author as an undergrad at a top conference (we're talking real, graduate level research). Now, THAT is a man smart enough to know a PhD is a bad idea.
Fortunately for the people, we live in a time when we don't have to fight ridiculous copyright laws, we can just ignore them. Entire IP industries ignore our fair use rights and abuse OUR legal rights and protections. Well, the tables have turned, haven't they.
Making money off the elderly and out of touch, the way God intended.
It sounds to me like you've already got the tools you need. You're telling me that you A) need work " sooner rather than later" and B) already have a good amount of experience and know modern marketable technologies. To quote a Kevin Smith movie, this is not the path of least resistance. On your resume, just downplay the "undesireables" like Basic and VB (arguably the ancient Z80 stuff, but more because it was so long ago more than it's not respectable). Ageism does exist, and you want to look fresh, especially on paper. The C and the C++ are very marketable skills if you actually can program in those languages (no offense; I don't know you, I'm just adding the disclaimer).
Finally, and I cannot stress this enough, there's no shortage of work for a good C programmer (probably not even for a suspect one). All the better if you can build things on your own. The same goes for C++.
I can agree with most of your pedantry, except the earth critique. The word "earth" is technically a proper noun, but is in such common usage that it almost makes sense not to capitalize it. On top of that, we DO say "the earth". No one says "the center of Earth" like we would for Jupiter or Mars. Rather, we would say "the center of the earth."
That was a (false) rumor. They sold for ~$16M.
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/2c5b4742c7/snl-celebrity-jeopardy-3-20-99
It is nigh impossible to brick your phone in an attempted jailbreak. There was an unlock solution a while back that would brick your phone if it was not compatible, but there were warnings everywhere on the jailbreak sites.
What exactly does Facebook _do_ ?
They deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to!
Maybe not some "shady" roll your own linux vpn
I was in China for 10 months, and I used a "shady" roll my own linux vpn (I mean, I didn't roll my own software, I used OpenVPN), and it worked fine. It was faster and cheaper than my friends' solutions.
Obviously, it's a good idea to have a backup to access the web for debugging (openvpn.net is blocked in China, go figure!). Ixquick.com or Startpage.com are great for a super simple proxy fallback.
I worked at a company that did something similar. Every minute of the day had to be assigned to a project. I have two points. The main one is that overhead is of course billable to the customer. Someone has to pay for it, and sales is the only inflow of money (or investment). That time is not magically free; those employees need to be paid. You raise a good point about remaining competitive, but many businesses aren't in great threat of competition undercutting them for the same product or service any time soon.
The second point is that I think it's better to track overhead as just that... overhead. That way, it can be more fairly split amongst the projects on which that employee is working by some reasonable metric. Just having the employee choose which projects to assign overhead to is almost the worst possible algorithm, because at the end of a friday, employees just don't care that much. It's untraceable, unreproduceable and just not a very deterministic way to assign that time. When I wasn't allowed to track overhead time, I'd just pick any old project to put my overhead time into (usually, doing it as quickly as possible, not as thoroughly as possible). Sure, I kinda tried to do it evenly or fairly. For example, say 90% of my reading and answering email time is related to one project, then all email time goes to that project, not X/N where X is the email reading time and N is the number of projects. But, then that time probably should be binned with that project regardless of the system used. But sometimes, there are company meetings or trainings or whatever. That time should be split up and assigned to the different customer projects from which I am paid. And, the process for doing that should be deterministc and well thought out and consistent.
So, this is the wanker who created paypal and now we're all grinding on his loins? No thanks.
I got modded a troll, but I honestly don't understand what you are saying. Explain it possibly?