Finally, someone who understands the good and the bad! I like Apple products, in general. I have used a Mac since OS X was released because I was tired of fighting firewire on my linux boxes. Over the last five years though, they have increasingly locked consumers out of functionality, starting most obviously with "breaking" (in my opinion) iTunes so it's basically just a useless front end for their store, which I don't really use. They make it difficult to burn bootable disks because it's a buried option under disk utility rather than an option in the standard disk burning utilities, and several other non-consumer friendly issues I've found.
I use Macs because they work more consistently and more cleanly, for me in general than a windows counterpart and i was just tired of using linux and getting almost what I wanted out of it.
For the most part Macs do "just work" and work well for most of the target market. What we all have to realize though is that Apple has a target market, and despite what they say it isn't the "power user", it's the teenage kids and the hipsters or the video/music editing market. With any company that has a target market like that, they're going to make decisions that aren't best for everyone, and generally are only best for the bottom line. They are no better and no worse than any other corporation, MS included. In the end, it's all about money for them. And honestly, it should be.
Could they still retain some good and try to buck the system, sure. In their own way, I'm sure they feel like they are, but all you have to do is look at google and see that after a certain point, it doesn't matter what your original intentions were, it's impossible to "do no evil" in all aspects of business. So Apple, like all other companies, make sacrifices. Usually those sacrifices come at our (the consumers) expense.
I would say most of your comment was valid if Adobe and Apple hadn't been in bed together for a long time. After Effects is, in fact, on a large portion of Apple's core user base. The newer users (like myself) are less likely to have it, though some of us do. I know of at least 15 people that have legitimate copies of it and none of them are professional video editors.
The other part of your comment makes sense, but is simply an unrealistic expectation for 95% of end-users. Yes there are people who would know how to use a VM to test new software before upgrading, but the simple fact is, they shouldn't have to. Apple fucked up. Now they should own up to it and simply fix the problem.
Make that 80% gets paid by taxes and 20% gets paid by tolls and I'll think it's a decent solution. Otherwise everything would cost more because the roads are the primary method of shipping goods in the United States. You can bet any manufacturer will transfer those tolls back to the consumer, thus the people who don't use the roads as much are paying in a different way anyway.
So how do you tax investments that aren't physical? Serious question, not meaning to be sarcastic or anything. It's an interesting concept, but it only works if you consider having money "ownership" of the money. Also, how do you tax things you own that are necessities? IE you have to have a place to live but that can be a $10000 shack (or decent house depending upon where you live) or a $5 million mansion. How are those taxed differently, strictly based on dollar value or is it adjusted for market (some places in the US you can buy a decent single family home for $100k others you can't even buy a 1 bedroom condo for that.)
What about food, that's "ownership" if I can afford to "stock up" but it's still an essential to life. How would you deal with those things?
"Why ask the people who don't use the road to pay for it?"
Why ask people who don't have children to pay for eduction? Whether they use the roads directly, or not, they benefit from the fact that the road system is there. They benefit from cheaper goods because shipping is easier. They benefit from better access to medical care, and other services that wouldn't be available without the roads. The "I don't use it, I shouldn't have to pay for it" argument is tired and completely unrealistic.
How about the fact that they are vital infrustructure for just about every other asset we use. Without roads, the economy would tank completely as people wouldn't be able to do business the way we do now. Without roads, education would drastically change (not necessarily a bad thing but probably bad) and likely make the next generation completely useless except for the really rich, thus increasing the already widening gap between the haves and the have nots.
Thank you. My first thought was, the article was written by a coder who needed to justify how good he is. I've known plenty of damn good, dare I say great, coders who never spent time at home coding after they got out of school. They know/knew a couple of languages well, and left the other languages to people more qualified to handle them. I'd say that's a higher mark of someone's skill is asking them how they'd handle something that they don't list on their resume, or list as having some experience with, but not mastered.
Excessive use of computers may imply passion, but it also implies early burn-out for most coders I've met. The ones who last and are also good, by contrast, are just the opposite. They work hard at work, and they leave it alone when they're at home. Of course there are exceptions to all rules, and certainly to anecdotal evidence, but that's been my experience thus far.
Every time you have an interview, it should be their interview as much as yours. That's the point of an interview, to see if you fit together, not just to see if they think you fit them, but to see if you think they fit you too.
Every interview I've ever had, I interviewed my interviewer as much as they interviewed me. Maybe I'm strange, but it's worked so far.
Honestly, the best way is to read the business plan for yourself. Take a couple of classes in business, specifically something along the lines of how to get venture funding for a startup, and "business plan writing" classes.
Once you've done that you'll be a lot further along at being able to tell for sure if someone is worth working for/with. Of course that assumes they're willing to let you look at these things. But even if you can't actually look at them, it will give you a lot of insight into good questions to ask during an interview. EG: "what's your 5 year plan for funding?" "What is your market?" "Who is your anticipated competition?" If a person can't answer those 3 questions at least, you need to walk away because they haven't thought the idea through enough.
"When you say "light output divided by the square inches of the screen" - that's what we call an inverse square law. On account, you see, of the light output being divided by the square - oh, never mind."
Except not. Inverse square has to do with the distance from the source, not the square area of the reflected surface. (An argument can be made that the area of the reflected surface has a relationship to the distance from the source, but it's not the same thing at all.)
Exactly my point, though you said it better. The penalty is just, not only because of the potential damage, but because it was a deliberate violation of trust from the system that is intended to help prevent this sort of activity.
"The gadget power of having a phone-projector is orders of magnitude more than a polyphonic ringtone. This thing will sell millions no matter how bad the image quality is."
Only until the first complaints about poor battery life come in. Once people realize you can only project images (or whatever) for 5 minutes and still have a usable phone, sales will fall off immediately. Unless they've also come up with a huge improvement in battery life, this won't sell very much. Not to mention most people won't have any real use for it other than as a slide show projector for pictures, which they can just as easily video message or email to their friends.
"While i do think health care is a matter of great importance , and so a major punishment is in order , a charge of murder seems a bit ridiculous."
No doubt, I agree with you entirely. I was just saying that the argument could be made by some DA to charge him with something as ridiculous as that.
I think you're right, there are more important lessons to be learned, at a systemic level, but for the person charged, I think it was an appropriate penalty. Screwing with people's lives (literally) is not to be taken lightly.
I'll remind you of that when someone you love dies because their health records are inaccessible due to some asshat fucking up the servers.
Manslaughter charges bring a whole lot more than a couple of years. As does attempted murder, and the argument (for better or worse) can be made for either of those charges. I think 30 months is reasonable to make the person very aware of the potential damage he could have done to real people, not just data, without being overly oppressive.
Replacing disks isn't particularly difficult. Save yourself the $180, look online for some instructions and do it yourself. It takes about half an hour if you've ever done it before and maybe an hour and a half if you haven't.
Typical slashdotter, didn't understand the sexual reference. I'm surprised you posted anonymously though. Most slashdotters seem proud of their sexuality (or lack thereof).
"Yes the information in the O'Reilly books is available elsewhere on the internet for free (as one other commenter pointed out), but having it available collected in one location makes it worth having."
I have one word for you: bookmarks.
Seriously, I understand the benefit of having multiple references in one place but I don't see it as beneficial for work unless you happen to do a lot of travel and work on airplanes or in airports where connectivity is much less convenient/likely.
Exactly. Magnetic charging like many "toothbrushes" and the like use inductors, so could these little things. That combined with flexible solar cells and there's no reason why these things would ever need to "come home".
They are alive and well, they're just not paying in straight cash any more. The only reason for this is to keep people like us from saying "you can't charge internet radio because you don't charge terrestrial radio stations". This is actually very good for us in the long run, because for once the consumer will actually win because radio stations will change their format and start playing local artists again. It will be like having 20 college radio stations in every town. I can't think of a better way to kill the record labels (as they are today) than by passing this kind of legislation.
Honestly, I hope this passes. If it does, it will be the end of music radio as we know it and finally the record companies will understand they've slit their own throats. Clear Channel and the like won't like the music industry cutting so heavily into their profits and they'll do whatever they can to defeat this. Two heads of the same monster fighting can't be that bad, right?
How are they defining "stable"? Stays upright or "doesn't sink" or doesn't make the inhabitants sick? I'd be impressed with the last one as I don't think it's possible but the others I wouldn't think would be too huge a design issue considering the other hurdles they'll have to get over. Of course, I'm neither an aerospace engineer nor a nautical engineer, just a hobbyist kayaker.
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Way to take my comments out of context! As my last statement said, Apple fucked up. Now they need to own up to it and fix it.
Finally, someone who understands the good and the bad! I like Apple products, in general. I have used a Mac since OS X was released because I was tired of fighting firewire on my linux boxes. Over the last five years though, they have increasingly locked consumers out of functionality, starting most obviously with "breaking" (in my opinion) iTunes so it's basically just a useless front end for their store, which I don't really use. They make it difficult to burn bootable disks because it's a buried option under disk utility rather than an option in the standard disk burning utilities, and several other non-consumer friendly issues I've found.
I use Macs because they work more consistently and more cleanly, for me in general than a windows counterpart and i was just tired of using linux and getting almost what I wanted out of it.
For the most part Macs do "just work" and work well for most of the target market. What we all have to realize though is that Apple has a target market, and despite what they say it isn't the "power user", it's the teenage kids and the hipsters or the video/music editing market. With any company that has a target market like that, they're going to make decisions that aren't best for everyone, and generally are only best for the bottom line. They are no better and no worse than any other corporation, MS included. In the end, it's all about money for them. And honestly, it should be.
Could they still retain some good and try to buck the system, sure. In their own way, I'm sure they feel like they are, but all you have to do is look at google and see that after a certain point, it doesn't matter what your original intentions were, it's impossible to "do no evil" in all aspects of business. So Apple, like all other companies, make sacrifices. Usually those sacrifices come at our (the consumers) expense.
I would say most of your comment was valid if Adobe and Apple hadn't been in bed together for a long time. After Effects is, in fact, on a large portion of Apple's core user base. The newer users (like myself) are less likely to have it, though some of us do. I know of at least 15 people that have legitimate copies of it and none of them are professional video editors.
The other part of your comment makes sense, but is simply an unrealistic expectation for 95% of end-users. Yes there are people who would know how to use a VM to test new software before upgrading, but the simple fact is, they shouldn't have to. Apple fucked up. Now they should own up to it and simply fix the problem.
Make that 80% gets paid by taxes and 20% gets paid by tolls and I'll think it's a decent solution. Otherwise everything would cost more because the roads are the primary method of shipping goods in the United States. You can bet any manufacturer will transfer those tolls back to the consumer, thus the people who don't use the roads as much are paying in a different way anyway.
So how do you tax investments that aren't physical? Serious question, not meaning to be sarcastic or anything. It's an interesting concept, but it only works if you consider having money "ownership" of the money. Also, how do you tax things you own that are necessities? IE you have to have a place to live but that can be a $10000 shack (or decent house depending upon where you live) or a $5 million mansion. How are those taxed differently, strictly based on dollar value or is it adjusted for market (some places in the US you can buy a decent single family home for $100k others you can't even buy a 1 bedroom condo for that.)
What about food, that's "ownership" if I can afford to "stock up" but it's still an essential to life. How would you deal with those things?
"Why ask the people who don't use the road to pay for it?"
Why ask people who don't have children to pay for eduction? Whether they use the roads directly, or not, they benefit from the fact that the road system is there. They benefit from cheaper goods because shipping is easier. They benefit from better access to medical care, and other services that wouldn't be available without the roads. The "I don't use it, I shouldn't have to pay for it" argument is tired and completely unrealistic.
How about the fact that they are vital infrustructure for just about every other asset we use. Without roads, the economy would tank completely as people wouldn't be able to do business the way we do now. Without roads, education would drastically change (not necessarily a bad thing but probably bad) and likely make the next generation completely useless except for the really rich, thus increasing the already widening gap between the haves and the have nots.
Thank you. My first thought was, the article was written by a coder who needed to justify how good he is. I've known plenty of damn good, dare I say great, coders who never spent time at home coding after they got out of school. They know/knew a couple of languages well, and left the other languages to people more qualified to handle them. I'd say that's a higher mark of someone's skill is asking them how they'd handle something that they don't list on their resume, or list as having some experience with, but not mastered.
Excessive use of computers may imply passion, but it also implies early burn-out for most coders I've met. The ones who last and are also good, by contrast, are just the opposite. They work hard at work, and they leave it alone when they're at home. Of course there are exceptions to all rules, and certainly to anecdotal evidence, but that's been my experience thus far.
Every time you have an interview, it should be their interview as much as yours. That's the point of an interview, to see if you fit together, not just to see if they think you fit them, but to see if you think they fit you too.
Every interview I've ever had, I interviewed my interviewer as much as they interviewed me. Maybe I'm strange, but it's worked so far.
Honestly, the best way is to read the business plan for yourself. Take a couple of classes in business, specifically something along the lines of how to get venture funding for a startup, and "business plan writing" classes.
Once you've done that you'll be a lot further along at being able to tell for sure if someone is worth working for/with. Of course that assumes they're willing to let you look at these things. But even if you can't actually look at them, it will give you a lot of insight into good questions to ask during an interview. EG: "what's your 5 year plan for funding?" "What is your market?" "Who is your anticipated competition?" If a person can't answer those 3 questions at least, you need to walk away because they haven't thought the idea through enough.
"When you say "light output divided by the square inches of the screen" - that's what we call an inverse square law. On account, you see, of the light output being divided by the square - oh, never mind."
Except not. Inverse square has to do with the distance from the source, not the square area of the reflected surface. (An argument can be made that the area of the reflected surface has a relationship to the distance from the source, but it's not the same thing at all.)
Check this website for a more complete description.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/isql.html
Exactly my point, though you said it better. The penalty is just, not only because of the potential damage, but because it was a deliberate violation of trust from the system that is intended to help prevent this sort of activity.
"The gadget power of having a phone-projector is orders of magnitude more than a polyphonic ringtone. This thing will sell millions no matter how bad the image quality is."
Only until the first complaints about poor battery life come in. Once people realize you can only project images (or whatever) for 5 minutes and still have a usable phone, sales will fall off immediately. Unless they've also come up with a huge improvement in battery life, this won't sell very much. Not to mention most people won't have any real use for it other than as a slide show projector for pictures, which they can just as easily video message or email to their friends.
"While i do think health care is a matter of great importance , and so a major punishment is in order , a charge of murder seems a bit ridiculous ."
No doubt, I agree with you entirely. I was just saying that the argument could be made by some DA to charge him with something as ridiculous as that.
I think you're right, there are more important lessons to be learned, at a systemic level, but for the person charged, I think it was an appropriate penalty. Screwing with people's lives (literally) is not to be taken lightly.
I'll remind you of that when someone you love dies because their health records are inaccessible due to some asshat fucking up the servers.
Manslaughter charges bring a whole lot more than a couple of years. As does attempted murder, and the argument (for better or worse) can be made for either of those charges. I think 30 months is reasonable to make the person very aware of the potential damage he could have done to real people, not just data, without being overly oppressive.
As opposed to shooting them (going postal), which is okay?
Replacing disks isn't particularly difficult. Save yourself the $180, look online for some instructions and do it yourself. It takes about half an hour if you've ever done it before and maybe an hour and a half if you haven't.
Typical slashdotter, didn't understand the sexual reference. I'm surprised you posted anonymously though. Most slashdotters seem proud of their sexuality (or lack thereof).
What e-reader gives you the option of writing notes in your books? Seriously, I didn't know that was a feature of any of them.
"Yes the information in the O'Reilly books is available elsewhere on the internet for free (as one other commenter pointed out), but having it available collected in one location makes it worth having."
I have one word for you: bookmarks.
Seriously, I understand the benefit of having multiple references in one place but I don't see it as beneficial for work unless you happen to do a lot of travel and work on airplanes or in airports where connectivity is much less convenient/likely.
Exactly. Magnetic charging like many "toothbrushes" and the like use inductors, so could these little things. That combined with flexible solar cells and there's no reason why these things would ever need to "come home".
They are alive and well, they're just not paying in straight cash any more. The only reason for this is to keep people like us from saying "you can't charge internet radio because you don't charge terrestrial radio stations". This is actually very good for us in the long run, because for once the consumer will actually win because radio stations will change their format and start playing local artists again. It will be like having 20 college radio stations in every town. I can't think of a better way to kill the record labels (as they are today) than by passing this kind of legislation.
Honestly, I hope this passes. If it does, it will be the end of music radio as we know it and finally the record companies will understand they've slit their own throats. Clear Channel and the like won't like the music industry cutting so heavily into their profits and they'll do whatever they can to defeat this. Two heads of the same monster fighting can't be that bad, right?
I think you've confused asteroids with large lizards and flying sea monsters.
How are they defining "stable"? Stays upright or "doesn't sink" or doesn't make the inhabitants sick? I'd be impressed with the last one as I don't think it's possible but the others I wouldn't think would be too huge a design issue considering the other hurdles they'll have to get over. Of course, I'm neither an aerospace engineer nor a nautical engineer, just a hobbyist kayaker.