As somebody who doesn't rate Obama too badly as presidents go, I still agree with you, that Constitutionally, he does not really have the power to delay any part of it. But who would challenge his actions in this case?
Wouldn't anyone who got billed for more than $12,700 in out of pocket costs in 2014 have standing to sue? The law says that this is the limit they have to pay, regardless of whether the administration thinks they have to follow it or not. For that matter, the person getting billed could refuse to pay and, when brought to court over the charges, defend themselves on the ground that the charges were illegal because they violated PPACA.
yeap. the issue is the browser code, which essentially boils down to:
draw link with normal style
lookup link in visited database
if link exists in database
then draw link with visited style
Wouldn't the obvious solution be to change the order to lookup the link first, and if the link exists in the visited database, then draw it with visited style, else draw it with unvisited style? That shouldn't be any slower (since the DB has to be checked anyway) and it would eliminate the timing attacks discussed here.
I'm not buying it, how could you possibly screwup a USB charger to the point where it would be lethal? I mean the cables aren't generally thick enough to carry enough 220V current to kill someone before they melt and 5.5V DC certainly isn't going to kill someone.
I suspect it wasn't the connecting cable where the fire occurred, but the small box that plugs into the electrical outlet. This box presumably contains components to convert AC to DC power, and if it was made very cheaply and in disregard of safety standards, it could easily cause a fire.
Is there a reasonably reliable medical test that can determine whether or not someone is a psychopath? Maybe a fMRI or something like that? While it would be nice if we could somehow cure sociopaths, I think just identifying them would be a good start. Maybe we could even prohibit them from running for public office or holding executive positions in publicly traded corporations...
According to NBC News, the fake drone signs were a bit of performance art by a local guy named Stephen Whisler. He described his motivation as " partially political and partially a prank".
People are not abandoning the PC to use phones tablets and "services in the cloud." That is propaganda designed to sell you phones, tablets and services in the cloud.
But there have been two important changes. First, smartphones and tablets have become good enough that users with limited needs (web surfing, Facebook, simple games) often find them preferable to full-blown PCs, since they are easier to use and don't require as much annoying maintenance. Secondly, regular PCs reached the "good enough for average users" point about 7 years ago. Most people are still just fine with a Core 2 Duo or Athlon 64 X2 system from 2006. Sure, if you do heavy work with photo/video editing, or HPC, or want to play the latest Doom clone, you probably need something better, but only a relatively small percentage of users fall into that category. For everyone else, upgrading to a new PC, especially in these tough economic times, seems like a waste of money.
All this means that the desktop should become more oriented towards power users, not less. The casual users have already bolted in favor of iOS or Android. People who use a desktop PC these days have good reason for doing so, and don't want it to try to imitate the portable ARM devices that they've already rejected as inadequate for their needs.
We've all heard the old joke about losing money on each sale but making it up in volume, but this is the first time I've seen someone actually propose it as a serious business plan.
Pretty much. They need to focus on their core demographics – mostly business users, but also to a lesser extent power-users and gamers. Forget about portable, forget about Metro, and instead work on keeping businesses on Windows. Cultivate a professional attitude, not the kind of Apple-wanna-be hipster nonsense we've seen from them recently. Make it clear that "Microsoft will be here for you, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now." Make good, solid incremental changes without breaking stuff. Maybe even consider a new version of VB that is backward-compatible with VB6 (or open-sourcing that ancient compiler) as a sign of good faith. Consider offering extended support for XP to large companies by subscription only – this could potentially be a nice revenue stream with little effort needed.
I'd prefer Raymond Chen as CEO, but I realize that's probably not a realistic option. What Microsoft needs to maintain its position is an obsession with backwards compatibility and not breaking anyone's workflow, and an understanding that they will never be hip or cool. They need to transition from a growth company to a dividend-oriented company.
95% is comprised of defending the network. If it's been up and running, no changes have been made and no equipment has died... chances are, it's NOT the network. Go check group policy.
In most small and mid-size companies, group policy is part of the network administrator's job. Your notion that the network admin should only be handling the IT plumbing is something that's only going to work in large corporations. When you can't afford a massive IT department, people have to wear multiple hats.
App stores make this less of an issue. If Apple wants to switch the iDevices to x86, they'll tell developers that they must have an x86 build posted by such-and-such date, or their app will be dropped from the store.
The problem is, who will innovate for a meager paycheck, when they can do exceedingly much better starting on their own?
But that's just it – Microsoft doesn't need innovation. They need steady, non-disruptive, incremental improvement of the solid products they already have (Windows 7, Office, Exchange Server, etc.)
If Ballmer wants to innovate then he should leave MS and begin his own startup. Business and professional users don't need or want innovation; they want their user training to remain valuable and their legacy systems to keep working, and for upgrades to not break stuff.
I really wish that the press releases of shadowy "think tanks" (and consulting firms, for that matter) were treated with a little less credulity and more scrutiny. This study was published by a group calling itself the "Alliance for Generational Equity". Who are these people and who do they represent? We don't know. I did some Googling to see if I could find out more about them, but didn't find much. No Wikipedia article, nothing on SourceWatch. Nothing about their funding sources appears to be public. How do we know this "think tank" isn't just another sockpuppet of the Koch Brothers?
I was able to find some information about Thomas Hazlett, one of the authors whose name is on the study. He's a professor at the GMU Law School, which is not an encouraging sign (that law school is a notorious den of right-wing crackpots). Hazlett is also against net neutrality. This man is not on your side; he's a shill for rich plutocrats. Listen to anything he has to say at your peril.
You know when I'll believe things have changed at Microsoft? When Raymond Chen is put in charge of the Windows division (or better yet, the whole company). More than anyone else I've heard about, he actually understands why people use Windows and stick with it: because of the consistent focus on backward compatibility at all costs that was the hallmark of the pre-Ballmer era.
Legacy compatibility is the #1 thing keeping Windows alive. But if the Ballmer/MSDN camp keeps winning victories over the Raymond Chen camp, that will continue to be eaten away, and Microsoft will one day wake up to find that no one needs them any more.
Customers (other than programmers) don't care of the code bases are the same for windows phone, surface and xbox.
But they do care if the UI is the same. They hate it, as we've seen with Windows 8.
The problem is that "consolidation" has the potential to help Microsoft, but it hurts customers. Since Microsoft is used to having a monopoly, they don't care. But their monopoly is fraying around the edges, with "cloud" services, smartphones/tablets, and BYOD taking off. They could have kept things going indefinitely if they followed the Raymond Chen route: obsessively focus on backward compatibility, and thus remain the path of least resistance for businesses that buy a ton of licenses. But Ballmer wants to be Steve Jobs, so he's betting big, and in due time it will cost Microsoft everything if they don't reverse course.
I've wondered before why jQuery isn't supported natively in browsers by now. It's probably the single most widely used framework; it should be an integral part of the language, much like the C standard libraries are for ANSI C.
I've found the best way to get developers to stop being lazy is to give them shit hardware.
Giving developers "shit hardware" is a good way to alienate them and reduce their productivity. And as Donald Knuth noted, premature optimization is the root of all evil.
First you write the code and get it working, then you test performance on whatever hardware you might be targeting as your minimum requirements, and then, if necessary, you profile and optimize to get it working at an acceptable speed on the target platform.
Stop loading dozens of fucking libraries and frameworks and learn to really code.
Why reinvent the wheel? If I need an image carousel on my site, sure, I could write my own in raw JS, but I'm not arrogant enough to believe my image carousel would be better than the 5,000 others already out there, especially since many of these have been used by multiple people and already extensively debugged. If you're writing desktop applications and want to compress data, do you write your own compression code or do you use zlib? How many people write their own JPEG decompressor? Almost no one – everyone uses the native OS functionality, or if you are writing portable code, you use libjpeg(-turbo).
That's the real question that needs to be answered? Will I finally be able to manufacture my own actual, metallic pistol using this process? (Perfectly legal to do so in the US, BTW)
If you really want to make your own guns, then you'd be much better off buying a CNC machine. Use the right tool for the right job.
Why does everyone somehow seem to think that additive manufacturing ("3D printing") is better than subtractive (standard CNC)?
You could argue that forcing telcos and ISPs to incorporate wiretapping equipment into their systems constitutes a quartering of government agents on private property in violation of the 3rd Amendment.
Hence the state of their economy with several members of the EU on the brink of bankruptcy.
Yet it's not the most socialist European countries that are going broke. The Nordic nations, for example, are doing just fine. It's Mediterranean Europe that is having trouble, and they've had fiscal problems for decades. Putting them in a single currency union with the likes of Germany was just asking for a disaster to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
This is total bullshit. Every single SSD I had owned has failed within a year.
Stop buying from OCZ and start using reputable brands.
As somebody who doesn't rate Obama too badly as presidents go, I still agree with you, that Constitutionally, he does not really have the power to delay any part of it. But who would challenge his actions in this case?
Wouldn't anyone who got billed for more than $12,700 in out of pocket costs in 2014 have standing to sue? The law says that this is the limit they have to pay, regardless of whether the administration thinks they have to follow it or not. For that matter, the person getting billed could refuse to pay and, when brought to court over the charges, defend themselves on the ground that the charges were illegal because they violated PPACA.
yeap. the issue is the browser code, which essentially boils down to:
Wouldn't the obvious solution be to change the order to lookup the link first, and if the link exists in the visited database, then draw it with visited style, else draw it with unvisited style? That shouldn't be any slower (since the DB has to be checked anyway) and it would eliminate the timing attacks discussed here.
I'm not buying it, how could you possibly screwup a USB charger to the point where it would be lethal? I mean the cables aren't generally thick enough to carry enough 220V current to kill someone before they melt and 5.5V DC certainly isn't going to kill someone.
I suspect it wasn't the connecting cable where the fire occurred, but the small box that plugs into the electrical outlet. This box presumably contains components to convert AC to DC power, and if it was made very cheaply and in disregard of safety standards, it could easily cause a fire.
Is there a reasonably reliable medical test that can determine whether or not someone is a psychopath? Maybe a fMRI or something like that? While it would be nice if we could somehow cure sociopaths, I think just identifying them would be a good start. Maybe we could even prohibit them from running for public office or holding executive positions in publicly traded corporations...
Here's his website: http://stephenwhisler.net/Stephen_Whisler.html. And a direct link to the page on this prank / performance art: http://stephenwhisler.net/Sculpture/Pages/Speed_Enforced_by_Drones.html.
According to NBC News, the fake drone signs were a bit of performance art by a local guy named Stephen Whisler. He described his motivation as " partially political and partially a prank".
People are not abandoning the PC to use phones tablets and "services in the cloud." That is propaganda designed to sell you phones, tablets and services in the cloud.
But there have been two important changes. First, smartphones and tablets have become good enough that users with limited needs (web surfing, Facebook, simple games) often find them preferable to full-blown PCs, since they are easier to use and don't require as much annoying maintenance. Secondly, regular PCs reached the "good enough for average users" point about 7 years ago. Most people are still just fine with a Core 2 Duo or Athlon 64 X2 system from 2006. Sure, if you do heavy work with photo/video editing, or HPC, or want to play the latest Doom clone, you probably need something better, but only a relatively small percentage of users fall into that category. For everyone else, upgrading to a new PC, especially in these tough economic times, seems like a waste of money.
All this means that the desktop should become more oriented towards power users, not less. The casual users have already bolted in favor of iOS or Android. People who use a desktop PC these days have good reason for doing so, and don't want it to try to imitate the portable ARM devices that they've already rejected as inadequate for their needs.
We've all heard the old joke about losing money on each sale but making it up in volume, but this is the first time I've seen someone actually propose it as a serious business plan.
So, IBM?
Pretty much. They need to focus on their core demographics – mostly business users, but also to a lesser extent power-users and gamers. Forget about portable, forget about Metro, and instead work on keeping businesses on Windows. Cultivate a professional attitude, not the kind of Apple-wanna-be hipster nonsense we've seen from them recently. Make it clear that "Microsoft will be here for you, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now." Make good, solid incremental changes without breaking stuff. Maybe even consider a new version of VB that is backward-compatible with VB6 (or open-sourcing that ancient compiler) as a sign of good faith. Consider offering extended support for XP to large companies by subscription only – this could potentially be a nice revenue stream with little effort needed.
I'd prefer Raymond Chen as CEO, but I realize that's probably not a realistic option. What Microsoft needs to maintain its position is an obsession with backwards compatibility and not breaking anyone's workflow, and an understanding that they will never be hip or cool. They need to transition from a growth company to a dividend-oriented company.
95% is comprised of defending the network. If it's been up and running, no changes have been made and no equipment has died... chances are, it's NOT the network. Go check group policy.
In most small and mid-size companies, group policy is part of the network administrator's job. Your notion that the network admin should only be handling the IT plumbing is something that's only going to work in large corporations. When you can't afford a massive IT department, people have to wear multiple hats.
App stores make this less of an issue. If Apple wants to switch the iDevices to x86, they'll tell developers that they must have an x86 build posted by such-and-such date, or their app will be dropped from the store.
Well, having her in charge of Surface/Xbox is better than her being in charge of Windows...
The problem is, who will innovate for a meager paycheck, when they can do exceedingly much better starting on their own?
But that's just it – Microsoft doesn't need innovation. They need steady, non-disruptive, incremental improvement of the solid products they already have (Windows 7, Office, Exchange Server, etc.)
If Ballmer wants to innovate then he should leave MS and begin his own startup. Business and professional users don't need or want innovation; they want their user training to remain valuable and their legacy systems to keep working, and for upgrades to not break stuff.
I really wish that the press releases of shadowy "think tanks" (and consulting firms, for that matter) were treated with a little less credulity and more scrutiny. This study was published by a group calling itself the "Alliance for Generational Equity". Who are these people and who do they represent? We don't know. I did some Googling to see if I could find out more about them, but didn't find much. No Wikipedia article, nothing on SourceWatch. Nothing about their funding sources appears to be public. How do we know this "think tank" isn't just another sockpuppet of the Koch Brothers?
I was able to find some information about Thomas Hazlett, one of the authors whose name is on the study. He's a professor at the GMU Law School, which is not an encouraging sign (that law school is a notorious den of right-wing crackpots). Hazlett is also against net neutrality. This man is not on your side; he's a shill for rich plutocrats. Listen to anything he has to say at your peril.
You know when I'll believe things have changed at Microsoft? When Raymond Chen is put in charge of the Windows division (or better yet, the whole company). More than anyone else I've heard about, he actually understands why people use Windows and stick with it: because of the consistent focus on backward compatibility at all costs that was the hallmark of the pre-Ballmer era.
Legacy compatibility is the #1 thing keeping Windows alive. But if the Ballmer/MSDN camp keeps winning victories over the Raymond Chen camp, that will continue to be eaten away, and Microsoft will one day wake up to find that no one needs them any more.
Customers (other than programmers) don't care of the code bases are the same for windows phone, surface and xbox.
But they do care if the UI is the same. They hate it, as we've seen with Windows 8.
The problem is that "consolidation" has the potential to help Microsoft, but it hurts customers. Since Microsoft is used to having a monopoly, they don't care. But their monopoly is fraying around the edges, with "cloud" services, smartphones/tablets, and BYOD taking off. They could have kept things going indefinitely if they followed the Raymond Chen route: obsessively focus on backward compatibility, and thus remain the path of least resistance for businesses that buy a ton of licenses. But Ballmer wants to be Steve Jobs, so he's betting big, and in due time it will cost Microsoft everything if they don't reverse course.
I've wondered before why jQuery isn't supported natively in browsers by now. It's probably the single most widely used framework; it should be an integral part of the language, much like the C standard libraries are for ANSI C.
I've found the best way to get developers to stop being lazy is to give them shit hardware.
Giving developers "shit hardware" is a good way to alienate them and reduce their productivity. And as Donald Knuth noted, premature optimization is the root of all evil.
First you write the code and get it working, then you test performance on whatever hardware you might be targeting as your minimum requirements, and then, if necessary, you profile and optimize to get it working at an acceptable speed on the target platform.
Stop loading dozens of fucking libraries and frameworks and learn to really code.
Why reinvent the wheel? If I need an image carousel on my site, sure, I could write my own in raw JS, but I'm not arrogant enough to believe my image carousel would be better than the 5,000 others already out there, especially since many of these have been used by multiple people and already extensively debugged. If you're writing desktop applications and want to compress data, do you write your own compression code or do you use zlib? How many people write their own JPEG decompressor? Almost no one – everyone uses the native OS functionality, or if you are writing portable code, you use libjpeg(-turbo).
Apple doesn't seem to really care very much about Safari on Windows
The fact that they discontinued it should be a clue.
That's the real question that needs to be answered? Will I finally be able to manufacture my own actual, metallic pistol using this process? (Perfectly legal to do so in the US, BTW)
If you really want to make your own guns, then you'd be much better off buying a CNC machine. Use the right tool for the right job.
Why does everyone somehow seem to think that additive manufacturing ("3D printing") is better than subtractive (standard CNC)?
You could argue that forcing telcos and ISPs to incorporate wiretapping equipment into their systems constitutes a quartering of government agents on private property in violation of the 3rd Amendment.
Hence the state of their economy with several members of the EU on the brink of bankruptcy.
Yet it's not the most socialist European countries that are going broke. The Nordic nations, for example, are doing just fine. It's Mediterranean Europe that is having trouble, and they've had fiscal problems for decades. Putting them in a single currency union with the likes of Germany was just asking for a disaster to happen.