or is the bloom coming off the rose for Amazon? Remember when they were this cute little outfit that just sold books? Now they are just another huge money grubbing multi-national. Bezos, if it is not completely obvious by now, is a complete and utter prick. Sometimes Amazon makes Microsoft look like choir boys in comparison.
I do a lot of remote work and, for me, it is very productive. The idea of getting dressed up, getting in my car, driving through traffic and sitting in a grey cubicle all day is a complete waste of time. Management tend to be the biggest opponents of remote work. Not all managers but the old school type that want to know what time you arrived at work and how long you took for lunch.
The unspoken truth is that people like this don't trust you. If they can't come out of their office and see you in the little grey cubicle you can't possibly be working. You must be goofing off. The only way they can ensure that you are actually working is to exert a measure of control by requiring you to be in your seat for a given number of hours every day so they can stop by whenever they like and watch you work. This visit will be disguised as some sort of colloquial chit chat or team bonding exercise. The true intent, of course, is to try to catch you off guard (i.e. goofing off) thus providing self validation to support their worker theory.
Sadly I actually worked for an idiot like this for a period of time. He didn't hire me but I soon found myself as part of his group. I eventually grew weary of trying to drag him out of his 1950s mentality and into someone that was actually cool. Someone that I could respect and actually work hard for. He would have meetings for the sake of meetings. His calendar was consistently double or even triple booked, allowing him to blow off meetings that required decisions or * gasp * leadership. The whole thing was an attempt to make him appear more important than he really was. Self preservation and empire building. In short, he was the most worthless piece of shit I ever worked with.
Nonetheless, it was a valuable experience. It taught me to ask a prospective employer about their remote work policy very early in the discussions. If their response is "we don't allow it" or "we'll see" then I don't want to work for them. If you don't trust me then don't hire me. It will save both of us a lot of time.
I think it's as simple as that. While Linux has gotten much easier to install there are times when you have to get under the covers to fix or enhance things. For less sophisticated users - and let's face it, most users are unsophisticated - it will be seen as a chore. For people that work in an office, most of them are using Windows at work. I have tried using Macs and Linux laptops in Windows shops and while most things work fine there are some incompatibilities.
For home use though, Linux is great. Fast, secure, and nobody is spying on me (we're talking about you, Microsoft).
I don't always agree with Linus and he has a well deserved reputation for being...well..prickly at times. But his comments on social media are bang on. Even at work, I don't know how many times I have sent an email to someone and it was misinterpreted. All they have are the words on the page. They don't hear my voice or see my face and sometimes when all you see are the words it can come across as more harsh than it was intended. If it starts going back and forth I usually just pick up the phone and it all gets sorted out rather quickly.
Imagine how much worse it is when you don't know the author of the comments. Or it is written in ALL CAPS (implying yelling at you). Or the grammar and spelling is horrible which makes it even more difficult to understand them. On top of all that, there are people out there that will write stuff expressly to piss people off. It is one of the main reasons that I don't respond to anonymous comments on/. I'm just not going to take the bait.
if modern tractors are anything like modern cars they are full of computers. Modern cars require really expensive computer diagnostic equipment that makes it impractical to repair them on your own. What her proposal might do though is open it up to 3rd party repair shops that could do it a lot cheaper than the dealer would.
1) No annual fee. I won't use any credit card that has a fee. So far so good. 2) No late fees. This is actually a pretty big deal. Someone with otherwise spotless credit can get dinged with a $40 late fee on a $5 balance. Late fees are a ripoff plain and simple. 3) No foreign transaction fees. This is a pretty big deal too. The only other card I know that does this is Discover, and they are not as widely accepted as MasterCard. 4) 2% cash back. The card I have now does that and if you pay your bills on time and avoid all other fees you actually come out ahead. Reading the fine print though, you only get 1% if you use the physical card rather than the iPhone app. But you get 3% for "Apple products". I wonder if you can get 3% off the News app if use the apple credit card to pay for it? Hmm.
All in all I don't see any real downside to this. Yes, you can get other cards with no annual fee and 2% cashback. But none of those cards have done away with late fees as far as I know.
Sure, you need an iPhone to take full advantage of everything it offers but all Apple stuff is like that.
I'm seeing a lot of negativity on here about the announcement. I still need to read the fine print but $9.99 a month doesn't seem like a bad deal. In fact, it's a great deal when you consider that it includes the Wall Street Journal. Last time I checked, the WSJ charges $5 a week. So if you get it through Apple instead it is half the price. Not to mention that you get access to other magazines and periodicals.
I get that a lot of people on here don't like Apple but on the face of it, this is a good deal.
Home theater trumps movie theater. I understand the appeal of having a night out and for some things, like a date or taking the kids out for the night, the movie theater is great. But those are relatively few and far between and for most viewing my home theater system is great. I love the convenience of being able to start and stop whenever I like. Not to mention that a night out at the movies is quite expensive compared to the monthly cost of Netflix and Amazon.
Personally I haven't bought a DVD in years. I think I have bought about 3 Blueray disks, just out of curiosity. So to me DVDs are dead.
I think it's going to be very hard for movie theaters to thrive. Other than the big screen and big sound the only other advantage is that you get to see new movies there before they appear on Netflix. For me I'm so busy doing other things that I can wait to see movies when I get around to it. Big Hollywood productions seem to be overproduced formula themed events that lack substance for the most part. For the most part I have left them behind for more compelling entertainment options.
What is the first step of any server migration? Take a backup. Worst case you can go back to where you started with no data loss. Failing that they don't have a backup from yesterday? Or last week? No large scale operation like this could ever operate without backups.
No...this data was intentionally wiped. Maybe pressure from the artists or record companies about storing potentially illegal copies of music. Whatever the reason. I know that nobody really uses MySpace anymore but the least they could do is just be honest about it. Just tell the user community that you were forced to take the music files down for copyright infringement, or whatever the reason was. But don't come up with this BS story about a botched server migration. Pathetic.
I use a script I run periodically to comb through my Documents folder and write it to a password protected 7-zip compressed file and write that file to the Box Sync folder. That file is what gets written to the Box cloud drive. Yes, I do have to run Box Sync to keep it all together though.
Like others have mentioned, I basically gave up on Dropbox a long time ago. One of the main reasons for me was that they don't encrypt the files. I have an account with Box that offers me 50GB of storage for free. I get around the encryption issue by creating a Veracrypt container in Box and adding my files to the container. I consider it more like archival storage just in case my local backups get corrupted.
For day to day file sharing I use a combination of OneDrive and OneNote. Mostly work related stuff so using Microsoft tools works quite well. I used to use Evernote but gave up on it when they started putting restrictions on how many devices I could use and tried to push me towards a paid plan. OneNote, in my opinion, is the best thing Microsoft makes and they are giving it away for free these days. You don't even have to buy MS Office. The Android client that I use works flawlessly and as near as I can tell there isn't any real limit on how much you can store in it. If there is I haven't come close to reaching it.
At this stage I need glasses for everyday wear and a second pair just for the computer. I had my optometrist give me a second prescription measured at about 30 inches - roughly the distance from where I sit to my monitor. Zenni provided the computer glasses and they are very bit as good as the overpriced ones in the lens shop. I think I paid about $35 at Zenni vs. about $150 at the lens shop.
From now on I'm taking the prescription with me and shopping online for glasses. The prices are at least 2-3 times cheaper.
I recall some time ago that Amazon removed books from the Kindle library that they deemed to be offensive for some reason. All well and good...except that some people had actually purchased them and woke up one day to find them gone. Even if Amazon gives you a credit for the book I don't feel it is their right to reach in to my library and remove something. I will determine if the book is offensive, not them.
This stuff happens all the time. I read the other day where there is a movement to rename John Wayne airport in California. What happens if someone decides that the lyrics to a song are suddenly offensive?
When I buy a CD or Vinyl album the music is mine. I can make backup copies of it. I can lend it to friends. When I "buy" a digital copy of the music I am subject the terms and conditions or Apple or Amazon or whomever I get it from. They dictate the terms of usage. In that sense I don't really own the music. It's more like a local rental of the songs.
Given the choice I will either just stream the music or buy a physical copy of it.
I disagree. Fewer people using phones in cars leads to fewer traffic accidents and fatalities. My point has nothing to do with the State collecting more money. It is about public safety. And I say this knowing that auto manufacturers are as much at fault as anyone else. They cram every electronic gadget under the sun into the new cars and those certainly cause driver distraction as well.
You want self driving cars? Sure I'm all for that. But the technology is not there yet. My fear is that autonomous cars will only really work if ALL cars are autonomous, not just some of them. Trying to predict erratic human behavior behind the wheel has proven to be extremely difficult. Erratic behavior like using cellphones and in car gadgets:-)
For years everyone has known that using a cellphone when driving is dangerous. The evidence is overwhelming. Yet the federal government has done nothing about it, largely due to the telecom lobbyists. But local governments are taking notice and passing laws. Several of them where I live have done just that due to pressures from their constituents.
To me, this is a sign of backlash against mobile devices. People walking around like fucking zombies glued to their phones. It is similar in some ways to the backlash against smoking. It had nothing to do with the fact that smoking is bad for the smoker. It had everything to do with the fact that it stinks and it potentially bad for the non smoker.
Sooner or later the phone zombie will be shunned and instead of being seen as hip will be seen as a loser. Everything goes in cycles and this is yet another one, only to be replaced by the next fad.
Kroger by all accounts is a pretty well run company. Safeway/Albertsons, on the other hand, is horribly run and deeply in debt. 12 billion is what I heard. But they do have a lot of stores and real estate that would appeal to Amazon. Amazon will force them into bankruptcy and scoop it up for pennies on the dollar.
Yup. Unless you are Al Gore. Right after he "invented the internet" he went on to predict his own doomsday scenario in the movie An Inconvenient Truth back in 2006. Somewhat entertaining but it fell flat on its face when it came to predictions. None of them were even remotely close to coming to fruition. The only thing that was Inconvenient were the tall tales. But that didn't prevent other snake oil salesmen, err, scientists from making similar predictions.
Along the way they have conveniently changed the name from Global Warming to Climate Change. That way if temperatures go up OR down - as they have been since the beginning of time - they can claim that their "models" are correct. But we need more studies...MORE STUDIES...I say.
As near as I can tell, all India has done for US high tech is drive down salaries. In the ERP segment, where I work, back in the early 2000's you could make north of $200/hr as an independent contractor working on Oracle or SAP systems. Thanks to the influx of cheap labor, primarily from India, those rates are now about half that.
These big companies like IBM and Accenture have huge collections of programmers in India. Those jobs were not in addition to US positions. Those were US positions eliminated and transferred overseas. The remaining positions based in the US now pay less, largely due to all those newly laid off programmers fighting over fewer and fewer remaining jobs.
And now that India has gotten prosperous, off of our backs, they don't like the way the game is being played? Fuck them. I say we start cutting back on the H1-B visas. Let's see how the corrupt Indian politicians react when all those remittances start to slow down.
California is going bankrupt. I knew this thing was doomed to failure right from the beginning and have called it out on here many times only to be ridiculed by these big project rail supporters.
Doesn't really bode well for the Green New Deal now does it?
Slashdot Mirror
or is the bloom coming off the rose for Amazon? Remember when they were this cute little outfit that just sold books? Now they are just another huge money grubbing multi-national. Bezos, if it is not completely obvious by now, is a complete and utter prick. Sometimes Amazon makes Microsoft look like choir boys in comparison.
Just watch regular old YouTube for free. Honestly, the self produced content is a lot more interesting than that Hollywood crap.
I do a lot of remote work and, for me, it is very productive. The idea of getting dressed up, getting in my car, driving through traffic and sitting in a grey cubicle all day is a complete waste of time. Management tend to be the biggest opponents of remote work. Not all managers but the old school type that want to know what time you arrived at work and how long you took for lunch.
The unspoken truth is that people like this don't trust you. If they can't come out of their office and see you in the little grey cubicle you can't possibly be working. You must be goofing off. The only way they can ensure that you are actually working is to exert a measure of control by requiring you to be in your seat for a given number of hours every day so they can stop by whenever they like and watch you work. This visit will be disguised as some sort of colloquial chit chat or team bonding exercise. The true intent, of course, is to try to catch you off guard (i.e. goofing off) thus providing self validation to support their worker theory.
Sadly I actually worked for an idiot like this for a period of time. He didn't hire me but I soon found myself as part of his group. I eventually grew weary of trying to drag him out of his 1950s mentality and into someone that was actually cool. Someone that I could respect and actually work hard for. He would have meetings for the sake of meetings. His calendar was consistently double or even triple booked, allowing him to blow off meetings that required decisions or * gasp * leadership. The whole thing was an attempt to make him appear more important than he really was. Self preservation and empire building. In short, he was the most worthless piece of shit I ever worked with.
Nonetheless, it was a valuable experience. It taught me to ask a prospective employer about their remote work policy very early in the discussions. If their response is "we don't allow it" or "we'll see" then I don't want to work for them. If you don't trust me then don't hire me. It will save both of us a lot of time.
I think it's as simple as that. While Linux has gotten much easier to install there are times when you have to get under the covers to fix or enhance things. For less sophisticated users - and let's face it, most users are unsophisticated - it will be seen as a chore. For people that work in an office, most of them are using Windows at work. I have tried using Macs and Linux laptops in Windows shops and while most things work fine there are some incompatibilities.
For home use though, Linux is great. Fast, secure, and nobody is spying on me (we're talking about you, Microsoft).
I don't always agree with Linus and he has a well deserved reputation for being...well..prickly at times. But his comments on social media are bang on. Even at work, I don't know how many times I have sent an email to someone and it was misinterpreted. All they have are the words on the page. They don't hear my voice or see my face and sometimes when all you see are the words it can come across as more harsh than it was intended. If it starts going back and forth I usually just pick up the phone and it all gets sorted out rather quickly.
Imagine how much worse it is when you don't know the author of the comments. Or it is written in ALL CAPS (implying yelling at you). Or the grammar and spelling is horrible which makes it even more difficult to understand them. On top of all that, there are people out there that will write stuff expressly to piss people off. It is one of the main reasons that I don't respond to anonymous comments on /. I'm just not going to take the bait.
if modern tractors are anything like modern cars they are full of computers. Modern cars require really expensive computer diagnostic equipment that makes it impractical to repair them on your own. What her proposal might do though is open it up to 3rd party repair shops that could do it a lot cheaper than the dealer would.
Let's take a look at what the Apple card offers:
1) No annual fee. I won't use any credit card that has a fee. So far so good.
2) No late fees. This is actually a pretty big deal. Someone with otherwise spotless credit can get dinged with a $40 late fee on a $5 balance. Late fees are a ripoff plain and simple.
3) No foreign transaction fees. This is a pretty big deal too. The only other card I know that does this is Discover, and they are not as widely accepted as MasterCard.
4) 2% cash back. The card I have now does that and if you pay your bills on time and avoid all other fees you actually come out ahead. Reading the fine print though, you only get 1% if you use the physical card rather than the iPhone app. But you get 3% for "Apple products". I wonder if you can get 3% off the News app if use the apple credit card to pay for it? Hmm.
All in all I don't see any real downside to this. Yes, you can get other cards with no annual fee and 2% cashback. But none of those cards have done away with late fees as far as I know.
Sure, you need an iPhone to take full advantage of everything it offers but all Apple stuff is like that.
Time will tell. Apparently you can try it free for a month and decide for yourself.
I'm seeing a lot of negativity on here about the announcement. I still need to read the fine print but $9.99 a month doesn't seem like a bad deal. In fact, it's a great deal when you consider that it includes the Wall Street Journal. Last time I checked, the WSJ charges $5 a week. So if you get it through Apple instead it is half the price. Not to mention that you get access to other magazines and periodicals.
I get that a lot of people on here don't like Apple but on the face of it, this is a good deal.
Home theater trumps movie theater. I understand the appeal of having a night out and for some things, like a date or taking the kids out for the night, the movie theater is great. But those are relatively few and far between and for most viewing my home theater system is great. I love the convenience of being able to start and stop whenever I like. Not to mention that a night out at the movies is quite expensive compared to the monthly cost of Netflix and Amazon.
Personally I haven't bought a DVD in years. I think I have bought about 3 Blueray disks, just out of curiosity. So to me DVDs are dead.
I think it's going to be very hard for movie theaters to thrive. Other than the big screen and big sound the only other advantage is that you get to see new movies there before they appear on Netflix. For me I'm so busy doing other things that I can wait to see movies when I get around to it. Big Hollywood productions seem to be overproduced formula themed events that lack substance for the most part. For the most part I have left them behind for more compelling entertainment options.
What is the first step of any server migration? Take a backup. Worst case you can go back to where you started with no data loss. Failing that they don't have a backup from yesterday? Or last week? No large scale operation like this could ever operate without backups.
No...this data was intentionally wiped. Maybe pressure from the artists or record companies about storing potentially illegal copies of music. Whatever the reason. I know that nobody really uses MySpace anymore but the least they could do is just be honest about it. Just tell the user community that you were forced to take the music files down for copyright infringement, or whatever the reason was. But don't come up with this BS story about a botched server migration. Pathetic.
I use a script I run periodically to comb through my Documents folder and write it to a password protected 7-zip compressed file and write that file to the Box Sync folder. That file is what gets written to the Box cloud drive. Yes, I do have to run Box Sync to keep it all together though.
Like others have mentioned, I basically gave up on Dropbox a long time ago. One of the main reasons for me was that they don't encrypt the files. I have an account with Box that offers me 50GB of storage for free. I get around the encryption issue by creating a Veracrypt container in Box and adding my files to the container. I consider it more like archival storage just in case my local backups get corrupted.
For day to day file sharing I use a combination of OneDrive and OneNote. Mostly work related stuff so using Microsoft tools works quite well. I used to use Evernote but gave up on it when they started putting restrictions on how many devices I could use and tried to push me towards a paid plan. OneNote, in my opinion, is the best thing Microsoft makes and they are giving it away for free these days. You don't even have to buy MS Office. The Android client that I use works flawlessly and as near as I can tell there isn't any real limit on how much you can store in it. If there is I haven't come close to reaching it.
At this stage I need glasses for everyday wear and a second pair just for the computer. I had my optometrist give me a second prescription measured at about 30 inches - roughly the distance from where I sit to my monitor. Zenni provided the computer glasses and they are very bit as good as the overpriced ones in the lens shop. I think I paid about $35 at Zenni vs. about $150 at the lens shop.
From now on I'm taking the prescription with me and shopping online for glasses. The prices are at least 2-3 times cheaper.
Direct quote from Zuckerberg. Anyone that believes this lying sack of shit deserves what they get.
I recall some time ago that Amazon removed books from the Kindle library that they deemed to be offensive for some reason. All well and good...except that some people had actually purchased them and woke up one day to find them gone. Even if Amazon gives you a credit for the book I don't feel it is their right to reach in to my library and remove something. I will determine if the book is offensive, not them.
This stuff happens all the time. I read the other day where there is a movement to rename John Wayne airport in California. What happens if someone decides that the lyrics to a song are suddenly offensive?
When I buy a CD or Vinyl album the music is mine. I can make backup copies of it. I can lend it to friends. When I "buy" a digital copy of the music I am subject the terms and conditions or Apple or Amazon or whomever I get it from. They dictate the terms of usage. In that sense I don't really own the music. It's more like a local rental of the songs.
Given the choice I will either just stream the music or buy a physical copy of it.
I disagree. Fewer people using phones in cars leads to fewer traffic accidents and fatalities. My point has nothing to do with the State collecting more money. It is about public safety. And I say this knowing that auto manufacturers are as much at fault as anyone else. They cram every electronic gadget under the sun into the new cars and those certainly cause driver distraction as well.
You want self driving cars? Sure I'm all for that. But the technology is not there yet. My fear is that autonomous cars will only really work if ALL cars are autonomous, not just some of them. Trying to predict erratic human behavior behind the wheel has proven to be extremely difficult. Erratic behavior like using cellphones and in car gadgets :-)
For years everyone has known that using a cellphone when driving is dangerous. The evidence is overwhelming. Yet the federal government has done nothing about it, largely due to the telecom lobbyists. But local governments are taking notice and passing laws. Several of them where I live have done just that due to pressures from their constituents.
To me, this is a sign of backlash against mobile devices. People walking around like fucking zombies glued to their phones. It is similar in some ways to the backlash against smoking. It had nothing to do with the fact that smoking is bad for the smoker. It had everything to do with the fact that it stinks and it potentially bad for the non smoker.
Sooner or later the phone zombie will be shunned and instead of being seen as hip will be seen as a loser. Everything goes in cycles and this is yet another one, only to be replaced by the next fad.
Kroger by all accounts is a pretty well run company. Safeway/Albertsons, on the other hand, is horribly run and deeply in debt. 12 billion is what I heard. But they do have a lot of stores and real estate that would appeal to Amazon. Amazon will force them into bankruptcy and scoop it up for pennies on the dollar.
Closing the stores? Where are you supposed to go to get the car serviced?
Well, entertaining in kind of a slipping on a banana sort of way. Entertaining to the observer, not so much for the one stepping on the banana.
Yup. Unless you are Al Gore. Right after he "invented the internet" he went on to predict his own doomsday scenario in the movie An Inconvenient Truth back in 2006. Somewhat entertaining but it fell flat on its face when it came to predictions. None of them were even remotely close to coming to fruition. The only thing that was Inconvenient were the tall tales. But that didn't prevent other snake oil salesmen, err, scientists from making similar predictions.
Along the way they have conveniently changed the name from Global Warming to Climate Change. That way if temperatures go up OR down - as they have been since the beginning of time - they can claim that their "models" are correct. But we need more studies...MORE STUDIES...I say.
As near as I can tell, all India has done for US high tech is drive down salaries. In the ERP segment, where I work, back in the early 2000's you could make north of $200/hr as an independent contractor working on Oracle or SAP systems. Thanks to the influx of cheap labor, primarily from India, those rates are now about half that.
These big companies like IBM and Accenture have huge collections of programmers in India. Those jobs were not in addition to US positions. Those were US positions eliminated and transferred overseas. The remaining positions based in the US now pay less, largely due to all those newly laid off programmers fighting over fewer and fewer remaining jobs.
And now that India has gotten prosperous, off of our backs, they don't like the way the game is being played? Fuck them. I say we start cutting back on the H1-B visas. Let's see how the corrupt Indian politicians react when all those remittances start to slow down.
California is going bankrupt. I knew this thing was doomed to failure right from the beginning and have called it out on here many times only to be ridiculed by these big project rail supporters.
Doesn't really bode well for the Green New Deal now does it?