For me it's a non starter because you can't run existing Windows applications on it. Microsoft delivers a scaled down version of Office on it but it doesn't include Outlook. Apparently there is some sort of other email client on it. Why would I buy one of these things if I have to go out and buy new software for it? If I'm going to do that I might as well get an iPad or Android tablet. Those two also have a much, much bigger selection of titles in their respective app stores compared to MicroSoft.
I don't understand why the RT was released before the x86 model since RT seems to have a much more limited audience. Maybe there were some manufacturing delays with the x86 model? If I were going to buy one of the Surface tablets (and I'm not) I would go for the x86 model.
"On my current project, the release date is so tight that we have to do it the quick and dirty way" - I see this all the time.
Project managers always seem to be pushing to get the code done by a specific date - whether it's really done or not. Their job is to crack the whip to get tasks completed by a specific date so corner cutting is inevitable. What's worse is that in my experience almost none of them have ever done any real programming so they have no idea how complex it can be.
PM: "How long will it take to do programming task 'A'?" Me: "That's impossible to say. There are too many dependencies and most of them are out of my control." PM: "Well, I need to put a date on the project plan. Take a guess" Me: "Why don't we just put a calendar on the wall and throw darts at it. That would be just as accurate."
And so it goes until I finally give in and give the PM some ridiculous date just to get him or her off my back. So when I find myself somewhere having to fix someones crappy code there is a very good chance that they just had this conversation with a PM. Then I just smile and get on with the task:-)
That's a good question. Personally I would tell the prospective employee the truth. If you lie they will figure it out eventually and they will leave for another job. The cycle of turnover continues. By telling them, yes we've had 'X' amount of turnover, you are at least starting off on the right foot by telling them the truth. Own up to it and tell them what you're doing to fix it. I would rather the prospective employee decide right then and there that they are not up to the challenge and not accept the job than accept it under false pretenses.
Would I lose a few good candidates? Probably. If a company has high turnover they have got bigger problems than the person sitting across from you at the interview table. A good manager is going to get to the root of the problem and fix it so that the company is a compelling place to work. When you've done that you no longer have to ask people to work for you. They want to work for you.
"Applicant is not a synonym for supplicant" - Brilliant. What the parent poster here doesn't seem to realize is that good developers are not looking for a job. They already have one. And if you want to snare one of them you had better be able to answer their questions. Don't try to bullshit them, it won't work. If a prospective employer refused to answer those questions for me then the interview would be over right then and there.
I disagree. I think that is a perfectly valid question. If the interviewer is unwilling or unable to answer then that in itself is the answer. A vacant position may be vacant for a variety of reasons - perfectly valid reasons such as company expansion, retirement, etc. If it turns out that there is high turnover then there is clearly a problem - noncompetitive salary, poor working conditions, incompetent management, etc.
Now having said all that, a lot of the coding work out there is mop up work. It would be nice if everything I worked on was original code but that's just not the case. I motivate myself in different ways by taking pride in improving the code beyond the way I found it. Sometimes poor code is not the fault of the developer before you. It could be due to imprecise and changing requirements. It could be due to poor technical leadership. It could be due to poor testing. Maybe the guy just did the best he could with the time he had.
In the end it doesn't matter whose fault it is. You were hired to fix it so fix it.
Apple borrowing from BSD was a brilliant move. OS9 (the predecessor to OSX) was absolutely horrible. Slow, prone to crashing, and it ran on PowerPC chips that were far slower than Intel chips. When Apple brought Jobs back it was partly because of the operating system that NeXT had developed that was based on BSD. It evolved into what is now OSX.
Apple did not invent BSD or Linux or UNIX but what they did do was take a very stable, open source, version of UNIX (BSD) and put a beautifully appealing graphical front end on it (AQUA). I would argue that OSX is the most user friendly version of any UNIX or Linux based kernel. It's very stable, it's easy to use and it looks nice. I would bet that a lot of Mac users don't even know, or care, that it's based on UNIX. They just know that it works and is enjoyable to use.
Apple hasn't invented a lot of things but they have taken what others have done and made it better. That's innovation. In the same way that Android looks and works very much like IOS. In the same way that nearly every modern smartphone uses a touch interface. Apple didn't invent the touch interface either, they just perfected it. Some people think that Microsoft "stole" the GUI from Apple, who in turn "stole" it from XEROX. Who knows?
In my view, none of that stuff is stealing. It's simply the industry realizing that there is a better way to do things and then everyone embraces it. Balmer and Gates have seen the writing on the wall. PC sales are down drastically. For many people, particularly in developing countries, a smartphone is their first and only internet enabled device. That's where the growth is. So Windows is going to have to evolve if it wants to stay relevant in the consumer space. Time will tell how successful it is.
Workday is doing the same thing. They use MySQL. Dave Duffield learned his lesson this time around. Back when he was running PeopleSoft the majority of their customers used an Oracle database as they still do now. They also licensed a bunch of other third party tools such as COBOL (MicroFocus), Crystal Reports and SQR. Any application vendor that has an Oracle database at the heart of it is eventually going to get screwed by Oracle. That's just how they operate.
Windows is going to be the dominant operating system in the corporate setting for many years to come. Yes, people will have their little smart phones and tablets but they cannot replace the power of a desktop computer - at least not today. I see people in meetings smugly walking in with their iPads only to quickly fumble trying to take notes on the thing. It's fine for looking at stuff, not so good for creating stuff.
Benioff takes a jab at Ellison every chance he gets. Can't say I blame him because Ellison may be one of the few people that's a bigger jackass than Benioff is - and that's saying a lot.
What people need to remember about Salesforce is that CRM is not a mission critical application. That's why it works ok on a cloud architecture. If there is an outage it's not the end of the world. Now imagine putting your whole Financials or Supply Chain system on a cloud based system and there is an outage or a security breach. You're fucked. Short story - cloud works for some stuff and not others.
Benioff - shut up and get back on your Segway and stick your thumb back up your ass where it belongs.
1) Install Microsoft Security Essentials. It's free and works as well as any paid Anti-Virus that I've used. 2) Educate your kids on the types of website to avoid. Sites like Limewire (where kids get free MP3's from) are full of viruses and spyware. 3) Set them up with a non-Admin account. That way if something bad happens the damage is minimized. 4) Install some add ons for the browser. No Script is a good one. It blocks Java Script and the bad guys love to use that to wreck havoc. 5) Consider creating a separate partition for the OS. If something goes wrong it's nice to have the OS separate from your own files. 6) Consider something like Norton Ghost (there are free alternatives as well) that can create a full image of your HD. Take snapshots before doing major system updates. If something goes wrong you can just restore the image and everything is as it was. 7) Running Windows as a VM on top of Linux is a good idea. If something goes south you can simply copy the pristine image back over the corrupted one. 8) Stay on top of the System Updates. Microsoft has "patch Tuesday" where they typically release system patches. Some of them are important and fix known vulnerabilities.
Good point. I suspect that the end run around the teachers unions plays into this too. It just goes to illustrate that education is not quite as free and open as some might want you to believe. It's very tightly controlled by the government. The good news is that technology is chipping away at this long standing monopoly. Just this morning I heard that NewsWeek will no longer be a print publication - online only. We're moving from a world of the physical to a world of bits and bytes. In the corporate world I see a trend away from instructor led training classes to online or pre-recorded instruction.
It's happening in the formal education world as well, just more slowly. The first hurdle was getting online degrees some recognition and that is happening now. I'm not willing to bet that formal in class instruction is going away completely but the days of trudging to a classroom and sitting on a hard wooden chair listening to some stuffy old windbag in a bow tie and tweed jacket sporting a C. Everett Coop beard-with-no-mustache are coming to an end.
The article doesn't mention but I suspect that is base salary only. Google is known to have a very good benefits package (at least by today's standards). There may be a stock and/or bonus component that is not included. I find it hard to believe that 128K is the total comp for an engineer at Google.
Having said all that, my experience is that salaries in CA are far too low given the cost of living there. Where I live (it's a large city, not out in the sticks) you can buy a nice house for 250-300K. Same house in Silicon Valley or LA? Well over a million and that's being conservative. Taxes are also much higher in CA. So you would think that salaries are 4x as high there as they are here but they are almost the same.
Sure, CA is really nice. I love going there. Great weather, all that. But living there? Forget it.
Yup. Probably 90% of the dev work I do is via RDP to a Windows server somewhere. It works just as well with a Mac client as it does a Windows client. The only two Windows only software I might use that doesn't have a Mac equivalent is Visio and MS Project and I very rarely use them. I have a couple of Windows VM's but I almost never have to use them...it's just my security blanket. It's still a Windows world but if you're a bit creative you can get my just fine with a Mac.
Boxee is just doing what Amazon does now with their Prime service. Prime offers you access to watch tons of TV and movies at no additional cost (beyond the cost of the Prime membership). You can queue up shows and watch them at your leisure. But if you cancel Prime...poof...there goes all your TV shows and movies in the queue. So you can only watch it for as long as your membership is active. Boxee is doing exactly the same thing.
Cloud services are for people that are dumb and/or too lazy to figure out how to do it for themselves. The appeal is that it's so easy. Just pay a few bucks a month and let the cloud company manage everything for you. Ok, so I can have access to my music and movie library from anywhere there is an internet connection. You can do the same thing with an OpenSSH connection to your home media server (for free) or by using a VPN service (some are free, some you pay for). To me, paying $15 a month...every month...forever...is not a very good deal for something I can do for free. But not everyone is technically inclined or has the time to figure it out so for them it's worth it. To each their own.
Yup. I was lucky enough to snag one of those fire sale Touchpads. After playing with WebOS for a few days I found out that they had little in the way of useful apps so I dual booted it with Android. It makes great little dirt-cheap tablet.
I had high hopes for the Surface...if only to keep Apple and Google and Amazon honest. But the $499 price is a complete non-starter. First of all, if you want the cover/keyboard you have to fork over an additional $100. Seems a little steep to me. $50 is more like it. Secondly, when you buy one of the other tablets you're buying into a vast ecosystem of apps. Microsoft? They have relatively little to offer. Sure they have Office but this is supposed to be a consumer tablet, not a corporate tablet.
Unless you are just a huge Microsoft fan to begin with I don't see any compelling reason to buy one of these. You can get an iPad with vastly more apps to choose from. You can buy an Android tablet for much the same reason, and cheaper to boot. You can buy an Amazon tablet for half the price and, if you have a Prime membership, access to tons of movies TV and books.
I was hoping that MS would price it at $399, including keyboard/cover. That would give them a fighting chance against the other guys. Even if they have to sell it at a loss at least they can get them in peoples hands and give developers an audience to write for. As it stands now, this will be Touchpad II.
Every time one of these knuckleheads at the cable monopolies pull this kind of stunt all it does is encourage people to pirate stuff. The record companies tried it too and it failed. Personally I can get all the entertainment I need with an OTA antenna, Roku and Amazon Prime. Nobody needs any of this stuff...it's entertainment. If it's there we will watch it but if it's not then we just find something else to do.
Many years ago I had a billing dispute with the cable company and cut it off. Two years with no TV whatsoever..then my GF at the time moves in and she wants it so we put it back on. But during that time I didn't miss it a bit. I read more, did more stuff outdoors...generally made better use of my time. Even now, I watch less TV and the time I do spend is watching quality programming not whatever crap the cable executive throws at me.
The point is that TV is a habit, bordering on addiction. The sooner people realize this the sooner they will spend less money and make better use of their time. The cable execs are counting on us NOT figuring this out.
What has these idiots scared is that technology keeps getting better and better and eventually someone will find a way around this entrenched monopoly. You can do what I'm doing but it's a bit clumsy still and not ideal for the non-technical types.
Yes, this is how Facebook operates and it's very insidious. If you dig deep enough you can find the correct privacy control but FB has shown time and again that their so called 'controls' either don't work properly or are abused. And every time it's the same response - 'oops, I guess we messed up...we'll get it right this time'. Now that they are a publicly traded company I only expect that the increased pressure to generate profits will only accelerate this sort of behavior. They will sell your personal information to anyone that is willing to pay for it. Zuck - I wouldn't trust that slimy little bastard as far as I could spit.
Absolutely right about HP. I wouldn't buy anything from them until they decide what kind of company they want to be and start showing us some of the great products they used to make but somehow lost their way.
As for Apple I can't quite figure out what they are doing with their laptops these days. I've got a MacBook Pro that's about 4 years old (still running Snow Leopard) and it's hands down the best laptop I have ever owned. But you know what? I don't want to buy a new one. They are nice machines but you can't upgrade them. Everything is soldered on to the board. The one I have now I've been able to add memory to and upgrade it to an SSD which has extended the life of it. It's still fast and smooth but eventually the screen will die or the logic board or something that costs too much to fix and I'll have to get another laptop.
At this point I'm leaning towards a Lenovo. Many years ago I worked for a place that issued me a ThinkPad and that thing was solid. Great keyboard and very reliable. Probably the best "Windows" laptop that I've had. But on the Lenovo I'd put Linux and get rid of Windows 8.
Property rights - that's a very good way to phrase it. From my standpoint, the employer does not own me. They rent me for 40 hours a week. During those 40 hours I will do what they ask me to do (provided that it's nothing illegal or immoral). I will abide by their rules and regulations. The "contract" is completely open ended. They can terminate it for any reason they like - as can I. Outside that 40 hour "contract" the employer can go pound sand. They can do whatever they like during that time - as can I.
As a contractor it's much easier for me to enforce this than a full time employee. Just the same, employees have to stand up and fight this sort of thing. Otherwise, the employer will continue to take as much as they can for as long as they can. If you are fortunate enough to have marketable skills and other employment options then the best way to fight it is with your feet. Leave. Get a job with a different employer that treats you better. Tell your friends in the industry not to work for Employer X because Employer X treats their employees like shit. The minute you give in you might as well bend over and grease up cause it's game over.
My Galaxy S2 (yes, it's no longer the newest Galaxy model) has an SD card in it and it's one of the main reasons I ditched my old iPhone. SD cards are cheap and I've never had one fail on me. There is just no way I'm going to pay $100 for an extra 8GB of onboard storage when I can buy an SD card for a fraction of that price. Not to mention that with SD cards you have virtually unlimited storage if you're willing to swap cards in and out. To swap out the SD card I have to take off the back cover and it's underneath the battery. Not as convenient as a side loaded card but I don't need any tools to do it so it's not that much of a burden.
Maybe if the carriers would give us truly unlimited data (Sprint seems to be the only one willing to do that so far) I wouldn't mind pulling my songs down from the cloud. But if I'm going to be limited to 1-5Gb per month then I'm not willing to spend that pulling down stuff that is already mine in the first place. Besides, I prefer having it local for other reasons.
So I'm with you - if the phone doesn't have an SD card it's a non starter for me.
What sometimes gets lost in the mobile furor is the fact that many (most?) people that are buying mobile devices already have a desktop and/or laptop computer. This might not be true in some of the 3rd world countries but in 1st world countries I believe that it is true. Yes, mobile will be increasingly popular but for content creators nothing yet rivals the versatility of the full sized keyboard and large (or even multiple) screens that the desktop offers. For some tasks a mobile phone or tablet is great. Things like checking email, watching a movie, etc. But if you have to do a lot of typing or precision drawing then the small screen doesn't cut it. Granted, most people are content consumers rather than creators so the mobile use case works well. However, someone has to create the stuff that we consume so the desktop is going to be around for a long time to come.
It's been my experience that often the ones that get promoted into management are the ones that put in long hours. Not necessarily productive hours, just long. Why do they get promoted? Because their bosses had to play the same game to get where they are. It's the same reason that management types tend to hire and promote others that think, look and act like they do. It's a club and if you want in you have to play by their rules.
Some managers have the mistaken belief that working longer is the same as working harder. Programming, for example, requires a great deal of concentration to do properly. After a certain number of work hours (varies by person) productivity drops off sharply. Fatigue sets in and mistakes multiply. I have seen this time and again, not just with myself but when I have managed others.
My view on it is that if people are having to work long hours then one of the following is to blame: a) the schedule is unrealistic b) the person is not working efficiently or c) skills are lacking. A or C are relatively easy to identify and fix. B is sometimes more difficult to spot. People often look busy without getting much done.
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For me it's a non starter because you can't run existing Windows applications on it. Microsoft delivers a scaled down version of Office on it but it doesn't include Outlook. Apparently there is some sort of other email client on it. Why would I buy one of these things if I have to go out and buy new software for it? If I'm going to do that I might as well get an iPad or Android tablet. Those two also have a much, much bigger selection of titles in their respective app stores compared to MicroSoft.
I don't understand why the RT was released before the x86 model since RT seems to have a much more limited audience. Maybe there were some manufacturing delays with the x86 model? If I were going to buy one of the Surface tablets (and I'm not) I would go for the x86 model.
Hahaha...yeah the old Macs did have some good features. It's just that the OS became outdated so they had to move on.
"On my current project, the release date is so tight that we have to do it the quick and dirty way" - I see this all the time.
Project managers always seem to be pushing to get the code done by a specific date - whether it's really done or not. Their job is to crack the whip to get tasks completed by a specific date so corner cutting is inevitable. What's worse is that in my experience almost none of them have ever done any real programming so they have no idea how complex it can be.
PM: "How long will it take to do programming task 'A'?"
Me: "That's impossible to say. There are too many dependencies and most of them are out of my control."
PM: "Well, I need to put a date on the project plan. Take a guess"
Me: "Why don't we just put a calendar on the wall and throw darts at it. That would be just as accurate."
And so it goes until I finally give in and give the PM some ridiculous date just to get him or her off my back. So when I find myself somewhere having to fix someones crappy code there is a very good chance that they just had this conversation with a PM. Then I just smile and get on with the task :-)
That's a good question. Personally I would tell the prospective employee the truth. If you lie they will figure it out eventually and they will leave for another job. The cycle of turnover continues. By telling them, yes we've had 'X' amount of turnover, you are at least starting off on the right foot by telling them the truth. Own up to it and tell them what you're doing to fix it. I would rather the prospective employee decide right then and there that they are not up to the challenge and not accept the job than accept it under false pretenses.
Would I lose a few good candidates? Probably. If a company has high turnover they have got bigger problems than the person sitting across from you at the interview table. A good manager is going to get to the root of the problem and fix it so that the company is a compelling place to work. When you've done that you no longer have to ask people to work for you. They want to work for you.
"Applicant is not a synonym for supplicant" - Brilliant. What the parent poster here doesn't seem to realize is that good developers are not looking for a job. They already have one. And if you want to snare one of them you had better be able to answer their questions. Don't try to bullshit them, it won't work. If a prospective employer refused to answer those questions for me then the interview would be over right then and there.
I disagree. I think that is a perfectly valid question. If the interviewer is unwilling or unable to answer then that in itself is the answer. A vacant position may be vacant for a variety of reasons - perfectly valid reasons such as company expansion, retirement, etc. If it turns out that there is high turnover then there is clearly a problem - noncompetitive salary, poor working conditions, incompetent management, etc.
Now having said all that, a lot of the coding work out there is mop up work. It would be nice if everything I worked on was original code but that's just not the case. I motivate myself in different ways by taking pride in improving the code beyond the way I found it. Sometimes poor code is not the fault of the developer before you. It could be due to imprecise and changing requirements. It could be due to poor technical leadership. It could be due to poor testing. Maybe the guy just did the best he could with the time he had.
In the end it doesn't matter whose fault it is. You were hired to fix it so fix it.
Apple borrowing from BSD was a brilliant move. OS9 (the predecessor to OSX) was absolutely horrible. Slow, prone to crashing, and it ran on PowerPC chips that were far slower than Intel chips. When Apple brought Jobs back it was partly because of the operating system that NeXT had developed that was based on BSD. It evolved into what is now OSX.
Apple did not invent BSD or Linux or UNIX but what they did do was take a very stable, open source, version of UNIX (BSD) and put a beautifully appealing graphical front end on it (AQUA). I would argue that OSX is the most user friendly version of any UNIX or Linux based kernel. It's very stable, it's easy to use and it looks nice. I would bet that a lot of Mac users don't even know, or care, that it's based on UNIX. They just know that it works and is enjoyable to use.
Apple hasn't invented a lot of things but they have taken what others have done and made it better. That's innovation. In the same way that Android looks and works very much like IOS. In the same way that nearly every modern smartphone uses a touch interface. Apple didn't invent the touch interface either, they just perfected it. Some people think that Microsoft "stole" the GUI from Apple, who in turn "stole" it from XEROX. Who knows?
In my view, none of that stuff is stealing. It's simply the industry realizing that there is a better way to do things and then everyone embraces it. Balmer and Gates have seen the writing on the wall. PC sales are down drastically. For many people, particularly in developing countries, a smartphone is their first and only internet enabled device. That's where the growth is. So Windows is going to have to evolve if it wants to stay relevant in the consumer space. Time will tell how successful it is.
Workday is doing the same thing. They use MySQL. Dave Duffield learned his lesson this time around. Back when he was running PeopleSoft the majority of their customers used an Oracle database as they still do now. They also licensed a bunch of other third party tools such as COBOL (MicroFocus), Crystal Reports and SQR. Any application vendor that has an Oracle database at the heart of it is eventually going to get screwed by Oracle. That's just how they operate.
Windows is going to be the dominant operating system in the corporate setting for many years to come. Yes, people will have their little smart phones and tablets but they cannot replace the power of a desktop computer - at least not today. I see people in meetings smugly walking in with their iPads only to quickly fumble trying to take notes on the thing. It's fine for looking at stuff, not so good for creating stuff.
Benioff takes a jab at Ellison every chance he gets. Can't say I blame him because Ellison may be one of the few people that's a bigger jackass than Benioff is - and that's saying a lot.
What people need to remember about Salesforce is that CRM is not a mission critical application. That's why it works ok on a cloud architecture. If there is an outage it's not the end of the world. Now imagine putting your whole Financials or Supply Chain system on a cloud based system and there is an outage or a security breach. You're fucked. Short story - cloud works for some stuff and not others.
Benioff - shut up and get back on your Segway and stick your thumb back up your ass where it belongs.
1) Install Microsoft Security Essentials. It's free and works as well as any paid Anti-Virus that I've used.
2) Educate your kids on the types of website to avoid. Sites like Limewire (where kids get free MP3's from) are full of viruses and spyware.
3) Set them up with a non-Admin account. That way if something bad happens the damage is minimized.
4) Install some add ons for the browser. No Script is a good one. It blocks Java Script and the bad guys love to use that to wreck havoc.
5) Consider creating a separate partition for the OS. If something goes wrong it's nice to have the OS separate from your own files.
6) Consider something like Norton Ghost (there are free alternatives as well) that can create a full image of your HD. Take snapshots before doing major system updates. If something goes wrong you can just restore the image and everything is as it was.
7) Running Windows as a VM on top of Linux is a good idea. If something goes south you can simply copy the pristine image back over the corrupted one.
8) Stay on top of the System Updates. Microsoft has "patch Tuesday" where they typically release system patches. Some of them are important and fix known vulnerabilities.
Good point. I suspect that the end run around the teachers unions plays into this too. It just goes to illustrate that education is not quite as free and open as some might want you to believe. It's very tightly controlled by the government. The good news is that technology is chipping away at this long standing monopoly. Just this morning I heard that NewsWeek will no longer be a print publication - online only. We're moving from a world of the physical to a world of bits and bytes. In the corporate world I see a trend away from instructor led training classes to online or pre-recorded instruction.
It's happening in the formal education world as well, just more slowly. The first hurdle was getting online degrees some recognition and that is happening now. I'm not willing to bet that formal in class instruction is going away completely but the days of trudging to a classroom and sitting on a hard wooden chair listening to some stuffy old windbag in a bow tie and tweed jacket sporting a C. Everett Coop beard-with-no-mustache are coming to an end.
The article doesn't mention but I suspect that is base salary only. Google is known to have a very good benefits package (at least by today's standards). There may be a stock and/or bonus component that is not included. I find it hard to believe that 128K is the total comp for an engineer at Google.
Having said all that, my experience is that salaries in CA are far too low given the cost of living there. Where I live (it's a large city, not out in the sticks) you can buy a nice house for 250-300K. Same house in Silicon Valley or LA? Well over a million and that's being conservative. Taxes are also much higher in CA. So you would think that salaries are 4x as high there as they are here but they are almost the same.
Sure, CA is really nice. I love going there. Great weather, all that. But living there? Forget it.
Yup. Probably 90% of the dev work I do is via RDP to a Windows server somewhere. It works just as well with a Mac client as it does a Windows client. The only two Windows only software I might use that doesn't have a Mac equivalent is Visio and MS Project and I very rarely use them. I have a couple of Windows VM's but I almost never have to use them...it's just my security blanket. It's still a Windows world but if you're a bit creative you can get my just fine with a Mac.
Boxee is just doing what Amazon does now with their Prime service. Prime offers you access to watch tons of TV and movies at no additional cost (beyond the cost of the Prime membership). You can queue up shows and watch them at your leisure. But if you cancel Prime...poof...there goes all your TV shows and movies in the queue. So you can only watch it for as long as your membership is active. Boxee is doing exactly the same thing.
Cloud services are for people that are dumb and/or too lazy to figure out how to do it for themselves. The appeal is that it's so easy. Just pay a few bucks a month and let the cloud company manage everything for you. Ok, so I can have access to my music and movie library from anywhere there is an internet connection. You can do the same thing with an OpenSSH connection to your home media server (for free) or by using a VPN service (some are free, some you pay for). To me, paying $15 a month...every month...forever...is not a very good deal for something I can do for free. But not everyone is technically inclined or has the time to figure it out so for them it's worth it. To each their own.
You forgot Craven Morehead
Touche :-)
Yup. I was lucky enough to snag one of those fire sale Touchpads. After playing with WebOS for a few days I found out that they had little in the way of useful apps so I dual booted it with Android. It makes great little dirt-cheap tablet.
I had high hopes for the Surface...if only to keep Apple and Google and Amazon honest. But the $499 price is a complete non-starter. First of all, if you want the cover/keyboard you have to fork over an additional $100. Seems a little steep to me. $50 is more like it. Secondly, when you buy one of the other tablets you're buying into a vast ecosystem of apps. Microsoft? They have relatively little to offer. Sure they have Office but this is supposed to be a consumer tablet, not a corporate tablet.
Unless you are just a huge Microsoft fan to begin with I don't see any compelling reason to buy one of these. You can get an iPad with vastly more apps to choose from. You can buy an Android tablet for much the same reason, and cheaper to boot. You can buy an Amazon tablet for half the price and, if you have a Prime membership, access to tons of movies TV and books.
I was hoping that MS would price it at $399, including keyboard/cover. That would give them a fighting chance against the other guys. Even if they have to sell it at a loss at least they can get them in peoples hands and give developers an audience to write for. As it stands now, this will be Touchpad II.
Every time one of these knuckleheads at the cable monopolies pull this kind of stunt all it does is encourage people to pirate stuff. The record companies tried it too and it failed. Personally I can get all the entertainment I need with an OTA antenna, Roku and Amazon Prime. Nobody needs any of this stuff...it's entertainment. If it's there we will watch it but if it's not then we just find something else to do.
Many years ago I had a billing dispute with the cable company and cut it off. Two years with no TV whatsoever..then my GF at the time moves in and she wants it so we put it back on. But during that time I didn't miss it a bit. I read more, did more stuff outdoors...generally made better use of my time. Even now, I watch less TV and the time I do spend is watching quality programming not whatever crap the cable executive throws at me.
The point is that TV is a habit, bordering on addiction. The sooner people realize this the sooner they will spend less money and make better use of their time. The cable execs are counting on us NOT figuring this out.
What has these idiots scared is that technology keeps getting better and better and eventually someone will find a way around this entrenched monopoly. You can do what I'm doing but it's a bit clumsy still and not ideal for the non-technical types.
Yes, this is how Facebook operates and it's very insidious. If you dig deep enough you can find the correct privacy control but FB has shown time and again that their so called 'controls' either don't work properly or are abused. And every time it's the same response - 'oops, I guess we messed up...we'll get it right this time'. Now that they are a publicly traded company I only expect that the increased pressure to generate profits will only accelerate this sort of behavior. They will sell your personal information to anyone that is willing to pay for it. Zuck - I wouldn't trust that slimy little bastard as far as I could spit.
Absolutely right about HP. I wouldn't buy anything from them until they decide what kind of company they want to be and start showing us some of the great products they used to make but somehow lost their way.
As for Apple I can't quite figure out what they are doing with their laptops these days. I've got a MacBook Pro that's about 4 years old (still running Snow Leopard) and it's hands down the best laptop I have ever owned. But you know what? I don't want to buy a new one. They are nice machines but you can't upgrade them. Everything is soldered on to the board. The one I have now I've been able to add memory to and upgrade it to an SSD which has extended the life of it. It's still fast and smooth but eventually the screen will die or the logic board or something that costs too much to fix and I'll have to get another laptop.
At this point I'm leaning towards a Lenovo. Many years ago I worked for a place that issued me a ThinkPad and that thing was solid. Great keyboard and very reliable. Probably the best "Windows" laptop that I've had. But on the Lenovo I'd put Linux and get rid of Windows 8.
Property rights - that's a very good way to phrase it. From my standpoint, the employer does not own me. They rent me for 40 hours a week. During those 40 hours I will do what they ask me to do (provided that it's nothing illegal or immoral). I will abide by their rules and regulations. The "contract" is completely open ended. They can terminate it for any reason they like - as can I. Outside that 40 hour "contract" the employer can go pound sand. They can do whatever they like during that time - as can I.
As a contractor it's much easier for me to enforce this than a full time employee. Just the same, employees have to stand up and fight this sort of thing. Otherwise, the employer will continue to take as much as they can for as long as they can. If you are fortunate enough to have marketable skills and other employment options then the best way to fight it is with your feet. Leave. Get a job with a different employer that treats you better. Tell your friends in the industry not to work for Employer X because Employer X treats their employees like shit. The minute you give in you might as well bend over and grease up cause it's game over.
My Galaxy S2 (yes, it's no longer the newest Galaxy model) has an SD card in it and it's one of the main reasons I ditched my old iPhone. SD cards are cheap and I've never had one fail on me. There is just no way I'm going to pay $100 for an extra 8GB of onboard storage when I can buy an SD card for a fraction of that price. Not to mention that with SD cards you have virtually unlimited storage if you're willing to swap cards in and out. To swap out the SD card I have to take off the back cover and it's underneath the battery. Not as convenient as a side loaded card but I don't need any tools to do it so it's not that much of a burden.
Maybe if the carriers would give us truly unlimited data (Sprint seems to be the only one willing to do that so far) I wouldn't mind pulling my songs down from the cloud. But if I'm going to be limited to 1-5Gb per month then I'm not willing to spend that pulling down stuff that is already mine in the first place. Besides, I prefer having it local for other reasons.
So I'm with you - if the phone doesn't have an SD card it's a non starter for me.
What sometimes gets lost in the mobile furor is the fact that many (most?) people that are buying mobile devices already have a desktop and/or laptop computer. This might not be true in some of the 3rd world countries but in 1st world countries I believe that it is true. Yes, mobile will be increasingly popular but for content creators nothing yet rivals the versatility of the full sized keyboard and large (or even multiple) screens that the desktop offers. For some tasks a mobile phone or tablet is great. Things like checking email, watching a movie, etc. But if you have to do a lot of typing or precision drawing then the small screen doesn't cut it. Granted, most people are content consumers rather than creators so the mobile use case works well. However, someone has to create the stuff that we consume so the desktop is going to be around for a long time to come.
It's been my experience that often the ones that get promoted into management are the ones that put in long hours. Not necessarily productive hours, just long. Why do they get promoted? Because their bosses had to play the same game to get where they are. It's the same reason that management types tend to hire and promote others that think, look and act like they do. It's a club and if you want in you have to play by their rules.
Some managers have the mistaken belief that working longer is the same as working harder. Programming, for example, requires a great deal of concentration to do properly. After a certain number of work hours (varies by person) productivity drops off sharply. Fatigue sets in and mistakes multiply. I have seen this time and again, not just with myself but when I have managed others.
My view on it is that if people are having to work long hours then one of the following is to blame: a) the schedule is unrealistic b) the person is not working efficiently or c) skills are lacking. A or C are relatively easy to identify and fix. B is sometimes more difficult to spot. People often look busy without getting much done.
Long hours are easy to see, work ethic less so.