Software bugs are not bugs - they are defects. Would you pay to fix a manufacturing or design defect in a product you already bought?
Hell no. The manufacturer has an obligation to deliver a defect-free, feature complete product - that is what I paid for.
Android and other software should not get a pass on this simply because "software".
I'll pay for new features and new hardware if the value proposition is there - but I will not pay developers twice. Once to build the product and yet another time to fix the product they screwed up.
I want a smart-enough watch with good battery life that doesn't look awful. Pebble's watches look clunky and have displays that look pixelated enough to belong in the 80's.
My wife has an Apple Watch, I have a Moto 360 and a Samsung Gear Fit. The Apple watch and the Moto 360 are hobbled by software problems but the unforgivable sin is poor battery life. Both of these devices can barely make it through a work day - forget about going out at night with either unless you charge them after work.
My Samsung Gear Fit - while not technically a smartwatch is a smart-enough watch that gives me alerts, tells me the time, tracks my activity and has days long battery life.
I want my next watch to be lighter, cheaper, and have fantastic battery life.
I laugh when I hear about drug companies taking the moral "high road" when it comes to these issues.
This is an industry that has repeatedly milked every last cent out of life saving drugs. An industry that puts profit before human life has no moral ground to stand on.
That said, this is an ineffective protest - states will not simply drop the death penalty when far cheaper and easier forms of execution exist. I suspect if these drugs can no longer be found the gas chamber and firing squad will be brought back. Bullets and hydrogen cyanide are pretty cheap and very effective.
If Microsoft makes it, use an alternative product whenever and wherever possible.
We went to Google Apps years ago, but it was tough trying to get people to use Hangouts VS Skype. Everyone just sort of used Skype out of inertia.
Finally after many problems, my users started using Hangouts. We also use Hangouts in our conference rooms with dedicated chromeboxes. Users were happy about running entirely in the browser and not having to install and update another bit of software.
The incumbent cable company is the only broadband choice for many people in the US. Cable companies that adopt this policy are in violation of US anti-trust law. Cable companies that use their monopoly status to harm competing video services should be held liable for the damages caused to the competing video services.
Microsoft tried this with a web browser and operating system years ago - and it tied them up in court for years.
As the H-1B glut depresses wages, it will further discourage enrollment in STEM programs. It's a downward spiral that will result in no Americans going into STEM education paths.
I have young kids. I see that some kids genuinely are interested in math and science. Unfortunately most of these kids are being told by their parents that there are little opportunities in STEM fields.
I also see many more kids taking the vocational/technical track than when I was in school. Vo-tech seems to have lost it's stigma and is even being praised by many former tech workers.
The H-1B program has caused almost irreparable harm to the tech sector in the US. It may take a generation to undo the damage.
Atom didn't have the power of a desktop CPU and didn't have low enough power consumption to unseat ARM. Atom also had an awkward position in SOHO NAS devices. My Atom based Synology can't transcode 1080p video. I'm sure Synology picked Atom for price/power consumption reasons - but in a box with 5 spinning discs, does power consumption really matter all that much?
I'm hoping that with the death of Atom, SOHO NAS vendors will migrate to more capable CPUs.
Instead of asking about existing labeled economic systems, Harvard should have asked this question:
If you were king of the world, how would you distributed limited resources in a world with unlimited demand?
This "resource allocation" problem is non-trivial. Markets seem to be the only way to efficiently and equitably direct resources where they are most productive. Any other system requires policy makers to pick winners and losers - and history is full of examples of that going wrong.
Millennials may feel differently about planned economies when they are being taken from instead of being given to.
I have a computer science degree, and I can tell you that computer science isn't science.
In its most abstract form, it's mathematics. The act of implementing algorithms in software could be more accurately described as software engineering.....if the profession actually had things like professional organizations and quality assurance measures like accreditation, certification, and licensing.
So I guess "computer science" really isn't science OR engineering.
What these guys want are more code monkey factory workers - and they want the government to pay for the training.
We only used Adobe for photo editing and PDF software.
Our Chromebooks and Macs have native PDF capability and Gimp filled in as a photoshop replacement. Apple Photos also does some photo work for us.
Our websites are built with a number of cloud based tools - like Google sites.
There is no "drop-in" replacement for Adobe's entire suite that I am aware of, but there are many stand alone tools that can replace many of the pieces.
Boxed software licensing stupidity pushed us into the cloud.
We are a private school, and we got tired of constantly tracking our licensing status. Do we have enough AV seats? Do we have enough Exchange and SQL cals?
Enough is enough.
We put our staff on Mac OS and we put the kids on Chromebooks and Google Apps. Our experience with Microsoft's crazy licensing schemes was one of the reasons we didn't even consider their "cloud" solutions. Yes, an E1 Office 365 is free for schools, but Google Apps and Chromebooks are dead simple and the staff and students really like them.
We kicked Adobe to the curb for the same reasons. The licensing and compliance costs, even for Edu, were absurd.
One of the most important tenets of Libertarianism is your individual right to sell your labor. Voluntarily choosing to sell your labor via a labor union isn't incompatible with Libertarianism.
I have two issues with some unions:
1. An individual should never be forced to join a union. An individual should join a union if it makes sense for the individual. Too often unions enrich themselves while providing little else to the rank and file.
2. There should be no unions in Government work. No functions of our Government should be at the mercy of a union.
Beyond that, I support voluntary membership in private sector unions.
Years ago my father in law changed the navigation voice on his Garmin to a man's voice.
When I asked him why he said: "My wife and two daughters have been telling me what to do and where to go my entire life. I don't want another woman telling me what to do."
I was the Director of Network Services for a small community bank. Since we were an FDIC insured bank, we were regulated by the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS).
We were never permitted to run any software or hardware that was not supported by the manufacturer. We also had tons of security requirements (intrusion detection, the most restrictive permissions delegated to allow someone to do their job, putting all internet facing devices in a DMZ, database auditing and logging...etc...etc...etc).
I've never worked IT in healthcare. How does a provider of medical services not have similar regulatory requirements?
The charger included with Tesla vehicles only needs a NEMA 14-50 outlet in your garage. That means you need a two-pole 50A breaker - 6-3 wire and a NEMA 14-50R receptacle installed......hardly $10k - more like $300 worth of materials and a half a day's work for a competent electrician.
Your charging solution should cost $800 bucks or so.
Reserving one of these cars now increases the likelihood that your car will be eligible for the $7500 tax credit. As I understand it, this credit only applies to the first 200,000 qualifying vehicles sold by a manufacturer. At last estimates, Tesla sold about 100,000 or so vehicles which leaves about 100,000 credits left.
I reserved mine last night. The deposit is fully refundable. At the very least, I think I've got a shot at getting the federal credit.
It's not a bad deal.
Mass transit isn't the only poorly planned thing
on
Why BART Is Falling Apart
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
We have schools throughout the country that are asking for voter approval for huge bonds to upgrade or replace their aging schools.
One school district near me tries to get voter sympathy by giving tours of its boiler rooms and showcasing a 60 year old boiler (that still works BTW).
During one of the trips a person on the tour asked our tour guide "The boilers didn't become 60 years old overnight - why didn't the school board put some money away every year for future maintenance and upgrades?"
I suspect BART is also the victim of failing to plan for the future. Entropy always wins. No system exists that will not need maintenance or repair in the future. It is foolish to defer maintenance and upgrades and shows a lack of stewardship by the managers of that system.
To the surprise of no one - the $70 million bond request by the school district was voted down by a 3 to 1 measure.
H-1B visas were intended to give STEM companies a way to recruit the absolute best and brightest in high-end fields - when those skills are not available locally.
This was intended for research and engineering positions - PhD stuff.
Instead the program was abused to artificially increase the labor supply of half-price IT admins and code monkeys. If these visa holders are the best and the brightest, why do these visa holders end up on the low-end of the pay scale?
The easiest way to fix the H1B1 is to ensure that it is used for its intended purpose. Make the MINIMUM salary for an H-1B holder $150,000/yr and adjust it up annually with the CPI.
Slashdot Mirror
Software bugs are not bugs - they are defects. Would you pay to fix a manufacturing or design defect in a product you already bought?
Hell no. The manufacturer has an obligation to deliver a defect-free, feature complete product - that is what I paid for.
Android and other software should not get a pass on this simply because "software".
I'll pay for new features and new hardware if the value proposition is there - but I will not pay developers twice. Once to build the product and yet another time to fix the product they screwed up.
I should have been more clear in my post.
I want a smart-enough watch with good battery life that doesn't look awful. Pebble's watches look clunky and have displays that look pixelated enough to belong in the 80's.
My wife has an Apple Watch, I have a Moto 360 and a Samsung Gear Fit. The Apple watch and the Moto 360 are hobbled by software problems but the unforgivable sin is poor battery life. Both of these devices can barely make it through a work day - forget about going out at night with either unless you charge them after work.
My Samsung Gear Fit - while not technically a smartwatch is a smart-enough watch that gives me alerts, tells me the time, tracks my activity and has days long battery life.
I want my next watch to be lighter, cheaper, and have fantastic battery life.
I laugh when I hear about drug companies taking the moral "high road" when it comes to these issues.
This is an industry that has repeatedly milked every last cent out of life saving drugs. An industry that puts profit before human life has no moral ground to stand on.
That said, this is an ineffective protest - states will not simply drop the death penalty when far cheaper and easier forms of execution exist. I suspect if these drugs can no longer be found the gas chamber and firing squad will be brought back. Bullets and hydrogen cyanide are pretty cheap and very effective.
If Microsoft makes it, use an alternative product whenever and wherever possible.
We went to Google Apps years ago, but it was tough trying to get people to use Hangouts VS Skype. Everyone just sort of used Skype out of inertia.
Finally after many problems, my users started using Hangouts. We also use Hangouts in our conference rooms with dedicated chromeboxes. Users were happy about running entirely in the browser and not having to install and update another bit of software.
We got rid of Skype and you can too.
The incumbent cable company is the only broadband choice for many people in the US. Cable companies that adopt this policy are in violation of US anti-trust law.
Cable companies that use their monopoly status to harm competing video services should be held liable for the damages caused to the competing video services.
Microsoft tried this with a web browser and operating system years ago - and it tied them up in court for years.
Obama, are you listening?
They are lightweight relative to their power output and are approaching 60% efficiency.
They also are very durable requiring little maintenance over their lifetime.
Fuel density and turbine efficiency are pretty hard to beat when it comes to aircraft.
As the H-1B glut depresses wages, it will further discourage enrollment in STEM programs. It's a downward spiral that will result in no Americans going into STEM education paths.
I have young kids. I see that some kids genuinely are interested in math and science. Unfortunately most of these kids are being told by their parents that there are little opportunities in STEM fields.
I also see many more kids taking the vocational/technical track than when I was in school. Vo-tech seems to have lost it's stigma and is even being praised by many former tech workers.
The H-1B program has caused almost irreparable harm to the tech sector in the US. It may take a generation to undo the damage.
Atom didn't have the power of a desktop CPU and didn't have low enough power consumption to unseat ARM. Atom also had an awkward position in SOHO NAS devices. My Atom based Synology can't transcode 1080p video. I'm sure Synology picked Atom for price/power consumption reasons - but in a box with 5 spinning discs, does power consumption really matter all that much?
I'm hoping that with the death of Atom, SOHO NAS vendors will migrate to more capable CPUs.
We deploy tons of chromebooks at our school - we love them. Specifically plasticky 15" HP units with Intel CPUs - they are $199 and durable as heck.
The entire point of a chromebook is cheap and low-power. Storage and computing are (mostly) done in the cloud.
Is there anyone on earth asking for a luxury chromebook? That's like asking for a luxury Nissan Versa.
Instead of asking about existing labeled economic systems, Harvard should have asked this question:
If you were king of the world, how would you distributed limited resources in a world with unlimited demand?
This "resource allocation" problem is non-trivial. Markets seem to be the only way to efficiently and equitably direct resources where they are most productive. Any other system requires policy makers to pick winners and losers - and history is full of examples of that going wrong.
Millennials may feel differently about planned economies when they are being taken from instead of being given to.
It's history for people that don't want to be history professors.
I have a computer science degree, and I can tell you that computer science isn't science.
In its most abstract form, it's mathematics. The act of implementing algorithms in software could be more accurately described as software engineering.....if the profession actually had things like professional organizations and quality assurance measures like accreditation, certification, and licensing.
So I guess "computer science" really isn't science OR engineering.
What these guys want are more code monkey factory workers - and they want the government to pay for the training.
We only used Adobe for photo editing and PDF software.
Our Chromebooks and Macs have native PDF capability and Gimp filled in as a photoshop replacement. Apple Photos also does some photo work for us.
Our websites are built with a number of cloud based tools - like Google sites.
There is no "drop-in" replacement for Adobe's entire suite that I am aware of, but there are many stand alone tools that can replace many of the pieces.
Boxed software licensing stupidity pushed us into the cloud.
We are a private school, and we got tired of constantly tracking our licensing status. Do we have enough AV seats? Do we have enough Exchange and SQL cals?
Enough is enough.
We put our staff on Mac OS and we put the kids on Chromebooks and Google Apps. Our experience with Microsoft's crazy licensing schemes was one of the reasons we didn't even consider their "cloud" solutions. Yes, an E1 Office 365 is free for schools, but Google Apps and Chromebooks are dead simple and the staff and students really like them.
We kicked Adobe to the curb for the same reasons. The licensing and compliance costs, even for Edu, were absurd.
The entire benefit of a wired network connection is stability, speed, and always-on, unlimited data use.
When greedy ISPs like Comcast don't maintain the quality of their networks speed and reliability suffer. Data caps are the last straw.
When the benefits of wired internet are taken away, it's logical that consumers would seek other choices......market economics at work.
One of the most important tenets of Libertarianism is your individual right to sell your labor. Voluntarily choosing to sell your labor via a labor union isn't incompatible with Libertarianism.
I have two issues with some unions:
1. An individual should never be forced to join a union. An individual should join a union if it makes sense for the individual. Too often unions enrich themselves while providing little else to the rank and file.
2. There should be no unions in Government work. No functions of our Government should be at the mercy of a union.
Beyond that, I support voluntary membership in private sector unions.
The Chinese really do copy everything don't they?
Years ago my father in law changed the navigation voice on his Garmin to a man's voice.
When I asked him why he said: "My wife and two daughters have been telling me what to do and where to go my entire life. I don't want another woman telling me what to do."
I was the Director of Network Services for a small community bank. Since we were an FDIC insured bank, we were regulated by the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS).
We were never permitted to run any software or hardware that was not supported by the manufacturer. We also had tons of security requirements (intrusion detection, the most restrictive permissions delegated to allow someone to do their job, putting all internet facing devices in a DMZ, database auditing and logging...etc...etc...etc).
I've never worked IT in healthcare. How does a provider of medical services not have similar regulatory requirements?
The charger included with Tesla vehicles only needs a NEMA 14-50 outlet in your garage. That means you need a two-pole 50A breaker - 6-3 wire and a NEMA 14-50R receptacle installed......hardly $10k - more like $300 worth of materials and a half a day's work for a competent electrician.
Your charging solution should cost $800 bucks or so.
Reserving one of these cars now increases the likelihood that your car will be eligible for the $7500 tax credit. As I understand it, this credit only applies to the first 200,000 qualifying vehicles sold by a manufacturer. At last estimates, Tesla sold about 100,000 or so vehicles which leaves about 100,000 credits left.
I reserved mine last night. The deposit is fully refundable. At the very least, I think I've got a shot at getting the federal credit.
It's not a bad deal.
We have schools throughout the country that are asking for voter approval for huge bonds to upgrade or replace their aging schools.
One school district near me tries to get voter sympathy by giving tours of its boiler rooms and showcasing a 60 year old boiler (that still works BTW).
During one of the trips a person on the tour asked our tour guide "The boilers didn't become 60 years old overnight - why didn't the school board put some money away every year for future maintenance and upgrades?"
I suspect BART is also the victim of failing to plan for the future. Entropy always wins. No system exists that will not need maintenance or repair in the future. It is foolish to defer maintenance and upgrades and shows a lack of stewardship by the managers of that system.
To the surprise of no one - the $70 million bond request by the school district was voted down by a 3 to 1 measure.
H-1B visas were intended to give STEM companies a way to recruit the absolute best and brightest in high-end fields - when those skills are not available locally.
This was intended for research and engineering positions - PhD stuff.
Instead the program was abused to artificially increase the labor supply of half-price IT admins and code monkeys. If these visa holders are the best and the brightest, why do these visa holders end up on the low-end of the pay scale?
http://www.cis.org/PayScale-H1...
The easiest way to fix the H1B1 is to ensure that it is used for its intended purpose. Make the MINIMUM salary for an H-1B holder $150,000/yr and adjust it up annually with the CPI.
This would fix the H-1B visa abuses overnight.
Ubiquiti makes a line of cameras with an NVR, that is probably more trustworthy than the loads of cheap Chinese DVRs heading to our shores.
https://www.ubnt.com/products/...
It's all IP based stuff no Analog/CVI/TVI - so you can't use your existing siamese cable.