And I'm confident Nokia assured them that they can make relevant products people wanted.
Its hard to make relevant products when the entire look and feel as well as key functions (like the app ecosystem) are being dictated from on high by an evil overlord.
Or they could make an investment in a new direction, using new people with the appropriate skill sets. The net number of jobs could be the same, and the jobs would be more stable since they would actually make sense.
That is remarkably difficult because the available people in the job pool will almost definitely not match up well to the jobs you have open if you are starting a new direction. If you are doing RnD towards a new product line, you need developers and engineers in the top 20% (probably closer to top 5%). What is typically available in large numbers in the unemployed pool is the bottom half. These people are perfectly good if you have an existing product line that just needs maintenance, a few new features or enhancements. The pile of people the Microsoft just laid off were definitely in the top half if not the top 20% in their respective fields, and many of them would be able to transition into a successful role in a new product line far better than a random person from the unemployment lines.
What Microsoft lacks isn't the talent to achieve killer new products. They lack the imagination to know what to do with that talent. Bill Gates had one flash of inspiration 40 years ago, and through brilliant (and often times illegal) business wrangling has managed to turn that one good idea into an empire by buying other good ideas and bringing them to market. Since that time, Microsoft has had a very spotty record with buying other good ideas. They made a few work, but their history indicates that being acquired by Microsoft has a greater than 90% chance of marking the beginning of the end.
So, it's Microsoft's job to make busy work for these people instead of letting them go?
It is when they made assurances to regulators, prior to the acquisition, that certain things would not happen. Now Microsoft is going back on those promises.
I do find it telling thaqt Microsoft had to go all the way to Finland to find anyone dumb enough to trust them at their word.
To anyone thinking of doing business with Microsoft I have only one piece of advice: Get it in writing.
I have a shocking idea! instead of giving all of this free money to the thieves and liars, the FCC should build the infrastructure themselves and rent it out to whomever wants to use it. Everybody wins. The FCC gets its rural broadband, the customers actually get the access, and the various service providers don't have to cough up and pay for any infrastructure they are not going to use. Once the initial investment is paid back, the FCC makes money on the deal.
Anything else is just another government boondoggle with all of us collectively footing the bill.
In the Shiva "I invented email" Ayyadurai case, pretty much anyone can see that the case is a fake lawsuit created from nothing. Ayyadurai didn't invent electronic mail, and it's not libel to point that out. Thiel is enabling a groundless lawsuit to take place. That's not right.
I agree, completely, and given the circumstances around that case, it will almost certainly be dismissed. I would not be surprised (nor unhappy) to also see a counter suit for frivolous lawsuit, but in that case, the tables would be 100% turned against Gawker as the person bringing the suit would have almost no assets to seize to pay the award, so Gawker would have no upside to going after Ayyadurai. It is exactly the kind of lose lose situation Gawker puts its victims in, and I absolutely love to see our twisted legal system contorted back onto itself like this.
for example, withdrawing motions that would have ensured Gawker's insurers paid out.
That is exactly the point of the lawsuit. Financial damages are only part of it. Hogan filed for( and the jury awarded ( and the judge approved ) ) of an additional award of punitive damages precisely because they are trying to stop gawker from behaving the way they have. The jury awarded the punitive damages because Gawker is behaving like a first class ass, and what they have been doing is illegal. The judge approved the award because it is likely the only way to get Gawkers attention, and maybe serve as a warning to others that think the 1st amendment gives them the right to say and do anything they want without consequences. The first amendment guarantees Gawker that the government will take no direct action to stop them. It does not absolve them of liability for their actions. The move to prevent insurance from being partly liable for the award was done specifically because Hogan and his backers are not in it to get the money (although that is probably a small component ), but really just want to make sure Gawker stops doing what it is doing. All available evidence suggests that Gawker will not stop until they are no longer a going concern, and the judge and jury seem quite content to help Gawker reach the logical end of that road.
The ability of the rich to try and sue someone into compliance, or at least silence, is nothing new, and is troubling on its own, but at least when they're suing directly they open themselves to discovery.
This guy isn't creating fake lawsuits from nothing here, He simply enabled a person to mount a legal campaign against gawker, that the plaintiff would not have been able to mount without help. It should also be noted that Gawker is in no small part responsible for the plaintiffs financial state. Infidelity in a marriage doesn't necessarily always end in divorce, but when the spouse is exposed to the nearly incessant barrage of public scrutiny that Gawker created, it makes it almost impossible to save the marriage.
At the end of the day, all this billionaire did was restore balance to the legal system in this one case. In a perfect world, his involvement should have been neither necessary or consequential, but we don't live in a perfect world, we live in a country that is halfway between electing a narcissistic self entitled brat to the white house, or electing Trump.
On the other, those people hanging on help to deteriorate the security posture of the rest of the internet and harm Microsofts reputation when they get hit with malware or other security issues.
Then Microsoft should do the right thing and cough up some of their ill gotten fortune to maintain that old shit code they wrote. If they don't want to do that, open source it so that others can do the maintenance. They made their bed when they wrote the shitty code in the first place, and should be held responsible for the consequences of that choice, if for no other reason than to serve as a warning to others.
No, he bought a Samsung, or HTC, or Motorola phone. Google couldn't stop android even if they actively started trying to kill it. Most of Android is open source, and enough of it is open such that a cell phone manufacturer could use it without relying on Google for anything. Most manufacturers use some of Googles overlays onto Android because they provide many higher end features that it is easier for the manufacturers to buy than produce in house.
At the end of the day, if Google abandoned Android today, most of the Cell phone world wouldn't even skip a beat.
Would we call any website with 16 million users a niche? Or even any other kind of computer hardware?
A website doesn't cost $400M+ to create (even the dot-comers couldn't blow away that much money, and they tried). Most computer hardware doesn't cost that much to create either. The only close comparison would be CPUs and GPUs, and a huge amount of money is saved on that development by reusing huge pieces of the design. In spite of that, any processor that doesn't sell at least 10M units is considered a dismal failure.
A good way to estimate success vs failure is to divide the development cost by the number of units sold and add the per unit cost to manufacture. If this number is greater than 1/3 of the retail price of your product, you're gonna be in deep crap because that other two thirds pays for your overhead, including marketing, HR costs, building and grounds cost, and lastly your profit.
But even though percentage wise the share is small, 2+ million phones in a quarter sure seems a fairly long way from dead, especially given Microsoft's motivation to maintain at least a foothold in mobile.
It can cost upwards of a couple hundred million to design a cell phone that doesn't suck. Once you add in a reasonable amount of marketing, you double that. Divide that upfront cost among 2 million phones, and Microsoft is stuck with a profit margin that is hundreds of dollars less than their competitors. With the poor a showing, the manufacturer has two options. Take a loss on it and hope the next generation of phone fares better, or call it quits. The only way a 1% market share is viable is if your product is so good you can charge $200 more than the competition to make up for the lack of volume. This is what Apple started out doing. If you recall, everyone said apple was crazy and would never get $500+ for a cell phone when the competing phones cost only $200 for the highest of the high. Apple had the last laugh because their product was a *generation* better than the competing products. Windows phones not only aren't an evolutionary leap, they are a step backwards. Microsoft has *never* produced an innovative product of their own. The most successful they have ever been is to take somebody else's idea and get it to market first. Failing that they have barely succeeded at anything except the XBOX, in which they simply had enough cash to out-survive the competition. Any other company trying to break into the video game market would have given up or gone belly up with the business plan Microsoft used.
The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do. And they were careful and had a high degree of integrity... I came to the view that [the programs] were well intentioned, that they were designed in fact to collect information for the purpose of ferreting out potential terrorist plots both in the U.S. and around the world and that was their design and purpose...
That is the fundamental problem. Almost no one actually believes that the NSA was acting in an unprofessional manner. It is not, and never was the NSA people had specific issues with. The problem is the precedent this sets for future activities because sooner or later, someone comes along who isn't so diligent, and isn't so trustworthy, and they use these programs as precedent to justify all manner of nasty crap.
It should also be noted that the NSA is in a unique position to see what the worldwide effects of overreaching surveillance can be. They, of all the organizations on this planet, get a ring side view of just what oppression can come from universal surveillance. In a very real sense, they should have known better than to set the precedent they tried to set. They cannot justify their actions through the claim of combating terrorism because the situation this precedent would have created has the potential to be far worse than any terrorist organization could ever hope to achieve.
Well, the choices are definitely awe-inspiring. Kind of like a tsunami headed our way is awe-inspiring.
I was actually reminded of that moment of awe right after you've seen the flash, you know the shockwave is coming, and realize you've just taken 10 times the lethal dose of radiation...
Or is there something already out there that would do the same thing as a Nest but without 'the cloud' as part of the requirement? Yes, a standard programmable thermostat does 90% of what a Nest does,
There is, the company is Connexus Controls . We provide HVAC control systems for new installations and retrofit. We provide remote access similar to the way the Nest and others do, but unlike the others, there is no centralized server, your data stays in your home, and the system will function perfectly fine with or without network access. We will provide access to our control API for anyone that wants to tinker with the system, opening up a whole world of opportunity.
With much of the EU going into negative interest rates, keeping it in the bank, even at 0% inflation, will be a money-loser. Give it time, they'll have to bring it back.
As opposed to the 30% tax rate for bringing it back, did you even think about that before you said it, or are you just bad at math?
If you think everything is all roses for Wall Street why don't you just fucking invest and join the party instead of coming off like a retarded cunt?
While I am not the AC, I happen to agree with him/her. The organization of our society (political, financial,criminal) is thoroughly borked. Candidates like Rubio, Clinton and Bush represent more of the same. Trump supporters and Bernie supporters (and to a large extent Cruz) understand that as long as we keep electing people who are beholden to the corporations, we'll keep getting fucked in the ass. That is the simple reason why Clinton can't win in the fall. Trump will have a much easier time converting Bernie supporters than Clinton will simply because she is massively indebted to the established political system. Everyone with a pulse understands that if you want to change the system, you can't look to someone who has massively benefited from it, to make those changes. Clinton isn't in this to rock the boat, all three of the other viable candidates are/were.
Trump is going to win in the fall, for no other reason than because Clinton is worse.
You can get a much more functional Raspberry Pi3, Odroid, BBB, or just about any other damn thing for less than that. The only thing that made the zero worth getting was the low pricetag...
I can't believe people are actually in bidding wars on ebay over these things...
What types of systems? And how do I get a job doing this? What's a good place to start learning this?
There are all kinds of companies that do this. In spite of the stated purpose of the R-Pi foundation, the vast majority of Raspberry Pis are purchased for inclusion into final products by small to medium sized companies. I am currently contracting for a company that has done just that, and over the past 4 years has used around 5k R-Pis. I have contracted for another company in the past that was similarly inclined, and another one that used Beaglebones.
In answer to your question, There are lots of job opportunities along those lines. Search any job site you like for jobs requiring the keywords Embedded and Linux, and you'll hit on tons of them. Pays pretty decent, but be prepared to face some tough problems, as every one of these embedded platforms has tons of really annoying quirks, and the companies that use them grew *fast* because the SBCs allowed them a very rapid development cycle, so they expect anything can be done with a Pi and a few months of coding.
This "toy" is at least as powerful as your desktop computer, circa Y2k, and a whole lot smaller and cheaper. It's being used for network monitor and control systems, process controllers, multimedia kiosks, home automation systems and a whole lot more. The Pi is a fully functional computer that's cheap enough to hand out in quantity as party favors.
While I agree that the Pi *was* a good platform, it has caused us nothing but headaches lately. The foundation is a not-for-profit, and they do not make money on their devices. In fact, they can only offer the price points they do because of massive subsidies by chip makers. Without those subsidies, you can add $15+ to every Raspberry Pi.
That is ultimately a problem because every time the foundation releases a new Pi, they stop making older versions. This is critical because it means that any design you have based around a pi will only have a useful lifespan of less than 4 years. You then have to adapt the design to a new Pi model. While that may not sound like a big deal, it is a huge burden even if all you have to do is recompile, because everything has to be retested, and god help you if you paid for CE or UL, because now you have to refile, and that costs a damn fortune.
The biggest kick in the balls is that the Pis are closed source, so there is no way to simply pick up and have your own manufactured, you're stuck. We have been so bitten, and our new designs are Beaglebone based because the retail version is just as widely available, and we have the manufacturing files tucked away, so they cant be end-of-lifed on us. To Raspberry Pi and Broadcom, I say a heartfelt Fuck You.
Now if they would only block a drunk boss from calling you on a Saturday night and yelling and screaming at you for no real reason at all, that would be a good next step.
We don't need new laws for that, we have perfectly good anti-harassment, and anti retaliatory laws already on the books.
I work late shift right now and I like it. I worked graveyard shifts before and loved them. Sadly they were taken away "for the employees' benefit" (read: "because it was more expensive").
Boaty McBoatface is actually very representative of the "democratic" process in our societies: people vote, but ultimately their voice doesn't matter one jot, and the powers that be impose whatever the hell they want.
It should also be noted that left to their own devices, the masses will often choose a downright retarded option...
In fact, when you think about it, this is a prime example of why people *shouldn't* have democracy. They're unwilling or unable to handle the responsibility.
That is very disingenuous, when you consider That of that 68%, more than half is money that people either earned by way of a pension, or already paid in in the form of social security. You have no right to "stop the handouts" when those moneys are in fact owed every bit as much as (if not more) than our vast public debt.
If you want an obvious way to deal with the budget in a rational way, cut the military spending back to a sane level, and tell any politician that wants to get us involved in *any* military conflict to be the first man in and the last man out... We have already demonstrated repeatedly and publicly that the entirety of the military budget is being spent on bullshit that provides virtually zero protection from the real dangers of our world. Its time to tell the military, to forget about Jets, bombs, missiles, guns and troops and start talking about weapons that will allow us to stop a dirty bomb or backpack nuke. We've all seen how effective the military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq have been. Time to cut their budgets since they seem unable to spend it wisely.
Slashdot Mirror
And I'm confident Nokia assured them that they can make relevant products people wanted.
Its hard to make relevant products when the entire look and feel as well as key functions (like the app ecosystem) are being dictated from on high by an evil overlord.
Or they could make an investment in a new direction, using new people with the appropriate skill sets. The net number of jobs could be the same, and the jobs would be more stable since they would actually make sense.
That is remarkably difficult because the available people in the job pool will almost definitely not match up well to the jobs you have open if you are starting a new direction. If you are doing RnD towards a new product line, you need developers and engineers in the top 20% (probably closer to top 5%). What is typically available in large numbers in the unemployed pool is the bottom half. These people are perfectly good if you have an existing product line that just needs maintenance, a few new features or enhancements. The pile of people the Microsoft just laid off were definitely in the top half if not the top 20% in their respective fields, and many of them would be able to transition into a successful role in a new product line far better than a random person from the unemployment lines.
What Microsoft lacks isn't the talent to achieve killer new products. They lack the imagination to know what to do with that talent. Bill Gates had one flash of inspiration 40 years ago, and through brilliant (and often times illegal) business wrangling has managed to turn that one good idea into an empire by buying other good ideas and bringing them to market. Since that time, Microsoft has had a very spotty record with buying other good ideas. They made a few work, but their history indicates that being acquired by Microsoft has a greater than 90% chance of marking the beginning of the end.
So, it's Microsoft's job to make busy work for these people instead of letting them go?
It is when they made assurances to regulators, prior to the acquisition, that certain things would not happen. Now Microsoft is going back on those promises.
I do find it telling thaqt Microsoft had to go all the way to Finland to find anyone dumb enough to trust them at their word.
To anyone thinking of doing business with Microsoft I have only one piece of advice: Get it in writing.
I have a shocking idea! instead of giving all of this free money to the thieves and liars, the FCC should build the infrastructure themselves and rent it out to whomever wants to use it. Everybody wins. The FCC gets its rural broadband, the customers actually get the access, and the various service providers don't have to cough up and pay for any infrastructure they are not going to use. Once the initial investment is paid back, the FCC makes money on the deal.
Anything else is just another government boondoggle with all of us collectively footing the bill.
In the Shiva "I invented email" Ayyadurai case, pretty much anyone can see that the case is a fake lawsuit created from nothing. Ayyadurai didn't invent electronic mail, and it's not libel to point that out. Thiel is enabling a groundless lawsuit to take place. That's not right.
I agree, completely, and given the circumstances around that case, it will almost certainly be dismissed. I would not be surprised (nor unhappy) to also see a counter suit for frivolous lawsuit, but in that case, the tables would be 100% turned against Gawker as the person bringing the suit would have almost no assets to seize to pay the award, so Gawker would have no upside to going after Ayyadurai. It is exactly the kind of lose lose situation Gawker puts its victims in, and I absolutely love to see our twisted legal system contorted back onto itself like this.
for example, withdrawing motions that would have ensured Gawker's insurers paid out.
That is exactly the point of the lawsuit. Financial damages are only part of it. Hogan filed for( and the jury awarded ( and the judge approved ) ) of an additional award of punitive damages precisely because they are trying to stop gawker from behaving the way they have. The jury awarded the punitive damages because Gawker is behaving like a first class ass, and what they have been doing is illegal. The judge approved the award because it is likely the only way to get Gawkers attention, and maybe serve as a warning to others that think the 1st amendment gives them the right to say and do anything they want without consequences. The first amendment guarantees Gawker that the government will take no direct action to stop them. It does not absolve them of liability for their actions. The move to prevent insurance from being partly liable for the award was done specifically because Hogan and his backers are not in it to get the money (although that is probably a small component ), but really just want to make sure Gawker stops doing what it is doing. All available evidence suggests that Gawker will not stop until they are no longer a going concern, and the judge and jury seem quite content to help Gawker reach the logical end of that road.
The ability of the rich to try and sue someone into compliance, or at least silence, is nothing new, and is troubling on its own, but at least when they're suing directly they open themselves to discovery.
This guy isn't creating fake lawsuits from nothing here, He simply enabled a person to mount a legal campaign against gawker, that the plaintiff would not have been able to mount without help. It should also be noted that Gawker is in no small part responsible for the plaintiffs financial state. Infidelity in a marriage doesn't necessarily always end in divorce, but when the spouse is exposed to the nearly incessant barrage of public scrutiny that Gawker created, it makes it almost impossible to save the marriage.
At the end of the day, all this billionaire did was restore balance to the legal system in this one case. In a perfect world, his involvement should have been neither necessary or consequential, but we don't live in a perfect world, we live in a country that is halfway between electing a narcissistic self entitled brat to the white house, or electing Trump.
On the other, those people hanging on help to deteriorate the security posture of the rest of the internet and harm Microsofts reputation when they get hit with malware or other security issues.
Then Microsoft should do the right thing and cough up some of their ill gotten fortune to maintain that old shit code they wrote. If they don't want to do that, open source it so that others can do the maintenance. They made their bed when they wrote the shitty code in the first place, and should be held responsible for the consequences of that choice, if for no other reason than to serve as a warning to others.
You bought a GOOGLE product
No, he bought a Samsung, or HTC, or Motorola phone. Google couldn't stop android even if they actively started trying to kill it. Most of Android is open source, and enough of it is open such that a cell phone manufacturer could use it without relying on Google for anything. Most manufacturers use some of Googles overlays onto Android because they provide many higher end features that it is easier for the manufacturers to buy than produce in house.
At the end of the day, if Google abandoned Android today, most of the Cell phone world wouldn't even skip a beat.
Would we call any website with 16 million users a niche? Or even any other kind of computer hardware?
A website doesn't cost $400M+ to create (even the dot-comers couldn't blow away that much money, and they tried). Most computer hardware doesn't cost that much to create either. The only close comparison would be CPUs and GPUs, and a huge amount of money is saved on that development by reusing huge pieces of the design. In spite of that, any processor that doesn't sell at least 10M units is considered a dismal failure.
A good way to estimate success vs failure is to divide the development cost by the number of units sold and add the per unit cost to manufacture. If this number is greater than 1/3 of the retail price of your product, you're gonna be in deep crap because that other two thirds pays for your overhead, including marketing, HR costs, building and grounds cost, and lastly your profit.
But even though percentage wise the share is small, 2+ million phones in a quarter sure seems a fairly long way from dead, especially given Microsoft's motivation to maintain at least a foothold in mobile.
It can cost upwards of a couple hundred million to design a cell phone that doesn't suck. Once you add in a reasonable amount of marketing, you double that. Divide that upfront cost among 2 million phones, and Microsoft is stuck with a profit margin that is hundreds of dollars less than their competitors. With the poor a showing, the manufacturer has two options. Take a loss on it and hope the next generation of phone fares better, or call it quits. The only way a 1% market share is viable is if your product is so good you can charge $200 more than the competition to make up for the lack of volume. This is what Apple started out doing. If you recall, everyone said apple was crazy and would never get $500+ for a cell phone when the competing phones cost only $200 for the highest of the high. Apple had the last laugh because their product was a *generation* better than the competing products. Windows phones not only aren't an evolutionary leap, they are a step backwards. Microsoft has *never* produced an innovative product of their own. The most successful they have ever been is to take somebody else's idea and get it to market first. Failing that they have barely succeeded at anything except the XBOX, in which they simply had enough cash to out-survive the competition. Any other company trying to break into the video game market would have given up or gone belly up with the business plan Microsoft used.
The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do. And they were careful and had a high degree of integrity... I came to the view that [the programs] were well intentioned, that they were designed in fact to collect information for the purpose of ferreting out potential terrorist plots both in the U.S. and around the world and that was their design and purpose...
That is the fundamental problem. Almost no one actually believes that the NSA was acting in an unprofessional manner. It is not, and never was the NSA people had specific issues with. The problem is the precedent this sets for future activities because sooner or later, someone comes along who isn't so diligent, and isn't so trustworthy, and they use these programs as precedent to justify all manner of nasty crap.
It should also be noted that the NSA is in a unique position to see what the worldwide effects of overreaching surveillance can be. They, of all the organizations on this planet, get a ring side view of just what oppression can come from universal surveillance. In a very real sense, they should have known better than to set the precedent they tried to set. They cannot justify their actions through the claim of combating terrorism because the situation this precedent would have created has the potential to be far worse than any terrorist organization could ever hope to achieve.
Well, the choices are definitely awe-inspiring. Kind of like a tsunami headed our way is awe-inspiring.
I was actually reminded of that moment of awe right after you've seen the flash, you know the shockwave is coming, and realize you've just taken 10 times the lethal dose of radiation...
Or is there something already out there that would do the same thing as a Nest but without 'the cloud' as part of the requirement? Yes, a standard programmable thermostat does 90% of what a Nest does,
There is, the company is Connexus Controls . We provide HVAC control systems for new installations and retrofit. We provide remote access similar to the way the Nest and others do, but unlike the others, there is no centralized server, your data stays in your home, and the system will function perfectly fine with or without network access. We will provide access to our control API for anyone that wants to tinker with the system, opening up a whole world of opportunity.
With much of the EU going into negative interest rates, keeping it in the bank, even at 0% inflation, will be a money-loser. Give it time, they'll have to bring it back.
As opposed to the 30% tax rate for bringing it back, did you even think about that before you said it, or are you just bad at math?
If you think everything is all roses for Wall Street why don't you just fucking invest and join the party instead of coming off like a retarded cunt?
While I am not the AC, I happen to agree with him/her. The organization of our society (political, financial,criminal) is thoroughly borked. Candidates like Rubio, Clinton and Bush represent more of the same. Trump supporters and Bernie supporters (and to a large extent Cruz) understand that as long as we keep electing people who are beholden to the corporations, we'll keep getting fucked in the ass. That is the simple reason why Clinton can't win in the fall. Trump will have a much easier time converting Bernie supporters than Clinton will simply because she is massively indebted to the established political system. Everyone with a pulse understands that if you want to change the system, you can't look to someone who has massively benefited from it, to make those changes. Clinton isn't in this to rock the boat, all three of the other viable candidates are/were.
Trump is going to win in the fall, for no other reason than because Clinton is worse.
I just bought a bunch on eBay for $60 each...
Son, are you stupid or something?
You can get a much more functional Raspberry Pi3, Odroid, BBB, or just about any other damn thing for less than that. The only thing that made the zero worth getting was the low pricetag...
I can't believe people are actually in bidding wars on ebay over these things...
Morons
What types of systems? And how do I get a job doing this? What's a good place to start learning this?
There are all kinds of companies that do this. In spite of the stated purpose of the R-Pi foundation, the vast majority of Raspberry Pis are purchased for inclusion into final products by small to medium sized companies. I am currently contracting for a company that has done just that, and over the past 4 years has used around 5k R-Pis. I have contracted for another company in the past that was similarly inclined, and another one that used Beaglebones.
In answer to your question, There are lots of job opportunities along those lines. Search any job site you like for jobs requiring the keywords Embedded and Linux, and you'll hit on tons of them. Pays pretty decent, but be prepared to face some tough problems, as every one of these embedded platforms has tons of really annoying quirks, and the companies that use them grew *fast* because the SBCs allowed them a very rapid development cycle, so they expect anything can be done with a Pi and a few months of coding.
This "toy" is at least as powerful as your desktop computer, circa Y2k, and a whole lot smaller and cheaper. It's being used for network monitor and control systems, process controllers, multimedia kiosks, home automation systems and a whole lot more. The Pi is a fully functional computer that's cheap enough to hand out in quantity as party favors.
While I agree that the Pi *was* a good platform, it has caused us nothing but headaches lately. The foundation is a not-for-profit, and they do not make money on their devices. In fact, they can only offer the price points they do because of massive subsidies by chip makers. Without those subsidies, you can add $15+ to every Raspberry Pi.
That is ultimately a problem because every time the foundation releases a new Pi, they stop making older versions. This is critical because it means that any design you have based around a pi will only have a useful lifespan of less than 4 years. You then have to adapt the design to a new Pi model. While that may not sound like a big deal, it is a huge burden even if all you have to do is recompile, because everything has to be retested, and god help you if you paid for CE or UL, because now you have to refile, and that costs a damn fortune.
The biggest kick in the balls is that the Pis are closed source, so there is no way to simply pick up and have your own manufactured, you're stuck. We have been so bitten, and our new designs are Beaglebone based because the retail version is just as widely available, and we have the manufacturing files tucked away, so they cant be end-of-lifed on us. To Raspberry Pi and Broadcom, I say a heartfelt Fuck You.
Now if they would only block a drunk boss from calling you on a Saturday night and yelling and screaming at you for no real reason at all, that would be a good next step.
We don't need new laws for that, we have perfectly good anti-harassment, and anti retaliatory laws already on the books.
I work late shift right now and I like it. I worked graveyard shifts before and loved them. Sadly they were taken away "for the employees' benefit" (read: "because it was more expensive").
Graveyard shift is actually killing people
Boaty McBoatface is actually very representative of the "democratic" process in our societies: people vote, but ultimately their voice doesn't matter one jot, and the powers that be impose whatever the hell they want.
It should also be noted that left to their own devices, the masses will often choose a downright retarded option...
In fact, when you think about it, this is a prime example of why people *shouldn't* have democracy. They're unwilling or unable to handle the responsibility.
however typically users are consenting, unknowingly..
It is not legally possible to "consent unknowingly"
It costs an arm and a leg to get a head in this world.
I wonder how much it is for just a leg up?
* 68% mailing checks to the old and the poor
That is very disingenuous, when you consider That of that 68%, more than half is money that people either earned by way of a pension, or already paid in in the form of social security. You have no right to "stop the handouts" when those moneys are in fact owed every bit as much as (if not more) than our vast public debt.
If you want an obvious way to deal with the budget in a rational way, cut the military spending back to a sane level, and tell any politician that wants to get us involved in *any* military conflict to be the first man in and the last man out... We have already demonstrated repeatedly and publicly that the entirety of the military budget is being spent on bullshit that provides virtually zero protection from the real dangers of our world. Its time to tell the military, to forget about Jets, bombs, missiles, guns and troops and start talking about weapons that will allow us to stop a dirty bomb or backpack nuke. We've all seen how effective the military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq have been. Time to cut their budgets since they seem unable to spend it wisely.