I follow your point about bad leadership, but even bad management can have a strategy. In fact, they're quite likely to have a bad one.
Here's an example. I've long held the theory that Microsoft strategically doesn't allow their employees to use the products that they're actually developing. That explains numerous UI goofs over the years, from the dancing paperclip to the Metro interface. After all, in a matter of minutes, anyone could tell that such things are ridiculous. Even Monkey Boy could figure that out. So, it must be that nobody let him or the other employees actually use them. That's a pretty simple explanation, isn't it? It also explains why it took IE so long to get tabs, and why Windows Explorer still doesn't have tabs or even a splitter pane, years after Microsoft added those to their other products. And it also neatly explains why you can't (easily) open two Excel spreadsheets in two windows.
The only exception I know of to this is Visual Studio, which I use frequently and find to be generally excellent, though not perfect. But since Visual Studio is developed using Visual Studio, its developers have no choice but to use it. They must get some sort of special exemption from Microsoft's strategic vision of developing products without polluting their UI's with user feedback. I bet the developers even go so far as to sneak in things that they, as users, discovered they wanted as they used it. And that's why Visual Studio is Microsoft's only truly slick product.
Maybe they're just trying to ruin their return on equity (ROE), which currently is an unspectacular 16%.
If they were following Microsoft's playbook, they might be trying to avoid expensive acquisitions so that their highly profitable company could achieve a very respectable ROE of 30%. Most of Microsoft's bad investments are organic, not acquisitions, e.g. Bing. In fact, I can't remember the last time Microsoft shelled out even a measly billion dollars for an acquisition. Losing money organically is really smart - much cheaper than losing it through acquisitions.
Then again, maybe Google is just trying to catch down with Facebook's not-so-great ROE of 8%. Facebook sets the gold standard for corporations who pay too much for acquisition.
Neither does Google. Paying this much money for such a small young company is pure speculation. Kindda reminds me of their YouTube purchase. Even though YouTube is quite popular, it hasn't been a big financial success for them, last I heard.
It fascinates me that they added Aero as eye candy that no one needed in Vista, then in Windows 8 they not only took it away but also took away the minimal, though longstanding, eye candy of rounded corners. So do we need eye candy or don't we?
Years ago, I read about a study in which researchers tried to determine what type of music would make cows produce the most milk. They tried all the common genres, from classical to hard rock, but didn't find any clear winner. However, they found that the cows produced slightly more milk when the type of music was changed.
Microsoft consistently has milked their users by changing the cosmetics of each major new version of Windows. I assume that's part of the plan to sell you the same thing again while pretending it's different - much as car makers do. But since Windows 8 is plain, Windows 9 seemingly would need to be fancy. But it can't be slightly fancy like XP, or really fancy like Aero. What's more, if they want to stick with their dogma of deploying the same look-and-feel across all devices, big and small, they're going to have to find a new form of plain (to run on lowest-common-denominator hardware) that's somehow different. Changing colors is about the only option I can think of. Hey, it works for the fashion industry.
Why don't they just crowd-source it like everything else here? They could add a feature to the article preview page to correct the article, then they could have modders validate the changes. Oh, that would involve paying "programmers".
I can't imagine concussions going down if the players left off their helmets. However, if you mean that the rules should be changed so that helmets are no longer needed, (American) Football would be a fundamentally different game. Or, as the article you cite neatly puts it, "Football is a collision sport, while rugby is a contact sport." I think people who prefer Rugby rules already have a very nice game that uses them.
Maybe the NFL should consider this for the longstanding concussion problem that's been getting a lot of publicity lately. They could afford to throw them away as often as needed.
To Valve, though, it's a first step in levering development, publishing, gameplay and community away from their reliance on Windows and DirectX (and to a lesser extent Mac OS), systems that cannot be relied upon in the long term.
Silly me. I thought it was all about popularizing Steam by reducing the build cost for gamers who want to play Steam games on high-end PCs, by taking out the cost of Windows. It may also have something to do with Valve having more control over their platform and/or building an empire.
Realistically, if an OS isn't used by many people, there's little reason to write malware for it.
And if an OS isn't used by many people because it's so hard to administer that only techies can use it, there's zero reason to write malware for it. Who wants to write malware for techies when you can shoot fish in a general-population barrel?
(That being said, if Steam OS makes desktop linux big, then there will be more malware for desktop linux.)
Good point. But it may not take even that long. For example, I think the Studebaker plant still stands. And Armco Steel, which once was a primary employer in the Kansas City area, has been a gigantic rusting (but intact) hulk for a couple of decades. Since these things cost so much to tear down and there's no economic incentive to do so, they seemingly will last until nature takes over, in decades or centuries.
You don't find many of these kind of posts anymore. Not a single offtopic mention of NSA, Snowden, Assange, Bitcoin, or how stupid one is if they support any political party. I know, they'll show up soon, but at least I can enjoy the moment before I hit the refresh button.
I've been hatching a theory, very loosely based on Godwin's Law, that any thread here that includes either NSA, Snowden, or Bitcoin ultimately will include the other two. The theory hasn't previously include Assange since we haven't heard much about him lately, but I'll consider incorporating him into it if need be.
I haven't seen much evidence that my theory is wrong, but these primary hot topics recently have achieved meta status wherein they get mentioned even if they are notable only for their absence. You did it, and now I'm doing it.
That doesn't exactly disprove the theory, but it does take a little of the zest out of it. So, let's all just try to find "legitimate" ways to drag NSA, Snowden, Bitcoin - and even Assange, if we must - into each and every conversation here. And please, no more cheating via the meta trick.
That's terrible: mobile banking apps for iOS are woefully insecure, yet you folks are making fun of them. Poor little things, you're gonna make 'em cry. Is that really what you want? Can't you just leave 'em alone, you big bullies...?
No, I try not to use that kind of language, regardless of the issue.
My point is basically that bug-fix upgrades either aren't needed (because the bugs haven't bothered users of old versions), or those users can undergo the pain of upgrading. A third alternative, of course, since Python is open source software, is for anyone who absolutely needs something fixed in an old version to fix it themselves.
I don't use RHEL5, but my understanding is that folks who use any open source software are invited to submit a patch for anything that's bothering them. So, if you're committed to Python 2.4, for example, you can submit a patch to the Python folks to fix a bug in it that's suddenly bothering you after all these years. If they don't accept that, you are free to patch it on your own system. Or you are free to live with it (as you evidently have been). Or you are free migrate to some other distribution, if that's feasible. What's so bad about that? I thought that's just the kind of "freedom" that users of such systems value.
And why would any of that be a basis for me to prescribe an unpleasant afterlife for anyone? I'd much prefer that everyone have a nice day.:-)
Please note that in our current Congress, voting third-party would have the net effect of voting against (nearly?) all incumbents. So, your idea is one possible way to implement my plan.
Why are we Python developers inflicting so much pain on ourselves to support antiquated Python releases?
If I were a Python developer, instead of Python user, and there was a lot of pain supporting old Pythons, I'd just stop supporting them (instead of whining.) Older versions of Python only receive bug fixes. People who are still using an older version evidently are happy with it, bugs included. So, Python developers should fix old bugs if it's painless, or not if it's painful.
About the only exception I can think of is security problems: if a security flaw in an old version is suddenly revealed, it should be fixed by Python developers if at all possible. Then again, if that becomes too much trouble for Python developers, they can just (politely) say "if this bug really is a problem for you, you should just pay the pain yourself by upgrading to a newer version where we've fixed it."
Another clear exception is that the last 2.x version, 2.7, should have its bugs fixed into the foreseeable future because so many of us still prefer 2.x. Then again, I would have already switched to 3.x if a 2.7 didn't (already and into the foreseeable future) work just fine for everything I need Python for.
The real problem is if the person that will provide the working parameters to these algorithms defines that some of us, as humans, are mistakes that must be "resolved" and that the weapons working on these algorithms are the tools to perform that improvement.
You can't tell the difference between Yahoo, Bing, and Google. I'm ignoring everything you said now.
OK, I'll bite. What exactly is the difference between Yahoo and Bing?;-)
Regarding Google, have you ever taken the Bing Test? I have, and the results didn't show any clear preference for me. In fact, I think my minor perceived preference for Google mostly has to do with its simple clean interface, that is, its cosmetics. There's a reason that Yahoo has been systematically updating its cosmetics: people respond to that, whether they realize it or not.
Anyway, even if you do objectively prefer Google for search, that doesn't mean that, for example, their finance feature is better. Specifically, although I really like Google's stock screener, I haven't found anything to beat Yahoo's "Key Statistics" page for that stock metrics. For Yahoo, for example, I can look at that and determine in seconds that it's significantly overvalued.
OK, I'll bite. There still are a few things they do well. For example, their Finance feature is among the best in class of financial information (IMHO).
I began using their email system as a POP server years ago, mainly because I thought the spam filtering worked very well. At some point, they changed their system so that you had to use their address as the reply address, so I began using that rather than my website's forwarding address. Although that should have alienated me and made me go elsewhere, I stuck with them, so now people are used to replying to the Yahoo address and it's hard to switch to something else.
I used to use their "classic" (old-fashioned) mail but they forced me and everyone else out of that last year. So, I got used to the new email interface and even generally like it now, but the performance problems still are inexcusable. For example, I sent one email several times the other day after their system said it had failed to send it, then multiple copies of it appeared in my "Sent" list. So, did it go out or not? - who knows?
Their longstanding "Groups" system still has some attractive features. I tried to find a replacement for it recently for an email list I've run for several years, and I couldn't find any similar free and ready-made (no installation) email group service that allows users to subscribe themselves.
There seems to be a theme lately of Yahoo changing the cosmetics of their system as often as possible. However, they don't seem to understand that users don't want change unless there is a clear benefit to them. And users also don't want continuous change - they need time to digest each new thing that's foisted on them. Yahoo also seems to be disregarding the impact all these changes have on system performance. Even after tolerating senseless change, I'm just about ready to abandon their email due to its increasingly poor performance.
I find their search to be OK, though I'm not particularly loyal to it. Honestly, I can't tell much difference between Yahoo/Bing search and Google, so I just use whichever one comes up in the browser I happen to be using. However, my perception is that Google is very slightly better.
Overall, the challenge for Yahoo is to modernize their systems after years of neglect, while retaining the things that people like about them (in my case: finance, spam filtering, and groups), without impacting quality in terms of performance and security. They might get to the Promised Land one day, but there's a lot of desert to cross first.
Who said it was supposed to solve anything? It's mainly about making a statement.
That said, let's do the thought experiment: if every member of Congress got replaced by the voters, en masse, wouldn't the new ones that came in figure out that the old ones must have been doing something wrong? They might even figure out that The People want them to do their job - which involves finding some sort of middle ground that moves things forward to address the nation's major problems.
The current political game seems to revolve around each team making the other team look bad. Sometimes Democrats win and sometimes Republicans win, but incumbents somehow nearly always win. That's what I'd like to change - if only for the moral satisfaction.
I visited the House of Representatives last year a few months before the shutdown. It was quite interesting to see members of "America's Only Native Criminal Class" up close in the National Rogues Gallery. (The architecture and the artwork there weren't bad either.) For example, John Boehner makes an even better looking hound dog in person than he does on TV. It was kindda fun to see him snub the lesser criminals as he walked up the aisle, systematically ignoring them when they smiled hopefully at him. (Every successful criminal enterprise has a power hierarchy that must be systematically imposed from above.)
I'm with ya, bro. Now that America has revert to a single political party - the Incumbents - I plan to vote against every member of that party in the next election, be they nominally Republicans, Democrats, or anything else. (That last part was just for completeness - more of theoretical possibility than anything. Luckily, Ralph Nader never joined the Incumbent Party.)
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I follow your point about bad leadership, but even bad management can have a strategy. In fact, they're quite likely to have a bad one.
Here's an example. I've long held the theory that Microsoft strategically doesn't allow their employees to use the products that they're actually developing. That explains numerous UI goofs over the years, from the dancing paperclip to the Metro interface. After all, in a matter of minutes, anyone could tell that such things are ridiculous. Even Monkey Boy could figure that out. So, it must be that nobody let him or the other employees actually use them. That's a pretty simple explanation, isn't it? It also explains why it took IE so long to get tabs, and why Windows Explorer still doesn't have tabs or even a splitter pane, years after Microsoft added those to their other products. And it also neatly explains why you can't (easily) open two Excel spreadsheets in two windows.
The only exception I know of to this is Visual Studio, which I use frequently and find to be generally excellent, though not perfect. But since Visual Studio is developed using Visual Studio, its developers have no choice but to use it. They must get some sort of special exemption from Microsoft's strategic vision of developing products without polluting their UI's with user feedback. I bet the developers even go so far as to sneak in things that they, as users, discovered they wanted as they used it. And that's why Visual Studio is Microsoft's only truly slick product.
Maybe they're just trying to ruin their return on equity (ROE), which currently is an unspectacular 16%.
If they were following Microsoft's playbook, they might be trying to avoid expensive acquisitions so that their highly profitable company could achieve a very respectable ROE of 30%. Most of Microsoft's bad investments are organic, not acquisitions, e.g. Bing. In fact, I can't remember the last time Microsoft shelled out even a measly billion dollars for an acquisition. Losing money organically is really smart - much cheaper than losing it through acquisitions.
Then again, maybe Google is just trying to catch down with Facebook's not-so-great ROE of 8%. Facebook sets the gold standard for corporations who pay too much for acquisition.
Neither does Google. Paying this much money for such a small young company is pure speculation. Kindda reminds me of their YouTube purchase. Even though YouTube is quite popular, it hasn't been a big financial success for them, last I heard.
Yes, but with or without Aero?
It fascinates me that they added Aero as eye candy that no one needed in Vista, then in Windows 8 they not only took it away but also took away the minimal, though longstanding, eye candy of rounded corners. So do we need eye candy or don't we?
Years ago, I read about a study in which researchers tried to determine what type of music would make cows produce the most milk. They tried all the common genres, from classical to hard rock, but didn't find any clear winner. However, they found that the cows produced slightly more milk when the type of music was changed.
Microsoft consistently has milked their users by changing the cosmetics of each major new version of Windows. I assume that's part of the plan to sell you the same thing again while pretending it's different - much as car makers do. But since Windows 8 is plain, Windows 9 seemingly would need to be fancy. But it can't be slightly fancy like XP, or really fancy like Aero. What's more, if they want to stick with their dogma of deploying the same look-and-feel across all devices, big and small, they're going to have to find a new form of plain (to run on lowest-common-denominator hardware) that's somehow different. Changing colors is about the only option I can think of. Hey, it works for the fashion industry.
Good point. I retract the suggestion.
(Moderators: please mark parent as a Troll for disagreeing with me.)
Why don't they just crowd-source it like everything else here? They could add a feature to the article preview page to correct the article, then they could have modders validate the changes. Oh, that would involve paying "programmers".
I can't imagine concussions going down if the players left off their helmets. However, if you mean that the rules should be changed so that helmets are no longer needed, (American) Football would be a fundamentally different game. Or, as the article you cite neatly puts it, "Football is a collision sport, while rugby is a contact sport." I think people who prefer Rugby rules already have a very nice game that uses them.
Maybe the NFL should consider this for the longstanding concussion problem that's been getting a lot of publicity lately. They could afford to throw them away as often as needed.
Don't worry: regardless of how we screw things up, ants will remain.
They scrawled graffiti on public rocks. We humanoids haven't evolved much since then.
To Valve, though, it's a first step in levering development, publishing, gameplay and community away from their reliance on Windows and DirectX (and to a lesser extent Mac OS), systems that cannot be relied upon in the long term.
Silly me. I thought it was all about popularizing Steam by reducing the build cost for gamers who want to play Steam games on high-end PCs, by taking out the cost of Windows. It may also have something to do with Valve having more control over their platform and/or building an empire.
Realistically, if an OS isn't used by many people, there's little reason to write malware for it.
And if an OS isn't used by many people because it's so hard to administer that only techies can use it, there's zero reason to write malware for it. Who wants to write malware for techies when you can shoot fish in a general-population barrel?
(That being said, if Steam OS makes desktop linux big, then there will be more malware for desktop linux.)
If I may paraphrase Norma Desmond:
Linux is big. It's the users that got small.
Perhaps in an alternate universe, Douglas Adams wrote the following:
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks do.
Good point. But it may not take even that long. For example, I think the Studebaker plant still stands. And Armco Steel, which once was a primary employer in the Kansas City area, has been a gigantic rusting (but intact) hulk for a couple of decades. Since these things cost so much to tear down and there's no economic incentive to do so, they seemingly will last until nature takes over, in decades or centuries.
You don't find many of these kind of posts anymore. Not a single offtopic mention of NSA, Snowden, Assange, Bitcoin, or how stupid one is if they support any political party. I know, they'll show up soon, but at least I can enjoy the moment before I hit the refresh button.
I've been hatching a theory, very loosely based on Godwin's Law, that any thread here that includes either NSA, Snowden, or Bitcoin ultimately will include the other two. The theory hasn't previously include Assange since we haven't heard much about him lately, but I'll consider incorporating him into it if need be.
I haven't seen much evidence that my theory is wrong, but these primary hot topics recently have achieved meta status wherein they get mentioned even if they are notable only for their absence. You did it, and now I'm doing it.
That doesn't exactly disprove the theory, but it does take a little of the zest out of it. So, let's all just try to find "legitimate" ways to drag NSA, Snowden, Bitcoin - and even Assange, if we must - into each and every conversation here. And please, no more cheating via the meta trick.
That's terrible: mobile banking apps for iOS are woefully insecure, yet you folks are making fun of them. Poor little things, you're gonna make 'em cry. Is that really what you want? Can't you just leave 'em alone, you big bullies...?
No, I try not to use that kind of language, regardless of the issue.
My point is basically that bug-fix upgrades either aren't needed (because the bugs haven't bothered users of old versions), or those users can undergo the pain of upgrading. A third alternative, of course, since Python is open source software, is for anyone who absolutely needs something fixed in an old version to fix it themselves.
I don't use RHEL5, but my understanding is that folks who use any open source software are invited to submit a patch for anything that's bothering them. So, if you're committed to Python 2.4, for example, you can submit a patch to the Python folks to fix a bug in it that's suddenly bothering you after all these years. If they don't accept that, you are free to patch it on your own system. Or you are free to live with it (as you evidently have been). Or you are free migrate to some other distribution, if that's feasible. What's so bad about that? I thought that's just the kind of "freedom" that users of such systems value.
And why would any of that be a basis for me to prescribe an unpleasant afterlife for anyone? I'd much prefer that everyone have a nice day. :-)
Please note that in our current Congress, voting third-party would have the net effect of voting against (nearly?) all incumbents. So, your idea is one possible way to implement my plan.
Why are we Python developers inflicting so much pain on ourselves to support antiquated Python releases?
If I were a Python developer, instead of Python user, and there was a lot of pain supporting old Pythons, I'd just stop supporting them (instead of whining.) Older versions of Python only receive bug fixes. People who are still using an older version evidently are happy with it, bugs included. So, Python developers should fix old bugs if it's painless, or not if it's painful.
About the only exception I can think of is security problems: if a security flaw in an old version is suddenly revealed, it should be fixed by Python developers if at all possible. Then again, if that becomes too much trouble for Python developers, they can just (politely) say "if this bug really is a problem for you, you should just pay the pain yourself by upgrading to a newer version where we've fixed it."
Another clear exception is that the last 2.x version, 2.7, should have its bugs fixed into the foreseeable future because so many of us still prefer 2.x. Then again, I would have already switched to 3.x if a 2.7 didn't (already and into the foreseeable future) work just fine for everything I need Python for.
The real problem is if the person that will provide the working parameters to these algorithms defines that some of us, as humans, are mistakes that must be "resolved" and that the weapons working on these algorithms are the tools to perform that improvement.
It's already happened to Captain Kirk. Remember that old episode about Nomad?
You can't tell the difference between Yahoo, Bing, and Google. I'm ignoring everything you said now.
OK, I'll bite. What exactly is the difference between Yahoo and Bing? ;-)
Regarding Google, have you ever taken the Bing Test? I have, and the results didn't show any clear preference for me. In fact, I think my minor perceived preference for Google mostly has to do with its simple clean interface, that is, its cosmetics. There's a reason that Yahoo has been systematically updating its cosmetics: people respond to that, whether they realize it or not.
Anyway, even if you do objectively prefer Google for search, that doesn't mean that, for example, their finance feature is better. Specifically, although I really like Google's stock screener, I haven't found anything to beat Yahoo's "Key Statistics" page for that stock metrics. For Yahoo, for example, I can look at that and determine in seconds that it's significantly overvalued.
OK, I'll bite. There still are a few things they do well. For example, their Finance feature is among the best in class of financial information (IMHO).
I began using their email system as a POP server years ago, mainly because I thought the spam filtering worked very well. At some point, they changed their system so that you had to use their address as the reply address, so I began using that rather than my website's forwarding address. Although that should have alienated me and made me go elsewhere, I stuck with them, so now people are used to replying to the Yahoo address and it's hard to switch to something else.
I used to use their "classic" (old-fashioned) mail but they forced me and everyone else out of that last year. So, I got used to the new email interface and even generally like it now, but the performance problems still are inexcusable. For example, I sent one email several times the other day after their system said it had failed to send it, then multiple copies of it appeared in my "Sent" list. So, did it go out or not? - who knows?
Their longstanding "Groups" system still has some attractive features. I tried to find a replacement for it recently for an email list I've run for several years, and I couldn't find any similar free and ready-made (no installation) email group service that allows users to subscribe themselves.
There seems to be a theme lately of Yahoo changing the cosmetics of their system as often as possible. However, they don't seem to understand that users don't want change unless there is a clear benefit to them. And users also don't want continuous change - they need time to digest each new thing that's foisted on them. Yahoo also seems to be disregarding the impact all these changes have on system performance. Even after tolerating senseless change, I'm just about ready to abandon their email due to its increasingly poor performance.
I find their search to be OK, though I'm not particularly loyal to it. Honestly, I can't tell much difference between Yahoo/Bing search and Google, so I just use whichever one comes up in the browser I happen to be using. However, my perception is that Google is very slightly better.
Overall, the challenge for Yahoo is to modernize their systems after years of neglect, while retaining the things that people like about them (in my case: finance, spam filtering, and groups), without impacting quality in terms of performance and security. They might get to the Promised Land one day, but there's a lot of desert to cross first.
How does that solve anything?
Who said it was supposed to solve anything? It's mainly about making a statement.
That said, let's do the thought experiment: if every member of Congress got replaced by the voters, en masse, wouldn't the new ones that came in figure out that the old ones must have been doing something wrong? They might even figure out that The People want them to do their job - which involves finding some sort of middle ground that moves things forward to address the nation's major problems.
The current political game seems to revolve around each team making the other team look bad. Sometimes Democrats win and sometimes Republicans win, but incumbents somehow nearly always win. That's what I'd like to change - if only for the moral satisfaction.
I visited the House of Representatives last year a few months before the shutdown. It was quite interesting to see members of "America's Only Native Criminal Class" up close in the National Rogues Gallery. (The architecture and the artwork there weren't bad either.) For example, John Boehner makes an even better looking hound dog in person than he does on TV. It was kindda fun to see him snub the lesser criminals as he walked up the aisle, systematically ignoring them when they smiled hopefully at him. (Every successful criminal enterprise has a power hierarchy that must be systematically imposed from above.)
We developers have been killing software bugs for decades. Why can't software bugs start killing us?
I'm with ya, bro. Now that America has revert to a single political party - the Incumbents - I plan to vote against every member of that party in the next election, be they nominally Republicans, Democrats, or anything else. (That last part was just for completeness - more of theoretical possibility than anything. Luckily, Ralph Nader never joined the Incumbent Party.)