The "we release a new major for each typo fixed" craze started with Chrome. Google pushes a new version on an hourly basis. Shows that browser version has become somewhat irrelevant.
The problem with Firefox is that the community has little say in what that browser does. Plenty of excellent proposals were made that all got shot down by the arrogant lead developers who see Firefox as the coded manifestation of their egos. FF is open source only because the source is open, but not because a community is working on it together taking user feedback into account. Maybe they fix the update bug, my tests systems are stuck on version 47 although 48 is available.
I'm fine with being left behind. Aside from mildly better security there is no compelling reason for Win 10. 80% of the tasks I need to do work as well on Win7 as they do on Win10, the other 20% only work on Win7 because Win10 has dismal hardware support and outright refuses to run some software. The real roadblock is the dysfunctional UI in Win 10. It is so complicated and confusing for no reason. UI was the least problem that Windows had, yet that gets changed for the worse while we still endure the underperforming NTFS from Jurassic Park. Also no change in networking speed. When I think back how snappy network shares were connected under W2k...Win networking got worse with every new release. Instead we get useless stuff like Cortana...that is neat for those who have an office with a door.
Intel and AMD can greatly improve their sales numbers when they offer support on older Windows. And even if not, "not optimized" does not mean Win7/8 do not run on these processors.
Correct! Expenses for Academia at State Universities have been flat the past 15 years while administrative expenses (especially college athletics!!!!) have risen by over 300%. So all that high tuition does not go to the profs, but to the greatest money waster of all time: college sports and licked campus gardening.
My advice: learn German and study in Germany. Top notch universities with 0€ tuition.
I recently flew to Europe and the checks in Europe are reasonable and thus quite fast. In the US you have to get to a rather needless state of undress, pass soft x-ray machines, get a pat down, and potentially get elected for further search. In Europe, you can keep your shoes on, pass through a metal detector, and if that does not sound an alarm you grab your stuff and move on. All these TSA checks are totally over the top, time consuming, and with little to no effect beyond what was done before. Plus, plenty of times the checks are proven to be ineffective.
Even worse is immigrations. In Europe they check your passport, if that does not come up on a list as flagged they wish you a good day and you are on your way. In the US, you get to fill out custom forms, then answer tons of questions at a kiosk, then scan in every passport document you may have, then try ten times until that automatic camera manages to take your picture, and if you happen to be a legal resident you get fingerprinted yet again. You get a receipt and then walk up to an officer who except for the picture does exactly the same stuff that they always did. So why did I have to fight for ten minutes with a badly designed kiosk app? All that does not curb any bad things from happening and only increases the lengths of the lines.
So, how about US officials get their act together and keep only those checks that indeed accomplish something and get rid of everything else. Paying the TSA clerks more than minimum wage will also help. TSA is the largest government employment program the US has ever seen. A lot of money spent with not much to show for.
As in "You are holding it wrong!" ?? Apple is no better, worst case they claim that the malfunction is intentional and by design and everyone claps. Like leaving out a headphone jack so that they can sell an adapter for the rootin tootin low price of 49.99.
Don't blame it on capitalism and big wigs. It is us who rather buy the lower priced gadget than one that is much more expensive...unless, of course, it has an Apple logo on it, but that no longer stands for superior design or high quality either, only for high prices.
It is not only in China. Look at all the craptastic tech stuff and software from the US, quality wise not any better. Unless you go back to things built decades ago that still work fine like they did on day one. Consumers are not interested in paying a bit extra for quality, all they want is lowest price and fast product release cycles. I am sure we'd all be fine if Samsung and others took a few years to truly design a reliable and decent new product, but if there isn't a new release within a year's time the "experts" declare the company as defunct and going under dragging stock prices into the basement.
The only ones who can change that is us consumers. Stop buying that stuff and send letters to the company CEOs demanding better quality.
This is 2016! Quality control was abandoned years ago in favor of lower cost and faster delivery times. Eating the cost for having to replace or rework stuff is considered cheaper than preventing bad things from happening, although it rarely is.
Or if companies making the batteries claim that their product can handle the charge/discharge rates just to get the multimillion order from Samsung. Would not be the first time where vendors make all kinds of claims and promises just to close a deal.
There is a life beyond work. Keep in mind that nobody will remember your 60 hour weeks and all nighters when the choice is between firing you and keeping CEO pay at the same level. Don't give an employer more than you owe them, the idea of reward and loyalty is sadly something from past generations.
Still using my old QIC 80 tapes. Unfortunately, I need to keep an old Win 98 box around for that. New systems do not have floppy controllers and newer OS no longer support QIC 80 drives. I had the tapes sitting in a cabinet at room temperature for over 20 years now and they still work fine.
I'd get a modern tape drive if the drives were not so expensive. Instead, I buy SATA drives when they are on sale for a piggish price and use that as backup.
OP didn't specify exactly what happened. If the place burned down than yea, the discs are ashes and fumes. Not that tape, HDD, SDD,or USB thumb drive would have fared any better.
DVD-R/RW are dirt cheap and easy to use, plus they keep data for quite some time. They are also somewhat easily mailed although I am now tending more towards sending micro SD cards inserted into an adapter. The micro SD card itself is too likely to fall out of the envelope unless it is taped to a piece of paper. Most people I deal with have a desktop or laptop with optical drives.
I would never buy a system that does not have an optical drive/burner (except for a tablet). The craze to eliminate a very versatile device that adds a few bucks and a wee bit of size to a device just makes no sense to me. And dealing with external drives is a pain in the rear.
Two factor is great, but it is typically implemented in a way that demands to have a smart phone. While I do not totally disagree with it, smart phone operation costs are ridiculously high and for folks like me with a middle class income unaffordable. I guess going forward there is no way around it.
Enter PIN? Not in the US! The retailers and banks outright refused to make chip & PIN the standard, so it is chip only. That is barely more secure than the mag stripe. I've even come across cases where the retailer first asked to insert the chip into the reader and the requested a swipe as well.
Slowness is commonplace, but I think it has nothing to do with the chip technology, it is a passive aggressive step by the banking/merchant industry to demonstrate that they should be in charge of which technology to use rather than have it be dictated...means they want to keep using the cheapest possible technology even if it far less secure. The breaches and losses will be paid by insurance companies and the higher cost will be pushed to consumers and businesses.
That aside, even if there would be chip & PIN, by the time it is in place in the US that technology is being phased out in Europe for better solutions.
What do we expect? The US has infrastructure that in many places dates back to the 1860-1880s when it was put in place. We still have cables nailed to wooden posts strung along main street.Power outages are a common occurrence. Many homes do not even have public water or sewer, relying instead on wells and leaky septic tanks. Even infrastructure that is relied on heavily such as streets is left in shambles. Expecting to have decent and secure money transactions is naive.
I want to see the exact same emissions standards applied to trucks, vans, semis, big rigs, and construction equipment. Those vehicles still spew out a lot of dust, dirt, and poison that makes the VW cheat negligible. But oh no, regulating big trucking will create a big uproar.
It surely was a fine day, but what is even more impressive than the technology is the ingenuity and determination of the crew. There was tons of stuff that did not work, such as switches that broke off so that they had to stick a pen into the remains of the switch to operate it. Landing the lunar module was another issue because there were only seconds to spare until the module would have been without sufficient fuel left to return to the orbiter.
It was a great achievement, but I think there are much bigger achievements that we could pull off that are as challenging, but not as "sexy". For example, fixing the massive traffic issues in the US, the utterly outdated power grid, the hopelessly underdeveloped railway system (although until the 50s the US had one one the densest and best equipped systems in the world), the rampant urban blight, poverty, and crime. And yes, there are solutions to all this found in technology, but it also requires a lot of ingenuity and determination. If the nation can fund and pull off a lunar program then we can fix petty stuff like replacing the unsustainable Interstate system with something that works much better and costs less. Or have rain storms not be a guarantee to also have hour long power outages. Or have people get decent employment (in technology) so that they do not have to work three jobs and still not get by.
I never understood what the big deal is with Silicon Valley. That region is filled with companies that have inept management. Why put HQ where 2342423424 other companies jockey for the scarce talent in the area? The US is a big place, they can put their offices in many other places...where realty prices are much lower, the weather is less hot, labor costs are lower, talent is plentiful, excellent colleges exist...the list goes on.
I'm coming here for the summary of recent events. I can care less about which comments get modded into which direction. Most of the discussions go downhill right after the first comment...and that is nothing new, that is like this for years.
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The "we release a new major for each typo fixed" craze started with Chrome. Google pushes a new version on an hourly basis. Shows that browser version has become somewhat irrelevant.
The problem with Firefox is that the community has little say in what that browser does. Plenty of excellent proposals were made that all got shot down by the arrogant lead developers who see Firefox as the coded manifestation of their egos. FF is open source only because the source is open, but not because a community is working on it together taking user feedback into account. Maybe they fix the update bug, my tests systems are stuck on version 47 although 48 is available.
I'm fine with being left behind. Aside from mildly better security there is no compelling reason for Win 10. 80% of the tasks I need to do work as well on Win7 as they do on Win10, the other 20% only work on Win7 because Win10 has dismal hardware support and outright refuses to run some software. The real roadblock is the dysfunctional UI in Win 10. It is so complicated and confusing for no reason. UI was the least problem that Windows had, yet that gets changed for the worse while we still endure the underperforming NTFS from Jurassic Park. Also no change in networking speed. When I think back how snappy network shares were connected under W2k...Win networking got worse with every new release. Instead we get useless stuff like Cortana...that is neat for those who have an office with a door.
Intel and AMD can greatly improve their sales numbers when they offer support on older Windows. And even if not, "not optimized" does not mean Win7/8 do not run on these processors.
Correct! Expenses for Academia at State Universities have been flat the past 15 years while administrative expenses (especially college athletics!!!!) have risen by over 300%. So all that high tuition does not go to the profs, but to the greatest money waster of all time: college sports and licked campus gardening. My advice: learn German and study in Germany. Top notch universities with 0€ tuition.
I recently flew to Europe and the checks in Europe are reasonable and thus quite fast. In the US you have to get to a rather needless state of undress, pass soft x-ray machines, get a pat down, and potentially get elected for further search. In Europe, you can keep your shoes on, pass through a metal detector, and if that does not sound an alarm you grab your stuff and move on. All these TSA checks are totally over the top, time consuming, and with little to no effect beyond what was done before. Plus, plenty of times the checks are proven to be ineffective. Even worse is immigrations. In Europe they check your passport, if that does not come up on a list as flagged they wish you a good day and you are on your way. In the US, you get to fill out custom forms, then answer tons of questions at a kiosk, then scan in every passport document you may have, then try ten times until that automatic camera manages to take your picture, and if you happen to be a legal resident you get fingerprinted yet again. You get a receipt and then walk up to an officer who except for the picture does exactly the same stuff that they always did. So why did I have to fight for ten minutes with a badly designed kiosk app? All that does not curb any bad things from happening and only increases the lengths of the lines. So, how about US officials get their act together and keep only those checks that indeed accomplish something and get rid of everything else. Paying the TSA clerks more than minimum wage will also help. TSA is the largest government employment program the US has ever seen. A lot of money spent with not much to show for.
As in "You are holding it wrong!" ?? Apple is no better, worst case they claim that the malfunction is intentional and by design and everyone claps. Like leaving out a headphone jack so that they can sell an adapter for the rootin tootin low price of 49.99.
Don't worry, the uninspired Tim Cook without any plan or vision for Apple will undo that company single handedly.
Don't blame it on capitalism and big wigs. It is us who rather buy the lower priced gadget than one that is much more expensive...unless, of course, it has an Apple logo on it, but that no longer stands for superior design or high quality either, only for high prices.
It is not only in China. Look at all the craptastic tech stuff and software from the US, quality wise not any better. Unless you go back to things built decades ago that still work fine like they did on day one. Consumers are not interested in paying a bit extra for quality, all they want is lowest price and fast product release cycles. I am sure we'd all be fine if Samsung and others took a few years to truly design a reliable and decent new product, but if there isn't a new release within a year's time the "experts" declare the company as defunct and going under dragging stock prices into the basement. The only ones who can change that is us consumers. Stop buying that stuff and send letters to the company CEOs demanding better quality.
This is 2016! Quality control was abandoned years ago in favor of lower cost and faster delivery times. Eating the cost for having to replace or rework stuff is considered cheaper than preventing bad things from happening, although it rarely is.
Or if companies making the batteries claim that their product can handle the charge/discharge rates just to get the multimillion order from Samsung. Would not be the first time where vendors make all kinds of claims and promises just to close a deal.
Sure...how about other sites than FB. ;)
There is a life beyond work. Keep in mind that nobody will remember your 60 hour weeks and all nighters when the choice is between firing you and keeping CEO pay at the same level. Don't give an employer more than you owe them, the idea of reward and loyalty is sadly something from past generations.
Or do what is common in Europe, 35 hour work week with 100% salary and benefits and six weeks paid vacation.
Still using my old QIC 80 tapes. Unfortunately, I need to keep an old Win 98 box around for that. New systems do not have floppy controllers and newer OS no longer support QIC 80 drives. I had the tapes sitting in a cabinet at room temperature for over 20 years now and they still work fine. I'd get a modern tape drive if the drives were not so expensive. Instead, I buy SATA drives when they are on sale for a piggish price and use that as backup.
OP didn't specify exactly what happened. If the place burned down than yea, the discs are ashes and fumes. Not that tape, HDD, SDD,or USB thumb drive would have fared any better.
DVD-R/RW are dirt cheap and easy to use, plus they keep data for quite some time. They are also somewhat easily mailed although I am now tending more towards sending micro SD cards inserted into an adapter. The micro SD card itself is too likely to fall out of the envelope unless it is taped to a piece of paper. Most people I deal with have a desktop or laptop with optical drives. I would never buy a system that does not have an optical drive/burner (except for a tablet). The craze to eliminate a very versatile device that adds a few bucks and a wee bit of size to a device just makes no sense to me. And dealing with external drives is a pain in the rear.
Two factor is great, but it is typically implemented in a way that demands to have a smart phone. While I do not totally disagree with it, smart phone operation costs are ridiculously high and for folks like me with a middle class income unaffordable. I guess going forward there is no way around it.
Enter PIN? Not in the US! The retailers and banks outright refused to make chip & PIN the standard, so it is chip only. That is barely more secure than the mag stripe. I've even come across cases where the retailer first asked to insert the chip into the reader and the requested a swipe as well. Slowness is commonplace, but I think it has nothing to do with the chip technology, it is a passive aggressive step by the banking/merchant industry to demonstrate that they should be in charge of which technology to use rather than have it be dictated...means they want to keep using the cheapest possible technology even if it far less secure. The breaches and losses will be paid by insurance companies and the higher cost will be pushed to consumers and businesses. That aside, even if there would be chip & PIN, by the time it is in place in the US that technology is being phased out in Europe for better solutions. What do we expect? The US has infrastructure that in many places dates back to the 1860-1880s when it was put in place. We still have cables nailed to wooden posts strung along main street.Power outages are a common occurrence. Many homes do not even have public water or sewer, relying instead on wells and leaky septic tanks. Even infrastructure that is relied on heavily such as streets is left in shambles. Expecting to have decent and secure money transactions is naive.
Neither the FBI nor anyone else found that any laws were violated. So stop obsessing about it!
I want to see the exact same emissions standards applied to trucks, vans, semis, big rigs, and construction equipment. Those vehicles still spew out a lot of dust, dirt, and poison that makes the VW cheat negligible. But oh no, regulating big trucking will create a big uproar.
It surely was a fine day, but what is even more impressive than the technology is the ingenuity and determination of the crew. There was tons of stuff that did not work, such as switches that broke off so that they had to stick a pen into the remains of the switch to operate it. Landing the lunar module was another issue because there were only seconds to spare until the module would have been without sufficient fuel left to return to the orbiter. It was a great achievement, but I think there are much bigger achievements that we could pull off that are as challenging, but not as "sexy". For example, fixing the massive traffic issues in the US, the utterly outdated power grid, the hopelessly underdeveloped railway system (although until the 50s the US had one one the densest and best equipped systems in the world), the rampant urban blight, poverty, and crime. And yes, there are solutions to all this found in technology, but it also requires a lot of ingenuity and determination. If the nation can fund and pull off a lunar program then we can fix petty stuff like replacing the unsustainable Interstate system with something that works much better and costs less. Or have rain storms not be a guarantee to also have hour long power outages. Or have people get decent employment (in technology) so that they do not have to work three jobs and still not get by.
I never understood what the big deal is with Silicon Valley. That region is filled with companies that have inept management. Why put HQ where 2342423424 other companies jockey for the scarce talent in the area? The US is a big place, they can put their offices in many other places...where realty prices are much lower, the weather is less hot, labor costs are lower, talent is plentiful, excellent colleges exist...the list goes on.
I'm coming here for the summary of recent events. I can care less about which comments get modded into which direction. Most of the discussions go downhill right after the first comment...and that is nothing new, that is like this for years.