And by what magic would non-productive employees actually get productive when they have to be on-site? Do you put a watcher behind each one of them that makes sure they actually work?
When Yahoo removed telecommuting, it was because of problems with management not with the individual workers. Management at Yahoo was too incompetent to manage telecommuting employees. Fixing this level of gross incompetence would have been too difficult and take too long, so Yahoo ended the telecommuting option.
The only thing that move accomplished is make the non-productive ones more expensive and to drive away productive ones that liked the freedom. Stupid.
If management was not capable of managing their employees, what makes you think they could properly identify non-productive employees? Marissa Mayer simply did not trust her managers enough to make these calls, and she wasn't going to investigate thousands of employees herself. She took to least bad option once she noticed how incompetent the Yahoo management was.
I obviously don't have enough information to know if Marissa was correct in believing Yahoo's management was not up to the task, but if she was correct then her actions seem justified.
If Yahoo is just an entity that owns 15% of Alibaba, is it just a holding company? Would they just need to be staffed by a dozen people who file quarterly reports? Does anyone know if Yahoo's stake in Alibaba includes actual management and/or engineering responsibilities?
there is a vast chasm between what you have described -- an independent criminal, or even a gang of them -- and institutional oppression.
I agree there is a vast difference between the two. I only think that because people feel so safe from independent criminals or even gangs (because of our functioning legal system), they take this safety for granted. Oppressive regimes can and do come to power, even in western countries. Since we already Godwinned this discussion, remember Germany is a western country.
To bring this back to Trump, a judicial application of considered checks and balances, supported by the populace, would keep him in check effectively.
Considering Supreme Court justices are appointed by a President, and Congress votes the party line well over 90% of the time, it is reasonable to doubt the effectiveness of the US Constitution's checks and balances. While I do agree with you that Trump does not pose a threat to American democracy, I guess I'm not as willing to throw the idea out as ignorant.
And there is still no chance in hell he will be accepted and elected even by the majority of the Republican voter base, much less the entire electorate.
I also agree with you here. But I am a little worried we are wrong. And my primary worry is not Trump becoming president. My primary worry is any democratic country filled with citizens who would vote Trump into power. Such an electorate would be prime for the rise of fascism.
The incidents people actually think about when they hear mass shootings probably lies closer to the 61 figure.
The fact that you think nearly 300 incidents in which 4 or more people were shot wouldn't fit people's image of mass shootings just shows how warped your citizens perspective is on guns.
Overall people are fine with gang members killing gang members. Overall people who don't live in poor areas don't worry about armed robbery. Overall people think domestic abuse is something that wouldn't happen to them. It is also something associated with the poor in most people's minds (mostly accurately).
People generally only get scared or want to do something about a problem when it affects them. Mass shootings are a good boogeyman because even the middle class can be targets.
Second, all of you amaze me in your ignorance of the American political system. The President does have power, but Congress has a lot more. Appropriations, oversight, you name it and Congress has it. Has Congress ceded a lot of its power to the President? In some cases, yes. And it is done cynically, to deflect blame in most cases. However, should Congress choose to exercise its power there is little the President can do on her/his own. That would be even more true if the Supreme Court were to side with Congress.
Don't get too comfortable with laws and checks and balances you believe are bullet proof. Most Americans, myself included, live in a world where they can count on the rule of law. Americans forget that every single law is powerless when confronted with a man with a gun. And gun toting flag waving American is just as powerless when confronted with a mob with guns. On a small scale that means a man with a gun can take my car, invade my home, take my life, etc. and no law can prevent that. Laws can help remedy the aftermath, but not when the legal system itself is attacked.
Even strong checks and balances can erode with a little force, whether political force or actual force. Politicians can be made too scared to resist. Judges can be killed.
I don't believe Trump is the next Hitler. But I do believe the same mentality that allows common people to vote for Trump could eventually lead to fascism. Trump is scary because of what he represents, not because he is all that scary himself. He does play the role of the clown well though, so maybe we should be more scared.
No... he's pandering to the lowest common denominator including people who watch reality TV and idiots like you.
Step out of your liberal bubble and introduce yourself to the American public. I live in a high income liberal leaning suburb now so I rarely meet anyone who would be considered an average American. But I grew up around them in a small farm town. It's a whole different world.
Every day, huh? What mass shooting happened yesterday? It only feels like everyday, but shootings have gone down dramatically each decade.
Apparently it really depends on your definition of mass shootings. By the most broad definition I could find (4 or more people shot in a single incident) there were 353 mass shootings in the US in 2015 by November 23rd. So about one per day on average.
By the most narrow definition I could find (a single non-gang, robbery, or domestic violence incident where 4 or more people die), there were 4 mass shootings in the US in 2015 by November 23rd. With the same definition but replace death with just being shot, the number goes up to 61.
The incidents people actually think about when they hear mass shootings probably lies closer to the 61 figure. Which means about 5-6 mass shootings per month.
Considering most other web content is just downloading some text and static pictures, I'm surprised only 70% of downstream traffic at peak times is streaming video. I guess that goes to show how good compression on streaming video is.
I don't see how this is different from the past where most programmers "coded" in RPG, or in Delphi, or in Powerbuilder, or in MS Access.
Not much different. Just like the iPhone wasn't much different than the Newton. But at a certain point technologies become mature enough they can deliver on the hype that has built up for decades.
What tools like Powerbuilder and Access were not good at, IMHO, is they weren't built upon an enterprise grade infrastructure. Perhaps I am not being fair to Powerbuilder since I only worked on one project with it and as a junior developer, but it didn't seem as extensible as even a VB application. All I know is our C++ and VB teams always seemed to have far less limitations than our Powerbuilder developers.
When working with Salesforce, however, our analysts writing workflow rules and approval processes are working on the exact same platform as the developers writing custom code. The platform does a good enough job of allowing configuration "code" to co-exist with actual code, even in enterprise environments with tens of thousands of users.
There is certainly room for improvement, but like I said earlier I really think it is a glimpse of what software development will be in the future. 80% of developers who are really just configuring platforms, and 20% of developers who write source code as part of their job.
I do see software development roles split between people still writing code and people using graphical (perhaps gesture based) interfaces designing workflows, approval processes, user interfaces, etc. Not sure how fishing rods factor in.
I think my recent work with Salesforce has given a good glimpse of the future of software development, at least in the next decade or two that is. 90% of the work I would have done a decade ago is now handled by a third party platform, and I just work on the few things that need to be custom. That has been attempted by SAAS vendors before (even before it was called that), but never as well as Salesforce has done it. There is plenty of room for improvement, but their software gives an idea of what can be accomplished. Though I hope someone else beats out Salesforce's Force.com platform with something that is more engineering focused instead of sales/marketing focused.
I see the software development industry breaking up into tiers like most other industries. Similar to engineering where you have engineers and you have CAD operators (among other roles). I see elite software engineers making much more money than they do now, but a class of programmers making wages closer to CAD operators (although a bit more) becoming the norm for most programmers. Overall it will let the industry create more software with less costs.
When challenged, absolutely NO ONE seems to be able to provide proof of a "brogrammer" culture that people seem to cite when they talk about the numbers of women in "tech".
I am a white male in his 30's, so I don't have to worry about any of this. But I see my female coworkers who cannot get a client to believe they are competent because they are women. I see their ideas attributed to the first man who publicly agrees with them (I have had to explicitly remind people in a meeting that an idea originated with a female coworker). I see similar cultural influences that tell African American men being smart isn't cool tell women that being nerdy isn't feminine. I also see women who have a hard time finding professionals they can identify within a workforce that is so heavily male dominated.
I could go on, but it doesn't matter. If you still don't see the inequality of opportunity in the IT field towards women after years of the industry starting to come to terms with it, you are willfully trying to ignore the problem.
Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. The first is a worth goal, the second is just insanity, forcing people to do things they don't really want to do. And we already have the first, with only very slight inequalities remaining.
Whether or not we have equality of opportunity is what's in debate here. While you have a right to your opinion, treating it as fact is disingenuous. And in my opinion, someone would really need to have their head in the sand to believe there is equality of opportunity. Leaving things to market forces free of overt discrimination is not the same thing as equality of opportunity.
I am a white male in his 30's, so I don't have to worry about any of this. But I see my female coworkers who cannot get a client to believe they are competent because they are women. I see their ideas attributed to the first man who publicly agrees with them (I have had to explicitly remind people in a meeting that an idea originated with a female coworker). I see similar cultural influences that tell African American men being smart isn't cool tell women that being nerdy isn't feminine. I also see women who have a hard time finding professionals they can identify within a workforce that is so heavily male dominated.
No one knows all the answers to fix these inequalities, but it is quite apparent that efforts must be taken to counteract the inequality of opportunity in many STEM fields. There are other fields with inequalities, but in my opinion none as important in fueling a modern economy as STEM fields.
If it fails, the performers and venues can still pull the nuclear option - require you to show your ID at the event, and the ID has to match the person who bought the ticket.
This problem is much easier to solve than this. Just make people sign up at the venue days before the tickets go on sale, and then use a lottery to pick who gets tickets. Then you can give some tickets to people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford them, scalpers have very little chance to buy tickets in bulk, and buyers can still sell their tickets if they can't go.
Typical. I don't understand the derogatory use of the term. By definition, social justice is something all people should strive for.
While I agree using SJW as derogatory is silly, using definitions of terms in an acronym or group names out of context is even worse.
You disagree with libertarians? Why do you hate liberty? You disagree with socialism? Why are you anti-social? You didn't like the NAZI (National-socialist German Workers) Party? Why do you hate the working man?
Sorry but if it works without the keyboard? Its a tablet.
So all smart phones are tablets? The 60" smart monitor at work is a tablet? I'm not saying you are necessarily wrong by considering it a tablet, but your narrow definition of what makes something a tablet seems a bit silly.
Around 3 hours was what they wanted out of their laptops, anything above that was gravy. This makes sense as when was the last time you were away from an outlet for more than 3 hours?
Like them, I am fine with a "mobile desktop"-type laptop only having a few hours of battery life. But this isn't since I am worried about how long I will be away from an outlet, its because I am virtually never away from an outlet. Or a docking station for that matter. A computing device that is not meant to be glued to a docking station is a much different device than one which is truly meant to be mobile (in the modern sense, not the expectations of five years ago). Everyone I have ever talked to after using a laptop with 8+ hours of battery life has sworn off ever using a 3 hour battery laptop ever again.
They're also counting laptops with detachable screens as being tablets.
While I agree with the Surface Pro 4 being considered a tablet, I also agree calling the Surface Book a tablet is ridiculous. Not because it is basically a laptop with a detachable screen, but because that detachable screen cannot function like a tablet by itself. Its battery life as a tablet is only about three hours.
I recently bought a Surface Pro 4, and was very tempted to go with the Surface Book because of the nicer screen. But three hours of detached battery life was just too little. If they could have doubled that I certainly would have gone with the Book. I understand why they couldn't deliver that kind of battery life, but it does mean the device simply cannot be thought of as a tablet in any way. It is a laptop with a touch screen.
Unfortunately that is not always an option. There are myriad reasons why, and while in many cases it is the fault of the consumer for choosing vendor lock-in despite repeated warnings to avoid it, in many other cases someone who would never make such a mistake inherited it from someone who did. Indeed, for a few niche cases vendor lock-in was the only viable choice.
In many cases, of course, they can migrate, and at this point those people who don't do so are either crazy, idiots, or both.
Yes, using a competitor is ALWAYS an option at the time scales which are relevant here. Companies can continue to use Windows Server 2012 for about another decade. Anyone who cannot remove vendor lock in over a decade is willingly ignoring the problem, and willfully accepting whatever license changes Microsoft is making because they don't feel like going with another option. There may be companies whose IT departments do move this slow, but that is their choice. They could move faster if they were motivated to.
And before GP chimes in and says "so what, you agreed to the license!", a contract can be invalidated for being one-sided. If the license says you pay more money "because FU, that's why" then the contract seems a little one sided.
I find it hard to believe someone could argue these license changes constitute an unconscionable contract. I could see it happening for an end user agreement when one party is a corporation and the other is a standard customer. But in this case both sides are professionals. Microsoft isn't picking on some old lady who doesn't know what they are doing. Anyone purchasing Windows Server 2016 for servers costing tens of thousands of dollars should know what they are doing. And since Windows will be offering extended support for Server 2012 for close to another decade, no one is forcing anyone to upgrade.
Thats funny, I thought the only reason you used a.NET application was because you were using a Windows server. Maybe its circular:)
Perhaps not circular, as the cycle begins with the developers machines running Windows. The combination of Microsoft Office and their desire to use arguably the best IDE in the industry (Visual Studio) keeps most developers in the enterprise using Windows. Since they are already using Windows, and their favorite development tools are geared towards the.NET ecosystem, using.NET just makes sense. Add to that C# being a really great language along with.NET being a pretty good platform and there are a lot of reasons so much software is written for the Microsoft stack.
I am in the process of weaning myself off of the Microsoft stack because I don't see them winning in the move to the cloud. I would pay thousands of dollars per year for a development environment as good as Visual Studio that runs on Linux. I have tried VIM, Sublime, Eclipse, Netbeans (only briefly) MonoDevelop (also briefly), and IntelliJ. IntelliJ comes reasonably close and VIM isn't that bad when you get good with it. But Visual Studio is still a joy to work with comparatively.
But people today don't use Firefox because they like it. [It's] used just because it's the least-worst of all of the shitty options. [...] They'll finally get to use a browser that isn't Chrome, but that's still fast, modern, and efficient.
If Firefox is so bad, why wouldn't people use Chrome? Are you including Chrome in those shitty options you mentioned? Because I haven't seen any browser comparisons that don't put Chrome at the top on Javascript performance, DOM rendering performance, or standards compliance.
Unless Edge comes to Linux / OS X and is much better than Chrome, I don't see how it will change Firefox's market share much. I don't even know why anyone would use Firefox over Chrome anyway, except for developers who like their developer tools better.
It's pretty obvious the most common language is going to have the most apparent bugs and the most security woes because it is the one that is most used to solve the majority of problems.
That argument doesn't work when the measurement is in bugs per megabyte.
This is bug density, not total bugs.
He said apparent bugs, not total bugs or even bug density. His contention was the most used languages will have the most people identifying security holes. Similar to how the most used operating systems will have the most people writing viruses for them. Just because one application has the most identified bugs doesn't mean another application doesn't have far more that are simply not identified.
I don't agree with the argument, since I think there is a threshold where a language is popular enough to have people combing it for vulnerabilities. C, Java, C#, Javascript, etc. have all passed that threshold.
Slashdot Mirror
And by what magic would non-productive employees actually get productive when they have to be on-site? Do you put a watcher behind each one of them that makes sure they actually work?
When Yahoo removed telecommuting, it was because of problems with management not with the individual workers. Management at Yahoo was too incompetent to manage telecommuting employees. Fixing this level of gross incompetence would have been too difficult and take too long, so Yahoo ended the telecommuting option.
The only thing that move accomplished is make the non-productive ones more expensive and to drive away productive ones that liked the freedom. Stupid.
If management was not capable of managing their employees, what makes you think they could properly identify non-productive employees? Marissa Mayer simply did not trust her managers enough to make these calls, and she wasn't going to investigate thousands of employees herself. She took to least bad option once she noticed how incompetent the Yahoo management was.
I obviously don't have enough information to know if Marissa was correct in believing Yahoo's management was not up to the task, but if she was correct then her actions seem justified.
Am I being naive, or just is this just a way of moving Alibaba into American ownership?
Yahoo only owns 15% of Alibaba, so it certainly is not a US company.
If Yahoo is just an entity that owns 15% of Alibaba, is it just a holding company? Would they just need to be staffed by a dozen people who file quarterly reports? Does anyone know if Yahoo's stake in Alibaba includes actual management and/or engineering responsibilities?
there is a vast chasm between what you have described -- an independent criminal, or even a gang of them -- and institutional oppression.
I agree there is a vast difference between the two. I only think that because people feel so safe from independent criminals or even gangs (because of our functioning legal system), they take this safety for granted. Oppressive regimes can and do come to power, even in western countries. Since we already Godwinned this discussion, remember Germany is a western country.
To bring this back to Trump, a judicial application of considered checks and balances, supported by the populace, would keep him in check effectively.
Considering Supreme Court justices are appointed by a President, and Congress votes the party line well over 90% of the time, it is reasonable to doubt the effectiveness of the US Constitution's checks and balances. While I do agree with you that Trump does not pose a threat to American democracy, I guess I'm not as willing to throw the idea out as ignorant.
And there is still no chance in hell he will be accepted and elected even by the majority of the Republican voter base, much less the entire electorate.
I also agree with you here. But I am a little worried we are wrong. And my primary worry is not Trump becoming president. My primary worry is any democratic country filled with citizens who would vote Trump into power. Such an electorate would be prime for the rise of fascism.
The fact that you think nearly 300 incidents in which 4 or more people were shot wouldn't fit people's image of mass shootings just shows how warped your citizens perspective is on guns.
Overall people are fine with gang members killing gang members.
Overall people who don't live in poor areas don't worry about armed robbery.
Overall people think domestic abuse is something that wouldn't happen to them. It is also something associated with the poor in most people's minds (mostly accurately).
People generally only get scared or want to do something about a problem when it affects them. Mass shootings are a good boogeyman because even the middle class can be targets.
and why should we pretend that the bottom of the barrel trailer park trash that support him are anything to be listened to.
Because their vote counts just as much as yours or mine does. Ignore them at your own peril.
Second, all of you amaze me in your ignorance of the American political system. The President does have power, but Congress has a lot more. Appropriations, oversight, you name it and Congress has it. Has Congress ceded a lot of its power to the President? In some cases, yes. And it is done cynically, to deflect blame in most cases. However, should Congress choose to exercise its power there is little the President can do on her/his own. That would be even more true if the Supreme Court were to side with Congress.
Don't get too comfortable with laws and checks and balances you believe are bullet proof. Most Americans, myself included, live in a world where they can count on the rule of law. Americans forget that every single law is powerless when confronted with a man with a gun. And gun toting flag waving American is just as powerless when confronted with a mob with guns. On a small scale that means a man with a gun can take my car, invade my home, take my life, etc. and no law can prevent that. Laws can help remedy the aftermath, but not when the legal system itself is attacked.
Even strong checks and balances can erode with a little force, whether political force or actual force. Politicians can be made too scared to resist. Judges can be killed.
I don't believe Trump is the next Hitler. But I do believe the same mentality that allows common people to vote for Trump could eventually lead to fascism. Trump is scary because of what he represents, not because he is all that scary himself. He does play the role of the clown well though, so maybe we should be more scared.
"..he's saying what the people want to hear.."
No... he's pandering to the lowest common denominator including people who watch reality TV and idiots like you.
Step out of your liberal bubble and introduce yourself to the American public. I live in a high income liberal leaning suburb now so I rarely meet anyone who would be considered an average American. But I grew up around them in a small farm town. It's a whole different world.
Every day, huh? What mass shooting happened yesterday?
It only feels like everyday, but shootings have gone down dramatically each decade.
Apparently it really depends on your definition of mass shootings. By the most broad definition I could find (4 or more people shot in a single incident) there were 353 mass shootings in the US in 2015 by November 23rd. So about one per day on average.
By the most narrow definition I could find (a single non-gang, robbery, or domestic violence incident where 4 or more people die), there were 4 mass shootings in the US in 2015 by November 23rd. With the same definition but replace death with just being shot, the number goes up to 61.
The incidents people actually think about when they hear mass shootings probably lies closer to the 61 figure. Which means about 5-6 mass shootings per month.
source
Considering most other web content is just downloading some text and static pictures, I'm surprised only 70% of downstream traffic at peak times is streaming video. I guess that goes to show how good compression on streaming video is.
You realize that, by your comment, you are accepting that the purpose of this device is to spy on the driver, not *help* the driver in an emergency.
No, at best the AC was accepting it could be used for both.
I don't see how this is different from the past where most programmers "coded" in RPG, or in Delphi, or in Powerbuilder, or in MS Access.
Not much different. Just like the iPhone wasn't much different than the Newton. But at a certain point technologies become mature enough they can deliver on the hype that has built up for decades.
What tools like Powerbuilder and Access were not good at, IMHO, is they weren't built upon an enterprise grade infrastructure. Perhaps I am not being fair to Powerbuilder since I only worked on one project with it and as a junior developer, but it didn't seem as extensible as even a VB application. All I know is our C++ and VB teams always seemed to have far less limitations than our Powerbuilder developers.
When working with Salesforce, however, our analysts writing workflow rules and approval processes are working on the exact same platform as the developers writing custom code. The platform does a good enough job of allowing configuration "code" to co-exist with actual code, even in enterprise environments with tens of thousands of users.
There is certainly room for improvement, but like I said earlier I really think it is a glimpse of what software development will be in the future. 80% of developers who are really just configuring platforms, and 20% of developers who write source code as part of their job.
I do see software development roles split between people still writing code and people using graphical (perhaps gesture based) interfaces designing workflows, approval processes, user interfaces, etc. Not sure how fishing rods factor in.
I think my recent work with Salesforce has given a good glimpse of the future of software development, at least in the next decade or two that is. 90% of the work I would have done a decade ago is now handled by a third party platform, and I just work on the few things that need to be custom. That has been attempted by SAAS vendors before (even before it was called that), but never as well as Salesforce has done it. There is plenty of room for improvement, but their software gives an idea of what can be accomplished. Though I hope someone else beats out Salesforce's Force.com platform with something that is more engineering focused instead of sales/marketing focused.
I see the software development industry breaking up into tiers like most other industries. Similar to engineering where you have engineers and you have CAD operators (among other roles). I see elite software engineers making much more money than they do now, but a class of programmers making wages closer to CAD operators (although a bit more) becoming the norm for most programmers. Overall it will let the industry create more software with less costs.
When challenged, absolutely NO ONE seems to be able to provide proof of a "brogrammer" culture that people seem to cite when they talk about the numbers of women in "tech".
I am a white male in his 30's, so I don't have to worry about any of this. But I see my female coworkers who cannot get a client to believe they are competent because they are women. I see their ideas attributed to the first man who publicly agrees with them (I have had to explicitly remind people in a meeting that an idea originated with a female coworker). I see similar cultural influences that tell African American men being smart isn't cool tell women that being nerdy isn't feminine. I also see women who have a hard time finding professionals they can identify within a workforce that is so heavily male dominated.
I could go on, but it doesn't matter. If you still don't see the inequality of opportunity in the IT field towards women after years of the industry starting to come to terms with it, you are willfully trying to ignore the problem.
Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. The first is a worth goal, the second is just insanity, forcing people to do things they don't really want to do. And we already have the first, with only very slight inequalities remaining.
Whether or not we have equality of opportunity is what's in debate here. While you have a right to your opinion, treating it as fact is disingenuous. And in my opinion, someone would really need to have their head in the sand to believe there is equality of opportunity. Leaving things to market forces free of overt discrimination is not the same thing as equality of opportunity.
I am a white male in his 30's, so I don't have to worry about any of this. But I see my female coworkers who cannot get a client to believe they are competent because they are women. I see their ideas attributed to the first man who publicly agrees with them (I have had to explicitly remind people in a meeting that an idea originated with a female coworker). I see similar cultural influences that tell African American men being smart isn't cool tell women that being nerdy isn't feminine. I also see women who have a hard time finding professionals they can identify within a workforce that is so heavily male dominated.
No one knows all the answers to fix these inequalities, but it is quite apparent that efforts must be taken to counteract the inequality of opportunity in many STEM fields. There are other fields with inequalities, but in my opinion none as important in fueling a modern economy as STEM fields.
If it fails, the performers and venues can still pull the nuclear option - require you to show your ID at the event, and the ID has to match the person who bought the ticket.
This problem is much easier to solve than this. Just make people sign up at the venue days before the tickets go on sale, and then use a lottery to pick who gets tickets. Then you can give some tickets to people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford them, scalpers have very little chance to buy tickets in bulk, and buyers can still sell their tickets if they can't go.
Typical. I don't understand the derogatory use of the term. By definition, social justice is something all people should strive for.
While I agree using SJW as derogatory is silly, using definitions of terms in an acronym or group names out of context is even worse.
You disagree with libertarians? Why do you hate liberty?
You disagree with socialism? Why are you anti-social?
You didn't like the NAZI (National-socialist German Workers) Party? Why do you hate the working man?
Sorry but if it works without the keyboard? Its a tablet.
So all smart phones are tablets? The 60" smart monitor at work is a tablet? I'm not saying you are necessarily wrong by considering it a tablet, but your narrow definition of what makes something a tablet seems a bit silly.
Around 3 hours was what they wanted out of their laptops, anything above that was gravy. This makes sense as when was the last time you were away from an outlet for more than 3 hours?
Like them, I am fine with a "mobile desktop"-type laptop only having a few hours of battery life. But this isn't since I am worried about how long I will be away from an outlet, its because I am virtually never away from an outlet. Or a docking station for that matter. A computing device that is not meant to be glued to a docking station is a much different device than one which is truly meant to be mobile (in the modern sense, not the expectations of five years ago). Everyone I have ever talked to after using a laptop with 8+ hours of battery life has sworn off ever using a 3 hour battery laptop ever again.
They're also counting laptops with detachable screens as being tablets.
While I agree with the Surface Pro 4 being considered a tablet, I also agree calling the Surface Book a tablet is ridiculous. Not because it is basically a laptop with a detachable screen, but because that detachable screen cannot function like a tablet by itself. Its battery life as a tablet is only about three hours.
I recently bought a Surface Pro 4, and was very tempted to go with the Surface Book because of the nicer screen. But three hours of detached battery life was just too little. If they could have doubled that I certainly would have gone with the Book. I understand why they couldn't deliver that kind of battery life, but it does mean the device simply cannot be thought of as a tablet in any way. It is a laptop with a touch screen.
Unfortunately that is not always an option. There are myriad reasons why, and while in many cases it is the fault of the consumer for choosing vendor lock-in despite repeated warnings to avoid it, in many other cases someone who would never make such a mistake inherited it from someone who did. Indeed, for a few niche cases vendor lock-in was the only viable choice.
In many cases, of course, they can migrate, and at this point those people who don't do so are either crazy, idiots, or both.
Yes, using a competitor is ALWAYS an option at the time scales which are relevant here. Companies can continue to use Windows Server 2012 for about another decade. Anyone who cannot remove vendor lock in over a decade is willingly ignoring the problem, and willfully accepting whatever license changes Microsoft is making because they don't feel like going with another option. There may be companies whose IT departments do move this slow, but that is their choice. They could move faster if they were motivated to.
And before GP chimes in and says "so what, you agreed to the license!", a contract can be invalidated for being one-sided. If the license says you pay more money "because FU, that's why" then the contract seems a little one sided.
I find it hard to believe someone could argue these license changes constitute an unconscionable contract. I could see it happening for an end user agreement when one party is a corporation and the other is a standard customer. But in this case both sides are professionals. Microsoft isn't picking on some old lady who doesn't know what they are doing. Anyone purchasing Windows Server 2016 for servers costing tens of thousands of dollars should know what they are doing. And since Windows will be offering extended support for Server 2012 for close to another decade, no one is forcing anyone to upgrade.
Thats funny, I thought the only reason you used a .NET application was because you were using a Windows server. Maybe its circular :)
Perhaps not circular, as the cycle begins with the developers machines running Windows. The combination of Microsoft Office and their desire to use arguably the best IDE in the industry (Visual Studio) keeps most developers in the enterprise using Windows. Since they are already using Windows, and their favorite development tools are geared towards the .NET ecosystem, using .NET just makes sense. Add to that C# being a really great language along with .NET being a pretty good platform and there are a lot of reasons so much software is written for the Microsoft stack.
I am in the process of weaning myself off of the Microsoft stack because I don't see them winning in the move to the cloud. I would pay thousands of dollars per year for a development environment as good as Visual Studio that runs on Linux. I have tried VIM, Sublime, Eclipse, Netbeans (only briefly) MonoDevelop (also briefly), and IntelliJ. IntelliJ comes reasonably close and VIM isn't that bad when you get good with it. But Visual Studio is still a joy to work with comparatively.
But people today don't use Firefox because they like it. [It's] used just because it's the least-worst of all of the shitty options. [...] They'll finally get to use a browser that isn't Chrome, but that's still fast, modern, and efficient.
If Firefox is so bad, why wouldn't people use Chrome? Are you including Chrome in those shitty options you mentioned? Because I haven't seen any browser comparisons that don't put Chrome at the top on Javascript performance, DOM rendering performance, or standards compliance.
Unless Edge comes to Linux / OS X and is much better than Chrome, I don't see how it will change Firefox's market share much. I don't even know why anyone would use Firefox over Chrome anyway, except for developers who like their developer tools better.
That argument doesn't work when the measurement is in bugs per megabyte.
This is bug density, not total bugs.
He said apparent bugs, not total bugs or even bug density. His contention was the most used languages will have the most people identifying security holes. Similar to how the most used operating systems will have the most people writing viruses for them. Just because one application has the most identified bugs doesn't mean another application doesn't have far more that are simply not identified.
I don't agree with the argument, since I think there is a threshold where a language is popular enough to have people combing it for vulnerabilities. C, Java, C#, Javascript, etc. have all passed that threshold.
That's when they overlook things, like the fact that they entered 129.4 instead of 128.4, which is prettin' similar at a glance.
Ha, that's a minor problem compared with entering 428.4 instead of 128.4, which is quite easy to do.