Recent graduates should be making just above minimum wage until they've proven themselves to be anything other than completely incompetent.
Their pay should then rise in accordance with their skills and experience.
Recent graduates are, in general, absolutely terrible. It's insane to pay some idiot kid a senior developers salary because they managed to pull a passing grade on a few practice exercises in C# in college.
I still don't see the use of ever owning a tablet OS, but from what I've heard out of CES, the Playbook is sounding really nice
I have no need for a tablet myself but, judging from the CES videos, the playbook is astonishing. It truly makes the iPad look like a $99 Android 1.6 tablet.
Granted, it does look like it stole quite a bit of its UI from WebOS -- Though I don't think you find too many users complaining:)
If HP comes out with something half as good next month, we'll be reading articles like "Crunch Time For iOS, Android" before June.
. Now, I know that the average user isn't going to have the 10 or 12 windows I leave open on my Palm Pre + all the time, but the people I know who own them who are NOT geeks love the UI and mutter and mumble angrily when they're confined to android and Ios phones.
HP has a lot of work to do to get that fact into the publics mind, but webOS is by far the most USABLE portable operating system in the world. Is it somewhat short of apps as of today? Yep. Is it worth the effort? Yep.
The PP+ really is amazing in terms of usability, and it gets excellent mileage out of its lower-end hardware.
While went with the BB Torch instead of the PP+, it was definitely a tempting option. In terms of notifications and multitasking, WebOS is unmatched. You really don't know what your missing until you've tried it out for yourself.
If HP can get WebOS onto some fancier hardware, you'll find iOS and Android scrambling to play catch-up. (The UI really is that good.)
On a related note, it's also the only OS I've seen that looks like it would really shine on a tablet. If HP can avoid bungling their WebOS tablet Feb. 9th, it could very well be a game-changer.
RIMs 'consumer' offerings have been pretty weak. Their 'business' products, however, are as solid as ever.
That's really why I can't discount them. While the trend toward shiny touchscreen toy phones has pushed them to the margins, they still offer the best productivity tools in the market.
It's easy to get sucked into the flashy interface on products like the iPhone or Droid X, it's novel, it's new, and let's them do more than any 'feature phone' they've had in the past. It's no wonder they're not attracted to the 'boring' models RIM and Palm are offering.
But as users start to do more with their phones, they're going to start to expect usability to improve -- and that's when no amount of additional 'shiny' is going to make the sale.
Making users more productive is where RIM really excels -- it's why they were the untouchable leader in smartphones for so many years.
In it's day, Palm built it's reputation on improving the productivity of it's users. With few exceptions, it's products out-shined competitors with technically superior systems. If HP managed to retain some of that expertise, you can expect users will find Palms future offerings quite attractive.
They'll be back -- assuming they use their phone for doing actual work. If they're only using the extra functionality for playing 'angry birds', you may want to review your policy.
My brief flirtation with an iPhone left me begging for my BB within hours. It was fun, but I didn't need a toy phone.
While I'll agree that RIM's efforts to enter the 'individual' market have been a bit ham-fisted (Pearl, Storm, Style) their 'business' products have always been ahead of the curve when it comes to productivity.
The BB Torch is the exception, as it's remarkable as an "in between" product. It's like a higher-resolution iPhone 3GS that you can do actual work on. It's my current phone.
Having seen some of the new iPhone and Android products, I was disappointed at first that the Torch was technically underpowered and had a lower-resolution display. That feeling didn't last long as the touch pad and physical keyboard made tasks difficult to perform with a touch-screen only interface effortless. While my non-BB using colleagues struggle, I get things done.
Toss in Documents To Go and RIMs unparalleled email and messaging software and it's an easy sell.
That said, I'll likely trade in my Torch for the next phone in the Bold line. The touchscreen doesn't improve usability, the keyboard isn't as good as the Bold's, and the phone doesn't quite 'balance' right when the keyboard is out.
(I gave it a chance, but playtime is over. It's time to get back to work.)
I expect that once the novelty wears off you'll see people more away from the flashy toys and back to serious tools. This is where RIM and Palm really shine.
Well yes, primitive operations like mov and sub and push are indeed quite trivial to reason about compared to multiple inheritance and template metaprogramming.
Wait, so you're saying that these sort of high-level abstractions intended to make programming and managing complexity easier have, in fact, made programming more difficult and increased complexity?
If that were true, we'd be overrun by slow, over-sized, bug-filled software.
It costs more and you lose your entire library if you switch to the competition.
But yes, the delivery path is quite straightforward. At least with the competition you're not quite as locked down and can move to a different device.
I'd have agreed with you before I purchased a Kindle 3.
The experience of reading is so vastly improved (for me, at least) over the old 'dead-tree' format that I find it's worth the extra cost to purchase both the print and digital versions.
I buy the digital version of books I'm not sure about first. If I decide it's worth adding to my over-burdened library, I buy it in print.
While it would be nice if I didn't have to strip the DRM myself for my digital archive/backup, that's a burden I've imposed on myself in anticipation of switching "providers" in the future.
I didn't find the heavier, thicker, touch-screen Nook appealing in any way. If it had been the only option, I probably wouldn't own an e-reader.
So I'm trading the Nooks obvious advantages for what I consider a better reading experience. I'm willing to pay for that in both time and money.
Actually it turns out you copied the text of the person you were responding to, and forgot to mark it as a quote. Thus making a statement yourself that you didn't intend to.
Literacy - it's not just reading skills, but writing skills too. You fucked up.
That would be post #34813886
I see that I failed to format one quote. However, it was your inability to read which caused to you fail to put in the the proper context.
Sorry, a formatting error cannot account for you're unimaginable illiteracy. The meaning and intent of my post was quite clear, even with the minor formatting error.
You even said your BlackBerry could be set to reboot every night, clearly it needs to be rebooted almost daily, otherwise why put in that option.
It must have been a third-party app as it's not a feature found on any BB I've ever had.
So it is clear that all of the top 3 smart-phone groups need to be rebooted from time to time so they function properly. So it's not really a liability since they all need it.
The only time I've had to reboot my phone were for certain "system" apps which required a reboot to install and OS updates. My current uptime is 20d 2h 16m. (Not bad, considering that I've only had my current BB for about a month.)
A lot of BB users will do a soft reset or pull the battery once a month or so to free up memory from leaky apps (as a 'best practice'), but a good "memory cleaner" app will completely eliminate the need. Though it hasn't been a problem on any model I've owned, with the software I had installed, I still like keep an eye on it.
(I think I may have missed some recent problems by keeping my last model, an 8820, longer than I normally do. I've heard of a number of problems on some late OS4 devices -- the 9000 and some Pearls being particularly weird with early builds.)
So it is clear that all of the top 3 smart-phone groups need to be rebooted from time to time so they function properly. So it's not really a liability since they all need it.
If I had to reboot even once a month I'd get a different phone. One of the many reasons I have a BB is the unparalleled stability I've had (and expect).
everyone pretty much knows that if you're going to be on AT&T, an iPhone is the phone to have.
Really? I've been an AT&T customer since they bought my old carrier. (I have no complaints -- and their coverage is significantly better than Verizon's in my area.) I've never once considered an iPhone -- their other offerings have been far more attractive.
I can see how it would be one of their most popular toy phones -- but I don't see any compelling reason why it would be "the phone to have".
Apple is very happy to ignore the bottom of the market and focus solely on people who have enough money to afford a premium product. Why? Because if you can afford their products, you're not going to balk at spending $50-$100 more for one that looks great and has a fantastic UI.
I disagree. There isn't really much of a cost issue when buying a subsidized iPhone vs any other smart phone. The 3GS is practically a giveaway at $50 -- an appealing option at the low-end.
While the iPhone 4 is a premium at $200, you'll find that the Blackberry Bold 9000 & 9700, Droid X, HTC Evo, Samsung Captivate, etc. all sell for the same price.
As for the UI, It doesn't really offer anything unique in terms of other touch-screen phones -- nor do I find any "touch-screen only" UI terribly usable.
I'll admit that it has the best accessibility of any phone (VoiceOver blows the competition away, by any measure) that's really it's only distinguishing feature.
In terms of actual productivity, (using the phone to do work) it's really hard to beat the BB UI.
What really separates the tools from the toys seem to be the touchscreen -- which slows you down at every turn. What the iPhone gave us was a usable touchscreen device -- not a revolutionary UI. It's been copied because it works, not because it works exceptionally well as evidenced by the variations you'll find on other phones.
I have a BB Torch right now (which I will replace with the first Bold with OS6). I find I use the touchscreen very little; usually only to swipe between screens or to scroll. The rest of the time, I find myself using the touch-pad. The precision it gives me when selecting text, clicking links, or navigating a spreadsheet just can't be matched on a touchscreen -- even with a stylus.
I've compared the soft keyboard on a 3GS to the one on my BB, and I find them fairly comparable -- but still far behind the physical keyboard on any of my past BB's, including the inferior keyboard on my Torch. For text entry (email, editing word docs/spreadsheets) touch screens just aren't there yet.
The point, of course, is that the UI isn't really superior (it's inferior for some use cases) nor is price necessarily an issue, as it's comparably priced to other high-end smartphones.
As it stands now, the iPhone is "just another smart phone". There isn't really anything special about it.
Pretend you are the average iPhone owner, you would rest much more easy if you didn't had to worry about what antivirus [sharethewarez.com] to run. Apple's approval process do it's best to make sure nothing like that gets into their App Store.
When just visiting a website is enough to jailbreak an iPhone, I think the average users should start to worry a little more about what antivirus they should run...
few people have enough open mind to realize what the non-technical masses actually want.
You seem to think that they want a false sense of security.
I, on the other hand, know exactly what they want: They want to play Farmville.
I can barely get my droid to move the cursor to the proper location within text if I need to go back and fix a typo.
This is why I passed up the Droid offering in favor of a BB Torch. The track pad (replacing the old track ball) makes the tasks which are difficult on a touchscreen virtually painless.
Frustrating problems like positioning the cursor, selecting text, and hitting undersized or overcrowded targets (e.g. links on websites) are no longer a problem for me.
Oh, yes. Having a physical keyboard is a huge plus, even if it's not a good as the one on the Bold.
Slashdot Mirror
Recent graduates should be making just above minimum wage until they've proven themselves to be anything other than completely incompetent.
Their pay should then rise in accordance with their skills and experience.
Recent graduates are, in general, absolutely terrible. It's insane to pay some idiot kid a senior developers salary because they managed to pull a passing grade on a few practice exercises in C# in college.
Kids are getting high listening to Music?
My, God... Kids listen to music in school, in your home, and even at church.
I even heard that Kids are downloading music from internet websites.
What are we going to do to put an end to this latest threat to our children?!
I still don't see the use of ever owning a tablet OS, but from what I've heard out of CES, the Playbook is sounding really nice
I have no need for a tablet myself but, judging from the CES videos, the playbook is astonishing. It truly makes the iPad look like a $99 Android 1.6 tablet.
Granted, it does look like it stole quite a bit of its UI from WebOS -- Though I don't think you find too many users complaining :)
If HP comes out with something half as good next month, we'll be reading articles like "Crunch Time For iOS, Android" before June.
. Now, I know that the average user isn't going to have the 10 or 12 windows I leave open on my Palm Pre + all the time, but the people I know who own them who are NOT geeks love the UI and mutter and mumble angrily when they're confined to android and Ios phones.
HP has a lot of work to do to get that fact into the publics mind, but webOS is by far the most USABLE portable operating system in the world. Is it somewhat short of apps as of today? Yep. Is it worth the effort? Yep.
The PP+ really is amazing in terms of usability, and it gets excellent mileage out of its lower-end hardware.
While went with the BB Torch instead of the PP+, it was definitely a tempting option. In terms of notifications and multitasking, WebOS is unmatched. You really don't know what your missing until you've tried it out for yourself.
If HP can get WebOS onto some fancier hardware, you'll find iOS and Android scrambling to play catch-up. (The UI really is that good.)
On a related note, it's also the only OS I've seen that looks like it would really shine on a tablet. If HP can avoid bungling their WebOS tablet Feb. 9th, it could very well be a game-changer.
RIMs 'consumer' offerings have been pretty weak. Their 'business' products, however, are as solid as ever.
That's really why I can't discount them. While the trend toward shiny touchscreen toy phones has pushed them to the margins, they still offer the best productivity tools in the market.
It's easy to get sucked into the flashy interface on products like the iPhone or Droid X, it's novel, it's new, and let's them do more than any 'feature phone' they've had in the past. It's no wonder they're not attracted to the 'boring' models RIM and Palm are offering.
But as users start to do more with their phones, they're going to start to expect usability to improve -- and that's when no amount of additional 'shiny' is going to make the sale.
Making users more productive is where RIM really excels -- it's why they were the untouchable leader in smartphones for so many years.
In it's day, Palm built it's reputation on improving the productivity of it's users. With few exceptions, it's products out-shined competitors with technically superior systems. If HP managed to retain some of that expertise, you can expect users will find Palms future offerings quite attractive.
They'll be back -- assuming they use their phone for doing actual work. If they're only using the extra functionality for playing 'angry birds', you may want to review your policy.
My brief flirtation with an iPhone left me begging for my BB within hours. It was fun, but I didn't need a toy phone.
While I'll agree that RIM's efforts to enter the 'individual' market have been a bit ham-fisted (Pearl, Storm, Style) their 'business' products have always been ahead of the curve when it comes to productivity.
The BB Torch is the exception, as it's remarkable as an "in between" product. It's like a higher-resolution iPhone 3GS that you can do actual work on. It's my current phone.
Having seen some of the new iPhone and Android products, I was disappointed at first that the Torch was technically underpowered and had a lower-resolution display. That feeling didn't last long as the touch pad and physical keyboard made tasks difficult to perform with a touch-screen only interface effortless. While my non-BB using colleagues struggle, I get things done.
Toss in Documents To Go and RIMs unparalleled email and messaging software and it's an easy sell.
That said, I'll likely trade in my Torch for the next phone in the Bold line. The touchscreen doesn't improve usability, the keyboard isn't as good as the Bold's, and the phone doesn't quite 'balance' right when the keyboard is out.
(I gave it a chance, but playtime is over. It's time to get back to work.)
I expect that once the novelty wears off you'll see people more away from the flashy toys and back to serious tools. This is where RIM and Palm really shine.
Don't count them out so quickly.
I often wish Slashdot had an option whereby one could hide all posts moderated as 'Funny'--after all, it's Slashdotters making a judgment of humor...
Considering that humor is subjective, and this is slashdot...
Have you considered the possibility that you're just not smart enough to 'get' the jokes?
I suppose it's also possible that you're simply humorless and uninteresting, but having seen your other posts, I'm going to go with the former.
Well yes, primitive operations like mov and sub and push are indeed quite trivial to reason about compared to multiple inheritance and template metaprogramming.
Wait, so you're saying that these sort of high-level abstractions intended to make programming and managing complexity easier have, in fact, made programming more difficult and increased complexity?
If that were true, we'd be overrun by slow, over-sized, bug-filled software.
Oh, wait...
It costs more and you lose your entire library if you switch to the competition.
But yes, the delivery path is quite straightforward. At least with the competition you're not quite as locked down and can move to a different device.
I'd have agreed with you before I purchased a Kindle 3.
The experience of reading is so vastly improved (for me, at least) over the old 'dead-tree' format that I find it's worth the extra cost to purchase both the print and digital versions.
I buy the digital version of books I'm not sure about first. If I decide it's worth adding to my over-burdened library, I buy it in print.
While it would be nice if I didn't have to strip the DRM myself for my digital archive/backup, that's a burden I've imposed on myself in anticipation of switching "providers" in the future.
I didn't find the heavier, thicker, touch-screen Nook appealing in any way. If it had been the only option, I probably wouldn't own an e-reader.
So I'm trading the Nooks obvious advantages for what I consider a better reading experience. I'm willing to pay for that in both time and money.
The scheduled "off" doesn't really turn it off in any way that would be meaningful in terms of a reboot.
If you have access to a BB, use the power-off icon to turn the phone "off" and then on again. (this is equivalent to what the 'scheduled off' does)
Now do the same thing with an alt-rshift-del or a battery-pull
You'll see what I mean.
Actually it turns out you copied the text of the person you were responding to, and forgot to mark it as a quote. Thus making a statement yourself that you didn't intend to.
Literacy - it's not just reading skills, but writing skills too. You fucked up.
That would be post #34813886
I see that I failed to format one quote. However, it was your inability to read which caused to you fail to put in the the proper context.
Sorry, a formatting error cannot account for you're unimaginable illiteracy. The meaning and intent of my post was quite clear, even with the minor formatting error.
It's stock.
No, it's not. The feature the link refers to won't actually reboot the phone.
Says the guy that thinks that because he has to reboot his phone regularly, that means all phone OSs need to be rebooted regularly.
I believe I said the exact opposite of that.
Literacy is cool.
Because it's misleading. Because it made you think that Android is ahead of iOS. When that's not the case.
It's only misleading if you're functionally illiterate.
That is not the fault of the article.
I suppose iPhones lack of turn-by-turn navigation is ... a feature?
Turn-by-turn is ancient history. The iPhone will revolutionize they way you get from one place to another.
You anti-Apple zealots just can't see how brilliant the lack of turn-by-turn navigation is.
Here's a clue: It's easily twice as good as not having multi-tasking. Which was so unimaginably awesome back when we didn't have it.
You even said your BlackBerry could be set to reboot every night, clearly it needs to be rebooted almost daily, otherwise why put in that option.
It must have been a third-party app as it's not a feature found on any BB I've ever had.
So it is clear that all of the top 3 smart-phone groups need to be rebooted from time to time so they function properly. So it's not really a liability since they all need it.
The only time I've had to reboot my phone were for certain "system" apps which required a reboot to install and OS updates. My current uptime is 20d 2h 16m. (Not bad, considering that I've only had my current BB for about a month.)
A lot of BB users will do a soft reset or pull the battery once a month or so to free up memory from leaky apps (as a 'best practice'), but a good "memory cleaner" app will completely eliminate the need. Though it hasn't been a problem on any model I've owned, with the software I had installed, I still like keep an eye on it.
(I think I may have missed some recent problems by keeping my last model, an 8820, longer than I normally do. I've heard of a number of problems on some late OS4 devices -- the 9000 and some Pearls being particularly weird with early builds.)
So it is clear that all of the top 3 smart-phone groups need to be rebooted from time to time so they function properly. So it's not really a liability since they all need it.
If I had to reboot even once a month I'd get a different phone. One of the many reasons I have a BB is the unparalleled stability I've had (and expect).
everyone pretty much knows that if you're going to be on AT&T, an iPhone is the phone to have.
Really? I've been an AT&T customer since they bought my old carrier. (I have no complaints -- and their coverage is significantly better than Verizon's in my area.) I've never once considered an iPhone -- their other offerings have been far more attractive.
I can see how it would be one of their most popular toy phones -- but I don't see any compelling reason why it would be "the phone to have".
Yes, but it's not relevant in this context.
Google is already maxed out their customer base
I don't see how you can draw this conclusion from the data available. We haven't seen Androids growth plateau.
Apple has tons of room for growth in the US.
Do you have any data to support this assertion?
Apple is very happy to ignore the bottom of the market and focus solely on people who have enough money to afford a premium product. Why? Because if you can afford their products, you're not going to balk at spending $50-$100 more for one that looks great and has a fantastic UI.
I disagree. There isn't really much of a cost issue when buying a subsidized iPhone vs any other smart phone. The 3GS is practically a giveaway at $50 -- an appealing option at the low-end.
While the iPhone 4 is a premium at $200, you'll find that the Blackberry Bold 9000 & 9700, Droid X, HTC Evo, Samsung Captivate, etc. all sell for the same price.
As for the UI, It doesn't really offer anything unique in terms of other touch-screen phones -- nor do I find any "touch-screen only" UI terribly usable.
I'll admit that it has the best accessibility of any phone (VoiceOver blows the competition away, by any measure) that's really it's only distinguishing feature.
In terms of actual productivity, (using the phone to do work) it's really hard to beat the BB UI.
What really separates the tools from the toys seem to be the touchscreen -- which slows you down at every turn. What the iPhone gave us was a usable touchscreen device -- not a revolutionary UI. It's been copied because it works, not because it works exceptionally well as evidenced by the variations you'll find on other phones.
I have a BB Torch right now (which I will replace with the first Bold with OS6). I find I use the touchscreen very little; usually only to swipe between screens or to scroll. The rest of the time, I find myself using the touch-pad. The precision it gives me when selecting text, clicking links, or navigating a spreadsheet just can't be matched on a touchscreen -- even with a stylus.
I've compared the soft keyboard on a 3GS to the one on my BB, and I find them fairly comparable -- but still far behind the physical keyboard on any of my past BB's, including the inferior keyboard on my Torch. For text entry (email, editing word docs/spreadsheets) touch screens just aren't there yet.
The point, of course, is that the UI isn't really superior (it's inferior for some use cases) nor is price necessarily an issue, as it's comparably priced to other high-end smartphones.
As it stands now, the iPhone is "just another smart phone". There isn't really anything special about it.
Pretend you are the average iPhone owner, you would rest much more easy if you didn't had to worry about what antivirus [sharethewarez.com] to run. Apple's approval process do it's best to make sure nothing like that gets into their App Store.
When just visiting a website is enough to jailbreak an iPhone, I think the average users should start to worry a little more about what antivirus they should run...
few people have enough open mind to realize what the non-technical masses actually want.
You seem to think that they want a false sense of security.
I, on the other hand, know exactly what they want: They want to play Farmville.
And anyone with half some experience purchasing laptops knows better than to get one from Acer.
Really? At home, I currently have three working Acers (two netbooks and one notebook -- never had any problems) and two dead HP notebooks.
Comparing the two against my experience at work, I've seen significantly more hardware failure on HP laptops than Acers.
It's just my experience, but of the brands I've seen, Acers seem to be of a higher quality.
I learned FORTH on a KIM-1. Who else remembers the classic article (I think it was in Byte) "How to write a compiler in 50 words or less"?
You're thinking of "Forth Extensibility: Or How to Write a Compiler in Twenty-Five Words Or Less"
It was in Byte -- August, 1980 (The Forth Issue)
Archived here, with others, as a gigantic PDFs
I can barely get my droid to move the cursor to the proper location within text if I need to go back and fix a typo.
This is why I passed up the Droid offering in favor of a BB Torch. The track pad (replacing the old track ball) makes the tasks which are difficult on a touchscreen virtually painless.
Frustrating problems like positioning the cursor, selecting text, and hitting undersized or overcrowded targets (e.g. links on websites) are no longer a problem for me.
Oh, yes. Having a physical keyboard is a huge plus, even if it's not a good as the one on the Bold.
Apparently, it will fix itself by January 3
Apparently not.