HR performance is coupled to how many people they get fired, not how many they hire. I thought everyone knew that. HR is there to facilitate company savings, heading off the costly, over-qualified people before they get to be interviewed by the departments which need them.
You need to pay attention to what's actually being said (or not being said) here. It's a study done by a fucking ID management company. It's like Symantec writing a paper on how Windows malware infections are on the rise (as their stock markets drop).
Imagine, someone answers a question like:
* Do you keep customer contact information on your personal phone? (This question ignores that you get to expense the use of your phone, but whatever.)
If you answered "yes" to that, chances are you're guilty of somethign like "proprietary information theft", according to your company's lawyers (should you ever be fired grievously).
How about:
* Do you work from home?
Bam! They've got you right there regardless. You're working from home and so you've obviously got to have company passwords (which you probably didn't turn over - they're talking about your personal account credentials). They're either written on a sticky by your desk, in a small bound book, or in your head, but it doesn't matter. You've got them.
Financial reports? I got one of those this past winter. It said, paraphrased and then with a follow-up personal email, "we weren't profitable enough to give you your promised bonus" - even though I know it to be a patent lie. But it's still a financial report which I printed and kept.
I'm sure there are many, many other weasel questions which would and could be asked to reach the study results they found. They're an "ID management" firm. You know what that means, right? So-called experts who come in and claim your in-house staff is doing everything wrong, push a massive bill of sale for snake oil software, and then disappear into the night. Or, at the very least, make a hefty profit. They do, after all, have a product which just happens to fix the problems they've diagnosed as existing...
I don't buy it for one minute. IT people are, bar a few, some of the most ethical professionals. And if they're not professional, they're at least smart enough to realize that, short of working for the DoD or a similar organization. They work in one of the few fields where improper handling of what is tentatively 'petty' information (regardless of whether they can use it) can land them in prison for a very, very long time, or have them blacklisted from ever working in the field again.
They fired over 50 people in the span of a few months in a political fiat between infosecurity and the rest of IT (Little known fact: many people who work in info security have no previous background in IT. They usually can't tell a router from a switch) So you know, security must have improved after that, eh? Well, actually it didn't; They were robbed of a significant chunk their customer's credit card and billing data six months later because when you fire a significant chunk of your IT staff in one go, minor things like security patches tend to get put on the backburner while everyone goes into crisis mode.
Yeah, I have to laugh at that. And then they replace the "lazy slobs" with half as many (or fewer) people and expect things to run better. Hello, McFly? The only thing that happens there is corners get cut to simply stay ahead of the avalanche.
I don't know. In the last 15 years I've gotten along fine with each and every customer I've had.
You are missing the most crucial point of distinction between the people this article talks about and yourself.
You're talking about your customers. You are a contractor.
The article is talking about employees.
Having been on both sides of the fence in the last couple years, let me just say this: the two are very, very different. Being terminated from a customer relationship is not nearly the same as being terminated from an employer: even if you dislike the customer (assuming they're not your only customer), losing them barely even hurts compared to being tossed out by your employer (and only likely viable source of current income).
That's why I do not want to ever be under the exclusive domain control of a single employer again. "Yeah, you want to bully me for years without a raise? Tough shit. I've got half my wages lined up next month in contract gigs already, and I'll be making my full wages again by the month after. I'll eat ramen for a month and be done with the likes of you."
Unless I wasn't perfectly clear: what I was trying to convey is that the questions to this survey may very well have been skewed. For instance, a question like:
Do you have prior customer contact information on your personal phone?
Could easily have led to the survey-taker checking off "Stole proprietary company information". Why? Because that is most assuredly how the businesses looking to prosecute someone for theft or breach of (NDA) contract would be looking for. The same could, more or less, be applicable to every single one of their "types of information" in one way or another.
However I had wisely created a "emergercy care package" for myself in the form of various pieces of informations and when I went to court, some of that information was used by my lawyer to very deadly effect.
As someone who's going through something very similar now, let me ask: what was in your care package?
Then, he shorts my check by the majority, apparently claiming I didn't show up for anything more than the next two days...
As for the topic of this thread? Look. It doesn't quite work the way the sodding article wants you to think it does. They word these things for sensationalism to scare the people doing the hiring.
privileged password lists
Oh, you mean the one associated with my myriad systems accounts, on my personal laptop, which I was expected to use - after hours - in support of the company and/or the clients I'm to support? Yes, I walked out with that. The last time I heard, I am still entitled to at least my own personal property and not being legally obliged to divulge a non-essential account password. And in the case of system and service passwords (or keys) - yes, I or someone like me set them up. No, I don't remember them, and just because I set them up doesn't mean I've still got them.
company databases
You mean the client after-hours contact list I've got, or the phone numbers and email addresses of every client the company has which I or my group supports? Those 'company databases' which are on my phone for the purposes of after-hours support and notification? Or the ones in my personal address book, which were put there after I befriended the clients? Or how about the personal copy of the (technical) documentation and tools I wrote, personally (either on the clock or off), which I would like for the purposes of later reference and use?
R&D plans and financial reports
Believe it or not, but when you're working for an MSP, the client will ask the technicians (the people they trust), "does this look right?" when they don't trust the sales and marketing people.
I will grant that willful theft can and does occur, and I have noticed how it is trivial to actually steal said information. What's amazing is that more people do not do so, and that this information does not go on to get used more often. It is, in my opinion, a testament to the generally high ethical nature of people in systems (vs. say, your average sales weasel).
What's all the more amazing is that society has gotten so sick as to think it's not only reasonable but expected for a highly skilled professional to have nothing aside from what's in their head to show for their professional work. In IT, you're expected to have no contact with the clients or customers after leaving jobs; you're expected to have no trace of information indicating you worked for said company. I realize a lot of that is universal boiler plate, but from what I've noticed, it's only in IS/IT where abuse of these universal policies gets enforced.
At this point in my life, I've heard, "You were right, I was wrong..." so many fucking times, hearing it brings anger, not joy or any sense of self satisfaction.
I'm right there with you, sitting in the front seat. Sadly, I've not been around long enough in the field (in my case, systems administration in more of an engineering/network triage environment for multiple clients, if that makes sense) that I should really have to see this shit. People don't take self improvement seriously, or realize how important it is in information technologies.
So yeah, I can understand why someone might have issue with someone calling themselves a "software engineer" or "systems engineer" - because there are very few who are anything more than experienced hacks. (Someone who does the wrong thing for a long time is only good at doing the wrong thing efficiently.)
imbibe [im-bahyb] Show IPA verb, imbibed, imbibing. verb (used with object) 1. to consume (liquids) by drinking; drink: He imbibed great quantities of iced tea. 2. to absorb or soak up, as water, light, or heat: Plants imbibe moisture from the soil. 3. to take or receive into the mind, as knowledge, ideas, or the like: to imbibe a sermon; to imbibe beautiful scenery.
No, I've learned how to engage in constructive mutual conversation. I'm much more social today than I was 5 years go, possibly as a result of reflection and conscious behavior modification. I used to be afraid I'd embarass myself, which led to awkwardness; not anymore.
That's because education (field and level of degree) has largely been meaningless for the past 15+ years. You've got a 1600 on your SAT but have a double BA in Humanities studies and foreign affairs? You're still a fucking idiot - but people with a 1600 on their SATs don't go into those fields, normally, because they're too highly logical.
So you've got people with 'medium' SAT scores going to school and getting advanced degrees in useless fields, but the people with the best scores end up doing something "smart" - ie, something which will net them a lot of money, provide them stability, and/or fulfill their interests. These are fields like: accounting, business, mathematics/science, law, medicine, and/or sales (sadly, though not all that often, obviously).
I know people who tested close to perfect on both the SAT and their GMAT. They're complete fucking idiots: generally incompetent at life, but also not that mentally quick or capable. Some might describe them as "blond", regardless of gender or hair color.
I'd argue that a high SAT (or GMAT, or ACT) score doesn't correlate to intelligence any higher than a low one does. It might be more correlative, if only due to a self-selection bias. From what I've seen, at least.
Or engineers who think "PE" or "EE" irrevocably imbibes them with capability in engineering - or, for that matter, competence in general.
I'm a "computing engineer", not in that I think of myself as an engineer, but because I engineer things. In computing, your paper certificate means nothing: what matters is competence and engineering capability.
That said: I know a lot of really shit "software engineers", ie people who couldn't properly design a toilet paper roll onto the dispenser.
Precisely. I've got a bad habit of blurting out (potentially) humorous things at contextually inappropriate times. It's compulsive. Quite often, the things I blurt out are just generally inappropriate, but I do it because I think it's funny. I've managed, over the years, to consciously curtail this trait by telling myself, "self, shut the fuck up". Since I've realized my proclivity, it's saved many an embarrassing, awkward moment from happening.
Add to the list Motorola. Though, really, Samsung and Motorola are 'just' big (good) hardware intigrators, as opposed to being instigators of the actual core technologies. But if TI has signed on, I think they should certainly consider it.
Apple? Most certainly they should be off the list, if for no other reason than the fact that they design their x86 hardware to not be fully compatible with other common x86 systems (thinking of their UEFI), seemingly for the sake of being different...
A few months ago I got a used IBM T221. 3840 x 2400.
My coding productivity has gone up simply by not having to constantly click around to uncover one buried window or another
I do wonder how people 20 years ago got along on their 80x24 character terminals. Sure, we've got better software to deal with things like coding these days, but as evidenced by all the constant clicking you do to put these new fangled windows into usable positions indicates, people seem to overlook the fact that modern GUIs make you painfully dependent on the mouse for doing things which should be happening at least semi-automatically for you.
Not to be dick, but: why would I want large gaps between the keys? What functionality does it serve? a.5cm gap between the home key block and anything else, or the function keys and the number keys, should be enough. You don't need an inch or more.
Personally, I prefer the Lenovo UltraNav keyboards (either with or without the numberpad, but without is just fine, thanks). I used to love my IBM Model M, but then realized it was causing undue movement. My wrists were getting fatigued. On the ultranav, this isn't the case: there's much less movement required in both my wrists and my fingers. Carpel tunnel numbness hasn't been a problem for years (and I tried many other keyboards getting here).
Apple, IMO, makes the second best 'independent' keyboard on the market. They're comfortable to type on and have all the physical keys you need (unless you deal with al ot of numbers). The only downside is that you still need to be reliant upon a mouse - one of the biggest causes for repetitive strain injuries.
I couldn't agree more with the 'replacable' keyboard option. The downside and difficulty there, of course, is that people would start to expect them to be compatible between different laptop models and vendors. Since a keyboard nad the screen are the two biggest points of distinction for many people (presumably) on a laptop, I'm guessing that may not fly... better to be unique and shitty.:)
* Why is the sky blue? * Why does water freeze? * How is charcoal made? (relating it to fire, of course)
For those who are curious, he had an interesting discussion with Bob Osserman entitled M*A*T*H some years ago. You can download the video of it here: http://www.msri.org/web/msri/online-videos/-/video/showVideo/11928
I've done something similar to improve my health. Instead of walking all day, I took up smoking.
Yeah, that's right. Smoking has improved my health. I've got to tromp down a half dozen flights of stairs everytime I want a fucking cigarette, and then march back to the top. So, like clockwork, I get a nice brief aerobic exercise as I go down to get me back up to 'normal' heartrate from a sitting heart rate, and then 5 minutes later I get a brief period of exertive exercise as I climb (these days, run) up the 6 flights of steps back to my office.
What you're describing has been around for quite some time, though it disappeared a number of years ago, just before embedded systems started to drop off in price to more closely match their their performance in perf per dollar. Back around 2000 it was called "wearable computing".
There were quite a few interesting, novel input devices for this. My favorite was a rigid split keyboard design which put one half of the keyboard on either side of your body. You could strap them to your legs if you pleased, or you could put them around your stomach. There was another keyboard, I believe it was called a Twiddler (no lie). I believe it had a pad on the heel of your hand with a limited number of keys, and input was largely modal, but it was reputably fairly fast (a feat I believe, given how fast I've seen people text with non-tactile modal keyboards on their much-smaller phones). There were also quite a number of NTSC (and similar) resolution HUD screens and/or glasses people were experimenting with. If I recall correctly, you could put together quite the impressive all-day computing platform (which was only about 4 years behind the common desktops of the day) for around $2,000.
Really, there's nothing commercially viable (no more so now than then), but we're close. We're at the point where anyone, even a lowly developer, could piece together something from the components at Fry's or Best Buy with a little luck. The hardware today is much better suited for such things: a nice tablet like an Asus Transformer or a newer Atom or Bobcat based device, a smaller and more energy dense Lithium battery pack, and a number of other things you could fairly easily source (with schematics) on the Internet would give you something a Borg would envy.
Now, if you want your screaming i7 Windows 7 workstation, that's another matter, but I suspect that's what you were asking. That's probably not possible yet, despite energy efficiency gains. (But we're very, very close.)
Let me pose a different, axial question: why shouldn't the US invade their countries, steal their women, and pillage their natural resources (and hand-made carpets)? It's a similarly preposterous question, so I deem you should answer it.
In all seriousness, this is a stupid question. It's like the famous "let them eat cake" statement: completely ignorant of the situation, proposing a grand solution to a complicated and sensitive problem.
There is absolutely no reason why there should be much, if any, limitations on such highly skilled workers. I deem that the reality is that all of the leading questions asked by the OP should have a feel-good answer readily available to the lips and easily found within the immigration code of pretty much any country. The problem is quite the opposite, and compounded by other related issues. People, as described, don't actually make it into the US.
For instance: a highly skilled professional who would make $60-90k throughout most of the US (vs. in, say, the SF Bay area, where wages are grossly inflated) from Europe is fucked. S/he can't get in, in most cases. I know this because I've got quite a few acquaintances who have tried to do so, and have been unable to do so. They're specialized machinists with employment offers, IT professionals, and nurses with clean histories and in-demand skills. So ask yourself: why are people like them not allowed to immigrate to the US, either on temporary vistas or to become residents and citizens? Why does the 3rd world have a massively disproportionate number (no matter how you divide it up - per capita, per application, or some combination thereof) compared to Europe? Here's a hint: immigration in the US has become yet another form of global welfare the US "provides as a service", doing irreparable harm to the countries at the bottom first and foremost.
If we're not letting people like this into the country - while allowing people to flow in over the borders from Mexico and immigrate from North Africa and China at record levels (you know, those places in the globe which aren't actually all that culturally or politically friendly with the US), I'm glad we've got a problem with employment in the US.
And that's what it comes down to: There is no legal immigration which is working in the US. We're importing crime, impoverty, manual laborers, and a burgeoning welfare underclass. The other side of that is that we seem to be using affirmative action for India and China as well, allowing complete dipshits with fraudulent diplomas and CVs come over here and work $90k/year jobs at $45k. The State Department couldn't more actively sabotage national interests if they tried, quite literally.
I have to agree with this. I've had so, so many problems with nForce hardware and drivers it's not even funny. nForce is a redheaded stepchild, to be sure. I've had quite a few problems, with pretty much anything that matters on the platform: the ethernet, chipset/disk, and video. Independent cards are still the way to go with nVidia.
As a whole, I'd say ATI is much better about integrated products, but I'll take independent components which work over something which tends to like to fail, thanks. It's been years and years since I've had a problem with independent NVidia cards, on Windows or Linux. The same can't be said for ATI.
What you complain about are implementation problems, not conceptual problems. Cloud computing is much, much more sensitive to implementation specifics than is a local setup.
The exact same things that is gonna happen this time,
What? What happened last time is that the price of desktops dropped precipitously while server cost remained the same, and terminal services on Windows and the common hardware really weren't suited for the number of users necessary to make it a financially wise/break even proposition.
worries about data security,
Last time, there weren't any, as near as I can tell.
having a whole office sitting on ass if the network ever goes down, lag and crappy hosted apps not being as good as rich desktop apps, which BTW none of these problems have been solved by replacing net or server with cloud.
No, but these really aren't problems with terminal services today. You can play 3D games on TS quite successfully, over a fairly crap network.
I guess history doomed repeat and all that.
The only thing repeating here is marketing and sales have a new shiney to sell.
Cloud computing is a stupid idea at this point, but something else has changed. The problems present in what was sold as the next big thing are no longer there, with many more benefits that weren't available previously. In-house terminal services are most certainly worth looking into now.
Slashdot Mirror
HR performance is coupled to how many people they get fired, not how many they hire. I thought everyone knew that. HR is there to facilitate company savings, heading off the costly, over-qualified people before they get to be interviewed by the departments which need them.
You need to pay attention to what's actually being said (or not being said) here. It's a study done by a fucking ID management company. It's like Symantec writing a paper on how Windows malware infections are on the rise (as their stock markets drop).
Imagine, someone answers a question like:
* Do you keep customer contact information on your personal phone? (This question ignores that you get to expense the use of your phone, but whatever.)
If you answered "yes" to that, chances are you're guilty of somethign like "proprietary information theft", according to your company's lawyers (should you ever be fired grievously).
How about:
* Do you work from home?
Bam! They've got you right there regardless. You're working from home and so you've obviously got to have company passwords (which you probably didn't turn over - they're talking about your personal account credentials). They're either written on a sticky by your desk, in a small bound book, or in your head, but it doesn't matter. You've got them.
Financial reports? I got one of those this past winter. It said, paraphrased and then with a follow-up personal email, "we weren't profitable enough to give you your promised bonus" - even though I know it to be a patent lie. But it's still a financial report which I printed and kept.
I'm sure there are many, many other weasel questions which would and could be asked to reach the study results they found. They're an "ID management" firm. You know what that means, right? So-called experts who come in and claim your in-house staff is doing everything wrong, push a massive bill of sale for snake oil software, and then disappear into the night. Or, at the very least, make a hefty profit. They do, after all, have a product which just happens to fix the problems they've diagnosed as existing...
I don't buy it for one minute. IT people are, bar a few, some of the most ethical professionals. And if they're not professional, they're at least smart enough to realize that, short of working for the DoD or a similar organization. They work in one of the few fields where improper handling of what is tentatively 'petty' information (regardless of whether they can use it) can land them in prison for a very, very long time, or have them blacklisted from ever working in the field again.
They fired over 50 people in the span of a few months in a political fiat between infosecurity and the rest of IT (Little known fact: many people who work in info security have no previous background in IT. They usually can't tell a router from a switch) So you know, security must have improved after that, eh? Well, actually it didn't; They were robbed of a significant chunk their customer's credit card and billing data six months later because when you fire a significant chunk of your IT staff in one go, minor things like security patches tend to get put on the backburner while everyone goes into crisis mode.
Yeah, I have to laugh at that. And then they replace the "lazy slobs" with half as many (or fewer) people and expect things to run better. Hello, McFly? The only thing that happens there is corners get cut to simply stay ahead of the avalanche.
I don't know. In the last 15 years I've gotten along fine with each and every customer I've had.
You are missing the most crucial point of distinction between the people this article talks about and yourself.
You're talking about your customers. You are a contractor.
The article is talking about employees.
Having been on both sides of the fence in the last couple years, let me just say this: the two are very, very different. Being terminated from a customer relationship is not nearly the same as being terminated from an employer: even if you dislike the customer (assuming they're not your only customer), losing them barely even hurts compared to being tossed out by your employer (and only likely viable source of current income).
That's why I do not want to ever be under the exclusive domain control of a single employer again. "Yeah, you want to bully me for years without a raise? Tough shit. I've got half my wages lined up next month in contract gigs already, and I'll be making my full wages again by the month after. I'll eat ramen for a month and be done with the likes of you."
Unless I wasn't perfectly clear: what I was trying to convey is that the questions to this survey may very well have been skewed. For instance, a question like:
Do you have prior customer contact information on your personal phone?
Could easily have led to the survey-taker checking off "Stole proprietary company information". Why? Because that is most assuredly how the businesses looking to prosecute someone for theft or breach of (NDA) contract would be looking for. The same could, more or less, be applicable to every single one of their "types of information" in one way or another.
However I had wisely created a "emergercy care package" for myself in the form of various pieces of informations and when I went to court, some of that information was used by my lawyer to very deadly effect.
As someone who's going through something very similar now, let me ask: what was in your care package?
That's what I did at my previous position.
Then, he shorts my check by the majority, apparently claiming I didn't show up for anything more than the next two days...
As for the topic of this thread? Look. It doesn't quite work the way the sodding article wants you to think it does. They word these things for sensationalism to scare the people doing the hiring.
privileged password lists
Oh, you mean the one associated with my myriad systems accounts, on my personal laptop, which I was expected to use - after hours - in support of the company and/or the clients I'm to support? Yes, I walked out with that. The last time I heard, I am still entitled to at least my own personal property and not being legally obliged to divulge a non-essential account password. And in the case of system and service passwords (or keys) - yes, I or someone like me set them up. No, I don't remember them, and just because I set them up doesn't mean I've still got them.
company databases
You mean the client after-hours contact list I've got, or the phone numbers and email addresses of every client the company has which I or my group supports? Those 'company databases' which are on my phone for the purposes of after-hours support and notification? Or the ones in my personal address book, which were put there after I befriended the clients? Or how about the personal copy of the (technical) documentation and tools I wrote, personally (either on the clock or off), which I would like for the purposes of later reference and use?
R&D plans and financial reports
Believe it or not, but when you're working for an MSP, the client will ask the technicians (the people they trust), "does this look right?" when they don't trust the sales and marketing people.
I will grant that willful theft can and does occur, and I have noticed how it is trivial to actually steal said information. What's amazing is that more people do not do so, and that this information does not go on to get used more often. It is, in my opinion, a testament to the generally high ethical nature of people in systems (vs. say, your average sales weasel).
What's all the more amazing is that society has gotten so sick as to think it's not only reasonable but expected for a highly skilled professional to have nothing aside from what's in their head to show for their professional work. In IT, you're expected to have no contact with the clients or customers after leaving jobs; you're expected to have no trace of information indicating you worked for said company. I realize a lot of that is universal boiler plate, but from what I've noticed, it's only in IS/IT where abuse of these universal policies gets enforced.
Oh snap, I totally didn't see this coming (or intend to post the exact same thing).
At this point in my life, I've heard, "You were right, I was wrong..." so many fucking times, hearing it brings anger, not joy or any sense of self satisfaction.
I'm right there with you, sitting in the front seat. Sadly, I've not been around long enough in the field (in my case, systems administration in more of an engineering/network triage environment for multiple clients, if that makes sense) that I should really have to see this shit. People don't take self improvement seriously, or realize how important it is in information technologies.
So yeah, I can understand why someone might have issue with someone calling themselves a "software engineer" or "systems engineer" - because there are very few who are anything more than experienced hacks. (Someone who does the wrong thing for a long time is only good at doing the wrong thing efficiently.)
Projecting a bit, aren't you?
imbibe [im-bahyb] Show IPA verb, imbibed, imbibing.
verb (used with object)
1.
to consume (liquids) by drinking; drink: He imbibed great quantities of iced tea.
2.
to absorb or soak up, as water, light, or heat: Plants imbibe moisture from the soil.
3.
to take or receive into the mind, as knowledge, ideas, or the like: to imbibe a sermon; to imbibe beautiful scenery.
No, I've learned how to engage in constructive mutual conversation. I'm much more social today than I was 5 years go, possibly as a result of reflection and conscious behavior modification. I used to be afraid I'd embarass myself, which led to awkwardness; not anymore.
That's because education (field and level of degree) has largely been meaningless for the past 15+ years. You've got a 1600 on your SAT but have a double BA in Humanities studies and foreign affairs? You're still a fucking idiot - but people with a 1600 on their SATs don't go into those fields, normally, because they're too highly logical.
So you've got people with 'medium' SAT scores going to school and getting advanced degrees in useless fields, but the people with the best scores end up doing something "smart" - ie, something which will net them a lot of money, provide them stability, and/or fulfill their interests. These are fields like: accounting, business, mathematics/science, law, medicine, and/or sales (sadly, though not all that often, obviously).
I know people who tested close to perfect on both the SAT and their GMAT. They're complete fucking idiots: generally incompetent at life, but also not that mentally quick or capable. Some might describe them as "blond", regardless of gender or hair color.
I'd argue that a high SAT (or GMAT, or ACT) score doesn't correlate to intelligence any higher than a low one does. It might be more correlative, if only due to a self-selection bias. From what I've seen, at least.
Or engineers who think "PE" or "EE" irrevocably imbibes them with capability in engineering - or, for that matter, competence in general.
I'm a "computing engineer", not in that I think of myself as an engineer, but because I engineer things. In computing, your paper certificate means nothing: what matters is competence and engineering capability.
That said: I know a lot of really shit "software engineers", ie people who couldn't properly design a toilet paper roll onto the dispenser.
Precisely. I've got a bad habit of blurting out (potentially) humorous things at contextually inappropriate times. It's compulsive. Quite often, the things I blurt out are just generally inappropriate, but I do it because I think it's funny. I've managed, over the years, to consciously curtail this trait by telling myself, "self, shut the fuck up". Since I've realized my proclivity, it's saved many an embarrassing, awkward moment from happening.
Add to the list Motorola. Though, really, Samsung and Motorola are 'just' big (good) hardware intigrators, as opposed to being instigators of the actual core technologies. But if TI has signed on, I think they should certainly consider it.
Apple? Most certainly they should be off the list, if for no other reason than the fact that they design their x86 hardware to not be fully compatible with other common x86 systems (thinking of their UEFI), seemingly for the sake of being different...
Why does the ultimate goal have to be to eliminate all competition?
A few months ago I got a used IBM T221. 3840 x 2400.
My coding productivity has gone up simply by not having to constantly click around to uncover one buried window or another
I do wonder how people 20 years ago got along on their 80x24 character terminals. Sure, we've got better software to deal with things like coding these days, but as evidenced by all the constant clicking you do to put these new fangled windows into usable positions indicates, people seem to overlook the fact that modern GUIs make you painfully dependent on the mouse for doing things which should be happening at least semi-automatically for you.
Not to be dick, but: why would I want large gaps between the keys? What functionality does it serve? a .5cm gap between the home key block and anything else, or the function keys and the number keys, should be enough. You don't need an inch or more.
Personally, I prefer the Lenovo UltraNav keyboards (either with or without the numberpad, but without is just fine, thanks). I used to love my IBM Model M, but then realized it was causing undue movement. My wrists were getting fatigued. On the ultranav, this isn't the case: there's much less movement required in both my wrists and my fingers. Carpel tunnel numbness hasn't been a problem for years (and I tried many other keyboards getting here).
Apple, IMO, makes the second best 'independent' keyboard on the market. They're comfortable to type on and have all the physical keys you need (unless you deal with al ot of numbers). The only downside is that you still need to be reliant upon a mouse - one of the biggest causes for repetitive strain injuries.
I couldn't agree more with the 'replacable' keyboard option. The downside and difficulty there, of course, is that people would start to expect them to be compatible between different laptop models and vendors. Since a keyboard nad the screen are the two biggest points of distinction for many people (presumably) on a laptop, I'm guessing that may not fly... better to be unique and shitty. :)
Alda is quite the personality and has
How about these questions:
* Why is the sky blue?
* Why does water freeze?
* How is charcoal made? (relating it to fire, of course)
For those who are curious, he had an interesting discussion with Bob Osserman entitled M*A*T*H some years ago. You can download the video of it here: http://www.msri.org/web/msri/online-videos/-/video/showVideo/11928
I've done something similar to improve my health. Instead of walking all day, I took up smoking.
Yeah, that's right. Smoking has improved my health. I've got to tromp down a half dozen flights of stairs everytime I want a fucking cigarette, and then march back to the top. So, like clockwork, I get a nice brief aerobic exercise as I go down to get me back up to 'normal' heartrate from a sitting heart rate, and then 5 minutes later I get a brief period of exertive exercise as I climb (these days, run) up the 6 flights of steps back to my office.
What you're describing has been around for quite some time, though it disappeared a number of years ago, just before embedded systems started to drop off in price to more closely match their their performance in perf per dollar. Back around 2000 it was called "wearable computing".
There were quite a few interesting, novel input devices for this. My favorite was a rigid split keyboard design which put one half of the keyboard on either side of your body. You could strap them to your legs if you pleased, or you could put them around your stomach. There was another keyboard, I believe it was called a Twiddler (no lie). I believe it had a pad on the heel of your hand with a limited number of keys, and input was largely modal, but it was reputably fairly fast (a feat I believe, given how fast I've seen people text with non-tactile modal keyboards on their much-smaller phones). There were also quite a number of NTSC (and similar) resolution HUD screens and/or glasses people were experimenting with. If I recall correctly, you could put together quite the impressive all-day computing platform (which was only about 4 years behind the common desktops of the day) for around $2,000.
Really, there's nothing commercially viable (no more so now than then), but we're close. We're at the point where anyone, even a lowly developer, could piece together something from the components at Fry's or Best Buy with a little luck. The hardware today is much better suited for such things: a nice tablet like an Asus Transformer or a newer Atom or Bobcat based device, a smaller and more energy dense Lithium battery pack, and a number of other things you could fairly easily source (with schematics) on the Internet would give you something a Borg would envy.
Now, if you want your screaming i7 Windows 7 workstation, that's another matter, but I suspect that's what you were asking. That's probably not possible yet, despite energy efficiency gains. (But we're very, very close.)
Let me pose a different, axial question: why shouldn't the US invade their countries, steal their women, and pillage their natural resources (and hand-made carpets)? It's a similarly preposterous question, so I deem you should answer it.
In all seriousness, this is a stupid question. It's like the famous "let them eat cake" statement: completely ignorant of the situation, proposing a grand solution to a complicated and sensitive problem.
There is absolutely no reason why there should be much, if any, limitations on such highly skilled workers. I deem that the reality is that all of the leading questions asked by the OP should have a feel-good answer readily available to the lips and easily found within the immigration code of pretty much any country. The problem is quite the opposite, and compounded by other related issues. People, as described, don't actually make it into the US.
For instance: a highly skilled professional who would make $60-90k throughout most of the US (vs. in, say, the SF Bay area, where wages are grossly inflated) from Europe is fucked. S/he can't get in, in most cases. I know this because I've got quite a few acquaintances who have tried to do so, and have been unable to do so. They're specialized machinists with employment offers, IT professionals, and nurses with clean histories and in-demand skills. So ask yourself: why are people like them not allowed to immigrate to the US, either on temporary vistas or to become residents and citizens? Why does the 3rd world have a massively disproportionate number (no matter how you divide it up - per capita, per application, or some combination thereof) compared to Europe? Here's a hint: immigration in the US has become yet another form of global welfare the US "provides as a service", doing irreparable harm to the countries at the bottom first and foremost.
If we're not letting people like this into the country - while allowing people to flow in over the borders from Mexico and immigrate from North Africa and China at record levels (you know, those places in the globe which aren't actually all that culturally or politically friendly with the US), I'm glad we've got a problem with employment in the US.
And that's what it comes down to: There is no legal immigration which is working in the US. We're importing crime, impoverty, manual laborers, and a burgeoning welfare underclass. The other side of that is that we seem to be using affirmative action for India and China as well, allowing complete dipshits with fraudulent diplomas and CVs come over here and work $90k/year jobs at $45k. The State Department couldn't more actively sabotage national interests if they tried, quite literally.
I have to agree with this. I've had so, so many problems with nForce hardware and drivers it's not even funny. nForce is a redheaded stepchild, to be sure. I've had quite a few problems, with pretty much anything that matters on the platform: the ethernet, chipset/disk, and video. Independent cards are still the way to go with nVidia.
As a whole, I'd say ATI is much better about integrated products, but I'll take independent components which work over something which tends to like to fail, thanks. It's been years and years since I've had a problem with independent NVidia cards, on Windows or Linux. The same can't be said for ATI.
What you complain about are implementation problems, not conceptual problems. Cloud computing is much, much more sensitive to implementation specifics than is a local setup.
The exact same things that is gonna happen this time,
What? What happened last time is that the price of desktops dropped precipitously while server cost remained the same, and terminal services on Windows and the common hardware really weren't suited for the number of users necessary to make it a financially wise/break even proposition.
worries about data security,
Last time, there weren't any, as near as I can tell.
having a whole office sitting on ass if the network ever goes down, lag and crappy hosted apps not being as good as rich desktop apps, which BTW none of these problems have been solved by replacing net or server with cloud.
No, but these really aren't problems with terminal services today. You can play 3D games on TS quite successfully, over a fairly crap network.
I guess history doomed repeat and all that.
The only thing repeating here is marketing and sales have a new shiney to sell.
Cloud computing is a stupid idea at this point, but something else has changed. The problems present in what was sold as the next big thing are no longer there, with many more benefits that weren't available previously. In-house terminal services are most certainly worth looking into now.