It is happening in the US; you just don't see it so much, because most consumer products aren't made here anymore.
High-quality specialty goods, as well as industrial goods, are often American (or German) made. Tools, and the parts thereof, in particular. There is a big market for 'aftermarket' replacement parts, many of which are made to better tolerances, with better materials, and better engineering (eg. Standard Motor Parts, for instance, still makes most of its quality stuff in the US, or assembles them here using some foreign parts which are hard to get wrong). Performance parts come from the US.
Things which you won't find as "Made in the USA" are parts which have a lot of ecological damage factored into their construction. Where it's cheaper to make things overseas (due to weak sanctions against damaging the environment) or where there is a high dependence on human repetition (things machines can't do well AND cheaply yet), they'll be made overseas.
There are exceptions, of course. You can, for instance, buy the bulk laundry or dishwasher detergent for less, but a significantly smaller container of domestically made detergent (which, ironically, is much more effective and requires less per use) is more expensive per unit of volume, but cheaper per use (saving by not having to ship as much, I presume).
New graduate skills are fresher, to be sure. Fresher, like a warm steaming cow shit dropped on the top of the grass. It's rare that everything within their realm of knowledge is fully digested, what they did digest is usually still incomplete, and their knowledge is usually so fresh that when put upon the crops, it burns them.
Education is a starting point. Someone who's got education and no actual experience (and IMO, self-starter/personal projects count for a LOT) has a long, long road of trial, error, and repetitive tasks until they're able to be left on their own with a brief description of deliverables they need to meet (like anyone working as part of a team project).
I call it the "interchangeable cog" school of thought.
Unfortunately, the system as a whole has pretty much bought the philosophy hook, line, and sinker. With the President praising "shovel ready job creation" when what we need is something else entirely, there's not much hope without a drastic re-examination of how our society (and culture) works. For starters: business schools and organizations which study business practices cluing in first would be a wonderful step towards saving Western Civilization as a whole. They basically need to divorce themselves from the past 50 years of "business intelligence" and "business schooling": such things only yield short-term results.
The only way to turn things around at this point is if businesses start honoring experience, excellence, and eccentricity. They need to throw out the "use them and lose them" philosophy and value their employees as people with lives. We need to go back to fostering people who want to stay in one place and excel, not just fill a chair and punch in/out at a predictable time. We need skilled and knowledgeable people, and we need to have those skilled, knowledgeable people apprentice the younger generations (or all their knowledge, gained through experience, will be lost).
Like another poster said, if you assume/accept less than you're worth, people won't think you're worth anything. (There are, as in everything, exceptions. A bad resume, looking in the wrong kind of organization, or not fitting the specific buzzwords necessary at a given time can be doom in IT...)
I worked for my dad shortly after high school. His engineering company was struggling. My dad was always trying to cut customers good deals. Being a bit opinionated and headstrong, I told him to knock it off.
Business actually improved after that - not only in finances, but in the number of paying customers. The number of defaulting/collections customers (agricultural/rural engineering) decreased, and the company was profitable within a year and a half whereas it'd been in the red.
I've personally had better luck finding gainful employment when I "demand" more than I think I'm worth (or more than 'median market').
financial security of salary is repayed by the occasional 50-80 week to get the job done
Unless you've got a golden parachute stipulation to your contract, salary has absolutely fucking nothing to do with security. Seriously?
I have yet to see salary as anything budge a bludgeon to beat employees with, forcing them by penalty of termination to work over 40 hours a week. 50-60 hours is the expected bare-minimum, and a "hard week" is one with 4-5 hours between days.
State-required overtime for non-salary employees is a reality check (and why salary is the new slavery) for employers.
If you're an hourly employee and working 60 hours, in most states that means they are required by law to pay you overtime. Look into it.
I believe your question is a bit of a red herring, but I'll humor it anyway.
As for why your question is a red herring: even if experience returns are diminished on an individual basis, "institutional knowledge" is greatly augmented by having "old" guys around. A healthy organization will have a good balance of young, mid-career, and old people. They will fill the appropriate age- and experience-related positions. Their benefit in salary is more than returned to the company, if not directly, then indirectly by helping avoid the common mistakes inexperienced people make (repeating the mistakes of the past) and by serving as a human resource for the younger generations.
For decades (until very recently), Japan valued experience and seniority. They were the power brokers in the information age for a while there - until that system started to break down, resorting to wage slave salary-men more similar to what exists in India today.
* 1/4 salary ($37,500) * Work 3 days a week * 2 months vacation (40 days off) * Medical and other standard benefits
... ooooor, you could hire someone who's not "retirement age" for similar bennies and pay, as long as they're not in a Rape and Gouge state like California.
For instance, $50k, 2 months vacation, 5 day+ work week, and good medical benefits would get you quite a lot of systems administration employee if you're looking to employ a remote sysadmin who may or may not be able to work from his home, with his family, in a lower cost state.
Now if by "no one wants older guys" you mean "won't pay what I demand", well, that is a part of economics
Well, sorta.
Companies simply refuse to hire people at the hire rates, even if there's nobody else and there's a high demand for talent within the organization.
Simply put, when you slave away for your employers, both for 40+ hours a week at the office and after hours to improve your value to them, and have done so for many years, you are in a reasonable position to demand that your employers pay you well for what you provide to the company. Most companies, however, are run by people with business degrees: they're taught to steamroll everyone out into a nice uniform paste, don't add any seasoning, spread it thin, and then charge a lot for it. By distributing a lot of work over many, instead of a lot of work over an exceptional (relatively) few, they think they're mitigating risk.
What they're also mitigating is reward. They're mortgaging the long game for short game results. This is increasingly easy for them to get away with: instead of having 5+ years in a managerial position before moving on, they'll be around for 1-3 years, or even less. They get their career benefit, sell everyone down the river, and move on. This continues on ad nauseum. It's the same thing the CxO level has been doing to their companies: managers are only emulating what their superiors are doing, to great (personal) success.
Yeah, except most hiring types (read: HR people who read PC Magazine; Sales/Marketing types who are up on their buzzwords who usually become IT Managers) can't tell the fucking difference between:
* Experienced, knowledgeable individual * Experienced, but complete-bullshit-for-knowledge (ie, see "Self-Marketing/Sales types") * Inexperienced, but a lot of bullshit on their resume * Knowledgeable with no experience, but capable (oh actually, they tend to throw these resumes out during round 1, so never mind)
Most people who suck (ie, most people in large companies) shop for talent like someone on food stamps shops for pasta: cheaper is better, and volume is better, but anything like nutrition be damned. They just want to look/feel full, consequences be damned.
Here's the problem: Exchange isn't just a mail server, it's also:
* An address/contact book server for: - personal addresses/contacts - shared/group addresses/contacts - organization/server-wide contacts
* A calendar server - personal - shared from internal exchange users - shared from server/organization-external exchange users - local/server wide shared
* connected to the same authentication backend your workstations use (Active Directory) and configurable through such
* single authentication/configuration point for all of those things
So, what we need then is: * an open MAPI server implementation/gateway * something to control said configuration/backend through AD (or some other directory which we can also auth our workstations through) - Samba would be the natural choice for this; unfortunately, Samba 4 has been in process since at least 2005, and is still yet not even usable at a 2000-level AD controller without significant problems.:(
Yes - except most things don't need MAPI, only email.
For that, you've got Thunderbird. Thunderbird is fairly mature of late, but it's still got a lot of work which needs to be done. It outperforms Outlook by quite a bit. The only thing missing is (like you said) MAPI.
Since Android has probably a bazillion implementions that do MAPI, I'm kind of surprised there's no Outlook alternative which does MAPI well. The only thing I'm aware of is Evolution, and that won't work with the online version(s) of Exchange (BPOS or whatever MS is calling it now).
Most certainly. If Microsoft has it's way (which I'm sure they will) with Office 2012, there will be a wide open field for LibreOffice advancement.
Let's see: Office 2012 is supposed to be something like "the biggest innovative complete re-implementation" of the Office framework to allow it to use the new Windows Phone/8 style UI elements. They may be doing away with the Ribbon UI (which, once I understood it as being modal, made decent sense and was implemented fairly well in 2010.) Over the minimalist cubism of WP7/W8, pretty much everything is desirable. (I'll go back to wordgrinder, thanks...)
From what I've seen of late, people hate Outlook and will switch to Thunderbird if they can. Likewise, people who are familiar with the Ribbon UI tend to like it, but still in some ways prefer the older UI still present in LibreOffice. From what I can tell, LibreOffice is all but a replacement for Office, except for some shortcomings in the spreadsheet application regarding support of complex Excel workbooks (that's what I hear).
LibreOffice, with the option for different UIs as well as with the upcoming 'porting' effort to make a web-enabled UI for LibreOffice, is starting to get quite a bit more appealing.
Chuck Norris was unable to comment, but his media representative assures us he has no twin Korean brother, but he's comfortable enough being awesome to allow them to borrow his for a while for the purposes of world peace and/or annihilation. Just as long as it's awesome.
there would be millions of refugees crossing into China almost immediately.
So? This is China we're talking about. People are saying that NK is the biggest exploiter of humanity out there, but these people must not be paying attention.
China would put these people to work making sweaters, and/or use them for cattle feed if they've already been exhausted as slave labor. Chances are, though, they're healthier than most of their citizens and with a little rice will last at least as long as a native Chinaman.
SF is a fucking hellhole. If it wasn't for public transit being abhorrently expensive and inconvenient as well, I'm sure there'd be fewer drivers. (BART trains not so much, but that's just to get you into the city so you can spend money...)
There are people who actually need to use their vehicle in the city to go to and from work. It hurts everyone: when you get 15mpg in your "big truck" (needed for carrying equipment and parts) and you end paying more per month for parking than you do fuel - including the 2-hour commute into and out of the city - there's something wrong.
And no, this isn't the exception. There are many people who face this nonsense.
I don't know how SF fucks it up so badly. NYC, and Manhattan in particular, is markedly better. Maybe it's because there are so few roads into and out of the (SF) peninsula, but seriously: it's no excuse. Throw another bridge in across the bay south of Hunter's Point to 880, widen or actually finish the construction on the Bay Bridge - something. Maybe fix your fucking roads instead of just tarring a sheet of steel down (that's fun in the rain, or on a bike! Safety first, don't forget the ticket(s) resulting from the accident for reckless driving!) Why not operate more trams to make street public transit more reasonable/useful, so there's regular transit? How about not having absolutely retarded one-way streets (and I'm talking about how they're implemented, not that they're one-way)?
And that doesn't even address SF drivers. What. The. Fuck. People in Manhattan drive on similar streets, at twice the speed and much higher density. People there know how to cross the fucking road. There's something wrong with the water out here, I swear.
The reason that over the years Apple was able to make and retain such intense customer loyalty was because they chose to focus on making sure that every aspect of their products made the user's life a little bit easier. When you see--in a thousand little ways--that someone has gone to the trouble of trying to make it easier for you to do what it is you're trying to get done... intense loyalty is a natural result.
Yet, they haven't done this, per se. In some ways, it's been a symptom of their own efforts, but for the most part it hasn't even happened. There is not much Apple has done which has been innovative or even all that useful which was not done before.
The answer is in two words: black turtlenecks. Quite simply, good, consistent marketing, a cohesively uniform product/corporate image, and trendy products naturally appeals to trend-setters (and those who appeal to them). Remember the "I'm a Mac" commercials, and how incredibly stupid and low-brow they were? They appealed to common people who buy consumer products. They're the reason why flashy sports cars which have a reputation for running poorly have, in the past, sold so well: people cling to image when they are image focused. They don't care if it works well, just that it works and looks cool in the process of it doing so.
The fact that the rest of the tech industry was flagging at the time when Apple was coming out of the closet was a fortunate coincidence. Everything was stagnant at the consumer level, basically waiting for the next step in evolutionary change: Fisher Price XP was out, Vista was on the horizon but not terribly promising unless you were a fanboy; the MP3 player market was expensive and very much a small market due to the technology humps that needed to be overcome to use the devices effectively; and later, there weren't many feature phones which were capable of doing what the iPhone did (or, at least, which were marketed like the iPhone was).
The biggest difference I notice between Google and Apple in an area where it really matters is this: how they treat problems and shortcomings with their services/products.
* Apple: There are no problems with our products. All of our engineering, design, and software efforts are perfect. If there's a problem with your application it's not our fault. If there is a problem, it's probably your fault.
* Google: if there's a problem or missing feature in a major product (Gmail, calendar, search, whatever) they're working on "improving" it, with no ETA on the horizon. If it's in something with minor use, it's sooner trashed/gotten rid of than fixed. They've mastered the domain of the "simple but elegant" web UI, and everything hinges on that.
Honestly, of the tech titans out there, Microsoft seems to be one of the better ones right now when it comes to actually eating their own dog food and making their shit work. I've been quite impressed (even though I don't even use any of their products anymore, personally or professionally). They're doing a lot to win back the hearts and minds they alienated during the era of Microsoft Suck.
Pay is also largely inversely proportional to one's scruples.
Said another way, if you don't have skill and ability in something desirable (or able to do something required but undesirable), you've got to make up for it one way or another through a weak moral backbone.
You realize that most pornography produced hasn't exactly been that, right? Pornography is not typically considered to be desirable work. It's degrading, dehumanizing work (as evidenced by the very, very high rate of suicide, reckless behavior, and drug abuse among performers).
Maybe if the proponents of 'save the environment' would focus on results moreso than agriprop rhetoric, rhetorical, hyperbolic responses like this wouldn't be necessary.
Here are a couple pointers:
* Forest fires are GOOD: - They kill disease, - thin old growth, allowing (CO2-hungry) young growth to take root - increase and encourage environmental competition and biodiversity - are actually REQUIRED for many species to propagate
* Human hunting of wildlife is GOOD: - it prevents overpopulation from occurring - it feeds people using natural resources - it helps keep the ecosystem in balance
* Control of predatory animals is GOOD: - it saves money (due to all the effort required to control the overpopulation) - it reduces animal cruelty (due to fewer livestock maimed, and allowing them to range wider) - saves lives (either through death or maiming) - decreases the spread of disease from over-population (because we are the natural predator of the predator, primarily for their fur, and they are not being controlled through these methods in teh West anymore due to so-called conservation efforts)
* Domestic oil drilling and exploratory drilling is GOOD: - it reduces foreign dependence (particularly of those whom would rather see harm to us) - it reduces international conflict (we don't have to go There, and they don't have our money to come Here) - despite reactionary claims regarding Peak Oil, the dates have come and gone with no indication that the projections were correct (oil prices are high right now due to reasons other than actual production capability)
* We CAN NOT CHANGE the cycles of the sun: - it's absence makes us cold - its presence makes us warm - it has cycles, with undetermined maximums and minimums, just like everything else
* We have to realize that we are more likely to do more harm than good! History has shown that, regardless of our intention, our efforts have been fairly destructive: - Yellowstone National Park was, initially, a giant conservatory with introduced animals. This effort was a complete utter nightmare, almost resulting in the extinction of wolves. It's taken over the better part of a century of "leave it alone" to get the environment back to pre-intervention levels. - current forest conservation efforts have resulted in the highest rate of destruction from forest fires on record. Miles of forest have been utterly destroyed instead of simply decimated, as a normal fire would do.
The people who support "the environment" are at it for political and financial reasons, too. There are many, many 'conservation' groups which are not the friend of the things they claim to be. They're bleeding hearts pushed with an agenda, or they're more often than not playing the 'let's make money with nothing but lobbying' - like pretty much every recipient of 'green' money from the current US government administration. (Pay attention!)
PETA - responsible for more domestic animal deaths than any number of cruel, inhumane pounds. Partially responsible for the gross restriction on ecologically destructive species which have lost their natural predators due to civilization encroachment and trapping (eg. beavers, otters, muskrats, etc.).
Greenpeace is more about the destruction of traditional
Don't even get me started about so-called 'green' vehicles. Seriously? One word: lithium. (And you think we've got problems with petroleum now. Just wait.)
Please: name me one "pro-environment" group (which is NOT a purely conservatory group, like Ducks Unlimited or WWF) which actually does what they claim to do, and do not resort to actual terrorism in doing so.
Just remember: motives mean shit. Hitler wanted purity; Mao wanted unification; Osama bin Laden wanted to be left alone; Stalin wanted to represent his people and secure his borders. I may want everyone in the world to be well fed and have a roof over their heads, but it doesn't justify me in killing 95% of the world's population to make that happen. That is the approach of most 'green' movement bullshit. "Let's leech heavy metals into the environment so we don't have to burn carbon based fuels" or "save the dolphins, there are a lot of tuna out there" or "you can't hunt Bambi, they have to starve to death after years of over-population and a hard winter".
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It is happening in the US; you just don't see it so much, because most consumer products aren't made here anymore.
High-quality specialty goods, as well as industrial goods, are often American (or German) made. Tools, and the parts thereof, in particular. There is a big market for 'aftermarket' replacement parts, many of which are made to better tolerances, with better materials, and better engineering (eg. Standard Motor Parts, for instance, still makes most of its quality stuff in the US, or assembles them here using some foreign parts which are hard to get wrong). Performance parts come from the US.
Things which you won't find as "Made in the USA" are parts which have a lot of ecological damage factored into their construction. Where it's cheaper to make things overseas (due to weak sanctions against damaging the environment) or where there is a high dependence on human repetition (things machines can't do well AND cheaply yet), they'll be made overseas.
There are exceptions, of course. You can, for instance, buy the bulk laundry or dishwasher detergent for less, but a significantly smaller container of domestically made detergent (which, ironically, is much more effective and requires less per use) is more expensive per unit of volume, but cheaper per use (saving by not having to ship as much, I presume).
New graduate skills are fresher, to be sure. Fresher, like a warm steaming cow shit dropped on the top of the grass. It's rare that everything within their realm of knowledge is fully digested, what they did digest is usually still incomplete, and their knowledge is usually so fresh that when put upon the crops, it burns them.
Education is a starting point. Someone who's got education and no actual experience (and IMO, self-starter/personal projects count for a LOT) has a long, long road of trial, error, and repetitive tasks until they're able to be left on their own with a brief description of deliverables they need to meet (like anyone working as part of a team project).
I call it the "interchangeable cog" school of thought.
Unfortunately, the system as a whole has pretty much bought the philosophy hook, line, and sinker. With the President praising "shovel ready job creation" when what we need is something else entirely, there's not much hope without a drastic re-examination of how our society (and culture) works. For starters: business schools and organizations which study business practices cluing in first would be a wonderful step towards saving Western Civilization as a whole. They basically need to divorce themselves from the past 50 years of "business intelligence" and "business schooling": such things only yield short-term results.
The only way to turn things around at this point is if businesses start honoring experience, excellence, and eccentricity. They need to throw out the "use them and lose them" philosophy and value their employees as people with lives. We need to go back to fostering people who want to stay in one place and excel, not just fill a chair and punch in/out at a predictable time. We need skilled and knowledgeable people, and we need to have those skilled, knowledgeable people apprentice the younger generations (or all their knowledge, gained through experience, will be lost).
Like another poster said, if you assume/accept less than you're worth, people won't think you're worth anything. (There are, as in everything, exceptions. A bad resume, looking in the wrong kind of organization, or not fitting the specific buzzwords necessary at a given time can be doom in IT...)
I worked for my dad shortly after high school. His engineering company was struggling. My dad was always trying to cut customers good deals. Being a bit opinionated and headstrong, I told him to knock it off.
Business actually improved after that - not only in finances, but in the number of paying customers. The number of defaulting/collections customers (agricultural/rural engineering) decreased, and the company was profitable within a year and a half whereas it'd been in the red.
I've personally had better luck finding gainful employment when I "demand" more than I think I'm worth (or more than 'median market').
financial security of salary is repayed by the occasional 50-80 week to get the job done
Unless you've got a golden parachute stipulation to your contract, salary has absolutely fucking nothing to do with security. Seriously?
I have yet to see salary as anything budge a bludgeon to beat employees with, forcing them by penalty of termination to work over 40 hours a week. 50-60 hours is the expected bare-minimum, and a "hard week" is one with 4-5 hours between days.
State-required overtime for non-salary employees is a reality check (and why salary is the new slavery) for employers.
If you're an hourly employee and working 60 hours, in most states that means they are required by law to pay you overtime. Look into it.
I believe your question is a bit of a red herring, but I'll humor it anyway.
As for why your question is a red herring: even if experience returns are diminished on an individual basis, "institutional knowledge" is greatly augmented by having "old" guys around. A healthy organization will have a good balance of young, mid-career, and old people. They will fill the appropriate age- and experience-related positions. Their benefit in salary is more than returned to the company, if not directly, then indirectly by helping avoid the common mistakes inexperienced people make (repeating the mistakes of the past) and by serving as a human resource for the younger generations.
For decades (until very recently), Japan valued experience and seniority. They were the power brokers in the information age for a while there - until that system started to break down, resorting to wage slave salary-men more similar to what exists in India today.
* 1/4 salary ($37,500)
* Work 3 days a week
* 2 months vacation (40 days off)
* Medical and other standard benefits
... ooooor, you could hire someone who's not "retirement age" for similar bennies and pay, as long as they're not in a Rape and Gouge state like California.
For instance, $50k, 2 months vacation, 5 day+ work week, and good medical benefits would get you quite a lot of systems administration employee if you're looking to employ a remote sysadmin who may or may not be able to work from his home, with his family, in a lower cost state.
Just speaking from experience.
Now if by "no one wants older guys" you mean "won't pay what I demand", well, that is a part of economics
Well, sorta.
Companies simply refuse to hire people at the hire rates, even if there's nobody else and there's a high demand for talent within the organization.
Simply put, when you slave away for your employers, both for 40+ hours a week at the office and after hours to improve your value to them, and have done so for many years, you are in a reasonable position to demand that your employers pay you well for what you provide to the company. Most companies, however, are run by people with business degrees: they're taught to steamroll everyone out into a nice uniform paste, don't add any seasoning, spread it thin, and then charge a lot for it. By distributing a lot of work over many, instead of a lot of work over an exceptional (relatively) few, they think they're mitigating risk.
What they're also mitigating is reward. They're mortgaging the long game for short game results. This is increasingly easy for them to get away with: instead of having 5+ years in a managerial position before moving on, they'll be around for 1-3 years, or even less. They get their career benefit, sell everyone down the river, and move on. This continues on ad nauseum. It's the same thing the CxO level has been doing to their companies: managers are only emulating what their superiors are doing, to great (personal) success.
Why would that be important?
They'll just hire a couple sales/marketing guys to find the loophole, making that 'penalty' disappear through smooth talking and exception clauses.
Yeah, except most hiring types (read: HR people who read PC Magazine; Sales/Marketing types who are up on their buzzwords who usually become IT Managers) can't tell the fucking difference between:
* Experienced, knowledgeable individual
* Experienced, but complete-bullshit-for-knowledge (ie, see "Self-Marketing/Sales types")
* Inexperienced, but a lot of bullshit on their resume
* Knowledgeable with no experience, but capable (oh actually, they tend to throw these resumes out during round 1, so never mind)
Most people who suck (ie, most people in large companies) shop for talent like someone on food stamps shops for pasta: cheaper is better, and volume is better, but anything like nutrition be damned. They just want to look/feel full, consequences be damned.
Here's the problem: Exchange isn't just a mail server, it's also:
* An address/contact book server for:
- personal addresses/contacts
- shared/group addresses/contacts
- organization/server-wide contacts
* A calendar server
- personal
- shared from internal exchange users
- shared from server/organization-external exchange users
- local/server wide shared
* connected to the same authentication backend your workstations use (Active Directory) and configurable through such
* single authentication/configuration point for all of those things
So, what we need then is: :(
* an open MAPI server implementation/gateway
* something to control said configuration/backend through AD (or some other directory which we can also auth our workstations through) - Samba would be the natural choice for this; unfortunately, Samba 4 has been in process since at least 2005, and is still yet not even usable at a 2000-level AD controller without significant problems.
Yes - except most things don't need MAPI, only email.
For that, you've got Thunderbird. Thunderbird is fairly mature of late, but it's still got a lot of work which needs to be done. It outperforms Outlook by quite a bit. The only thing missing is (like you said) MAPI.
Since Android has probably a bazillion implementions that do MAPI, I'm kind of surprised there's no Outlook alternative which does MAPI well. The only thing I'm aware of is Evolution, and that won't work with the online version(s) of Exchange (BPOS or whatever MS is calling it now).
Most certainly. If Microsoft has it's way (which I'm sure they will) with Office 2012, there will be a wide open field for LibreOffice advancement.
Let's see: Office 2012 is supposed to be something like "the biggest innovative complete re-implementation" of the Office framework to allow it to use the new Windows Phone/8 style UI elements. They may be doing away with the Ribbon UI (which, once I understood it as being modal, made decent sense and was implemented fairly well in 2010.) Over the minimalist cubism of WP7/W8, pretty much everything is desirable. (I'll go back to wordgrinder, thanks...)
From what I've seen of late, people hate Outlook and will switch to Thunderbird if they can. Likewise, people who are familiar with the Ribbon UI tend to like it, but still in some ways prefer the older UI still present in LibreOffice. From what I can tell, LibreOffice is all but a replacement for Office, except for some shortcomings in the spreadsheet application regarding support of complex Excel workbooks (that's what I hear).
LibreOffice, with the option for different UIs as well as with the upcoming 'porting' effort to make a web-enabled UI for LibreOffice, is starting to get quite a bit more appealing.
Chuck Norris was unable to comment, but his media representative assures us he has no twin Korean brother, but he's comfortable enough being awesome to allow them to borrow his for a while for the purposes of world peace and/or annihilation. Just as long as it's awesome.
there would be millions of refugees crossing into China almost immediately.
So? This is China we're talking about. People are saying that NK is the biggest exploiter of humanity out there, but these people must not be paying attention.
China would put these people to work making sweaters, and/or use them for cattle feed if they've already been exhausted as slave labor. Chances are, though, they're healthier than most of their citizens and with a little rice will last at least as long as a native Chinaman.
What are you smoking?
ESXi is miles above Xen at this point, and I'd rather use VirtualBox than Hyper-V. XenServer doesn't even enter the equation.
SF is a fucking hellhole. If it wasn't for public transit being abhorrently expensive and inconvenient as well, I'm sure there'd be fewer drivers. (BART trains not so much, but that's just to get you into the city so you can spend money...)
There are people who actually need to use their vehicle in the city to go to and from work. It hurts everyone: when you get 15mpg in your "big truck" (needed for carrying equipment and parts) and you end paying more per month for parking than you do fuel - including the 2-hour commute into and out of the city - there's something wrong.
And no, this isn't the exception. There are many people who face this nonsense.
I don't know how SF fucks it up so badly. NYC, and Manhattan in particular, is markedly better. Maybe it's because there are so few roads into and out of the (SF) peninsula, but seriously: it's no excuse. Throw another bridge in across the bay south of Hunter's Point to 880, widen or actually finish the construction on the Bay Bridge - something. Maybe fix your fucking roads instead of just tarring a sheet of steel down (that's fun in the rain, or on a bike! Safety first, don't forget the ticket(s) resulting from the accident for reckless driving!) Why not operate more trams to make street public transit more reasonable/useful, so there's regular transit? How about not having absolutely retarded one-way streets (and I'm talking about how they're implemented, not that they're one-way)?
And that doesn't even address SF drivers. What. The. Fuck. People in Manhattan drive on similar streets, at twice the speed and much higher density. People there know how to cross the fucking road. There's something wrong with the water out here, I swear.
The reason that over the years Apple was able to make and retain such intense customer loyalty was because they chose to focus on making sure that every aspect of their products made the user's life a little bit easier. When you see--in a thousand little ways--that someone has gone to the trouble of trying to make it easier for you to do what it is you're trying to get done... intense loyalty is a natural result.
Yet, they haven't done this, per se. In some ways, it's been a symptom of their own efforts, but for the most part it hasn't even happened. There is not much Apple has done which has been innovative or even all that useful which was not done before.
The answer is in two words: black turtlenecks. Quite simply, good, consistent marketing, a cohesively uniform product/corporate image, and trendy products naturally appeals to trend-setters (and those who appeal to them). Remember the "I'm a Mac" commercials, and how incredibly stupid and low-brow they were? They appealed to common people who buy consumer products. They're the reason why flashy sports cars which have a reputation for running poorly have, in the past, sold so well: people cling to image when they are image focused. They don't care if it works well, just that it works and looks cool in the process of it doing so.
The fact that the rest of the tech industry was flagging at the time when Apple was coming out of the closet was a fortunate coincidence. Everything was stagnant at the consumer level, basically waiting for the next step in evolutionary change: Fisher Price XP was out, Vista was on the horizon but not terribly promising unless you were a fanboy; the MP3 player market was expensive and very much a small market due to the technology humps that needed to be overcome to use the devices effectively; and later, there weren't many feature phones which were capable of doing what the iPhone did (or, at least, which were marketed like the iPhone was).
The biggest difference I notice between Google and Apple in an area where it really matters is this: how they treat problems and shortcomings with their services/products.
* Apple: There are no problems with our products. All of our engineering, design, and software efforts are perfect. If there's a problem with your application it's not our fault. If there is a problem, it's probably your fault.
* Google: if there's a problem or missing feature in a major product (Gmail, calendar, search, whatever) they're working on "improving" it, with no ETA on the horizon. If it's in something with minor use, it's sooner trashed/gotten rid of than fixed. They've mastered the domain of the "simple but elegant" web UI, and everything hinges on that.
Honestly, of the tech titans out there, Microsoft seems to be one of the better ones right now when it comes to actually eating their own dog food and making their shit work. I've been quite impressed (even though I don't even use any of their products anymore, personally or professionally). They're doing a lot to win back the hearts and minds they alienated during the era of Microsoft Suck.
I'll admit there are over-simplifications there, but half truths? I am curious to read what you have to say.
There is quite a difference in practicality between 12 and 10mpg - it's 20% better fuel economy.
In contrast, a 30mpg mini-sedan isn't even 100% better fuel economy than my van.
Boiling frogs has nothing to do with it. That'd be like arguing a negligible difference.
Pay is also largely inversely proportional to one's scruples.
Said another way, if you don't have skill and ability in something desirable (or able to do something required but undesirable), you've got to make up for it one way or another through a weak moral backbone.
You realize that most pornography produced hasn't exactly been that, right? Pornography is not typically considered to be desirable work. It's degrading, dehumanizing work (as evidenced by the very, very high rate of suicide, reckless behavior, and drug abuse among performers).
Maybe if the proponents of 'save the environment' would focus on results moreso than agriprop rhetoric, rhetorical, hyperbolic responses like this wouldn't be necessary.
Here are a couple pointers:
* Forest fires are GOOD:
- They kill disease,
- thin old growth, allowing (CO2-hungry) young growth to take root
- increase and encourage environmental competition and biodiversity
- are actually REQUIRED for many species to propagate
* Human hunting of wildlife is GOOD:
- it prevents overpopulation from occurring
- it feeds people using natural resources
- it helps keep the ecosystem in balance
* Control of predatory animals is GOOD:
- it saves money (due to all the effort required to control the overpopulation)
- it reduces animal cruelty (due to fewer livestock maimed, and allowing them to range wider)
- saves lives (either through death or maiming)
- decreases the spread of disease from over-population (because we are the natural predator of the predator, primarily for their fur, and they are not being controlled through these methods in teh West anymore due to so-called conservation efforts)
* Domestic oil drilling and exploratory drilling is GOOD:
- it reduces foreign dependence (particularly of those whom would rather see harm to us)
- it reduces international conflict (we don't have to go There, and they don't have our money to come Here)
- despite reactionary claims regarding Peak Oil, the dates have come and gone with no indication that the projections were correct (oil prices are high right now due to reasons other than actual production capability)
* We CAN NOT CHANGE the cycles of the sun:
- it's absence makes us cold
- its presence makes us warm
- it has cycles, with undetermined maximums and minimums, just like everything else
* We have to realize that we are more likely to do more harm than good! History has shown that, regardless of our intention, our efforts have been fairly destructive:
- Yellowstone National Park was, initially, a giant conservatory with introduced animals. This effort was a complete utter nightmare, almost resulting in the extinction of wolves. It's taken over the better part of a century of "leave it alone" to get the environment back to pre-intervention levels.
- current forest conservation efforts have resulted in the highest rate of destruction from forest fires on record. Miles of forest have been utterly destroyed instead of simply decimated, as a normal fire would do.
You're a bit out of sync there, chief.
The people who support "the environment" are at it for political and financial reasons, too. There are many, many 'conservation' groups which are not the friend of the things they claim to be. They're bleeding hearts pushed with an agenda, or they're more often than not playing the 'let's make money with nothing but lobbying' - like pretty much every recipient of 'green' money from the current US government administration. (Pay attention!)
PETA - responsible for more domestic animal deaths than any number of cruel, inhumane pounds. Partially responsible for the gross restriction on ecologically destructive species which have lost their natural predators due to civilization encroachment and trapping (eg. beavers, otters, muskrats, etc.).
Greenpeace is more about the destruction of traditional
Don't even get me started about so-called 'green' vehicles. Seriously? One word: lithium. (And you think we've got problems with petroleum now. Just wait.)
Please: name me one "pro-environment" group (which is NOT a purely conservatory group, like Ducks Unlimited or WWF) which actually does what they claim to do, and do not resort to actual terrorism in doing so.
Just remember: motives mean shit. Hitler wanted purity; Mao wanted unification; Osama bin Laden wanted to be left alone; Stalin wanted to represent his people and secure his borders. I may want everyone in the world to be well fed and have a roof over their heads, but it doesn't justify me in killing 95% of the world's population to make that happen. That is the approach of most 'green' movement bullshit. "Let's leech heavy metals into the environment so we don't have to burn carbon based fuels" or "save the dolphins, there are a lot of tuna out there" or "you can't hunt Bambi, they have to starve to death after years of over-population and a hard winter".
Fuck. Off.