Apple is generally very good about reacting to bad press. Witness the stolen clock image and how quickly they settled up with the company they stole it from.
I'm betting that they pedal backward on this too and eventually release as a single season. I give it about 2 weeks.
Same here. I use Kindle's Lending library quite a bit. The other thing this is competing against is just plain public library lending through Overdrive.
One of the best kept secrets in New York is that all residents of New York *State* can get a New York City Public Library Card. http://nypl.org/ NYPL has one of the richest ebooks collection for lending around. Works great through Overdrive with Kindle.
$10/month is too steep. I would reconsider if the price came down to a yearly subscription of $50.
Bullshit. We don't think about the cloud by name, but I can guarantee you that people who have their life in either Apple, Microsoft or Google's cloud service definitely give thought to which phone will be easier to use given that their stuff is there. I know I certainly did, as did other members of my family. In fact, it was a deciding factor in most cases, particularly among people who are buying 2nd and 3rd smartphones.
The game now isn't the devices, it's the cloud. Google v. iCloud v. Microsoft Outlook+XBox+whatever else. These days, the device is just your entry point into your cloud of choice. One of the missing pieces I see is book content. Microsoft already made an investment in Barnes and Noble. Today, Amazon announced the MatchBook program which provides either a free or $1 e-book for certain Amazon physical book purchases made as far back as 1995.
This has to sting an already reeling Barnes & Noble. I'm wondering if Microsoft is going to white knight them as well and add another piece to their cloud puzzle?
Yes we want to stick in a world of Apple and Google to be controlling everything. Having more competition is a bad thing... Right?
Most of this anti-Window nonsense, is decades old.
I don't think anyone wants that, but it's hard to root for a company that repeatedly stabs itself in the eye as many time as Microsoft does. While I'm at it, you can throw Blackberry into that pile as well.
How many systems are you talking about? If it's not a lot, I would recommend to the proprietors that they just replace the whole lot of them with cheap ChromeOS systems ($250 each if you go for the current Samsungs). That way, you won't be worrying too much about virii, the old folks can still surf matlock.com and you come out looking like a genius.
Communication skills never go out of style and are always in demand.
I can find gazillions of Java or C or Perl or PHP programmers. Heck, I'm sure I can even dig up quite a few PL/I, PL/X, IBM mainframe Assembly or JCL slingers.
But find me that one programmer who can communicate technically to a team of 10-20 programmers and be able to communicate in plain English or in the business language to management and customers and he or she will be a keeper for a long time.
I fear the one programmer who write thousands and thousands of lines of spaghetti code that can be done in hundreds of lines if written correctly. Especially if his program "works" well enough in a demo for some idiot middle management guy to think we should make it into a product to sell.....by next week.
For the right price ( $500), I'd be more than happy with a lightweight Android "netbook" sans Windows. I can keep my Windows and Linux systems at the office in our VMWare cloud for software development and use an Android based VNC/RDP or Chrome Remote Desktop to access them. For everything else I typically do, "there's an app for that". To me, having a keyboard on Android would be big plus.
It helps to be something more than just a pure software engineer. I'm at a little under the $200K mark (probably 1 or 2 years away) but have gotten steady raises for the past 10 years and moved up in rank considerably. Mostly, I've kept up my software engineering skills, never wandering away from actually "touching code", but I've also built a good reputation for leading other programmers worldwide. It's one thing to get yourself to be a great coding machine, but another skill entirely to get an entire worldwide team of 20-30 coders performing at a high level. This means keeping up your own programming skills so you can speak with some authority, honing communication and interpersonal skills, learning full cycle software development and delivering code that isn't just used by a few people, but is a consumer or business product. It also means working with people who aren't coders - marketing types, lawyers, documentation people, beta testers, support desk people, etc. and being able to explain things clearly and succinctly to all of them.
TL;DR - Work on your soft skills and keep coding too!
Only that most of the products we use at work run on it. At home, I use a combination of Linux, Windows and Android. But there's no need to upgrade any of my current systems beyond Windows 7. I've tried Windows 8 and loathe it. The confusion between Apps and Programs, the mysterious tendency toward fixing things that weren't broken.
The next system I'm considering is the HP X2 Slatebook http://www8.hp.com/us/en/ads/x2/slatebook-x2.html . I'm already own a few Android phones and tablets, am more than happy that I can do what I need to with them. Having a real keyboard on one to me is a great idea.
This is going to date me. When I was somewhere between 8 and 10, my dad took me on my day off to the high school where he taught math. In addition to being the math dept chair, he also was the main computer teacher. Back then, "computer" meant a MARK something or other timeshare computer somewhere offsite, if memory serves correct, somewhere at Rutgers U. It was hooked up to the teletype at the high school.
Anyway, dad sat me down, showed me how to use the teletype to write some crude BASIC programs. ("End each line with RETURN, BACKSPACE, RUBOUT, RUBOUT, RUBOUT" - let's see if any of you older kids recognize that) I figured out how to get it to do some basic math problems, adding, and then discovered IF-THEN and looping. So, I taught it to count to 10...printing out the numbers from 1 to 10, one for each line on the teletype. So then, I tried to make the limit 100....more paper. Then, I went to do something more fancy and messed up the end condition checking....and the teletype started spewing paper. My first bug. I figured out how to stop the program after a few panicked seconds. Anyway, I did save the program to punched tape and came back weeks later and was thrilled to see that I could load the program up and it still ran. Science!
Some years later, my dad made sure we were the first family to get a TRS-80. I spent the summer fighting for time with my brother. I wrote a Hangman program from scratch, complete with 500 word dictionary and crude hangman ASCII animation and showed it to my friends. I definitely had the programming bug.
Thanks, Dad. It's (mumble) years later, and I'm celebrating my 29th year in the IT industry. I'm so glad he taught me how to program before I ever learned that "girls don't code".
Funny thing is, I wonder how many people bought it and immediately discarded the Facebook crap on it. For all it's warts, it was a pretty good phone hardwarewise.
People don't mind being exploited if you give away stuff in exchange for being exploited. Google gives away very good services for email, calendaring, mapping, news consolidation, search, etc. and oh yeah, a mobile OS!
Just being made to feel special isn't enough, as Facebook is starting to find out.
A whole article on this topic without mentioning maybe one of the more historically successful attempts at pulling together voice, chat, offline chat/mail - Skype?
I know it's not perfect but it is definitely the only messenging service that my family all work with - grandma/grandpa from their ancient Dell computers included.
Slashdot Mirror
So, Microsoft's been scroogling us all along. Funny how these things work out.
This is Microsoft's huge problem. It's like the have complete idiots in their marketing department.
"I know, let's call the THIRD generation of our XBox product, the ONE!"
"Let's brand two completely different platforms (three actually) under the Surface name!"
"Let's have Programs and Apps kinda be the same, but different."
So much facepalm lately for MS.
Apple is generally very good about reacting to bad press. Witness the stolen clock image and how quickly they settled up with the company they stole it from.
I'm betting that they pedal backward on this too and eventually release as a single season. I give it about 2 weeks.
Same here. I use Kindle's Lending library quite a bit. The other thing this is competing against is just plain public library lending through Overdrive.
One of the best kept secrets in New York is that all residents of New York *State* can get a New York City Public Library Card. http://nypl.org/
NYPL has one of the richest ebooks collection for lending around. Works great through Overdrive with Kindle.
$10/month is too steep. I would reconsider if the price came down to a yearly subscription of $50.
Bullshit. We don't think about the cloud by name, but I can guarantee you that people who have their life in either Apple, Microsoft or Google's cloud service definitely give thought to which phone will be easier to use given that their stuff is there. I know I certainly did, as did other members of my family. In fact, it was a deciding factor in most cases, particularly among people who are buying 2nd and 3rd smartphones.
The game now isn't the devices, it's the cloud. Google v. iCloud v. Microsoft Outlook+XBox+whatever else. These days, the device is just your entry point into your cloud of choice. One of the missing pieces I see is book content. Microsoft already made an investment in Barnes and Noble. Today, Amazon announced the MatchBook program which provides either a free or $1 e-book for certain Amazon physical book purchases made as far back as 1995.
This has to sting an already reeling Barnes & Noble. I'm wondering if Microsoft is going to white knight them as well and add another piece to their cloud puzzle?
If you have Android, Tasker works great for this sort of thing. Simply set it up to trigger a profile based on your GPS location.
Parsing please.......
Is this "Google Now" serving 25%......or "Google" now serving 25%.
Jenny McCarthy should be paying huge punitive damages into the public health care system now.
I don't trust either but I can walk away from Facebook.
Yes we want to stick in a world of Apple and Google to be controlling everything. Having more competition is a bad thing... Right?
Most of this anti-Window nonsense, is decades old.
I don't think anyone wants that, but it's hard to root for a company that repeatedly stabs itself in the eye as many time as Microsoft does. While I'm at it, you can throw Blackberry into that pile as well.
Every generation thinks they invented sex.
How many systems are you talking about? If it's not a lot, I would recommend to the proprietors that they just replace the whole lot of them with cheap ChromeOS systems ($250 each if you go for the current Samsungs). That way, you won't be worrying too much about virii, the old folks can still surf matlock.com and you come out looking like a genius.
Communication skills never go out of style and are always in demand.
I can find gazillions of Java or C or Perl or PHP programmers. Heck, I'm sure I can even dig up quite a few PL/I, PL/X, IBM mainframe Assembly or JCL slingers.
But find me that one programmer who can communicate technically to a team of 10-20 programmers and be able to communicate in plain English or in the business language to management and customers and he or she will be a keeper for a long time.
I fear the one programmer who write thousands and thousands of lines of spaghetti code that can be done in hundreds of lines if written correctly. Especially if his program "works" well enough in a demo for some idiot middle management guy to think we should make it into a product to sell.....by next week.
Yeah, that happens here.
For the right price ( $500), I'd be more than happy with a lightweight Android "netbook" sans Windows. I can keep my Windows and Linux systems at the office in our VMWare cloud for software development and use an Android based VNC/RDP or Chrome Remote Desktop to access them. For everything else I typically do, "there's an app for that". To me, having a keyboard on Android would be big plus.
Start to learn how to program for mobile devices - Android & iOS.
It helps to be something more than just a pure software engineer. I'm at a little under the $200K mark (probably 1 or 2 years away) but have gotten steady raises for the past 10 years and moved up in rank considerably. Mostly, I've kept up my software engineering skills, never wandering away from actually "touching code", but I've also built a good reputation for leading other programmers worldwide. It's one thing to get yourself to be a great coding machine, but another skill entirely to get an entire worldwide team of 20-30 coders performing at a high level. This means keeping up your own programming skills so you can speak with some authority, honing communication and interpersonal skills, learning full cycle software development and delivering code that isn't just used by a few people, but is a consumer or business product. It also means working with people who aren't coders - marketing types, lawyers, documentation people, beta testers, support desk people, etc. and being able to explain things clearly and succinctly to all of them.
TL;DR - Work on your soft skills and keep coding too!
.....or any hope of starting/spending time with your family.
Only that most of the products we use at work run on it. At home, I use a combination of Linux, Windows and Android. But there's no need to upgrade any of my current systems beyond Windows 7. I've tried Windows 8 and loathe it. The confusion between Apps and Programs, the mysterious tendency toward fixing things that weren't broken.
The next system I'm considering is the HP X2 Slatebook http://www8.hp.com/us/en/ads/x2/slatebook-x2.html . I'm already own a few Android phones and tablets, am more than happy that I can do what I need to with them. Having a real keyboard on one to me is a great idea.
The best best for Android is Cerberus. Seriously, it does everything that "Find my iPhone" does plus a few things it will never do. It's free today through AppGratis http://www.droid-life.com/2013/06/06/deal-cerberus-lifetime-license-is-free-today-from-appgratis/
If you happen to have a rooted phone, there's even a ROM version which will survive a Factory Reset.
This is going to date me. When I was somewhere between 8 and 10, my dad took me on my day off to the high school where he taught math. In addition to being the math dept chair, he also was the main computer teacher. Back then, "computer" meant a MARK something or other timeshare computer somewhere offsite, if memory serves correct, somewhere at Rutgers U. It was hooked up to the teletype at the high school.
Anyway, dad sat me down, showed me how to use the teletype to write some crude BASIC programs. ("End each line with RETURN, BACKSPACE, RUBOUT, RUBOUT, RUBOUT" - let's see if any of you older kids recognize that) I figured out how to get it to do some basic math problems, adding, and then discovered IF-THEN and looping. So, I taught it to count to 10...printing out the numbers from 1 to 10, one for each line on the teletype. So then, I tried to make the limit 100....more paper. Then, I went to do something more fancy and messed up the end condition checking....and the teletype started spewing paper. My first bug. I figured out how to stop the program after a few panicked seconds. Anyway, I did save the program to punched tape and came back weeks later and was thrilled to see that I could load the program up and it still ran. Science!
Some years later, my dad made sure we were the first family to get a TRS-80. I spent the summer fighting for time with my brother. I wrote a Hangman program from scratch, complete with 500 word dictionary and crude hangman ASCII animation and showed it to my friends. I definitely had the programming bug.
Thanks, Dad. It's (mumble) years later, and I'm celebrating my 29th year in the IT industry. I'm so glad he taught me how to program before I ever learned that "girls don't code".
Shocked. Just shocked to hear this.
Funny thing is, I wonder how many people bought it and immediately discarded the Facebook crap on it. For all it's warts, it was a pretty good phone hardwarewise.
People don't mind being exploited if you give away stuff in exchange for being exploited. Google gives away very good services for email, calendaring, mapping, news consolidation, search, etc. and oh yeah, a mobile OS!
Just being made to feel special isn't enough, as Facebook is starting to find out.
A whole article on this topic without mentioning maybe one of the more historically successful attempts at pulling together voice, chat, offline chat/mail - Skype?
I know it's not perfect but it is definitely the only messenging service that my family all work with - grandma/grandpa from their ancient Dell computers included.