Even worse... Netflix grandfathered in all these old customers at a time when it didn't have a large and growing library of exclusive content that is winning critical acclaim left and right.
Netflix... the 80s schoolyard crack dealer of internet streaming. FOR SHAME!
True story: I used to get DSL service in San Francisco from a CLEC, Earthlink, because I already hated AT&T back then.
One day, my service goes down. Modem lights blinking. I put in a repair request, and the service person tells me that she can verify there is indeed a problem with my line, and someone will take care of it. I go to work. I come home from work and there's a message on my voicemail telling me the problem has been successfully resolved. The lights on my modem are still blinking. Still no service.
I call back and say I still have no service. They say according to their systems, I do. I say I don't. They say the problem must be with my interior wiring. I say, how is there going to be a problem with the interior wiring when nothing has even moved? One day, service; the next day, none. It has to be Earthlink's problem, so could they please send someone out to take a look?
They said no. I said, what? "No. We will not roll a truck, sorry. But if you like, I could quote you a price on our satellite internet service."
It went back and forth like this over a couple more calls, them not budging, until finally I get someone at second-tier tech support. He goes, "You wouldn't happen to have a pair of alligator clips?" Flabbergasted, I said, "Um. You mean a length of phone cable with the ends stripped and a pair of alligator clips attached to the ends? Uh, yes. Yes, I do." He advised me that if I had a power outlet available, I could take my DSL modem out to the phone box on the side of the house and use the alligator clips to find my line. Depending on whether the modem loops up from the box or not, I'd know where the problem is.
So I did. I went out to the box, and sure enough, the modem looped up. And that's how I discovered where the problem was. Because the lines inside the box -- my nice little pair of wires with the Earthlink tag attached to them -- had been cut. Clearly snipped in half with wire cutters.
And that's when I remembered. A few days before my DSL went out, a new neighbor moved in upstairs. What do you do when you move into a new place? You order phone service. They had probably called AT&T to have a new line set up -- maybe even DSL -- and when the AT&T tech came out to the house, he saw my non-AT&T DSL line and he cut it, likely knowing Earthlink wouldn't do a damn thing about it and I'd be forced to switch back to AT&T. (Later, someone explained to me that AT&T's field techs are union and Earthlink's were not. I can't vouch for that but it's another theory.)
So that was my situation. Either I could go with AT&T, which I had already got fed up from dealing with for both home service and business networking. Or I could go with Earthlink, who were obviously competing in a totally hostile market and clearly didn't give a flying fuck about my business, so much so that when they told me they wouldn't repair my line, they helpfully added, "And because you've been a customer for nearly two years now, you won't have to pay any fees for early cancellation."
So I went with Comcast. Fuck DSL, fuck 'em all. And you know what? I know they suck and I've heard all the stories, but for the most part, Comcast hasn't given me any trouble ever since. It's been 10 years now, too.
Oracle has much more than just a database, though. I would be surprised if their database is more than a fraction of their revenue.
Perhaps, for some very large value of "fraction." They don't break out what software is what, but software and the support to go along with it is still definitely the lion's share of their business.
It's possible that VR will fizzle out, but to compare it to 3DTV is showing the extent of your experience with the technology (i.e. zero). The biggest problems VR will face are applications and costs, not whether the technology actually works.
Which was... the exact same problem with 3DTV? I have a 3DTV. Trust me, the technology works quite well. But people didn't want to buy in because it was costly and they didn't see a reason for it. Audiences were already getting bored with 3D movies in theaters by the time the costs of the sets came down. Then they were told they'd have to buy extra sets of battery-powered glasses if they wanted to be able to watch with their families. The 3D sports content never really materialized. The 3D Blu-Rays cost more than the regular ones. Etc.
Similarly, I have tried some of the VR technology -- not Oculus, but a couple others (some still in development). It's impressive. The first time you put one of those headsets on, you will go, "Whoa!" If you're like me, you will proceed to tell many of your friends about it and how neat the experience was. But you will not buy one.
If it takes 22 weeks to obtain replacement thyristors (or any given part) and you haven't stockpiled enough thyristors to cover the expected failures that will occur over the next 22 weeks (plus some for the unexpected failures), you have a management problem.
You should see how long it takes just to fix the escalators. Each time those break down (which seems to happen at least twice a year, at my station) the time to get them back into service is measured in months. Usually much of that time is spent with the escalator partially dismantled, awaiting parts -- so in the meantime they're not even usable as stairs.
Seems like the sensible thing to do is replace the tracks/cars with new. In the mean time replace trains with buses until the project is complete.
This is already being done. The new cars have already been ordered and the first ones should be delivered soon. To make the whole project happen, though, BART plans to float a $3.5 million bond measure, and as soon as people hear that they start complaining that BART should be able to find the money itself, which inevitably leads to bickering about unions.
Adrift and rudderless for years before Marisa Mayer came along, it seems. Remember when Mayer had to abolish Yahoo's work-from-home policy because so many of its employees just couldn't even bother to show up?
They've been developing memristor technology more than 15 years, so hopefully they've finally licked the problems.
Doesn't sound like it. Their world-changing God device known as The Machine is supposed to be based entirely on non-volatile memristor storage. But the first demo units are going to ship based on DRAM.
The HP mouthpiece's excuse? "DRAM essentially is non-volatile as long as the power doesn't go out."
Nah, Apple wants 'em for their mobile graphics chips, mainly. You might see some MIPS in some gadget down the road if the deal does go down, but I can't see Apple throwing away all the investment it's already made in its A* line of ARM chips.
All that bullshit because the FBI wanted to save $15 thousand dollars?
On the other hand, $15,000 is pretty damn cheap for a global marketing campaign. When Cellebrite can't crack the iPhone, the bullshit will get cranked up to fever pitch.
Yeah, but you're not a lawyer and also didn't look it up and read about it in depth so you didn't realize that there are a bunch of caveats and that being "exempt" doesn't mean you're not owed overtime if you work overtime.
It's true I'm not a lawyer, but I also don't know where you got this idea from. Every source I've seen, every HR department, and every lawyer I've spoken to on the subject has told me that "exempt" means exempt – you are not owed overtime pay under the law.
The only issue is that the burden is on your employer to prove that your occupation makes you legitimately exempt.
A new business that isn't a startup is the same as a traditional business; they don't want to pay overtime, and they don't want to get sued for back overtime later if they abuse an employee by not paying overtime just because they're on a salary. By law that salary is only for regular time, and an office worker isn't like a doctor or lawyer where it just might take more hours to finish the work; the company could let them go how after 8 hours, they're fully in charge of the schedule.
That's nice, but Silicon Valley is still in California, and California has rather forward-thinking views on which employees qualify as exempt from overtime.
Microsoft has just confirmed that the update it made to the Windows Store FAQ page was just a mistake and that Windows 10 would continue to support Bitcoin.
I'm guessing that anyone who surprises us with a nuclear detonation, or more probably a radiological attack like a dirty bomb, is going to *tell us that they did it*, because you don't just set off nuclear bombs or dirty bombs and run away and go "tee hee".
Indeed. If you're smart, you detonate a bomb, then wait a few days and put a video out on the internet praising [Name of Middle East Country You Would Like to See Destabilized] for the successful attack.
I was actually one of the people who appreciated the touch screen features of Windows 8, since I had a lot of (free) tablets and touchscreen laptops lying around. The irony is that there was so much backlash against Windows 8 that Windows 10 actually doesn't work as well with touchscreens as Windows 8 did.
Is it really that amazing that a computer could be better at a game that has so many possible moves that it defies the human mind, but one that can be calculated entirely?
The whole point of the exercise is that Go is a problem space that cannot be calculated entirely (at least not efficiently enough to win a game in a reasonable amount of time). Cracking the problem required advanced machine learning techniques (what some people call AI).
How long would a game last with AlphaGo playing against itself?
Actually, it's already been tried. To create AlphaGo, researchers first had the machine study tons and tons of human games. The neural net then continued to learn by playing against itself a few million times.
The truth is, spammers will eventually get around any form of captcha, if it's important enough to them. As long as a human can decipher your captcha, there's always Mechanical Turk.
Slashdot Mirror
The IDE for Android used to be Eclipse, but Google ended that.
True story ... I kinda forgot that Netflix was only charging me $7.99. I thought the price was ten bucks.
My bad.
Even worse ... Netflix grandfathered in all these old customers at a time when it didn't have a large and growing library of exclusive content that is winning critical acclaim left and right.
Netflix ... the 80s schoolyard crack dealer of internet streaming. FOR SHAME!
True story: I used to get DSL service in San Francisco from a CLEC, Earthlink, because I already hated AT&T back then.
One day, my service goes down. Modem lights blinking. I put in a repair request, and the service person tells me that she can verify there is indeed a problem with my line, and someone will take care of it. I go to work. I come home from work and there's a message on my voicemail telling me the problem has been successfully resolved. The lights on my modem are still blinking. Still no service.
I call back and say I still have no service. They say according to their systems, I do. I say I don't. They say the problem must be with my interior wiring. I say, how is there going to be a problem with the interior wiring when nothing has even moved? One day, service; the next day, none. It has to be Earthlink's problem, so could they please send someone out to take a look?
They said no. I said, what? "No. We will not roll a truck, sorry. But if you like, I could quote you a price on our satellite internet service."
It went back and forth like this over a couple more calls, them not budging, until finally I get someone at second-tier tech support. He goes, "You wouldn't happen to have a pair of alligator clips?" Flabbergasted, I said, "Um. You mean a length of phone cable with the ends stripped and a pair of alligator clips attached to the ends? Uh, yes. Yes, I do." He advised me that if I had a power outlet available, I could take my DSL modem out to the phone box on the side of the house and use the alligator clips to find my line. Depending on whether the modem loops up from the box or not, I'd know where the problem is.
So I did. I went out to the box, and sure enough, the modem looped up. And that's how I discovered where the problem was. Because the lines inside the box -- my nice little pair of wires with the Earthlink tag attached to them -- had been cut. Clearly snipped in half with wire cutters.
And that's when I remembered. A few days before my DSL went out, a new neighbor moved in upstairs. What do you do when you move into a new place? You order phone service. They had probably called AT&T to have a new line set up -- maybe even DSL -- and when the AT&T tech came out to the house, he saw my non-AT&T DSL line and he cut it, likely knowing Earthlink wouldn't do a damn thing about it and I'd be forced to switch back to AT&T. (Later, someone explained to me that AT&T's field techs are union and Earthlink's were not. I can't vouch for that but it's another theory.)
So that was my situation. Either I could go with AT&T, which I had already got fed up from dealing with for both home service and business networking. Or I could go with Earthlink, who were obviously competing in a totally hostile market and clearly didn't give a flying fuck about my business, so much so that when they told me they wouldn't repair my line, they helpfully added, "And because you've been a customer for nearly two years now, you won't have to pay any fees for early cancellation."
So I went with Comcast. Fuck DSL, fuck 'em all. And you know what? I know they suck and I've heard all the stories, but for the most part, Comcast hasn't given me any trouble ever since. It's been 10 years now, too.
C# would have been a far worse idea. Fewer developers, libraries, little open source support. Built by the only company more evil than Oracle.
Surprise! Now you have Xamarin.
Er, I mean Microsoft Xamarin.
Oracle has much more than just a database, though. I would be surprised if their database is more than a fraction of their revenue.
Perhaps, for some very large value of "fraction." They don't break out what software is what, but software and the support to go along with it is still definitely the lion's share of their business.
It's possible that VR will fizzle out, but to compare it to 3DTV is showing the extent of your experience with the technology (i.e. zero). The biggest problems VR will face are applications and costs, not whether the technology actually works.
Which was ... the exact same problem with 3DTV? I have a 3DTV. Trust me, the technology works quite well. But people didn't want to buy in because it was costly and they didn't see a reason for it. Audiences were already getting bored with 3D movies in theaters by the time the costs of the sets came down. Then they were told they'd have to buy extra sets of battery-powered glasses if they wanted to be able to watch with their families. The 3D sports content never really materialized. The 3D Blu-Rays cost more than the regular ones. Etc.
Similarly, I have tried some of the VR technology -- not Oculus, but a couple others (some still in development). It's impressive. The first time you put one of those headsets on, you will go, "Whoa!" If you're like me, you will proceed to tell many of your friends about it and how neat the experience was. But you will not buy one.
If it takes 22 weeks to obtain replacement thyristors (or any given part) and you haven't stockpiled enough thyristors to cover the expected failures that will occur over the next 22 weeks (plus some for the unexpected failures), you have a management problem.
You should see how long it takes just to fix the escalators. Each time those break down (which seems to happen at least twice a year, at my station) the time to get them back into service is measured in months. Usually much of that time is spent with the escalator partially dismantled, awaiting parts -- so in the meantime they're not even usable as stairs.
Seems like the sensible thing to do is replace the tracks/cars with new. In the mean time replace trains with buses until the project is complete.
This is already being done. The new cars have already been ordered and the first ones should be delivered soon. To make the whole project happen, though, BART plans to float a $3.5 million bond measure, and as soon as people hear that they start complaining that BART should be able to find the money itself, which inevitably leads to bickering about unions.
This is for the Chinese government, not the Chinese consumer.
And no one is expected to develop software for the Chinese government?
Yahoo does, and they're almost as effective as HP's board.
Adrift and rudderless for years before Marisa Mayer came along, it seems. Remember when Mayer had to abolish Yahoo's work-from-home policy because so many of its employees just couldn't even bother to show up?
They've been developing memristor technology more than 15 years, so hopefully they've finally licked the problems.
Doesn't sound like it. Their world-changing God device known as The Machine is supposed to be based entirely on non-volatile memristor storage. But the first demo units are going to ship based on DRAM.
The HP mouthpiece's excuse? "DRAM essentially is non-volatile as long as the power doesn't go out."
Nah, Apple wants 'em for their mobile graphics chips, mainly. You might see some MIPS in some gadget down the road if the deal does go down, but I can't see Apple throwing away all the investment it's already made in its A* line of ARM chips.
All that bullshit because the FBI wanted to save $15 thousand dollars?
On the other hand, $15,000 is pretty damn cheap for a global marketing campaign. When Cellebrite can't crack the iPhone, the bullshit will get cranked up to fever pitch.
Yeah, but you're not a lawyer and also didn't look it up and read about it in depth so you didn't realize that there are a bunch of caveats and that being "exempt" doesn't mean you're not owed overtime if you work overtime.
It's true I'm not a lawyer, but I also don't know where you got this idea from. Every source I've seen, every HR department, and every lawyer I've spoken to on the subject has told me that "exempt" means exempt – you are not owed overtime pay under the law.
The only issue is that the burden is on your employer to prove that your occupation makes you legitimately exempt.
A new business that isn't a startup is the same as a traditional business; they don't want to pay overtime, and they don't want to get sued for back overtime later if they abuse an employee by not paying overtime just because they're on a salary. By law that salary is only for regular time, and an office worker isn't like a doctor or lawyer where it just might take more hours to finish the work; the company could let them go how after 8 hours, they're fully in charge of the schedule.
That's nice, but Silicon Valley is still in California, and California has rather forward-thinking views on which employees qualify as exempt from overtime.
Yup, didn't get an account until they added moderation.
Wha--? Seems to me they've had moderation as long as I've been here, unless I'm remembering wrong.
The story has now been updated to read:
Microsoft has just confirmed that the update it made to the Windows Store FAQ page was just a mistake and that Windows 10 would continue to support Bitcoin.
...... intellectual property is by requirement public knowledge.
No it isn't. I don't have to show anybody my copyrighted code.
I'm guessing that anyone who surprises us with a nuclear detonation, or more probably a radiological attack like a dirty bomb, is going to *tell us that they did it*, because you don't just set off nuclear bombs or dirty bombs and run away and go "tee hee".
Indeed. If you're smart, you detonate a bomb, then wait a few days and put a video out on the internet praising [Name of Middle East Country You Would Like to See Destabilized] for the successful attack.
Win10 is maybe better for touch screens
I was actually one of the people who appreciated the touch screen features of Windows 8, since I had a lot of (free) tablets and touchscreen laptops lying around. The irony is that there was so much backlash against Windows 8 that Windows 10 actually doesn't work as well with touchscreens as Windows 8 did.
Is it really that amazing that a computer could be better at a game that has so many possible moves that it defies the human mind, but one that can be calculated entirely?
The whole point of the exercise is that Go is a problem space that cannot be calculated entirely (at least not efficiently enough to win a game in a reasonable amount of time). Cracking the problem required advanced machine learning techniques (what some people call AI).
How long would a game last with AlphaGo playing against itself?
Actually, it's already been tried. To create AlphaGo, researchers first had the machine study tons and tons of human games. The neural net then continued to learn by playing against itself a few million times.
The truth is, spammers will eventually get around any form of captcha, if it's important enough to them. As long as a human can decipher your captcha, there's always Mechanical Turk.