I viewed the China censorship affair as a large corporation ignores a country's laws because it was powerful enough to be above the government.
Another deluded fool thinks a business is more dangerous than a authoritarian state. The current government of China is a long term threat to the freedom of the world in a way that no mere business can ever be.
But haven't you heard? Google is not like other companies: It has it's own NAVY (http://www.theonion.com/audio/google-steps-in-to-help-us-with-google-navy,12948/ and http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/08/09/06/1755216.shtml) and Airforce (http://seoblackhat.com/2008/10/24/google-air-force-alpha/)
You're still out of date. I have the latest bleeding edge version of chrome. I'm running Chrome: living standard edition.
I thought it was "Chrome: In Living Color Edition" where the splash screen is a young Jim Carey who gesticulates wildly as he imitates Kirk. This will be followed by Chrome: Saturday Night Live edition.
Slashdot users debunk this scheme as stupid in 5... 4... 3...
Nah, it's a great plan. Can we have the expiry date based on image quality? Since most Facebook images are a blurry mess, they should all expire before anyone gets to see 'em. No more privacy scandals! Faster Facebook pae loads. And this X-Pire guy can continue to just sell his rubbish and slashvertise all he likes. Everyone wins.
- On the trip use a USB hard drive image tank or netbook for backup. Back up to multiple drives even while on your trip. If you have multiple drives with you, erasing and reusing cards is no big deal.
- When you get home you should have 3 copies. 1 main online accessible copy. 1 backup local copy powered off. 1 off site. Ideally you'd use 3 different kinds of media, but since the only large convenient media is hard disk buy different brands (no one wants to copy terrabytes around 1 DVD or Bluray at a time!)
- A 4th copy at a second off site location for irreplaceables like wedding photos
- Monitor hard disk temps via SMART. Don't leave this step out. I learn this when I found my WD Elements drives were cooking in the summer at 75 degrees celcius when doing entire drive copies. I managed to bring temps down to mid 40s by spacing the drives out a little more and using a room fan to circulate air
- If you really care about your images not changing over time you'll keep checksum files (md5sum should be fine). Too many pieces of software will alter the EXIF data on even read-only files.
- Plan to transfer onto new media every 3 to 5 years depending on usage. Do not wipe old media. 5 year old hard disks aren't worth much. Your photos are.
That was my point - it was sarcasm. The status bar was never bloat, hence my amusing comparison to "balancing out" the bloat by removing it to make room for Pandora.
Sorry for missing the sarcasm. Dangers of posting too early in the morning.
P.S.=> His background, Nazi Scientist, didn't stop him from being utilized in the name of United States Progress in Sciences & Military applications... why? Because he was a pre-eminent scientist in the field of rocketry so, especially at that time, pretty much everyone wanted what he was good at so, there you are! apk
It was a question of not letting the enemy have them instead.
Thing is, replace Soviet Union with Taliban and you still have the same issues. It's just not being handled as intelligently anymore. Instead we're letting political correctness run rife.
Ok, so in the spirit of "removing bloat" Pandora is now a feature, but to balance it out, the status bar has to go!
Ridiculous! The status bar is not and never was bloat. It's basic functionality. What are you going to get rid of next? Keyboard input?
I can't believe the lengths some people will go to justify awful decisions. The bottom line is this: If you continue to force changes on people that they don't want, they'll either revert to an older version temporarily and go to another piece of software, or they'll just bite the bullet and go for that bit of software. I install Firefox because until recently (Awfulbar!!!) the browser was very sensible and the extensions gave me extra functionality. My only reason for bothering anymore (over IE, since I'm a windows user) is the extensions. Every new version breaks them and leaves behind another set of useful extensions (certainly many good extensions I use don't work with 4 beta 9) so pretty soon it looks like I'll have no reason to use Firefox.
At this point, Mozilla can't win no matter what they do. If they take features away and put them in addons, the people who want everything (like me:) ) complain. If they add features in, the people who want all the features they in particular don't need to be addons complain. They're in a no-win situation.
NONSENSE. They could stop forcing changes on the user - like that pile of junk "Awesomebar" - and at least retain the option (without having to install additional software!!!) to have old functionality like the old address bar and the status bar. No one is forcing them to remove features. People would complain a lot less if the developers weren't so arrogant and left the options in the user's hands. They could choose whatever default behaviour they wanted, and time would tell if the choice was right based on what percentage of users changed the defaults.
Sure, some people will always complain no matter what you decide, but that's nothing new and it's not unique to Firefox. Giving up and saying you can't win is just a pathetic excuse not to put in the effort of trying to do well.
The way Firefox is going, they might as well just ship wget with addon functionality and tell everyone to write their own extensions if they want "extra" features like a GUI or mouse support.
I bet if they did, they'd still force the user to use "Awesomebar" unless they installed an addon. I propose they rename their browser Awesomefox - that will make up for any shortcomings in usability and stability.
So I should blame the water company if I install my plumbing wrong?
No you should blame your plumber if they install your plumbing wrong. You should blame the water company if they install the plumbing service connecting to your house wrong. Unless you are in fact the plumber, it's not your fault.
Also last I checked your water service didn't change the size and standards of pipes every couple of decades.
Don't live in the US, and don't know how Netflix operates. But the way I see it...
A lot of people won't blink at an extra $1 per DVD to hire movies in a way that is convenient to them. Not everyone has high speed unlimited broadband. If peoplewant physical media and postage they can pay for it. A $0.95 fee per DVD probably won't phase anyone, where as $700M per year might be too much for a company to absorb.
However, I do wonder how many DVDs are lost or damaged and what the loss from that is...that might make the DVDs more expensive.
There is also the environmental factor. I'm not sure how much fossil fuel is being used and greenhouse gas produced shuffling DVDs around.
I hope you're not suggesting that having a family means you shouldn't expect to be able to make a decent living. The drive to find a mate and raise a family is primal. Blame evolution if you really think assigning blame is necessary.
Employers should have a duty to their employee not to use them up and spit them out slave labour style. The relationship should be symbiotic.
There are things a family man can offer a young buck can't. Like stability, level headedness and the experience to know that sometimes you have to do a job even if it's unpleasant and you're not at your best.
Senior devs find it difficult to keep up with new technologies because the company is too busy milking the existing skillset. They're not going to excuse you from your current job just because it's a dead-end leading to career stagnation; after all, they really need somebody to do it, for the moment.
It's hard finding time to learn a new language when you're flat out at work with the "existing skills" and then come home and find you have to do a metric ton of housework and child-rearing and handy-work. Meanwhile the kid's got a choice between yet another session of World of Warcraft, TV and reading a coding book for fun. He's bored while the old timer is exhausted.
If you do your job correctly, then everything runs smoothly and you don't get any attention (or credit) at all. But as soon as something goes wrong, it's obviously because YOU FUCKED UP, and you get LOTS of attention! Other than money, can anyone cite an upside to working in IT?
If you can't answer that question yourself, and your circumstances allow, perhaps you should look into a career change.
Every job has it's downs. That's why it's a job not a hobby, and people get paid to do it. But if you can't find ANYTHING you like about your job a career change before it's too late might be the answer. Once you've got a family, the idea of changing and leaving your family without an income (esp. if you're the only bread winner) becomes less feasible.
No, Captain Cynic, they're not. In the US, the federal government was given the power to issue them so that inventors could be free to innovate without having to worry about their ideas being stolen as fast as they could be created. Without patents, the rich would actually ALWAYS have the upper hand once they get access to a new product or its design documents. The problem is not with patents themselves, but with the length of time they are in force. The duration is far too long with most things.
All nice in theory, but the system doesn't work. It just gives inventors the incentive to be lazy and sloppy going to market, withhold the invention (as you point out almost indefinitely), and suppress other people's inventions if they are similar.
Imagine instead a system where an inventor had no control over his invention, with anyone permitted to copy, but if the inventor can show his invention was used, he is entitled to some portion of the profits. Suddenly everyone is competing to produce the product efficiently, other inventions are permitted. The inventor is paid. Everyone wins.
I can highly recommend Ben's book "Bad Science". I bought a copy for each of my family members for the holidays. It gives a very realistic overview of the current state of medical research, both from the "mainstream" and "alternative" medicine worlds.
Despite the standup routine, this story doesn't belong in idle.
My prof was talking about patents and using them as a resource for generating new ideas. The original intent of patents. He had to warn us though because companies will file multiple patents that vary slightly, but in the end don't work. They are there to hide the actual patent. Talk about side stepping the whole concept of why patents exist and is contributing to the backlog.
I could have sworn patents were there to stiffle innovation so that people get rich.
Slashdot Mirror
I viewed the China censorship affair as a large corporation ignores a country's laws because it was powerful enough to be above the government.
Another deluded fool thinks a business is more dangerous than a authoritarian state. The current government of China is a long term threat to the freedom of the world in a way that no mere business can ever be.
But haven't you heard? Google is not like other companies: It has it's own NAVY (http://www.theonion.com/audio/google-steps-in-to-help-us-with-google-navy,12948/ and http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/08/09/06/1755216.shtml) and Airforce (http://seoblackhat.com/2008/10/24/google-air-force-alpha/)
...and that show's winning awards and doing just fine. Piss weak excuses from British fat cat fools. You gonna cede the battlefield to the yanks now?
You're still out of date. I have the latest bleeding edge version of chrome. I'm running Chrome: living standard edition.
I thought it was "Chrome: In Living Color Edition" where the splash screen is a young Jim Carey who gesticulates wildly as he imitates Kirk. This will be followed by Chrome: Saturday Night Live edition.
Slashdot users debunk this scheme as stupid in 5... 4... 3...
Nah, it's a great plan. Can we have the expiry date based on image quality? Since most Facebook images are a blurry mess, they should all expire before anyone gets to see 'em. No more privacy scandals! Faster Facebook pae loads. And this X-Pire guy can continue to just sell his rubbish and slashvertise all he likes. Everyone wins.
- Almost forgot. Plan to update your backups at least every few months and after major events or trips.
Nope. Not good enough.
- On the trip use a USB hard drive image tank or netbook for backup. Back up to multiple drives even while on your trip. If you have multiple drives with you, erasing and reusing cards is no big deal.
- When you get home you should have 3 copies. 1 main online accessible copy. 1 backup local copy powered off. 1 off site. Ideally you'd use 3 different kinds of media, but since the only large convenient media is hard disk buy different brands (no one wants to copy terrabytes around 1 DVD or Bluray at a time!)
- A 4th copy at a second off site location for irreplaceables like wedding photos
- Monitor hard disk temps via SMART. Don't leave this step out. I learn this when I found my WD Elements drives were cooking in the summer at 75 degrees celcius when doing entire drive copies. I managed to bring temps down to mid 40s by spacing the drives out a little more and using a room fan to circulate air
- If you really care about your images not changing over time you'll keep checksum files (md5sum should be fine). Too many pieces of software will alter the EXIF data on even read-only files.
- Plan to transfer onto new media every 3 to 5 years depending on usage. Do not wipe old media. 5 year old hard disks aren't worth much. Your photos are.
Schmidt Happens
It's just another Page in amongst the ranks of Google's history.
That's a threat?...I for one am fine buying elsewhere. Motorolla can rot for all I care. Bye bye.
That was my point - it was sarcasm. The status bar was never bloat, hence my amusing comparison to "balancing out" the bloat by removing it to make room for Pandora.
Sorry for missing the sarcasm. Dangers of posting too early in the morning.
See subject line, & this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
APK
P.S.=> His background, Nazi Scientist, didn't stop him from being utilized in the name of United States Progress in Sciences & Military applications... why? Because he was a pre-eminent scientist in the field of rocketry so, especially at that time, pretty much everyone wanted what he was good at so, there you are! apk
It was a question of not letting the enemy have them instead.
Thing is, replace Soviet Union with Taliban and you still have the same issues. It's just not being handled as intelligently anymore. Instead we're letting political correctness run rife.
Sort of, some were ex-Nazis, but point taken. That was the whole point of operation paperclip.
They were Nazis but they got better? ;-)
"Elastic Beenstalk" sounds like someone's been smoking too much pot.
Ok, so in the spirit of "removing bloat" Pandora is now a feature, but to balance it out, the status bar has to go!
Ridiculous! The status bar is not and never was bloat. It's basic functionality. What are you going to get rid of next? Keyboard input?
I can't believe the lengths some people will go to justify awful decisions. The bottom line is this: If you continue to force changes on people that they don't want, they'll either revert to an older version temporarily and go to another piece of software, or they'll just bite the bullet and go for that bit of software. I install Firefox because until recently (Awfulbar!!!) the browser was very sensible and the extensions gave me extra functionality. My only reason for bothering anymore (over IE, since I'm a windows user) is the extensions. Every new version breaks them and leaves behind another set of useful extensions (certainly many good extensions I use don't work with 4 beta 9) so pretty soon it looks like I'll have no reason to use Firefox.
At this point, Mozilla can't win no matter what they do. If they take features away and put them in addons, the people who want everything (like me :) ) complain. If they add features in, the people who want all the features they in particular don't need to be addons complain. They're in a no-win situation.
NONSENSE. They could stop forcing changes on the user - like that pile of junk "Awesomebar" - and at least retain the option (without having to install additional software!!!) to have old functionality like the old address bar and the status bar. No one is forcing them to remove features. People would complain a lot less if the developers weren't so arrogant and left the options in the user's hands. They could choose whatever default behaviour they wanted, and time would tell if the choice was right based on what percentage of users changed the defaults.
Sure, some people will always complain no matter what you decide, but that's nothing new and it's not unique to Firefox. Giving up and saying you can't win is just a pathetic excuse not to put in the effort of trying to do well.
The way Firefox is going, they might as well just ship wget with addon functionality and tell everyone to write their own extensions if they want "extra" features like a GUI or mouse support.
I bet if they did, they'd still force the user to use "Awesomebar" unless they installed an addon. I propose they rename their browser Awesomefox - that will make up for any shortcomings in usability and stability.
So I should blame the water company if I install my plumbing wrong?
No you should blame your plumber if they install your plumbing wrong. You should blame the water company if they install the plumbing service connecting to your house wrong. Unless you are in fact the plumber, it's not your fault.
Also last I checked your water service didn't change the size and standards of pipes every couple of decades.
Don't live in the US, and don't know how Netflix operates. But the way I see it...
A lot of people won't blink at an extra $1 per DVD to hire movies in a way that is convenient to them. Not everyone has high speed unlimited broadband. If peoplewant physical media and postage they can pay for it. A $0.95 fee per DVD probably won't phase anyone, where as $700M per year might be too much for a company to absorb.
However, I do wonder how many DVDs are lost or damaged and what the loss from that is...that might make the DVDs more expensive.
There is also the environmental factor. I'm not sure how much fossil fuel is being used and greenhouse gas produced shuffling DVDs around.
Fair enough, but whose fault is that?
I hope you're not suggesting that having a family means you shouldn't expect to be able to make a decent living. The drive to find a mate and raise a family is primal. Blame evolution if you really think assigning blame is necessary.
Employers should have a duty to their employee not to use them up and spit them out slave labour style. The relationship should be symbiotic.
There are things a family man can offer a young buck can't. Like stability, level headedness and the experience to know that sometimes you have to do a job even if it's unpleasant and you're not at your best.
Senior devs find it difficult to keep up with new technologies because the company is too busy milking the existing skillset. They're not going to excuse you from your current job just because it's a dead-end leading to career stagnation; after all, they really need somebody to do it, for the moment.
It's hard finding time to learn a new language when you're flat out at work with the "existing skills" and then come home and find you have to do a metric ton of housework and child-rearing and handy-work. Meanwhile the kid's got a choice between yet another session of World of Warcraft, TV and reading a coding book for fun. He's bored while the old timer is exhausted.
If you do your job correctly, then everything runs smoothly and you don't get any attention (or credit) at all. But as soon as something goes wrong, it's obviously because YOU FUCKED UP, and you get LOTS of attention! Other than money, can anyone cite an upside to working in IT?
If you can't answer that question yourself, and your circumstances allow, perhaps you should look into a career change.
Every job has it's downs. That's why it's a job not a hobby, and people get paid to do it. But if you can't find ANYTHING you like about your job a career change before it's too late might be the answer. Once you've got a family, the idea of changing and leaving your family without an income (esp. if you're the only bread winner) becomes less feasible.
The same as every other department. The only difference between IT and accounting is the self-pity in IT.
...and the ratio of women to men.
What you say?
No, Captain Cynic, they're not. In the US, the federal government was given the power to issue them so that inventors could be free to innovate without having to worry about their ideas being stolen as fast as they could be created. Without patents, the rich would actually ALWAYS have the upper hand once they get access to a new product or its design documents. The problem is not with patents themselves, but with the length of time they are in force. The duration is far too long with most things.
All nice in theory, but the system doesn't work. It just gives inventors the incentive to be lazy and sloppy going to market, withhold the invention (as you point out almost indefinitely), and suppress other people's inventions if they are similar.
Imagine instead a system where an inventor had no control over his invention, with anyone permitted to copy, but if the inventor can show his invention was used, he is entitled to some portion of the profits. Suddenly everyone is competing to produce the product efficiently, other inventions are permitted. The inventor is paid. Everyone wins.
I can highly recommend Ben's book "Bad Science". I bought a copy for each of my family members for the holidays. It gives a very realistic overview of the current state of medical research, both from the "mainstream" and "alternative" medicine worlds.
Despite the standup routine, this story doesn't belong in idle.
My prof was talking about patents and using them as a resource for generating new ideas. The original intent of patents. He had to warn us though because companies will file multiple patents that vary slightly, but in the end don't work. They are there to hide the actual patent. Talk about side stepping the whole concept of why patents exist and is contributing to the backlog.
I could have sworn patents were there to stiffle innovation so that people get rich.