These companies are only interested in how it affects their bottom line. They can bring in H1B visa workers cheaper than they can hire American workers. This keeps downward pressure on salaries in the tech sector. Its about time this artificial suppression of tech workers' salaries was curbed and the greedy super-rich companies stop taking food, opportunity and jobs from the American workers' mouth.
So much for "green" power. I'm all for it, really, but let us not be deceived that "green" means at no cost. There is a real cost to everything. Tens of millions of birds (and bats) are killed the world over annually the world over. The Altamont wind farm in California alone has killed 2,900 Golden Eagles since it opened, not to mention other bird species. Be informed. Here's one of many links to information: http://savetheeaglesinternatio...
I have, for some time now, been wrestling with the urge to cut the Netflix cord. The catalog has shrunk, the caliber of the movies and programs is about 80% "filler" - its just plain garbage. I think that maybe its just me - there is almost nothing in the catalog that I want to watch any more - and I am multiligual - I can choose from Swedish, German, French, English, Danish and Spanish language movies. For those who watch only a single language their selection is even more limited. I'm pretty much disgusted and even if it were free it is really difficult to find anything worth investing my time to watch. Truly, were it not for my wife who watches TV a little more than I do, I would simply cut the cord and just pay for a movie that I want to watch every now and then. The only thing that Netflix has going for them is that they don't assault me with advertising. Period. I think I'm just going to cut the cord and send the message. Its not about the $10 per month - its about the diet of pure garbage in they serve up. I can absolutely live without it.
They may be very fashionable and ergonomic, but good luck arriving at your intended destination if they use Apple Maps for navigation. At least you'll get lost in style:-). The graybeards reading this will remember that for decades there has been a comic narrative going around about "what if UNIX/LINUX, Microsoft and Apple made cars instead of software?" It was something about the UNIX car arrived, still in its crate, and was delivered to your driveway with no tools or instructions and you were on your own from there. The Microsoft car would crash numerous times a day without any explanation - closing and reopening the windows would somehow make it work again. The Apple cars looked stylish and ran smoothly but they only worked on about 20% of the roads. You can google it if you're of a mind.
So let me see if I understand the sheer genius of this move: we're going to be legislated into reducing millions of acres of food crops while millions the world over are starving, reduce those millions of food acres to fuel additives and then burn them to increase greenhouse gasses. Brilliant!
I guess that the wall street greed gravy train has screeched to a halt. Wall street and Washington D.C. have been in each others' pockets for so long and now they fear that they can't just buy all rulings to be in their favor and conduct themselves sans accountability. The greed of the few just isn't as lucrative as it was before if the Washington swamp gets drained. It will still be the most lucrative tech economy on the planet, just not as obscenely so. Investors; grow up, stop whining and have a dram of couth toward the common man - at least, let them have the crumbs of your table.
Climate change is happening and has always happened since the beginning of time. Parts of the earth that were desert are now seas and vice versa. Ice ages have come and gone and will continue to do so. These cycles of climate change happened before mankind came along and will happen long after mankind is gone but there is no disputing that man is contributing to the current cycle of climate change. Generally, the cycles are so long (in time) that they're not easily recognized, but mankind has accelerated the change through industry and environmental disruption.
It is important, though, to understand _the other side of the equation_. We've been using coal to heat and power our homes, for instance, along with other fuels. If we did not use coal, how many millions of acres of trees would we have to burn to provide the same heat to the same number of homes? There's such a hue and cry about GMOs (and I believe there is GMO abuse, so I'm not defending that) but GMOs allow 1 acre of land to render double or triple the amount of non-GMO crop. Should we then not have GMOs and instead clear three times as much forest to grow crops to feed the growing population of the world? Which would be more catastrophic?
So, my point is, yes, mankind is contributing to climate change, but its happening with or without us and if we didn't do the things we are doing that contribute to climate change, doing something different would also have a negative effect, resulting in changes. If we want to eliminate the negative effects of mankind on our environment, including climate then we must eliminate mankind. If we want to reduce mankind's impact, we must reduce the population of mankind. Its simple arithmetic.
The naysayers, pessimists and alarmists seem to make all the headlines all the time but there are plenty of things happening that are cause for optimism. It's okay to raise the alarm about bad things happening but we need to balance those with acceptance of the good things that are happening all the time lest we wring our hands in dispair and resort to wailing and slashing our wrists. There is plenty of research, history a literature out there for those who are truly interested in the facts rather than being susceptible to only one-sided and incomplete context. If you're willing to be enlightened substantially and not just accept all the bad news as the only news I can recommend so great reading from a famous author, historian and researcher, Matt Ridley. As a starting point, read his book called "The Rational Optimist" - it'll give you a much needed perspective in this deluge of pessimism we're all subject to.
Slashdot has been one of the few places I have been able to go for decades to get news of all kinds, with a focus on tech. I have been so please to not see it turn into the usual flame-wars that most other forums are. Until now. This is not the place for political commentary. If one person is allowed to make thinly disguised politically motivated posts then others will too until this forum descends into just another rant forum where empty vessels make a lot of noise.
Version 4.3 of Skype for Linux (pre MS buyout) at least supports video and audio. MS has no sense of shame pushing an "updated" version of Skype for Linux with less functionality than the ancient version 4.3.0.37. "The more things change, the more things _____________________". You fill in the blanks.
One of the presidential candidates has promised they would fix the student loan crisis upon becoming president. If Amazon has some precognition that this candidate will likely become the next president (and I believe they do) and the president-elect does what they promised (and I believe that they will), or that there's an onerous interest hike and regulation in the works (more likely than not) then there's no big money left in student loans and they pulled out.
Wow. Tunnel-vision. For millions of years the climate on earth has been changing. Ice ages come and go (all without the assistance of humans) - warming and cooling cycles have been happening for millennia. The geological evidence is irrefutable. The authors are correct - as the industrial revolution has exploded, so has the human contribution to temperature rise. But in the history of temperature rise and fall of the earth it is characteristic, not exceptional and therefore not a finding worthy of any alarm. It's just part of the natural cycle.
This is *not* a politically-motivated post, as it should not be, but really? 5G? Who said that (supposedly "my") government could spend $400M of *my* money (from taxes) to give the poor, starving cell carriers another, faster product to gouge consumers with? There are any number of better ways to spend $400M in the USA today. Its pretty disgusting.
I think that DevOps was dreamed up by a bunch of bean-counters (CIOs, CFOs, Accountants, etc.) to reduce headcount and make the developers (the "Dev" part) be responsible also for deployment and operation (the "Ops" part) of the infrastructure and systems. Because, they argue, that Developers can deploy code, but Operations personnel cannot develop applications. It was doomed to fail from the outset. Any decent software developer who is an analytical, creative and disciplined designer and writer of computer programs views the deployment of code and the ongoing maintenance of the systems that run it as a janitorial chore. They don't want to do it. Its a different mindset. Likewise the 'Ops' folks love the infrastructure, spinning things up and watching them hum along - they breath life into that code for the end users and keep the users happy. They are different mindsets and different skill sets. And different talents and temperaments. Developers *must* be risk-takers to innovate or rise above anything above mediocre. Quite the opposite is true of the Ops folks who, while no less important than the developers, cannot gamble and take risks - they thrive on "uptime", no exceptions and nothing out of the ordinary. Ops people often like to dabble and develop tools and utilities to help them do their job, and they do it expertly, but they don't want to maintain 50000, 100000 or 2000000 lines of ever-evolving source code.
A scientist that develops a product - a cosmetic, a glass cleaning fluid, whatever - doesn't want to be trudging the streets banging on doors to sell it - they want to be developing the next product. The salesperson on the other hand doesn't want to be slaving for years with no payoff to develop a product - they instead want to be on the streets immediately engaging people to consume the product with the least effort, time invested and risk - they want predictable and near term results. They are by nature and design different.
Developers don't want the chore, boredom and rigor of the Ops folks and Ops folks don't want the uncertainty and unpredictable outcomes and challenges that Developers face. It is a fantasy in the mind of naive bean-counters ignorant of the temperament, personality, mindset, skill set, likes and dislikes of the essential distinct disciplines of software development and software deployment and maintenance. It's just not true that they can be exceptionally well done by the same individual and sustained at that level. I could be wrong, but I don't believe that when you take any two related entities and reduce them to a common denominator that the quality of either entity is elevated above its initial state, nor that the quality of the whole is greater than the sum of its two constituent parts. The final consumer then, of the common denominator, is inexorably receiving an inferior product.
The DevOps fallacy might spin well in a boardroom for a while but eventually it will show on the bottom line as the quality of product and service decline and the personnel turnover increase.
Climate has been changing radically, warming, cooling and everything else in between since earth had an atmosphere. Who could possibly imagine that just because humans are so populous now that the laws of millions of years of nature would suddenly stop? We really, really don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Earth, biological life and climate changes existed long before we showed up and they will exist long after we disappear.
When we have a cashless society we have slavery. Anyone who has deposited an out of town check has already discovered that you don't have the money right away. Oh, the bank where you deposited it has it that night. But you can't have it for up to 10 working days. This is called the "float". Banks "float" huge sums of money daily - your money - and lend it back to you and others at exorbitant interest rates. The banks, of course, keep those (up to 29% annually of the amount borrowed) interest collections. You can already, in the USA, transfer money only 10 times per month in the USA - even between your own accounts at the same bank. So already, you don't own your money and can't do with it what you please. You earned it. You've already paid taxes on your earning, but you still don't actually own what's left to do with as you please. You have restrictions on how much you can draw at a time etc. etc. Your money can be confiscated, blocked from usage and be divided by 1,000 overnight. Just ask anyone who lives in Argentina. You can literally go to bed a wealthy person, having worked fervently and saved your whole life, and wake up in the morning where every $100 you had in the bank is now only 10 cents. When your money is *completely* controlled electronically you are at the mercy of your government and the banks. Totally. You are effectively a hostage, if not a slave. I know, I've lived it already.
As long as the earth has existed there have been warming and cooling cycles and we've only been recording them for a short while. The alarmists and pessimists that make the most noise insult our intelligence by disseminating (sometimes deliberately) incomplete information and promote their pet conclusions based on that incomplete information. Humans, with the best of intentions and complete information, are still prone to arrive at flawed conclusions because we're only human. How much more prone to flawed conclusions with *incomplete* information? Most people don't have the time to invest to research these enormously complex subjects so read a couple of books and articles on each side of every argument and form your own opinion. Easily said, but when I went about trying to find a book by a reputable author and researcher that did not simply parrot the "alarm du jour" of "global warming" I had a really tough time finding anything. For one terrifying moment I thought that maybe there isn't any published counterpoint to the alarmists and that all of life on earth would perish in the next two centuries. Googling and YouTube eventually lead me to one such book by a well known author called Matt Ridley - "The Rational Optimist". I'm still working my way through the second half of it but it will open your eyes to a lot of things (including global warming) and give you genuine reason for optimism. Pick it up - you'll be glad you did. Disclaimer: I have no interest in the book, the publisher and don't have any connection to the author. You will read and learn a whole lot of stuff you didn't know - I did. The more you know, the greater the probability you'll form a realistic opinion on the subject.
Learning to use chopsticks might not be useful every day to the average Anglo-Saxon diner, but the dexterity acquired by proficiency in their use might help a surgeon or EMT have a better success rate. I don't care if my doctor consumes Asian food or not but I care that his skills be the best possible for very obvious reasons. There are many tools available to improve mental acuity - mathematics is one such tool. Algebra helps develop, among other things, the ability to think in the abstract and develop or hone logical thinking and problem solving. At the same time, I do believe that certain curricula are loaded with irrelevant requirements that extend the duration of study for graduation solely to support greater revenues for the institution.
The possibility of a good paying job in software development when they graduate college. Maybe even with the company paying off their student loans for them.
Instead of the chance to compete against low-balling H1B applicants...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it won't be long before politicians are replaced by AI - in fact, AI is probably *already* smarter ;-)
Yes, I agree, it is BIG NEWS when a Linux distro has any kind of problem because it almost never happens. MS outages, not so much.
San Francisco has a massive network outage - I must've missed your post about that.
Come back after you grow up @msmash.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/h...
Yes, I agree, it is BIG NEWS when a Linux distro has any kind of problem because it almost never happens. MS outages, not so much.
San Francisco has a massive network outage - I must've missed your post about that.
Come back after you grow up @msmash.
Stop it. There are plenty of places to express your political point of view - slashdot is not one of those.
Please stop it. There are plenty of places to express your political point of view - slashdot is not one of those.
These companies are only interested in how it affects their bottom line. They can bring in H1B visa workers cheaper than they can hire American workers. This keeps downward pressure on salaries in the tech sector. Its about time this artificial suppression of tech workers' salaries was curbed and the greedy super-rich companies stop taking food, opportunity and jobs from the American workers' mouth.
So much for "green" power. I'm all for it, really, but let us not be deceived that "green" means at no cost. There is a real cost to everything. Tens of millions of birds (and bats) are killed the world over annually the world over. The Altamont wind farm in California alone has killed 2,900 Golden Eagles since it opened, not to mention other bird species. Be informed. Here's one of many links to information: http://savetheeaglesinternatio...
I have, for some time now, been wrestling with the urge to cut the Netflix cord. The catalog has shrunk, the caliber of the movies and programs is about 80% "filler" - its just plain garbage. I think that maybe its just me - there is almost nothing in the catalog that I want to watch any more - and I am multiligual - I can choose from Swedish, German, French, English, Danish and Spanish language movies. For those who watch only a single language their selection is even more limited. I'm pretty much disgusted and even if it were free it is really difficult to find anything worth investing my time to watch. Truly, were it not for my wife who watches TV a little more than I do, I would simply cut the cord and just pay for a movie that I want to watch every now and then. The only thing that Netflix has going for them is that they don't assault me with advertising. Period. I think I'm just going to cut the cord and send the message. Its not about the $10 per month - its about the diet of pure garbage in they serve up. I can absolutely live without it.
They may be very fashionable and ergonomic, but good luck arriving at your intended destination if they use Apple Maps for navigation. At least you'll get lost in style :-). The graybeards reading this will remember that for decades there has been a comic narrative going around about "what if UNIX/LINUX, Microsoft and Apple made cars instead of software?" It was something about the UNIX car arrived, still in its crate, and was delivered to your driveway with no tools or instructions and you were on your own from there. The Microsoft car would crash numerous times a day without any explanation - closing and reopening the windows would somehow make it work again. The Apple cars looked stylish and ran smoothly but they only worked on about 20% of the roads. You can google it if you're of a mind.
So let me see if I understand the sheer genius of this move: we're going to be legislated into reducing millions of acres of food crops while millions the world over are starving, reduce those millions of food acres to fuel additives and then burn them to increase greenhouse gasses. Brilliant!
I guess that the wall street greed gravy train has screeched to a halt. Wall street and Washington D.C. have been in each others' pockets for so long and now they fear that they can't just buy all rulings to be in their favor and conduct themselves sans accountability. The greed of the few just isn't as lucrative as it was before if the Washington swamp gets drained. It will still be the most lucrative tech economy on the planet, just not as obscenely so. Investors; grow up, stop whining and have a dram of couth toward the common man - at least, let them have the crumbs of your table.
Climate change is happening and has always happened since the beginning of time. Parts of the earth that were desert are now seas and vice versa. Ice ages have come and gone and will continue to do so. These cycles of climate change happened before mankind came along and will happen long after mankind is gone but there is no disputing that man is contributing to the current cycle of climate change. Generally, the cycles are so long (in time) that they're not easily recognized, but mankind has accelerated the change through industry and environmental disruption.
It is important, though, to understand _the other side of the equation_. We've been using coal to heat and power our homes, for instance, along with other fuels. If we did not use coal, how many millions of acres of trees would we have to burn to provide the same heat to the same number of homes? There's such a hue and cry about GMOs (and I believe there is GMO abuse, so I'm not defending that) but GMOs allow 1 acre of land to render double or triple the amount of non-GMO crop. Should we then not have GMOs and instead clear three times as much forest to grow crops to feed the growing population of the world? Which would be more catastrophic?
So, my point is, yes, mankind is contributing to climate change, but its happening with or without us and if we didn't do the things we are doing that contribute to climate change, doing something different would also have a negative effect, resulting in changes. If we want to eliminate the negative effects of mankind on our environment, including climate then we must eliminate mankind. If we want to reduce mankind's impact, we must reduce the population of mankind. Its simple arithmetic.
The naysayers, pessimists and alarmists seem to make all the headlines all the time but there are plenty of things happening that are cause for optimism. It's okay to raise the alarm about bad things happening but we need to balance those with acceptance of the good things that are happening all the time lest we wring our hands in dispair and resort to wailing and slashing our wrists. There is plenty of research, history a literature out there for those who are truly interested in the facts rather than being susceptible to only one-sided and incomplete context. If you're willing to be enlightened substantially and not just accept all the bad news as the only news I can recommend so great reading from a famous author, historian and researcher, Matt Ridley. As a starting point, read his book called "The Rational Optimist" - it'll give you a much needed perspective in this deluge of pessimism we're all subject to.
Slashdot has been one of the few places I have been able to go for decades to get news of all kinds, with a focus on tech. I have been so please to not see it turn into the usual flame-wars that most other forums are. Until now. This is not the place for political commentary. If one person is allowed to make thinly disguised politically motivated posts then others will too until this forum descends into just another rant forum where empty vessels make a lot of noise.
I love Slashdot - please don't do it!
Thanks.
Version 4.3 of Skype for Linux (pre MS buyout) at least supports video and audio. MS has no sense of shame pushing an "updated" version of Skype for Linux with less functionality than the ancient version 4.3.0.37. "The more things change, the more things _____________________". You fill in the blanks.
One of the presidential candidates has promised they would fix the student loan crisis upon becoming president. If Amazon has some precognition that this candidate will likely become the next president (and I believe they do) and the president-elect does what they promised (and I believe that they will), or that there's an onerous interest hike and regulation in the works (more likely than not) then there's no big money left in student loans and they pulled out.
Wow. Tunnel-vision. For millions of years the climate on earth has been changing. Ice ages come and go (all without the assistance of humans) - warming and cooling cycles have been happening for millennia. The geological evidence is irrefutable. The authors are correct - as the industrial revolution has exploded, so has the human contribution to temperature rise. But in the history of temperature rise and fall of the earth it is characteristic, not exceptional and therefore not a finding worthy of any alarm. It's just part of the natural cycle.
This is *not* a politically-motivated post, as it should not be, but really? 5G? Who said that (supposedly "my") government could spend $400M of *my* money (from taxes) to give the poor, starving cell carriers another, faster product to gouge consumers with? There are any number of better ways to spend $400M in the USA today. Its pretty disgusting.
I think that DevOps was dreamed up by a bunch of bean-counters (CIOs, CFOs, Accountants, etc.) to reduce headcount and make the developers (the "Dev" part) be responsible also for deployment and operation (the "Ops" part) of the infrastructure and systems. Because, they argue, that Developers can deploy code, but Operations personnel cannot develop applications. It was doomed to fail from the outset. Any decent software developer who is an analytical, creative and disciplined designer and writer of computer programs views the deployment of code and the ongoing maintenance of the systems that run it as a janitorial chore. They don't want to do it. Its a different mindset. Likewise the 'Ops' folks love the infrastructure, spinning things up and watching them hum along - they breath life into that code for the end users and keep the users happy. They are different mindsets and different skill sets. And different talents and temperaments. Developers *must* be risk-takers to innovate or rise above anything above mediocre. Quite the opposite is true of the Ops folks who, while no less important than the developers, cannot gamble and take risks - they thrive on "uptime", no exceptions and nothing out of the ordinary. Ops people often like to dabble and develop tools and utilities to help them do their job, and they do it expertly, but they don't want to maintain 50000, 100000 or 2000000 lines of ever-evolving source code.
A scientist that develops a product - a cosmetic, a glass cleaning fluid, whatever - doesn't want to be trudging the streets banging on doors to sell it - they want to be developing the next product. The salesperson on the other hand doesn't want to be slaving for years with no payoff to develop a product - they instead want to be on the streets immediately engaging people to consume the product with the least effort, time invested and risk - they want predictable and near term results. They are by nature and design different.
Developers don't want the chore, boredom and rigor of the Ops folks and Ops folks don't want the uncertainty and unpredictable outcomes and challenges that Developers face. It is a fantasy in the mind of naive bean-counters ignorant of the temperament, personality, mindset, skill set, likes and dislikes of the essential distinct disciplines of software development and software deployment and maintenance. It's just not true that they can be exceptionally well done by the same individual and sustained at that level. I could be wrong, but I don't believe that when you take any two related entities and reduce them to a common denominator that the quality of either entity is elevated above its initial state, nor that the quality of the whole is greater than the sum of its two constituent parts. The final consumer then, of the common denominator, is inexorably receiving an inferior product.
The DevOps fallacy might spin well in a boardroom for a while but eventually it will show on the bottom line as the quality of product and service decline and the personnel turnover increase.
Climate has been changing radically, warming, cooling and everything else in between since earth had an atmosphere. Who could possibly imagine that just because humans are so populous now that the laws of millions of years of nature would suddenly stop? We really, really don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Earth, biological life and climate changes existed long before we showed up and they will exist long after we disappear.
When we have a cashless society we have slavery. Anyone who has deposited an out of town check has already discovered that you don't have the money right away. Oh, the bank where you deposited it has it that night. But you can't have it for up to 10 working days. This is called the "float". Banks "float" huge sums of money daily - your money - and lend it back to you and others at exorbitant interest rates. The banks, of course, keep those (up to 29% annually of the amount borrowed) interest collections. You can already, in the USA, transfer money only 10 times per month in the USA - even between your own accounts at the same bank. So already, you don't own your money and can't do with it what you please. You earned it. You've already paid taxes on your earning, but you still don't actually own what's left to do with as you please. You have restrictions on how much you can draw at a time etc. etc. Your money can be confiscated, blocked from usage and be divided by 1,000 overnight. Just ask anyone who lives in Argentina. You can literally go to bed a wealthy person, having worked fervently and saved your whole life, and wake up in the morning where every $100 you had in the bank is now only 10 cents. When your money is *completely* controlled electronically you are at the mercy of your government and the banks. Totally. You are effectively a hostage, if not a slave. I know, I've lived it already.
As long as the earth has existed there have been warming and cooling cycles and we've only been recording them for a short while. The alarmists and pessimists that make the most noise insult our intelligence by disseminating (sometimes deliberately) incomplete information and promote their pet conclusions based on that incomplete information. Humans, with the best of intentions and complete information, are still prone to arrive at flawed conclusions because we're only human. How much more prone to flawed conclusions with *incomplete* information? Most people don't have the time to invest to research these enormously complex subjects so read a couple of books and articles on each side of every argument and form your own opinion. Easily said, but when I went about trying to find a book by a reputable author and researcher that did not simply parrot the "alarm du jour" of "global warming" I had a really tough time finding anything. For one terrifying moment I thought that maybe there isn't any published counterpoint to the alarmists and that all of life on earth would perish in the next two centuries. Googling and YouTube eventually lead me to one such book by a well known author called Matt Ridley - "The Rational Optimist". I'm still working my way through the second half of it but it will open your eyes to a lot of things (including global warming) and give you genuine reason for optimism. Pick it up - you'll be glad you did. Disclaimer: I have no interest in the book, the publisher and don't have any connection to the author. You will read and learn a whole lot of stuff you didn't know - I did. The more you know, the greater the probability you'll form a realistic opinion on the subject.
Learning to use chopsticks might not be useful every day to the average Anglo-Saxon diner, but the dexterity acquired by proficiency in their use might help a surgeon or EMT have a better success rate. I don't care if my doctor consumes Asian food or not but I care that his skills be the best possible for very obvious reasons. There are many tools available to improve mental acuity - mathematics is one such tool. Algebra helps develop, among other things, the ability to think in the abstract and develop or hone logical thinking and problem solving. At the same time, I do believe that certain curricula are loaded with irrelevant requirements that extend the duration of study for graduation solely to support greater revenues for the institution.
And he's figured out a way for 9 women to have a baby in 1 month too!
" The real value of [open sourcing] Swift will be whether it can realistically be used anywhere but Apple's walled garden."
The possibility of a good paying job in software development when they graduate college. Maybe even with the company paying off their student loans for them.
Instead of the chance to compete against low-balling H1B applicants...
+1