Meh. With any major OS update, there's bound to be some weird issues in the x.0 release. That goes for Apple but other manufacturers as well... with Apple, it's usually some rogue process getting stuck running in the background, causing the battery the be sucked dry in a few hours. Mostly, these issues get fixed within a few weeks.
The issue with dropped connections on the 4S model doesn't seem to be "massive" at all, judging from what I read on the forums. It's a software issue apparently, and it occurs when using certain types of SIM-cards with a PIN. Removing the PIN appears to be a good workaround for most people until Apple issues a fix.
When true scientists are asked about God the answer tends to be: I don't know, there is no evidence one way or the other.
If a scientist gives equal weight to the lack of proof of god's existence, and the lack of proof that there is no god, then he is rather sloppily disregarding probabilities. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and if no evidence can be found despite our best efforts, one may safely proceed on the premise that the claim is false even if you cannot conclusively disprove it.
Or the scientist was just being polite. More honest answers are:
"The existence of a god is not a falsifiable assertion. But there is no strong or convincing evidence that any exists"
"The existence of a god cannot be ruled out. But given the evidence, the chance of that god being like the guy in the bible is about as likely as it turning out to be the flying spaghetti monster, or Harry Potter".
Autorotation requires variable-pitch rotors; these are fixed pitch, but with some redundancy in the power and control systems, I bet this thing can be made rather safe. They look like large off-the-shelf model airplane props. A bit scary when they all spin like that, but a shroud around the prop can catch any debris if a prop breaks, and the control system can quickly shut that motor down.
Oh, and these multirotor platforms are easy to stabilise; with the right control system this thing will be a snap to fly, far easier than a regular heli or even a fixed wing plane (I've flown models of all of these).
Higher education here is (nearly) free, not to all but to those who meet the scholastic qualifications. And yes, "free" means of course that the state picks up the tab. Most economists think this is an excellent deal... for the state. The cost of education is overshadowed by the positive effects, both primary (a higher average wage means more income taxes) and secondary (positive effects of a well educated work force on the economy). Paying for free education is an investment that makes a lot of sense for the state; I lean towards somewhat libertarian thinking but in this case I endorse the state getting involved.
You may call me left wing all you want. But i think there is something _fundamentally_ wrong when you base availability of medical treatment on money. The only basis for medical treatment should be need. Regardless of species.
Regardless of cost as well? Don't get me wrong, I think it's good that scarce medical resources (rare medicine, vaccines in short supply, donor organs, a doctor's time) are mostly given out on a basis of need first, and by random lot second. Money should not enable you to jump the queue, so to speak.
But what about treatment that isn't particularly rare, just very expensive to make? Suppose this life-extending treatment turns out to be a little bit like the iPhone: we can make them in arbitrary quantities (up to a point of course), but at any volume there will always be a sizable group of people unable to afford one. If we cannot collectively afford to pay to make this treatment available to every single person in the world, should we then take this cure off the market, even if it can save lives of the more wealthy amongst us? Could we even morally outlaw the treatment in that case?
Frankly we need to raise the retirement age to 80 NOW. Make the boomers work for another 25 years or retire on their own money. But us Gen X and down shouldn't be paying for it.
At least over here in NL, the supposed requirement to work longer because of increased life expectancy is a sham. One perpetuated (with great success) with the goal of making Gen X and down pay for the 'boomers. The largest part of the increase in life expectancy in the past 40 years is due to a reduction in infant mortality rates. The life expectancy of a person 65 years of age (which is what matters for pension schemes) has increased perhaps by 1 year in that period. An increase that can easily be covered by a slight increase in pension premiums.
(Of course, the actual situation is a bit more complex than "the boomers living off the subsequent generations". The situation here is that in case of our state-provided pension, the 'boomers simply haven't paid their fair share into it. Private pensions currently are in trouble partly by sucky returns on investments, and not just because of the crisis. In this case, the 'boomers were simply lucky to enjoy excellent ROIs in the 80s, with subsequently lower premiums to pay).
A lot of these issues can already be addressed with treatments and replacements. Which raises interesting questions. Even if this medicine turns out to be affordable, the treatments to keep the body going beyond its designed lifespan most likely will be very expensive. So on what basis will this life-extending drug be given out? Will it only be issued in cases where it will help a person reach a natural age with a decent quality of life? Or will anyone able to pay for it be able to obtain it?
There's already growing resentment against the fabled 1% who own almost everything... just imagine what will happen when people find out that "the rich" also get to live about 70 years longer than the rest of us. On the other hand, how fair is it to withhold life saving/extending treatment from someone willing and able to pay for it? (Assuming that one rich guy extending his life isn't going to affect the amount of healthcare available to the rest of us)
"The protesters want" is a meaningless phrase at this point. There are now many groups of "professional" protesters joining the fray, including environmentalists, chem-trail nutcases, anarchists, hard-core socialists... and each group brings its own agenda. Then there's the group that doesn't even really understand what they are protesting for.
I agree that we need to return to sanity. Perhaps protests like these are a first step, but if I listen to the solutions proposed by some of these people, I think I'd rather stick with Wall Street, banks, and greed. And that's why I am not going anywhere near these protesters. It's only a matter of time before this movement is hijacked by one or two of the louder professional activist groups. Same as happened to other causes and even organisations (Greenpeace, for instance).
In many cases, outsourcing support to your user community is feasible. Here's an interesting experiment: the next time you ask a co-worker about how to do pivot tables in Excel, or how to fill in your expense claim in SAP, or how to clear a jammed printer, also ask them where they learned the answer? Very often the answer is: "I googled it" or "a colleague told me". That is called peer support, and companies are discovering that you can boost its effects by facilitating it. My client has gotten very good results with Yammer (a corporate Twitter-lookalike), and we are now starting a trial with GetSatisfaction, another peer support tool which helps with finding relevant answers provided to previous questions.
This is not going to replace help desks completely, but initial results show that for the easier (tier 1 and 2) questions, answers are more accurate and come faster from peers. However, all this has absolutely nothing to do with "going mobile" or "the cloud", as JPL's IT CTO suggests.
I think that part of the problem in the PC market is a lack of strong brands. People might pay extra for a good looking, well built and quiet desktop PC, or a durable, powerful laptop with good battery life, but which brand would you turn to? Some of the more expensive ones are just as crap as the cheap ones, and in the past few years there hasnt been any one brand of PCs that I'd trust.
Strong brands do work. Look at Apple. With Apple you pay top dollar for good design and good quality (even if they are not always without flaws, take the iPhone 4 with its poor antenna). Just physically picking up any other brand of phone will instantly reveal the difference... That is a feeling I haven't gotten with any PC maker recently, the feeling that love and dedication have gone into the design and build. And no, Alienware doesn't count; to me they've been the Bose of PCs: better than average but way overpriced.
That book exists: "Managers, not MBAs", by Henry Mintzberg. Well worth a read... and rather than a baseless rant, it's a well-argued book written by someone in the know.
The disparity in wealth makes for tasty factoids that are nice for op-ed pieces or signs at protest rallies, but it's a side issue. Just like the bonuses given to bankers and traders are a side issue (and one that banks would just love us to focus on). What matters is power.
I don't mind an industrialist making billions, or a banker getting a big fat check for gambling on some short term goals. What I do object to is that industrialist being able to influence legislators to the extend that laws are being drafted not with the well-being of the state and the people in mind, but solely to further the interests of that industrialist or his industry. I object to being forced to bail out irresponsible bankers, and pretty much having no choice in where to put my retirement fund... well, I can choose between irresponsible bankers, greedy insurers who charge half the fund's revenue in "fees", or responsible pension funds... that get a big chunk of their reserves appropriated by a greedy government as "overage" (this happened in the Netherlands in the 80s).
The state should be in control. And by that I do not mean the state should involve themselves with the day-to-day of every aspect of business, but they should be ready, willing, and able to step in when the situation demands it, when business oversteps its bounds. Not more rules and regulations, but better oversight.
I'm not worried about being charged by the megabyte, and Net Neutrality does not prevent ISP from charging me that way. What it does do is exactly what it says on the tin: keep the net neutral. That is important, because ISPs would like to (and have already expressed an interest in) charging for popular services and/or blocking services that compete with their own offering. Regulators rightly want to ensure that the ISP has no control over what you do on the Internet, not by pricing, blocking nor by traffic shaping. Even with a pay-per-megabyte plan, you still want and need Net Neutrality.
Which is exactly why I am glad that, in the Netherlands at least, legislators are now set to implement Net Neutrality. This after a mobile carrier announced that they were going to block VoIP and WhatsApp because these eat too much into their traditional revenue model. It's a valid argument, but it would have been only a matter of time before such restrictions would have been placed on fixed networks as well, especially since almost all of the major ISPs here are owned by the traditional (mobile) phone operators, and most offer their own (premium) VoIP and TVoIP. They'd love to be able to block competing phone and streaming video providers, and levy a tax on "bandwidth hogs" (read: popular services) like YouTube, Facebook and Google. Some providers already had plans for this, but thankfully that particular shotgun was pointed firmly at their own feet when they touched the trigger.
I'd gladly pay for movies as well, but I'd like some choice and flexibility:
- Streaming is fine but I also want a download-to-own option, so that I can take movies along on my tablet when I travel
- It's nice to have the option of different formats (especially for the downloads): the familiar 700MB avi files up to 720p and 1080p with surround.
In today's society we are taught over and over again that we need to be mindful of other people's sensitivities, no matter how bizarre. This mindset puts you in a particularly difficult position if you're a manager: if someone comes to you with a complaint about having their feelings hurt, being insulted or whatnot, you have to take the complaint seriously even though the correct response might be to "grow up", "get a life", "grow a pair" etc. Because if you dismiss the complaint, chances are that the complainant will go over your head, or seek help from some grievance counsellor who will be all to happy to make a big case out of it to justify their own job. Which will result in potentially embarassing publicity for your company, and likely you'll get a dressing-down from your own superiour for handling the situation poorly. To avoid such unpleasantness, I notice that many managers take the approach of culling all potentially offensive material before any actual complaint has been filed.
[...] taking the pictures oneself is a really bad idea.
It's a bad idea to unscrew a lightbulb and stick your finger in the socket. Are we going to punish such stupidity as well? Perhaps we should leave such things for what they are: simple rules of life parents ought to teach to their children.
That being said, by decriminalizing sexting by minors it's likely to have the side effect of opening up an entire realm of photos to pedophiles that were previously harder to come by.
How? And if it were true, so what? If your naked picture is already out there on the internet and downloaded by thousands of people, who cares if one of those people happens to be a paedophile? Contrary to belief that is popular in certain circles, kiddy porn does not magically turn paedophiles into child molesters.
Microsoft are not mandating PC manufacturers to have UEFI, that's only if they want to slap the "Designed for Windows 8" logo on the case. Neighter are Microsoft preventing manufacturers from distributing keys for other OSes along with the Windows one. It's a bit farfetched to dollow the reasoning: "Windows 8 is the dominant OS, having a Windows 8 sticker on your brand of PCs is highly desirable, to get that sticker you need UEFI and the Windows key installed, which means that all PC manufacturers will enable UEFI, but they'll be too much of a slacker to add keys for other popular OSes, which effectively means that Microsoft is locking out other operating systems". It's doubtful the EU anti-competition watchdog will see it that way, especially since MS do not require manufacturers to prevent users from disabling UEFI to be allowed to bear the Windows 8 sticker, or to run Windows 8.
A question: does UEFI allow users to install additional keys later on?
CS is programming. IT is the maintenance of computer systems.
Interesting. Is this the prevalent definition of IT in the US (assuming that's where you are from)? Because in Europe, IT in common parlance means "computer stuff" i.e. networking, software engineering, database administration, server administration/support, data analysis, web design, etc. My job titles include business analyst and solution architect, but when I state that I "work in IT" to others (all over the globe), it does not seem to cause confusion.
Doing complicated things is often easier and more straightforward in scripting languages than it is on the command line. You might be able to do it faster on the command line if you're clever. Perhaps the real advantage of the CLI however is not that clever people can accomplish things faster there, but it gives them a chance to show us how clever they are. As you say, people usually just share Python snippets, but they show off their CLI scripts with pride.
It would be nice if they'd get into Zigbee or Zwave... Both these home control protocols seem reasonably mature, but the products that implement it are anything but. I went with Zwave, a closed protocol but has by far the most appliances on the market (locks, switches, thermostats, motion sensors, etc.), though many of those fail functionally in small but infuriating ways. I'd love to see kits for home control stuff, where you just buy components and put them together to work the way you want. Hook up a kit to a simple keypad and solenoid-driven deadbolt instead of using the pricey Schlage stuff.
No real world application (yet) perhaps, but I was actually surprised to see a more or less practical helicopter design, instead of something looking like those human-powered airplanes made up of rice paper and balsawood, with a 150m wingspan, requiring two guys to run along to balance it on takeoffs, etc. And if flight times increase, it will find some uses.
The control stick setup reminded me a little of the Kolibrie helicopter, which has a similar "hobby" look to it. By the way, someone mentioned batteries going flat in the air... seems to me there's no autorotation on this thing.
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Meh. With any major OS update, there's bound to be some weird issues in the x.0 release. That goes for Apple but other manufacturers as well... with Apple, it's usually some rogue process getting stuck running in the background, causing the battery the be sucked dry in a few hours. Mostly, these issues get fixed within a few weeks.
The issue with dropped connections on the 4S model doesn't seem to be "massive" at all, judging from what I read on the forums. It's a software issue apparently, and it occurs when using certain types of SIM-cards with a PIN. Removing the PIN appears to be a good workaround for most people until Apple issues a fix.
Here's a handy overview of how various smartphone owners see the other brands' users.
When true scientists are asked about God the answer tends to be: I don't know, there is no evidence one way or the other.
If a scientist gives equal weight to the lack of proof of god's existence, and the lack of proof that there is no god, then he is rather sloppily disregarding probabilities. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and if no evidence can be found despite our best efforts, one may safely proceed on the premise that the claim is false even if you cannot conclusively disprove it.
Or the scientist was just being polite. More honest answers are:
"The existence of a god is not a falsifiable assertion. But there is no strong or convincing evidence that any exists"
"The existence of a god cannot be ruled out. But given the evidence, the chance of that god being like the guy in the bible is about as likely as it turning out to be the flying spaghetti monster, or Harry Potter".
Autorotation requires variable-pitch rotors; these are fixed pitch, but with some redundancy in the power and control systems, I bet this thing can be made rather safe. They look like large off-the-shelf model airplane props. A bit scary when they all spin like that, but a shroud around the prop can catch any debris if a prop breaks, and the control system can quickly shut that motor down.
Oh, and these multirotor platforms are easy to stabilise; with the right control system this thing will be a snap to fly, far easier than a regular heli or even a fixed wing plane (I've flown models of all of these).
DEregulation is what failed us. We need to put the leash back on the dog.
Exactly. And those opposed to "big government" (which I definitely am) need to remember that regulation != big government.
Higher education here is (nearly) free, not to all but to those who meet the scholastic qualifications. And yes, "free" means of course that the state picks up the tab. Most economists think this is an excellent deal... for the state. The cost of education is overshadowed by the positive effects, both primary (a higher average wage means more income taxes) and secondary (positive effects of a well educated work force on the economy). Paying for free education is an investment that makes a lot of sense for the state; I lean towards somewhat libertarian thinking but in this case I endorse the state getting involved.
You may call me left wing all you want. But i think there is something _fundamentally_ wrong when you base availability of medical treatment on money. The only basis for medical treatment should be need. Regardless of species.
Regardless of cost as well? Don't get me wrong, I think it's good that scarce medical resources (rare medicine, vaccines in short supply, donor organs, a doctor's time) are mostly given out on a basis of need first, and by random lot second. Money should not enable you to jump the queue, so to speak.
But what about treatment that isn't particularly rare, just very expensive to make? Suppose this life-extending treatment turns out to be a little bit like the iPhone: we can make them in arbitrary quantities (up to a point of course), but at any volume there will always be a sizable group of people unable to afford one. If we cannot collectively afford to pay to make this treatment available to every single person in the world, should we then take this cure off the market, even if it can save lives of the more wealthy amongst us? Could we even morally outlaw the treatment in that case?
Frankly we need to raise the retirement age to 80 NOW. Make the boomers work for another 25 years or retire on their own money. But us Gen X and down shouldn't be paying for it.
At least over here in NL, the supposed requirement to work longer because of increased life expectancy is a sham. One perpetuated (with great success) with the goal of making Gen X and down pay for the 'boomers. The largest part of the increase in life expectancy in the past 40 years is due to a reduction in infant mortality rates. The life expectancy of a person 65 years of age (which is what matters for pension schemes) has increased perhaps by 1 year in that period. An increase that can easily be covered by a slight increase in pension premiums.
(Of course, the actual situation is a bit more complex than "the boomers living off the subsequent generations". The situation here is that in case of our state-provided pension, the 'boomers simply haven't paid their fair share into it. Private pensions currently are in trouble partly by sucky returns on investments, and not just because of the crisis. In this case, the 'boomers were simply lucky to enjoy excellent ROIs in the 80s, with subsequently lower premiums to pay).
A lot of these issues can already be addressed with treatments and replacements. Which raises interesting questions. Even if this medicine turns out to be affordable, the treatments to keep the body going beyond its designed lifespan most likely will be very expensive. So on what basis will this life-extending drug be given out? Will it only be issued in cases where it will help a person reach a natural age with a decent quality of life? Or will anyone able to pay for it be able to obtain it?
There's already growing resentment against the fabled 1% who own almost everything... just imagine what will happen when people find out that "the rich" also get to live about 70 years longer than the rest of us. On the other hand, how fair is it to withhold life saving/extending treatment from someone willing and able to pay for it? (Assuming that one rich guy extending his life isn't going to affect the amount of healthcare available to the rest of us)
"The protesters want" is a meaningless phrase at this point. There are now many groups of "professional" protesters joining the fray, including environmentalists, chem-trail nutcases, anarchists, hard-core socialists... and each group brings its own agenda. Then there's the group that doesn't even really understand what they are protesting for.
I agree that we need to return to sanity. Perhaps protests like these are a first step, but if I listen to the solutions proposed by some of these people, I think I'd rather stick with Wall Street, banks, and greed. And that's why I am not going anywhere near these protesters. It's only a matter of time before this movement is hijacked by one or two of the louder professional activist groups. Same as happened to other causes and even organisations (Greenpeace, for instance).
So store them in The Cloud, they will be safe there. Right?
In many cases, outsourcing support to your user community is feasible. Here's an interesting experiment: the next time you ask a co-worker about how to do pivot tables in Excel, or how to fill in your expense claim in SAP, or how to clear a jammed printer, also ask them where they learned the answer? Very often the answer is: "I googled it" or "a colleague told me". That is called peer support, and companies are discovering that you can boost its effects by facilitating it. My client has gotten very good results with Yammer (a corporate Twitter-lookalike), and we are now starting a trial with GetSatisfaction, another peer support tool which helps with finding relevant answers provided to previous questions.
This is not going to replace help desks completely, but initial results show that for the easier (tier 1 and 2) questions, answers are more accurate and come faster from peers. However, all this has absolutely nothing to do with "going mobile" or "the cloud", as JPL's IT CTO suggests.
I think that part of the problem in the PC market is a lack of strong brands. People might pay extra for a good looking, well built and quiet desktop PC, or a durable, powerful laptop with good battery life, but which brand would you turn to? Some of the more expensive ones are just as crap as the cheap ones, and in the past few years there hasnt been any one brand of PCs that I'd trust.
Strong brands do work. Look at Apple. With Apple you pay top dollar for good design and good quality (even if they are not always without flaws, take the iPhone 4 with its poor antenna). Just physically picking up any other brand of phone will instantly reveal the difference... That is a feeling I haven't gotten with any PC maker recently, the feeling that love and dedication have gone into the design and build. And no, Alienware doesn't count; to me they've been the Bose of PCs: better than average but way overpriced.
That book exists: "Managers, not MBAs", by Henry Mintzberg. Well worth a read... and rather than a baseless rant, it's a well-argued book written by someone in the know.
The disparity in wealth makes for tasty factoids that are nice for op-ed pieces or signs at protest rallies, but it's a side issue. Just like the bonuses given to bankers and traders are a side issue (and one that banks would just love us to focus on). What matters is power.
I don't mind an industrialist making billions, or a banker getting a big fat check for gambling on some short term goals. What I do object to is that industrialist being able to influence legislators to the extend that laws are being drafted not with the well-being of the state and the people in mind, but solely to further the interests of that industrialist or his industry. I object to being forced to bail out irresponsible bankers, and pretty much having no choice in where to put my retirement fund... well, I can choose between irresponsible bankers, greedy insurers who charge half the fund's revenue in "fees", or responsible pension funds... that get a big chunk of their reserves appropriated by a greedy government as "overage" (this happened in the Netherlands in the 80s).
The state should be in control. And by that I do not mean the state should involve themselves with the day-to-day of every aspect of business, but they should be ready, willing, and able to step in when the situation demands it, when business oversteps its bounds. Not more rules and regulations, but better oversight.
I'm not worried about being charged by the megabyte, and Net Neutrality does not prevent ISP from charging me that way. What it does do is exactly what it says on the tin: keep the net neutral. That is important, because ISPs would like to (and have already expressed an interest in) charging for popular services and/or blocking services that compete with their own offering. Regulators rightly want to ensure that the ISP has no control over what you do on the Internet, not by pricing, blocking nor by traffic shaping. Even with a pay-per-megabyte plan, you still want and need Net Neutrality.
Which is exactly why I am glad that, in the Netherlands at least, legislators are now set to implement Net Neutrality. This after a mobile carrier announced that they were going to block VoIP and WhatsApp because these eat too much into their traditional revenue model. It's a valid argument, but it would have been only a matter of time before such restrictions would have been placed on fixed networks as well, especially since almost all of the major ISPs here are owned by the traditional (mobile) phone operators, and most offer their own (premium) VoIP and TVoIP. They'd love to be able to block competing phone and streaming video providers, and levy a tax on "bandwidth hogs" (read: popular services) like YouTube, Facebook and Google. Some providers already had plans for this, but thankfully that particular shotgun was pointed firmly at their own feet when they touched the trigger.
I'd gladly pay for movies as well, but I'd like some choice and flexibility:
- Streaming is fine but I also want a download-to-own option, so that I can take movies along on my tablet when I travel
- It's nice to have the option of different formats (especially for the downloads): the familiar 700MB avi files up to 720p and 1080p with surround.
Oh, and no damn unskippable ads, if you please.
In today's society we are taught over and over again that we need to be mindful of other people's sensitivities, no matter how bizarre. This mindset puts you in a particularly difficult position if you're a manager: if someone comes to you with a complaint about having their feelings hurt, being insulted or whatnot, you have to take the complaint seriously even though the correct response might be to "grow up", "get a life", "grow a pair" etc. Because if you dismiss the complaint, chances are that the complainant will go over your head, or seek help from some grievance counsellor who will be all to happy to make a big case out of it to justify their own job. Which will result in potentially embarassing publicity for your company, and likely you'll get a dressing-down from your own superiour for handling the situation poorly. To avoid such unpleasantness, I notice that many managers take the approach of culling all potentially offensive material before any actual complaint has been filed.
[...] taking the pictures oneself is a really bad idea.
It's a bad idea to unscrew a lightbulb and stick your finger in the socket. Are we going to punish such stupidity as well? Perhaps we should leave such things for what they are: simple rules of life parents ought to teach to their children.
That being said, by decriminalizing sexting by minors it's likely to have the side effect of opening up an entire realm of photos to pedophiles that were previously harder to come by.
How? And if it were true, so what? If your naked picture is already out there on the internet and downloaded by thousands of people, who cares if one of those people happens to be a paedophile? Contrary to belief that is popular in certain circles, kiddy porn does not magically turn paedophiles into child molesters.
Microsoft are not mandating PC manufacturers to have UEFI, that's only if they want to slap the "Designed for Windows 8" logo on the case. Neighter are Microsoft preventing manufacturers from distributing keys for other OSes along with the Windows one. It's a bit farfetched to dollow the reasoning: "Windows 8 is the dominant OS, having a Windows 8 sticker on your brand of PCs is highly desirable, to get that sticker you need UEFI and the Windows key installed, which means that all PC manufacturers will enable UEFI, but they'll be too much of a slacker to add keys for other popular OSes, which effectively means that Microsoft is locking out other operating systems". It's doubtful the EU anti-competition watchdog will see it that way, especially since MS do not require manufacturers to prevent users from disabling UEFI to be allowed to bear the Windows 8 sticker, or to run Windows 8.
A question: does UEFI allow users to install additional keys later on?
CS is programming. IT is the maintenance of computer systems.
Interesting. Is this the prevalent definition of IT in the US (assuming that's where you are from)? Because in Europe, IT in common parlance means "computer stuff" i.e. networking, software engineering, database administration, server administration/support, data analysis, web design, etc. My job titles include business analyst and solution architect, but when I state that I "work in IT" to others (all over the globe), it does not seem to cause confusion.
Doing complicated things is often easier and more straightforward in scripting languages than it is on the command line. You might be able to do it faster on the command line if you're clever. Perhaps the real advantage of the CLI however is not that clever people can accomplish things faster there, but it gives them a chance to show us how clever they are. As you say, people usually just share Python snippets, but they show off their CLI scripts with pride.
It would be nice if they'd get into Zigbee or Zwave... Both these home control protocols seem reasonably mature, but the products that implement it are anything but. I went with Zwave, a closed protocol but has by far the most appliances on the market (locks, switches, thermostats, motion sensors, etc.), though many of those fail functionally in small but infuriating ways. I'd love to see kits for home control stuff, where you just buy components and put them together to work the way you want. Hook up a kit to a simple keypad and solenoid-driven deadbolt instead of using the pricey Schlage stuff.
No real world application (yet) perhaps, but I was actually surprised to see a more or less practical helicopter design, instead of something looking like those human-powered airplanes made up of rice paper and balsawood, with a 150m wingspan, requiring two guys to run along to balance it on takeoffs, etc. And if flight times increase, it will find some uses.
The control stick setup reminded me a little of the Kolibrie helicopter, which has a similar "hobby" look to it. By the way, someone mentioned batteries going flat in the air... seems to me there's no autorotation on this thing.