With the end of Net Neutrality (hopefully not permanently), your Xfinity cable internet service could decide that you don't get access to Disney and ESPN through streaming; your U-Verse service could decide not to let you stream Sling (owned by Dish Network) and so on.
If an of the big ISPs cut off Netflix or Amazon, there'd be riots in the street, but the smaller players may get cut out if Net Neutrality isn't restored.
Any why doesn't everyone do what I did and turn a $100 DirecTV bill (no premium channels, DVR, HD) into a $30 Sling bill (ditto)? Laziness. It's easy to keep that autobill payment on your credit card, it's hard to empty out a DVR.
The reason why the "Lighting Industry" wants these rolled back is that the US manufacturers didn't re-tool their factories to produce LED lights, and now Chinese manufacturers have the bulk of the sales. They've had a couple years to know this is coming for this second class of lamps/bulbs, and *still* didn't re-tool.
This does not benefit the consumer in any way, it's strictly a bailout for the dinosaur bulb manufacturers.
I always laughed at Babylon 5's data crystals: What good is something you can't label? Even an SD card is tough, MicroSD out of the question (you generally just install and forget about them anyway, until it's time to upgrade). But is that my engineering reports to give to Captain Sheridan, or my collection of Centauri porn with full attributes?
20 years ago, my wife and I ran an independent online children's bookstore. Our catalog/shopping cart was, to a large degree, hand-built by me (yay Perl and FoxPro), and the product images (only for monthly features) were scanned from publisher paper catalogs. It was ridiculous levels of effort to clean those images up (especially with Photoshop Elements, we couldn't afford more than that).
It was the best of times (a search on Yahoo or AltaVista had as much a chance of finding us as Amazon when you searched for a title), it was the worst of times (not enough volume to get discounts on rapidly-rising credit card and shipping fees). We got out with a small profit... but I would have loved to have had today's image tools.
Reports from the ISS are that 9 out of 24 SSD drives failed in an HP supercomputer they'd brought up there. Quite scary how fragile those things are from radiation.
I spent 7 years in a big nasty company that ate our small happy (but slowly failing) company, and most of the opportunities that came around were contract, narrow, and not the leadership position I'd been in.
Then I got a phone call from the CEO of a company -- a guy I knew and respected. He wanted me for thought leadership and technology I was one of only a few dozen people who really knew it; was willing to give me the salary and bonus I deserved. No resume, no HR hoops. I said yes.
Now a year later we've been bought by a big company that doesn't seem nasty... I'm holding my breath.
When we sold books (we stopped 10 years ago, lots of reasons but mainly Amazon), we'd see prices on used books on sites such as the late Half.com and Amazon marketplace that would go from a $10 reasonable to $40-60 silly. What we were finding is that it was often the same book getting marked up by a couple bucks by each merchant who thought they could sell it, and still make money buying it off the other guy. We could trace one book through a half-dozen sellers by the text they'd add onto the descriptions
I've had several headhunters contact me about positions with manager or director in the title, but they're rent-to-own: Start as contract, and if we like you, we might hire you in a year or so.
I have been in this industry for over 30 years, and I'm well known in the business -- I do industry conference presentations, blogging, loudly volunteer on standards development, etc.. If you can't actually hire me, I don't want to work for you.
Part of the problem is that the headhunters are the contract agency, so it's not at all in their interest to go back to the employer and say, "He'd like to join, but only as a permanent employee."
One note: with the recent mostly-vile tax revisions, independent contractors get significant tax breaks. It was designed as a handout to financial and real-estate gazillionaires, but it benefits the Uber driver and other giggers.
I've had it now for two weeks, and it's pretty darn sweet: * same basic specs as the Galaxy S8. Same SOC, memory and 128GB storage. Phone is a little shorter, but with less bezel, there's not much difference in pixels * fantastic battery life * sturdy construction * can't beat the price at those specs -- it's a high-end phone at mid-range prices * pure Android, no carrier or manufacturer cruft
Downsides * camera is not top-notch (but it's getting better in software) * accessories are minimal * there may be some touchscreen glitches, hard to pin down (could be software, as alternate firmware doesn't have the problem)
This is the android phone for people who want the pure experience, unlocked bootloader, and don't want to pay Pixel prices. Their marketing is not top-notch. I would barely have heard of it if I didn't fish in the android forum waters. My biggest worry is if Andy Rubin decides he's bored with it, and it loses support for upgrades in the future. However, if they deliver on the Project Treble version of Oreo, maintaining upgraded firmware gets a lot easier.
There has to be some level of entertainment for the dog too: My previous dog would carry tennis balls to the top of the stairs in order to drop them and chase them. No owner reward at all. Current dog won't fetch anything, even for a reward. If it's not moving, it has no interest at all: she only wants the chase.
I've seen her frighten herself by catching her foot on the boot tray in which her food bowl sits, scattering food everywhere and leaving her too disturbed to eat for an hour.
She's incapable of learning to fetch, where anything that isn't actively moving isn't worth chasing, let alone retrieving.
There are some dog IQ tests out there, and she failed every one: Example: Show the dog a treat, place the treat on the floor and cover with a plastic cup. She looked at it, sniffed all the way around, then looked up and whined.
For a long while it was Neuromancer, if for no other reason than that opening line, and the overall tone and mood. Good science fiction? No. Beautiful prose, definitely.
The Blue Ant trilogy, including Spook Country, took the lead not too long ago. Solid writing, better story, still just on the cusp of our world.
But the Peripheral is damned brilliant. Wild-ass SF ideas, great writing, probably one of my favorite books of all time.
I'm in my 50s and I never have hated the work to be done: I'm lucky enough to be in an industry with near-constant change in technology, and have carved out positions for myself where I'm nearly indispensible, and become the expert. (Yes, I'm being vague)
That's obviously not easy for anyone to do, but it's been very satisfying for me.
On the other hand, I've hated my employers at times: companies that don't support their employees, don't enable them to do what's best for the customers or the company, and in one case, kept me hanging by golden handcuffs for most of a year with almost no work to do.
It's not in AT&T's best interest to limit phone spam, because they're customers. Who would be best able to detect and prevent boiler-room callers? The phone companies.
I'm worried that If I ever meet "Heather from Card Member Services" I may not be responsible for my actions.
Working while traveling isn't high on my list of priorities. Watching an episode on Netflix, playing a VR racing game (admittedly slower on the highway than on the track), whatever.
And the comfort level will get there. The first generation will only be a little bit better than human reactions. The next version (hopefully a free software upgrade - funded by an auto-manufacturer/insurance alliance) twice as safe, the next version four times as safe, etc.
If it can't just be software upgrades, it's going to be a long, slow adoption: cars get replaced every 2-10 years - but then they get resold, so the average age of cars on the road is over 11 years. (REF: http://www.usatoday.com/story/...)
Eventually, insurance lobbies will get the government to require autonomous driving: first on certain highways and city centers, then eventually everywhere. Just like seat belts, air bags, rear-view cameras.
I had a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Nice phone for its day. Never got a single major version upgrade, because the VZN variant used a different SOC from the GSM version, and between Verizon and Samsung, they just said, "meh."
Currently, using a Galaxy S5 on AT&T and while ma bell provides regular security updates, I haven't seen an Android version update since I received it last year. Still on Lollipop (5.1), no Marshmallow, let alone plans for Nougat.
For me, the annoyance is worst when you are forbidden from making a truly secure password. I've seen sites which forbid more than 12 (or even 8) characters, forbid spaces (or all non-alphanumerics).
Back when I did IT support in the 80's, our minicomputer-based servers required six digits, and must be changed every 90 days (didn't check for repeats). I knew I could go to any admin's desk and have a good chance of logging in with SPRING, SUMMER, AUTUMN or WINTER. Later they changed it to 8 characters, so I knew I could use SPRING87, etc.
Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
The Insurance industry is a YUUUUGE lobby. If it will cut down on deaths, injuries and property damage, they'll lobby for making it a mandate. Right now, the Google car is slightly safer than a human being, at city speeds, in good weather. If it gets to the point where it's definitely safer than a human being (not foolproof, but safer), any weather or road conditions, the laws will change so fast your head will spin.
The one place VB still has some life is in the MS Office (and related apps) macro language, Visual Basic for Applications. It's mainly VB6 with some quirks... but you can get a lot of stuff done. I have clients that would prefer that I send them a Word template add-in instead of a 'compiled' add-in, since anything with a DLL requires an installer, whereas the template can be just dropped into the Startup folder to be usable.
Sadly, rather than updating it to the more object-oriented VB.Net, Microsoft has left it foundering in the barely-OO VB6 era with some object stuff bolted on that never quite does what you need, and yes, there are certainly things that need a full.Net interface to be written that you can't do... but I've made a fair chunk of my career on VBA, and use it for automating Office stuff on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, I have more multitasking time when ears are occupied (teleconferences where I'll only need to interject once an hour) than eyes. It's partly that I prefer music for driving, flying and exercising... but the number of articles on sites such as BoingBoing, Lifehacker, xda-developer etc. that are only in audio or video format that I sigh and say, "Well, I guess I'll never know."
Slashdot Mirror
With the end of Net Neutrality (hopefully not permanently), your Xfinity cable internet service could decide that you don't get access to Disney and ESPN through streaming; your U-Verse service could decide not to let you stream Sling (owned by Dish Network) and so on.
If an of the big ISPs cut off Netflix or Amazon, there'd be riots in the street, but the smaller players may get cut out if Net Neutrality isn't restored.
Any why doesn't everyone do what I did and turn a $100 DirecTV bill (no premium channels, DVR, HD) into a $30 Sling bill (ditto)? Laziness. It's easy to keep that autobill payment on your credit card, it's hard to empty out a DVR.
The reason why the "Lighting Industry" wants these rolled back is that the US manufacturers didn't re-tool their factories to produce LED lights, and now Chinese manufacturers have the bulk of the sales. They've had a couple years to know this is coming for this second class of lamps/bulbs, and *still* didn't re-tool.
This does not benefit the consumer in any way, it's strictly a bailout for the dinosaur bulb manufacturers.
I always laughed at Babylon 5's data crystals: What good is something you can't label? Even an SD card is tough, MicroSD out of the question (you generally just install and forget about them anyway, until it's time to upgrade). But is that my engineering reports to give to Captain Sheridan, or my collection of Centauri porn with full attributes?
20 years ago, my wife and I ran an independent online children's bookstore. Our catalog/shopping cart was, to a large degree, hand-built by me (yay Perl and FoxPro), and the product images (only for monthly features) were scanned from publisher paper catalogs. It was ridiculous levels of effort to clean those images up (especially with Photoshop Elements, we couldn't afford more than that).
It was the best of times (a search on Yahoo or AltaVista had as much a chance of finding us as Amazon when you searched for a title), it was the worst of times (not enough volume to get discounts on rapidly-rising credit card and shipping fees). We got out with a small profit... but I would have loved to have had today's image tools.
Reports from the ISS are that 9 out of 24 SSD drives failed in an HP supercomputer they'd brought up there. Quite scary how fragile those things are from radiation.
The one thing you're really not going to have is *in-flight* refueling.
I spent 7 years in a big nasty company that ate our small happy (but slowly failing) company, and most of the opportunities that came around were contract, narrow, and not the leadership position I'd been in.
Then I got a phone call from the CEO of a company -- a guy I knew and respected. He wanted me for thought leadership and technology I was one of only a few dozen people who really knew it; was willing to give me the salary and bonus I deserved. No resume, no HR hoops. I said yes.
Now a year later we've been bought by a big company that doesn't seem nasty... I'm holding my breath.
When we sold books (we stopped 10 years ago, lots of reasons but mainly Amazon), we'd see prices on used books on sites such as the late Half.com and Amazon marketplace that would go from a $10 reasonable to $40-60 silly. What we were finding is that it was often the same book getting marked up by a couple bucks by each merchant who thought they could sell it, and still make money buying it off the other guy. We could trace one book through a half-dozen sellers by the text they'd add onto the descriptions
I've had several headhunters contact me about positions with manager or director in the title, but they're rent-to-own: Start as contract, and if we like you, we might hire you in a year or so.
I have been in this industry for over 30 years, and I'm well known in the business -- I do industry conference presentations, blogging, loudly volunteer on standards development, etc.. If you can't actually hire me, I don't want to work for you.
Part of the problem is that the headhunters are the contract agency, so it's not at all in their interest to go back to the employer and say, "He'd like to join, but only as a permanent employee."
One note: with the recent mostly-vile tax revisions, independent contractors get significant tax breaks. It was designed as a handout to financial and real-estate gazillionaires, but it benefits the Uber driver and other giggers.
I've had it now for two weeks, and it's pretty darn sweet:
* same basic specs as the Galaxy S8. Same SOC, memory and 128GB storage. Phone is a little shorter, but with less bezel, there's not much difference in pixels
* fantastic battery life
* sturdy construction
* can't beat the price at those specs -- it's a high-end phone at mid-range prices
* pure Android, no carrier or manufacturer cruft
Downsides
* camera is not top-notch (but it's getting better in software)
* accessories are minimal
* there may be some touchscreen glitches, hard to pin down (could be software, as alternate firmware doesn't have the problem)
This is the android phone for people who want the pure experience, unlocked bootloader, and don't want to pay Pixel prices.
Their marketing is not top-notch. I would barely have heard of it if I didn't fish in the android forum waters.
My biggest worry is if Andy Rubin decides he's bored with it, and it loses support for upgrades in the future. However, if they deliver on the Project Treble version of Oreo, maintaining upgraded firmware gets a lot easier.
There has to be some level of entertainment for the dog too: My previous dog would carry tennis balls to the top of the stairs in order to drop them and chase them. No owner reward at all. Current dog won't fetch anything, even for a reward. If it's not moving, it has no interest at all: she only wants the chase.
I've seen her frighten herself by catching her foot on the boot tray in which her food bowl sits, scattering food everywhere and leaving her too disturbed to eat for an hour.
She's incapable of learning to fetch, where anything that isn't actively moving isn't worth chasing, let alone retrieving.
There are some dog IQ tests out there, and she failed every one: Example: Show the dog a treat, place the treat on the floor and cover with a plastic cup. She looked at it, sniffed all the way around, then looked up and whined.
For a long while it was Neuromancer, if for no other reason than that opening line, and the overall tone and mood. Good science fiction? No. Beautiful prose, definitely.
The Blue Ant trilogy, including Spook Country, took the lead not too long ago. Solid writing, better story, still just on the cusp of our world.
But the Peripheral is damned brilliant. Wild-ass SF ideas, great writing, probably one of my favorite books of all time.
I'm in my 50s and I never have hated the work to be done: I'm lucky enough to be in an industry with near-constant change in technology, and have carved out positions for myself where I'm nearly indispensible, and become the expert. (Yes, I'm being vague)
That's obviously not easy for anyone to do, but it's been very satisfying for me.
On the other hand, I've hated my employers at times: companies that don't support their employees, don't enable them to do what's best for the customers or the company, and in one case, kept me hanging by golden handcuffs for most of a year with almost no work to do.
It's not in AT&T's best interest to limit phone spam, because they're customers.
Who would be best able to detect and prevent boiler-room callers? The phone companies.
I'm worried that If I ever meet "Heather from Card Member Services" I may not be responsible for my actions.
I like my guest network name:
DHS Monitoring Van
Working while traveling isn't high on my list of priorities. Watching an episode on Netflix, playing a VR racing game (admittedly slower on the highway than on the track), whatever.
And the comfort level will get there. The first generation will only be a little bit better than human reactions. The next version (hopefully a free software upgrade - funded by an auto-manufacturer/insurance alliance) twice as safe, the next version four times as safe, etc.
If it can't just be software upgrades, it's going to be a long, slow adoption: cars get replaced every 2-10 years - but then they get resold, so the average age of cars on the road is over 11 years.
(REF: http://www.usatoday.com/story/...)
Eventually, insurance lobbies will get the government to require autonomous driving: first on certain highways and city centers, then eventually everywhere. Just like seat belts, air bags, rear-view cameras.
I had a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Nice phone for its day. Never got a single major version upgrade, because the VZN variant used a different SOC from the GSM version, and between Verizon and Samsung, they just said, "meh."
Currently, using a Galaxy S5 on AT&T and while ma bell provides regular security updates, I haven't seen an Android version update since I received it last year. Still on Lollipop (5.1), no Marshmallow, let alone plans for Nougat.
For me, the annoyance is worst when you are forbidden from making a truly secure password. I've seen sites which forbid more than 12 (or even 8) characters, forbid spaces (or all non-alphanumerics).
Back when I did IT support in the 80's, our minicomputer-based servers required six digits, and must be changed every 90 days (didn't check for repeats). I knew I could go to any admin's desk and have a good chance of logging in with SPRING, SUMMER, AUTUMN or WINTER. Later they changed it to 8 characters, so I knew I could use SPRING87, etc.
Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
...they'll be mandated for all new cars.
The Insurance industry is a YUUUUGE lobby. If it will cut down on deaths, injuries and property damage, they'll lobby for making it a mandate.
Right now, the Google car is slightly safer than a human being, at city speeds, in good weather.
If it gets to the point where it's definitely safer than a human being (not foolproof, but safer), any weather or road conditions, the laws will change so fast your head will spin.
was "Windows 95 sucks less."
Detecting drunk people is the tough part.
Use mass spec for instant breathalyzer?
Analyze behavior?
In the long run it's like self-driving cars: eventually it'll be so much better than human-operated that insurance companies will lobby to mandate it.
The one place VB still has some life is in the MS Office (and related apps) macro language, Visual Basic for Applications.
It's mainly VB6 with some quirks... but you can get a lot of stuff done.
I have clients that would prefer that I send them a Word template add-in instead of a 'compiled' add-in, since anything with a DLL requires an installer, whereas the template can be just dropped into the Startup folder to be usable.
Sadly, rather than updating it to the more object-oriented VB.Net, Microsoft has left it foundering in the barely-OO VB6 era with some object stuff bolted on that never quite does what you need, and yes, there are certainly things that need a full .Net interface to be written that you can't do... but I've made a fair chunk of my career on VBA, and use it for automating Office stuff on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, I have more multitasking time when ears are occupied (teleconferences where I'll only need to interject once an hour) than eyes.
It's partly that I prefer music for driving, flying and exercising... but the number of articles on sites such as BoingBoing, Lifehacker, xda-developer etc. that are only in audio or video format that I sigh and say, "Well, I guess I'll never know."