The key is agreeing on what a "bad" programming language is.
Is a language that's 1) quick and easy to learn, 2) used in an environment that reinvents itself from scratch every X years, and 3) free? No.
PHP is the plastic member of the programming utensil family. It's so relatively cheap to throw out and replace that the users don't care if it's not strong and reusable.
A vote, on the floor, by the entire House - that actually passes. Until then, this is nothing more to the Net Neutrality cause than fruitless posturing.
My advice : ignore the extreme left and the extreme right yelling, fight them rationally without name calling, and consider they are truly a minority.
Those extreme minorities themselves can't be completely ignored. They have to be kept out of positions of power by the rest - from both sides of the politicial spectrum. If that doesn't happen, you will get a near clone of the intolerance in 1930's Nazi Germany. And we all know where that went...
Toyota made a fortune off environmentally friendly cars. When George W Bush told America that raising fuel economy would cost "millions" of jobs, Toyota bet on the technology anyway. When gas prices rose Americans bought fuel-efficient cars bolstering Toyota. The American auto makers were either buying engines from Toyota or licensing their patents. Environmental tech paid off.
Toyota also only initially invested in the technology because an American car manufacturer (GM, IIRC) had put together potential prototypes and looked to be way ahead of the game on the future. Of course, GM threw all of that tech in the closet for whatever dumb reason and Toyota took the lead. (Isn't it amazing that even in the 21st century companies are still invent superior technology to their own and then neglecting it intentionally out of the inability to change or take risks - despite all of the MBA-educated executives being trained to NOT DO THAT in MBA 101?)
Just like vaccines, right-wing ideologues can't imagine a world where acid rain, lead in gasoline and paint (i.e. just about everywhere), and Superfund sites that are decades away from being completely cleaned up.
Maybe we should kill the IRS too, because they're evil according to __fill-in-the-blank__
I'm a registered GOP voter, but sometimes the more ignorant, emotionally-driven members of our party really embarrass the rest of us.
I'm a GOP voter that voted for Trump but it wasn't only out of anger. I said, "To hell with common sense and safety. If I'm going to vote for REAL change - I'd rather take a huge gamble and hope for a possible big payout (vs. a total disaster) with a President Trump than voting for the consummate insider politician and four more years of growing federal gridlock and corruption.
Like President Obama, he hired some politically-extreme amateurs to his staff. Hopefully he'll continue to correct course and dump the remaining bad apples like Pruitt at the EPA (Ex. the Verizon-trained assclown chairman at the FCC and the completely worthless ideologue that's intentionally running the CFPB into the ground to kill it.)
The story (click-bait or not) is about the overarching trend - which is, "Sell, sell, SELL!" $20,000 down to $6300 is quite a turn in a matter of six months.
Like another person suggested already: Current Bitcoin owners are holding the hyper-inflated bag of Dutch tulips.
Former Firebug user here: No, the Firebug replacement doesn't have the community extensions that made Firebug better, but I've found that the built-in Firefox replacement has come around to where it's solid enough as a replacement. And it's definitely not as buggy as Firebug was at times.
The tradeoff of a few extra add-ons for the speed and better stability is a fair tradeoff, IMO.
If Firefox could collect more data on its end users (or ideally - from a UX research point of view - everything you do, like I'm sure Chrome does its best to do), the developers would have a much better view of what people want.
Instead, the Firefox devs have to deal with us grouchy, "Don't track me!!", users. As a result, they have to make their best guesses based on their relatively meager datasets... Hell - Maybe that's why the Firefox UI is so much more like Chrome than it used to be: they had to get their UX market research from somewhere...
In a generation, we've gone from, "Cameras everywhere are Big Brother!", to, "Cameras are a key tool to increasing personal safety!"
I've seen people pull out cameras as if they're going to stop people from saying or doing something, as if they are some kind of bulletproof vest that can stop others from doing them harm. In reality, they're as useless as a car window in stopping a murderer from shooting you with a gun. I wouldn't be surprised if people being chased by a killer would opt to pull out a cellphone rather than pick up a club to defend themselves.
"I'll video you and shame you on (fill in social media outlet here)!!" Shame doesn't stop someone that doesn't share your fears and doubts.
You'd think we would've learned from the UK's ring of steel and general surveillance environment (bad things still happen to people there).
I agree that the government shouldn't force equal allocation for all. Better performers should get greater rewards.
And I'm not saying it should be free to everyone just out of the goodness of our hearts. If it costs $30,000-$40,000 (to cover the "hundreds" of man hours + a healthy cut for the company), then that's good business.
I am saying, however, that your "allocation theory" and modern capitalism have been corrupted. The "right" way to sell such a valuable treatment would be to immediately turn that $30-$40K tab into a $100K bill to get the "warrior class" of salespeople/CEOs golden parachutes. Then they charge $110K the next year, and $120K in the 3rd year, and so on - just to drive up a company's stock price in perpetuity above all other concerns.
No matter what modern economic theories can be penned to support this modern version of business capitalism, it still FEELS wrong. It is innately wrong to put your profits first and your customers last - especially when human lives are what's being lost. In that scenario, are those people still behaving like society's "cream of the crop" that should reap the rewards? I'd say no.
The thought of a cure like this being validated and then made ready for the public, only to be priced out of reach for all but the top 10% and not covered by insurance would be a disgrace.
This was my exact argument -- until I finally took the plunge and updated to FF57. Yes, there were a couple of must-have extensions I HAD to wait for (NoScript, Nuke Anything, Web Developer), but they all came online and I made the change.
I quickly realized that I was totally wrong and was just being stubborn.
To those who suggest Palemoon or other pre-FF57 forks: Stop kidding yourself. You're riding on a slow, sinking ship that's losing support by the day.
Instead of staying on the FFork Titanic, try the following: Let go of every extension you haven't used in a few months and see what's left. If there's anything left with no Quantum version, try a close clone of the functionality. When you get to a good middle ground, make the jump. You'll realize that the speed/performance difference is BIG - and you won't be able to go back and be happy anymore.
I haven't studied the wind patterns off the Atlantic seaboard, but it seems like they could go a little north and try the Maine coastline, perhaps? Is it about visibility for their project?
Would you climb into a self-driving car that's programmed by a company that cheated with their programming on EPA standards to make more money? I wouldn't either...
Unlike BMW and Mercedes, VW is willing to take a bath on the draconian contract terms that Apple is clearly expecting any partner on this project to take. And they're hoping that Apple can give them back the tech cachet they need.
Linux being known as "free software" by just about everyone that cares about computers/IT is enough reason to skip the acronym. Besides, humans are lazy by nature, so why force people to tack on an acronym that many people can't even pronounce right?
BTW - This is the best GNU definition to give to anyone who doesn't know what GNU means. It's clean, concise, and very short - yet quite complete somehow.
Though they've come a long ways with Quantum, they can't outright crush Chrome in terms of performance. There's therefore no compelling technical reason for old Firefox users to switch back.
They have finally realized they needed a different marketing angle, and they're rebranding themselves as the alternative for people concerned about privacy. (Whether Firefox is really concerned about privacy is irrelevant, BTW. We're talking about marketing. And it's Firefox's best marketing play they have; There's no way that Chrome can honestly compete in that category.)
The GSK was caught by a harmless, private company collecting biometric data in a very positive way on the surface. "Send us your data and we'll tell you about your ancestry!" One of the GSK's distant relatives bought the service, and that eventually turned into the government's tool to turn a quiet, seventy-somthing retiree into a soon-to-be convict.
In that case, privately collected data was used for "good", but it won't always be government entities (see China). As for the private sector, they're probably worse. If Facebook has done anything (besides connect past friends and future adulterers), it has shown us that private corporations like Ticket Master don't give a damn about us beyond manipulation and eventual monetization.
The CA state government is serious about controlling and/or protecting its environment, gun ownership, etc.. They also tax its citizens more than other states by a significant margin. To be effective in this endeavor, they "state" has to collect a TON of private data - far more than any corporation.
Yet they want to protect individuals from corporate abuse of data collection and sale?
While the effort is noble and I agree that corporations have long overreached on data collection while keeping the federal government at bay in D.C. with fierce bribery... er, fierce lobbying, this move feels more hypocritical (and power-hungry) than helpful to average citizens.
Sometimes it's easier to just do it yourself, but it's not that simple in this professor's case.
Don't forget that it wasn't his property to fix; It was the institution's property. He technically didn't have the right to fix it. In fact, he likely would've gotten in trouble with his building's facilities management team.
What if he was working in an older university building, and there was asbestos mitigation that had to take place due to federal and state regulations? That's legal liability that has to be considered.
And that says nothing about some union people getting upset about someone doing their job for them.
As much as it sucks for the professor, he probably did the right thing and let it go - other than cleaning up the initial mess, of course.
We have college students that intern at Amazon starting between $90K-$100K, right out of college. They work long hours (10-12/day), but none of them would say they're not compensated well for a starting job.
Mod +6. This is a REAL problem in Arizona. There are literally HUNDREDS of school districts. And every time there's an effort to consolidate districts, there's immediate pushback.
Examples of administrative stupidity in AZ:
#1 - In the east valley of the Phoenix metro area, where there used to be an unincorporated town named Higley, Arizona. It has been completely annexed by Gilbert, AZ, so there's nothing really left of Higley except a hot dog business - and the Higley Unified School District. There is ZERO reason for it to exist, but the state government doesn't do anything about it. Tradition, maybe?
#2 - In the Gila Valley in SE Arizona, there are four small towns/cities (Safford, Thatcher, Pima, Ft. Thomas) totalling roughly 25K residents, and each town has its own school district. Four sets of administrators and overhead. There was a push a while back by some smart people there to combine into one school district, but it was shot down by an overwhelming majority. Why? Safford hated the Mormon snobs in Thatcher. Thatcher hated the white trash and Mexicans in Safford. Both Safford and Thatcher looked down on Pima, who had its own arrogant residents who thought they're God's gift to the valley. All three of them hated the "Injuns" in and around Ft. Thomas. Why? 100% FUD (at best).
That's just two cases in a state where that kind of Arizonan ignorance is commonplace. Meanwhile, teachers are paid terrible wages - practically the worst in the nation. They're having to force a virtual strike just to get something done about it. In the wake of the walkout, the Democratic and GOP leaders are crying about politics - while nobody does anything about the overpopulation of school districts.
I lucked out that Apple decided to be "brave" by adding that Touch bar and added too few USB-C ports while stripping the rest out. Otherwise I would've upgraded from my MacBook Pro 2014 and been hosed with that keyboard bug to boot.
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The key is agreeing on what a "bad" programming language is.
Is a language that's 1) quick and easy to learn, 2) used in an environment that reinvents itself from scratch every X years, and 3) free? No.
PHP is the plastic member of the programming utensil family. It's so relatively cheap to throw out and replace that the users don't care if it's not strong and reusable.
A vote, on the floor, by the entire House - that actually passes. Until then, this is nothing more to the Net Neutrality cause than fruitless posturing.
Good post. I would just add one point of caution.
My advice : ignore the extreme left and the extreme right yelling, fight them rationally without name calling, and consider they are truly a minority.
Those extreme minorities themselves can't be completely ignored. They have to be kept out of positions of power by the rest - from both sides of the politicial spectrum. If that doesn't happen, you will get a near clone of the intolerance in 1930's Nazi Germany. And we all know where that went...
Toyota made a fortune off environmentally friendly cars. When George W Bush told America that raising fuel economy would cost "millions" of jobs, Toyota bet on the technology anyway. When gas prices rose Americans bought fuel-efficient cars bolstering Toyota. The American auto makers were either buying engines from Toyota or licensing their patents. Environmental tech paid off.
Toyota also only initially invested in the technology because an American car manufacturer (GM, IIRC) had put together potential prototypes and looked to be way ahead of the game on the future. Of course, GM threw all of that tech in the closet for whatever dumb reason and Toyota took the lead. (Isn't it amazing that even in the 21st century companies are still invent superior technology to their own and then neglecting it intentionally out of the inability to change or take risks - despite all of the MBA-educated executives being trained to NOT DO THAT in MBA 101?)
Just like vaccines, right-wing ideologues can't imagine a world where acid rain, lead in gasoline and paint (i.e. just about everywhere), and Superfund sites that are decades away from being completely cleaned up.
Maybe we should kill the IRS too, because they're evil according to __fill-in-the-blank__
I'm a registered GOP voter, but sometimes the more ignorant, emotionally-driven members of our party really embarrass the rest of us.
I'm a GOP voter that voted for Trump but it wasn't only out of anger. I said, "To hell with common sense and safety. If I'm going to vote for REAL change - I'd rather take a huge gamble and hope for a possible big payout (vs. a total disaster) with a President Trump than voting for the consummate insider politician and four more years of growing federal gridlock and corruption.
Like President Obama, he hired some politically-extreme amateurs to his staff. Hopefully he'll continue to correct course and dump the remaining bad apples like Pruitt at the EPA (Ex. the Verizon-trained assclown chairman at the FCC and the completely worthless ideologue that's intentionally running the CFPB into the ground to kill it.)
The story (click-bait or not) is about the overarching trend - which is, "Sell, sell, SELL!" $20,000 down to $6300 is quite a turn in a matter of six months.
Like another person suggested already: Current Bitcoin owners are holding the hyper-inflated bag of Dutch tulips.
Former Firebug user here: No, the Firebug replacement doesn't have the community extensions that made Firebug better, but I've found that the built-in Firefox replacement has come around to where it's solid enough as a replacement. And it's definitely not as buggy as Firebug was at times.
The tradeoff of a few extra add-ons for the speed and better stability is a fair tradeoff, IMO.
If Firefox could collect more data on its end users (or ideally - from a UX research point of view - everything you do, like I'm sure Chrome does its best to do), the developers would have a much better view of what people want.
Instead, the Firefox devs have to deal with us grouchy, "Don't track me!!", users. As a result, they have to make their best guesses based on their relatively meager datasets... Hell - Maybe that's why the Firefox UI is so much more like Chrome than it used to be: they had to get their UX market research from somewhere...
In a generation, we've gone from, "Cameras everywhere are Big Brother!", to, "Cameras are a key tool to increasing personal safety!"
I've seen people pull out cameras as if they're going to stop people from saying or doing something, as if they are some kind of bulletproof vest that can stop others from doing them harm. In reality, they're as useless as a car window in stopping a murderer from shooting you with a gun. I wouldn't be surprised if people being chased by a killer would opt to pull out a cellphone rather than pick up a club to defend themselves.
"I'll video you and shame you on (fill in social media outlet here)!!" Shame doesn't stop someone that doesn't share your fears and doubts.
You'd think we would've learned from the UK's ring of steel and general surveillance environment (bad things still happen to people there).
Value is a perceived desire within someone for something.
So based on your list of valuable things.. Did you post this from 1840's rural Minnesota?
I can't remember where I read or heard this, but the moon and Earth's days would eventually be the same length and they'd lock into each other.
I agree that the government shouldn't force equal allocation for all. Better performers should get greater rewards.
And I'm not saying it should be free to everyone just out of the goodness of our hearts. If it costs $30,000-$40,000 (to cover the "hundreds" of man hours + a healthy cut for the company), then that's good business.
I am saying, however, that your "allocation theory" and modern capitalism have been corrupted. The "right" way to sell such a valuable treatment would be to immediately turn that $30-$40K tab into a $100K bill to get the "warrior class" of salespeople/CEOs golden parachutes. Then they charge $110K the next year, and $120K in the 3rd year, and so on - just to drive up a company's stock price in perpetuity above all other concerns.
No matter what modern economic theories can be penned to support this modern version of business capitalism, it still FEELS wrong. It is innately wrong to put your profits first and your customers last - especially when human lives are what's being lost. In that scenario, are those people still behaving like society's "cream of the crop" that should reap the rewards? I'd say no.
The thought of a cure like this being validated and then made ready for the public, only to be priced out of reach for all but the top 10% and not covered by insurance would be a disgrace.
This was my exact argument -- until I finally took the plunge and updated to FF57. Yes, there were a couple of must-have extensions I HAD to wait for (NoScript, Nuke Anything, Web Developer), but they all came online and I made the change.
I quickly realized that I was totally wrong and was just being stubborn.
To those who suggest Palemoon or other pre-FF57 forks: Stop kidding yourself. You're riding on a slow, sinking ship that's losing support by the day.
Instead of staying on the FFork Titanic, try the following: Let go of every extension you haven't used in a few months and see what's left. If there's anything left with no Quantum version, try a close clone of the functionality. When you get to a good middle ground, make the jump. You'll realize that the speed/performance difference is BIG - and you won't be able to go back and be happy anymore.
$$$$$$$$$$$$ + NIMBY = 0% chance of it happening.
I haven't studied the wind patterns off the Atlantic seaboard, but it seems like they could go a little north and try the Maine coastline, perhaps? Is it about visibility for their project?
Would you climb into a self-driving car that's programmed by a company that cheated with their programming on EPA standards to make more money? I wouldn't either...
Unlike BMW and Mercedes, VW is willing to take a bath on the draconian contract terms that Apple is clearly expecting any partner on this project to take. And they're hoping that Apple can give them back the tech cachet they need.
Linux being known as "free software" by just about everyone that cares about computers/IT is enough reason to skip the acronym. Besides, humans are lazy by nature, so why force people to tack on an acronym that many people can't even pronounce right?
BTW - This is the best GNU definition to give to anyone who doesn't know what GNU means. It's clean, concise, and very short - yet quite complete somehow.
Though they've come a long ways with Quantum, they can't outright crush Chrome in terms of performance. There's therefore no compelling technical reason for old Firefox users to switch back.
They have finally realized they needed a different marketing angle, and they're rebranding themselves as the alternative for people concerned about privacy. (Whether Firefox is really concerned about privacy is irrelevant, BTW. We're talking about marketing. And it's Firefox's best marketing play they have; There's no way that Chrome can honestly compete in that category.)
The GSK was caught by a harmless, private company collecting biometric data in a very positive way on the surface. "Send us your data and we'll tell you about your ancestry!" One of the GSK's distant relatives bought the service, and that eventually turned into the government's tool to turn a quiet, seventy-somthing retiree into a soon-to-be convict.
In that case, privately collected data was used for "good", but it won't always be government entities (see China). As for the private sector, they're probably worse. If Facebook has done anything (besides connect past friends and future adulterers), it has shown us that private corporations like Ticket Master don't give a damn about us beyond manipulation and eventual monetization.
The CA state government is serious about controlling and/or protecting its environment, gun ownership, etc.. They also tax its citizens more than other states by a significant margin. To be effective in this endeavor, they "state" has to collect a TON of private data - far more than any corporation.
Yet they want to protect individuals from corporate abuse of data collection and sale?
While the effort is noble and I agree that corporations have long overreached on data collection while keeping the federal government at bay in D.C. with fierce bribery... er, fierce lobbying, this move feels more hypocritical (and power-hungry) than helpful to average citizens.
Sometimes it's easier to just do it yourself, but it's not that simple in this professor's case.
Don't forget that it wasn't his property to fix; It was the institution's property. He technically didn't have the right to fix it. In fact, he likely would've gotten in trouble with his building's facilities management team.
What if he was working in an older university building, and there was asbestos mitigation that had to take place due to federal and state regulations? That's legal liability that has to be considered.
And that says nothing about some union people getting upset about someone doing their job for them.
As much as it sucks for the professor, he probably did the right thing and let it go - other than cleaning up the initial mess, of course.
We have college students that intern at Amazon starting between $90K-$100K, right out of college. They work long hours (10-12/day), but none of them would say they're not compensated well for a starting job.
Mod +6. This is a REAL problem in Arizona. There are literally HUNDREDS of school districts. And every time there's an effort to consolidate districts, there's immediate pushback.
Examples of administrative stupidity in AZ:
#1 - In the east valley of the Phoenix metro area, where there used to be an unincorporated town named Higley, Arizona. It has been completely annexed by Gilbert, AZ, so there's nothing really left of Higley except a hot dog business - and the Higley Unified School District. There is ZERO reason for it to exist, but the state government doesn't do anything about it. Tradition, maybe?
#2 - In the Gila Valley in SE Arizona, there are four small towns/cities (Safford, Thatcher, Pima, Ft. Thomas) totalling roughly 25K residents, and each town has its own school district. Four sets of administrators and overhead. There was a push a while back by some smart people there to combine into one school district, but it was shot down by an overwhelming majority. Why? Safford hated the Mormon snobs in Thatcher. Thatcher hated the white trash and Mexicans in Safford. Both Safford and Thatcher looked down on Pima, who had its own arrogant residents who thought they're God's gift to the valley. All three of them hated the "Injuns" in and around Ft. Thomas. Why? 100% FUD (at best).
That's just two cases in a state where that kind of Arizonan ignorance is commonplace. Meanwhile, teachers are paid terrible wages - practically the worst in the nation. They're having to force a virtual strike just to get something done about it. In the wake of the walkout, the Democratic and GOP leaders are crying about politics - while nobody does anything about the overpopulation of school districts.
I lucked out that Apple decided to be "brave" by adding that Touch bar and added too few USB-C ports while stripping the rest out. Otherwise I would've upgraded from my MacBook Pro 2014 and been hosed with that keyboard bug to boot.