"To be exact, 51% of them have the Google-branded device, 52% are on iOS tablets, while 8% are on those with other platforms, such as Blackberry OS."
To be exact... no. 28% of the 51% are Kindle Fires, and they are not "Google-branded" devices, they're Amazon-branded devices. In fact, they're not even specifically sold as Android tablets, even though they run a forked version of 2.3.
"Want to create jobs, let businesses hire people without regulatory red tape and high costs (taxes)."
What red tape you you suggest we cut? The red tape that controls the number and type of emissions your plant can spew into the atmosphere? The ones controlling what poisons you can dump into the local river? The ones preventing you from planting containers of Dioxins in your backyard (and over the local aquifer)? The ones that insure that the food produced at your local restaurant or processing plant isn't contaminated? That ones that help insure your chemical plant or mine isn't likely to explode sometime in the near future?
Or maybe the ones that insure your boss can't simply fire you because he just learned you're gay. Or Jewish. Or won't sleep with him.
Then there's the other fallacy in your reasoning, that assumes that the money they save by not properly disposing of hazardous wastes will be used to "create jobs", and won't just go to the CEO and upper management in their annual bonus.
"However that money will be reinvested into the company to allow the company to grow, and hire more people."
Assumption. And even if that's what's being said, it's a rationalization. Effective tax rates for corporations are at the lowest they've been for decades. Many industries, like the aforementioned oil industry, are enjoying record profits and sitting on mountains of cash.
And yet job creation is at a standstill. If giving more money to the rich "creates jobs", everyone would be employed by now. They're not.
In all likelihood, the extra profit will sit on the companies books or be doled out to upper management in the form of bonuses and other executive perks. The only "reinvestment" likely to occur is in yet another Ferrari.
"....even though they were the first to market, and they were the risk-takers who didn't know ahead of time that there would be any profits."
Bullshit. Seriously. We were talking about oil. Hundreds of wildcat outfits rushed to take advantage of the Texas oil boom in 1901, over one hundred years ago. Today's mega-corporations bear little to no resemblance to those companies, and most, if not all of their "risks" are insured and subsidized.
Young and inexperienced programmers often suffer from the "when the only tool you have is a hammer..." mentality. This could be design patterns, or their insistence on using a single language for everything, or for always using a particular platform or framework.
Regardless, patterns are interesting in that they're largely platform and language agnostic. They're just ways of thinking about a problem, and the true test of using them is knowing when they fit a given situation... and when they don't. Knowing the benefits and the tradeoffs.
I understand that you setup a specific scenario with a deliberately limited menu of inputs and available options, in an attempt to portray an analogy to the existing situation. The problem is, as you admitted, the analogy breaks down rather quickly the moment one attempts to step out of the box, which in turn suggests that it's not even a close analogy to the question at hand.
Real world solutions to problems tend to be a bit messy, and, as you indicated, often have no right answers. But some are better than others, and typically more than just one answer is needed.
"Real pioneering comes from thinking outside of the box, where nobody else has ever tried exploring before. If all you can do is think in terms of the named patterns that other people have already thought of, then I think that's generally only going to hold you back."
Ummm... this smacks of a distain for formal education, which I typically find in people who lack formal education and training.
Regardless, patterns are simply tools in the box. They're not the ONLY tools in the box.
"When Boeing or Airbus wants to build a new plane they don't hire some kid who's good folding paper aircraft, they hire proper engineers."
When I need to have the brakes fixed on my car, an aerospace engineer would be overkill.
For adding a few customization features and pages to a WordPress installation, a PHP guy with a year or so's worth of experience is probably all most people need. Or can afford, for that matter.
"Singleton: Some poor language are missing the plain old structures, and did not bother to implement them thread safe BY SPECIFICATION"
Ah... no. Singletons are typically used as resource managers, like managing a pool of objects, or perhaps controlling access to a hardware resource, where you need to ensure that there's one instance and only one instance.
It's true that you're more likely to need them in languages that don't implement threads as part of the language syntax, but the flip side of that is that as a developer you're probably not going to be able to dictate your personal language preferences (biases) to every employer and on every project.
"Builder: Really? What is next? Every time i write 3 lines of code i have to say that i used 3some pattern???"
You don't have to say anything. Design Patterns simply pointed out that a lot of code tends to be organized into certain patterns, and having an idea of what those patterns are and their associated benefits and tradeoffs may help you write better code.
Or in your case, at least help you to write adequate code... (grin)
Subjective? Hardly. Start with the presumption that other people will treat you, your wife, and your kids the same way you treat them and theirs. That gets you close.
"The only way to avoid being racist is to simply treat everyone by the same fair and equitable standard."
If everyone were willing to abide by that policy, all would be well and good. The problems occurs when they don't.
It's not that you're giving special favors to someone based on race. Or gender. Or religion. Or sexual orientation. It's that you're ensuring that anyone, regardless of those factors, has the same rights and access to the same opportunities as everyone else.
Even if some people would prefer -- or even demand -- otherwise.
If you believe that EVERYONE should be under the same fair and equitable standard, then there would be no gay rights issues, or abortion issues, or special breaks or exemptions under the tax code. Everyone would have access to basic medical care. And on. And on.
"Also missing from your analysis is that by far most homicides involving firearms are done so with *illegally* obtained firearms..."
Your FBI link relates to OFFICER involved shootings. Cops get shot more often with illegal weapons? Duh.
How about a study from the American Journal of Epidemiology? "Results show that regardless of storage practice, type of gun, or number of firearms in the home, having a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of firearm homicide and firearm suicide in the home."
"Distances where some dumbass who knows nothing about guns can kill with one resemble distances where dumbasses who know nothing about knives can kill with one of those."
I can kill someone with a knife from six feet away?
Seriously, at the distances most handguns are used, good breath control and the rest don't matter. I'm not trying to hit the x-ring on a range target 30 feet away. I just need to pour lead into that big thing standing in front of me.
"You might be surprised to learn that the vast majority of mobile phones in the USA and the world are not smart phones."
Ah, no. Smartphones are now more common than "dumb" phones. To quote CNN, "For the first time, more than half of all American mobile customers own a smartphone, according to a report released Wednesday by Nielsen. That's up from 38% a year ago."
Someone at some point in time probably made the argument that the majority of people were not going to be able to afford expensive mobile phones as well. Or that most people wouldn't have $10,000 "personal" computers sitting at home. Or that there would never be a market for $400 pocket calculators.
Thing is, those devices got cheaper. Smartphones will get cheaper. Soon that's all that will be made.
Of course, here in the US, this kind of thing would never happen.
Because under CISPA, any and all information shared, even the nature of the information shared, is completely and totally exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Unlike the UK, we'd never even hear about the abuses, because we'd never even be able to ask the question...
Hijacking the thread here. The Twitter ban has been lifted.
“Pakistan’s telecommunications regulators shut down Twitter for about eight hours Sunday because the social networking site would not remove content the government found objectionable to Muslims, but the nation’s prime minister stepped in to reverse the ban, officials said.”
Slashdot Mirror
"To be exact, 51% of them have the Google-branded device, 52% are on iOS tablets, while 8% are on those with other platforms, such as Blackberry OS."
To be exact... no. 28% of the 51% are Kindle Fires, and they are not "Google-branded" devices, they're Amazon-branded devices. In fact, they're not even specifically sold as Android tablets, even though they run a forked version of 2.3.
I think he meant min wage and working at McDonalds.
"Want to create jobs, let businesses hire people without regulatory red tape and high costs (taxes)."
What red tape you you suggest we cut? The red tape that controls the number and type of emissions your plant can spew into the atmosphere? The ones controlling what poisons you can dump into the local river? The ones preventing you from planting containers of Dioxins in your backyard (and over the local aquifer)? The ones that insure that the food produced at your local restaurant or processing plant isn't contaminated? That ones that help insure your chemical plant or mine isn't likely to explode sometime in the near future?
Or maybe the ones that insure your boss can't simply fire you because he just learned you're gay. Or Jewish. Or won't sleep with him.
Then there's the other fallacy in your reasoning, that assumes that the money they save by not properly disposing of hazardous wastes will be used to "create jobs", and won't just go to the CEO and upper management in their annual bonus.
"However that money will be reinvested into the company to allow the company to grow, and hire more people."
Assumption. And even if that's what's being said, it's a rationalization. Effective tax rates for corporations are at the lowest they've been for decades. Many industries, like the aforementioned oil industry, are enjoying record profits and sitting on mountains of cash.
And yet job creation is at a standstill. If giving more money to the rich "creates jobs", everyone would be employed by now. They're not.
In all likelihood, the extra profit will sit on the companies books or be doled out to upper management in the form of bonuses and other executive perks. The only "reinvestment" likely to occur is in yet another Ferrari.
"....even though they were the first to market, and they were the risk-takers who didn't know ahead of time that there would be any profits."
Bullshit. Seriously. We were talking about oil. Hundreds of wildcat outfits rushed to take advantage of the Texas oil boom in 1901, over one hundred years ago. Today's mega-corporations bear little to no resemblance to those companies, and most, if not all of their "risks" are insured and subsidized.
Most of people who've put you into this mess are ex-CEOs who've since bailed and retired on their multi-million-dollar golden parachutes.
Cut expenses, Profit. Cut jobs. Profit. Offshore. More profits. Cut quality. More profits. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat...
What? People are no longer buying the mass-produced junk we're importing from China? Sorry about that. Guess it's time for me to bail...
Young and inexperienced programmers often suffer from the "when the only tool you have is a hammer..." mentality. This could be design patterns, or their insistence on using a single language for everything, or for always using a particular platform or framework.
Regardless, patterns are interesting in that they're largely platform and language agnostic. They're just ways of thinking about a problem, and the true test of using them is knowing when they fit a given situation... and when they don't. Knowing the benefits and the tradeoffs.
Which comes from experience.
I understand that you setup a specific scenario with a deliberately limited menu of inputs and available options, in an attempt to portray an analogy to the existing situation. The problem is, as you admitted, the analogy breaks down rather quickly the moment one attempts to step out of the box, which in turn suggests that it's not even a close analogy to the question at hand.
Real world solutions to problems tend to be a bit messy, and, as you indicated, often have no right answers. But some are better than others, and typically more than just one answer is needed.
"Real pioneering comes from thinking outside of the box, where nobody else has ever tried exploring before. If all you can do is think in terms of the named patterns that other people have already thought of, then I think that's generally only going to hold you back."
Ummm... this smacks of a distain for formal education, which I typically find in people who lack formal education and training.
Regardless, patterns are simply tools in the box. They're not the ONLY tools in the box.
"When Boeing or Airbus wants to build a new plane they don't hire some kid who's good folding paper aircraft, they hire proper engineers."
When I need to have the brakes fixed on my car, an aerospace engineer would be overkill.
For adding a few customization features and pages to a WordPress installation, a PHP guy with a year or so's worth of experience is probably all most people need. Or can afford, for that matter.
"Singleton: Some poor language are missing the plain old structures, and did not bother to implement them thread safe BY SPECIFICATION"
Ah... no. Singletons are typically used as resource managers, like managing a pool of objects, or perhaps controlling access to a hardware resource, where you need to ensure that there's one instance and only one instance.
It's true that you're more likely to need them in languages that don't implement threads as part of the language syntax, but the flip side of that is that as a developer you're probably not going to be able to dictate your personal language preferences (biases) to every employer and on every project.
"Builder: Really? What is next? Every time i write 3 lines of code i have to say that i used 3some pattern???"
You don't have to say anything. Design Patterns simply pointed out that a lot of code tends to be organized into certain patterns, and having an idea of what those patterns are and their associated benefits and tradeoffs may help you write better code.
Or in your case, at least help you to write adequate code... (grin)
That's a fairly elaborate straw man scenario you've set up in an attempt to "prove" some point.
Where's that part about how the teacher drags Bill off to the principle's office for discipline?
Subjective? Hardly. Start with the presumption that other people will treat you, your wife, and your kids the same way you treat them and theirs. That gets you close.
"The only way to avoid being racist is to simply treat everyone by the same fair and equitable standard."
If everyone were willing to abide by that policy, all would be well and good. The problems occurs when they don't.
It's not that you're giving special favors to someone based on race. Or gender. Or religion. Or sexual orientation. It's that you're ensuring that anyone, regardless of those factors, has the same rights and access to the same opportunities as everyone else.
Even if some people would prefer -- or even demand -- otherwise.
If you believe that EVERYONE should be under the same fair and equitable standard, then there would be no gay rights issues, or abortion issues, or special breaks or exemptions under the tax code. Everyone would have access to basic medical care. And on. And on.
"Also missing from your analysis is that by far most homicides involving firearms are done so with *illegally* obtained firearms..."
Your FBI link relates to OFFICER involved shootings. Cops get shot more often with illegal weapons? Duh.
How about a study from the American Journal of Epidemiology? "Results show that regardless of storage practice, type of gun, or number of firearms in the home, having a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of firearm homicide and firearm suicide in the home."
"Distances where some dumbass who knows nothing about guns can kill with one resemble distances where dumbasses who know nothing about knives can kill with one of those."
I can kill someone with a knife from six feet away?
Seriously, at the distances most handguns are used, good breath control and the rest don't matter. I'm not trying to hit the x-ring on a range target 30 feet away. I just need to pour lead into that big thing standing in front of me.
Or upgrade to a new, subsidized phone.
Target traditionally sends coupons in a booklet, not in an envelope.
At the time C++ hadn't really risen into dominance. ObjC, however, had more Smalltalk'ish features and dynamic binding.
Hey. Who knew?
"You might be surprised to learn that the vast majority of mobile phones in the USA and the world are not smart phones."
Ah, no. Smartphones are now more common than "dumb" phones. To quote CNN, "For the first time, more than half of all American mobile customers own a smartphone, according to a report released Wednesday by Nielsen. That's up from 38% a year ago."
Someone at some point in time probably made the argument that the majority of people were not going to be able to afford expensive mobile phones as well. Or that most people wouldn't have $10,000 "personal" computers sitting at home. Or that there would never be a market for $400 pocket calculators.
Thing is, those devices got cheaper. Smartphones will get cheaper. Soon that's all that will be made.
Of course, here in the US, this kind of thing would never happen.
Because under CISPA, any and all information shared, even the nature of the information shared, is completely and totally exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Unlike the UK, we'd never even hear about the abuses, because we'd never even be able to ask the question...
http://www.isights.org/2012/05/uk-government-staff-caught-snooping-on-citizens-data.html
Hijacking the thread here. The Twitter ban has been lifted.
“Pakistan’s telecommunications regulators shut down Twitter for about eight hours Sunday because the social networking site would not remove content the government found objectionable to Muslims, but the nation’s prime minister stepped in to reverse the ban, officials said.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pakistan-blocks-then-restores-twitter-access/2012/05/20/gIQAPqBPdU_story.html
Ditto. People always act like it's an either/or situation. Put this engine into a next-generation plug-in Prius and get 150mpg...
"I think my last multi-state driving vacation was about $150 for a week in a mercedes c240 (thanks to a free upgrade coupon)."
Really have to wonder why more people don't do this.
As has been pointed out, many families ALREADY have two vehicles, a commuter and a hauler. In many cases, one of those could easily be electric.