We use jQuery because it allows us to deliver what our users want in a significantly shorter period of time. Not only they get it sooner, it costs the company less and we can focus on doing things that jQuery doesn't do. Especially in our case since we have a limited set of hardware and browsers to support. Wringing the most speed out of a site that we possibly can isn't necessary.
And just because you're using jQuery for some stuff doesn't mean you have to forget how to write native javascript or use css for those things that make the most sense to use it for.
Then you don't know enough people using jQuery. Just because I'm quite capable of writing straight javascript or creating my own library doesn't mean that jQuery doesn't have benefits for programmers. Smart programmers don't reinvent the wheel just because they can.
We use jQuery for actual in house web applications rather than a site that gets infrequent visits from random users. The difference being that we can use an application cache to store things like a minified version jQuery library on the client so it doesn't need to be downloaded every time you visit the site.
In some cases at work we've replaced laptops with tablets for field use. Laptops were often not a very good fit anyway.
At home, we used to have two PCs, then a PC and a laptop, then 2 laptops and we've since replaced one laptop with a tablet. That arrangement works pretty well, especially when you consider that my son has his own tablet through school and my daughter has an iPod touch that she uses for email, games, messaging, and watching shows on netflix.
My point is that there are things that we used to use PCs for that are done as well or better by a mobile device. That's not to say there aren't trade offs but I do believe that tablets in particular are cutting into PC and laptop sales. Lots of people use a computer primarily for web and email access. Even though a PC might be better at some things and many families will keep one around, they aren't going to be as inclined to buy new ones as often. Our current laptop is 4 years old and we've got no plans to upgrade anytime soon. We'd probably get another tablet first. So yeah, I think the PC market has definitely been impacted.
I think the mistake some techie folks make is that they feel they should be judged strictly on their technical skills. Whether you want to call it "good at office politics" or "having people skills", ultimately the success of many projects depends on technical people being able to effectively work with non technical people to deliver a product.Those are skills that you should develop if you don't have them all ready.
I may promote or give better opportunities to an employee that is really good at getting user stories as opposed to somebody who's good at generating code but not much else. That's still a meritocracy.
Good post, except one point needs to be changed(or you need to change your naive view): CS kids usually have no idea about "math" as you call it. It is much more encompassing than you think it is. That is, if you think there is no math beyond what is taught in CS curriculum. ( some form of "discrete math", calc, DE, basic statistics).
Just recall that mathematics predates CS in any form and CS is some really really tiny part of "math". In any case mathematics is much more abstract and pure than CS.
That's it.
It's all relative.
I have no idea about modern CS degrees but 20 years ago the required math courses you had to take in order to get a CS degree left you about 10 credits short of a math minor (which I went ahead and got). I don't consider myself a math expert by any means but compared to an average college grad my math skills are (or at least were) pretty good. Believe me that I know I was just scratching the surface.
My post was in response to the AC who said that CS degrees are a waste of money and don't tell you anything about the applicant. It does tell me that they have above average math skills though not necessarily much above average. Someone who's programming skills are self taught may really suck at math and in the organization I work for that would be a problem.
How long could society support every couple having 4 kids?
The point is that having 4 kids is a choice. So is two kids. So is none. Likewise there are 1,200 sqft apartments and $4,000 sqft homes.
Choosing more interesting work over a higher salary doesn't necessary mean you can't support a family, but certainly having a large family can make that harder.
Salary is but one consideration and high paying + challenging is not mutually exclusive.
I deliberately left a higher paying job for a non-profit even though I had a mortgage and two kids. Ultimately I'm happier for it even though I know I'd be making more money if I had stayed where I was. The work wouldn't be nearly as fulfilling or challenging. Still I'm not exactly poor and I'm content with my pay.
Wow. At least when I graduated a CS degree wasn't exactly an easy one to get. It doesn't mean that everyone holding a CS degree is automatically a better candidate than everyone who doesn't have one, nor does it mean that they are good candidate for a given position. It at least used to mean that they have a pretty good understanding of how computers and operating systems work, that they have decent (if not great) math skills, that they have some ability to complete a project, work with others, and have reasonable writing skills.
Usually when I'm looking for people I'll state that a computer science degree is preferred. That has not stopped me from hiring people without CS degrees though I think pretty much everyone I've hired (as a developer) has had some degree.
You're right, I think his advice is timeless and not particularly targeted towards the class of 2013. It's still good advice. The other topics you mention might be interesting (or maybe not) and have some relevance for them but I'm not sure they'd make good commencement speech topics.
The Terms of service makes it plain that it doesn't matter if he's using the service for commercial purposes or not, he can't have a server. He was providing a high bandwidth service to friends and family that potentially impacts the level of service that Verizon is able to give its other customers. I think they did the right thing.
Now in all honesty, I also think as a residential customer I should be able to host a server or two on my Internet connection for my own purposes which would include the ability to host a few files and photos that for privacy reasons I may not want to have on dropbox or flickr.
Maybe the best way to handle something like this and prevent the kind of abuse this guy engaged in is to allow unlimited downloads but charge extra for uploads over a certain amount. Then remove the server restriction.
From what I understand he had two places in Belize. On located in the mainland off of the New river (which I saw) and the other on Ambergris Caye which I probably was within a couple miles of. I think it was the latter which burned down. It was on a quiet part of an island otherwise filled with tourists and American expatriates. It's not as remote as you're thinking it is. The place I grew up in the states probably had a worse road and was located next to a smaller town.
You can purchase MP3 legally from Amazon. CD ripping (aka format shifting) has always been legal.
Oh and if your candybar phone was anything like mine, using its hobbled browser to download music from Amazon would have been pretty painful if would have worked at all.
You can purchase MP3 legally from Amazon. CD ripping (aka format shifting) has always been legal.
You have to remember that we're talking about 7 or 8 years ago when Intel opted not to work with Apple on a processor for the iPhone. Amazon wasn't selling MP3s at the time and wouldn't start until after the iPhone was released. And then only with a much smaller list of available titles compared to the iTunes store.
As for ripping CDs, when's the last time you actually bought a music CD? I haven't in a long time. Why? Because downloading is so much easier and convenient. This is one of the things the iPhone offered that other phones of that era didn't.
My candy bar phone back then played MP3s just fine. I do not see what's the big deal with vendor-locked iTunes.
Where did these mp3s you played on your candy bar phone come from and what steps did you have to go through to get them on the phone itself? Could you browse through a library of millions of songs (on the phone) and download them individually or by album? Could you do it legally? What about your non-techie friends and relatives? Even if their phones could play mp3s, did they have any clue as to how to do it?
To be completely accurate, the ability to download songs from the iTunes store straight to the iPhone itself wasn't there at launch. It took a few months but that does point out another advantage of the iPhone over what was available at the time, - frequent software upgrades.
More and more it's becoming apparent to me that many of us in the tech industry have a huge blind spot. We want faster GPUs and processors. We want more storage capacity, more bandwidth, and more pixels, but we really only care about ease of use to a point. We like gadgets and playing with software so if getting some music on our phone takes some fiddling with software and hardware, it's just part of the fun. On the other hand, if everyone can do it, it takes away from our techie mystique.;-)
Yes, iTunes was vendor locked but it was apparent well before 2007 that vast majority of the public didn't care.
When it comes to specifics we probably agree. I will add some caveats though. Technology moves quickly and career wise if we want to be relevant in our 40's and 50's we need to move with it. It's not only good for your career, learning new skills is good for your brain.
There's been plenty of times in my career where I've chosen to use a particular technology for a given project primarily because I wanted to learn it or I wanted a member of my staff to learn it. Yes, it costs more, but it pays off down the road.
My current example is a backend text processing system for one of our data analysis applications. I started it about 12 years ago and chose perl. Python seems to be the language of choice now for scripting and I'm contemplating doing a conversion. It will be time consuming and expensive. Further there's nothing I foresee needing to do with this system that I can't do with perl. The problem is that the system continues to grow and as expensive as it would be to convert now, it will be even more expensive in 2 years.
Great advice and I will add that as far as your brain and career goes, sometimes change for change sake is good. You really should be ensuring that you're learning new stuff on a regular basis. Keeps your brain healthy. I've seen too many posts on Slashdot from tech folks in their 40's or 50's wondering what they should learn in order to have relevant skills again because the demand for the skills they had dried up.
Considering iTunes' not working on other devices was due to DRM (mainly), I can't say it's a very positive aspect that only the iPhone could do it.
My smartphones back then did a very good job with what web pages were available back then, no problems there.
The iPhone only really changed two things:
Interfaces got flatter (fewer sub-menus) and touch input replaced physical keyboards and navigation keys.
You're applying your techie values and missing some things. You may see iTunes and associated DRM as a disadvantage but the larger group of consumers doesn't (or didn't). It was a hugely positive aspect and only the iPhone had it. Further, the app store wasn't there at day one but it really helped push the iPhone ahead of everybody else when it did come. This in spite of the fact that lots of techies don't like the walled garden aspect of it. The world is filled with people who don't really care about that.
The touch input just didn't replace the keyboard and navigation keys. It allowed for much better navigation than what was available before, especially on a small device. Pinch and Zoom was what really made web pages designed for large screens workable on a small one, so no the web browser you had was not nearly as good in comparison even though it may have been decent for its time and good enough for you.
The day Steve Jobs stood in front of a room and introduced the Iphone EVERYONE knew this was a game changer. "Today we're going to introduce a new iPod, a phone, and world class web device" As he repeated that line the graphics on the screen merged and the room realized the leaks about three new products were instead one new device. It was a hell of a mis-direction. It wasn't "the mother of all demos" but it was a close second.
I disagree, but that's probably because I'd been using PDAs for a decade prior to the iPhone. Everyone in the PDA business knew that phones and PDAs were going to merge. The only thing they didn't know was if phones were going to pick up PDA features, or if PDAs were going to be able to make calls. In the end, they are both small computers running various programs.
The only game-changer the iPhone brought was that it eschewed hardware number/keyboard entry (and one helluva marketing campaign). Others had toyed with a purely touchscreen interface before, but nobody had bet the entire farm on it like Apple did. (For those taken in by the marketing who believe that the iPhone was the first purely touchscreen phone, google for LG Prada.)
In that way, the iPhone was a lot like the iPod. It was ho-hum in terms of technical features - things which everyone else already had or had tried before. But the interface was a game-changer, and even if they weren't actually the first to market with the idea their massive marketing campaign made it first in people's minds. So I don't really blame Intel for missing the boat. Interface and marketing aren't things you can really appraise prior to a product's release. If Intel judged the iPhone purely on its technical features, it would've looked like any other smartphone with one helluva risky bet on a touchscreen-only keyboard. Just like the technocrati here first saw the iPod and based on its technical features declared, "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
How many PDAs or smart phones in 2007 could leverage the tremendously popular iTunes store? How many had web browsers that could actually display most sites as intended (flash notwithstanding)? To me there were other things that the iPhone brought to the table that could have been used to evaluate its potential.
They seem to have a hard time grasping that numbers aren't all that matter and more data needs to be considered. The game changers are often the people who know how to look beyond the numbers.
This is especially true for Apple. Apple's sales have always relied as much on consumers' emotional responses to its products as to the tech specs - - (Apple haters would say they relied it more or exclusively). It's always been about creating "an experience" for consumers, which, by definition, creates an emotional appeal that can't be measured quantitatively. So anyone who tries to judge the likely success or failure of a new Apple product based solely on numbers and tech specs just doesn't understand the way Apple does business at all.
I'd take it further than that. To like something because it's easier to use than another product isn't just an emotional response, it's a very practical one. The iTunes store made it easy to get the music you wanted. There were smartphones before the iPhone and even ones with touch screens. There were PDAs, There were mp3 players. There were cameras. Apple created a device that from a sheer hardware and software standpoint was perhaps not the best of breed in any of those categories but was by far and away the best at combining them. It was also easy to buy which is part of the process.
So, he made a perfectly rational decision based upon the data he had available. It turned out in the long run that he would have been better off if he had acted otherwise, so looking back on it he says it would be better to reject rational decision making. I find this unconvincing. In my experience, people have a fantastic way of revising their own personal histories and 'the gut' is a great tool to do so. If I made the best choice I could, given the information I had, and it turned out incorrect I can always look back on things and say that my gut told me otherwise. By this means the chief protagonist of my personal history will always be correct, always know the right thing to do, even when it turned out to be wrong.
I agree that hindsight is 20/20. However, he may have actually had an inclination that he decided to ignore and instead make a decision "based on the data he had available"
The problem is that we sometimes look at all the relevant reports, trend studies, and specs we've been presented with and figure that constitutes the data that's available. It's not. I believe that what we often call "gut instinct" or "intuition" is really our mind's way of combining various bits of information from throughout our lifetime and merging it with our sense of the current situation to form an opinion. THAT is data too.
Many techie people seem to be confounded by Apple's success because the just look and the hardware specs and think there's better stuff available. Lot's of folks in the tech industry thought the iPad was going to be a huge flop.
They seem to have a hard time grasping that numbers aren't all that matter and more data needs to be considered. The game changers are often the people who know how to look beyond the numbers.
Lamanai, not Laminai,, from the Mayan Lama'anayin meaning submerged crocodile.
Beautiful pyramids though and it is very easy to know what they are is as they are always in areas with other Mayan structures.
And yes, the Belize gov is pretty incompetent (ask McAffee)
It's only easy to know that the other hills in the area are ruins if you've been told that. I saw the temples at Lamanai and maybe eventually on my own I would have figured out that the other hills are ruins but it wasn't obvious to me at first. They were completely unremarkable to me and looked very much like the limestone hills and outcroppings I'd see around here near some rivers and streams.
It brings up a good question. There's an old fort near where I live. Up until after WWII it served the military in various ways, primarily as place for training in it's later years. Now it's mostly a living museum. The main buildings and walls have been restored and are maintained, but a lot of the supplemental buildings on the edges of the complex have stood empty for decades. They've become dilapidated and would be increasingly expensive to repair. At what point do you say we have enough examples of buildings like this, we don't need to keep all of them?
Mayan ruins are different of course. They're much older and could provide valuable information about that culture and that time period that has been lost. Still, it's very unlikely that all the ruins will be ever excavated or studied in any detail. In fact excavating them would probably just hasten their erosion. I'm sure that many of the structures are very much like a lot of the other ones.
A good road in Belize however, might have much more practical value to the local population. But I don't really understand the whole context of this. I'm sure there are lesser ruins that could have been used instead. Further, I'm pretty sure that limestone is a pretty common material in Belize (hence its use by Mayans) so is it really that hard and that expensive to get it some place else? Would the local population have been better off had the tourism potential of the ruins been realized? I don't now. I do know that it's pretty easy to sit here and judge when shown a picture of an impressive ruin which is not in fact the one that was destroyed and when we can take roads for granted.
Bullshit. They excavated the material for road fill, they knew exactly what it was and the quality of the material they would obtain and how much money they would save paying for quarried material trucked to the site. You do not just use any passing dirt for road fill because it will be impossible to compact properly and could be subject to extreme bulking when exposed to water, you do not randomly excavate hills because you do not know what they constitute and how difficult they will be to excavate.
You win the prize for civil construction ignorance as do those who thought your ignorance was informative. Even ancient Romans knew better than you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads please check diagram at bottom of article.
The greedy shit head owner of the company knew exactly what they were doing and how much they would save.
I'll try putting it a little differently. I have a hard time believing they knew exactly what they were doing because if they did they'd know there'd be hell to pay. There are lots of completely un-excavated buildings of lesser importance that they'd have a much better chance of destroying and getting away with. In fact that may be exactly what they were supposed to do. Somebody picked the wrong hill.
Bullshit. They excavated the material for road fill, they knew exactly what it was and the quality of the material they would obtain and how much money they would save paying for quarried material trucked to the site. You do not just use any passing dirt for road fill because it will be impossible to compact properly and could be subject to extreme bulking when exposed to water, you do not randomly excavate hills because you do not know what they constitute and how difficult they will be to excavate.
You win the prize for civil construction ignorance as do those who thought your ignorance was informative. Even ancient Romans knew better than you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads please check diagram at bottom of article.
The greedy shit head owner of the company knew exactly what they were doing and how much they would save.
I'm sure they knew what they were getting even if they didn't realize it was a Mayan temple (which as I said is a stretch). The limestone was visible through the vegetation. I'm not suggesting that people commonly dig up random hills to use as road fill.
However, even if total ignorance of the significance of the site is a stretch, what I also find unbelievable is that someone thought they could tear down the most prominent feature of a major archaeological find and figure that nobody would notice.
So the truth is probably somewhere in between. The picture in the linked article was a deliberate misrepresentation of what was destroyed in order to fan outrage. If they'd shown a picture of the actual temple readers wouldn't be nearly as upset because frankly it didn't look like much. Now again, the fact that it didn't look like much doesn't mean it's not an important site. I'm not condoning what happened. But tearing down something like the high temple at Laminai is a much different sort of crime that what we have here.
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We use jQuery because it allows us to deliver what our users want in a significantly shorter period of time. Not only they get it sooner, it costs the company less and we can focus on doing things that jQuery doesn't do. Especially in our case since we have a limited set of hardware and browsers to support. Wringing the most speed out of a site that we possibly can isn't necessary.
And just because you're using jQuery for some stuff doesn't mean you have to forget how to write native javascript or use css for those things that make the most sense to use it for.
Then you don't know enough people using jQuery. Just because I'm quite capable of writing straight javascript or creating my own library doesn't mean that jQuery doesn't have benefits for programmers. Smart programmers don't reinvent the wheel just because they can.
We use jQuery for actual in house web applications rather than a site that gets infrequent visits from random users. The difference being that we can use an application cache to store things like a minified version jQuery library on the client so it doesn't need to be downloaded every time you visit the site.
The website seems to work fine on my smartphone which is almost 3 years old.
In some cases at work we've replaced laptops with tablets for field use. Laptops were often not a very good fit anyway.
At home, we used to have two PCs, then a PC and a laptop, then 2 laptops and we've since replaced one laptop with a tablet. That arrangement works pretty well, especially when you consider that my son has his own tablet through school and my daughter has an iPod touch that she uses for email, games, messaging, and watching shows on netflix.
My point is that there are things that we used to use PCs for that are done as well or better by a mobile device. That's not to say there aren't trade offs but I do believe that tablets in particular are cutting into PC and laptop sales. Lots of people use a computer primarily for web and email access. Even though a PC might be better at some things and many families will keep one around, they aren't going to be as inclined to buy new ones as often. Our current laptop is 4 years old and we've got no plans to upgrade anytime soon. We'd probably get another tablet first. So yeah, I think the PC market has definitely been impacted.
I think the mistake some techie folks make is that they feel they should be judged strictly on their technical skills. Whether you want to call it "good at office politics" or "having people skills", ultimately the success of many projects depends on technical people being able to effectively work with non technical people to deliver a product.Those are skills that you should develop if you don't have them all ready.
I may promote or give better opportunities to an employee that is really good at getting user stories as opposed to somebody who's good at generating code but not much else. That's still a meritocracy.
Good post, except one point needs to be changed(or you need to change your naive view): CS kids usually have no idea about "math" as you call it. It is much more encompassing than you think it is. That is, if you think there is no math beyond what is taught in CS curriculum. ( some form of "discrete math", calc, DE, basic statistics).
Just recall that mathematics predates CS in any form and CS is some really really tiny part of "math". In any case mathematics is much more abstract and pure than CS.
That's it.
It's all relative.
I have no idea about modern CS degrees but 20 years ago the required math courses you had to take in order to get a CS degree left you about 10 credits short of a math minor (which I went ahead and got). I don't consider myself a math expert by any means but compared to an average college grad my math skills are (or at least were) pretty good. Believe me that I know I was just scratching the surface.
My post was in response to the AC who said that CS degrees are a waste of money and don't tell you anything about the applicant. It does tell me that they have above average math skills though not necessarily much above average. Someone who's programming skills are self taught may really suck at math and in the organization I work for that would be a problem.
How long could society support every couple having 4 kids?
The point is that having 4 kids is a choice. So is two kids. So is none. Likewise there are 1,200 sqft apartments and $4,000 sqft homes.
Choosing more interesting work over a higher salary doesn't necessary mean you can't support a family, but certainly having a large family can make that harder.
Salary is but one consideration and high paying + challenging is not mutually exclusive.
I deliberately left a higher paying job for a non-profit even though I had a mortgage and two kids. Ultimately I'm happier for it even though I know I'd be making more money if I had stayed where I was. The work wouldn't be nearly as fulfilling or challenging. Still I'm not exactly poor and I'm content with my pay.
Wow. At least when I graduated a CS degree wasn't exactly an easy one to get. It doesn't mean that everyone holding a CS degree is automatically a better candidate than everyone who doesn't have one, nor does it mean that they are good candidate for a given position. It at least used to mean that they have a pretty good understanding of how computers and operating systems work, that they have decent (if not great) math skills, that they have some ability to complete a project, work with others, and have reasonable writing skills.
Usually when I'm looking for people I'll state that a computer science degree is preferred. That has not stopped me from hiring people without CS degrees though I think pretty much everyone I've hired (as a developer) has had some degree.
You're right, I think his advice is timeless and not particularly targeted towards the class of 2013. It's still good advice. The other topics you mention might be interesting (or maybe not) and have some relevance for them but I'm not sure they'd make good commencement speech topics.
The Terms of service makes it plain that it doesn't matter if he's using the service for commercial purposes or not, he can't have a server. He was providing a high bandwidth service to friends and family that potentially impacts the level of service that Verizon is able to give its other customers. I think they did the right thing.
Now in all honesty, I also think as a residential customer I should be able to host a server or two on my Internet connection for my own purposes which would include the ability to host a few files and photos that for privacy reasons I may not want to have on dropbox or flickr.
Maybe the best way to handle something like this and prevent the kind of abuse this guy engaged in is to allow unlimited downloads but charge extra for uploads over a certain amount. Then remove the server restriction.
From what I understand he had two places in Belize. On located in the mainland off of the New river (which I saw) and the other on Ambergris Caye which I probably was within a couple miles of. I think it was the latter which burned down. It was on a quiet part of an island otherwise filled with tourists and American expatriates. It's not as remote as you're thinking it is. The place I grew up in the states probably had a worse road and was located next to a smaller town.
You can purchase MP3 legally from Amazon. CD ripping (aka format shifting) has always been legal.
Oh and if your candybar phone was anything like mine, using its hobbled browser to download music from Amazon would have been pretty painful if would have worked at all.
You can purchase MP3 legally from Amazon. CD ripping (aka format shifting) has always been legal.
You have to remember that we're talking about 7 or 8 years ago when Intel opted not to work with Apple on a processor for the iPhone. Amazon wasn't selling MP3s at the time and wouldn't start until after the iPhone was released. And then only with a much smaller list of available titles compared to the iTunes store.
As for ripping CDs, when's the last time you actually bought a music CD? I haven't in a long time. Why? Because downloading is so much easier and convenient. This is one of the things the iPhone offered that other phones of that era didn't.
My candy bar phone back then played MP3s just fine. I do not see what's the big deal with vendor-locked iTunes.
Where did these mp3s you played on your candy bar phone come from and what steps did you have to go through to get them on the phone itself? Could you browse through a library of millions of songs (on the phone) and download them individually or by album? Could you do it legally? What about your non-techie friends and relatives? Even if their phones could play mp3s, did they have any clue as to how to do it?
;-)
To be completely accurate, the ability to download songs from the iTunes store straight to the iPhone itself wasn't there at launch. It took a few months but that does point out another advantage of the iPhone over what was available at the time, - frequent software upgrades.
More and more it's becoming apparent to me that many of us in the tech industry have a huge blind spot. We want faster GPUs and processors. We want more storage capacity, more bandwidth, and more pixels, but we really only care about ease of use to a point. We like gadgets and playing with software so if getting some music on our phone takes some fiddling with software and hardware, it's just part of the fun. On the other hand, if everyone can do it, it takes away from our techie mystique.
Yes, iTunes was vendor locked but it was apparent well before 2007 that vast majority of the public didn't care.
When it comes to specifics we probably agree. I will add some caveats though. Technology moves quickly and career wise if we want to be relevant in our 40's and 50's we need to move with it. It's not only good for your career, learning new skills is good for your brain.
There's been plenty of times in my career where I've chosen to use a particular technology for a given project primarily because I wanted to learn it or I wanted a member of my staff to learn it. Yes, it costs more, but it pays off down the road.
My current example is a backend text processing system for one of our data analysis applications. I started it about 12 years ago and chose perl. Python seems to be the language of choice now for scripting and I'm contemplating doing a conversion. It will be time consuming and expensive. Further there's nothing I foresee needing to do with this system that I can't do with perl. The problem is that the system continues to grow and as expensive as it would be to convert now, it will be even more expensive in 2 years.
Great advice and I will add that as far as your brain and career goes, sometimes change for change sake is good. You really should be ensuring that you're learning new stuff on a regular basis. Keeps your brain healthy. I've seen too many posts on Slashdot from tech folks in their 40's or 50's wondering what they should learn in order to have relevant skills again because the demand for the skills they had dried up.
Considering iTunes' not working on other devices was due to DRM (mainly), I can't say it's a very positive aspect that only the iPhone could do it.
My smartphones back then did a very good job with what web pages were available back then, no problems there.
The iPhone only really changed two things:
Interfaces got flatter (fewer sub-menus) and touch input replaced physical keyboards and navigation keys.
You're applying your techie values and missing some things. You may see iTunes and associated DRM as a disadvantage but the larger group of consumers doesn't (or didn't). It was a hugely positive aspect and only the iPhone had it. Further, the app store wasn't there at day one but it really helped push the iPhone ahead of everybody else when it did come. This in spite of the fact that lots of techies don't like the walled garden aspect of it. The world is filled with people who don't really care about that.
The touch input just didn't replace the keyboard and navigation keys. It allowed for much better navigation than what was available before, especially on a small device. Pinch and Zoom was what really made web pages designed for large screens workable on a small one, so no the web browser you had was not nearly as good in comparison even though it may have been decent for its time and good enough for you.
I disagree, but that's probably because I'd been using PDAs for a decade prior to the iPhone. Everyone in the PDA business knew that phones and PDAs were going to merge. The only thing they didn't know was if phones were going to pick up PDA features, or if PDAs were going to be able to make calls. In the end, they are both small computers running various programs. The only game-changer the iPhone brought was that it eschewed hardware number/keyboard entry (and one helluva marketing campaign). Others had toyed with a purely touchscreen interface before, but nobody had bet the entire farm on it like Apple did. (For those taken in by the marketing who believe that the iPhone was the first purely touchscreen phone, google for LG Prada.) In that way, the iPhone was a lot like the iPod. It was ho-hum in terms of technical features - things which everyone else already had or had tried before. But the interface was a game-changer, and even if they weren't actually the first to market with the idea their massive marketing campaign made it first in people's minds. So I don't really blame Intel for missing the boat. Interface and marketing aren't things you can really appraise prior to a product's release. If Intel judged the iPhone purely on its technical features, it would've looked like any other smartphone with one helluva risky bet on a touchscreen-only keyboard. Just like the technocrati here first saw the iPod and based on its technical features declared, "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
How many PDAs or smart phones in 2007 could leverage the tremendously popular iTunes store? How many had web browsers that could actually display most sites as intended (flash notwithstanding)? To me there were other things that the iPhone brought to the table that could have been used to evaluate its potential.
They seem to have a hard time grasping that numbers aren't all that matter and more data needs to be considered. The game changers are often the people who know how to look beyond the numbers.
This is especially true for Apple. Apple's sales have always relied as much on consumers' emotional responses to its products as to the tech specs - - (Apple haters would say they relied it more or exclusively). It's always been about creating "an experience" for consumers, which, by definition, creates an emotional appeal that can't be measured quantitatively. So anyone who tries to judge the likely success or failure of a new Apple product based solely on numbers and tech specs just doesn't understand the way Apple does business at all.
I'd take it further than that. To like something because it's easier to use than another product isn't just an emotional response, it's a very practical one. The iTunes store made it easy to get the music you wanted. There were smartphones before the iPhone and even ones with touch screens. There were PDAs, There were mp3 players. There were cameras. Apple created a device that from a sheer hardware and software standpoint was perhaps not the best of breed in any of those categories but was by far and away the best at combining them. It was also easy to buy which is part of the process.
So, he made a perfectly rational decision based upon the data he had available. It turned out in the long run that he would have been better off if he had acted otherwise, so looking back on it he says it would be better to reject rational decision making. I find this unconvincing. In my experience, people have a fantastic way of revising their own personal histories and 'the gut' is a great tool to do so. If I made the best choice I could, given the information I had, and it turned out incorrect I can always look back on things and say that my gut told me otherwise. By this means the chief protagonist of my personal history will always be correct, always know the right thing to do, even when it turned out to be wrong.
I agree that hindsight is 20/20. However, he may have actually had an inclination that he decided to ignore and instead make a decision "based on the data he had available"
The problem is that we sometimes look at all the relevant reports, trend studies, and specs we've been presented with and figure that constitutes the data that's available. It's not. I believe that what we often call "gut instinct" or "intuition" is really our mind's way of combining various bits of information from throughout our lifetime and merging it with our sense of the current situation to form an opinion. THAT is data too.
Many techie people seem to be confounded by Apple's success because the just look and the hardware specs and think there's better stuff available. Lot's of folks in the tech industry thought the iPad was going to be a huge flop.
They seem to have a hard time grasping that numbers aren't all that matter and more data needs to be considered. The game changers are often the people who know how to look beyond the numbers.
Lamanai, not Laminai,, from the Mayan Lama'anayin meaning submerged crocodile.
Beautiful pyramids though and it is very easy to know what they are is as they are always in areas with other Mayan structures. And yes, the Belize gov is pretty incompetent (ask McAffee)
It's only easy to know that the other hills in the area are ruins if you've been told that. I saw the temples at Lamanai and maybe eventually on my own I would have figured out that the other hills are ruins but it wasn't obvious to me at first. They were completely unremarkable to me and looked very much like the limestone hills and outcroppings I'd see around here near some rivers and streams.
Nohmul might be different.
It brings up a good question. There's an old fort near where I live. Up until after WWII it served the military in various ways, primarily as place for training in it's later years. Now it's mostly a living museum. The main buildings and walls have been restored and are maintained, but a lot of the supplemental buildings on the edges of the complex have stood empty for decades. They've become dilapidated and would be increasingly expensive to repair. At what point do you say we have enough examples of buildings like this, we don't need to keep all of them?
Mayan ruins are different of course. They're much older and could provide valuable information about that culture and that time period that has been lost. Still, it's very unlikely that all the ruins will be ever excavated or studied in any detail. In fact excavating them would probably just hasten their erosion. I'm sure that many of the structures are very much like a lot of the other ones.
A good road in Belize however, might have much more practical value to the local population. But I don't really understand the whole context of this. I'm sure there are lesser ruins that could have been used instead. Further, I'm pretty sure that limestone is a pretty common material in Belize (hence its use by Mayans) so is it really that hard and that expensive to get it some place else? Would the local population have been better off had the tourism potential of the ruins been realized? I don't now. I do know that it's pretty easy to sit here and judge when shown a picture of an impressive ruin which is not in fact the one that was destroyed and when we can take roads for granted.
Bullshit. They excavated the material for road fill, they knew exactly what it was and the quality of the material they would obtain and how much money they would save paying for quarried material trucked to the site. You do not just use any passing dirt for road fill because it will be impossible to compact properly and could be subject to extreme bulking when exposed to water, you do not randomly excavate hills because you do not know what they constitute and how difficult they will be to excavate.
You win the prize for civil construction ignorance as do those who thought your ignorance was informative. Even ancient Romans knew better than you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads please check diagram at bottom of article.
The greedy shit head owner of the company knew exactly what they were doing and how much they would save.
I'll try putting it a little differently. I have a hard time believing they knew exactly what they were doing because if they did they'd know there'd be hell to pay. There are lots of completely un-excavated buildings of lesser importance that they'd have a much better chance of destroying and getting away with. In fact that may be exactly what they were supposed to do. Somebody picked the wrong hill.
Bullshit. They excavated the material for road fill, they knew exactly what it was and the quality of the material they would obtain and how much money they would save paying for quarried material trucked to the site. You do not just use any passing dirt for road fill because it will be impossible to compact properly and could be subject to extreme bulking when exposed to water, you do not randomly excavate hills because you do not know what they constitute and how difficult they will be to excavate.
You win the prize for civil construction ignorance as do those who thought your ignorance was informative. Even ancient Romans knew better than you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads please check diagram at bottom of article.
The greedy shit head owner of the company knew exactly what they were doing and how much they would save.
I'm sure they knew what they were getting even if they didn't realize it was a Mayan temple (which as I said is a stretch). The limestone was visible through the vegetation. I'm not suggesting that people commonly dig up random hills to use as road fill.
However, even if total ignorance of the significance of the site is a stretch, what I also find unbelievable is that someone thought they could tear down the most prominent feature of a major archaeological find and figure that nobody would notice.
So the truth is probably somewhere in between. The picture in the linked article was a deliberate misrepresentation of what was destroyed in order to fan outrage. If they'd shown a picture of the actual temple readers wouldn't be nearly as upset because frankly it didn't look like much. Now again, the fact that it didn't look like much doesn't mean it's not an important site. I'm not condoning what happened. But tearing down something like the high temple at Laminai is a much different sort of crime that what we have here.