Stuff like this and the "Fair" Elections Act should have people out in the streets with pitchforks and torches.
I love how the government in Canada and the States names bills exactly the opposite of what they do and somehow keep a straight face while defending them.
The part that was really buggy as hell was the MyFordTouch software/interface which was laggy, inconsistent, crashing etc.
After a couple of major updates issued by Ford it is finally working pretty well for the most part but there were so many complaints regarding the system that Ford actually extended the warranty on MyFordTouch for a couple extra years if I recall correctly.
The story I heard is that Ford decided they wanted to do it themselves so they wrote the MyFordTouch interface etc in house and disaster ensued.
The voice commands and Sync functions have worked pretty well for the most part -- as well as voice ever seems to anyways..
Now back to your regularly scheduled Microsoft bashing..
We might have finally reached the tipping point where there will be no new sector for all the displaced workers to migrate to.
Agriculture > Industry > Knowledge workers.. each shift seems to have required progressively less workers which is why we now have the Service sector. ie. crap jobs where people are treated like disposal items.
With the price of automation falling and the playing field internationally being so unfair to manual labour in most developed countries.. how can there continue to be a middle class? I don't see it.
Where are displaced people supposed to find jobs now when every industry has become more and more efficient with technology while using less and less people?
Remember when Windows 3.x sucked because it encouraged you to use a mouse and it was stupid and you were faster with a keyboard?
Remember when Windows 9x sucked because it was stupid and got rid of Program Manager?
Remember when Windows XP sucked because it looked like a Fisher Price toy?
Seriously, on modern hardware there is nothing wrong with Windows 8 and especially 8.1.
If you are a Windows user and have a convertible or a Surface Pro you'll quickly find out after a little tinkering that it actually works really nicely as a hybrid.
Is a CEO really worth the same as 10000 (or more) "workers"? No, of course not.
Yeah actually they are. Every decision a CEO makes is a decision with potentially billions on the line. A hundred workers could do their best to destroy the company and they won't be able to do as much damage as one decision by a CEO. CEOs are paid a lot because there is a high demand for people who won't make billion dollar fuck ups.
And when they do make a billion dollar mistake?
Oh thanks for the millions of dollars I'll go golfing now....
Indeed. Like I say, unions are a very good mirror of the approaches of the corporations they're standing against, good and malevolent.
Very true. I think there is a happy medium to be found. At times the pendulum swings too far towards the union and others too far toward the company. I don't see how anyone could say that unions are the problem in North America today. They have been largely gutted and are fading away.
I have never been a part of a union and probably never will be in my profession -- but I still appreciate the hours, holidays, health and safety etc. unions have given us over the years.
The interesting thing is that whenever I point this out people talk about how unions are no longer needed because all these rights are in the laws now. I always have to point out that things like right to work laws etc. obviously mean that the law isn't static and these rights need to be defended or we're headed back towards 19th century robber baron conditions.
>The real question is why the Democrats needed to take over the entire health insurance industry if the goal was to just help pay for insurance for a few million folks that didn't have it and wanted it. You could have covered that with a check just out of what's been spent on the federal and state ACA exchanges.
Because for some reason Obama wanted to compromise reach a with the obviously completely uncooperative Republicans and offered them their own plan of a decade or two prior, with all the corporate handouts that implies. Still the single biggest failing of his administration to my eyes - once it became obvious that the Republicans were completely unwilling to cooperate he should have ramrodded through a *real* plan instead of the deeply flawed Republican one.
Then again - can't say I've actually checked on medical insurance contributions to the Dems, could be they were bought as well.
The Dems were bought as well.
The only sane solution is a single payer and they gave that up almost immediately.
GM failed because the free market determined there was no value in keeping it going. You hear me? The GM business mode was and still is a failure. The free market said "a company that operates on borrowed money and makes financial promises it can't keep does not deserve to be in business."
Bailing it out caused a lot more harm than allowing it to fail. GM would not have shut down. What happens in bankruptcy is that the assets are sold to someone with a viable business model that works in the free market. GM cars would never have stopped rolling off the line, not even for one minute.
Instead, what we have is the same old unsustainable business model of operating on borrowed money, making financial promises that can never be kept, and loading up the company with debt it will never be able to repay. Kinda like what our government does with the taxpayer.
The free market said no, but that same government insisted that the borrow-and-spend business model works.
Thank you for illustrating my point: most people here clearly have no idea how intertwined the auto supply base has become.
Your overly simplistic econ 101 recap isn't going to help in a situation like 2008.
I agree that ideally GM would have been able to go bankrupt along with the banks and all their hopelessly greedy and out of touch executives. In the real world, though, things would have been catastrophic if that had been allowed to happen.
Just so you know: There is no such thing as a free market.
IT is not a part of the business model -- you most likely don't.
You're considered a necessary but unwanted expense like keeping the lights on and are usually treated like the janitor.
No one cares who you are or what you are doing until there is a mess somewhere. Then it is your fault for not having cleaned it up already.
Welcome to IT.
If I had known years ago what I was getting myself into I would never have gotten into this industry or at least I would have had the sense to work in a business where IT *is* the business. Hopefully I will be able to make that transition in the future.
Windows RT, even apart from having a terrible and confusing name, was entering a market where the iPad was already running away with the mind share.
The only way Surface RT would have had a chance is to seriously undercut Apple on price, hope to get enough of them out there to foster application development, and then recoup it later.
Add in terrible marketing (what the hell is Windows RT supposed to even mean? Why is it called Windows if I can't run Windows programs? etc.) and the confusion between the Surface and Surface Pro and.... yeah... bye bye.
They can pay me half what they pay the executives in charge of this stuff and I will be happy to hold their hands and impress upon them what should have been some very simple concepts.
There are still companies that are incredibly over valued in the Nasdaq and the entire stock market (not just Nasdaq) has been inflated by the Fed QE of 85 billion a month.
It will come tumbling down and then we'll start the whole thing over again.
Microsoft doesn't need to concentrate on Office. Microsoft needs to concentrate on integrating all these many pieces of the puzzle that they already have.
They could do some kick ass stuff if they could make it easy to do all the things people would like to by having settings / media ownership and compatibility between all the different platforms and form factors.
No one else has all the pieces that they do right now. If they could just stop infighting and head towards a common goal they could accomplish really cool stuff.
There is no such thing as security. Only mitigation of risk to an acceptable level.
The second thing to keep in mind is that, in these corporations, all goals are skewed towards short term performance and the executives milking out as much cash for themselves as possible.
If putting off the investment in security this year gets them a bonus this year then who cares what happens next year?
The unfortunate state of/. is 90% of stories are click baiting fanboy fodder. It makes it a joyous occasion when an occasional technical article slips through.
Unfortunately true.
I'm not buying one... yet. What most partisans fail to see is Microsoft has no choice. Tablets are the future for the majority of consumers. Microsoft can't compete using someone else's OS. Microsoft can't rely on hardware "partners" to follow through. Their only long term chance is to keep plugging away at the Surface Pro until hardware power, battery life and application availability hits a tipping point. They may still fail, but quitting now is certain failure.
I think you're correct here too.
Eventually all these different device form factors are going to converge in one way or another so they need to keep advancing Windows towards that goal - even if they have to do it themselves - if here is going to be a Windows down the road.
If they stop now it will just continue to become more and more irrelevant.
If the government would just stop interfering with the free markets the invisible hand and enlightened self interest would take over and do a much better job! We'd be living in a land of unicorns and rainbows in no time!
Also nuclear power is the only reasonable - and environmentally friendly! - solution to our energy problems. */sarcasm
* - Excluding all those pesky externalities because we all know in the technologically advanced future we'll magically solve all those problems -- also using the power of the free markets! (some conditions and circular reasoning may apply, offer not valid in all states blah blah blah)
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously?
Stuff like this and the "Fair" Elections Act should have people out in the streets with pitchforks and torches.
I love how the government in Canada and the States names bills exactly the opposite of what they do and somehow keep a straight face while defending them.
Sync works fine.
The part that was really buggy as hell was the MyFordTouch software/interface which was laggy, inconsistent, crashing etc.
After a couple of major updates issued by Ford it is finally working pretty well for the most part but there were so many complaints regarding the system that Ford actually extended the warranty on MyFordTouch for a couple extra years if I recall correctly.
The story I heard is that Ford decided they wanted to do it themselves so they wrote the MyFordTouch interface etc in house and disaster ensued.
The voice commands and Sync functions have worked pretty well for the most part -- as well as voice ever seems to anyways..
Now back to your regularly scheduled Microsoft bashing..
The problem is not automation (we are doing this since the industrial revolution), but the distribution of wealth.
Stop wasting time in the wrong direction FFS.
I think you're wrong.
Automation and getting more productivity out of the remaining workers is what is causing the inequality in distribution of wealth.
They don't call it capitalism for nothing. Those with the capital are going to "win" in the end.
And hey, just to make sure they have corrupted practically every government and lobbied like crazy against regulation to be on the safe side.
I think it is only one of the methods.
We might have finally reached the tipping point where there will be no new sector for all the displaced workers to migrate to.
Agriculture > Industry > Knowledge workers.. each shift seems to have required progressively less workers which is why we now have the Service sector. ie. crap jobs where people are treated like disposal items.
With the price of automation falling and the playing field internationally being so unfair to manual labour in most developed countries.. how can there continue to be a middle class? I don't see it.
Where are displaced people supposed to find jobs now when every industry has become more and more efficient with technology while using less and less people?
Remember when Windows 3.x sucked because it encouraged you to use a mouse and it was stupid and you were faster with a keyboard?
Remember when Windows 9x sucked because it was stupid and got rid of Program Manager?
Remember when Windows XP sucked because it looked like a Fisher Price toy?
Seriously, on modern hardware there is nothing wrong with Windows 8 and especially 8.1.
If you are a Windows user and have a convertible or a Surface Pro you'll quickly find out after a little tinkering that it actually works really nicely as a hybrid.
Is a CEO really worth the same as 10000 (or more) "workers"? No, of course not.
Yeah actually they are. Every decision a CEO makes is a decision with potentially billions on the line. A hundred workers could do their best to destroy the company and they won't be able to do as much damage as one decision by a CEO. CEOs are paid a lot because there is a high demand for people who won't make billion dollar fuck ups.
And when they do make a billion dollar mistake?
Oh thanks for the millions of dollars I'll go golfing now....
Don't you see the problem with this picture?
Indeed. Like I say, unions are a very good mirror of the approaches of the corporations they're standing against, good and malevolent.
Very true. I think there is a happy medium to be found. At times the pendulum swings too far towards the union and others too far toward the company. I don't see how anyone could say that unions are the problem in North America today. They have been largely gutted and are fading away.
I have never been a part of a union and probably never will be in my profession -- but I still appreciate the hours, holidays, health and safety etc. unions have given us over the years.
The interesting thing is that whenever I point this out people talk about how unions are no longer needed because all these rights are in the laws now. I always have to point out that things like right to work laws etc. obviously mean that the law isn't static and these rights need to be defended or we're headed back towards 19th century robber baron conditions.
Unions are ridiculously powerful in the US
Not sure if serious.
>The real question is why the Democrats needed to take over the entire health insurance industry if the goal was to just help pay for insurance for a few million folks that didn't have it and wanted it. You could have covered that with a check just out of what's been spent on the federal and state ACA exchanges.
Because for some reason Obama wanted to compromise reach a with the obviously completely uncooperative Republicans and offered them their own plan of a decade or two prior, with all the corporate handouts that implies. Still the single biggest failing of his administration to my eyes - once it became obvious that the Republicans were completely unwilling to cooperate he should have ramrodded through a *real* plan instead of the deeply flawed Republican one.
Then again - can't say I've actually checked on medical insurance contributions to the Dems, could be they were bought as well.
The Dems were bought as well.
The only sane solution is a single payer and they gave that up almost immediately.
Who is surprised?
That data is Google's entire business.
You, sir, are clearly an idiot.
Right back at you.
GM failed because the free market determined there was no value in keeping it going. You hear me? The GM business mode was and still is a failure. The free market said "a company that operates on borrowed money and makes financial promises it can't keep does not deserve to be in business."
Bailing it out caused a lot more harm than allowing it to fail. GM would not have shut down. What happens in bankruptcy is that the assets are sold to someone with a viable business model that works in the free market. GM cars would never have stopped rolling off the line, not even for one minute.
Instead, what we have is the same old unsustainable business model of operating on borrowed money, making financial promises that can never be kept, and loading up the company with debt it will never be able to repay. Kinda like what our government does with the taxpayer.
The free market said no, but that same government insisted that the borrow-and-spend business model works.
Thank you for illustrating my point: most people here clearly have no idea how intertwined the auto supply base has become.
Your overly simplistic econ 101 recap isn't going to help in a situation like 2008.
I agree that ideally GM would have been able to go bankrupt along with the banks and all their hopelessly greedy and out of touch executives. In the real world, though, things would have been catastrophic if that had been allowed to happen.
Just so you know: There is no such thing as a free market.
how intertwined the supply chain is.. a GM failure would have been complete chaos all down the line.
Many of the suppliers to the auto parts industry supply more than one brand but losing, say, 20% of your business overnight would have shut them down.
It would have been a cascading failure of the whole industry without intervention.
Anyone saying "oh well a startup would take their place" obviously has no clue how long it takes to get these programs off the ground and running.
IT is not a part of the business model -- you most likely don't.
You're considered a necessary but unwanted expense like keeping the lights on and are usually treated like the janitor.
No one cares who you are or what you are doing until there is a mess somewhere. Then it is your fault for not having cleaned it up already.
Welcome to IT.
If I had known years ago what I was getting myself into I would never have gotten into this industry or at least I would have had the sense to work in a business where IT *is* the business. Hopefully I will be able to make that transition in the future.
For *reliable* backup and archive purposes tape never went out of style.
Windows RT, even apart from having a terrible and confusing name, was entering a market where the iPad was already running away with the mind share.
The only way Surface RT would have had a chance is to seriously undercut Apple on price, hope to get enough of them out there to foster application development, and then recoup it later.
Add in terrible marketing (what the hell is Windows RT supposed to even mean? Why is it called Windows if I can't run Windows programs? etc.) and the confusion between the Surface and Surface Pro and.... yeah... bye bye.
They can pay me half what they pay the executives in charge of this stuff and I will be happy to hold their hands and impress upon them what should have been some very simple concepts.
There are still companies that are incredibly over valued in the Nasdaq and the entire stock market (not just Nasdaq) has been inflated by the Fed QE of 85 billion a month.
It will come tumbling down and then we'll start the whole thing over again.
(that is when you buy)
Certifications are no substitute for fundamentals.
The problem with certifications is that they date so quickly as versions and products come and go.
Understanding fundamentals helps you pick up anything new.
Microsoft doesn't need to concentrate on Office. Microsoft needs to concentrate on integrating all these many pieces of the puzzle that they already have.
They could do some kick ass stuff if they could make it easy to do all the things people would like to by having settings / media ownership and compatibility between all the different platforms and form factors.
No one else has all the pieces that they do right now. If they could just stop infighting and head towards a common goal they could accomplish really cool stuff.
It should be clear that with:
a) full blown computer chipsets getting better on power usage and thermal efficiency
and
b) more demands being placed on our portable devices (phones + tablets)
We are going to end up converging down to on OS for both desktop and mobile use.
There is no such thing as security. Only mitigation of risk to an acceptable level.
The second thing to keep in mind is that, in these corporations, all goals are skewed towards short term performance and the executives milking out as much cash for themselves as possible.
If putting off the investment in security this year gets them a bonus this year then who cares what happens next year?
The unfortunate state of /. is 90% of stories are click baiting fanboy fodder. It makes it a joyous occasion when an occasional technical article slips through.
Unfortunately true.
I'm not buying one... yet. What most partisans fail to see is Microsoft has no choice. Tablets are the future for the majority of consumers. Microsoft can't compete using someone else's OS. Microsoft can't rely on hardware "partners" to follow through. Their only long term chance is to keep plugging away at the Surface Pro until hardware power, battery life and application availability hits a tipping point. They may still fail, but quitting now is certain failure.
I think you're correct here too.
Eventually all these different device form factors are going to converge in one way or another so they need to keep advancing Windows towards that goal - even if they have to do it themselves - if here is going to be a Windows down the road.
If they stop now it will just continue to become more and more irrelevant.
I agree about the ARM version. And I know how great it is to bash Microsoft in absolutely every thread their name appears..
However, the Surface Pro 2 looks very attractive. I am buying one.
They closed the big thing holding people back on Pro -- the gap on battery life -- I will be getting a Surface Pro 2 to replace my everyday machine.
And a dock when they come out. Perfect.
MS still overpriced RT. They need to lose money and get it out there for the RT to have any hope of generating the critical mass of developers needed.
Notebook and tablet. Hello Surface Pro 2.
Can't wait.
If the government would just stop interfering with the free markets the invisible hand and enlightened self interest would take over and do a much better job! We'd be living in a land of unicorns and rainbows in no time!
Also nuclear power is the only reasonable - and environmentally friendly! - solution to our energy problems. * /sarcasm
* - Excluding all those pesky externalities because we all know in the technologically advanced future we'll magically solve all those problems -- also using the power of the free markets! (some conditions and circular reasoning may apply, offer not valid in all states blah blah blah)