Windows 8 isn't so bad. I run it in Parallels on my Mac. Windows 8 was a no-cost license, so I replaced Windows 7 (which I paid for), which replaced Windows XP (for which I also had a lot of no-cost licenses). Mostly I need it for OneNote and Access (no Mac versions of those), and EveMon (simply because I like it better than the Mac alternatives). My assessment: for the type of use that I have, Windows 8 doesn't suck. Oh, it has annoyances like everything post-XP does, but it's not a show-stopper. At work, though, I have a Vista machine, and I miss XP. I tend to think that if I had Windows 8 at work, I'd probably say it sucks.
Oh, I forgot about the two little Atom nettops I used as HTPC front-end. I put Win8 onto those, too. Definitely an improvement, except for the mouse cursor not being present when no mouse is plugged in (makes using phone-based remote controls a bit tricky).
As long as it's cheaper than the competition. That's a key point. I live and work in China for a global, US-based manufacturer of complicated, expensive, high-end goods. Every one of our new plants is highly automated despite the laughably low wages. Why? Because the competition is automating, too. It doesn't matter that 150 labor hours per unit only has a cost of $600. If we can automate and bring that down to 100 labor hours versus the competitors' average of 110, that's an advantage to us. And with the ability to depreciate equipment over time, TARR, and other financial moves that I don't fully appreciate, it often doesn't matter that the up-front cost of automation is significantly higher than non-automation.
And by the way: automation isn't significantly more expensive than manual processes, and when speed is a concern, it's actually much cheaper.
For all the grief everyone is giving the guy, it's a good opportunity for him to learn Linux. I'll even offer a "better" learning experience that doesn't screw up a needed VPS: Amazon EC2 free tier micro instances. Free for the first year after you sign up. Screw up the machine? Terminate it and start from scratch. Know what you're doing now or are advanced? Don't trash the image; fix it.
It's a fast way to learn other Linuxes, too. Just today I found myself reading the YUM man page because all I'd ever used in the past was apt.
The only issue with the interface for HTPC use is that there's no mouse pointer when I disconnect the mouse! Yeah, I can get by, but it would be nice to have a mouse pointer when not in Plex. This is new behavior in Windows 8; presumably related to the touch interface.
Nettop, not Netbook, and I'd agree (I still have about 15 unused XP licenses), except the hardware decoder used by Plex requires Vista or above, otherwise it decodes in software using the Atom's chipset. Not good for 1080p (remember, this is an HTPC front end).
Two were HTPC front-ends for Plex (a Zotac MAG and a Zotac ZBox). Win8 is reportedly less resource hungry than Win7, so on those little Atom nettops, it seemed like a good way to get a performance boost. Although given that all they do is run Plex, performance wasn't really an issue anyway. Chalk these up to "new toy," then. (No Windows key over VNC kind of sucks, though.)
The third was a VM install, which I mostly need for EveMon, OneNote, and Access (no Mac versions). Given my use, Win8 isn't as bad as a lot of other people seem to indicate; it doesn't take too long to get used to. I've always been a keyboard shortcutter anyway, and the stupid menus are only stupid if you have to use a mouse. I miss alt-v-d in the "File Explorer" (né "Windows Explorer") though.
In installed Windows 8 on three machines this past weekend. There's no tutorial, but while it's finishing its install there are instructions that tell you to move the mouse to any of the four corners of the screen. In all three cases, it seemed to know it was running on a non-touch device.
You caught me. Kind of. I'm currently the victim of a sunk cost dilemma. I've taken an international position with my company that takes all of my free time and gaming motivation. My custom Access database (remember? One of my reasons for keeping Win 7 around) for trading is way out of date, I'm not sure if the API's to eve-central even work anymore, and I must have billions in data cores ready to be picked up. I'm not a casual Eve Onliner gamer at heart, but I want to be. I've invested so much, though, that I still pay the annual fee both (yes, both) of my accounts.
I play some games casually... Eve Online, Empires at War. The former runs in Cider and the latter one may or may not be native OS X. I don't care. They work good enough.
I've played around with Linux since some early RedHat days on Acer (I think) laptop, dating back to 1998 or so. I'm not afraid of command lines, X86conf files, etc., and such is hardly even needed these days. I install the latest Ubuntu in a VM for a few weeks every time there's a new release (Unity was particularly offsetting) but there's nothing there that compels me to switch away from Mac OS X. It’s like switching to the metric system (which I use professionally) in my daily life: why bother?
If WINE worked flawlessly with Office 2010, then at least I’d consider migrating my Win7 VM to Linux. I only need to run OneNote and Access (and, yeah, EveMon) from time to time, and that’s merely for work.
Yeah, maybe someday Mac OS X will be completely iOS-ified. The day that happens, I will consider fully switching (although, I use iOS instead of any of the Android operating systems, jailbroken of course (except for my phone – stupid “Good For Enterprise” is a tattletale).
Oh, I am talking about my main, home desktop machines. I keep Ubuntu around on some nettops that I used as Plex front ends, and for many years my main, household file server was a Debian box until I Hackintosh’d it. My offshore seedbox is Linux.
I'd settle for something that shows maps outside of China. I hate having to go into airplane mode, turning wifi back on, turning off location services, and connecting to a VPN just so I can see maps in English (on my US localized phone) and shows sat imagery outside of China.
Not sure why people modded you down, but the FOSS tools don't work for me as I need compatibility with work. I suppose on the Mac side, I could use FOSS as a Word/Excel/PowerPoint replacement, but I still need Outlook/Exchange. On the Windows side, there's nothing that's compatible with OneNote and Access.
...unless I keep getting the $10 versions from work home use program (HUP). The problem with HUP is I can select (currently) either Office 2010 or Office 2011, but not both (just in case it's not obvious, the former is Windows, and the latter is Mac OS). And yes, I want and need both.
My company uses Windows workstations, but I prefer Mac OS at home. Most of the time, Office:Mac is just fine. Except, you know, the glaring omissions of Access and OneNote, which cause me to have to boot up Parallels (less of a chore since adding the Thunderbolt SSD).
As it is, I know I'm breaking the MS license -- I've got Office 2011 installed on a laptop and my desktop. I'd prefer to have it universally installed on all machines so I can maintain a single, master image, but I'm not too egregious with the license abuse.
If I can have multiple installs of both Windows and Mac versions for the low price of $100 per year, yeah, I'm all for it. The only thing cheaper for my circumstances would be going back to the old days of piracy.
I wonder if this is legal in the USA. I suppose that's not an issue, since it's presumably only available in China.
I live in China. These guys are already the worst drivers in the world. I wonder how many people they'll injure with remote controlled cars?
On the other hand, they are truly horrendous drivers (as mentioned), and they don't know how to back up (that's a gross generalization, but it's mostly true). Chinese drivers regularly make backing into a parking space a 10 point maneuver. Just maybe this thing can make them better (quicker) at parking at the Ikea or Metro.
Yes, the claim that Mexico has near universal coverage is accurate, but Mexico's health care is not a US or Canadian (-provincial) style. This Wikipedia article is pretty accurate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Mexico about how it works.
Ex-President Fox's Seguro Popular is mostly what the article talks about, and that's what (properly) gives Mexico the right to say that it has nearly 100% coverage. And it's a good program -- my mother-in-law's maid's kid received a kidney transplant under the program.
It's important to distinguish, though, that you're not forced into this system. You can still buy private insurance, or pay cash. (Last time I had to go to a hospital in Mexico, they simply wanted my credit card).
tl;dr: the Mexican government hasn't taken away choice.
I think we're still a Fortune 10 company... we manufacture consumer products globally, and have a global performance evaluation (PE) process. I will be as generic as possible in the terminology. Oh, I'm a manager who conducts PE's, and also a volunteer on the personnel development forum (PDF) for non-management personnel.
For PE's, we have a top-tier level that's limited to 15% of the eligible pool. In my department so far this year, we've not nominated enough people to meet that 15% (we're in a new region, and all of the local employees are new). Then there's 70% to 85% of people that are achievers. This bracket is slightly open because there's an allowance of 15% of under-achievers and non-performers. The key is, we're *not* forced to bracket anyone into the lower tiers. And like I said for the top tier, we're not forced to bracket people into that tier, either.
Our system makes sense. Not everyone can be a super-star; even when everyone is a super-star, there's always a small percentage that have a little bit of an edge. And because we're not forced to rank anyone as under-achievers, we recognize that even the weakest link might be carrying his or her weight -- and carrying weight (do your job) is all we ask!
To prevent abuse, all of the top 15% and the lower 15% (if any) all go to the PDF committee that I mentioned I'm in. There, my fellow managers and I review the proposals for the highest-achiever rankings, and we all have to agree. Basically, you can't screw your way to the top, or other methods of brown-nosing.
And as a low-level manager (organizationally-speaking), I'm subject to the same process at my pay grade. And I'm fairly happy with it.
I'm a hiring manager with direct reports, and I want quality employees, and am willing to compensate them. HR, though, makes most compensation decisions, however.
Would I be subject to compensating someone higher than another due to favoritism? Hell, yes! What's important is what that favoritism is based upon, though. I don't believe in accepting (e.g.) sexual favors, but if you're a good contributor who makes my life easier, you're likely to be my favorite, and I'm likely to want to pay you more.
As much as we despise HR, their control over salaries helps mitigate a lot of favoritism issues.
Somewhere in Jiangsu Province here. Sadly my "western" house (it's duplex, really, but they call it a "villa" to make it sound nice) is still very much Chinese under the paint. Everything western is truly superficial in the case of Chinese construction.
I have to feel sorry for those poor suckers that live in Chinese apartment buildings (which is where the vast majority of Chinese live). Don't get me wrong, many of the local Chinese (and some westerners) have beautiful apartments. I just wonder how long until the upper floors start collapsing onto the lower floors.
As the title suggests, I've never accepted the EULA for my work PC. If I suffer a damage due to Windows 8 on my work PC, presumably I'd still have the right to sue in a class action.
Or, recognizing that my employment may cause legal complications for damages there, then I suggest that my wife (who didn't install Windows 8) could sue in a class action.
I suppose that for Windows 9, we'll have to accept a click-wrap license every time we log into our user account or open a new application.
My new Win Vista laptop at work requires a USB key to even boot. I've been warned that if I ever lose that key, I'm screwed. I have no idea what the encryption key even is (I've not browsed the key, or even know if there's a filesystem on it). I'm hoping the key is something long and complex and not something stupid like "I.T. Guzé" or similar.
(I won't really be screwed, because I run Unison daily to back up everything that's important to a network drive anyway.)
Sigh. Right-to-work isn't at all the same as at-will. My state -- Michigan -- is a union-shop state, but also an at-will state. They have no bearing on each other, and have nothing at all common in law.
Right-to-work means (only) that non-members don't have to pay union dues. In a union-shop state, you *still* have the right not to join a union -- you're still stuck paying union dues (actually, an "agency fee" which is slightly less than the union dues). Unions can still thrive and prosper and protect their works in right-to-work states, and a lot of them do so.
At-will only applies to non-contract employment in at-will states. If you have a union and you have a contract with the appropriate language, then you're not an at-will employee, even in at at-will state.
I read that as capacity, i.e., his 10kW device would cost 1000 to 1500 dollars. Does that include fuel? I have no idea, and I've never read anything about this device. I do know that a 10kW natural gas backup generator would run me about $10,000 installed with an automatic switch, because that's something I've been looking for.
Oh, neat. I'm in Jiangsu. Except for some reason all of my channels come from the Philippines. I'm getting good at Tagalog, which doesn't really help me in China.
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Windows 8 isn't so bad. I run it in Parallels on my Mac. Windows 8 was a no-cost license, so I replaced Windows 7 (which I paid for), which replaced Windows XP (for which I also had a lot of no-cost licenses). Mostly I need it for OneNote and Access (no Mac versions of those), and EveMon (simply because I like it better than the Mac alternatives). My assessment: for the type of use that I have, Windows 8 doesn't suck. Oh, it has annoyances like everything post-XP does, but it's not a show-stopper. At work, though, I have a Vista machine, and I miss XP. I tend to think that if I had Windows 8 at work, I'd probably say it sucks.
Oh, I forgot about the two little Atom nettops I used as HTPC front-end. I put Win8 onto those, too. Definitely an improvement, except for the mouse cursor not being present when no mouse is plugged in (makes using phone-based remote controls a bit tricky).
As long as it's cheaper than the competition. That's a key point. I live and work in China for a global, US-based manufacturer of complicated, expensive, high-end goods. Every one of our new plants is highly automated despite the laughably low wages. Why? Because the competition is automating, too. It doesn't matter that 150 labor hours per unit only has a cost of $600. If we can automate and bring that down to 100 labor hours versus the competitors' average of 110, that's an advantage to us. And with the ability to depreciate equipment over time, TARR, and other financial moves that I don't fully appreciate, it often doesn't matter that the up-front cost of automation is significantly higher than non-automation.
And by the way: automation isn't significantly more expensive than manual processes, and when speed is a concern, it's actually much cheaper.
For all the grief everyone is giving the guy, it's a good opportunity for him to learn Linux. I'll even offer a "better" learning experience that doesn't screw up a needed VPS: Amazon EC2 free tier micro instances. Free for the first year after you sign up. Screw up the machine? Terminate it and start from scratch. Know what you're doing now or are advanced? Don't trash the image; fix it.
It's a fast way to learn other Linuxes, too. Just today I found myself reading the YUM man page because all I'd ever used in the past was apt.
The only issue with the interface for HTPC use is that there's no mouse pointer when I disconnect the mouse! Yeah, I can get by, but it would be nice to have a mouse pointer when not in Plex. This is new behavior in Windows 8; presumably related to the touch interface.
Nettop, not Netbook, and I'd agree (I still have about 15 unused XP licenses), except the hardware decoder used by Plex requires Vista or above, otherwise it decodes in software using the Atom's chipset. Not good for 1080p (remember, this is an HTPC front end).
Two were HTPC front-ends for Plex (a Zotac MAG and a Zotac ZBox). Win8 is reportedly less resource hungry than Win7, so on those little Atom nettops, it seemed like a good way to get a performance boost. Although given that all they do is run Plex, performance wasn't really an issue anyway. Chalk these up to "new toy," then. (No Windows key over VNC kind of sucks, though.)
The third was a VM install, which I mostly need for EveMon, OneNote, and Access (no Mac versions). Given my use, Win8 isn't as bad as a lot of other people seem to indicate; it doesn't take too long to get used to. I've always been a keyboard shortcutter anyway, and the stupid menus are only stupid if you have to use a mouse. I miss alt-v-d in the "File Explorer" (né "Windows Explorer") though.
In installed Windows 8 on three machines this past weekend. There's no tutorial, but while it's finishing its install there are instructions that tell you to move the mouse to any of the four corners of the screen. In all three cases, it seemed to know it was running on a non-touch device.
You caught me. Kind of. I'm currently the victim of a sunk cost dilemma. I've taken an international position with my company that takes all of my free time and gaming motivation. My custom Access database (remember? One of my reasons for keeping Win 7 around) for trading is way out of date, I'm not sure if the API's to eve-central even work anymore, and I must have billions in data cores ready to be picked up. I'm not a casual Eve Onliner gamer at heart, but I want to be. I've invested so much, though, that I still pay the annual fee both (yes, both) of my accounts.
I play some games casually... Eve Online, Empires at War. The former runs in Cider and the latter one may or may not be native OS X. I don't care. They work good enough.
I've played around with Linux since some early RedHat days on Acer (I think) laptop, dating back to 1998 or so. I'm not afraid of command lines, X86conf files, etc., and such is hardly even needed these days. I install the latest Ubuntu in a VM for a few weeks every time there's a new release (Unity was particularly offsetting) but there's nothing there that compels me to switch away from Mac OS X. It’s like switching to the metric system (which I use professionally) in my daily life: why bother?
If WINE worked flawlessly with Office 2010, then at least I’d consider migrating my Win7 VM to Linux. I only need to run OneNote and Access (and, yeah, EveMon) from time to time, and that’s merely for work.
Yeah, maybe someday Mac OS X will be completely iOS-ified. The day that happens, I will consider fully switching (although, I use iOS instead of any of the Android operating systems, jailbroken of course (except for my phone – stupid “Good For Enterprise” is a tattletale).
Oh, I am talking about my main, home desktop machines. I keep Ubuntu around on some nettops that I used as Plex front ends, and for many years my main, household file server was a Debian box until I Hackintosh’d it. My offshore seedbox is Linux.
I'd settle for something that shows maps outside of China. I hate having to go into airplane mode, turning wifi back on, turning off location services, and connecting to a VPN just so I can see maps in English (on my US localized phone) and shows sat imagery outside of China.
Not sure why people modded you down, but the FOSS tools don't work for me as I need compatibility with work. I suppose on the Mac side, I could use FOSS as a Word/Excel/PowerPoint replacement, but I still need Outlook/Exchange. On the Windows side, there's nothing that's compatible with OneNote and Access.
...unless I keep getting the $10 versions from work home use program (HUP). The problem with HUP is I can select (currently) either Office 2010 or Office 2011, but not both (just in case it's not obvious, the former is Windows, and the latter is Mac OS). And yes, I want and need both.
My company uses Windows workstations, but I prefer Mac OS at home. Most of the time, Office:Mac is just fine. Except, you know, the glaring omissions of Access and OneNote, which cause me to have to boot up Parallels (less of a chore since adding the Thunderbolt SSD).
As it is, I know I'm breaking the MS license -- I've got Office 2011 installed on a laptop and my desktop. I'd prefer to have it universally installed on all machines so I can maintain a single, master image, but I'm not too egregious with the license abuse.
If I can have multiple installs of both Windows and Mac versions for the low price of $100 per year, yeah, I'm all for it. The only thing cheaper for my circumstances would be going back to the old days of piracy.
I wonder if this is legal in the USA. I suppose that's not an issue, since it's presumably only available in China.
I live in China. These guys are already the worst drivers in the world. I wonder how many people they'll injure with remote controlled cars?
On the other hand, they are truly horrendous drivers (as mentioned), and they don't know how to back up (that's a gross generalization, but it's mostly true). Chinese drivers regularly make backing into a parking space a 10 point maneuver. Just maybe this thing can make them better (quicker) at parking at the Ikea or Metro.
Yes, the claim that Mexico has near universal coverage is accurate, but Mexico's health care is not a US or Canadian (-provincial) style. This Wikipedia article is pretty accurate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Mexico about how it works.
Ex-President Fox's Seguro Popular is mostly what the article talks about, and that's what (properly) gives Mexico the right to say that it has nearly 100% coverage. And it's a good program -- my mother-in-law's maid's kid received a kidney transplant under the program.
It's important to distinguish, though, that you're not forced into this system. You can still buy private insurance, or pay cash. (Last time I had to go to a hospital in Mexico, they simply wanted my credit card).
tl;dr: the Mexican government hasn't taken away choice.
BBEdit Lite is now TextWrangler.
I think we're still a Fortune 10 company... we manufacture consumer products globally, and have a global performance evaluation (PE) process. I will be as generic as possible in the terminology. Oh, I'm a manager who conducts PE's, and also a volunteer on the personnel development forum (PDF) for non-management personnel.
For PE's, we have a top-tier level that's limited to 15% of the eligible pool. In my department so far this year, we've not nominated enough people to meet that 15% (we're in a new region, and all of the local employees are new). Then there's 70% to 85% of people that are achievers. This bracket is slightly open because there's an allowance of 15% of under-achievers and non-performers. The key is, we're *not* forced to bracket anyone into the lower tiers. And like I said for the top tier, we're not forced to bracket people into that tier, either.
Our system makes sense. Not everyone can be a super-star; even when everyone is a super-star, there's always a small percentage that have a little bit of an edge. And because we're not forced to rank anyone as under-achievers, we recognize that even the weakest link might be carrying his or her weight -- and carrying weight (do your job) is all we ask!
To prevent abuse, all of the top 15% and the lower 15% (if any) all go to the PDF committee that I mentioned I'm in. There, my fellow managers and I review the proposals for the highest-achiever rankings, and we all have to agree. Basically, you can't screw your way to the top, or other methods of brown-nosing.
And as a low-level manager (organizationally-speaking), I'm subject to the same process at my pay grade. And I'm fairly happy with it.
I'm a hiring manager with direct reports, and I want quality employees, and am willing to compensate them. HR, though, makes most compensation decisions, however.
Would I be subject to compensating someone higher than another due to favoritism? Hell, yes! What's important is what that favoritism is based upon, though. I don't believe in accepting (e.g.) sexual favors, but if you're a good contributor who makes my life easier, you're likely to be my favorite, and I'm likely to want to pay you more.
As much as we despise HR, their control over salaries helps mitigate a lot of favoritism issues.
Somewhere in Jiangsu Province here. Sadly my "western" house (it's duplex, really, but they call it a "villa" to make it sound nice) is still very much Chinese under the paint. Everything western is truly superficial in the case of Chinese construction.
I have to feel sorry for those poor suckers that live in Chinese apartment buildings (which is where the vast majority of Chinese live). Don't get me wrong, many of the local Chinese (and some westerners) have beautiful apartments. I just wonder how long until the upper floors start collapsing onto the lower floors.
As the title suggests, I've never accepted the EULA for my work PC. If I suffer a damage due to Windows 8 on my work PC, presumably I'd still have the right to sue in a class action.
Or, recognizing that my employment may cause legal complications for damages there, then I suggest that my wife (who didn't install Windows 8) could sue in a class action.
I suppose that for Windows 9, we'll have to accept a click-wrap license every time we log into our user account or open a new application.
They said we're finally migrating from XP. Thank God they still let me keep Office 2003.
My new Win Vista laptop at work requires a USB key to even boot. I've been warned that if I ever lose that key, I'm screwed. I have no idea what the encryption key even is (I've not browsed the key, or even know if there's a filesystem on it). I'm hoping the key is something long and complex and not something stupid like "I.T. Guzé" or similar.
(I won't really be screwed, because I run Unison daily to back up everything that's important to a network drive anyway.)
Sigh. Right-to-work isn't at all the same as at-will. My state -- Michigan -- is a union-shop state, but also an at-will state. They have no bearing on each other, and have nothing at all common in law.
Right-to-work means (only) that non-members don't have to pay union dues. In a union-shop state, you *still* have the right not to join a union -- you're still stuck paying union dues (actually, an "agency fee" which is slightly less than the union dues). Unions can still thrive and prosper and protect their works in right-to-work states, and a lot of them do so.
At-will only applies to non-contract employment in at-will states. If you have a union and you have a contract with the appropriate language, then you're not an at-will employee, even in at at-will state.
I read that as capacity, i.e., his 10kW device would cost 1000 to 1500 dollars. Does that include fuel? I have no idea, and I've never read anything about this device. I do know that a 10kW natural gas backup generator would run me about $10,000 installed with an automatic switch, because that's something I've been looking for.
Oh, neat. I'm in Jiangsu. Except for some reason all of my channels come from the Philippines. I'm getting good at Tagalog, which doesn't really help me in China.
Or Plex, if you have multiple front-ends. Mac/Windows, and Linux is looking promising.