Re:What he took away is more precious than given
on
Steve Jobs Dead At 56
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· Score: 1
Please define this for me, then: "locking in his customers, limiting their freedoms and then making enormous profits over these".
Then kindly provide a concrete example of when that happened.
Re:What he took away is more precious than given
on
Steve Jobs Dead At 56
·
· Score: 2
WTF are you on about? IBM, HP and many others tried for far more "vendor lock-in" than Apple. I got tons of Apple gear, but I'm not locked into Apple at all. I could take my data off of my MacBook Pro and use it just as well on a Linux or Win box. In fact, I store a large portion of my data on both Windows partitions and Solaris partitions, and that data is used by other users on both platforms. How is that locking me in?
How many people would you classify as "superficial"? According to sales numbers, it would have to be, roughly, a fuck-load. Either all of those people are superficial, or maybe the appeal wasn't just to superficial people. Maybe non-superficial people also found value in Apple's products. Wouldn't you think that, if the products really weren't that good, those superficial people wouldn't tell their superficial friends and relatives about them? Being superficial, wouldn't they drop Apple products for the next "shiny"? Is that happening? If not, why not?
And if that was all he did, why couldn't anyone else do it? Superficial people are easily swayed, right?
How is this any different from a thug standing in your business entry way saying, "It would be a terrible shame if something were to happen to this nice business you have here. If you pay me a small monthly fee, I'll do my best to make sure nothing happens. Otherwise, hey, it's a rough neighborhood. You never know what might happen."
The effect is the same, is it not? The thugs get money for nothing: just the promise of "protection". If MS at least outlined to Casio exactly what patents they wouldn't sue over, then it might carry more legitimacy. As it is, it smacks of little more than, "Hey, it's a rough neighborhood..."
Otherwise, I'm in the same ballpark that the AC got:
13,170,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Earth, in pounds 6.585E+21 Earth, in tons ( / 2000)
5000000 Rate of decay per second, in tons 1.317E+15 Seconds to eradicate Earth ("in tons" / "rate of decay per second") 2.195E+13 Minutes ( / 60) 3.65833E+11 Hours ( / 24 ) 15243055556 Days ( / 365) 41761796.04 Years
Worse than that: they provide storage bins - aka "trash cans" - right at the checkpoint for the disposal of all of these "harmful agents". Sheer genius. "Is that a dirty bomb you have there? Throw it in this trash can, please..."
If it's not dangerous, why take it from us? If they're taking it from us, why stockpile it right there, next to passengers they're trying to protect?
So I did what I normally do on a Friday: I cut out of town at 2:00 pm to drive back to the WNY area for the weekend. However, instead of taking my usual 86 / 17 route, which was nuts with traffic, I heard, I drove back roads following the upper Delaware scenic bypass and enjoyed the quiet, if slightly longer drive.
I do hope my apartment is still standing when I head back. My office building - I can take it or leave it...
> which incluides not ripping on stupid management decisions. If you disagree, keep your mouth shut, unless it's an ethics or compliance violation.
How would you handle incompetence, or fundamental inability to do the job? The code my manager delivers is terrible: it may correctly fulfill the requirements, but any "upgrades" or addition of capabilities would likely require a re-write. Further, because he doesn't understand advanced concepts - like looping and hashes - he rejects code that "scares" him. Seriously.
I don't know that this would be an "ethics or compliance violation," so how would you handle this?
It could be her way of saying, "You're not here with me. I don't like that. And this ass-dragging in the morning has got to stop." That's kind of direct and confrontational. Blaming it on the typing - less confrontational.
Sometimes, in a relationship, you have to say things indirectly. Yes, a lot of us tech-types prefer straight-up communications, but not everyone - particularly a lot of spouses - works that way.
"Languages are easy, it's the principles that are hard." You would think so. I tried cutting my teeth on an "easy" app for iOS. Just a simple display of a timer that started with a random number and counted down to 0, then beeped. What a pain in the ass. I figured "while ( i > 0 ) { sleep( 1 ) ; update_display( i ); i-- } beep();" - bam! Done!
Hardly. Googled well into the night just to figure out what should be relatively simple. Ok, I'm better for the knowledge, and it's not -strictly- a language issue: libraries aren't intrinsic parts of the language. But, still, at least in Obj-C as it's used for iOS apps, this "language" was -not- easy.
Maybe I'm thinking to simplistically, but can't you guys form your own consulting group? If you're that good - the "A Team" of IT - and you have some contacts, I'd think anyone would be only too happy to pay for your services. Heck, you might even be able to turn around and sell yourselves to your soon-to-be former company - at a huge markup.
Indeed. I really do enjoy my job - all kinds of interesting, challenging stuff - but my manager is one those upward-looking sociopaths who over-promise and have to cut corners to deliver. The "cuts" are in quality and maintainability. It doesn't help that this clueless fuck couldn't handle an abstraction as simple as looping, so he cuts-and-pastes the same block ten times to handle ten different files, instead of using a single loop. Because he doesn't understand these "complex" concepts, he won't accept them in the code -any- of us deliver.
I have to get stabbed - literally - in the eye every six to eight weeks to see out of my eye. Will this continue for the rest of my life? I don't know - possibly.
If this guy is that unhappy, it may cost him more than his job.
In fact, I was exhausted that night from a 500 mile drive and made a wrong turn heading through town on I-90 just after the game finished. I ended up down-town on Michigan Ave., instead of safely in the 'burbs. If I was tired, before that, I was energized by the thousands of people dancing around the cars, holding up traffic, and scared piss-less that they'd do something to us.
Fortunately, nothing happened to us, but it took almost four hours or longer to get back on the highway and drive the 40 miles home.
Still too risky. Wouldn't it be much better if we all had assigned cells - er, rooms - and were kept away from anything and everything that might harm us, or that we might harm?
The "texts not going through" isn't limited to Virgin: AT&T sucks balls at that, too. Caused a blow-up between the wife and the daughter-in-law, once. Not pretty... Since then, if it's that important, we follow up with a phone call, just in case.
Not doubting your numbers, but you need more imagination. Because of the lower barrier to entry, those 300k Arduinos will blossom into a much bigger number.
Personal anecdote: where I wouldn't have considered a MC project, previously, I have bought an mbed controller and plan to do some interesting things with it. The ease of making it do fun things - in contrast with "real" MCs - enhances my enthusiasm for this device and will certainly carry over to other associates of mine who see that, "Hey! Lookit what he's doing! If he can do that, then so can I!" Then the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon kicks in, and before you know it, even Kevin Bacon is rocking an mbed / Arduino / MS jobbie.
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Please define this for me, then: "locking in his customers, limiting their freedoms and then making enormous profits over these".
Then kindly provide a concrete example of when that happened.
WTF are you on about? IBM, HP and many others tried for far more "vendor lock-in" than Apple. I got tons of Apple gear, but I'm not locked into Apple at all. I could take my data off of my MacBook Pro and use it just as well on a Linux or Win box. In fact, I store a large portion of my data on both Windows partitions and Solaris partitions, and that data is used by other users on both platforms. How is that locking me in?
How many people would you classify as "superficial"? According to sales numbers, it would have to be, roughly, a fuck-load. Either all of those people are superficial, or maybe the appeal wasn't just to superficial people. Maybe non-superficial people also found value in Apple's products. Wouldn't you think that, if the products really weren't that good, those superficial people wouldn't tell their superficial friends and relatives about them? Being superficial, wouldn't they drop Apple products for the next "shiny"? Is that happening? If not, why not?
And if that was all he did, why couldn't anyone else do it? Superficial people are easily swayed, right?
How is this any different from a thug standing in your business entry way saying, "It would be a terrible shame if something were to happen to this nice business you have here. If you pay me a small monthly fee, I'll do my best to make sure nothing happens. Otherwise, hey, it's a rough neighborhood. You never know what might happen."
The effect is the same, is it not? The thugs get money for nothing: just the promise of "protection". If MS at least outlined to Casio exactly what patents they wouldn't sue over, then it might carry more legitimacy. As it is, it smacks of little more than, "Hey, it's a rough neighborhood..."
Best response in any thread, today. You rawk!!
I liked "I Am Legend," and "7 Pounds."
I started with a different weight for the earth, which I got from here: http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_kids/AskKids/earthweight.shtml
Otherwise, I'm in the same ballpark that the AC got:
13,170,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Earth, in pounds
6.585E+21 Earth, in tons ( / 2000)
5000000 Rate of decay per second, in tons
1.317E+15 Seconds to eradicate Earth ("in tons" / "rate of decay per second")
2.195E+13 Minutes ( / 60)
3.65833E+11 Hours ( / 24 )
15243055556 Days ( / 365)
41761796.04 Years
Where are we off?
I know - someone should've warned us about Bush and Cheney all those years ago...
Worse than that: they provide storage bins - aka "trash cans" - right at the checkpoint for the disposal of all of these "harmful agents". Sheer genius. "Is that a dirty bomb you have there? Throw it in this trash can, please..."
If it's not dangerous, why take it from us? If they're taking it from us, why stockpile it right there, next to passengers they're trying to protect?
Not limited to Commies: Bush did a fair job, himself.
So I did what I normally do on a Friday: I cut out of town at 2:00 pm to drive back to the WNY area for the weekend. However, instead of taking my usual 86 / 17 route, which was nuts with traffic, I heard, I drove back roads following the upper Delaware scenic bypass and enjoyed the quiet, if slightly longer drive.
I do hope my apartment is still standing when I head back. My office building - I can take it or leave it...
You say that like it's a bad thing...
> which incluides not ripping on stupid management decisions. If you disagree, keep your mouth shut, unless it's an ethics or compliance violation.
How would you handle incompetence, or fundamental inability to do the job? The code my manager delivers is terrible: it may correctly fulfill the requirements, but any "upgrades" or addition of capabilities would likely require a re-write. Further, because he doesn't understand advanced concepts - like looping and hashes - he rejects code that "scares" him. Seriously.
I don't know that this would be an "ethics or compliance violation," so how would you handle this?
It could be her way of saying, "You're not here with me. I don't like that. And this ass-dragging in the morning has got to stop." That's kind of direct and confrontational. Blaming it on the typing - less confrontational.
Sometimes, in a relationship, you have to say things indirectly. Yes, a lot of us tech-types prefer straight-up communications, but not everyone - particularly a lot of spouses - works that way.
"Languages are easy, it's the principles that are hard." You would think so. I tried cutting my teeth on an "easy" app for iOS. Just a simple display of a timer that started with a random number and counted down to 0, then beeped. What a pain in the ass. I figured "while ( i > 0 ) { sleep( 1 ) ; update_display( i ); i-- } beep();" - bam! Done!
Hardly. Googled well into the night just to figure out what should be relatively simple. Ok, I'm better for the knowledge, and it's not -strictly- a language issue: libraries aren't intrinsic parts of the language. But, still, at least in Obj-C as it's used for iOS apps, this "language" was -not- easy.
Maybe I'm thinking to simplistically, but can't you guys form your own consulting group? If you're that good - the "A Team" of IT - and you have some contacts, I'd think anyone would be only too happy to pay for your services. Heck, you might even be able to turn around and sell yourselves to your soon-to-be former company - at a huge markup.
Indeed. I really do enjoy my job - all kinds of interesting, challenging stuff - but my manager is one those upward-looking sociopaths who over-promise and have to cut corners to deliver. The "cuts" are in quality and maintainability. It doesn't help that this clueless fuck couldn't handle an abstraction as simple as looping, so he cuts-and-pastes the same block ten times to handle ten different files, instead of using a single loop. Because he doesn't understand these "complex" concepts, he won't accept them in the code -any- of us deliver.
The upshot is that after dealing with this BS for 2+ years, I've now developed a physical condition from the stress: branched retinal vein occlusion. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0004583/#adam_007330.disease.causes
I have to get stabbed - literally - in the eye every six to eight weeks to see out of my eye. Will this continue for the rest of my life? I don't know - possibly.
If this guy is that unhappy, it may cost him more than his job.
Could it reasonably power an airplane? Obviously not a jet, but maybe a single-prop ultra-light jobbie?
That's not rioting - that's over-exuberance.
In fact, I was exhausted that night from a 500 mile drive and made a wrong turn heading through town on I-90 just after the game finished. I ended up down-town on Michigan Ave., instead of safely in the 'burbs. If I was tired, before that, I was energized by the thousands of people dancing around the cars, holding up traffic, and scared piss-less that they'd do something to us.
Fortunately, nothing happened to us, but it took almost four hours or longer to get back on the highway and drive the 40 miles home.
Still too risky. Wouldn't it be much better if we all had assigned cells - er, rooms - and were kept away from anything and everything that might harm us, or that we might harm?
I thought it failed because it completely avoided a car analogy. Have we moved past that, too...?
I do wish they would post current guidelines on these things.
-Today- you don't break the law. Tomorrow, your same actions may, in fact, break the law. Will you be concerned about its use then?
The "texts not going through" isn't limited to Virgin: AT&T sucks balls at that, too. Caused a blow-up between the wife and the daughter-in-law, once. Not pretty... Since then, if it's that important, we follow up with a phone call, just in case.
I agree with your general principal, but how do you come out ahead if they kill you, like they did Kelly Thomas?
Not doubting your numbers, but you need more imagination. Because of the lower barrier to entry, those 300k Arduinos will blossom into a much bigger number.
Personal anecdote: where I wouldn't have considered a MC project, previously, I have bought an mbed controller and plan to do some interesting things with it. The ease of making it do fun things - in contrast with "real" MCs - enhances my enthusiasm for this device and will certainly carry over to other associates of mine who see that, "Hey! Lookit what he's doing! If he can do that, then so can I!" Then the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon kicks in, and before you know it, even Kevin Bacon is rocking an mbed / Arduino / MS jobbie.
So, yeah, it may be a blip - for now.