I'm with this attitude (but still on Windows, but looking at alternatives).
I tell people to deal with certain mail order suppliers because a) they know what they are talking about and b) if something goes wrong, they are good at rectifying it.
The answer I get back is: "but they cost more!". Thing is, I don't care. I want it to work. Not working costs me a lot more than a small premium for service/parts.
The problem that a lot of people have with science (and to some degree, their work too) is a lack of exactitude.
When I hear a journalist ask a politician "is this drug safe?", I want the politician to say "we don't know. It's been through a highly rigourous testing process, but nothing is ever proven completely safe". Of course, they don't. They promise it's OK, and generally get lucky.
A lot of anti-science has occurred (such as junk medicine in the UK) because the white heat promises of a post-war glorious scientific future had some high-profile mistakes like Chernobyl and Thalidomide. People stopped trusting scientists who they had assumed were superbeings and instead started to dismiss it as not being the answer.
The dichotomy is that people still want improvements to their lives, even anti-science environmentalists. Anti-scientists want to be able to publish websites telling of their cause, even though had their world view presided, they probably would have made sure that the internet didn't exist.
1984 is about totalitarian control, which right now, even in the UK (with ID cards coming, CCTV cameras everywhere and various other mechanisms, we are still some distance from.
What worries me are two things. Firstly, that we are building technology capable of creating a 1984-style society (CCTV everywhere, biometrics, RFID) and secondly that most citizens simply don't care enough about their civil liberties. When the UK government suggested 3 months detention without trial, it had overwhelming public support in polls.
That's far enough away that not only will the politicians who promised this be gone, but it will be forgotten by then.
Never trust any projection by a politician beyond the current term. If someone gives you a promise this far away, ask what the interim targets are. And watch the politicians avoid the answer.
There's a new guy in charge of Disney (Robert Iger) and he's stated that he wants animation at the heart.
Disney have gone through a rough patch, making mostly so-so movies. But they've been successful in their early days, and then in the late 80s/early 90s (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King).
An unmanagable national debt is not, in my opinion, the sign of a good capitalistic system. Capitalism should mean being financially responsible - spending what is yours and not for the next generation.
I've worked in a lot of different companies, and in many cases, you are right.
But, I've worked in places that really believed in training people. Heck, even as a contractor, they sent me on training courses. Some just gave me the time and would cough up for resources (like books, CDs) which was OK.
Training is an expense, but it can also be an investment. The bright companies recognise this.
You have to provide a safety net. But not much more than that.
I get a bit cheesed off when I see families on benefits who can still somehow afford to smoke and drink. If you can afford beer, you don't need my taxes spent on you. For some in the UK, it's just a lifestyle, not a safety net.
In Europe, even the eastern side, people left their work at work. I recall my mother telling me stories when I started hating the working world I encountered here. "Yep, I remember how we used to have it back home, it wasn't as bad as it seemed, now that I think about it. At least we had assured work, nobody got laid off, everyone had assured (and delivered, without need for lawsuits) pensions and retirement, and when they walked out the door at the end of the day, and off the premises, the coat of "labor" wore off, and it was time to enjoy life.
And there were food queues, the economy had oversupply in some things and under supply in others because it was a managed economy, and basically, a disaster.
I live in the UK, and it sounds to me like moving to France might be a good move for you. That's the attitude of many there - that we can all have 35 hour weeks, jobs for life, wonderful pensions and all that.
Unfortunately, you can't get a quart out of a pint pot. France now has massive unemployment. Innovators move here to the UK because we have a far more relaxed regulatory regime and people have an acceptance that they don't have a job for life, and have to look after themselves and their families.
To add to that, I'm seeing more and more companies building internal applications on browsers. Not so much for platform independence, but because deployment and management is a piece of cake.
Even if people are not making them platform-independent, that's not a massive amount of work to do later if required.
Personally, I won't be using this stuff. I'm pretty tired of working with Microsoft stuff that by the time I get to a decent level of expertise (and I'm running efficiently with it) gets dropped for Yet Another Way Of Working that gives me limited performance improvements.
Just out of interest, how much time do you believe is lost in the process of getting a developer to import/create design elements based on some pictures produced by a designer?
The whole thing of GUI designers gave people the impression that they would produce massive productivity gains, but most (95+%) of the work I spend on building and supporting an application is in the back end code - validation logic and database interaction.
I believe that most developers would be better off improving their productivity with existing tools than spending time retooling for yet another short-term Microsoft technology. CSS is already out there to serve this purpose.
Adobe did it right with PDF. Just because it's open doesn't mean that everyone can beat you. The best tool for making PDFs is still Adobe Acrobat. But by opening it, they've actually helped to increase their user base.
I've written programs using 3rd party libraries that generate and manipulate PDFs. That keeps me wanting to use PDF as much as possible instead of using something like Word, which is, IMO a complete horror to try and automatically generate.
I'm seeing quite a few sites using Flash for video, and I think we'll see even more of it. I know I'm going to get some "I don't" replies, but I'd say that the most ubiquitous plugin that is installed is the Flash plugin.
It probably has broader adoption than any of the "video" formats on their own.
(I also wonder, as devil's advocate, whether the whole idea that censorship is an unqualified evil doesn't reek of Western moral absolutism via Mill--but I guess that's another discussion entirely.)
It's not a western thing. It's a human thing. Why would any human being want to have censorship imposed on them? And considering that plenty of countries around China have such rights suggests that it isn't just a western viewpoint.
As far as I'm concerned, there is no way to realistically block people from doing bad things with the data without creating a massive encumberance on people and their work.
The better policy is to deal with who has access to what data, and keep it to what they need for their job. For more sensitive data, limit it to a small number of highly trusted people.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm seeing Cars.
Plenty of mainstream hollywood movies can't weave that sort of depth into an action movie that is supposedly for adults.
I tell people to deal with certain mail order suppliers because a) they know what they are talking about and b) if something goes wrong, they are good at rectifying it.
The answer I get back is: "but they cost more!". Thing is, I don't care. I want it to work. Not working costs me a lot more than a small premium for service/parts.
The problem that a lot of people have with science (and to some degree, their work too) is a lack of exactitude.
When I hear a journalist ask a politician "is this drug safe?", I want the politician to say "we don't know. It's been through a highly rigourous testing process, but nothing is ever proven completely safe". Of course, they don't. They promise it's OK, and generally get lucky.
A lot of anti-science has occurred (such as junk medicine in the UK) because the white heat promises of a post-war glorious scientific future had some high-profile mistakes like Chernobyl and Thalidomide. People stopped trusting scientists who they had assumed were superbeings and instead started to dismiss it as not being the answer.
The dichotomy is that people still want improvements to their lives, even anti-science environmentalists. Anti-scientists want to be able to publish websites telling of their cause, even though had their world view presided, they probably would have made sure that the internet didn't exist.
As far as I am aware, none of the other christians I know are creationists.
The church in the UK is far more interested in issues like social justice, and Africa than it is in creationism.
Newsnight
Radio 4
Foreign websites I don't believe it's a well-known term.
What worries me are two things. Firstly, that we are building technology capable of creating a 1984-style society (CCTV everywhere, biometrics, RFID) and secondly that most citizens simply don't care enough about their civil liberties. When the UK government suggested 3 months detention without trial, it had overwhelming public support in polls.
That's far enough away that not only will the politicians who promised this be gone, but it will be forgotten by then.
Never trust any projection by a politician beyond the current term. If someone gives you a promise this far away, ask what the interim targets are. And watch the politicians avoid the answer.
Disney have gone through a rough patch, making mostly so-so movies. But they've been successful in their early days, and then in the late 80s/early 90s (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King).
Microsoft could easily spend out say, $10 billion on Disney shares.
Tron was a flawed movie. Groundbreaking in effects terms, but could have been much better.
I personally rate Bug's Life as the least good Pixar movie. Which is still head-and-shoulders above every non-Pixar non-Shrek CG movie.
The teaser for Cars makes it look unappealling, but I'm going anyway.
Are you referring to the NHS?
But, I've worked in places that really believed in training people. Heck, even as a contractor, they sent me on training courses. Some just gave me the time and would cough up for resources (like books, CDs) which was OK.
Training is an expense, but it can also be an investment. The bright companies recognise this.
It's so great. That's why there's a whole lot of eastern european immigrants wanting to come to work in the UK all the time?
I get a bit cheesed off when I see families on benefits who can still somehow afford to smoke and drink. If you can afford beer, you don't need my taxes spent on you. For some in the UK, it's just a lifestyle, not a safety net.
And there were food queues, the economy had oversupply in some things and under supply in others because it was a managed economy, and basically, a disaster.
I live in the UK, and it sounds to me like moving to France might be a good move for you. That's the attitude of many there - that we can all have 35 hour weeks, jobs for life, wonderful pensions and all that.
Unfortunately, you can't get a quart out of a pint pot. France now has massive unemployment. Innovators move here to the UK because we have a far more relaxed regulatory regime and people have an acceptance that they don't have a job for life, and have to look after themselves and their families.
Even if people are not making them platform-independent, that's not a massive amount of work to do later if required.
Personally, I won't be using this stuff. I'm pretty tired of working with Microsoft stuff that by the time I get to a decent level of expertise (and I'm running efficiently with it) gets dropped for Yet Another Way Of Working that gives me limited performance improvements.
The whole thing of GUI designers gave people the impression that they would produce massive productivity gains, but most (95+%) of the work I spend on building and supporting an application is in the back end code - validation logic and database interaction.
I believe that most developers would be better off improving their productivity with existing tools than spending time retooling for yet another short-term Microsoft technology. CSS is already out there to serve this purpose.
I've written programs using 3rd party libraries that generate and manipulate PDFs. That keeps me wanting to use PDF as much as possible instead of using something like Word, which is, IMO a complete horror to try and automatically generate.
It probably has broader adoption than any of the "video" formats on their own.
Sometimes, you have to lose the battle to win the war.
It's not a western thing. It's a human thing. Why would any human being want to have censorship imposed on them? And considering that plenty of countries around China have such rights suggests that it isn't just a western viewpoint.
The better policy is to deal with who has access to what data, and keep it to what they need for their job. For more sensitive data, limit it to a small number of highly trusted people.