It's kind of funny for me to hear someone call Shaw one of the "big boys" after working on a number of Telecom projects in the USA. In the scheme of things Shaw would only rate being maybe a tier 3 player. Their maximum customer base is maybe 8 million potential people.... not households (and I'm presupposing they are in Saskatchewan and Manitoba now otherwise subtract a couple million). And they compete with Telus and Manitoba Tel and Sasktel (or whoever it is there). That's definitely tier 3 or smaller. Heck, Bell Canada and Rogers are considered tier 2 and their market is probably 15 million or more. FYI Sprint USA has 50 million plus accounts, AT&T has at least 300 million accounts.
I told a Telus (Shaw's major and bigger competitor) senior manager in a conversation one time that it was ridiculous that they made employees pay for their coffee and had the gall to close the cafeteria at 2:30. He said "do you know how many employees we have?! 20,000!" I said I had worked on campuses of companies that had more people than that... and they bought the coffee... I guess you don't think much of your employees. He didn't believe there were business campuses that big. People in Canada don't get that we're not that big in the scheme of things world wide and like it or not it's why we have to work with out neighbor and stop insulting them with our Napoleon syndrome antics. Land area doesn't make up for relatively small population.
I fucking hate the new 100s and 50s. They are way to slippery. I had a 100 in my pocket and went to pull something else out and lost the 100. I hate using a wallet, but now if I have one or more I only will carry them in a wallet. The "paper" money has enough friction that it stays put when you reach in and out of your pocket. The new bills should be embossed with micro ridges or something to at least give them the same friction as the old paper bills. As it is these new plastic bills slide like a greased [make up some disgusting analogy and put it here].
Sounds like the Apple school of management. After years of screaming at them, MS just ignores people and release their Tuesday patches occasionally. Google is the search engine, so they can just hide complaints. That leaves Apple, who (and I could be wrong but it) appears to me to be one of the most litigious consumer electronics companies ever... at least in terms of going after their own customers and contributors.
Any $1 Billion + a year company that I've done work at (there have been at least 7, and I've only worked at them as either a vendor or consultant... go figure), the IT department were always a mix of developers and traditional IT. There have been a range of abilities from exceptional to scope dopes. Most are competent and at the very least their long term exposure to the industry gives them enough insight to more than compensate for technical ability when solving many problems. There are usually enough well qualified people who can handle things when more is needed. And like any place where there are a lot of people, people are people. A wide range of abilities, beliefs, characters, and quirks.
I was ion one project where it might have been Anderson Insulting's IT degenerate (sorry... descendant) that had got it's hooks in. They had signed a contract to run a large scale (>$500 million) installation/integration project for the companies main business systems and at the same time replace all the IT at this company. (They weren't the systems vendors by the way, but it required a lot of new systems programming to handle the new infrastructure like massive SOA development with custom systems buses etc.) Anyway, the people they did hire didn't have as much industry experience The experienced people they were letting go at the company often chose the buy out over working for the new guys and they left without passing on often 20 or 30 years of knowledge. This was often because the new company wanted to move their departments to different cities in an effort to cement their hold. The people that were hired to replace were not all that good. Often H1-B equivalents who said they knew their trade but like most of the consultants out there (that lie about their qualifications to retarded head hunters) they had to pull out books at their desks to learn how to do what they were supposed to be experts at. Granted not all were like this, but too many were.
FWIW the insulting tried to hire me for the project but didn't pay what it was worth so I told their very rude HR head hunter to literally fuck off when he had the balls to come to me when I was on another project and try to bully me into taking a 40% pay cut to work for them. A few months later when my existing contract ended I was hired by a consulting company to work the equivalent to a US 1099 for much higher at the same place. The downside was that a year and a half in, they found a sucker to try to do my job for a much lower price. I heard the rollout that they helped design was so bad the company had to take a loss because it was so badly done. Love that kind of vindication. Especially when your colleagues call you up to tell you the news.:D
Anyway, as I said, just like many consulting companies that manage to talk their way into this position, they started moving many departments to different cities where the client did have offices but no competencies in what that moved department did. All done to implement the umbrella principle:... insert your business like an umbrella up the customers ass, then open... it ain't ever coming out. Divide and conquer, get rid of the old guard and replace them with new people in places where the old people don't want to go. By the way, I first heard of the umbrella principle in terms of one of the vendors on the project. They are the largest telecom billing, order management, and CRM vendor in the world from oh, around the Mediterranean area, and are known in industry circles as one of the finest executioners of umbrella principle anywhere. It seems the Insulting's degenerates (sorry... descendents) were trying to emulate them.
In what was perhaps a very unusual development, it looks to me like the company realized that they were getting fucked, losing experience and competencies, and paying a steep markup on wages for no real return... and from what I understand, the quality of operations took a big hit. Anyway, for whatever reason the relation between the company and the MAJOR
GM is a huge company. They have a significant lever. IBM, you will never work in here again if you screw us on transferring employees. In the end, IBM and every other tech consulting firm are a bunch of sluts who will bend over when a big contract is involved.
And like some people keep trying to drill into other peoples' heads here, business isn't about facial haired, espresso swilling ping pong playing computer hackers coming up with gee wiz bang frameworks. Business is in business to make money. GM isn't a software company. They want reliable un-sexy computer systems that help them get business done. Hiring highly individual IT people who tend to do things like drop new code bases on production servers without telling people because they read a cool article on some web site isn't what they want. They want people who can write code good enough to let them do business. And that is easily maintainable (something that using flavour of the day frameworks that will disappear quickly and will puzzle the hell out of people who have to program this weird shit 15 years from now). GM is not a software company. Sure they need to create some system software, but the majority will be bought and then maintained in house.
Sorry about your brother. But that really was a Darwin moment getting out of his car instead of just getting the fuck out of the area when the shit hits the fan. It is kind of a suspect story that he got out of his car to do the right thing and throw out a leaking can. How many cans and crap do you, he, and the rest of us drive by without picking it up to throw out. And then in the midst of a neighbourhood in riot mode, he decides to stop and be neat freak citizen? OK, benefit of the doubt he was being a good guy.
But the way the cops acted, I agree was probably to a high degree over the top (depending on the true story... we only have his side second hand through you). I don't really have a problem with cops kicking the shit out of a guy who deserves it and think camera phones and the politically correct ruined a good thing. Instant remedial action usually results in punks thinking twice before pulling shit and usually results in quieter and safer neighbourhoods (look what just frisking people does to reduce crime in New York).
And for the record, I'm white, and I can relate one of several instances where one of my white buddies lipped off to the cops one time too many while he was drunk and after causing a disturbance. The cops kicked the shit out of him. From then on when we had been drinking and were thinking of doing something stupid that would likely inconvenience others (euphemism for illegal), he would stop us with a "don't want to piss off the cops" and prevented us from causing shit. I've seen other white guys get shit kicked by the cops. They deserved it and it was better than getting a record. I may be white, but it doesn't mean I grew up with privilege. Some of us know what the real school of hard knocks is. Surrounded by gangs and murderers, etc. So I come by these opinions rationally and honestly, and from experience. I didn't grow up in a nice middle class home and go to college right away, or after a European vacation. Before I went back to school (learning that working for a living sucked) I drove taxi, worked in factories, bounced in a pool hall for a few years (a tough one too). Working in that pool hall is how I paid for college. I had acquaintances and drinking buddies from there killed in fights, knew guys who ended up killing people (and all I knew were arrested and served time or died... one guy killed himself in jail... one guy killed a guy about an hour after I kicked him out of the pool hall, the cops followed him into the place the next day and before I could throw him out again they arrested him for that murder and hauled him away). That was all a long time ago, but no-one can tell me I don't know shit about this subject. I know better than most of these armchair quarterbacks who trip out on their politically correct bullshit. And that's all I'll say on that matter.
But in any case, they way they acted here just goes to prove my point. They acted instinctually. That is what pack mentality is. When we revert there, it is all instinct taking over. And that is what I think happens to cops. Group think, pack like mentality. But it is not hard to sympathize with them somewhat, given that people often treat them as persona non-grata. Especially in certain neighbourhoods were the fucking stupid meme of "don't be a snitch" exists. Cops are human beings, and we can't say out of one side of our mouths, to err is human, and out of the other side, cops can never err or be less than perfect. The reality is that when anyone, especially people easily identifiable (in this case cops with their uniforms) and in a recognizable tribe (the police) are put under stress, like all of us, we tend to regress.
Yeah, I think we can aspire. I think we can try to achieve above all that. But to err is human. We don't always do it. And some people (emotional types with less intelligence especially) when put under stress, all the higher level stuff will disappear. Anyone of us who has walked in a shifty neighbourhood in the middle of the night will understand. Even the best of us won't rea
For a lot of people, I would be at least 50%, yes, at least to a significant degree. And 100% for those who choose their paths using their emotions and not reason.
You are obviously a whiny politically correct moron. Stop talking and you'll sound a lot smarter. That is a flame. Mark it accordingly. I don't have time for idiots like you.
Most people don't mind this because every time it is implemented the crime rate goes down. When the bad guys know they are being watched, they don't do bad things. The truth is if you want to dress like a gansta or tough guy, don't be surprised if people treat you like one. Why else does someone dress like that other than to project an image.
If the image you want to project is that of a bad guy tough guy, stop fucking whining when you are treated that way. It's like women who where low cut tops and push up bras so their tits are bulging out, and then bitching about how they are degraded when men look at their tits. People are hard wired to react to what they see. Why, because evolution (you know that thing that we bitch about the religious right ignoring) wired us like this because it helped us survive. When we see potential danger or tough guy competition, we react. When we want to intimidate to win a fight without fighting (fighting is a last resort in the economy of survival... it is too dangerous to do it as a first resort) so we try to look tough and intimidate first. So the fact that we defend or go against the people who dress like tough guys is a facet of our evolutionary past.
The fact we look at big tits is part of our evolution too. If women look healthy it is ingrained in us that they are the ones we want to schtup... errr mate with. Bottom line, what we dress and act like is how others will treat us because evolution told us that generalizing is the safe way to go and leads to a greater chance to survive and excel, and we can generalize that guys who look like criminals probably have those tendencies. So stop trying to look the part and a good chance you won't be harassed.
I know the politically correct will hate this. I think they hate the effects of evolution more than the religious right. They don't like the fact that we are in essence animals and react often instinctually, and that no amount of 'civilization' will end it. No we are not above our animal instincts. At best we can mitigate them as long as it serves to our benefit. So get over it "sensitive people." And right now, people are allowing their instinctual fear of the guys who look like they want to bad things to them rule. And since crime goes down when these policies are enacted, it shows that our instincts via evolution are once again, correct. It is hard to win against a biologically ingrained education won over scores of millennia at the school or hard knocks.
I think slowing down in order to enter it by typing is better than vocalizing it. We tend to speak faster than we think. At least by typing it gives us a chance to better think about what we are doing. And even then it is still too fast sometimes.:)
As I enter this on my smart. Phone. I can't help but this.k that this demise of the PC is highly exaggerated. Keyboards and mice and the number pad are all much more efficient and less error prone, and therefore faster and more headache free ways to enter data. Until smart phones and tablets and other upcoming "smart devices" can compete in this regard (as well as screen real estate), the PC/laptop in business at the very least isn't going anywhere. I don't want someone angering any of my financial I.to on an autocorrecting tablet touch screen. And for those who might choose this argument, a ta let with a cover or keybiard accessory is really a laptop. Anyway having read the author's previous work I don't need to read thus one to k ow it should have been titled, "Cringley Jumps On The Bandwagon Again With Nothing Useful To Say Or Hasn't Already Been Said A Dozen Times Before, Or Both."
(there's no way to read minds yet, we can only say "pattern X equals action Y",
But isn't this what you are doing when you learn how to do something physical like play a guitar or pianno, or tennis, etc? Your mind equates how you move your fingers or body to a result or external action on your environment and you say to yourself, that's good or that's bad and you store the information. So now you know that if your fingers do X, you get Y note from the instrument, or you hit the ball. As far as I can tell, and I'm not a neurobiologist or whatever discipline studies this, but as far as I can tell, that is what creating muscle memory is (in terms of being able to easily repeat something you practice that is). The more you do X to get Y the easier it is for you to retrieve and use that data and required action.
Ahem...SeerStones... a.k.a. bunkem, hoax, fraud, grifting, or in California get rich quick with gullible idiots or in Baptist Church circles, way ahead of his time.
Aren't we talking about Google? Wasn't this story about Google?
I don't give a shit what the others do. But sure, they're weasels with our personal data too; but we aren't talking about them are we? They're not the ones who proudly waved the old red white and blue, and trumpeted about selling a made in America phone. When in reality it was, yay! we're bringing plastic and zinc moulding back to North America! Who needs high tech electronics anyway?
Or are you saying because others' are weasels too, Google and the rest can be forgiven when (not if) they lie to us? Where did you get your ethics book? Wall Street? Or do you really buy the 'do no evil' bullshit.
They are a billion dollar company, and like any other billion dollar company they did it any way it took. So surprise surprise when we once again find out they're bullshitting us. I don't know why anyone post stuff like this as news. It should be assumed. It should be news when they and the rest do something ethical.
I don't begrudge them using data since that is what they are in business for. But they have reached a level where they are becoming like any other corporate sociopathic entity, with a pseudo monopolistic position in the market. They basically take what they want and push people around to get it. I even gave an example: Why do I need to give my cell phone number to create a Google account now? They don't need it to provide the services. They know that people want to post their cute cat videos and make them give out unnecessarily personal data to do so. Even if there is a way around it, they don't make it obvious. That is a sure sign of a bunch of scum bags in my book. I have had an account for ages, so don't have this issue with them, but I don't like to see it being done.
So again, surprise surprise, who would figure they would lie about a product in order to make more money. What do you call cynical when the stuff you are cynical about really happens? It's kind of like you aren't paranoid if people really are out to get you.
Imagine that, a company that makes a habit of being overly vague about how it gleans your personal data and what exactly it does with it also being vague as to the origins of another one of their products. Yeah I can use another search engine, but unfortunately they are a defacto standard. Everyone on Slasdot likes to beat up Microsoft for their corporate policies, but Google can't seem to do any wrong. OK, now it's time for the Gmail zombies to kick in and tell everyone how it's good to put more of your personal data on their servers since Google does no harm... never mind a company's private data. Google is just as slimy as any multi billion dollar company. Even if it does provide an essential service; like AT&T or Con Ed. So now why exactly should I want to give Google my cell phone number when I want to post a video of whatever on YouTube?
Slashdot Mirror
That's also the answer to 'what does it taste like having oral sex with an 80 year old?': Depends.
It's kind of funny for me to hear someone call Shaw one of the "big boys" after working on a number of Telecom projects in the USA. In the scheme of things Shaw would only rate being maybe a tier 3 player. Their maximum customer base is maybe 8 million potential people .... not households (and I'm presupposing they are in Saskatchewan and Manitoba now otherwise subtract a couple million). And they compete with Telus and Manitoba Tel and Sasktel (or whoever it is there). That's definitely tier 3 or smaller. Heck, Bell Canada and Rogers are considered tier 2 and their market is probably 15 million or more. FYI Sprint USA has 50 million plus accounts, AT&T has at least 300 million accounts.
I told a Telus (Shaw's major and bigger competitor) senior manager in a conversation one time that it was ridiculous that they made employees pay for their coffee and had the gall to close the cafeteria at 2:30. He said "do you know how many employees we have?! 20,000!" I said I had worked on campuses of companies that had more people than that... and they bought the coffee... I guess you don't think much of your employees. He didn't believe there were business campuses that big. People in Canada don't get that we're not that big in the scheme of things world wide and like it or not it's why we have to work with out neighbor and stop insulting them with our Napoleon syndrome antics. Land area doesn't make up for relatively small population.
The designers AND their managers and their managers should be made redundant.
"Shouldn't". Now there is a weasel word that in this context, has packed in a whole lot of weasel. Might even be fair to call it a wolverine word.
I fucking hate the new 100s and 50s. They are way to slippery. I had a 100 in my pocket and went to pull something else out and lost the 100. I hate using a wallet, but now if I have one or more I only will carry them in a wallet. The "paper" money has enough friction that it stays put when you reach in and out of your pocket. The new bills should be embossed with micro ridges or something to at least give them the same friction as the old paper bills. As it is these new plastic bills slide like a greased [make up some disgusting analogy and put it here].
Iceland did, very recently discuss switching their currency to the Canadian dollar.
Sounds like the Apple school of management. After years of screaming at them, MS just ignores people and release their Tuesday patches occasionally. Google is the search engine, so they can just hide complaints. That leaves Apple, who (and I could be wrong but it) appears to me to be one of the most litigious consumer electronics companies ever... at least in terms of going after their own customers and contributors.
Any $1 Billion + a year company that I've done work at (there have been at least 7, and I've only worked at them as either a vendor or consultant... go figure), the IT department were always a mix of developers and traditional IT. There have been a range of abilities from exceptional to scope dopes. Most are competent and at the very least their long term exposure to the industry gives them enough insight to more than compensate for technical ability when solving many problems. There are usually enough well qualified people who can handle things when more is needed. And like any place where there are a lot of people, people are people. A wide range of abilities, beliefs, characters, and quirks.
I was ion one project where it might have been Anderson Insulting's IT degenerate (sorry... descendant) that had got it's hooks in. They had signed a contract to run a large scale (>$500 million) installation/integration project for the companies main business systems and at the same time replace all the IT at this company. (They weren't the systems vendors by the way, but it required a lot of new systems programming to handle the new infrastructure like massive SOA development with custom systems buses etc.) Anyway, the people they did hire didn't have as much industry experience The experienced people they were letting go at the company often chose the buy out over working for the new guys and they left without passing on often 20 or 30 years of knowledge. This was often because the new company wanted to move their departments to different cities in an effort to cement their hold. The people that were hired to replace were not all that good. Often H1-B equivalents who said they knew their trade but like most of the consultants out there (that lie about their qualifications to retarded head hunters) they had to pull out books at their desks to learn how to do what they were supposed to be experts at. Granted not all were like this, but too many were.
FWIW the insulting tried to hire me for the project but didn't pay what it was worth so I told their very rude HR head hunter to literally fuck off when he had the balls to come to me when I was on another project and try to bully me into taking a 40% pay cut to work for them. A few months later when my existing contract ended I was hired by a consulting company to work the equivalent to a US 1099 for much higher at the same place. The downside was that a year and a half in, they found a sucker to try to do my job for a much lower price. I heard the rollout that they helped design was so bad the company had to take a loss because it was so badly done. Love that kind of vindication. Especially when your colleagues call you up to tell you the news. :D
Anyway, as I said, just like many consulting companies that manage to talk their way into this position, they started moving many departments to different cities where the client did have offices but no competencies in what that moved department did. All done to implement the umbrella principle:... insert your business like an umbrella up the customers ass, then open... it ain't ever coming out. Divide and conquer, get rid of the old guard and replace them with new people in places where the old people don't want to go. By the way, I first heard of the umbrella principle in terms of one of the vendors on the project. They are the largest telecom billing, order management, and CRM vendor in the world from oh, around the Mediterranean area, and are known in industry circles as one of the finest executioners of umbrella principle anywhere. It seems the Insulting's degenerates (sorry... descendents) were trying to emulate them.
In what was perhaps a very unusual development, it looks to me like the company realized that they were getting fucked, losing experience and competencies, and paying a steep markup on wages for no real return... and from what I understand, the quality of operations took a big hit. Anyway, for whatever reason the relation between the company and the MAJOR
GM is a huge company. They have a significant lever. IBM, you will never work in here again if you screw us on transferring employees. In the end, IBM and every other tech consulting firm are a bunch of sluts who will bend over when a big contract is involved.
And like some people keep trying to drill into other peoples' heads here, business isn't about facial haired, espresso swilling ping pong playing computer hackers coming up with gee wiz bang frameworks. Business is in business to make money. GM isn't a software company. They want reliable un-sexy computer systems that help them get business done. Hiring highly individual IT people who tend to do things like drop new code bases on production servers without telling people because they read a cool article on some web site isn't what they want. They want people who can write code good enough to let them do business. And that is easily maintainable (something that using flavour of the day frameworks that will disappear quickly and will puzzle the hell out of people who have to program this weird shit 15 years from now). GM is not a software company. Sure they need to create some system software, but the majority will be bought and then maintained in house.
Sorry about your brother. But that really was a Darwin moment getting out of his car instead of just getting the fuck out of the area when the shit hits the fan. It is kind of a suspect story that he got out of his car to do the right thing and throw out a leaking can. How many cans and crap do you, he, and the rest of us drive by without picking it up to throw out. And then in the midst of a neighbourhood in riot mode, he decides to stop and be neat freak citizen? OK, benefit of the doubt he was being a good guy.
But the way the cops acted, I agree was probably to a high degree over the top (depending on the true story... we only have his side second hand through you). I don't really have a problem with cops kicking the shit out of a guy who deserves it and think camera phones and the politically correct ruined a good thing. Instant remedial action usually results in punks thinking twice before pulling shit and usually results in quieter and safer neighbourhoods (look what just frisking people does to reduce crime in New York).
And for the record, I'm white, and I can relate one of several instances where one of my white buddies lipped off to the cops one time too many while he was drunk and after causing a disturbance. The cops kicked the shit out of him. From then on when we had been drinking and were thinking of doing something stupid that would likely inconvenience others (euphemism for illegal), he would stop us with a "don't want to piss off the cops" and prevented us from causing shit. I've seen other white guys get shit kicked by the cops. They deserved it and it was better than getting a record. I may be white, but it doesn't mean I grew up with privilege. Some of us know what the real school of hard knocks is. Surrounded by gangs and murderers, etc. So I come by these opinions rationally and honestly, and from experience. I didn't grow up in a nice middle class home and go to college right away, or after a European vacation. Before I went back to school (learning that working for a living sucked) I drove taxi, worked in factories, bounced in a pool hall for a few years (a tough one too). Working in that pool hall is how I paid for college. I had acquaintances and drinking buddies from there killed in fights, knew guys who ended up killing people (and all I knew were arrested and served time or died... one guy killed himself in jail... one guy killed a guy about an hour after I kicked him out of the pool hall, the cops followed him into the place the next day and before I could throw him out again they arrested him for that murder and hauled him away). That was all a long time ago, but no-one can tell me I don't know shit about this subject. I know better than most of these armchair quarterbacks who trip out on their politically correct bullshit. And that's all I'll say on that matter.
But in any case, they way they acted here just goes to prove my point. They acted instinctually. That is what pack mentality is. When we revert there, it is all instinct taking over. And that is what I think happens to cops. Group think, pack like mentality. But it is not hard to sympathize with them somewhat, given that people often treat them as persona non-grata. Especially in certain neighbourhoods were the fucking stupid meme of "don't be a snitch" exists. Cops are human beings, and we can't say out of one side of our mouths, to err is human, and out of the other side, cops can never err or be less than perfect. The reality is that when anyone, especially people easily identifiable (in this case cops with their uniforms) and in a recognizable tribe (the police) are put under stress, like all of us, we tend to regress.
Yeah, I think we can aspire. I think we can try to achieve above all that. But to err is human. We don't always do it. And some people (emotional types with less intelligence especially) when put under stress, all the higher level stuff will disappear. Anyone of us who has walked in a shifty neighbourhood in the middle of the night will understand. Even the best of us won't rea
For a lot of people, I would be at least 50%, yes, at least to a significant degree. And 100% for those who choose their paths using their emotions and not reason.
You are obviously a whiny politically correct moron. Stop talking and you'll sound a lot smarter. That is a flame. Mark it accordingly. I don't have time for idiots like you.
Most people don't mind this because every time it is implemented the crime rate goes down. When the bad guys know they are being watched, they don't do bad things. The truth is if you want to dress like a gansta or tough guy, don't be surprised if people treat you like one. Why else does someone dress like that other than to project an image.
If the image you want to project is that of a bad guy tough guy, stop fucking whining when you are treated that way. It's like women who where low cut tops and push up bras so their tits are bulging out, and then bitching about how they are degraded when men look at their tits. People are hard wired to react to what they see. Why, because evolution (you know that thing that we bitch about the religious right ignoring) wired us like this because it helped us survive. When we see potential danger or tough guy competition, we react. When we want to intimidate to win a fight without fighting (fighting is a last resort in the economy of survival... it is too dangerous to do it as a first resort) so we try to look tough and intimidate first. So the fact that we defend or go against the people who dress like tough guys is a facet of our evolutionary past.
The fact we look at big tits is part of our evolution too. If women look healthy it is ingrained in us that they are the ones we want to schtup... errr mate with. Bottom line, what we dress and act like is how others will treat us because evolution told us that generalizing is the safe way to go and leads to a greater chance to survive and excel, and we can generalize that guys who look like criminals probably have those tendencies. So stop trying to look the part and a good chance you won't be harassed.
I know the politically correct will hate this. I think they hate the effects of evolution more than the religious right. They don't like the fact that we are in essence animals and react often instinctually, and that no amount of 'civilization' will end it. No we are not above our animal instincts. At best we can mitigate them as long as it serves to our benefit. So get over it "sensitive people." And right now, people are allowing their instinctual fear of the guys who look like they want to bad things to them rule. And since crime goes down when these policies are enacted, it shows that our instincts via evolution are once again, correct. It is hard to win against a biologically ingrained education won over scores of millennia at the school or hard knocks.
I think slowing down in order to enter it by typing is better than vocalizing it. We tend to speak faster than we think. At least by typing it gives us a chance to better think about what we are doing. And even then it is still too fast sometimes. :)
As I enter this on my smart. Phone. I can't help but this.k that this demise of the PC is highly exaggerated. Keyboards and mice and the number pad are all much more efficient and less error prone, and therefore faster and more headache free ways to enter data. Until smart phones and tablets and other upcoming "smart devices" can compete in this regard (as well as screen real estate), the PC/laptop in business at the very least isn't going anywhere. I don't want someone angering any of my financial I.to on an autocorrecting tablet touch screen. And for those who might choose this argument, a ta let with a cover or keybiard accessory is really a laptop. Anyway having read the author's previous work I don't need to read thus one to k ow it should have been titled, "Cringley Jumps On The Bandwagon Again With Nothing Useful To Say Or Hasn't Already Been Said A Dozen Times Before, Or Both."
I can't help but thinking the first person to do this will be thinking, "It's dark in here!"
But isn't this what you are doing when you learn how to do something physical like play a guitar or pianno, or tennis, etc? Your mind equates how you move your fingers or body to a result or external action on your environment and you say to yourself, that's good or that's bad and you store the information. So now you know that if your fingers do X, you get Y note from the instrument, or you hit the ball. As far as I can tell, and I'm not a neurobiologist or whatever discipline studies this, but as far as I can tell, that is what creating muscle memory is (in terms of being able to easily repeat something you practice that is). The more you do X to get Y the easier it is for you to retrieve and use that data and required action.
Yeah, considering he needed both arms to carry them. ;)
The first money maker will be a Dutch sex-bot, remotely operated by a hooker from Amsterdam.
Ahem... Seer Stones ... a.k.a. bunkem, hoax, fraud, grifting, or in California get rich quick with gullible idiots or in Baptist Church circles, way ahead of his time.
I heard you got big stones.
Aren't we talking about Google? Wasn't this story about Google?
I don't give a shit what the others do. But sure, they're weasels with our personal data too; but we aren't talking about them are we? They're not the ones who proudly waved the old red white and blue, and trumpeted about selling a made in America phone. When in reality it was, yay! we're bringing plastic and zinc moulding back to North America! Who needs high tech electronics anyway?
Or are you saying because others' are weasels too, Google and the rest can be forgiven when (not if) they lie to us? Where did you get your ethics book? Wall Street? Or do you really buy the 'do no evil' bullshit.
They are a billion dollar company, and like any other billion dollar company they did it any way it took. So surprise surprise when we once again find out they're bullshitting us. I don't know why anyone post stuff like this as news. It should be assumed. It should be news when they and the rest do something ethical.
I don't begrudge them using data since that is what they are in business for. But they have reached a level where they are becoming like any other corporate sociopathic entity, with a pseudo monopolistic position in the market. They basically take what they want and push people around to get it. I even gave an example: Why do I need to give my cell phone number to create a Google account now? They don't need it to provide the services. They know that people want to post their cute cat videos and make them give out unnecessarily personal data to do so. Even if there is a way around it, they don't make it obvious. That is a sure sign of a bunch of scum bags in my book. I have had an account for ages, so don't have this issue with them, but I don't like to see it being done.
So again, surprise surprise, who would figure they would lie about a product in order to make more money. What do you call cynical when the stuff you are cynical about really happens? It's kind of like you aren't paranoid if people really are out to get you.
Imagine that, a company that makes a habit of being overly vague about how it gleans your personal data and what exactly it does with it also being vague as to the origins of another one of their products. Yeah I can use another search engine, but unfortunately they are a defacto standard. Everyone on Slasdot likes to beat up Microsoft for their corporate policies, but Google can't seem to do any wrong. OK, now it's time for the Gmail zombies to kick in and tell everyone how it's good to put more of your personal data on their servers since Google does no harm... never mind a company's private data. Google is just as slimy as any multi billion dollar company. Even if it does provide an essential service; like AT&T or Con Ed. So now why exactly should I want to give Google my cell phone number when I want to post a video of whatever on YouTube?
They won't go away as long a businesses need to input data which is easier with keyboards and mice, and run apps that require screen real estate, etc.