Ah yes, like the time a previous developer decided to have the database connection error display "Fuck! Can't connect to database!". Of course the database didn't fail until well after he left. Fun times when the client called about that one...
given how often the IRS gives bad advice on taxes, and the fact that they're not responsible for errors, I really don't have a problem with this. Nobody in their right mind would use any software made by the IRS anyway.
I've been using Turbotax for several years. It is riddled with errors. I answer the questions literally as they are asked by Turbotax, but the results it gives back to me make no sense. I often have to reverse-engineer what Turbotax thinks it's supposed to be asking, then read the relevant IRS documentation, then go back and fill out Turbotax now that I know the authoritative truth.
I'm a software engineer. I think logically and precisely. The IRS documentation is written for people like me. Turbotax by contrast is like those tests you did in high school where you know the test-setter had screwed up, and you have to figure out what they had been meaning to ask.
Okay guys... stop using those words, they don't mean what you think they mean! At best we have advance algorithms...
ML systems are emphatically not "advanced algorithms". An algorithm is a step-by-step sequence of instructions. You don't code ML systems the same way you code algorithms. You don't think about them in the same way. You don't test them the same way. You don't validate them the same way. You don't adjust their parameters the same way. They don't have a step by step sequence of "rules" except in the trivial sense that every single cause-and-effect in the universe is a rule. Heck you don't even check them into source control the same way. ML has nothing to do with algorithms. (well, nothing more than the fact that it's all Turing-complete).
I "code" with my daughters, aged 3 and 5. I stand them in the room with their eyes closed and tell them "Walk forwards two paces. Turn Right. Walk forward two paces". I call this code because it's exactly the same as LOGO turtle graphics that those of us born in the 70s are familiar with and did in school. They have fun, and they're developing a sense of algorithms. (Likewise, when a toy's batteries run out, I have them come with me to the workshop and "repair" it by unscrewing the case and installing new batteries. When a toy breaks in other ways, I have them glue it back or help me solder it. Again they have fun, and they're developing technical affinity.)
I was a volunteer teacher in India back in 1992. Again I taught LOGO, this time to academically low-performing 8th through 10th graders. None of them particularly cared to become tech workers. Some used it to create beautiful art. Some coded up a teen magazine style personality quiz. They all loved it. They also found a subject that they were good at, and for once felt mastery over. I think it developed their minds and their analytical skills in ways that will help many of their future (non-tech) jobs.
There's always a kneejerk slashdot reaction about "learn to code is bad because there won't be good jobs in tech". This misses the point. Coding at school isn't about training up a workforce of coders. It's about empowering people (in all walks of life) to become active citizens in a world that needs at least a little tech-savviness...
The kids who do "learn to code" today... Maybe they'll be constructing spreadsheets to figure out their mortgage payments and sticking in a few formulas. Maybe they'll be able to automate a small process with VBA macros in their job as a dental office receptionist. Maybe they'll put together an "If-This-Then-That" script that helps their ailing grandmother remember her appointment. Maybe they'll scrape some data off the web and discover local government embezzlement. Maybe they'll just be able to write a small LUA mod for their favorite game or D&D group. There are a zillion ways that an elementary level of coding competence will help people function as members of tomorrow's society, and only few of them involve jobs in tech.
Separately: at school up to the 80s and 90s, kids were taught a few formal algorithms for long multiplication, long division and the like. The formal algorithms have largely been replaced by "new maths" that gives children a better intuitive understanding of numbers, but unfortunately means that folks don't get a good training in algorithmic thinking.
Why is algorithmic thinking valuable? Someone who's brain is accustomed to how algorithms work will just be able to interact better with all the autonomous systems they interact with in their life. They won't view their car's self-driving skills as magic. They won't treat a website as if there's really a human behind it who intuitively understands them. You know how you as a coder are just somehow magically able to interact with computers and websites more fluently than non-coders? That's what learn-to-code will help people with.
Selfishly, I also hope that algorithmic thinking will lead to an internet of better recipe websites:) that no longer have pages of waffle about the person's life history.
Why is this a "conspiracy theory"? Some people would like the UN to be a world government. And who can blame them when most of the world governments are pretty much shit might as well see if the UN can sort things out or at least send some money their way.
That doesn't make sense. The UN is nothing more -- and nothing less -- than the collective wills of the current national governments around the world. If they collectively want something done then the often do it via the UN machinery. If they don't collectively want something done then the UN doesn't do it.
Writing your sentence out in full, it becomes "Some people want the governments of the world working together to be a world government".
Working long hours for a company that doesn't give a shit about you is strictly for suckers. Get in at 8:30, leave at 5:30, take an hour for lunch. Go home and enjoy the money you make. Encourage everyone else to do the same. You will be fine.
Oh! I'd consider 8:30-5:30 an unacceptably long day. I do a solid 9-5 in tech, and think that's enough, and I tell my reports the same. (we work for a company that does care about us, fortunately).
I think in the case of Facebook the real headline should read: Facebook Secretly Explored Building Bird-Size Drones To Ferry Personal Data From People With Bad Internet Connections
. Amirite?
No, I think you're wrong in an instructive way.
What plausible mechanism can you imagine by which these drones would carry data away from people? Occam's razor strongly suggests that what you describe wouldn't happen in this case. Which suggests you should re-evaluate your knee jerk.
Reminds me of Microsoft Visual Studio Code - lots of people at work raved about this app, but when I tried it on my MacBook its as full of telemetry as any Windows 10 app
Maybe just maybe -- (1) people raved about it, (2) they raved about it because it's good, (3) it's good because they had the right telemetry to know how to achieve this, (4) better telemetry in the sense of being more representative and more actionable comes from it being opt-out rather than opt-in.
I don't like telemetry. I'm a hypocrite free-loader -- I turn off telemetry on software I run on my own machine, but I happily enjoy the the better products that come from better telemetry submitted by other people.
If you're wearing pajamas, I too would rather that you stay home than sit in the movie theater next to me.
(Personally, I go to movies for IMAX. I feel more immersed when the scene fills my peripheral vision. Most recent film was Apollo 11. It was 100% stunning on that giant screen with the serious sound system.)
Plenty of cities in England get over 1600 hours of sunlight a year... that's enough
I lived in England for 20 years. You can't kid me. It's true that sometimes the clouds opened up and we got a few rays of sunshine, but that was mostly only at night.
1. Add "big-brother" safety enforcements like 112mph speed caps and distracted-driver preventions 2. Observe fewer car accidents that involve Volvo vehicles. Achieve their 2020 goal of "no deaths in a new volvo" 3. Potential customers observe the safety statistics. They observe no deaths in a Volvo. For them, it becomes a no-brainer to buy a Volvo. PROFIT.
I agree that by no means everyone will view "zero deaths" as a positive selling point. For a lot of people they'll ignore this feature. But I'm sure there will be a sizeable potential audience for whom it's a major selling point. Imagine you have kids, and you're having a conversation with your spouse about which new car to buy, and your spouse says "let's get a volvo because no one dies in a volvo" and you have to answer "well I'd rather get a car that looks better even though people do die in it". It'll be hard to get your way. Like a lot of people I was persuaded to get rid of my motorcycle when my kids were born, for similar reasons.
When I'm video-chatting with someone, it's disconcerting that we don't make eye contact. Their eyes are always looking above my face or at my ear -- because on their device they're looking at the screen rather than the camera.
When I take selfies with my young kids, again the photos always have them looking slightly off-center, because their eyes are naturally drawn to the screen rather than the camera.
It will make for better photography and video-chats if Samsung can pull this off.
(I read about previous attempts, where they'd have the screen flicker on and off so the camera could pick up light while the screen is off. I never learned whether it succeeded. I imagine you'd end up with a dimmer screen, and poorer light-pickup from the camera. I wonder how Samsung hope to achieve it?)
Considering by your post, you don't understand why Captain Marvel is likely to be a disaster, I'll help you out. After 20 years of them trying to shove her into some type of hero-type body-of-situation, and it failing every time. They then made a movie, where the lead actor proceeded to pull an EA. In EA's case, that was a bold movie...and they seem to be having one hell of a run with commercial failures these days. ME:A, BFV, Anthem(it's already 50% off in some stores). Do you understand now, or would you like me to draw you a picture?
I'm reading the reports now:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/... [Captain Marvel] delivered the franchise's seventh largest opening weekend of all time while grossing more over its first three days than the combined totals of any previous three-day weekend so far this year... Captain Marvel proved a massive success... Historically, the performance ranks among openings that include The Dark Knight ($158.4m opening), The Hunger Games: Catching Fire ($158m opening), Rogue One ($155m opening) and The Hunger Games ($152.5m opening), the four of which representing a total domestic gross ranging from $408-530+ million... Internationally, Captain Marvel delivered an estimated $302 million, making it the fifth highest international opening weekend of all-time and the sixth largest worldwide debut ever...
Your prediction of Captain Marvel likely being a disaster was enormously off the mark. I wonder what you think about that?
When I bought my house, they typically give you an hour or two to read through the closure/escrow documents in their office. I read through every single page and found an error. They said "oh! that's obviously wrong! we've been using this contract for five years now, and you're the first one to have noticed it!"
(it wasn't anything particularly serious - not a case of them asking for something unreasonable. It was just clearly a nonsensical clause.)
Why can't you just send photos via text messages? Do you really have to give the pictures to FaceBook (whereby they take ownership), so that FaceBook can send your parents pics of their grandkids?
I can't send photos and videos by text because (1) international texts are ruinously expensive, (2) sending a 2min high-res video clip isn't really possible over text, (3) text message would result in too many parent-support-calls "could you send that again please?" or "I got a new phone and I've lost all the videos of my grandchildren" or "I'm out of space", (4) maintaining a group chat of 8 grandparents+uncles generates too much traffic which would make the tech-savvy uncles disengage, and sending each photo individually to 8 grandparents+uncles would be too much work on my part.
That's the FaceBook business model.
I know what the business model is. I'm telling you that for the scenario/demographic in question, when you consider the end-to-end experience with non-technie people, it's well worth it.
I also share photos and videos via OneDrive sometimes, but that's quite difficult for non-technie people to get a grip on. It also doesn't have a rich enough commenting model to build the kind of social bonds we aim to build by sharing pics of grandchildren.
I also used to run my own IMAP mailserver because I didn't trust any company with my email archive. Don't anymore because I wasn't a confident enough sysadmin to maintain security and reliability, and I got those things better by paying an email-hosting company to do it for me.
The old windows7 calculator was a win32 app. That started up almost instantly. (you say it's Windows Forms, but I think that's wrong. Windows Forms is a.NET layer on top of the win32 "user32.dll" API for displaying dialogs/buttons/windows. I think calculator used the win32 API directly, as do many C/C++ win32 apps. There are two different C++ layers on top of user32.dll which calc might have used... I'm not sure.)
The new windows10 calculator is a modern store app, also known as WinRT, formerly called Metro. WinRT apps can be written in C++, JS or.NET. (you say ModernUI or WPF, but it's certainly not WPF - WPF is a.NET layer on top of something a bit lower than user32.dll - I think it used graphics acceleration where it could, and didn't use the user32.dll APIs).
Another poster commented that the problem is that the new calculator is slow because it's in.NET. That's wrong for two reasons. First, the slowness is inherent in all WinRT apps. Try it with even the simplest no-op C++ WinRT app. It takes a minimum of 500ms to launch and do nothing, compared to about 20ms for a win32 app. Second,.NET store apps get compiled to native, and the startup overhead is so small it's hard to measure. And indeed I don't even know if the new calc is written in C++ or JS or.NET -- we can find out easily by looking at the files on disk.
From the article you linked, Rand Paul says: "I believe that the benefits of vaccines greatly outweigh the risks".
I wonder what definition of "anti-vaxxer" you're using?
Rand Paul explained that although he thought vaccines are the right thing to do (and had his kids vaccinated) he believed that government persuasion rather than government force is the right means to achieve that. "I think it's important to remember that force is not consistent with the American story".
Do you define an "anti-vaxxer" as anyone who fails to believe that government should coerce people to vaccinate their children (e.g. in Rand Paul's case by preventing the children from attending school?)
For what it's worth, I believe that vaccines are the right thing to do, and I'm even more extreme in thinking it should be a criminal offence to fail to have your children vaccinated, and I think Rand Paul is wrong on this and most other issues. But the term "anti-vaxxer" can only stretch so far before it breaks, and I don't think it makes sense to call him an anti-vaxxer.
Why would I buy something that comes with arbitrary limits? Maybe if I was a rental car company, business or government, but as an individual this would be a massive turn off. If I want to kill myself at 113 MPH, volvo shouldn't stop me.
Why should Volvo want you as a customer? If you buy your next car from a different manufacturer, then Volvo's safety stats will look even better than their competition, and they'll generate more sales from people who care about safety. (which is already their primary audience, I believe).
Imagine I'm buying a car and I have a family. "Hmmm... Volvo cars have injury rate of X per 100k miles, and Ford cars have a higher injury rate of Y per 100k miles, so I know which one I'll buy." That will be a higher priority for me than the ability to go above 112mph.
[Q2. What exactly do you count as a disaster? I'd be interested to hear you say *in advance of its opening* what kind of metric you'd use to count whether it's a disaster.]
Disasters in film openings come from multiple things...
I know what disasters come from... I'm just asking if you will set out now, in advance, a metric by which we can judge objectively whether your prediction of "disaster" comes true. I'd expected you to say something like "US opening weekend $120m is a success", but I assume you'd pick different numbers.
Am I asking an unreasonable question? Is there a different way you'd want to judge the success of the film?
Are you even responding to the study? It clearly showed that users preferred the update experience in win10 as compared with previous versions of windows. Microsoft is clearly doing something right - more systems are up to date with security fixes (amongst others) and their users prefer the new experience.
Considering by your post, you don't understand why Captain Marvel is likely to be a disaster, I'll help you out. After 20 years of them trying to shove her into some type of hero-type body-of-situation, and it failing every time.
Q1. Is it likely to be a disaster? Before we can answer this, let's first answer a second question...
Q2. What exactly do you count as a disaster? I'd be interested to hear you say *in advance of its opening* what kind of metric you'd use to count whether it's a disaster. Please let us know whether we should judge disaster by its opening weekend (if so then what level counts as a disaster?) or its long-term take in the US (again, what level?) or its long-term take worldwide? or some other metric? I'm asking you to give a measure now in advance, to make sure there's no backpedalling. Here are some comparison numbers I found...
* Captain Marvel had 40k people vote whether they wanted to see it on Rotten Tomatoes. Estimates for opening weekend as of last week were $100m +- $20m. * Avengers: Infinity War had 10k people vote whether they wanted to see it on Rotten Tomatoes. Its opening weekend was $260m, and its worldwide total gross was $2b. * Dr Strange had 50k people vote whether they wanted to see it. Its opening weekend was $85m, and its worldwide total gross was $680m.
There's also no proof of review bombing despite all of the media outlets reporting that's the case.
Yeah, that frustrates me too. Rotten Tomatoes is no longer showing "do I want to watch this?" so I can't make any assessment. I'd want to know whether the volume of "do I want to watch this" ratings for Captain Marvel is significantly different from that for other MCU films. If it is, that suggests trolling/bombing. If it's not, that suggests genuine sentiment.
Before rottentomateos scrubbed it the main "not interested" group was made up of old accounts greater than 8 years. Feel free to look up the archived snapshots if you want, wayback, archive.co, whatever go have fun.
Oh that's a good idea! I did just that. Here are how many people voted yes or no on the "I want to see this movie" button on rotten tomatoes, as of 10 days prior to each movie's release:
These numbers flat out don't make sense. I don't know much about MCU but my perception of the hype was that "DrStrange (47k), AntMan+Wasp (11k), CaptainMarvel (45k)" were all minor films about minor characters, while "GOG2 (54k), BlackPanther (34k), InfinityWar (11k)" are major films that were massively hyped.
Oh speaking of how well is the moving going to do? They've already revised the opening weekend downward twice, and now are expecting it to not clear $100m on opening weekend.
I wanted to understand your claim in context. Here's some good context, from two weeks ago:
https://deadline.com/2019/02/c... (Feb 14th) Outside of Iron Man‘s $102M and Black Panther‘s $202M, no other Marvel origins film has opened to north of $100M, particularly those in the deeper universe, i.e. Doctor Strange ($85M) and Guardians of the Galaxy ($94.3M)... Another box office industry source informed us on Captain Marvel‘s $100M start: “Give or take $20M”.
http://fortune.com/2019/02/14/... (Feb 14th) early tracking data suggests the Brie Larson-helmed superhero film is heading toward a $100 million opening-weekend haul at the box office. That would make it one of the highest-grossing Marvel-movie openings of all time, and put it close to the $103 million earned by DC’s Wonder Woman film during
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Ah yes, like the time a previous developer decided to have the database connection error display "Fuck! Can't connect to database!". Of course the database didn't fail until well after he left. Fun times when the client called about that one...
Here's one I noticed from H&R Block: https://idp.hrblock.com/
It returns just "<html><body><h1>It works!</h1></body></html>" (plus a load of javascript that I assume is tracking).
given how often the IRS gives bad advice on taxes, and the fact that they're not responsible for errors, I really don't have a problem with this. Nobody in their right mind would use any software made by the IRS anyway.
I've been using Turbotax for several years. It is riddled with errors. I answer the questions literally as they are asked by Turbotax, but the results it gives back to me make no sense. I often have to reverse-engineer what Turbotax thinks it's supposed to be asking, then read the relevant IRS documentation, then go back and fill out Turbotax now that I know the authoritative truth.
I'm a software engineer. I think logically and precisely. The IRS documentation is written for people like me. Turbotax by contrast is like those tests you did in high school where you know the test-setter had screwed up, and you have to figure out what they had been meaning to ask.
Okay guys... stop using those words, they don't mean what you think they mean! At best we have advance algorithms...
ML systems are emphatically not "advanced algorithms". An algorithm is a step-by-step sequence of instructions. You don't code ML systems the same way you code algorithms. You don't think about them in the same way. You don't test them the same way. You don't validate them the same way. You don't adjust their parameters the same way. They don't have a step by step sequence of "rules" except in the trivial sense that every single cause-and-effect in the universe is a rule. Heck you don't even check them into source control the same way. ML has nothing to do with algorithms. (well, nothing more than the fact that it's all Turing-complete).
I "code" with my daughters, aged 3 and 5. I stand them in the room with their eyes closed and tell them "Walk forwards two paces. Turn Right. Walk forward two paces". I call this code because it's exactly the same as LOGO turtle graphics that those of us born in the 70s are familiar with and did in school. They have fun, and they're developing a sense of algorithms. (Likewise, when a toy's batteries run out, I have them come with me to the workshop and "repair" it by unscrewing the case and installing new batteries. When a toy breaks in other ways, I have them glue it back or help me solder it. Again they have fun, and they're developing technical affinity.)
I was a volunteer teacher in India back in 1992. Again I taught LOGO, this time to academically low-performing 8th through 10th graders. None of them particularly cared to become tech workers. Some used it to create beautiful art. Some coded up a teen magazine style personality quiz. They all loved it. They also found a subject that they were good at, and for once felt mastery over. I think it developed their minds and their analytical skills in ways that will help many of their future (non-tech) jobs.
There's always a kneejerk slashdot reaction about "learn to code is bad because there won't be good jobs in tech". This misses the point. Coding at school isn't about training up a workforce of coders. It's about empowering people (in all walks of life) to become active citizens in a world that needs at least a little tech-savviness...
The kids who do "learn to code" today... Maybe they'll be constructing spreadsheets to figure out their mortgage payments and sticking in a few formulas. Maybe they'll be able to automate a small process with VBA macros in their job as a dental office receptionist. Maybe they'll put together an "If-This-Then-That" script that helps their ailing grandmother remember her appointment. Maybe they'll scrape some data off the web and discover local government embezzlement. Maybe they'll just be able to write a small LUA mod for their favorite game or D&D group. There are a zillion ways that an elementary level of coding competence will help people function as members of tomorrow's society, and only few of them involve jobs in tech.
Separately: at school up to the 80s and 90s, kids were taught a few formal algorithms for long multiplication, long division and the like. The formal algorithms have largely been replaced by "new maths" that gives children a better intuitive understanding of numbers, but unfortunately means that folks don't get a good training in algorithmic thinking.
Why is algorithmic thinking valuable? Someone who's brain is accustomed to how algorithms work will just be able to interact better with all the autonomous systems they interact with in their life. They won't view their car's self-driving skills as magic. They won't treat a website as if there's really a human behind it who intuitively understands them. You know how you as a coder are just somehow magically able to interact with computers and websites more fluently than non-coders? That's what learn-to-code will help people with.
Selfishly, I also hope that algorithmic thinking will lead to an internet of better recipe websites :) that no longer have pages of waffle about the person's life history.
Why is this a "conspiracy theory"? Some people would like the UN to be a world government. And who can blame them when most of the world governments are pretty much shit might as well see if the UN can sort things out or at least send some money their way.
That doesn't make sense. The UN is nothing more -- and nothing less -- than the collective wills of the current national governments around the world. If they collectively want something done then the often do it via the UN machinery. If they don't collectively want something done then the UN doesn't do it.
Writing your sentence out in full, it becomes "Some people want the governments of the world working together to be a world government".
Working long hours for a company that doesn't give a shit about you is strictly for suckers. Get in at 8:30, leave at 5:30, take an hour for lunch. Go home and enjoy the money you make. Encourage everyone else to do the same. You will be fine.
Oh! I'd consider 8:30-5:30 an unacceptably long day. I do a solid 9-5 in tech, and think that's enough, and I tell my reports the same. (we work for a company that does care about us, fortunately).
Their marketing hyperbole is so over the top, however, that I wouldn't trust them with anything.
Really? What is the "marketing hyperbole" you're talking about? The only hypebole I've seen in this case comes from journalists.
I think in the case of Facebook the real headline should read: Facebook Secretly Explored Building Bird-Size Drones To Ferry Personal Data From People With Bad Internet Connections
. Amirite?
No, I think you're wrong in an instructive way.
What plausible mechanism can you imagine by which these drones would carry data away from people? Occam's razor strongly suggests that what you describe wouldn't happen in this case. Which suggests you should re-evaluate your knee jerk.
Reminds me of Microsoft Visual Studio Code - lots of people at work raved about this app, but when I tried it on my MacBook its as full of telemetry as any Windows 10 app
Maybe just maybe -- (1) people raved about it, (2) they raved about it because it's good, (3) it's good because they had the right telemetry to know how to achieve this, (4) better telemetry in the sense of being more representative and more actionable comes from it being opt-out rather than opt-in.
I don't like telemetry. I'm a hypocrite free-loader -- I turn off telemetry on software I run on my own machine, but I happily enjoy the the better products that come from better telemetry submitted by other people.
If you're wearing pajamas, I too would rather that you stay home than sit in the movie theater next to me.
(Personally, I go to movies for IMAX. I feel more immersed when the scene fills my peripheral vision. Most recent film was Apollo 11. It was 100% stunning on that giant screen with the serious sound system.)
Plenty of cities in England get over 1600 hours of sunlight a year... that's enough
I lived in England for 20 years. You can't kid me. It's true that sometimes the clouds opened up and we got a few rays of sunshine, but that was mostly only at night.
Can't see who, if anyone, is the audience here.
I see clearly who the audience is...
1. Add "big-brother" safety enforcements like 112mph speed caps and distracted-driver preventions
2. Observe fewer car accidents that involve Volvo vehicles. Achieve their 2020 goal of "no deaths in a new volvo"
3. Potential customers observe the safety statistics. They observe no deaths in a Volvo. For them, it becomes a no-brainer to buy a Volvo. PROFIT.
I agree that by no means everyone will view "zero deaths" as a positive selling point. For a lot of people they'll ignore this feature. But I'm sure there will be a sizeable potential audience for whom it's a major selling point. Imagine you have kids, and you're having a conversation with your spouse about which new car to buy, and your spouse says "let's get a volvo because no one dies in a volvo" and you have to answer "well I'd rather get a car that looks better even though people do die in it". It'll be hard to get your way. Like a lot of people I was persuaded to get rid of my motorcycle when my kids were born, for similar reasons.
Britain is surrounded by water, true, but it doesn't get sunshine...
When I'm video-chatting with someone, it's disconcerting that we don't make eye contact. Their eyes are always looking above my face or at my ear -- because on their device they're looking at the screen rather than the camera.
When I take selfies with my young kids, again the photos always have them looking slightly off-center, because their eyes are naturally drawn to the screen rather than the camera.
It will make for better photography and video-chats if Samsung can pull this off.
(I read about previous attempts, where they'd have the screen flicker on and off so the camera could pick up light while the screen is off. I never learned whether it succeeded. I imagine you'd end up with a dimmer screen, and poorer light-pickup from the camera. I wonder how Samsung hope to achieve it?)
Considering by your post, you don't understand why Captain Marvel is likely to be a disaster, I'll help you out. After 20 years of them trying to shove her into some type of hero-type body-of-situation, and it failing every time. They then made a movie, where the lead actor proceeded to pull an EA. In EA's case, that was a bold movie...and they seem to be having one hell of a run with commercial failures these days. ME:A, BFV, Anthem(it's already 50% off in some stores). Do you understand now, or would you like me to draw you a picture?
I'm reading the reports now:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/...
[Captain Marvel] delivered the franchise's seventh largest opening weekend of all time while grossing more over its first three days than the combined totals of any previous three-day weekend so far this year...
Captain Marvel proved a massive success...
Historically, the performance ranks among openings that include The Dark Knight ($158.4m opening), The Hunger Games: Catching Fire ($158m opening), Rogue One ($155m opening) and The Hunger Games ($152.5m opening), the four of which representing a total domestic gross ranging from $408-530+ million...
Internationally, Captain Marvel delivered an estimated $302 million, making it the fifth highest international opening weekend of all-time and the sixth largest worldwide debut ever...
Your prediction of Captain Marvel likely being a disaster was enormously off the mark. I wonder what you think about that?
When I bought my house, they typically give you an hour or two to read through the closure/escrow documents in their office. I read through every single page and found an error. They said "oh! that's obviously wrong! we've been using this contract for five years now, and you're the first one to have noticed it!"
(it wasn't anything particularly serious - not a case of them asking for something unreasonable. It was just clearly a nonsensical clause.)
Why can't you just send photos via text messages? Do you really have to give the pictures to FaceBook (whereby they take ownership), so that FaceBook can send your parents pics of their grandkids?
I can't send photos and videos by text because (1) international texts are ruinously expensive, (2) sending a 2min high-res video clip isn't really possible over text, (3) text message would result in too many parent-support-calls "could you send that again please?" or "I got a new phone and I've lost all the videos of my grandchildren" or "I'm out of space", (4) maintaining a group chat of 8 grandparents+uncles generates too much traffic which would make the tech-savvy uncles disengage, and sending each photo individually to 8 grandparents+uncles would be too much work on my part.
That's the FaceBook business model.
I know what the business model is. I'm telling you that for the scenario/demographic in question, when you consider the end-to-end experience with non-technie people, it's well worth it.
I also share photos and videos via OneDrive sometimes, but that's quite difficult for non-technie people to get a grip on. It also doesn't have a rich enough commenting model to build the kind of social bonds we aim to build by sharing pics of grandchildren.
I also used to run my own IMAP mailserver because I didn't trust any company with my email archive. Don't anymore because I wasn't a confident enough sysadmin to maintain security and reliability, and I got those things better by paying an email-hosting company to do it for me.
If you're still using social media past 35, I feel sorry for you.
What?? Past 35 is when you have kids. Facebook seems one of the easiest way to share child photos+videos with grandparents.
The old windows7 calculator was a win32 app. That started up almost instantly. (you say it's Windows Forms, but I think that's wrong. Windows Forms is a .NET layer on top of the win32 "user32.dll" API for displaying dialogs/buttons/windows. I think calculator used the win32 API directly, as do many C/C++ win32 apps. There are two different C++ layers on top of user32.dll which calc might have used... I'm not sure.)
The new windows10 calculator is a modern store app, also known as WinRT, formerly called Metro. WinRT apps can be written in C++, JS or .NET. (you say ModernUI or WPF, but it's certainly not WPF - WPF is a .NET layer on top of something a bit lower than user32.dll - I think it used graphics acceleration where it could, and didn't use the user32.dll APIs).
Another poster commented that the problem is that the new calculator is slow because it's in .NET. That's wrong for two reasons. First, the slowness is inherent in all WinRT apps. Try it with even the simplest no-op C++ WinRT app. It takes a minimum of 500ms to launch and do nothing, compared to about 20ms for a win32 app. Second, .NET store apps get compiled to native, and the startup overhead is so small it's hard to measure. And indeed I don't even know if the new calc is written in C++ or JS or .NET -- we can find out easily by looking at the files on disk.
Rand Paul is an anti-vaxxer. https://thehill.com/policy/hea...
From the article you linked, Rand Paul says: "I believe that the benefits of vaccines greatly outweigh the risks".
I wonder what definition of "anti-vaxxer" you're using?
Rand Paul explained that although he thought vaccines are the right thing to do (and had his kids vaccinated) he believed that government persuasion rather than government force is the right means to achieve that. "I think it's important to remember that force is not consistent with the American story".
Do you define an "anti-vaxxer" as anyone who fails to believe that government should coerce people to vaccinate their children (e.g. in Rand Paul's case by preventing the children from attending school?)
For what it's worth, I believe that vaccines are the right thing to do, and I'm even more extreme in thinking it should be a criminal offence to fail to have your children vaccinated, and I think Rand Paul is wrong on this and most other issues. But the term "anti-vaxxer" can only stretch so far before it breaks, and I don't think it makes sense to call him an anti-vaxxer.
Why would I buy something that comes with arbitrary limits? Maybe if I was a rental car company, business or government, but as an individual this would be a massive turn off. If I want to kill myself at 113 MPH, volvo shouldn't stop me.
Why should Volvo want you as a customer? If you buy your next car from a different manufacturer, then Volvo's safety stats will look even better than their competition, and they'll generate more sales from people who care about safety. (which is already their primary audience, I believe).
Imagine I'm buying a car and I have a family. "Hmmm... Volvo cars have injury rate of X per 100k miles, and Ford cars have a higher injury rate of Y per 100k miles, so I know which one I'll buy." That will be a higher priority for me than the ability to go above 112mph.
[Q2. What exactly do you count as a disaster? I'd be interested to hear you say *in advance of its opening* what kind of metric you'd use to count whether it's a disaster.]
Disasters in film openings come from multiple things...
I know what disasters come from... I'm just asking if you will set out now, in advance, a metric by which we can judge objectively whether your prediction of "disaster" comes true. I'd expected you to say something like "US opening weekend $120m is a success", but I assume you'd pick different numbers.
Am I asking an unreasonable question? Is there a different way you'd want to judge the success of the film?
Are you even responding to the study? It clearly showed that users preferred the update experience in win10 as compared with previous versions of windows. Microsoft is clearly doing something right - more systems are up to date with security fixes (amongst others) and their users prefer the new experience.
Considering by your post, you don't understand why Captain Marvel is likely to be a disaster, I'll help you out. After 20 years of them trying to shove her into some type of hero-type body-of-situation, and it failing every time.
Q1. Is it likely to be a disaster? Before we can answer this, let's first answer a second question...
Q2. What exactly do you count as a disaster? I'd be interested to hear you say *in advance of its opening* what kind of metric you'd use to count whether it's a disaster. Please let us know whether we should judge disaster by its opening weekend (if so then what level counts as a disaster?) or its long-term take in the US (again, what level?) or its long-term take worldwide? or some other metric? I'm asking you to give a measure now in advance, to make sure there's no backpedalling. Here are some comparison numbers I found...
* Captain Marvel had 40k people vote whether they wanted to see it on Rotten Tomatoes. Estimates for opening weekend as of last week were $100m +- $20m.
* Avengers: Infinity War had 10k people vote whether they wanted to see it on Rotten Tomatoes. Its opening weekend was $260m, and its worldwide total gross was $2b.
* Dr Strange had 50k people vote whether they wanted to see it. Its opening weekend was $85m, and its worldwide total gross was $680m.
There's also no proof of review bombing despite all of the media outlets reporting that's the case.
Yeah, that frustrates me too. Rotten Tomatoes is no longer showing "do I want to watch this?" so I can't make any assessment. I'd want to know whether the volume of "do I want to watch this" ratings for Captain Marvel is significantly different from that for other MCU films. If it is, that suggests trolling/bombing. If it's not, that suggests genuine sentiment.
Before rottentomateos scrubbed it the main "not interested" group was made up of old accounts greater than 8 years. Feel free to look up the archived snapshots if you want, wayback, archive.co, whatever go have fun.
Oh that's a good idea! I did just that. Here are how many people voted yes or no on the "I want to see this movie" button on rotten tomatoes, as of 10 days prior to each movie's release:
These numbers flat out don't make sense. I don't know much about MCU but my perception of the hype was that "DrStrange (47k), AntMan+Wasp (11k), CaptainMarvel (45k)" were all minor films about minor characters, while "GOG2 (54k), BlackPanther (34k), InfinityWar (11k)" are major films that were massively hyped.
Oh speaking of how well is the moving going to do? They've already revised the opening weekend downward twice, and now are expecting it to not clear $100m on opening weekend.
I wanted to understand your claim in context. Here's some good context, from two weeks ago:
https://deadline.com/2019/02/c... (Feb 14th)
Outside of Iron Man‘s $102M and Black Panther‘s $202M, no other Marvel origins film has opened to north of $100M, particularly those in the deeper universe, i.e. Doctor Strange ($85M) and Guardians of the Galaxy ($94.3M)...
Another box office industry source informed us on Captain Marvel‘s $100M start: “Give or take $20M”.
http://fortune.com/2019/02/14/... (Feb 14th)
early tracking data suggests the Brie Larson-helmed superhero film is heading toward a $100 million opening-weekend haul at the box office. That would make it one of the highest-grossing Marvel-movie openings of all time, and put it close to the $103 million earned by DC’s Wonder Woman film during