While I won't disagree on Apple (per iPad, and GUI), or Edison; I will have to with the Wright Brothers. Yes, there were contemporaries trying to tackle the same problem, but there was only one other successful person in the field, and they were pretty much both operating in isolation from each other. They also invented major portions of what is became the modern airplane - per controls, wing structure, etc.
The difficulty of relocation also depends a lot on your life situation. If you're a single guy renting an apartment in Chicago and there's a great job in Peoria, moving is a relatively cheap and easy thing to do. If you're married with children living in a house with 5 years left on your mortgage, it's much more expensive, difficult, and riskier.
True. However, I will add that I've known a lot of single guys and gals that have refused to move anywhere to find a position in their field. For whatever reason, they are tied to staying in their hometown - even when their hometown means working at McD's instead of writing software, etc.
You spend your youth being able to do the job better than the people currently in place (I could code circles around the 30+ crowd when I was 15, and the 15 year olds I know now can outcode me on any language that came out after 2005).
Somehow I find that hard to believe, especially when you then say...
You spend your growth getting the degrees and certs and other related papers and letters so that the money-men will believe your claims (I spent a solid 8 years on mine).
Emphasis added.
Now I do find a college education very useful; but the certs, etc. are worthless in 99% of the computing field. (That 1% is areas like Cisco and Oracle where you can really only do something if you've been specifically trained in how their specific systems work. But then, you'll probably only ever work on those systems in that case.)
Fact is, the old guys typically know quite a bit more about programming than the younger folks - especially the guys that got in prior to the 1990's as computer degrees were very different back then (something actually useful). Today's CS programs are complete crap as they focus so much on theory that they're useless in the real world. Those old guys can still probably code circles around you and the 15 years olds you mentioned (funny thing is you may never know it!).
Pretty much all of them should understand Legos, so use Legos (Kinex, Constructor Set, Lincoln Logs, etc.) to build something. As others have suggested, involve the children - decide what to build, how to build, etc. as a group.
...pushing people off of Windows and onto Android, iOS, Mac, and Linux. Is that in-line with their goals? Probably not, but it is certainly a huge benefit.
Uh, that was a computer that had a Geeksquad set-up with restore CD service done to it. I did like 12 of them today, you just got a free $100 (semi worth it) service for free, quit bitching. "Oh no! free anti-virus!"
But is it a service you wanted? If the answer is no, then there is a problem - especially if it is no for a majority of buyers. In all honesty, they should ask you whether you want it done or not and give you one accordingly regardless of whether they charge you for the service as it otherwise effects warranties, contents, etc. Manufacturer's (e.g. Dell, Gateway, HP, etc) could pick up on this and rightly refuse to provide service - saying that BestBuy needs to do it since they broke the contract with between you and the manufacturer. So there really is a lot more at play.
These people are Evangelical Christian "Scientists", who are part of the evangelical christian movement. While it's good they realise that the genetic evidence gives a good case against their religion, what they have failed to realise is that they are now no longer fundamentalist evangelical christians because they have just put reality over and above the idea of inerrant scripture.
While I agree with your point - they are no longer Christian Scientists - I disagree with the why. They are no longer Christian Scientists because they have put the works & words of man over the word of God, thereby violating their faith.
However, that does not mean that the Bible is wrong - merely their interpretation of it. For instance, they are going back to Genesis 1-3, but missing the consolidation of an entire 1000+ year civilization (Genesis 3 to 6) to ~8 people (Noah+Wife+3 sons+their wives - though we assume there were no children at this point as it does not mention them in Genesis 7; so it's possibly there could have been more, though unlikely) in Genesis 6-9 from which the civilization as we know it is born. They are also missing a big important point about that civilization and the chapters in Genesis they are looking at - how much time was there exactly between Genesis 2 and Genesis 3? Simply put we don't know - it could have been billions of years. To further that, looking at Genesis 3 you cannot say that they were without children until after Genesis 3 (Cain & Abel are first mentioned in Genesis 4); oddly enough Adam & Eve are the only two in a Biblical genealogy that do not have a first born name - so no, it wasn't Cain or Abel (otherwise it would have been explicitly said).
In other words, before trying to compare the Bible and science you need to make sure you have all your assumptions, facts, interpretations, etc. laid out and well understood for both science and the Bible. More often then not, people do not.
Motorola spun off Motorola Mobility a few years ago. They have long exited the mobile space.
And I hardly think that there is much uncertainty at Motorola Mobility going on; but as I don't work there or have any kind of connection to any employees there I really can't say - that's just my hunch based on the fact that they were spun off due to poor profits, and have had a generally hard time at viability so if anything this should give greater certainty to the organization that it will continue to be around. Google could, as some have suggested, use them as a test bed and can certainly afford to operate it at a loss (short term) or low profit (long term) to advance ideas, etc.
Though, Google could also turn around and sell it off once the whole software patent thing is cleared up too; but then, it would still make for a good hardware patent pool to continue protected Android from the hardware side.
...it dawned upon them a very long time ago. But at the end of the day they'll get a bigger paycheck if they outsource something to lower the costs. Let's be honest, there's always someone somewhere on this planet who does it cheaper...and now guess what Capitalism is about.
True; however, Capitalism is about making money. However, it does not define the period over which that money is made. He is essentially making the case that everyone needs a longer term view. CEOs typically stay (on average) at a company for 5 years before moving on. When they come in, they promise great profits, shift the focus of the company to their short-term vision, see it through, and then leave as it starts to falter but before it can be pointed out that their cost cutting caused the issue; leaving the next CEO to solve the problem and repeat the process. The problem is, that that is not healthy for the company in the long term.
One example he cites is a company that spend $2 Million to send software development to India only to see that they didn't get the ROI as expected and spent another $6 million to bring it back. (He later states how they could have saved the money.) So that is $8 Million that they company couldn't send on innovating, sales, or otherwise wooing customers. It's also $8 Million that had a very poor ROI, and did not reap any benefit for the investors - short term or long term. (Though a typical - short-term - CEO would have come in, done it; declared the $2 million saved, and left before they knew they had to invest $6 million to bring it back.)
Another example of this locally even is building ownership. Many companies do not own the facilities they operate out of. Many that use to, no longer do - selling them to someone else, and renting - even the same locations - back from them. This too is short-sighted and in bad health for the company in the long term. By renting, you toss all the money to someone else; true by owning you have to pay for up keep, taxes, etc; either way you have to pay insurance. However, one gives you an asset that you can use in times of financial hardship to gain some resources, the other does not - and one gives you a source of income (by renting it) if you don't need all the space, the other (again) does not. Yet the typical CEO will sell the property and rent it back because the initial sale makes them look good by increasing the profits in the short term - a one time deal - at the cost of the long term health of the company, which of course they will be long gone by the time it matters.
That's not to say that investors, owners, etc. can't hold CEO's accountable for the long term health of the company. The problem is that there is a systematic approach at all levels - investors, owners, management, etc - that reinforces this short-term look at running the company. The businesses that are doing well, are typically ones that have a longer term view. And yes, there's a trick to balancing the short-term, mid-term, and long-term views - but right now that balance is way out of kilter such that short-term means quarterly, mid-term means either bi-annually or annually, and long-term is anything greater but typically limited to the term of the CEOs at longest. (Meaning, the Board of Directors is not imposing a longer term vision for the entire company beyond what one CEO sets.) In reality, the short-term should by your 5 year outlook, mid-term 10 year, and long term 15+ years; but you'll be hard pressed to find that kind of vision in any SEC report.
You are also conflating access to the equivalent of "/dev/cdrom" with "direct hardware access". This is also a fallacy. Xine is accessing a special file, not a raw hardware device, and there are several layers of indirection between Xine and the hardware, and you could easily substitute another file and Xine would neither know nor care. Xine isn't what's fiddling with hardware registers and the like, the drivers are. Xine is an application running on top of abstractions others have built.
While that was one example, it is still in merit as there are applications that do that that are not "systems" programs - one component of a system I work on does exactly that. Generally you are right but there are still the exceptions and more numerous they are than you realize.
...since not everyone will always have an Internet service available that could reach them to verify or get the listing.
I just converted my work laptop to Linux, but needed to keep Windows around for a few tasks - like compiling Windows versions of one program I am working on. Figured I would push it to VMware - well, got the disk image into VMware and then it wouldn't let me do anything other than re-activate the licenses, but it couldn't do that b/c it didn't have the drivers for the VMware emulated NIC that would get installed as soon as I could login and load the vmware tools ISO. It's not like getting a new license key was an issue (I had one from MSDN that I could use), but I couldn't get it to do anything let alone be able to verify it - chicken vs. egg problem. (Yeah, I know, I could call up read in a 40+ digit number, enter in a 40+ digit number and be done with it...but something tells me that reading and entering two separate 40+ digit numbers would still be problematic...)
Apparently you missed the word "application". Application developers don't and shouldn't care about hardware, nor should they be writing the VM. That's for systems developers to worry about.
Some developers may do both application and systems development, that does not mean they are the same discipline.
Some applications still access hardware directly. For example, Xine accesses the cdrom as a raw device and then decodes the DVDs on its own, not relying on the hardware to do so. Similarly, some applications may for other purposes access the hardware directly, yet they are not systems stuff - e.g. OS.
Further, VMs typically operate in application space, and anything that needs to interact with the non-VM - e.g. libraries, etc. - also have to do that switch. So, for example, if you wanted to access Qt from the VM (e.g. Python, Perl, Java) then you still have to write a thunking wrapper to switch between VM and non-VM modes. You may still be entirely in the application space - even without having to deal with hardware - but you still have to mix the two managed and unmanaged modes.
After only recently being able to plug in most phones with the same USB cable and FINALLY having 3.5 jacks a standard on said phones, Apple now wants to go fuck with the standards.
Jerks.
True, if they really wanted to just "do away" with it, a better choice would be to go to using BlueTooth headsets for it. It's not like they don't exist as a standard already, and most of the devices already support BlueTooth.
... never distinguished between "native" and "managed" code.
Write the damn code according to the rules and idioms of the language in use, let the language implementation deal with the rest. If you're an application developer and care about *how* your code is being run, you're doing it wrong.
Incorrect - especially when you have to - in the same program - switch between managed and unmanaged. Yes, all VM's have to do that at some point, and someone has to write that code. Have a complex enough problem and you may have to do it as well - for example, to access hardware to get data.
The biggest failing of C IMHO is that there is no way to do a "heap check" on any particular pointer you are passed to see how much space it has to work with. Had that functionality existed, then it would be possible to write a safe gets() function or any function. It's not like the machine doesn't know either, free() doesn't require you to pass in the size. It may be relatively expensive to do, but the logic is there.
Well, how to do you differentiate between Heap and Stack pointers? Your program could be loaded any where in memory, your heap may be randomly located somewhere else (possibly lower than your stack) for security, so how do you tell which one you're in?
Sure, the code could keep track of the pointers (at the cost of performance and overhead), but you still run into a problem with verifying every pointer. glibc does have function to that can verify heap allocated pointers, but there's still nothing you can do about the stack pointers.
And to note, Pascal, Ada, etc have the same problem. It's harder to write "unsafe" code in them, but not impossible. This is a fundamental issue for software in general regardless of the language - even Java.
Last I checked you could use.NET in C++. So use.NET for the gui and networking frameworks and use C++ to do hardcore number crunching. Also there are native data structures in.NET and Java you can use in your program if you need performance. Most amature programmers never look in the math or collections libraries.
Managed C++ in MSVC is simply C#.
Unmanaged C++ in MSVC is actual C++.
As to the native data structures in.NET and Java - you incur performance penalties when you want to use them directly as you have to thunk back and forth between the managed and unmanaged portions of the system. I think Java is better about it than.NET, but its a pain nonetheless. It's easier, and more performance, to just stay in either unmanaged or managed code all the time.
Yes, you get a little bruised when it comes to pointers, but that is very much worth it in the long run.
Students that don't learn about pointers and such early on (e.g. got Java first) tend to have a harder time in the upper classes where lower level languages are required. So, you can either "man up" and get the hard stuff learned early when it won't interfere with the classwork, or have your upper level classes being diverted in order to teach the stuff they should have learned earlier on and then not get to learn as much of the upper level material as they should have.
I don't get the statement "Microsoft could probably do a great mobile platform, if they were willing to sacrifice the desktop".
What does it mean to "sacrifice the desktop"?
Microsoft has always been reluctant to do a true mobile computing platform as they fear cannibalizing the desktop market as it is the mainstay of their business. If they got over that issue and really went after the mobile computing platform - including porting Office to it - then they have the ability to do a very good mobile platform. The industry could have been doing mobile 10 years ago - but Microsoft held everyone back because of not wanting to risk losing the desktop platform. If you ever wondered why Windows Mobile looked like and acted like a standard Windows Desktop - that why - to discourage mobile computing and push people to the desktop platforms.
So no, Microsoft doesn't need to walk away from the desktop platform; but rather pursue the mobile platform irregardless of how it may impact the desktop platform.
So now instead, they are looking at losing the desktop platform to Android and iOS as they have no viable mobile offerings, and they are still not willing to put Office on the mobile platforms. Office would need to be updated for a true touchscreen style interface, as would Windows - and no, WP7/WP8's Metro UI does not do it.
I hold the opinion that you can thank MS for the fact that we have a dominate desktop hardware platform, and that you can get these amazing devices at the prices you can. I believe that they enabled the commodization of personal computers, resulting in defacto standards, low prices, and phenominal increases in performance.
Computing could be a lot cheaper if not for the artificially inflated prices due to the cost of Windows. Manufacturers have time and again made cheaper systems running Linux - systems that people would and did buy - only to have Microsoft start complaining and raising a fuss in yanking licensing programs, etc. from them so they had little to no choice but to continue with doing a Windows Only platform. The present mobile platform transformation is taking care of that - though Microsoft is still complaining to high heaven and threatening patent lawsuits instead since they have little leverage over the various players.
Truly, you can be critical of MS in their failure to stay relevent in the mobile space, as well as the stagnatin of innovation of the browser
Microsoft has caused stagnation in many areas of computing - from the Desktop to Browser to and far beyond. Linux has relieved some of those areas (e.g. servers, clusters, HPC, etc.), and KDE4 are again revolutionizing the desktop - ultimately forcing Apple, Microsoft, and GNOME to follow. (Much of what is in Win7 was in KDE4 long before Win7 was even announced.)
While we may dis-agree on what constitutes a "great mobile platform", I hold that the WP7 is evolving in to that even as I write this. I expect that WP7 and then WP8 will be very competative from a developer and performance standpoint. I make no predictions on market share, or app-store anti-trust issues.
Windows 8 (and WP8 by extension) will not make any significant mark in the history of Microsoft other than to perhaps show how irrelevant Microsoft has become - though Win7 is already showing that. By the numbers, Win7 looks to be a great seller - until you really investigate them and see that most are using the Downgrade rights to move back to WinXP. Win8 will do little more to help that - and from what they have said - will be alienating developers even more by pushing nearly all Windows developers into a second-class citizenry on the platform. Now granted, that's the desktop end; however, Microsoft is looking to link the Desktop and mobile offerings via Win8 - so you have the same platform on your phone, tablet, and laptop - and in doing so everyone will be fo
FLOSS principles do not guarantee, require, or want that.
RMS begs to differ.
Well, start by quoting the whole line:
Google contributes quite a bit to the open source community. Yes, they may not publish everything they do for anyone to garnish - FLOSS principles do not guarantee, require, or want that.
Now look at what RMS says and what his organizations (e.g. GNU and FSF) say - and you will see that they are pretty much in line with that quote.
RMS has no problem with people using GPL'd works (even his own) an d not releaseing changes to the community - so long as they do release the changes to anyone that they do distribute to. That's not to say that he doesn't have problems with Cloud Computing (he does); but how Google is otherwise using the software and the licenses is not an issue. Please read more on the GPL, etc - go over the FAQs, etc. at FSF's site too.
FLOSS principles don't guarantee that the entire community gets access to every little change in source code - but that those who are being distributed to do (and anyone supporting them by extension of acting as an agent).
Google isn't an "altruistic and idealistic organization that truly cares only about making life better for everyone." They're a multi-billion-dollar megacorp whose business is based on a closed-source search-and-advertising platform dependent on selling your personal data to advertising partners. They make sleazy non-neutral internet deals with vendors just to push Android. They withhold Android source from non-privileged partners and ship closed technology like Flash, AAC, and MP3 support in Chrome, even as they preach about openness. Android is a free product pumped into a new market to maintain the dominance of the core business and kill off competitors who can't afford to compete with an artificial price, the same way Internet Explorer was pumped into the browser market to kill off Netscape and keep the Windows platform relevant.
Google is most often critized for the altruism of its ranks, and the optimism that it portrays in everything it does publicly. I'm not saying they don't have issues (what organization doesn't?) but they have certainly done a very good job of keeping to their motto of "Do No Evil".
The benevolent little tech company from ten years ago is long gone. In its place is a gigantic advertising conglomerate under investigation around the world for antitrust violations and privacy breaches. Google is another Microsoft and is no better.
Interesting you should bring that up...everyone one of those can be traced to Microsoft - either directly or indirectly; and every one of them will fail to find Google guilty of anything. The fact is that Microsoft can't stand that it was found guilty in both the US and EU of Antitrust violations and it wants to see all of its competitors - Apple, Google, IBM, etc - brought up on similar charges and found Guilty too. Thus far, nothing has stuck despite all the crap that Microsoft has shot into the fan.
Microsoft still elicits a predictable reaction on Slashdot, repetition of the term "FUD" as if it automatically counters all arguments. And, as always, there will be mysterious Underrated moderations to such comments because Overrated/Underrated moderations aren't subject to meta-moderation, a loophole that Slashdot has left unclosed for years. I think what has happened to this community is that Reddit and Hacker News drew most of the more objective posters away, leaving the hardcore ideologues behind who automatically stand behind Google and automatically hate Microsoft, Apple, Sun, and anything else that competes with Google.
Microsoft gets that reaction based on their own actions. There is little that comes out of Microsoft that is actually worthwhile, not based on some take over the world scheme, and useful to people in general. Outside of the firms paid by Microsoft to spew only Microsoft favoring news, everyone else has wised up to them. Even some of those paid firms are starting to wise up too.
Slashdot's overall position was always skewed by default, but there was actually a degree of objectivity that used to shine through in the comment sections. That very rarely occurs today.
I do agree that the objectivity in Slashdot has considerably declined.
It's really quite fascinating that there isn't more outcry over the fact that a closed-source product from a corporation has become the gatekeeper for the web, but apparently, if you use Linux for your business, all is forgiven, and you are a pack of angels trying to make the world a better place rather than another scum-sucking corporation leveraging their monopoly to make a dollar.
Google contributes quite a bit to the open source community. Yes, they may not publish everything they do for anyone to garnish - FLOSS principles do not guarantee, require, or want that. However, they also provide funding for many different FLOSS projects - whether hiring interns for the summer (
My Microsoft phone (WP7) has not had any of the "epic fails" in software, that you mentioned.
That you know of. They're probably doing the same thing that they do with Vista & Win7 - reboot instead of generating errors to make the BSOD issue less visible. It's not that the platforms are more stable than WinXP or Win9x, it's just that they hide the instability better from the end user so that it appears to be more stable.
But by now most users are used to google and would simply change the default if it was something else. By now Bing is unfamiliar to the majority of the population and Google is considered the best search engine by most. It is going to take quite a lot more than setting Bing as the default to change that in people's minds.
True. If Mozilla tried to change the default to Bing or anything else, I'd simply change it back to Google; just like I do with all IE installs I come across - switch them over to using Google for their search provider (mostly b/c those people don't realize they do have a choice, they just use the search bar or [more likely] just load google's website directly).
Exactly - you can't imagine it. Just like those in the 1950's had a hard time imagining (if they could at all) having a cell phone more powerful than the computers that filled a room at that time. However, my son (born in February) will likely see no point in a laptop or a desktop; possibly not even a tablet or cell phone in 10 years time. Those between him and a 10 year old now will have no problem seeing no use for a laptop or desktop in even 2 years time if they don't already.
For those of us that like our laptops and desktops, it'll take a few more years than that - but needless to say, with the rise of Android and devices like the Motorola Atrix the end of the PC is era is upon us.
And yes, I would gladly turn in my laptops for a Motorola Atrix like device with docking station - only I would use a some kind of near field communication technology (no NFC proper - but something like Bluetooth or some other wireless standard) to connect it to additional CPUs, monitor, keyboards, etc when dropped on a desktop. The USB+HDMI on the Motorola Atrix is a great first round, but it will really need to be wireless in the end.
Slashdot Mirror
While I won't disagree on Apple (per iPad, and GUI), or Edison; I will have to with the Wright Brothers. Yes, there were contemporaries trying to tackle the same problem, but there was only one other successful person in the field, and they were pretty much both operating in isolation from each other. They also invented major portions of what is became the modern airplane - per controls, wing structure, etc.
True. However, I will add that I've known a lot of single guys and gals that have refused to move anywhere to find a position in their field. For whatever reason, they are tied to staying in their hometown - even when their hometown means working at McD's instead of writing software, etc.
Somehow I find that hard to believe, especially when you then say...
Emphasis added.
Now I do find a college education very useful; but the certs, etc. are worthless in 99% of the computing field. (That 1% is areas like Cisco and Oracle where you can really only do something if you've been specifically trained in how their specific systems work. But then, you'll probably only ever work on those systems in that case.)
Fact is, the old guys typically know quite a bit more about programming than the younger folks - especially the guys that got in prior to the 1990's as computer degrees were very different back then (something actually useful). Today's CS programs are complete crap as they focus so much on theory that they're useless in the real world. Those old guys can still probably code circles around you and the 15 years olds you mentioned (funny thing is you may never know it!).
Pretty much all of them should understand Legos, so use Legos (Kinex, Constructor Set, Lincoln Logs, etc.) to build something. As others have suggested, involve the children - decide what to build, how to build, etc. as a group.
...pushing people off of Windows and onto Android, iOS, Mac, and Linux. Is that in-line with their goals? Probably not, but it is certainly a huge benefit.
Uh, that was a computer that had a Geeksquad set-up with restore CD service done to it. I did like 12 of them today, you just got a free $100 (semi worth it) service for free, quit bitching. "Oh no! free anti-virus!"
But is it a service you wanted? If the answer is no, then there is a problem - especially if it is no for a majority of buyers. In all honesty, they should ask you whether you want it done or not and give you one accordingly regardless of whether they charge you for the service as it otherwise effects warranties, contents, etc. Manufacturer's (e.g. Dell, Gateway, HP, etc) could pick up on this and rightly refuse to provide service - saying that BestBuy needs to do it since they broke the contract with between you and the manufacturer. So there really is a lot more at play.
...you have to get the Best Buy warranties...because they already invalidated the manufacturer's warranty!
Yep, I'd return it, ask for a discount, free warranty for 2-3 years, etc. There's no reason for them to do that.
It's one thing if you signed up for them to do that - it's another for them to assume you want it done.
For all we know, Eden is buried under the ice in Antarctica or dropped into the sea during the flood as the oceans were created.
While I agree with your point - they are no longer Christian Scientists - I disagree with the why. They are no longer Christian Scientists because they have put the works & words of man over the word of God, thereby violating their faith.
However, that does not mean that the Bible is wrong - merely their interpretation of it. For instance, they are going back to Genesis 1-3, but missing the consolidation of an entire 1000+ year civilization (Genesis 3 to 6) to ~8 people (Noah+Wife+3 sons+their wives - though we assume there were no children at this point as it does not mention them in Genesis 7; so it's possibly there could have been more, though unlikely) in Genesis 6-9 from which the civilization as we know it is born. They are also missing a big important point about that civilization and the chapters in Genesis they are looking at - how much time was there exactly between Genesis 2 and Genesis 3? Simply put we don't know - it could have been billions of years. To further that, looking at Genesis 3 you cannot say that they were without children until after Genesis 3 (Cain & Abel are first mentioned in Genesis 4); oddly enough Adam & Eve are the only two in a Biblical genealogy that do not have a first born name - so no, it wasn't Cain or Abel (otherwise it would have been explicitly said).
In other words, before trying to compare the Bible and science you need to make sure you have all your assumptions, facts, interpretations, etc. laid out and well understood for both science and the Bible. More often then not, people do not.
Motorola spun off Motorola Mobility a few years ago. They have long exited the mobile space.
And I hardly think that there is much uncertainty at Motorola Mobility going on; but as I don't work there or have any kind of connection to any employees there I really can't say - that's just my hunch based on the fact that they were spun off due to poor profits, and have had a generally hard time at viability so if anything this should give greater certainty to the organization that it will continue to be around. Google could, as some have suggested, use them as a test bed and can certainly afford to operate it at a loss (short term) or low profit (long term) to advance ideas, etc.
Though, Google could also turn around and sell it off once the whole software patent thing is cleared up too; but then, it would still make for a good hardware patent pool to continue protected Android from the hardware side.
...it dawned upon them a very long time ago. But at the end of the day they'll get a bigger paycheck if they outsource something to lower the costs. Let's be honest, there's always someone somewhere on this planet who does it cheaper...and now guess what Capitalism is about.
True; however, Capitalism is about making money. However, it does not define the period over which that money is made. He is essentially making the case that everyone needs a longer term view. CEOs typically stay (on average) at a company for 5 years before moving on. When they come in, they promise great profits, shift the focus of the company to their short-term vision, see it through, and then leave as it starts to falter but before it can be pointed out that their cost cutting caused the issue; leaving the next CEO to solve the problem and repeat the process. The problem is, that that is not healthy for the company in the long term.
One example he cites is a company that spend $2 Million to send software development to India only to see that they didn't get the ROI as expected and spent another $6 million to bring it back. (He later states how they could have saved the money.) So that is $8 Million that they company couldn't send on innovating, sales, or otherwise wooing customers. It's also $8 Million that had a very poor ROI, and did not reap any benefit for the investors - short term or long term. (Though a typical - short-term - CEO would have come in, done it; declared the $2 million saved, and left before they knew they had to invest $6 million to bring it back.)
Another example of this locally even is building ownership. Many companies do not own the facilities they operate out of. Many that use to, no longer do - selling them to someone else, and renting - even the same locations - back from them. This too is short-sighted and in bad health for the company in the long term. By renting, you toss all the money to someone else; true by owning you have to pay for up keep, taxes, etc; either way you have to pay insurance. However, one gives you an asset that you can use in times of financial hardship to gain some resources, the other does not - and one gives you a source of income (by renting it) if you don't need all the space, the other (again) does not. Yet the typical CEO will sell the property and rent it back because the initial sale makes them look good by increasing the profits in the short term - a one time deal - at the cost of the long term health of the company, which of course they will be long gone by the time it matters.
That's not to say that investors, owners, etc. can't hold CEO's accountable for the long term health of the company. The problem is that there is a systematic approach at all levels - investors, owners, management, etc - that reinforces this short-term look at running the company. The businesses that are doing well, are typically ones that have a longer term view. And yes, there's a trick to balancing the short-term, mid-term, and long-term views - but right now that balance is way out of kilter such that short-term means quarterly, mid-term means either bi-annually or annually, and long-term is anything greater but typically limited to the term of the CEOs at longest. (Meaning, the Board of Directors is not imposing a longer term vision for the entire company beyond what one CEO sets.) In reality, the short-term should by your 5 year outlook, mid-term 10 year, and long term 15+ years; but you'll be hard pressed to find that kind of vision in any SEC report.
While that was one example, it is still in merit as there are applications that do that that are not "systems" programs - one component of a system I work on does exactly that. Generally you are right but there are still the exceptions and more numerous they are than you realize.
...since not everyone will always have an Internet service available that could reach them to verify or get the listing.
I just converted my work laptop to Linux, but needed to keep Windows around for a few tasks - like compiling Windows versions of one program I am working on. Figured I would push it to VMware - well, got the disk image into VMware and then it wouldn't let me do anything other than re-activate the licenses, but it couldn't do that b/c it didn't have the drivers for the VMware emulated NIC that would get installed as soon as I could login and load the vmware tools ISO. It's not like getting a new license key was an issue (I had one from MSDN that I could use), but I couldn't get it to do anything let alone be able to verify it - chicken vs. egg problem. (Yeah, I know, I could call up read in a 40+ digit number, enter in a 40+ digit number and be done with it...but something tells me that reading and entering two separate 40+ digit numbers would still be problematic...)
Apparently you missed the word "application". Application developers don't and shouldn't care about hardware, nor should they be writing the VM. That's for systems developers to worry about.
Some developers may do both application and systems development, that does not mean they are the same discipline.
Some applications still access hardware directly. For example, Xine accesses the cdrom as a raw device and then decodes the DVDs on its own, not relying on the hardware to do so. Similarly, some applications may for other purposes access the hardware directly, yet they are not systems stuff - e.g. OS.
Further, VMs typically operate in application space, and anything that needs to interact with the non-VM - e.g. libraries, etc. - also have to do that switch. So, for example, if you wanted to access Qt from the VM (e.g. Python, Perl, Java) then you still have to write a thunking wrapper to switch between VM and non-VM modes. You may still be entirely in the application space - even without having to deal with hardware - but you still have to mix the two managed and unmanaged modes.
Great.
After only recently being able to plug in most phones with the same USB cable and FINALLY having 3.5 jacks a standard on said phones, Apple now wants to go fuck with the standards.
Jerks.
True, if they really wanted to just "do away" with it, a better choice would be to go to using BlueTooth headsets for it. It's not like they don't exist as a standard already, and most of the devices already support BlueTooth.
... never distinguished between "native" and "managed" code.
Write the damn code according to the rules and idioms of the language in use, let the language implementation deal with the rest. If you're an application developer and care about *how* your code is being run, you're doing it wrong.
Incorrect - especially when you have to - in the same program - switch between managed and unmanaged. Yes, all VM's have to do that at some point, and someone has to write that code. Have a complex enough problem and you may have to do it as well - for example, to access hardware to get data.
The biggest failing of C IMHO is that there is no way to do a "heap check" on any particular pointer you are passed to see how much space it has to work with. Had that functionality existed, then it would be possible to write a safe gets() function or any function. It's not like the machine doesn't know either, free() doesn't require you to pass in the size. It may be relatively expensive to do, but the logic is there.
Well, how to do you differentiate between Heap and Stack pointers? Your program could be loaded any where in memory, your heap may be randomly located somewhere else (possibly lower than your stack) for security, so how do you tell which one you're in?
Sure, the code could keep track of the pointers (at the cost of performance and overhead), but you still run into a problem with verifying every pointer. glibc does have function to that can verify heap allocated pointers, but there's still nothing you can do about the stack pointers.
And to note, Pascal, Ada, etc have the same problem. It's harder to write "unsafe" code in them, but not impossible. This is a fundamental issue for software in general regardless of the language - even Java.
Last I checked you could use .NET in C++. So use .NET for the gui and networking frameworks and use C++ to do hardcore number crunching. Also there are native data structures in .NET and Java you can use in your program if you need performance. Most amature programmers never look in the math or collections libraries.
Managed C++ in MSVC is simply C#.
.NET and Java - you incur performance penalties when you want to use them directly as you have to thunk back and forth between the managed and unmanaged portions of the system. I think Java is better about it than .NET, but its a pain nonetheless. It's easier, and more performance, to just stay in either unmanaged or managed code all the time.
Unmanaged C++ in MSVC is actual C++.
As to the native data structures in
C++.
Yes, you get a little bruised when it comes to pointers, but that is very much worth it in the long run.
Students that don't learn about pointers and such early on (e.g. got Java first) tend to have a harder time in the upper classes where lower level languages are required. So, you can either "man up" and get the hard stuff learned early when it won't interfere with the classwork, or have your upper level classes being diverted in order to teach the stuff they should have learned earlier on and then not get to learn as much of the upper level material as they should have.
Microsoft has always been reluctant to do a true mobile computing platform as they fear cannibalizing the desktop market as it is the mainstay of their business. If they got over that issue and really went after the mobile computing platform - including porting Office to it - then they have the ability to do a very good mobile platform. The industry could have been doing mobile 10 years ago - but Microsoft held everyone back because of not wanting to risk losing the desktop platform. If you ever wondered why Windows Mobile looked like and acted like a standard Windows Desktop - that why - to discourage mobile computing and push people to the desktop platforms.
So no, Microsoft doesn't need to walk away from the desktop platform; but rather pursue the mobile platform irregardless of how it may impact the desktop platform.
So now instead, they are looking at losing the desktop platform to Android and iOS as they have no viable mobile offerings, and they are still not willing to put Office on the mobile platforms. Office would need to be updated for a true touchscreen style interface, as would Windows - and no, WP7/WP8's Metro UI does not do it.
Computing could be a lot cheaper if not for the artificially inflated prices due to the cost of Windows. Manufacturers have time and again made cheaper systems running Linux - systems that people would and did buy - only to have Microsoft start complaining and raising a fuss in yanking licensing programs, etc. from them so they had little to no choice but to continue with doing a Windows Only platform. The present mobile platform transformation is taking care of that - though Microsoft is still complaining to high heaven and threatening patent lawsuits instead since they have little leverage over the various players.
Microsoft has caused stagnation in many areas of computing - from the Desktop to Browser to and far beyond. Linux has relieved some of those areas (e.g. servers, clusters, HPC, etc.), and KDE4 are again revolutionizing the desktop - ultimately forcing Apple, Microsoft, and GNOME to follow. (Much of what is in Win7 was in KDE4 long before Win7 was even announced.)
Windows 8 (and WP8 by extension) will not make any significant mark in the history of Microsoft other than to perhaps show how irrelevant Microsoft has become - though Win7 is already showing that. By the numbers, Win7 looks to be a great seller - until you really investigate them and see that most are using the Downgrade rights to move back to WinXP. Win8 will do little more to help that - and from what they have said - will be alienating developers even more by pushing nearly all Windows developers into a second-class citizenry on the platform. Now granted, that's the desktop end; however, Microsoft is looking to link the Desktop and mobile offerings via Win8 - so you have the same platform on your phone, tablet, and laptop - and in doing so everyone will be fo
FLOSS principles do not guarantee, require, or want that.
RMS begs to differ.
Well, start by quoting the whole line:
Now look at what RMS says and what his organizations (e.g. GNU and FSF) say - and you will see that they are pretty much in line with that quote. RMS has no problem with people using GPL'd works (even his own) an d not releaseing changes to the community - so long as they do release the changes to anyone that they do distribute to. That's not to say that he doesn't have problems with Cloud Computing (he does); but how Google is otherwise using the software and the licenses is not an issue. Please read more on the GPL, etc - go over the FAQs, etc. at FSF's site too.
FLOSS principles don't guarantee that the entire community gets access to every little change in source code - but that those who are being distributed to do (and anyone supporting them by extension of acting as an agent).
Google is most often critized for the altruism of its ranks, and the optimism that it portrays in everything it does publicly. I'm not saying they don't have issues (what organization doesn't?) but they have certainly done a very good job of keeping to their motto of "Do No Evil".
Interesting you should bring that up...everyone one of those can be traced to Microsoft - either directly or indirectly; and every one of them will fail to find Google guilty of anything. The fact is that Microsoft can't stand that it was found guilty in both the US and EU of Antitrust violations and it wants to see all of its competitors - Apple, Google, IBM, etc - brought up on similar charges and found Guilty too. Thus far, nothing has stuck despite all the crap that Microsoft has shot into the fan.
Microsoft gets that reaction based on their own actions. There is little that comes out of Microsoft that is actually worthwhile, not based on some take over the world scheme, and useful to people in general. Outside of the firms paid by Microsoft to spew only Microsoft favoring news, everyone else has wised up to them. Even some of those paid firms are starting to wise up too.
I do agree that the objectivity in Slashdot has considerably declined.
Google contributes quite a bit to the open source community. Yes, they may not publish everything they do for anyone to garnish - FLOSS principles do not guarantee, require, or want that. However, they also provide funding for many different FLOSS projects - whether hiring interns for the summer (
That you know of. They're probably doing the same thing that they do with Vista & Win7 - reboot instead of generating errors to make the BSOD issue less visible. It's not that the platforms are more stable than WinXP or Win9x, it's just that they hide the instability better from the end user so that it appears to be more stable.
But by now most users are used to google and would simply change the default if it was something else. By now Bing is unfamiliar to the majority of the population and Google is considered the best search engine by most. It is going to take quite a lot more than setting Bing as the default to change that in people's minds.
True. If Mozilla tried to change the default to Bing or anything else, I'd simply change it back to Google; just like I do with all IE installs I come across - switch them over to using Google for their search provider (mostly b/c those people don't realize they do have a choice, they just use the search bar or [more likely] just load google's website directly).
Exactly - you can't imagine it. Just like those in the 1950's had a hard time imagining (if they could at all) having a cell phone more powerful than the computers that filled a room at that time. However, my son (born in February) will likely see no point in a laptop or a desktop; possibly not even a tablet or cell phone in 10 years time. Those between him and a 10 year old now will have no problem seeing no use for a laptop or desktop in even 2 years time if they don't already.
For those of us that like our laptops and desktops, it'll take a few more years than that - but needless to say, with the rise of Android and devices like the Motorola Atrix the end of the PC is era is upon us.
And yes, I would gladly turn in my laptops for a Motorola Atrix like device with docking station - only I would use a some kind of near field communication technology (no NFC proper - but something like Bluetooth or some other wireless standard) to connect it to additional CPUs, monitor, keyboards, etc when dropped on a desktop. The USB+HDMI on the Motorola Atrix is a great first round, but it will really need to be wireless in the end.