...our laptops are for consumers to buy crap online, and not for any kind of serious work....
Considering that Lenovo has a consumer line of laptops and a business line of laptops (the ThinkPad brand), there may be a shred of truth in what you say.
...When asked whether his company vets the software they pre-install on their machines, he said, "Yes, we do. Obviously in this case we didn't do enough. The intent of loading this tool was to help enhance our users’ shopping experience. The feedback from users was that it wasn’t useful...
It is a rare occasion when a C-level exec admits that his company has not got a clue about what its customers want.
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Since the marketing team are usually the ones responsible for knowing customer needs, will we be seeing a change in Lenovo's executive suite soon, say a new chief marketing officer?
Could Microsoft be using this newfound machine learning for customer support?
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A month or so ago, I had some issues with Microsoft's Bing bot not following the directions contained in my robots.txt file. When I sent an email in to the BingBot support address, the first reply I got back was that Microsoft considered my robots.txt instructions an "ideal" not something that has to be followed.
I pushed back and finally got someone who understand the purpose of robots.txt. That person told me to put a work-around into place, probably because Microsoft had no intention of fixing their bot to follow the robots.txt rules.
What was interesting about the whole series of email conversations was that the first "person" who answered my email did not seem to be a person at all. It just felt as if I was getting a reply from a email-bot.
The email-bot had some things right in its attempt to seem human --- (*) it first tried to push my support request aside, (*) when I didn't comply with that, it effectively told me to pound sand, (*) when I objected to that, it allowed me to bump up my request to a higher tier of support.
Not ready to agree or disagree with your points at this time, but I will say that my test of FreeBSD was originally done just for grins. But it worked so well (as well as any of the GNU/Linux versions I tested) that it is now at the top of the short list.
I've been playing with various GNU/Linux distributions lately. Since I'm looking to run KDE, I can settle on a reasonable feature set that needs to work.
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On a lark, I happened to install FreeBSD with KDE. It worked just as well as any of the GNU/Linux distributions. I wanted to look at PC-BSD, but my test notebook is 32-bit only, So I'll have to save that test for another day.
So now I'm wondering, since everything I need to do is available so long as I am able to run KDE, why does the underlying OS matter at all?
... For instance, today I asked an engineer with 20+ years of experience to describe to me the basic process of public/private key encryption. This engineer had no clue....
When you are looking for people to join your team, the process usually consists of asking the candidate questions about the technology you are currently using. That's the wrong approach, unless, of course, you want to lock yourselves into what you are doing now.
.
What you should be probing is how well a candidate is able to learn and apply new technology.
When you are interviewing, you are looking for a candidate to help you move into the future, not stay with what you have now.
The questions you should ask need to expose how a candidate learns and adapts to new technologies and the application thereof.
If you ask the wrong questions, you'll get the wrong answers.
Keep in mind that when speaking of bell curves, the sample size needs to be appropriate to the conclusions you are attempting to draw from the data.
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In other words, if you are trying to draw a bell curve based upon the 10 people you've interviewed, {bluntly speaking} you should not be in a position to interview people.
The primary purpose of most current home automation systems is data harvesting about the home's occupants. The actual automation of the home is a secondary purpose designed to get the harvesting inside the home.
Some lights in my house have been controlled by X-10 devices from back when it was called BSR X-10 some 35 years ago.
Aside from replacing batteries in the remotes, and replacing the remotes every decade or so, the system still functions as well as it did when I first installed it.
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The X-10 protocol itself is not as reliable as some of the current home control protocols, but the simplicity makes up for a lot of its shortcomings.
As I type, the X-10 main control unit has turned on a light in the living room, getting ready for sunset.
...Tell me again about how many of those people are above average and how many are below average? I'll give you a hint: it surely isn't "about half"....
Allowing a police officer to set foot in your house doesn't give them implicit permission to tear it apart. Why would this be any different?
Opening the trunk of your car to get something for the policeman then allows the policeman to search the trunk. Once you hand the phone over to the policeman, he can search it.
Right? So don't hand them the phone. Hold it up so they can scan the QR code on the display.
Where I live, and based upon my experience:), the policeman asks you for your license and insurance card, then walks back to his/her vehicle to do the checks. There is no way for the policeman to scan the QR code while the phone is in your possession in your car. You would have to give up possession of your phone to the policeman while the checks are being performed.
I have a few friends in Europe on facebook. Unfortunately, facebook defaults to bing for translations, and bing's translations are pretty poor.
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The google translations are a lot better, but I found out that if I go from, say french to arabic to english, instead of directly from french to english, the idioms seem to be translated better.
Last week I installed opensuse. When I tried to send an email using the mail command, Postfix was giving me odd permission errors for maildrop. So I went to look at the Postfix log, and there was none that I could find.
cd/var/log
ls
USE YOUR EYEBALLS.
I did. The log files were not present in/var/log.
Even opensuse's System log viewer could not find/var/log/messages
Slashdot Mirror
...our laptops are for consumers to buy crap online, and not for any kind of serious work....
Considering that Lenovo has a consumer line of laptops and a business line of laptops (the ThinkPad brand), there may be a shred of truth in what you say.
...When asked whether his company vets the software they pre-install on their machines, he said, "Yes, we do. Obviously in this case we didn't do enough. The intent of loading this tool was to help enhance our users’ shopping experience. The feedback from users was that it wasn’t useful...
It is a rare occasion when a C-level exec admits that his company has not got a clue about what its customers want.
.
Since the marketing team are usually the ones responsible for knowing customer needs, will we be seeing a change in Lenovo's executive suite soon, say a new chief marketing officer?
.
A month or so ago, I had some issues with Microsoft's Bing bot not following the directions contained in my robots.txt file. When I sent an email in to the BingBot support address, the first reply I got back was that Microsoft considered my robots.txt instructions an "ideal" not something that has to be followed.
I pushed back and finally got someone who understand the purpose of robots.txt. That person told me to put a work-around into place, probably because Microsoft had no intention of fixing their bot to follow the robots.txt rules.
What was interesting about the whole series of email conversations was that the first "person" who answered my email did not seem to be a person at all. It just felt as if I was getting a reply from a email-bot.
The email-bot had some things right in its attempt to seem human --- (*) it first tried to push my support request aside, (*) when I didn't comply with that, it effectively told me to pound sand, (*) when I objected to that, it allowed me to bump up my request to a higher tier of support.
.
Computer media are usually pretty dull, so there's nothing like a supposed battle to up the interest.
...my question: what are your most useful (and safe) browser extensions?...
The ones that have a level of quality that is on par with the browser. I've found too many extensions that are so buggy that they are useless.
Not ready to agree or disagree with your points at this time, but I will say that my test of FreeBSD was originally done just for grins. But it worked so well (as well as any of the GNU/Linux versions I tested) that it is now at the top of the short list.
.
On a lark, I happened to install FreeBSD with KDE. It worked just as well as any of the GNU/Linux distributions. I wanted to look at PC-BSD, but my test notebook is 32-bit only, So I'll have to save that test for another day.
So now I'm wondering, since everything I need to do is available so long as I am able to run KDE, why does the underlying OS matter at all?
...has been getting more attention recently...
Well, if it is a new language, by definition any attention it gets, no matter how little, is "more attention".
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When the comparison is against zero, it does not take too much to have a 100% improvement. :)
..."While everyone today needs to be an app developer,..."
Really, everyone needs to be an app developer? Why?
... For instance, today I asked an engineer with 20+ years of experience to describe to me the basic process of public/private key encryption. This engineer had no clue....
When you are looking for people to join your team, the process usually consists of asking the candidate questions about the technology you are currently using. That's the wrong approach, unless, of course, you want to lock yourselves into what you are doing now.
.
What you should be probing is how well a candidate is able to learn and apply new technology.
When you are interviewing, you are looking for a candidate to help you move into the future, not stay with what you have now. The questions you should ask need to expose how a candidate learns and adapts to new technologies and the application thereof.
If you ask the wrong questions, you'll get the wrong answers.
.
In other words, if you are trying to draw a bell curve based upon the 10 people you've interviewed, {bluntly speaking} you should not be in a position to interview people.
So, it's that obvious? :)
The primary purpose of most current home automation systems is data harvesting about the home's occupants. The actual automation of the home is a secondary purpose designed to get the harvesting inside the home.
.
The X-10 protocol itself is not as reliable as some of the current home control protocols, but the simplicity makes up for a lot of its shortcomings.
As I type, the X-10 main control unit has turned on a light in the living room, getting ready for sunset.
...Tell me again about how many of those people are above average and how many are below average? I'll give you a hint: it surely isn't "about half"....
sample size too small.
Why people keep repeating this stupid statement I have no idea, as it only applies to populations that have a normal distribution.
Pat, someone here needs to buy a humor clue..... :)
And about half are above average.
Allowing a police officer to set foot in your house doesn't give them implicit permission to tear it apart. Why would this be any different?
Opening the trunk of your car to get something for the policeman then allows the policeman to search the trunk. Once you hand the phone over to the policeman, he can search it.
Right? So don't hand them the phone. Hold it up so they can scan the QR code on the display.
Where I live, and based upon my experience :), the policeman asks you for your license and insurance card, then walks back to his/her vehicle to do the checks. There is no way for the policeman to scan the QR code while the phone is in your possession in your car. You would have to give up possession of your phone to the policeman while the checks are being performed.
Obviously, it is better than my spelling. :)
.
The google translations are a lot better, but I found out that if I go from, say french to arabic to english, instead of directly from french to english, the idioms seem to be translated better.
go figure......
Eggs are bad for you! Eggs are good for you! Meat is bad for you! Meat is good for you! Alcohol is good for you! Alcohol isn't good for you!...
Yeah, it's enough to drive one to drinking....
Maybe there should be a survey done about the effects on longevity based upon whether or not one reads all these "studies".
Last week I installed opensuse. When I tried to send an email using the mail command, Postfix was giving me odd permission errors for maildrop. So I went to look at the Postfix log, and there was none that I could find.
cd /var/log
ls
USE YOUR EYEBALLS.
I did. The log files were not present in /var/log.
Even opensuse's System log viewer could not find /var/log/messages
Whats your issue here? Did you not find the log file ( /var/log/mail ) or was postfix configured not to log?
I did not see /var/log/mail nor did I even see /var/log/messages.
When I went into opensuse's Control Center, and drilled down to view the system log, I got an error message that /var/log/messages could not be found.
Fog.
The problem is that Linux used to be better than Windows in this area, the opposite of what you assert.