"The term cloud computing is useless" said Stamos. "It's way overused. It's mostly about gathering venture capital or selling your products."
Yes. Because no one on the Internet has any use for gathering venture capital or selling products.
It IS an overused term, but you're not testing some product or how people are using it, you're really just testing the security models of various operating systems to determine which are more ready to support those concepts that people grouped together and called "cloud computing". There were a lot of various concepts that were grouped together that comprised the "Net 2.0" concept too...and that cliche was just as derided for being overused. And yet, websites that aren't all ajaxed up or don't use css seem pretty old-fashioned these days.
That said, the question I have is how ready for those "cloud computing" concepts is Windows, really? How much of that security model is using the proper approach to securing a transaction instead of just shutting down that path altogether?
I don't see why it matters anymore that Microsoft integrates their own proprietary browser into their OS. Apple does it. WebOS's entire UI is basically WebKit. Google's doing it. If WebOS and GoogleOS and Android can take Linux, give it an entirely browser oriented frontend with Ajaxy applications and your run of the mill real estate agent thinks it's a "real easy to use phone", you can bet more Linux devs will be doing that, too.
If anything, Microsoft should do it BETTER. Their browser integration has always been half-@ssed and forced to rely on a lot of hacks that have led to the majority of their security holes. At this point, the whole lawsuit against IE's browser integration is meaningless. The problem isn't the browser, the problem is the operating system that runs that browser and the business practices of the company behind that operating system. And even those aren't that creepy anymore, considering some of the creepy practices that Apple and Google have employed over the past 6 years.
If you're hooked on iTunes, seriously, you need to get over that, there ARE fine replacements for it. People were listening to digital music long before the iPod ever came out. Unfortunately, Apple tricked a lot of people into thinking that they were paying for music and supporting the artists, but their intention obviously was to control the platform. Any company that would charge for media, but then block you from using it on the device you want to use that media on are not worth your time and money, and if you've been doing business with them, sorry, they've ripped you off. This is a fine example of how Apple is more dangerous than M$ ever was in regards to anti-competitive and anti-innovative behavior.
Why do you think people who don't do software for a living would give up something that works?
They don't have any real emotional ties to philosophy around software. And honestly, they couldn't care less how much the company pays for it, as long as it works and they don't have to tinker with it or worry about a lot of outages. To them, Microsoft isn't "evil", it's just this company that makes this thing they use and don't think twice about. These are people who are more concerned about getting the right customers, keeping those customers, their families, their bosses, getting a report out by tomorrow...they frequently don't want to risk change if change doesn't appear to be needed.
The bottom line is this: The only way you're ever going to make inroads into that is to add features and sell those features as something people will absolutely require. They're used to how they save and deal with files...they couldn't care less if it's stored on the "cloud", and a whole lot of them aren't sure about the security of that because they don't understand network security. They feel more secure about things being on a thumb drive in their pocket, unconnected to anything (until they spyware it up when they hook it to their kid's computer). You have to make real features that save people lots of time. And it's hard. Microsoft had a 20 year head start on Google Apps. The best people are able to do is to imitate and offer something for free. Free is easy to see for an admin, but selling free to people who livelihood isn't saving money on infrastructure, but is actually getting things done without outages, takes something that is worth the risk.
I haven't seen a whole lot of risk taking lately by a lot of the "non-Microsoft" community, and it really hurts me to say that. We think a risk is a sneaky backdoor way to do something really slickly behind the scenes, but when it comes to making things more configurable and more responsive to an individual's needs, more able to help them finish their work faster, aside from a few exceptions...most of us completely miss the boat. You aren't going to budge that rock unless you can make a bigger rock.
It's a great place to work without a whole lot of jobs (the ones we have, though, are pretty skewed to IT). I like how that just falls through the cracks for both of those lists.
I've gotten plenty of big time offers though from companies in those states on the top ten "good places", and I've turned them down every time to stay here. The air and water's cleaner, there's more parks and recreation than most places I've been, the extensive mass transit system saves me a bundle in auto costs, the property costs are way lower, and I've just kept getting jobs here that pay better than the average rate. Nowhere else really has ever come close, at least not for me.
As for those spots on the worst list, with the exception of Boston and SF, I've replied to recruiters while laughing out loud at my effort to remain serious and not snide. When I say "If I know anyone who might be interested, I'll definitely send them on to you", in the back of my head, I'm thinking about any co-worker who's ever really pissed me off over the years.
I've never used an extension that "attempts to imitate other browsers". That's interesting, though. There's a string in the about:config where you can set your browser's id string, why install an extension that "imitates other browsers"?
I have some alternative download UI elements and forecastfox, a couple other plugins, but only an idiot would install anything and not expect SOME cost.
I think basically, my question is, how the hell does the GP get modded up past 1? And how is that insightful when it's either a troll or shows an amazing lack of understanding of how Firefox works? I don't get it.
Yeah, you go and make Microsoft drop their "Genuine Windows Advantage" program that is generally required for updating your browser, see where that gets you.
I'll bet a large number of those still using IE6 are doing so because it's still bundled in with every OS pre-Vista, no one wants to download a massive slug like IE7 or 8, they've got a pirated OS, have some bogus ActiveX/custom crap they need for their jobs, or someone told them that by downloading anything from Microsoft, all their personal information would be exposed. When you talk to people who still use IE6, it's usually something like that. I worked with some web developers a few years back that put support for IE6 over almost everything else for generally all of the above reasons.
For this one, feel free to do the time honored thing and blame Microsoft, because most of the problem is their own stupidity and shortsightedness.
On the other hand, my laptop is a desktop replacement and weighs a ton. It takes up most of a table at a coffee shop. I have a nearly 19 inch monitor on the thing.
I use my smartphone for everywhere else. My laptop works great for when I go from home to work, but when I'm anywhere else, I'd rather not carry, or buy, a smaller laptop AND a cellphone. I prefer to use a smartphone for that exact purpose.
The thing is, I agree with you. iPhones are purely for show. I can do a whole lot of the same things on my old Palm Treo that my friends can do with their iPhones. I can even take movies and copy and paste between apps on my phone that is older than theirs. Sure, it's not as pretty, but it works and the things I'd get out of an iPhone just don't make up for the things I'd lose if I switched to an iPhone.
Which is why, of course, there's no question I'm getting a Pre. All that and it's built on Linux. I can't see how a/.'er could resist that. Even if the keyboard isn't perfect...then again, from the full sized pictures I've seen of the phone, I have to say that it's not such a deal breaker as Boy Genius says it is. Apparently he doesn't use his thumbs from the same position as I use mine when typing on the keyboard, it doesn't look like I'd have the same problem as he has with hitting the bottom half of the front plate.
"The Race"? You don't seem to be familiar with whom they are. Go to their website and take a look first. Do some research on sites other than conservapedia.
They're not what you think they are just because their name "can" translate to that. They're a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization focused on reducing poverty and discrimination, and improving opportunities, for Hispanic-Americans. That's their mission statement right there. They're not out in the woods burning WASPS in effigy, similar to the organizations that you seem to equate them to. They're not lynching white people. You seem to want to equate them to a racist organization. Apparently you're not familiar with how real racist organizations operate.
The differences between the conservative mind and the progressive mind aren't as many as you'd think, but one very prominent difference is that progressives don't immediately assume that because someone is a woman, and of a different race, that she's immediately against your white male lifestyle. You go out and look for questionably reliable material that reinforces your own paranoia and prejudices. That is why you can't understand this, because you're getting garbage in and spewing garbage out.
Very possibly. Apple's people internally have been crying foul about this stuff, and they've been whining about their talent drain following Jon Rubenstein over to Palm for awhile now. It seems a lot of the guys who were inside at Apple during their big turnaround put their loyalties with Rubenstein rather than Jobs or the other corporate types that are really running Apple these days. Apple did the same thing a few years ago when they stripped Palmsource of all the developers they could find to make the iPhone, and had been pulling away top guys from Palm even before that when they were creating the iPod.
Is anyone really surprised that Apple's gone evil? Listen to the rhetoric. Apple, with every passing day, has been acting more and more hardline and closed to competition than even Microsoft. Apple fanboys are sounding off the same soundbites that the Microsoft guys did years ago about Linux.
The truth is that Apple doesn't want just anyone buying music from their near monopoly on pay music downloads(which, coincedentally, was helped to become a monopoly by Bono of U2, who also just so happens to be a member of Elevation Partners, one of the major shareholders in Palm). They only want the "approved" companies that swear not to actually compete with them to work with their stuff. This is the type of thinking that sent Apple down the tubes back in the late 80's/early 90's.
The truth is, most private users will do what they've done for the past 20 years, and that is one of these two options: use the version of Windows that comes with the computer, or use a pirated version. Why do you think Conficker was such a big deal? Microsoft pushed out a fix for that last year.
Selling a "Starter" version has only one purpose: trick the shareholders into thinking that Microsoft has a plan to get people who would otherwise pirate their OS on a path to buy their OS. It's not going to happen. Even casual PC users don't want to use a crippled operating system because they don't trust that it will do what they think they might need it to do.
Oh well. The only way Microsoft will get their market share back is if they essentially adopt Linux's model in regards to their operating system, and rip off Apple's "store" style system for purchasing or obtaining software. With Ballmer at the helm, fat chance. Personally, I'd like to see three or more players in the OS game running at their best in order to drive competition, but what you really have is one paranoid, xenophobic player that pointlessly handicaps itself constantly (Apple), one amorphous, disassociated player that lives in its own little world (Linux), and a rotting corpse in a business suit being propped up by greedy investors (Microsoft). For something as important as an operating system, there should be stronger players at the top than this.
You should get in touch with the GP, Bill Winston Ministries may be interested in helping your friend clear some of those old BWM posters out of his warehouse. I'm assuming, of course, that Bill Winston might think it a nifty idea to sell his "Ministries" by proudly featuring fancy cars.
There were two that are vying for the lead. The first was a desk that was jammed kind of in the corner, with no legroom, of a row of phone sales cubes. I had to put together my computer from some components that were lying around in the warehouse, and I did find a few spiders in the case. The monitor made a brain splitting high pitch whine intermittently. I wasn't allowed to wear headphones or listen to music as the sales people considered that highly taboo and would complain that it was distracting to them.
The other time was when we worked in this poolhouse on this upscale estate. It may sound nice, but outside, there were these kind of vicious guard dogs, it was next to a golf course so we had no shade and way too much humidity, the owner would come down in his robe and berate us, sometimes packing heat, as an awkward attempt to motivate us to work, and I would frequently have to wipe spyware off his kid's computers because we had to use the same network. Oh yeah, not to mention the flies. Nonstop flies, all the time. And it wouldn't have hurt the guy if he would have cleaned that pool. It stank, bad.
I certainly get the feeling that the "pulls no punches" part of this writeup is kind of redundant, considering that yes, it's by AppleInsider.
Of course Apple fanboys are going to rag on the competitor's phone. These are the same types of people who fervently believe that Apple invented the smartphone.
It really depends on where they came from. Some schools do a better job of setting expectations than others. A school with professors that have worked recently in the field will tend to put out students that know pretty much where they stand.
I think ultimately, a little narcissism is almost impossible to avoid with college students, primarily because they realize that they are subordinates, with "lesser" job titles and constant supervision. If they have any ambition at all, of course they're going to be a little "uppity".
I had one guy I supervised several years ago who, among a team of two other guys with roughly 4-5 years of experience, felt he should have 4-5 years of experience as well. So he would cite writing basic programs in high school, his college years, as well as his one month internship at Microsoft. When I look back on it, obviously the kid really didn't want to be the lowest animal on the totem pole, so even if it was pure narcissism, I would count it as more of a defense mechanism.
The main benefit of younger engineers is that they can be had for cheap because they're trying to establish their careers. The next benefit is that hopefully, they haven't got all the bad habits that come with working in the industry for several years. If their expectations bubble pops, they almost always quit, and they almost always float around without work for awhile and that usually brings them back down to earth. But you have to also expect that they're going to do everything they can to fluff themselves up, because they're coming into the thing with almost nothing, and they know they don't stand on even ground with a guy who might have 5 or 6 years of experience. They know that you're not going to weigh whether or not they can do the job vs. 6 years > 0 years, so yeah, they're going to do what they have to do. An experienced supervisor/manager/lead needs to expect that and work around it. Given a few years, they'll settle down some.
But no matter what platform I'm developing on, one language just isn't enough. With every project, there's lots of little one off scripts you write to perform various maintenance or deployment or testing tasks. Maybe I do too much, I don't know, but I've been doing this for about 10 years now, and I can't think of one project that used only one language, and no complete system that didn't integrate some other platform/SDK in somehow.
Really stimulating the economy would mean freezing their overseas hiring and rehiring their workers in the US. You can't really "Elevate America" if all you're doing is elevating China.
The bottom line about offshoring that employers still don't seem to be honest enough to admit is that it's all about money. It's not because they really want some amazingly skilled people overseas, so much so that they'd lay some guy in the US with the skills to currently deliver work off and pay him unemployment insurance...they want cheap workers. I work in a company that has some guys offshore. We don't employ them because they can do anything more than any of our guys we employ here, we employ our offshore team because the company I work with takes low bid flat fee projects from small businesses, and we give that work to those guys offshore because they work for the US equivalent of minimum wage. That holds true for any company trying to do things cheap.
You can pretty up resumes and offer cheap training all you want, but if you're not going to hire those people because you don't want to pay them, it's all for show. IMO, this is just a big public image stunt unless they're willing to directly place people in jobs.
Holy crap, I got modded up to 5 for that? I thought it was a "no shit" type of deal. Voters weren't, for the most part, geeks OR lawyers back then. Considering there was no mass media to build someone up, the only way to get someone in the middle of the territories to vote for you was to summarize your entire platform up in one short bio that everyone could pull off the tops of their heads at any given time. As a result, that little marketing fluff becomes part of the public lexicon.
These days, there are some remnants of that strategy, but they're usually drowned out by a whole sea of mass media talking heads, opinion pieces, sound bites, and everything else. One simple message doesn't get pounded into any one person's head anymore, except for maybe something vague like "Hope and Change" or "It's the economy, stupid". Ask anyone about their personal opinion of a current politician, and chances are, you're not going to hear the same bit of info repeated back at you, as you would back in the old days.
But what the hell. Who needs to spend any time thinking about anything, you know?
I remember so well the proto-economy that was the PDA application marketplace. Virtually the same were present back then as well, but now it's all news all over again. Now, with a big online app store, it's just a more widespread thing.
Hopefully people won't think the only way to solve that problem will be web based apps (keyword there is "based", not locally hosted web apps masquerading as native apps). They work great on a desktop, but they will always suck on mobile phones. Just how it is with a small form factor.
Neither is benign. When you tamper with a customer's third party software, you 1. Ask them first, and 2. Let them back out easily. Microsoft and Sun did neither of these. Not only are they spitting on good software standards, they're spitting on their users by doing this.
Quite a few that are in production or are set to be released utilize almost the exact same technology to reorient their screens and do a whole lot of other things. It doesn't take much to use that same accelerometers to do the exact same things that the article is talking about. The reason a lot of companies haven't gone quite as far as these researchers have is because enabling that by default is kind of a nuisance in practice. But it wouldn't be a bad option for some if they were used to it and wanted to minimize button/tapping/navigational interaction.
When they realize that no one will ever change their terms of service due to their customers' complaints, no matter how creepy it may sound. Their users get angry, the business just spins it around and around and tries to make it sound like it's no big deal. Some other online business drops a bomb on their users and makes a big scuzzy media splash, the original company just keeps going with the new ToS as if nothing ever happened. Then another business's lawyers see what someone else got away with, and the cycle continues.
The Log splitting thing was campaign fluff at the time. Back in the old days, populism got you elected. If he ran on the campaign that he was a geeky lawyer, he would have been laughed out of politics in those days.
What's wrong with that? Do you honestly think that other people always make the best choices, every time, regardless of how little or how much information they actually possess?
I'm not sure what the kids are calling THAT nowadays, but what they called it when I was a lad was an IDIOT.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. Because no one on the Internet has any use for gathering venture capital or selling products.
It IS an overused term, but you're not testing some product or how people are using it, you're really just testing the security models of various operating systems to determine which are more ready to support those concepts that people grouped together and called "cloud computing". There were a lot of various concepts that were grouped together that comprised the "Net 2.0" concept too...and that cliche was just as derided for being overused. And yet, websites that aren't all ajaxed up or don't use css seem pretty old-fashioned these days.
That said, the question I have is how ready for those "cloud computing" concepts is Windows, really? How much of that security model is using the proper approach to securing a transaction instead of just shutting down that path altogether?
I don't see why it matters anymore that Microsoft integrates their own proprietary browser into their OS. Apple does it. WebOS's entire UI is basically WebKit. Google's doing it. If WebOS and GoogleOS and Android can take Linux, give it an entirely browser oriented frontend with Ajaxy applications and your run of the mill real estate agent thinks it's a "real easy to use phone", you can bet more Linux devs will be doing that, too.
If anything, Microsoft should do it BETTER. Their browser integration has always been half-@ssed and forced to rely on a lot of hacks that have led to the majority of their security holes. At this point, the whole lawsuit against IE's browser integration is meaningless. The problem isn't the browser, the problem is the operating system that runs that browser and the business practices of the company behind that operating system. And even those aren't that creepy anymore, considering some of the creepy practices that Apple and Google have employed over the past 6 years.
I like it far better, anyway. It's simple and does what I want, and that's just to move media around. Works flawlessly with the Palm Pre, heck, DVD Jon HAS a Pre. DoubleTwist Manages Your Pre Media, Freely, Easily, and Transparently
If you're hooked on iTunes, seriously, you need to get over that, there ARE fine replacements for it. People were listening to digital music long before the iPod ever came out. Unfortunately, Apple tricked a lot of people into thinking that they were paying for music and supporting the artists, but their intention obviously was to control the platform. Any company that would charge for media, but then block you from using it on the device you want to use that media on are not worth your time and money, and if you've been doing business with them, sorry, they've ripped you off. This is a fine example of how Apple is more dangerous than M$ ever was in regards to anti-competitive and anti-innovative behavior.
Why do you think people who don't do software for a living would give up something that works?
They don't have any real emotional ties to philosophy around software. And honestly, they couldn't care less how much the company pays for it, as long as it works and they don't have to tinker with it or worry about a lot of outages. To them, Microsoft isn't "evil", it's just this company that makes this thing they use and don't think twice about. These are people who are more concerned about getting the right customers, keeping those customers, their families, their bosses, getting a report out by tomorrow...they frequently don't want to risk change if change doesn't appear to be needed.
The bottom line is this: The only way you're ever going to make inroads into that is to add features and sell those features as something people will absolutely require. They're used to how they save and deal with files...they couldn't care less if it's stored on the "cloud", and a whole lot of them aren't sure about the security of that because they don't understand network security. They feel more secure about things being on a thumb drive in their pocket, unconnected to anything (until they spyware it up when they hook it to their kid's computer). You have to make real features that save people lots of time. And it's hard. Microsoft had a 20 year head start on Google Apps. The best people are able to do is to imitate and offer something for free. Free is easy to see for an admin, but selling free to people who livelihood isn't saving money on infrastructure, but is actually getting things done without outages, takes something that is worth the risk.
I haven't seen a whole lot of risk taking lately by a lot of the "non-Microsoft" community, and it really hurts me to say that. We think a risk is a sneaky backdoor way to do something really slickly behind the scenes, but when it comes to making things more configurable and more responsive to an individual's needs, more able to help them finish their work faster, aside from a few exceptions...most of us completely miss the boat. You aren't going to budge that rock unless you can make a bigger rock.
It's a great place to work without a whole lot of jobs (the ones we have, though, are pretty skewed to IT). I like how that just falls through the cracks for both of those lists.
I've gotten plenty of big time offers though from companies in those states on the top ten "good places", and I've turned them down every time to stay here. The air and water's cleaner, there's more parks and recreation than most places I've been, the extensive mass transit system saves me a bundle in auto costs, the property costs are way lower, and I've just kept getting jobs here that pay better than the average rate. Nowhere else really has ever come close, at least not for me.
As for those spots on the worst list, with the exception of Boston and SF, I've replied to recruiters while laughing out loud at my effort to remain serious and not snide. When I say "If I know anyone who might be interested, I'll definitely send them on to you", in the back of my head, I'm thinking about any co-worker who's ever really pissed me off over the years.
I've never used an extension that "attempts to imitate other browsers". That's interesting, though. There's a string in the about:config where you can set your browser's id string, why install an extension that "imitates other browsers"?
I have some alternative download UI elements and forecastfox, a couple other plugins, but only an idiot would install anything and not expect SOME cost.
I think basically, my question is, how the hell does the GP get modded up past 1? And how is that insightful when it's either a troll or shows an amazing lack of understanding of how Firefox works? I don't get it.
Yeah, you go and make Microsoft drop their "Genuine Windows Advantage" program that is generally required for updating your browser, see where that gets you.
I'll bet a large number of those still using IE6 are doing so because it's still bundled in with every OS pre-Vista, no one wants to download a massive slug like IE7 or 8, they've got a pirated OS, have some bogus ActiveX/custom crap they need for their jobs, or someone told them that by downloading anything from Microsoft, all their personal information would be exposed. When you talk to people who still use IE6, it's usually something like that. I worked with some web developers a few years back that put support for IE6 over almost everything else for generally all of the above reasons.
For this one, feel free to do the time honored thing and blame Microsoft, because most of the problem is their own stupidity and shortsightedness.
On the other hand, my laptop is a desktop replacement and weighs a ton. It takes up most of a table at a coffee shop. I have a nearly 19 inch monitor on the thing.
/.'er could resist that. Even if the keyboard isn't perfect...then again, from the full sized pictures I've seen of the phone, I have to say that it's not such a deal breaker as Boy Genius says it is. Apparently he doesn't use his thumbs from the same position as I use mine when typing on the keyboard, it doesn't look like I'd have the same problem as he has with hitting the bottom half of the front plate.
I use my smartphone for everywhere else. My laptop works great for when I go from home to work, but when I'm anywhere else, I'd rather not carry, or buy, a smaller laptop AND a cellphone. I prefer to use a smartphone for that exact purpose.
The thing is, I agree with you. iPhones are purely for show. I can do a whole lot of the same things on my old Palm Treo that my friends can do with their iPhones. I can even take movies and copy and paste between apps on my phone that is older than theirs. Sure, it's not as pretty, but it works and the things I'd get out of an iPhone just don't make up for the things I'd lose if I switched to an iPhone.
Which is why, of course, there's no question I'm getting a Pre. All that and it's built on Linux. I can't see how a
"The Race"? You don't seem to be familiar with whom they are. Go to their website and take a look first. Do some research on sites other than conservapedia.
They're not what you think they are just because their name "can" translate to that. They're a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization focused on reducing poverty and discrimination, and improving opportunities, for Hispanic-Americans. That's their mission statement right there. They're not out in the woods burning WASPS in effigy, similar to the organizations that you seem to equate them to. They're not lynching white people. You seem to want to equate them to a racist organization. Apparently you're not familiar with how real racist organizations operate.
The differences between the conservative mind and the progressive mind aren't as many as you'd think, but one very prominent difference is that progressives don't immediately assume that because someone is a woman, and of a different race, that she's immediately against your white male lifestyle. You go out and look for questionably reliable material that reinforces your own paranoia and prejudices. That is why you can't understand this, because you're getting garbage in and spewing garbage out.
Very possibly. Apple's people internally have been crying foul about this stuff, and they've been whining about their talent drain following Jon Rubenstein over to Palm for awhile now. It seems a lot of the guys who were inside at Apple during their big turnaround put their loyalties with Rubenstein rather than Jobs or the other corporate types that are really running Apple these days. Apple did the same thing a few years ago when they stripped Palmsource of all the developers they could find to make the iPhone, and had been pulling away top guys from Palm even before that when they were creating the iPod.
Is anyone really surprised that Apple's gone evil? Listen to the rhetoric. Apple, with every passing day, has been acting more and more hardline and closed to competition than even Microsoft. Apple fanboys are sounding off the same soundbites that the Microsoft guys did years ago about Linux.
The truth is that Apple doesn't want just anyone buying music from their near monopoly on pay music downloads(which, coincedentally, was helped to become a monopoly by Bono of U2, who also just so happens to be a member of Elevation Partners, one of the major shareholders in Palm). They only want the "approved" companies that swear not to actually compete with them to work with their stuff. This is the type of thinking that sent Apple down the tubes back in the late 80's/early 90's.
The truth is, most private users will do what they've done for the past 20 years, and that is one of these two options: use the version of Windows that comes with the computer, or use a pirated version. Why do you think Conficker was such a big deal? Microsoft pushed out a fix for that last year.
Selling a "Starter" version has only one purpose: trick the shareholders into thinking that Microsoft has a plan to get people who would otherwise pirate their OS on a path to buy their OS. It's not going to happen. Even casual PC users don't want to use a crippled operating system because they don't trust that it will do what they think they might need it to do.
Oh well. The only way Microsoft will get their market share back is if they essentially adopt Linux's model in regards to their operating system, and rip off Apple's "store" style system for purchasing or obtaining software. With Ballmer at the helm, fat chance. Personally, I'd like to see three or more players in the OS game running at their best in order to drive competition, but what you really have is one paranoid, xenophobic player that pointlessly handicaps itself constantly (Apple), one amorphous, disassociated player that lives in its own little world (Linux), and a rotting corpse in a business suit being propped up by greedy investors (Microsoft). For something as important as an operating system, there should be stronger players at the top than this.
You should get in touch with the GP, Bill Winston Ministries may be interested in helping your friend clear some of those old BWM posters out of his warehouse. I'm assuming, of course, that Bill Winston might think it a nifty idea to sell his "Ministries" by proudly featuring fancy cars.
There were two that are vying for the lead. The first was a desk that was jammed kind of in the corner, with no legroom, of a row of phone sales cubes. I had to put together my computer from some components that were lying around in the warehouse, and I did find a few spiders in the case. The monitor made a brain splitting high pitch whine intermittently. I wasn't allowed to wear headphones or listen to music as the sales people considered that highly taboo and would complain that it was distracting to them.
The other time was when we worked in this poolhouse on this upscale estate. It may sound nice, but outside, there were these kind of vicious guard dogs, it was next to a golf course so we had no shade and way too much humidity, the owner would come down in his robe and berate us, sometimes packing heat, as an awkward attempt to motivate us to work, and I would frequently have to wipe spyware off his kid's computers because we had to use the same network. Oh yeah, not to mention the flies. Nonstop flies, all the time. And it wouldn't have hurt the guy if he would have cleaned that pool. It stank, bad.
So, because they specialize in "Apple rumors", that makes them unbiased when reviewing competitor's phones?
I don't think so. That's like going to Treocentral and think you're going to get a resounding review of the iPhone as it stacks up to the Treo.
I certainly get the feeling that the "pulls no punches" part of this writeup is kind of redundant, considering that yes, it's by AppleInsider.
Of course Apple fanboys are going to rag on the competitor's phone. These are the same types of people who fervently believe that Apple invented the smartphone.
It really depends on where they came from. Some schools do a better job of setting expectations than others. A school with professors that have worked recently in the field will tend to put out students that know pretty much where they stand.
I think ultimately, a little narcissism is almost impossible to avoid with college students, primarily because they realize that they are subordinates, with "lesser" job titles and constant supervision. If they have any ambition at all, of course they're going to be a little "uppity".
I had one guy I supervised several years ago who, among a team of two other guys with roughly 4-5 years of experience, felt he should have 4-5 years of experience as well. So he would cite writing basic programs in high school, his college years, as well as his one month internship at Microsoft. When I look back on it, obviously the kid really didn't want to be the lowest animal on the totem pole, so even if it was pure narcissism, I would count it as more of a defense mechanism.
The main benefit of younger engineers is that they can be had for cheap because they're trying to establish their careers. The next benefit is that hopefully, they haven't got all the bad habits that come with working in the industry for several years. If their expectations bubble pops, they almost always quit, and they almost always float around without work for awhile and that usually brings them back down to earth. But you have to also expect that they're going to do everything they can to fluff themselves up, because they're coming into the thing with almost nothing, and they know they don't stand on even ground with a guy who might have 5 or 6 years of experience. They know that you're not going to weigh whether or not they can do the job vs. 6 years > 0 years, so yeah, they're going to do what they have to do. An experienced supervisor/manager/lead needs to expect that and work around it. Given a few years, they'll settle down some.
But no matter what platform I'm developing on, one language just isn't enough. With every project, there's lots of little one off scripts you write to perform various maintenance or deployment or testing tasks. Maybe I do too much, I don't know, but I've been doing this for about 10 years now, and I can't think of one project that used only one language, and no complete system that didn't integrate some other platform/SDK in somehow.
Really stimulating the economy would mean freezing their overseas hiring and rehiring their workers in the US. You can't really "Elevate America" if all you're doing is elevating China.
The bottom line about offshoring that employers still don't seem to be honest enough to admit is that it's all about money. It's not because they really want some amazingly skilled people overseas, so much so that they'd lay some guy in the US with the skills to currently deliver work off and pay him unemployment insurance...they want cheap workers. I work in a company that has some guys offshore. We don't employ them because they can do anything more than any of our guys we employ here, we employ our offshore team because the company I work with takes low bid flat fee projects from small businesses, and we give that work to those guys offshore because they work for the US equivalent of minimum wage. That holds true for any company trying to do things cheap.
You can pretty up resumes and offer cheap training all you want, but if you're not going to hire those people because you don't want to pay them, it's all for show. IMO, this is just a big public image stunt unless they're willing to directly place people in jobs.
Holy crap, I got modded up to 5 for that? I thought it was a "no shit" type of deal. Voters weren't, for the most part, geeks OR lawyers back then. Considering there was no mass media to build someone up, the only way to get someone in the middle of the territories to vote for you was to summarize your entire platform up in one short bio that everyone could pull off the tops of their heads at any given time. As a result, that little marketing fluff becomes part of the public lexicon.
These days, there are some remnants of that strategy, but they're usually drowned out by a whole sea of mass media talking heads, opinion pieces, sound bites, and everything else. One simple message doesn't get pounded into any one person's head anymore, except for maybe something vague like "Hope and Change" or "It's the economy, stupid". Ask anyone about their personal opinion of a current politician, and chances are, you're not going to hear the same bit of info repeated back at you, as you would back in the old days.
But what the hell. Who needs to spend any time thinking about anything, you know?
I remember so well the proto-economy that was the PDA application marketplace. Virtually the same were present back then as well, but now it's all news all over again. Now, with a big online app store, it's just a more widespread thing.
Hopefully people won't think the only way to solve that problem will be web based apps (keyword there is "based", not locally hosted web apps masquerading as native apps). They work great on a desktop, but they will always suck on mobile phones. Just how it is with a small form factor.
Neither is benign. When you tamper with a customer's third party software, you 1. Ask them first, and 2. Let them back out easily. Microsoft and Sun did neither of these. Not only are they spitting on good software standards, they're spitting on their users by doing this.
Quite a few that are in production or are set to be released utilize almost the exact same technology to reorient their screens and do a whole lot of other things. It doesn't take much to use that same accelerometers to do the exact same things that the article is talking about. The reason a lot of companies haven't gone quite as far as these researchers have is because enabling that by default is kind of a nuisance in practice. But it wouldn't be a bad option for some if they were used to it and wanted to minimize button/tapping/navigational interaction.
When they realize that no one will ever change their terms of service due to their customers' complaints, no matter how creepy it may sound. Their users get angry, the business just spins it around and around and tries to make it sound like it's no big deal. Some other online business drops a bomb on their users and makes a big scuzzy media splash, the original company just keeps going with the new ToS as if nothing ever happened. Then another business's lawyers see what someone else got away with, and the cycle continues.
The Log splitting thing was campaign fluff at the time. Back in the old days, populism got you elected. If he ran on the campaign that he was a geeky lawyer, he would have been laughed out of politics in those days.
What's wrong with that? Do you honestly think that other people always make the best choices, every time, regardless of how little or how much information they actually possess?
I'm not sure what the kids are calling THAT nowadays, but what they called it when I was a lad was an IDIOT.