Realistically, nobody will be "ok" with a provider who bills Internet at something like "99 cents per month!" and then tacks on itemized fees for using various web sites, making a bill that's really $70 or more. That's a class action lawsuit waiting to happen, if nothing else. (Whether "net neutrality" law dictates a complete explanation of what you're going to be charged -- consumers expect fair advertising and marketing, with fees disclosed.)
The BIGGER issue? I think we're probably approaching the whole thing wrong. A buddy of mine worked for a public utility for years and had the insight to realize that the infrastructure should be separated from the services that run through it.
Just as we let government build and maintain our roads and highways, but let private cars and trucks use them freely? We should consider our coaxial, fiber and copper a similar scenario. The reason we don't see any real competition with ISPs, usually stuck with only 1 or 2 choices for broadband (if that!) is because we don't view the infrastructure as independent from the private businesses selling Internet services.
That's really not fair when the public has paid hundreds of millions in tax dollars for initiatives to help increase broadband deployment (especially to rural areas), and when the telcos were essentially handed 100+ years of copper wire infrastructure built during the era when Ma Bell was a protected monopoly.
While we waste time arguing the pros and cons of net neutrality legislation, we ignore this elephant in the room, to our detriment. We'd be much better off letting Federal government take control over the wired infrastructure itself, but let private businesses have equal access to all of it. That way, our taxes can go to ensuring everyone has good, wired Internet service even in the rural areas where it's not profitable for any private business to bury the cables. But the businesses actually selling you broadband can be free of any govt. regulations over how they choose to price things. Let them compete fair and square, in a market where none of them have an "upper hand" simply because they own some of the cabling to people's doors.
The difference is, the stock markets represent people's monetary investments in businesses, who actually do employ people, manufacture things and provide services of value. When you buy Bitcoin, it doesn't put capital into business ventures.
Screw that.... ANOTHER attempt by government to manipulate the free market economy, with the flawed idea it will improve anything.
You can blame these scripts/bots all you like for product shortages, but I guarantee they'll continue to happen even if all of them are somehow magically prevented from running.
The companies actually building the products are known to limit how many are produced after doing the marketing, knowing full well that shortages drum up more interest and free publicity than making sure there's plenty of supply. (When supply is plentiful, a lot of people decide to buy some other product instead that they feel is going to be harder to obtain as a gift. They figure, "Eh... I can easily get one of THOSE things any time, and judging by how many are on shelves? It'll probably go on sale by then too.")
I know Papa John's pizza has an app with a tracker. Pretty sure Pizza Hut does too. Seems to be a pretty standard feature for chain pizza delivery places at this point.
I get the idea that all of them are just based on timers, plus some kind of data input in the computer at the pizza place? EG. Tracker starts counting down time pizza is supposedly baking in the oven based on when the sale is processed, and delivery time based on entering some other data that says a driver picked it up and went out the door with it.
Having it give an incorrect name of the driver supposedly arriving with your order? That sounds like an error made by whoever was keying the info in for it. That kind of thing is gonna happen and doesn't prove the app is "fake".
But unless each pizza has an embedded RFID chip or something crazy like that, I don't know how you can expect it'll be perfectly accurate all the time? UPS and FedEx have similar "fakery" in use with package tracking. (The package only gets scanned once in a while while in route to you. On stretches between scans, they just estimate delivery times based on when the trucks SHOULD get it from one point to the next in the middle of the route. When packages get lost, the trackers get "brain dead" and often indicate a box was last seen on a truck that it was never even loaded onto. When you call in about such instances, the dispatch people on the phone seem to have a second system where they can pinpoint things better than the user-facing web site data does.)
I'm not saying I'm an expert on the subject - but I do live in the DC metro area and take the red line metro regularly.
As far as I'm able to determine, the maintenance issues they're experiencing are primarily the result of mismanagement and possible corruption. Whatever issues they had addressing water leaks in the tunnels should have LONG since been taken care of as an expected complication of building the tunnels. And yes, they "still leak" in the sense that when we've had a few instances where there was enough torrential rain and/or melting snow -- it caused certain metro stations to be flooded. (I'm not sure that's realistically avoidable? Within a day or so, they had things back under control when that happened, and the system kept running anyway, minus the stations they had to shut down. It wasn't so bad the trains couldn't pass on through them.) Most of the time, any leaking I see is just the slight sound of dripping water, like you'd expect to hear in a cave, and possibly a few small wet spots on the concrete walls. Pretty sure they have pumps in place that are pumping the water back out that's getting in and collecting someplace it's designed to go, and that's where the dripping sound comes from.)
The biggest challenge I see with the DC metro is simply that they designed the whole thing with only 2 tracks... one in each direction. So any time a track needs repair, they go to "single tracking" to get around that spot, and that causes big delays for everyone. It would have been much more efficient if it was built with at least a third "spare" track they could switch to and use in either direction, as needed, in order to fix one of the main two tracks.
But still? There are obvious questions about where the money is all going with DC metro. Doesn't add up that you can have 24 hour/7 day operation of a subway system like New York City has, and yet their fares are still cheaper and their system that much more reliable overall. (I know they keep saying it's because of the larger volume of users in NYC. And that plays a role... but that should ALSO mean more wear and tear, and need to hire more staff to manage it all.)
When I think of SnapChat, I think of "that skeezy service that enables pre-teens to share nude photos of themselves with each other without leaving evidence behind" (since photos you take with it automatically disappear after a short time).
If they're truly redesigning the whole thing to be a "better Facebook than Facebook"? Great -- but they've got a bad reputation to shake off first.
Right now, I really get the feeling that the younger crowd has migrated to SnapChat only because their parents are all over Facebook, making that an automatic "non starter" of a social media option for many of them. (Nobody wants to have a discussion with friends about the opposite sex or a party they attended or what-not, and suddenly have mom or dad, or grandma pipe up in the middle of it.)
But really, Facebook has a far more established service. Features like "memories" that automatically recall and feature old photos you posted and forgot about add more value for people than a service that treats them as disposable.
You do realize, I hope -- that tobacco companies would simply stop advertising in any traditional form if such a ruling was passed. Why spend money running an ad for your product if you're legally required to run another to cancel it out each time? Your best move is to save all those ad dollars and promote the product in a more underground, grass-roots fashion.
It's technically not buying advertising to get a bunch of people to promote the product for you on social media, for example.
Seriously... I love the concept of cash because it's anonymous and "just works". (No need for a whole computerized back-end processing system for someone to be able to accept it from you.) But the way our whole financial system is run today, you're just losing potential buying power if you don't take advantage of credit cards when buying goods or services from legitimate businesses who can accept them.
Not only that, but if I pay with a credit card, I don't have to risk carrying cash around that can get lost or stolen without any recourse. If they steal my credit card(s), all I have to do is call up and report them stolen and I'm off the hook for anything they manage to spend with them.
And while the true usefulness may be debatable at times, my credit cards do offer to extend the factory warranties on products. (I tried to use it one time with a damaged Apple computer and ultimately didn't have any luck. I can't even remember the details anymore, but recall it being kind of a pain. Lots of photos and documentation the card issuer requested from me about the original transaction and problem, only to determine it didn't qualify for compensation.) But at least it's there as a second option. Some may have better luck than I did.
Cash is what I pull out of the bank only in preparation for doing transactions with individuals or events (like local carnivals) where I know they don't accept credit. I might use it to tip at a restaurant, if I have enough of it in my wallet, too. (Just seems like a small favor I can do for restaurant workers to help ensure they're not getting screwed by their employer who might insist on reporting the tips as taxable income.)
I voted for Gary Johnson this last election for exactly the reason that's becoming clear to a lot of people now....
I don't at all think the Democrats would have been a "better choice", given the fact they chose to run one of the absolutely worst possible choices for a candidate with Hillary Clinton. I mean, she was completely out of touch with what life is like for a typical American citizen. It was a unique experience for her just to try to do her own grocery shopping as a publicity stunt. And frankly? I think her husband was even trying to sabotage her campaign discreetly, because he probably had ZERO desire to get stuck living 4 years in the White House again, except as "first man" instead of the leader of the country.
To the credit of the Trump administration, they DID squash the the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), which Obama's administration kept pushing and which would have categorically been a bad thing for America had it passed. But absolutely, Trump is playing the uninformed fool that many of us fully expected him to be if he was elected. Essentially, he's treating the whole thing just like more reality TV and making up anything he thinks sounds good as he goes along. Even so? A lot of people voted for him more to counter the last 8 years of rule by a Democrat - including trying to avoid loading up the Supreme Court with another left-leaning Justice (which would have implications lasting far longer than a Trump presidency).
Ultimately though, yeah -- it doesn't matter anymore if you vote for the Democrats or the Republicans. Either way, you're going to get a leader who has an agenda that doesn't align well with anything resembling the intentions or purposes of the United States of America as it was originally designed by its founders. Republicans keep doing anything they can to help their friends and connections in big business or banking or the stock market. Democrats keep trying to design a government that "mandates equality" with taxation and legislation ensuring every minority group you can think of gets special recognition or privileges that enable them to force the majority to bend to their whims.
I think your experience mimics mine pretty closely, working in the networking, hardware and support side of I.T.
The problem I've always encountered with project managers is they waste inordinate amounts of time and effort on systems to provide reporting or status update capabilities to their superiors. And yet, those higher-ups spend less time actually looking at the data collected than the whole team spent documenting it according to the required procedures.
Especially when we have a real fire to put out, such as a server crash or network circuit down - these people feel like flies buzzing around your head, trying to disrupt your attempts to fix it quickly. They're constantly pestering you for estimates on how long until things are fixed, updates on where you're at in the process, requests to call so-and-so to inform them that they can't do something or other while things are down, etc.
On the flip-side though? I appreciate the value in having a single liaison for upper management to speak with out what the whole team is doing. That's really the only time I feel like a PM adds value. I think most of the time, they just err on the side of trying to collect too much data in case their boss asks for it -- negatively impacting the team's ability to get real work done.
I was just talking to a few union folks (bus drivers and truck drivers) the other day about the fears they have with the driver-less vehicle revolution. In every case, their first reaction was that "the automation must be stopped"! As soon as I argued that there's just no historical case of people successfully putting those genies back into bottles once new technologies emerge, they quieted down and seemed to listen.
The thing is? I don't have any definite solutions for all the disruptive job loss it will create. But I do know that trying to fight the future is a losing strategy.
The worst case scenarios around all of this stuff seem to hinge on a few big corporations owning the entire thing, though. People don't want to live in a future where "Megacorp, Inc" owns every single self-driving car or truck and now collects 100% of all additional profits to be made by eliminating human labor as a cost of doing business.
Perhaps one way to prevent that is by passing legislation that says any business that operates with automation completely replacing human labor as part of the business model MUST be treated as a co-op? If a trucking company uses all driver-less trucks, require it be structured so each business wishing to use its services does so by buying into it with a fraction of ownership.
It may not stop the truck drivers from losing their jobs driving trucks... but at least it ensures the extra wealth generated by taking human employees out of the equation gets spread around - benefiting dozens, hundreds or even thousands of businesses who use the services. That, in turn, means greater opportunities for a variety of other new jobs to pop up.
The negative comments seem to completely ignore the fact that in MOST new communities, the resource limitations are a "make or break" situation because the inhabitants can't afford to pay taxes high enough to cover the costs involved in overcoming them.
(Heck, where I live - we're a town of about 6,000 people, right along the Potomac River. And a big reason some people who come here don't stay long is the high water and sewer bills. Treating the river water is quite expensive.)
If the second richest man in the world is the guy who wants to experiment with making a city work in the desert, I think he could do it. But it depends on how bad he WANTS this to work. Desalination plants could provide ocean water pumped in and processed using solar energy arrays. That's the kind of infrastructure that would get the job done, but at a really big up-front cost if you want it to be viable for residents after it's in place.
The reason there's so much outrage over a glorified TV remote control system is the principle of the whole thing. It reminds people that no matter how much you spend on an electronic gadget, if it relies on a "cloud based" back-end in some manner, you don't *really* own or control it. You just paid to use the thing for as long as the manufacturer deems it worthy of continuing to allow it to operate for you.
Perhaps the most extreme example of this today is the Tesla Motors electric car? You can spend 6 figures on the performance version of a Model S and yet it's still subject to firmware updates Tesla pushes out to it. Not only can they cap and uncap your driving range at will, but they routinely make use of a feature that locks you out of all remote control to your vehicle (commonly done when a Tesla service place has the car overnight for maintenance). The reasoning is sound enough; they don't want you trying to manipulate things like the power windows or horn or lights while it's being worked on. But it still proves they have the "master switch" to turn your ability on and off to communicate with your vehicle that you paid for.
And here's an example of them turning off the "emergency braking" feature on the Model 3's for owners:
I've been saying for years that companies are being "penny wise, pound foolish" trying so hard to "cloudify" their operations. There are things that lend themselves well to being cloud-hosted, like email. (Whether you run your own mail server or not, you're still pushing and pulling everybody's content over the Internet, through other email servers that you don't control at all. And typically, the amount of time your in house I.T. staff will have to spend to address Exchange server related issues doesn't make good economic sense vs. outsourcing all of those issues up to the chain and paying for the mail hosting.) But typically, you're giving too much control and trusting too much security to 3rd. parties. Where I work, we have a DropBox business subscription. Great product and solves a lot of issues for us, but they just did a price increase that will cost us thousands more per year. It was already a pretty hefty expense that keeps going up as the company adds contractors or freelancers who need to share team folders with our employees. Before long, it'll reach a point where it's financially more sensible to host the content ourselves with a "private cloud". Except now, it's a MASSIVE hassle to retrain everyone on a new product and migrate all the data to a different platform. Could have all been avoided if we just tried to do this ourselves from the start, rather than being tempted by the instant gratification of DropBox.
And so what? The fact that the Democratic Republic of the USA exists is viewed as a big F-U by many nations who believe it needs to be forced into conformity with the predominantly socialist governance around the world.
Our legislation has to be created and ratified through proper channels, or else it's just not valid or binding. Doesn't matter if it's the most awesome, best idea ever conceived. If it was never voted on by the legislative branch, it's at best, a temporary order unlikely to last much longer than the term of office of whichever President dictated it.
Completely agree. In some cases, the smartest option is not to bother with a college degree at all. MOST of the time, I think people really aren't sure what they want to do "for a living" when they're fresh out of high-school. For them, college offers the opportunity to learn a little about a lot of subjects, while earning credits towards graduating with some kind of degree that proves they stuck with it all. Even if it doesn't inspire them to focus more intensely on a particular field -- it means they were at least exposed to some options and could be a valuable employee if they find something they'd like to do.
Other times, people figure out before college even gets started that they have a passion for a certain thing. EG. I knew sons of auto mechanics who were rebuilding engines and transmissions for fun, at home, before they even had a drivers' license. College really has nothing to offer them compared to a tech school where they can earn certifications and build skills directly related to automotive maintenance. In my own case, I floundered around in a community college, taking courses just because my parents were teachers and since one worked there part-time, I got my credit hours heavily discounted. All along, I knew all I wanted to do was to go into computer sales and service in some aspect. The best "education" I got was taking a job helping a couple of guys who were trying to get a computer reseller going. I rarely got paid, except occasionally in free computer parts -- but learned a whole lot, hands-on, about assembling PCs and storage arrays, networking, etc.
Conversely, EVERY single person I know who earned a PhD really didn't come out ahead financially after getting it. It earned them some respect in their field and with peers who never achieved that high a degree. But time and again, their stories were ones of struggles finding or keeping jobs that made use of their level of skills. Especially in some areas like Criminal Justice, advanced degrees really have no practical application if you're not interested in a very specific, narrow path.
That might be very true. I can completely relate. But that's why I still have a music collection on physical CD and keep all of my digital music as a library of MP3s stored on one computer, vs. paying for any of these music streaming or rental services. Tried "Apple Music" for a while and hated it. Too many headaches for me, like tracks pausing/stopping in the middle of listening to them if your cellular data connection disappeared while traveling someplace (even if you were listening to a "rented" song you had already stored offline).
I'm kind of a fan of preserving a lot of older tech, and often believe the new stuff is just reinventing wheels that were just fine to begin with. But cassette tape was NOT one of the technologies I'd want to bring back to the forefront.
I mean, sure... as long as there are vintage tape players out there that people would still like to use, it makes sense that SOMEBODY still manufactures cassette tape media for them. But hipsters wanting to buy their new music on cassette when they already have superior options? That's kind of ridiculous.
If nothing else, the whole ritual of rewinding tapes to the beginning of a side or fast-forwarding to get to a song you wanted to hear out of sequence was a pain. Never-mind the unreliability of tape (stretches over time, or gets unwound in the mechanism when a roller in the player acts up). A whole lot of us willingly paid twice for the same albums just to get the same thing we already paid for on compact disc INSTEAD of cassette. Why go back?
Even if you're some kind of analog purist who just has a problem with digital to analog conversions? I think you'd be better served by vinyl records. At least there's a long standing argument made that vinyl adds a "warm coloration" to the sound which just makes some of the music more pleasing to the ears. Cassette only added hiss and usually a limited frequency range (depending on the type of tape and ability of a given player to handle it properly).
Yeah... that's a horrible situation if you take a "rank and file" job with one of them. But it's probably a pretty effective way to ensure the company keeps making good profits despite having clueless management.
I learned a long time ago that many bigger places use this as a standard business model. The "revolving door" works pretty well as a money-making machine, churning through bodies - IF you can keep that churn rate within certain parameters. Management is really only judged by hitting or exceeding whatever targets are set for their departments, so they, in turn, just keep people around for as long as they're producing numbers that help that total stay where they need it to be. If the place is designed around high turnover? They'll just have a whole team of people who process the new applicants as efficiently as possible so that becomes pretty much a fixed cost. (If you're asked to take a lot of standardized tests as part of the hiring process, it's a good clue you're applying at one of these places.)
Often, they'll even create a slew of petty and arbitrary rules so terminating a person can be done pretty much whenever they like without the employee having much of a leg to stand on that it was unjustified. Convergy's used to run call centers in the midwest that absolutely ran this way. Once hired, they set things up so your computer terminal tracked you by the second. Get up for a restroom break? The timer was counting until you returned and pressed another key. You weren't counted as present in the morning until you signed in. Run 30 seconds late because it snowed outside and you had to walk slow not to slip and fall on the ice? That's an automatic mark saved in your file about you being tardy. Work there long enough and you pretty much HAD to rack up at least a half dozen of these. Plenty of ammo for H.R. to use as your reason for termination at will, any time they felt like it.
I got the impression that Musk saw potential in SolarCity as aligning with his claims that electric cars are more environmentally-friendly. If you don't use alternative energy sources like solar to charge the cars up, you run into the issue where you're just drawing power from power plants often still burning coal or oil. Furthermore, if that's the usual scenario for charging stations, it dis-incentivizes adding them where they're most needed. (EG. Parking garages people use in big cities all day while at the office. They're not going to spend the $'s to not only install a good number of them but for the bigger electric bills to keep them operational for everyone. Most people think garage parking rates are sky-high as it is.)
I'm absolutely sure part of his decision DID have to do with trying to help out his cousins, too. But to be fair? I think he saw a way the business fit into the big picture of what he was selling.
Ultimately though? Tesla Motors truly offered a product that the competition couldn't match. It may be the first time in the history of the automobile where a new player came along and outdid ALL of the established name brands. SolarCity, by contrast, survived more on big marketing pushes and name familiarity. The actual services rendered (solar panel installation with either solar leases/loans or outright purchases) are pretty much imitated by many other competitors out there, often with superior pricing. And that Tesla "PowerWall" storage battery they're trying to sell as an accompanying product? Again... I don't see why Tesla Motors can't market that with or without SolarCity? It's still not normally a cost-effective solution for people, given its high price. It'll be enough of a niche so it needs to be offered by pretty much ALL solar vendors to see good sales.
I think it's still a really valid question.... Why aren't these phones designed so an indicator light on them has to be lit if the camera is in use by something? Wire that up in the hardware so it's not a light you can bypass via clever software coding.
Even if you don't care a bit about some app trying to sneakily take pictures or video while you have it running in the background, that impacts your battery life so you'd want to know about it just for that reason.
Just because I grant an app permission to use the camera doesn't mean I'm ok with it trying to mis-use the camera input for other purposes than its stated function it performs while in the foreground.
One guy I used to work with who was a programmer is now in real estate. He said he figured out at some point that owning and renting out properties was a smarter way to earn a living than constantly chasing the moving target of new programming languages and companies who might outsource your job at any time.
Another who used to be self-employed coding for people on a consulting basis told me he got into woodworking, eventually. His reasoning? As you get older, you start asking yourself questions like, "What have I created that will be used and enjoyed by others even after I'm gone?" It's easy to sink years of your life into a software application, only to find that in a decade or two, nobody is using it anymore. It's become "old and obsolete". If you build good quality, hand-crafted furniture pieces? They're quite likely to be used for 100 years or more. Build a dresser for one of your kids and they may even be handing it down to THEIR kids.
I'm not really sure what happened to several of the other guys I used to hang out with who were software developers? I know one kind of transitioned over to web development -- but I see that as more of a lateral move, with so many things becoming web and cloud-based.
I have no inside information or anything, so take this at face value.... just an educated guess by a guy who follows the industry.
But all of the recent rumors about what the next Mac Pro workstation will be lines up nicely with a new Mac Mini. Basically, the next Mac Pro should be a very modular system that allows you to build it with as much or as little as you need.
It makes a lot of sense that you could start such a machine with a "base" that's essentially a Mac Mini. You could design the case so the expansion modules stack, almost like LEGO bricks. Need 3D graphics? Buy the add-on block with the latest video GPUs in it. Need more drive storage? Snap on the storage expansion unit that holds 4 hot-swappable drives in it. Need more CPU power than the base has built into it? Again, fine. Buy the multi-core, multi-processor expansion box that snaps on top and disables the original CPU in the base unit.
IF Apple has anything in mind remotely like this, it makes sense why the Mac Mini hasn't gotten an upgrade for so long. It has to wait for everything else, so it can be launched along with everything else to cover the whole range of needs.
My (albeit limited) experience with academia is that they make incredibly poor hiring decisions when it comes to I.T.
There's the inevitable conflict of interest, for starters. They feel compelled to prove formal educations have real value, so they put a heavy emphasis on your number of degrees, certifications earned, etc. Often, the people who "collect" this stuff are just good at test taking and cramming for exams, but not necessarily any good at actually doing the job.
There's a LOT of "politics" too... I'd say double the amount in corporate America. You can do an amazing job implementing great technology for a college or university, only to find they fire a director and bring in a new guy who feels a need to change it all, just to hide the fact he's unfamiliar with the existing setup. Everything that worked gets scrapped and they waste money and time starting over.
This stuff doesn't happen as much in the business world because successful implementations drive profits, and nobody wants to get rid of money-makers. Schools don't care because their I.T. infrastructure doesn't directly determine the money received from taxes or from student tuition payments.
To be honest? I spent my WHOLE working career worrying about losing job X, Y or Z -- and have lost a few jobs due to the company I worked for filing bankruptcy and shutting down, as well as a layoff and a huge pay cut and threatened layoff at another one. I finally believe I found employment with a company that's not only successful, but makes smart investments in buying other successful small businesses and merging with them. (That, in turn, increases their need for the I.T. support I provide them along with the small, close-knit group of co-workers in my department.)
I don't earn the kind of pay that some of my peers keep telling me I'm "worth", given my number of years of experience. BUT, they do give regular raises as well as annual bonuses and they're flexible with such things as allowing me to work from home on days when I can see that's the most efficient option. I really feel like some of my friends jumped on jobs because of the fat paychecks offered, only to find out that pay rate was only offered because management wasn't very realistic about what they could really afford long-term. As soon as the economy had a down-turn, they were in the unemployment line. No interest in trying to find ways to keep them employed with a few cut hours or other options.
As I've gotten older, I've gotten better about appreciating the "slow and steady wins the race" adage. If I don't at least have the option to stay employed where I'm at through retirement, I believe it will most likely be my own fault (getting bored or burnt out and slacking off too much, maybe?). Anything's possible, but for once, I'm not constantly worried about losing this job.
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Realistically, nobody will be "ok" with a provider who bills Internet at something like "99 cents per month!" and then tacks on itemized fees for using various web sites, making a bill that's really $70 or more. That's a class action lawsuit waiting to happen, if nothing else. (Whether "net neutrality" law dictates a complete explanation of what you're going to be charged -- consumers expect fair advertising and marketing, with fees disclosed.)
The BIGGER issue? I think we're probably approaching the whole thing wrong. A buddy of mine worked for a public utility for years and had the insight to realize that the infrastructure should be separated from the services that run through it.
Just as we let government build and maintain our roads and highways, but let private cars and trucks use them freely? We should consider our coaxial, fiber and copper a similar scenario. The reason we don't see any real competition with ISPs, usually stuck with only 1 or 2 choices for broadband (if that!) is because we don't view the infrastructure as independent from the private businesses selling Internet services.
That's really not fair when the public has paid hundreds of millions in tax dollars for initiatives to help increase broadband deployment (especially to rural areas), and when the telcos were essentially handed 100+ years of copper wire infrastructure built during the era when Ma Bell was a protected monopoly.
While we waste time arguing the pros and cons of net neutrality legislation, we ignore this elephant in the room, to our detriment. We'd be much better off letting Federal government take control over the wired infrastructure itself, but let private businesses have equal access to all of it. That way, our taxes can go to ensuring everyone has good, wired Internet service even in the rural areas where it's not profitable for any private business to bury the cables. But the businesses actually selling you broadband can be free of any govt. regulations over how they choose to price things. Let them compete fair and square, in a market where none of them have an "upper hand" simply because they own some of the cabling to people's doors.
The difference is, the stock markets represent people's monetary investments in businesses, who actually do employ people, manufacture things and provide services of value. When you buy Bitcoin, it doesn't put capital into business ventures.
Screw that.... ANOTHER attempt by government to manipulate the free market economy, with the flawed idea it will improve anything.
You can blame these scripts/bots all you like for product shortages, but I guarantee they'll continue to happen even if all of them are somehow magically prevented from running.
The companies actually building the products are known to limit how many are produced after doing the marketing, knowing full well that shortages drum up more interest and free publicity than making sure there's plenty of supply. (When supply is plentiful, a lot of people decide to buy some other product instead that they feel is going to be harder to obtain as a gift. They figure, "Eh... I can easily get one of THOSE things any time, and judging by how many are on shelves? It'll probably go on sale by then too.")
I know Papa John's pizza has an app with a tracker. Pretty sure Pizza Hut does too. Seems to be a pretty standard feature for chain pizza delivery places at this point.
I get the idea that all of them are just based on timers, plus some kind of data input in the computer at the pizza place? EG. Tracker starts counting down time pizza is supposedly baking in the oven based on when the sale is processed, and delivery time based on entering some other data that says a driver picked it up and went out the door with it.
Having it give an incorrect name of the driver supposedly arriving with your order? That sounds like an error made by whoever was keying the info in for it. That kind of thing is gonna happen and doesn't prove the app is "fake".
But unless each pizza has an embedded RFID chip or something crazy like that, I don't know how you can expect it'll be perfectly accurate all the time? UPS and FedEx have similar "fakery" in use with package tracking. (The package only gets scanned once in a while while in route to you. On stretches between scans, they just estimate delivery times based on when the trucks SHOULD get it from one point to the next in the middle of the route. When packages get lost, the trackers get "brain dead" and often indicate a box was last seen on a truck that it was never even loaded onto. When you call in about such instances, the dispatch people on the phone seem to have a second system where they can pinpoint things better than the user-facing web site data does.)
I'm not saying I'm an expert on the subject - but I do live in the DC metro area and take the red line metro regularly.
As far as I'm able to determine, the maintenance issues they're experiencing are primarily the result of mismanagement and possible corruption. Whatever issues they had addressing water leaks in the tunnels should have LONG since been taken care of as an expected complication of building the tunnels. And yes, they "still leak" in the sense that when we've had a few instances where there was enough torrential rain and/or melting snow -- it caused certain metro stations to be flooded. (I'm not sure that's realistically avoidable? Within a day or so, they had things back under control when that happened, and the system kept running anyway, minus the stations they had to shut down. It wasn't so bad the trains couldn't pass on through them.) Most of the time, any leaking I see is just the slight sound of dripping water, like you'd expect to hear in a cave, and possibly a few small wet spots on the concrete walls. Pretty sure they have pumps in place that are pumping the water back out that's getting in and collecting someplace it's designed to go, and that's where the dripping sound comes from.)
The biggest challenge I see with the DC metro is simply that they designed the whole thing with only 2 tracks ... one in each direction. So any time a track needs repair, they go to "single tracking" to get around that spot, and that causes big delays for everyone. It would have been much more efficient if it was built with at least a third "spare" track they could switch to and use in either direction, as needed, in order to fix one of the main two tracks.
But still? There are obvious questions about where the money is all going with DC metro. Doesn't add up that you can have 24 hour/7 day operation of a subway system like New York City has, and yet their fares are still cheaper and their system that much more reliable overall. (I know they keep saying it's because of the larger volume of users in NYC. And that plays a role ... but that should ALSO mean more wear and tear, and need to hire more staff to manage it all.)
When I think of SnapChat, I think of "that skeezy service that enables pre-teens to share nude photos of themselves with each other without leaving evidence behind" (since photos you take with it automatically disappear after a short time).
If they're truly redesigning the whole thing to be a "better Facebook than Facebook"? Great -- but they've got a bad reputation to shake off first.
Right now, I really get the feeling that the younger crowd has migrated to SnapChat only because their parents are all over Facebook, making that an automatic "non starter" of a social media option for many of them. (Nobody wants to have a discussion with friends about the opposite sex or a party they attended or what-not, and suddenly have mom or dad, or grandma pipe up in the middle of it.)
But really, Facebook has a far more established service. Features like "memories" that automatically recall and feature old photos you posted and forgot about add more value for people than a service that treats them as disposable.
You do realize, I hope -- that tobacco companies would simply stop advertising in any traditional form if such a ruling was passed. Why spend money running an ad for your product if you're legally required to run another to cancel it out each time? Your best move is to save all those ad dollars and promote the product in a more underground, grass-roots fashion.
It's technically not buying advertising to get a bunch of people to promote the product for you on social media, for example.
Seriously ... I love the concept of cash because it's anonymous and "just works". (No need for a whole computerized back-end processing system for someone to be able to accept it from you.) But the way our whole financial system is run today, you're just losing potential buying power if you don't take advantage of credit cards when buying goods or services from legitimate businesses who can accept them.
Not only that, but if I pay with a credit card, I don't have to risk carrying cash around that can get lost or stolen without any recourse. If they steal my credit card(s), all I have to do is call up and report them stolen and I'm off the hook for anything they manage to spend with them.
And while the true usefulness may be debatable at times, my credit cards do offer to extend the factory warranties on products. (I tried to use it one time with a damaged Apple computer and ultimately didn't have any luck. I can't even remember the details anymore, but recall it being kind of a pain. Lots of photos and documentation the card issuer requested from me about the original transaction and problem, only to determine it didn't qualify for compensation.) But at least it's there as a second option. Some may have better luck than I did.
Cash is what I pull out of the bank only in preparation for doing transactions with individuals or events (like local carnivals) where I know they don't accept credit. I might use it to tip at a restaurant, if I have enough of it in my wallet, too. (Just seems like a small favor I can do for restaurant workers to help ensure they're not getting screwed by their employer who might insist on reporting the tips as taxable income.)
I voted for Gary Johnson this last election for exactly the reason that's becoming clear to a lot of people now....
I don't at all think the Democrats would have been a "better choice", given the fact they chose to run one of the absolutely worst possible choices for a candidate with Hillary Clinton. I mean, she was completely out of touch with what life is like for a typical American citizen. It was a unique experience for her just to try to do her own grocery shopping as a publicity stunt. And frankly? I think her husband was even trying to sabotage her campaign discreetly, because he probably had ZERO desire to get stuck living 4 years in the White House again, except as "first man" instead of the leader of the country.
To the credit of the Trump administration, they DID squash the the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), which Obama's administration kept pushing and which would have categorically been a bad thing for America had it passed. But absolutely, Trump is playing the uninformed fool that many of us fully expected him to be if he was elected. Essentially, he's treating the whole thing just like more reality TV and making up anything he thinks sounds good as he goes along. Even so? A lot of people voted for him more to counter the last 8 years of rule by a Democrat - including trying to avoid loading up the Supreme Court with another left-leaning Justice (which would have implications lasting far longer than a Trump presidency).
Ultimately though, yeah -- it doesn't matter anymore if you vote for the Democrats or the Republicans. Either way, you're going to get a leader who has an agenda that doesn't align well with anything resembling the intentions or purposes of the United States of America as it was originally designed by its founders. Republicans keep doing anything they can to help their friends and connections in big business or banking or the stock market. Democrats keep trying to design a government that "mandates equality" with taxation and legislation ensuring every minority group you can think of gets special recognition or privileges that enable them to force the majority to bend to their whims.
I think your experience mimics mine pretty closely, working in the networking, hardware and support side of I.T.
The problem I've always encountered with project managers is they waste inordinate amounts of time and effort on systems to provide reporting or status update capabilities to their superiors. And yet, those higher-ups spend less time actually looking at the data collected than the whole team spent documenting it according to the required procedures.
Especially when we have a real fire to put out, such as a server crash or network circuit down - these people feel like flies buzzing around your head, trying to disrupt your attempts to fix it quickly. They're constantly pestering you for estimates on how long until things are fixed, updates on where you're at in the process, requests to call so-and-so to inform them that they can't do something or other while things are down, etc.
On the flip-side though? I appreciate the value in having a single liaison for upper management to speak with out what the whole team is doing. That's really the only time I feel like a PM adds value. I think most of the time, they just err on the side of trying to collect too much data in case their boss asks for it -- negatively impacting the team's ability to get real work done.
I was just talking to a few union folks (bus drivers and truck drivers) the other day about the fears they have with the driver-less vehicle revolution. In every case, their first reaction was that "the automation must be stopped"! As soon as I argued that there's just no historical case of people successfully putting those genies back into bottles once new technologies emerge, they quieted down and seemed to listen.
The thing is? I don't have any definite solutions for all the disruptive job loss it will create. But I do know that trying to fight the future is a losing strategy.
The worst case scenarios around all of this stuff seem to hinge on a few big corporations owning the entire thing, though. People don't want to live in a future where "Megacorp, Inc" owns every single self-driving car or truck and now collects 100% of all additional profits to be made by eliminating human labor as a cost of doing business.
Perhaps one way to prevent that is by passing legislation that says any business that operates with automation completely replacing human labor as part of the business model MUST be treated as a co-op? If a trucking company uses all driver-less trucks, require it be structured so each business wishing to use its services does so by buying into it with a fraction of ownership.
It may not stop the truck drivers from losing their jobs driving trucks ... but at least it ensures the extra wealth generated by taking human employees out of the equation gets spread around - benefiting dozens, hundreds or even thousands of businesses who use the services. That, in turn, means greater opportunities for a variety of other new jobs to pop up.
The negative comments seem to completely ignore the fact that in MOST new communities, the resource limitations are a "make or break" situation because the inhabitants can't afford to pay taxes high enough to cover the costs involved in overcoming them.
(Heck, where I live - we're a town of about 6,000 people, right along the Potomac River. And a big reason some people who come here don't stay long is the high water and sewer bills. Treating the river water is quite expensive.)
If the second richest man in the world is the guy who wants to experiment with making a city work in the desert, I think he could do it. But it depends on how bad he WANTS this to work. Desalination plants could provide ocean water pumped in and processed using solar energy arrays. That's the kind of infrastructure that would get the job done, but at a really big up-front cost if you want it to be viable for residents after it's in place.
That's my guess.... Apple testers didn't take cold weather into account since they don't really have it there.
The reason there's so much outrage over a glorified TV remote control system is the principle of the whole thing. It reminds people that no matter how much you spend on an electronic gadget, if it relies on a "cloud based" back-end in some manner, you don't *really* own or control it. You just paid to use the thing for as long as the manufacturer deems it worthy of continuing to allow it to operate for you.
Perhaps the most extreme example of this today is the Tesla Motors electric car? You can spend 6 figures on the performance version of a Model S and yet it's still subject to firmware updates Tesla pushes out to it. Not only can they cap and uncap your driving range at will, but they routinely make use of a feature that locks you out of all remote control to your vehicle (commonly done when a Tesla service place has the car overnight for maintenance). The reasoning is sound enough; they don't want you trying to manipulate things like the power windows or horn or lights while it's being worked on. But it still proves they have the "master switch" to turn your ability on and off to communicate with your vehicle that you paid for.
And here's an example of them turning off the "emergency braking" feature on the Model 3's for owners:
https://jalopnik.com/tesla-tem...
I've been saying for years that companies are being "penny wise, pound foolish" trying so hard to "cloudify" their operations. There are things that lend themselves well to being cloud-hosted, like email. (Whether you run your own mail server or not, you're still pushing and pulling everybody's content over the Internet, through other email servers that you don't control at all. And typically, the amount of time your in house I.T. staff will have to spend to address Exchange server related issues doesn't make good economic sense vs. outsourcing all of those issues up to the chain and paying for the mail hosting.) But typically, you're giving too much control and trusting too much security to 3rd. parties. Where I work, we have a DropBox business subscription. Great product and solves a lot of issues for us, but they just did a price increase that will cost us thousands more per year. It was already a pretty hefty expense that keeps going up as the company adds contractors or freelancers who need to share team folders with our employees. Before long, it'll reach a point where it's financially more sensible to host the content ourselves with a "private cloud". Except now, it's a MASSIVE hassle to retrain everyone on a new product and migrate all the data to a different platform. Could have all been avoided if we just tried to do this ourselves from the start, rather than being tempted by the instant gratification of DropBox.
And so what? The fact that the Democratic Republic of the USA exists is viewed as a big F-U by many nations who believe it needs to be forced into conformity with the predominantly socialist governance around the world.
Our legislation has to be created and ratified through proper channels, or else it's just not valid or binding. Doesn't matter if it's the most awesome, best idea ever conceived. If it was never voted on by the legislative branch, it's at best, a temporary order unlikely to last much longer than the term of office of whichever President dictated it.
Completely agree. In some cases, the smartest option is not to bother with a college degree at all. MOST of the time, I think people really aren't sure what they want to do "for a living" when they're fresh out of high-school. For them, college offers the opportunity to learn a little about a lot of subjects, while earning credits towards graduating with some kind of degree that proves they stuck with it all. Even if it doesn't inspire them to focus more intensely on a particular field -- it means they were at least exposed to some options and could be a valuable employee if they find something they'd like to do.
Other times, people figure out before college even gets started that they have a passion for a certain thing. EG. I knew sons of auto mechanics who were rebuilding engines and transmissions for fun, at home, before they even had a drivers' license. College really has nothing to offer them compared to a tech school where they can earn certifications and build skills directly related to automotive maintenance. In my own case, I floundered around in a community college, taking courses just because my parents were teachers and since one worked there part-time, I got my credit hours heavily discounted. All along, I knew all I wanted to do was to go into computer sales and service in some aspect. The best "education" I got was taking a job helping a couple of guys who were trying to get a computer reseller going. I rarely got paid, except occasionally in free computer parts -- but learned a whole lot, hands-on, about assembling PCs and storage arrays, networking, etc.
Conversely, EVERY single person I know who earned a PhD really didn't come out ahead financially after getting it. It earned them some respect in their field and with peers who never achieved that high a degree. But time and again, their stories were ones of struggles finding or keeping jobs that made use of their level of skills. Especially in some areas like Criminal Justice, advanced degrees really have no practical application if you're not interested in a very specific, narrow path.
That might be very true. I can completely relate. But that's why I still have a music collection on physical CD and keep all of my digital music as a library of MP3s stored on one computer, vs. paying for any of these music streaming or rental services. Tried "Apple Music" for a while and hated it. Too many headaches for me, like tracks pausing/stopping in the middle of listening to them if your cellular data connection disappeared while traveling someplace (even if you were listening to a "rented" song you had already stored offline).
I'm kind of a fan of preserving a lot of older tech, and often believe the new stuff is just reinventing wheels that were just fine to begin with. But cassette tape was NOT one of the technologies I'd want to bring back to the forefront.
I mean, sure ... as long as there are vintage tape players out there that people would still like to use, it makes sense that SOMEBODY still manufactures cassette tape media for them. But hipsters wanting to buy their new music on cassette when they already have superior options? That's kind of ridiculous.
If nothing else, the whole ritual of rewinding tapes to the beginning of a side or fast-forwarding to get to a song you wanted to hear out of sequence was a pain. Never-mind the unreliability of tape (stretches over time, or gets unwound in the mechanism when a roller in the player acts up). A whole lot of us willingly paid twice for the same albums just to get the same thing we already paid for on compact disc INSTEAD of cassette. Why go back?
Even if you're some kind of analog purist who just has a problem with digital to analog conversions? I think you'd be better served by vinyl records. At least there's a long standing argument made that vinyl adds a "warm coloration" to the sound which just makes some of the music more pleasing to the ears. Cassette only added hiss and usually a limited frequency range (depending on the type of tape and ability of a given player to handle it properly).
Yeah... that's a horrible situation if you take a "rank and file" job with one of them. But it's probably a pretty effective way to ensure the company keeps making good profits despite having clueless management.
I learned a long time ago that many bigger places use this as a standard business model. The "revolving door" works pretty well as a money-making machine, churning through bodies - IF you can keep that churn rate within certain parameters. Management is really only judged by hitting or exceeding whatever targets are set for their departments, so they, in turn, just keep people around for as long as they're producing numbers that help that total stay where they need it to be. If the place is designed around high turnover? They'll just have a whole team of people who process the new applicants as efficiently as possible so that becomes pretty much a fixed cost. (If you're asked to take a lot of standardized tests as part of the hiring process, it's a good clue you're applying at one of these places.)
Often, they'll even create a slew of petty and arbitrary rules so terminating a person can be done pretty much whenever they like without the employee having much of a leg to stand on that it was unjustified. Convergy's used to run call centers in the midwest that absolutely ran this way. Once hired, they set things up so your computer terminal tracked you by the second. Get up for a restroom break? The timer was counting until you returned and pressed another key. You weren't counted as present in the morning until you signed in. Run 30 seconds late because it snowed outside and you had to walk slow not to slip and fall on the ice? That's an automatic mark saved in your file about you being tardy. Work there long enough and you pretty much HAD to rack up at least a half dozen of these. Plenty of ammo for H.R. to use as your reason for termination at will, any time they felt like it.
I got the impression that Musk saw potential in SolarCity as aligning with his claims that electric cars are more environmentally-friendly. If you don't use alternative energy sources like solar to charge the cars up, you run into the issue where you're just drawing power from power plants often still burning coal or oil. Furthermore, if that's the usual scenario for charging stations, it dis-incentivizes adding them where they're most needed. (EG. Parking garages people use in big cities all day while at the office. They're not going to spend the $'s to not only install a good number of them but for the bigger electric bills to keep them operational for everyone. Most people think garage parking rates are sky-high as it is.)
I'm absolutely sure part of his decision DID have to do with trying to help out his cousins, too. But to be fair? I think he saw a way the business fit into the big picture of what he was selling.
Ultimately though? Tesla Motors truly offered a product that the competition couldn't match. It may be the first time in the history of the automobile where a new player came along and outdid ALL of the established name brands. SolarCity, by contrast, survived more on big marketing pushes and name familiarity. The actual services rendered (solar panel installation with either solar leases/loans or outright purchases) are pretty much imitated by many other competitors out there, often with superior pricing. And that Tesla "PowerWall" storage battery they're trying to sell as an accompanying product? Again... I don't see why Tesla Motors can't market that with or without SolarCity? It's still not normally a cost-effective solution for people, given its high price. It'll be enough of a niche so it needs to be offered by pretty much ALL solar vendors to see good sales.
I think it's still a really valid question.... Why aren't these phones designed so an indicator light on them has to be lit if the camera is in use by something? Wire that up in the hardware so it's not a light you can bypass via clever software coding.
Even if you don't care a bit about some app trying to sneakily take pictures or video while you have it running in the background, that impacts your battery life so you'd want to know about it just for that reason.
Just because I grant an app permission to use the camera doesn't mean I'm ok with it trying to mis-use the camera input for other purposes than its stated function it performs while in the foreground.
Let's see....
One guy I used to work with who was a programmer is now in real estate. He said he figured out at some point that owning and renting out properties was a smarter way to earn a living than constantly chasing the moving target of new programming languages and companies who might outsource your job at any time.
Another who used to be self-employed coding for people on a consulting basis told me he got into woodworking, eventually. His reasoning? As you get older, you start asking yourself questions like, "What have I created that will be used and enjoyed by others even after I'm gone?" It's easy to sink years of your life into a software application, only to find that in a decade or two, nobody is using it anymore. It's become "old and obsolete". If you build good quality, hand-crafted furniture pieces? They're quite likely to be used for 100 years or more. Build a dresser for one of your kids and they may even be handing it down to THEIR kids.
I'm not really sure what happened to several of the other guys I used to hang out with who were software developers? I know one kind of transitioned over to web development -- but I see that as more of a lateral move, with so many things becoming web and cloud-based.
I have no inside information or anything, so take this at face value .... just an educated guess by a guy who follows the industry.
But all of the recent rumors about what the next Mac Pro workstation will be lines up nicely with a new Mac Mini. Basically, the next Mac Pro should be a very modular system that allows you to build it with as much or as little as you need.
It makes a lot of sense that you could start such a machine with a "base" that's essentially a Mac Mini. You could design the case so the expansion modules stack, almost like LEGO bricks. Need 3D graphics? Buy the add-on block with the latest video GPUs in it. Need more drive storage? Snap on the storage expansion unit that holds 4 hot-swappable drives in it. Need more CPU power than the base has built into it? Again, fine. Buy the multi-core, multi-processor expansion box that snaps on top and disables the original CPU in the base unit.
IF Apple has anything in mind remotely like this, it makes sense why the Mac Mini hasn't gotten an upgrade for so long. It has to wait for everything else, so it can be launched along with everything else to cover the whole range of needs.
My (albeit limited) experience with academia is that they make incredibly poor hiring decisions when it comes to I.T.
There's the inevitable conflict of interest, for starters. They feel compelled to prove formal educations have real value, so they put a heavy emphasis on your number of degrees, certifications earned, etc. Often, the people who "collect" this stuff are just good at test taking and cramming for exams, but not necessarily any good at actually doing the job.
There's a LOT of "politics" too ... I'd say double the amount in corporate America. You can do an amazing job implementing great technology for a college or university, only to find they fire a director and bring in a new guy who feels a need to change it all, just to hide the fact he's unfamiliar with the existing setup. Everything that worked gets scrapped and they waste money and time starting over.
This stuff doesn't happen as much in the business world because successful implementations drive profits, and nobody wants to get rid of money-makers. Schools don't care because their I.T. infrastructure doesn't directly determine the money received from taxes or from student tuition payments.
To be honest? I spent my WHOLE working career worrying about losing job X, Y or Z -- and have lost a few jobs due to the company I worked for filing bankruptcy and shutting down, as well as a layoff and a huge pay cut and threatened layoff at another one. I finally believe I found employment with a company that's not only successful, but makes smart investments in buying other successful small businesses and merging with them. (That, in turn, increases their need for the I.T. support I provide them along with the small, close-knit group of co-workers in my department.)
I don't earn the kind of pay that some of my peers keep telling me I'm "worth", given my number of years of experience. BUT, they do give regular raises as well as annual bonuses and they're flexible with such things as allowing me to work from home on days when I can see that's the most efficient option. I really feel like some of my friends jumped on jobs because of the fat paychecks offered, only to find out that pay rate was only offered because management wasn't very realistic about what they could really afford long-term. As soon as the economy had a down-turn, they were in the unemployment line. No interest in trying to find ways to keep them employed with a few cut hours or other options.
As I've gotten older, I've gotten better about appreciating the "slow and steady wins the race" adage. If I don't at least have the option to stay employed where I'm at through retirement, I believe it will most likely be my own fault (getting bored or burnt out and slacking off too much, maybe?). Anything's possible, but for once, I'm not constantly worried about losing this job.