I don't think Apple owes anyone any refunds in this situation. They provided the products that were ordered, and apparently, in good working condition.
Pearson *may* have misrepresented what they were actually selling on the software side of things, but that would be an issue for the courts to decide, should they get challenged on it.
The ridiculous thing is that the school district spent all this money, approving a plan that they clearly didn't test well enough in advance. Personally, I do think iPads could have a legitimate place in school as learning tools. But like any electronic device, they're only as good (or bad) as their implementation. For starters, I think they're expensive enough so any school purchasing them for a large group (or all?) of their students should have a cost justification plan in place as part of the project. (Basically, you'd have to get all of your physical textbooks in e-book format, negotiated as part of a deal so it's much cheaper to get them and keep them current in digital format on the iPad vs. buying the printed textbooks.)
I think you'd also have to have your school's wi-fi network in order, ensuring the iPad users can't just get online and surf random web sites. The iPads would also need to be centrally managed to protect against theft and to control which apps were installed on them, etc.
I think all of this could be done, but I'm not so confident anyone has ever successfully done all of it properly, to date? (I see so many schools who don't even seem to have a good handle on their wireless security. They'll claim students aren't allowed to use it to get to sites they're not supposed to be on, and 10 minutes later you have a student laughing because he's using their network to access porn sites via a proxy or VPN tunnel they didn't account for.)
I don't really know anyone who read this story and thought the guy was a jerk for doing this?
The issue I have is just the way these things get reported in the news, as though we're all too clueless to understand that these CEOs aren't really putting a crimp in their lifestyles when they make these "sacrifices".
I think it was just last week in USA Today, they did an article listing 5 CEOs who only accepted a $1 salary this year. We all know that's basically just a gimmick. When you're CEO of a successful company, you likely have very little in the way of personal expenses. You can charge almost everything you do to the company, negating the need for your own personal salary. Your wealth is primarily made of the stock options you hold.
Yes, you could make the argument that whatever salary a CEO volunteers not to accept is money going back to the company's bottom line. But as CEO, the salary they accept is pretty arbitrary to begin with, AND probably entangles them in a lot of tax law too. (I can imagine there are cases where taking a small salary is actually the smarter financial move for someone than getting taxed on a big income.) If as CEO I accept a "raise" from $1 million a year to $2 million a year (you know, because things are going well and stockholders are pleased?), and then the following year I take a 50% pay cut voluntarily -- did I really just "save the company $1 million", or was I just playing a numbers game? Depends on your perspective, I think.....
I've got to admit that initially, I was *not* excited by the Apple watch announcement at all. Like a lot of people, I was thinking, "Stupid! Most people don't wear watches anymore. The smartphone is what KILLED them for many of us!" I thought the prices were insanely high for the fancier models, and it's little more than a "remote display/control for the phone" anyway.
I'm also aware of the Android watches that came first, and one of my best friends uses one. It has its good points, but I never felt it was anything I'd use myself.
But as it turns out, Apple's online ordering for the new watch went live on the day of our anniversary, so my wife offered to get me one as a gift. (Frankly, I wasn't willing to stay awake until 3AM to place an order, but the "hype machine" did at least convince me to browse Apple's site before I went to bed, just to see what configurations they had. I mentioned to my wife that if I was going to get one, I'd probably do the space grey with a black sport band -- as it was the only one I thought looked any good without spending crazy prices for the upscale editions.) Turns out she DID stay up until 3AM and ordered that one for me.
So now, as I wait my 4-6 weeks for delivery, I've been doing more research to find out exactly what this thing will and won't be able to do for me. And as the long-term reviews come out from people who got to use one for a week or more, it sounds promising. Unlike the initial reports that the Apple Watch would basically "do nothing but tell the time" when it wasn't paired up with your phone in your pocket? I'm finding out that's not quite so. For starters, it apparently has 2GB of storage in it for music. So you can use it as a music player with a pair of bluetooth earbuds without your phone anywhere around. It's also smart enough to pair to your phone via your wi-fi network, as well as via low power bluetooth. So you can walk around your house or office and the watch will be fully functional, even though your phone was left on your desk or nightstand.
Additionally, reports are coming out that as long as the watch is on a wi-fi network, you can send and receive iMessages on it without the need of a paired phone.
Then there's the fitness tracker aspect of it. My workplace just started a program where everyone gets a free FitBit and there's a website you can log into to compete with co-workers for who walked the most in a day or a week, etc. etc. It's part of the overall "wellness program". Great, but I really dislike my new FitBit. Because it lacks any GPS functionality, it's too "brain dead" to realize when I'm in a car, on the metro, in a plane, etc. etc. -- so any vibrations that happen get counted as steps taken. It can literally be 50% off on counting your steps! The Apple Watch and iPhone combo makes a far more powerful fitness tracker than FitBit.
So yeah, the Apple Watch is definitely not a "need", but simply a "want". And many people may not want it at all. That's fine. But I think I'm forced to rethink my original opinion that this was generally going to be a bad idea for Apple. What it may do is re-kindle the interest in wearing a watch around, because it finally gives people some reasons why they should consider doing so, EVEN THOUGH they carry a smartphone already.
I'm glad so many people enjoy it, and it speaks to the quality of original television HBO has managed to create in recent years. (Great way to re-imagine themselves as they realized their classic business model wasn't going to sustain them into the future. Too much competition with the business model of offering a selection of "seen before" movies to view for a fixed monthly rate.)
But for whatever reason (and frankly, I can't explain it!), I just can't really get into television or movies that take place in these time-frames? I could barely get through any of those medieval times movies with knights on horses jousting and dragons and castle sieges. (That's despite one of my best friends constantly watching that stuff and trying to get me into it, years ago.) Anything about ancient Rome or even non-existent fantasy worlds with similar levels of technology (a la Lord of the Rings)? Same thing.... Just not feeling it.
And I feel kind of guilty about it, because by contrast, I love good science fiction. Anyone else out there relate to this? I feel like the only guy on the planet who loved Star Wars, Star Trek, the remake of BSG, etc. etc. -- yet who couldn't ever bring himself to bother watching The Hobbit or the LOTR trilogy!
Good stuff. This could be printed out and handed to every middle manager in I.T., and it'd be the single best summary of what they need to do that I've seen yet.
I have to admit that I haven't even looked at the job listings on Dice for years (largely because I've been happily employed and didn't feel the need). But as someone with a background in network/systems administration, PC support, etc. -- I distinctly recall finding FEW interesting listings on Dice. The web site seemed slanted towards those looking for software coding or web development jobs, DBAs, or specialists in rolling out and supporting large ERP packages.
So when a survey from Dice tells me that there's more growth, opportunity and money in all of those areas -- I have to take that with a grain of salt.
I mean, look.... I think we should all know by now that help desk jobs are a dead end, unless you're with one of the few remaining companies who hires from within and essentially demands you do your time on their help desk to earn the right to one of the better positions in I.T. they offer. We don't need a survey to tell us that. There's a whole group of jobs out there that tend to have titles like "systems specialist", "support specialist", "support analyst" or even "network manager" where you're likely to wear multiple hats. Often, these turn out to be jobs where you're really the only full-time I.T. person for a small business who finally decided to get serious about I.T. and quit hiring consultants at hourly rates whenever they screwed things up. Other times, you're part of a team who does everything from help desk type support to ensuring backups run to making recommendations for upgrading the whole infrastructure.
I find these positions to be right up my alley, in the sense they aren't as likely to get boring and I get to "call the shots" more and more often, as I get established in such a role and prove to management that I know what I'm doing. (You probably won't make big $'s in these positions, but you'll get your hands on all sorts of different things and get a decent shot at working for a business where you're not just a number or line-item in a spreadsheet.)
So sure.... Dice can hawk the software development side of I.T. as "where the money's at!" -- but I'm good doing what I do, thanks.
At least 5 years ago, I heard the exact same complaint about what it looked like on your typical college campus.... Dozens of people wandering around the courtyards, faces buried in their phones.
Perhaps it only "seems very abnormal and unhealthy" because we're all part of the older generation that didn't ever have the devices in the first place?
I, too, used to think it was a "disturbing" trend... but I often find myself doing the same thing now, when I'm grabbing lunch at work or waiting for the metro train, or just waiting someplace in line. Truth is, the younger generation really uses these things as their primarily communications tool. When it looks like they're a bunch of zombies staring into smartphone screens, they're actually *interacting* with each other via those screens -- so it is a form of being social.
And I know in my own case, I was never a very social, outgoing person in the first place. Large social settings full of strangers were always uncomfortable for me. Looking back, I would have LOVED to have a smartphone back then to pull out, instead of just holding a drink and trying to look like I was having a good time.
Kids with pre-existing mental health conditions find their problems amplified by the use of smartphones and the various social media tools typically used on them?
My 12 year old daughter has a few issues (anxiety, depression, mood swings) and we wound up taking away her smartphone after it seemed to keep causing problems. (Everything from a constant stress inducer when she "forgot to charge it and it was almost dead" when we were out someplace, to forgetting where she put it, to fights over putting the phone away while we were eating at the table, to eventually catching her sexting a guy on it and having inappropriate IM chats using it.)
On the other hand, I don't see why for many kids, a smartphone is anything more than another useful tool to carry around in one's pocket?
Despite the article's claims, the discussion directly below it makes it pretty clear that a lot of finger-pointing is going on around the whole thing. Some people assert that "firmware should never try to adjust anything to get around an OS bug", yet that's been commonplace for well over a decade now!
(Anyone remember the old PC BIOS's which would require you toggle "Plug and Play" to Yes for a Windows '9x type OS, or select "No" for others? How about the ones that let you enable or disable the USB 2.0 "high speed" functionality? If that wasn't a work-around for OS/driver issues, what was it? Because USB 2 is supposed to be backwards compatible with the slower 1.1 devices. Heck, I remember a few BIOS's out there where I had to specifically set "OS/2" to "Yes" so they'd work right with installing it.)
The poster I replied to was talking about a Toshiba machines the purposely disabled ALL of the devices if it couldn't determine you were booting a version of Windows. That's a lot more extreme than things like "the on-board sound not initializing if the Linux default value for ACPI gets presented to it".
Now THAT would make me apt to return the computer for a refund and buy something different.... It's one thing for Linux to support a newer level of ACPI that many popular vendors/machines don't behave well with. (I get the idea of reporting a value of 2 instead of 5 to make things work in these cases. Why not? It's a one character solution to the OS misbehaving on those systems. Just make a note as to why it's done and allow users to edit a file to change it to 5 for full ACPI functionality in cases where it will work.
But to have a computer that willfully disables hardware because it thinks you're "trying to run something other than Windows"? That's done on purpose by Toshiba, if you ask me -- and was a ploy to ensure only Windows stays on the machine. (Maybe for tech support reasons, so they don't have to worry about fielding calls from users of Linux or other OS's who they have no support database built for?) I'd prefer not to use something designed like that.
I thought at one point in time, it was agreed on that no single nation "owned" the moon. Therefore, what happens if someone goes up there for a commercial project and sells material gathered there? Is it "first come, first to profit"?
It just seems to me that although right now, people might think it obvious that whoever spends all the money and effort to get there and retrieve a substance should have the rights to it -- what happens when this process gets cheaper and easier to do? Will people who arrive there try to stake a claim for a certain number of square kilometers of the moon as "their work area" and fight about it if someone extracts helium 3 or something else while on their claimed area?
If nothing else, I'd certainly advocate for changing railroad overpasses/underpasses to make them less accessible to people, wherever possible. My reasoning is, anyone wanting to use "getting hit by a train" as a means of suicide is selfishly affecting the lives of others who shouldn't have had to get directly involved. Those trains aren't automated... They're operated by engineers, who have to deal with the memories of running over a person while operating the locomotive and are often haunted with the "What if?" questions, if they could have stopped the train sooner or not approached a station so fast, or ?
The person who equated this article to advocating "blocking the exits" is exactly right. The individual who actually plans to end their life in a fully conscious, fit state of mind has also surely come up with a plan that will get around any number of "blocked exit" strategies (like locking up personal guns in a cabinet, or hiding the keys to the car). They're not who this article refers to, IMO.
But the person who is distraught enough to actually go through with a plan that has a high likelihood of ending their life (as opposed to FAR more of them who might talk about it or use a half-hearted attempt as attention-seeking behavior) are going to do it when the mood strikes them. And the original article seems to be saying it's effective and appropriate to remote as many possible means to accomplish this as possible, so the means will be lacking when the mood strikes.
My problem with this is that it's only a band-aid for the underlying issue... someone's severe depression. If it's not possible to get a person to get back the will to live, what quality of life do they have anyway, while you've "succeeded in preventing their suicide" by locking all of your knives up in a box?
As others said, there's not necessarily a guarantee Russia wouldn't decide to use Snowden as a bargaining chip or sorts, turning him over to the U.S. govt. at a very inopportune time for him to get any hope of justice. Surely, that's in the back of his head as at least a lingering possibility?
Also, he has quite a bit of support in the U.S. from people who think he's a hero, not a criminal. (Not everyone makes the front cover of Wired magazine, covered in a positive way.) Our current folks in political office may not care for him -- but *if* he could negotiate a high profile trial here, at least there would be a LOT of eyeballs watching, concerned that he received a fair outcome.
I'm positive he'd instantly find work in the private sector too, doing infosec of some sort.
I just attended a seminar today where a couple of Microsoft people gave presentations. One thing that they made pretty clear is that Microsoft's Azure "cloud" is a HUGE part of their future business model.
Right now, when you ask the typical MS user if they can name 3 things Azure does, they usually get stuck naming even one item. But one of these days, Microsoft hopes to embrace the software as subscription model to the point where practically everyone will just pay for Azure to spin up and host whatever servers they wish, vs. trying to run their own on their own hardware, in-house.
They've also made a big deal in their recent marketing about the Titanfall game running on Azure -- and I'm sure there will be more of this to come. If they do a Minecraft sequel, I'd suspect it will be designed so people can easily host Minecraft servers on Azure (probably with a friendly web front-end to create and configure them?). Maybe that will be the ONLY authorized way to do it?
I think this is a great strategy, but how would Epic Games know what a developer's gross income was, year after year, on a particular game title? Is this a matter of Epic trusting them to report it honestly, or is it part of contractual terms where you're required to supply them with your tax records each year, or what?
I'm thinking this might be similar to what some of the video card manufacturers have done (such as with the R9280X cards), where a physical DIP switch on the card selects between firmware flash A or B. If you suspected corruption, you could flip the switch to use the alternate, which presumably would be loaded from the factory with good, working firmware of whatever version was most recent at the time the product was manufactured.
I suppose this would technically only give you "one shot" at recovering from a firmware hack... but better than nothing, right? And in the meantime, it would give protection to people from such things as a corrupt flash update or a way to do an easy A/B comparison between 2 firmware revisions.
I know that sounds a little snarky.... but that's been one of my issues with the Civ games for quite some time. It seems like as you get into the "thick" of the game, with a lot of units occupying more and more space -- the system resources taken get pretty large. It often leads to slowdowns and a freeze-up or crash before the game can be completed.
The difference, IMO, is that obtaining a real guitar to play with one of these games is really not much more "out of reach" than getting the plastic toy version.
If you want to play a sport like football, you have to gather together a willing team of players. If you want to drive a real car on a racetrack, that involves some expense and a suitable car. Chuck rocks at pigs? Umm.... sure, if you have a handy pig pen to go visit at whatever hour of day or night you're ready to play that game, and you have an ample supply of rocks to throw, plus nobody who'll call the cops on you.
I never had much interest in the Guitar Hero franchise, because meh.... playing a fake plastic guitar with buttons similar to the old "Simon" game I had as a pre-teen seems rather pointless. People put all that effort into mastering it and it's a useless skill for anything else. Why bother?
Rocksmith did interest me, because it was all about actually learning songs using your favorite electric guitar. But only a few minutes into that one, I realized I wasn't getting into it either. I like what they tried to do with it, but like others here said -- why no standard guitar tablature? The whole scrolling neck thing works for Guitar Hero, but I found it pretty disorienting and non-intuitive for learning music on a real guitar. Maybe offer a toggle between views/modes at least?
Also, maybe it's just me... but I feel like the era of the "guitar god" and stadium rock is pretty much behind us. These games still cling to that theme, that you're trying to play bigger and bigger live shows, seeking the applause of the fans, etc. etc. But do people even really relate to that anymore? I guess it's one mechanism to try to make the game rewarding -- but part of me feels too old for that nonsense. I want a game that makes practicing songs and new guitar techniques fun, but without making me pretend I'm 25 years younger and striving to make it big in the era of 80's hair metal.
Net metering doesn't force the utility to provide a service without getting compensated for it. Here in Maryland, I'm billed for the transport costs to move the power BOTH to or FROM my residence. So I have to cover a cost of my generated solar power getting pushed back out over their lines.
As I also pointed out, if the utilities were more forward-thinking and less resistant to change, they'd embrace PV solar as a useful addition to their overall system. There are pretty large losses involved in transporting power long distances to customers from the central power generation plant. That's why you see those big structures surrounded by chain link fence. They contain transformers needed to step up the voltage to compensate for resistive losses going over miles of copper wire on the poles.
If they've got people scattered about with small solar power generation capabilities on their roofs, they can purchase and immediately resell excess power generated there and avoid the big transmission losses.
I completely agree that this stuff requires some coordination with the utility company, for best results. As it is, you can't even get a solar system up and running without filling out a lot of paperwork, undergoing an inspection, and waiting for an approval from the utility though. So the ball is in their court in this respect. (They DO have first-hand knowledge of exactly where the solar systems will go online and how much power they're capable of generating.)
Most likely, what will happen is when particular neighborhoods reach a certain saturation level of solar installation, the power company will have to say - "Sorry... We won't approve any more new systems here with more than X amount of generation capacity because we've got all we need for this geographic area."
You're correct, except in reality, those of us adopting PV solar right now aren't really so much expecting the utility company to act as a battery as we expect that they'll be able to immediately redirect/resell the excess electricity we generate to another customer nearby.
I believe a recent statistic said solar adoption would, in fact, work nicely this way in any given neighborhood until it exceeds at least a threshold of around 8%?
In my own town, for example... we have a population of roughly 6,000. As far as I'm aware, there are only approximately 5 residences using PV solar. (I think the city makes some use of solar as well for the water treatment plant, but that's probably NOT a situation where they're generating more than they're using and expecting repayment for excess generation!) Even if you assume you've got 3 or 4 (or more) people living in one residence in some cases, and a number of people in apartment complexes? It's clear we haven't hit the saturation point yet where more people are making power than want to use it at that same time.
If the utility company can resell the power I generate and push back out over the wires connected to my house, that's power they don't have to generate themselves AND transmit a relatively long distance, running it through "step up" transformers and so on to offset losses from the electrical resistance of the long run of wire. In that sense, it should be valuable to them -- not something inherently "bad" or "problematic".
Crowdfunding albums has been done before. I'm pretty sure RadioHead tried this with a recent album, as did Nine Inch Nails. David Bowie may have done so too? (Just going by memory here...)
In any case, I think the concern with going this route is that once the novelty of doing it wears off, you'll quickly have little more than a "race to the bottom", where artists everywhere are releasing works this way, and people won't contribute much money at all to any one project. (The early adopters of the model did well with it, primarily because people were paying them the "going rate" for albums, or more in some cases, as a show of support for trying the new business model and taking risks.)
Again, I'm not really sure what the answer is with all of this? Many, many years ago, musicians were "professionals for hire" -- LONG before it was even possible to record audio. The wealthy paid them to do live gigs at their parties and what-not, and that was pretty much the extent of how profit was made from it. Maybe we're headed back that way, where live concerts are the only practical way to profit from making music -- and anything else is simply done to market your music and get your "brand" out there?
Truthfully, I don't even know that I care? I love music and I used to even play guitar in a local band for a couple years (long time ago). Part of me thinks our society is poorer for eliminating the possibility (however faint) that some teens jamming together in a garage can aspire to become stars, making millions, if they just believe in themselves and doggedly keep practicing and playing, playing, playing. But another part of me knows that's exactly why I got out of the music scene too. The writing was on the wall that this wasn't going to be a good living for many people at all, as technology progressed and things changed. (First, we saw the decline of the radio DJ who was allowed to run his/her own show, playing whatever he/she liked. Then we saw the major labels implode (deservedly, basically). And just as the indie labels and individual entrepreneurs were picking up the pieces and going DYI -- things went to digital streaming for "all you want to listen to for $10 a month" services.
I see you posted anonymous. Nice.... so you can't even sign your name to your opinion on this topic?
The "flat earth" debate has long ceased to be a debate because it's essentially PROVEN at this point that the planet is, indeed, a sphere. (The only people still denying it are a very SMALL portion of the population who may well do so just to be contrary, vs. having a true belief in it.)
I'm not whining and fussing about a few dollars coming from my pocket, at all. I *am*, however, saying, there's a LOT of B.S. going around, especially in areas like "alternative energy solutions" right now.
I actually HAVE a PV solar system I purchased for our house, outright -- and that cost me more than "a few dollars". Even so, I'd happily tell anyone who asks how much total B.S. and nonsense is promised by the "Eco Green, pro solar" crowd and adjust their expectations before they commit to a solar loan or purchase.
It's *only* via artificially manufactured govt. subsidies that this stuff makes good financial sense for most customers. It's NOT cost effective on its own, especially when you consider the costs they don't like to talk about -- such as labor to disassemble a whole solar system from your roof, in order to replace roofing shingles that are at the end of their useful life, or the cost to replace a dying inverter outside of the warranty period (typically less than HALF the warranty length offered on your panels themselves).
A serious change would involve building new, safer nuclear power plants and using those to generate all of our energy needs where options like hydroelectric weren't viable options. Guess what though? That's not really profitable for the special interests getting big payouts from technologies like solar right now, so that's not up for so much real discussion.....
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think Apple owes anyone any refunds in this situation. They provided the products that were ordered, and apparently, in good working condition.
Pearson *may* have misrepresented what they were actually selling on the software side of things, but that would be an issue for the courts to decide, should they get challenged on it.
The ridiculous thing is that the school district spent all this money, approving a plan that they clearly didn't test well enough in advance. Personally, I do think iPads could have a legitimate place in school as learning tools. But like any electronic device, they're only as good (or bad) as their implementation. For starters, I think they're expensive enough so any school purchasing them for a large group (or all?) of their students should have a cost justification plan in place as part of the project. (Basically, you'd have to get all of your physical textbooks in e-book format, negotiated as part of a deal so it's much cheaper to get them and keep them current in digital format on the iPad vs. buying the printed textbooks.)
I think you'd also have to have your school's wi-fi network in order, ensuring the iPad users can't just get online and surf random web sites. The iPads would also need to be centrally managed to protect against theft and to control which apps were installed on them, etc.
I think all of this could be done, but I'm not so confident anyone has ever successfully done all of it properly, to date? (I see so many schools who don't even seem to have a good handle on their wireless security. They'll claim students aren't allowed to use it to get to sites they're not supposed to be on, and 10 minutes later you have a student laughing because he's using their network to access porn sites via a proxy or VPN tunnel they didn't account for.)
I don't really know anyone who read this story and thought the guy was a jerk for doing this?
The issue I have is just the way these things get reported in the news, as though we're all too clueless to understand that these CEOs aren't really putting a crimp in their lifestyles when they make these "sacrifices".
I think it was just last week in USA Today, they did an article listing 5 CEOs who only accepted a $1 salary this year. We all know that's basically just a gimmick. When you're CEO of a successful company, you likely have very little in the way of personal expenses. You can charge almost everything you do to the company, negating the need for your own personal salary. Your wealth is primarily made of the stock options you hold.
Yes, you could make the argument that whatever salary a CEO volunteers not to accept is money going back to the company's bottom line. But as CEO, the salary they accept is pretty arbitrary to begin with, AND probably entangles them in a lot of tax law too. (I can imagine there are cases where taking a small salary is actually the smarter financial move for someone than getting taxed on a big income.) If as CEO I accept a "raise" from $1 million a year to $2 million a year (you know, because things are going well and stockholders are pleased?), and then the following year I take a 50% pay cut voluntarily -- did I really just "save the company $1 million", or was I just playing a numbers game? Depends on your perspective, I think.....
I've got to admit that initially, I was *not* excited by the Apple watch announcement at all. Like a lot of people, I was thinking, "Stupid! Most people don't wear watches anymore. The smartphone is what KILLED them for many of us!" I thought the prices were insanely high for the fancier models, and it's little more than a "remote display/control for the phone" anyway.
I'm also aware of the Android watches that came first, and one of my best friends uses one. It has its good points, but I never felt it was anything I'd use myself.
But as it turns out, Apple's online ordering for the new watch went live on the day of our anniversary, so my wife offered to get me one as a gift. (Frankly, I wasn't willing to stay awake until 3AM to place an order, but the "hype machine" did at least convince me to browse Apple's site before I went to bed, just to see what configurations they had. I mentioned to my wife that if I was going to get one, I'd probably do the space grey with a black sport band -- as it was the only one I thought looked any good without spending crazy prices for the upscale editions.) Turns out she DID stay up until 3AM and ordered that one for me.
So now, as I wait my 4-6 weeks for delivery, I've been doing more research to find out exactly what this thing will and won't be able to do for me. And as the long-term reviews come out from people who got to use one for a week or more, it sounds promising. Unlike the initial reports that the Apple Watch would basically "do nothing but tell the time" when it wasn't paired up with your phone in your pocket? I'm finding out that's not quite so. For starters, it apparently has 2GB of storage in it for music. So you can use it as a music player with a pair of bluetooth earbuds without your phone anywhere around. It's also smart enough to pair to your phone via your wi-fi network, as well as via low power bluetooth. So you can walk around your house or office and the watch will be fully functional, even though your phone was left on your desk or nightstand.
Additionally, reports are coming out that as long as the watch is on a wi-fi network, you can send and receive iMessages on it without the need of a paired phone.
Then there's the fitness tracker aspect of it. My workplace just started a program where everyone gets a free FitBit and there's a website you can log into to compete with co-workers for who walked the most in a day or a week, etc. etc. It's part of the overall "wellness program". Great, but I really dislike my new FitBit. Because it lacks any GPS functionality, it's too "brain dead" to realize when I'm in a car, on the metro, in a plane, etc. etc. -- so any vibrations that happen get counted as steps taken. It can literally be 50% off on counting your steps! The Apple Watch and iPhone combo makes a far more powerful fitness tracker than FitBit.
So yeah, the Apple Watch is definitely not a "need", but simply a "want". And many people may not want it at all. That's fine. But I think I'm forced to rethink my original opinion that this was generally going to be a bad idea for Apple. What it may do is re-kindle the interest in wearing a watch around, because it finally gives people some reasons why they should consider doing so, EVEN THOUGH they carry a smartphone already.
I'm glad so many people enjoy it, and it speaks to the quality of original television HBO has managed to create in recent years. (Great way to re-imagine themselves as they realized their classic business model wasn't going to sustain them into the future. Too much competition with the business model of offering a selection of "seen before" movies to view for a fixed monthly rate.)
But for whatever reason (and frankly, I can't explain it!), I just can't really get into television or movies that take place in these time-frames? I could barely get through any of those medieval times movies with knights on horses jousting and dragons and castle sieges. (That's despite one of my best friends constantly watching that stuff and trying to get me into it, years ago.) Anything about ancient Rome or even non-existent fantasy worlds with similar levels of technology (a la Lord of the Rings)? Same thing .... Just not feeling it.
And I feel kind of guilty about it, because by contrast, I love good science fiction. Anyone else out there relate to this? I feel like the only guy on the planet who loved Star Wars, Star Trek, the remake of BSG, etc. etc. -- yet who couldn't ever bring himself to bother watching The Hobbit or the LOTR trilogy!
One of MANY prime examples?
http://gazette.com/west-virgin...
Yep.... Ask yourself why the border patrol would need an office in West Virginia.
Good stuff. This could be printed out and handed to every middle manager in I.T., and it'd be the single best summary of what they need to do that I've seen yet.
A+
I have to admit that I haven't even looked at the job listings on Dice for years (largely because I've been happily employed and didn't feel the need). But as someone with a background in network/systems administration, PC support, etc. -- I distinctly recall finding FEW interesting listings on Dice. The web site seemed slanted towards those looking for software coding or web development jobs, DBAs, or specialists in rolling out and supporting large ERP packages.
So when a survey from Dice tells me that there's more growth, opportunity and money in all of those areas -- I have to take that with a grain of salt.
I mean, look.... I think we should all know by now that help desk jobs are a dead end, unless you're with one of the few remaining companies who hires from within and essentially demands you do your time on their help desk to earn the right to one of the better positions in I.T. they offer. We don't need a survey to tell us that. There's a whole group of jobs out there that tend to have titles like "systems specialist", "support specialist", "support analyst" or even "network manager" where you're likely to wear multiple hats. Often, these turn out to be jobs where you're really the only full-time I.T. person for a small business who finally decided to get serious about I.T. and quit hiring consultants at hourly rates whenever they screwed things up. Other times, you're part of a team who does everything from help desk type support to ensuring backups run to making recommendations for upgrading the whole infrastructure.
I find these positions to be right up my alley, in the sense they aren't as likely to get boring and I get to "call the shots" more and more often, as I get established in such a role and prove to management that I know what I'm doing. (You probably won't make big $'s in these positions, but you'll get your hands on all sorts of different things and get a decent shot at working for a business where you're not just a number or line-item in a spreadsheet.)
So sure.... Dice can hawk the software development side of I.T. as "where the money's at!" -- but I'm good doing what I do, thanks.
At least 5 years ago, I heard the exact same complaint about what it looked like on your typical college campus.... Dozens of people wandering around the courtyards, faces buried in their phones.
Perhaps it only "seems very abnormal and unhealthy" because we're all part of the older generation that didn't ever have the devices in the first place?
I, too, used to think it was a "disturbing" trend ... but I often find myself doing the same thing now, when I'm grabbing lunch at work or waiting for the metro train, or just waiting someplace in line. Truth is, the younger generation really uses these things as their primarily communications tool. When it looks like they're a bunch of zombies staring into smartphone screens, they're actually *interacting* with each other via those screens -- so it is a form of being social.
And I know in my own case, I was never a very social, outgoing person in the first place. Large social settings full of strangers were always uncomfortable for me. Looking back, I would have LOVED to have a smartphone back then to pull out, instead of just holding a drink and trying to look like I was having a good time.
Kids with pre-existing mental health conditions find their problems amplified by the use of smartphones and the various social media tools typically used on them?
My 12 year old daughter has a few issues (anxiety, depression, mood swings) and we wound up taking away her smartphone after it seemed to keep causing problems. (Everything from a constant stress inducer when she "forgot to charge it and it was almost dead" when we were out someplace, to forgetting where she put it, to fights over putting the phone away while we were eating at the table, to eventually catching her sexting a guy on it and having inappropriate IM chats using it.)
On the other hand, I don't see why for many kids, a smartphone is anything more than another useful tool to carry around in one's pocket?
I did read the article. What's your point?
Despite the article's claims, the discussion directly below it makes it pretty clear that a lot of finger-pointing is going on around the whole thing. Some people assert that "firmware should never try to adjust anything to get around an OS bug", yet that's been commonplace for well over a decade now!
(Anyone remember the old PC BIOS's which would require you toggle "Plug and Play" to Yes for a Windows '9x type OS, or select "No" for others? How about the ones that let you enable or disable the USB 2.0 "high speed" functionality? If that wasn't a work-around for OS/driver issues, what was it? Because USB 2 is supposed to be backwards compatible with the slower 1.1 devices. Heck, I remember a few BIOS's out there where I had to specifically set "OS/2" to "Yes" so they'd work right with installing it.)
The poster I replied to was talking about a Toshiba machines the purposely disabled ALL of the devices if it couldn't determine you were booting a version of Windows. That's a lot more extreme than things like "the on-board sound not initializing if the Linux default value for ACPI gets presented to it".
Now THAT would make me apt to return the computer for a refund and buy something different.... It's one thing for Linux to support a newer level of ACPI that many popular vendors/machines don't behave well with. (I get the idea of reporting a value of 2 instead of 5 to make things work in these cases. Why not? It's a one character solution to the OS misbehaving on those systems. Just make a note as to why it's done and allow users to edit a file to change it to 5 for full ACPI functionality in cases where it will work.
But to have a computer that willfully disables hardware because it thinks you're "trying to run something other than Windows"? That's done on purpose by Toshiba, if you ask me -- and was a ploy to ensure only Windows stays on the machine. (Maybe for tech support reasons, so they don't have to worry about fielding calls from users of Linux or other OS's who they have no support database built for?) I'd prefer not to use something designed like that.
I thought at one point in time, it was agreed on that no single nation "owned" the moon. Therefore, what happens if someone goes up there for a commercial project and sells material gathered there? Is it "first come, first to profit"?
It just seems to me that although right now, people might think it obvious that whoever spends all the money and effort to get there and retrieve a substance should have the rights to it -- what happens when this process gets cheaper and easier to do? Will people who arrive there try to stake a claim for a certain number of square kilometers of the moon as "their work area" and fight about it if someone extracts helium 3 or something else while on their claimed area?
If nothing else, I'd certainly advocate for changing railroad overpasses/underpasses to make them less accessible to people, wherever possible. My reasoning is, anyone wanting to use "getting hit by a train" as a means of suicide is selfishly affecting the lives of others who shouldn't have had to get directly involved. Those trains aren't automated ... They're operated by engineers, who have to deal with the memories of running over a person while operating the locomotive and are often haunted with the "What if?" questions, if they could have stopped the train sooner or not approached a station so fast, or ?
The person who equated this article to advocating "blocking the exits" is exactly right. The individual who actually plans to end their life in a fully conscious, fit state of mind has also surely come up with a plan that will get around any number of "blocked exit" strategies (like locking up personal guns in a cabinet, or hiding the keys to the car). They're not who this article refers to, IMO.
But the person who is distraught enough to actually go through with a plan that has a high likelihood of ending their life (as opposed to FAR more of them who might talk about it or use a half-hearted attempt as attention-seeking behavior) are going to do it when the mood strikes them. And the original article seems to be saying it's effective and appropriate to remote as many possible means to accomplish this as possible, so the means will be lacking when the mood strikes.
My problem with this is that it's only a band-aid for the underlying issue ... someone's severe depression. If it's not possible to get a person to get back the will to live, what quality of life do they have anyway, while you've "succeeded in preventing their suicide" by locking all of your knives up in a box?
As others said, there's not necessarily a guarantee Russia wouldn't decide to use Snowden as a bargaining chip or sorts, turning him over to the U.S. govt. at a very inopportune time for him to get any hope of justice. Surely, that's in the back of his head as at least a lingering possibility?
Also, he has quite a bit of support in the U.S. from people who think he's a hero, not a criminal. (Not everyone makes the front cover of Wired magazine, covered in a positive way.) Our current folks in political office may not care for him -- but *if* he could negotiate a high profile trial here, at least there would be a LOT of eyeballs watching, concerned that he received a fair outcome.
I'm positive he'd instantly find work in the private sector too, doing infosec of some sort.
I just attended a seminar today where a couple of Microsoft people gave presentations. One thing that they made pretty clear is that Microsoft's Azure "cloud" is a HUGE part of their future business model.
Right now, when you ask the typical MS user if they can name 3 things Azure does, they usually get stuck naming even one item. But one of these days, Microsoft hopes to embrace the software as subscription model to the point where practically everyone will just pay for Azure to spin up and host whatever servers they wish, vs. trying to run their own on their own hardware, in-house.
They've also made a big deal in their recent marketing about the Titanfall game running on Azure -- and I'm sure there will be more of this to come. If they do a Minecraft sequel, I'd suspect it will be designed so people can easily host Minecraft servers on Azure (probably with a friendly web front-end to create and configure them?). Maybe that will be the ONLY authorized way to do it?
I think this is a great strategy, but how would Epic Games know what a developer's gross income was, year after year, on a particular game title?
Is this a matter of Epic trusting them to report it honestly, or is it part of contractual terms where you're required to supply them with your tax records each year, or what?
I'm thinking this might be similar to what some of the video card manufacturers have done (such as with the R9280X cards), where a physical DIP switch on the card selects between firmware flash A or B. If you suspected corruption, you could flip the switch to use the alternate, which presumably would be loaded from the factory with good, working firmware of whatever version was most recent at the time the product was manufactured.
I suppose this would technically only give you "one shot" at recovering from a firmware hack ... but better than nothing, right? And in the meantime, it would give protection to people from such things as a corrupt flash update or a way to do an easy A/B comparison between 2 firmware revisions.
I know that sounds a little snarky .... but that's been one of my issues with the Civ games for quite some time. It seems like as you get into the "thick" of the game, with a lot of units occupying more and more space -- the system resources taken get pretty large. It often leads to slowdowns and a freeze-up or crash before the game can be completed.
The difference, IMO, is that obtaining a real guitar to play with one of these games is really not much more "out of reach" than getting the plastic toy version.
If you want to play a sport like football, you have to gather together a willing team of players. If you want to drive a real car on a racetrack, that involves some expense and a suitable car. Chuck rocks at pigs? Umm.... sure, if you have a handy pig pen to go visit at whatever hour of day or night you're ready to play that game, and you have an ample supply of rocks to throw, plus nobody who'll call the cops on you.
I never had much interest in the Guitar Hero franchise, because meh.... playing a fake plastic guitar with buttons similar to the old "Simon" game I had as a pre-teen seems rather pointless. People put all that effort into mastering it and it's a useless skill for anything else. Why bother?
Rocksmith did interest me, because it was all about actually learning songs using your favorite electric guitar. But only a few minutes into that one, I realized I wasn't getting into it either. I like what they tried to do with it, but like others here said -- why no standard guitar tablature? The whole scrolling neck thing works for Guitar Hero, but I found it pretty disorienting and non-intuitive for learning music on a real guitar. Maybe offer a toggle between views/modes at least?
Also, maybe it's just me ... but I feel like the era of the "guitar god" and stadium rock is pretty much behind us. These games still cling to that theme, that you're trying to play bigger and bigger live shows, seeking the applause of the fans, etc. etc. But do people even really relate to that anymore? I guess it's one mechanism to try to make the game rewarding -- but part of me feels too old for that nonsense. I want a game that makes practicing songs and new guitar techniques fun, but without making me pretend I'm 25 years younger and striving to make it big in the era of 80's hair metal.
Net metering doesn't force the utility to provide a service without getting compensated for it. Here in Maryland, I'm billed for the transport costs to move the power BOTH to or FROM my residence. So I have to cover a cost of my generated solar power getting pushed back out over their lines.
As I also pointed out, if the utilities were more forward-thinking and less resistant to change, they'd embrace PV solar as a useful addition to their overall system. There are pretty large losses involved in transporting power long distances to customers from the central power generation plant. That's why you see those big structures surrounded by chain link fence. They contain transformers needed to step up the voltage to compensate for resistive losses going over miles of copper wire on the poles.
If they've got people scattered about with small solar power generation capabilities on their roofs, they can purchase and immediately resell excess power generated there and avoid the big transmission losses.
I completely agree that this stuff requires some coordination with the utility company, for best results. As it is, you can't even get a solar system up and running without filling out a lot of paperwork, undergoing an inspection, and waiting for an approval from the utility though. So the ball is in their court in this respect. (They DO have first-hand knowledge of exactly where the solar systems will go online and how much power they're capable of generating.)
Most likely, what will happen is when particular neighborhoods reach a certain saturation level of solar installation, the power company will have to say - "Sorry... We won't approve any more new systems here with more than X amount of generation capacity because we've got all we need for this geographic area."
You're correct, except in reality, those of us adopting PV solar right now aren't really so much expecting the utility company to act as a battery as we expect that they'll be able to immediately redirect/resell the excess electricity we generate to another customer nearby.
I believe a recent statistic said solar adoption would, in fact, work nicely this way in any given neighborhood until it exceeds at least a threshold of around 8%?
In my own town, for example ... we have a population of roughly 6,000. As far as I'm aware, there are only approximately 5 residences using PV solar. (I think the city makes some use of solar as well for the water treatment plant, but that's probably NOT a situation where they're generating more than they're using and expecting repayment for excess generation!) Even if you assume you've got 3 or 4 (or more) people living in one residence in some cases, and a number of people in apartment complexes? It's clear we haven't hit the saturation point yet where more people are making power than want to use it at that same time.
If the utility company can resell the power I generate and push back out over the wires connected to my house, that's power they don't have to generate themselves AND transmit a relatively long distance, running it through "step up" transformers and so on to offset losses from the electrical resistance of the long run of wire. In that sense, it should be valuable to them -- not something inherently "bad" or "problematic".
Crowdfunding albums has been done before. I'm pretty sure RadioHead tried this with a recent album, as did Nine Inch Nails. David Bowie may have done so too? (Just going by memory here ...)
In any case, I think the concern with going this route is that once the novelty of doing it wears off, you'll quickly have little more than a "race to the bottom", where artists everywhere are releasing works this way, and people won't contribute much money at all to any one project. (The early adopters of the model did well with it, primarily because people were paying them the "going rate" for albums, or more in some cases, as a show of support for trying the new business model and taking risks.)
Again, I'm not really sure what the answer is with all of this? Many, many years ago, musicians were "professionals for hire" -- LONG before it was even possible to record audio. The wealthy paid them to do live gigs at their parties and what-not, and that was pretty much the extent of how profit was made from it. Maybe we're headed back that way, where live concerts are the only practical way to profit from making music -- and anything else is simply done to market your music and get your "brand" out there?
Truthfully, I don't even know that I care? I love music and I used to even play guitar in a local band for a couple years (long time ago). Part of me thinks our society is poorer for eliminating the possibility (however faint) that some teens jamming together in a garage can aspire to become stars, making millions, if they just believe in themselves and doggedly keep practicing and playing, playing, playing. But another part of me knows that's exactly why I got out of the music scene too. The writing was on the wall that this wasn't going to be a good living for many people at all, as technology progressed and things changed. (First, we saw the decline of the radio DJ who was allowed to run his/her own show, playing whatever he/she liked. Then we saw the major labels implode (deservedly, basically). And just as the indie labels and individual entrepreneurs were picking up the pieces and going DYI -- things went to digital streaming for "all you want to listen to for $10 a month" services.
I see you posted anonymous. Nice.... so you can't even sign your name to your opinion on this topic?
The "flat earth" debate has long ceased to be a debate because it's essentially PROVEN at this point that the planet is, indeed, a sphere. (The only people still denying it are a very SMALL portion of the population who may well do so just to be contrary, vs. having a true belief in it.)
I'm not whining and fussing about a few dollars coming from my pocket, at all. I *am*, however, saying, there's a LOT of B.S. going around, especially in areas like "alternative energy solutions" right now.
I actually HAVE a PV solar system I purchased for our house, outright -- and that cost me more than "a few dollars". Even so, I'd happily tell anyone who asks how much total B.S. and nonsense is promised by the "Eco Green, pro solar" crowd and adjust their expectations before they commit to a solar loan or purchase.
It's *only* via artificially manufactured govt. subsidies that this stuff makes good financial sense for most customers. It's NOT cost effective on its own, especially when you consider the costs they don't like to talk about -- such as labor to disassemble a whole solar system from your roof, in order to replace roofing shingles that are at the end of their useful life, or the cost to replace a dying inverter outside of the warranty period (typically less than HALF the warranty length offered on your panels themselves).
A serious change would involve building new, safer nuclear power plants and using those to generate all of our energy needs where options like hydroelectric weren't viable options. Guess what though? That's not really profitable for the special interests getting big payouts from technologies like solar right now, so that's not up for so much real discussion.....