I've used a *lot* of different mice out there, and I keep settling on Logitech's MX series as one of my favorites. I used to have their MX1000 laser mouse, and then the MX Revolution.... and now the Performance Mouse MX.
My only complaint about these mice is that the black rubber "grippy" areas on the sides where you rest your fingers wears off after a while in spots, making the mouse look pretty ragged/beat-up at that point, even if it's still functional otherwise.
I also preferred the MX Revolution's charging cradle to the current design where you just plug a micro-USB cable into the front of the mouse to recharge it. (I find the micro USB cable to be a bit difficult to get inserted just right, and I have a feeling it will be one of the things that breaks first on this mouse.)
What I'd really like to see, though, is a bluetooth version of one of these. If you're a Mac user (especially of a notebook like the Air which doesn't have a lot of ports), a bluetooth mouse makes much more sense than wasting a USB port with a wireless receiver dongle. But there's VERY little available in the way of quality bluetooth mice. HP makes a couple of Z series BT mice, but the more expensive ($60 or so) one that tries to look like an Apple product (complete with gesture support on the flat top surface) fails to impress. Other than it's promised long battery life, it was nothing but negatives when I tried it. Gesture support is jerky and overly sensitive, unlike Apple's own Magic Mouse -- and the buttons start acting up where they stick when pressed or fail to register when pressed. The cheaper black Z series BT mouse from HP actually feels more comfortable in my hand and works better as a standard mouse (no fancy gesture support or slim line buttons that don't work right). BUT, drop it on the floor even once and expect it to blow up into pieces all over the floor.
I think you're looking at this from the wrong angle, myself.
Someone deciding to make some extra money on the side driving for Uber doesn't need a "commercial license" from the DMV! What they probably DO need is a special car insurance policy or rider that covers the situation.
Just like if I upgrade my car with a fancy, multi-thousand dollar stereo system -- I can't expect my auto insurance to cover its replacement cost if it's stolen. They're going to say, "Sorry buddy. We insured you based on the standard equipment we know comes with the particular make and model of vehicle you insured with us." They WILL however, let me pay extra to itemize what's in it and get that covered as additional coverage.
The auto insurance company who starts marketing a reasonably priced insurance rider specifically for folks doing "ride sharing" will find it very profitable and popular.
That's just one more argument against living in California then.
IMO, the *real* reason for commercial licenses was the concept that commercial drivers are driving much larger vehicles that require special training/skills to operate safely on the roadways. (Your average licensed driver can't just hop into an 18-wheeler and operate it. They'd likely not even be able to figure out the transmission with as many gear as it has!) And the ability to properly back one up into a loading dock isn't something that comes without training either.
A vehicle anyone buys at a regular car dealership and uses as a "daily driver" for things like commuting or trips to the grocery store should NOT require a commercial license.
The states ALL want tax revenue, but there are ways to go about it that make relative degrees of common sense to citizens. When they start making unreasonable, illogical demands, it's time to get that changed or consider moving to a more reasonable place.
As someone who was born and raised in St. Louis, MO -- I can tell you it really depends. In the last decade or so, my opinion is that it's time to get out of St. Louis if you're trying to make a living there doing I.T.
It has several "big players" who hire for tech positions and pay well, but the problem is what's available outside of those options. Enterprise Leasing, for example, has their corporate HQ in St. Louis and employs a lot of I.T. workers. (Some of my best friends worked for them for years.) You've also got options like Boeing, Energizer or the A.B. brewery.
But take a closer look and you can see a trend of Boeing scaling things back over the years in St. Louis. (Ever since they bought out McDonnell Douglas, they've been shrinking the size of that campus.) A.B. hasn't been the same ever since they sold out to InBev, either. And the once well regarded A.G. Edwards Company is now Wells Fargo Advisors, a company not exactly known for being a "great place to work" in I.T.
Don't forget the auto makers who used to have plants in St. Louis and are now gone.
The cost of living is reasonable (especially housing prices), but crime is pretty bad these days (just look at the insanity ever since the Ferugson riots), and the once amazing riverfront area is pretty much gone too.
These days, you find the occasional good I.T. position open in STL working for the Federal Reserve or maybe a contract with the Post Office. As in all cities, I.T. jobs are available with the school districts and hospitals too -- but you won't hear a whole lot of stories of high job satisfaction with many of those. I guess there are some openings at Emerson Corp. too, but that puts your workplace right in the middle of where all the Ferguson fallout lies.
After living there for around 40 years, I had enough... saw the writing on the wall, and got out. Working in the DC area now, I was initially unhappy with the cost of living making my salary increase an actual pay cut. But you learn how to live cheaper out here, in trade for a longer commute - and eventually settle into something that's effective. (Or don't, and accept the higher cost of living as an acceptable trade for being in the heart of the DC night life, etc.) By using public transportation, I literally went from putting over 1,000 miles per month on my vehicle to only putting 2,000 on it in 5 months. That requires a change in habits but makes it cheaper to live here than it first seemed.
Malware Bytes? Yes.... Great product that really is pretty effective (especially if you can boot into "safe mode" in Windows first) at cleaning up malware.
But Windows Defender? Absolutely not. It got ranked absolute worst at detecting malware in a head to head test last year vs. something like 40 other products on the market! And just from personal experience trying to keep PCs clean in an office setting with a lot of mobile workers? It didn't even trigger on some heavily infected machines.
Personally, we use eSet NOD32, and while I won't claim it's "best" - I just feel it seems to do a reasonably good job without dragging down system performance. It's not free but not that expensive either.
I could be wrong, but I thought I once read that the original Lucas script for Episode 4 (or was it Empire Strikes Back?) was pretty much ghost-written and revamped by someone else, in order to make for a better movie?
In any case, I've always thought George did an amazing job imagining all of the ships, creatures and planets that appear in the movies -- but that doesn't necessarily make him a great script writer. Disney, IMO, would be wise to keep him as more of a consultant on any Star Wars movie project. Take his input on the bigger picture stuff, but don't let him worry about the exact lines each character speaks.
The IRS suffering a temporary shutdown would be cause for celebration.
I'm not talking about libertarian utopias here at all. Rather, I'm saying a failure of that magnitude (a government incapable of even keeping its agency going which collects its FUNDS) would be a huge wake-up call that the current system is broken.
Discussions that might come from such a shutdown would include, "Maybe it's about time we simplify the tax code, so all of this infrastructure isn't necessary to collect taxes?"
But that's a good point too. I.T. seems to be in a strange place when it comes to where it fits in a budget for some companies. Some people want to call I.T. an expense (necessary cost of operations), while others view it as a "profit center" and constantly expect justifications from I.T. management as to how much money it saved the company in a given quarter.
The last couple places I worked insisted on an accounting scheme where I.T. had its hours charged back to cost centers of other divisions of the company, based on how much time we assisted those people. I guess it's fine, if it makes the number crunchers happy with the results? But it never made a lot of logical sense to me since so much of I.T. involved system or network-wide changes or upgrades affecting everybody. And you got into office politics with such things as wanting an office to upgrade to a faster internet connection. Their manager might say no because he didn't want the extra cost billed to his division/department. But not upgrading meant slower VPN access for any remote workers connecting to the router in that office and performance lag for anyone on the WAN who needed to load/save content from servers at his location. So his refusal to upgrade affected others negatively who he wasn't even directly responsible for.
One thing I've really noticed in the last decade or so is the massive amount of consolidation, mergers, acquisitions, etc. Every time I turn around, it seems like some company is being bought out by another one. And with so many opting to recycle old company brand names, it's difficult to tell sometimes just who really makes a product or provides a service.
(We've all heard of Polaroid, RCA and Westinghouse -- but they're not the companies they used to be.)
Quite often when these mergers or acquisitions happen, the company originating the process really only wants to add the other business's patent portfolio, or its proprietary product -- not its labor pool. The employees typically come along for the ride, initially though -- with some kind of (often underhanded) plan to eliminate them over time. Perhaps it would be better for everyone involved if they were up front and honest about such plans, except the truth is? If they were, people would start throwing fits and revolting against these buyouts and mergers instead of viewing them as "just part of doing business".
(EG. If you want to own a technology that a competitor created, it's easy to pay off the head of the company who owns the rights to it and let them "resign". Everyone assumes it's because that individual is simply angry that he/she lost so much control over the original business plan and is going to walk away on principle. In reality? He/she just sold out and threw their staff under the bus.)
In the end though -- hey, it's the modern way business is done. They're worried about maximum efficiency, which means having a labor pool that costs the company the minimum in training costs, salaries, etc. while doing as much useful work as possible. Loyalty is pretty much out the window because keeping people around, just because they've "been with us a long time" turns out to be less efficient than hiring fresh people who are motivated to "prove themselves".
IMO, Microsoft has a big hit on their hands with Windows 10, from the looks of the developer preview. If it continues as planned, it should be the upgrade all of the Windows 7 holdouts have been waiting for. It has package management from the command line (a real plus for I.T. folks supporting these systems on a network), and native support for the latest hardware technologies like USB 3. The problems with the Metro UI in Windows 8 should hopefully be worked out, too.
But Windows Mobile for phones? They've tried and tried again and it's pretty much a non-starter. People simply aren't that interested in a Windows UI on a cellphone. IMO, they need to cut their losses and quit trying to have Microsoft everywhere. Focus on what works and build on that. EG. Move forward with such things as Office for iOS, because that's being smart. (It costs too much to try to convince everyone to ditch an iPad and buy a Surface tablet instead. Make your money off selling apps for iOS instead.)
I dislike the malls too, but truthfully - I consider the Apple retail stores a net positive, and another reason to keep buying Macs instead of something else.
If I don't want to visit a "Genius Bar", I don't have to, and neither do you. Apple has a toll free number you can call for service and support, which I've used several times before. They'll even overnight you a postage paid return mailer box to pack up your machine in, to go back to them for service, if needed. (This is identical to the service procedure I've gone through in the past with Toshiba -- except Apple is much quicker to answer their phone, vs. leaving you on hold for 45 minutes first.)
The GPU problem you're complaining about on your 2011 model of Macbook? That was a WELL known issue, across the board, with just about ALL notebook manufacturers who used those GPUs. So it's not even fair to use that as a reason you feel Macs lack quality or reliability. By contrast, I've got a 17" Macbook Pro that's from early 2010 which I leave on 24 hours/7 days (typically in a Henge dock on my office desk these days) and it's never needed service at all. It's my main work computer, and with a 512GB SSD I put in it a while back, it still feels pretty fast too. 5 years of daily use isn't bad at all for a portable, no matter what the brand.
I agree that Dell, arguably, does Apple one better in the area of service by sending out on-site technicians. BUT, I've worked for years in places that used exclusively Dell so I'm very familiar with that whole process too. Especially in more recent years, those techs are notorious for not showing up when they're scheduled, or bringing out an incorrect repair part, causing you the inconvenience of waiting around for them to show a second time.
For what it's worth, too.... Apple does have a couple of different programs you can join if you're a business user of their machines, to make the repair process a lot easier. They don't advertise these as well as I think they should, but they do exist. With one of them, you can get your own employees certified as Apple technicians so they can troubleshoot problems themselves and call Apple to get repair pairs overnighted to them under the warranty.
Just to play devil's advocate here.... The newer wireless access point products on the market like the Cisco Meraki gear encourage this sort of behavior, with their "Air Marshal" capabilities. They're designed so you can actively DoS wi-fi routers that appear on your network, "unauthorized".
They even have an extra radio integrated in them for this functionality, separate from the ones handling the rest of the wireless traffic.
So arguably, the I.T. folks who set this whole thing up for the hotels might have done so with intentions of preserving the integrity of the paid hotel wi-fi network, and not because "they mistakenly thought they owned all of the airwaves inside the hotel building". It's still an asshole move to set something like this up, IMO... but a hotel chain that charges for its wi-fi could reasonably argue that it's in its best interests to ensure its paying customers get a good, reliable signal with it. That could be compromised with hundreds of guests setting up their own APs in their rooms.
Our workplace made a decision a while back to stay on Windows 7 Professional as the "standard" for our Windows users. (We also support a number of Macs.) In general, I think many corporate I.T. departments have a policy of upgrading every OTHER release of Windows. (For example, they stayed on XP and skipped Vista. Upgraded to 7 and will now wait for Windows 10.)
Even if you go back as far as Windows '98, it turned out to be wise to stay put on '98 (upgrading it to second edition where possible) and skipping Windows ME.
IMO, there's just no benefit to a Windows 8 migration. The arguments like "no new Direct X support for 7" is meaningless when the users just use 2D apps like MS Office and a bunch of web based apps. The new "tile" interface means more training is required, which is a real problem for us, with so many mobile workers scattered all over the country.
Meanwhile, Windows 10 is the one really bringing the "added value" we're after, with such things as an upgraded Windows "PowerShell" that will finally support software upgrades from packages (similar to Linux distros) from the command line.
Fact is, at least in the U.S. -- the whole cellular market is designed around a 2 year device rotation as "standard". This is due to the popularity of the 2 year contract that includes a heavily subsidized handset at signing or renewal time.
The industry figures that unless you're one of the less desirable customers who gets a pay as you go phone due to problems passing a credit check, you're going to keep paying $60-100 per month or so for the length of time you want to use a phone, and you're going to expect a shiny new model every couple of years as part of that arrangement.
I do think this might SLOWLY be changing a bit, largely thanks to T-Mobile trying to act as the rebellious upstart of the industry and encouraging people to rethink traditional contracts. (Additionally, the companies like "Net 10" who act as wholesalers of minutes of service and kilobytes of data from the major carriers help fuel interest in buying higher-end handsets straight out and using them without contracts.)
But no - there really is the expectation that a couple of years of support is all that's necessary on a cellphone. And tablets are sort of falling into that same category by default - simply because they run the same OS's as the cellphones do.
I don't really expect voters to be "experts" on the topics they're voting for. And at least in my own case, I often feel I'm vastly under-informed on what I'm about to vote on. (In reality, some of the people I'm asked to vote for haven't made any effort to publicize their views at all. This tends to happen with judges or folks in charge of treasuries or school-related positions pretty often. You'll often find someone standing near the polling place handing out a list of recommendations of who to vote for, for these things -- but that just tells you who wants to give the most money to the school or organization who made the flier.)
Regardless, I usually feel relatively informed on at least a few of the issues up for vote that I'm most interested in. Therefore, I go to cast votes on those issues, and I may just skip over the ones I have no real opinion on.
The problem I have is with apathetic voters who vote simply due to peer pressure. You can say all you want about them cancelling each other out (thanks to equal numbers voting for both sides of an issue) -- but I feel that every vote counted acts as evidence an individual supports the candidate the vote was cast for. When all of the candidates are lackluster or even guilty of previous corruption - I'd rather see them get very few votes on either side, then large numbers from all the disinterested and uninformed who just "pick one" at the polls.
This is the single biggest issue I have with all of the ad campaigns trying to convince people to get out and vote. The result is, you get a bunch of uninformed people who really don't care enough to cast an educated vote - but they go so they can get the free "I voted!" sticker, feel good about themselves and fit in with what's perceived as "right" or "cool" (a la MTV's "Rock the Vote" advertising, years ago).
If all of the options available to vote for are so unappealing, many people can't even bring themselves to cast a vote one way or another? That says something too. Those are the elections that SHOULD be showing really low voter turnout.
Well, the Cadillac ELR got the styling thing down, arguably (by recycling the award winning "edgy" styling of their CTS Coupe). Yet it, too, is doing horrible in sales numbers. (I believe only 1,200 or so sold for all of 2014!?)
Look at the insane price though and it's no wonder... I hear they're discounting them by about $20,000 to try to get them off dealer lots now, and people STILL think it's too high. I mean, the bottom line is -- if you have the money for a "high end electric" car, you want Tesla, not Cadillac wrapping their modern idea of a luxury car around some Chevy Volt technology.
Yeah, ANYTHING is possible given enough talent, dedication and funding.
In reality though, even these multi-year, multi-phase implementations tend to go way over budget and fail to yield everything promised.
I've seen it happen, first-hand, when a company I worked for decided to implement a new ERP system and phase out a number of other applications and processes. They DID shell out the money to get the analysis done properly, but the problem really came in with ability for the new software to perform as intended. Bugs were found during the roll-out, but the team doing the implementation had too many layers internally to get those bugs corrected in a reasonable and timely manner. (EG. They'd have guys flown out and paid by the hour to give employee training on the new software and how to do something with it. During that process, they might run into a glitch -- but as trainers, they weren't really capable of fixing it or even having a direct contact with someone who could. They'd just gloss it over and move on, promising to "make a note of it".) If they even remembered to pass the note along about the bug, chances are it went to some team responsible for collecting the reports from other people on staff with the company. So now the bug was perhaps poorly or incompletely documented in some kind of bug tracking database. When will the actual developers get to addressing that bug? Hard to say. As likely as anything, they might claim it wasn't reproducible with their environment, or ask for more information. But since our people didn't have access to the database directly, we'd never be able to directly reply with that additional info or help finding the bug.
There were times my boss fixed problems in their system himself, because he knew more than the average person about the back end database it used. When that happened, I remember him telling their people about the fix and it was pretty much ignored, as in "Well, that's great then! Our team should eventually figure it out too and roll it into a version upgrade...."
For millions of dollars spent, I don't think you should have to work late nights finding your own fixes for their defective code... but that's how it went down.
I was just talking to some people yesterday about the popular trend in offices to build open floor-plans in lieu of the traditional cubicles and dividers. Even Google embraced the open floor-plan concept, yet I can't find much evidence from people working in such an environment that they find it an improvement?
Basically, people are remodeling in this style because it's viewed as more trendy and insightful. Never mind the fact that the old way was probably done for good reasons and to solve real problems. (Open floor-plan offices have serious problems with noises, distractions and a lack of appropriate places to go make a phone call with a client or vendor. They remove the privacy of the individual worker, causing everyone around to see every little thing you do. Duck out for a smoke break or to use the rest-room? Everyone immediately sees how long you're not occupying your seat and can make judgements on your behavior.
Same thing with this argument of using remote, "work from home" employees vs. making people come in to a central office. There are, IMO, many good reasons to expect your employees to be physically present in a central workplace each day. (Companies like Yahoo, who tried letting people work from home, decided to ban the practice when it turned out to be a failure for them.) Truthfully, I love having the ability to work from home in my own job - but I do computer support and systems administration work. Realistically, I usually wind up coming in to the office and only working from home about one day each week. In my situation, I'm (thankfully) given permission to make judgement calls about when it's most sensible for me to come in, vs. stay home. If I expect it will be a day of nothing but phone calls, helping users via remote access to their machine, and working with cloud based services we use? Then sure, I can do it from home. Many other times though, I'm expecting a package to arrive with a part to replace for somebody, or I'm just able to provide people a better level of service if I can look at an issue hands-on with them. (Remote control software is all but useless if you're trying to figure out why they're having monitor issues, for example. It may look fine on YOUR remote session screen even if their display is going bad.)
I know a number of our creative workers putting together marketing proposals and the like do better work when they're in a group together, in-person. We've given them plenty of tools to collaborate remotely, and sometimes they do. But there are still lots of limitations with the technology, including internet bandwidth issues for some people, meaning their video keeps breaking up or their audio gets choppy on a conference call. And ultimately, you can't celebrate with co-workers for a job well done by remotely taking them out for dinner or a few drinks, either.
I've become more and more convinced that the best solution is a mix of allowing SOME work from home or remote, and SOME expectation of coming in, in person. You won't be able to keep "best in breed" software development going with a scattered workforce who only collaborates video video chat, IM, email or phone calls.
I was just going to leave this whole thing alone, but I've got to comment on this one.
There's nothing that great about adding MicroSD card slots to cellphones. Sure, "Everyone else does it (but Apple)." -- but that doesn't make it a good solution. Whenever I've used Android devices, it's always added an extra layer of complexity, determining if an app or some data is stored on the internal or external storage. And while perhaps they've addressed it now, I also recall a lot of hassles with certain programs requiring things be stored using the internal storage only - as they didn't know how to work with the MicroSD storage.
I think most cellphones just did it that way to make the devices cheaper to build. "You want more storage space? Whatever.... buy a card for that...."
I'm not going to try to debate that Apple overcharges for the storage you get in a given iOS device. (Heck, I agree... they gouge for it. But with Apple products, you almost always pay a premium. Either way, it just means whatever you buy from them has that much better resale value down the road too.)
I just find that with a phone, I want the information in it to be "one" with the device itself. If I store address book entries, for example, it may as well just be in the phone's own internal storage, because it would really inconvenience me if it was on a removable card and I swapped the wrong card in the phone that didn't have that data on it. Never mind the propensity for some of these SD flash cards to go bad without warning and lose everything on them.
So no, I have no issue with the way Apple chose to do things with the iPhones and no card slots. They *do* have a USB cable to facilitate data xfer to/from other devices, so you're not completely unable to communicate with other hardware. It sounds to me like some people just tried to get off cheap, buying the minimum storage version of the phones available and bigger, more feature filled versions of iOS don't leave a lot of space for your apps on the "entry level" model. Nothing worthy of a lawsuit.
No.... our company does advertising/marketing related work, so there's no HIPPA or other compliance regulation to worry about with the content that goes to DropBox.
In our case, we have a highly mobile workforce already, including a lot of freelance workers (some of whom are freelance status, yet essentially work with us on every project to the point where they're a "permalancer"... and in at least one case, one of these people even employes a freelance worker underneath them). We needed a way for these people to collaborate on projects and easily share folders with specific people, but not necessarily everyone else.
Sure, you could store all of this on a traditional file server and let people access it via VPN, but that would generally require someone with administrator rights and the ability to adjust the permissions appropriately, as content was added. DropBox for Business makes it easy for people to shoot out email invites to download content and control who can access it themselves.
I already commented on SysAid's own page, but my feeling is this:
Consumerization of I.T. is generally a win-win for employers and employees, as long as it's done properly.
It's always a good thing when you can hire somebody who is used to using a particular service, technology or product, and they're able to use essentially the same thing as an employee. It's one less thing requiring training and adding complexity to doing the job.
I think BYOD (bring your own device) with cellphones and tablets was the initial driver of this discussion? But increasingly, we're seeing cloud services as another similar area. Plenty of people are familiar with DropBox for example, and often have a free DropBox personal account. With our corporate DropBox account, though, we're able to let people manage both their personal and their new corporate-issued one simultaneously, using one login. If they leave the company, we can instruct the software to auto delete the corporate data on their device(s) while reverting back to working as a free personal DropBox again, preserving their personal data.
By contrast, another cloud based product we use and like is CrashPlan for backups. Unfortunately, CrashPlan creates "islands" for personal accounts, standard business accounts, and enterprise-class accounts. If you upgrade a user from one "tier" to another, their backup history can't be migrated over. They're stuck doing a full, new backup from scratch under the new service class. That's a real issue for us, as we move to the enterprise version of the service. (What if someone's laptop drive crashes out in the field, after we upgrade their CrashPlan version and before it got a chance to back up everything successfully?) This could impact people who'd been using personal CrashPlan accounts and work for a company that decides to bring all of them under the fold of a business class backup account, too.
So in the next 5 years? I see I.T. departments needing to give more consideration to selection of business tools that play well with shared personal/business use.
I don't see why authors should feel threatened by Amazon's subscription model for books? In the case of books and other publications, our government has been funding repositories for the physical printed works so anyone can read as many of them as they like at NO additional cost -- and this has been the case for many, many years.
As a general rule, I think people who actually buy their own copies of books only do so with a very select group of them they consider so good, they might want to read them over and over, or hang onto them to share with friends or family. These are the titles people will be likely to purchase the e-book versions of, if they're fond of reading via a Kindle, iPad or other electronic device - vs. counting on some $9.95/month recurring subscription to retain access to them. (With these subscription models, you have no control over what titles get removed from the collection over time and substituted with others.)
In that sense, nothing much changes here except lesser known authors stand an improved chance of getting read, if they're lumped into a "read all you like for a flat monthly fee" package.
Actually, I've had a Facebook account for years and I use it regularly.
Of course I'm well aware that they sift through all of my information and try to resell it. But IMO, it's a pretty well understood trade, and one that I don't have a big problem with. The fact remains, Facebook will only have the information that I willingly provide by way of posting it up there or filling out fields on the site. And meanwhile, they're enabling ME to obtain information on all of my friends and other online connections too.
I don't share or say anything on FB that I'm not already comfortable sharing with other people, so it's not like huge secrets are being revealed. Things I do get out of Facebook include using local buy/sell/trade type groups that people have set up (no fees to post listings or fees owed to the site operator upon successful sales) and special interest groups, such as one for one of the cars I own.
I've also been able to keep in touch with a number of old friends who I probably wouldn't keep up with otherwise, after moving. (And let's face it... that's primarily because there's nothing critical or earth-shattering to be gained by keeping up with these people's daily lives when you don't even live in the same city as them anymore. But when it's free and as easy as checking in on FB, it makes for a mildly enjoyable way to kill some time while better preserving those old friendships. You never know when you're going to visit a place you used to live, and it's nice not to do so without having to wonder if those people you "used to know" still live at the same address, etc.)
If Facebook does nothing for you, great. Don't use it! But I see so much bashing of the site that I think is unwarranted. Did FB ever so much as beg for donations from you to keep it operational, or limit how much time you could spend using it each month or day? Nope! And yet, you're even free to create new groups (even closed, private ones) without owing a dime. IMO, there's a lot of value to be wrung out of using the site -- despite knowing they're trying to cull value out of the content you put out there.
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Let's face it. The White House has been FULL of drones for a long time!
I've used a *lot* of different mice out there, and I keep settling on Logitech's MX series as one of my favorites. .... and now the Performance Mouse MX.
I used to have their MX1000 laser mouse, and then the MX Revolution
My only complaint about these mice is that the black rubber "grippy" areas on the sides where you rest your fingers wears off after a while in spots, making the mouse look pretty ragged/beat-up at that point, even if it's still functional otherwise.
I also preferred the MX Revolution's charging cradle to the current design where you just plug a micro-USB cable into the front of the mouse to recharge it. (I find the micro USB cable to be a bit difficult to get inserted just right, and I have a feeling it will be one of the things that breaks first on this mouse.)
What I'd really like to see, though, is a bluetooth version of one of these. If you're a Mac user (especially of a notebook like the Air which doesn't have a lot of ports), a bluetooth mouse makes much more sense than wasting a USB port with a wireless receiver dongle. But there's VERY little available in the way of quality bluetooth mice. HP makes a couple of Z series BT mice, but the more expensive ($60 or so) one that tries to look like an Apple product (complete with gesture support on the flat top surface) fails to impress. Other than it's promised long battery life, it was nothing but negatives when I tried it. Gesture support is jerky and overly sensitive, unlike Apple's own Magic Mouse -- and the buttons start acting up where they stick when pressed or fail to register when pressed. The cheaper black Z series BT mouse from HP actually feels more comfortable in my hand and works better as a standard mouse (no fancy gesture support or slim line buttons that don't work right). BUT, drop it on the floor even once and expect it to blow up into pieces all over the floor.
I think you're looking at this from the wrong angle, myself.
Someone deciding to make some extra money on the side driving for Uber doesn't need a "commercial license" from the DMV! What they probably DO need is a special car insurance policy or rider that covers the situation.
Just like if I upgrade my car with a fancy, multi-thousand dollar stereo system -- I can't expect my auto insurance to cover its replacement cost if it's stolen. They're going to say, "Sorry buddy. We insured you based on the standard equipment we know comes with the particular make and model of vehicle you insured with us." They WILL however, let me pay extra to itemize what's in it and get that covered as additional coverage.
The auto insurance company who starts marketing a reasonably priced insurance rider specifically for folks doing "ride sharing" will find it very profitable and popular.
Wow! Really?!
That's just one more argument against living in California then.
IMO, the *real* reason for commercial licenses was the concept that commercial drivers are driving much larger vehicles that require special training/skills to operate safely on the roadways. (Your average licensed driver can't just hop into an 18-wheeler and operate it. They'd likely not even be able to figure out the transmission with as many gear as it has!) And the ability to properly back one up into a loading dock isn't something that comes without training either.
A vehicle anyone buys at a regular car dealership and uses as a "daily driver" for things like commuting or trips to the grocery store should NOT require a commercial license.
The states ALL want tax revenue, but there are ways to go about it that make relative degrees of common sense to citizens. When they start making unreasonable, illogical demands, it's time to get that changed or consider moving to a more reasonable place.
As someone who was born and raised in St. Louis, MO -- I can tell you it really depends. In the last decade or so, my opinion is that it's time to get out of St. Louis if you're trying to make a living there doing I.T.
It has several "big players" who hire for tech positions and pay well, but the problem is what's available outside of those options. Enterprise Leasing, for example, has their corporate HQ in St. Louis and employs a lot of I.T. workers. (Some of my best friends worked for them for years.) You've also got options like Boeing, Energizer or the A.B. brewery.
But take a closer look and you can see a trend of Boeing scaling things back over the years in St. Louis. (Ever since they bought out McDonnell Douglas, they've been shrinking the size of that campus.) A.B. hasn't been the same ever since they sold out to InBev, either. And the once well regarded A.G. Edwards Company is now Wells Fargo Advisors, a company not exactly known for being a "great place to work" in I.T.
Don't forget the auto makers who used to have plants in St. Louis and are now gone.
The cost of living is reasonable (especially housing prices), but crime is pretty bad these days (just look at the insanity ever since the Ferugson riots), and the once amazing riverfront area is pretty much gone too.
These days, you find the occasional good I.T. position open in STL working for the Federal Reserve or maybe a contract with the Post Office. As in all cities, I.T. jobs are available with the school districts and hospitals too -- but you won't hear a whole lot of stories of high job satisfaction with many of those. I guess there are some openings at Emerson Corp. too, but that puts your workplace right in the middle of where all the Ferguson fallout lies.
After living there for around 40 years, I had enough ... saw the writing on the wall, and got out. Working in the DC area now, I was initially unhappy with the cost of living making my salary increase an actual pay cut. But you learn how to live cheaper out here, in trade for a longer commute - and eventually settle into something that's effective. (Or don't, and accept the higher cost of living as an acceptable trade for being in the heart of the DC night life, etc.) By using public transportation, I literally went from putting over 1,000 miles per month on my vehicle to only putting 2,000 on it in 5 months. That requires a change in habits but makes it cheaper to live here than it first seemed.
Malware Bytes? Yes.... Great product that really is pretty effective (especially if you can boot into "safe mode" in Windows first) at cleaning up malware.
But Windows Defender? Absolutely not. It got ranked absolute worst at detecting malware in a head to head test last year vs. something like 40 other products on the market! And just from personal experience trying to keep PCs clean in an office setting with a lot of mobile workers? It didn't even trigger on some heavily infected machines.
Personally, we use eSet NOD32, and while I won't claim it's "best" - I just feel it seems to do a reasonably good job without dragging down system performance. It's not free but not that expensive either.
I could be wrong, but I thought I once read that the original Lucas script for Episode 4 (or was it Empire Strikes Back?) was pretty much ghost-written and revamped by someone else, in order to make for a better movie?
In any case, I've always thought George did an amazing job imagining all of the ships, creatures and planets that appear in the movies -- but that doesn't necessarily make him a great script writer. Disney, IMO, would be wise to keep him as more of a consultant on any Star Wars movie project. Take his input on the bigger picture stuff, but don't let him worry about the exact lines each character speaks.
The IRS suffering a temporary shutdown would be cause for celebration.
I'm not talking about libertarian utopias here at all. Rather, I'm saying a failure of that magnitude (a government incapable of even keeping its agency going which collects its FUNDS) would be a huge wake-up call that the current system is broken.
Discussions that might come from such a shutdown would include, "Maybe it's about time we simplify the tax code, so all of this infrastructure isn't necessary to collect taxes?"
But that's a good point too. I.T. seems to be in a strange place when it comes to where it fits in a budget for some companies. Some people want to call I.T. an expense (necessary cost of operations), while others view it as a "profit center" and constantly expect justifications from I.T. management as to how much money it saved the company in a given quarter.
The last couple places I worked insisted on an accounting scheme where I.T. had its hours charged back to cost centers of other divisions of the company, based on how much time we assisted those people. I guess it's fine, if it makes the number crunchers happy with the results? But it never made a lot of logical sense to me since so much of I.T. involved system or network-wide changes or upgrades affecting everybody. And you got into office politics with such things as wanting an office to upgrade to a faster internet connection. Their manager might say no because he didn't want the extra cost billed to his division/department. But not upgrading meant slower VPN access for any remote workers connecting to the router in that office and performance lag for anyone on the WAN who needed to load/save content from servers at his location. So his refusal to upgrade affected others negatively who he wasn't even directly responsible for.
One thing I've really noticed in the last decade or so is the massive amount of consolidation, mergers, acquisitions, etc.
Every time I turn around, it seems like some company is being bought out by another one. And with so many opting to recycle old company brand names, it's difficult to tell sometimes just who really makes a product or provides a service.
(We've all heard of Polaroid, RCA and Westinghouse -- but they're not the companies they used to be.)
Quite often when these mergers or acquisitions happen, the company originating the process really only wants to add the other business's patent portfolio, or its proprietary product -- not its labor pool. The employees typically come along for the ride, initially though -- with some kind of (often underhanded) plan to eliminate them over time. Perhaps it would be better for everyone involved if they were up front and honest about such plans, except the truth is? If they were, people would start throwing fits and revolting against these buyouts and mergers instead of viewing them as "just part of doing business".
(EG. If you want to own a technology that a competitor created, it's easy to pay off the head of the company who owns the rights to it and let them "resign". Everyone assumes it's because that individual is simply angry that he/she lost so much control over the original business plan and is going to walk away on principle. In reality? He/she just sold out and threw their staff under the bus.)
In the end though -- hey, it's the modern way business is done. They're worried about maximum efficiency, which means having a labor pool that costs the company the minimum in training costs, salaries, etc. while doing as much useful work as possible. Loyalty is pretty much out the window because keeping people around, just because they've "been with us a long time" turns out to be less efficient than hiring fresh people who are motivated to "prove themselves".
IMO, Microsoft has a big hit on their hands with Windows 10, from the looks of the developer preview. If it continues as planned, it should be the upgrade all of the Windows 7 holdouts have been waiting for. It has package management from the command line (a real plus for I.T. folks supporting these systems on a network), and native support for the latest hardware technologies like USB 3. The problems with the Metro UI in Windows 8 should hopefully be worked out, too.
But Windows Mobile for phones? They've tried and tried again and it's pretty much a non-starter. People simply aren't that interested in a Windows UI on a cellphone. IMO, they need to cut their losses and quit trying to have Microsoft everywhere. Focus on what works and build on that. EG. Move forward with such things as Office for iOS, because that's being smart. (It costs too much to try to convince everyone to ditch an iPad and buy a Surface tablet instead. Make your money off selling apps for iOS instead.)
I dislike the malls too, but truthfully - I consider the Apple retail stores a net positive, and another reason to keep buying Macs instead of something else.
If I don't want to visit a "Genius Bar", I don't have to, and neither do you. Apple has a toll free number you can call for service and support, which I've used several times before. They'll even overnight you a postage paid return mailer box to pack up your machine in, to go back to them for service, if needed. (This is identical to the service procedure I've gone through in the past with Toshiba -- except Apple is much quicker to answer their phone, vs. leaving you on hold for 45 minutes first.)
The GPU problem you're complaining about on your 2011 model of Macbook? That was a WELL known issue, across the board, with just about ALL notebook manufacturers who used those GPUs. So it's not even fair to use that as a reason you feel Macs lack quality or reliability. By contrast, I've got a 17" Macbook Pro that's from early 2010 which I leave on 24 hours/7 days (typically in a Henge dock on my office desk these days) and it's never needed service at all. It's my main work computer, and with a 512GB SSD I put in it a while back, it still feels pretty fast too. 5 years of daily use isn't bad at all for a portable, no matter what the brand.
I agree that Dell, arguably, does Apple one better in the area of service by sending out on-site technicians. BUT, I've worked for years in places that used exclusively Dell so I'm very familiar with that whole process too. Especially in more recent years, those techs are notorious for not showing up when they're scheduled, or bringing out an incorrect repair part, causing you the inconvenience of waiting around for them to show a second time.
For what it's worth, too.... Apple does have a couple of different programs you can join if you're a business user of their machines, to make the repair process a lot easier. They don't advertise these as well as I think they should, but they do exist. With one of them, you can get your own employees certified as Apple technicians so they can troubleshoot problems themselves and call Apple to get repair pairs overnighted to them under the warranty.
Just to play devil's advocate here.... The newer wireless access point products on the market like the Cisco Meraki gear encourage this sort of behavior, with their "Air Marshal" capabilities. They're designed so you can actively DoS wi-fi routers that appear on your network, "unauthorized".
They even have an extra radio integrated in them for this functionality, separate from the ones handling the rest of the wireless traffic.
So arguably, the I.T. folks who set this whole thing up for the hotels might have done so with intentions of preserving the integrity of the paid hotel wi-fi network, and not because "they mistakenly thought they owned all of the airwaves inside the hotel building". It's still an asshole move to set something like this up, IMO ... but a hotel chain that charges for its wi-fi could reasonably argue that it's in its best interests to ensure its paying customers get a good, reliable signal with it. That could be compromised with hundreds of guests setting up their own APs in their rooms.
Our workplace made a decision a while back to stay on Windows 7 Professional as the "standard" for our Windows users. (We also support a number of Macs.)
In general, I think many corporate I.T. departments have a policy of upgrading every OTHER release of Windows. (For example, they stayed on XP and skipped Vista. Upgraded to 7 and will now wait for Windows 10.)
Even if you go back as far as Windows '98, it turned out to be wise to stay put on '98 (upgrading it to second edition where possible) and skipping Windows ME.
IMO, there's just no benefit to a Windows 8 migration. The arguments like "no new Direct X support for 7" is meaningless when the users just use 2D apps like MS Office and a bunch of web based apps. The new "tile" interface means more training is required, which is a real problem for us, with so many mobile workers scattered all over the country.
Meanwhile, Windows 10 is the one really bringing the "added value" we're after, with such things as an upgraded Windows "PowerShell" that will finally support software upgrades from packages (similar to Linux distros) from the command line.
Fact is, at least in the U.S. -- the whole cellular market is designed around a 2 year device rotation as "standard".
This is due to the popularity of the 2 year contract that includes a heavily subsidized handset at signing or renewal time.
The industry figures that unless you're one of the less desirable customers who gets a pay as you go phone due to problems passing a credit check, you're going to keep paying $60-100 per month or so for the length of time you want to use a phone, and you're going to expect a shiny new model every couple of years as part of that arrangement.
I do think this might SLOWLY be changing a bit, largely thanks to T-Mobile trying to act as the rebellious upstart of the industry and encouraging people to rethink traditional contracts. (Additionally, the companies like "Net 10" who act as wholesalers of minutes of service and kilobytes of data from the major carriers help fuel interest in buying higher-end handsets straight out and using them without contracts.)
But no - there really is the expectation that a couple of years of support is all that's necessary on a cellphone. And tablets are sort of falling into that same category by default - simply because they run the same OS's as the cellphones do.
I don't really expect voters to be "experts" on the topics they're voting for. And at least in my own case, I often feel I'm vastly under-informed on what I'm about to vote on. (In reality, some of the people I'm asked to vote for haven't made any effort to publicize their views at all. This tends to happen with judges or folks in charge of treasuries or school-related positions pretty often. You'll often find someone standing near the polling place handing out a list of recommendations of who to vote for, for these things -- but that just tells you who wants to give the most money to the school or organization who made the flier.)
Regardless, I usually feel relatively informed on at least a few of the issues up for vote that I'm most interested in. Therefore, I go to cast votes on those issues, and I may just skip over the ones I have no real opinion on.
The problem I have is with apathetic voters who vote simply due to peer pressure. You can say all you want about them cancelling each other out (thanks to equal numbers voting for both sides of an issue) -- but I feel that every vote counted acts as evidence an individual supports the candidate the vote was cast for. When all of the candidates are lackluster or even guilty of previous corruption - I'd rather see them get very few votes on either side, then large numbers from all the disinterested and uninformed who just "pick one" at the polls.
I absolutely agree!
This is the single biggest issue I have with all of the ad campaigns trying to convince people to get out and vote. The result is, you get a bunch of uninformed people who really don't care enough to cast an educated vote - but they go so they can get the free "I voted!" sticker, feel good about themselves and fit in with what's perceived as "right" or "cool" (a la MTV's "Rock the Vote" advertising, years ago).
If all of the options available to vote for are so unappealing, many people can't even bring themselves to cast a vote one way or another? That says something too. Those are the elections that SHOULD be showing really low voter turnout.
Well, the Cadillac ELR got the styling thing down, arguably (by recycling the award winning "edgy" styling of their CTS Coupe). Yet it, too, is doing horrible in sales numbers. (I believe only 1,200 or so sold for all of 2014!?)
Look at the insane price though and it's no wonder... I hear they're discounting them by about $20,000 to try to get them off dealer lots now, and people STILL think it's too high. I mean, the bottom line is -- if you have the money for a "high end electric" car, you want Tesla, not Cadillac wrapping their modern idea of a luxury car around some Chevy Volt technology.
Yeah, ANYTHING is possible given enough talent, dedication and funding.
In reality though, even these multi-year, multi-phase implementations tend to go way over budget and fail to yield everything promised.
I've seen it happen, first-hand, when a company I worked for decided to implement a new ERP system and phase out a number of other applications and processes. They DID shell out the money to get the analysis done properly, but the problem really came in with ability for the new software to perform as intended. Bugs were found during the roll-out, but the team doing the implementation had too many layers internally to get those bugs corrected in a reasonable and timely manner. (EG. They'd have guys flown out and paid by the hour to give employee training on the new software and how to do something with it. During that process, they might run into a glitch -- but as trainers, they weren't really capable of fixing it or even having a direct contact with someone who could. They'd just gloss it over and move on, promising to "make a note of it".) If they even remembered to pass the note along about the bug, chances are it went to some team responsible for collecting the reports from other people on staff with the company. So now the bug was perhaps poorly or incompletely documented in some kind of bug tracking database. When will the actual developers get to addressing that bug? Hard to say. As likely as anything, they might claim it wasn't reproducible with their environment, or ask for more information. But since our people didn't have access to the database directly, we'd never be able to directly reply with that additional info or help finding the bug.
There were times my boss fixed problems in their system himself, because he knew more than the average person about the back end database it used. When that happened, I remember him telling their people about the fix and it was pretty much ignored, as in "Well, that's great then! Our team should eventually figure it out too and roll it into a version upgrade...."
For millions of dollars spent, I don't think you should have to work late nights finding your own fixes for their defective code ... but that's how it went down.
I was just talking to some people yesterday about the popular trend in offices to build open floor-plans in lieu of the traditional cubicles and dividers.
Even Google embraced the open floor-plan concept, yet I can't find much evidence from people working in such an environment that they find it an improvement?
Basically, people are remodeling in this style because it's viewed as more trendy and insightful. Never mind the fact that the old way was probably done for good reasons and to solve real problems. (Open floor-plan offices have serious problems with noises, distractions and a lack of appropriate places to go make a phone call with a client or vendor. They remove the privacy of the individual worker, causing everyone around to see every little thing you do. Duck out for a smoke break or to use the rest-room? Everyone immediately sees how long you're not occupying your seat and can make judgements on your behavior.
Same thing with this argument of using remote, "work from home" employees vs. making people come in to a central office. There are, IMO, many good reasons to expect your employees to be physically present in a central workplace each day. (Companies like Yahoo, who tried letting people work from home, decided to ban the practice when it turned out to be a failure for them.) Truthfully, I love having the ability to work from home in my own job - but I do computer support and systems administration work. Realistically, I usually wind up coming in to the office and only working from home about one day each week. In my situation, I'm (thankfully) given permission to make judgement calls about when it's most sensible for me to come in, vs. stay home. If I expect it will be a day of nothing but phone calls, helping users via remote access to their machine, and working with cloud based services we use? Then sure, I can do it from home. Many other times though, I'm expecting a package to arrive with a part to replace for somebody, or I'm just able to provide people a better level of service if I can look at an issue hands-on with them. (Remote control software is all but useless if you're trying to figure out why they're having monitor issues, for example. It may look fine on YOUR remote session screen even if their display is going bad.)
I know a number of our creative workers putting together marketing proposals and the like do better work when they're in a group together, in-person. We've given them plenty of tools to collaborate remotely, and sometimes they do. But there are still lots of limitations with the technology, including internet bandwidth issues for some people, meaning their video keeps breaking up or their audio gets choppy on a conference call. And ultimately, you can't celebrate with co-workers for a job well done by remotely taking them out for dinner or a few drinks, either.
I've become more and more convinced that the best solution is a mix of allowing SOME work from home or remote, and SOME expectation of coming in, in person. You won't be able to keep "best in breed" software development going with a scattered workforce who only collaborates video video chat, IM, email or phone calls.
I was just going to leave this whole thing alone, but I've got to comment on this one.
There's nothing that great about adding MicroSD card slots to cellphones. Sure, "Everyone else does it (but Apple)." -- but that doesn't make it a good solution.
Whenever I've used Android devices, it's always added an extra layer of complexity, determining if an app or some data is stored on the internal or external storage. And while perhaps they've addressed it now, I also recall a lot of hassles with certain programs requiring things be stored using the internal storage only - as they didn't know how to work with the MicroSD storage.
I think most cellphones just did it that way to make the devices cheaper to build. "You want more storage space? Whatever.... buy a card for that...."
I'm not going to try to debate that Apple overcharges for the storage you get in a given iOS device. (Heck, I agree... they gouge for it. But with Apple products, you almost always pay a premium. Either way, it just means whatever you buy from them has that much better resale value down the road too.)
I just find that with a phone, I want the information in it to be "one" with the device itself. If I store address book entries, for example, it may as well just be in the phone's own internal storage, because it would really inconvenience me if it was on a removable card and I swapped the wrong card in the phone that didn't have that data on it. Never mind the propensity for some of these SD flash cards to go bad without warning and lose everything on them.
So no, I have no issue with the way Apple chose to do things with the iPhones and no card slots. They *do* have a USB cable to facilitate data xfer to/from other devices, so you're not completely unable to communicate with other hardware. It sounds to me like some people just tried to get off cheap, buying the minimum storage version of the phones available and bigger, more feature filled versions of iOS don't leave a lot of space for your apps on the "entry level" model. Nothing worthy of a lawsuit.
No.... our company does advertising/marketing related work, so there's no HIPPA or other compliance regulation to worry about with the content that goes to DropBox.
In our case, we have a highly mobile workforce already, including a lot of freelance workers (some of whom are freelance status, yet essentially work with us on every project to the point where they're a "permalancer" ... and in at least one case, one of these people even employes a freelance worker underneath them). We needed a way for these people to collaborate on projects and easily share folders with specific people, but not necessarily everyone else.
Sure, you could store all of this on a traditional file server and let people access it via VPN, but that would generally require someone with administrator rights and the ability to adjust the permissions appropriately, as content was added. DropBox for Business makes it easy for people to shoot out email invites to download content and control who can access it themselves.
I already commented on SysAid's own page, but my feeling is this:
Consumerization of I.T. is generally a win-win for employers and employees, as long as it's done properly.
It's always a good thing when you can hire somebody who is used to using a particular service, technology or product, and they're able to use essentially the same thing as an employee. It's one less thing requiring training and adding complexity to doing the job.
I think BYOD (bring your own device) with cellphones and tablets was the initial driver of this discussion? But increasingly, we're seeing cloud services as another similar area. Plenty of people are familiar with DropBox for example, and often have a free DropBox personal account. With our corporate DropBox account, though, we're able to let people manage both their personal and their new corporate-issued one simultaneously, using one login. If they leave the company, we can instruct the software to auto delete the corporate data on their device(s) while reverting back to working as a free personal DropBox again, preserving their personal data.
By contrast, another cloud based product we use and like is CrashPlan for backups. Unfortunately, CrashPlan creates "islands" for personal accounts, standard business accounts, and enterprise-class accounts. If you upgrade a user from one "tier" to another, their backup history can't be migrated over. They're stuck doing a full, new backup from scratch under the new service class. That's a real issue for us, as we move to the enterprise version of the service. (What if someone's laptop drive crashes out in the field, after we upgrade their CrashPlan version and before it got a chance to back up everything successfully?) This could impact people who'd been using personal CrashPlan accounts and work for a company that decides to bring all of them under the fold of a business class backup account, too.
So in the next 5 years? I see I.T. departments needing to give more consideration to selection of business tools that play well with shared personal/business use.
I don't see why authors should feel threatened by Amazon's subscription model for books? In the case of books and other publications, our government has been funding repositories for the physical printed works so anyone can read as many of them as they like at NO additional cost -- and this has been the case for many, many years.
As a general rule, I think people who actually buy their own copies of books only do so with a very select group of them they consider so good, they might want to read them over and over, or hang onto them to share with friends or family. These are the titles people will be likely to purchase the e-book versions of, if they're fond of reading via a Kindle, iPad or other electronic device - vs. counting on some $9.95/month recurring subscription to retain access to them. (With these subscription models, you have no control over what titles get removed from the collection over time and substituted with others.)
In that sense, nothing much changes here except lesser known authors stand an improved chance of getting read, if they're lumped into a "read all you like for a flat monthly fee" package.
Actually, I've had a Facebook account for years and I use it regularly.
Of course I'm well aware that they sift through all of my information and try to resell it. But IMO, it's a pretty well understood trade, and one that I don't have a big problem with. The fact remains, Facebook will only have the information that I willingly provide by way of posting it up there or filling out fields on the site. And meanwhile, they're enabling ME to obtain information on all of my friends and other online connections too.
I don't share or say anything on FB that I'm not already comfortable sharing with other people, so it's not like huge secrets are being revealed. Things I do get out of Facebook include using local buy/sell/trade type groups that people have set up (no fees to post listings or fees owed to the site operator upon successful sales) and special interest groups, such as one for one of the cars I own.
I've also been able to keep in touch with a number of old friends who I probably wouldn't keep up with otherwise, after moving. (And let's face it... that's primarily because there's nothing critical or earth-shattering to be gained by keeping up with these people's daily lives when you don't even live in the same city as them anymore. But when it's free and as easy as checking in on FB, it makes for a mildly enjoyable way to kill some time while better preserving those old friendships. You never know when you're going to visit a place you used to live, and it's nice not to do so without having to wonder if those people you "used to know" still live at the same address, etc.)
If Facebook does nothing for you, great. Don't use it! But I see so much bashing of the site that I think is unwarranted. Did FB ever so much as beg for donations from you to keep it operational, or limit how much time you could spend using it each month or day? Nope! And yet, you're even free to create new groups (even closed, private ones) without owing a dime. IMO, there's a lot of value to be wrung out of using the site -- despite knowing they're trying to cull value out of the content you put out there.