There are also some additional technical issues with combining these. I normally just search for things in the URL bar, but occasionally have found that I get directed to a non-existent website when I actually wanted to search for a specific term.
This is the problem with overloading your input field like this. You have to make a "best guess" as to your user's intention, and if you screw up, you force the user to go search from a website.
Want to know how easy it is to fool the "Awesome Bar"? Type "string.length()" into it, and watch as it tries to take you to "www.string.length".
If it was me, I likely would have called you a kleine snotneus. But I think that insult may be a genetic trait of the Dutch, along with thriftiness. You know how copper wire was invented, right? Two Dutchmen were fighting over a penny...
All the more reason not to visit the pacific northwestern US.
Damn, you saw through us! All those Gay Pride parades in Seattle, electing a gay Mayor, and rainbow crosswalks were just a clever trap. We're only pretending to be all chill and tolerant, but that's only until all those people finally out themselves, and then we'll have them! Muahahahahah!
I wish I'd read this highly informative title in the late 90s. My husband and I both suffer from PTHSCD (post-traumatic huge ship collision disorder) which we acquired while piloting our own huge ship. I remember it like it was yesterday -- we were carrying over 3 million gallons of blue paint to Morocco when, wouldn't you know it, we collided with our competitors. They had about 4 million gallons of red-brown on board, and before we knew it, we were all marooned.
This one was also quite a helpful review:
When on my jet ski in the Chesapeake bay this summer I was confronted by a huge ship moving up the channel. You can imagine my horror when I realized I had only 1 hour and 45 minutes or so before the lumbering behemoth was sure to pass through my area. With no place to hide and only a water jet propelled small craft beneath me for transport, I quickly withdrew my Kindle Fire from the storage compartment beneath my seat and preceded to read the book How To Avoid Huge Ships. One hour later and with only 45 minutes to spare, I implemented the expert advice provided by the author and turned my jet ski in the opposite direction of the huge ship to avoid certain disaster.
I've been using Firefox for a long time, since tabbed browsing was a killer new feature. I've seen it convulse with pointless UI changes, copying Chrome visually (and even their ridiculous versioning scheme) but presumably failing to understand *why* Chrome was eating their lunch. I watched as idiotic deals were made with Pocket, integrating more cruft no one wanted directly into the browser.
Now, Firefox is breaking backwards compatibility. I totally understand *why* they might like to do this, but that really makes no difference to the user. Functionality which was once there is now no more. If they were going to break compatibility anyhow, maybe they should have bitten the bullet and written an entirely new browser like MS did with Edge, so they wouldn't have to make any compromises going forward. Now, instead, we get the worst of both worlds: the historical cruft of an old browser AND broken backwards compatibility.
At this point, I suspect I'll just jump to Chrome, which is what Firefox ultimately seems aiming towards anyhow. It was mostly simple inertia that was keeping me on Firefox, and now I've been forced into some sort of action. Might as well pick the better browser at this point.
Company-destroying fines or jail sentences will probably just mean said companies will do anything to cover up this sort of breach. Moreover, these sorts of breaches can occur even when everything is done as correctly as possible due to things like targeted spear-phishing or rogue employees. We want companies to be able to disclose these sorts of things responsibly, even if it was their lack of proper oversight that caused the problem in the first place (and yes, most of the time it DOES seem to be their fault)
Perhaps a different approach is needed. Say we pass a law that requires companies which store personal data to divert a small percentage of profits into some sort of escrow fund which grows proportionally to the amount and sensitivity of the personal information they're storing. If a breach occurs, that escrow fund is drained and distributed to the victims, and the company has to start re-filling a new fund.
This gives an immediate, tangible incentive to protecting that data, and not only that, gives the data an unambiguous monetary value, which creates a strong incentive to protect it just like any other asset. This also creates a disincentive for companies to collect personal information "just because". They immediately are subjected to much more government regulation and oversight, and such data becomes a potential financial drain if not properly managed.
It's funny you mention "gold". During the great California and Alaska gold rushes, do you know who really struck it rich? It was the folks selling mining hardware and other supplies to the miners. The vast majority of miners didn't make much at all.
I think it's an appropriate comparison for modern-day class action suits. These types of lawsuits make lawyers rich, and everyone else gets enough for a free latte or two.
Where exactly did you get those numbers and facts you're presenting? They don't seem to jibe with historical data I've found for US agriculture. In fact, they seem to be off by a full order of magnitude, as the transition appears to be fairly linear over 50 years, from 1910 to 1960.
We don't even know yet about how upcoming technology will affect us in a positive or negative way. It's pure, utter speculation at that point, and all I see here is a lot of fear-mongering to try to panic people into implementing massive and potentially risky social and economic reforms which have no proven track record. And speaking of such, so far, the historical track record has been that people have found other employment *every* other time such transformations occurred. You're apparently betting AGAINST the established precedent, and as such, I think the burden of proof is on the people who are predicting a cataclysm of some sort rather than a simple shift in employment, same as always.
You can talk all you want about things, but I'd strongly oppose any pre-emptive action before we even see the most remote example of this taking place on a mass scale. For all the intent to make things better, I'd say there's an equal chance of actually making things worse. As such, I think some cautionary notes are warranted in that regard.
On a more practical level, I'm convinced that the people terrified of this robot apocalypse don't have a lot of broad experience with many blue-collar jobs (or even white collar jobs outside the tech industry), and don't realize how utterly impractical it would be for robots or AI to take over many of those jobs in the foreseeable future. There are a hell of a lot of jobs besides factory assembly-line work, or drone-like data analysis which advanced algorithms can theoretically do.
In short, the notion that robots will put most people out of work in the next 10 years is pure, unadulterated fantasy. And people have historically been absolutely terrible about predicting the function past a decade out with *any* sort of accuracy. The hubris to believe our generation is the first to do seems sadly typical of the tech crowd.
And I can see these people now, sadly shaking their heads at me, saying "You fool, how can you not see this coming? It's so obvious!" My response would be: let's at least wait until we see the tiniest sign that this is beginning to happen before we all panic and start trying to implement radical (and potentially harmful) solutions for perceived problems that may not even manifest. We can't even begin to realistically imagine what sort of tradeoffs, both positive and negative, will occur from future advanced technology. All we have now is wild speculation and fear-mongering.
Complete automation in the near future is a fantasy advocated by people, I suspect, who don't have a broad experience with blue-collar jobs. That is, their imagination is limited to factory workers or a few other common tropes. There are many, many blue collar jobs for which there's no prospect of complete automation occurring within the next century, maybe longer. A lot of jobs require mental flexibility and / or physical dexterity which are far beyond the capabilities of any machine or AI.
There also exists an entire category of service jobs in which customers simply don't want to be served by a machine. Few people want to go see a play performed by robot actors, or get a massage by a robot, or get served at a fancy restaurant by a robot (aside from novelty-based exceptions). Interacting with other humans at a personal level is part of the experience and appeal of many services.
Naturally, lots of jobs where people are currently just human cogs in a machine will certainly go away. The increase in human labor costs and the advent of more capable and flexible machines makes this inevitable. We saw the same thing with jobs that involved nothing but exploiting human muscle power or basic dexterity. But there are plenty of jobs that are simply not suited to automation yet, perhaps because they work in a dynamic environment where robots couldn't cope, or simply require the mental flexibility that even our current most advanced "AI" currently lacks.
We're not anywhere near the point of manufacturing drop-in replacement machines for human workers, and so it's rather premature to start "transforming our society" before we even have a serious grasp on the ultimate effects of this new technology, and what counter-acting benefits it might provide to the inevitable drawbacks and problems. Most futurists have been historically awful at actually predicting the future. To believe that we can do better where everyone else failed is the height of hubris, which, incidentally, seems to be par for the course among the Slashdot / tech crowd.
I also view this story as a warning against an over-reliance on pay-to-play online services. What happens if it's not a banking issue, but a simple lack of funds that causes a scenario like this? Granted, with an online presence of any sort you can't exactly do completely without paid services, but at the very least, for example, if you actually own copies of your software that aren't tied to the cloud, you can simply choose not to upgrade them, and they'll continue working forever. Slack is handy, but it's a third party service that can, in theory, disappear at any moment. I've seen people building critical infrastructure into these types of tools, and I think they're insane.
Instead, having all these online services chewing at your bank account every month means you have few options when it comes to tightening your belt for a short period, something that nearly all small businesses run into at one time or another.
In 2008, it was acknowledged that there were 42 engineers working on Chrome. Let's generously assume the headcount has doubled since then. Mozilla has over a thousand employees, a number it hit a few years ago, I believe.
In short, Mozilla could get away with having a fraction of their current headcount and Firefox would probably be better off for it. All their side-projects have been sucking the life out of that organization, and distracting them from improving the one product that everyone cares about. It's great that Mozilla has such a high-minded mission statement, but they need a solid product in the browser market, or else they become little more than an internet think-tank.
My prediction: within five years, you're going to hear about massive layoffs at Mozilla, slashing perhaps 1/4 to 1/2 of their current headcount.
Yeah, good point. Still, I'm at least willing to acknowledge that "supergeeks" may exist in a "superhero" world. But even shows that try to present this stuff "realistically" get it so far off the mark, it actually ends up being hilarious to watch.
Honestly, I'd be pretty happy if Hollywood ever depicted computer science, programming, or hacking in a remotely realistic manner. I honestly don't care all that much what gender or skin color the programmer is. I just want to see less of this, please.
Mozilla reminds me of people who profess a desire for world peace, but then get into petty feuds with their neighbors. They can't seem put what they advocate into practice on a small scale, which tends to undermine confidence in their capacity to advocate and execute their larger mission.
Mozilla has one project that really matters, and they employ a lot of people. Why Firefox isn't hands-down the world's best browser is beyond me.
It's not the computer's power that makes a computer a desktop. It's the form factor and OS capabilities. Mobile smartphones have plenty of power, but aren't optimally designed for use with a large screen, mouse, and keyboard. Desktop OSes, on the other hand, offer exactly the correct paradigm for this form factor.
We've seen several prominent examples of how it's rather impractical to try to bridge these two very different use cases, and the companies that have attempted to do so are backing away from that attempt now.
The only people who think that a smartphone can replace a desktop are the people who simply don't do the type of work that still requires a desktop computer. It's like saying "Hey, now that we've invented a motorcycle, there's no need for anyone to buy a pickup truck!"
I was typing up a reply very similar to yours, even including the same vehicle-based analogy. Then I looked down and saw your post. So instead I'll just say "yes, this".
A language that tries to be all things will always lose out to specialist languages designed for a very specific use case. There is some merit in selecting from among a handful of well known languages, simply for the ease of learning and collaboration, but beyond a specific point, too much language consolidation would actively harm specific use-cases that have more extreme requirements.
Slashdot Mirror
How DARE you suggest the emperor actually has no clothes on! Can you not see the finery he's wearing?
There are also some additional technical issues with combining these. I normally just search for things in the URL bar, but occasionally have found that I get directed to a non-existent website when I actually wanted to search for a specific term.
This is the problem with overloading your input field like this. You have to make a "best guess" as to your user's intention, and if you screw up, you force the user to go search from a website.
Want to know how easy it is to fool the "Awesome Bar"? Type "string.length()" into it, and watch as it tries to take you to "www.string.length".
Awesome, huh?
The northwest is tolerant. But you're a bunch of cunts.
We love you too, man.
If it was me, I likely would have called you a kleine snotneus. But I think that insult may be a genetic trait of the Dutch, along with thriftiness. You know how copper wire was invented, right? Two Dutchmen were fighting over a penny...
Ya got me.
All the more reason not to visit the pacific northwestern US.
Damn, you saw through us! All those Gay Pride parades in Seattle, electing a gay Mayor, and rainbow crosswalks were just a clever trap. We're only pretending to be all chill and tolerant, but that's only until all those people finally out themselves, and then we'll have them! Muahahahahah!
Personally, I enjoyed this review:
I wish I'd read this highly informative title in the late 90s. My husband and I both suffer from PTHSCD (post-traumatic huge ship collision disorder) which we acquired while piloting our own huge ship. I remember it like it was yesterday -- we were carrying over 3 million gallons of blue paint to Morocco when, wouldn't you know it, we collided with our competitors. They had about 4 million gallons of red-brown on board, and before we knew it, we were all marooned.
This one was also quite a helpful review:
When on my jet ski in the Chesapeake bay this summer I was confronted by a huge ship moving up the channel. You can imagine my horror when I realized I had only 1 hour and 45 minutes or so before the lumbering behemoth was sure to pass through my area. With no place to hide and only a water jet propelled small craft beneath me for transport, I quickly withdrew my Kindle Fire from the storage compartment beneath my seat and preceded to read the book How To Avoid Huge Ships. One hour later and with only 45 minutes to spare, I implemented the expert advice provided by the author and turned my jet ski in the opposite direction of the huge ship to avoid certain disaster.
I've been using Firefox for a long time, since tabbed browsing was a killer new feature. I've seen it convulse with pointless UI changes, copying Chrome visually (and even their ridiculous versioning scheme) but presumably failing to understand *why* Chrome was eating their lunch. I watched as idiotic deals were made with Pocket, integrating more cruft no one wanted directly into the browser.
Now, Firefox is breaking backwards compatibility. I totally understand *why* they might like to do this, but that really makes no difference to the user. Functionality which was once there is now no more. If they were going to break compatibility anyhow, maybe they should have bitten the bullet and written an entirely new browser like MS did with Edge, so they wouldn't have to make any compromises going forward. Now, instead, we get the worst of both worlds: the historical cruft of an old browser AND broken backwards compatibility.
At this point, I suspect I'll just jump to Chrome, which is what Firefox ultimately seems aiming towards anyhow. It was mostly simple inertia that was keeping me on Firefox, and now I've been forced into some sort of action. Might as well pick the better browser at this point.
It sounds like GP was talking about EMAIL the program not being widely used, not email the protocol.
Company-destroying fines or jail sentences will probably just mean said companies will do anything to cover up this sort of breach. Moreover, these sorts of breaches can occur even when everything is done as correctly as possible due to things like targeted spear-phishing or rogue employees. We want companies to be able to disclose these sorts of things responsibly, even if it was their lack of proper oversight that caused the problem in the first place (and yes, most of the time it DOES seem to be their fault)
Perhaps a different approach is needed. Say we pass a law that requires companies which store personal data to divert a small percentage of profits into some sort of escrow fund which grows proportionally to the amount and sensitivity of the personal information they're storing. If a breach occurs, that escrow fund is drained and distributed to the victims, and the company has to start re-filling a new fund.
This gives an immediate, tangible incentive to protecting that data, and not only that, gives the data an unambiguous monetary value, which creates a strong incentive to protect it just like any other asset. This also creates a disincentive for companies to collect personal information "just because". They immediately are subjected to much more government regulation and oversight, and such data becomes a potential financial drain if not properly managed.
It's funny you mention "gold". During the great California and Alaska gold rushes, do you know who really struck it rich? It was the folks selling mining hardware and other supplies to the miners. The vast majority of miners didn't make much at all.
I think it's an appropriate comparison for modern-day class action suits. These types of lawsuits make lawyers rich, and everyone else gets enough for a free latte or two.
Someone who still sends checks in the mail instead of making an electronic payment.
Where exactly did you get those numbers and facts you're presenting? They don't seem to jibe with historical data I've found for US agriculture. In fact, they seem to be off by a full order of magnitude, as the transition appears to be fairly linear over 50 years, from 1910 to 1960.
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.o...
https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...
We don't even know yet about how upcoming technology will affect us in a positive or negative way. It's pure, utter speculation at that point, and all I see here is a lot of fear-mongering to try to panic people into implementing massive and potentially risky social and economic reforms which have no proven track record. And speaking of such, so far, the historical track record has been that people have found other employment *every* other time such transformations occurred. You're apparently betting AGAINST the established precedent, and as such, I think the burden of proof is on the people who are predicting a cataclysm of some sort rather than a simple shift in employment, same as always.
You can talk all you want about things, but I'd strongly oppose any pre-emptive action before we even see the most remote example of this taking place on a mass scale. For all the intent to make things better, I'd say there's an equal chance of actually making things worse. As such, I think some cautionary notes are warranted in that regard.
On a more practical level, I'm convinced that the people terrified of this robot apocalypse don't have a lot of broad experience with many blue-collar jobs (or even white collar jobs outside the tech industry), and don't realize how utterly impractical it would be for robots or AI to take over many of those jobs in the foreseeable future. There are a hell of a lot of jobs besides factory assembly-line work, or drone-like data analysis which advanced algorithms can theoretically do.
In short, the notion that robots will put most people out of work in the next 10 years is pure, unadulterated fantasy. And people have historically been absolutely terrible about predicting the function past a decade out with *any* sort of accuracy. The hubris to believe our generation is the first to do seems sadly typical of the tech crowd.
And I can see these people now, sadly shaking their heads at me, saying "You fool, how can you not see this coming? It's so obvious!" My response would be: let's at least wait until we see the tiniest sign that this is beginning to happen before we all panic and start trying to implement radical (and potentially harmful) solutions for perceived problems that may not even manifest. We can't even begin to realistically imagine what sort of tradeoffs, both positive and negative, will occur from future advanced technology. All we have now is wild speculation and fear-mongering.
Complete automation in the near future is a fantasy advocated by people, I suspect, who don't have a broad experience with blue-collar jobs. That is, their imagination is limited to factory workers or a few other common tropes. There are many, many blue collar jobs for which there's no prospect of complete automation occurring within the next century, maybe longer. A lot of jobs require mental flexibility and / or physical dexterity which are far beyond the capabilities of any machine or AI.
There also exists an entire category of service jobs in which customers simply don't want to be served by a machine. Few people want to go see a play performed by robot actors, or get a massage by a robot, or get served at a fancy restaurant by a robot (aside from novelty-based exceptions). Interacting with other humans at a personal level is part of the experience and appeal of many services.
Naturally, lots of jobs where people are currently just human cogs in a machine will certainly go away. The increase in human labor costs and the advent of more capable and flexible machines makes this inevitable. We saw the same thing with jobs that involved nothing but exploiting human muscle power or basic dexterity. But there are plenty of jobs that are simply not suited to automation yet, perhaps because they work in a dynamic environment where robots couldn't cope, or simply require the mental flexibility that even our current most advanced "AI" currently lacks.
We're not anywhere near the point of manufacturing drop-in replacement machines for human workers, and so it's rather premature to start "transforming our society" before we even have a serious grasp on the ultimate effects of this new technology, and what counter-acting benefits it might provide to the inevitable drawbacks and problems. Most futurists have been historically awful at actually predicting the future. To believe that we can do better where everyone else failed is the height of hubris, which, incidentally, seems to be par for the course among the Slashdot / tech crowd.
I also view this story as a warning against an over-reliance on pay-to-play online services. What happens if it's not a banking issue, but a simple lack of funds that causes a scenario like this? Granted, with an online presence of any sort you can't exactly do completely without paid services, but at the very least, for example, if you actually own copies of your software that aren't tied to the cloud, you can simply choose not to upgrade them, and they'll continue working forever. Slack is handy, but it's a third party service that can, in theory, disappear at any moment. I've seen people building critical infrastructure into these types of tools, and I think they're insane.
Instead, having all these online services chewing at your bank account every month means you have few options when it comes to tightening your belt for a short period, something that nearly all small businesses run into at one time or another.
In 2008, it was acknowledged that there were 42 engineers working on Chrome. Let's generously assume the headcount has doubled since then. Mozilla has over a thousand employees, a number it hit a few years ago, I believe.
In short, Mozilla could get away with having a fraction of their current headcount and Firefox would probably be better off for it. All their side-projects have been sucking the life out of that organization, and distracting them from improving the one product that everyone cares about. It's great that Mozilla has such a high-minded mission statement, but they need a solid product in the browser market, or else they become little more than an internet think-tank.
My prediction: within five years, you're going to hear about massive layoffs at Mozilla, slashing perhaps 1/4 to 1/2 of their current headcount.
Yeah, good point. Still, I'm at least willing to acknowledge that "supergeeks" may exist in a "superhero" world. But even shows that try to present this stuff "realistically" get it so far off the mark, it actually ends up being hilarious to watch.
Stories about Hollywood, perhaps?
Honestly, I'd be pretty happy if Hollywood ever depicted computer science, programming, or hacking in a remotely realistic manner. I honestly don't care all that much what gender or skin color the programmer is. I just want to see less of this, please.
Mozilla reminds me of people who profess a desire for world peace, but then get into petty feuds with their neighbors. They can't seem put what they advocate into practice on a small scale, which tends to undermine confidence in their capacity to advocate and execute their larger mission.
Mozilla has one project that really matters, and they employ a lot of people. Why Firefox isn't hands-down the world's best browser is beyond me.
"Creators" != "Creative". I'm creating an Excel spreadsheet on Windows 10. Woo!
It's not the computer's power that makes a computer a desktop. It's the form factor and OS capabilities. Mobile smartphones have plenty of power, but aren't optimally designed for use with a large screen, mouse, and keyboard. Desktop OSes, on the other hand, offer exactly the correct paradigm for this form factor.
We've seen several prominent examples of how it's rather impractical to try to bridge these two very different use cases, and the companies that have attempted to do so are backing away from that attempt now.
The only people who think that a smartphone can replace a desktop are the people who simply don't do the type of work that still requires a desktop computer. It's like saying "Hey, now that we've invented a motorcycle, there's no need for anyone to buy a pickup truck!"
I was typing up a reply very similar to yours, even including the same vehicle-based analogy. Then I looked down and saw your post. So instead I'll just say "yes, this".
A language that tries to be all things will always lose out to specialist languages designed for a very specific use case. There is some merit in selecting from among a handful of well known languages, simply for the ease of learning and collaboration, but beyond a specific point, too much language consolidation would actively harm specific use-cases that have more extreme requirements.