Yep, agreed. Apparently, Walmart can't stop thinking of themselves as a brick and mortar store. I'm betting that this is why Amazon will continue to win in the online space.
Fortunately for them, there are apparently plenty of people who still prefer to shop for things in a physical store.
How did it become the only real viable desktop distro aside from maybe Mint?
This is sort of a strange way to phrase this, considering that Mint is built on top of Ubuntu (except for the newer Debian edition) . It's basically Ubuntu with a more traditional desktop and a few additional utilities. Canonical hasn't always make the best decisions, in many people's opinion, but you can give them a lot of credit, especially early on, by helping to popularize a very "friendly" version of Linux on the desktop.
Keep in mind that within a specific product category, there are going to be various features that you may prefer. In the product category or jams or jellies, you indicated that you don't like jellies. Well, that cuts a big portion of those "redundant" products out, right? Do you like seeds or seedless? What flavor: strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, blueberry, or something else? How about product size - large or small? Glass jar or squeezable plastic bottle?
When you've narrowed things down like that, you're really only left with a couple of brand choices, not dozens and dozens. And it's a good thing for those few brands to have to compete for your business with competitive prices and quality.
Yes, but this means we have the opportunity to grow into one of those awesome and sophisticated "elder races" that we see all the time in science fiction. That is, assuming we can avoid killing ourselves off completely by clubbing each other over the head.
It will be "fine" for a while, then when cable has sufficiently declined in popularity, the streaming prices will increase and the ads will begin to flow like water.
You think? That's one of the good things about the fragmentation - those multiple services are competing with each other. The problem with cable is it hasn't had much competition. In many areas of the country, there's only one cable provider, so they can pretty much charge whatever they please, and that can be a lot. And the streaming options for pro sports are either ridiculously restrictive or absurdly expensive, so sports fans are often limited to cable.
If streaming services start ratcheting up the prices and shoving ads in my face, I'll unsubscribe, simple as that. I went years without cable before streaming was viable for me, and if things go south with streaming, I'll kick them out of my house as well.
How much does cable cost per month? Probably between $50 and $60 for basic, and a lot more for premium packages. Assuming you're already going to pay for internet service, that's FIVE streaming services you can sign up for and not pay more than a basic cable package. Besides which, that's on-demand and commercial-free service, so I'd consider it a superior product anyhow.
I'm totally fine with this deal. I'm signed up for three streaming services, and it's more TV than I can realistically watch anyhow.
Apples and oranges. Not all videos are created equal. Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu have full TV shows (entire series) and movies. Youtube has a bunch of user content I mostly don't give a crap about.
I currently subscribe to three different streaming services (in lieu of cable), so I'm not averse to paying for content. It just feels like they'll need an awful lot of premium content to catch up to the other services for that price point.
Heh, true. Still, keep in mind it's easy to label such thinking "stupid" with the clarity hindsight and history gives us.;-)
Back in the winter of '44, the Germans seemed to appear very close to being defeated. The allies simply didn't believe the Wehrmacht had the capacity to launch another offensive, so everything they heard was filtered through that mindset. They even dismissed first-hand civilian reports of massive buildups and Ultra intercepts, instead preferring to believe it was simply more German pys-ops.
I simply look at it as the time-honored talent nearly every human has for viewing the world as they want to see it, rather than the way it really is.
If you're going to criticize the French for being surprised by the German invasion through the Ardennes, then in fairness, I need to point out that they did the exact same thing to the US during the Battle of the Bulge. And we didn't even have the excuse of not having seen them pull that same maneuver just a few years earlier.
When I was talking about comments, I was mostly referring to comments that described the functionality of internal code. In these cases, the comments are typically embedded right with the code, so the locality of that sort of documentation isn't a problem.
For external documentation... I think that would tend to be a per-company or per-project issue. If I was working on code that required external documentation, I'd generally recommend keeping it in the source files using Doxygen or something like that to auto-generate the documentation from specially-formatted comments. It seems a lot more practical to me to keep the documentation tied to the source code for precisely the reasons you imply - if it's separated, it's too easy to let them get out of sync.
I've heard arguments against writing proper comments similar to what the author makes: "but if you change the code and the documentation or comments don't change, then it might be worse than no documentation at all." My response is that if you're not updating the documentation or comments, then you're not finishing the job you were assigned. You could make the same arguments against taking the time to create meaningful variables and function names.
There's another argument against comments I occasionally hear as well, which is "a competent coder should be able to discern what the code is doing without comments." While that's technically true, it's another argument I would reject. I feel the best comments can and should declare the intent of a block of code, rather than drilling down into the mechanics of the code. Those types of comments are often much more valuable than comments which simply regurgitate the mechanics of code in English.
Still, in my own code, I don't have a fixed ratio of comment to code. It's entirely dependent on the complexity / obviousness of the code in question. For instance, if you have a very simple function, such as a handler that reacts to some UI event and just passes along the event to some other system, or performs a simple operation, it's stupid to spend a bunch of time and create excess visual noise to document that function. A quick glance at the code tells you everything you need to know about what's going on far easier than comment blocks.
On the other hand, when code gets more complex, or the internal workings of a function is less than trivial, I expect to see a more comments in the code. In some of the most complex code I've either written or worked on, the number of lines of comments can actually exceed the number of lines of code. I've even seen some helpful little ASCII drawings in some particularly complex physics code, which was awesome.
What assumption am I making? They ARE being paid - they're just being paid up front. Would this be a fair package if they got six months severance pay in exchange for what may be a very rare trip into the office, or the occasional phone call or e-mail over the next two years? How about if they only got a month's pay? I think it makes a difference. Note that the agreement specifically forbids SunTrust from using this clause to the extent it causes an employee hardship with their new job.
Also, apparently this damage-control statement from SunTrust came in later (check out at the bottom of the article):
It is a rare occasion when we need to call a former employee. The “continuing cooperation” clause is designed to assist the company under scenarios that arise infrequently when we need access to knowledge possessed by a former employee. Those scenarios primarily relate to regulatory or legal matters. For instance, we may need to reach out to former employees to ensure we accurately understand situations in which they were involved while employed by the company. SunTrust has never used this provision to require a former employee to be “on call” to help conduct day-to-day business in any way.
Since it's apparently rare for people to get called in, it's stupid of SunTrust not to offer their ex-employees a fair market rate for consulting work. It would hardly cost them anything (assuming it's as rare as they claim), and it would make this whole thing a non-issue.
I too find it slightly odd the article doesn't even mention what the severance package benefits are. This is almost certainly compensation for what's likely at least several months of pay after termination. Unless I badly misunderstand the legal issues involved, I'm pretty sure there's absolutely no obligation to accept the agreement if they're willing to decline the severance package.
When I was laid off, I signed an "I won't sue you" agreement for a couple of month's pay. I was being laid off for legitimate financial reasons (i.e. too many expenses, not enough revenue), and the company was honest with us and tried to be up front about everything. I certainly wasn't planning to sue them, so I didn't mind signing.
Don't misunderstand, I'm not defending the bank here, especially since they're laying off these folks and outsourcing the work, but I think some people may be misunderstanding how these severance deals work - there's often some conditions as a part of the package. I've just never heard of conditions like these before.
Windows Phone... yeah, I've heard it's nice from people who actually have one. But aren't you missing out on the app ecosystem of the Android or iPhone marketplace?
Unfortunately, an ecosystem feeds on popularity, and popularity feeds on the ecosystem. As we've seen from Windows' death-grip on the PC market, it's hard for competitors to break into an existing market, even with solid alternative offerings.
Google supports Nexus phones with major updates for "at least two years" now, and security updates for "the longer of three years from initial availability or 18 months from last sale of the device via the Google Store," which is better than any other Android OEM out there. After the Stagefright vulnerability cropped up, Google instituted a monthly security update schedule, and so far Nexus devices have gotten OTAs in August, September, and October, right on schedule.
It's good to see this stated up front. I'm hoping that this becomes a trend in the industry. The expected lifetime of the phone is going to be a very important factor when deciding on my next one.
I'm not quite sure what you're implying... that it's dangerous to do that? Assuming you're not firing solid slugs or heavy buckshot, it's reasonably safe to fire a shotgun into the air. Birdshot raining back down retains little of it's kinetic energy.
Well, it's a good thing Silicon Valley is safely situated far away from dangerous faultlines, right?;-)
I've lived in or near the Seattle area all my life, and I'd say I've noticed a minor earthquake perhaps once every five years or so on average. I've never experienced even a moderately sized quake during my entire lifetime. I'm sure it looks rather dangerous when you're viewing a large regional map with all the quakes from the last century or two overlaid. In reality, I'd bet the odds of a major quake destroying a datacenter within the payoff period (maybe a decade?) is probably fairly small.
If we get hit with the big one in the next few years, feel free to tell me "I told you so" after I dig myself out of the rubble.
No one is going to be breaching the Grand Coulee Dam or the several dozen other major dams in the near future. I wouldn't extrapolate a few small, obsolete dams being torn down into some sort of trend.
I'd agree with your assessment regarding military drones, but probably not for civilian types. The technology will only escalate if the participants are actively trying to defeat those defensive mechanisms. Why would most drones or their operators care about that, since they likely have no intention of doing anything that would get them in trouble with law enforcement in the first place?
Besides, if the drone defeats the radio-based approach, law enforcement (or military) will simply resort to the "flying lead" approach. There's not a lot of defensive measures you can take against a well aimed shotgun - presumably the gun of choice for forcefully removing drones from the air.
That was a random comment via Twitter, wasn't it? I think everyone knows that the internet can be extremely toxic. People say all sorts of nasty shit when they're anonymous, especially regarding women. That's a real issue that we need to work on as a society, but I think it's a different issue than discrimination in the workplace.
To me, the important question is: does she feel discriminated against in any way at work because she's a woman? According to her tagline for the ad in question, she appeared to think her team was awesome and smart. That doesn't sound like someone fighting discrimination at work to me.
I'm not saying discrimination against women doesn't happen. I just don't believe that discrimination alone could explain the massive gender gap we see. Why would programmers be so much more institutionally sexist than other white-collar professions in which there's a closer gender balance (say, doctors)? It just doesn't make any sense to me.
While I agree that posting this stuff on Slashdot time and time again is damn near trolling (maybe we should be able to moderate the summary?), I don't see why anyone should have a problem with this. I think it's fine if some people wish to set up women-only schools. It's not like there aren't a million other options for male students. There are probably some women who would feel more comfortable going to school in an all-female environment, especially given the likely male/female ratios in programming classes.
Of course, one question I have is, how will they react to jumping into an environment with 90% or more men straight from all-female classes? My fear is it could cause a bit of culture shock - sort of like an adult who has never built up an immunity as a child gets hit rather hard by typical childhood diseases. Damn, I just compared men to diseases. You know what I mean, though.
Anyhow, more power to them. I'd personally love to see more female programmers, but only if it's what they want to do, and if they get the jobs because they're qualified, not because of any particular internal plumbing. My fear is that if this program bombs due to lack of participation, some people will still manage to point an accusing finger at the industry and say "See? Your workplaces are so poisonous that women don't even want to take a chance on a computer science degree!" I'm a little tired of being collectively accused of misogyny when I've never seen female programmers I've worked with treated any differently than anyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, agreed. Apparently, Walmart can't stop thinking of themselves as a brick and mortar store. I'm betting that this is why Amazon will continue to win in the online space.
Fortunately for them, there are apparently plenty of people who still prefer to shop for things in a physical store.
How did it become the only real viable desktop distro aside from maybe Mint?
This is sort of a strange way to phrase this, considering that Mint is built on top of Ubuntu (except for the newer Debian edition) . It's basically Ubuntu with a more traditional desktop and a few additional utilities. Canonical hasn't always make the best decisions, in many people's opinion, but you can give them a lot of credit, especially early on, by helping to popularize a very "friendly" version of Linux on the desktop.
Keep in mind that within a specific product category, there are going to be various features that you may prefer. In the product category or jams or jellies, you indicated that you don't like jellies. Well, that cuts a big portion of those "redundant" products out, right? Do you like seeds or seedless? What flavor: strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, blueberry, or something else? How about product size - large or small? Glass jar or squeezable plastic bottle?
When you've narrowed things down like that, you're really only left with a couple of brand choices, not dozens and dozens. And it's a good thing for those few brands to have to compete for your business with competitive prices and quality.
Yes, but this means we have the opportunity to grow into one of those awesome and sophisticated "elder races" that we see all the time in science fiction. That is, assuming we can avoid killing ourselves off completely by clubbing each other over the head.
It will be "fine" for a while, then when cable has sufficiently declined in popularity, the streaming prices will increase and the ads will begin to flow like water.
You think? That's one of the good things about the fragmentation - those multiple services are competing with each other. The problem with cable is it hasn't had much competition. In many areas of the country, there's only one cable provider, so they can pretty much charge whatever they please, and that can be a lot. And the streaming options for pro sports are either ridiculously restrictive or absurdly expensive, so sports fans are often limited to cable.
If streaming services start ratcheting up the prices and shoving ads in my face, I'll unsubscribe, simple as that. I went years without cable before streaming was viable for me, and if things go south with streaming, I'll kick them out of my house as well.
How much does cable cost per month? Probably between $50 and $60 for basic, and a lot more for premium packages. Assuming you're already going to pay for internet service, that's FIVE streaming services you can sign up for and not pay more than a basic cable package. Besides which, that's on-demand and commercial-free service, so I'd consider it a superior product anyhow.
I'm totally fine with this deal. I'm signed up for three streaming services, and it's more TV than I can realistically watch anyhow.
Apples and oranges. Not all videos are created equal. Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu have full TV shows (entire series) and movies. Youtube has a bunch of user content I mostly don't give a crap about.
I currently subscribe to three different streaming services (in lieu of cable), so I'm not averse to paying for content. It just feels like they'll need an awful lot of premium content to catch up to the other services for that price point.
"I didn't ask you to turn on the thermal heater. I merely commented that it was freezing in the princess's chamber..."
*bleep* *boop*
"But it's SUPPOSED to be freezing! How we are ever going to dry out her clothes, I really don't know!"
Heh, true. Still, keep in mind it's easy to label such thinking "stupid" with the clarity hindsight and history gives us. ;-)
Back in the winter of '44, the Germans seemed to appear very close to being defeated. The allies simply didn't believe the Wehrmacht had the capacity to launch another offensive, so everything they heard was filtered through that mindset. They even dismissed first-hand civilian reports of massive buildups and Ultra intercepts, instead preferring to believe it was simply more German pys-ops.
I simply look at it as the time-honored talent nearly every human has for viewing the world as they want to see it, rather than the way it really is.
If you're going to criticize the French for being surprised by the German invasion through the Ardennes, then in fairness, I need to point out that they did the exact same thing to the US during the Battle of the Bulge. And we didn't even have the excuse of not having seen them pull that same maneuver just a few years earlier.
When I was talking about comments, I was mostly referring to comments that described the functionality of internal code. In these cases, the comments are typically embedded right with the code, so the locality of that sort of documentation isn't a problem.
For external documentation... I think that would tend to be a per-company or per-project issue. If I was working on code that required external documentation, I'd generally recommend keeping it in the source files using Doxygen or something like that to auto-generate the documentation from specially-formatted comments. It seems a lot more practical to me to keep the documentation tied to the source code for precisely the reasons you imply - if it's separated, it's too easy to let them get out of sync.
I've heard arguments against writing proper comments similar to what the author makes: "but if you change the code and the documentation or comments don't change, then it might be worse than no documentation at all." My response is that if you're not updating the documentation or comments, then you're not finishing the job you were assigned. You could make the same arguments against taking the time to create meaningful variables and function names.
There's another argument against comments I occasionally hear as well, which is "a competent coder should be able to discern what the code is doing without comments." While that's technically true, it's another argument I would reject. I feel the best comments can and should declare the intent of a block of code, rather than drilling down into the mechanics of the code. Those types of comments are often much more valuable than comments which simply regurgitate the mechanics of code in English.
Still, in my own code, I don't have a fixed ratio of comment to code. It's entirely dependent on the complexity / obviousness of the code in question. For instance, if you have a very simple function, such as a handler that reacts to some UI event and just passes along the event to some other system, or performs a simple operation, it's stupid to spend a bunch of time and create excess visual noise to document that function. A quick glance at the code tells you everything you need to know about what's going on far easier than comment blocks.
On the other hand, when code gets more complex, or the internal workings of a function is less than trivial, I expect to see a more comments in the code. In some of the most complex code I've either written or worked on, the number of lines of comments can actually exceed the number of lines of code. I've even seen some helpful little ASCII drawings in some particularly complex physics code, which was awesome.
What assumption am I making? They ARE being paid - they're just being paid up front. Would this be a fair package if they got six months severance pay in exchange for what may be a very rare trip into the office, or the occasional phone call or e-mail over the next two years? How about if they only got a month's pay? I think it makes a difference. Note that the agreement specifically forbids SunTrust from using this clause to the extent it causes an employee hardship with their new job.
Also, apparently this damage-control statement from SunTrust came in later (check out at the bottom of the article):
It is a rare occasion when we need to call a former employee. The “continuing cooperation” clause is designed to assist the company under scenarios that arise infrequently when we need access to knowledge possessed by a former employee. Those scenarios primarily relate to regulatory or legal matters. For instance, we may need to reach out to former employees to ensure we accurately understand situations in which they were involved while employed by the company. SunTrust has never used this provision to require a former employee to be “on call” to help conduct day-to-day business in any way.
Since it's apparently rare for people to get called in, it's stupid of SunTrust not to offer their ex-employees a fair market rate for consulting work. It would hardly cost them anything (assuming it's as rare as they claim), and it would make this whole thing a non-issue.
I too find it slightly odd the article doesn't even mention what the severance package benefits are. This is almost certainly compensation for what's likely at least several months of pay after termination. Unless I badly misunderstand the legal issues involved, I'm pretty sure there's absolutely no obligation to accept the agreement if they're willing to decline the severance package.
When I was laid off, I signed an "I won't sue you" agreement for a couple of month's pay. I was being laid off for legitimate financial reasons (i.e. too many expenses, not enough revenue), and the company was honest with us and tried to be up front about everything. I certainly wasn't planning to sue them, so I didn't mind signing.
Don't misunderstand, I'm not defending the bank here, especially since they're laying off these folks and outsourcing the work, but I think some people may be misunderstanding how these severance deals work - there's often some conditions as a part of the package. I've just never heard of conditions like these before.
Windows Phone... yeah, I've heard it's nice from people who actually have one. But aren't you missing out on the app ecosystem of the Android or iPhone marketplace?
Unfortunately, an ecosystem feeds on popularity, and popularity feeds on the ecosystem. As we've seen from Windows' death-grip on the PC market, it's hard for competitors to break into an existing market, even with solid alternative offerings.
So, how long will a $400-500 phone last us?
Google supports Nexus phones with major updates for "at least two years" now, and security updates for "the longer of three years from initial availability or 18 months from last sale of the device via the Google Store," which is better than any other Android OEM out there. After the Stagefright vulnerability cropped up, Google instituted a monthly security update schedule, and so far Nexus devices have gotten OTAs in August, September, and October, right on schedule.
It's good to see this stated up front. I'm hoping that this becomes a trend in the industry. The expected lifetime of the phone is going to be a very important factor when deciding on my next one.
You probably got fooled because Microsoft created an advertisement that wasn't laughably bad. Of course you'd initially assume it was from Apple.
This is more their style.
I'm not quite sure what you're implying... that it's dangerous to do that? Assuming you're not firing solid slugs or heavy buckshot, it's reasonably safe to fire a shotgun into the air. Birdshot raining back down retains little of it's kinetic energy.
Well, it's a good thing Silicon Valley is safely situated far away from dangerous faultlines, right? ;-)
I've lived in or near the Seattle area all my life, and I'd say I've noticed a minor earthquake perhaps once every five years or so on average. I've never experienced even a moderately sized quake during my entire lifetime. I'm sure it looks rather dangerous when you're viewing a large regional map with all the quakes from the last century or two overlaid. In reality, I'd bet the odds of a major quake destroying a datacenter within the payoff period (maybe a decade?) is probably fairly small.
If we get hit with the big one in the next few years, feel free to tell me "I told you so" after I dig myself out of the rubble.
Whoops. Too late.
At least it appears they've seen the errors of their ways... now that their own missions are in danger of being hit by it, of course.
Heh, good point. Also, it somehow seems appropriate for you to point the obvious flaw in my statement.
No one is going to be breaching the Grand Coulee Dam or the several dozen other major dams in the near future. I wouldn't extrapolate a few small, obsolete dams being torn down into some sort of trend.
I'd agree with your assessment regarding military drones, but probably not for civilian types. The technology will only escalate if the participants are actively trying to defeat those defensive mechanisms. Why would most drones or their operators care about that, since they likely have no intention of doing anything that would get them in trouble with law enforcement in the first place?
Besides, if the drone defeats the radio-based approach, law enforcement (or military) will simply resort to the "flying lead" approach. There's not a lot of defensive measures you can take against a well aimed shotgun - presumably the gun of choice for forcefully removing drones from the air.
That was a random comment via Twitter, wasn't it? I think everyone knows that the internet can be extremely toxic. People say all sorts of nasty shit when they're anonymous, especially regarding women. That's a real issue that we need to work on as a society, but I think it's a different issue than discrimination in the workplace.
To me, the important question is: does she feel discriminated against in any way at work because she's a woman? According to her tagline for the ad in question, she appeared to think her team was awesome and smart. That doesn't sound like someone fighting discrimination at work to me.
I'm not saying discrimination against women doesn't happen. I just don't believe that discrimination alone could explain the massive gender gap we see. Why would programmers be so much more institutionally sexist than other white-collar professions in which there's a closer gender balance (say, doctors)? It just doesn't make any sense to me.
While I agree that posting this stuff on Slashdot time and time again is damn near trolling (maybe we should be able to moderate the summary?), I don't see why anyone should have a problem with this. I think it's fine if some people wish to set up women-only schools. It's not like there aren't a million other options for male students. There are probably some women who would feel more comfortable going to school in an all-female environment, especially given the likely male/female ratios in programming classes.
Of course, one question I have is, how will they react to jumping into an environment with 90% or more men straight from all-female classes? My fear is it could cause a bit of culture shock - sort of like an adult who has never built up an immunity as a child gets hit rather hard by typical childhood diseases. Damn, I just compared men to diseases. You know what I mean, though.
Anyhow, more power to them. I'd personally love to see more female programmers, but only if it's what they want to do, and if they get the jobs because they're qualified, not because of any particular internal plumbing. My fear is that if this program bombs due to lack of participation, some people will still manage to point an accusing finger at the industry and say "See? Your workplaces are so poisonous that women don't even want to take a chance on a computer science degree!" I'm a little tired of being collectively accused of misogyny when I've never seen female programmers I've worked with treated any differently than anyone else.