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User: caywen

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  1. Why MS become why not MS on States Seek More Oversight of Microsoft · · Score: 1

    It's kind of a big irony of this whole thing. Consumers are happy with XP running Firefox running Google applications. And, HP is happy selling PC's as is. What did they expect to see? That as soon as web 2.0 apps came along, everyone would flock to alternatives? It's become clear that there just isn't enough friction to move the market share as quickly as anti-MS people want.

  2. Management "experience" on Transitioning From Developer To Management? · · Score: 1

    Sounds kind of zennish, but learning to be a good manager means learning about yourself and how you best interact with people. In some ways it's useful to observe other managers and how they fare, but each person is different. For some people, something about them allows them to do that drill sargeant thing effectively. For others, the debate master tact is their natural flow. You get the idea. Find what works.

    Also, find what doesn't work. Everyone has kinks in their personalities that sometimes needs to be sanded down a bit to fit into a managerial role. Or, those kinks can actually be a surprising asset. It's really a soft skill, unlike programming or data analysis.

    That said, it's also good to know the ins and outs of hiring, firing, and HR policy. It's also helpful to keep reasonably organized and follow up with people proactively.

  3. Bad pattern of behavior... on MTV Bails on Microsoft's URGE Store · · Score: 1

    Apple: iTunes? Still there. Microsoft: MSN Music? Bail. Urge? Bail. PlaysForSure? Bail. Zune? Gotta wonder...

  4. Re:Imagine drowning if you couldn't hold your brea on Surviving in Space Without a Spacesuit · · Score: 1

    Doesn't it also depend on how fast the pressure change occurs? Wouldn't an instant change to 0 PSI cause a lot more damage than a change over a minute?

  5. Casual developers may be driving this on Netcraft Says IIS Gaining on Apache · · Score: 1

    I find that from the web developer's perspective, there's a bit of a technological sandwich that occurs with the level of sophistication that the platforms allow. A lot of web devs are looking for a no-code solution to setting up a site/mashup/blog/storefront/whatever and in this case, I believe most apache-based systems work great for this. A lot of web devs are also looking for a system that gives them a solid platform for writing very sophisticated, architected solutions, and apache also shines in this regard. However, a lot of devs are looking for something in between - write some simple code (C#, VB) to do relatively simple database queries, and create data-driven pages. Though there are great apache solutions to this, IIS/ASP.NET works really well for these in-betweens, too, and combined with Visual Studio, is pretty compelling to a lot of people. Perhaps some dynamic is driving a lot of web devs to this middle area.

  6. Re:Is BusinessWeek a Microsoft product? on BusinessWeek Advocates Microsoft Piracy · · Score: 1

    As opposed to BusinessWeek expressing why, for example, it would be a good thing for Google or Apple or IBM to entrench themselves in developing nations? This isn't a piece on what's good for the world. It's a piece on what's good for Microsoft. No different than expressing an opinion on why it'd be a good thing for GM if they could get the Chinese to drive their cars. It's called "BusinessWeek" and not "OpenSourceFreeeedooomWeek" ok? :-)

  7. I hate all widgets on Steve Jobs Hates Buttons · · Score: 1

    In the future, we should deprecate all widgets, both on screen and physical. When I want to tune my radio, I should be able to just point my arm out in a particular direction and keep it there as long as I want to listen to that radio station. I also want cheery doors to open for me automatically.

  8. Cool, but ho hum in the year 2075 on Intel Researchers Demonstrate 40Gbps Optical Chips · · Score: 2, Funny

    Definitely sounds like a good bet for getting us past Moore's Law after 2065. I think electron spin technology will carry us from 2050-2060, and quantum spooky effect chips will take us to 2075, but man, after that we're just screwed without this technology. Until 2065, though, we're just gonna have to live with million core chips suspended in a bathtub of liquid nitrogen. As long as it's cost effective!

  9. No, I think Google is bending the truth on Which Google Should Congress Believe? · · Score: 1

    Is the assumption that it's hard to find qualified candidates in the US? Or is it the assumption that it's hard to find *cheap* qualified candidates in the US. I think that Google wants cheap labor and is pouting that the government is not giving it to them. And they seem to be doing just fine otherwise, so they should stop bitching and find ways to get the most of their US talent pool. Or, do what Microsoft did and build a huge campus in Canada.

  10. Re:wahay! on Forget Math to Become a Great Computer Scientist? · · Score: 1

    I remember when I was much greener, I lambasted my experienced coworker's code for doing stuff redundantly and wasting cycles without understanding his ingenious use of L1 cache. In reality, my rewrite ended up 10x slower despite being algorithmically faster. Algorithms are they way they are because of the machines they run on. It's amazing how fast an algorithm changes when the nature of the machine changes. What happens when we move to massive brain-like parallelism? Some classical thinking stays, but some go out the window. To the point of the original article, I don't think the general involvement of math and physics will change, but the type of math and physics will. At least, until we invent a machine that runs on Fun Art and Feelin' Good (tm).

  11. I'm strangely attracted to my HD now on Sony Develops Fluid-Filled Bags For Hard Disks · · Score: 1

    After Sony inserted these fluid filled bags into my hard drive, I find myself staring at it more, and I can't stop fondling it.

  12. Vista hurt the numbers, not helped on Windows Loses Ground With Developers · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FTA: "The arrival of Windows Vista likely only kept the numbers from being even worse." I think that Vista actually hurt the numbers. Not so much Vista itself, but in Microsoft's post-launch execution. Microsoft's big developer hotness is supposed to be all these great .NET technologies. But the lack of Vista adoption might be putting the brakes on developer enthusiasm because Microsoft is failing to lead the way in showing the end result benefits of it. COM didn't really catch on until Microsoft started demonstrating how hot it was through dogfooding and releasing applications architected on it. With it came a greater degree of modularity and flexibility that they demonstrated compellingly well with IE, Office, Visual Studio, etc. To this day, Microsoft hasn't delivered any real WPF+WCF applications - at least none that a significant number of people care about. They should be pumping out amazing applications that can be showcased on Vista, causing developers to envy and copy them, and causing customers to actually want Vista because of the hotness the developers *and* Microsoft are offering.

  13. Typical big company / little employee situation on Microsoft Slaps Its Most Valuable Professional · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is a typical case where a small-minded employee works for a big company. The reason why this is so typical of big companies is that they screw up in one of two extremes. Either the employee becomes a complete obstructionist tool to compensate for their lack of self worth, or the company bestows a sense of we're-god-you're-nobody hubris. In either case, the partners get treated like sh*t. Microsoft has entered middle age, and is now burdened with a huge population of small-minded bitches who have no sense of what's actually good for the company and industry.

  14. Hey, lookie here on Terminator Gene Ban Suggested in Canada · · Score: 1

    I pity da fool that mess with T genes!

  15. I believe it requires us to pop up a level on Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard? · · Score: 1

    I think parallel programming as it pertains to multicore CPU architectures and multi-CPU architectures will always remain roughly similar to what we see today. Some problems can be highly parallelized and others will be harder. It will remain up to the brilliance of the engineers/scientists to do this work. There's no great language or tool breakthrough that will save us the work of understanding each case-by-case problem of how to make our programs optimal on parallel architectures. The future of parallelism isn't about how we can make what we currently do faster. It's about what new things become possible.

  16. Vista Sleep mode on What's the Worst Technical Feature You've Used? · · Score: 1

    The first feature that makes me want to slap Steve Ballmer silly is the new Sleep mode. It's neither quick nor a power saver. I have 2 laptops, and they both behave exactly the same way. You close the lid, the hard drive grinds for 5 minutes, and eventually it clicks off. Later, you open it up, it grinds again for a few more minutes, and you find out that all the grinding just chewed up 10% of your power. Not to mention it made you wait. I went back to good ol' standby.

  17. Roe v Wade in 3D! on Is Virtual Rape a Crime? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So, if my female avatar gets virtually raped and becomes virtually pregnant, is she virtually protected by Roe v Wade in getting a cyber-abortion? Also, if my avatar enters a virtual-virtual world and gets virtually-raped 2 levels in, is that a crime, too? What if some stick-figure dude icon stands next to my stick-figure babe icon and the message "you got raped!" appears in all caps in the console panel playing Ultima 3 : Exodus Online in my Apple 2 emulator?

  18. Re:Mac OS X vs Classic on Vista Eating Battery Life · · Score: 1

    The difference here is that for every 5 people pissed about their old MacBooks, there are 95 people pissed about Vista.

  19. Re:I'm Running Both On My MBP... on Vista Eating Battery Life · · Score: 1

    Yo - completely agree. My DV9000T is now running non-AeroGlass so it no longer does this. But while it had AeroGlass turned on, I could hear my laptop, which was supposedly idling, from the next room. The fan was that loud. If Microsoft does not respond to this soon, I call shenanigans!

  20. Re:This always seems to happen on Vista Eating Battery Life · · Score: 1

    I tried switching to power savings mode, but the fan still blows hard. I do find that if I prop up the back of the laptop, once in a while the fan will slow down. I guess that's because it slightly improves the ventilation on the DV9000T. Still, never had to prop up anything or alter power savings mode under XP. I've never been this unhappy with any OS except Windows Me.

  21. This always seems to happen on Vista Eating Battery Life · · Score: 1

    FWIW, I'm absolutely pissed about my DV9000T always sounding like a Harrier jet and losing nearly an hour of battery life. I'll bet that the Desktop Composition team simply didn't consider battery life during its development. I'll bet it became a concern after the project signoff, and after the concern was raised: 1. Program management went off looking for excuses and workarounds 2. The engineers scrambled to tweak the code in whatever way they could 3. The PR team scrambled to tout the new sleep mode and mobility center to sell the mobility story I don't believe for an instant that Vista was designed to be power friendly at any early point in its development. If it were, it wouldn't have been an issue during beta, it wouldn't have required workarounds and clarifications, and it wouldn't have found its way to be a high profile story on CNET. I've since turned off Desktop Composition and have found Vista to perform closer to XP in terms of power usage. I suppose one day when AMD and NVidia have GPU's specially designed to not bake your laptop under Vista, this will be yesterday's news. But for now, shame on MS.

  22. Other healthcare fixups on Can Technology Fix the Health Care System? · · Score: 1

    I think the article states some good points. I like the idea of using technology to help the elderly maintain their medication more reliably.

    However, I think one of the biggest pitfalls is the constant battle between the practitioners and insurance companies. Practitioners realize they only get paid for 10% of their procedures, so they charge 10x as much. Insurance companies refuse to pay even in cut and dry cases, causing rates to soar. All this lands on the patient's lap as a big bill.

    Kaiser Permanente really has the right idea. Expensive, yes, but arguably worth it. Service is prompt and predictable, and when you need real work done, it costs next to nothing. Preventative medicine is where it's at. If they can take this to the next level and start providing proactive health advice for patients at risk for certain diseases, healthcare companies can avoid paying huge costs for big procedures.

  23. Imitation is the highest form of flattery on Microsoft Says Other OSes Should Imitate UAC · · Score: 1

    Imitation is the highest form of flattery, and Microsoft is simply not getting any flattery so it wants to flatter itself. Really, Microsoft has had no trouble getting others to imitate the actual good things it has done, and of course has no compunction in imitating others. But no one is going to imitate this and it's quite sad that they are suggesting this. It's like Pontiac saying "other companies should copy the Aztek's style." (the Aztek is one of the ugliest cars in history - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac_Aztek)

  24. Why 1 guy can do this on Lone Programmer Writes 352 Webcam Drivers For Linux · · Score: 1

    In general, there is always a huge difference between people who don't get it and those that do. Well, there's just as big a gap between people who get it and people who own it. The latter not only get it, they get everything about it and what seems complex to the former is actually quite trivial to the latter. It's like the difference between someone who studied Klingon for 5 years, and the person who pumps out 300 page Klingon novels every 3 months. Most of us are like the latter (or, worse if you're me) but every now and then, you get that 1% of 1% of people that know how to take it to the next level. Like Star Wars Kid. Man, that was in a class all by itself.

  25. Why Dell fails against HP on Dell Rethinking the Direct-Sales Market · · Score: 1

    HP's really got the right formula. HP really has taken a page from Apple's book. 1. HP's products are just sexier than Dell's. Dell has been on the same hardware design for years, but HP has been through 3 redesigns. Look at how sexy an HP laptop is compared to Dell's and you'd want one too. 2. HP lets you *see* how sexy their stuff is at all major retailers. CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City - HP's foo just dominates the space. Dell's stuff is getting crufty, and you don't even get to see how crufty it is until it arrives at your doorstep. 3. HP's PR/marketing staff is doing their job swaying reviewers to award their products higher ratings. They are winning the reviews and getting press. Dell has not done jack. Dell needs to do all of the above. Dell needs to sex up their hardware and shove it right under our noses. That's how you sell. The immense mindshare they would get would translate directly into increased consumer and business confidence, and their phones will start ringing off the hook again.