Scientists at the University of Lubbock, TX, reported that Richard Small, a Microsoft sales engineer, to be the world's angriest man. When he was shown Nate Silver's projections of Romney's chances for victory, while thinking about his name and how it matches his employers name his brain emitted Delta waves at levels never reported in neuroscience before. The delta waves are said to measure the level of anger.
There was some apocryphal story about Microsoft developers seen with the ubiquitous Apple iPod headphones would be have choice words (and probably no chairs) thrown at them by Steve Ballmar. Not sure if that was true. I wonder if Microsoft has mandated the use of Win 8 phones (or zune) as the corporate standard?
It is definitely true H1B visa reduces the wages in USA. But, it is too late to close the barn door because the horse has been stolen already.
Before the global infrastructure built up, before so much of investments were made by big companies in India, before many mid level execs have hitched their wagon to the out sourcing horse (which was stolen from the barn mentioned earlier), it might have been possible to reduce H1B and kept the job in USA.
But right now, if you reduce H1B, it is going to move the whole damned job to India. At least they (or us, because I am an ex H1B) work in USA, pay taxes in USA and spend most of their money in USA and save and invest in USA. The outsourced job lives, spends, invests and pays taxes in India.
I ran the rat race in India, and won it. And the prize was US Citizenship. I don't want my daughter fighting for jobs with the next generation of me who wins the rat race in India. But that makes me sound like the guy who dynamites the bridge after crossing it himself. This is quite complicated.
As Obama said in the third debate, "Some jobs are not coming back. They are low wage low skill jobs. I want high wage high skill jobs here", it would be great if we could make sure the jobs that were lost are all low wage low skill jobs and keep the high wage jobs here. Even if that means my daughter has to fight with the next generation rat-race winner from India.
I had great respect for Prof Diamond as an intellectual and scientist.
Then I saw him in a documentary. He cried, sobbing like a baby, seeing the plight of babies with malaria. Now I respect him as a compassionate human being ten times more.
Some people hold wine itself is just a waste by product of grape juice making, when a few batches of them ferment and get spoiled.
They all say Americans are the worlds best businessmen. But they are nothing compared to the French who have convinced the whole world that their spoiled milk and rotten grape juice is gourmet food.
Microsoft is designing a brand new mobile device. It is a wrist watch. But no ordinary wrist watch, but it comes with an optical reader.
You get some special software that lets you build your calender in any windows machine. The calender could be exported from Outlook too.
Then issue the comand "download data to watch".
Presto!
The screen displays a series of bar codes. The watch's reader can decode it and store it in the watch. They are partnering with Timex for this project. They are planning to call the project "DataLink" . This is going to change everything! Watches with Microsoft brandname! Mobile Device! Bar code optical reader. It got every trending thing man!
To the best of my recollection the brazen hackers came in and added skimmers to Point-of-sale terminals . I could understand unattended lone ATM machines getting a skimmer that grabs ATM cards. But how they managed to do it in a grocery store with a clerk standing by almost all the time, I cant understand. They have cameras too.
My ATM card was compromised, some 5000$ of fraudulent charges. Mercifully my bank reversed all the charges including the hated "foreign ATM" fees. Then, because my bank refunds all the ATM fees charged by other banks at the end of the month, I got some 4 or 5 such fees refunded once again.
This triggered a serious saint on left shoulder devil on the right shoulder situation for me. These banksters stole billions of my tax dollars, so I can keep this 15$ said the devil. The saint said, "nah, it aint your money, you gotta return it". Who won? You guess.
I don't know if it is still true. I no longer attend all those export compliance meetings. But when I used to we used worry about the cryptographic key lengths. If we use any crypto algo that is stronger than a certain threshold we need to run them through some national security agency (lack of capitalization very intentional). It is very much possible they were using a weaker key when those regulations were in place. Either they completed the paper work to release a software produce stronger than 512 bits to foreign markets or the threshold has been raised and these guys have been following the golden rule,:
"if ( it ain't broken, ||
the original coder has since left the company ||
no one has touched that header for four years ||
the code is abandoned without any "owner" in the company ||
it is living in a branch of source code deemed "legacy"){
Content creation is a totally different ballgame than content consumption.
When my daughter was about 18 months she figured out that the TV remote does something and the picture comes on. She would politely offer the remote to the TV, almost like some tribal chief making an offering to the local deity. Gosh, I should find the tape and put it on youtube. Took her a week or so to notice that I press buttons and figure out the button that turns the machine on. This is nothing.
It is content *creation* that is difficult in dumbed down interfaces. To m content creation spans the entire range from putting together video clips, to writing documents, calculating on spreadsheets, to hacking code, to creating web sites etc etc. It is those tasks where the user interface makes a big difference.
My skill is coding. I have learnt one interface to code and debug. Now if I am forced to chuck all that experience out of the window and learn a new one, OK, INBD. I will do it. But at the end of the process, my improved productivity should justify the downtime for retraining. An accountant analyst's skill is collecting information from various accounting departments, make sure the numbers tally and cross reference correctly, and put them out in standard locations for the daily script to read and update SEC reporting. Even small and trivial changes frustrate her. "I have a process, that works. They are paying me to make sure the numbers are correct. If you change something, unless it improves my process, it is not worth my time to relearn everything new". That is what she would say.
Hurts me to say it. But Apple got it right. One ubiquitos, easy to use OS for content consumption. And a more involved OS for content creation and for people who are more comfortable with computing devices. And they interoperate seamlessly behind the curtain. I hate the Apple walled garden as much as I hated Microsoft arrogance and monoculture. But they are winning because they have learnt something. They don't mind throwing stuff out and starting all over. They ditched their home grown OS and switched to unix, much to the consternation of Apple die-hards back in the 1990s. They ditched their chip set and went to Intel. They constantly experimented with form factors in desk tops. They innovated so much, something had to click, and it di.
Oh, all those days they spent increasing the switching costs of their customers. How many Vice Presidents wrote in their annual review, "I did this clever thing to thwart our customers from Windows. Made lock in more secure. Now the vendor lock is stronger than ever!".
One trivial example: How many gaggled, "I introduced a space in all the important and default folder names. All those geeks trying to use cygwin to run shell scripts have to redo their scripts to quote their path names. ha! ha!! haa! Their support cost goes up. Our customer switching cost goes up. Our lock is getting stronger!"
And finally, they find their customers are unable to get out of XP to Win7!!!
Serves them right! Pay back is a bitch baby! You deserve it. All I got is that unspellable German word, schadenfreude or something.
People using black berries are mocked and made fun of? Get over it buddy. It is nothing compared to the humiliation and derision invited by the lone college freshman using Dell in an ocean of Apple logos.
#27 and #33? They are google vans, masquerading as FBI vans. The real FBI van masquerades as "Microsoft win8 q/a team". Microsoft bing van usually uses a very creative name "bing van".
Dont protect the machine. Let him taste windows the way Microsoft serves it. What does not kill him will make him stronger. Either he learns to protect the machine on his own and stays in Windows camp. Or learns that the few things in the Windows world is not worth the pain and suffering comes home to a real OS. At best you throw him a nickel and ask him to buy a real OS. [Growing a beard before throwing that nickel is optional.]
Why Microsoft Shouldn't Copy Apple's iOS Walled Garden
Microsoft should not copy Apple, it should sue Apple for copy right infringement. The idea of proprietary file formats, making switching costs high, getting people and making it difficult to leave, monoculture, etc etc were all invented by Microsoft and pushed for decades. Of course it is sad people jump out of one walled garden and jump right into another in the form of iOS. But still, if Microsoft copies Apple it will be a xerox copy of a xerox copy.
The four tired wheels are sticking out of the sides when it is in water. Looks like Wile E Coyote after it has hit the ground after walking off a cliff and made the mistake of looking down. On land, ok, it looks like a regular ATV with some weirdly acceptable running boards. And this costs 40K? They are better off selling it as rescue vehicle rather than a recreational vehicle.
A jesuit priest/ missionary was sent to southern India for proselyting the local population, back in the 17th century. He had a printing press, and did a remarkable job. Learnt the local language (Tamil), translated the Bible and did the usual missionary things. One of the things he did was to write a series of short stories making fun of the Hindu gurus. Satire worthy of being in The Onion. Rip roaring comedy about the Guru, and his five disciples. Their names would translate as Fool, Idiot, Dimwit, Ignoramus and Retard. Mind you this was back in the 17th century. What happened?
He is a revered figure in Tamil Nadu. He is credited with bringing printing press to the region, compiling the first dictionary, the first thesaurus, first compedium of numbered collections (like four directions, four seasons, seven notes, five senses, etc), and the rhyming dictionary. He also wrote hymns in Tamil. Wrote extensively about the mores and customs of the land to help the other missionaries who would follow him.
Whatever happened to the satire of Hindu swamis? It lives on. Still very much in the circulation. I heard most of those stories from my grandma as bed time stories. A culture that is so self assured and so self confident it was able to laugh at a good joke. It is not a surprise, despite his great literary achievements and reverence, in his core mission of religious conversion, he hardly made a dent. Less than 1% of the Tamils converted to Christianity in his times. Even now Christian population is just 2 or 3 % in Tamil Nadu.
Two nights before the scheduled date for the flight, he broke two ribs while riding a horse. He was so afraid of being removed from the mission that he went to a veterinarian in a nearby town for treatment and told only his wife, as well as friend and fellow project pilot Jack Ridley about it.
Yeager in front of the Bell X-1, which, as with all of the aircraft assigned to him, he named Glamorous Glennis (or some variation thereof), after his wife.
Yeager in the Bell X-1 cockpit.
On the day of the flight, Yeager was in such pain that he could not seal the airplane's hatch by himself. Ridley rigged up a device, using the end of a broom handle as an extra lever, to allow Yeager to seal the hatch of the X-1.
Chuck Yeager was actually nursing an injury on that day. And that he hid the fact that he was medically unfit to test that plane from his commanding officers. Because that flight was successful, everyone forgave Chuck. But he could have crashed the plane and set the program back by an year. In my eyes he is just a glory seeker, who put his personal ambition ahead of the interests of his mission.
au contraire, my friend, that user name is quite carefully chosen. My collegemates will recognize me by my dorm addresses. My fellow alumi would recognize the dorm names and know my college.
Remember that guy discovered that the zip code was the password Sarah Palin's yahoo account? Wasn't he jailed or something?
So if the phone hacking scandal that rocked (or still rocking) UK and News Corp, would not be illegal in the USA?
Wondering what would happen if that judge has a gmail/yahoo/hotmail (or more likely an AOL ) account, and it gets hacked and he gets his own ruling cited as the hacker walks away scot free.
Slashdot Mirror
Scientists at the University of Lubbock, TX, reported that Richard Small, a Microsoft sales engineer, to be the world's angriest man. When he was shown Nate Silver's projections of Romney's chances for victory, while thinking about his name and how it matches his employers name his brain emitted Delta waves at levels never reported in neuroscience before. The delta waves are said to measure the level of anger.
If not, why not?
Before the global infrastructure built up, before so much of investments were made by big companies in India, before many mid level execs have hitched their wagon to the out sourcing horse (which was stolen from the barn mentioned earlier), it might have been possible to reduce H1B and kept the job in USA.
But right now, if you reduce H1B, it is going to move the whole damned job to India. At least they (or us, because I am an ex H1B) work in USA, pay taxes in USA and spend most of their money in USA and save and invest in USA. The outsourced job lives, spends, invests and pays taxes in India.
I ran the rat race in India, and won it. And the prize was US Citizenship. I don't want my daughter fighting for jobs with the next generation of me who wins the rat race in India. But that makes me sound like the guy who dynamites the bridge after crossing it himself. This is quite complicated.
As Obama said in the third debate, "Some jobs are not coming back. They are low wage low skill jobs. I want high wage high skill jobs here", it would be great if we could make sure the jobs that were lost are all low wage low skill jobs and keep the high wage jobs here. Even if that means my daughter has to fight with the next generation rat-race winner from India.
Then I saw him in a documentary. He cried, sobbing like a baby, seeing the plight of babies with malaria. Now I respect him as a compassionate human being ten times more.
They all say Americans are the worlds best businessmen. But they are nothing compared to the French who have convinced the whole world that their spoiled milk and rotten grape juice is gourmet food.
You get some special software that lets you build your calender in any windows machine. The calender could be exported from Outlook too. Then issue the comand "download data to watch".
Presto!
The screen displays a series of bar codes. The watch's reader can decode it and store it in the watch. They are partnering with Timex for this project. They are planning to call the project "DataLink" . This is going to change everything! Watches with Microsoft brandname! Mobile Device! Bar code optical reader. It got every trending thing man!
My ATM card was compromised, some 5000$ of fraudulent charges. Mercifully my bank reversed all the charges including the hated "foreign ATM" fees. Then, because my bank refunds all the ATM fees charged by other banks at the end of the month, I got some 4 or 5 such fees refunded once again.
This triggered a serious saint on left shoulder devil on the right shoulder situation for me. These banksters stole billions of my tax dollars, so I can keep this 15$ said the devil. The saint said, "nah, it aint your money, you gotta return it". Who won? You guess.
"if ( it ain't broken, ||
the original coder has since left the company ||
no one has touched that header for four years ||
the code is abandoned without any "owner" in the company ||
it is living in a branch of source code deemed "legacy"){
don't fix it;
}
It is content *creation* that is difficult in dumbed down interfaces. To m content creation spans the entire range from putting together video clips, to writing documents, calculating on spreadsheets, to hacking code, to creating web sites etc etc. It is those tasks where the user interface makes a big difference.
My skill is coding. I have learnt one interface to code and debug. Now if I am forced to chuck all that experience out of the window and learn a new one, OK, INBD. I will do it. But at the end of the process, my improved productivity should justify the downtime for retraining. An accountant analyst's skill is collecting information from various accounting departments, make sure the numbers tally and cross reference correctly, and put them out in standard locations for the daily script to read and update SEC reporting. Even small and trivial changes frustrate her. "I have a process, that works. They are paying me to make sure the numbers are correct. If you change something, unless it improves my process, it is not worth my time to relearn everything new". That is what she would say.
Hurts me to say it. But Apple got it right. One ubiquitos, easy to use OS for content consumption. And a more involved OS for content creation and for people who are more comfortable with computing devices. And they interoperate seamlessly behind the curtain. I hate the Apple walled garden as much as I hated Microsoft arrogance and monoculture. But they are winning because they have learnt something. They don't mind throwing stuff out and starting all over. They ditched their home grown OS and switched to unix, much to the consternation of Apple die-hards back in the 1990s. They ditched their chip set and went to Intel. They constantly experimented with form factors in desk tops. They innovated so much, something had to click, and it di.
One trivial example: How many gaggled, "I introduced a space in all the important and default folder names. All those geeks trying to use cygwin to run shell scripts have to redo their scripts to quote their path names. ha! ha!! haa! Their support cost goes up. Our customer switching cost goes up. Our lock is getting stronger!"
And finally, they find their customers are unable to get out of XP to Win7!!!
Serves them right! Pay back is a bitch baby! You deserve it. All I got is that unspellable German word, schadenfreude or something.
People using black berries are mocked and made fun of? Get over it buddy. It is nothing compared to the humiliation and derision invited by the lone college freshman using Dell in an ocean of Apple logos.
#27 and #33? They are google vans, masquerading as FBI vans. The real FBI van masquerades as "Microsoft win8 q/a team". Microsoft bing van usually uses a very creative name "bing van".
Quick patent the idea. Sell faux blackberry gel covers for iPhone! Imagine the number of people who would buy to fool the would be muggers!
Dont protect the machine. Let him taste windows the way Microsoft serves it. What does not kill him will make him stronger. Either he learns to protect the machine on his own and stays in Windows camp. Or learns that the few things in the Windows world is not worth the pain and suffering comes home to a real OS. At best you throw him a nickel and ask him to buy a real OS. [Growing a beard before throwing that nickel is optional.]
Why Microsoft Shouldn't Copy Apple's iOS Walled Garden
Microsoft should not copy Apple, it should sue Apple for copy right infringement. The idea of proprietary file formats, making switching costs high, getting people and making it difficult to leave, monoculture, etc etc were all invented by Microsoft and pushed for decades. Of course it is sad people jump out of one walled garden and jump right into another in the form of iOS. But still, if Microsoft copies Apple it will be a xerox copy of a xerox copy.
Senator Ted Kennedy, Thanks for calling from the beyond. How are things there sir?
The four tired wheels are sticking out of the sides when it is in water. Looks like Wile E Coyote after it has hit the ground after walking off a cliff and made the mistake of looking down. On land, ok, it looks like a regular ATV with some weirdly acceptable running boards. And this costs 40K? They are better off selling it as rescue vehicle rather than a recreational vehicle.
Missed the citation. Sorry about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constanzo_Beschi
He is a revered figure in Tamil Nadu. He is credited with bringing printing press to the region, compiling the first dictionary, the first thesaurus, first compedium of numbered collections (like four directions, four seasons, seven notes, five senses, etc), and the rhyming dictionary. He also wrote hymns in Tamil. Wrote extensively about the mores and customs of the land to help the other missionaries who would follow him.
Whatever happened to the satire of Hindu swamis? It lives on. Still very much in the circulation. I heard most of those stories from my grandma as bed time stories. A culture that is so self assured and so self confident it was able to laugh at a good joke. It is not a surprise, despite his great literary achievements and reverence, in his core mission of religious conversion, he hardly made a dent. Less than 1% of the Tamils converted to Christianity in his times. Even now Christian population is just 2 or 3 % in Tamil Nadu.
Two nights before the scheduled date for the flight, he broke two ribs while riding a horse. He was so afraid of being removed from the mission that he went to a veterinarian in a nearby town for treatment and told only his wife, as well as friend and fellow project pilot Jack Ridley about it. Yeager in front of the Bell X-1, which, as with all of the aircraft assigned to him, he named Glamorous Glennis (or some variation thereof), after his wife. Yeager in the Bell X-1 cockpit. On the day of the flight, Yeager was in such pain that he could not seal the airplane's hatch by himself. Ridley rigged up a device, using the end of a broom handle as an extra lever, to allow Yeager to seal the hatch of the X-1.
[ Citation Provided ]
Chuck Yeager was actually nursing an injury on that day. And that he hid the fact that he was medically unfit to test that plane from his commanding officers. Because that flight was successful, everyone forgave Chuck. But he could have crashed the plane and set the program back by an year. In my eyes he is just a glory seeker, who put his personal ambition ahead of the interests of his mission.
Of course they had radio. Don't you know how old that Italian guy, Marconi was?
au contraire, my friend, that user name is quite carefully chosen. My collegemates will recognize me by my dorm addresses. My fellow alumi would recognize the dorm names and know my college.
This guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_email_hack
So if the phone hacking scandal that rocked (or still rocking) UK and News Corp, would not be illegal in the USA?
Wondering what would happen if that judge has a gmail/yahoo/hotmail (or more likely an AOL ) account, and it gets hacked and he gets his own ruling cited as the hacker walks away scot free.
Frankly I find the idea of a bug that thinks offensive.
You have not seen the AI code in development. Sometimes the code becomes sentient prematurely and the bugs think they are features.