Or maybe, like all people, your tastes are not always perfectly in tune with the rest of the world's. I thought Assassin's Creed was an easy 75/100 at least, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, do not regret the purchase one bit. Sure, it wasn't as OMFG awesome as, say, GTA4 was, but the movement mechanics were novel, the fighting was fun, and the only annoying part was those stupid flag-capturing side missions.
I find Metacritic to be reasonably, er, reasonable when it comes to review scores, for me anyway.
Eye candy is ok, and some of what you would consider eye candy I would consider legitimate usability enhancements. Take OSX's "genie" effect when you minimize/restore windows (it gets "sucked" to the taskbar in a cool animation). Seems frivolous, but it does greatly aid in the user understanding just WTF happened to his/her window.
Nay, the problem with Vista was not too much eye candy, it's too much *pointless* eye candy. Instead of using their newfound DirectX-accelerated powers to improve usability, they threw in transparencies and other gimmicks that did nothing but suck up juice.
Which is still overkill. We can't treat corporations like we do people, because *they are obviously different things*. So while we may throw a guy in jail for fraud, I think a large fine that sends a strong message is enough to punish corporations that step out of line. What I *do* favor is personal responsibility and transparency in companies. Instead of just fining the company, we need laws that require companies maintain communication logs for subpoenas, so that we can find out *who* in the company masterminded the fraud, and punish them personally.
Did you by any chance cross at Blaine, WA? I've heard of some notorious troubles with people crossing there, and even ran into trouble there myself once or twice.
Seems like a lot of border guards are just bitter that they have to sit around and stamp crap, while you're out vacationing, or something. Either way, they seem to really enjoy power-tripping on everyone who looks reasonably well-to-do.
It's also hilarious, since at the crossing there is a BIG poster about the DHS' commitment to providing courteous, friendly service. This is in stark contrast to the guy who opens up the conversation with "Son, do you know how to read a form?"
Companies are quite often too large for their own good. This is taking a sledgehammer to a fly - do you seriously mean to lay off potentially tens of thousands of people because one department screws up?
And that is why this game rocks. Without the writing it's just a fairly well-thought-out stereotypical RPG game, one that I would bore of within a half-hour of play. The writing is something else though, just enough intrigue to keep you going, and many bust-out-loud laughing moments.
How many items do you have on your start menu right now? How big would the pie get to accommodate all of them?
IMHO that implies a problem with the start menu, not the pie menu. I've used some niche software that have made excellent use of pie menus - but that's because their functionality is well-separated, and each menu does not tend to balloon like most app menus do today.
The fact that we have huge menus of 15+ items is IMHO evidence of a failure of proper UI design. I love pie menus, but they do require some real design work from the engineer, and not just randomly throwing functionality into menu items randomly.
My experience hasn't been like that, though I can certainly see where you're coming from. IMHO the situation is not entirely analogous to post-WW2 Europe, since America was the unquestionable victor and ultimate place to be at the time. Liberal immigration policies helped, but people were practically climbing over each other to get in.
Nowadays, with China rising quickly, and economic development in other areas outstripping the USA, the allure is certainly dimmed a bit, especially for people who aren't so concerned with freedom and all those fuzzy things. IMHO America is faced with having to work harder to attract the truly brilliant minds of the world. Every obstacle we throw in the way of getting qualified, talented people into the country is one more point to countries like China.
IMHO the H1B system is sometimes abused, if you look at the numbers they don't lie - a fair chunk of the annual allotment is sucked up by companies bringing in support-type people, which is contrary to what IMHO should be the purpose of the H1B program - recruiting HIGH LEVEL (i.e. not bottom barrel) people from other places.
I'm not entirely opposed to bringing in entry-level people from foreign countries. We need these people for their future contributions to the country, and if we're sure they are rare talent, then we shouldn't preclude the option of bringing them in fresh out of school.
What I have experienced here (in Seattle, looking at all the large software firms in the area) is that there is truly a shortage for capable software engineers (not support types). I'm not seeing a situation where otherwise qualified Americans are being brushed to the side in favor of foreign talent - the industry can't hire enough people, and there's plenty of opportunity to go around. Then again, I work in a more hardcore computer-science-y segment of the industry, less sysadmin'ing and codemonkeying...
Alright, clearly you're big on blaming the ills of the world on immigrants... which is all too common these days. Let's tackle some of your points.
Yeah right. But let's assume you are correct. What happens when you increase the supply of anything? It's price goes down. And we see that with stagnant wages.
When you increase supply without increasing demand, price drops. But this is not the case in tech. Looking at my own company, and companies like MS, Google, and many others, these guys are on hiring binges, and can't fill all the positions they want filled. There's a genuine case for bringing in skilled software engineers. It's not really our problem if Google is successfully hiring Indian engineers for $100K+ a pop, and you can't get an interview with them. Work harder, get your qualifications up to snuff. So yes, increasing supply while increasing demand is perfectly healthy. We're certainly not bringing in hordes of foreign engineers in a time when the industry is experiencing negative growth. Tech is booming.
But I thought you guys said that for every one of you we bring in it creates 10 more American jobs. So how did employment possibly go down. Hell we should have 0% unemployment and skyrocketing wages.
Elementary. Employment is going down in manufacturing and other industries that are fleeing the USA for greener pastures like Asia. Tech is *still growing* and fast too.
Yeah, and none of them were h1b's.
And quit with the hard work crap. Nice stereotype that Americans are so lazy. If we're so lazy compared to you then why are all your countries so primitive compared to the US? Shouldn't all the jobs be in the H1b countries since they have such superior work ethic?
Does it matter if they were H1B's? The entire purpose is to bring in talented people with the allure of becoming an American. That has not changed, regardless of what visa code they are operating under. Despite what you may think there are a great many people who admire America and its ideals, and would die to join you (and many have).
Americans aren't lazy. Some segments of America are certainly complacent. They have bred into the habit of expecting everything to come for free, that they do not need to compete on the world stage, and that the world is their oyster, for doing absolutely squat. The people I work with on a daily basis are some of the smartest, most talented people I've ever met, and all of them, regardless of if they're born American, H1B's, or anything else, are not averse to hardship, and are willing to work hard. They are also all quite successful, and doing very well despite the weak economy. This is not a coincidence.
Since you've opened the can of worms, I'll address your points one by one:
If we're so lazy compared to you then why are all your countries so primitive compared to the US?
Because you weren't always this way, and because the elites in your country have ALWAYS been hard working, and continue to be so. And the fact that you would describe most of the Pacific Rim as "primitive" shows how little understanding you have of the world. People come to America because of opportunity, and due to politics, war, and other factors, such opportunities simply are not available in their own countries.
Shouldn't all the jobs be in the H1b countries since they have such superior work ethic?
Helloooooo outsourcing. But, in the end, people want to come to America. Despite what you may think many people out there value the kind of freedom most Americans take for granted. We value the ability to speak freely, to worship whatever God we please, or none at all. We value blue skies, green fields, and safe cities, over the industrially-advanced but crime-ridden, dirty cities of Asia. You have a wonderful country that is exceptionally socially well-developed (in comparison to most of the rest anyway). The elite of the world want to join the winning team, so to speak.
Right, because the best way to remain a world leader is to cower on your turf, so worried about your job that you turn away tens of thousands of talented foreigners who are just dying for the chance to become Americans and contribute to making your country great.
I'll admit, my stance may be biased. I'm a Canadian working in the USA, and I work with a huge number of people who are on H-1b's, and just as many who are now naturalized citizens, but first came on work visas. Not a single one is considered "cheap labor"; they are paid as much as their local, home-bred American counterparts. The job crunch is not due to people like us "stealing" your jobs, it's due to your flaccid economy to begin with... but from what I can see tech is booming in spite of the American economy's current weakness, and there's really no excuse for complaint in this regard.
Might I remind you that America's initial ascent to world superpower was largely powered by foreign immigration? After WW2 we moved a great many scientists and engineers out from Europe, and they in turn have paid their dues to America. It's a win-win for everyone, except the locals who refuse to compete with the inbound immigrants. No offense, but I've seen some truly lazy people (in both Canada and the USA) who would rather sit and bitch about how the immigrant dude is willing to work harder than he is, and it's TOTALLY not fair. Guess what? Hard work is what put this country at the top, and hard work is the ONLY thing that will keep it there.
It's a liability problem. If Windows borks, Microsoft's on the hook, your boss has a fallback, and can pass the buck to the vendor. With FOSS is much harder to do. Oops, our system broke, time to go in front of the board and blame it on a bunch of weekend programmers. Corporate America is really just a bunch of people too busy covering their asses to worry about doing what's actually good for the company.
Public health issue? So they don't smoke in the office, nor anywhere except designated smoking areas, where us non-smokers will never go anyway. "They smell bad" is about as valid as complaining about your coworker's BO, both are issues that you have to sort out within your own office environment.
The problem with alcoholics is that being drunk precludes you from doing useful work, as well as being a disruptive force in the office. You cannot possibly make that case with smoking. A smoker is NOT impaired, nor is he disruptive unless he's puffing smoke in your face.
I cannot believe you're seriously suggesting discrimination against smokers "because they smell bad". What's next, not hiring the Indian dude because he smells like curry? Get real.
we should work more on prevention (the minimum age for buying cigarettes should get progressively higher, for instance).
Ugh, age limits have NEVER solved ANY problems. Around here they keep raising the driving age, and accidents have never decreased. All they've done is have a bunch of 20 year-olds killing themselves in cars, instead of 16 year-olds. The smoking problem, drinking problem, and any other social ill is NOT solved by limiting access to the vice, it is solved from the root of it - cultural perceptions. Funny how France has no realistic drinking age, but alcohol abuse is a FAR smaller problem for them. It's all in the culture, m'boy.
I can also carrying a mp3 player, cell phone, rolodex of my contacts, portable DVD player, Eee PC, alarm clock, and camera at all times, instead of just getting a modern phone.
Convergence is worth money. GOOD convergence is worth a LOT of money.
For what it's worth, I was disappointed also, but some points you've made aren't fair:
Gold is not magnetic, neither is lead.
The movie established that the skulls attract "artifacts" (almost in an intelligent way), possibly due to the aliens' obsession with human culture. Also, shotgun pellets are NOT made of lead, despite what the common name may suggest:)
15. A room containing every artifact of every culture ever, for no apparently explained reason.
They explained it. The aliens were obsessed with human culture and collected these artifacts from around the world.
22. An atomic blast, which destroys buildings, has to make a second pass because it forgot the mannequins hanging out in front of the buildings.
Oh come on, are we going to start holding continuity shots against movies now? Seriously. Pick on something worthwhile.
25. A hundred bad guys, provided they are not American or Soviet, can get wiped out with heavy machine guns, and leave pristine bodies with no marks.
Are you talking about the slaughtered natives? I saw plenty of bullet holes.
14. Apparently ILM still hasn't figured out gravity. In the real world, lighter pebble sized objects may stay aloft because of high winds, however rocks the size of office buildings tend to fall. In the ILM world, dust settles, then giant rocks hang aloft in a way I haven't seen since a Coyote held up a sign after running off a cliff 20 seconds earlier.
Because it's ALIEN, INTER-DIMENSIONAL technology? Seriously, you can't complain about ET phone home suckage in one sentence, and then complain about how their fantastic aliens were UNREALISTIC.
Personally I thought the pacing in the movie was way off, there was way too little of the usual Indiana Jones snark we're used to, and most of all, instead of just giving us something cool, they had to beat it to death with pseudo-scientific explanations. Smells like the Star Wars prequels and midi-Chlorians:P
We were fine not knowing how the Ark worked, who made it, or why the Grail gave eternal life. Those were all plot devices to enable Indy ass kicking. This movie spent not enough time kicking ass, and too much time trying to explain the stupid plot device.
I'm not talking about hackability, I'm talking about the UI in general. The most basic settings (hmm, I want to turn Bluetooth on) requires diving through countless menus that are vaguely named. Menu items that logically should contain certain items do not, while what you ARE looking for is buried in other seemingly unrelated menus.
There is also the horrifying lag between button press and UI response. I don't know what kind of clunker CPU they've got in there, but it makes the phone an absolutely pain to use. Surfing a long address book? Hold down the down arrow until you see the contact you're looking for, let go, watch the list keep scrolling for 3 more seconds, painfully scroll back up to what you wanted...
BTW this wasn't a Verizon phone, it was a Rogers phone in Canada.
If the dude released his work under BSD, then he has no right to complain. If he released it under GPL, and PsyStar is making the source available, then he has no right to complain.
If he released it under his own license, then sue away, and be happy:)
Do you have any information to actually back this up or are you just making things up? Why in your view is the operation "shady"?
Slashdot covered this before, as have other sites. In summary, the company pulled credit card orders a few short days after announcing the product. Efforts to track down the company at its real-life address turned out to be difficult, and we still have not seen any evidence that the company is legit (there was no business by its name at the address listed on its site). When confronted with this information the company changed its physical address on its website numerous times, none of which seem to reflect a real business. THAT is why it seems shady. Indeed, it looks like this is an amateur operation at best, a scam at worst.
Apple is overpriced because they can be. They are on x86 architecture now so they don't really have an excuse. You CAN compare them to similar spec'd PC hardware to see how overpriced they are.
Go ahead. Do it. I've done it, as have many others. When you don't make cheap excuses like "oh yeah let's leave out the Bluetooth, 'cos who uses it anyways?" you'll find that Macs are quite competitive. Yes, there's still a premium, but "as overpriced as can be" is not it. I would say Sony's are far more overpriced than Macs.
There is as much "perceived value" in style and interface as there is "perceived value" in genuine performance. A computer is a tool to do something, and for the vast majority of users not running servers, the interface contributes to the tool's usefulness as much as teh megahurtz.
Having used some truly horrible interfaces in my time, and having seen the real productivity improvements that come with superior design, I assign a pretty high value to usability. Just look at any recent Motorola phone *shudder*.
WinAmp 5 was actually an improvement over 3. Version 3 was slow, unstable, and dangerously buggy. I had it crash constantly to the point where I just went back to version 2. Did I mention it ate RAM like a monster?
Actually, 5 is a pretty good music player. The only problem was the adware, and the main reason why I don't use it anymore:( RIP WinAmp, you were awesome, for a little while.
Most times I 'sleep' the computer I need to restart. Multiple monitors at work? I need to restart. Two days of intense document construction? "Out of memory" and I need to restart. After 2 days the cursor becomes jumpy, I need to restart and the list goes on and on and on.
May I suggest that this may be a hardware issue? I run a MBP with Leopard and have had none of these problems. In fact multiple monitors is one of the great things about running a Mac:) It just works, and it remembers all your settings to boot. Connect it to your work external monitor and blam, one desktop, connect to home, blam, another. I've also seen problems on MacBook hinges that prevent proper sleep, maybe this is the case.
Take it into your local Apple Store, this just ain't right.
I think we're twisting "terrorism" a bit here. Me warning people about, say, an impending earthquake is not terrorism, regardless of how much terror it may cause - after all, *I'm* not the one who's going to be shaking the ground. Now, threatening to blow something up, that's terrorism, because I'm the one carrying out the destruction, and living up to the threats I've made.
I know terrorism is buzzword of the decade, and I'm no fan of Greenpeace either, but can we stop labeling random people as terrorists? Ramming whaling ships is terrorism, violence against oil companies is terrorism, warning people about global warming, regardless of how overblown the description, is not.
That being said, screw Greenpeace. They are the epitome of yuppie thinking - all about feel-good measures and little real science. They're going to save the world by making it uneconomical for the world to eat, to clothe themselves, to shelter themselves, by throwing us back to a medieval agrarian society. Great job guys. They are the sort of knee-jerk idiots that equate industrialization and modernization with destroying the Earth.
Yes, this government has created a better life for Chinese people, but read your history and realize that the same regime also put them in that agrarian state in the mid 20th Century. The fact that oppression of religion, free speech, and a free press is seen as 'collateral damage' is, I must say, short-minded and a bit ridiculous.
Far from the same regime. The regime that took over in the 90s is really only related to the old one by name. China went from hardline Maoist to communism-by-name, but in reality a capitalist oligarchy. The Chinese have no desire to return to the old regime.
Look at it from the Chinese people's perspective. You have nothing to eat, you're starving to death by the thousands, you have no roof over your head. What are you more concerned about? Having money for your next meal, having a warm place to sleep, or high-minded ideals like freedom of assembly and freedom of religion?
IMHO the Chinese have far bigger problems to worry about than freedom. The majority of their country is STILL in abject poverty. Let's solve the most basic needs of the population first, shall we?
Quite a number of Chinese people I've talked to do not believe the government has done enough to 'quell the uprising' in Tibet. The utopian view of China as a great number of people dissatisfied with a tyrannical regime is simply wrong.
Quell uprising, yes. The Chinese I know believe that Tibet is rightfully a part of China. But supporting MPs shooting monks? That's a pretty big leap. I don't know any "yeah! shoot the monks!" Chinese, no more than any "yeah! shoot the ragheads!" nutbars here in the US.
Uneducated no, misinformed yes. Most people in China have only learned from the schools fed bullshit by the Chinese government... wouldn't you be a bit misinformed too? (you seem to be...)
I'm actually Chinese, have lived in Asia, have seen the issue from the Canadian side, the Chinese side, and the Taiwanese side (I have deep ties to all 3). Who's misinformed?
I've heard this argument a number of times. The Western media gives pictures with their stories. If you want those pictures to be from Tibet, allow the Western media into Tibet. Otherwise quit bitching when they show pictures of Tibetans elsewhere in the world.
So... Let me get this straight. Because the Chinese didn't allow Western media into Tibet... they took pictures of Tibetans being brutalized in Nepal, published it WITH CAPTIONS claiming that the picture depicted Chinese MPs... And this is ok? Thanks, you're now part of the problem.
Yes, the Western media is biased, but to say it is *as* biased as a state run media is ludicrous. Get your facts straight and quit allowing yourself to be informed by propagandistic bullshit.
You get your facts straight. You lost all credibility the moment you claimed it was ok to pass off fake photos as evidence of Chinese crimes. I've seen media coverage from both sides of the ocean (have you?), and the resounding impression I get is... everyone is full of shit. Americans, Canadians, Chinese, Japanese, everyone. Between "Muslim Obama" lies, "Japs wanna kill us all" hysteria, and everything else I've seen, there's no such thing as unbiased news reporting anymore. Journalistic integrity is non-existent anywhere you go.
The Chinese government has become very adept at raising generations of citizens who are in complete support of the tyrannical regime.
Way to show your biases, and the fact that you seemingly have never spoken to a real Chinese person.
People do not support the communist regime, and certainly do not support the tyrannical aspects of it. They do not support shooting Tibetan monks, nor do they support jailing political prisoners. People don't cheer when another freedom-fighting troublemaker is arrested, they simply accept it as a fact of life, and move on. In your twisted reality you might call that supporting the tyranny by refusing to fight back, but that's far from the truth.
Similarly, people do not generally see the Communist regime as tyrannical. After all, this is the regime that has turned China from backwater agrarian wasteland into THE industrial power of the world. It has lifted tens of millions of people out of poverty, and modernized a country that was ridiculously behind, even just two decades ago. The people have seen explosive economic growth, and the indescribable improvement in their quality of life. This is hardly tyrannical. Most everyone I know accepts that some collateral damage must be done (e.g. political prisoners, putting down unrest in brutal ways) in order for the whole to benefit.
Unfortunately most Chinese citizens welcome the filtered news and internet brought to them by their government and certainly support any efforts of that government to quell further uprisings by such violent 'terrorists' (as the government lovingly refers to them) as Buddhist monks...
Do you assume the Chinese are stupid, you racist fuck? My God, if we all thought like you we'd still think Blacks can't vote, and are subhuman, or some other nonsense like that. The Chinese know full well that their government lies to them every single day. They know that the state media twists everything, and most don't believe in it more than they do fairy tales. I have no doubt *some* of the state media's lies sneak through as truth, but seriously, the state media is NOT a trusted news source in China.
Your attitude sickens me. This whole "America is so superior, we can see right through obvious propaganda, but surely the simple-minded, backwards, uneducated masses in China cannot!" It reeks of the superiority complex that Western media has constantly demonstrated towards Asia.
You want to have a positive influence on Chinese people? Stop publishing ludicrously biased news. I've had the unique opportunity to look at news of the Tibetan uprising from both sides of the media, and I have to say that both sides are *equally* guilty of publishing pure bullshit. China claims that the Dalai Lama is a terrorist inciting war inside Tibet's borders, a ludicrous claim. American papers on the other hand, published a picture of "Chinese" military police brutally suppressing monks in Tibet, when it turns out that the "police" were actually Nepalese, the picture was taken in Nepal, and the Chinese had nothing to do with it. Media bias much?
Give it up, your news media is every bit as "fair and balanced" as the state news in China, and we all manufacture the same propaganda bullshit. Get off your high horse and stop assuming that your media is the paragon of unbiased truth.
Why on Earth would you ship something accross a country as huge as the US in a truck ? Simply load it into an electric train and let the nuclear power plants / solar collectors / windmills power it. Much cheaper and more effective.
Right, because all of this infrastructure exists, or can be readily built within the next 10 years. Sure, in an ideal world we can snap our fingers and say "let there be... a high speed electric railroad criss-crossing the entire length of the continent!". Sure, let's throw our muscle behind projects like these, but *in the mean time* the reality still exists: our rail does NOT have the capacity to move things where we need them, when we need them. Trucks are a MASSIVE component of our distribution channels, and there's no getting rid of them in the short-to-mid term. So... what do we want to do? Let gas prices continue to skyrocket, bankrupting the American economy for the next 30 years while we build up alternative infrastructure?
There is a difference between idealism and reality. Ideally we can build up infrastructure overnight to deal with our problems, but life does in fact have to continue while infrastructure is still scarce. By all means, I fully support alternative transportation, and evolving our infrastructure to fit new energy needs, but pulling the rug out from under the American people is NOT the way to do it.
All of these assume that rising oil prices mean the death of the car, rather than fuel efficiency getting a higher priority in purhcasing decisions (and thus manufacturer design goals).
Fuel efficiency does not exist in a vacuum. The Japanese have tiny cars, as do the Europeans. Tiny cars are more fuel efficient (hardly surprising)... but the way American cities have been laid out, you can hardly get anywhere without going on a freeway somewhere, an environment that's hostile to uber-compact vehicles. The lack of fuel efficiency in American automobiles is at least partially due to the REQUIREMENTS of its operating environment. There's a lot more to improving fuel efficiency than just saying "we gotta build more fuel efficient cars!". Like I've been trying to get at, we're talking about infrastructure changes like the US has never seen since the 1920s. This is not something we can do overnight.
In the meantime the reality is that oil prices are going up, and up, and up, and we cannot allow this to continue until alternative infrastructure is in place.
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe, like all people, your tastes are not always perfectly in tune with the rest of the world's. I thought Assassin's Creed was an easy 75/100 at least, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, do not regret the purchase one bit. Sure, it wasn't as OMFG awesome as, say, GTA4 was, but the movement mechanics were novel, the fighting was fun, and the only annoying part was those stupid flag-capturing side missions.
I find Metacritic to be reasonably, er, reasonable when it comes to review scores, for me anyway.
Eye candy is ok, and some of what you would consider eye candy I would consider legitimate usability enhancements. Take OSX's "genie" effect when you minimize/restore windows (it gets "sucked" to the taskbar in a cool animation). Seems frivolous, but it does greatly aid in the user understanding just WTF happened to his/her window.
Nay, the problem with Vista was not too much eye candy, it's too much *pointless* eye candy. Instead of using their newfound DirectX-accelerated powers to improve usability, they threw in transparencies and other gimmicks that did nothing but suck up juice.
Which is still overkill. We can't treat corporations like we do people, because *they are obviously different things*. So while we may throw a guy in jail for fraud, I think a large fine that sends a strong message is enough to punish corporations that step out of line. What I *do* favor is personal responsibility and transparency in companies. Instead of just fining the company, we need laws that require companies maintain communication logs for subpoenas, so that we can find out *who* in the company masterminded the fraud, and punish them personally.
Did you by any chance cross at Blaine, WA? I've heard of some notorious troubles with people crossing there, and even ran into trouble there myself once or twice.
Seems like a lot of border guards are just bitter that they have to sit around and stamp crap, while you're out vacationing, or something. Either way, they seem to really enjoy power-tripping on everyone who looks reasonably well-to-do.
It's also hilarious, since at the crossing there is a BIG poster about the DHS' commitment to providing courteous, friendly service. This is in stark contrast to the guy who opens up the conversation with "Son, do you know how to read a form?"
Companies are quite often too large for their own good. This is taking a sledgehammer to a fly - do you seriously mean to lay off potentially tens of thousands of people because one department screws up?
And that is why this game rocks. Without the writing it's just a fairly well-thought-out stereotypical RPG game, one that I would bore of within a half-hour of play. The writing is something else though, just enough intrigue to keep you going, and many bust-out-loud laughing moments.
IMHO that implies a problem with the start menu, not the pie menu. I've used some niche software that have made excellent use of pie menus - but that's because their functionality is well-separated, and each menu does not tend to balloon like most app menus do today.
The fact that we have huge menus of 15+ items is IMHO evidence of a failure of proper UI design. I love pie menus, but they do require some real design work from the engineer, and not just randomly throwing functionality into menu items randomly.
My experience hasn't been like that, though I can certainly see where you're coming from. IMHO the situation is not entirely analogous to post-WW2 Europe, since America was the unquestionable victor and ultimate place to be at the time. Liberal immigration policies helped, but people were practically climbing over each other to get in.
Nowadays, with China rising quickly, and economic development in other areas outstripping the USA, the allure is certainly dimmed a bit, especially for people who aren't so concerned with freedom and all those fuzzy things. IMHO America is faced with having to work harder to attract the truly brilliant minds of the world. Every obstacle we throw in the way of getting qualified, talented people into the country is one more point to countries like China.
IMHO the H1B system is sometimes abused, if you look at the numbers they don't lie - a fair chunk of the annual allotment is sucked up by companies bringing in support-type people, which is contrary to what IMHO should be the purpose of the H1B program - recruiting HIGH LEVEL (i.e. not bottom barrel) people from other places.
I'm not entirely opposed to bringing in entry-level people from foreign countries. We need these people for their future contributions to the country, and if we're sure they are rare talent, then we shouldn't preclude the option of bringing them in fresh out of school.
What I have experienced here (in Seattle, looking at all the large software firms in the area) is that there is truly a shortage for capable software engineers (not support types). I'm not seeing a situation where otherwise qualified Americans are being brushed to the side in favor of foreign talent - the industry can't hire enough people, and there's plenty of opportunity to go around. Then again, I work in a more hardcore computer-science-y segment of the industry, less sysadmin'ing and codemonkeying...
Alright, clearly you're big on blaming the ills of the world on immigrants... which is all too common these days. Let's tackle some of your points.
Yeah right. But let's assume you are correct. What happens when you increase the supply of anything? It's price goes down. And we see that with stagnant wages.When you increase supply without increasing demand, price drops. But this is not the case in tech. Looking at my own company, and companies like MS, Google, and many others, these guys are on hiring binges, and can't fill all the positions they want filled. There's a genuine case for bringing in skilled software engineers. It's not really our problem if Google is successfully hiring Indian engineers for $100K+ a pop, and you can't get an interview with them. Work harder, get your qualifications up to snuff. So yes, increasing supply while increasing demand is perfectly healthy. We're certainly not bringing in hordes of foreign engineers in a time when the industry is experiencing negative growth. Tech is booming.
But I thought you guys said that for every one of you we bring in it creates 10 more American jobs. So how did employment possibly go down. Hell we should have 0% unemployment and skyrocketing wages.Elementary. Employment is going down in manufacturing and other industries that are fleeing the USA for greener pastures like Asia. Tech is *still growing* and fast too.
Yeah, and none of them were h1b's. And quit with the hard work crap. Nice stereotype that Americans are so lazy. If we're so lazy compared to you then why are all your countries so primitive compared to the US? Shouldn't all the jobs be in the H1b countries since they have such superior work ethic?Does it matter if they were H1B's? The entire purpose is to bring in talented people with the allure of becoming an American. That has not changed, regardless of what visa code they are operating under. Despite what you may think there are a great many people who admire America and its ideals, and would die to join you (and many have).
Americans aren't lazy. Some segments of America are certainly complacent. They have bred into the habit of expecting everything to come for free, that they do not need to compete on the world stage, and that the world is their oyster, for doing absolutely squat. The people I work with on a daily basis are some of the smartest, most talented people I've ever met, and all of them, regardless of if they're born American, H1B's, or anything else, are not averse to hardship, and are willing to work hard. They are also all quite successful, and doing very well despite the weak economy. This is not a coincidence.
Since you've opened the can of worms, I'll address your points one by one:
If we're so lazy compared to you then why are all your countries so primitive compared to the US?Because you weren't always this way, and because the elites in your country have ALWAYS been hard working, and continue to be so. And the fact that you would describe most of the Pacific Rim as "primitive" shows how little understanding you have of the world. People come to America because of opportunity, and due to politics, war, and other factors, such opportunities simply are not available in their own countries.
Shouldn't all the jobs be in the H1b countries since they have such superior work ethic?Helloooooo outsourcing. But, in the end, people want to come to America. Despite what you may think many people out there value the kind of freedom most Americans take for granted. We value the ability to speak freely, to worship whatever God we please, or none at all. We value blue skies, green fields, and safe cities, over the industrially-advanced but crime-ridden, dirty cities of Asia. You have a wonderful country that is exceptionally socially well-developed (in comparison to most of the rest anyway). The elite of the world want to join the winning team, so to speak.
Right, because the best way to remain a world leader is to cower on your turf, so worried about your job that you turn away tens of thousands of talented foreigners who are just dying for the chance to become Americans and contribute to making your country great.
I'll admit, my stance may be biased. I'm a Canadian working in the USA, and I work with a huge number of people who are on H-1b's, and just as many who are now naturalized citizens, but first came on work visas. Not a single one is considered "cheap labor"; they are paid as much as their local, home-bred American counterparts. The job crunch is not due to people like us "stealing" your jobs, it's due to your flaccid economy to begin with... but from what I can see tech is booming in spite of the American economy's current weakness, and there's really no excuse for complaint in this regard.
Might I remind you that America's initial ascent to world superpower was largely powered by foreign immigration? After WW2 we moved a great many scientists and engineers out from Europe, and they in turn have paid their dues to America. It's a win-win for everyone, except the locals who refuse to compete with the inbound immigrants. No offense, but I've seen some truly lazy people (in both Canada and the USA) who would rather sit and bitch about how the immigrant dude is willing to work harder than he is, and it's TOTALLY not fair. Guess what? Hard work is what put this country at the top, and hard work is the ONLY thing that will keep it there.
It's a liability problem. If Windows borks, Microsoft's on the hook, your boss has a fallback, and can pass the buck to the vendor. With FOSS is much harder to do. Oops, our system broke, time to go in front of the board and blame it on a bunch of weekend programmers. Corporate America is really just a bunch of people too busy covering their asses to worry about doing what's actually good for the company.
Public health issue? So they don't smoke in the office, nor anywhere except designated smoking areas, where us non-smokers will never go anyway. "They smell bad" is about as valid as complaining about your coworker's BO, both are issues that you have to sort out within your own office environment.
The problem with alcoholics is that being drunk precludes you from doing useful work, as well as being a disruptive force in the office. You cannot possibly make that case with smoking. A smoker is NOT impaired, nor is he disruptive unless he's puffing smoke in your face.
I cannot believe you're seriously suggesting discrimination against smokers "because they smell bad". What's next, not hiring the Indian dude because he smells like curry? Get real.
we should work more on prevention (the minimum age for buying cigarettes should get progressively higher, for instance).Ugh, age limits have NEVER solved ANY problems. Around here they keep raising the driving age, and accidents have never decreased. All they've done is have a bunch of 20 year-olds killing themselves in cars, instead of 16 year-olds. The smoking problem, drinking problem, and any other social ill is NOT solved by limiting access to the vice, it is solved from the root of it - cultural perceptions. Funny how France has no realistic drinking age, but alcohol abuse is a FAR smaller problem for them. It's all in the culture, m'boy.
"She" has an exotic thruster? o_O
I can also carrying a mp3 player, cell phone, rolodex of my contacts, portable DVD player, Eee PC, alarm clock, and camera at all times, instead of just getting a modern phone.
Convergence is worth money. GOOD convergence is worth a LOT of money.
For what it's worth, I was disappointed also, but some points you've made aren't fair:
Gold is not magnetic, neither is lead.The movie established that the skulls attract "artifacts" (almost in an intelligent way), possibly due to the aliens' obsession with human culture. Also, shotgun pellets are NOT made of lead, despite what the common name may suggest :)
15. A room containing every artifact of every culture ever, for no apparently explained reason.They explained it. The aliens were obsessed with human culture and collected these artifacts from around the world.
22. An atomic blast, which destroys buildings, has to make a second pass because it forgot the mannequins hanging out in front of the buildings.Oh come on, are we going to start holding continuity shots against movies now? Seriously. Pick on something worthwhile.
25. A hundred bad guys, provided they are not American or Soviet, can get wiped out with heavy machine guns, and leave pristine bodies with no marks.Are you talking about the slaughtered natives? I saw plenty of bullet holes.
14. Apparently ILM still hasn't figured out gravity. In the real world, lighter pebble sized objects may stay aloft because of high winds, however rocks the size of office buildings tend to fall. In the ILM world, dust settles, then giant rocks hang aloft in a way I haven't seen since a Coyote held up a sign after running off a cliff 20 seconds earlier.Because it's ALIEN, INTER-DIMENSIONAL technology? Seriously, you can't complain about ET phone home suckage in one sentence, and then complain about how their fantastic aliens were UNREALISTIC.
Personally I thought the pacing in the movie was way off, there was way too little of the usual Indiana Jones snark we're used to, and most of all, instead of just giving us something cool, they had to beat it to death with pseudo-scientific explanations. Smells like the Star Wars prequels and midi-Chlorians :P
We were fine not knowing how the Ark worked, who made it, or why the Grail gave eternal life. Those were all plot devices to enable Indy ass kicking. This movie spent not enough time kicking ass, and too much time trying to explain the stupid plot device.
I'm not talking about hackability, I'm talking about the UI in general. The most basic settings (hmm, I want to turn Bluetooth on) requires diving through countless menus that are vaguely named. Menu items that logically should contain certain items do not, while what you ARE looking for is buried in other seemingly unrelated menus.
There is also the horrifying lag between button press and UI response. I don't know what kind of clunker CPU they've got in there, but it makes the phone an absolutely pain to use. Surfing a long address book? Hold down the down arrow until you see the contact you're looking for, let go, watch the list keep scrolling for 3 more seconds, painfully scroll back up to what you wanted...
BTW this wasn't a Verizon phone, it was a Rogers phone in Canada.
If the dude released his work under BSD, then he has no right to complain. If he released it under GPL, and PsyStar is making the source available, then he has no right to complain.
If he released it under his own license, then sue away, and be happy :)
Slashdot covered this before, as have other sites. In summary, the company pulled credit card orders a few short days after announcing the product. Efforts to track down the company at its real-life address turned out to be difficult, and we still have not seen any evidence that the company is legit (there was no business by its name at the address listed on its site). When confronted with this information the company changed its physical address on its website numerous times, none of which seem to reflect a real business. THAT is why it seems shady. Indeed, it looks like this is an amateur operation at best, a scam at worst.
Apple is overpriced because they can be. They are on x86 architecture now so they don't really have an excuse. You CAN compare them to similar spec'd PC hardware to see how overpriced they are.Go ahead. Do it. I've done it, as have many others. When you don't make cheap excuses like "oh yeah let's leave out the Bluetooth, 'cos who uses it anyways?" you'll find that Macs are quite competitive. Yes, there's still a premium, but "as overpriced as can be" is not it. I would say Sony's are far more overpriced than Macs.
There is as much "perceived value" in style and interface as there is "perceived value" in genuine performance. A computer is a tool to do something, and for the vast majority of users not running servers, the interface contributes to the tool's usefulness as much as teh megahurtz.
Having used some truly horrible interfaces in my time, and having seen the real productivity improvements that come with superior design, I assign a pretty high value to usability. Just look at any recent Motorola phone *shudder*.
WinAmp 5 was actually an improvement over 3. Version 3 was slow, unstable, and dangerously buggy. I had it crash constantly to the point where I just went back to version 2. Did I mention it ate RAM like a monster?
Actually, 5 is a pretty good music player. The only problem was the adware, and the main reason why I don't use it anymore :( RIP WinAmp, you were awesome, for a little while.
May I suggest that this may be a hardware issue? I run a MBP with Leopard and have had none of these problems. In fact multiple monitors is one of the great things about running a Mac :) It just works, and it remembers all your settings to boot. Connect it to your work external monitor and blam, one desktop, connect to home, blam, another. I've also seen problems on MacBook hinges that prevent proper sleep, maybe this is the case.
Take it into your local Apple Store, this just ain't right.
I think we're twisting "terrorism" a bit here. Me warning people about, say, an impending earthquake is not terrorism, regardless of how much terror it may cause - after all, *I'm* not the one who's going to be shaking the ground. Now, threatening to blow something up, that's terrorism, because I'm the one carrying out the destruction, and living up to the threats I've made.
I know terrorism is buzzword of the decade, and I'm no fan of Greenpeace either, but can we stop labeling random people as terrorists? Ramming whaling ships is terrorism, violence against oil companies is terrorism, warning people about global warming, regardless of how overblown the description, is not.
That being said, screw Greenpeace. They are the epitome of yuppie thinking - all about feel-good measures and little real science. They're going to save the world by making it uneconomical for the world to eat, to clothe themselves, to shelter themselves, by throwing us back to a medieval agrarian society. Great job guys. They are the sort of knee-jerk idiots that equate industrialization and modernization with destroying the Earth.
Far from the same regime. The regime that took over in the 90s is really only related to the old one by name. China went from hardline Maoist to communism-by-name, but in reality a capitalist oligarchy. The Chinese have no desire to return to the old regime.
Look at it from the Chinese people's perspective. You have nothing to eat, you're starving to death by the thousands, you have no roof over your head. What are you more concerned about? Having money for your next meal, having a warm place to sleep, or high-minded ideals like freedom of assembly and freedom of religion?
IMHO the Chinese have far bigger problems to worry about than freedom. The majority of their country is STILL in abject poverty. Let's solve the most basic needs of the population first, shall we?
Quite a number of Chinese people I've talked to do not believe the government has done enough to 'quell the uprising' in Tibet. The utopian view of China as a great number of people dissatisfied with a tyrannical regime is simply wrong.Quell uprising, yes. The Chinese I know believe that Tibet is rightfully a part of China. But supporting MPs shooting monks? That's a pretty big leap. I don't know any "yeah! shoot the monks!" Chinese, no more than any "yeah! shoot the ragheads!" nutbars here in the US.
Uneducated no, misinformed yes. Most people in China have only learned from the schools fed bullshit by the Chinese government... wouldn't you be a bit misinformed too? (you seem to be...)I'm actually Chinese, have lived in Asia, have seen the issue from the Canadian side, the Chinese side, and the Taiwanese side (I have deep ties to all 3). Who's misinformed?
I've heard this argument a number of times. The Western media gives pictures with their stories. If you want those pictures to be from Tibet, allow the Western media into Tibet. Otherwise quit bitching when they show pictures of Tibetans elsewhere in the world.So... Let me get this straight. Because the Chinese didn't allow Western media into Tibet... they took pictures of Tibetans being brutalized in Nepal, published it WITH CAPTIONS claiming that the picture depicted Chinese MPs... And this is ok? Thanks, you're now part of the problem.
Yes, the Western media is biased, but to say it is *as* biased as a state run media is ludicrous. Get your facts straight and quit allowing yourself to be informed by propagandistic bullshit.You get your facts straight. You lost all credibility the moment you claimed it was ok to pass off fake photos as evidence of Chinese crimes. I've seen media coverage from both sides of the ocean (have you?), and the resounding impression I get is... everyone is full of shit. Americans, Canadians, Chinese, Japanese, everyone. Between "Muslim Obama" lies, "Japs wanna kill us all" hysteria, and everything else I've seen, there's no such thing as unbiased news reporting anymore. Journalistic integrity is non-existent anywhere you go.
Way to show your biases, and the fact that you seemingly have never spoken to a real Chinese person.
People do not support the communist regime, and certainly do not support the tyrannical aspects of it. They do not support shooting Tibetan monks, nor do they support jailing political prisoners. People don't cheer when another freedom-fighting troublemaker is arrested, they simply accept it as a fact of life, and move on. In your twisted reality you might call that supporting the tyranny by refusing to fight back, but that's far from the truth.
Similarly, people do not generally see the Communist regime as tyrannical. After all, this is the regime that has turned China from backwater agrarian wasteland into THE industrial power of the world. It has lifted tens of millions of people out of poverty, and modernized a country that was ridiculously behind, even just two decades ago. The people have seen explosive economic growth, and the indescribable improvement in their quality of life. This is hardly tyrannical. Most everyone I know accepts that some collateral damage must be done (e.g. political prisoners, putting down unrest in brutal ways) in order for the whole to benefit.
Unfortunately most Chinese citizens welcome the filtered news and internet brought to them by their government and certainly support any efforts of that government to quell further uprisings by such violent 'terrorists' (as the government lovingly refers to them) as Buddhist monks...Do you assume the Chinese are stupid, you racist fuck? My God, if we all thought like you we'd still think Blacks can't vote, and are subhuman, or some other nonsense like that. The Chinese know full well that their government lies to them every single day. They know that the state media twists everything, and most don't believe in it more than they do fairy tales. I have no doubt *some* of the state media's lies sneak through as truth, but seriously, the state media is NOT a trusted news source in China.
Your attitude sickens me. This whole "America is so superior, we can see right through obvious propaganda, but surely the simple-minded, backwards, uneducated masses in China cannot!" It reeks of the superiority complex that Western media has constantly demonstrated towards Asia.
You want to have a positive influence on Chinese people? Stop publishing ludicrously biased news. I've had the unique opportunity to look at news of the Tibetan uprising from both sides of the media, and I have to say that both sides are *equally* guilty of publishing pure bullshit. China claims that the Dalai Lama is a terrorist inciting war inside Tibet's borders, a ludicrous claim. American papers on the other hand, published a picture of "Chinese" military police brutally suppressing monks in Tibet, when it turns out that the "police" were actually Nepalese, the picture was taken in Nepal, and the Chinese had nothing to do with it. Media bias much?
Give it up, your news media is every bit as "fair and balanced" as the state news in China, and we all manufacture the same propaganda bullshit. Get off your high horse and stop assuming that your media is the paragon of unbiased truth.
Right, because all of this infrastructure exists, or can be readily built within the next 10 years. Sure, in an ideal world we can snap our fingers and say "let there be... a high speed electric railroad criss-crossing the entire length of the continent!". Sure, let's throw our muscle behind projects like these, but *in the mean time* the reality still exists: our rail does NOT have the capacity to move things where we need them, when we need them. Trucks are a MASSIVE component of our distribution channels, and there's no getting rid of them in the short-to-mid term. So... what do we want to do? Let gas prices continue to skyrocket, bankrupting the American economy for the next 30 years while we build up alternative infrastructure?
There is a difference between idealism and reality. Ideally we can build up infrastructure overnight to deal with our problems, but life does in fact have to continue while infrastructure is still scarce. By all means, I fully support alternative transportation, and evolving our infrastructure to fit new energy needs, but pulling the rug out from under the American people is NOT the way to do it.
All of these assume that rising oil prices mean the death of the car, rather than fuel efficiency getting a higher priority in purhcasing decisions (and thus manufacturer design goals).Fuel efficiency does not exist in a vacuum. The Japanese have tiny cars, as do the Europeans. Tiny cars are more fuel efficient (hardly surprising)... but the way American cities have been laid out, you can hardly get anywhere without going on a freeway somewhere, an environment that's hostile to uber-compact vehicles. The lack of fuel efficiency in American automobiles is at least partially due to the REQUIREMENTS of its operating environment. There's a lot more to improving fuel efficiency than just saying "we gotta build more fuel efficient cars!". Like I've been trying to get at, we're talking about infrastructure changes like the US has never seen since the 1920s. This is not something we can do overnight.
In the meantime the reality is that oil prices are going up, and up, and up, and we cannot allow this to continue until alternative infrastructure is in place.