Re: Fear and Loathing ...
Trouble is: they ARE all sock puppets, except Trump. He funds himself and so answers only to himself (the very epitome of a free man?), while the others must mind their paymasters.
902 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009
Yes, he probably doubly damns this CEO because she's woman, but I suspect he is the sort of lice-comber who really only sees nits, and would gleefully point at the failings of anyone.
I think investors who never actually put in money to help start a company, but just buy into a going concern so it will rain pennies on their heads, have little savvy to offer about the actual running of a company. Not that I think Yahoo! is well-run, but I don't think Jehovah Himself could make a success of the Y.
I wouldn't go cloud, so have hung onto my very old CS copy of Photoshop. When I've needed something like Illustrator, InDesign, etc, I have found cheap or free versions that do pretty much all I want.
Now I'm in a job where I just PS a lot, and of course am on the CC version. I've lost some effects I liked, got a lot of stuff I don't use, and on the whole am not convinced I'll need it in my semi-pro personal work. When and if my clapped-out personal copy dies, I'll check out Affinity.
It's the bad taste from being locked in that I don't like.
When the idea was part-time workers, mums, students etc (i.e. 'nice ordinary people') would drive their nice cars for Uber as a way to get cash, and you'd have a ride at a good price (unless rides were scarce, in which case you'd pay through the nose), it was appealing. As it turned out, and oh who could have predicted it, poor people with clapped-out cars desperate to put in as many hours as they could without dropping dead signed up and did the actual driving. Now they need legal protection, because the company is doing its best to treat them like amateurs when it's these people's only job.
The fact that the 'inventors' of the idea are gazillionaires, while the drivers are denied the most basic labour rights, confirms to me that the new wonderful world of internet businesses is right back in the 1890s. But where are our muck-rakers and social activists?
Yes, the two flags things was a nice fudge, wasn't it? A democratic process would have been a tricky one then -- we were still a bit 'colonial' and there would have been years of backing and forthing -- but perhaps we would have followed NZ's style now: a shortlist, a public vote, and then done-and-dusted.
I certainly like the Canadian national flag. Simple, clear, and also instantly identifiable. There are a few flags around the world that are like that: UK's, USA's, China's, a couple of others, and the rest are merely coloured bars. I hope to see the Black Fern adding itself to the cool countries' flags.
I think the Black Fern versions look great, with or without the Southern Cross, although it will be a nightmare for graphics people and manufacturers of flags.
I know there was kerfuffle over 'don't lose the old flag and the Union Jack, under which our troops served, this makes a mockery of our veterans' etc etc. Canada changed its flag in the 1960s and I don't think Canadian veterans had collective heart attacks.
My first, immature, reaction was 'glad someone was making them pay', but even without putting images onto their machines, he was still allowing these guys to do what they did, as long s he could get a cut. So he was merely the, as it were, yeast infection on top of the prurient knob.
Try trademarking a symbol that is a checkmark with a rounded curve ad see how fast Nike are onto you with measurements. Try trademarking a curved M for your fast-food company and see how quickly McDonalds comes knocking about infringement. Or try having rear lights on your luxury sports car that show a line that curves down and see how fast Jaguar are phoning you up.
Design is not a triviality in today's world.
Following suspicious behaviour from specific groups (to pluck an example our of the air, Chechens who had visited the home country, googled radical sites, were flagged up by Russian security agencies) is apparently not done, but following your hot ex and her new husband as they shop and go on vacation, that definitely. Because spy boys will be boys.
No matter how badly you are treated, you are a professional person and should do what an honourable and decent professional person would do, which is to take responsibility. In this case, it could have been a pleasantly-worded email to the Powers That Be reminding them of an expensive time-bomb ticking and what the next steps should be. I think that the said Powers That Be in this case would have done nowt and the results would have been the same, but you could go to your next employers with head held high knowing that your conduct and your commitment to quality were beyond reproach.
It is possible for children to have privacy and to be able to use their imaginations, supplying their toys with voices and having a cheerful conversation. It' one way children expand how they understand points of view and creativity and all that brain-expanding stuff.
Now we strap them in push chairs and feel responses to their dolls and turn them into passive consumers of technology.
I know this point has been made before, but still.
Most people use both. They are the ordinary punters who just want thinks to work, and have no deep feelings for the security breaches Flash and Java assist. Turning them off makes a lot of popular sites cease to work well, or at all. What do you want them to do? The intertubes are for everyone, not just us super brainiac types.
My nephews live on their smartphones. They ski, film with a GoPro or film others, edit the clips into little films on their phones, and share them with friends, plus they post them to various social media sites. They are able to send nifty formatted invitations with embedded maps, etc. from their phones. They do not consider these to be IT tasks, but the way they live their lives.
I don't think any of the tests would have them blinking an eye.
We know what we're involved in ISN'T a well-run project, we sort if know how it should be being done, but we can't do anything about it. Most project managers can't put A, B and C in the right order, so when a project is handed to them, isn't a fail from the start. But mostly the project fails before that point, because the goal, the purpose, etc is so fuzzy that the project could take a hundred different tracks and still appear to be right.
Let's put it through its paces. I see a tilted ramp so it can launch itself in the air, do a roll, and land again or its wheels. Or not.
I also see using one as a random Segway. Have a seat and go on a mystery tour.
Or a place to park my empty coffee cup and sarnie wrapper: go, little ones, and enjoy your adventure to lands I know not where...
I do a lot of things, as it is clear you do, to meet my own standards of quality. These are usually higher than what my dearly beloved company would ask, but they don't know what to ask for, would be content to take the lowest-possible threshold of acceptability, if proffered by a consultant, so I don't tell them what I am doing and am willing to spend the extra time creating security etc that would not shame me if I fell under a bus and a colleague such as you replaced me. If someone like you can look at what I' created and think "well done, good job", then I know I've achieved the standards I aim for.
Google scanned huge numbers of books 'for' libraries, who then had to pay to use the digital copy of the books they owned, and the scanning, in my experience, is pretty bad. Chunks are missing, whole sections are alphabet sphagetti, it's sloppy, and obviously books are ways Google can get eyes on their ads, as opposed to offering a service. I can't think of how I (as a published writer) will benefit from Google doing this to my books. If people want to buy them, they will look me up and go buy them.
I can see for many people this will be a useful device, but I ran through a typical day, then an untypical day, and considered my tinnitus, and thought: this doesn't do anything better than I can do now and with more privacy, and it is yet another source of sound, which I don't want. I am sure I'm in the minority.
BBC World Service was slashed and burned not too long ago. Fantastically interesting programmes and, for many countries, a trusted source of information, went up in smoke, and lose experienced journalists were lost. I can think of a lot of other things I would have given up, funded by public money, than that.
I still have my pre-GPS Bold. It's a bit thick, but has never caused me a moment of trouble, does what I want from a phone (calles, text, emails) and fits in my pocket and can be used one-handed if i have to. I will be as gutted as your good lady wife when (if) it goes.
Sadly, pressure cooker + nails + rucksack + Russian warning that these two brothers should be kept under observation + two American boys heading off to Chechen land for a summer vacation all did not add up to 'maybe we should send the police aroudn to have a word'. They do that later in the fear that there will be a copycat, but it would be really nice is they used their gazillion petayetaflops of data from us to, ya know, stop atrocities before they happen. You can call me a dreamer...
My first day at a job many years ago and I managed to upend my carton of orange juice all over my new keyboard. I turned it upside down and let it drain, then quietly mopped as best I could (I did not want to draw a lot of attention to myself), wiped the keys, but every day it stank worse of heated, elderly juice until I found a PC bundled up ready to be taken out of commission and swapped keyboards. Can't drink orange juice at work to this day.
I am guessing that you do not write books or songs or poems. Is a book that took five years to write going to get fifteen years worth of royalties? Is a song that was slowly developing in a composer's head over a decade, but which finally took a couple of days to write down, worth more than a sudden inspiration dashed off on the back of a table napkin? What about copyright in prioprietory code? If it taks a team of 100 working over four years, do they get a century or so of copyright?
If we leave it to the public to pay what they think is fair, creators would get about 5p each. Thats' why copyright laws exist.