Posts by deadlockvictim

Re: A good start….

When you type in 'bananas', you'll get the results that maximises our profits, and if that means other fruit, Teslas or information from a particular insurance company, then that's what you'll get.

You must not forget that search is not a service for you, it's simply a service we know that you will use.

Re: E=World

iron» Apple have never done anything first.

I have no way of knowing of this statement is true or not.

What they have done is take technologies that had been up to then poorly adopted and make them mainstream.

Examples include:

1. Daisy-chaining peripherals: ADB from 1986 onwards with the Apple IIGS;

2. SCSI: 1986 - 1999 starting the Macintosh Plus;

3. FireWire/IEEE 1394: 1998 onwards starting the iMac;

4. Miniaturising laptop components to make laptops easy to carry: 1991 onwards with the PowerBook 100 series

5. GUI: Xerox may have invented the GUI but it was Apple that made it a common idea;

6. USB: 1998 onwards starting the iMac;

This is what springs to mind now.

Give credit where credit is due.

Yes, Apple may have invented little, but their implementation of ideas, hardware & software is the reason why USB is ubiquitous, laptops all look like MacBook Air-wannabes and all personal computers use GUIs, amongst other things.

The Onion

As usual, my news source of choice, The Onion, illuminates this point:

Report: More Young Americans Achieving Homeownership By Changing Locks On Airbnb

https://www.theonion.com/report-more-young-americans-achieving-homeownership-by-1849156454

Re: As a geologically stable country surrounded by ocean

Ireland is quite stable politically.

It may have been/be poorly run but the political system is stable.

There hasn't been a threat to the transfer of power since the 1920s.

SQL Server Express Edition

I reckoned they should have built an easy-to-use frontend for an installation of SQL Server Express Edition and then retired Access gracefully.

It should be something that builds reports & databases with the ease of Access and something that does not require an installation of Management Studio.

Re: "Diversity will destroy this company"

What does 'woke' mean in this context?

Those on the right in American life use it to mean everything bad in American life today and I'm never actually sure what it means.

Is the poster saying that Intel is too diverse? I would that very hard to believe.

Re: Yes, I am ashamed of my country

I don't understand why it isn't put to a general vote as an amendment to the constitution.

I do wonder how pro-choice Republicans will vote in the mid-terms in November.

Re: Favourite CPU socket?

You can't beat ZIF sockets for ease of upgrade.

Re: "we have been hard at work"

Translation:

We may look stressed, but we have have your data and we fuckin' own you.

You are paying us and even when we fuck up because there is nothing that you will do.

We can do what we want because we know how much hassle it is to change.

Enjoy your day.

Re: A necessary evil

That is way too simplistic. The combination of engineering, a knowledge of mathematics and being able to work in coordinated units produced massive gains is work productivity.

Unfortunately, it was mostly limited to armies (Julius Caesar was a great example of this). That being said, it enabled the building of aqueducts, the Pantheon in Rome as well as the great cathedrals in Europe.

Land of the Free

When I was young, America was the place that everyone wanted to go to, and, with the possible exception of Sweden (it was the '70s), it was the sexiest place to be.

Now it seems to become more like Hell with each passing day, as if the US populace is figuratively being boiled alive — slowly.

Added to that, it seems as if a civil war is imminent and with the amount of weaponry present in that land, there will be more massacres to join the frequent ones that already happen.

Re: Fowler Play

OED prefers -ize. Really? Citation Needed.

My compromise:

• Those words that came into English either from Latin or French use '-ise'.

• Those that came into English directly from Greek use '-ize'.

There are an estimated 400 million speakers of English in and around India. My guess is that, by usage alone, '-ise' is more common.

Re: Inevitability

The UK was run for 10 years by a scientist and she made a very impression.

Oddly enough, there haven't been too many leaders since her with STEM backgrounds.

Re: Clippy

This came to mind when I read the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifleu0VVAc0

Re: Good I guess

The right software is the software that doesn't cost an executive his bonus and since almost nothing will, it is all the right software.

Mindset

There is in Japan the belief, not without justification, that proximity to power is power.

The idea that important infrastructure would be placed away from the centre requires one to think differently, a trait not encouraged in Japan. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.

Two thoughts that came to mind though:

1. Japan is frequently hit by earthquakes. If a substantial chunk of the data-centres are hit by a massive earthquake, then there is a lot of damage done to vital infrastructure in one go and this will be catastrophic;

If the datacentres are geographically dispersed then there is a greater chance that one data-centre will be taken down. Is there enough resilience in the other data-centres to cope with one or two going down.

2. Data-centres require large bandwidth. With any luck, the Japanese countryside will receive nice, new shiny fibre cables and improve the connectivity of those living in the furusato.

Re: Why are we blindly letting this happen?

You are welcome not to support the Chinese economy which supports the regime of which you do not approve. This means, amongst other things, not buying anything from China. Good luck with that.

We in Europe felt very aggrieved after the U.S. lashed out in Afghanistan & Iraq (but did nothing to Saudi Arabia) after September 11, 2001. Should we have boycotted American goods & services then? What emanated from the Bush White House horrified us. Was that so very different?

Did the plight of these fellow humans in Afghanistan & Iraq not matter to those of us in the so called ‘west’?

Should we not be furthering the economic fortunes of states that do not treat the citizens of conquered lands with basic human rights? WMD indeed.

Re: Not an unequivocal union fan - but I applaud this

JB(nb)» Are unions still run by or linked to the Mafia or other organised crime?

Wow, just wow.

Wargames

The film 'Wargames' came to mind: The only way to win is not to play.

Surely it is time for the PFY to leave the nest and take over a new one.

Reasonably priced Mac Pro

A Mac Pro is only reasonably priced if your employer is paying for it.

Otherwise, it only becomes reasonably priced 10 years after it has been released.

Cost of Living

A programmer earns roughly the median salary in Switzerland with substantial swings either side the median.

For a country where 30% of the population does not own the property within which they live, a programmer that saves has the potential to buy an apartment or house.

Re: Hybrid work ?

Exactly.

Teams has two great features:

1. Because Microsoft still has to learn about the concept of the agreeable user interface, meetings on Teams are a mildly unpleasant affair and people can't wait for them to end. As a consequence, meetings tend to be shorter and to the point. It is very annoying that MS have taken away the ability to control the screens of others too.

2. You can get real work done while others are rambling on. I couldn't get away with this when I was stuck in meeting rooms in meatspace.

And I'm happy when 60% of the others is not in our open-plan office. It is a lot quieter and there are fewer distractions.

Women in technical roles

I've mentioned this before in these fora.

The women I have come across in non-academic/research technical roles tend to fall into one of these two groups:

a. Requirements Engineers — probably the most social of the technical roles;

b. Data-people — data-scientists & DBAs.

Furthermore, of the female DBAs I have met & worked with, they have all been foreign (relative to the country I lived in at the time), being from India, Russia, China & Spain.

It seems to me that while culture plays an important role, women gravitate towards roles where there is a strong interpersonal element in the job and being alone with your code or your server is not their cup of tea. There is nothing wrong with this. It just needs to be appreciated.