The problem is 'QWERTY' not bloody size. Sure after much experience you get to know where the keys are but how many know the full QWERTY alphabet 'QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM' so that you can tab through to get to the letter group you want (reduced number of keys, say 6 or 12 ie next key, 6 ABCDE next FGHIJ next). So you drop QWERTY and go back to your ABCs, so that a reduced key set works . This creates other problems for multiple devices so it makes sense to start pushing ABCs as a option on devices where it is purely governed by software.

Business customers will simply get updates after 'home users'. Home users will be crash test dummies who will simply be blamed for configuring their machines poorly or using it insecurely. M$ is running into harsher more competitive and demanding business market and hence is working to look better for them, so the monopoly market becomes a crash test dummy market (with all their machines reporting problems back, basically paying to be lab rats).

Paying taxes is about paying for the revenue opportunities those countries create. Don't want to pay the taxes, 'THEN FUCK OFF', you are not entitled to the revenue opportunities those countries create. Want to generate revenue in the 'HIGH VALUE' markets, then pay taxes in those markets where the revenue is generated and do not steal infrastructure, a customer base with money or the social services of that customer base. Countries need to start killing of companies that steal access to markets without paying, corporate deaths sentences with asset seizure. That corporate tax greed is depriving citizens of social services that ensure health and well being. Corporate greed is killing a percentage of the population every year, it is time to hold them accountable for those deaths, when they cheat on taxes that pay for those social services.

Want out, fine, 'FUCK OFF' but don't expect access to that market any more. Sell your shit to third world sweat shop workers, good luck with that.

You seem to forget it is open source. If a manufacturer wants to sell cheap phones with a old version of the software with a smaller overhead, then it is up to them to patch it, the patches are out there and really it doesn't take all that much effort, just a couple of skilled staff members as a part time effort. The Android system provides choice for everyone, manufacturers, application producers and customers. Choice inherently is fragmentation but seriously calling choice fragmentation is blatant PR=B$ and likely stems from vested advertising interest from say some other company that provides little or no choice.

So Apple to customers, we give you no choice 'er' fragmentation, buy it like we sell it too you and pay to much for it or piss off but believe us when we tell you, that you will look cool and sophisticated when you flash our stuff about the place and not look at all like a victim of marketing and a certain gullibility when it comes to paying inflated profit margins.

Privacy, what about accuracy. My cell phone location data had me travelling to locations, I had never been, even overseas. Live in Adelaide, never left Adelaide since having the phone, but location data showing me travelling to Singapore.

So moron courts, how about placing some real legal risks on those providing that data, to ensure accuracy. So what is the penalty for the company providing inaccurate data, how many millions of dollars in penalties would they pay for providing inaccurate data, that threatens a conviction for what could be extremely serious offences. What is the legal warranty that the data provided is accurate, what is the penalty for failure in this regard, what right of challenge of accuracy of data does the defendant have.

Proper legal defence, prove the accuracy of the data to beyond a shadow of a doubt and I already know from first hand experience how inaccurate that data really is. Lawyers really need to put companies on legal spot when they provided data of questionable accuracy.

Never forget lawyers. Lawyers first advice, you need us to advise you, so that you can pay us for each and every phone call, for each and every letter read and response written, for each and every email read and response written and, for researching your problem (you pay them to learn how to solve the problems they create for you). The problem here is reaching for the lawyers, the advice they give you and that you pay for, usually will be to pay them more and they will wrap that up in some sell able story. Once you reach for the lawyers, you have already lost. So they did not shoot themselves in the foot, their lawyers tricked them into paying the lawyers to shoot them in both feet.

Just give each person a few programming tasks that should take ten minutes or so.

Yeah, but actually no. Each skill set is different. I could write you a PCB router in under an hour, or whip up an image processing mechanism, layered image editing, signal processing, write an FFT from scratch. I can do assembly coding as fast as I can type while higher up, I favor c and Python for their various and highly disjoint abilities. I'm good at documentation, and I can manage effectively -- without getting the team to hate me. But fizzbuzz? Sort of boggles me. I solve it very slowly. Perhaps because there's no point to it and I don't really give a flying crap. :) But perhaps also because it's just not my thing. I despise puzzles-for-the-sake-of-puzzles, and avoid them like the plague.

Bottom line, any type of interview question or test will sit poorly with some high quality programmer. Some don't know a language, some have an unusual process, some aren't great communicators, some don't function well with someone staring at them or under immediate pressure... there is no perfect interview method, and surely no way to determine programmer competence outside of their actual accomplishments -- which, even when you can pull it off, is not the same thing as measuring their skills against others, placing them in an objective relationship to the skills of others, either.

Personally -- and this is strictly anecdotal, but reflects many decades of experience -- I've had a lot better luck asking many-possible-answer questions about techniques and areas of knowledge in a friendly, low-pressure atmosphere where the interviewee is made to feel they are welcome and respected the moment they walk in the door.

Hell, you wouldn't ask a psychiatrist to give you an appendectomy, would you?

The only thing I'd ask a psychiatrist is "please leave."

Wow wow wow.

You probably want to get that turntable checked. One day it's only wowing, then suddenly tomorrow there's flutter, rumble, tracking error, and cookie crumbs blocking the strobe light.

I'm just needling you, of course.

Issues much?

Nah. Just perpetually amused. :)

You appear to be well supplied with strawmen, though. So there's that. :)

Oh. Hey. Cisco kid. Was a friend of mine. Until that beetles in the bog thing. Yeah.

A variation of it is quite prominent on Slashdot, with many users inexplicably believing that programming requires a "special mind", dividing people in to two groups: "can program" and "can never program".

Some of us just have different metrics for drawing a line between "programming" and "stumbling around in a programming language doing dangerous, stupid, and occasionally functional things."

But, hey. If you can set your digital alarm clock, or interact with your microwave in such a way as to involve more than one button push (even if you're going to destroy the comestible), you're a programmer, right?

It's like kids with crayons. They're all artists! Special butterflies! Call the Louvre!

Now get off my nursing home's lawn

From TFS:

If you could measure programming ability somehow, its curve would look like the normal distribution.

Since you can't measure programming ability "somehow" or otherwise, you don't know what the curve would look like. Which reveals the entire set of claims here as utter garbage. If you don't know what the distribution is, you don't know what the distribution is. How difficult is that to understand?

Hahaha, brilliant! :D

AI is actually far different to data analysis, it is all about different layers or levels (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQyXeLSL0II ;) ) of decision making. So you start off with very simple solutions and if they are good enough you stop there, if not enough you use those outputs in the next higher or adjacent level or and add more different levels for more outputs, until your arrive at the answer. Not based upon the current level of analysis only but also on all the previous ones, it becomes a composite solution, which readily varies processing time with regard to the complexity of the question and complexity the final solution. The greater the number of possible solutions you can generate, the greater the ability of the artificial intelligence, by using composite outputs from different levels analysis, you greatly increase the number of potential outputs.

You do understand in the world of statistics and reality, you represent the trailing edge of the bell curve for your age group. You can readily guess my age and I distinctly remember for decades going through that cringe when people my age and quite some years younger seemed to want brag about their lack of computer skills, how their children knew more, a badge of ignorance. Things are tough out in the employment market and there are a whole bunch of unemployed, past middle age computer illiterates and you don't want them clogging up your recruitment process. Having been on the other side, all those applications are a real pain and the reality is you want only one application and one interview, the right one and how quickly you can thin down hundreds or even thousands of apps down to that right one is useful. So yes, toss out a few of the good because you can get rid of a whole lot of the futile at the same time is going to happen most of the time. Just sucks to be associated with digitally inept but that is the way it is.

New employment question, what are your gamer tags on what game servers, we would like to see how you play (this is actually far more accurate than looking at social media and will reveal far more about a person over an extended period of interaction). Steam in reality does count for far more than other social media sites, how well people play together will define how well those people will work an old rule that works well in the digital era, if you pay attention. In a digital sense, Geeks tend to hang well together regardless of age, nerds not so much.