You conflate "intelligence" with being coldly logical and rational in purely monetary terms.

In my experience, human psychology is not purely logical. For example, people will often respect someone- or something- more if they are paying more for them; and, conversely, less if they are getting something on the cheap or free.

An employer that does that is probably paying through the nose for the minor privilege of being able to treat some people with such "contempt".

It would smack of someone who was more interested in indulging his bullying than running a business competently and thus raise two sets of alarms for any potential employee(!)

But even assuming the company's long-term survival was assured... Some people *will* undoubtedly accept this if they're being paid enough, but in *some* cases (which will vary depending upon the psychology of the persons involved and their motivation), it's unlikely that you'll ever get their best work, regardless of how much you pay, if you treat them with contempt.

Which, of course, makes them worth less.

Again, you are imposing your own pseudo-logical values on the concept of "intelligence". I say "pseudo-logical" because since human beings *don't* always behave as the purely rational, logical, self-interest-maximising idealised entities you assume, anything that relies on this being the case is ultimately flawed. Which, ironically, makes it illogical.

Once again, this assumes that all human behaviour is purely logical and can be traded off and gamed in such terms.

I would guess that you are probably more suited to the "in and out", supposedly demonstrable-value contractor style of doing things, as it's probably closer to the situation you describe above. If that's what suits you, then fair enough, but your chosen way of working isn't how everything works.

Remind me never, *ever* to work for you.

Ironically, by (possibly unintentionally) personalising the role of "investor/owner" you undermine the case I thought you were making (i.e. that of a corporation being an abstract, purely profit-maximising entity with no feelings and behaviour that would be considered "sociopathic" if they were human).

If the "investor/owner" was a single individual (or small group) that had personally planned out and set up every aspect of the functioning of the company- as the tone of your argument suggests- one could argue that he/she is a human being, and unless they are a sociopath, it'd be quite reasonable to expect him or her to view fellow human beings as more than just cogs in a machine, a means to an end. (*)

Of course, as mentioned above, in reality even the set up- let alone the running- of a larger company will require many people, to the point that people *are* cogs in a money-making machine, leading to the abstract, soulless "company" becoming something distinct from any of its employees.

That's the case I thought you were making at first, but even that well-worn argument would miss the point here.

Companies are still made up of individual people with a generally-shared group culture and values, and it's *those* values that one is ultimately talking about when we speak about companies "understanding" (or not understanding) and "respecting" engineers.

A "group" is- after all- just a set of individuals, but we talk about what certain groups of people think, their behaviours, their value judgements, etc. etc. because human beings *are* social creatures.

And even when such people are constrained by the fact they're working for a company whose ultimate aim is to make money, their interactions with each other still reflect the values and culture associated with that company. Those values may have been explicitly encouraged by those that run the company, they may have arisen indirectly due to the mentality of those at the top (e.g. lack of respect for engineers) percolating down, they might reflect behaviour that the structure of the company has encouraged.... whatever the reason, groups of humans share values even when that group is made up of millions of individuals (e.g. nations).

(*) Of course, many people running companies small and large *are* sociopaths anyway. But that'd be a reflection on them personally, and not the same thing as the purely profit-maximising "sociopathic" behaviour often ascribed to the abstract concept of a corporation.

If that's the case, I'd suggest that all the money MS paid those consultants for endless rebrandings has ultimately proved to be hugely counter-productive. As I commented on another site a couple of years back:-

I'm guessing that either:-
(i) MS were throwing money at consultants for repeated relaunches because they had no focus
(ii) The environment was conducive to consultants making money out of MS by constantly encouraging pricey rebrandings and relaunches
(iii) The constant rebranding was a reflection of the politics, internal power struggles and identity-stamping going in within MS, or
(iv) All of the above.

At any rate, I'd be interested to find out how on the money- if at all- this guesswork is, from someone like yourself who actually worked at MS. :-)

Since Chevrolet is a GM brand anyway (and has been since the early 20th century), I'd assume that's redundant unless Chevrolet is run and/or seen as being significantly separate from GM's other operations in North America?

I specifically noted North America because I live in the UK, and your mention of those brands brought up and issue- the European market is quite different, both in terms of cars and in perception of brands. Chevrolet was virtually nonexistent here until the mid-2000s, when GM started using it for Korean-built lower-end models formerly sold under the Daewoo Motors brand (which they'd bought out). *That* probably bears little resemblance to what the brand is associated with in North America.

(The Chrysler brand is interesting in that- following its reintroduction in the UK and Ireland (*) after the Fiat takeover a few years back - they *did* use an all-American voiceover and American-style ads relating to their heritage... hinting at, but never explicitly linking it to America. Which is probably because the cars being sold as "Chryslers" in those ads were those sold elsewhere in Europe under the Italian "Lancia" brand! (**))

Similarly, Vauxhall and Opel, GM's "main" brands in the UK, and in the rest of Europe respectively (***) have a generally decent reputation, and even though Ford sells cars under its own name here, it doesn't have the generally-bad reputation it does over there. In both cases, this is almost certainly because most models sold by those companies in Europe are entirely different to the North American lineup, and also because they're generally either built in Europe or imported from Asia, not North America.

In fact, to some extent, it's not so much North America and Europe, as it is North America and the rest of the world. It's been pointed out that the North American car industry may be an example of the Galapagos syndrome relative to the rest of the world. (For example, I can imagine many Japanese cars being usable on British streets, but some of the larger American models would be massively out of place and impractical on smaller and twistier British roads).

But the tl;dr bottom line is that the repuation of such companies and their brands is often very different outside the US- often to their advantage!

(*) Chrysler apparently tried entering the European market in the 1960s, but- unlike GM and Ford- didn't succeed, and left in the late 1970s.
(**) Lancias were taken off the UK market after they gained a notorious reputation for corrosion problems in the 1980s- probably exacerbated by the climate here- and I suspect Fiat's decision not to use the brand here may still be for this reason, i.e. a European example of a hard-to-shake bad reputation.
(**) Vauxhall has long been to all intents and purposes just the UK counterpart brand for Opel cars- the models are virtually identical.

WTF? 450 x 450 is effectively sub-SD (640 x 480 or 720 x 576).

Not that this is a criticism if one is shooting a mindboggling trillions of frames per second, but in terms of spatial resolution alone, it'd probably disappoint even on your existing HD set.

Also, you'll probably complain that the high frame rate makes it look like a cheap soap opera and prefer it when they go back to 24 fps. ;-)

In all seriousness, trillions of frames per second... WTF?! How does that even work? Modern CPUs operate in the low GHz (i.e. *billions* of ops per second) range, "trillions" is a thousand times faster (THz). Even assuming the use of specialised hardware, how does one even begin to deal with handling frames at that speed?

Ignoring the amount of capacity that might be required to store such high frame rates- we could assume it might just be recording a very short burst- one still needs to get it off the sensor (or whatever) and store it somewhere in an average of one-trillionth of a second. Even a Class-10 SD card probably isn't going to cut it here(!)

This BBC article is four years old now (I remember submitting it to Slashdot at the time, but it wasn't greenlit). However, it's probably still quite informative about aspects of Japan that aren't quite as high-tech as the stereotypical image would suggest:-

As the post you're replying to makes clear, the "niche" referred to is that of "banking and internal-usage business tools" relative to the number of web-based apps and programs as a whole, and not to ADP's relative position within the former.

ADP may be a big fish within the moderately-sized lake of banking and corporate apps, but that lake is still tiny compared to the ocean of endless Flash apps and games aimed at 10-year-olds et al.

Sounds like a close relative of "zombie brands", i.e. people buying out the brand (and little or nothing else) of bankrupt companies, then either slapping it on generic low-end product from a no-name OEM Chinese manufacturer, or whoring it out on a case-by-case basis to the highest third-party bidder, typically itself just a distributor of random generic tat upon which the brand will be slapped.

Consumers- often older ones who were familiar with the brand for many years and do not realise that the original company went bankrupt- are then more likely to buy such goods on the "strength" of the brand and its reputation. Which is obviously meaningless now, but they don't know that.

Polaroid is an example of this. The original company went bankrupt well over ten years ago. The assets were bought out by some random marketing operation, with only (AFAIK) the film-based cameras being "true" Polaroid products (*). Everything else- including "their" digital cameras of the time- were just rebranded generic goods with the name used under license. Polaroid was never even a manufacturer of TV and video equipment in the first place, but the name was used to sell generally mediocre flat-panel televisions anyway.

Ironically, the "new" Polaroid itself went bankrupt under shady circumstances, and was bought out again. The new owners at least seemed to be attempting to exploit the heritage with some respect (e.g. hiring Lady Ga Ga as the "creative director" a few years back- even if it *was* a blatant publicity stunt- and using her name in connection with would-be high-end photo printers). But they're still whoring it out for LCD TVs and the like.

(*) Insofar as the "new" Polaroid was "true" anyway.

Good grief.

If one goes back and reads my original post, it's acknowledged quite clearly that Java Applets still enjoy *niche* usage for banking and internal-usage business tools but as far as the web in general is concerned, Java Applets are vastly outnumbered by embedded Flash.

I appreciate that you're trying to win an argument by disingenuous pedantry and taking isolated phrases out of context, but the meaning is quite clear to anyone who isn't trying to use it solely as an attempt at point-scoring.

Very good point; one whose importance I should perhaps have been more aware of (I didn't have a PC nor access to a PC nor the Internet circa 1995 to 98, so perhaps my lack of firsthand experience at the time this was unfolding blinded me to this factor).

Shame this wasn't posted earlier on when the discussion was still relatively new and prominent, but it's a post I'll happily reference the next time this comes up.

Yes; it's easy to forget what a bunch of cynical, destructive *****s MS were- and still are, given the chance. Oh wait... no, it's not.

Unfortunately, Java is now in the hands of a company that makes MS look.... well, okay, I'm not sure they make MS look good, but Oracle's motto should be "We like being evil, and we're not bothered what you think". :-/

I know a lot of people seem to prefer Sheridan, and that Boxleitner was JMS's original choice, but I actually preferred O'Hare's Sinclair and was sorry to see him go.

Nothing I said contradicts that. Quite the opposite; I'd say that *was* pretty much the sort of niche use acknowledged in my original post:-

But the main point- already expressed- was that

In terms of pure numbers, there were (and still are, even now) vastly more embedded Flash apps and programs on web pages in general than there ever were Java Applets.

Incidentally, the fact that you mentioned it requires the superseded Java 6 would seem to back up my suspicion expressed elsewhere that many such apps are essentially legacy products.

I live in Scotland, and I can tell you now that your chosen example isn't representative of what people use here. (*) (**) They strike me as one of those niche providers that do well from people willing to pay a bit more for its services, but most people here (as with the rest of the UK) are with Virgin, BT, Sky, Plusnet et al, who are generally much cheaper. (**)

The first three of those generally give their cheapest prices via bundled deals (e.g. phone/broadband or phone/TV/broadband), so it's hard to give an actual price. However, I can guarantee you that the majority of people here are not paying anything like £30 to £40 per month for Internet alone.

Not that I'm saying BT etc. are great in many respects, but that's not what was being discussed.

Despite the "highlander in an isolated bothy" cliche I suspect many foreigners have when they think of Scottish life, the majority of people here live in major cities in the central and eastern lowland areas, with the same access to facilities as most large towns and cities in England. Of course, those highland areas do exist, and people live there- and have more issues with connectivity- but they're a relatively small percentage of the population.

(*) I suspect that you did a search on (e.g.) Scotland ISP, and took the first result that came up as your example.

(**) You'll note that "Scotnet is now the largest Scottish Broadband provider" as claimed on their "About Us" page is *not* the same as saying they're the largest provider of broadband in Scotland. Far from it!

(***) ADSL prices do generally require an additional (phone) "line rental" charge which can add on significantly, but that's used for other things too. (Virgin Media cable Internet doesn't require a traditional phone line).

AFAICT the last time my Windows installation was infected it was via Java. Currently I don't have it installed, and haven't missed it.

I suspect that the majority of remaining client-side Java apps around today have legacy origins.

As I acknowledged, Flash *is* quite clearly on the way out now- something that probably started with Apple not supporting it on the iPhone, and isn't helped by issues with other smartphones and low-powered tablets.

Combined with the fact that JavaScript, HTML and the infrastructure supporting both is far more mature than it was 15 years ago, ditching Flash is now quite doable.

So what you say *is* true nowadays, but it wasn't always the case.

Maybe so, but it *was* specifically client-side web-based Applets I was talking about.

How often do you see Java browser applets used anyway? Not that much, because they never really took off in the first place (despite being by far the most hyped aspect of Java when it first came out in the mid-90s).

Yeah, you do see them used sometimes for banking applications, custom internal-use corporate tools and the like, but for general use Java Applets were massively outnumbered by Flash apps.

In fact, I'd say that Flash on web pages ended up almost entirely fulfilling the general-purpose embedded code role that Java Applets were originally meant- but failed- to fill.

The problem was that Java was just too heavyweight and slow for computers of the time, whereas Flash was more lightweight- having started out as little more than an interactive animation creator- its increasing capabilities better matching slowly-improving computer power.

I wouldn't say that Flash stole that market from Java, because the latter had already had a run at it (during the mid-to-late 90s) and failed to take off by the time that Flash started growing up around the turn of the millennium.

Obviously it's in decline now, but Flash had at least ten- and probably closer to fifteen- years at the top, whereas Java Applets never took off in the first place.