Comment Re:You can probably thank Microsoft for this... (Score 1) 285
Office 95 was actually their best version I think. It really started to go downhill after that point.
Office 95 was actually their best version I think. It really started to go downhill after that point.
The "standard" is basically to do whatever the Microsoft product does.
This applies to multiple standards. It's even common for many cheap products to skimp on the standards and only implement a subset that works on Windows even if the standard mandates certain functionality that they leave out.
You probably also get Word and Excel files that can not be accurately read by Word and Excel (if they're not the same version the files were created with). Even Microsoft is incapable of being compatible with Office.
I never figured out Excel. Lotus 123 was easy to use and learn, but Excel is obtuse.
So let's look at what other primates due during their working hours. Guess what, they sit down and lie down a lot.
And many of those workers who stand all day definitely have troubles doing that after 30 years. And surprise, they still get arthritis even without the desk chairs.
Except that in this particular case in southern Nevada, it involved threat of violence and property crime.
This party sadly came true.
And every individual citizen allowed to make their own private laws.
You can barely find stuff from 5 years ago on the web. Some stuff yes, but most of it vanishes or becomes very difficult to locate using modern search tools which are oriented towards serving up ads and hits for what's popular and current.
I can read a magazine on the toilet, I refuse to take a laptop in there (I don't even own my own, it's a work laptop and it stays at the office). I can't read anything on a smartphone period, the text is too tiny and the interface is awful, smartphones are badly designed nuisances. Similarly, I can read a book or magazine in bed, but not the smartphone and not my desktop computer and I will never own a tablet. I can read the paper or a magazine on a train or plane, but electronic substitutes fail badly there for me (and the books never run out of batteries).
Hmm, I don't think I have a profile page myself. I wanted to post something in forums once but couldn't without a profile, but I didn't want to create one so I let it slide.
I noticed things like "Half Life 2: Lost Coast" is very high on the owned by unplayed list. But I think people got that for free as part of HL2 at some point? I know I've got some HL2 add on that I've never touched (too disappointed that it wasn't a full game with an actual ending, so I'm not continuing that franchise). I think I have one or two other things that are in that category.
Also left 4 dead 2 was given away for free not too long ago, though it has a much smaller percentage of "not played". I suspect people grabbed it when it was free without even knowing much about it, tried it a little bit, then stopped because it wasn't their favorite style of game.
I also think that with a low level language that more developers are aware of potential problems than developers using high level languages. In some sense I think this is also due to the types of programs being developed. C/C++ today is common used for embedded systems, operating systems, runtime libraries, compilers, security facilities, and so forth. So systems programmers versus application programmers versus apps programmers. The system programmers are forced to take a close look at the code and must be mindful of how the code affects the system. I think that if you had such a comparison done back in the 80s that the numbers would be different because many more application programmers were using C/C++.
Ie, interview for a systems programmer: do you know about priority inversion, do you understand how the hardware works, do you know the proper byte order to use, what does the stack look like, etc.
Interview for the modern applications programmer: have you memorized the framework and library facilities.
I'm pretty sure I'll have a million all told in various things and I'm not the highest paid or even a financial whiz (I'm lousy at investing or monitoring what the money is doing, which is why my peers will do so much better than I will). However that's not as much as it used to be. It's not necessarily a comfortable retirement where I live. The condo I have worth a bit over $300k is dumpy and in a borderline neighborhood, and the price has gone down since I purchased it.
A list is only as strong as its weakest link. -- Don Knuth