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Yes, an interesting read, though I do wonder what evidence he (she?) based the following assertion on:Quote: Humans are not wired to exist in a constant state of divided attention
It's a somewhat meaningless statement - you may as well say humans are not wired to sit in an office all day either - but anyway... try telling that to your average mum while she's doing the housework while keeping an eye or ear out for little Johnny in his playpen, and at the same time compiling in her head what she needs to buy from the shops that afternoon in order to make dinner for everyone, and making a mental note to remind hubby that his in-laws are coming to stay at the w/e so he must get the shower-rail in the bathroom fixed before then...
(Yeah yeah I know - in today's enlightened world men are just as... oh, never mind!)
Seems to me that humans are quite capable of dividing their attention and, more than that, this has been an essential survival tool - we would never have survived otherwise. But still, while I don't want to dismiss all the article says just on this (and I may be wrong in arguing it anyway), a part of me also thinks he's pissing into the wind. The ability to communicate instantly with people is not going away anytime soon, methinks. Those of us that can't function in such a world may well find ourselves left behind by those that can. That's simple evolutionary theory: adapt to your environment, or suffer.
I'm aware that I've quietly ignored the word "constant" in the quote, but I rather think that was a lazy addition to the sentence anyway. No-one has their attention constantly divided - what is constant is the potential for something to come along at any time - an email, in this case and, as I've said, we've always had to be able to cope with that. But, as individuals, we do not have to check our email or Facebook or Twitter accounts every minute, and all he's arguing for is a work environment that formalizes when we do and when we don't. Which is fair enough, I guess. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating - whether productivity and work-satisfaction goes up or not.
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Edit: This post was a false alarm of sorts. After booting into safe mode and checking the event log, the system reported a disk error in a paging operation. Maybe the chkdsk fixed the problem(s), but it has been stable now for a few hours, enough for me to do what I needed to do initially...rebuild a couple of installers. A good end to the week!  I hope yours ended nicely as well!
You may disregard the rest of this message...but I leave for your entertainment since weekends are pretty slow here.
It's within reason to have multiple new systems such as Win10, failing on different systems at the same time (more technically, within an hour), but how about two 7 yo systems running a 16 yo OS? The only other commonality besides the OS is that they coexist on the same HDD which I just checked for errors to find none. The systems don't blue screen or crash, they both just become almost completely unresponsive after just a few minutes. A couple of months ago, they were both fine. What are the odds? (rhetorical)
I might think virus, but these two systems have never been used for web browsing. I'll try a few things before I give up on saving them. At least all of the data is still intact...it just means that I have to rebuild a few older InstallShield projects from scratch. 
Now, before I start thinking conspiracy, I thought I'd see if anybody else has experienced problems recently with Win2k. From recent posts, I know there are a few out there. 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
modified 19-Feb-16 19:10pm.
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kmoorevs wrote: The only other commonality besides the OS is that they coexist on the same HDD...
Do they share the same motherboard, RAM, GPU, peripherals, etc...?
There are two types of people in this world: those that pronounce GIF with a soft G, and those who do not deserve to speak words, ever.
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lol I was also wondering that. Is there some sort of IDE Y-cable out there?
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Yes. This is a test machine with multiple drives, though usually not connected simultaneously. It's been running Vista all day without a hitch, which is what I used to error check the other disk. I suppose I could check out the other disks, but it doesn't seem likely it's a hardware issue, outside of the single drive failure.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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My Windows 7 machine will occasionally "freeze" and become near unresponsive. Looking at Task Manager, I found the culprit to be the Windows Update service. When I stopped that service, CPU usage went back to its normal 1-2 percent.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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Thanks, that was my first thought, so the second time around I disconnected the network cable. I've edited the op with the real problem which event viewer pointed me to...a disk error. One thing that was kind of funny was that the caps lock still worked, but really slowly. Out of frustration, I held it down for a few seconds and was promptly greeted with a blue screen and an annoying alarm from the MB! That's when I just walked away from it for the day.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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I have a Win2K box solid as a rock. I now only use it for running an electronics simulator and an old copy of MPLAB and a few other embedded systems in case any ghosts from my past materialise
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Someone at Infragistic discusses the merits of some nearby site[^].
Not really any new information, but it's nice to see everyone here get their due. They do miss one feature near and dear to my heart though 
TTFN - Kent
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I'm curious - will the article induce a spike in membership?
Perhaps a buy-out offer from Micro$oft?
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos wrote: Perhaps a buy-out offer from Micro$oft?
Not if they read the lounge!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Good publicity is always nice.
Now, what's Kent doing in the lounge???
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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Kevin Marois wrote: Now, what's Kent doing in the lounge???
It's my day off! 
TTFN - Kent
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If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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So I guess this will be all over the Insider on Monday... 
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I know it's been discussed to death in other threads, but I have a different angle that just came to mind and I'm honestly curious if anyone else has seen/heard a similar thing happening anywhere (albeit likely at a much smaller scale).
For the sake of argument, let's pretend the courtroom dust has settled, and the end result is in: Apple is compelled to create a new tool/OS for the FBI to use for its hacking pleasure.
So here's where my question comes in. What if every developer in Apple's employ decides they'd rather quit than work on that project? What if they publicly announce a sort of conscientious objector or something? Where does that leave Apple (other than programmer-less)? Where does it leave the government? The ruling is against Apple, not any single developer, and you can't exactly threaten someone with jail for quitting their job, right?
Any thoughts?
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Another thought: If Apple cave in, what happens in six months time when China demand the tools to decrypt the iPhone from a captured CIA agent? 
Troy Hunt's blog post on the topic is a good read:
Troy Hunt: Everything you need to know about the Apple versus FBI case[^]
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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from the blog:
"[...]What’s intriguing about this approach is that when it works well, encryption is transparent. This is not a feature like you’d see showcased in an Apple product launch[...]"
today, security and encryption are some of the main selling points of internet devices; no one care about CPU/GPU/RAM/HDD ... or even the OS as most apps are available on every OS and platforms.
It is not just an Apple vs. FBI issue; it will happen for every device and OS manufacturer out there.
I'd rather be phishing!
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Richard Deeming wrote: If Apple cave in, what happens in six months time when China demand the tools to decrypt the iPhone from a captured CIA agent?
Well that assumes China needs a captured agent to get the info. I am sure that they've got hackers/crackers whose sole purpose in life is to break phone security. 
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That isnt responsible software development running away if it gets nasty. And consider that "even" Apple has to comply with the US-laws and cooperate with law enforcement. The question is, where are the borders between law and privacy.
Do you what the salaries at Apple are?
Press F1 for help or google it.
Greetings from Germany
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KarstenK wrote: isnt responsible software development running away if it gets nasty
[my emphasis]
What is the consequence of your statement?
Say you work with pacemakers to save peoples lives. Then you are ordered, by company boss Ronnald Trump, brother of President Donnald Trump, and to hack the pacemaker of the North Korean ruler to kill him. You are happy to do it. It's not even nasty. It's kinda cool.
Then they order you to provide a mod to hack any pacemaker. They don't say but, they might wanna use it on some other bad dictator [cool!], or drug-lord, or bank robber, or lefty journalist, or Hillary, or John Doe or your dad, or... you.
Is it still "irresponsible" to leave? Or are there different kinds of nasty? Some where it is responsible to leave. Who defines the degree of nasty where to draw the line. Is it Karsten K?
Or is it possible that some truly objective concept of "responsible" is not relevant?
Life is too shor
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KarstenK wrote: That isnt responsible software development running away if it gets nasty.
It's not a matter of nasty, it's a matter of personal ethics. If I was an Apple developer (disclosure: I'm not), and I was asked to write this tool/feature, I'd pack my things right in front of the manager requesting it and walk out. Heck, if my current employer asked me to write something that I felt did not fit with my personal ethics I'd walk out. I wouldn't even try to negotiate something like "Hey can you give it to someone else, I'm not comfortable... blah, blah, blah", I wouldn't even want to work for a company that produced such software to begin with. So I'd leave.
Now, having said all that, I do realize that not all devs will have the same personal ethical stance on this subject as I do. Perhaps there are folks who work at Apple who feel it would be unethical to not help the FBI. If they feel that way, then cool. Stay and write the thing. If not (and they feel strongly enough about it), then leave. It's not like an Apple developer is going to have a hard time finding work.
I was more interested in what would happen in the specific case where the devs all decide to walk. Almost in an non-unionized strike if you will.
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Vark111 wrote: What if every developer in Apple's employ decides they'd rather quit than work on that project? What if they publicly announce a sort of conscientious objector or something? Where does that leave Apple...
I'm sure such a thing happens elsewhere, where the company and the employee(s) are going in opposite directions. The voids eventually get filled.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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