One feller's views on the state of everyday computer science & its application (and now, OTHER STUFF) who isn't rich enough to shell out for www.myfreakinfirst-andlast-name.com
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With taskbar on left, the problem is that you don't get more columns for new tabs when you drag the taskbar to the right, you just get longer tabs. This seems like a bug, or maybe it's a "feature" I don't understand...
When using taskbar on the bottom, I can get 20 tabs per row without scrolling kicking in, but have to manually drag the edge of the taskbar up to make more rows. I just had 60 separate tabs open, way more than I ever need...
He's right. It's driving me crazy.
Taskbar(s) on left:
Same icons open with taskbar at bottom.
Wow! I can see all the icons without scrolling! INCROYABLE.
Why can't I have the bottom taskbar functionality on the left? *sigh*
But then, if Microsoft, for heaven's sake, is taking shortcuts to get things out of the door, well, does anyone really write large pieces of great code?
Why the increased errors [in the Washington Post]? Clearly, reduced staffing plays some role. A decade ago, at its peak, The Post's newsroom had more than 900 FTES (full-time equivalent employees)... Today, the now-integrated print and online staffs total about 650 FTEs...
The answer may be less about staffing levels and more about the changing duties of copy editors. Gone are the days when they primarily detected errors and smoothed prose for the next day's newspaper. Now they must also operate in an online environment where "search-engine optimization" is a key goal. That requires new skills and time-consuming additional duties. Separate online headlines must be written in a way that attracts attention on the Web. ... Some relief may be coming for beleaguered copy editors. This week, The Post will begin search-engine optimization training for the entire newsroom. Front-end help from reporters and other staff should ease the burden on copy editors. [emboldened emphasis mine]
I don't know about you, but I'm not happy to hear that journalists are writing for the computers to the exclusion of their human readers. I realize there has always been a pressure on writing to the technology. I've done a review of newspapers from the 18th century, and realize the way that length was constrained by the sheets you could afford to print and sell, or how headline lengths are influenced by column and font size, and how inserting pictures are exceptionally difficult. I've seen papers run out of a font and start printing in, eg, italics to finish up a page to save time. I know that content is influenced by technology directly.
Still, what the Washington Post is doing marks a significant change for the press. Now, people are writing content for, say, Google News rather than to point out the most newsworthy events of the day. Like a gamer figuring out the secrets of the algorithm for Mike Tyson's Punch Out ("When he makes the noise, dodge right, and then upppercut"), newspaper reporters, the front line folk, are being asked to learn, anticipate, and integrate the algorithms of the news search engines ("When we're talking about someone in the movies, try to tie Angelina Jolie in there somehow" or "Make sure 'failed Obamacare' is in the title of three of today's stories somehow").
I've noticed the WaPo's declining editorial attention. To redefine what "editing" meanings is to take the lazy fellow's way out. What's happening isn't that you're doing a more complicated job. It's that you're no longer doing your old job. We're more worried about hits than grammar. And what bothers me the most is the degree to which an American institution is pushing onto the front ranks of the free press the onus for making our news match whatever Google's programmers feel is newsworthy.
In the briefest terms, then, I'm exceptionally disappointed that Google's programmers have become the editors of the Washington Post.
This is from an academic article titled The Accuracy of Stated Energy Contents of Reduced-Energy, Commercially Prepared Foods, which I picked up from the US Food Policy blog. The bottom line is that not only are restaurants underestimating calories (no real surprise there; can any franchise really keep squirts of mayo to company specs outside of their in-house labs?), but that frozen food producers are too. One advantage of mass production is supposed to be standardization, right?
The accuracy of stated energy contents of reduced-energy restaurant foods and frozen meals purchased from supermarkets was evaluated. Measured energy values of 29 quick-serve and sit-down restaurant foods averaged 18% more than stated values, and measured energy values of 10 frozen meals purchased from supermarkets averaged 8% more than originally stated.
Emph mine. I don't think this is horribly surprising either, honestly. To range pretty far in the metaphorical field, take recent baseball slugger, short-time home run record holder, and steroid abuser Mark McGuire. The guy has caught some grief recently for saying that he wished he hadn't played in the steroid era, and that if he hadn't (and had played when testing happened), he wouldn't have taken the drug.
The argument that these comments are disingenuous and that he still made the decision to take steroids (and Big Mac is thus an evil man) is flakey at best and its logic willfully unrealistic. Where there clean guys pre-testing? Perhaps, but within the rules of Major League Baseball (MLB), steroids weren't illegal. Sure, they were illegal in the "real world" but so is jaywalking, speeding, whaling on Sunday, and Limewire. We've slowly learned that illegal is nine tenths enforcement. If there's no good method of enforcing national laws, then baseball's lack of testing for steroids in baseball or even putting it on their banned substances list tells players that their sport is looking the other way. It's an implicit encouragement to use, and nobody can say that the Sosa-McGuire chase hurt MLB.
Same here with food and calories. Being able to argue that more food has fewer calories, I have to imagine, is a successful selling point for dinner makers. This study tells us that it's pretty obvious that many producers aren't reliably testing the caloric content of frozen food. And if your competitor isn't, what's you motivation not to follow suit? The unwritten rules of the game -- that there's no testing and fudging just enough to maintain some plausable, collective deniability -- say that you, too, cheat. In fact, there becomes a situation of double discourse (or, more accurately, a situation of expertise, of closed, culture-specific mores) that says that cheating is the rule and it is, at least implicitly, encouraged.
Though I try not to live according to these sorts of unwritten rules of expertise and inside deception, as I grow older I find it more difficult not to fault those who act surprised when it's discovered that those rules exist. Nuance your mind, folk.
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