- I think what the GP was referring to was the "new" owner of Sears, who reorganized the company into dozens of independent business units in the early 2010s (IT, HR, apparel, electronics, etc). Not departments, either; full-on internal businesses intended as a microcosm of the free market.
Each of these units were then given access to an internal "market" and directed to compete with each other for funding.
The idea was likely to try and improve efficiency... But what ended up happening is siloing increased, BUs started infighting for a dwindling set of resources (beyond normal politics you'd expect at an organization that size; actively trying to fuck each other over), and cohesion decreased.
It's often pointed to as one of the reasons for their decline, and worked out so badly that it's commonly believed their owner (who also owns the company holding their debt and stands to immensely profit if they go bankrupt) desired this outcome... to the point that he got sued a few years ago by investors over the conflict of interest and, let's say "creative" organizational decisions.
- Do you have a source for this? I don't see any indication from a quick Google other than this thread as the second result.
The license at: https://github.com/juce-framework/JUCE/blob/master/LICENSE.m...
indicates you can just license any module under agpl and avoid the JUCE 8 license (which to be fair, I'm not bothering to read)
- It boggles the mind that they built a "low code" interface to designing websites, with the express purpose of making it easy to use...
..and then used Excel formulas of all things as the basis for its scripting language.
It's as if they wanted these things to be as clunky and spaghettified as possible.
- It's crazy how much RAM has inflated in the last month. I checked the price history of a few DDR5 kits and most have tripled since September.
- There's legitimately interesting research in using it to accelerate certain calculations. For example, usually you see a few talks at chemistry conferences on how it's gotten marginally faster at (very basic) electronic structure calculations. Also some neat stuff in the optimization space. Stuff you keep your eye on hoping it's useful in 10 years.
The most similar comparison is AI stuff, except even that has found some practical applications. Unlike AI, there isn't really much practicality for quantum computers right now beyond bumping up your h-index
Well, maybe there is one. As a joke with some friends after a particularly bad string of natural 1's in D&D, I used IBM's free tier (IIRC it's 10 minutes per month) and wrote a dice roller to achieve maximum randomness.
- That's where I'm at with these.
I don't personally care if a product includes AI, it's the pushiness of it that's annoying.
That, and the inordinate amount of effort being devoted to it. It's just hilarious at this point that Microsoft, for example, is moving heaven and earth to put AI into everything office, and yet Excel still automatically converts random things into dates (the "ability" to turn it off they added a few years ago only works half the time, and only affects csv imports) with no ability to disable it.
- Probably because just easier to catch a predatory fish than a land predator
Throw a line in the pond, whatever bites will bite. Clean it and you've got dinner.
Versus with hunting, historically (and even now) if you miss your shot or don't hit a part that immediately takes it down, now you've got an angry wolf/bear/moose bearing down on you. Wolf is also probably too close to dog for most cultures.
Nowadays you can get meat from bear/moose/whatever, but there isn't much of a culinary tradition associated with them. So the only people out for them are the curious or macho types
- > Your" IT department should consider giving you your own admin account. But it's their call.
Seems like a bit of an extreme solution for one-off installations that are rare enough to not be worth bothering to automate.
Good example of this is scientific software like Gaussian (a "common" quantum mechanics package): needs admin, expensive and strict license that gets audited. It's approved, but we have a single digit number of people using it. It's just not worth the time to automate a script around an install that only happens once every year or so on average, when they can just temporarily elevate the user.
- Where did I write that it was not approved in advance...?
The post is about requiring admin to install to Program Files. Even if it is an approved piece of software, you're still going to need admin to install it.
- No, that's the default behavior in Windows. If you install to, say, app data it's fine. If you install to program files, you need admin because it is a protected folder.
> The company does NOT want you installing random crap on their machines.
Why do you immediately jump to the conclusion that the post is about installing "random crap?"
- > Your IT department should be vetting it, deploying it, and keeping it up-to date for you.
There are not enough IT staff at my organization to do this. They have an approved list of software that may be installed. Some common installations are automated, others are niche-enough that it's DIY.
We don't live in a perfect world where the IT staffing ratio is 1:20 (or whatever arbitrary number you would consider "good"), so this is how my organization does it.
> unfortunately we can't let everyone install anything.
Who is this "we?"
- The most annoying instance of this is installers in Windows that just assume you want to go into `C:/Program Files`, which nowadays requires admin to be modified
This is very annoying on company machines where you may not have admin, since now there's red tape with your IT because the installer was poorly written.
Half the reason I use the WSL is because you at least get "root" on it, so permissions are never an issue
Edit: there may be something lost in translation. This post is in reference to software your IT already approves, which happens to only install to program files.
- > while quoting an HR executive at a Fortune 100 company griping: "All of these copilots are supposed to make work more efficient with fewer people, but my business leaders are also saying they can't reduce head count yet."
I'm surprised McKinsey convinced someone to say the quiet part out loud
- > Would you say software still has this gate / barrier or is it disappearing?
Not OP, but if you wanna get an idea for how much of a barrier there was 30 years ago... Just look through a few shareware CDs. So much crap was hastily thrown together by someone who read a beginner book on Hypercard or Visual Basic - and you'd have to mail $10 to an address, hope they hadn't moved, and that your floppy wouldn't get lost in the mail.
The general shittiness of most software back in the 90s is still a bit nostalgic IMO. It felt like software that was written by actual people instead of a faceless corporation
- The best one I had was when I bought a VR headset, and inside of the package was a brick.
No questions asked and they took my return, but man, I was sweating that I'd get accused of something.
Oracle is an incredibly litigious company. Their awful reputation in this respect means that the JS ecosystem can never be sure they won't swoop in and attempt to demand rent someday. This is made worse by the army of lawyers they employ; even if they're completely in the wrong, whatever project they go after probably won't be able to afford a defense.