I am not sure you realize how bad the "human resources" movement people are at finding talent that doesn't fit into a distinct mould. There are tons of good people out there who have true talent who can't get jobs because they don't strictly fit into some H.R. drone can't easily label them or because H.R. is playing games with H1-Bs or whatnot.
People like Charlie Pitts deserve chances. Not every homeless guy is the "bum" stereotype we see so much in our media, and many have genuine talents and can contribute a lot. It's just that we don't manage our available talents well in the US at all right now.
By working to put out product that is at least a degree of magnitude better that MS! There are a lot of ways you can define "better," but everyone knows that MS has weaknesses in quality on many levels. Apple has them beat on many levels without even trying. If they actually took on MS head to head they would win at least sometimes even with the dirty tactics, and every win makes it harder for MS to get away the the crap they've become known for.
Apple's belief that they should be a hardware company (as they were when they started) is what keeps their share of the market from growing. If they want to grow (maybe they don't really want to, and that's okay too) then they are going to have to change. It seems to ancient idea now when hardware (including their own) has become commodity to such an extent.
I know it's an opinion, but it's a widely held opinion: Apple does better at building an OS that Microsoft. If they had refocused a few years ago and changed the attitude that the OS only sells hardware I think Microsoft would actually have to some real competition.
Every time Apple has shot down clone competitors have had to just shake my head. It seems exactly the opposite of what they should be doing. Didn't they learn by watching the evolution of the PC? If they wanted to they could emulate that success by getting their OS to run better that Windows on all types of hardware. They could sell more copies of the OS and bring down the price, etc.. etc.. etc..
They aren't stupid at Apple... so maybe they know this and are just ignoring it. But jessh, doesn't it seem like they could really, really have great opportunities with these clone companies? There are millions of people that would choose an Apple OS over a Windows OS if it worked as well (and with Apple's expertise it would probably work a lot better) on reasonably priced, reasonably solid commodity hardware.
Maybe they like their market share the way it is. People yell about Apple's share of the market, but even a 5% share of the size of the multi-billion computer market is still big, and our addition to economic growth is just that... an addiction.
This reply reminds me of something one my really dumb bosses said to me one time when I was trying to fix a problem I was having in my linux instation.
"Can't you just call Linux and have them fix it?"
Like everything we use has to be centered at some big corporation somewhere...
Corporations doing what is best for their owners and share holders is a MYTH. This is one of the biggest myths of the corporate era of history.
Corporations move first to promote the interests of the *corporation* itself. The interests of shareholders is a very. very distant second.
If the shareholders where higher on the ladder you wouldn't see the rush to declare bankruptcy where the common shareholder gets nothing out of the deal.
well.. the last time I checked I could install firefox from my Ubuntu desktop without causing the OS or desktop to become non-functional.
If you are using XP then you can never totally stop using I.E. Every program that uses any browser functionality or gathers any information from the internet uses I.E. code. There is no way to change that. Not to mention that items like update manager require IE and have no way to run in other browsers. I can't speak to Vista on this (though I know that Update Manager runs somewhat different).
I think to anyone with enough information KNOWS that the OS/IE thing is illegal.. I think the problem is that our legal system is so screwed up and is so tied up in details its hard to define. But in this case it's a little like porn... it's hard to define buy you know it when you see it.
Because there in some quarters there is the cult-like mentality and most of the rest of people don't know any better. Most office drones with little skill and ambition never used any word processing program before Office and they don't have the will to learn anything.
Really... a huge amount of Office use is simply because of ignorance, sloth, and inertia (as well as Microsoft Zombies that happen to be working in the IT department and management). There are are hundreds of programs that do what Office in a better and cheaper way, it's just it get past the masses of users who don't know any better and who don't have the curiosity to try anything new, even if it eventually make their life easier.
The small organization that I work for as Tech director is still standardized at Office 2000, and that was a rather recent development as pleaded them to move up a bit because so much of my support time was used to maintain various office aps of a variety of versions. Office is a total nightmare. It has to be the most labor intensive application for techs ever devised and it's only used out of ignorance.
They also had hissy fits when I tried to get them to use Openoffice as a trial (which we really can't use because Mail Merge is so entrenched in the culture and OO just doesn't do it well, at least in version 2. And even if it does Mail Merge well now we can't go to OO now because of the hissy fits and people refusing to learn new stuff).
Office is a plague on the business culture in the U.S. We have people using it because "they've never seen anyone use anything else." We have people that think they can make super complex documents in Word that should be done in InDesign or Tex and then find that the layout totally blows up when they change 3 characters. We have people using Powerpoint to create 200 image slideshows. Microsoft has somehow managed to make everyone believe that Office is an all-in-one tool out of a load of garbage. It's amazing.
I can't imagine something that has hurt the computing world more that Microsoft Office (though as this is slashdot I am sure people will post them now).
The day is coming when I will have more people using Vista or 7 (64 bit to get more than 4GB of memory for other big tasks) and I have to update all the office apps and face question after question from people who can't read a help file or look up a question with Google. I don't envy these Air Force folks one tiny bit.
They were actually reporting it as a single *2TB* external hard drive.
Of course it was one of the total airhead reporters and CNN is known for not even taking to their own IT folks down the hall to make sure something they are saying about technology even makes sense on their surface.
I posted yesterday in reply to someone yesterday I wrote, after he gave a list of multinational corporation products we would "miss" if we didn't have them, that there are damn few products that have to be made by a big corporation, especially given the Internet and the technology available to us now as opposed to 25 or 30 years ago.
I think you can take that further and say there are a lot of products that can be made a hell of a lot better by a smaller company rather than a multi-national. If that weren't the case, why would we see so many cases of huge corporations that have to spin off or have to set up semi-autonomous units in order to make good quality products.
Also the definition of "big corporation" is HAZY right now methinks. We should probably be defining "big" these days as in number of dollars or as number of countries. The same tech that makes it possible for small companies to compete on an large scale allows big companies to work with small numbers of workers. "Big" companies don't need the unwashed masses like they used to; they can easily be multi-billion with a relative handful of people. Especially in the US, where the only business model there seems to be right now is 1)buy from overseas 2)sell at huge markup 3)PROFIT!!
Corporations are simply large businesses, structured that way for better profit and efficiency. While they can be powerful, they're no more an "enemy of democracy" than other large entities, including our own elected government. Furthermore, I'd like to see you live without corporate products for awhile. Come back and tell me what life is like for you when you can no longer buy cars from Toyota, computers from Apple, burgers from McDonalds, fly on planes from Boeing, or take antibiotics from Merck. You get back to us on what it was like to try and build your own cars, grow all your own food, and make your own clothing.
*Huge* corporations *are not* simply large businesses. They don't simply have just a bit more power, they are huge collections of money and huge collections of power, so huge as they change the gravity of the power of the country.
The governmental structure of the U.S. was just not intended to deal with huge pockets of power. U.S. society has a huge blind spot in regards to this, but the writers of the constitution did not. They saw the damage that was caused by the East India company and while they believed that corporations could be a positive force as long as they were limited. They believed in giving them *limited* charters (ones that actually expired!) and not allowing them to own other corporations or land that wasn't related directly to their businesses. That was all chucked in the mid-1800s because the rich wanted to get richer.
Corporations are useful for big tasks, but I don't think that any the tasks you listed here couldn't be done by a small or medium size businesses. With the Internet and the modern tech available to us there are damn few jobs that I know that couldn't be done by a small business, and just about anyone and be an international player. Sorry... I doubt the modern corporation is necessary to maintain life as we know it.
> An additional problem with open architecture systems, Microsoft explains, is that 'virtually anyone can write an application that can be executed on the system.'
Of my dear Lord! You wouldn't want someone not working for a duly licensed corporate entity to be able to write for your corporate approved operating system.
First Joe Sixpack will write something for his own computer and then the terrists.
Not only that... I replayed the original Legend of Zelda last year as a download for my Wii. The game is still fun and challenging (even if you use a map).
I am for great graphics, but I have to say most of these games that are supposed to be cutting edge I personally just don't find interesting (or more like I feel that I liked the game when it was call "Quake":-) I'm getting to be an old fart, I guess... I like a good puzzle game or other strategy game that really takes thought more these days than any big shooter game. (Maybe I should try Portal.. lol)
It would be great for me personally if they did start making cards that helped out with video and, at least for me, improving the computer's ability to view and edit HD video seems a lot more important that trying to get the latest FPS to run. Of course, that's only one point of view out of billions of users.
Slashdot Mirror
Especially those girls from Poland.. yowzer...
I am not sure you realize how bad the "human resources" movement people are at finding talent that doesn't fit into a distinct mould. There are tons of good people out there who have true talent who can't get jobs because they don't strictly fit into some H.R. drone can't easily label them or because H.R. is playing games with H1-Bs or whatnot.
People like Charlie Pitts deserve chances. Not every homeless guy is the "bum" stereotype we see so much in our media, and many have genuine talents and can contribute a lot. It's just that we don't manage our available talents well in the US at all right now.
By working to put out product that is at least a degree of magnitude better that MS! There are a lot of ways you can define "better," but everyone knows that MS has weaknesses in quality on many levels. Apple has them beat on many levels without even trying. If they actually took on MS head to head they would win at least sometimes even with the dirty tactics, and every win makes it harder for MS to get away the the crap they've become known for.
Apple's belief that they should be a hardware company (as they were when they started) is what keeps their share of the market from growing. If they want to grow (maybe they don't really want to, and that's okay too) then they are going to have to change. It seems to ancient idea now when hardware (including their own) has become commodity to such an extent.
I know it's an opinion, but it's a widely held opinion: Apple does better at building an OS that Microsoft. If they had refocused a few years ago and changed the attitude that the OS only sells hardware I think Microsoft would actually have to some real competition.
Every time Apple has shot down clone competitors have had to just shake my head. It seems exactly the opposite of what they should be doing. Didn't they learn by watching the evolution of the PC? If they wanted to they could emulate that success by getting their OS to run better that Windows on all types of hardware. They could sell more copies of the OS and bring down the price, etc.. etc.. etc..
They aren't stupid at Apple... so maybe they know this and are just ignoring it. But jessh, doesn't it seem like they could really, really
have great opportunities with these clone companies? There are millions of people that would choose an Apple OS over a Windows OS if it worked as well (and with Apple's expertise it would probably work a lot better) on reasonably priced, reasonably solid commodity hardware.
Maybe they like their market share the way it is. People yell about Apple's share of the market, but even a 5% share of the size of the multi-billion computer market is still big, and our addition to economic growth is just that... an addiction.
It's just a fake BSOD.
don't let spielburg know...
People working in the corporation aren't liable for what the corporation does. That is what a Limited Liability Corporation is, smartguy.
This reply reminds me of something one my really dumb bosses said to me one time when I was trying to fix a problem I was having in my linux instation.
"Can't you just call Linux and have them fix it?"
Like everything we use has to be centered at some big corporation somewhere...
Corporations doing what is best for their owners and share holders is a MYTH. This is one of the biggest myths of the corporate era of history.
Corporations move first to promote the interests of the *corporation* itself. The interests of shareholders is a very. very distant second.
If the shareholders where higher on the ladder you wouldn't see the rush to declare bankruptcy where the common shareholder gets nothing out of the deal.
They don't do what is good for "people" in general and they don't claim to do so.
This is true of every big corporation. It's probably true of any group where liability for actions are taken away.
well.. the last time I checked I could install firefox from my Ubuntu desktop without causing the OS or desktop to become non-functional.
If you are using XP then you can never totally stop using I.E. Every program that uses any browser functionality or gathers any information from the internet uses I.E. code. There is no way to change that. Not to mention that items like update manager require IE and have no way to run in other browsers. I can't speak to Vista on this (though I know that Update Manager runs somewhat different).
I think to anyone with enough information KNOWS that the OS/IE thing is illegal.. I think the problem is that our legal system is so screwed up and is so tied up in details its hard to define. But in this case it's a little like porn... it's hard to define buy you know it when you see it.
Because there in some quarters there is the cult-like mentality and most of the rest of people don't know any better. Most office drones with little skill and ambition never used any word processing program before Office and they don't have the will to learn anything.
Really... a huge amount of Office use is simply because of ignorance, sloth, and inertia (as well as Microsoft Zombies that happen to be working in the IT department and management). There are are hundreds of programs that do what Office in a better and cheaper way, it's just it get past the masses of users who don't know any better and who don't have the curiosity to try anything new, even if it eventually make their life easier.
The small organization that I work for as Tech director is still standardized at Office 2000, and that was a rather recent development as pleaded them to move up a bit because so much of my support time was used to maintain various office aps of a variety of versions. Office is a total nightmare. It has to be the most labor intensive application for techs ever devised and it's only used out of ignorance.
They also had hissy fits when I tried to get them to use Openoffice as a trial (which we really can't use because Mail Merge is so entrenched in the culture and OO just doesn't do it well, at least in version 2. And even if it does Mail Merge well now we can't go to OO now because of the hissy fits and people refusing to learn new stuff).
Office is a plague on the business culture in the U.S. We have people using it because "they've never seen anyone use anything else." We have people that think they can make super complex documents in Word that should be done in InDesign or Tex and then find that the layout totally blows up when they change 3 characters. We have people using Powerpoint to create 200 image slideshows. Microsoft has somehow managed to make everyone believe that Office is an all-in-one tool out of a load of garbage. It's amazing.
I can't imagine something that has hurt the computing world more that Microsoft Office (though as this is slashdot I am sure people will post them now).
The day is coming when I will have more people using Vista or 7 (64 bit to get more than 4GB of memory for other big tasks) and I have to update all the office apps and face question after question from people who can't read a help file or look up a question with Google. I don't envy these Air Force folks one tiny bit.
I guess that's a rant...
I thought Tipper got over this during the PMRC fiasco.
My name is Torgo. I take care of the place when the master is away.
(sorry. mention "master" and you get a Manos or a Dr. Who quote every time.)
Clinton is an asshole... that's definite.
But they've yet to make the asshole-anometer that doesn't peg when George Bush and Dick Cheney are mentioned.
And some of judge our politicians on their actions, not just on how they fit on some fictional left/right scale.
They were actually reporting it as a single *2TB* external hard drive.
Of course it was one of the total airhead reporters and CNN is known for not even taking to their own IT folks down the hall to make sure something they are saying about technology even makes sense on their surface.
It would have everything, then.
Actually it's usually a euphemism for poor countries, isn't it?
I've seen the scans and this particular "outrage" seems completely pointless.
There is nothing titillating here unless you find Spongebob Squarepants erotic.
Meta-modders take note... how the hell is that article flamebait??
I posted yesterday in reply to someone yesterday I wrote, after he gave a list of multinational corporation products we would "miss" if we didn't have them, that there are damn few products that have to be made by a big corporation, especially given the Internet and the technology available to us now as opposed to 25 or 30 years ago.
I think you can take that further and say there are a lot of products that can be made a hell of a lot better by a smaller company rather than a multi-national. If that weren't the case, why would we see so many cases of huge corporations that have to spin off or have to set up semi-autonomous units in order to make good quality products.
Also the definition of "big corporation" is HAZY right now methinks. We should probably be defining "big" these days as in number of dollars or as number of countries. The same tech that makes it possible for small companies to compete on an large scale allows big companies to work with small numbers of workers. "Big" companies don't need the unwashed masses like they used to; they can easily be multi-billion with a relative handful of people. Especially in the US, where the only business model there seems to be right now is 1)buy from overseas 2)sell at huge markup 3)PROFIT!!
Corporations are simply large businesses, structured that way for better profit and efficiency. While they can be powerful, they're no more an "enemy of democracy" than other large entities, including our own elected government. Furthermore, I'd like to see you live without corporate products for awhile. Come back and tell me what life is like for you when you can no longer buy cars from Toyota, computers from Apple, burgers from McDonalds, fly on planes from Boeing, or take antibiotics from Merck. You get back to us on what it was like to try and build your own cars, grow all your own food, and make your own clothing.
*Huge* corporations *are not* simply large businesses. They don't simply have just a bit more power, they are huge collections of money and huge collections of power, so huge as they change the gravity of the power of the country.
The governmental structure of the U.S. was just not intended to deal with huge pockets of power. U.S. society has a huge blind spot in regards to this, but the writers of the constitution did not. They saw the damage that was caused by the East India company and while they believed that corporations could be a positive force as long as they were limited. They believed in giving them *limited* charters (ones that actually expired!) and not allowing them to own other corporations or land that wasn't related directly to their businesses. That was all chucked in the mid-1800s because the rich wanted to get richer.
Corporations are useful for big tasks, but I don't think that any the tasks you listed here couldn't be done by a small or medium size businesses. With the Internet and the modern tech available to us there are damn few jobs that I know that couldn't be done by a small business, and just about anyone and be an international player. Sorry... I doubt the modern corporation is necessary to maintain life as we know it.
> An additional problem with open architecture systems, Microsoft explains, is that 'virtually anyone can write an application that can be executed on the system.'
Of my dear Lord! You wouldn't want someone not working for a duly licensed corporate entity to be able to write for your corporate approved operating system.
First Joe Sixpack will write something for his own computer and then the terrists.
That statement is un-farking-believable.
Not only that... I replayed the original Legend of Zelda last year as a download for my Wii. The game is still fun and challenging (even if you use a map).
I am for great graphics, but I have to say most of these games that are supposed to be cutting edge I personally just don't find interesting (or more like I feel that I liked the game when it was call "Quake" :-) I'm getting to be an old fart, I guess... I like a good puzzle game or other strategy game that really takes thought more these days than any big shooter game. (Maybe I should try Portal.. lol)
It would be great for me personally if they did start making cards that helped out with video and, at least for me, improving the computer's ability to view and edit HD video seems a lot more important that trying to get the latest FPS to run. Of course, that's only one point of view out of billions of users.