While the parent does come off as living on a "bizarro planet", there are many like him. I simply don't understand it. Basically, they are peeved because the Mac doesn't work the way Windows does? Haven't 20+ years of usability studies pretty much proven that the Mac way is vastly superior in nearly every aspect? What really gets me going is when people try to apply PC logic to a Mac, and then fault the Mac.
The one legitimate complaint I've noted about the finder is that when my wife closes her MacBook, it freezes my finder for a long time (if we are networked). I usually just force quit and restart the finder in a shorter time than it would take to wait.
For every niggling complaint about the finder (not being able to rename the files from the File/Edit menus, who does that when you click on the file name and retype what you want), I can point to glaringly awful limitations of WinXP. For example, why can't you rename a file that is open? You never come across the need to rename a document you are working on? Why should I have to litter the explorer with two versions of the same file, just to get a different name on the second one (then have to delete the original one). Or worse, why should I have to close the document I'm working on, rename it, then reopen it? Mac OS X doesn't have this limitation. Why does WinXP not refresh the file list when you add new items, or rename something? More importantly, why do PC users get mad at Macs when the F5 key doesn't do this, because OS X doesn't need to because it puts files in their respective place when moved, changed, renamed, added, etc.? Why is there no color label scheme in WinXP so I can mark files that are "in progress", "need review" or whatever naming scheme I dream up and then sort them accordingly? Would it have to do with the fact that XP wouldn't be able to order them correctly without hitting the F5 key, and that would simply be adding another level of complexity?
But anyway, enough Windows bashing already. Windows shortcomings are very obvious to those of us who demand more and chose to use Mac OS X. What I don't let stand, though, is petty nitpicking about the supposed shortcomings of finder when the alternative explorer has far more shortcomings.
This might be why Microsoft generally sucks compared to Apple (from the NYT):
Microsoft's chief, Steven Ballmer, said online advertising would grow to make up 25 percent of the company's revenue.
So Microsoft is dumping all their resources into forcing ads onto my computer. Great. It's all about the corporate culture: Apple makes cool stuff, Microsoft makes online ads.
What I was talking about was when I was in College (ca. early 90s) companies were recruiting non-computer people to do computer jobs, based on aptitude and things like having a musical or linguistic brain (somehow those relate to programming, which is odd, because I'm a musician and speak two foreign languages, but programming is the most foreign thing in the world to me).
Just make sure it is 800+ mhz minimum specs. My G4 is 800mhz, so it doesn't meet the minimum requirements (barely). I might try it out anyway, since would like to use it as the host of my Time Machine backups.
David Pogue said it best: "To the amazement of many Windows refugees, Mac OS X requires no serial number and no "activation"; it's not copy-protected. It doesn't clutter the desktop with crippled bits of free-trial software from other companies. There are no nagging balloons or come-ons."
I'm picking it up tonight, but 20+ years of Mac experience tell me I can skip the family pack, buy one copy and proceed to upgrade as many Macs as I can find in my house, no questions asked. I mean I already paid the evil Mac Tax, right?
So I bought World of Warcraft in the UK, played it for three months, then moved to the US. Not only did I have to rebuy the game and the expansion, I also lost my sweet ass L56 Dwarven Paladin forever. Those bastards!
So why is this just Valve's problem? Or why is this even a problem? Buy the version for your market and quit being cheap asses.
Uh, you mean pay more than we used to pay in dollars? Because if you mean pay more than the Brits/Germans/French/Italians pay, you are sadly mistaken. It doesn't matter how strong the pound is to the dollar. There is simply no excuse to ever pay more than $30,000 for a three cylinder economy microsized car. These types of cars would sell for about $12,000 USD. It doesn't matter how many high paying jobs or what the pound/euro rate is, this is simply a microcosm of everything that is wrong with the European economies.
Since everyone hates car analogies, how about this one. Little Timmy discovers he likes the sound of the trumpet. Little Timmy's parents live in Anytown, USA and go to the local music store to buy him an entry level trumpet. They walk out with a new trumpet and case for $500. Little Gerhard lives in some town in Germany. Little Gerhard also loves the trumpet, but Little Gerhard's parents have to fork out $2000 USD equivalent and another 20% ad velorum tax. Little Gerhard develops a sudden interest in "hanging out with friends". (Feel free to substitute the entire German part with any British name and musical instrument).
Yes, because there are no Democrats in Big Business? Have you examined the resumes of our Democrat Representatives and Senators? Have you noticed that nearly every Presidential Candidate on the Democrat side rose to prominence via business? Pinning this on Republicans is stupid and cheapens your otherwise well thought out post.
My guess is they don't care because their company isn't in the business of building YOUR experience levels? Not saying that's right, but it is reality.
I can second the otherwise anecdotal evidence that $75,000 today is NOTHING like $26,000 a year back in 1995. Coincidentally, these are roughly the salaries I am/was making for these given times. With $75,000-ish a year, I am able to afford my $230,000 house with a mortgage payment of roughly $2,000 a month. In 1995 I bought my first house. It was $60k and the mortage is (still have it) $450. I also have two more children then I had back then, yet I'm able to comfortably pay my new mortgage. I remember barely making it month-to-month on my first mortgage.
Seems to me that disposable income grows exponentially, after you get over the living mont-to-month hump and after you've paid off all the necessities. I often ask my wife how much more stuff we actually need, when we lived just fine in 1995 with less.
Anyone who focuses on specific skills such as language-X or web-platform-Y just doesn't "get" it.
That's what is so damned frustrating about the IT industry. Seems like every program manager I've ever known has this short sighted "vision".
Thankfully, I got in with a company that understands that my content knowledge in our industry is far more important than my Flash development skills. Although I'll spend 90% of my time designing training with Flash, my understanding of how the industry works (and my 12 years of experience in the industry) is far more important (and valuable) than my ability to buy a book and go through it to makes some Flash presentations. Not to dismiss Flash skills or the art of Instructional Design (since that is what I do), but in the hierarchy of things, how to program a rollover button is far less critical than designing sound Instructional Design from the start. Instructional Design is no good unless you understand the target, which requires a solid understanding of the industry. This, in a nutshell, is why project managers make more than the Instructional Designers, who make more than the developers.
Whatever happened to the days when corporations where taking people with no skills and training them? If there is such a shortage of skilled workers in these fields (presumably) then why did they give up on hiring the musicians and the artistic people who were suppoosedly better and faster at adapting computer sciences? I assure you that someone like myself or my wife, intelligent people with Master's Degrees and decent computer skills, could learn SAP faster than your average tech-wannabe. We both have a proven track record of trainability, as evident by our wall of degrees (not to gloat, but reality is what it is) and long lists of honors. Now, If we were bumbling idiots on "the computer", I'd say you could wipe your ass with our degrees. But we are are competent, and we don't even call it "the" computer.
My point being, why turn your back on highly intelligent, technology capable people, just because they lack experience in a specific tech skill such as SAP?
Excellent point. My (way under $100k) salary in Austin TX would have to be about $200k in San Jose California for me to live the same quality of life. Substitute "Austin" with "San Antonio", "Boise", "Portland", "Atlanta", "Colorado Springs" or about 25 other cities I'd rather live in than ANY city in California ever again.
Look around. You'll find plenty of comanies with good health insurance. ESPECIALLY in the IT field. I just took a job in Austin and the company gives full family medical/dental/vision for FREE. I've gotten used to paying about $150 a month to insure a family of four, but this new plan is pretty awesome. If you are complaining about no Insurance in this field, then you simply aren't looking around.
It's usually always cheaper to bring someone on full time (in the short run). They contracted you because they don't want the overhead associated with full-time employment, or at least that was my take the two months I worked contracts. The 6-week contract I was on was for an Interactive Multimedia Instruction developer and the statement-of-work stipulated a whopping $88/hour! Holy crap I was being payed slightly less than half of that an hour, which is still WAY TOO MUCH for an instructional designer in any field, but especially for a grocery company. I asked them why they didn't just hire me full time for $30 hour, because that's what I'd accept for the security of full time work, and they told me they already have a full time staff of developers and they weren't hiring. Makes no sense to me, but I didn't mind the $40 hour I made for 6 weeks.
All great points, but none of them take away from the fact that the IT person is hired to fix all this stuff, regardless of how it was broken. If one doesn't like being called at 6pm on a Sunday, one should get a different job.
To put it another way, without the niggling problems of computer-illiterate bosses that can afford yachts (whatever that has to do with anything), the IT guy doesn't have a job.
thanks. I've been trying to figure out exactly what it is about most slashdotters that gives me the feeling I'm not really welcome here. In fact, your post nicely sums up why society shuns nerds in general.
having the outlook that things will work out don't make you single-minded, as long as your name isn't George Bush, or as long as you don't totally absolve all your responsibilities in the name of "faith".
IMO, pessimists seem to be pessimistic about everything (except for the hope that Linux will be taken seriously). An optimist understands when to be pessimistic, as in understsnding that Vista will very soon control 90%+ of the market. Pessimists go so far to find the "bad" in things, to the flaw of being wrong. Apessimist slashdotter (pardon the redundancy) will go on and on about how Mac OS X is riddled with security holes, even when faced with the reality there have been zero viruses outbreaks in 6 years. I, armed with this knowledge and 20+ years of Apple experience am thus optimistic about apple products in general. For that, I'm labelled a cultist. On well, at least our koolaide cups are half full.
Slashdot Mirror
The one legitimate complaint I've noted about the finder is that when my wife closes her MacBook, it freezes my finder for a long time (if we are networked). I usually just force quit and restart the finder in a shorter time than it would take to wait.
For every niggling complaint about the finder (not being able to rename the files from the File/Edit menus, who does that when you click on the file name and retype what you want), I can point to glaringly awful limitations of WinXP. For example, why can't you rename a file that is open? You never come across the need to rename a document you are working on? Why should I have to litter the explorer with two versions of the same file, just to get a different name on the second one (then have to delete the original one). Or worse, why should I have to close the document I'm working on, rename it, then reopen it? Mac OS X doesn't have this limitation. Why does WinXP not refresh the file list when you add new items, or rename something? More importantly, why do PC users get mad at Macs when the F5 key doesn't do this, because OS X doesn't need to because it puts files in their respective place when moved, changed, renamed, added, etc.? Why is there no color label scheme in WinXP so I can mark files that are "in progress", "need review" or whatever naming scheme I dream up and then sort them accordingly? Would it have to do with the fact that XP wouldn't be able to order them correctly without hitting the F5 key, and that would simply be adding another level of complexity?
But anyway, enough Windows bashing already. Windows shortcomings are very obvious to those of us who demand more and chose to use Mac OS X. What I don't let stand, though, is petty nitpicking about the supposed shortcomings of finder when the alternative explorer has far more shortcomings.
And by assholes, you mean out-of-touch-with-real-people nerds, right? That's my take at least.
I just read somewhere that Apple is the fourth most valuable tech company in the world. That hardly qualifies them as "small corporation".
What I was talking about was when I was in College (ca. early 90s) companies were recruiting non-computer people to do computer jobs, based on aptitude and things like having a musical or linguistic brain (somehow those relate to programming, which is odd, because I'm a musician and speak two foreign languages, but programming is the most foreign thing in the world to me).
Just make sure it is 800+ mhz minimum specs. My G4 is 800mhz, so it doesn't meet the minimum requirements (barely). I might try it out anyway, since would like to use it as the host of my Time Machine backups.
I'm picking it up tonight, but 20+ years of Mac experience tell me I can skip the family pack, buy one copy and proceed to upgrade as many Macs as I can find in my house, no questions asked. I mean I already paid the evil Mac Tax, right?
So why is this just Valve's problem? Or why is this even a problem? Buy the version for your market and quit being cheap asses.
Since everyone hates car analogies, how about this one. Little Timmy discovers he likes the sound of the trumpet. Little Timmy's parents live in Anytown, USA and go to the local music store to buy him an entry level trumpet. They walk out with a new trumpet and case for $500. Little Gerhard lives in some town in Germany. Little Gerhard also loves the trumpet, but Little Gerhard's parents have to fork out $2000 USD equivalent and another 20% ad velorum tax. Little Gerhard develops a sudden interest in "hanging out with friends". (Feel free to substitute the entire German part with any British name and musical instrument).
Yes, because there are no Democrats in Big Business? Have you examined the resumes of our Democrat Representatives and Senators? Have you noticed that nearly every Presidential Candidate on the Democrat side rose to prominence via business? Pinning this on Republicans is stupid and cheapens your otherwise well thought out post.
Seems to me that disposable income grows exponentially, after you get over the living mont-to-month hump and after you've paid off all the necessities. I often ask my wife how much more stuff we actually need, when we lived just fine in 1995 with less.
Thankfully, I got in with a company that understands that my content knowledge in our industry is far more important than my Flash development skills. Although I'll spend 90% of my time designing training with Flash, my understanding of how the industry works (and my 12 years of experience in the industry) is far more important (and valuable) than my ability to buy a book and go through it to makes some Flash presentations. Not to dismiss Flash skills or the art of Instructional Design (since that is what I do), but in the hierarchy of things, how to program a rollover button is far less critical than designing sound Instructional Design from the start. Instructional Design is no good unless you understand the target, which requires a solid understanding of the industry. This, in a nutshell, is why project managers make more than the Instructional Designers, who make more than the developers.
My point being, why turn your back on highly intelligent, technology capable people, just because they lack experience in a specific tech skill such as SAP?
Excellent point. My (way under $100k) salary in Austin TX would have to be about $200k in San Jose California for me to live the same quality of life. Substitute "Austin" with "San Antonio", "Boise", "Portland", "Atlanta", "Colorado Springs" or about 25 other cities I'd rather live in than ANY city in California ever again.
Look around. You'll find plenty of comanies with good health insurance. ESPECIALLY in the IT field. I just took a job in Austin and the company gives full family medical/dental/vision for FREE. I've gotten used to paying about $150 a month to insure a family of four, but this new plan is pretty awesome. If you are complaining about no Insurance in this field, then you simply aren't looking around.
It's usually always cheaper to bring someone on full time (in the short run). They contracted you because they don't want the overhead associated with full-time employment, or at least that was my take the two months I worked contracts. The 6-week contract I was on was for an Interactive Multimedia Instruction developer and the statement-of-work stipulated a whopping $88/hour! Holy crap I was being payed slightly less than half of that an hour, which is still WAY TOO MUCH for an instructional designer in any field, but especially for a grocery company. I asked them why they didn't just hire me full time for $30 hour, because that's what I'd accept for the security of full time work, and they told me they already have a full time staff of developers and they weren't hiring. Makes no sense to me, but I didn't mind the $40 hour I made for 6 weeks.
To put it another way, without the niggling problems of computer-illiterate bosses that can afford yachts (whatever that has to do with anything), the IT guy doesn't have a job.
just don't stop in england on your way. 1mbit = $50/month.
uh, well it IS your job. Actially, i'm convinced that you IT guys hoarde knowledge, and avoid good software just for your own job security.
thanks. I've been trying to figure out exactly what it is about most slashdotters that gives me the feeling I'm not really welcome here. In fact, your post nicely sums up why society shuns nerds in general.
having the outlook that things will work out don't make you single-minded, as long as your name isn't George Bush, or as long as you don't totally absolve all your responsibilities in the name of "faith".
IMO, pessimists seem to be pessimistic about everything (except for the hope that Linux will be taken seriously). An optimist understands when to be pessimistic, as in understsnding that Vista will very soon control 90%+ of the market. Pessimists go so far to find the "bad" in things, to the flaw of being wrong. Apessimist slashdotter (pardon the redundancy) will go on and on about how Mac OS X is riddled with security holes, even when faced with the reality there have been zero viruses outbreaks in 6 years. I, armed with this knowledge and 20+ years of Apple experience am thus optimistic about apple products in general. For that, I'm labelled a cultist. On well, at least our koolaide cups are half full.
I hate /. now. This is one of the best posts ever, and some slash-douche mods it "troll".