combined with an apathetic and undereducated public lead to widespread ignorance
Would you listen to someone who views you in that way?
People don't listen to geeky experts because
The average person has much greater emotional intelligence than the average geek. I had to learn that the hard way. We think we are communicating factually, and the average Joe is hearing something completely different, because he is listening on a broader and higher level. The things he is hearing don't invite trust.
Experts are so 1950's. I grew up in the 60's, when "Question Authority" was a radical slogan to put on your bumper. Now days, no one accepts authority automatically, but I remember when they did. Bottom line, the experts put forth a lot of bad information that led many people to do things they deeply regretted. Remember the insulin treatments in "A Beautiful Mind"? That's why I don't trust experts, either.
People learned long ago that experts are just as political and dogmatic as fundamentalists, and they can be just as misguided.
BTW, some of the postings make me embarrassed to be a geek. I don't see disrespect as a sign of intelligence.
Office is one of the products from M$ that I actually (mostly) like. The positive of all this is that M$ is feeling the heat and is responding. Of course, their response is so '90s, but we can't have everything. Hopefully, ISO will rebuff them, and the pressure on them will increase. They can make a (fairly) decent product, if someone else innovates first. Moving them off their proprietary formats (and converters, for their own junk), would make Office better and open the door for alternatives, which would in turn...
My brother was convicted in Oakland by a publicity-seeking DA with no hard evidence. The case was highly publicized, and Edward Kennedy became involved. Sadly, the prominence of the DA and weak defense attorneys led to a mis-trial, and then a conviction. DA's are elected, and they seize on these high-publicity cases to build their rep. This sounds like another such case.
I finally bought a Mac for the family. They all hate Windows, especially my wife. But I held back because of applications. Two things are changing. One, more native apps for Mac. Two, VMWare Fusion, which allows me to run my Windows-only apps in a Mac Window. Now, everyone fights to get on the Mac. The same applies to Linux. When the apps are there, I certainly won't spend a bunch of money to get Windows, which is three on my list of OS's.
In a way, I'd love to see M$ sink 40+ billion into Yahoo! And I do mean sink. What possible value does M$ intend to gain from this transaction? This reminds me of AMD's recent acquisition of ATI, which they are still struggling to digest. On the other hand, while I want to see M$ face a lot more competition, if only so they'll improve their products, having them make a huge mistake could have serious consequences. Or maybe they'll finally give up on Chairman Bill's megalomaniac business model, stick to what they are good at (relatively speaking), and actually produce quality software in the desktop PC and server spaces. I said I was a hater...
We call that terrorism. It's been around for millennia.
What's new is that some countries decided, several centuries ago, to (mostly) restrict warfare to military targets. Moreover, many countries have renounced imperialism. First world countries are not "war happy" because they lack the technological means. Imagine ancient conquerors with modern weapons. That's what the world could be like.
This post really deals with nothing more than the natural evolution of established ethics as technology evolves. Using robots is less revolutionary than air power, where one country can selectively destroy another with virtual impunity.
When IT people were classified as exempt, they were called "IT Pros". Now, IT people, particularly programmers and administrators, are treated exactly like clerks, except they are expected to work a lot of free OT. If management considers us clerks, they should pay us in the same manner as clerks, including overtime. As far as pay cuts, either IBM was overpaying in the first place, or they are going to lose their best people.
"That leaves open the question of exactly what IE is."
Sadly, it's the standard, and "Web browser" is irrelevant. Even commercial software specifically codes to IE, and it won't work in FF. The IT Director refuses to eliminate apps just because they are not "Web browser" compliant. What's his problem? I'm just glad M$ is doing something to straighten this mess out.
As one responder noted, corp admins don't want user updating their PC's. However, in the company I work for, updates are done by pushing an app; it doesn't matter what the app is. The big problems are the mass of IE only pages in use (I'm a reformed offender), admins don't want to support another app, and the Help Desk doesn't want to answer user questions about two browsers. Bottom line, big businesses generally aren't very concerned about browsers. However, as browsers become increasingly important in delivering business applications, I think that will change. Meanwhile, everyone in IT but the admins need to keep dissing IE and promoting Firefox at every opportunity. I remember when Ethernet was considered a stupid idea.
Linux and Mac are polar opposites. How can Mac be eating into Linux's market share? The "problem", if Linux has one, is that it is too geeky. That's why everyone on/. loves it. News flash: only 0.29% to 0.63% of computer users read/. Linux desktop appliances could take off, if they ran Office pre-installed and IE 7 finally breaks HTML coders from designing for IE only.
to go with the iMac. It had nothing to do with the hardware and everything to do with getting off Windows. I'm a geek, but my family has benefited fantastically from OS X. I actually tend to use the Mac, even though I have to contend with the kids to get on it. For one thing, it boots up almost instantly. Mac is not better, Mac is just what a PC ought to be. Windows is worse.
It means that I don't have to be in the office to take care of matters, which means more at-home time for me. As far as constantly checking my e-mail, I generally don't. Even if I do, that doesn't mean I have to respond. I also like knowing what to expect before I arrive at work. Bottom line, I'd rather be able to satisfy an overly demanding boss from home, rather than spending my evenings and Saturdays in the cube.
First of all, even Firefox 2 can't handle the Acid 2 test, so I have to wonder exactly how significant is this test? At the same time, Firefox comes close. Second, I want to report that IE 6 can indeed properly display the reference image.
I just went through a bunch of open source licenses with the support group. They wanted to send them all to Legal. Now, we use Tomcat. I added a security class to customize logins. If Apache Group switched to the AGPL, there is no way I would be allowed to use Tomcat. The company would have to create a Web site with all the source, including my tiny class, and then keep it up to date. The company would be liable if I somehow failed to update the site any time I downloaded any patch for Tomcat. At least that's what Legal would say. This whole GPLv3 sounds bad, and AGPL sounds worse.
1. Since when is the original formation of DNA not part of the theory of evolution? DNA is at the core of the entire theory. If you tenets require you to blithely ignore observations you can't explain, you need to reexamine your tenets. 2. My background is physics. From my perspective, a theory that fails to explain all the observations is lacking, especially when those observations are central to the area the theory tries to explain. That is not to say the theory is invalid, but it certainly can't be used, as is, to rule out other theories. 3. The entire theory of evolution, apart from some form of intelligent design, is based on random mutation. A virus certainly isn't introducing intelligent mutations. Simply knowing the source of mutations does not make them non-random. 4. If the article is worthwhile in the first place, a bad edit does not make it less worthwhile. On the contrary, it makes the article a target for a correction. 5. I never ruled out evolution. I am saying that the portion of the theory that requires random changes does not stand up to objective examination.
... that's why it works. In addition, improvement through random events, driven by survival of the fittest, provides no explanation for how DNA first formed. Based on the evidence, a "scientifically minded" person must conclude that the current "scientific" explanation is lacking.
BTW, comparing Wikipedia with random mutations has three drawbacks. First, very few edits are "random". The posters intend, at least, to add intelligent content. Second, a bad edit can be corrected without killing the article. Third, "good" additions and corrections are made by people who are both intelligent and informed.
The worst thing about M$ Office is that the integration isn't all that great, and M$ has added very few truly useful features since the '90s. The OO problem is the scope of the project and the fact that integration isn't all that interesting. As far as killing Outlook, it will kill itself a release or two down the road. What a pig!
I don't do Linux, and only Vista has persuaded me to seriously consider Mac. I am one of the many who feel trapped by the M$ monopoly, and I will eventually move to Vista, only because my clients will force me to do so for compatibility reasons. Having said that, Vista is a disaster. It biggest problems are its new features, the sluggish presentation manager, DRM, and security. M$ could fix each of those things if they wanted to, but I predict they won't. Fixing those components would involve rewriting the OS, not service packs. I suspect, when the time comes, I will turn off Aero and security and make do with less appealing graphics and third-party security. Will this be the end of M$? I doubt it. Corporate America is enslaved, by their own choices, to M$, and only a truly unusable server OS release will cause them to even reconsider. On the other hand, the lemming herd is tiring of jumping off cliffs, especially when XP settled into being what many of us really wanted from a Windows OS. My prediction is that M$ will start losing their stranglehold. Some of us will turn to Mac at home. Businesses will slowly increase Linux use as Linux replaces UNIX for data center applications. But M$ will remain dominant for the next five years. After that, competition will become more intense as standardization makes options to M$ application software available. M$'s next desktop OS release will have much more riding on it. Until then, at least everyone has something complain about.
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Would you listen to someone who views you in that way?
People don't listen to geeky experts because
- The average person has much greater emotional intelligence than the average geek. I had to learn that the hard way. We think we are communicating factually, and the average Joe is hearing something completely different, because he is listening on a broader and higher level. The things he is hearing don't invite trust.
- Experts are so 1950's. I grew up in the 60's, when "Question Authority" was a radical slogan to put on your bumper. Now days, no one accepts authority automatically, but I remember when they did. Bottom line, the experts put forth a lot of bad information that led many people to do things they deeply regretted. Remember the insulin treatments in "A Beautiful Mind"? That's why I don't trust experts, either.
- People learned long ago that experts are just as political and dogmatic as fundamentalists, and they can be just as misguided.
BTW, some of the postings make me embarrassed to be a geek. I don't see disrespect as a sign of intelligence.MS is losing the EU to open standards.
Office is one of the products from M$ that I actually (mostly) like. The positive of all this is that M$ is feeling the heat and is responding. Of course, their response is so '90s, but we can't have everything. Hopefully, ISO will rebuff them, and the pressure on them will increase. They can make a (fairly) decent product, if someone else innovates first. Moving them off their proprietary formats (and converters, for their own junk), would make Office better and open the door for alternatives, which would in turn...
Say in the future MS want to push out a patch that is so mean and so unethical that Autopatcher refuse to include it
Do repeated WGA downloads count?
My brother was convicted in Oakland by a publicity-seeking DA with no hard evidence. The case was highly publicized, and Edward Kennedy became involved. Sadly, the prominence of the DA and weak defense attorneys led to a mis-trial, and then a conviction. DA's are elected, and they seize on these high-publicity cases to build their rep. This sounds like another such case.
I finally bought a Mac for the family. They all hate Windows, especially my wife. But I held back because of applications. Two things are changing. One, more native apps for Mac. Two, VMWare Fusion, which allows me to run my Windows-only apps in a Mac Window. Now, everyone fights to get on the Mac. The same applies to Linux. When the apps are there, I certainly won't spend a bunch of money to get Windows, which is three on my list of OS's.
In a way, I'd love to see M$ sink 40+ billion into Yahoo! And I do mean sink. What possible value does M$ intend to gain from this transaction? This reminds me of AMD's recent acquisition of ATI, which they are still struggling to digest. On the other hand, while I want to see M$ face a lot more competition, if only so they'll improve their products, having them make a huge mistake could have serious consequences. Or maybe they'll finally give up on Chairman Bill's megalomaniac business model, stick to what they are good at (relatively speaking), and actually produce quality software in the desktop PC and server spaces. I said I was a hater...
Get a life. Everyone calls it M$. If that causes you to miss the point, you wouldn't be the point anyway.
Attacking civilians seems a more logical step
We call that terrorism. It's been around for millennia.
What's new is that some countries decided, several centuries ago, to (mostly) restrict warfare to military targets. Moreover, many countries have renounced imperialism. First world countries are not "war happy" because they lack the technological means. Imagine ancient conquerors with modern weapons. That's what the world could be like.
This post really deals with nothing more than the natural evolution of established ethics as technology evolves. Using robots is less revolutionary than air power, where one country can selectively destroy another with virtual impunity.
When IT people were classified as exempt, they were called "IT Pros". Now, IT people, particularly programmers and administrators, are treated exactly like clerks, except they are expected to work a lot of free OT. If management considers us clerks, they should pay us in the same manner as clerks, including overtime. As far as pay cuts, either IBM was overpaying in the first place, or they are going to lose their best people.
"That leaves open the question of exactly what IE is."
Sadly, it's the standard, and "Web browser" is irrelevant. Even commercial software specifically codes to IE, and it won't work in FF. The IT Director refuses to eliminate apps just because they are not "Web browser" compliant. What's his problem? I'm just glad M$ is doing something to straighten this mess out.As one responder noted, corp admins don't want user updating their PC's. However, in the company I work for, updates are done by pushing an app; it doesn't matter what the app is.
The big problems are the mass of IE only pages in use (I'm a reformed offender), admins don't want to support another app, and the Help Desk doesn't want to answer user questions about two browsers. Bottom line, big businesses generally aren't very concerned about browsers. However, as browsers become increasingly important in delivering business applications, I think that will change. Meanwhile, everyone in IT but the admins need to keep dissing IE and promoting Firefox at every opportunity. I remember when Ethernet was considered a stupid idea.
Linux and Mac are polar opposites. How can Mac be eating into Linux's market share? The "problem", if Linux has one, is that it is too geeky. That's why everyone on /. loves it. News flash: only 0.29% to 0.63% of computer users read /. Linux desktop appliances could take off, if they ran Office pre-installed and IE 7 finally breaks HTML coders from designing for IE only.
to go with the iMac. It had nothing to do with the hardware and everything to do with getting off Windows. I'm a geek, but my family has benefited fantastically from OS X. I actually tend to use the Mac, even though I have to contend with the kids to get on it. For one thing, it boots up almost instantly. Mac is not better, Mac is just what a PC ought to be. Windows is worse.
I can't wait to see the next ad with PC and Mac...
It means that I don't have to be in the office to take care of matters, which means more at-home time for me. As far as constantly checking my e-mail, I generally don't. Even if I do, that doesn't mean I have to respond. I also like knowing what to expect before I arrive at work. Bottom line, I'd rather be able to satisfy an overly demanding boss from home, rather than spending my evenings and Saturdays in the cube.
First of all, even Firefox 2 can't handle the Acid 2 test, so I have to wonder exactly how significant is this test? At the same time, Firefox comes close. Second, I want to report that IE 6 can indeed properly display the reference image.
is "Seagate" the new version of the consumer warning label? I will certainly avoid them.
I just went through a bunch of open source licenses with the support group. They wanted to send them all to Legal. Now, we use Tomcat. I added a security class to customize logins. If Apache Group switched to the AGPL, there is no way I would be allowed to use Tomcat. The company would have to create a Web site with all the source, including my tiny class, and then keep it up to date. The company would be liable if I somehow failed to update the site any time I downloaded any patch for Tomcat. At least that's what Legal would say. This whole GPLv3 sounds bad, and AGPL sounds worse.
but the second mouse gets the cheese.
1. Since when is the original formation of DNA not part of the theory of evolution? DNA is at the core of the entire theory. If you tenets require you to blithely ignore observations you can't explain, you need to reexamine your tenets.
2. My background is physics. From my perspective, a theory that fails to explain all the observations is lacking, especially when those observations are central to the area the theory tries to explain. That is not to say the theory is invalid, but it certainly can't be used, as is, to rule out other theories.
3. The entire theory of evolution, apart from some form of intelligent design, is based on random mutation. A virus certainly isn't introducing intelligent mutations. Simply knowing the source of mutations does not make them non-random.
4. If the article is worthwhile in the first place, a bad edit does not make it less worthwhile. On the contrary, it makes the article a target for a correction.
5. I never ruled out evolution. I am saying that the portion of the theory that requires random changes does not stand up to objective examination.
... that's why it works. In addition, improvement through random events, driven by survival of the fittest, provides no explanation for how DNA first formed. Based on the evidence, a "scientifically minded" person must conclude that the current "scientific" explanation is lacking. BTW, comparing Wikipedia with random mutations has three drawbacks. First, very few edits are "random". The posters intend, at least, to add intelligent content. Second, a bad edit can be corrected without killing the article. Third, "good" additions and corrections are made by people who are both intelligent and informed.
The worst thing about M$ Office is that the integration isn't all that great, and M$ has added very few truly useful features since the '90s. The OO problem is the scope of the project and the fact that integration isn't all that interesting. As far as killing Outlook, it will kill itself a release or two down the road. What a pig!
I don't do Linux, and only Vista has persuaded me to seriously consider Mac. I am one of the many who feel trapped by the M$ monopoly, and I will eventually move to Vista, only because my clients will force me to do so for compatibility reasons. Having said that, Vista is a disaster. It biggest problems are its new features, the sluggish presentation manager, DRM, and security. M$ could fix each of those things if they wanted to, but I predict they won't. Fixing those components would involve rewriting the OS, not service packs. I suspect, when the time comes, I will turn off Aero and security and make do with less appealing graphics and third-party security.
Will this be the end of M$? I doubt it. Corporate America is enslaved, by their own choices, to M$, and only a truly unusable server OS release will cause them to even reconsider. On the other hand, the lemming herd is tiring of jumping off cliffs, especially when XP settled into being what many of us really wanted from a Windows OS. My prediction is that M$ will start losing their stranglehold. Some of us will turn to Mac at home. Businesses will slowly increase Linux use as Linux replaces UNIX for data center applications. But M$ will remain dominant for the next five years. After that, competition will become more intense as standardization makes options to M$ application software available. M$'s next desktop OS release will have much more riding on it. Until then, at least everyone has something complain about.
the spacecraft runs into an object the size of a dime while traveling at 1/10c?
Isn't "photonic laser" redundant?