Not critizing, just interested: Had this happened to other employees in the past, or were you the only one you knew of? Had your previous IT Admin had the same treatment? Generally employers don't have different policies for different people leaving the company.
I'm with you - but I'm thinking I'd like to run it on a Droid phone sans SIM as a MP3 player. Why buy a new Droid or iPod for $240+ when I can buy a used droid phone for $80 off eBay, throw on Ubuntu and use it for the next five years as my portable media player?
Spreadsheets are only widespread because most office drones don't have a clue about proper data management. I shudder whenever I see someone using a spreadsheet to make important business decisions because I know there are errors in every non-trivial spreadsheet.
What do you define as non-trivial? I think a spreadsheet template which has been used a couple hundred times will have all but the most corner-case bugs worked out. As well, business decisions are made by humans, not machines. They rely on things not easily quantifible like customer service, past performance, future projections of costs, etc. Databases are also prone to data entry errors, design errors and the like. Just because you use a database does not mean it does not have to be tested throughly.
Remind me why I should ever vote for you again? I have voted against you in the previous number of federal elections (even while considering myself conservative) because of this stuff. You're not helping change my mind!
While I haven't read the graphic novel (comic, whatever), I rather enjoyed the V for Vendetta and Watchmen movies. Of course, I also enjoyed the Constantine movie, so YMMV.
I keep thinking that Razor might be the best thing to happen to KDE in a LONG time. I keep thinking a Razor-based distro might be good for what ails me.
I know it can now, but back then (late 2008, early 2009 as I recall) it didn't. At that point Facebook was using it's own homebrew chat backend. it took until 2010 for them to actually implement XMPP.
As Dragonslicer eluded to, there are a *LOT* of bugs still in the program as it stands now, and with it taking however long to get a *BETA* version out, I wonder why bother?
and KDE Telepathy reaching its first beta milestone.
Is it an adequate replacement for Pidgin & Kopete yet? And do I have the ability to have it minimize to the systray?
Kopete was by far my favorite client but once the improvements and bugfixes stopped I had to jump ship to the (IMHO) inferior Pidgin. The lack of facebook chat did it for me. And since it's taken like 4 years to get to beta with this, I question whether re-inventing the wheel was a good idea.
That's a good point - why the heck isn't there an update script or something on Windows & Macs? I get you don't want to push nightly build but major point releases couldn't hurt. I think my in-laws are still on OO 2.3...
Has Canonical burned an epic amount of karma with Unity? Absolutely. But now we see the strategy of Canonical and why the (at the time) weird decisions were being made - for moving into the mobile & embedded market.
1) The nasty split with the Gnome community over Gnome3. Due to the Gnome community designing for the desktop and ignoring Canonical's input for the most part. Canonical decides to develop Unity so it can control the development path.
2) Wayland - X has way too much overhead and features for low-power mobile devices. Wayland keeps it nice and light.
3) Close/minimize/maximize debacle - pure usabilty idea. It was thrown out there to play with the code and how far people will accept change.
4) Ubuntu One - iTunes/Amazon fighter.
Being as they are one of (if not the) largest GPL distros on the planet, they know they have a massive built in base they can use for beta testing ideas, Q&A and bug fixing (since the code is all out in the open). That's huge. Add in the rock solid dependability of Linux and they have a winner.
+1 Interesting. I don't necessarily agree with all you said, but it is thought provoking. Two points I disagree with:
even if they did unite the whole muslim world against us that's not actually a very credible military force.
1) The problem isn't with the actual military - it's the insurgents that cause the issues. The U.S. invaded Iraq pretty easily, but they dealt with a 10+ year war of attrition which I wouldn't say they won. *NOBODY* would have a hope in hell of occupying all the Arab nations simultaneously.
When was the last time you bought something that said "made in "? Probably never because they have almost no industrial capacity. That means they have no ability to wage a modern war...Oh sure, they can plant IEDs if you let them get close. But if you waged a WW2 type war against them none of that would work.
I think the wars in Afgahnistan & Iraq ARE the modern war. It's not military vs military, it's military vs insurgents. I doubt a WW2 style war could happen again strictly because of the nuclear option being so prevalent and the networked media giving us so much information that large scale mass destruction would turn the tide of opinion pretty quickly.
I would throw in DoubleCAD as well. I use it constantly at work and it's really quite good. It isn't on Mac or Linux though. I'll have to check out Draftsight though!
I think everyone does this to some extent although with my laptop being about 9 years old I try to keep it low on resources as possible. My system has Lubuntu as the baseline, Clementine for music, Picasa via Wine for photo control & editing, Opera for the browser & RSS feed, and Dolphin for the file manager. I used PCmanFM for a time but the split screen is a killer feature for me, even with it requiring Nepomuk for some god only knows reason. My only real complaint is Samba is STILL borked on Lubuntu which eliminates my access to the server.
Slashdot Mirror
Not critizing, just interested: Had this happened to other employees in the past, or were you the only one you knew of? Had your previous IT Admin had the same treatment? Generally employers don't have different policies for different people leaving the company.
I'm with you - but I'm thinking I'd like to run it on a Droid phone sans SIM as a MP3 player. Why buy a new Droid or iPod for $240+ when I can buy a used droid phone for $80 off eBay, throw on Ubuntu and use it for the next five years as my portable media player?
Socialist I'm guessing.
1) -40C in the winter for weeks on end.
2) Civic and Provincial Government which makes Obama look like 'Strong Leadership'
At least there is lots of beer and pretty girls!
Spreadsheets are only widespread because most office drones don't have a clue about proper data management. I shudder whenever I see someone using a spreadsheet to make important business decisions because I know there are errors in every non-trivial spreadsheet.
What do you define as non-trivial? I think a spreadsheet template which has been used a couple hundred times will have all but the most corner-case bugs worked out. As well, business decisions are made by humans, not machines. They rely on things not easily quantifible like customer service, past performance, future projections of costs, etc. Databases are also prone to data entry errors, design errors and the like. Just because you use a database does not mean it does not have to be tested throughly.
It has had .docx support for quite a while as I recall.
Now I'm starting to think they've secured a niche as a status symbol. Much like Gucci or Prada handbags
That might be the most insightful thing I have read in a long time.
Remind me why I should ever vote for you again? I have voted against you in the previous number of federal elections (even while considering myself conservative) because of this stuff. You're not helping change my mind!
*looks at the slashdot article on Opera 11.60*
So good for them...
While I haven't read the graphic novel (comic, whatever), I rather enjoyed the V for Vendetta and Watchmen movies. Of course, I also enjoyed the Constantine movie, so YMMV.
My first thought when I read the headline was 'Cool. When is it making it into Google Earth?'
I keep thinking that Razor might be the best thing to happen to KDE in a LONG time. I keep thinking a Razor-based distro might be good for what ails me.
I know it can now, but back then (late 2008, early 2009 as I recall) it didn't. At that point Facebook was using it's own homebrew chat backend. it took until 2010 for them to actually implement XMPP.
As Dragonslicer eluded to, there are a *LOT* of bugs still in the program as it stands now, and with it taking however long to get a *BETA* version out, I wonder why bother?
and KDE Telepathy reaching its first beta milestone.
Is it an adequate replacement for Pidgin & Kopete yet? And do I have the ability to have it minimize to the systray? Kopete was by far my favorite client but once the improvements and bugfixes stopped I had to jump ship to the (IMHO) inferior Pidgin. The lack of facebook chat did it for me. And since it's taken like 4 years to get to beta with this, I question whether re-inventing the wheel was a good idea.
That's a good point - why the heck isn't there an update script or something on Windows & Macs? I get you don't want to push nightly build but major point releases couldn't hurt. I think my in-laws are still on OO 2.3...
I wouldn't say that.
Has Canonical burned an epic amount of karma with Unity? Absolutely. But now we see the strategy of Canonical and why the (at the time) weird decisions were being made - for moving into the mobile & embedded market.
1) The nasty split with the Gnome community over Gnome3. Due to the Gnome community designing for the desktop and ignoring Canonical's input for the most part. Canonical decides to develop Unity so it can control the development path.
2) Wayland - X has way too much overhead and features for low-power mobile devices. Wayland keeps it nice and light.
3) Close/minimize/maximize debacle - pure usabilty idea. It was thrown out there to play with the code and how far people will accept change.
4) Ubuntu One - iTunes/Amazon fighter.
Being as they are one of (if not the) largest GPL distros on the planet, they know they have a massive built in base they can use for beta testing ideas, Q&A and bug fixing (since the code is all out in the open). That's huge. Add in the rock solid dependability of Linux and they have a winner.
When I first read that I thought it said Caldera. I was thinking, Zombie SCO has risen and joined forces with Oracle? What's next? Voting republican?
Tim Horton's, you have failed me!
+1 Interesting. I don't necessarily agree with all you said, but it is thought provoking. Two points I disagree with:
even if they did unite the whole muslim world against us that's not actually a very credible military force.
1) The problem isn't with the actual military - it's the insurgents that cause the issues. The U.S. invaded Iraq pretty easily, but they dealt with a 10+ year war of attrition which I wouldn't say they won. *NOBODY* would have a hope in hell of occupying all the Arab nations simultaneously.
When was the last time you bought something that said "made in "? Probably never because they have almost no industrial capacity. That means they have no ability to wage a modern war...Oh sure, they can plant IEDs if you let them get close. But if you waged a WW2 type war against them none of that would work.
I think the wars in Afgahnistan & Iraq ARE the modern war. It's not military vs military, it's military vs insurgents. I doubt a WW2 style war could happen again strictly because of the nuclear option being so prevalent and the networked media giving us so much information that large scale mass destruction would turn the tide of opinion pretty quickly.
Like I heard elsewhere on Avatar: I saw it in the 90s - it was called Fern Gully.
What I want is a holodeck & Deanna Troi.
the guitar heroish Shredz64 comes to mind
My first thought: What sadist thought that would be a good idea?!? My second: What does it look like? Answer to both: http://www.toniwestbrook.com/archives/category/development-logs/shredz64
It's a feature!
Sorry, I couldn't resist!
Gladiator
Tombstone
The Shawshank Redemption
Inception
Granted The Dark Knight is the most *RECENT* great movie, but I don't think I've ever kept doing anything else once I spy one of those movies playing.
I would throw in DoubleCAD as well. I use it constantly at work and it's really quite good. It isn't on Mac or Linux though. I'll have to check out Draftsight though!
I think everyone does this to some extent although with my laptop being about 9 years old I try to keep it low on resources as possible. My system has Lubuntu as the baseline, Clementine for music, Picasa via Wine for photo control & editing, Opera for the browser & RSS feed, and Dolphin for the file manager. I used PCmanFM for a time but the split screen is a killer feature for me, even with it requiring Nepomuk for some god only knows reason. My only real complaint is Samba is STILL borked on Lubuntu which eliminates my access to the server.