I like my current job and I'm very good at it but I don't get paid especially well. Past jobs I've had recently were bad pay, no benefits, no respect, and shitty work conditions. That's with more than a decade of experience and the ability to move across job titles easily and a talent for finding the right people to outsource to so that they are affordable and do a great job.
At my current job I'm practically building a new company for them from scratch on a tiny budget and am close to being a profitable business after only a about three months on this project. At least this company respects me and creates a nice job atmosphere. That's a serious improvement over most tech companies I've worked for in the past few (post dot bomb) years. Within a year I know I'll be making more money since this job is offering me a decent amount of profit sharing on what I create. Still, I can barely afford to live for now and this job pays a lot better than other jobs I've had.
It'd certainly be funny if you had the balls to redo your car in pink and use the Slashdot OMG Ponies logo. I don't think your average male has the sense of humor and the balls of most Slashdot folks though. Being made fun of and treated as social outcasts gives us a certain ability to shrug off our machoist needs.;)
It's definately a role model that other software venders could learn from. For friends and family that I used to have to babysit their browser updates now all I have to do is let Firefox do it's thing. Seems to work well in Thunderbird too. It really does make it a lot easier for non-technical people to keep up-to-date and truth be told it makes it easier for a geek boy like me too.
The only other Windows program I have that seems to work as well is Azureus which is also opensource.
How large a percentage of men drive the new VW Beatles? They're good cars with decent performance and room inside. Find the number of straight men that don't work for Geek Squad that drive them. I can tell from observation that it has to be a really low percentage. I'd be surprised if 10% of them are driven primarily by men. I'd bet most the guys that do use a "It's my wifes." excuse like when they have to carry a purse or buy tampons. I don't know any studies on those either but if you argue that men don't avoid doing those things then you're blind. You're whole argument that branding doesn't matter is bullshit as anyone with any business or marketing experience should know.
I'm not claiming that the Wii has anything wrong with it technically - just that the branding will harm it's adoption.
It's all relative to our own circles of influence. When I was a kid with an Atari the neighbor kid with the NES was a god. When the neighborhood kids all have an XBox 360 or PS3 the kids with a Wii will be treated as lamers.
Then don't bitch when stuff doesn't work for you. If you refuse to let stores send you coupons then don't complain when you never have coupons to use at the check-out.
The only people who can access the information in cookies are people who put it there anyway. The vast majority of them are simply an anoymous key that keeps track of who you are. It's the same as me giving you a number when you walk into my business and then every thing you ask to buy being put in a matched basket until you are ready to checkout. Nothing is disclosed about you because of you using the number I give you that wouldn't be revealed anyway and it makes things a lot simpler than if I have to label a basket with "Male of about 6ft and 180lbs with red hair and freckles wearing a blue tshirt and dorky striped shorts.". Anything else that cookies track can be tracked just as easily using other methods.
So every guy that doesn't want to own a sports car or off-road vehicle.. that leaves maybe 10% of the market? You can deny it if you want but the majority of men suffer from needing to feel macho.
I'd probably still buy one but I can see that a lot of guys wouldn't.
That's a good reason to make notes as you learn something. And as a developer you need to learn to look for things that'll be hard for users. Being experienced shouldn't blind you to things that are broken.
I've been surprised on the cookie issue. I thought nobody would block cookies but then I've had to resolve a number of issues with users who do block cookies. Evidently a few anti-spyware type programs commonly used block cookies by default. A real pain in the ass to figure out to tell the truth. This whole anti-cookie thing drives me nuts since they really are harmless for the most part.
Proxy servers add some issues too. I'm pro-proxy as it does reduce load on servers, speed up the user's experience, etc. It does make tracking harder though and causes some hiccups with dynamic pages sometimes.
My experience is that a lot of users use cookie killing software that removes cookies every time the browser is closed or just reject cookies altogether. Also many users seem to use multiple browsers and computers even within small time periods. Counting unique visitors is really quite difficult. Still, if all site's play by the same rules on counting the number still has some meaning. Unique IP address within a given timeframe is probably a decent metric still.
GIMP at least is an acronymn. GIMP isn't really the name and the name makes total sense in a very dry geeky way.
GNU doesn't make as much sense but to be fair it was never really meant as a mass market consumer term. I'll agree with you about GNU/Linux though. I'll always call it just Linux.
Could be, but I don't see the name Wii as especially attractive to any market (at least not English speaking) and it's repulsive to most their existing market. It just seems to be a huge risk they didn't need to take. If they did want to take this risk then I think they could have found a name better than Wii to take it with. I can't think of any successful products with a name anything like Wii. Even something like WiiPlay would have been better I think as at least then it'd convey some meaning to the buyer.
Most men, of any age above about 12, will not want to buy a console called Wii regardless to it's games and especially when the PS3 and XBox 360 are so much more powerful. Nintendo seems to be gambling that children and women will be a better market. Possibly this is true but it's still a gamble and the name could still be a disaster in those markets too as it's not especially a cute or female name either.
People know the name but their primary market won't want to own one because of the name. Not good. It'd be as if Ford renamed the Mustang to the Oh My Gawd it's Ponies car. People would comment on the name but 99% of the market wouldn't buy it with that name printed on the side.
The whole point is that from a PR point of view Revolution was a name that made a statement and sounded cool. Wii does neither of these things. It's a stupid name that will drive away many gamers from even considering buying one. Given Wii's less than stellar power it's primary chance for excitement was in the revolution of the new controller and game interactions. How many people are going to rush out and buy an underpowered system named Wii? It sounds like a kids toy. What are they trying to compete with? VTech's Smile consoles for little kids? Unless that's really the market they are trying for the name Wii is a marketing tragedy. Teenage boys aren't going to want a Wii.
This guys argument is why America doesn't work. Everyone wants freedom without having any responsibilities. People seem not to understand that the payment required for freedom is higher responsibility. When you no longer live with mama you have to make sure your bills get paid, do your own laundry, get your ass out of bed in the morning, etc - there is no longer somebody there making sure all this happens. That's just the way freedom works.
People are free to have easier to use FOSS software - all they have to do is learn how the software works and either submit patches that make it easier to use, write their own version that is easier to use, or write a frontend that makes it easier to use. Everyone has that freedom. If they don't want to take advantage of it then it's their own problem. That's where their rights and responsibilities meet.
Leaving behind the whole freedom issue though I'll agree that FOSS could often be easier. Sometimes it is well designed and well documented but to often it's something thrown together without concern and with either sucky or non-existing documentation. It's frustrating, even for advanced users, when your trying to use something and you're expected to read, and sometimes fix, the source code to figure things out. For programs that are out of beta and in use by thousands or millions of people that isn't a good situation.
To bad Michelle Meyrink didn't do more great movies like Revenge of the Nerds and Real Genius. Mmmmm mmmm geek girl sex appeal. I wanted her sooooo bad. If only she'd been a nude geek girl.
I didn't see Stealth but I saw the new War of the Worlds. If that steaming pile of crap was better than Stealth then I think Hollywood should just give up and leave the movies to Matt & Trey. At least the Southpark episode where Tom Cruise locked himself in the closest was funny. Southpark is the only good show I've seen Tom Cruise in in a long time.
You must not have seen the recent War of the World's remake. At least Independence Day wasn't that bad. I'd pick it as my choice of War of the World's remake anyday.
My gf used to work at Kinkos and would go nuts because people would bring in grainy low res scans of black and white faxes and wonder why she couldn't clear it up, zoom in, and add the color back. It's amazing that people really think you can do all the stuff you see on tv.
Google doesn't own Firefox. If MSN could influence the Firefox developers by funding the Firefox project, being nice to them in general, etc then maybe MSN would be one of the default options. Having the IE team playing nicer with the FF team is a good start. Trying for a standards IE would help too. It sure wouldn't hurt for Microsoft to donate some money, hire some Firefox developers, or even cut a deal with the FF team similar to what Google did where FF gets paid when users do a MSN search from the search box.
I knew one of the people doing the FF extension that added gesture support but I never really cared for it much. It's not so much a bad concept IMO as the mice we use are to bulky and unsuited for that sort of motion. Hand tracking or even something like a pen device would make gestures much more practical I think.
Being able to un-close stuff isn't a bad idea although actual UI for the feature seems to bloated for my tastes. A simple CTRL-Z would be good.
Possibly, it still seems like I'm encounting both more and more in normal searches. Since Google's terms of use for AdSense specify that pages can not be used primarily for providing these links I think they should start shutting down the companies doing this. Some of the biggest offenders are domain registars. Maybe Google should pull GoDaddy's account for example. Prove that they, Google, aren't part of this spammy plot by doing the right thing. Don't be evil. It shouldn't be hard to determine if most of these sites are squatters because they have almost no content on their sites other than links. By eliminating them it will at least force these companies to add some sort of content to keep making their money.
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I like my current job and I'm very good at it but I don't get paid especially well. Past jobs I've had recently were bad pay, no benefits, no respect, and shitty work conditions. That's with more than a decade of experience and the ability to move across job titles easily and a talent for finding the right people to outsource to so that they are affordable and do a great job.
At my current job I'm practically building a new company for them from scratch on a tiny budget and am close to being a profitable business after only a about three months on this project. At least this company respects me and creates a nice job atmosphere. That's a serious improvement over most tech companies I've worked for in the past few (post dot bomb) years. Within a year I know I'll be making more money since this job is offering me a decent amount of profit sharing on what I create. Still, I can barely afford to live for now and this job pays a lot better than other jobs I've had.
Don't include your real name?
It'd certainly be funny if you had the balls to redo your car in pink and use the Slashdot OMG Ponies logo. I don't think your average male has the sense of humor and the balls of most Slashdot folks though. Being made fun of and treated as social outcasts gives us a certain ability to shrug off our machoist needs. ;)
It's definately a role model that other software venders could learn from. For friends and family that I used to have to babysit their browser updates now all I have to do is let Firefox do it's thing. Seems to work well in Thunderbird too. It really does make it a lot easier for non-technical people to keep up-to-date and truth be told it makes it easier for a geek boy like me too.
The only other Windows program I have that seems to work as well is Azureus which is also opensource.
How large a percentage of men drive the new VW Beatles? They're good cars with decent performance and room inside. Find the number of straight men that don't work for Geek Squad that drive them. I can tell from observation that it has to be a really low percentage. I'd be surprised if 10% of them are driven primarily by men. I'd bet most the guys that do use a "It's my wifes." excuse like when they have to carry a purse or buy tampons. I don't know any studies on those either but if you argue that men don't avoid doing those things then you're blind. You're whole argument that branding doesn't matter is bullshit as anyone with any business or marketing experience should know.
I'm not claiming that the Wii has anything wrong with it technically - just that the branding will harm it's adoption.
It's all relative to our own circles of influence. When I was a kid with an Atari the neighbor kid with the NES was a god. When the neighborhood kids all have an XBox 360 or PS3 the kids with a Wii will be treated as lamers.
Then don't bitch when stuff doesn't work for you. If you refuse to let stores send you coupons then don't complain when you never have coupons to use at the check-out.
The only people who can access the information in cookies are people who put it there anyway. The vast majority of them are simply an anoymous key that keeps track of who you are. It's the same as me giving you a number when you walk into my business and then every thing you ask to buy being put in a matched basket until you are ready to checkout. Nothing is disclosed about you because of you using the number I give you that wouldn't be revealed anyway and it makes things a lot simpler than if I have to label a basket with "Male of about 6ft and 180lbs with red hair and freckles wearing a blue tshirt and dorky striped shorts.". Anything else that cookies track can be tracked just as easily using other methods.
So every guy that doesn't want to own a sports car or off-road vehicle.. that leaves maybe 10% of the market? You can deny it if you want but the majority of men suffer from needing to feel macho.
I'd probably still buy one but I can see that a lot of guys wouldn't.
That's a good reason to make notes as you learn something. And as a developer you need to learn to look for things that'll be hard for users. Being experienced shouldn't blind you to things that are broken.
I've been surprised on the cookie issue. I thought nobody would block cookies but then I've had to resolve a number of issues with users who do block cookies. Evidently a few anti-spyware type programs commonly used block cookies by default. A real pain in the ass to figure out to tell the truth. This whole anti-cookie thing drives me nuts since they really are harmless for the most part.
Proxy servers add some issues too. I'm pro-proxy as it does reduce load on servers, speed up the user's experience, etc. It does make tracking harder though and causes some hiccups with dynamic pages sometimes.
My experience is that a lot of users use cookie killing software that removes cookies every time the browser is closed or just reject cookies altogether. Also many users seem to use multiple browsers and computers even within small time periods. Counting unique visitors is really quite difficult. Still, if all site's play by the same rules on counting the number still has some meaning. Unique IP address within a given timeframe is probably a decent metric still.
GIMP at least is an acronymn. GIMP isn't really the name and the name makes total sense in a very dry geeky way.
GNU doesn't make as much sense but to be fair it was never really meant as a mass market consumer term. I'll agree with you about GNU/Linux though. I'll always call it just Linux.
Could be, but I don't see the name Wii as especially attractive to any market (at least not English speaking) and it's repulsive to most their existing market. It just seems to be a huge risk they didn't need to take. If they did want to take this risk then I think they could have found a name better than Wii to take it with. I can't think of any successful products with a name anything like Wii. Even something like WiiPlay would have been better I think as at least then it'd convey some meaning to the buyer.
Most men, of any age above about 12, will not want to buy a console called Wii regardless to it's games and especially when the PS3 and XBox 360 are so much more powerful. Nintendo seems to be gambling that children and women will be a better market. Possibly this is true but it's still a gamble and the name could still be a disaster in those markets too as it's not especially a cute or female name either.
People know the name but their primary market won't want to own one because of the name. Not good. It'd be as if Ford renamed the Mustang to the Oh My Gawd it's Ponies car. People would comment on the name but 99% of the market wouldn't buy it with that name printed on the side.
The whole point is that from a PR point of view Revolution was a name that made a statement and sounded cool. Wii does neither of these things. It's a stupid name that will drive away many gamers from even considering buying one. Given Wii's less than stellar power it's primary chance for excitement was in the revolution of the new controller and game interactions. How many people are going to rush out and buy an underpowered system named Wii? It sounds like a kids toy. What are they trying to compete with? VTech's Smile consoles for little kids? Unless that's really the market they are trying for the name Wii is a marketing tragedy. Teenage boys aren't going to want a Wii.
This guys argument is why America doesn't work. Everyone wants freedom without having any responsibilities. People seem not to understand that the payment required for freedom is higher responsibility. When you no longer live with mama you have to make sure your bills get paid, do your own laundry, get your ass out of bed in the morning, etc - there is no longer somebody there making sure all this happens. That's just the way freedom works.
People are free to have easier to use FOSS software - all they have to do is learn how the software works and either submit patches that make it easier to use, write their own version that is easier to use, or write a frontend that makes it easier to use. Everyone has that freedom. If they don't want to take advantage of it then it's their own problem. That's where their rights and responsibilities meet.
Leaving behind the whole freedom issue though I'll agree that FOSS could often be easier. Sometimes it is well designed and well documented but to often it's something thrown together without concern and with either sucky or non-existing documentation. It's frustrating, even for advanced users, when your trying to use something and you're expected to read, and sometimes fix, the source code to figure things out. For programs that are out of beta and in use by thousands or millions of people that isn't a good situation.
To bad Michelle Meyrink didn't do more great movies like Revenge of the Nerds and Real Genius. Mmmmm mmmm geek girl sex appeal. I wanted her sooooo bad. If only she'd been a nude geek girl.
I didn't see Stealth but I saw the new War of the Worlds. If that steaming pile of crap was better than Stealth then I think Hollywood should just give up and leave the movies to Matt & Trey. At least the Southpark episode where Tom Cruise locked himself in the closest was funny. Southpark is the only good show I've seen Tom Cruise in in a long time.
You must not have seen the recent War of the World's remake. At least Independence Day wasn't that bad. I'd pick it as my choice of War of the World's remake anyday.
My gf used to work at Kinkos and would go nuts because people would bring in grainy low res scans of black and white faxes and wonder why she couldn't clear it up, zoom in, and add the color back. It's amazing that people really think you can do all the stuff you see on tv.
Google doesn't own Firefox. If MSN could influence the Firefox developers by funding the Firefox project, being nice to them in general, etc then maybe MSN would be one of the default options. Having the IE team playing nicer with the FF team is a good start. Trying for a standards IE would help too. It sure wouldn't hurt for Microsoft to donate some money, hire some Firefox developers, or even cut a deal with the FF team similar to what Google did where FF gets paid when users do a MSN search from the search box.
I knew one of the people doing the FF extension that added gesture support but I never really cared for it much. It's not so much a bad concept IMO as the mice we use are to bulky and unsuited for that sort of motion. Hand tracking or even something like a pen device would make gestures much more practical I think.
Being able to un-close stuff isn't a bad idea although actual UI for the feature seems to bloated for my tastes. A simple CTRL-Z would be good.
Good to know. I don't use Opera enough to have been aware of that.
Possibly, it still seems like I'm encounting both more and more in normal searches. Since Google's terms of use for AdSense specify that pages can not be used primarily for providing these links I think they should start shutting down the companies doing this. Some of the biggest offenders are domain registars. Maybe Google should pull GoDaddy's account for example. Prove that they, Google, aren't part of this spammy plot by doing the right thing. Don't be evil. It shouldn't be hard to determine if most of these sites are squatters because they have almost no content on their sites other than links. By eliminating them it will at least force these companies to add some sort of content to keep making their money.