Posters on Slashdot are all talk - haven't you realized this? When some corporation does something "evil" everyone jumps all over themselves to come post something witty about boycotting the evil corporations that control the universe. The next day, though, there is usually about something "wonderful" that same company did - like make some sci-fi movie or such that geeks like (disregarding those that feel the need to make themselves feel above it all by saying they don't own a TV but instead read/. at 10pm on a Friday and think they are better than the unwashed masses watching TGIF.)
I can understand it, but these people have invested 1/3 of their weekday lives working for your company. Time they can never get back.
You are really taking a job too seriously. It is not time invested with no pay back: those people were getting paid for that time. Whether they were getting paid enough is an individual concern. Keep in mind that they were on strike, while the company had no money...
No outplacement assistance, nothing. Tossed aside like a used Kleenex.
In your attempt to paint this as the giant evil corporation using people like Kleenex you missed that there will be a seperation package. Getting laid off is not pleasant. Firing someone is not pleasant on the individual level, either. With no way to get in touch with someone because that person is not coming into work how do you prepose the company should have let people know they should start planning for their future instead of chanting with signs in front of the company?
How is this an improvement?! Instead of clicking once, waiting a second, and clicking again to rename a file, I now have to right-click then select something from a pull-down menu! It's a step backwards! It actually seems more intuitive to be clicking on the thing you want to change. What is the next step? Will it be making you click on a file and then press CTRL-Shift-R?!
On one hand we (meaning people that post on/.) praise Linux because of choice and then we praise the Gnome developers for deciding that their way is better?
If it was really a problem, making the required delay between clicks longer would probably solve the issue. That seems more reasonable than just arbitrarily deciding to remove or not implement the feature and call it an improvement.
You need to think about the market for this. Being able to watch TV on a phone - something so small you can hold it in your hand while being smashed from all directions as you commute to work on a train that has ten times more people on it than any American would think reasonable - is USEFUL.
You won't see anything useful in the US for a while, though, so don't worry.
You just have to bang your head against the keyboard a couple of times and I bet you it compiles!;) Never used to be like that when I learnt to program.
Yes, management doesn't like to only hear problems without solutions but, even moreso, they don't want to find out about problems after the fact. Having a couple of solutions would be even better.
If the issue is something that you not only feel is important but seriously needs to be considered and you have already discussed it with your immediate management, then you can bring it up. Mentioning a problem that you have kept secret until now will only look like backstabbing because, in effect, it is since you haven't given your boss a chance to rectify the situation.
Making the whole discussing into a "bitch" session will only turn the upper-management off. No one wants to be bitched at and the negative feelins will make any real issues harder to deal with.
And best of all, ever wonder what happened to the Anthrax Assasin? Yes folks, the Anthrax Assasin, who incidentally killed more innocent Americans than Saddam Hussein, has dissapeared.
Yea, what *did* happen to him?
Completely off-topic, I know, but does anyone have more information about what happened?
What won't happen again? Finding lost episodes or being able to watch them?
If, by chance, something made today is lost and it was stored on some digital medium, the likelihood of it being usable 20, 40, or 50! years from now is very, very unlikely - you're right.
Personal storage and P2P will help, to some extent, but what happens when people get bored of storing these episodes that they never watch? It is much easier to delete things now as well...
IBM suits will calmly pop open their identical briefcases and extract the dental drills, pliers, and electrical probes...
I wonder if some lawyer for IBM reads these posts and passes them around to his buddies. I know I would if it was me! Some how the pro-IBM posts paint IBM lawyers in such a mythical way that it must be enjoyable for them.
Back in high school we had a computer lab using IBM XT compatible boxes, learning COBOL. Having the computer to play with after getting our lessons done was probably the best learning experience I had. Figuring out how to edit the Autoexec.bat file and put semi-scary messages for the next student was a blast...until I went too far.
The message was something along the lines of "The harddrive is going to be wiped in 3 seconds. 1... 2... 3... Wiping harddrive..." And then it would blank for a couple of seconds and wait for a keypress. Obviously the next student freaked out and called the teacher over.
In today's environment I would probably be suspended. Instead, the teach editted the file and put a message about experimention being wonderful but to be careful because we would be held responsible for any damages. Basically getting caught (she knew it was me) but only getting a warning (and the fact that the teacher had the same level of knowledge) was a good learning experience.
I think the problem is partly because teachers today, for the most part, have lost the inquisitive nature and don't know enough to keep up with the students. That makes the teachers afraid: both because they are being outpaced in computer learning and because they can't control or understand what the students are doing.
There are many things in life that people do for a living that others would classify as a waste of time. In your case, the job you need to do is fixing computers so of course it isn't a waste of your time to do it - it is a waste of someone else's time, though, because that isn't their job, or isn't what they want to accomplish. Having to fill up my car is a waste of time. When deciding if something is a waste of time you need to consider what you are trying to do: if filling up your car is an activity you want to get done, all by itself, then you aren't wasting your time. If, on the other hand, you have to fill up your car so that you can accomplish something else (like get somewhere in the car) than the time spent filling the car up was time not spent accomplishing the task at hand, hence wasted time. It may have been necessary, certainly, but that is only because you don't have a car with better gas mileage.
I spent a good few days trying to coax FreeBSD into running UDMA modes on its IDE controllers only to find out its not supported with the controller on the board. That's not 'wasted' time though.
That was wasted time - especially because it wasn't even necessary to actually fix your problem. You may have enjoyed the investigation and troubleshooting, though started getting frustrated near the end, but you were not using the computer at the time or even fixing it - you were wasting time. If what you want to do is needlessly troubleshoot, then it wasn't wastsed time - if what you want to do is write something, edit a picture, create a spreadsheet or actually get the computer running then you did in fact waste two days.
The biggest problem with IT related issues is that, as another poster pointed out, the 5-minute fix is never only 5-minutes of your time. This goes for most things in business that are not directly related to getting your job done. Combine this gross misunderestimate with the fact that the interruptions occur so often and you can have a real problem.
My dad is the V.P. of Civil Space at lockheed martin (this project was under his management), so the family and I got to go and watch the final approach and the turning of the satelite (not that we could see anything other than people at workstations at JPL and Waterton) and see the first images.
Put this in the spectre of being a *wiki* & not simply an http terminal, having multi-gigabyte databases which are being constantly accessed & edited like hail hitting a hot tin roof, backup databases, upload servers, dozens of different language editions, and you may understand why they need big iron.
I guess this sort of put a limit to the amount of expansion, collaboration, and open effort that can be handled without big money support.
I am already on call to fix the computers of my friends and family, my girlfriend, my girlfriend's best friend, my girlfriend's sister,
and my girfriend's sister's girlfriend.
Some service calls are definitely better than others, eh?
Powerpoint, as a presentation software, is not horrible. The problem - which Tufte points out - is that people use the templates to help them put what little information they have into a presentation. Even worse, they may try to fit the good information they have into the minimal amount of space that the slides allow.
The bullet list is a good way to summarize and highlight data. The problem is that people have become used to putting ALL of the data into bullet lists. This leads to arbitrarily cutting statements short, or leaving them out entirely, to fit into the format and space that Powerpoint provides.
This is why Powerpoint makes you dumb.
It also seems to make the people looking at them dumb. I know that I sometimes come out of meetings feeling dumber for the experience.
Tufte is focused very much on data density. I was at the presentation last week and noticed that many people there are webdesigners. The point that Tufte is really trying to make is often lost: that higher density media - like paper! - is better at presenting data than a computer screen or Powerpoint slide.
"Tim says he set up the network because he wants to give Internet access to people who can't afford or access it, especially people living in Third World countries or depressed areas of other countries."
I can't pick up the signal in the East Bay...I doubt that anyone in another country or depressed region of the world (unless you count some parts of SF) will be able to pick it up...Expanding to Marin Co. may not be a good idea - they already have a high enough cancer rate as it is. All we need is some left-coast loon to start blaming Wi-Fi on any perceived increase in cancer rates over the next couple of years and you'll have a lot more government interest than is good for anyone...
Slashdot Mirror
Posters on Slashdot are all talk - haven't you realized this? When some corporation does something "evil" everyone jumps all over themselves to come post something witty about boycotting the evil corporations that control the universe. The next day, though, there is usually about something "wonderful" that same company did - like make some sci-fi movie or such that geeks like (disregarding those that feel the need to make themselves feel above it all by saying they don't own a TV but instead read /. at 10pm on a Friday and think they are better than the unwashed masses watching TGIF.)
You are really taking a job too seriously. It is not time invested with no pay back: those people were getting paid for that time. Whether they were getting paid enough is an individual concern. Keep in mind that they were on strike, while the company had no money...
No outplacement assistance, nothing. Tossed aside like a used Kleenex.
In your attempt to paint this as the giant evil corporation using people like Kleenex you missed that there will be a seperation package. Getting laid off is not pleasant. Firing someone is not pleasant on the individual level, either. With no way to get in touch with someone because that person is not coming into work how do you prepose the company should have let people know they should start planning for their future instead of chanting with signs in front of the company?
Having the TM symbol only means that you consider it your trademark, not that it has been registered. That is the cirle-R is for...
On one hand we (meaning people that post on /.) praise Linux because of choice and then we praise the Gnome developers for deciding that their way is better?
If it was really a problem, making the required delay between clicks longer would probably solve the issue. That seems more reasonable than just arbitrarily deciding to remove or not implement the feature and call it an improvement.
Actually, they cost a lot LESS if you get them in a foreign country.
You won't see anything useful in the US for a while, though, so don't worry.
You must be confusing Python with Perl...
And prepare to not like the responses.
Yes, management doesn't like to only hear problems without solutions but, even moreso, they don't want to find out about problems after the fact. Having a couple of solutions would be even better.
Making the whole discussing into a "bitch" session will only turn the upper-management off. No one wants to be bitched at and the negative feelins will make any real issues harder to deal with.
Yea, what *did* happen to him?
Completely off-topic, I know, but does anyone have more information about what happened?
If, by chance, something made today is lost and it was stored on some digital medium, the likelihood of it being usable 20, 40, or 50! years from now is very, very unlikely - you're right.
Personal storage and P2P will help, to some extent, but what happens when people get bored of storing these episodes that they never watch? It is much easier to delete things now as well...
I wonder if some lawyer for IBM reads these posts and passes them around to his buddies. I know I would if it was me! Some how the pro-IBM posts paint IBM lawyers in such a mythical way that it must be enjoyable for them.
Get a lawyer!
Read here.
Talk to a lawyer.
Do not ask Slashdot.
Do you truly believe that one party is really better or more ethical than the other???
The message was something along the lines of "The harddrive is going to be wiped in 3 seconds. 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... Wiping harddrive..." And then it would blank for a couple of seconds and wait for a keypress. Obviously the next student freaked out and called the teacher over.
In today's environment I would probably be suspended. Instead, the teach editted the file and put a message about experimention being wonderful but to be careful because we would be held responsible for any damages. Basically getting caught (she knew it was me) but only getting a warning (and the fact that the teacher had the same level of knowledge) was a good learning experience.
I think the problem is partly because teachers today, for the most part, have lost the inquisitive nature and don't know enough to keep up with the students. That makes the teachers afraid: both because they are being outpaced in computer learning and because they can't control or understand what the students are doing.
Where are the bad reviews and bugs in TaxCut?
I spent a good few days trying to coax FreeBSD into running UDMA modes on its IDE controllers only to find out its not supported with the controller on the board. That's not 'wasted' time though.
That was wasted time - especially because it wasn't even necessary to actually fix your problem. You may have enjoyed the investigation and troubleshooting, though started getting frustrated near the end, but you were not using the computer at the time or even fixing it - you were wasting time. If what you want to do is needlessly troubleshoot, then it wasn't wastsed time - if what you want to do is write something, edit a picture, create a spreadsheet or actually get the computer running then you did in fact waste two days.
The biggest problem with IT related issues is that, as another poster pointed out, the 5-minute fix is never only 5-minutes of your time. This goes for most things in business that are not directly related to getting your job done. Combine this gross misunderestimate with the fact that the interruptions occur so often and you can have a real problem.
So much for being an Anonymous Coward, eh?
At the current rate of decline, I predict that Forrester will no longer be a company by 2005.
The bullet list is a good way to summarize and highlight data. The problem is that people have become used to putting ALL of the data into bullet lists. This leads to arbitrarily cutting statements short, or leaving them out entirely, to fit into the format and space that Powerpoint provides.
This is why Powerpoint makes you dumb.
It also seems to make the people looking at them dumb. I know that I sometimes come out of meetings feeling dumber for the experience.
Tufte is focused very much on data density. I was at the presentation last week and noticed that many people there are webdesigners. The point that Tufte is really trying to make is often lost: that higher density media - like paper! - is better at presenting data than a computer screen or Powerpoint slide.