The fact that someone mentioned complexity associated with command-line actions means the conversation is over. Apple's model for file copy has NOTHING to do with the command-line, switches or flags. That complexity is abstracted from the customer.
rsync is VERY powerful. VERY powerful. In order to glean benefit of that power, you have to be educated about how to use it. Could Apple have defaulted the app to use the "include apple-specific-stuff?" Sure. Should they have? Probably.
Regardless, rsync is HARD and complex for "joe sixpack" and it's not simpler for him to run rsync -e ssh --recursive -l -t -g --compress * joe@destination:dest_dir
than it is to run rsync -e ssh --recursive -l -t -g --compress * joe@destination:dest_dir --includeAppleSpecificStuffHere
Really? Poo! I've got a few macs at home and one is the "kids computer" which I have set up to mount CD images and launch classic to load old games.
I love the idea of keeping all the boxes "the same" and the family pack lets me really do that. I was planning to get Leopard in a few weeks and upgrade all of my machines.
Now that you tell me that classic dies... I guess I'll be keeping a Tiger box around just for that. Wonder why they killed it? How expensive could it have been for them to keep it around? Wonder if we can talk them into considering open sourcing if for a maintainer...
I use fetchmail to slurp a copy of messages from gmail to my machine at home. I use uw-imapd to act as a Mac-OS hosted imap server at the house too, but that's another post.
This way I get to keep a copy of my data under my control and also use gmail from my blackberry.
(Yes, I know that I've sold my privacy to Satan (or Google) by having my email hit their servers forever.)
AbiWord is fast, no doubt about it. I have tried using it on my Mac, and the font rendering is TERRIBLE. The spacing is completely off for multiple typefaces - so much so that the text is practically unreadable. AbiWord - speed? Yes. Usable? No.
*YOU* want to do a good job, and that's a good thing for you and for your employer. Most people simply don't care that much about the work they do - it's a means to an end, not an art.
Have you ever hired a contractor to work on your house or yard?
Would you really agree to terms with them and then not manage their work? If so, I think you'll get lots of experience hiring one after another who does awful work until you find a good one.
Those guys are all contractors, paid by the number of installs completed. They DO NOT CARE about quality or design, just "getting complete" so they can get paid. They will take the shortest, fastest path to the checkbox saying they are done unless you are there to make them do otherwise.
Most people in most jobs are not quality focused, and therefore need to be supervised in order to make sure that the job is well done.
Not paying medical bills yourself decreases a sense of personal responsibility for risk taking activities. Glad the state is taking away your accountability. That will make for a hardy people group up north.
Do you read? My brother in law "played" as you described, and has brain damage! The fact that you didn't sustain a serious injury is fortuitous for you, but I don't think that society should count on luck.
Go ahead and ride your bike with no helmet. I don't care. Here's the deal though. When you blow a tire, hit an obstacle, or fall down and crack your cranium because your head was not protected; don't you DARE be unable to pay EVERY DIME OF YOUR MEDICAL BILLS OUT OF POCKET.
If you screw up your head and need care for the rest of your life, or care that costs more than your brain-damaged body can earn enough money to pay for because you want to protect your right to not wear a helmet, then you damned well be prepared to take responsibility for your own care.
You see, if you can't pay, the hospital system eats the cost, which means I pay.
As long as I have to pay, you can wear the damn helmet thank you very much.
Your rights STOP when they impact my wallet.
The fact that you were lucky as a kid is irrelevant. My brother in law did the same stuff you did as a kid and now as an adult still has brain damage and a metal plate in his head. We should have compelled helmets when I was a kid. I'm glad that they are compelled now.
With the exception of the veterans, I don't see how the examples you give are victims. The waitress at the restaurant can live within her means of income. If she can't, she should move to where her income potential is greater than her expenses. While doing that, she could/should look for opportunities to increase her marketability so that she's able to sustain a better standard of living. It's called "living on cash" "having a roommate (or several)" and "public transportation." She should look into it.
The stock clerks and cashiers are probably making union scale wages, and should also be able to live within their means.
The senior citizen who thinks he/she can get by on social security is living in a fantasy world, and failing to take measures to provide for their own needs during their lifetime was a serious error in judgment. Moreover, where is the family of that person to care for their needs? If they have lived financially irresponsibly and neglected relationships for a lifetime, why should I consider them a victim?
We need to care for our vets. You've got me on that one. However, vets too should work if they are able.
Exploited? For being required to keep the terms of the agreement they signed up for? I understand that the agreement is stacked against them, but they didn't *have* to sign it. If you feel strongly about it, it is *possible* to live without credit cards. Really.
You may not be interested in pursuing this, and I recognize that there are very many "check your brain at the door" religious folks, but I tend to think of myself as someone who uses my intellect as a component of my faith experience.
Would you be willing to share with me a couple of your "fundamental inconsistencies?"
Philosophically, the deck is stacked against conservative views here. Certainly religious folks are ridiculed. Interestingly Ravi Zacharias says that if all you can do is ridicule a major religious system, you simply have not studied it enough. I hold to Christianity, but Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and others have valid points - it's just that they are not fundamentally True.
I could cherry pick some beliefs from any of them and make fun of them, but that would not be intellectually honest of me. Someone reading this post may suggest that I'm not being honest when I suggest that all religious views other than Christianity are untrue. Please understand that I say that respectfully, and it would be hypocrisy for me to say that they are anything but untrue.
Slashdot is as "fair and balanced" as a Michael Moore documentary. At least Slashdot has a vocal minority who are able to add comments, unlike a Moore movie.;)
/. leans left, but I'm proof that a young earth creationist, evangelical Christian can have "excellent" karma on this site, in spite of numerous posts that unequivocally declare that God exists, and it's possible to know him personally. If you're reading this post, don't know who God is, and have questions about what it means to have a personal relationship with God, please email me.:)
The key is balance, and choosing your battles. Many of my postings are focused on technical topics and do not mention my world view.
I've been married almost nine years and have a healthy sex life as evidenced by my five kids.
If you're not having sex post marriage, I don't think that marriage is the root cause. You might want to evaluate what you're doing to make her not interested in you.
I recently had a similar, if lower profile, experience with my employer. Essentially Fortune 1000 companies are scared that something someone says might come across as upsetting to business relationships. As a result, they tend to be overly cautious in their response.
In my case, the corporate communications department was "concerned" that someone might interpret a future action to be offensive. Since the up side to my activities would benefit the department I work for, and the potential down side might negatively impact the corporate image and relationships, it was their opinion that I should cease and desist these activities.
Let me be clear. In my case I was using my work persona, and the project was clearly work related. I used my work email address, and mentioned my employer (in the disclaimer saying that I was representing myself and not my employer.) I had violated no company policies, and nothing that I had said or done actually crossed any lines. It was deemed to be risky, and I was directed to stop.
It troubled me that none of the parties in my situation had actually reviewed the content at all before declaring that the activities needed to stop. They also could not identify a policy which would have prohibited me from taking the action I took. It is what it is. Their stance is that anything in writing (like a blog) is potentially more damaging because it can be forwarded, easily taken out of context, etc. We all walk a fine line, and if we're identified as an agent of the corporation, we need to follow their rules.
I think that the use of the computer and internet connection for a few minutes of upload is irrelevant. Anyone here ever use the PHONE for a personal call? Of course you do. Internet access for personal use is no different.
By the time of IE5 and Netscape 4 Communicator was "aging," it's true that Communicator was less capable and more buggy than IE. By that point, the damage had already been done. Netscape's funding model had been destroyed and without cash, they could not possibly compete *in that marketplace at that time.*
Much has changed since then, and I'm posting this from Firefox 2 today. Let me point out that today's market is not the same market as 1998.
I think that what you've said is true, but it does not paint an accurate picture of why Netscape was falling behind. It seems akin to suggest that a person died of natural causes (when they had been shot by an assailant an hour before) because it's natural to bleed to death when you have that many bullet holes!
Netscape could not fight Microsoft in 1998 because the shooting started in 1996.
The "corporations are evil" meme that permeates/. frustrates me. There's a perception that all employees are "corporate drones" or "wage slaves" and we simply do the evil bidding of the "corporate overlords" who are the moral equivalent of the sith.
My point is that there are legitimate reasons for companies to advertise for a position in a way which seems evil.
As a hiring manager in a Fortune 500 company, I can tell you that your grades are FAR FAR FAR less important than *any* practical work experience you can show me. We check "Did you graduate?" "What area was the degree?" For what it's worth, I've known polysci and English majors who could outcode lots of CS and EE nerds.
Don't get me wrong, EE and CS are great, but some people with degrees in them stink at writing code. Some who can really write code are TERRIBLE to work with because they are convinced that they are smarter than everyone and social skills are unimportant. NOTE - "House" is a TV show. TV is not reality.
Frankly it's important to note that HR is never on your side. HR's job is to make sure that the company complies with the law and that the company will win if ever sued. Interestingly, at my company HR is really not helpful to the hiring manager, either. Frequently my interests in filling a position are at odds with their interests in "following their procedures." Also, this is not uncommon in large firms.
Get REAL work experience. We don't believe you really know much of anything when we hire a recent grad, and we expect that we will have to train you in everything.
Why did you go to college? Because a) it's your entry ticket to the big company HR department, and b) the theory that they taught you will make you MUCH faster at coming up to speed and you'll beat the pants off almost all of those people who never bothered to get a degree.
Don't waste your time. Get the degree, get ANY job that gives you some practical work experience, then apply for a better job 1-2 years later. Finally, who do you know? This is the MOST important thing in getting work. Look for opportunities to build relationships with other professionals. IT is *always* a small world, and after a couple of years experience, your reputation will go a long way into finding your next position.
I work for a big company. We need some specific skills, and can't find them in the marketplace. We had a job posted on Monster, the local major newspaper and the corporate website for MONTHS with no qualified candidates save an H1B candidate.
We hired him, and are sponsoring him for a green card. We have to advertise for the position, and of course we need to make sure that the ad lists qualifications he can prove. We already advertised a position broadly and found NO QUALIFIED CANDIDATES eligible to work in the US. Now we're advertising to the letter of the law. If we found the right citizen or otherwise eligible to work in the US person, we would have hired that person.
Is the law stupid? Perhaps. Is there a dearth of candidates with the skills we need? Yes. What would you have us do?
For what it's worth, we just had someone leave, and are now looking broadly for someone eligible to work in the US. We just launched the "honest job search" process this past week. We'll see if we end up hiring another H1-B.
Many many many times, mediocre is good enough to allow companies to remain significantly profitable, even with poor leadership.
If you consider $3B in profits to be "continuing to fail" then I'd love to see your definition of success!
Perhaps Yahoo is focusing on a market who simply doesn't understand that it *could* be better than Yahoo currently is. No one goes out of business underestimating the lack of intelligence in the population. Lowest common denominator can make lots of money. Perhaps it's their strategy.
Given that there is never any absolutes and no action has any inherent meaning, Gee. That sounds like two absolute statements in a row. Pretty good for a relativist!
To make the statement that there are no absolutes is itself a truth statement.
Your argument is self-refuting. Try again, please.
Uranium, aluminum tubes, WMDs. All lies. All known to be lies at the time the lies were uttered I've merely been an observer up to this point, but I have to ask: Can you say with certainty that President Bush knew at the time that what he was saying was inaccurate? There's a difference between being wrong, and lying. Lying requires intent.
What specific evidence do you have that the President intentionally lied about these matters? Can you show how you know that on X date when Y statement was made, that the President knew what he was saying was untrue, and he said it for the purpose of deceiving the public?
I mean no disrespect when I ask this question: Your appeal for a god with no contradiction implies that there is a standard by which god is judged. Don't you see that this very question is self-referential?
I worship and serve the God who created the universe. I am convinced that when people suggest that He is internally inconsistent that they are taking a simplistic view of God for the purposes of dismissing His relevance. What assumptions do you make when you judge god's moral framework?
WRT science, the fact that there is some evidence of moral behavior seen in creation makes sense to me based on my world view, although I'd expect it to be pretty faintly seen.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that someone mentioned complexity associated with command-line actions means the conversation is over. Apple's model for file copy has NOTHING to do with the command-line, switches or flags. That complexity is abstracted from the customer.
rsync is VERY powerful. VERY powerful. In order to glean benefit of that power, you have to be educated about how to use it. Could Apple have defaulted the app to use the "include apple-specific-stuff?" Sure. Should they have? Probably.
Regardless, rsync is HARD and complex for "joe sixpack" and it's not simpler for him to run
rsync -e ssh --recursive -l -t -g --compress * joe@destination:dest_dir
than it is to run
rsync -e ssh --recursive -l -t -g --compress * joe@destination:dest_dir --includeAppleSpecificStuffHere
It's the same to them - all gibberish.
Classique c'est mort
Really? Poo! I've got a few macs at home and one is the "kids computer" which I have set up to mount CD images and launch classic to load old games.
I love the idea of keeping all the boxes "the same" and the family pack lets me really do that. I was planning to get Leopard in a few weeks and upgrade all of my machines.
Now that you tell me that classic dies... I guess I'll be keeping a Tiger box around just for that. Wonder why they killed it? How expensive could it have been for them to keep it around? Wonder if we can talk them into considering open sourcing if for a maintainer...
I use fetchmail to slurp a copy of messages from gmail to my machine at home. I use uw-imapd to act as a Mac-OS hosted imap server at the house too, but that's another post.
This way I get to keep a copy of my data under my control and also use gmail from my blackberry.
(Yes, I know that I've sold my privacy to Satan (or Google) by having my email hit their servers forever.)
If you can make money off of the $5 idiots, the $50 idiots, and the $7K idiots, you'll get rich!
AbiWord is fast, no doubt about it. I have tried using it on my Mac, and the font rendering is TERRIBLE. The spacing is completely off for multiple typefaces - so much so that the text is practically unreadable. AbiWord - speed? Yes. Usable? No.
*YOU* want to do a good job, and that's a good thing for you and for your employer. Most people simply don't care that much about the work they do - it's a means to an end, not an art.
Have you ever hired a contractor to work on your house or yard?
Would you really agree to terms with them and then not manage their work? If so, I think you'll get lots of experience hiring one after another who does awful work until you find a good one.
Those guys are all contractors, paid by the number of installs completed. They DO NOT CARE about quality or design, just "getting complete" so they can get paid. They will take the shortest, fastest path to the checkbox saying they are done unless you are there to make them do otherwise.
Most people in most jobs are not quality focused, and therefore need to be supervised in order to make sure that the job is well done.
Not paying medical bills yourself decreases a sense of personal responsibility for risk taking activities. Glad the state is taking away your accountability. That will make for a hardy people group up north.
Do you read? My brother in law "played" as you described, and has brain damage! The fact that you didn't sustain a serious injury is fortuitous for you, but I don't think that society should count on luck.
Go ahead and ride your bike with no helmet. I don't care. Here's the deal though. When you blow a tire, hit an obstacle, or fall down and crack your cranium because your head was not protected; don't you DARE be unable to pay EVERY DIME OF YOUR MEDICAL BILLS OUT OF POCKET.
If you screw up your head and need care for the rest of your life, or care that costs more than your brain-damaged body can earn enough money to pay for because you want to protect your right to not wear a helmet, then you damned well be prepared to take responsibility for your own care.
You see, if you can't pay, the hospital system eats the cost, which means I pay.
As long as I have to pay, you can wear the damn helmet thank you very much.
Your rights STOP when they impact my wallet.
The fact that you were lucky as a kid is irrelevant. My brother in law did the same stuff you did as a kid and now as an adult still has brain damage and a metal plate in his head. We should have compelled helmets when I was a kid. I'm glad that they are compelled now.
With the exception of the veterans, I don't see how the examples you give are victims. The waitress at the restaurant can live within her means of income. If she can't, she should move to where her income potential is greater than her expenses. While doing that, she could/should look for opportunities to increase her marketability so that she's able to sustain a better standard of living. It's called "living on cash" "having a roommate (or several)" and "public transportation." She should look into it.
The stock clerks and cashiers are probably making union scale wages, and should also be able to live within their means.
The senior citizen who thinks he/she can get by on social security is living in a fantasy world, and failing to take measures to provide for their own needs during their lifetime was a serious error in judgment. Moreover, where is the family of that person to care for their needs? If they have lived financially irresponsibly and neglected relationships for a lifetime, why should I consider them a victim?
We need to care for our vets. You've got me on that one. However, vets too should work if they are able.
Exploited? For being required to keep the terms of the agreement they signed up for? I understand that the agreement is stacked against them, but they didn't *have* to sign it. If you feel strongly about it, it is *possible* to live without credit cards. Really.
You may not be interested in pursuing this, and I recognize that there are very many "check your brain at the door" religious folks, but I tend to think of myself as someone who uses my intellect as a component of my faith experience.
Would you be willing to share with me a couple of your "fundamental inconsistencies?"
Respectfully,
Anomaly
Philosophically, the deck is stacked against conservative views here. Certainly religious folks are ridiculed. Interestingly Ravi Zacharias says that if all you can do is ridicule a major religious system, you simply have not studied it enough. I hold to Christianity, but Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and others have valid points - it's just that they are not fundamentally True.
;)
I could cherry pick some beliefs from any of them and make fun of them, but that would not be intellectually honest of me. Someone reading this post may suggest that I'm not being honest when I suggest that all religious views other than Christianity are untrue. Please understand that I say that respectfully, and it would be hypocrisy for me to say that they are anything but untrue.
Slashdot is as "fair and balanced" as a Michael Moore documentary. At least Slashdot has a vocal minority who are able to add comments, unlike a Moore movie.
/. leans left, but I'm proof that a young earth creationist, evangelical Christian can have "excellent" karma on this site, in spite of numerous posts that unequivocally declare that God exists, and it's possible to know him personally. If you're reading this post, don't know who God is, and have questions about what it means to have a personal relationship with God, please email me. :)
The key is balance, and choosing your battles. Many of my postings are focused on technical topics and do not mention my world view.
Good one. :)
I've been married almost nine years and have a healthy sex life as evidenced by my five kids.
If you're not having sex post marriage, I don't think that marriage is the root cause. You might want to evaluate what you're doing to make her not interested in you.
I recently had a similar, if lower profile, experience with my employer. Essentially Fortune 1000 companies are scared that something someone says might come across as upsetting to business relationships. As a result, they tend to be overly cautious in their response.
In my case, the corporate communications department was "concerned" that someone might interpret a future action to be offensive. Since the up side to my activities would benefit the department I work for, and the potential down side might negatively impact the corporate image and relationships, it was their opinion that I should cease and desist these activities.
Let me be clear. In my case I was using my work persona, and the project was clearly work related. I used my work email address, and mentioned my employer (in the disclaimer saying that I was representing myself and not my employer.) I had violated no company policies, and nothing that I had said or done actually crossed any lines. It was deemed to be risky, and I was directed to stop.
It troubled me that none of the parties in my situation had actually reviewed the content at all before declaring that the activities needed to stop. They also could not identify a policy which would have prohibited me from taking the action I took. It is what it is. Their stance is that anything in writing (like a blog) is potentially more damaging because it can be forwarded, easily taken out of context, etc. We all walk a fine line, and if we're identified as an agent of the corporation, we need to follow their rules.
I think that the use of the computer and internet connection for a few minutes of upload is irrelevant. Anyone here ever use the PHONE for a personal call? Of course you do. Internet access for personal use is no different.
By the time of IE5 and Netscape 4 Communicator was "aging," it's true that Communicator was less capable and more buggy than IE. By that point, the damage had already been done. Netscape's funding model had been destroyed and without cash, they could not possibly compete *in that marketplace at that time.*
Much has changed since then, and I'm posting this from Firefox 2 today. Let me point out that today's market is not the same market as 1998.
I think that what you've said is true, but it does not paint an accurate picture of why Netscape was falling behind. It seems akin to suggest that a person died of natural causes (when they had been shot by an assailant an hour before) because it's natural to bleed to death when you have that many bullet holes!
Netscape could not fight Microsoft in 1998 because the shooting started in 1996.
I agree with you on that point.
/. frustrates me. There's a perception that all employees are "corporate drones" or "wage slaves" and we simply do the evil bidding of the "corporate overlords" who are the moral equivalent of the sith.
The "corporations are evil" meme that permeates
My point is that there are legitimate reasons for companies to advertise for a position in a way which seems evil.
As a hiring manager in a Fortune 500 company, I can tell you that your grades are FAR FAR FAR less important than *any* practical work experience you can show me. We check "Did you graduate?" "What area was the degree?" For what it's worth, I've known polysci and English majors who could outcode lots of CS and EE nerds.
Don't get me wrong, EE and CS are great, but some people with degrees in them stink at writing code. Some who can really write code are TERRIBLE to work with because they are convinced that they are smarter than everyone and social skills are unimportant. NOTE - "House" is a TV show. TV is not reality.
Frankly it's important to note that HR is never on your side. HR's job is to make sure that the company complies with the law and that the company will win if ever sued. Interestingly, at my company HR is really not helpful to the hiring manager, either. Frequently my interests in filling a position are at odds with their interests in "following their procedures." Also, this is not uncommon in large firms.
Get REAL work experience. We don't believe you really know much of anything when we hire a recent grad, and we expect that we will have to train you in everything.
Why did you go to college? Because
a) it's your entry ticket to the big company HR department, and
b) the theory that they taught you will make you MUCH faster at coming up to speed and you'll beat the pants off almost all of those people who never bothered to get a degree.
Don't waste your time. Get the degree, get ANY job that gives you some practical work experience, then apply for a better job 1-2 years later. Finally, who do you know? This is the MOST important thing in getting work. Look for opportunities to build relationships with other professionals. IT is *always* a small world, and after a couple of years experience, your reputation will go a long way into finding your next position.
I work for a big company. We need some specific skills, and can't find them in the marketplace. We had a job posted on Monster, the local major newspaper and the corporate website for MONTHS with no qualified candidates save an H1B candidate.
We hired him, and are sponsoring him for a green card. We have to advertise for the position, and of course we need to make sure that the ad lists qualifications he can prove. We already advertised a position broadly and found NO QUALIFIED CANDIDATES eligible to work in the US. Now we're advertising to the letter of the law. If we found the right citizen or otherwise eligible to work in the US person, we would have hired that person.
Is the law stupid? Perhaps. Is there a dearth of candidates with the skills we need? Yes. What would you have us do?
For what it's worth, we just had someone leave, and are now looking broadly for someone eligible to work in the US. We just launched the "honest job search" process this past week. We'll see if we end up hiring another H1-B.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
Many many many times, mediocre is good enough to allow companies to remain significantly profitable, even with poor leadership.
If you consider $3B in profits to be "continuing to fail" then I'd love to see your definition of success!
Perhaps Yahoo is focusing on a market who simply doesn't understand that it *could* be better than Yahoo currently is. No one goes out of business underestimating the lack of intelligence in the population. Lowest common denominator can make lots of money. Perhaps it's their strategy.
$6.5B in gross income, $3.7B in gross profit, $37B in market cap?
Oh, that I could be so second rate!
Given that there is never any absolutes and no action has any inherent meaning,
Gee. That sounds like two absolute statements in a row. Pretty good for a relativist!
To make the statement that there are no absolutes is itself a truth statement.
Your argument is self-refuting. Try again, please.
Uranium, aluminum tubes, WMDs. All lies. All known to be lies at the time the lies were uttered
I've merely been an observer up to this point, but I have to ask: Can you say with certainty that President Bush knew at the time that what he was saying was inaccurate? There's a difference between being wrong, and lying. Lying requires intent.
What specific evidence do you have that the President intentionally lied about these matters? Can you show how you know that on X date when Y statement was made, that the President knew what he was saying was untrue, and he said it for the purpose of deceiving the public?
I mean no disrespect when I ask this question: Your appeal for a god with no contradiction implies that there is a standard by which god is judged. Don't you see that this very question is self-referential?
I worship and serve the God who created the universe. I am convinced that when people suggest that He is internally inconsistent that they are taking a simplistic view of God for the purposes of dismissing His relevance. What assumptions do you make when you judge god's moral framework?
WRT science, the fact that there is some evidence of moral behavior seen in creation makes sense to me based on my world view, although I'd expect it to be pretty faintly seen.
Respectfully,
Anomaly