Indeed. Manual transmission is even easier, because you can start to come off the clutch while the brake is still pressed so that by the time you release the brake the car is idling forward enough to not slide backward.
Doesn't hatin' on your own customers kind of put you in a similar moral position as those business owners who catered to the gay community in California but then turned around and voted against their equality? 'We'll take your money, but secretly we think you're pathetic...'
Coincidentally, that sounds a lot like Apple themselves.
"You don't know how to use a computer and wouldn't be able to manage most basic tasks. Here, try this iPad. It's not a computer, it's magical."
All she does is email, browse the web and chat with Skype.
I hope emailing and browsing the web doesn't involve watching anything on Youtube, because she won't be doing that. Nor listening to music, at least not through any Flash-based player.
What's so bad about a Linux-based netbook which is able to do anything she would want it to? Do you think you're going to have problems updating a Linux machine? Does it really need updating? She isn't going to get any PDF or Flash vulnerabilities, because they aren't going to run on the OS. My EeePC came with all of the software necessary to do everything you described, including Skype, and it can do a lot more as well.
Hell, the iPad doesn't have an ethernet port. If she's staying somewhere without wifi, she's not going to be able to do *any* of the things you described.
Seems a little strange that you would consider limiting her to only what she's doing currently as a desirable thing. Actually, now that I say that, that sounds a lot like Apple's model in general. Limit people only to a specific set of activities.
You assume, however, that his target audience included the chronically ignorant.
Are you assuming it didn't? His comment did get modded down, after all, and it was a perfectly cromulent comment. Not only on-topic, but also in line with the common group think, and even accurate. Yet, even now, it's currently marked as flamebait.
So yes, I would say his audience certainly includes the chronically ignorant.
I'm not enough of a sheep to choose my words based on whether some ignorant twit is going to confuse them with other unrelated words. This is what you seem to have a problem with.
I'm just going for clarification in communication. Whenever you use a word that is simply not in common use, regardless of what the word is, you're a less effective communicator than you would have been had you used a word that more people are familiar with. Like I said, that's a basic tenet of good technical writing. Again, this has nothing to do with injustice in the world, this is about communicating clearly. You can insult me all you want, you can imagine I think however you want, but at the end of the day the only thing I'm arguing in favor of is clear communication.
There's nothing ignorant about promoting effective communication. The quality of one's writing improves as you are able to remove words or syllables and not lose any meaning. This:
Microsoft is niggardly
is less effective than this:
Microsoft is stingy
which is less effective than this:
Microsoft is cheap
All three of those mean the exact same thing, but the last one will be the most effective at communicating the message to the most people without causing confusion.
I guess you can see that as "ignorant is cool", but it's a basic tenet of effective technical writing.
Posted logged in, because I'm not scared of being modded down and I'm not going to hide.
Someone who thinks "niggardly" is a racist or racially-motivated term is wrong, that's just a fact
That's correct, it's a fact.
You sir are a spineless coward who cares only about what the crowd is doing, not about what's right or correct. People like you are responsible for most of the injustice in the world.
That's a nice projection, but you're missing the point. You (I assume I'm still talking to the same person who posted originally, but I can't tell because, ironically enough, you are an Anonymous Coward) meant to describe Microsoft as stingy or cheap. You could have used either of those words, but instead you chose a word that, at the very least, you should have known that some people would confuse with a racial slur. You should have known that, but you chose to use that word anyway. You could have gotten your point across better if you had used "cheap" or "stingy", but look what happened: instead of talking about Microsoft or IE, now we're focused on the word you chose to use. Instead of effectively communicating your message, you caused confusion. That was the point I was making, not defending anyone, nothing to do with injustice or all of the problems in the world being my fault, just pointing out that if you were trying to achieve effective communication, you failed miserably.
If you want to say stingy, say stingy. Quite frankly, if you expect to use a word like niggardly, regardless of its etymology, and not be downmodded, then you're the one who's stupid.
Should I go with the best browser (Opera)? How about the most wide-spread browser (IE)? Or should I target the browser most likely to gain the most marketshare (Webkit, aka Chrome and Safari)?
Yes. When your site or application is not working in a given browser, you use that browser's tools to figure out why.
In this case it is two pieces of open-source software meant to run on general computing hardware.
If you're going to describe it in the broadest possible terms, then yeah you can introduce confusion. If you realize that one of them is an operating system, and one of them is essentially a browser plugin, then you can use the context of the discussion to remove ambiguity.
"I used Dragonfly to inspect the DOM and modify some styles."
What do you think that means, do you think that means someone booted into BSD and somehow loaded up a document object and stylesheets into the OS?
"I booted into Dragonfly and uploaded the update."
What do you think that means, do you think that someone is using Opera's debugging tools to boot their computer?
However, including it will mean that Mozilla's rep is now tied to the Chinese government, and should someone misuse the CA key, it will mean that if China starts another offensive on compromising Western systems, the Mozilla foundation is guilty of espionage by proxy.
I'm sorry, but Mozilla trusting any given CA does not make them guilty of a single thing, let alone espionage.
Physical car analogy: A car dealership giving a master key to every vehicle to a group of people who have been noted in the past for car theft.
Yeah, you wouldn't be able to say that the dealership is guilty of theft if the people they gave the key to steal the cars. The people stealing the cars are the ones who are guilty.
Flush out your headgear, new guy. The days of HTML- and CSS- only websites are over. Even though those sites still exist, there's an entirely new category of "websites" online: web applications. The application I've been working on for the last 3 years or so is composed of about 60% Javascript, 30% PHP, 8% CSS, 1% HTML, 1% "other". With the recent push in Javascript engines, I've actually been able to watch the performance of the application improve by a substantial amount through no effort of my own, just because the application uses Javascript for the entire interface and browsers have focused on that aspect.
Nearly all of Google's services other than search are powered by Javascript, from Maps to Mail. Javascript (or any widely-supported client-side scripting language) is here to stay, and frankly it's the future of anything that's going to be online other than your basic informational sites. Even sites which are taking advantage of all of the new features in HTML5 will continue to take advantage of Javascript as well. The difference between IE6/7 and any very recent (< 3 months) browser is staggering.
I'm glad to see Opera catching up again, they're my browser of choice. They were among the fastest of the "first generation" JS engines, but nearly everyone else other than Microsoft pretty much beat Opera to the punch in the next generation of Javascript. It's nice to see them catch up. I hope Microsoft is able to make better strides with IE9, if not before.
Even the fancy but legitimately useful UI toolkits (e.g. YUI, jQuery) are invasive because they are so often served from third party sites (Yahoo or Google) instead of directly from the app site.
You can't say that the libraries are invasive because they're included from third-party applications, the application developers are invasive. My chosen framework (ExtJS in this case) is served from the same domain as the rest of the application, all gzipped and everything.
No, I'm not saying that. Active Directory works fine, it's Microsoft's implementation of the open LDAP standard. The question isn't about Microsoft, it's about Apple, and whether or not Apple makes enough of an effort to make sure that their devices are able to operate on common networks.
But Windows (via the built-in MS-DOS emulator) can.
So why not call it a Windows PC then? Wouldn't that be a little more clear than "IBM PC compatible?" Considering the fact that the IBM PC was discontinued in 1987, and a substantial portion of computer users were not alive while that machine was being produced. Is the ability to run ancient software really the primary thing that distinguishes computers?
Do you really have 25+ year old software you're trying to run on these machines?
How about "Windows PC"? The primary difference is the OS, correct? You have Windows PCs, Apple PCs, and Linux PCs. Each and every one of them is a personal computer. You can also have Windows servers, Apple servers, Linux servers, BSD servers, et al. The hardware is all compatible (generally speaking), the primary difference is the software.
What exactly does it mean to be "IBM PC compatible"? Does that mean you have a computer that is compatible with every personal computer produced by IBM? Does that mean you have a personal computer which is compatible with all other personal computers, and which is also manufactured by IBM? What does it even mean to be "compatible" with a personal computer?
This term had a meaning when your choices were things like IBM, Commodore, Tandy, etc, which were not compatible with each other, but the term is pretty meaningless today.
Yeah, I'm done. I look forward to more random accounts of things that have or have not happened to you.
Are you trying to assert that no update has ever reset the default browser, or just that you haven't installed one that did? If the latter is true, who cares?
but a geek would know enough to google before doing the install to find out how they should do it
Indeed they would, but not necessarily before posting a hypothetical situation to Slashdot, so it may not be necessary to respond to a hypothetical situation with a technical explanation of why it's wrong.
The guy said Windows users are not geeks, I responded with a generic question about dual-boot, and you responded to tell me that my hypothetical approach to dual-booting was wrong. Sorry I didn't research that more before asking the question.
Linux = geek Windows = non-geek Linux + Windows = non-geek Windows + Linux = geek
if you installed your bootloader to the partition instead of the MBR, it's relatively easy to get the windows boot loader to launch GRUB. Of course, that's crazy
Of course it is! Any geek knows that. It's ludicrous!
Ah, so merely touching a Windows product box has the effect of making someone no longer a geek. The line keeps moving farther away..
So if I'm talking to a woman who says she doesn't like geeks, all I have to do in order to prove I'm not is show her the Windows CD in my pocket. Funny how that works.
If one were to download Windows and avoid ever touching an actual CD or any other sort of offending packaging material, would this save their geekdom?
I can tell by your handle that you are also not a geek, just like myself!
This new learning amazes me! Explain again how touching a Windows box transforms the image of oneself in the eyes of the general public.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. Manual transmission is even easier, because you can start to come off the clutch while the brake is still pressed so that by the time you release the brake the car is idling forward enough to not slide backward.
Doesn't hatin' on your own customers kind of put you in a similar moral position as those business owners who catered to the gay community in California but then turned around and voted against their equality? 'We'll take your money, but secretly we think you're pathetic...'
Coincidentally, that sounds a lot like Apple themselves.
"You don't know how to use a computer and wouldn't be able to manage most basic tasks. Here, try this iPad. It's not a computer, it's magical."
All she does is email, browse the web and chat with Skype.
I hope emailing and browsing the web doesn't involve watching anything on Youtube, because she won't be doing that. Nor listening to music, at least not through any Flash-based player.
What's so bad about a Linux-based netbook which is able to do anything she would want it to? Do you think you're going to have problems updating a Linux machine? Does it really need updating? She isn't going to get any PDF or Flash vulnerabilities, because they aren't going to run on the OS. My EeePC came with all of the software necessary to do everything you described, including Skype, and it can do a lot more as well.
Hell, the iPad doesn't have an ethernet port. If she's staying somewhere without wifi, she's not going to be able to do *any* of the things you described.
Seems a little strange that you would consider limiting her to only what she's doing currently as a desirable thing. Actually, now that I say that, that sounds a lot like Apple's model in general. Limit people only to a specific set of activities.
You assume, however, that his target audience included the chronically ignorant.
Are you assuming it didn't? His comment did get modded down, after all, and it was a perfectly cromulent comment. Not only on-topic, but also in line with the common group think, and even accurate. Yet, even now, it's currently marked as flamebait.
So yes, I would say his audience certainly includes the chronically ignorant.
I'm not enough of a sheep to choose my words based on whether some ignorant twit is going to confuse them with other unrelated words. This is what you seem to have a problem with.
I'm just going for clarification in communication. Whenever you use a word that is simply not in common use, regardless of what the word is, you're a less effective communicator than you would have been had you used a word that more people are familiar with. Like I said, that's a basic tenet of good technical writing. Again, this has nothing to do with injustice in the world, this is about communicating clearly. You can insult me all you want, you can imagine I think however you want, but at the end of the day the only thing I'm arguing in favor of is clear communication.
There's nothing ignorant about promoting effective communication. The quality of one's writing improves as you are able to remove words or syllables and not lose any meaning. This:
Microsoft is niggardly
is less effective than this:
Microsoft is stingy
which is less effective than this:
Microsoft is cheap
All three of those mean the exact same thing, but the last one will be the most effective at communicating the message to the most people without causing confusion.
I guess you can see that as "ignorant is cool", but it's a basic tenet of effective technical writing.
Posted logged in, because I'm not scared of being modded down and I'm not going to hide.
Someone who thinks "niggardly" is a racist or racially-motivated term is wrong, that's just a fact
That's correct, it's a fact.
You sir are a spineless coward who cares only about what the crowd is doing, not about what's right or correct. People like you are responsible for most of the injustice in the world.
That's a nice projection, but you're missing the point. You (I assume I'm still talking to the same person who posted originally, but I can't tell because, ironically enough, you are an Anonymous Coward) meant to describe Microsoft as stingy or cheap. You could have used either of those words, but instead you chose a word that, at the very least, you should have known that some people would confuse with a racial slur. You should have known that, but you chose to use that word anyway. You could have gotten your point across better if you had used "cheap" or "stingy", but look what happened: instead of talking about Microsoft or IE, now we're focused on the word you chose to use. Instead of effectively communicating your message, you caused confusion. That was the point I was making, not defending anyone, nothing to do with injustice or all of the problems in the world being my fault, just pointing out that if you were trying to achieve effective communication, you failed miserably.
If you want to say stingy, say stingy. Quite frankly, if you expect to use a word like niggardly, regardless of its etymology, and not be downmodded, then you're the one who's stupid.
Should I go with the best browser (Opera)? How about the most wide-spread browser (IE)? Or should I target the browser most likely to gain the most marketshare (Webkit, aka Chrome and Safari)?
Yes. When your site or application is not working in a given browser, you use that browser's tools to figure out why.
In this case it is two pieces of open-source software meant to run on general computing hardware.
If you're going to describe it in the broadest possible terms, then yeah you can introduce confusion. If you realize that one of them is an operating system, and one of them is essentially a browser plugin, then you can use the context of the discussion to remove ambiguity.
"I used Dragonfly to inspect the DOM and modify some styles."
What do you think that means, do you think that means someone booted into BSD and somehow loaded up a document object and stylesheets into the OS?
"I booted into Dragonfly and uploaded the update."
What do you think that means, do you think that someone is using Opera's debugging tools to boot their computer?
However, including it will mean that Mozilla's rep is now tied to the Chinese government, and should someone misuse the CA key, it will mean that if China starts another offensive on compromising Western systems, the Mozilla foundation is guilty of espionage by proxy.
I'm sorry, but Mozilla trusting any given CA does not make them guilty of a single thing, let alone espionage.
Physical car analogy: A car dealership giving a master key to every vehicle to a group of people who have been noted in the past for car theft.
Yeah, you wouldn't be able to say that the dealership is guilty of theft if the people they gave the key to steal the cars. The people stealing the cars are the ones who are guilty.
Flush out your headgear, new guy. The days of HTML- and CSS- only websites are over. Even though those sites still exist, there's an entirely new category of "websites" online: web applications. The application I've been working on for the last 3 years or so is composed of about 60% Javascript, 30% PHP, 8% CSS, 1% HTML, 1% "other". With the recent push in Javascript engines, I've actually been able to watch the performance of the application improve by a substantial amount through no effort of my own, just because the application uses Javascript for the entire interface and browsers have focused on that aspect.
Nearly all of Google's services other than search are powered by Javascript, from Maps to Mail. Javascript (or any widely-supported client-side scripting language) is here to stay, and frankly it's the future of anything that's going to be online other than your basic informational sites. Even sites which are taking advantage of all of the new features in HTML5 will continue to take advantage of Javascript as well. The difference between IE6/7 and any very recent (< 3 months) browser is staggering.
I'm glad to see Opera catching up again, they're my browser of choice. They were among the fastest of the "first generation" JS engines, but nearly everyone else other than Microsoft pretty much beat Opera to the punch in the next generation of Javascript. It's nice to see them catch up. I hope Microsoft is able to make better strides with IE9, if not before.
Even the fancy but legitimately useful UI toolkits (e.g. YUI, jQuery) are invasive because they are so often served from third party sites (Yahoo or Google) instead of directly from the app site.
You can't say that the libraries are invasive because they're included from third-party applications, the application developers are invasive. My chosen framework (ExtJS in this case) is served from the same domain as the rest of the application, all gzipped and everything.
VBScript is nothing to tout as a positive. Certainly not as a potential replacement for Javascript.
Maybe you should spend more time with IE.
Please don't say that.
No, I'm not saying that. Active Directory works fine, it's Microsoft's implementation of the open LDAP standard. The question isn't about Microsoft, it's about Apple, and whether or not Apple makes enough of an effort to make sure that their devices are able to operate on common networks.
But Windows (via the built-in MS-DOS emulator) can.
So why not call it a Windows PC then? Wouldn't that be a little more clear than "IBM PC compatible?" Considering the fact that the IBM PC was discontinued in 1987, and a substantial portion of computer users were not alive while that machine was being produced. Is the ability to run ancient software really the primary thing that distinguishes computers?
Do you really have 25+ year old software you're trying to run on these machines?
You don't need to answer those, I'm just feeling overly pedantic today.
How about "Windows PC"? The primary difference is the OS, correct? You have Windows PCs, Apple PCs, and Linux PCs. Each and every one of them is a personal computer. You can also have Windows servers, Apple servers, Linux servers, BSD servers, et al. The hardware is all compatible (generally speaking), the primary difference is the software.
What exactly does it mean to be "IBM PC compatible"? Does that mean you have a computer that is compatible with every personal computer produced by IBM? Does that mean you have a personal computer which is compatible with all other personal computers, and which is also manufactured by IBM? What does it even mean to be "compatible" with a personal computer?
This term had a meaning when your choices were things like IBM, Commodore, Tandy, etc, which were not compatible with each other, but the term is pretty meaningless today.
Yeah, I'm done. I look forward to more random accounts of things that have or have not happened to you.
Are you trying to assert that no update has ever reset the default browser, or just that you haven't installed one that did? If the latter is true, who cares?
Good call on the Asperger's, BTW.
IBM PC-compatible
FYI: it's currently 2010.
Which is fine, OS X integrates fairly well into an Active Directory setup with a little tinkering.
If you've already got a Windows server running Active Directory, doesn't it make sense to also have Windows workstations?
but a geek would know enough to google before doing the install to find out how they should do it
Indeed they would, but not necessarily before posting a hypothetical situation to Slashdot, so it may not be necessary to respond to a hypothetical situation with a technical explanation of why it's wrong.
The guy said Windows users are not geeks, I responded with a generic question about dual-boot, and you responded to tell me that my hypothetical approach to dual-booting was wrong. Sorry I didn't research that more before asking the question.
That's a nice story, but that doesn't mean it never happens.
Ah. That makes more sense.
Linux = geek
Windows = non-geek
Linux + Windows = non-geek
Windows + Linux = geek
if you installed your bootloader to the partition instead of the MBR, it's relatively easy to get the windows boot loader to launch GRUB. Of course, that's crazy
Of course it is! Any geek knows that. It's ludicrous!
Ah, so merely touching a Windows product box has the effect of making someone no longer a geek. The line keeps moving farther away..
So if I'm talking to a woman who says she doesn't like geeks, all I have to do in order to prove I'm not is show her the Windows CD in my pocket. Funny how that works.
If one were to download Windows and avoid ever touching an actual CD or any other sort of offending packaging material, would this save their geekdom?
I can tell by your handle that you are also not a geek, just like myself!
This new learning amazes me! Explain again how touching a Windows box transforms the image of oneself in the eyes of the general public.
Well if that is not true, then using XP and being a geek definitely are. No self respecting geek
Ah ha.. so it's only not possible to be a self-respecting geek if you're using XP. Those geeks without self respect are still safe using XP though.
note: all of the machines I program on run Windows XP