What I tell everyone is my mother's maiden name isn't her maiden name. I figured out 20 years ago that wouldn't be difficult to track down, so I fictionalized her name.
Well, basically the trash stands as a catch-all for "get rid of" and has since the first Mac OS.
Well, kind of.
The drag to the trash was a shortcut for people that knew and never mentioned by Apple. File->Eject was the official way. (why it took someone a few days to find File->Eject is beyond me).
Anyway, Apple tried to kill the behavior in System 7, but testers had grown so accustomed to the behavior that Apple couldn't kill it. They had improved upon the 'Eject' idea with File->Put Away, that would not only eject, but unmount file servers (you don't eject them either) and would take files that you moved to the desktop and return them to where they came from - yes, it tracked all of them.
Turns out nobody used it, apparently except for me.
OS X comes around and AGAIN Apple can't kill it, so at least decides to turn the trashcan into an eject icon. These days, I never see anyone do that anymore - the sidebar inserts an eject/burn/etc. icon next to the volume label which is, well, just terrible useful.
Another analogy: Computer Science:software engineering::Physics:civil engineering
The problem is that software engineering is such an embryonic field right now - there are effectively no widely recognized standards of practice, no standardized testing, etc. for it to come to the same level as most other engineering disciplines.
The coders aren't doing much to change this, nor are the true computer scientists. Ultimately, CS will have to contract to a more self-contracted science, coding will revert to a trade, and software engineering will somehow emerge in the middle.
It's not MS/Oracle/etc. that need software engineering, nor are they driving it. It's coming out of Boeing and other large traditional engineering firms dealing more and more with code that DO take responsibility for their work (that's one of the first tenets of a professional engineer) and have no comfortable way now of determining if the work of their individual engineers is good or not.
Bottom line, from the perspective of a professional engineering firm, MS and all other software firms that follow their model of deniability of responsibility are absolute train-wrecks. At some point, a MS buffer overflow or some other dipshit problem will cause a major direct and obvious financial or human life crisis and the Congressional hearings will begin. Software engineering as a widely recognized discipline will be the result.
Where do you get your news from? Why do you cite M$'s apparent install base of linux, one based on Linux desktop *sales*. Go read Gartner or Netcraft, the install base of desktop Linux is close to exceeding the Mac - do you see Apple desktops rolled out be the hundreds-of-thousands in Government departments and offices? No and likely you never will. And anyway that's not the point. An argument for giving back to the Unix community, from which they derive so much development capital, should not be justified by popularity alone.
But you failed to raise the real counterargument of why Apple doesn't port iTunes: "hundreds-of-thousands in Government departments and offices". iTunes is a consumer product and linux isn't, which is why cellphones are getting iTunes rather than those government employees.
Seriously, Apple's always been blamed for being elitist for having a semi-closed architecture and many PC partisans took them to task for it. Now some PC manufacturers are starting to do the same
And yet the Mac will accept any 'ol mini-PCI 802.11b/g card that you have drivers for. Who's more open now?
"Aboriginal tribesmen somehow sensed the impending danger of December's tsunami in time to flee to higher ground before the first sign of water."
Uh, what about the big fucking earthquake as the sign? These tribesmen were relatively close to the epicenter and a 9.0 would have certainly gotten their attention. Their generational history would have at least two other major tsunamis stemming from major earthquakes within the last hundred and fifty years.
I live 4 miles from the ocean on a fault line, my first thoughts after a big earthquake are: gas line, water line, structural damage, tsunami. I don't consider it a sixth sense to move away from the shore after an earthquake provided that earthquake=tsunami is somewhere in your knowledge base.
Ah, so MS gets to vote now, eh? Sorry, but a representative democracy is one where the officials serve the interests of those that elect them. MS or any other company isn't part of that equation.
Lobbying is a means to influence the perception of representation. Don't listen to the voters, listen to me - I employ the voters, I service the voters, etc. and can serve as a proxy for them. It's the suggestion that representatives should act in MSs interests because MSs interests are to some degree the interests of those that MS employs, or are the interests of the community at large because the money that MS brings to the economy provides benefits to the community that the govt. does not need to provide.
Unfortunately, the trend in representative governance is to place significant emphasis on the economic role of government, which companies do play a part in, over all the other roles of government, such as national security, civil rights, individual liberty, and so on. Of course, that's really what corporate lobbyists do - make sure the economic message is the strongest one in any any public debate.
Unfortunately, taxing by mile does not take into acount that some vehicles inherently put more wear on the road than others. It'd be quite unfair to assign the same road maintenance cost/mile to a user of a Honda Nighthawk or Geo Metro as a Ford Super Duty.
I don't know if they still do, but NY used to tax you based on either your vehicle weight or the number of axles for precisely these reasons. I think registration was based on weight but tolls based on axles - something like that.
It's not as though they weighed your car, they just looked at the curb weight and used that. Axels were used quite a while ago - certainly before things like wireless toll paying and even before tokens were introduced on many of the bridges (70s).
"The corporation doesn't have a natural right to make a profit"
No, but it does have an obligation by definition to do so. If moving those 800 out of of Denmark made MS more profitable, Gates would have an valid justification for doing it. He doesn't have to, of course.
If there's anything unethical about this, its that the patent situation and those 800 jobs have nothing to do with each other and Gates justification for termination the 800 jobs appears to have nothing to do with the profitability or operation of MS. It appears totally arbitrary (it may not be, he may have decided to close down that unit months ago and is offering to reverse a decision he already made, we'll never know).
But corporations are also taxpayers by definition.
In the end, what MS is doing is unpleasant and well beneath a company as successful as them, but they aren't doing anything wrong. I would expect anyone taking a job with MS or Apple or any company willing to constantly and strongly push the edges of their envelope to be aware that their job is far from secure.
3 years ago I patented a method for generating photographer revenue by erecting large amorphous reflective works of art in public places. I figured sooner or later someone would violate it.
Now if only my related patent for generating contractor revenue through the temporary construction of a series of orange fabric covered archways in a public park would be violated...
Am I the only one wondering how a state-guaranteed ID card used for authentication will provide more _privacy_???
Well, the NSA uses an assload of authentication to ensure privacy.
You're equating privacy to anonymity, which are different things. The ID card prevents anonymity but could help or hinder privacy, depending on it's use.
Of course, there needs to be a expression of trust that the authentication won't be used for other purposes which would lead to less privacy.
Problem is that MS, like the govt., assumes everyone trusts them when in fact few do - but they don't understand that. Good application for a free market - authenticate through who you trust to not abuse your ID. Lots of insfrastructure there though.
If they had cross-bar latch-based systems they wouldn't be have been using transistors in the first place.
Geez, nobody can think through a problem logically around here.
The Klingon UFO had the transistors. The Vulcan UFO had the cross-bar latch. They collided inside Earths gravity well and both crashed in the southwest US 50 years ago. We just couldn't figure out the more advanced Vulcan tech.
Hmm. I just use firewire for that. Set up a TCP over Firewire network set and go. FW 800 is pretty much just as fast as the gigabit and I tend to find FW cables more readily than ethernet these days.
The analogy is not putting *one* more key on the keyboard, but 105 more keys on the keyboard.
The difference between the keyboard and mouse is important in another way - keyboard buttons are labeled, mouse ones are not and the way we reference mouse buttons and actions stems from a one-button mouse world.
Had we started with 2 button mice, you'd say double-left click, or double-select click. Instead of right-click you'd probably say menu-click or context-click. Writing 'select' and 'context menu' on the ends of the mouse buttons wouldn't have been a bad idea either.
The unfortunate truth is that a lot of new users cannot type without looking at the keyboard - they have very little kinesthetic sense for that kind of action (vs opposable thumb actions which everybody does constantly). Watch a struggling user follow verbal left-click vs. right-click instructions and they have to *look* at the mouse a lot. If you have to *look* at a two button mouse, you're one button in too deep.
Keynote 1 had this and did it quite well (better than PowerPoint X and about on par with 2004).
Keynote 1 had this, v.x did not. Powerpoint 2004s was better than Keynote 1s, and Keynote 2s looks about the same or slightly better.
I have yet to come across a feature powerpoint had that keynote 1 didn't.
Like timed presentations? Sorry, but I love Keynote and use it exclusively, but it's feature set hardly overlaps that of Powerpoint's fully. Yes, Keynote offers a lot more in areas, but less in others.
Oh, and the engineering school there has a pretty good reputation, too. And the CS department, even though I think it's too theoretically oriented.
Yes, they do have a good engineering school, and CS isn't too theoretical there. It's Computer SCIENCE. It's supposed to be theoretical. If you want it to be applied, it'd called Computer ENGINEERING.
Unfortunately the go-go 90's substantially screwed most computer science/engineering/systems programs as it turned into a land-grab for dollars from.coms.
"Smart people are smart, but hard working people get the job done."
Actually, you need both. The breakthrough algorithm is likely to be relatively small but not obvious. You need smarts for that. Turning that into code that doesn't suck can be done with hard work, and fewer smarts.
It depends a great deal on the business. My staff don't need to be brilliant, but they need to work as a team, be even mannered, and work hard. If they get stuck, we have person they can go to for sorting out the difficult problems. Google does a lot of R&D and those areas are almost nothing but sorting out difficult problems - gotta have the grey matter for that stuff.
I agree that interviewing 16 times is stupid. I do 2 interviews, 3 on occasion if it's a tough decision. Generally I can find the right candidate spending no more than 45 minutes with them, provided I did my fact checking beforehand. All my questions center around decision making - how would you solve this problem - handle this situation. They're open-ended with no obviously correct answer. Interviewees don't like the process but 90% of most information based jobs is decision making on some level. You quickly ferret out they good and bad traits with the right questions. You can find those that refuse to seek help, are lazy, are unethical, are suck-ups, etc.
If you need 16 interviews to find someone then you're either being too picky, or you don't know what the hell you're doing.
Slashdot Mirror
I typically drive faster than the speed of sound and nobody seems to mind. At least, I haven't heard anyone honk or complain...
Hey, it worked for USB...
No you can't.
What I tell everyone is my mother's maiden name isn't her maiden name. I figured out 20 years ago that wouldn't be difficult to track down, so I fictionalized her name.
It's not as though anybody checks.
Well, basically the trash stands as a catch-all for "get rid of" and has since the first Mac OS.
Well, kind of.
The drag to the trash was a shortcut for people that knew and never mentioned by Apple. File->Eject was the official way. (why it took someone a few days to find File->Eject is beyond me).
Anyway, Apple tried to kill the behavior in System 7, but testers had grown so accustomed to the behavior that Apple couldn't kill it. They had improved upon the 'Eject' idea with File->Put Away, that would not only eject, but unmount file servers (you don't eject them either) and would take files that you moved to the desktop and return them to where they came from - yes, it tracked all of them.
Turns out nobody used it, apparently except for me.
OS X comes around and AGAIN Apple can't kill it, so at least decides to turn the trashcan into an eject icon. These days, I never see anyone do that anymore - the sidebar inserts an eject/burn/etc. icon next to the volume label which is, well, just terrible useful.
Actually there is a such thing as software engineering with a precise legal definition currently recognized by Texas.
The problem is that the term is terribly misused. The first comment I read here involved endless coffee and coding - that's not software engineering.
Analogy:
Software engineering:coding::Civil engineering:plumbing
Another analogy:
Computer Science:software engineering::Physics:civil engineering
The problem is that software engineering is such an embryonic field right now - there are effectively no widely recognized standards of practice, no standardized testing, etc. for it to come to the same level as most other engineering disciplines.
The coders aren't doing much to change this, nor are the true computer scientists. Ultimately, CS will have to contract to a more self-contracted science, coding will revert to a trade, and software engineering will somehow emerge in the middle.
It's not MS/Oracle/etc. that need software engineering, nor are they driving it. It's coming out of Boeing and other large traditional engineering firms dealing more and more with code that DO take responsibility for their work (that's one of the first tenets of a professional engineer) and have no comfortable way now of determining if the work of their individual engineers is good or not.
Bottom line, from the perspective of a professional engineering firm, MS and all other software firms that follow their model of deniability of responsibility are absolute train-wrecks. At some point, a MS buffer overflow or some other dipshit problem will cause a major direct and obvious financial or human life crisis and the Congressional hearings will begin. Software engineering as a widely recognized discipline will be the result.
Where do you get your news from? Why do you cite M$'s apparent install base of linux, one based on Linux desktop *sales*. Go read Gartner or Netcraft, the install base of desktop Linux is close to exceeding the Mac - do you see Apple desktops rolled out be the hundreds-of-thousands in Government departments and offices? No and likely you never will. And anyway that's not the point. An argument for giving back to the Unix community, from which they derive so much development capital, should not be justified by popularity alone.
But you failed to raise the real counterargument of why Apple doesn't port iTunes: "hundreds-of-thousands in Government departments and offices". iTunes is a consumer product and linux isn't, which is why cellphones are getting iTunes rather than those government employees.
I think the lesson here is that if your duck dies and you buy a dog to replace it, you're an idiot to blame the dog if it won't quack.
Seriously, Apple's always been blamed for being elitist for having a semi-closed architecture and many PC partisans took them to task for it. Now some PC manufacturers are starting to do the same
And yet the Mac will accept any 'ol mini-PCI 802.11b/g card that you have drivers for. Who's more open now?
"Aboriginal tribesmen somehow sensed the impending danger of December's tsunami in time to flee to higher ground before the first sign of water."
Uh, what about the big fucking earthquake as the sign? These tribesmen were relatively close to the epicenter and a 9.0 would have certainly gotten their attention. Their generational history would have at least two other major tsunamis stemming from major earthquakes within the last hundred and fifty years.
I live 4 miles from the ocean on a fault line, my first thoughts after a big earthquake are: gas line, water line, structural damage, tsunami. I don't consider it a sixth sense to move away from the shore after an earthquake provided that earthquake=tsunami is somewhere in your knowledge base.
It's called "representative democracy."
Ah, so MS gets to vote now, eh? Sorry, but a representative democracy is one where the officials serve the interests of those that elect them. MS or any other company isn't part of that equation.
Lobbying is a means to influence the perception of representation. Don't listen to the voters, listen to me - I employ the voters, I service the voters, etc. and can serve as a proxy for them. It's the suggestion that representatives should act in MSs interests because MSs interests are to some degree the interests of those that MS employs, or are the interests of the community at large because the money that MS brings to the economy provides benefits to the community that the govt. does not need to provide.
Unfortunately, the trend in representative governance is to place significant emphasis on the economic role of government, which companies do play a part in, over all the other roles of government, such as national security, civil rights, individual liberty, and so on. Of course, that's really what corporate lobbyists do - make sure the economic message is the strongest one in any any public debate.
Unfortunately, taxing by mile does not take into acount that some vehicles inherently put more wear on the road than others. It'd be quite unfair to assign the same road maintenance cost/mile to a user of a Honda Nighthawk or Geo Metro as a Ford Super Duty.
I don't know if they still do, but NY used to tax you based on either your vehicle weight or the number of axles for precisely these reasons. I think registration was based on weight but tolls based on axles - something like that.
It's not as though they weighed your car, they just looked at the curb weight and used that. Axels were used quite a while ago - certainly before things like wireless toll paying and even before tokens were introduced on many of the bridges (70s).
"The corporation doesn't have a natural right to make a profit"
No, but it does have an obligation by definition to do so. If moving those 800 out of of Denmark made MS more profitable, Gates would have an valid justification for doing it. He doesn't have to, of course.
If there's anything unethical about this, its that the patent situation and those 800 jobs have nothing to do with each other and Gates justification for termination the 800 jobs appears to have nothing to do with the profitability or operation of MS. It appears totally arbitrary (it may not be, he may have decided to close down that unit months ago and is offering to reverse a decision he already made, we'll never know).
But corporations are also taxpayers by definition.
In the end, what MS is doing is unpleasant and well beneath a company as successful as them, but they aren't doing anything wrong. I would expect anyone taking a job with MS or Apple or any company willing to constantly and strongly push the edges of their envelope to be aware that their job is far from secure.
I'll be having the last laugh on this one!
3 years ago I patented a method for generating photographer revenue by erecting large amorphous reflective works of art in public places. I figured sooner or later someone would violate it.
Now if only my related patent for generating contractor revenue through the temporary construction of a series of orange fabric covered archways in a public park would be violated...
mySQL is popular now because every hosting firm offers it as an option, but Postgres is far less common.
Further, most web service add-ons (CMS, forums, etc.) are mySQL based out-of-the-box so it has become the platform on which to build.
You'll notice there are no technical reasons there - as RDBMS go, mySQL is pretty horrible. It's the Windows of free databases, as it were.
Am I the only one wondering how a state-guaranteed ID card used for authentication will provide more _privacy_???
Well, the NSA uses an assload of authentication to ensure privacy.
You're equating privacy to anonymity, which are different things. The ID card prevents anonymity but could help or hinder privacy, depending on it's use.
Of course, there needs to be a expression of trust that the authentication won't be used for other purposes which would lead to less privacy.
Problem is that MS, like the govt., assumes everyone trusts them when in fact few do - but they don't understand that. Good application for a free market - authenticate through who you trust to not abuse your ID. Lots of insfrastructure there though.
Because it doesn't have to actually work to get published - it just needs to be viably interesting (eg. not wrong) and have specific applications.
Remember, applied physics != engineering. It the engineering boys that expect that it works.
If they had cross-bar latch-based systems they wouldn't be have been using transistors in the first place.
Geez, nobody can think through a problem logically around here.
The Klingon UFO had the transistors. The Vulcan UFO had the cross-bar latch. They collided inside Earths gravity well and both crashed in the southwest US 50 years ago. We just couldn't figure out the more advanced Vulcan tech.
Duh!
Hmm. I just use firewire for that. Set up a TCP over Firewire network set and go. FW 800 is pretty much just as fast as the gigabit and I tend to find FW cables more readily than ethernet these days.
The analogy is not putting *one* more key on the keyboard, but 105 more keys on the keyboard.
The difference between the keyboard and mouse is important in another way - keyboard buttons are labeled, mouse ones are not and the way we reference mouse buttons and actions stems from a one-button mouse world.
Had we started with 2 button mice, you'd say double-left click, or double-select click. Instead of right-click you'd probably say menu-click or context-click. Writing 'select' and 'context menu' on the ends of the mouse buttons wouldn't have been a bad idea either.
The unfortunate truth is that a lot of new users cannot type without looking at the keyboard - they have very little kinesthetic sense for that kind of action (vs opposable thumb actions which everybody does constantly). Watch a struggling user follow verbal left-click vs. right-click instructions and they have to *look* at the mouse a lot. If you have to *look* at a two button mouse, you're one button in too deep.
Keynote 1 had this and did it quite well (better than PowerPoint X and about on par with 2004).
Keynote 1 had this, v.x did not. Powerpoint 2004s was better than Keynote 1s, and Keynote 2s looks about the same or slightly better.
I have yet to come across a feature powerpoint had that keynote 1 didn't.
Like timed presentations? Sorry, but I love Keynote and use it exclusively, but it's feature set hardly overlaps that of Powerpoint's fully. Yes, Keynote offers a lot more in areas, but less in others.
And Flash export is just brilliant.
Oh, and the engineering school there has a pretty good reputation, too. And the CS department, even though I think it's too theoretically oriented.
.coms.
Yes, they do have a good engineering school, and CS isn't too theoretical there. It's Computer SCIENCE. It's supposed to be theoretical. If you want it to be applied, it'd called Computer ENGINEERING.
Unfortunately the go-go 90's substantially screwed most computer science/engineering/systems programs as it turned into a land-grab for dollars from
I have no difficulty telling a lawyer that I'll assume she's a conniving bitch until she proves otherwise
Let me guess, she agreed to pay your way through medical school as soon as she graduated, right?
Note, this is technically illegal in the US. You're broadcasting outside the legal FCC range. Channels 12-14 are generally used for european users.
Ok, so log into all of the OTHER routers, move them to channel 14, and then call the FCC. Problem solved.
Yet that is exactly type of argument that legitimized home VCRs
And firearms.
"Smart people are smart, but hard working people get the job done."
Actually, you need both. The breakthrough algorithm is likely to be relatively small but not obvious. You need smarts for that. Turning that into code that doesn't suck can be done with hard work, and fewer smarts.
It depends a great deal on the business. My staff don't need to be brilliant, but they need to work as a team, be even mannered, and work hard. If they get stuck, we have person they can go to for sorting out the difficult problems. Google does a lot of R&D and those areas are almost nothing but sorting out difficult problems - gotta have the grey matter for that stuff.
I agree that interviewing 16 times is stupid. I do 2 interviews, 3 on occasion if it's a tough decision. Generally I can find the right candidate spending no more than 45 minutes with them, provided I did my fact checking beforehand. All my questions center around decision making - how would you solve this problem - handle this situation. They're open-ended with no obviously correct answer. Interviewees don't like the process but 90% of most information based jobs is decision making on some level. You quickly ferret out they good and bad traits with the right questions. You can find those that refuse to seek help, are lazy, are unethical, are suck-ups, etc.
If you need 16 interviews to find someone then you're either being too picky, or you don't know what the hell you're doing.