My main problem is that unlike most graphics programs, I am never quite sure where the tool that I want is located. In most programs, tools come from a menu that is fixed/attached to the window that contains the image that I'm working on. In GIMP, all tools are selected from a myriad of windows that are opened for various tool sets.
Then if I want, for example, to select the colour palette, then I have to find the window - if it's open. And the problem there is that it could be anywhere on the screen. Heck it could even be hidden under another window. And I have to hunt d__n near every time I want to use a tool that I haven't used in the last five minutes.
On the other hand, in most commercial applications, I slide my cursor to the menu bar, pick the correct drop down and slide the cursor down to the tool. And it will always be in the same place.
You might want to look at Don Norman's essay on Affordances and Design or read his book on "The Design of Everyday Things".
Agreed. But one should remember that the "later rubbish" took place after the poor man had a stroke. I remember when the change took place (I *think* it was the novel "Friday") I was confused by the change - mushy plots, fuzzy characters, huge amounts of self reference.
And one of the first rules is, "Never take a single study as proof of anything! Wait till the results are replicated before you even think of moving to a conclusion."
The major problem is really poor reporting on science research. The news media routinely blazon some **NEW * Scientific * Discovery!!!**. Then you read the story and somewhere around the 10th paragraph you might see that this is based on only one study - and oftentimes even before peer review.
Every scientists knows this. It's a shame the public doesn't. They wouldn't worry so much.
Now suppose you plop a modern 21st C, wired geek into the middle of this. (For purposes of this simulation, assume that access to the supporting networks is available through the time-slip*.)
Now imagine him walking down the street with his Bluetooth mobile phone headset chatting to tech support with his hands empty. Even if a native of the 1950's sees the thingy clamped to the geeks ear, will they consider it a phone or just a seriously weird earring? And what will they think of him as he walks by talking to thin air?
My assumption is that they will think either, "Wierdo!" or "ESPER!!!"
Frankly, I've never understood this. It does not cost more to write W3C compliant code. It just requires understanding of what you are doing and avoiding platform-specific code. (And you can do that even if you are using nothing but MS tools on an MS platform.)
My response to this attitude is to ask, "Why are you insisting on a solution that is guaranteed to deny access to a segment of your potential market? Don't you want to reach all of your customers??"
Alas, in the Land of PHBs, that is still not going to work with total success.
As a general rule, go for the smaller company.
on
Microsoft or Google?
·
· Score: 1
Grasshopper,
As an Old Fart (I go back to punch cards), I would caution against going to a big company. Any company with more than three layers of management is well on the road to becoming a bureaucracy.
Work for a smaller company, and it's easier to be noticed as a good worker. Work for a large company, and you are just one in a herd.
The main rule is to remember what a business exists for. And that is not "to make money." Within three weeks of starting b-school we were being told that that was the route to disaster, because although that may be why people invest money or labour in the company, that is their reason, not the company.
The real purpose of a company is satisfy the wants and/or needs of a market segment at a price that the market segment is willing to pay. If you can do this and turn a profit, the company will continue. The market (And here, I mean the customer base, not the stock market.) does not care if you are making a profit. It does not care that your shareholders want ever-increasing profitability.
One of the thing about the "old rules" in the article is its emphasis on the stock price. This is to take your eye off of your market, and I contend that this is the major cause of most of the septic corporate behaviour in the world today.
In fairness to the CEOs, the market and thus the boards of directors insist on this devotion to share price. From the article: "Never before has a CEO more needed to take risks, but rarely has Wall Street been less receptive. A recent Booz Allen study found that a CEO is vulnerable to ouster if his stock price has lagged behind the S&P 500 by an average of 2 percent since he took the top job." (God forbid we should take a momentary hit is stock price because we are developing a new market.) "Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers says he knows a number of colleagues who are planning to step down because of the difficulty of balancing the shortterm pressures of the Street with what's in the longterm best interest of the company."
Despite what many people think about the "intelligence" of the stock market, the function of investment funds is only to make money. There is no incentive in the stock market to take the long view.
In the book "Up the Organization", the author, Robert Townsend, relates that when he was hired to be the CEO of Avis, he insisted on one condition: "Don't talk to me about the stock price for two years!" He didn't want to be distracted from the long term goals by worrying about the vagaries of the stock market. I have alwys thought Mr Townsend to be a very smart man.
Well, working for a start-up company (large or small) is high risk. Most companies fail (50% of new businesses fail within two years, 80% within five years) because the people running it aren't competenet managers.
On the other hand, a small company that has lasted at least two or three years probably does have competent management and is worth looking at. (This is not a guarantee, just better odds.)
Personally, I feel that unless you are convinced that the start-up company has a really *Brilliant*Idea*, start-ups are very heavy work load with very high risk.
But not everyone learns the same way! If you want education taught in a way that is most convenient and efficacious for you, hire a tutor. Professors and most teachers have to deal with the reality of classes full of people who have varying levels of intelligence, predominantly left or right brained, different cultures, different educational backgrounds, etc, etc.
That means that no matter how they teach, their teaching style will work wonderfully for some and less so for others. And there is no way around that reality!
And as another poster wrote, in the real world outside the university, you will not get people who present the information you require in the best way for you to absorb. (You will learn this at your very first business meeting, I can guarantee you with a 95% degree of confidence!) So learning how to process information that isn't specially formatted to your tastes is a Very Good Skill to acquired. But if you are just going to complain that it isn't good enough, you will not learn that skill and therefore will deprive yourself.
Everyone's brain is different - physically - from everyone else's. To demand that reality accommodate itself to you rather than the other way around is an exercise in futility.
Get a good cartographic map. Look at the margin. On a good map, you will see a reference to Grid North (the vertical lines on the map point up to Grid North), True North (where the North Pole, the top of the Earth, is), and Magnetic North (where the compass points). You should also see a reference to the magnetic declination which is a factor you multiply by the number of years since the map was printed , and then add to the printed value of the Magnetic North. This then gives you the value of where Magnetic North is this year.
In other words, my poppets, Magnetic Morth moves every year and always has! Indeed the article makes reference to this fact. But making the assumption that since it is moving in a specific direction, it will continue to move in that direction is without foundation. It is well know to scientists (and Canadians) that the magnetic pole wanders about (quite slowly) in a random walk.
Not an invalid point. You are right that it isn't easy. But then, running your own business is never easy. What did your friend do to try and make a living? How did he attempt to sell his product?
In the days before the Internet, you could only make money by performances, and the recordings that you sold yourself. This meant a limited revenue stream because the only people who had a national/world wide distribution stream were the record dompanies.
But now, you have an inexpensive distribution stream (the Web), and thus an expanded market that was not accessible before. Otherwise, you have to do the slogging work that Miss McKennitt did before the web - lots of gigs, and running around with your car trunk full of recordings that you flog to record stores and from the bandstand/mall/street. Much less easy, and hard work, but doable.
But not everybody has the chops to be a good entrepreneur.
That is a point that many artists have something of a problem with. Music talent is not the same as entrepreneurial talent. I have a number of artist friends - in various disciplines, not just music - who don't want to deal with the business aspects at all. But the inability of someone to follow a business plan does not invalidate the business plan.
To rephrase it, I was merely making the point that it is now *possible* to sell to the world *without* a recording company. And if you are able to do that, you do not need to be hugely famous in order to make a decent living. (See the start of this thread.)
But so what? Is that really important - to achieve huge market penetration?
To illustrate, compare a musician who has a contract with a large record company who gets (mayby) 5 or 10 cents per record with an independent band who sell and distribute their own product and make - say - $8 net per each of their records that they sell themselves from the bandstand or their web site.
To make an income of, say, $40 K per year using the above assumptions; with the recording company, you must sell 400,000 to 800,000 records. By yourself, you need sell only 5000 copies.
(I leave out the question of Hollywood bookkeeping.)
Loreena McKennitt (I suspect you may never have heard of her), who started off busking with her harp in Canadian shopping malls, now sells to the world from her website (http://www.quinlanroad.com/) Note that the site is available in 14 languages. She is successful enough that a few years ago a documentary on her showed her office where she employs about 4 or 5 people whose only job is to distribute the CDs that she makes.
Any yet, she doesn't appear on any play charts that I am aware of. I doubt that she has a huge market penetration, nor the name recognition of Bono, or Britney Spears, or even Frankie Lane.
You don't need to be the center of the universe to make a good living.
Bosses are useless. Managers, on the other hand, analize, plan, monitor, take care of their personnel, correct their mistakes (their own as well as the employees), listen to criticism, etd., etc., and are useful.
(Sigh)
Unfortunately, managers are as rare as hen's teeth, so you usually just find a boss in the executive's chair rather than a manager.
You wrote, "And there's the fact that having a hunk of metal jammed into your torso or neck is pretty darn damaging, at at least as damaging as many common handgun bullets."
Umm . . . Beg to differ, sir.
If someone sticks a knife into you, the damage to the body is confined to the path that the knife takes. However, a bullet passing through the body causes, in addition to the path of the bullet, a hydrostatic shock which can cause damage some distance away from the bullet's path. This was discovered by a British Army surgeon in the 18th century who did dissections on battlefield casualties. He reported bones being shattered more than 6 inches away from the point of impact. (We are talking about a one ounce ball propelled by black powder here.)
If I'm going to have to make a choice, I think I'd rather be stabbed than shot. Although circumstances would be the deciding factor. If it's a choice between you using a Bowie knife on me or shooting at me with a.22 short at a range of 100 yards, well, then I'd rather be shot!
Slashdot Mirror
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH111
And according to IMDb, he's only worked in four episodes on TV. Not precisely the level of actor who gets residuals.
MS announced today that Vista is Double Plus Good!
Thanks for the info. Thank you for taking the time to inform me. (But I still really prefer to find all the tools in one specific place. YMMV.)
My main problem is that unlike most graphics programs, I am never quite sure where the tool that I want is located. In most programs, tools come from a menu that is fixed/attached to the window that contains the image that I'm working on. In GIMP, all tools are selected from a myriad of windows that are opened for various tool sets.
Then if I want, for example, to select the colour palette, then I have to find the window - if it's open. And the problem there is that it could be anywhere on the screen. Heck it could even be hidden under another window. And I have to hunt d__n near every time I want to use a tool that I haven't used in the last five minutes.
On the other hand, in most commercial applications, I slide my cursor to the menu bar, pick the correct drop down and slide the cursor down to the tool. And it will always be in the same place.
You might want to look at Don Norman's essay on Affordances and Design or read his book on "The Design of Everyday Things".
You wrote: "I'm also not convinced they're particularly useful anyway these days..."
And yet, every time I Google, I find what I'm looking for. To my mind, that's useful.
Agreed. But one should remember that the "later rubbish" took place after the poor man had a stroke. I remember when the change took place (I *think* it was the novel "Friday") I was confused by the change - mushy plots, fuzzy characters, huge amounts of self reference.
And then I heard of his stroke and I understood.
And one of the first rules is, "Never take a single study as proof of anything! Wait till the results are replicated before you even think of moving to a conclusion."
The major problem is really poor reporting on science research. The news media routinely blazon some **NEW * Scientific * Discovery!!!**. Then you read the story and somewhere around the 10th paragraph you might see that this is based on only one study - and oftentimes even before peer review.
Every scientists knows this. It's a shame the public doesn't. They wouldn't worry so much.
Now suppose you plop a modern 21st C, wired geek into the middle of this. (For purposes of this simulation, assume that access to the supporting networks is available through the time-slip*.)
Now imagine him walking down the street with his Bluetooth mobile phone headset chatting to tech support with his hands empty. Even if a native of the 1950's sees the thingy clamped to the geeks ear, will they consider it a phone or just a seriously weird earring? And what will they think of him as he walks by talking to thin air?
My assumption is that they will think either, "Wierdo!" or "ESPER!!!"
The future is now!
"do the Canadian mints sell uncirculated collector sets like the US mints?"
Why, yes, they do. Pretty much every coin set gets proof mint sets and uncirculated sets are available. Here's the catalogue.
Note: I believe all the poppy quarters have been sold out. You will have to look to coin dealers to purchase one now.
Actually, the incident you refer to was not done by the British navy, but by the Canadian navy. See http://www.mnq-nmq.org/capsule/articles/U-571_e.ht m
Do you read the news? Or are you living in a cave?
Frankly, I've never understood this. It does not cost more to write W3C compliant code. It just requires understanding of what you are doing and avoiding platform-specific code. (And you can do that even if you are using nothing but MS tools on an MS platform.)
My response to this attitude is to ask, "Why are you insisting on a solution that is guaranteed to deny access to a segment of your potential market? Don't you want to reach all of your customers??"
Alas, in the Land of PHBs, that is still not going to work with total success.
Grasshopper,
As an Old Fart (I go back to punch cards), I would caution against going to a big company. Any company with more than three layers of management is well on the road to becoming a bureaucracy.
Work for a smaller company, and it's easier to be noticed as a good worker. Work for a large company, and you are just one in a herd.
And a bureaucracy will eat your soul!
The main rule is to remember what a business exists for. And that is not "to make money." Within three weeks of starting b-school we were being told that that was the route to disaster, because although that may be why people invest money or labour in the company, that is their reason, not the company.
The real purpose of a company is satisfy the wants and/or needs of a market segment at a price that the market segment is willing to pay. If you can do this and turn a profit, the company will continue. The market (And here, I mean the customer base, not the stock market.) does not care if you are making a profit. It does not care that your shareholders want ever-increasing profitability.
One of the thing about the "old rules" in the article is its emphasis on the stock price. This is to take your eye off of your market, and I contend that this is the major cause of most of the septic corporate behaviour in the world today.
In fairness to the CEOs, the market and thus the boards of directors insist on this devotion to share price. From the article: "Never before has a CEO more needed to take risks, but rarely has Wall Street been less receptive. A recent Booz Allen study found that a CEO is vulnerable to ouster if his stock price has lagged behind the S&P 500 by an average of 2 percent since he took the top job." (God forbid we should take a momentary hit is stock price because we are developing a new market.) "Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers says he knows a number of colleagues who are planning to step down because of the difficulty of balancing the shortterm pressures of the Street with what's in the longterm best interest of the company."
Despite what many people think about the "intelligence" of the stock market, the function of investment funds is only to make money. There is no incentive in the stock market to take the long view.
In the book "Up the Organization", the author, Robert Townsend, relates that when he was hired to be the CEO of Avis, he insisted on one condition: "Don't talk to me about the stock price for two years!" He didn't want to be distracted from the long term goals by worrying about the vagaries of the stock market. I have alwys thought Mr Townsend to be a very smart man.
Well, working for a start-up company (large or small) is high risk. Most companies fail (50% of new businesses fail within two years, 80% within five years) because the people running it aren't competenet managers.
On the other hand, a small company that has lasted at least two or three years probably does have competent management and is worth looking at. (This is not a guarantee, just better odds.)
Personally, I feel that unless you are convinced that the start-up company has a really *Brilliant*Idea*, start-ups are very heavy work load with very high risk.
They said that hubris was a sin and brought Nemesis to punish.
Oh, the hubris! The hubris!
(snicker)
But not everyone learns the same way! If you want education taught in a way that is most convenient and efficacious for you, hire a tutor. Professors and most teachers have to deal with the reality of classes full of people who have varying levels of intelligence, predominantly left or right brained, different cultures, different educational backgrounds, etc, etc.
That means that no matter how they teach, their teaching style will work wonderfully for some and less so for others. And there is no way around that reality!
And as another poster wrote, in the real world outside the university, you will not get people who present the information you require in the best way for you to absorb. (You will learn this at your very first business meeting, I can guarantee you with a 95% degree of confidence!) So learning how to process information that isn't specially formatted to your tastes is a Very Good Skill to acquired. But if you are just going to complain that it isn't good enough, you will not learn that skill and therefore will deprive yourself.
Everyone's brain is different - physically - from everyone else's. To demand that reality accommodate itself to you rather than the other way around is an exercise in futility.
Get a good cartographic map. Look at the margin. On a good map, you will see a reference to Grid North (the vertical lines on the map point up to Grid North), True North (where the North Pole, the top of the Earth, is), and Magnetic North (where the compass points). You should also see a reference to the magnetic declination which is a factor you multiply by the number of years since the map was printed , and then add to the printed value of the Magnetic North. This then gives you the value of where Magnetic North is this year.
In other words, my poppets, Magnetic Morth moves every year and always has! Indeed the article makes reference to this fact. But making the assumption that since it is moving in a specific direction, it will continue to move in that direction is without foundation. It is well know to scientists (and Canadians) that the magnetic pole wanders about (quite slowly) in a random walk.
Just more crappy science reporting.
Wasn't Timothy McVeigh a Christian? And what about those Christians who go around murdering doctors who perform abortions?
Christians are just as capable of terrorism as anyone else.
Not an invalid point. You are right that it isn't easy. But then, running your own business is never easy. What did your friend do to try and make a living? How did he attempt to sell his product?
In the days before the Internet, you could only make money by performances, and the recordings that you sold yourself. This meant a limited revenue stream because the only people who had a national/world wide distribution stream were the record dompanies.
But now, you have an inexpensive distribution stream (the Web), and thus an expanded market that was not accessible before. Otherwise, you have to do the slogging work that Miss McKennitt did before the web - lots of gigs, and running around with your car trunk full of recordings that you flog to record stores and from the bandstand/mall/street. Much less easy, and hard work, but doable.
But not everybody has the chops to be a good entrepreneur.
That is a point that many artists have something of a problem with. Music talent is not the same as entrepreneurial talent. I have a number of artist friends - in various disciplines, not just music - who don't want to deal with the business aspects at all. But the inability of someone to follow a business plan does not invalidate the business plan.
To rephrase it, I was merely making the point that it is now *possible* to sell to the world *without* a recording company. And if you are able to do that, you do not need to be hugely famous in order to make a decent living. (See the start of this thread.)
But so what? Is that really important - to achieve huge market penetration?
To illustrate, compare a musician who has a contract with a large record company who gets (mayby) 5 or 10 cents per record with an independent band who sell and distribute their own product and make - say - $8 net per each of their records that they sell themselves from the bandstand or their web site.
To make an income of, say, $40 K per year using the above assumptions; with the recording company, you must sell 400,000 to 800,000 records. By yourself, you need sell only 5000 copies.
(I leave out the question of Hollywood bookkeeping.)
Loreena McKennitt (I suspect you may never have heard of her), who started off busking with her harp in Canadian shopping malls, now sells to the world from her website (http://www.quinlanroad.com/) Note that the site is available in 14 languages. She is successful enough that a few years ago a documentary on her showed her office where she employs about 4 or 5 people whose only job is to distribute the CDs that she makes.
Any yet, she doesn't appear on any play charts that I am aware of. I doubt that she has a huge market penetration, nor the name recognition of Bono, or Britney Spears, or even Frankie Lane.
You don't need to be the center of the universe to make a good living.
Bosses are useless. Managers, on the other hand, analize, plan, monitor, take care of their personnel, correct their mistakes (their own as well as the employees), listen to criticism, etd., etc., and are useful.
(Sigh)
Unfortunately, managers are as rare as hen's teeth, so you usually just find a boss in the executive's chair rather than a manager.
You wrote, "And there's the fact that having a hunk of metal jammed into your torso or neck is pretty darn damaging, at at least as damaging as many common handgun bullets."
Umm . . . Beg to differ, sir.
If someone sticks a knife into you, the damage to the body is confined to the path that the knife takes. However, a bullet passing through the body causes, in addition to the path of the bullet, a hydrostatic shock which can cause damage some distance away from the bullet's path. This was discovered by a British Army surgeon in the 18th century who did dissections on battlefield casualties. He reported bones being shattered more than 6 inches away from the point of impact. (We are talking about a one ounce ball propelled by black powder here.)
If I'm going to have to make a choice, I think I'd rather be stabbed than shot. Although circumstances would be the deciding factor. If it's a choice between you using a Bowie knife on me or shooting at me with a .22 short at a range of 100 yards, well, then I'd rather be shot!
You asked, "who says that Lloyd's isn't charging $1,000,000/year/seat for Linux use?"
The story pointed to says, "... will initially charge organizations $60 per server."