Are they really the tools the users wanted to do the job, or are they merely the ones you IT guys imposed on them?
I work for a college doing Mac and (occasionally) Linux desktop support. They can use whatever platform they want; one of the things I really like about my job.
So when my users manage to totally destroy something, it's the tool of their choosing, the one that they should be the most familiar and comfortable with. Admittedly, my job is an absolute cakewalk compared to the poor bastards who have to do the Windows support, but there's still a lot of proud ignorance from some people.
It may be annoying to my end users when I attempt to explain things to them and they don't understand the terms I'm using.
But it's annoying to me when they insist on being ignorant about the tools that they need to do their jobs, and that I'm paid to maintain. A tiny bit of effort on their part would pay huge dividends.
Why is is that people think being ignorant of how a computer works is something to be so damned _proud_ of? Nobody says "I'm car-illiterate" with a little chuckle after they wrap a sedan around a tree, but users who accidentally destroy their computers somehow think it's IT's fault.
And project looking glass looks really awesome for those who haven't seen it, it's a 3D gui that sits on top of Solaris or Linux and adds a lot more functionality. I'm not sure how they will 3.Profit off of it, but it's pretty badass.
Have you actually tried USING Looking Glass at all? I was at JavaOne, and there was a pavilion booth there with JDS and Looking Glass systems to play with. JDS was a pleasant surprise; I'm sort of partial to Gnome anyway, but it was a nice skinned version of Gnome that I could see deploying to my users.
Looking Glass, on the other hand, was a trainwreck. A nice, 3d, cute-looking trainwreck, but a nightmare all the same. I spent ten minutes trying to get it to do anything but run that stupid CD selector applet. No dice.
I run Debian on an older Powerbook (a Pismo... and I'm not replacing it until I can get a second battery bay in a new machine, dammit) and it's wonderful. I know that the install can be a little bit daunting at first, but the finished product is solid and very usable. Give it a shot.
Don't. There is a good reason that blackboards or whiteboards are in all classrooms. It is possible to do a good informative presentation with a computer, but I've never seen it done. Doesn't matter if you are using slides on the overhead, or a computer, the result is the same: a presentation that has no flexability and no interest.
The reason that I want the wireless remote is so that I can use the blackboard in conjunction with the slides, rather than having to cross the classroom and get chalk dust all over my laptop every time I need to bring up a new image.
But thanks all the same for the remarkably well thought-out and appropriate criticism. I appreciate it deeply.
So this is a meaningless Ask Slashdot; just go grab whatever wireless pointing/clicking device you feel like and have at it
I thought the same thing, until I borrowed a rather pricy Interlink remote control from another office and it didn't work at all with Impress. The problem was that it showed up to the OS as a USB Keyboard rather than a pointing device, and pushing the "next" button just sent a keystroke to the machine rather than the mouse click event.
This stuff is made to work with Powerpoint -- understandable, since they're the 800 lb gorilla in this space. That's why I chose to Ask Slashdot, because I figured that I couldn't possibly be the only person who has wanted to use Impress in a classroom.
This is so typical of the polarization of today's society, if someone disagrees with you, they're totally wrong and a dick.
I think it's more because you went from zero to confrontational with lightning speed. Polite disagreement looks quite a bit different than name-calling.
Clueless as to the correct answer, I took my best shot at it. Said I: "Isn't that where you send your card back to Microsoft to register the copy of Windows that you just bought?"
Not that anyone is still reading this thread, but...
When I interviewed to work as tech support for Verizon DSL, I got a similar question.
Them: "What does 'DSL' stand for?"
Me: "Digital Subscriber Line."
Them: "And how about ADSL?"
Me: "Uh... Advanced Digital Subscriber Line. It's better."
Yeah, because "Classical Music Butchered Beyond Hope" isn't obnoxious enough. I work at a college. I can't wait for every shitty pop song to be blaring out of some asshat's saggy A&F jeans during class when his roommate's older brother calls to say he got the beer.
Fucking christ. You know the only people that use this are going to be people infatuated with dreadful pop music. It's the same phenomenon as loud car stereos -- I don't think I've ever pulled up to someone with a thumping car at a traffic light and thought, "Oh, good, I really like this song."
One VP took a picture of his dog and pasted it on a badge. Next morning flashed it at the guard and walked through with no problem.
I got laid off a few years ago when the call center I was working for was relocated. That was, of course, the moment that the security guys were supposed to start actually checking the ID cards that we'd been required to wear ever since we'd been hired.
So I traded cards with my friend Ron. It's touch to imagine two people looking different -- I'm 6'6", pasty white, with a shaved head. Ron (at the time) was about 6'2, dark-skinned black man with dreads.
Sleep works perfectly on Debian/PPC running on my Pismo-era Powerbook. I can't remember the last time I had to reboot it -- I just close the lid when its not in use.
Then why is it so hard to find software to fit my needs on sourceforge.net? I've got a Palm Zire 21. If there was a decent calculator app for it, I could my palm for math classes instead of getting a replacement calculator for the one that I already had stolen.
Offtopic, but try "Easy Calc" -- that's what I've been using all year for my Calc classes. Works great, and it's free.
I wonder if this one will be even faster than Panther. I'm running OS X on a G3/400 iMac at home -- it's a little over five years old at this point. Every release of OS X is faster than the one before.
Looking forward to it. I'm going to WWDC again this year -- hopefully attendees will get free copies like they did for Panther last year.
I have to set debian up on machines fairly regularly.
# apt-get install systemimager
It's a great, simple, rsync-based installation package. It's what I'm using here for some test Linux desktop installs. Check it out. The time investment is minimal, and if you're setting up the same thing over and over again you'll make up the prep time the first time you use it.
Somehow, dull professors aren't any better at retaining their students' attention when there are more distractions available. Weird. Who would have thought.
--saint
Re:Free software lacks usability testing
on
GNOME for Grandma
·
· Score: 1
I would like to see the return of something like Apple AtEase. (Apple HCI found that "Finder" was too hard for dummy users.) Just a big window with big buttons for all your apps.
It's called the Dock, in WindowMaker. At least, that's how I configure it for the few apps that I use 95% of the time.
Sure, there are some people (I even know a couple) who are dumb enough to put a zip drive in a computer that already has a CDRW drive in it and feed the zip drive.
I work for a college, and one of the professors I support refuses to use the CD-RW drive built into her (very nice) iBook.
Why?
The media is too expensive.
So she uses Zip 100 disks for everything, instead.
Slashdot Mirror
Are they really the tools the users wanted to do the job, or are they merely the ones you IT guys imposed on them?
I work for a college doing Mac and (occasionally) Linux desktop support. They can use whatever platform they want; one of the things I really like about my job.
So when my users manage to totally destroy something, it's the tool of their choosing, the one that they should be the most familiar and comfortable with. Admittedly, my job is an absolute cakewalk compared to the poor bastards who have to do the Windows support, but there's still a lot of proud ignorance from some people.
--saint
It may be annoying to my end users when I attempt to explain things to them and they don't understand the terms I'm using.
But it's annoying to me when they insist on being ignorant about the tools that they need to do their jobs, and that I'm paid to maintain. A tiny bit of effort on their part would pay huge dividends.
Why is is that people think being ignorant of how a computer works is something to be so damned _proud_ of? Nobody says "I'm car-illiterate" with a little chuckle after they wrap a sedan around a tree, but users who accidentally destroy their computers somehow think it's IT's fault.
--saint
And project looking glass looks really awesome for those who haven't seen it, it's a 3D gui that sits on top of Solaris or Linux and adds a lot more functionality. I'm not sure how they will 3.Profit off of it, but it's pretty badass.
Have you actually tried USING Looking Glass at all? I was at JavaOne, and there was a pavilion booth there with JDS and Looking Glass systems to play with. JDS was a pleasant surprise; I'm sort of partial to Gnome anyway, but it was a nice skinned version of Gnome that I could see deploying to my users.
Looking Glass, on the other hand, was a trainwreck. A nice, 3d, cute-looking trainwreck, but a nightmare all the same. I spent ten minutes trying to get it to do anything but run that stupid CD selector applet. No dice.
--saint
I run Debian on an older Powerbook (a Pismo... and I'm not replacing it until I can get a second battery bay in a new machine, dammit) and it's wonderful. I know that the install can be a little bit daunting at first, but the finished product is solid and very usable. Give it a shot.
--saint
Don't. There is a good reason that blackboards or whiteboards are in all classrooms. It is possible to do a good informative presentation with a computer, but I've never seen it done. Doesn't matter if you are using slides on the overhead, or a computer, the result is the same: a presentation that has no flexability and no interest.
The reason that I want the wireless remote is so that I can use the blackboard in conjunction with the slides, rather than having to cross the classroom and get chalk dust all over my laptop every time I need to bring up a new image.
But thanks all the same for the remarkably well thought-out and appropriate criticism. I appreciate it deeply.
--saint
So this is a meaningless Ask Slashdot; just go grab whatever wireless pointing/clicking device you feel like and have at it
I thought the same thing, until I borrowed a rather pricy Interlink remote control from another office and it didn't work at all with Impress. The problem was that it showed up to the OS as a USB Keyboard rather than a pointing device, and pushing the "next" button just sent a keystroke to the machine rather than the mouse click event.
This stuff is made to work with Powerpoint -- understandable, since they're the 800 lb gorilla in this space. That's why I chose to Ask Slashdot, because I figured that I couldn't possibly be the only person who has wanted to use Impress in a classroom.
--saint
Question everything!
Why?
--saint
Fuck that noise. I want a new, Doom 3 engine based, Odell Lake. Now that was an educational game.
--saint
This is so typical of the polarization of today's society, if someone disagrees with you, they're totally wrong and a dick.
I think it's more because you went from zero to confrontational with lightning speed. Polite disagreement looks quite a bit different than name-calling.
--saint
What other interesting services or benefits have people been able to get by bartering IT/programming services?
Beer. And lots of it.
--saint
Clueless as to the correct answer, I took my best shot at it. Said I: "Isn't that where you send your card back to Microsoft to register the copy of Windows that you just bought?"
Not that anyone is still reading this thread, but...
When I interviewed to work as tech support for Verizon DSL, I got a similar question.
Them: "What does 'DSL' stand for?"
Me: "Digital Subscriber Line."
Them: "And how about ADSL?"
Me: "Uh... Advanced Digital Subscriber Line. It's better."
--saint
Yeah, because "Classical Music Butchered Beyond Hope" isn't obnoxious enough. I work at a college. I can't wait for every shitty pop song to be blaring out of some asshat's saggy A&F jeans during class when his roommate's older brother calls to say he got the beer.
Fucking christ. You know the only people that use this are going to be people infatuated with dreadful pop music. It's the same phenomenon as loud car stereos -- I don't think I've ever pulled up to someone with a thumping car at a traffic light and thought, "Oh, good, I really like this song."
--saint
Someone I spoke to on the phone referred to their computer as the "drive hard".
Some poor old woman came into the Computer City where a friend of mine was working and asked for an Iomega Jiz Drive.
--saint
One VP took a picture of his dog and pasted it on a badge. Next morning flashed it at the guard and walked through with no problem.
I got laid off a few years ago when the call center I was working for was relocated. That was, of course, the moment that the security guys were supposed to start actually checking the ID cards that we'd been required to wear ever since we'd been hired.
So I traded cards with my friend Ron. It's touch to imagine two people looking different -- I'm 6'6", pasty white, with a shaved head. Ron (at the time) was about 6'2, dark-skinned black man with dreads.
Security never noticed.
--saint
Sleep works perfectly on Debian/PPC running on my Pismo-era Powerbook. I can't remember the last time I had to reboot it -- I just close the lid when its not in use.
Just thought I'd offer a non x86 perspective.
--saint
Now only there were some way to access full Exchange compatibility from OS X...
--saint
Then why is it so hard to find software to fit my needs on sourceforge.net? I've got a Palm Zire 21. If there was a decent calculator app for it, I could my palm for math classes instead of getting a replacement calculator for the one that I already had stolen.
Offtopic, but try "Easy Calc" -- that's what I've been using all year for my Calc classes. Works great, and it's free.
--saint
German bureaucrats are not known for their flexiblity and eagerness to learn new things.
Oh, I don't know about that. They picked up Zyklon-B pretty readily.
--saint
I wonder if this one will be even faster than Panther. I'm running OS X on a G3/400 iMac at home -- it's a little over five years old at this point. Every release of OS X is faster than the one before.
Looking forward to it. I'm going to WWDC again this year -- hopefully attendees will get free copies like they did for Panther last year.
--saint
I have to set debian up on machines fairly regularly.
# apt-get install systemimager
It's a great, simple, rsync-based installation package. It's what I'm using here for some test Linux desktop installs. Check it out. The time investment is minimal, and if you're setting up the same thing over and over again you'll make up the prep time the first time you use it.
--saint
Tony Bourke is reviewing OpenBSD 3.4 for SPARC-64.
Would someone please give this guy a Solaris CD already?
He's reviewed _everything_ else that runs on his eBay-purchased US5. Let it go.
--saint
The Jem Report has an extensive review
And it's outrageous. Truly truly truly outrageous.
[/80s cartoon]
--saint
Many don't allow students to use them at all in class.
Canisius College, where I work, recently added wireless to the two main classroom buildings. We're already getting requests from the same faculty who called it "necessary" to find some way to turn it off during their classes.
Somehow, dull professors aren't any better at retaining their students' attention when there are more distractions available. Weird. Who would have thought.
--saint
I would like to see the return of something like Apple AtEase. (Apple HCI found that "Finder" was too hard for dummy users.) Just a big window with big buttons for all your apps.
It's called the Dock, in WindowMaker. At least, that's how I configure it for the few apps that I use 95% of the time.
(Firefox, xterm, Evolution, xchat)
--saint
Sure, there are some people (I even know a couple) who are dumb enough to put a zip drive in a computer that already has a CDRW drive in it and feed the zip drive.
I work for a college, and one of the professors I support refuses to use the CD-RW drive built into her (very nice) iBook.
Why?
The media is too expensive.
So she uses Zip 100 disks for everything, instead.
--saint