How many of you have dealt with these Asian techies and have been on the phone longer due to a misunderstanding between yourself and a techie?
Rather Frustrating!
Maybe there's a learning curve, but if I had my druthers, I wouldn't put up with it.
Perhaps once they have the majority of the programming jobs, they won't put up with you, and will only speak in a different language.
I don't speak any other languages either, but I am not ignorant enough to think that everyone must speak my native language flawlessly. This is the kind of attitude that is going to bury the US someday. You are a short-sighted fool if you think it can't happen.
The article was about people who drank coffee, not people who consumed caffeine. There is much more in coffee than just caffeine, as the article points out.
So all you bloated soda drinkers can stop rejoicing.
Guys, Apple is no more altruistic than Microsoft. Apple is only cool because they are the underdog.
No, Apple is cool because they are their own entity. They aren't the underdog to MS, they aren't anything to MS - they are in a different game all by themselves. They are doing their own thing, and have been for a long time.
I personally don't care for their computers, but that is just me. I respect them for doing it their own way and sticking to it.
I asked this question in the Slashdot interview questions to Bruce Perens back in July. (What ever happened to that interview anyway?)
My question was modded +5, and I would really like to hear one of the "leaders" answer on it. Here it is as I posted it then...
A lot of people equate Open Source with Linux, but what are your opinions on Open Source on Windows? Of course Open Source works well on Linux, it falls more in line with the philosophy of the OS. In your opinion, is it more beneficial to keep the concepts of Open Source and Linux coupled, or to get the message of Open Source out there in any way possible?
The question still applies to Free software too. Is it possible to run Free software on Windows, and not get RMS' hackles up? OpenOffice is a great example that runs on Windows. Is it worth it to get the word out about alternative to proprietary software, or is the whole movement about alternatives to proprietary OSs?
In Tennessee last summer a motorist was killed and his passenger wounded when two boys - aged 14 and 16 - played "Grand Theft Auto" and then decided to go out and take sniper shots at cars, just like in the game.
I find it peverse that GTA is held to blame in this particular case. More to the point, what the fuck were two underage boys doing with access to shotguns?
You've never been to Tennessee, have you?;-)
To the point of GTA, I have never played it, but think it is an utterly stupid game in concept. Many many games today are just plain ignorant and not very creative at all. But that speaks to our ignorant and non-creative society. The fact that GTA is so popular says a lot, and it isn't good. The makers of GTA could have avoided this situation by not being so stupid in the first place, by having the phrase "Kill the Hatians" in the game. Didn't anyone there think for a second and realize how it sounded? Would it have been so hard to put the word "gangs" at the end of the sentence? After all, there have been lots of games about killing enemies, and nobody has complained (too much). Nobody cares if you kill Nazis in a WWII game. Or monsters in Half-Life. But why "the Hatians"? I can see why these groups would be pissed off. Is it worth a lawsuit? Dunno, I think nearly all lawsuits are unnecessary in a civil society, and the only ones who win are the lawyers. But we don't exactly live in a civil society anymore. We pretend to, but it isn't really like that under the surface.
My mother-in-law is a CFO at a small company, and they might go bankrupt because they are being sued by Enron for money that Enron paid to them, and now they want it back. This seems completely ignorant, but is legal. So they had to hire an attorney in NY (they are in Chicago) to handle the case, and he is just charging them for stupid things, like the time spent reading all his email because it may contain case related material. Just stupid stupid stuff. Like this GTA lawsuit - and the game GTA itself. Sorry, GTA isn't art, it is a game created to make money because of a realization that it would do well and teens are suckers with no morals. Just like Girls Gone Wild, just like "Faces of Death" of years ago, just like Bum Fights, just like SCO. Get what you can, while you can, however you can.
In the end, the only ones who win are the lawyers.
Most optimistic guess: 2001-01-05 19:36:18-07 by Bill Segall
Considering that the pool started on 2001-01-06, "(First guess submitted on 2001-01-06 08:43:00 UTC by Ian Davis)" could this really be considered optimistic, or just plain stupid?
It seems that they think that ANYTHING that has any computing power is their territory, and they're out to claim it. Cell phones, embedded systems, and of course ALL computers.
What would Bill Gates look like crossed with Rich Uncle Pennybags (aka the Monopoly Guy)? Remember, the Monopoly tagline is "Own it all"
See what I am talking about over here, on a T-shirt . (and don't pay attention to that link to "poundingsand.com", it used to be my URL, but was hijacked.:(
just an fyi, Paris did know what Wal-Mart was, she said in a recent interview that she knew what Walmart was, but the producers had strongly encouraged them to say dumb things.
Well, what would YOU say if you said on national television that you didn't know what Wal-Mart was?:-)
This is a tough one. Who to believe - smarmy bastard Fox producers, or ultra-rich bratty skank?
I'm a bit puzzled that you seem to be extolling the virtues of a wire-fu flick as a pinnacle of realism. It's been a damn long time since I've seen a believable martial arts film.
I agree. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was awesome, but not realistic. But that was not meant to be realistic. Same with Kill Bill, which I really liked. That animation sequence in the middle was cool, and the way he went to black and white took some of the "blood" out of the shots.
Oh, back to my point. You want a real martial arts movie? The Last Samurai. Fan-fucking-tastic movie. I was a little disappointed at the last few scenes, and the way they couldn't leave well enough alone. They always have to Hollywood the fucking ending, just like in Cast Away. But The Last Samurai was really good, and very realistic. Kill Bill had a lot of good techniques, but Uma Thurman just wasn't believable with the sword. Many times she held it incorrectly (like a baseball bat). But in TLS, they covered everything pretty well. There were a few technicalities I caught (with the ninjas), but I can give them a little leeway because they did such a good job with the rest of it.
I know it is Tom Cruise, but go see it. It gets my vote for one of the year's best.
Here is another reason they are not accountable: They are by leaps and bounds the richest family in the US. Look at Forbes Top 10 Richest People list for 2003. Notice any similarities in the names?
TOP TEN 1. Bill Gates 2. Warren Buffett 3. Paul Allen 4. Helen Walton 5. S. Robson Walton 6. John Walton 7. Jim Walton 8. Alice Walton 9. Larry Ellison 10. Michael Dell
If you watch that train-wreck of a show "The Simple Life", Paris Hilton had no idea what Wal-Mart was. I found that quite interesting, because any one of the Walton family members could buy her family out with the cash in their pockets. Wal-Mart is even less accountable than Microsoft, which is pretty sickening.
None of the people mentioned are likely to become techies. There is also a class of people known as "administrators" who have basic knowledge of installing programs and rebooting computers. They fill the boring roles in the computer world that programmers do not want. (Network architects and a few other jobs are more engineers than techies, and so are not part of this discussion.) Using "scripting" languages has reduced the intelligence/competence/skill-level-required to program, and that is good because we need more programmers, and we have fewer.
We need more programmers? Maybe you are referring to "true" programmers, and not just someone who knows how to program, but I think we have plenty of those. I started programming on a TRS-80 in BASIC back in '85 I think. I got my BSCS in computer science, and I thought I would be a programmer. I got a job out of college doing configuration management, and after a year of doing that (and tons of ksh scripting) I decided to get into software testing. It was my choice, whether to move into the development or the test group, and I chose test. I don't really call myself a programmer, but I have tried to keep up my skills by writing scripts to do personal stuff. It hasn't killed my programming skills (at least I don't think) but has maybe kept them on life-support.
The more common computers become, the more common programmers will become. I am a little uneasy with calling a webmaster a "web programmer", and I have heard them referred to themselves as such. It is touchy ground. On one hand, I want to say "If you have never touched a compiler, you aren't a programmer". On the other hand, some of these kids coming up are whiz-bang perl programmers, and can code some amazing things.
It is a tough call for me, and probably one I won't make. I'll sit my old ass on the fence and just watch whatever happens. I am just glad that I am of the age where I am part of the old and the new school of the computer/internet age.
This feature is a great idea, it means that if, for example, Acrobat Reader is causing IE to crash then at least I know who is to blame and can uninstall or upgrade it.
So what if IE crashes on its own? Will it please please please allow me to uninstall it?
No, the real question is: if the average computer user in 50 is as clueless as today, will the computer be smart enough to help them figure out what they need to do?
Aghhhh! Clippy 3000!:-)
Personal computers are complex, and will get moreso, in that they are not single-purpose machines. They aren't like telephones, TVs, or VCRs, that can afford to have a simple interface that are easy to quickly understand. I think that the more we use computers, the more complex things they'll be able to do. This assumes that they don't become single-purpose devices. It is EXTREMELY difficult, if not impossible, to put a simple interface on something highly complex and have it retain its flexibility and usability.
Things are the way they are with computer UI because there is such a wide range of user-levels. I think that will remain, just that over time, there will be no "newbies" remaining, and all of the functions that catered to newbies will go away. I know it is hard for many people to imagine, but I believe that the command line will help solve this. The next "revolution" in computing will be the flexibility and power of the command line. It may not hit the mainstream for years, but I think that the "average" user will have to learn it or won't be able to keep up. Everyone always thinks that the UI must get simpler, but I think it must get more complex. The difference is that the user-base will be able to handle it, and it won't seem complex to them.
I think the point is that yes, my mom IS a GUI usability guru, for the simple fact that she has no technical expertise. The "average" computer user should not need to know anything about editing text-files in/etc, or using rpm or make to unzip/install new applications.
I think this statement is right on, but needs to be thought out some more. Hopefully, the "average" computer user will change. Right now, the Average Computer User (ACU) was probably born when personal computers didn't even exist. Look ahead 50 years, and that won't be the case. The ACU will be much more familiar with computers, and there will be no need to coddle them as much. Unless of course, they are coddled their entire lives. I think at some point the learning curve needs to be adjusted.
And my mom is a newbie to computers too, just using it for email and very minor web surfing. To her, the Windows UI is extremely confusing. Double-clicking was a new concept. Saving a file, locating where you saved it, opening it, all the wizard options, the odd error messages, etc. These were all brand-spanking-new things to her. Nothing was intuitive about Windows. Now I am not saying that Linux would have been, but if she were to start out using computers today, the Linux UI would be no more difficult than the Windows one, because her computing needs are simple. The more things you use a computer for, the more you delve into the particular OS's UI.
The real question is, is the ACU in 50 years going to be just as clueless as to how a computer operates as they are today? I certainly hope not, because that would mean that we are not progressing.
It took Optima 5+ years to figure out that all CDR Software/Hardware infringed upon their patent? Just another happy case of 1) Patent some tech 2) Wait for tech to become standard 3) Collect the underware 4) Sue for profit!
It still takes eons to make a secure-system user friendly though. The same reason why no other OS even competes for Windows market share yet.
I don't believe this. Why does it take more effort to make an OS user-friedly if it is secure? If that is the case, then one must have an effect on the other, meaning that you have to have a trade-off between the two. I don't think this is the case, even though there isn't much of an example out there to point at (unless you count Macs, but I am not a Mac person so I don't know)
I don't think you can point to user-friendliness as being the reason why no other OS competes for market share. There are lots of other factors out there, legal and illegal.:-) Let's not confuse the business side of things with the technical side of things. And as some others have pointed out in this thread, Windows may not be all that user-friendly.
Linguists have always been geeky. Don't forget that Larry Wall is a linguist first.
Let's not forget about Douglas Hofstadter either. He has written some books I think every geek should read: The Mind's I, and Godel Escher Bach. If you can get through those, you should try Metamagical Themas. As melon-scratchers go, it's a honey-doodle.
Funny story, that I am sure nobody cares about: My wife (then girlfriend) and I were both in a bookstore looking for books, and were in different parts of the store. She was getting her Masters in French Linquistics. We met up to check out, and she was excited about the book she found. I told her I found a really cool one too, Metamagical Themas. I showed her the cool stuff in this book, and she agreed it was interesting. Then she showed me some of the interesting stuff from the book she picked: Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language. We then realized that they were written by the same guy! Hofstadter is really awesome, and ties the whole geek/linguistics thing pretty well.
Security is only as good as how often the users patch.
Wrong. There is something to be said for how security is considered in the design of an OS. For Windows, it wasn't much of a consideration, which contributed heavily to why there have been so many systemic vulnerabilities.
The system was designed to be user-friendly, not secure. They got their market-share because of that fact. I think it is much easier to make a secure system user-friendly than to make a user-friendly system secure. Microsoft is finding that out as well. You reap what you sow.
You would probably take a CRT over an LCD any day, right? (*)
Show me an LCD that I can afford, see without being 3" away from it at a decent resolution, and can do ALL of my tasks, and I'll buy it.
* By the way, CRT's do have there uses in high speed games (Quake) but other than that they just burn your retinas.
Speaking of legacy garbage from the 90's (which I still love, BTW)...
So if you have an LCD and need to play Quake, what do you do? Own both a CRT and and LCD? Talk about waste. And you know what I hate? People who can't get there/their/they're and your/you're straight, even though all it takes is learning simple English rules.
Ever since we started using Software Update Services this has been cake.
All the clients just pull the windows critical updates that we approve from OUR servers.
I feel sorry for anyone who is trying to run around and do them by hand.
Really? It sucks for us. Our SUS client is pointed at our corporate server. When corporate decides a patch should be installed, it gets installed on our systems. The problem? I am in QA, and our systems started acting goofy lately. In particular, our Rational applications started behaving very strangely. We *think* that it is due to the MS updates, but have no way of telling without launching a full-blown investigation into the issue. We have different OSs we have to test on, and different configurations. But they all have to have these stupid patches installed automatically. And some of them you cannot un-install. Try to track down the cause of a problem when there were 10 patches installed on your system the night before.
Now that isn't necessarily MS's fault, it is more our head office's fault. We should be able to test out patches with the software we use before having it mass-deployed. Sure, mandate it for all the meat-bag virus-spreaders in sales, but leave us the F alone. The IT guys in our own building are clueless, because they don't have to do anything now - the auto-updater will take care of it, and the patches come from corporate. But like you said, that part is cake....
Slashdot Mirror
As opposed to a big company who tries to extort us to use Outlook?
Perhaps once they have the majority of the programming jobs, they won't put up with you, and will only speak in a different language.
I don't speak any other languages either, but I am not ignorant enough to think that everyone must speak my native language flawlessly. This is the kind of attitude that is going to bury the US someday. You are a short-sighted fool if you think it can't happen.
So all you bloated soda drinkers can stop rejoicing.
No, Apple is cool because they are their own entity. They aren't the underdog to MS, they aren't anything to MS - they are in a different game all by themselves. They are doing their own thing, and have been for a long time.
I personally don't care for their computers, but that is just me. I respect them for doing it their own way and sticking to it.
My question was modded +5, and I would really like to hear one of the "leaders" answer on it. Here it is as I posted it then...
The question still applies to Free software too. Is it possible to run Free software on Windows, and not get RMS' hackles up? OpenOffice is a great example that runs on Windows. Is it worth it to get the word out about alternative to proprietary software, or is the whole movement about alternatives to proprietary OSs?
Those odds approach 1 at the speed of light if you send me your address and you are within 100 miles of where I live.
I find it peverse that GTA is held to blame in this particular case. More to the point, what the fuck were two underage boys doing with access to shotguns?
You've never been to Tennessee, have you? ;-)
To the point of GTA, I have never played it, but think it is an utterly stupid game in concept. Many many games today are just plain ignorant and not very creative at all. But that speaks to our ignorant and non-creative society. The fact that GTA is so popular says a lot, and it isn't good. The makers of GTA could have avoided this situation by not being so stupid in the first place, by having the phrase "Kill the Hatians" in the game. Didn't anyone there think for a second and realize how it sounded? Would it have been so hard to put the word "gangs" at the end of the sentence? After all, there have been lots of games about killing enemies, and nobody has complained (too much). Nobody cares if you kill Nazis in a WWII game. Or monsters in Half-Life. But why "the Hatians"? I can see why these groups would be pissed off. Is it worth a lawsuit? Dunno, I think nearly all lawsuits are unnecessary in a civil society, and the only ones who win are the lawyers. But we don't exactly live in a civil society anymore. We pretend to, but it isn't really like that under the surface.
My mother-in-law is a CFO at a small company, and they might go bankrupt because they are being sued by Enron for money that Enron paid to them, and now they want it back. This seems completely ignorant, but is legal. So they had to hire an attorney in NY (they are in Chicago) to handle the case, and he is just charging them for stupid things, like the time spent reading all his email because it may contain case related material. Just stupid stupid stuff. Like this GTA lawsuit - and the game GTA itself. Sorry, GTA isn't art, it is a game created to make money because of a realization that it would do well and teens are suckers with no morals. Just like Girls Gone Wild, just like "Faces of Death" of years ago, just like Bum Fights, just like SCO. Get what you can, while you can, however you can.
In the end, the only ones who win are the lawyers.
Considering that the pool started on 2001-01-06,
"(First guess submitted on 2001-01-06 08:43:00 UTC by Ian Davis)"
could this really be considered optimistic, or just plain stupid?
What would Bill Gates look like crossed with Rich Uncle Pennybags (aka the Monopoly Guy)? Remember, the Monopoly tagline is "Own it all"
See what I am talking about over here, on a T-shirt . (and don't pay attention to that link to "poundingsand.com", it used to be my URL, but was hijacked. :(
Well, what would YOU say if you said on national television that you didn't know what Wal-Mart was? :-)
This is a tough one. Who to believe - smarmy bastard Fox producers, or ultra-rich bratty skank?
I agree. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was awesome, but not realistic. But that was not meant to be realistic. Same with Kill Bill, which I really liked. That animation sequence in the middle was cool, and the way he went to black and white took some of the "blood" out of the shots.
Oh, back to my point. You want a real martial arts movie? The Last Samurai. Fan-fucking-tastic movie. I was a little disappointed at the last few scenes, and the way they couldn't leave well enough alone. They always have to Hollywood the fucking ending, just like in Cast Away. But The Last Samurai was really good, and very realistic. Kill Bill had a lot of good techniques, but Uma Thurman just wasn't believable with the sword. Many times she held it incorrectly (like a baseball bat). But in TLS, they covered everything pretty well. There were a few technicalities I caught (with the ninjas), but I can give them a little leeway because they did such a good job with the rest of it.
I know it is Tom Cruise, but go see it. It gets my vote for one of the year's best.
Here is another reason they are not accountable: They are by leaps and bounds the richest family in the US. Look at Forbes Top 10 Richest People list for 2003. Notice any similarities in the names?
TOP TEN
1. Bill Gates
2. Warren Buffett
3. Paul Allen
4. Helen Walton
5. S. Robson Walton
6. John Walton
7. Jim Walton
8. Alice Walton
9. Larry Ellison
10. Michael Dell
If you watch that train-wreck of a show "The Simple Life", Paris Hilton had no idea what Wal-Mart was. I found that quite interesting, because any one of the Walton family members could buy her family out with the cash in their pockets. Wal-Mart is even less accountable than Microsoft, which is pretty sickening.
We need more programmers? Maybe you are referring to "true" programmers, and not just someone who knows how to program, but I think we have plenty of those. I started programming on a TRS-80 in BASIC back in '85 I think. I got my BSCS in computer science, and I thought I would be a programmer. I got a job out of college doing configuration management, and after a year of doing that (and tons of ksh scripting) I decided to get into software testing. It was my choice, whether to move into the development or the test group, and I chose test. I don't really call myself a programmer, but I have tried to keep up my skills by writing scripts to do personal stuff. It hasn't killed my programming skills (at least I don't think) but has maybe kept them on life-support.
The more common computers become, the more common programmers will become. I am a little uneasy with calling a webmaster a "web programmer", and I have heard them referred to themselves as such. It is touchy ground. On one hand, I want to say "If you have never touched a compiler, you aren't a programmer". On the other hand, some of these kids coming up are whiz-bang perl programmers, and can code some amazing things.
It is a tough call for me, and probably one I won't make. I'll sit my old ass on the fence and just watch whatever happens. I am just glad that I am of the age where I am part of the old and the new school of the computer/internet age.
So what if IE crashes on its own? Will it please please please allow me to uninstall it?
Please let it be Darl
Please let it be Darl
Please let it be Darl
Aghhhh! Clippy 3000! :-)
Personal computers are complex, and will get moreso, in that they are not single-purpose machines. They aren't like telephones, TVs, or VCRs, that can afford to have a simple interface that are easy to quickly understand. I think that the more we use computers, the more complex things they'll be able to do. This assumes that they don't become single-purpose devices. It is EXTREMELY difficult, if not impossible, to put a simple interface on something highly complex and have it retain its flexibility and usability.
Things are the way they are with computer UI because there is such a wide range of user-levels. I think that will remain, just that over time, there will be no "newbies" remaining, and all of the functions that catered to newbies will go away. I know it is hard for many people to imagine, but I believe that the command line will help solve this. The next "revolution" in computing will be the flexibility and power of the command line. It may not hit the mainstream for years, but I think that the "average" user will have to learn it or won't be able to keep up. Everyone always thinks that the UI must get simpler, but I think it must get more complex. The difference is that the user-base will be able to handle it, and it won't seem complex to them.
I think this statement is right on, but needs to be thought out some more. Hopefully, the "average" computer user will change. Right now, the Average Computer User (ACU) was probably born when personal computers didn't even exist. Look ahead 50 years, and that won't be the case. The ACU will be much more familiar with computers, and there will be no need to coddle them as much. Unless of course, they are coddled their entire lives. I think at some point the learning curve needs to be adjusted.
And my mom is a newbie to computers too, just using it for email and very minor web surfing. To her, the Windows UI is extremely confusing. Double-clicking was a new concept. Saving a file, locating where you saved it, opening it, all the wizard options, the odd error messages, etc. These were all brand-spanking-new things to her. Nothing was intuitive about Windows. Now I am not saying that Linux would have been, but if she were to start out using computers today, the Linux UI would be no more difficult than the Windows one, because her computing needs are simple. The more things you use a computer for, the more you delve into the particular OS's UI.
The real question is, is the ACU in 50 years going to be just as clueless as to how a computer operates as they are today? I certainly hope not, because that would mean that we are not progressing.
Just another happy case of
1) Patent some tech
2) Wait for tech to become standard
3) Collect the underware
4) Sue for profit!
Work smarter not harder.
Ironic sig you have there...
I don't believe this. Why does it take more effort to make an OS user-friedly if it is secure? If that is the case, then one must have an effect on the other, meaning that you have to have a trade-off between the two. I don't think this is the case, even though there isn't much of an example out there to point at (unless you count Macs, but I am not a Mac person so I don't know)
I don't think you can point to user-friendliness as being the reason why no other OS competes for market share. There are lots of other factors out there, legal and illegal. :-) Let's not confuse the business side of things with the technical side of things. And as some others have pointed out in this thread, Windows may not be all that user-friendly.
Let's not forget about Douglas Hofstadter either. He has written some books I think every geek should read: The Mind's I, and Godel Escher Bach. If you can get through those, you should try Metamagical Themas. As melon-scratchers go, it's a honey-doodle.
Funny story, that I am sure nobody cares about: My wife (then girlfriend) and I were both in a bookstore looking for books, and were in different parts of the store. She was getting her Masters in French Linquistics. We met up to check out, and she was excited about the book she found. I told her I found a really cool one too, Metamagical Themas. I showed her the cool stuff in this book, and she agreed it was interesting. Then she showed me some of the interesting stuff from the book she picked: Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language. We then realized that they were written by the same guy! Hofstadter is really awesome, and ties the whole geek/linguistics thing pretty well.
Wrong. There is something to be said for how security is considered in the design of an OS. For Windows, it wasn't much of a consideration, which contributed heavily to why there have been so many systemic vulnerabilities.
The system was designed to be user-friendly, not secure. They got their market-share because of that fact. I think it is much easier to make a secure system user-friendly than to make a user-friendly system secure. Microsoft is finding that out as well. You reap what you sow.
Show me an LCD that I can afford, see without being 3" away from it at a decent resolution, and can do ALL of my tasks, and I'll buy it.
* By the way, CRT's do have there uses in high speed games (Quake) but other than that they just burn your retinas.
Speaking of legacy garbage from the 90's (which I still love, BTW)...
So if you have an LCD and need to play Quake, what do you do? Own both a CRT and and LCD? Talk about waste. And you know what I hate? People who can't get there/their/they're and your/you're straight, even though all it takes is learning simple English rules.
#> /etc/init.d/httpd start
Really? It sucks for us. Our SUS client is pointed at our corporate server. When corporate decides a patch should be installed, it gets installed on our systems. The problem? I am in QA, and our systems started acting goofy lately. In particular, our Rational applications started behaving very strangely. We *think* that it is due to the MS updates, but have no way of telling without launching a full-blown investigation into the issue. We have different OSs we have to test on, and different configurations. But they all have to have these stupid patches installed automatically. And some of them you cannot un-install. Try to track down the cause of a problem when there were 10 patches installed on your system the night before.
Now that isn't necessarily MS's fault, it is more our head office's fault. We should be able to test out patches with the software we use before having it mass-deployed. Sure, mandate it for all the meat-bag virus-spreaders in sales, but leave us the F alone. The IT guys in our own building are clueless, because they don't have to do anything now - the auto-updater will take care of it, and the patches come from corporate. But like you said, that part is cake....
And I corrected it further...
"According to zdnet, emachines, the company geeks like to make fun of, finally has a toy we'd all need to get for Emacs