Our corporate IT staff refreshed us with a T42, but the software image didn't have the trackpoint wizard or whatever it's called. A few phone calls and I was able to disable the bloody thing - if you're a power typer, you will find yourself quickly losing focus from your working window as the heel of your hand exerts force on the trackpad and emulates a double-click.
My [personal] T23 doesn't have it, and they can have it when they pry my cold dead fingers from around it (well, as soon as I replace the fluorescent lamp.) It has the dreaded red tint on the screen and someday I will be annoyed enough to get it fixed, but I love it.
Boy, you don't know how to use it, do you? I'll bet you scrape your finger across it like a trackpad and think that it's gonna make the mouse pointer move.
Think of it like a joystick without the handle and you'll do much better. Five minutes, huh?
Arthur C. Clarke noted this in his book "Imperial Earth."
(Imperfectly quoted) "On Earth, they light a jet of hydrocarbon and let it burn in the oxygen atmosphere. Here, we light a jet of oxygen and let it burn in our hydrocarbon atmosphere."
Well, you must be either working for the US government,
The PP mentioned "GPO" in his/her post. If it's the conventional TLA, it means "[US] Government Printing Office."
I work for a Fortune 50 company. Not sure what the ramifications would be for wilfully walking away and leaving the PC on but I sure don't want to find out; I like my job. I do know our passworded screen saver kicks in after 10 minutes of inactivity and few people have permanent local admin rights on their machines (IT people included) so the keys to the candy store are rather well controlled.
Just tell users 'if you use this and lose data you are on your own'
Suuuure. That will work when the CEO comes a-knockin' on the door... "uh, Nurb, I had my speech to the local Chamber of Commerce in this folder, I sweated bullets on it for six weeks, the speech is in three hours, and [I forgot the password|the password doesn't work]."
we do allow PGP
My point exactly. It's doubtful the CEO will know enough to PGP encrypt a file, but they do know how to get to that context menu quickly enough...
Not that I'm espousing deleting the functionality, mind you; it's pretty cool. But the premise of "making the user responsible" seems credible in inverse proportion to the level at which the person is in the company.
I'm just waiting for our management to see the light.
We started transitioning the department that I used to work for to an offshore group. This was a low-salt wound in that it was a "center of excellence" at one of my companies' facilities overseas, so the work wasn't technically outsourced. It was still in the family, but of course it wasn't in the US any more...
We have first responder production support transitioned there now. The procedure now is for the (US-based) data center to call the offshore call center, where a ticket is assigned to the offshore analyst and they correct the issue.
It's been three weeks. In that three weeks there have been two outages. In both of these the US data center called the offshore call center per the SOP. The first time, the offshore operator had no idea what the data center analyst was talking about. They ended up paging me (the "page of last resort.") The second time, they couldn't even reach a person - got voicemail every time they tried. After an hour or so they paged me.
I refer you to the second paragraph, where I say it isn't even my department any more... what can I do? I'm just sitting, waiting for the house of cards to come tumbling down.
Yep, I can confirm that; I lost my wallet flying from SFO to Memphis. My worries started in the Avis lot as I went for it to pick up my rental car. Mirable dictu, the droid at the lot gate only asked for my contract. So if you're short of wheels in Memphis, I can attest to the fact that if you wander over to the airport and pick up an Avis preferred car with the contract in it, you have at least a 50-50 chance of getting out of the lot without flashing an ID.
But I digress.
I called the TSA from the hotel (another joy, as they didn't want to check me in on the Amex corporate card that I guaranteed the room with - the one that was about to be deactivated.) The TSA said that as long as the airline accepted me for boarding, that the boarding pass would be sufficient to get me through the checkpoint.
The denouement: The next evening I got an email from the carrier. My wallet was found on the aircraft, and I was reunited with my ID and my (now worthless) Amex card.
Naah. The airplanes (the Janet flights out of Las Vegas' McCarran Airport) are just 737s. No logo, only an FAA Registration number and a red stripe along the side.
If you want to see more information about them go to Dreamland Resort and click on Area 51 FAQs on the left, then click on the link "What are the Janet flights?"
most of the "loans" are for at least 15%! I don't know who this is helping...
People who have subpar credit scores. If they were to go to a regular creditor for a LOC they could easily approach 30%.
Geez, my Sears card is drifting up, on average a quarter point a month. Of course with a zero balance on it (I pay in full every month) they're not making any money off of me. I did have a balance on Sears at one point and it pissed me off to be paying 26.24% one month, 26.49% the month after that.
And go ahead and call them and ask for a rate reduction. No matter how high you go in the food chain, the answer is always "No."
But back on topic; if people align themselves with an affitity group in Prosper, they have a fighting chance at maybe swapping some 29% money for some 15% money. That can save them some cash. At least more of a fighting chance than going to a regular banker...
Interestingly enough, not all typo variants are snapped up by the typosquatters.
I figured I would do what I do unconsciously, and moved my hand one character off of the home row. Bingo, when you go to www.brstbuy.com you get redirected.
Oh, these guys are smart.:)
Interestingly enough, it doesn't work by going to bwstbuy.com.
A New York morning drive time host once had a similar bit; wryly observing how teachers mangle names on the first day of school, and how much fun you could have if you named your kid "shi-thead".
I'm not against the obvious neccessity of novices learning, I just don't think it's appropriate on serious projects. They should cut their teeth elsewhere.
To bring this back to the original poster, by the way, remember that it was a grad school programming project. If not that sort of project, then what? If not there, then where?
We, as experts, are being paid exceedingly well to deliver, not to engage in pleasant social interaction. And we have an addition obligation not merely to the company that pays us, but to the users of our products and to society.
Sorry, I guess we have to agree to disagree. You are paid exceedingly well to do what your employer tells you to do, no more and no less. Unless you're a sole proprietorship, that may involve doing things that cut against your grain - like training a new employee.
I did not start training this employee because I liked her (although I do, she's definitely easy on the eyes) but because our mutual manager instructed me to. Therefore, it became part of my performance assessment to make sure that she was trained adequately and to the company standards.
When you take that responsibility on, you also take the responsibility for vetting that users' work until it passes code reviews and unit tests on its own. So by that metric, you're taking on a huge responsibility to protect "society" from the inaction or poor action of the newbie programmer. And that's part of your job. If it's not, then don't do it. But if it is, then suck it up and do the best job you can, and at the end of the day you'll have a quality software project AND an employee who can help deliver more of them.
How about the young programmer read source code from a variety of projects. Why should I bother to teach someone who can't be bothered to make that effort, or who remains fundamentally ignorant about not what to learn, but how to learn ?
That begs the question of whether or not they know how to learn or not.
How about the novice actually study up on the domain of the work, in addition to the vanilla comp sci topics. Why should I have to cover and compensate for his lack of motivation and lack of desire to engage in domain subject matter ?
That begs the question of whether they are indeed unmotivated and lack desire.
Geez Louise, you're jumping to so many conclusions here you probably wore out your new tennis shoes already.
I've been training a new person since November in my particular specialty. Beyond giving me rare insights and making me think twice and thrice about what I'm doing, the social interaction and the joy of watching them grow and develop is something that I'll treasure long after they have moved onto another group (or I have.)
Clearly you're paid to develop software.
I'm paid to develop software AND develop the next generation of people to develop software.
And whether I'm paid more than you or not, I'm a lot wealthier.
On the other hand, how can projects like the Apollo Space Program succeed?
You might check out this article that was written in 1996 talking about the on-board shuttle group, the people responsible for the code that flies the STS. Pretty interesting article.
Microsoft could take a page from these people's books. We all could.
My 11 month old will say "yes" if you ask if she's hungry and she is.
If she's just eaten and you ask her if she's hungry, she doesn't say yes. If you offer her more food, she'll say "no" sometimes - not reliably - and shake her head and fend off the spoon, again not reliably.
I'd say she's mastered half of the binary number system, so she's on her way.:)
Slashdot Mirror
/me raises my hand
Our corporate IT staff refreshed us with a T42, but the software image didn't have the trackpoint wizard or whatever it's called. A few phone calls and I was able to disable the bloody thing - if you're a power typer, you will find yourself quickly losing focus from your working window as the heel of your hand exerts force on the trackpad and emulates a double-click.
My [personal] T23 doesn't have it, and they can have it when they pry my cold dead fingers from around it (well, as soon as I replace the fluorescent lamp.) It has the dreaded red tint on the screen and someday I will be annoyed enough to get it fixed, but I love it.
Boy, you don't know how to use it, do you? I'll bet you scrape your finger across it like a trackpad and think that it's gonna make the mouse pointer move.
Think of it like a joystick without the handle and you'll do much better. Five minutes, huh?
Arthur C. Clarke noted this in his book "Imperial Earth."
(Imperfectly quoted) "On Earth, they light a jet of hydrocarbon and let it burn in the oxygen atmosphere. Here, we light a jet of oxygen and let it burn in our hydrocarbon atmosphere."
Pretty good book.
Well, you must be either working for the US government,
The PP mentioned "GPO" in his/her post. If it's the conventional TLA, it means "[US] Government Printing Office."
I work for a Fortune 50 company. Not sure what the ramifications would be for wilfully walking away and leaving the PC on but I sure don't want to find out; I like my job. I do know our passworded screen saver kicks in after 10 minutes of inactivity and few people have permanent local admin rights on their machines (IT people included) so the keys to the candy store are rather well controlled.
Just tell users 'if you use this and lose data you are on your own'
Suuuure. That will work when the CEO comes a-knockin' on the door... "uh, Nurb, I had my speech to the local Chamber of Commerce in this folder, I sweated bullets on it for six weeks, the speech is in three hours, and [I forgot the password|the password doesn't work]."
we do allow PGP
My point exactly. It's doubtful the CEO will know enough to PGP encrypt a file, but they do know how to get to that context menu quickly enough...
Not that I'm espousing deleting the functionality, mind you; it's pretty cool. But the premise of "making the user responsible" seems credible in inverse proportion to the level at which the person is in the company.
rodtsasdt llllllreport*
832s? 832's? That's so 1960's.
REAL men use 1Sync.
could've done it in 3 if they used APL
"There are two things a man must do, Before his life is done. To write three lines in APL, and make the buggers run."
I'm just waiting for our management to see the light.
We started transitioning the department that I used to work for to an offshore group. This was a low-salt wound in that it was a "center of excellence" at one of my companies' facilities overseas, so the work wasn't technically outsourced. It was still in the family, but of course it wasn't in the US any more...
We have first responder production support transitioned there now. The procedure now is for the (US-based) data center to call the offshore call center, where a ticket is assigned to the offshore analyst and they correct the issue.
It's been three weeks. In that three weeks there have been two outages. In both of these the US data center called the offshore call center per the SOP. The first time, the offshore operator had no idea what the data center analyst was talking about. They ended up paging me (the "page of last resort.") The second time, they couldn't even reach a person - got voicemail every time they tried. After an hour or so they paged me.
I refer you to the second paragraph, where I say it isn't even my department any more... what can I do? I'm just sitting, waiting for the house of cards to come tumbling down.
Yep, I can confirm that; I lost my wallet flying from SFO to Memphis. My worries started in the Avis lot as I went for it to pick up my rental car. Mirable dictu, the droid at the lot gate only asked for my contract. So if you're short of wheels in Memphis, I can attest to the fact that if you wander over to the airport and pick up an Avis preferred car with the contract in it, you have at least a 50-50 chance of getting out of the lot without flashing an ID.
But I digress.
I called the TSA from the hotel (another joy, as they didn't want to check me in on the Amex corporate card that I guaranteed the room with - the one that was about to be deactivated.) The TSA said that as long as the airline accepted me for boarding, that the boarding pass would be sufficient to get me through the checkpoint.
The denouement: The next evening I got an email from the carrier. My wallet was found on the aircraft, and I was reunited with my ID and my (now worthless) Amex card.
Naah. The airplanes (the Janet flights out of Las Vegas' McCarran Airport) are just 737s. No logo, only an FAA Registration number and a red stripe along the side.
If you want to see more information about them go to Dreamland Resort and click on Area 51 FAQs on the left, then click on the link "What are the Janet flights?"
People who have subpar credit scores. If they were to go to a regular creditor for a LOC they could easily approach 30%.
Geez, my Sears card is drifting up, on average a quarter point a month. Of course with a zero balance on it (I pay in full every month) they're not making any money off of me. I did have a balance on Sears at one point and it pissed me off to be paying 26.24% one month, 26.49% the month after that.
And go ahead and call them and ask for a rate reduction. No matter how high you go in the food chain, the answer is always "No."
But back on topic; if people align themselves with an affitity group in Prosper, they have a fighting chance at maybe swapping some 29% money for some 15% money. That can save them some cash. At least more of a fighting chance than going to a regular banker...
I like that one better. Hadn't heard it before.
The regulation of government requires three boxes:
Soap
Ballot
Ammo.
Use in that order.
I'm especially fond of the disclaimer on the hiking trails on Mount Washington.
STOP
The area ahead has the worst weather in America. Many have died there from exposure, even in the summer. Turn back NOW if the weather is bad.
WHITE MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST
Barnes and Noble has a book all about the humor in decisions handed down by courts. It's called Corpus Juris Humorous. Pretty funny.
Interestingly enough, not all typo variants are snapped up by the typosquatters.
:)
I figured I would do what I do unconsciously, and moved my hand one character off of the home row. Bingo, when you go to www.brstbuy.com you get redirected.
Oh, these guys are smart.
Interestingly enough, it doesn't work by going to bwstbuy.com.
Oh well.
Just a nit, but ITYM "Tax Freedom Day."
And it seems that there are varying opinions on when Tax Freedom Day really falls.
Why isn't Verizon Wireless part of the phone notification system on Google Calendar?
Or is this addressed in a FAQ and I was too lazy to go look for it?
Yeah, but I want to know two things:
First, did they save a lot of money on their car insurance by switching to GEICO?
Secondly, did they really favor roast duck with a mango salsa?
A New York morning drive time host once had a similar bit; wryly observing how teachers mangle names on the first day of school, and how much fun you could have if you named your kid "shi-thead".
To bring this back to the original poster, by the way, remember that it was a grad school programming project. If not that sort of project, then what? If not there, then where?
Sorry, I guess we have to agree to disagree. You are paid exceedingly well to do what your employer tells you to do, no more and no less. Unless you're a sole proprietorship, that may involve doing things that cut against your grain - like training a new employee.
I did not start training this employee because I liked her (although I do, she's definitely easy on the eyes) but because our mutual manager instructed me to. Therefore, it became part of my performance assessment to make sure that she was trained adequately and to the company standards.
When you take that responsibility on, you also take the responsibility for vetting that users' work until it passes code reviews and unit tests on its own. So by that metric, you're taking on a huge responsibility to protect "society" from the inaction or poor action of the newbie programmer. And that's part of your job. If it's not, then don't do it. But if it is, then suck it up and do the best job you can, and at the end of the day you'll have a quality software project AND an employee who can help deliver more of them.
That begs the question of whether or not they know how to learn or not.
That begs the question of whether they are indeed unmotivated and lack desire.
Geez Louise, you're jumping to so many conclusions here you probably wore out your new tennis shoes already.
I've been training a new person since November in my particular specialty. Beyond giving me rare insights and making me think twice and thrice about what I'm doing, the social interaction and the joy of watching them grow and develop is something that I'll treasure long after they have moved onto another group (or I have.)
Clearly you're paid to develop software.
I'm paid to develop software AND develop the next generation of people to develop software.
And whether I'm paid more than you or not, I'm a lot wealthier.
On the other hand, how can projects like the Apollo Space Program succeed?
You might check out this article that was written in 1996 talking about the on-board shuttle group, the people responsible for the code that flies the STS. Pretty interesting article.
Microsoft could take a page from these people's books. We all could.
My 11 month old will say "yes" if you ask if she's hungry and she is.
:)
If she's just eaten and you ask her if she's hungry, she doesn't say yes. If you offer her more food, she'll say "no" sometimes - not reliably - and shake her head and fend off the spoon, again not reliably.
I'd say she's mastered half of the binary number system, so she's on her way.