> At this point in my life, I really don't want to work for Microsoft.
Yeah, at THIS point in your life you are busy with school. As a recent graduate, I GAURENTEE you wouldn't think twice if Microsoft offered you even the lowest of jobs. You would take it. I consider myself well above par in my class and I haven't been able to find a job since I graduated in December. At this point, I would suck Bill Gates' dick if he would be so gracious to offer me a janitorial position at Microsoft.
I would be happy with ANYTHING full-time and computer related at this time.
Get out while you can - WAY too many people fighting for too few jobs.
Actually, I think Twain said, "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." Perhaps he said the other one too, but only after quoting Einstein.
Ok, perhaps it's a bit prejudiced, but I've worked in Help Desk support before. Nothing is too stupid.
I can appreciate that not everyone is an expert (that's why the Help Desk is there), but some things I've seen seem to contradict the basic logic it takes to operate a toaster or use a telephone.
I'm sure their motives aren't so noble. Is it a coincidence Mozilla and Winamp compete heavily with Microsoft?
> In the boxing match that is MS vs AOL... I'm cheering for AOL.
How about cheering for the little guy? I don't have a problem with the fact that AOL is the biggest. I have a problem with them using their power to determine which standards are acceptable (or more importantly, unacceptable) on the Internet. As a tech support person at a semi-large Help Desk I've seen countless Java and other applications fail under AOL that work fine under the other browsers.
I do love Mozilla, but Netscape is a huge, moldy piece of shit (no, they are not the same). I cringe when I design a brand new web site that looks superb under Mozilla and Internet Explorer only to find out how much work I really have ahead of me when I see that it looks like garbage under Netscape. Live in the now people.
If it is that imperative that you work from home and you are that valuable to your company where downtime is inexcusable, perhaps your company should get you the tools you need to do your job (ie, pay for a business line).
> because they were all too stupid to set a message rule to delete anything with "Iloveyou" in the subject.
Sounds like the admins job to me. I agree, however, that it's like pulling teeth to get users to watch out for some of the most obvious and simple problems.
The staff/faculty of our campus has been hit a bunch of times with new e-mail viruses that are new and not removed by our Exchange AV program. Even though all of them have been a part of the chaos that has ensued in the past, and ALL of them have been told countless times not to open strange attachments, I've seen some of the most senior faculty persons open some of the most obviously shady attachments you could find. And then they call the Help Desk and curse about virus makers while we are digging through call logs looking for the last time the person was told not to open strange attachments.
> I bet you're a Democrat since the idea of being required to do some work is offensive to you.
It's not about the work - it's about the poor customer service that is plaguing universities nationwide. The customers (students) may have been in the wrong, but that doesn't mean you should ridicule them. You need to decide if their actions warrant losing their business. The universities know they can treat you like shit and people will keep giving them money because there is no alternative (since they are all the same). Then again, perhaps being continuously fucked in the ass is real world preparation after all...
(speaking as a person who is sick of being treated like a piece of dog shit by the university he shelled out some significant coin to)
I agree with you, but I was trying to avoid saying that because I didn't want to get flamed with "They have every right to charge what they want for *their* content" and "If you don't like it, don't use it" comments. I think $6 a month for one site is rediculous too.
Cool Home Pages also has some neat designs you can use for ideas too, but original designs are better.
This was said before, but it IS important to know your audience. I try to stay away from DHTML because it is different in every browser OR requires a lot of maintenance to keep it friendly with all the browsers. However, if your audience is a bunch of Mac zealots you can probably use more modern scripting techniques because Mac users are usually forced to upgrade their hardware often (due to new OS and application requirements).
Try your page on many platforms. A lot of Windows developers (other platforms, where?) forget about Macintosh and Linux users. My number one personal priority when I develop my pages is that it is compatible with as many browsers as possible. However, I'm starting to not care about Netscape since it is a pain in the ass to make it work and fewer and fewer people are using it anyway (upgrade already!). I mainly focus on compatibility with Mozilla and Internet Explorer now, and I think that hits the majority of people.
You have to balance elegant design with compatibility. I figure if I can get 99% of the browsers, I can sacrifice the rest for elegance.
I think many of us would be willing to pay a certain amount for services we perceive as useful. However, I doubt the average user can afford to pay, say, $6 per month to each site they use.
I mean, I visit 4 sites regularly (daily basis) and probably around 5 sites once a week, and countless others whenever necessary. Using the Salon model, I would be paying $24 per month to access my favorite 4 sites. What about the other sites I visit? Do I need to pay full price just to access them once in awhile. Granted, their information is useful to me, but not $6/month useful. Now, I relize they all wouldn't charge $6, but I was just using that as an example of how the monthly cost for a few web sites can add up. I would imagine most of the big sites would charge around $3-$10 per month.
That brings us to the problem - many of the sites I visit (Salon, Britannica, etc.) want you to pay a flat monthly rate for premium access. I would be more likely to pay on my favorite sites you could have the option of paying-per-use.
> Dude, there are 100 Windows programmers for each Unix one. Don't underestimate them, Windows world has created one of the most complicated and succesfull applications ever...
1. What's your point?
2. Which "application" are you referring to?
3. I was merely suggesting that our school is similar to the parent post's situation. There was no argument.
First of all, I'm not sure your laptop will last long operating at freezing temperatures anyway. Plus, it would take longer for the wanter coolant to freeze (even without an addative) since the computer produces heat. Why was this insightful? Funny, maybe.
Yeah, our school is on that track. We have business majors with MIS degrees and we have computer science majors. Of course the MIS people were in bed with Microsoft from the beginning. The CS people here, which are typical Slashdot geeks, fight to have UNIX/Java/Oracle as the campus standard, but in the end they too adopted MS Visual J++ (they eventually switched to VisualAge for Windows) and lost the war on the campus web standard (JSP? Sorry, you'll use ASP and you'll like it). Computer Services pushes them to have Windows on every box so they can have control over them, or they get no support. And sorry CS students, our laptops only come with Windows even though you check out more laptops that any other major (with the exception of the MIS kids). But, Macintosh is available for the departments that "need" it like Music and Art.
> I don't normally complain about this, but why is this story in "Your Rights Online"?
How about the right not to be harrassed by unsolicited e-mail? Or the right that my children should have to be shielded from pornographic e-mail? Or the right for me not to pay for spammers use of my bandwidth? Although I hate making more laws, as we already have enough of them, I feel like I should have these rights.
Agreed. You can cite U.S. state-specific violations from this page. Remember, it's just as easy for them to ignore e-mail as it is for you to ignore spam, so send a postal letter to your representative or senator.
> Why would I buy something from somebody I don't know, and can't get *real* info on.
Because you can't get it anywhere else, that's why. Ebay has a TON of stuff you can't find anywhere for great prices. It all depends on how averse to risk you are. Some people play the lottery, some people use Ebay. Personally, I've had much better luck with Ebay than the lottery.
>...there was no PayPal or online escrow services, so we employed other tactics to try to ensure that we didn't get ripped off.
I'm not sure everyone would agree that PayPal is a safe way to trade. In fact, I hardly see how there is any security built into the service. If someone rips you off, how much work do you think PayPal is going to do to get your money back? For those who feel the security of their credit cards, think again. After all, PayPal made the charge to your card and PayPal upheld their end of the deal - facilitating currency exchange. I don't see what grounds you would have to stop payment on PayPal who did nothing wrong.
For large amounts, I would much rather use an escrow service.
I love PayPal and have never gotten ripped off, but I am also aware I'm taking a risk. That's why I only use PayPal for small to medium amounts (depending on a seller's rating) and direct credit card payments and escrows for large amounts. Too bad, in this case, the seller had an excellent rating.
Perhaps, but don't you think the average hick (no offense, I shop at Walmart too) that walks into Walmart and see's a new 1GHz computer for $399 will buy now and worry about the OS later *wink wink*. Regardless of their target audience, I think they'll find their core customer base is just as interested in these machines.
I see it all the time here at school. They sell these moldy 100 MHz Pentium complete systems to people for like $250 and then we get calls at the Help Desk because they want to know how to install an OS on it. And then they get pissed when we tell them we can't lend them a Windows CD ("oh, come on, I'll just need it for a a couple of hours"). Sorry, we don't support that and it's illegal anyway (dumbass). But they see what they perceive as a good deal and get spend-happy, regardless if they have any clue what an OS is or not.
Hell, half the people whom we ask "What operating system are you using?" reply with something like "Internet Explorer" or "Microsoft 97". Heh.
Try a new browser, smokey. Looks fine here. Here is the correct quote:
> The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that a citizen has the right to express dissatifaction with the products or services of a company; in this case, an insurance company.
> I laugh whenever I'm in a situation where someone tells me "Hey! It's a free country". No it isn't.
You did not read my post correctly. As I said, I like to pretend it is a free country. It's one of those things like maintaining a good attitude in the worst of situation might bring about a happy ending. If I support the virtues of freedom I might help encourage it. And yet, you comparing our *elected* president to Hitler still gets a +3.
Bah, I still like to pretend this (US) is a free country. We don't need more rules, more regulation. Granted, some restrictions on big business are needed (like environmental and anti-trust, etc), but I like to leave the rest to social movement theory. I feel like there are so many rules in this country as it is.
If a sizeable amount of society can't agree on such a movement, is it really what we as a society want?
Call me a rule utilitarian, but I don't think Cisco did anything wrong since it was not illegal. If society doesn't like it they need to elect and petition politicians to change the law.
> Catering to the whims of the Slashdot crowd: precisely.
Even if it was karma whoring, he does have a valid point about Linux going from a naughty secret to being embraced by industry titans in the last 4 years. That is significant.
Slashdot Mirror
> At this point in my life, I really don't want to work for Microsoft.
Yeah, at THIS point in your life you are busy with school. As a recent graduate, I GAURENTEE you wouldn't think twice if Microsoft offered you even the lowest of jobs. You would take it. I consider myself well above par in my class and I haven't been able to find a job since I graduated in December. At this point, I would suck Bill Gates' dick if he would be so gracious to offer me a janitorial position at Microsoft.
I would be happy with ANYTHING full-time and computer related at this time.
Get out while you can - WAY too many people fighting for too few jobs.
> it doesn't come with Enterprise Manager, so if you don't already have access to the tools, you're screwed.
Screwed? Any serious database hacker would use a SQL client anyway. You can find them for free at downloads.com.
Actually, I think Twain said, "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." Perhaps he said the other one too, but only after quoting Einstein.
I stand by the origins of my quotation.
I actually laughed at this one.
Ok, perhaps it's a bit prejudiced, but I've worked in Help Desk support before. Nothing is too stupid.
I can appreciate that not everyone is an expert (that's why the Help Desk is there), but some things I've seen seem to contradict the basic logic it takes to operate a toaster or use a telephone.
> adopting a lot of open source practices
I'm sure their motives aren't so noble. Is it a coincidence Mozilla and Winamp compete heavily with Microsoft?
> In the boxing match that is MS vs AOL... I'm cheering for AOL.
How about cheering for the little guy? I don't have a problem with the fact that AOL is the biggest. I have a problem with them using their power to determine which standards are acceptable (or more importantly, unacceptable) on the Internet. As a tech support person at a semi-large Help Desk I've seen countless Java and other applications fail under AOL that work fine under the other browsers.
I do love Mozilla, but Netscape is a huge, moldy piece of shit (no, they are not the same). I cringe when I design a brand new web site that looks superb under Mozilla and Internet Explorer only to find out how much work I really have ahead of me when I see that it looks like garbage under Netscape. Live in the now people.
If it is that imperative that you work from home and you are that valuable to your company where downtime is inexcusable, perhaps your company should get you the tools you need to do your job (ie, pay for a business line).
If not, get your ass to work like the rest of us.
> because they were all too stupid to set a message rule to delete anything with "Iloveyou" in the subject.
Sounds like the admins job to me. I agree, however, that it's like pulling teeth to get users to watch out for some of the most obvious and simple problems.
The staff/faculty of our campus has been hit a bunch of times with new e-mail viruses that are new and not removed by our Exchange AV program. Even though all of them have been a part of the chaos that has ensued in the past, and ALL of them have been told countless times not to open strange attachments, I've seen some of the most senior faculty persons open some of the most obviously shady attachments you could find. And then they call the Help Desk and curse about virus makers while we are digging through call logs looking for the last time the person was told not to open strange attachments.
> I bet you're a Democrat since the idea of being required to do some work is offensive to you.
It's not about the work - it's about the poor customer service that is plaguing universities nationwide. The customers (students) may have been in the wrong, but that doesn't mean you should ridicule them. You need to decide if their actions warrant losing their business. The universities know they can treat you like shit and people will keep giving them money because there is no alternative (since they are all the same). Then again, perhaps being continuously fucked in the ass is real world preparation after all...
(speaking as a person who is sick of being treated like a piece of dog shit by the university he shelled out some significant coin to)
I agree with you, but I was trying to avoid saying that because I didn't want to get flamed with "They have every right to charge what they want for *their* content" and "If you don't like it, don't use it" comments. I think $6 a month for one site is rediculous too.
Cool Home Pages also has some neat designs you can use for ideas too, but original designs are better.
This was said before, but it IS important to know your audience. I try to stay away from DHTML because it is different in every browser OR requires a lot of maintenance to keep it friendly with all the browsers. However, if your audience is a bunch of Mac zealots you can probably use more modern scripting techniques because Mac users are usually forced to upgrade their hardware often (due to new OS and application requirements).
Try your page on many platforms. A lot of Windows developers (other platforms, where?) forget about Macintosh and Linux users. My number one personal priority when I develop my pages is that it is compatible with as many browsers as possible. However, I'm starting to not care about Netscape since it is a pain in the ass to make it work and fewer and fewer people are using it anyway (upgrade already!). I mainly focus on compatibility with Mozilla and Internet Explorer now, and I think that hits the majority of people.
You have to balance elegant design with compatibility. I figure if I can get 99% of the browsers, I can sacrifice the rest for elegance.
I think many of us would be willing to pay a certain amount for services we perceive as useful. However, I doubt the average user can afford to pay, say, $6 per month to each site they use.
I mean, I visit 4 sites regularly (daily basis) and probably around 5 sites once a week, and countless others whenever necessary. Using the Salon model, I would be paying $24 per month to access my favorite 4 sites. What about the other sites I visit? Do I need to pay full price just to access them once in awhile. Granted, their information is useful to me, but not $6/month useful. Now, I relize they all wouldn't charge $6, but I was just using that as an example of how the monthly cost for a few web sites can add up. I would imagine most of the big sites would charge around $3-$10 per month.
That brings us to the problem - many of the sites I visit (Salon, Britannica, etc.) want you to pay a flat monthly rate for premium access. I would be more likely to pay on my favorite sites you could have the option of paying-per-use.
> Dude, there are 100 Windows programmers for each Unix one. Don't underestimate them, Windows world has created one of the most complicated and succesfull applications ever ...
1. What's your point?
2. Which "application" are you referring to?
3. I was merely suggesting that our school is similar to the parent post's situation. There was no argument.
First of all, I'm not sure your laptop will last long operating at freezing temperatures anyway. Plus, it would take longer for the wanter coolant to freeze (even without an addative) since the computer produces heat. Why was this insightful? Funny, maybe.
Yeah, our school is on that track. We have business majors with MIS degrees and we have computer science majors. Of course the MIS people were in bed with Microsoft from the beginning. The CS people here, which are typical Slashdot geeks, fight to have UNIX/Java/Oracle as the campus standard, but in the end they too adopted MS Visual J++ (they eventually switched to VisualAge for Windows) and lost the war on the campus web standard (JSP? Sorry, you'll use ASP and you'll like it). Computer Services pushes them to have Windows on every box so they can have control over them, or they get no support. And sorry CS students, our laptops only come with Windows even though you check out more laptops that any other major (with the exception of the MIS kids). But, Macintosh is available for the departments that "need" it like Music and Art.
> I don't normally complain about this, but why is this story in "Your Rights Online"?
How about the right not to be harrassed by unsolicited e-mail? Or the right that my children should have to be shielded from pornographic e-mail? Or the right for me not to pay for spammers use of my bandwidth? Although I hate making more laws, as we already have enough of them, I feel like I should have these rights.
Agreed. You can cite U.S. state-specific violations from this page. Remember, it's just as easy for them to ignore e-mail as it is for you to ignore spam, so send a postal letter to your representative or senator.
I know I could probably set something like this up on our network and nobody would say a word.
> Why would I buy something from somebody I don't know, and can't get *real* info on.
Because you can't get it anywhere else, that's why. Ebay has a TON of stuff you can't find anywhere for great prices. It all depends on how averse to risk you are. Some people play the lottery, some people use Ebay. Personally, I've had much better luck with Ebay than the lottery.
> ...there was no PayPal or online escrow services, so we employed other tactics to try to ensure that we didn't get ripped off.
I'm not sure everyone would agree that PayPal is a safe way to trade. In fact, I hardly see how there is any security built into the service. If someone rips you off, how much work do you think PayPal is going to do to get your money back? For those who feel the security of their credit cards, think again. After all, PayPal made the charge to your card and PayPal upheld their end of the deal - facilitating currency exchange. I don't see what grounds you would have to stop payment on PayPal who did nothing wrong.
For large amounts, I would much rather use an escrow service.
I love PayPal and have never gotten ripped off, but I am also aware I'm taking a risk. That's why I only use PayPal for small to medium amounts (depending on a seller's rating) and direct credit card payments and escrows for large amounts. Too bad, in this case, the seller had an excellent rating.
Perhaps, but don't you think the average hick (no offense, I shop at Walmart too) that walks into Walmart and see's a new 1GHz computer for $399 will buy now and worry about the OS later *wink wink*. Regardless of their target audience, I think they'll find their core customer base is just as interested in these machines.
I see it all the time here at school. They sell these moldy 100 MHz Pentium complete systems to people for like $250 and then we get calls at the Help Desk because they want to know how to install an OS on it. And then they get pissed when we tell them we can't lend them a Windows CD ("oh, come on, I'll just need it for a a couple of hours"). Sorry, we don't support that and it's illegal anyway (dumbass). But they see what they perceive as a good deal and get spend-happy, regardless if they have any clue what an OS is or not.
Hell, half the people whom we ask "What operating system are you using?" reply with something like "Internet Explorer" or "Microsoft 97". Heh.
Try a new browser, smokey. Looks fine here. Here is the correct quote:
> The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that a citizen has the right to express dissatifaction with the products or services of a company; in this case, an insurance company.
> I laugh whenever I'm in a situation where someone tells me "Hey! It's a free country". No it isn't.
You did not read my post correctly. As I said, I like to pretend it is a free country. It's one of those things like maintaining a good attitude in the worst of situation might bring about a happy ending. If I support the virtues of freedom I might help encourage it. And yet, you comparing our *elected* president to Hitler still gets a +3.
> That's why corporations need to be regulated.
Bah, I still like to pretend this (US) is a free country. We don't need more rules, more regulation. Granted, some restrictions on big business are needed (like environmental and anti-trust, etc), but I like to leave the rest to social movement theory. I feel like there are so many rules in this country as it is.
If a sizeable amount of society can't agree on such a movement, is it really what we as a society want?
Call me a rule utilitarian, but I don't think Cisco did anything wrong since it was not illegal. If society doesn't like it they need to elect and petition politicians to change the law.
> Catering to the whims of the Slashdot crowd: precisely.
Even if it was karma whoring, he does have a valid point about Linux going from a naughty secret to being embraced by industry titans in the last 4 years. That is significant.