Ah! How times change and how times remain all the same.
Microsoft has well known since the Netscape days that the Web could make the OS completely irrelevant.
Which is why they promptly moved to kill Netscape (please, save to yourselves the comments about how crappy Netscape Navigator was, the crapyness of that software was an important contributing factor to the demise of the company, but the smoking gun was to be found in the office of Bill Gates himself.
They may be cheaper, but when they shit their pants because they are told your company is losing $10 million an hour due to a technical issue, then you realize that not all techies are created equal.
After a few years working technically, even if you remain a techie, you have gained an understanding about what is important for a company, how the technical aspects of what you do affect business, and which things are dumb or not to attempt.
You have earned your stripes, and you will be a good asset to anybody that can see beyond the salary differences.
Good companies needing solid experience will not be ageist, funnily enough many companies realize the error of their ways after a dalliance with only 20 somethings and come back for old timers to ensure their operations keep running.
Any professional person is perfectly capable of doing a job he doesn't like.
This fluffy attitude about doing what you love is pure bullshit, sometimes you do what you have to do, and at the end of the day you may have hated every single minute of it, but still be satisfied for a job well done.
Techies dismiss managers at their own peril, good managers will shield their technical reports from all the bullshit that is being thrown at the team (you know, recrimination, unreasonable requests, tiring and boring statistics and reports, that kind of thing) and will allocate resources fairly to get the job done.
This requires mostly to reach deals with people with varying priorities. Techies slaving away on their keyboards could try this and see if they cut it. Many of them can't hold a conversation without retreating in the body language equivalent of "please don't beat me", so it may be implausible for them to actually be an effective manager.
The only way to stop evolution would be to find a way that everybody had exactly the same genes, and enforce this thoroughly.
We could, for example, stop sexual reproduction, favour cloning and then little by little, prune the clones allowed to carry on, until we would have a species with so little genetic variation as to consider evolution has stopped for them.
But even then,mutations would be possible due to external factors, and the clones would not be perfect copies, unless you could refer always to a primordial genetic map with somehow could always be re implanted in any new human being.
They can tell you all about an animal they have never seen by looking only at the tracks they leave in the sand.
This is not the only useful knowledge they have, they are very knowledgeable about the foods available, the seasons, how to find water and all manner of skills to help them survive the harsh environment where they live.
Seeing them in action the last thing you would think about any of them is to consider them stupid. But most likely they would do badly in an IQ test. This is unsurprising if you consider that geometry, set theory and mathematics has never been a major cultural concern for them. There are many tribes around the world famed for their inability to count, nevertheless they have thrived in their environments for hundreds, or perhaps thousands of years.
Putting it another way, most modern westernised urbanized people would be completely hopeless in the environment of the San people, most likely they would consider such a person close to mentally retarded, which would be equally unfair.
Intelligence is not an absolute thing that can be measured. It is a capability to adapt to different circumstances aided by a social context that is familiar. Measuring human intelligence is an exercise of futility knowing that, fundamentally, we all have the same capabilities.
They were the first to produce art as we understand it today (paintings in South African caves dating back tens of thousands of years).
Africans produced, er, humanity.
This is not a figure of speech. If was Africans, more likely not too different from the ones living there today, who first ventured out of the African continent in order to spread the human race all around the globe.
As for IQ tests, you unhelpfully did not provide pointers to support your claims, which is strange since typing "validity of IQ tests" in Google brings a plethora of information, many of them pointing out to the flaws of using IQ to measure intelligence.
You could paint like Rembrandt, but you will never know if you can or not unless *you give it a serious go*.
The amount of nay sayers is really astounding, I will respect more a guy that regrets having a go at something that failed than a guy that thought about having a go at something and then recoiled because people told him it was too difficult.
Very often the only difference between success and failure is conviction, as sure as hell the only sure way to achieve nothing is doing nothing.
There may be people that are naturally talented, but what they are achieving is not black magic and can be learned.
You don't need to love what you do to succeed, you need to do it to a high standard, and except professions where your genes may be against you (piano player for example) there is no reason why any normal person could not make a career in any profession if determined to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
If MS would GPL anything at all, they would receive the credit they would deserve.
As it is, they aren't, they just continue to muddle the waters with licenses that nobody else is using.
... the competition will be legal or at least ethical.
Ah! How times change and how times remain all the same.
Microsoft has well known since the Netscape days that the Web could make the OS completely irrelevant.
Which is why they promptly moved to kill Netscape (please, save to yourselves the comments about how crappy Netscape Navigator was, the crapyness of that software was an important contributing factor to the demise of the company, but the smoking gun was to be found in the office of Bill Gates himself.
... Google would not exist.
Why do you need pixel level access? Just ensure your scripts can deal with a large enough screen real stat and of you go.
As for filesystem, you are joking, right? Your data will not be in your local computer, or it will be synched by an application outside your browser.
If you can't understand why this matters then I think you can't be helped.
They may be cheaper, but when they shit their pants because they are told your company is losing $10 million an hour due to a technical issue, then you realize that not all techies are created equal.
After a few years working technically, even if you remain a techie, you have gained an understanding about what is important for a company, how the technical aspects of what you do affect business, and which things are dumb or not to attempt.
You have earned your stripes, and you will be a good asset to anybody that can see beyond the salary differences.
Good companies needing solid experience will not be ageist, funnily enough many companies realize the error of their ways after a dalliance with only 20 somethings and come back for old timers to ensure their operations keep running.
No? I thought so.
Words are cheap of course.
Any professional person is perfectly capable of doing a job he doesn't like.
This fluffy attitude about doing what you love is pure bullshit, sometimes you do what you have to do, and at the end of the day you may have hated every single minute of it, but still be satisfied for a job well done.
That is a skill.
You either have it or you don't.
Techies dismiss managers at their own peril, good managers will shield their technical reports from all the bullshit that is being thrown at the team (you know, recrimination, unreasonable requests, tiring and boring statistics and reports, that kind of thing) and will allocate resources fairly to get the job done.
This requires mostly to reach deals with people with varying priorities. Techies slaving away on their keyboards could try this and see if they cut it. Many of them can't hold a conversation without retreating in the body language equivalent of "please don't beat me", so it may be implausible for them to actually be an effective manager.
Because maths, geography and English language change so much in a yearly basis ....
Many people related to genetics and evolutionary theory had nothing to do with the field when they arrived to it. Not even Darwin himself.
But keep your mind closed, it is really useful ....
The only way to stop evolution would be to find a way that everybody had exactly the same genes, and enforce this thoroughly.
We could, for example, stop sexual reproduction, favour cloning and then little by little, prune the clones allowed to carry on, until we would have a species with so little genetic variation as to consider evolution has stopped for them.
But even then ,mutations would be possible due to external factors, and the clones would not be perfect copies, unless you could refer always to a primordial genetic map with somehow could always be re implanted in any new human being.
One tends to listen to people that have proven that they can contribute something useful to our science and culture.
One has to listen sceptically (always) , but appeals to authority are the last refuge of the person without a point.
Don't anthropomorphize genes; they don't like it.
The irony is so delicious that I will not mock it.
Have you seen San people track animals?
They can tell you all about an animal they have never seen by looking only at the tracks they leave in the sand.
This is not the only useful knowledge they have, they are very knowledgeable about the foods available, the seasons, how to find water and all manner of skills to help them survive the harsh environment where they live.
Seeing them in action the last thing you would think about any of them is to consider them stupid. But most likely they would do badly in an IQ test. This is unsurprising if you consider that geometry, set theory and mathematics has never been a major cultural concern for them. There are many tribes around the world famed for their inability to count, nevertheless they have thrived in their environments for hundreds, or perhaps thousands of years.
Putting it another way, most modern westernised urbanized people would be completely hopeless in the environment of the San people, most likely they would consider such a person close to mentally retarded, which would be equally unfair.
Intelligence is not an absolute thing that can be measured. It is a capability to adapt to different circumstances aided by a social context that is familiar. Measuring human intelligence is an exercise of futility knowing that, fundamentally, we all have the same capabilities.
They were the first to undertake long migrations
They were the first to produce art as we understand it today (paintings in South African caves dating back tens of thousands of years).
Africans produced, er, humanity.
This is not a figure of speech. If was Africans, more likely not too different from the ones living there today, who first ventured out of the African continent in order to spread the human race all around the globe.
As for Africans having done "nothing" check your Encyclopaedia and find Egypt, also look at some of their art: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SFEC_EGYPT_ABUSIMBEL_2006-003.JPG so you can recognize the people who made that possible.
As for IQ tests, you unhelpfully did not provide pointers to support your claims, which is strange since typing "validity of IQ tests" in Google brings a plethora of information, many of them pointing out to the flaws of using IQ to measure intelligence.
Is like quoting
- Steve Ballmer about Open Source.
- Hitler about racial harmony.
- GW Bush about English Grammar.
You could paint like Rembrandt, but you will never know if you can or not unless *you give it a serious go*.
The amount of nay sayers is really astounding, I will respect more a guy that regrets having a go at something that failed than a guy that thought about having a go at something and then recoiled because people told him it was too difficult.
Very often the only difference between success and failure is conviction, as sure as hell the only sure way to achieve nothing is doing nothing.
So I don't know exactly what your point is.
What you need to succeed is hard work.
There may be people that are naturally talented, but what they are achieving is not black magic and can be learned.
You don't need to love what you do to succeed, you need to do it to a high standard, and except professions where your genes may be against you (piano player for example) there is no reason why any normal person could not make a career in any profession if determined to do so.
Only people whose skills were dubious to start with are hurting, skilled, up to date people are fine.
... then MS is lost...
I have still to receive a complaint from MS Word users.
Most people, even in an enterprise, do not use all the features in MS Word, then OO.org is a fine replacement for them.
Connect:Direct is what the banks use.
It is cross platform and relatively easy to implement.