A couple of years ago, I had a fairly close extended family member pass away in the night. The following morning, I told my project manager that I would be taking half a day in either two or three days, depending on when the funeral was scheduled. He chewed me up one side and down the other for not giving him enough notice. Honestly.
I'm right there with you. I've got a high-end Palm and an mid-range Axim. I've tried unsuccessfully to use both to get myself organized. My cell phone holds all the contact information I need on a daily basis. Since entering anything in an electronic calendar that requires handwring recognition (or numerous taps on a virtual keyboard) is slow, the only entries in my calendar were recurring things I remembered anyway (weekly team meetings, martial arts class schedule, etc). The important stuff to jot down (oil change on Thursday, doctor on Tuesday) never got written down, so I was always forgetting. I tried to use it as an electronic shopping list, and failed. In the end, my Axim became a way to play games in boring meetings.
Then I moved to some $0.25 mini spiral-bound notebooks from Staples with a bullet-type space pen. It's tiny and light-weight, so it's always with me. Lists get written down immediately. When I'm done shopping, that page is torn out and thrown away. An upcoming schedule page at the front keeps me organized, as does a simple to-do list. When pages fill up or are no longer needed, they're torn out and tossed. When the notebook is empty, I spent another $0.25 to replace it. It's going to take me a long time to reach the level of electronic PDA cost with this system, and I've never been more organized.
"More interesting work" seems to almost always mean "more time doing it." I don't know about you, but I have (and want to continue to have) a life outside of the office. The older I get, the more I realize that I can stand to do work that's boring for 8 hours, because that guarantees me that I can do what I want to do when I get home. And I can promise you, what I want to do isn't what I did at the office. When I had a more challenging position, I was only mediocre at it, and the management dictated that I spent a lot of time doing it (12-14 hrs/day, plus 2-3 weekends a month). Now I'm doing what some people might consider boring (web work), but I'm good at it. I'm able to stand out, get the raises, get the bonuses, and still get it done in a normal work day. I can't even remember the last time I worked a weekend.
I guess my point is this: If you're bored, look for something to fill that void outside of work. Work is not (or at least, shouldn't be) your entire life. Now, if after some careful thought you decide that the only thing that will fill the void in your life is more work, then by all means go for it.
No, it's not. It's clearly marked as an editorial. You as a reader have been told up front what the article was and what it was about. If you have no interest in such editorials, Slashdot makes it very easy for you to set preferences to remove editorials from your front page view. Even if you don't bother doing that but still have a problem with someone posting an editorial, the logical thing to do would have been to skip over the blurb, not read the entire editorial, and certainly not waste your time posting a comment about how inappropriate it is. You've wasted not only your time, but the time of every person who is reading these comments and had to see yours.
I'd say that's far from realistic, actually. A range of 10+ feet, okay. But at the 5 foot and under range (while taking damage from being stabbed, that's pretty darn close), even a full single-handed spray with an MP-5 will hit more than the game suggests. The people responsible for implementing the weapons should have spent a little time at a gun range to get an idea of what was actually realistic and what wasn't...
Is it just me, or is Ask Slashdot becoming a search engine for people too lazy to search on Google for themselves? Some questions are worth being posted to Ask Slashdot, but ones like this could easily be solved with a few minutes of searching.
Now, if the question were altered to read "After some searching, I've found applications A, B and C. Does anyone in the Slashdot crowd have experience with any of these, or have recommendations on which is the most accurate" I'd be more inclined to take it seriously.
Unfortunately, a number of people try this every election. Someone always runs on a 3rd party ticket, and is defeated. There are lots of reasons, but it mostly boils down to money. Only the horribly corrupt "main parties" have the financial resources to convince the general populous to vote for them. Honest people who would do good things for our government have precious little chance of getting elected to anything anymore. It just doesn't seem like there's anything that the citizenry can do to change the system for the better anymore.
Now, here's my challenge to everyone who's going to respond with claims of "you just don't understand the issues" or "you don't know how the system really works." Instead of responding like that, tell me what I can do. In return, I'll either do it or explain what happened when I already did. If the system really can be saved, I want to participate. But I feel very much that a citizen can on longer influence their government, and I'm not the only one...
You've either missed the point, or you're just trolling. I'm not really sure which, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
So those who don't know exactly how their highly-computerized car works should not operate one? No, not at all. Step right in, drive with your parking brake on, don't ever change oil, etc. If the car fails, it's not your fault.
How does "know exactly how their highly-computerized car works" translate into not knowing how to operate the parking brake? I've said again and again in this thread, I'm not advocating complete ignorance. But the original message made it sound like a person who could be tricked into having unnecessary repairs because they didn't know every under-the-hood aspect of their vehicle was responsible for the scammed. My argument is that a person cannot reasonable be expected to understand every last aspect of how their car works. I personally don't know how my automatic transmission makes the exact determination of when to change gears, nor do I think I should have to. I do, however, know how to set and unset the parking brake. The two are not even in the same league.
Should everyone who doesn't have a medical degree and fully understand the human body avoid medical care? No, of course not! Go on, smoke your favorite cigarettes, eat whatever you like, drink as much as you want. If you get sick, it's not your fault.
Again, how do you even make this jump? Nobody's saying you shouldn't know that smoking is bad for you. But I am saying that it's not reasonable to expect any person to be able to read an MRI. The two are (again) not even in the same league.
Should everyone who doesn't fully understand the intricacies of their local, regional and national economies not participate in them? Absolutely not! Vote for any candidate that appeals to you based on his looks or on the amount of advertisement he puts on TV without trying to understand his message. If the government fucks up it's not your fault.
You've got to be messing with me, right? I can't figure out how an educated person would jump from understanding the intricacies of the local economy to an election. There's a lot more to an economy than the government controls (or lack thereof). "Understanding his message" doesn't even make sense in this context...
See, it's your responsibility to learn at least the basics of how things work before you try to use them. After all, it's your own survival at stake. Yes, THE BASICS. My argument has been all along that a person should not have to know every part of their car's engine or how all of those parts work together in order to drive an automobile. I really don't know what's so hard to understand about that point. Perhaps I didn't make the point clearly enough. If that's the case, I hope this message clears that up.
Yes, there are plenty of reasons to know more about how your car works. And exactly how does knowing the answer to any of the above questions keep you driving at or lower than the speed limit, maintaining a proper following distance, obeying all traffic signals, merging correctly in construction zones, and not driving on the sidewalk? I think you're confusing being an efficient driver with being a good one. Both are important, but one does not have the slightest thing to do with the other.
I'm not saying that those that get phished 'deserve it'. I'm saying those that educate themselves some, are less likely to get phished than others.
Sure, I think that's something we can all get behind. But the post I replied to originally indicated that those who get tricked into having an unnecessary car repair done were the ones at fault, not the crooked mechanics. I'm simply arguing that 100% knowledge isn't possible in all areas, for anyone. And it shouldn't be expected. But despite a couple of replies that seem to want to flag me as advocating ignorance, I never said people shouldn't learn something. I'm simply saying that it's not reasonable to blame the average person for not knowing everything about topic X.
You're seriously sitting there and saying "knowing things is a bad idea"...
No, I'm not.
You're saying that it's the car owner's fault if they get tricked into a repair that wasn't necessary on their vehicle. I say if someone tricks them into buying new tires when the current ones are fine, the owner should have known better. But if a mechanic tells me that my timing chain is loose, should I know better? Should I know exactly how much slack there should be in a timing chain? For that matter, should I know the difference between every belt and chain under the hood? No, of course not! That's what we pay other people for. It's not realistic to expect anybody to know everything about every topic.
I'm all for doing some research before having major medical procedures done. If someone talks you into having your appendix removed for a second time, then shame on the patient. But can you honestly tell me that every patient should be able to read an x-ray and tell the difference between bronchitis and an allergy-related cough? Again, of course not. That's why we pay doctors. It's not realistic to expect everybody to know every possible medical fact and procedure.
I'm not sitting here saying knowing things is a bad idea, but I am advocating being reasonable and what level of knowledge should be expected out of the average person, especially in fields outside of their "main field." Can you honestly tell me you feel differently?
So those who don't know exactly how their highly-computerized car works should not operate one? Should everyone who doesn't have a medical degree and fully understand the human body avoid medical care? Should everyone who doesn't fully understand the intricacies of their local, regional and national economies not participate in them?
I agree that democracy must not be taken for granted, and that people must do "something" to keep their freedoms. I'm curious what your definition of "something" is in this case, though. As an American, what should we be doing to stop this from happening? I realize this doesn't sound like a serious question, but it honestly is. I think people need to be given examples of what should be done to help.
Re:A good solution for the article writer:
on
Halo 2 Stats Reset
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Now those of us who are sick of aimbot users, speed hackers and other kinds of cheaters have an alternative besides spending half an hour finding a cheat-free server. So these poor bastards won't have nearly as many fair players to abuse.
It's like the cd-r issue. Either the RIAA gets money from a tax on cd-r, or they get to enforce their copyright for damages in the court... but not both. Both these organisations are effectively double dipping. This shows how courts and governments can be manipulated given the right amount of money.
Actually, they may get to do both here. In the US, 22 states now have laws on the books that say drug dealers must pay tax on the illegal drugs they sell. Of course these states aren't actually going to collect anything, but it gives them something else to charge drug dealers with when they're arrested. Unfortunately, this is an example that the RIAA can point at and say "look, we can tax an illegal activity and still go after people for doing it." IANAL, but this seems a very dangerous example to set.
Exactly. I can't get anyone to do anything about the people dealing drugs across the street, but these dangerous pirates are locked away now. Maybe if I say the people across the street are selling copied DVDs instead of crack, something would get done...
That seems to be the secret. I've never talked to anyone who's happy with sharepoint if they're using it out of the box. Those who are happy with it seem to use it for little more than a framework to do significant extra development.
Also, a lot of people who are displeased with it seem to want to do more with it than it was designed for. I've talked to a couple of admins who tried to use it as a workflow management/routing system. Needless to say, they had nothing but bad things to say about their experience.:)
You meant to put that in the positive column, right?
Flaming aside, have you had any luck with sharepoint? My company used it for a while, but we've gone screaming in the other direction because we've had such a negative experience. I'd like to hear some success stories, though.
That's the impression I got which is the exact opposite to my experience with all the other OSS projects I've tinkered with. Typically I get a faster, more detailed response than with 'professional' tech support services I have contracts with.
Exactly. I've had to ask a few questions to project volunteers in the past (especially on smaller projects where the field of existing documentation is rather small). Every time, I've been thrilled by the friendly, quick and accurate responses I've gotten. In some cases, the friendliness of the person answering my question has prompted me to address whatever problem I was having and submit a fix. It's a shame that something as simple as poor wording can tarnish the image of a project that I'm sure is staffed with talented and friendly people. If I were one of those people, I'd be unhappy about that image and suggest to the FAQ maintainer that it should be changed.
I'm not one of their volunteers and have no interest in working on that project.
While I realize you're just trying to be a jerk, you've accidentally brought up a good point. With a FAQ that reads like that, it gives the whole project a rather negative overtone. Forget encouraging people to not try the software. Projecting an attitude like that, how many people are they encouraging to not help with the project?
No, I also thought that FAQ was unreasonably hostile. It does anything but encourage me to try the software. In particular, I love this:
NeoOffice/J is an open source development project staffed entirely by volunteers. What this means is that a handful of people spend their spare time working on NeoOffice/J instead of spending it with their family and friends. So, don't expect any response.
Translation: "Go F**k Yourselves". One of those volunteers should spend about 10 minutes rewriting that FAQ.
Slashdot Mirror
A couple of years ago, I had a fairly close extended family member pass away in the night. The following morning, I told my project manager that I would be taking half a day in either two or three days, depending on when the funeral was scheduled. He chewed me up one side and down the other for not giving him enough notice. Honestly.
I'm right there with you. I've got a high-end Palm and an mid-range Axim. I've tried unsuccessfully to use both to get myself organized. My cell phone holds all the contact information I need on a daily basis. Since entering anything in an electronic calendar that requires handwring recognition (or numerous taps on a virtual keyboard) is slow, the only entries in my calendar were recurring things I remembered anyway (weekly team meetings, martial arts class schedule, etc). The important stuff to jot down (oil change on Thursday, doctor on Tuesday) never got written down, so I was always forgetting. I tried to use it as an electronic shopping list, and failed. In the end, my Axim became a way to play games in boring meetings.
Then I moved to some $0.25 mini spiral-bound notebooks from Staples with a bullet-type space pen. It's tiny and light-weight, so it's always with me. Lists get written down immediately. When I'm done shopping, that page is torn out and thrown away. An upcoming schedule page at the front keeps me organized, as does a simple to-do list. When pages fill up or are no longer needed, they're torn out and tossed. When the notebook is empty, I spent another $0.25 to replace it. It's going to take me a long time to reach the level of electronic PDA cost with this system, and I've never been more organized.
"More interesting work" seems to almost always mean "more time doing it." I don't know about you, but I have (and want to continue to have) a life outside of the office. The older I get, the more I realize that I can stand to do work that's boring for 8 hours, because that guarantees me that I can do what I want to do when I get home. And I can promise you, what I want to do isn't what I did at the office. When I had a more challenging position, I was only mediocre at it, and the management dictated that I spent a lot of time doing it (12-14 hrs/day, plus 2-3 weekends a month). Now I'm doing what some people might consider boring (web work), but I'm good at it. I'm able to stand out, get the raises, get the bonuses, and still get it done in a normal work day. I can't even remember the last time I worked a weekend.
I guess my point is this: If you're bored, look for something to fill that void outside of work. Work is not (or at least, shouldn't be) your entire life. Now, if after some careful thought you decide that the only thing that will fill the void in your life is more work, then by all means go for it.
Its a personal rant being posted as news...
No, it's not. It's clearly marked as an editorial. You as a reader have been told up front what the article was and what it was about. If you have no interest in such editorials, Slashdot makes it very easy for you to set preferences to remove editorials from your front page view. Even if you don't bother doing that but still have a problem with someone posting an editorial, the logical thing to do would have been to skip over the blurb, not read the entire editorial, and certainly not waste your time posting a comment about how inappropriate it is. You've wasted not only your time, but the time of every person who is reading these comments and had to see yours.
I'd say that's far from realistic, actually. A range of 10+ feet, okay. But at the 5 foot and under range (while taking damage from being stabbed, that's pretty darn close), even a full single-handed spray with an MP-5 will hit more than the game suggests. The people responsible for implementing the weapons should have spent a little time at a gun range to get an idea of what was actually realistic and what wasn't...
Is it just me, or is Ask Slashdot becoming a search engine for people too lazy to search on Google for themselves? Some questions are worth being posted to Ask Slashdot, but ones like this could easily be solved with a few minutes of searching.
Now, if the question were altered to read "After some searching, I've found applications A, B and C. Does anyone in the Slashdot crowd have experience with any of these, or have recommendations on which is the most accurate" I'd be more inclined to take it seriously.
So we're not supposed to explore areas that are obviously unfinished, huh? Does that include Battlegrounds?
Unfortunately, a number of people try this every election. Someone always runs on a 3rd party ticket, and is defeated. There are lots of reasons, but it mostly boils down to money. Only the horribly corrupt "main parties" have the financial resources to convince the general populous to vote for them. Honest people who would do good things for our government have precious little chance of getting elected to anything anymore. It just doesn't seem like there's anything that the citizenry can do to change the system for the better anymore.
Now, here's my challenge to everyone who's going to respond with claims of "you just don't understand the issues" or "you don't know how the system really works." Instead of responding like that, tell me what I can do. In return, I'll either do it or explain what happened when I already did. If the system really can be saved, I want to participate. But I feel very much that a citizen can on longer influence their government, and I'm not the only one...
How does "know exactly how their highly-computerized car works" translate into not knowing how to operate the parking brake? I've said again and again in this thread, I'm not advocating complete ignorance. But the original message made it sound like a person who could be tricked into having unnecessary repairs because they didn't know every under-the-hood aspect of their vehicle was responsible for the scammed. My argument is that a person cannot reasonable be expected to understand every last aspect of how their car works. I personally don't know how my automatic transmission makes the exact determination of when to change gears, nor do I think I should have to. I do, however, know how to set and unset the parking brake. The two are not even in the same league.
Again, how do you even make this jump? Nobody's saying you shouldn't know that smoking is bad for you. But I am saying that it's not reasonable to expect any person to be able to read an MRI. The two are (again) not even in the same league.
You've got to be messing with me, right? I can't figure out how an educated person would jump from understanding the intricacies of the local economy to an election. There's a lot more to an economy than the government controls (or lack thereof). "Understanding his message" doesn't even make sense in this context...
See, it's your responsibility to learn at least the basics of how things work before you try to use them. After all, it's your own survival at stake.
Yes, THE BASICS. My argument has been all along that a person should not have to know every part of their car's engine or how all of those parts work together in order to drive an automobile. I really don't know what's so hard to understand about that point. Perhaps I didn't make the point clearly enough. If that's the case, I hope this message clears that up.
Yes, there are plenty of reasons to know more about how your car works. And exactly how does knowing the answer to any of the above questions keep you driving at or lower than the speed limit, maintaining a proper following distance, obeying all traffic signals, merging correctly in construction zones, and not driving on the sidewalk? I think you're confusing being an efficient driver with being a good one. Both are important, but one does not have the slightest thing to do with the other.
You're equating knowing how to drive well with knowing how your car works, and you have the nerve to call my questions dumb?
No, I'm not.
You're saying that it's the car owner's fault if they get tricked into a repair that wasn't necessary on their vehicle. I say if someone tricks them into buying new tires when the current ones are fine, the owner should have known better. But if a mechanic tells me that my timing chain is loose, should I know better? Should I know exactly how much slack there should be in a timing chain? For that matter, should I know the difference between every belt and chain under the hood? No, of course not! That's what we pay other people for. It's not realistic to expect anybody to know everything about every topic.
I'm all for doing some research before having major medical procedures done. If someone talks you into having your appendix removed for a second time, then shame on the patient. But can you honestly tell me that every patient should be able to read an x-ray and tell the difference between bronchitis and an allergy-related cough? Again, of course not. That's why we pay doctors. It's not realistic to expect everybody to know every possible medical fact and procedure.
I'm not sitting here saying knowing things is a bad idea, but I am advocating being reasonable and what level of knowledge should be expected out of the average person, especially in fields outside of their "main field." Can you honestly tell me you feel differently?
So those who don't know exactly how their highly-computerized car works should not operate one? Should everyone who doesn't have a medical degree and fully understand the human body avoid medical care? Should everyone who doesn't fully understand the intricacies of their local, regional and national economies not participate in them?
I agree that democracy must not be taken for granted, and that people must do "something" to keep their freedoms. I'm curious what your definition of "something" is in this case, though. As an American, what should we be doing to stop this from happening? I realize this doesn't sound like a serious question, but it honestly is. I think people need to be given examples of what should be done to help.
and go outside for a while
Says the person posting on Slashdot.
Now those of us who are sick of aimbot users, speed hackers and other kinds of cheaters have an alternative besides spending half an hour finding a cheat-free server. So these poor bastards won't have nearly as many fair players to abuse.
It's like the cd-r issue. Either the RIAA gets money from a tax on cd-r, or they get to enforce their copyright for damages in the court... but not both. Both these organisations are effectively double dipping. This shows how courts and governments can be manipulated given the right amount of money.
Actually, they may get to do both here. In the US, 22 states now have laws on the books that say drug dealers must pay tax on the illegal drugs they sell. Of course these states aren't actually going to collect anything, but it gives them something else to charge drug dealers with when they're arrested. Unfortunately, this is an example that the RIAA can point at and say "look, we can tax an illegal activity and still go after people for doing it." IANAL, but this seems a very dangerous example to set.
Exactly. I can't get anyone to do anything about the people dealing drugs across the street, but these dangerous pirates are locked away now. Maybe if I say the people across the street are selling copied DVDs instead of crack, something would get done...
That seems to be the secret. I've never talked to anyone who's happy with sharepoint if they're using it out of the box. Those who are happy with it seem to use it for little more than a framework to do significant extra development.
:)
Also, a lot of people who are displeased with it seem to want to do more with it than it was designed for. I've talked to a couple of admins who tried to use it as a workflow management/routing system. Needless to say, they had nothing but bad things to say about their experience.
-no sharepoint integration
You meant to put that in the positive column, right?
Flaming aside, have you had any luck with sharepoint? My company used it for a while, but we've gone screaming in the other direction because we've had such a negative experience. I'd like to hear some success stories, though.
That's the impression I got which is the exact opposite to my experience with all the other OSS projects I've tinkered with. Typically I get a faster, more detailed response than with 'professional' tech support services I have contracts with.
Exactly. I've had to ask a few questions to project volunteers in the past (especially on smaller projects where the field of existing documentation is rather small). Every time, I've been thrilled by the friendly, quick and accurate responses I've gotten. In some cases, the friendliness of the person answering my question has prompted me to address whatever problem I was having and submit a fix. It's a shame that something as simple as poor wording can tarnish the image of a project that I'm sure is staffed with talented and friendly people. If I were one of those people, I'd be unhappy about that image and suggest to the FAQ maintainer that it should be changed.
The translation is rather: "Don't ask stupid questions - we might answer good ones, though".
I'm sure that's the meaning they intended to convey, but their poor wording pushes a message that's far from that.
You can spend time on /. and not do it yourself?
I'm not one of their volunteers and have no interest in working on that project.
While I realize you're just trying to be a jerk, you've accidentally brought up a good point. With a FAQ that reads like that, it gives the whole project a rather negative overtone. Forget encouraging people to not try the software. Projecting an attitude like that, how many people are they encouraging to not help with the project?
Translation: "Go F**k Yourselves".
One of those volunteers should spend about 10 minutes rewriting that FAQ.