who sends.doc files when email suffices for short documents just fine and works way better on mobile devices.
Everyone. It drives me crazy.
Sometimes it's worse. Occasionally, I get a document that has been printed out and scanned to a pdf and sent as an email attachment.
If that wasn't enough, often those copied on the email will have a discussion over email and include the original attachments with every reply. That might be tolerable in the age of broadband, except the conversation usually goes like this: "Got it, thanks" followed by "Okay, great -- did everyone else get this?", "Yep, just hit my inbox", "Not sure, can you send it again?"
When.NET started to get popular, I recommended that they if they are going to go with.NET they should do VB.NET not C#.NET because at the time more people knew VB over C# (in the current area).
You should have made an informed recommendation, instead of clearly based solely on the name. Had you taken a moment to try the two languages, you'd have known that VB.NET was so far removed from VB6 that it didn't matter that your developers already new VB. (Additionally, it was pretty clear at the time that C# was the way forward, as far as Microsoft's tools were concerned.)
Because he was using the ER for something he should have gone to the doctor paid through his insurance rather then the ER which is free if you don't have insurance.
Someone is grossly misinformed. The ER is not even close to free if you don't have insurance. Some hospitals will offer a small discount to the uninsured, but most of the time you'll pay full price for the visit -- and it is incredibly expensive.
Over-reliance on the private insurance system is what keeps those costs (artificially) high. Why do you think it's standard practice to perform unnecessary tests and procedures? The patient isn't directly paying for those services, so doctors and hospitals milk the system for every penny they can squeeze out of the insurance company. Oh, and they push those additional, unnecessary, costs on to you if the insurance company refuses to pay-up.
Well, if you were even a little bit informed you'd know that that only affects some BIS users. It's *impossible* for RIM to "hand over the keys" for BES users because they don't have them.
That also ignores the fact that governments don't need special cooperation to spy on communications from Android and iOS users -- those don't even offer you the illusion of security.
So, yes, BlackBerry is the ONLY option if security is a concern. If they're your last option, I hope you're not responsible for making security related decisions!
But don't let facts stop you from continuing to spread misinformation, even though this particular bit of nonsense has been corrected multiple times in EVERY thread on the subject since the first article appeared on Slashdot.
The Micro Adventure series of books was written for kids about that age. They had type-in programs for various home computers, some required that the reader correct an intentional error in the program to make it work correctly.
You can find them online for ~$1/book on Amazon and eBay, and an old 80's micro to go along with them can be had for almost nothing. (Plus it'll add some much-needed novelty to get that initial interest going.)
Unfortunately, sign languages are natural languages, with the full complexity of natural languages
Thanks, I needed a laugh! Sign languages are primitive and lack precision and expressivity. An advanced form of pointing and grunting, just without the grunting.
There's a reason that we don't have any great sign-language story-tellers. Sign languages are the bare minimum needed to communicate simple ideas. Check out some of the deaf YouTube channels and you'll see what I mean -- outside a personal setting, sign languages quickly fall apart. (Well, at least ASL does.)
one group that was mentioned in a story recently here on Slashdot has created a system using a glove to track finger positions which "understands" ASL-based manual spelling. That's still a long way from full ASL understanding
It's unlikely that we'll ever see system capable of understanding ASL or any other sign language. After all, identifying the signs alone is insufficient! (That is, a system that can recognize signs with 100% accuracy isn't good enough, for obvious reasons. That's a bad way to put it, but you get my meaning. There's a reason, after all, that there still isn't a usable sign-writing system.)
While there are other serious problems with deaf education, I have little doubt that the primacy of sign contributes significantly to the astonishingly poor level of education you'll find in the deaf community.
Apparently it's a low priority. Chrome's date, for example, is awful. Why can't a select a year independent of a month?! To get to 2008, I need to keep selecting the first item in the drop-down and open the drop-down again to get older month/date pairs -- over and over and over -- until it finally appears.
Color isn't all that great either, now that I'm thinking about it, just an ugly button with a colored rectangle.
I could style them, but there aren't exactly a ton of options there. Even if you could make dramatic changes to the appearance, does the default have to look like a half-finished VB project from 1994?
Others like time and datetime just don't work at all. These are the kind of things I would have expected to see supported by now in all major browsers.
Watches are about fashion more than they're about function. Not everyone walks around with a battered $10 water-resistant Timex with the band cleverly repaired with masking tape, strapped to their wrist.
I, like many others, have different watches for different dressing occasions -- some are dressier, some are more casual.
If I were to wear a hand-gesture sensor bracelet as I went about my regular day, I expect that I'd want a number of different bracelets, in a number of different styles.
Knowing that I'm in a tiny minority among men, imagine how women must feel about this sort of thing!
webapps will soon be first class citizens thus breaking the walled garden
Apple has all but killed their initial commitment to web apps. They have one of the weakest mobile browsers on the market now. Worse, it inexplicably refuses to support things like WebGL (excepting in iAds, of course!)
It's a real shame.
I'd love to see a standard package type for web apps (something like a zip file with resources and a config file) with support across the mobile landscape. It would be great for both developers and users. I can see RIM, MS, and Google on-board, but it's unlikely that we'd see Apple join the party.
SVG could have been a great standard. A shame it turned out to be such a mess. Worse, it turned out to be a poorly supported mess! Had they not tied it to the DOM, not jumped on the XML bandwagon, and let you treat it like other image resources, it would have been really great.
For animation-heavy flash-like content the best option right now is canvas. Growing support for WebGL and handy libraries like Glow and Three.js make it a nice option for even the least competent developer.
What about other substances, which I agree should be legalized, and other substances which are currently legal, such as alcohol, which would impair your performance, potentially in life threatening ways for someone?
I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a response!
I don't even know how to begin explaining where you've gone wrong here.
If by allergy you means will most likely develop fucking cancer
This isn't even pretend true for primary smoking (the wildest figures put it at about 25%) we're talking about second-hand smoke at best and third-hand smoke in the most likely case.
I know that learning is way harder than simple rhetoric and easy "answers" but the payoff is fantastic: You get to live in the real world and not some fantasy land where danger lurks behind every corner.
Well you know what they say about slippery slop arguments
It's not invalid because it's a "slippery slope". Don't be stupid.
Fun fact, we've already slid down that slope! Both peanuts and perfume have been the subject of bans and, in the case of perfume, petitions and vocal protests -- complete with signs, chants, and picketers in gas masks. There's a whole anti-perfume movement!
Peanuts do not jump right off your clothes and affect those around you,
In a way they can. Imagine peanut oil from some greasy fingers finding it's way around the office -- that can actually kill someone.
Contrast the smell of tobacco smoke on clothes -- that won't harm anyone beyond a mild annoyance. Perfume comes off in higher concentrations and, yes, does cause harm.
So according to your logic getting drunk during lunch should be allowed on the job?
No. Where did you get that? I'm starting to think that you're just an anti-smoking zealot, and not someone interested in a legitimate discussion. I have no time for zealots.
You have an allergy to tobacco smoke, so it's okay to ban tobacco -- okay, you won't find too many objections.
Some people have an allergy to peanuts -- some incredibly sever, far worse than any tobacco smoke allergy. Should we ban peanuts? Maybe it makes sense in schools. Maybe that should be extended to other gov't buildings or business that serve the general public.
I have an allergy to the base in some perfumes -- my nose runs constantly, my eyes tear up, it's very unpleasant. Should we ban perfume? I'm on board!
How about this: We err on the side of freedom. Let businesses decide to allow or not allow smoking, peanuts, or perfume. We consider any policy that discriminates against workers for engaging in legal activity (smoking, eating peanuts, wearing perfume) outside of work to be unlawful.
Slashdot Mirror
who sends .doc files when email suffices for short documents just fine and works way better on mobile devices.
Everyone. It drives me crazy.
Sometimes it's worse. Occasionally, I get a document that has been printed out and scanned to a pdf and sent as an email attachment.
If that wasn't enough, often those copied on the email will have a discussion over email and include the original attachments with every reply. That might be tolerable in the age of broadband, except the conversation usually goes like this: "Got it, thanks" followed by "Okay, great -- did everyone else get this?", "Yep, just hit my inbox", "Not sure, can you send it again?"
It's nacho fathers office suite, that's for sure!
When .NET started to get popular, I recommended that they if they are going to go with .NET they should do VB.NET not C#.NET because at the time more people knew VB over C# (in the current area).
You should have made an informed recommendation, instead of clearly based solely on the name. Had you taken a moment to try the two languages, you'd have known that VB.NET was so far removed from VB6 that it didn't matter that your developers already new VB. (Additionally, it was pretty clear at the time that C# was the way forward, as far as Microsoft's tools were concerned.)
Because he was using the ER for something he should have gone to the doctor paid through his insurance rather then the ER which is free if you don't have insurance.
Someone is grossly misinformed. The ER is not even close to free if you don't have insurance. Some hospitals will offer a small discount to the uninsured, but most of the time you'll pay full price for the visit -- and it is incredibly expensive.
Over-reliance on the private insurance system is what keeps those costs (artificially) high. Why do you think it's standard practice to perform unnecessary tests and procedures? The patient isn't directly paying for those services, so doctors and hospitals milk the system for every penny they can squeeze out of the insurance company. Oh, and they push those additional, unnecessary, costs on to you if the insurance company refuses to pay-up.
Oddly enough, it seems like this would make them less vulnerable. How much malware out there still targets or can affect Windows 98?
After tapping on glass, it's bound to feel like a significant improvement...
Well, if you were even a little bit informed you'd know that that only affects some BIS users. It's *impossible* for RIM to "hand over the keys" for BES users because they don't have them.
That also ignores the fact that governments don't need special cooperation to spy on communications from Android and iOS users -- those don't even offer you the illusion of security.
So, yes, BlackBerry is the ONLY option if security is a concern. If they're your last option, I hope you're not responsible for making security related decisions!
But don't let facts stop you from continuing to spread misinformation, even though this particular bit of nonsense has been corrected multiple times in EVERY thread on the subject since the first article appeared on Slashdot.
The Micro Adventure series of books was written for kids about that age. They had type-in programs for various home computers, some required that the reader correct an intentional error in the program to make it work correctly.
You can find them online for ~$1/book on Amazon and eBay, and an old 80's micro to go along with them can be had for almost nothing. (Plus it'll add some much-needed novelty to get that initial interest going.)
What do I win?
If you care about security, get a BlackBerry.
There is no other option,
So was the Higgs boson at one time.
Like, right now.
Color?! What are you? Some kind of communist?
Unfortunately, sign languages are natural languages, with the full complexity of natural languages
Thanks, I needed a laugh! Sign languages are primitive and lack precision and expressivity. An advanced form of pointing and grunting, just without the grunting.
There's a reason that we don't have any great sign-language story-tellers. Sign languages are the bare minimum needed to communicate simple ideas. Check out some of the deaf YouTube channels and you'll see what I mean -- outside a personal setting, sign languages quickly fall apart. (Well, at least ASL does.)
one group that was mentioned in a story recently here on Slashdot has created a system using a glove to track finger positions which "understands" ASL-based manual spelling. That's still a long way from full ASL understanding
It's unlikely that we'll ever see system capable of understanding ASL or any other sign language. After all, identifying the signs alone is insufficient! (That is, a system that can recognize signs with 100% accuracy isn't good enough, for obvious reasons. That's a bad way to put it, but you get my meaning. There's a reason, after all, that there still isn't a usable sign-writing system.)
While there are other serious problems with deaf education, I have little doubt that the primacy of sign contributes significantly to the astonishingly poor level of education you'll find in the deaf community.
Apparently it's a low priority. Chrome's date, for example, is awful. Why can't a select a year independent of a month?! To get to 2008, I need to keep selecting the first item in the drop-down and open the drop-down again to get older month/date pairs -- over and over and over -- until it finally appears.
Color isn't all that great either, now that I'm thinking about it, just an ugly button with a colored rectangle.
I could style them, but there aren't exactly a ton of options there. Even if you could make dramatic changes to the appearance, does the default have to look like a half-finished VB project from 1994?
Others like time and datetime just don't work at all. These are the kind of things I would have expected to see supported by now in all major browsers.
Watches are about fashion more than they're about function. Not everyone walks around with a battered $10 water-resistant Timex with the band cleverly repaired with masking tape, strapped to their wrist.
I, like many others, have different watches for different dressing occasions -- some are dressier, some are more casual.
If I were to wear a hand-gesture sensor bracelet as I went about my regular day, I expect that I'd want a number of different bracelets, in a number of different styles.
Knowing that I'm in a tiny minority among men, imagine how women must feel about this sort of thing!
webapps will soon be first class citizens thus breaking the walled garden
Apple has all but killed their initial commitment to web apps. They have one of the weakest mobile browsers on the market now. Worse, it inexplicably refuses to support things like WebGL (excepting in iAds, of course!)
It's a real shame.
I'd love to see a standard package type for web apps (something like a zip file with resources and a config file) with support across the mobile landscape. It would be great for both developers and users. I can see RIM, MS, and Google on-board, but it's unlikely that we'd see Apple join the party.
Indeed, but not all webkit browsers are equal -- not by a long shot.
SVG could have been a great standard. A shame it turned out to be such a mess. Worse, it turned out to be a poorly supported mess! Had they not tied it to the DOM, not jumped on the XML bandwagon, and let you treat it like other image resources, it would have been really great.
For animation-heavy flash-like content the best option right now is canvas. Growing support for WebGL and handy libraries like Glow and Three.js make it a nice option for even the least competent developer.
I'd look a little more closely at that "study". You'll find quite a bit of bullshit.
What about other substances, which I agree should be legalized, and other substances which are currently legal, such as alcohol, which would impair your performance, potentially in life threatening ways for someone?
I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a response!
I don't even know how to begin explaining where you've gone wrong here.
"allergy to tobacco"? WTF?
Yeah, I did. Try google.
If by allergy you means will most likely develop fucking cancer
This isn't even pretend true for primary smoking (the wildest figures put it at about 25%) we're talking about second-hand smoke at best and third-hand smoke in the most likely case.
I know that learning is way harder than simple rhetoric and easy "answers" but the payoff is fantastic: You get to live in the real world and not some fantasy land where danger lurks behind every corner.
The earth is 6016 years old -- what are you trying to hide?
That's not how freedom works.
Well you know what they say about slippery slop arguments
It's not invalid because it's a "slippery slope". Don't be stupid.
Fun fact, we've already slid down that slope! Both peanuts and perfume have been the subject of bans and, in the case of perfume, petitions and vocal protests -- complete with signs, chants, and picketers in gas masks. There's a whole anti-perfume movement!
Peanut examples:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26124593/ns/today-back_to_school/t/schools-peanut-bans-spark-backlash/
http://parentables.howstuffworks.com/health-wellness/schools-banning-peanuts.html
Perfume examples:
http://shine.yahoo.com/beauty/perfume-ban-hampshire-state-explains-why-193100759.html
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-07-02/fragance-ban-allergies/55988704/1
Peanuts do not jump right off your clothes and affect those around you,
In a way they can. Imagine peanut oil from some greasy fingers finding it's way around the office -- that can actually kill someone.
Contrast the smell of tobacco smoke on clothes -- that won't harm anyone beyond a mild annoyance. Perfume comes off in higher concentrations and, yes, does cause harm.
So according to your logic getting drunk during lunch should be allowed on the job?
No. Where did you get that?
I'm starting to think that you're just an anti-smoking zealot, and not someone interested in a legitimate discussion. I have no time for zealots.
LOL!
It's a conspiracy by big tobacco and unscrupulous scientists!
Get real.
Where does it stop?
You have an allergy to tobacco smoke, so it's okay to ban tobacco -- okay, you won't find too many objections.
Some people have an allergy to peanuts -- some incredibly sever, far worse than any tobacco smoke allergy. Should we ban peanuts? Maybe it makes sense in schools. Maybe that should be extended to other gov't buildings or business that serve the general public.
I have an allergy to the base in some perfumes -- my nose runs constantly, my eyes tear up, it's very unpleasant. Should we ban perfume? I'm on board!
How about this: We err on the side of freedom. Let businesses decide to allow or not allow smoking, peanuts, or perfume. We consider any policy that discriminates against workers for engaging in legal activity (smoking, eating peanuts, wearing perfume) outside of work to be unlawful.