The best way not to be annoyed by users is, um, not to be annoyed by users:
1) Make a form for everything; web form, paper form, whatever. 2) Take away all admin rights. This keeps them from annoying you with things they fscked up. If they need anything important, see #1. 3) Don't do "training". If they can't figure out how to do their jobs, what the hell are you teaching them for?
To quote a friend, 'morality is between you and God, ethics are between you and your fellow man'.
Your friend has it backwards. "Mores" pertains to the values of a group of people as a whole. "Ethos" refers to the personal values of an individual. Of course, I can't find you any decent sources to quote because every dictionary confuses the two. The best evidence I can give is to look at the roots of the two words: ethos means character; moralis means custom.
There isn't a government on earth that successfully regulates 'ethical', or wholly personal, behaviour. Many even try unsuccessfully to regulate 'morals', or to ensure that predominant individual practices are practiced by every member of society: things like obeying speed limits and saying the pledge in school. In reality, however, neither morals nor ethics are the purview of a government that respects individual liberty.
Professionals such as doctors and lawyers are entreated to abide by a code of *ethics* because (due to their intimate relationships with others and the gravity of their responsibilities) their actions cannot be realistically regulated by *moral* (inter-personal) codes.
You'll notice the only people MS doesn't tend to piss off are the endusers. Businesses hate their recent licensing changes. Admins hate their insecure, unmaintainable software. OEMs hate their licensing agreements, sometimes enough to just sell pirated copies instead.
What does MS do in response? They turn a blind eye to enduser piracy and give away free software to endusers who rat out the OEMs that don't follow their licensing.
Basically, pandering to the masses. If there were any money in politics, MS execs would be working in Washington instead;)
Something tells me Bermuda (#3), the Cayman Islands (#4), and San Marino (#5) make your point. Probably some of the others as well. Basically, "corporate tax shelter" != "productive state".
It's funny. With all the Supreme Court decisions touting the principle that rights cannot be removed from a person, even if he/she wants to abdicate those rights, not once has that principle been applied to Copy and Patent "rights". Intellectual property goes directly from the individual to a large corporation, to be exploited for maximum profit. Depending on your employer, you may not have a "right" to your own intellectual property at all.
discourage European style printer's guilds from hoarding all the knowledge
You make a good point, but just to play devil's advocate here: This company is specifically setup *not* to horde all the knowledge. They want to rent ideas to implementors efficiently/easily so that products can be produced faster than they could be otherwise, without having the implementors just ignoring patents altogether, or relying on a bank of "defensive" patents to fend off legal attacks.
I'd say it's proof of exactly *how* broken the patent system is, that this type of intellectual property "rental" is necessary. Instead of reforming the system to have, say 5 year patents instead of 20, they create a "market" for the ideas and rent patents at the going rate starting from day one.
Instead of modding you into oblivion, I'll take this opportunity to point out the alternatives to wind energy and why whatever miniscule effect on climate windmills may have doesn't matter.
1) Nuclear energy -- this takes energy currently bound in nuclear forces and converts it into heat. Global Net -> more heat
2) Fossil fuels (oil, natural gas) -- this takes energy currently bound in chemical forces and converts it into heat. It also creates CO2 which may magnify the greenhouse effect and cause the atmosphere to trap more of the sun's rays. Global Net -> much more heat
3) Solar/Wind energy -- these take energy contained in the atmosphere and from solar radiation and converts it to usable forms of heat. Global Net -> same amount of heat
Do you understand the difference yet, or are you still going to argue the minutia?
there are tons better strategy games out on the market right now Would you be so kind as to tell us what better strategy/simulation/world-domination games are out there? I've seen nothing but first-person shooters for the past three years. I was a huge fan of C&C and some of the Star Wars strategy games. Basically, I'll buy anything that's multiplayer and doesn't require a $300 graphics card.
To me, an extra 0.1% performance increase, even if I am only imagining it to be faster, is certainly worth one day a week recompiling all of the latest packages from source code. Even if I do occasionally get my CFLAGS in a muddle! I think I speak for Slashdot when I say that Gentoo is the only sane option for getting the most from your hardware!
If there is a market for such a card, it should be low end, as cheap as possible.
You will never compete with ATI/nVidia, and they are ignoring the low-end ($40) market. Other low-end manufacturers (S3, I'm looking at you) have absymal Linux support.
Forget about 3D. The number of people who 1. use 3D on Linux, and 2. don't buy the latest ATI/nVidia, is too small.
Cater to large-scale specialty installs, multi-head installs in schools, etc.
What are you blathering about? SBC *has* no competitors in the DSL sphere. And in the larger "broadband" market, cable is kicking the living crap out of them. This is more about playing catch-up for SBC than about innovation.
The connotation of "abnormal" equaling "deficient" is an unfortunate problem; its a big problem with USians in particular
While I agree with everything you've said, I'd like to point out that it is also a particularly USian problem to assume that physical and genetic traits do not affect competency in certain tasks and jobs.
No matter how hard I try, I will never be a basketball or baseball player. Somehow I deal with it.
But for some reason everyone assumes that people with speech disorders make just as good announcers and public speakers as anyone else. The thought of a dyslexic programmer doesn't phase Americans. I guess we all still buy into the "anybody can be President/astronaut/superman" myth and sort of apply it to everything (save athletics of course).
I'm not saying the disabled can't be just as good or better as average announcers/programmers/astronauts, just that it isn't rational to assume everyone's abilities are equal in all areas.
The conduct of the [freedom seekers] is a threat to the authority of the [arbitrary authority], and a threat to peace. [freedom seekers] has answered a decade of [arbitrary authority] demands with a decade of defiance. All the world now faces a test, and the [arbitrary authority] a difficult and defining moment. Are [arbitrary authority] resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the [arbitrary authority] serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?
Slashdot Mirror
Building ordinances will mandate homes be made of cardboard in order to maintain the "character" of the area.
The best way not to be annoyed by users is, um, not to be annoyed by users:
1) Make a form for everything; web form, paper form, whatever.
2) Take away all admin rights. This keeps them from annoying you with things they fscked up. If they need anything important, see #1.
3) Don't do "training". If they can't figure out how to do their jobs, what the hell are you teaching them for?
"reliability, savings, productivity."
You're forgetting the most important part: blame.
Why would a Windows user buy a laptop with this card in it? Alternatively, why would HP/IBM create a laptop specifically for the Linux market?
To quote a friend, 'morality is between you and God, ethics are between you and your fellow man'.
Your friend has it backwards. "Mores" pertains to the values of a group of people as a whole. "Ethos" refers to the personal values of an individual. Of course, I can't find you any decent sources to quote because every dictionary confuses the two. The best evidence I can give is to look at the roots of the two words: ethos means character; moralis means custom.
There isn't a government on earth that successfully regulates 'ethical', or wholly personal, behaviour. Many even try unsuccessfully to regulate 'morals', or to ensure that predominant individual practices are practiced by every member of society: things like obeying speed limits and saying the pledge in school. In reality, however, neither morals nor ethics are the purview of a government that respects individual liberty.
Professionals such as doctors and lawyers are entreated to abide by a code of *ethics* because (due to their intimate relationships with others and the gravity of their responsibilities) their actions cannot be realistically regulated by *moral* (inter-personal) codes.
You'll notice the only people MS doesn't tend to piss off are the endusers. Businesses hate their recent licensing changes. Admins hate their insecure, unmaintainable software. OEMs hate their licensing agreements, sometimes enough to just sell pirated copies instead.
;)
What does MS do in response? They turn a blind eye to enduser piracy and give away free software to endusers who rat out the OEMs that don't follow their licensing.
Basically, pandering to the masses. If there were any money in politics, MS execs would be working in Washington instead
Something tells me Bermuda (#3), the Cayman Islands (#4), and San Marino (#5) make your point. Probably some of the others as well. Basically, "corporate tax shelter" != "productive state".
Taking painkillers constantly rots your brain.
Who could've guessed...
It's funny. With all the Supreme Court decisions touting the principle that rights cannot be removed from a person, even if he/she wants to abdicate those rights, not once has that principle been applied to Copy and Patent "rights". Intellectual property goes directly from the individual to a large corporation, to be exploited for maximum profit. Depending on your employer, you may not have a "right" to your own intellectual property at all.
And I suppose you're typing that on a computer you bought seventeen years ago? Ten? Five?
You make a good point, but just to play devil's advocate here: This company is specifically setup *not* to horde all the knowledge. They want to rent ideas to implementors efficiently/easily so that products can be produced faster than they could be otherwise, without having the implementors just ignoring patents altogether, or relying on a bank of "defensive" patents to fend off legal attacks.
I'd say it's proof of exactly *how* broken the patent system is, that this type of intellectual property "rental" is necessary. Instead of reforming the system to have, say 5 year patents instead of 20, they create a "market" for the ideas and rent patents at the going rate starting from day one.
The GPL promotes fair pricing and technological progress.
P2P piracy promotes fair pricing and technological progress.
Slashdot has a lot of cheap nerds.
My parents have geothermal heating in central Canada for a number of years now.
Yup. Ever heard of Heat Pumps? Tens of millions of people use "geothermal energy" sources.
*sigh*
Instead of modding you into oblivion, I'll take this opportunity to point out the alternatives to wind energy and why whatever miniscule effect on climate windmills may have doesn't matter.
1) Nuclear energy -- this takes energy currently bound in nuclear forces and converts it into heat. Global Net -> more heat
2) Fossil fuels (oil, natural gas) -- this takes energy currently bound in chemical forces and converts it into heat. It also creates CO2 which may magnify the greenhouse effect and cause the atmosphere to trap more of the sun's rays. Global Net -> much more heat
3) Solar/Wind energy -- these take energy contained in the atmosphere and from solar radiation and converts it to usable forms of heat. Global Net -> same amount of heat
Do you understand the difference yet, or are you still going to argue the minutia?
Don't forget fueling for all of that ;-)
6) first cost-effective renewable hydrogen energy source
there are tons better strategy games out on the market right now
Would you be so kind as to tell us what better strategy/simulation/world-domination games are out there? I've seen nothing but first-person shooters for the past three years. I was a huge fan of C&C and some of the Star Wars strategy games. Basically, I'll buy anything that's multiplayer and doesn't require a $300 graphics card.
Now just imagine that your OS does caching automatically from your system RAM.
Now upgrade to Linux.
ahh, this is golden:
To me, an extra 0.1% performance increase, even if I am only imagining it to be faster, is certainly worth one day a week recompiling all of the latest packages from source code. Even if I do occasionally get my CFLAGS in a muddle! I think I speak for Slashdot when I say that Gentoo is the only sane option for getting the most from your hardware!
You're assuming:
1) women relate well with each other, and
2) programmers relate well with anyone.
If there is a market for such a card, it should be low end, as cheap as possible.
You will never compete with ATI/nVidia, and they are ignoring the low-end ($40) market. Other low-end manufacturers (S3, I'm looking at you) have absymal Linux support.
Forget about 3D. The number of people who 1. use 3D on Linux, and 2. don't buy the latest ATI/nVidia, is too small.
Cater to large-scale specialty installs, multi-head installs in schools, etc.
I don't know about Australia, but in the US, the next generation walks across the border from Mexico.
What are you blathering about? SBC *has* no competitors in the DSL sphere. And in the larger "broadband" market, cable is kicking the living crap out of them. This is more about playing catch-up for SBC than about innovation.
Is that coolness factor worth having your job outsourced to a country where IT people aren't stupid?
The connotation of "abnormal" equaling "deficient" is an unfortunate problem; its a big problem with USians in particular
While I agree with everything you've said, I'd like to point out that it is also a particularly USian problem to assume that physical and genetic traits do not affect competency in certain tasks and jobs.
No matter how hard I try, I will never be a basketball or baseball player. Somehow I deal with it.
But for some reason everyone assumes that people with speech disorders make just as good announcers and public speakers as anyone else. The thought of a dyslexic programmer doesn't phase Americans. I guess we all still buy into the "anybody can be President/astronaut/superman" myth and sort of apply it to everything (save athletics of course).
I'm not saying the disabled can't be just as good or better as average announcers/programmers/astronauts, just that it isn't rational to assume everyone's abilities are equal in all areas.