I disagree about the "phones going wireless is a step backwards" argument,
Wireless phones have been a step forward only in convenience. The quality of the service they provide is a huge step backward. Back in olden days, there was a huge marketing campaign credibly focused on the promise that you could even hear a pin drop at the other end of the (fiber) line. Today one of the biggest telecom campaigns is built around a guy repeatedly asking if the person on the other end of a wireless connection can hear him at all. I carry a wireless phone out of professional necessity, but when I actually want to carry on a conversation, I wait until I can do it on a landline.
The "cool video" looks more like a series of about a dozen still shots with one-second fades from one to the next. It's more like a slide show than full-motion video.
There's a really neat solution available for most of the security, reliability, and speed issues involved in Wifi networking. It makes your network almost impossible to snoop without being in the same actual room with your equipment, eliminates most of the interference and frequency contention between nodes on the network by establishing redundant exclusive channels through your local area, and can boost intraoffice speeds to as much as 1Gbps with modern desktops and laptops. It does cost a little more than standard Wifi to equip an office with this technology, but if you're building an office space from nothing, it's fairly easy and inexpensive. It's called Wifi/Isolated-Redundant-Express, or WIRE.
My sister's family has tried it both ways. They moved to another state when he got a great job, but they really wanted to live here, so he found another job and brought the family back "home". When that job didn't work out, he took another job out of state, but this time he commutes: driving there once a week, working for a few days, then driving home for a few days and working at home.
It works for them. Part of the reason is that their kids are old enough that being a "single parent" a few days a week isn't a burden for my sister, and he's involved enough in their lives when he's there. Whether it will work for someone else... really depends on the people involved. If the marriage is strained, something like this will probably break it. If not... ?
With that said, I've tried both a 1.5-hours/day-by-car commute, and now a 20-minutes/day-by-bicycle commute, and I consider my younger self insane for putting up with that much time behind the wheel.
Hmm, I wonder what this "preview" button is for? I guess I'll never know.
You're presupposing a teleological explanation for the "preview" button. I look at it from an existential perspective: the "preview" button simply is, and it's up to each of us to find some meaning - if any - for it.
a computer program that performs as well on the SAT verbal analogy test as the average college-bound student.
Considering that the average college-bound student gets nearly half of the questions wrong, that's not such an impressive feat. Let me know when it gets them all right, and I'll admit it as my equal. {grin}
You have a solution: configure the Novell Client to use G as the first drive letter for automapped drives. Do you want someone here to come implement it for you, as well?
It's a fairly simple software tweak. A few clicks on the client properties, or double-click a.REG file with the proper setting in it, etc. 10 seconds per workstation, tops. Less on a new install, since you're probably already setting the default tree and context. If your users can't do it themselves with a short e-mail explaining the steps, and you have too many of them and/or too few of you to do it for them... then your problem isn't this XP/Novell "bug" but a lack of proper support systems.
If power in D.C. is based on seniority (and you're right: it is), then term-limiting Congresscritters would just put all the power into the hands of the unelected bureaucrats. They'd have all the "seniority", and Reps and Senators would be just a bunch of temps sent by the states to perform for the cameras on the floor for a few terms.
The President has a term limit. Why shouldn't Congress?
The danger of that office gaining too much power is greater. For some reason the public is far more willing to give singular heads of state dictatorial powers than legislatures.
If the server and client side are both by-invitation-only, isn't this little more than a multi-vendor closed system, rather than an actual part of the internet?
If you really want to make a change, start demanding term limits on the Senate and House.
We have those. Every two or six years (depending), the public gets to vote on whether they stay in office.
The kinds of term limits you're talking about are what lazy and ignorant voters ask for, so they don't have to get off their butts and figure out who needs to leave now. And legislative term limits don't do any good, because the professional bureaucrats who make up most of the government and have most of the real power aren't limited in how long they can stay in office.
Heck, it sounds like he just saw the new 1"-thick 2GHz Core Duo 13" MacBook with built-in 802.11g and up to 2GB RAM, and devised a question which asked for a machine of those exact specs.
Dude: Stroll over to Apple.com, plunk down your $1799+tax, install the OS of your choice, and be content. At least until you realize that you didn't really need a machine this powerful for hotel-room development work. But at least you got a nice new laptop out of it.:)
If it mentions having skills on windows and macintosh, I might [consider applying for it]. Even though I haven't sat at a Mac since OS8.
You probably shouldn't. About all OS X has in common with OS 8 are a few GUI design standards, some shortcut keys, and an emulator built into the former that runs the few remaining apps coded for the latter. Very little of what you might know about OS 8 will be of use today, whether the job involves programming, operations, or even helpdesk.
...perhaps you have an evil twin murmuring in folks ears at night...
Impossible. I'm the evil twin; my doppelganger is the good one. >:)
The only other potentialy helpful thing I have is a question. Is this is from your job posting "Experience with PC-based hardware and software installation, Intel-based hardware installation, and Windows operating system."? If so then I have to tell you the posting is confusing as to the priority of Mac.
(So you tracked down the job posting on our web site?) The posting is only confusing because you apparently have the same perplexing difficulty understanding written English as several of the people who applied for the job. Some of the phrasing in the job posting is kinda weird, I admit; I wish they'd let me write it instead of letting HR set the final wording. ("O/S" as shorthand for "operating system"? Puhleaze!) But it's still clear enough: Mac skills are labeled "Required qualifications"; Wintel skills are labeled "Preferred qualifications". This is Job Specs 101 stuff. It means that you must know Macs, and we'd like it if you knew PCs. If that isn't clear enough, then... hell, I give up. Sorry, but your reading comprehension and/or grasp of how "job requirements" are structured sucks. (God help you if you read programming specs this poorly.)
I would still think it _obvious_ that a huge number of misguided applicants signals a problem somewhere.
I think you've cleared that up for me. Evidently there really are people out there who were never taught how to read and comprehend a help-wanted ad.
Good. Now get someone with an 8th-grade (or better) reading level to explain to you what it means. Seriously: You don't understand what I'm saying, and I don't know how to dumb it down any further for you.
I didn't ask for a job.
No, you just spend a lot of time stomping your feet like a petulant 8-year-old and whining (like an 11-year-old who just learned a new swear word) that no one will give you one.
Get back on your meds, kid. If you don't have any... go find a mental health counselor before all this paranoid ranting about "lying fucks" alienates every last person who ever used to tolerate you.
"...Linux is close enough to OS X..."
I would be able to pick it up quickly. I'm a developer not a sysadm. Where I alluded to it being close enough was from that perspective, not from sysadm or helpdesk.
Again, only someone who's never developed software for OS X would think that it's fundamentally the same as developing for Linux. OK, they both use GCC on the back end, but OS X has its own proprietary GUI framework and APIs. So FYI: if you see a job posting that asks for for OS X development experience, do yourself and the employer a favor and don't apply until you've actually, say, played with Apple Xcode long enough to know whether your assumption is correct or just charmingly naive.
And the position I'm talking about is of the help-desk variety. I didn't make that completely clear here, perhaps, but the job posting does, so that doesn't excuse the folks who don't know what the Apple-C keystroke does but still think they can do the job.
Your use of "obviously" signals to me a disconnect somewhere. Obvious to you, but -obviously- not to the applicants.
It's obvious to anyone who reads the job description and believes that we actually mean it. Here are a few key excerpts:
"Resonsibilities: Insure smooth operation of Macintosh computers, servers, and printers....
Required Qualifications:...knowledge of hardware/software installation, Macintosh OS protocols and peripherals..."
I am truly at a loss as to how we can make it any more obvious that we want someone who has experience using Macintoshes.
You publicise a resource (the job) and from a high-potent position (Microsoft)...
Uh, dude...? I'm not Microsoft.
I thought you were kidding about that, which is why I didn't correct you before, but you appear here to be serious. Oops. I work for a university, and that tidbit of information about the employer is included in every job posting the university makes. (We also include the pay scale, so it can't be the dream of riches that leads unqualified people to take a shot at coming to work for us in spite of the long odds against them.)
But perhaps you've made a point here. I assumed it was rather obvious that I am not Microsoft, because the URL of my web site contains the string "toddverbeek" between "microsoft." and ".com", and the content of that site is full of anti-MS propaganda. But if that's not obvious enough, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there are people out there who would fail to make the "obvious" connection that my employer wants to hire a "Macintosh-based Information Systems Technician" who's actually used a Mac before.
So, it must not be "obvious" to many of the applicants (excepting those who mass-mail to anything which moves, and those you'll not be able to manage no matter what you do)
Well, I can try spreading the word that doing that is a waste of everyone's time, and that encouraging people to follow that tactic is just plain bad advice.
You're missing my point. I'm not saying that we're getting applicants who don't meet our needs; I'm saying we're getting applications who don't even meet what the ad says. Contrary to what cubiclehead keeps whining about, we're not packing the "requirements" list with arbitrary crap we don't actually need. We don't want to put up artificial obstacles. We're just stating in plain English that we need someone who's been doing X for Y-ish years and we still get resumes from people who seemingly have never X'ed in their life. I assume these people are following the "apply for every position you see" advice (a variation on the advice I was responding to), and that's really just a waste of time (theirs and ours), energy (theirs and ours), and stamps (theirs).
Or they might just *not* complete the skills assessment and submit anyway.
I have no doubt that they would. After all, they aren't reading the job requirements, why would they follow the procedure for applying?
P.S. Anybody who thinks that Linux is close enough to OS X that an employer would consider RedHat experience sufficient to do Mac tech support... obviously doesn't know enough about OS X.:)
I'm the person who read your adolescent whining in other messages and the sadly ignorant comment above that the only jobs that REALLY require experience are brain surgery and astronautics. That statement demonstrates that you don't know what you're talking about. Stop wearing your stupidity like some badge of honor and maybe people will stop calling you on it.
Yeah, and they all have one thing in common: they are all supervised by a lying dumbass. Any hiring manager that actually believes there is any job where education and work ethic don't matter is a fucking moron.
That's not what I said. Go back and read it again, this time without your head up your ass. My point was that education and work ethic aren't enough. You may also need skills that can only be learned from experience. "Fucking moron", indeed.
You want to know why no one will hire you? The problem is facing you every day in the mirror.
If you're getting what you consider an inordinate number of bad submissions, I suggest to you that your statement of requirements might be lacking.
I wish that were it. Our current job posting says that applicants need experience working with Macs (because our users have that, and it doesn't work to have a tech support guy who knows less than they do); we keep getting resumes and cover letters that detail experience with Windows and other software, but don't even contain the 3-letter sequence M-A-C or the word "apple".
I'm not trying to discourage anyone from applying for a job where they're close to the stated requirements, but not quite. I've been on that side of the interview table myself, and if I can make the case that I'm "close enough", I will. It's the people who are obviously not qualified - and don't even bother trying to trick me into thinking they are - that make me wonder why they're even wasting the 39 cents.
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Wireless phones have been a step forward only in convenience. The quality of the service they provide is a huge step backward. Back in olden days, there was a huge marketing campaign credibly focused on the promise that you could even hear a pin drop at the other end of the (fiber) line. Today one of the biggest telecom campaigns is built around a guy repeatedly asking if the person on the other end of a wireless connection can hear him at all. I carry a wireless phone out of professional necessity, but when I actually want to carry on a conversation, I wait until I can do it on a landline.
Might I suggest you go shopping for a tapir?
The "cool video" looks more like a series of about a dozen still shots with one-second fades from one to the next. It's more like a slide show than full-motion video.
There's a really neat solution available for most of the security, reliability, and speed issues involved in Wifi networking. It makes your network almost impossible to snoop without being in the same actual room with your equipment, eliminates most of the interference and frequency contention between nodes on the network by establishing redundant exclusive channels through your local area, and can boost intraoffice speeds to as much as 1Gbps with modern desktops and laptops. It does cost a little more than standard Wifi to equip an office with this technology, but if you're building an office space from nothing, it's fairly easy and inexpensive. It's called Wifi/Isolated-Redundant-Express, or WIRE.
I'm just grateful to Amir for providing us with those snapshots of the shirtless mystery man. Dude: e-mail me!
Think of the children!
It works for them. Part of the reason is that their kids are old enough that being a "single parent" a few days a week isn't a burden for my sister, and he's involved enough in their lives when he's there. Whether it will work for someone else... really depends on the people involved. If the marriage is strained, something like this will probably break it. If not... ?
With that said, I've tried both a 1.5-hours/day-by-car commute, and now a 20-minutes/day-by-bicycle commute, and I consider my younger self insane for putting up with that much time behind the wheel.
But a lot more interesting to hang out with.
You're presupposing a teleological explanation for the "preview" button. I look at it from an existential perspective: the "preview" button simply is, and it's up to each of us to find some meaning - if any - for it.
:)
Considering that the average college-bound student gets nearly half of the questions wrong, that's not such an impressive feat. Let me know when it gets them all right, and I'll admit it as my equal. {grin}
In English: If you can say it, you can say it clearly. If you can't say it, shut up.
This is why, until a few centuries ago, "physics" was commonly called "natural philosophy".
Perhaps you've confused /. with FreshMeat?
You have a solution: configure the Novell Client to use G as the first drive letter for automapped drives. Do you want someone here to come implement it for you, as well? It's a fairly simple software tweak. A few clicks on the client properties, or double-click a .REG file with the proper setting in it, etc. 10 seconds per workstation, tops. Less on a new install, since you're probably already setting the default tree and context. If your users can't do it themselves with a short e-mail explaining the steps, and you have too many of them and/or too few of you to do it for them... then your problem isn't this XP/Novell "bug" but a lack of proper support systems.
The President has a term limit. Why shouldn't Congress?
The danger of that office gaining too much power is greater. For some reason the public is far more willing to give singular heads of state dictatorial powers than legislatures.
If the server and client side are both by-invitation-only, isn't this little more than a multi-vendor closed system, rather than an actual part of the internet?
We have those. Every two or six years (depending), the public gets to vote on whether they stay in office.
The kinds of term limits you're talking about are what lazy and ignorant voters ask for, so they don't have to get off their butts and figure out who needs to leave now. And legislative term limits don't do any good, because the professional bureaucrats who make up most of the government and have most of the real power aren't limited in how long they can stay in office.
Dude: Stroll over to Apple.com, plunk down your $1799+tax, install the OS of your choice, and be content. At least until you realize that you didn't really need a machine this powerful for hotel-room development work. But at least you got a nice new laptop out of it. :)
But you're wrong. It's not everyone else's fault.
Your problem is you.
You probably shouldn't. About all OS X has in common with OS 8 are a few GUI design standards, some shortcut keys, and an emulator built into the former that runs the few remaining apps coded for the latter. Very little of what you might know about OS 8 will be of use today, whether the job involves programming, operations, or even helpdesk.
Impossible. I'm the evil twin; my doppelganger is the good one. >:)
The only other potentialy helpful thing I have is a question. Is this is from your job posting "Experience with PC-based hardware and software installation, Intel-based hardware installation, and Windows operating system."? If so then I have to tell you the posting is confusing as to the priority of Mac.
(So you tracked down the job posting on our web site?) The posting is only confusing because you apparently have the same perplexing difficulty understanding written English as several of the people who applied for the job. Some of the phrasing in the job posting is kinda weird, I admit; I wish they'd let me write it instead of letting HR set the final wording. ("O/S" as shorthand for "operating system"? Puhleaze!) But it's still clear enough: Mac skills are labeled "Required qualifications"; Wintel skills are labeled "Preferred qualifications". This is Job Specs 101 stuff. It means that you must know Macs, and we'd like it if you knew PCs. If that isn't clear enough, then... hell, I give up. Sorry, but your reading comprehension and/or grasp of how "job requirements" are structured sucks. (God help you if you read programming specs this poorly.)
I would still think it _obvious_ that a huge number of misguided applicants signals a problem somewhere.
I think you've cleared that up for me. Evidently there really are people out there who were never taught how to read and comprehend a help-wanted ad.
Good. Now get someone with an 8th-grade (or better) reading level to explain to you what it means. Seriously: You don't understand what I'm saying, and I don't know how to dumb it down any further for you.
I didn't ask for a job.
No, you just spend a lot of time stomping your feet like a petulant 8-year-old and whining (like an 11-year-old who just learned a new swear word) that no one will give you one.
Get back on your meds, kid. If you don't have any... go find a mental health counselor before all this paranoid ranting about "lying fucks" alienates every last person who ever used to tolerate you.
Again, only someone who's never developed software for OS X would think that it's fundamentally the same as developing for Linux. OK, they both use GCC on the back end, but OS X has its own proprietary GUI framework and APIs. So FYI: if you see a job posting that asks for for OS X development experience, do yourself and the employer a favor and don't apply until you've actually, say, played with Apple Xcode long enough to know whether your assumption is correct or just charmingly naive.
And the position I'm talking about is of the help-desk variety. I didn't make that completely clear here, perhaps, but the job posting does, so that doesn't excuse the folks who don't know what the Apple-C keystroke does but still think they can do the job.
Your use of "obviously" signals to me a disconnect somewhere. Obvious to you, but -obviously- not to the applicants.
It's obvious to anyone who reads the job description and believes that we actually mean it. Here are a few key excerpts:
I am truly at a loss as to how we can make it any more obvious that we want someone who has experience using Macintoshes.You publicise a resource (the job) and from a high-potent position (Microsoft)...
Uh, dude...? I'm not Microsoft.
I thought you were kidding about that, which is why I didn't correct you before, but you appear here to be serious. Oops. I work for a university, and that tidbit of information about the employer is included in every job posting the university makes. (We also include the pay scale, so it can't be the dream of riches that leads unqualified people to take a shot at coming to work for us in spite of the long odds against them.)
But perhaps you've made a point here. I assumed it was rather obvious that I am not Microsoft, because the URL of my web site contains the string "toddverbeek" between "microsoft." and ".com", and the content of that site is full of anti-MS propaganda. But if that's not obvious enough, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there are people out there who would fail to make the "obvious" connection that my employer wants to hire a "Macintosh-based Information Systems Technician" who's actually used a Mac before.
So, it must not be "obvious" to many of the applicants (excepting those who mass-mail to anything which moves, and those you'll not be able to manage no matter what you do)
Well, I can try spreading the word that doing that is a waste of everyone's time, and that encouraging people to follow that tactic is just plain bad advice.
Like I did in my initial comment here.
Or they might just *not* complete the skills assessment and submit anyway.
I have no doubt that they would. After all, they aren't reading the job requirements, why would they follow the procedure for applying?
P.S. Anybody who thinks that Linux is close enough to OS X that an employer would consider RedHat experience sufficient to do Mac tech support... obviously doesn't know enough about OS X. :)
I'm the person who read your adolescent whining in other messages and the sadly ignorant comment above that the only jobs that REALLY require experience are brain surgery and astronautics. That statement demonstrates that you don't know what you're talking about. Stop wearing your stupidity like some badge of honor and maybe people will stop calling you on it.
Yeah, and they all have one thing in common: they are all supervised by a lying dumbass. Any hiring manager that actually believes there is any job where education and work ethic don't matter is a fucking moron.
That's not what I said. Go back and read it again, this time without your head up your ass. My point was that education and work ethic aren't enough. You may also need skills that can only be learned from experience. "Fucking moron", indeed.
You want to know why no one will hire you? The problem is facing you every day in the mirror.
I wish that were it. Our current job posting says that applicants need experience working with Macs (because our users have that, and it doesn't work to have a tech support guy who knows less than they do); we keep getting resumes and cover letters that detail experience with Windows and other software, but don't even contain the 3-letter sequence M-A-C or the word "apple".
I'm not trying to discourage anyone from applying for a job where they're close to the stated requirements, but not quite. I've been on that side of the interview table myself, and if I can make the case that I'm "close enough", I will. It's the people who are obviously not qualified - and don't even bother trying to trick me into thinking they are - that make me wonder why they're even wasting the 39 cents.