You know that mediatation about having the strength to change what you can, and the serenity to accept what you can't? This sounds like one of the former.
Then it's too bad that their family was so small that they never went to any or talked to friends who'd been to them when they were still minors. Most people get better socialised than that before they're adults. And gee, what if it's someone's first time out of the house? Do we need to accommodate that scenario with warning signs as well? (On curbs: "Caution: Cars on this road are travelling at speeds in excess of 20mph and can be lethal to pedestrians." Just outside front door of houses: "Warning: Citizens in public places can be observed by others.") Or do we expect people to learn about the world as they grow up, and figure out new situations as they experience them? I think the latter is more sensible.
Also, not everybody is familiar with the 'customs' of the wedding photographer, it doesn't make them willfully stupid.
OK, some of them are just accidentally ignorant. But if I were as clueless about them as you describe, I'd do a little research before I went to one. Ask some friends what they're like, what happens, what's expected of guests, will their be dancing, drinking, photographers, animal sacrifice, the breaking of drinking glasses, etc. It's how we geeks manage in other unfamiliar social situations, isn't it?
I don't know about whatever country your from, but here in the U.S. we do not ever lose our rights
I live in the United States, aced the LSAT, have a couple if practicing lawyers in my family, and know a fair amount about how civil rights law operates (having been an activist about it when the need actually arises). As truckloads of case law will tell you, we give up our rights to varying degrees in in countless situations. You'll hear some libertarians assert otherwise, but they're arguing ideology, not law.
The "you get to sue them" attitude is the reason why there are so many lawsuits....
You seemed to be itching to litigate; I thought that'd make you happy. The fact that people squeal "there should be a warning sign" when the universe fails to protect them from having to use their own senses and sense is what cripples our legal system with litigation. Most people are mature enough to cope with the fact that their rights are not infinite and absolute.
Don't talk about my mother.
Sorry, I didn't mean to bring your landlord into it.:P
No, that's not a valid inference. For the sake of argument, let's assume that the correlation is true: "Mac users are smarter than PC users". That doesn't mean that you have to be smarter to buy a Mac, just that the people who buy Macs are smarter. Maybe it's because it's "smarter" to buy a computer that's easy to use, or because an easy to use computer helps you get "smart", or whatever. It's kind of like saying that "Canadians tend to be paler than Mexicans", and you can argue all the reasons that might be true... but it doesn't mean that you have to be pale to become a Canadian. It's just one of those things that tends to be true.
Besides, the definition of "smart" the article used was based on verbal expression, and no one would ever argue that the Mac OS (classic or current) depends on verbal expressiveness to operate. Quite the contrary, it's an example of the non-verbal communication methods also used by the mentally impaired (learning disabled, stroke/aphasia patients, other primates): point at what you want.
If it did, Mary Poppins should have been running the bank instead of those old farts who could not say "Supercalafragalisticexpialadocious".
I think one of the points of the story was that she was a better qualified person to run the bank. She certainly ran the Banks household better than a banker did, and showed more sense than Mr. Banks had pence.
there should be a sign at the entrance of the event warning me.
Thank you for demonstrating for our audience the attitude that makes all those silly warning labels necessary. Anyone who goes to a wedding oblivious to the fact that they'll be subject to being photographed by a professional photographer is either attending their first wedding ever, or willfully stupid.
What if they want to use it for an offensive advertisement.
Then you get to sue them for violating your rights of personal publicity and perhaps defamation. This is so astonishingly unlikely and beyond the reasonable expectations of a wedding guest, that you'd have a pretty good case. Would you have like a warning sign on your mother's birth canal that there's a 1 in a googol chance of this happening?
I recently achieved something I've dreamed of for 10-15 years: a 32-hour/week job. The bad news is that it doesn't include insurance, retirement contributions, paid vacations or even holidays, and the pay itself isn't great. But I finally have enough time and energy left to do things I want to do (including sleep). Heck, here it is 8:15am on a Wednesday, and I'm not/.ing on the sly at work; I'm/.ing openly at home!
Once you use a dual cpu machine, you never want to go back to single cpu.
This is true whether you're using Windows 2000/XP or *BSD/Linux.
Or OS X.
Budget constraints forced me to buy the least-possible PowerMac G5 for my home system last year, with only 1 CPU. The dual-G5 systems at the work place make me wish they paid me well enough to afford one ("two"?) myself.
the comics industry would never had gone into the financial slump of the mid 1990s if they had kept the traditional point of sale racks.
Comics publishers never wanted to abandon the ubiquitous presence of the newsstand market, but it was killing them. Retailer returns of unsold copies of comics were sucking their balance sheets dry. When you print and ship a million copies, but get paid for only 100,000 of them, that's not a viable business model. It was only the switch to distribution through non-returnable specialty store sales that kept comics publishers alive.
And there's no going back; newsstand retailers don't want to stock little $1 (or even $2.95) magazines that take up nearly as much shelf space as a $6 magazine that sells better. This is what's been driving the development of the graphic novel from the publisher's perspective: it's a package with a viable distribution system other than specialty stores.
"From the beginning, Moore's scripts were extraordinarily detailed, not just plot summaries but panel-by-panel blueprints, and this made the artist's job much easier."
Evidently the writer of the article has never spoken with an artist who has actually worked from Moore's scripts. Even the ones who haven't gone insane or quit due to the stress will attest that the level of detail Moore includes makes the job incredibly difficult. I think it was Eddie Campbell who admitted that he had his wife go through the scripts for From Hell and highlight the parts he actually needed to read.
The only thing wrong with this theory is one tiny factoid: hardly anybody reads comic books. Their main retail outlet (comics specialty stores) are visited mostly by die-hard fans of the superhero monthlies, and graphic novels are just starting to get some shelf space in bookstores... most of which is dedicated to translations of Japanese manga series, not the books cited by the submitter (many of which have shifted only tens of thousands of copies nationwide).
Don't get me wrong: I'm a lifelong fan and reader of the medium, I've done a little on the creative end of it as well, and continue to do so as an avocation. But it is not (yet) a phenomenon of mainstream media.
I REALLY REALLY fear that software companies all end up like auto companies 10 years from now. When you buy cars, you buy from a big name Ford, Mazda, Nissan, Honda etc. There are not thousands of car dealers like there is software companies.
There are zillion differences between software and automobiles, that make this parallel unlikely (at least to this degree). But perhaps the most important from a programmer's perspective is the fact that most software programming jobs aren't (and never were) at software companies (of any size). Most programmers' employers are in the business of retailing ready-to-wear clothing, or educating college students, or handling people's money, or even making automobiles. Companies like Microsoft, IBM, CA, Sun, Adobe, etc. are (still) minority players in the programming job market.
isn't it also a tale about dealing with mental illness and the perspective that comes with middle-age?
I remember it most for the protagonist's struggle with the concept of Quality, which piqued my interest in philosophy, which was an invaluable aid to me in college and since. I read the book first as a teen; maybe now that I have "the perspective that comes with middle-age" another reading would be in order.
Not my worst, but definitely my first job-threatening accident:
It's 1984, my last day of work at my summer job (starting my second year in college) as "the computer guy" for a local business. The company's accountant has one of those fancy brand new IBM PC AT's, with the big 20MB hard drives, which he's been using for all his important spreadsheets. I'm helping him format some floppies so he can do backups. "Very important," I explain. FORMAT.COM isn't in the search path, so I switch to the C: drive to run it. But I forget to specify "A:". I notice my mistake immediately after I hit [Enter] and it stops with a warning message. But this is DOS 3.0, which simply says "Press any key to continue" instead of asking "Continue?" and requiring an affirmative response. And I've been conditioned by all my Lotus 1-2-3 usage to press [Esc] to cancel. So I quickly hit [Esc]... and there goes the entire C: partition.
To my surprise, they hired me back again the next summer. I guess they figured I wouldn't make that mistake again.
But the new iMacs are announced for September, which is really too late to catch the school sales.
But (generally speaking) schools don't buy the iLamps. It's a great space-saving design for homes, but lousy for classrooms/labs. That's why the eMac was created: schools wanted a CRT-priced, CRT-style unit that would be more kid- and teen-proof. I work for a college that has all sorts of desktop Macs (Power G*'s, iCRTs, eMacs), but not a single iLamp anywhere.
The supply issues with the eMacs are more likely to be painful to Apple and to the schools that buy from them. We were considering buying a roomful of eMacs, but instead we're buying some Power G5's and that room's going to be equipped with hand-me-down Power G4's instead... a lucky choice.
I think during the 1990s, most of Apples' choices were merely "do the opposite of the mainstream." So we got RISC instead of CISC
Um, everybody and his brother was jumping on the RISC bandwagon (or at least trying to) in the 1990's. Even Intel and PS/2-era IBM tried their hand at it for a while.
SCSI instead of IDE
Um, IBM-compatible PCs were mostly using external-controller RLL-encoded hard drives when Apple decided to use SCSI for their Macs, in the 1980's (not 1990's). It was also being generally hailed as the next big thing at the time. IDE/ATA caught on later, after Apple was firmly committed to SCSI. They eventually relented as IDE drives became substantially cheaper than comparable SCSI drives.
PCI instead of AGP
This wasn't Apple being contrarian; it was Apple following along and adopting something that had by then become ubiquitous in PC-land (like with IDE).
a single mouse button paradigm
There was no "mainstream" mouse paradigm to speak of when Apple chose to put a single-button mouse on the Lisa... in 1982.
ADP instead of serial
You mean ADB? That wasn't just different, it had distinctly superior functionality over the serial interface used in most mice for PCs (i.e. daisychaining devices).
All you're doing is "correcting" people's conduct, in just the same way that they're correcting the poster's misuse of a particular word. You presumably imagine that people will learn from your rebuke and not make the same "mistake" again, in the same way that those commenting on the misuse of "erstwhile" hope that others will avoid making that mistake.
While that's true for most versions of Word, 5.1 didn't think for you. It's one of the reasons it's so loved by Mac users.
That, and the fact that it will run on any Mac ever made. OK, I have actually tried it on one of the floppy-only machines, but I found a copy of Word 5.1 on a Mac SE I picked up recently, and it's quite snappy on that li'l 8MHz 2.5MB antique.
Prolog is interesting for more than its lack of interbreeding with the rest of the programming gene pool. I did a nifty project my senior year in college using Turbo Prolog to prove arguments in propositional logic.
Slashdot Mirror
You know that mediatation about having the strength to change what you can, and the serenity to accept what you can't? This sounds like one of the former.
Get down on your knees.
Then it's too bad that their family was so small that they never went to any or talked to friends who'd been to them when they were still minors. Most people get better socialised than that before they're adults. And gee, what if it's someone's first time out of the house? Do we need to accommodate that scenario with warning signs as well? (On curbs: "Caution: Cars on this road are travelling at speeds in excess of 20mph and can be lethal to pedestrians." Just outside front door of houses: "Warning: Citizens in public places can be observed by others.") Or do we expect people to learn about the world as they grow up, and figure out new situations as they experience them? I think the latter is more sensible.
Also, not everybody is familiar with the 'customs' of the wedding photographer, it doesn't make them willfully stupid.
OK, some of them are just accidentally ignorant. But if I were as clueless about them as you describe, I'd do a little research before I went to one. Ask some friends what they're like, what happens, what's expected of guests, will their be dancing, drinking, photographers, animal sacrifice, the breaking of drinking glasses, etc. It's how we geeks manage in other unfamiliar social situations, isn't it?
I don't know about whatever country your from, but here in the U.S. we do not ever lose our rights
I live in the United States, aced the LSAT, have a couple if practicing lawyers in my family, and know a fair amount about how civil rights law operates (having been an activist about it when the need actually arises). As truckloads of case law will tell you, we give up our rights to varying degrees in in countless situations. You'll hear some libertarians assert otherwise, but they're arguing ideology, not law.
The "you get to sue them" attitude is the reason why there are so many lawsuits....
You seemed to be itching to litigate; I thought that'd make you happy. The fact that people squeal "there should be a warning sign" when the universe fails to protect them from having to use their own senses and sense is what cripples our legal system with litigation. Most people are mature enough to cope with the fact that their rights are not infinite and absolute.
Don't talk about my mother.
Sorry, I didn't mean to bring your landlord into it. :P
Besides, the definition of "smart" the article used was based on verbal expression, and no one would ever argue that the Mac OS (classic or current) depends on verbal expressiveness to operate. Quite the contrary, it's an example of the non-verbal communication methods also used by the mentally impaired (learning disabled, stroke/aphasia patients, other primates): point at what you want.
I think one of the points of the story was that she was a better qualified person to run the bank. She certainly ran the Banks household better than a banker did, and showed more sense than Mr. Banks had pence.
They just forgot the quotes around "different".
Thank you for demonstrating for our audience the attitude that makes all those silly warning labels necessary. Anyone who goes to a wedding oblivious to the fact that they'll be subject to being photographed by a professional photographer is either attending their first wedding ever, or willfully stupid.
What if they want to use it for an offensive advertisement.
Then you get to sue them for violating your rights of personal publicity and perhaps defamation. This is so astonishingly unlikely and beyond the reasonable expectations of a wedding guest, that you'd have a pretty good case. Would you have like a warning sign on your mother's birth canal that there's a 1 in a googol chance of this happening?
The same is true of saying "___ runs like shit", Mr. Pot.
That isn't racism. It's nationalism. Just as ugly, just as stupid, but not the same thing.
(Oh, and perhaps you might enjoy reading the FAQ for this site, which explains how moderating actually works here.)
I recently achieved something I've dreamed of for 10-15 years: a 32-hour/week job. The bad news is that it doesn't include insurance, retirement contributions, paid vacations or even holidays, and the pay itself isn't great. But I finally have enough time and energy left to do things I want to do (including sleep). Heck, here it is 8:15am on a Wednesday, and I'm not /.ing on the sly at work; I'm /.ing openly at home!
Or OS X.
Budget constraints forced me to buy the least-possible PowerMac G5 for my home system last year, with only 1 CPU. The dual-G5 systems at the work place make me wish they paid me well enough to afford one ("two"?) myself.
Comics publishers never wanted to abandon the ubiquitous presence of the newsstand market, but it was killing them. Retailer returns of unsold copies of comics were sucking their balance sheets dry. When you print and ship a million copies, but get paid for only 100,000 of them, that's not a viable business model. It was only the switch to distribution through non-returnable specialty store sales that kept comics publishers alive.
And there's no going back; newsstand retailers don't want to stock little $1 (or even $2.95) magazines that take up nearly as much shelf space as a $6 magazine that sells better. This is what's been driving the development of the graphic novel from the publisher's perspective: it's a package with a viable distribution system other than specialty stores.
Evidently the writer of the article has never spoken with an artist who has actually worked from Moore's scripts. Even the ones who haven't gone insane or quit due to the stress will attest that the level of detail Moore includes makes the job incredibly difficult. I think it was Eddie Campbell who admitted that he had his wife go through the scripts for From Hell and highlight the parts he actually needed to read.
Don't get me wrong: I'm a lifelong fan and reader of the medium, I've done a little on the creative end of it as well, and continue to do so as an avocation. But it is not (yet) a phenomenon of mainstream media.
There are zillion differences between software and automobiles, that make this parallel unlikely (at least to this degree). But perhaps the most important from a programmer's perspective is the fact that most software programming jobs aren't (and never were) at software companies (of any size). Most programmers' employers are in the business of retailing ready-to-wear clothing, or educating college students, or handling people's money, or even making automobiles. Companies like Microsoft, IBM, CA, Sun, Adobe, etc. are (still) minority players in the programming job market.
No, silly; he's a dancer!
I remember it most for the protagonist's struggle with the concept of Quality, which piqued my interest in philosophy, which was an invaluable aid to me in college and since. I read the book first as a teen; maybe now that I have "the perspective that comes with middle-age" another reading would be in order.
It's 1984, my last day of work at my summer job (starting my second year in college) as "the computer guy" for a local business. The company's accountant has one of those fancy brand new IBM PC AT's, with the big 20MB hard drives, which he's been using for all his important spreadsheets. I'm helping him format some floppies so he can do backups. "Very important," I explain. FORMAT.COM isn't in the search path, so I switch to the C: drive to run it. But I forget to specify "A:". I notice my mistake immediately after I hit [Enter] and it stops with a warning message. But this is DOS 3.0, which simply says "Press any key to continue" instead of asking "Continue?" and requiring an affirmative response. And I've been conditioned by all my Lotus 1-2-3 usage to press [Esc] to cancel. So I quickly hit [Esc]... and there goes the entire C: partition.
To my surprise, they hired me back again the next summer. I guess they figured I wouldn't make that mistake again.
But (generally speaking) schools don't buy the iLamps. It's a great space-saving design for homes, but lousy for classrooms/labs. That's why the eMac was created: schools wanted a CRT-priced, CRT-style unit that would be more kid- and teen-proof. I work for a college that has all sorts of desktop Macs (Power G*'s, iCRTs, eMacs), but not a single iLamp anywhere.
The supply issues with the eMacs are more likely to be painful to Apple and to the schools that buy from them. We were considering buying a roomful of eMacs, but instead we're buying some Power G5's and that room's going to be equipped with hand-me-down Power G4's instead... a lucky choice.
Um, everybody and his brother was jumping on the RISC bandwagon (or at least trying to) in the 1990's. Even Intel and PS/2-era IBM tried their hand at it for a while.
SCSI instead of IDE
Um, IBM-compatible PCs were mostly using external-controller RLL-encoded hard drives when Apple decided to use SCSI for their Macs, in the 1980's (not 1990's). It was also being generally hailed as the next big thing at the time. IDE/ATA caught on later, after Apple was firmly committed to SCSI. They eventually relented as IDE drives became substantially cheaper than comparable SCSI drives.
PCI instead of AGP
This wasn't Apple being contrarian; it was Apple following along and adopting something that had by then become ubiquitous in PC-land (like with IDE).
a single mouse button paradigm
There was no "mainstream" mouse paradigm to speak of when Apple chose to put a single-button mouse on the Lisa... in 1982.
ADP instead of serial
You mean ADB? That wasn't just different, it had distinctly superior functionality over the serial interface used in most mice for PCs (i.e. daisychaining devices).
It's actually pretty darn close.
The United States military.
All you're doing is "correcting" people's conduct, in just the same way that they're correcting the poster's misuse of a particular word. You presumably imagine that people will learn from your rebuke and not make the same "mistake" again, in the same way that those commenting on the misuse of "erstwhile" hope that others will avoid making that mistake.
That, and the fact that it will run on any Mac ever made. OK, I have actually tried it on one of the floppy-only machines, but I found a copy of Word 5.1 on a Mac SE I picked up recently, and it's quite snappy on that li'l 8MHz 2.5MB antique.
Prolog is interesting for more than its lack of interbreeding with the rest of the programming gene pool. I did a nifty project my senior year in college using Turbo Prolog to prove arguments in propositional logic.