'Nuff said. Except it's not enough because this sorry excuse for a redesign is still there. Oh, god, it's like a 15 year old with no concept of color got let loose with FrontPage and wanted to do a MySpace lookalike but without the same professionalism and restraint.
I guarantee you that you go out of your way to install various programs and codecs because Windows just won't play some media out of the box, you have 3-4 different media players depending on what you're playing
iTunes for my wife's iPod. That's it. Never had to install any other program or codec for what I or my wife or daughter do. And I'm a geek, and my daughter plays on the on-line kids' web sites for pre-schoolers. Just works.
gotta deal with Patch Tuesday updates, the Windows Firewall
Nope. It's already set up, I don't even have to approve anything. It downloads and installs. Now, if I want to get picky, I can. I can mess with the firewall settings, set the auto-updates to manual, whatever. But I don't need to, because I'm not doing tricky stuff like hosting a web site on my home PC. And the Windows Firewall is configured just fine to handle the usual browsing and other stuff.
And the reason why I can ignore most of this stuff is because my family uses our home PC in a non-geek way. And guess what'll work for your average end-user.
And, if I really want to get into the details, I can either go into the configuration file or the registry, or I can use the pretty graphical interface. Guess which one I prefer most of the time, because I just don't feel like dealing with arcane syntaxes...I've got other, better uses for my time. And guess which one is easier to explain to granny, and verify for you on the other end of the line, when you can ask her "is this box checked", as opposed to "find the line that reads open square bracket network parameters close square bracket, then the next line, does it have a semi-colon in the middle to separate the parameters, no wait, let me check mine, sorry, it should be a comma..."
Oh, why bother. Your mind is made up. Have fun. Enjoy. If you have a working system and it's fun or does what you need or gives you satisfaction, I'm happy for you.
Try reading the comments to the article. One individual says "yes, I could write a graphical front-end to config files if I wanted to, but I don't care about them, and no-one has ever asked me to write one for them, so obviously they're not needed".
And as for your point about the article being "all wrong, and flamebait"...really? All the problems are by design and correct decisions? Really?!? You mean the proliferation of incompatibilities and angst-ridden configuration methods are supposed to be like that? Well, that to me proves the contempt held for me by the programmers. Think I'll stick with something which has a front-end so I don't have to waste precious hours of my life trying to decipher yet another arcane syntax in a configuration file that I haven't seen before.
Hint: if you don't get that last paragraph, read the article again.
New Zealand. You don't need one, strictly speaking, but NZ uses a points-based system and having a recognized degree gets you a lot of points.
A recognised qualification - A qualification gives you a lot of points. We accept a variety of trade certificates, diplomas, bachelors degrees and post-graduate qualifications, from the institutions on our List of Recognised Qualifications. We also accept qualifications that the NZQA considers equivalent to an acceptable New Zealand qualification.
For comparison, having close family in NZ gives you 10 points, ten years of work experience gives you 30 points, and an undergraduate degree gives you 50 points.
Ray, you're obviously very well versed in all of this. Put aside the question of tactics used by the RIAA for a moment.
What do you think about people who are pirating music and/or movies? I looked on your website and found lots about the RIAA tactics, suing individuals, presenting evidence, etc., but nothing about whether you think music/movie piracy is right or wrong. Morally.
Do you think it's justifiable? Wrong? Slightly naughty but not a big deal? I'm really curious... I'm also curious about the legion of/. readers who spring to argument upon argument over any detail when this topic arises. Forget the question of tactics, of who's being mistakenly sued for an impossible amount of money, etc., etc. What do think about people who are pirating music and/or movies?
Yeah, French foreign policy is soooo much more mature than ours. Say what you will about the United States but we've never blown up ships in the harbors of our Allies.
For what it's worth, I am a New Zealander living in the US. I was there the night this happened. I remember with great clarity the French agents going back to France, spending time in a real "Club Med" type of resort as some laughable type of punishment (I emphasize the "real" because I'm so annoyed at the nonsensical "Club Gitmo" garbage from Rush Limbaugh and his ilk), and being paraded as heroes (with an actual parade, no less). I still harbor resentment. (And by the way just last year a friend who is studying political science in Ohio called me saying "I never knew...we covered this in class today".) I have plenty of reason to be very, very bitter and angry at the French.
And with all that just said, I am sickened by the American attitude towards the French. It smacks of nothing more than smug, pretentious, childish, hypocritical twaddle. Read my other post just below.
I personally always wonder why the same people ridiculing or otherwise castigating the French never suggest we give back the Statue of Liberty in a gesture of defiance, or rename the hundreds of streets and towns named after General Lafayette. (Hey guys...how important a contribution to America's history do you think that particular Frenchman must've made if he got streets, colleges, and towns named after him, was the first person to be granted honorary US citizenship, and is buried under soil from Bunker Hill?)
Really? It's not open-source, sure, but from your post you're not rewriting or recompiling. (Nor are most of the people commenting on this article.) You're selecting which components you want to install.
I can disable services I don't want. I can uninstall (or simply not install at the outset) components I don't need. I have the control panel to customize, e.g., the video depth and turn off video-hungry components.
In all seriousness: at this level (not the recompile level), what's the difference?
Pfft...beat you. I did this with a Sinclair ZX81 in the early eighties. It had BASIC already burned into the main ROM. You turned it on and your entire system was immediately ready to go. Ergo, by your rationale, your idea was a pathetic imitation stolen from Sir Clive Sinclair.
Gee, I remember when/. used to have rational and meaningful dialogue from people who were at least half as intelligent as they thought they were.
Just...read the article. Okay? Answers all this. They didn't just do this at random; the question of laptops is discussed.
One example of what they're doing: (from the first page, I think): an interactive map, useful for the new students to find their way around campus in the first week.
Okay, another example: used for real-time polls conducted in classes.
Not necessarily anything that couldn't be done with a laptop, but please, read the article and then we can have a semi-intelligent discussion on the actual issues?
In this last of meeting places We grope together {in a fog of ancient methane} and avoid speech Gathered on the beach of this tumid river.
So much for death by slowly spreading nuclear fall-out cloud. I suppose Australia and New Zealand will still be the last to go as the gas works its way into the southern hemisphere.
"Vyvyan! Have you been using my roll-on deodorant again? There's a revolting hair on it and it's not one of mine!"
"How d'you know?"
"Because I know what mine look like, Vyvyan, I can see them now!"
"Not the ones on your bum, you can't. Perhaps it's one off your bum."
"Oh! And I suppose you think that being lewd first thing in the morning is a terribly trendy thing to do, do you, Vyvyan? Well it's not!"
"Look, it's probably a hamster hair. He was getting a bit whiffy, so I gave him a good going over."
"And was I consulted, pally? How d'you think I feel, stinking like a student's armpit?"
"It's stealing Vyvyan. It's common stealing. And if you ever touch it again...ever!....I'm going to the police. I will, you know, I will go to the police!"
Can we just stop this blanket generalization? Please? I got my MCSE many years ago because it was of significant value to my consulting company's clients -- banks wanted someone with the paper, and if I hadn't known what I was doing my company would've fired me pretty quick once I screwed up a bank's database, okay?
Now, I work with a bunch of self-taught guys. I had one of these guys tell me a few months ago that the reason why a user couldn't update data on a server was because he was in two groups, one with RW privileges and the other with R privileges. Obviously the membership in the latter group meant the user no longer had the write privileges associated with the former group. He was serious, and he's a senior analyst at my company.
That's just one example, and it's anecdotal. I know that. I also know the MCSE after my name doesn't impress many people these days (although it DID at least ensure I know how NTFS permissions work!). Personally, I think what's been much more helpful to me is have a degree in computer science, along with the experience.
You can be self-taught and know lots, or have a paper certification. I have worked with an awful lot of people who have proven to me that self-taught can be a very dodgy proposition. (And, in fairness, I've worked with many who show me they can truly shine.) A lot of those people get into IT because it's fun and cool and they enjoy it. Fine, good enough reason: but they don't have the rigor behind it and they make STUPID FUNDAMENTAL MISTAKES. Why? They'd rather play with something cool like virtualization than take the time to make sure they know the basics.
The guys I was working with 15 years ago, on the other hand, had the rigor behind them. They took the MCSE and CNE classes and exams, because our company expected it. BUT they had the knowledge to back it up, AND the experience, and I would've put any one of them up against the amateurs I work with today.
Again...all anecdotal, and I'm ranting, and will almost certainly get modded flamebait. I don't particularly mind. But if IT shops start demanding a degree or some certification, to my mind it can only improve the level of skill. Because based on my experience, today's self-taught admins have neither the knowledge nor the theory to do this properly. And guess what; if you have five years experience of doing your job, but you've been doing it wrong for those five years because you didn't know the fundamentals, that is in some measure at least inferior to someone else who's been doing the same job for three years but has the rigor and the discipline behind him.
A music teacher I knew had a great saying.
"Practise doesn't make perfect. Correct practise makes perfect."
Have you met many recent graduates? I'd say "eduction" sits right up there with the current requirements for a Bachelors:(.
Face it, Masters is the new Bachelors and Bachelors is the new High School diploma.
Can someone explain this to me? I live in the U.S. now, but grew up elsewhere, and I don't get how the university system works here.
When I went through university (outside the U.S.), I studied science: computer science, physics, calculus, etc. My friends who were doing anthropology or commerce studied, well, anthropology and sociology, or accounting and economics and so forth. There seemed to be an implicit assumption that the basics of reading and writing and history and anything else outside of your core degree were, you know, taught at school before you got to university. University was supposed to be where you studied a more specialized course of study.
So how the heck does the U.S. get to the point where, so far as I can tell, pretty much all university students are required to study basic history, or politics, or who knows what else that has nothing to do with their core course of study? (And I haven't even started on the whole "changing majors" yet.) If you haven't learned enough of those fundamentals by the time you're in an institution of higher learning, then what have you been doing at school for the last 12 years and how diluted has the value of that bachelor's degree now become?
The period always goes inside the closing quotation mark, dumbass. Unless you're British.
Which I am. Almost. Well, closer to that than an American. Sort of. New Zealander living in the US. But with 30 years of NZ (read: British but with better accents, at least to American girls (or the ones I've met, anyway)) grammar, I claim adherence. Or closer.
That's either $DEITY or %DEITY%, please learn basic shell scripting for your platform:)
Morale: if you're gonna rant, make sure you do not make the same mistakes as the target of your rant
That's moral, which is a lesson to be learned. Morale refers to high spirits, or lack thereof, as in "his morale was crushed when he realized his error in verbiage".
Agreed 100%. If you as an IT geek ever feel you're the recipient of condescension or are mistreated as a lowly tech worker, well, it's because of idiotic garbage like that which makes people wonder why someone who's so intelligent can be so stupid. Seriously, that's the kind of stuff you expect from the same fools who wolf whistle and holler at girls walking by because they're wearing a low cut dress. Grow up.
With the release of Firefox 3, those who have been using self-signed certificates for SSL now face a huge issue -- the big, scary warning FF3 issues which is very unintuitive for non-technical users.
Let's assume there are still two or three people on the planet who don't use Firefox 3 and consequently have no idea what big scary warning you're talking about.
Also let's figure that those who are using self-signed certificates are at least somewhat likely to fall outside the ranks of "non-technical users".
Been around since the time of Juvenal's Satires (which would be the third or fourth century AD, I think, unless someone wants to look it up and correct me).
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Translation: who guards the guards?
Think for a moment. If you are a senior IT administrator or a senior programmer, unless you're in a very rigorous environment, your actions are most likely not subject to peer review. No-one has time. Right?
How many times do we see the argument "it's open source, anyone can read the code" immediately presented with "but who does"? Now consider that there are millions of people using Linux who potentially could read the code and who are likely working with it because they have a personal passion; but a handful of people who potentially could review your work, but are unlikely to have any deep yearning to do so because, well, they've got their own work to do.
In this kind of situation, you either have to have a mandated peer review regime (time consuming and expensive) or an independent audit (ditto). Both of these are, for reasons of practicality, likely to hit only subsections of what needs to be reviewed.
It's a trust thing. If you can trust your admins. And if you can't...well, who admins the admins?
Slashdot Mirror
'Nuff said. Except it's not enough because this sorry excuse for a redesign is still there. Oh, god, it's like a 15 year old with no concept of color got let loose with FrontPage and wanted to do a MySpace lookalike but without the same professionalism and restraint.
I guarantee you that you go out of your way to install various programs and codecs because Windows just won't play some media out of the box, you have 3-4 different media players depending on what you're playing
iTunes for my wife's iPod. That's it. Never had to install any other program or codec for what I or my wife or daughter do. And I'm a geek, and my daughter plays on the on-line kids' web sites for pre-schoolers. Just works.
gotta deal with Patch Tuesday updates, the Windows Firewall
Nope. It's already set up, I don't even have to approve anything. It downloads and installs. Now, if I want to get picky, I can. I can mess with the firewall settings, set the auto-updates to manual, whatever. But I don't need to, because I'm not doing tricky stuff like hosting a web site on my home PC. And the Windows Firewall is configured just fine to handle the usual browsing and other stuff.
And the reason why I can ignore most of this stuff is because my family uses our home PC in a non-geek way. And guess what'll work for your average end-user.
And, if I really want to get into the details, I can either go into the configuration file or the registry, or I can use the pretty graphical interface. Guess which one I prefer most of the time, because I just don't feel like dealing with arcane syntaxes...I've got other, better uses for my time. And guess which one is easier to explain to granny, and verify for you on the other end of the line, when you can ask her "is this box checked", as opposed to "find the line that reads open square bracket network parameters close square bracket, then the next line, does it have a semi-colon in the middle to separate the parameters, no wait, let me check mine, sorry, it should be a comma..."
Oh, why bother. Your mind is made up. Have fun. Enjoy. If you have a working system and it's fun or does what you need or gives you satisfaction, I'm happy for you.
Try reading the comments to the article. One individual says "yes, I could write a graphical front-end to config files if I wanted to, but I don't care about them, and no-one has ever asked me to write one for them, so obviously they're not needed".
And as for your point about the article being "all wrong, and flamebait"...really? All the problems are by design and correct decisions? Really?!? You mean the proliferation of incompatibilities and angst-ridden configuration methods are supposed to be like that? Well, that to me proves the contempt held for me by the programmers. Think I'll stick with something which has a front-end so I don't have to waste precious hours of my life trying to decipher yet another arcane syntax in a configuration file that I haven't seen before.
Hint: if you don't get that last paragraph, read the article again.
New Zealand. You don't need one, strictly speaking, but NZ uses a points-based system and having a recognized degree gets you a lot of points.
A recognised qualification - A qualification gives you a lot of points. We accept a variety of trade certificates, diplomas, bachelors degrees and post-graduate qualifications, from the institutions on our List of Recognised Qualifications. We also accept qualifications that the NZQA considers equivalent to an acceptable New Zealand qualification.
For comparison, having close family in NZ gives you 10 points, ten years of work experience gives you 30 points, and an undergraduate degree gives you 50 points.
So, out of interest, what would you consider classic literature? And what are the best novels you've ever read?
Ray, you're obviously very well versed in all of this. Put aside the question of tactics used by the RIAA for a moment.
What do you think about people who are pirating music and/or movies? I looked on your website and found lots about the RIAA tactics, suing individuals, presenting evidence, etc., but nothing about whether you think music/movie piracy is right or wrong. Morally.
Do you think it's justifiable? Wrong? Slightly naughty but not a big deal? I'm really curious... I'm also curious about the legion of /. readers who spring to argument upon argument over any detail when this topic arises. Forget the question of tactics, of who's being mistakenly sued for an impossible amount of money, etc., etc. What do think about people who are pirating music and/or movies?
I don't think so. I have this happen occasionally (usually at the end of a long weekend) and never have the problem you suggest.
Maybe, maybe not...
but Yahoo had it first. And they do it better.
Yeah, French foreign policy is soooo much more mature than ours. Say what you will about the United States but we've never blown up ships in the harbors of our Allies.
For what it's worth, I am a New Zealander living in the US. I was there the night this happened. I remember with great clarity the French agents going back to France, spending time in a real "Club Med" type of resort as some laughable type of punishment (I emphasize the "real" because I'm so annoyed at the nonsensical "Club Gitmo" garbage from Rush Limbaugh and his ilk), and being paraded as heroes (with an actual parade, no less). I still harbor resentment. (And by the way just last year a friend who is studying political science in Ohio called me saying "I never knew...we covered this in class today".) I have plenty of reason to be very, very bitter and angry at the French.
And with all that just said, I am sickened by the American attitude towards the French. It smacks of nothing more than smug, pretentious, childish, hypocritical twaddle. Read my other post just below.
I personally always wonder why the same people ridiculing or otherwise castigating the French never suggest we give back the Statue of Liberty in a gesture of defiance, or rename the hundreds of streets and towns named after General Lafayette. (Hey guys...how important a contribution to America's history do you think that particular Frenchman must've made if he got streets, colleges, and towns named after him, was the first person to be granted honorary US citizenship, and is buried under soil from Bunker Hill?)
Microsoft simply can't compete with this.
Really? It's not open-source, sure, but from your post you're not rewriting or recompiling. (Nor are most of the people commenting on this article.) You're selecting which components you want to install.
I can disable services I don't want. I can uninstall (or simply not install at the outset) components I don't need. I have the control panel to customize, e.g., the video depth and turn off video-hungry components.
In all seriousness: at this level (not the recompile level), what's the difference?
Pfft...beat you. I did this with a Sinclair ZX81 in the early eighties. It had BASIC already burned into the main ROM. You turned it on and your entire system was immediately ready to go. Ergo, by your rationale, your idea was a pathetic imitation stolen from Sir Clive Sinclair.
Gee, I remember when /. used to have rational and meaningful dialogue from people who were at least half as intelligent as they thought they were.
Just...read the article. Okay? Answers all this. They didn't just do this at random; the question of laptops is discussed.
One example of what they're doing: (from the first page, I think): an interactive map, useful for the new students to find their way around campus in the first week.
Okay, another example: used for real-time polls conducted in classes.
Not necessarily anything that couldn't be done with a laptop, but please, read the article and then we can have a semi-intelligent discussion on the actual issues?
That's Siberia all right.
In this last of meeting places
We grope together {in a fog of ancient methane} and avoid speech
Gathered on the beach of this tumid river.
So much for death by slowly spreading nuclear fall-out cloud. I suppose Australia and New Zealand will still be the last to go as the gas works its way into the southern hemisphere.
"Vyvyan! Have you been using my roll-on deodorant again? There's a revolting hair on it and it's not one of mine!"
"How d'you know?"
"Because I know what mine look like, Vyvyan, I can see them now!"
"Not the ones on your bum, you can't. Perhaps it's one off your bum."
"Oh! And I suppose you think that being lewd first thing in the morning is a terribly trendy thing to do, do you, Vyvyan? Well it's not!"
"Look, it's probably a hamster hair. He was getting a bit whiffy, so I gave him a good going over."
"And was I consulted, pally? How d'you think I feel, stinking like a student's armpit?"
"It's stealing Vyvyan. It's common stealing. And if you ever touch it again...ever!....I'm going to the police. I will, you know, I will go to the police!"
the higher-ups decided to migrate to Exchange 2007, which effectively destroyed my ability to check my email through any method other than webmail
So your organization migrated to Exchange 2007 and didn't provide any way to check it other than webmail? No client at all?
Or do they say "use Outlook and we'll support it, or else pick whatever you like but we won't support it"?
Or did they say "use Outlook", but you don't like Outlook and so you're going around their rules?
Just thought I'd ask.
Can we just stop this blanket generalization? Please? I got my MCSE many years ago because it was of significant value to my consulting company's clients -- banks wanted someone with the paper, and if I hadn't known what I was doing my company would've fired me pretty quick once I screwed up a bank's database, okay?
Now, I work with a bunch of self-taught guys. I had one of these guys tell me a few months ago that the reason why a user couldn't update data on a server was because he was in two groups, one with RW privileges and the other with R privileges. Obviously the membership in the latter group meant the user no longer had the write privileges associated with the former group. He was serious, and he's a senior analyst at my company.
That's just one example, and it's anecdotal. I know that. I also know the MCSE after my name doesn't impress many people these days (although it DID at least ensure I know how NTFS permissions work!). Personally, I think what's been much more helpful to me is have a degree in computer science, along with the experience.
You can be self-taught and know lots, or have a paper certification. I have worked with an awful lot of people who have proven to me that self-taught can be a very dodgy proposition. (And, in fairness, I've worked with many who show me they can truly shine.) A lot of those people get into IT because it's fun and cool and they enjoy it. Fine, good enough reason: but they don't have the rigor behind it and they make STUPID FUNDAMENTAL MISTAKES. Why? They'd rather play with something cool like virtualization than take the time to make sure they know the basics.
The guys I was working with 15 years ago, on the other hand, had the rigor behind them. They took the MCSE and CNE classes and exams, because our company expected it. BUT they had the knowledge to back it up, AND the experience, and I would've put any one of them up against the amateurs I work with today.
Again...all anecdotal, and I'm ranting, and will almost certainly get modded flamebait. I don't particularly mind. But if IT shops start demanding a degree or some certification, to my mind it can only improve the level of skill. Because based on my experience, today's self-taught admins have neither the knowledge nor the theory to do this properly. And guess what; if you have five years experience of doing your job, but you've been doing it wrong for those five years because you didn't know the fundamentals, that is in some measure at least inferior to someone else who's been doing the same job for three years but has the rigor and the discipline behind him.
A music teacher I knew had a great saying.
"Practise doesn't make perfect. Correct practise makes perfect."
Have you met many recent graduates? I'd say "eduction" sits right up there with the current requirements for a Bachelors :(.
Face it, Masters is the new Bachelors and Bachelors is the new High School diploma.
Can someone explain this to me? I live in the U.S. now, but grew up elsewhere, and I don't get how the university system works here.
When I went through university (outside the U.S.), I studied science: computer science, physics, calculus, etc. My friends who were doing anthropology or commerce studied, well, anthropology and sociology, or accounting and economics and so forth. There seemed to be an implicit assumption that the basics of reading and writing and history and anything else outside of your core degree were, you know, taught at school before you got to university. University was supposed to be where you studied a more specialized course of study.
So how the heck does the U.S. get to the point where, so far as I can tell, pretty much all university students are required to study basic history, or politics, or who knows what else that has nothing to do with their core course of study? (And I haven't even started on the whole "changing majors" yet.) If you haven't learned enough of those fundamentals by the time you're in an institution of higher learning, then what have you been doing at school for the last 12 years and how diluted has the value of that bachelor's degree now become?
Which I am. Almost. Well, closer to that than an American. Sort of. New Zealander living in the US. But with 30 years of NZ (read: British but with better accents, at least to American girls (or the ones I've met, anyway)) grammar, I claim adherence. Or closer.
That's moral, which is a lesson to be learned. Morale refers to high spirits, or lack thereof, as in "his morale was crushed when he realized his error in verbiage".
Agreed 100%. If you as an IT geek ever feel you're the recipient of condescension or are mistreated as a lowly tech worker, well, it's because of idiotic garbage like that which makes people wonder why someone who's so intelligent can be so stupid. Seriously, that's the kind of stuff you expect from the same fools who wolf whistle and holler at girls walking by because they're wearing a low cut dress. Grow up.
Let's assume there are still two or three people on the planet who don't use Firefox 3 and consequently have no idea what big scary warning you're talking about.
Also let's figure that those who are using self-signed certificates are at least somewhat likely to fall outside the ranks of "non-technical users".
I'll let you into a secret: I didn't learn the classics. I prefer Dostoevsky.
Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses
Virgil (first century BC) quoted Juvenal (second or third century AD, if I recall)? That was rather prescient.
Been around since the time of Juvenal's Satires (which would be the third or fourth century AD, I think, unless someone wants to look it up and correct me).
Think for a moment. If you are a senior IT administrator or a senior programmer, unless you're in a very rigorous environment, your actions are most likely not subject to peer review. No-one has time. Right?
How many times do we see the argument "it's open source, anyone can read the code" immediately presented with "but who does"? Now consider that there are millions of people using Linux who potentially could read the code and who are likely working with it because they have a personal passion; but a handful of people who potentially could review your work, but are unlikely to have any deep yearning to do so because, well, they've got their own work to do.
In this kind of situation, you either have to have a mandated peer review regime (time consuming and expensive) or an independent audit (ditto). Both of these are, for reasons of practicality, likely to hit only subsections of what needs to be reviewed.
It's a trust thing. If you can trust your admins. And if you can't...well, who admins the admins?