You need to get over the fact that Apple, just like Linux, or Google will get a special treatment on Slashdot. These are products/brands that the typical slashdot reader are interested in.
In my experience brand loyal drones aren't typical - they're just more vocal, more obnoxious, and more willing to blatantly abuse their mod points. The Apple fans seem to be the most vocal and willing to make arguments that fly in the face of reality. Google supporters I just plain don't understand - Google does a pretty good web search engine and has bought usenet and mail services, but they don't do much else well. (Chrome is a joke for example!). Linux zealots just have all their brain power devoted to the technical so their social skills are on par with those of an anti-social 8 year old.
You have to admit, "type" is more intuitive than "cat."
No it's not. Unless you're asking your secretary to retype something. Cat's short for catalog. Both are horrible. Try showfile, or if you must have four letter commands (which aren't going to be intuitive) show or view would make much more sense. Even disp (short for display) would make sense but traditionally that's used for other things (setting screen display)
You'd need to have longer command names in general to get the intuitive naming you desire eg. cat = viewfile, vi = edittext, nice = startwithpriority, apt = repositoryapp, sudo = actasuser
Then you'd get people complaining about the length of command names. Experienced users would find it slowed them down, and those non technical users who can't type fast would complain even more.
You really can't win with this. Command lines are clunky in some ways, brilliant in others.
Ok, outside the copyright debate, am I the only one that is extremely skeptical when someone is the "czar" of something? What the hell does that actually mean, and what can they actually do?
The fact that people are still using it regularly despite it being beta should say something at least.
Yeah I know what you mean. Just look at the Google web search engine. Everyone waited for the beta to end before using it. Same with GMail, Google Groups and everything else Google produced.
The REAL problem is that these tools have a different agenda to the end user. The end user just wants the damn thing to work. The vendor wants to sell them more software, do a security theatre dance around the PC. The geek coding isn't able to step back and work out what the user will and won't understand (and none of these tools have really good help explaining the technical gibberish in plain English). So what these tools invariably do is just throw up technically correct but obscure messages that the user just clicks to get rid of. Half the time if the user does bother to take the suggested action, the outcome is bad because the software was never smart enough to make the decision, and the end user just never understood the problem in the first place.
They need to find the genes that cause bald men to spend hundreds or even thousands on a toupee that looks like a dyed dead rat while insisting that it looks real and that people can't tell.
The customer is always right. They pay your salary.
That's a bone headed thing to say. Let's say you're a builder. If the customer insists you build a house out of matchsticks using only a toothbrush, you better let them know it won't work and will violate code, that you can't legally proceed and that the house will fall down anyway if you try. If they still insist that you continue, your only good option is to quit that piece of work.
_Usually_ if you're working as a professional, the customer will be reasonable, as it is in their own best interests that you succeed. That doesn't mean people are always reasonable.
You can continue to put yourself first, but you may find your more customer-focussed competitors do rather better than you.
You mean those people that promise the impossible and deliver shoddy work. Yeah I can't compete with that. I'm forced to pick clients that aren't idiots.
PS. most business apps are still MS-based, and Java is an increasingly irrelevent tech on Windows. MS is making sure of that by pulling developers to.Net as fast as they can.
You're talking rubbish. Go check the employment figures and job ads. Java's by far the most common platform at the moment..NET is second but not everyone's happy with proprietary lockin.
I am reasonably computer-savy, but if I have to do anything more complicated than typing a really simple letter, Word drives me up the wall. It constantly feels like I have to work against it, instead of having it do work for me.
What you need to do is use the right tool for the job. It sounds like you're trying to use a hammer where you need a saw. For example if you're fighting Word to do things, you're probably trying to use it as a Destkop Publisher rather than a simple Word Processor. I've used Excel to do Astrophysics homework for my Masters in Astronomy. It worked well for simple calculations and graphing, but I wouldn't have used it to do anything involving Calculus for example (even though it can be fudged to approximate what's required sometimes).
When I develop applications, I don't go looking for the tools that make my life the easiest--I go looking for the tools that will make the end-user's life easier. I develop in languages that work across multiple platforms (except for the abomination that is Java).
You should be looking for tools that make sense and are therefore easy for the developer AND achieve what the end user wants. Putting the end user first is an admirable but misplaced sentiment. If you're constantly struggling against the tools to achieve the desired result you'll be spending less time addressing the end user's concerns.
Then you call Java an abomination. I have news for you. ALL tools are abominations - none are perfect. None make sense all the time. You don't need to love the tool, you just need to use it effectively. Since Java is now the defacto standard of choice for most business apps, calling it an abomination and refusing to work with it is childish.
and by making assumptions of this magnitude around aircraft "my life" is the proper phrase, without watching and understanding what they did. As an electrical engineer I understand what they did, and can reasonably say they did a decent job.
Unless they did thorough testing on a very wide variety of aircraft using more sophisticated techniques I'd say they did a decent job of entertaining people and little else. Equipment varies by manufacturer, model and even batch number. I'd like to see equipment certified before someone made the claim that there is no interference. It scares me that you claim to be an elec eng. and don't have higher standards.
Mybusters proved that cellular signals, even those jacked up 20x didn't interfere with ANY instruments in a Cessna, IN FLIGHT.
I'm sure this will be modded flamebait but fuck it, this needs saying.
I sure as fuck am not going to trust my life to the unscientific rantings of a couple of special effects technicians who try out a handful of electronic equipment against a single aircraft and draw a conclusion from that. Mythbusters is not science - it's entertainment that uses a vague parody of the scientific method. Get a grip.
If it's crappy, why is getting pirated? That doesn't make sense.
Because it's still better than the latest round of vote for your favourite karoke singer, bad dancer, idiot stuck on an island, or idiot racing around the world.
Border agent: What is your reason for traveling today. Geek: I'm talking to a company about fault-tolerant servers...
and in this Powerpoint you'll notice that the two processors are running in
lock-step. Border agent: (He makes more than we do and we can't flush his head down the toilet anymore, but watch this Larry). The use of unfamiliar and suspicous language leads us to believe you may be involved in terrorist activities. We're taking your laptop, and please step this way for a cavity search.
Why the fuck would anyone want to be reminded that they could have looked better if nature and genetics had been kinder? Fuck that. I'll stick with the real harsh "ugly" pics.
Slashdot Mirror
You need to get over the fact that Apple, just like Linux, or Google will get a special treatment on Slashdot. These are products/brands that the typical slashdot reader are interested in.
In my experience brand loyal drones aren't typical - they're just more vocal, more obnoxious, and more willing to blatantly abuse their mod points. The Apple fans seem to be the most vocal and willing to make arguments that fly in the face of reality. Google supporters I just plain don't understand - Google does a pretty good web search engine and has bought usenet and mail services, but they don't do much else well. (Chrome is a joke for example!). Linux zealots just have all their brain power devoted to the technical so their social skills are on par with those of an anti-social 8 year old.
It's called short selling.
Selling something you don't actually own yet ought to be called fraud.
You have to admit, "type" is more intuitive than "cat."
No it's not. Unless you're asking your secretary to retype something. Cat's short for catalog. Both are horrible. Try showfile, or if you must have four letter commands (which aren't going to be intuitive) show or view would make much more sense. Even disp (short for display) would make sense but traditionally that's used for other things (setting screen display)
You'd need to have longer command names in general to get the intuitive naming you desire
eg. cat = viewfile, vi = edittext, nice = startwithpriority, apt = repositoryapp, sudo = actasuser
Then you'd get people complaining about the length of command names. Experienced users would find it slowed them down, and those non technical users who can't type fast would complain even more.
You really can't win with this. Command lines are clunky in some ways, brilliant in others.
Pre-Soviet Russia, actually. Soviet Russia is what happens when the Czars are so hated that there's a revolution.
Yeah, I know...but that wouldn't have sounded as funny. The objective here was humour not historical accuracy. I can see I've failed in both anyway.
When hundreds of millions of children can "manufacture and distribute" copies of works more easily than they can tie their shoes...
Personally, I blame Velcro.
Ok, outside the copyright debate, am I the only one that is extremely skeptical when someone is the "czar" of something? What the hell does that actually mean, and what can they actually do?
It means you're in Soviet Russia.
The fact that people are still using it regularly despite it being beta should say something at least.
Yeah I know what you mean. Just look at the Google web search engine. Everyone waited for the beta to end before using it. Same with GMail, Google Groups and everything else Google produced.
Warning! Sarcasm detected above.
Information doesn't want anything.
YOU want information to be free.
I'm sure he's willing to be reasonable and settle for the hookers and hash being free, while the info still costs.
Perhaps they can get a new model that displays the debt in scientific notation -- it could be named the "Cheney Memorial Clock".
It'd be easier to just come up with a poster that reads "Haha sucker, America owes you and it's never gonna pay you back". ;-)
Perhaps something like this is what you are observing?
What he's observing is inattentive asshole drivers. Don't overthink it.
...so it's time to add another. ;-)
The REAL problem is that these tools have a different agenda to the end user. The end user just wants the damn thing to work. The vendor wants to sell them more software, do a security theatre dance around the PC. The geek coding isn't able to step back and work out what the user will and won't understand (and none of these tools have really good help explaining the technical gibberish in plain English). So what these tools invariably do is just throw up technically correct but obscure messages that the user just clicks to get rid of. Half the time if the user does bother to take the suggested action, the outcome is bad because the software was never smart enough to make the decision, and the end user just never understood the problem in the first place.
They need to find the genes that cause bald men to spend hundreds or even thousands on a toupee that looks like a dyed dead rat while insisting that it looks real and that people can't tell.
The customer is always right. They pay your salary.
That's a bone headed thing to say. Let's say you're a builder. If the customer insists you build a house out of matchsticks using only a toothbrush, you better let them know it won't work and will violate code, that you can't legally proceed and that the house will fall down anyway if you try. If they still insist that you continue, your only good option is to quit that piece of work.
_Usually_ if you're working as a professional, the customer will be reasonable, as it is in their own best interests that you succeed. That doesn't mean people are always reasonable.
You can continue to put yourself first, but you may find your more customer-focussed competitors do rather better than you.
You mean those people that promise the impossible and deliver shoddy work. Yeah I can't compete with that. I'm forced to pick clients that aren't idiots.
PS. most business apps are still MS-based, and Java is an increasingly irrelevent tech on Windows. MS is making sure of that by pulling developers to .Net as fast as they can.
You're talking rubbish. Go check the employment figures and job ads. Java's by far the most common platform at the moment. .NET is second but not everyone's happy with proprietary lockin.
I'll pop the cork before takeoff and be merry before I worry for a second over something this trivial.
You're right, the life of a slashdot TROLL who's more interested in having the last word than the validity of his argument is trivial. My mistake.
I am reasonably computer-savy, but if I have to do anything more complicated than typing a really simple letter, Word drives me up the wall. It constantly feels like I have to work against it, instead of having it do work for me.
What you need to do is use the right tool for the job. It sounds like you're trying to use a hammer where you need a saw. For example if you're fighting Word to do things, you're probably trying to use it as a Destkop Publisher rather than a simple Word Processor. I've used Excel to do Astrophysics homework for my Masters in Astronomy. It worked well for simple calculations and graphing, but I wouldn't have used it to do anything involving Calculus for example (even though it can be fudged to approximate what's required sometimes).
1. Ask slashdot what you should do.
2. PM people who respond for more ideas.
3. Probe for more until the syllabus is written for you
4. Profit!
Consumer devices + airplanes != reason to be retentive.
If you don't want to be cautious, it's your funeral. Have fun
World leaders they no longer are
If like Yoda you speak slashdot will call you wise, yeeees!
When I develop applications, I don't go looking for the tools that make my life the easiest--I go looking for the tools that will make the end-user's life easier. I develop in languages that work across multiple platforms (except for the abomination that is Java).
You should be looking for tools that make sense and are therefore easy for the developer AND achieve what the end user wants. Putting the end user first is an admirable but misplaced sentiment. If you're constantly struggling against the tools to achieve the desired result you'll be spending less time addressing the end user's concerns.
Then you call Java an abomination. I have news for you. ALL tools are abominations - none are perfect. None make sense all the time. You don't need to love the tool, you just need to use it effectively. Since Java is now the defacto standard of choice for most business apps, calling it an abomination and refusing to work with it is childish.
It pays to be anal retentive when your life is literally at stake.
and by making assumptions of this magnitude around aircraft "my life" is the proper phrase, without watching and understanding what they did. As an electrical engineer I understand what they did, and can reasonably say they did a decent job.
Unless they did thorough testing on a very wide variety of aircraft using more sophisticated techniques I'd say they did a decent job of entertaining people and little else. Equipment varies by manufacturer, model and even batch number. I'd like to see equipment certified before someone made the claim that there is no interference. It scares me that you claim to be an elec eng. and don't have higher standards.
Mybusters proved that cellular signals, even those jacked up 20x didn't interfere with ANY instruments in a Cessna, IN FLIGHT.
I'm sure this will be modded flamebait but fuck it, this needs saying.
I sure as fuck am not going to trust my life to the unscientific rantings of a couple of special effects technicians who try out a handful of electronic equipment against a single aircraft and draw a conclusion from that. Mythbusters is not science - it's entertainment that uses a vague parody of the scientific method. Get a grip.
If it's crappy, why is getting pirated? That doesn't make sense.
Because it's still better than the latest round of vote for your favourite karoke singer, bad dancer, idiot stuck on an island, or idiot racing around the world.
Let me correct that for you.
Border agent: What is your reason for traveling today. ...
Geek: I'm talking to a company about fault-tolerant servers
and in this Powerpoint you'll notice that the two processors are running in
lock-step.
Border agent: (He makes more than we do and we can't flush his head down the toilet anymore, but watch this Larry). The use of unfamiliar and suspicous language leads us to believe you may be involved in terrorist activities. We're taking your laptop, and please step this way for a cavity search.
Why the fuck would anyone want to be reminded that they could have looked better if nature and genetics had been kinder? Fuck that. I'll stick with the real harsh "ugly" pics.