Frankly, based on the fact that developing technology to the point of intergalactic travel requires social stability on your home world, I would think the balance favors HAVING an intergalactic ethic.
I really REALLY wish I could agree, but I don't.
I know we don't have intergalactic travel, but we've come quite far in the last few hundred years technologically. A lot of that technology has come from seeking better and more efficient ways to kill each other.
Is working at Burger King as a teenager a launchpad or a dead end? I guess it depends on your attitude, your ambition, and your ability to learn from experiences.
If you're over 20 I'd say it's a complete dead end. Once you reach that age, you're labelled a burger flipper for life even if you're assistant manager by that point.
Any work dealing with customers will prepare you well for working in any kind of environment where you have to deal with people that are sometimes unreasonable or like to treat others like garbage. In other words, it prepares you to deal with real life.
It prepares you to become a tech slave for life willing to put up with crap to keep your job. I deal with people that are unreasonable but what I call unreasonable would be heaven to a help desk drone.
Help desk has the added bonus of being somewhat related to tech stuff, so if you combine it with some learning on your own time, maybe you can end up in a more technical role.
It's a trap! If you do your job well they'll never want to move you on. If you do it badly, you're not going to be given added responsibility. It's actually rare that there's career progression.
There are exceptions. 2nd and 3rd level support where you have to code to resolve the problem. Premium service help desks - the type that'll help CEOs and other VIPs. However your call center type help desk or internal IT help desk is often a road to nowhere.
Most companies will tend to recruit from within, so if they see that you're highly technically competent and are good at dealing with people, you're likely to get moved up out of help desk
It's rare and it makes sense that it's rare. Why would they move you out of your current job if you're doing it well and risk that you'll not do the better job well. If they employ externally and it doesn't work out that's one position they have to re-advertise. If they promote a competent help desk person, it's not likely they'll go back to their former role if the new one doesn't work out. That's 2 positions they're risking having to re-fill. It only makes sense if they think they're going to lose you anyway in which case 2 positions are at risk. It is however very difficult to threaten to leave and save face when you don't follow through.
If you sit around talking shit about the idiot customers all day when you're not on the phone, you're probably not going anywhere except possibly the unemployment line.
If you do any job particularly badly that's true. However if you're mediocre at the job you may be moved. If you're really doing well at it, your company profits best leaving you there. Your best bet is to do really well and apply externally.
In short, any job will give you what you're willing to get from it.
You've clearly never worked for an oppressive boss.
Whether any particular job is a dead end or a door leading to bigger and better things is entirely up to the person doing the job.
The person doing the job doesn't get to decide when he or she is promoted, so it's quite literally not "entirely up to the person doing the job"
On a personal note, I was in help desk for 6 months before being promoted to Unix admin.
Key thing is you were there a very short time and didn't have time to become an irreplaceable asset although you would have if you'd stayed longer and it would have been harder to move.
I'm not knocking what you've done. Good on you for getting ahead and doing well for your company. However the whole world doesn't work like that.
I'm playing with Ubuntu on VMWare server at the moment, because I haven't tried a distro in a year or so.
I also saw the story today about Ubuntu and while reading the detail seems to indicate it's a non-issue, I am concerned about going from being Microsoft's bitch, to becoming Ubuntu's bitch. What turned me off Linux last time was the demise of Redhat's free distros and their painful rebirth as Fedora core. The time before that it was the inclusion of PAM (pluggable authentication) in an upgrade - I wasted a good day unable to access my system because suddenly my passwords weren't secure enough to log in. Once I found the answer on the web I fixed it, but who wants to be locked out of their own system? That's one thing I've never had happen on Windows (but I have had a Vista backup hose my system, so I'm not saying Windows doesn't have major problems too).
I've tried a lot of distros. Started with Slackware. Used that for a while. Moved to Redhat and used that to do my Astronomy Masters. Tried Debian, SUSE, Mandrake a while back, and now I'm trying Ubuntu. The Linux flavour of the day certainly is a moving target. It's all such a goddamn headache and I still am at the whim of one company or other, just not paying through the nose for it.
Anyway, my biggest issue isn't even just the conversion of my irreplaceable NTFS partitions (multiple backups of unique things) though that's daunting. It's the lack of software that does what I'd like to do in supporting my hobbies. Everything from photo editing to chess coaching to flight simulators has only poor substitutes in Linux. Open office is getting more impressive by the day but I still worry about incomparability and missing features compared to MS Office.
True, but also leaning towards defeatist nonsense. Follow that line of thinking and you achieve nothing but a boring life. You have to take some risks
It's not defeatist nonsense to make an honest assessment of what you're going to be able to do to make a living before dumping a perfectly good career because you're a little bored with it. It really doesn't take much to go from making a decent living to ending up unable to provide for your family.
Also, I don't live in the US, so I don't have to worry about medical treatment being withheld because i don't have insurance...
I don't live in the US either, but no matter where you live not all life saving treatment will be covered by social security.
What a complete busload of bullshit. Have you even convinced yourself of what you're saying?
I never emphasized anything about captcha
You emphasized the cost of catering to the blind when building a web page. Go back and read what you wrote.
Although I did spend a lot of time talking about cost, that is because the OP's remarks were that cost of accessibility were negligible.
Ah so you agree that you did do so.
but in either case, there was no particular emphasis on my part.
Oh but now you don't. Do you understand the meaning of a logically consistent argument?
Covering some other issue when I was responding on that specific subject would have been trolling
No, that's called broadening the discussion. I don't think you understand the definition of trolling either. Trolling is about attacking someone verbally online with the intention of trying to get a reaction out of them rather than actually contributing to the discussion. Trolling isn't about broadening the discussion or disagreeing. It's about trying to piss someone off for the sake of the entertainment value.
To add accessibility for the blind, you are going to have to add a non-visual equivalent, which will always add to the cost, and that added cost is never going to be negligible, which is exactly what I said to start with, but you are apparently too stupid to understand without having your hand held every step of the way.
I completely disagree with you. Costs for basic compliance with standards that do give at least some access to the blind are negligible. Especially if you want quality code (meaning that you should be compliant with those standards anyway).
The delicious irony of you accusing me of trolling then calling me "too stupid to understand" without having my hand held is remarkable.
My phrasing wasn't at issue, but I submit your trolling is
Basically you're an idiot. You don't know the meaning of the word troll. You don't know how to make an argument, but instead accuse someone who disagrees strongly with some of the logically inconsistent garbage you spew a troll. No matter how you look at it, the post which I originally replied to emphasises the cost of granting blind people access to your web pages, and therefore implies that in a lot of circumstances this exaggerated cost isn't warranted. You can twist and turn your words all you like but all you're doing is making yourself sound stupider.
Sure, work hard at a boring job so that your child has all the right opportunities to grow up and do the same for his child.
Trying to find fun and fulfilment in your job is a losing strategy. Most jobs are crap, that is why people must be paid to get the work done. It's a harsh world. What all your generations of family are suppose to do is go to work and then use what they earn to find happiness and fulfilment. That means not working 120 hours a week, spending time with your family and finding a hobby or two.
Also, don'tcha want to be the "cool dad" everyone else's kids want to have?:P
You mean the one who's about to wind up out on his arse as a deadbeat dad when his wife decides she's married to a child?
I say take the chance, or risk looking back in ten years and wondering where your life went, seriously.
That is a lovely sentiment when it works out. If you end up destitute and homeless, or your child ends up with a treatable disease and you can't afford the treatment, it doesn't work so well.
So what do you think of people that use their mothers or grandmothers as guinea pigs? Is that ageist? Is it only okay to now use young male subjects testing usability? See how quickly your rant becomes ridiculous and how quickly it leads to less equality and an increase in sexism?
The fact is there are more men interested in computers than women, and that means most males in IT end up with partners who aren't as computer savvy. It's not a stupid assumption, it's the reality of the world. The guy who posted the article didn't come across as disrespectful to his girlfriend at all.
I also object to the practice of headline writers to refer to any man by his occupation ("Local Janitor Loses Home") and any woman by her family relationship ("Local Mom Sues Company"). To my mind, the headline of this story does the same thing... defines the woman by her relationship rather than her occupation.
Mother is not just a relationship. It's also a full time 24/7 occuppation. Would you rather "Local Housewife Sues Company"? I'm betting you'd call that sexist too, yet some women do still stay home and raise their children. I'd argue one member of a household should stay home. I'd also argue the one that earns least should be it, and would be happy if that means dad stays home. Does that make me sexist? YOU are the one disrespecting the woman in the headline. Mother isn't an easy job to do properly.
Where do I get this "with a girlfriend" release?.. of course with my luck, the "girlfriend" will be the openbsd version, and ship with all ports closed by default.
Still better than a girlfriend with ports open that is operating in promiscuous mode and contracts a virus.
...when the whole Universe was much denser at that stage. It's still good science, and another piece of information the human race possesses (especially in the detail) but I'm unsurprised.
Longhorn is stupid, but not as stupid as any of the Ubuntu code names. What I call it is irrelevant. I could call it Ubuntu Unicorn and people would just conclude I'm a nut. What it's advertised as and what the majority of the world call it matters much more.
Stop looking for fun at work. You get paid because people won't do it for free. If people did do it for free it'd be called a hobby or charity work. Jobs are where you make a trade. Your time doing crap for other people in exchange for them paying you money.
Most others responses have it pretty right. Spend time and effort on your family (including your wife not just the kids), find a hobby - the world's full of interesting things to do if you have a bit of spare cash. (I fly remote control aircraft, am into photography and astronomy, and computers - particularly simulation). If you don't have spare cash there are cheaper hobbies (If I couldn't fly r/c I'd go fly a kite as I find that fun)
Only if you're at the point where you're going to do something stupid (like harm yourself or your family, intentionally or otherwise) should you quit your job.
Also realize that if you jump into something else you love doing now, 10 years of doing it might make you disillusioned with that too.
That job might suck sometimes but life would be a lot worse without it.
The chess surprised me, so did the flight sims. To each his own I guess, why not dual boot for games or use wine?
Dual boot is an option, but it doesn't get me away from requiring Windows. If I have to run Windows anyway, why bother with another OS and it's quirks. (I use to bother for the sake of learning, but I learnt and can pick it back up any time. I occassionally use Unix at work so I'm not too rusty.)
Wine on the other hand is useless for 3D simulation. An excercise in frustration last time I bothered to try.
I haven't had any problem editing video. For media burning you are WAY off, its windows that doesnt have anything decent. K3B + KDE is a killer combo, rip, read, burn, create, no problem.
How much video editiing do you do? I dont do a lot but do find it painful so if Linux is truly better, that'd be a selling point. K3B certainly looks interesting. Screenshots look good. Bug fixes and version history leave me wondering about maturity.
I assume you mean photo editing, GIMP, Cinepaint, and Krita handle everything for me. Scribus, Xara, and Inkscape handle the vector graphics.
As I said I do try to use GIMP when I can, just so that if I ever do make the switch (looking more likely since Vista) I don't want it to be too big a shock. However GIMP handles alpha channels painfully, and is a quirky mess when it comes to the UI. It's usable for about 80% of what I do, but for the other 20% I go to something else. I haven't played with the other software you've listed, but as I understand it, it's either not as mature or not as capable as commercial counterparts. I have limited use for vector graphics at the present time so it wouldn't be s how stopper.
Moving the business over to OpenOffice was a godsend, I was writing 2-500 page grants and frankly Word is not competent for more then a letter. OO spreadsheets integrate better too. And you can output in PDF directly.
I've looked at OpenOffice too. It just doesn't compare I'm afraid. It can't open the latest Office formats, it can crash or freeze on complex Office 2003 documents. The spreadsheet isn't anywhere near as complete as Excel in terms of functions and graphing. (It's getting there, but it's a few years behind).
As for direct PDF output, that isn't a problem in Windows if you print to a PDF printer driver like PDFCreator.
Palm (do people still use those?)
Yes. Why should I throw out something I paid good money for, just because the fad is over?? In any case replace palm with crackberry or any other currently in vogue PDA and you get the idea.
There are a lot of tools, and remember they implemented several plugins and color schemes long before Palm did.
Half-implemented more like. Many features were missing compared to the native suites.
And Mobile phone? Yep got that covered too, can grab address books, dial, monitor batteries and answer calls. Pretty simple.
Those are essential functions you'd want with a phone (except dial and answer), but there's a LOT more to a mobile phone than that handful of things. Installing apps and ring tones, synchronizing calendar etc. I Haven't played with Linux too much on that side of things, but based on what I've seen on the forums I do know there's stuff missing.
NTFS? if you move over why would you want it?
I literally have terrabytes of data backed up to NTFS. Some of it is software but a lot of it is multiple copies of my photos (about 700Gb-1TB - My wife and I are right into photography, and have been known to shoot 4-6Gb on an outing to the zoo and up to 10-15Gb when photographing a wedding for friends or family - that includes files converted from RAW and copies that have been post processed). I also have my own wedding plus video - probably about 200-300Gb there including the raw digital video. I don't really feel like spending a few weekends (at least) sorting that conversion out. If I get it wrong because I rush it or do it late at night I fe
Yeah you're right I didn't get that because. Now you've pointed out it's obvious uni, bi etc. but trying to pronounce it in the first place is like trying to talk baby talk. I don't care if its in Greek, Swahili, Turkish or Masedonian. It's awful naming and disparaging me doesn't change that.
This is one of the problems with GIMP.. Who wants to show someone a picture that they edited and say "I GIMPed her in this picture"?
I don't know what it is about open source software and attrocious names. Ubuntu is no better. Fiesty Fawn? Gutsy Gibbon? Hardy Herron? I mean it's hard to come up with sillier names (but I'll try). I don't think I'll be using Ubuntu until I can casually say my wife got upset at me spending my weekend with Slutty Sow, Homo-erotic Horse, Randy Rhino and Lewd Lama.
Unbiunium (pronounced/nbijunim/) is the temporary name of a chemical element in the periodic table that has the temporary symbol Ubu and has the atomic number 121.
Unbibium (pronounced/nbbim/) is the temporary name of a (purportedly) recently discovered[1] chemical element in the periodic table that has the temporary symbol Ubb and has the atomic number 122.
These names are of course awful. What next? An element named bumbum?
I think it's basic psychology that anybody who spends any significant amount of time pretending to be someone else will eventually manifest behavorial changes.
Yes but the point is that some people completely lose touch with reality. I think it depends most significantly on the type of game, and on the person playing it.
I spend a hell of a lot of time on flight simulators, but I don't want to be a pilot in real life - I just love the challenge and get immersed in the freedom of exploring such a large virtual space. Being a real pilot would be costly and stressful in a way that I'm not prepared for (plus I'd get airsick). There is very little social interaction on a flight simulator. (I could join online communities which simulate air traffic control, or I could try to formation fly with others, but those tasks require dedication I and most other simmers simply don't have, and the environments are limited in a way that makes them not worth the effort for a lot of simmers. It's easier to just go onto the computer and do your own thing). My point is a key aspect is whether or not it's an inherently social game, like a MMORPG. Less social games can still be addictive but apart from making you more withdrawn if you're addicted are less personality changing than games where you take on the role of a character with all their quirks and personality traits.
Now as to the person playing the game...some play to have fun while others play to escape their life for whatever reason. It's the later that are most susceptible to lose touch with reality.
Hibernate has its limitations. I seem to have hit them a few times. Hibernate is great for doing simple things, but if you use any vendor specific features or really complex SQL, you may find yourself falling back to JDBC.
You are completely wrong about drop/delete in HQL. Instead of quoting references you don't have, here's the result of a quick Google search.
Your ignorance tells me you have very simple database needs. That's the siutation in which Hibernate will shine.
However, Hibernate can also be rather complex and unintuitive to control. The XML you have to write includes subtle options which need to be set correctly to get expected behaviour. It's very very easy to change an option and completely break a system.
Your smug attitude is awful. You've found a framework that meets your specific needs, but other coders have other needs that aren't met by your pet framework. By the way, I hope you're being paid to plug it, since otherwise you've been brainwashed.
Decent chess software (Chessmaster, not GnuChess or Winboard), a decent flight simulator (MS Flight sim 2004), Remote control flight simulator (Realflight), a bunch of games which are less important to me, easy to use video editing software, decent media burning and authoring tools (instead of a hodge podge of incomplete crap), a better editor than gimp (though I use gimp on windows, it's not my main editor), 100% office compatibility, good mobile phone sync suite and palm pilot sync software (I know it exists but the out of the box solution and advanced tools are for windows). Oh and while we're at it proper full NTFS support that's not unstable, buggy or risky to use.
Oh and a pony, because I'll get one before all these things are fully ported to Linux.
I really would like to move, but it would change what I'm able to do.
What exactly do you mean by a false positive anyway? UAC prompts for exactly the same reasons as something like sudo prompts.
I mean alerting you to an action you've intiated that is not risky, and often doing it multiple times for the one action. That does not require your attention. It's a distraction from the task at hand, and with so many prompts you're liable to find yourself automatically hitting "allow" like Pavlov's dog gone wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, based on the fact that developing technology to the point of intergalactic travel requires social stability on your home world, I would think the balance favors HAVING an intergalactic ethic.
I really REALLY wish I could agree, but I don't.
I know we don't have intergalactic travel, but we've come quite far in the last few hundred years technologically. A lot of that technology has come from seeking better and more efficient ways to kill each other.
Are these as accurate as the "historical documents" on Galaxy Quest? Anyone else reminded of that?
Is working at Burger King as a teenager a launchpad or a dead end? I guess it depends on your attitude, your ambition, and your ability to learn from experiences.
If you're over 20 I'd say it's a complete dead end. Once you reach that age, you're labelled a burger flipper for life even if you're assistant manager by that point.
Any work dealing with customers will prepare you well for working in any kind of environment where you have to deal with people that are sometimes unreasonable or like to treat others like garbage. In other words, it prepares you to deal with real life.
It prepares you to become a tech slave for life willing to put up with crap to keep your job. I deal with people that are unreasonable but what I call unreasonable would be heaven to a help desk drone.
Help desk has the added bonus of being somewhat related to tech stuff, so if you combine it with some learning on your own time, maybe you can end up in a more technical role.
It's a trap! If you do your job well they'll never want to move you on. If you do it badly, you're not going to be given added responsibility. It's actually rare that there's career progression.
There are exceptions. 2nd and 3rd level support where you have to code to resolve the problem. Premium service help desks - the type that'll help CEOs and other VIPs. However your call center type help desk or internal IT help desk is often a road to nowhere.
Most companies will tend to recruit from within, so if they see that you're highly technically competent and are good at dealing with people, you're likely to get moved up out of help desk
It's rare and it makes sense that it's rare. Why would they move you out of your current job if you're doing it well and risk that you'll not do the better job well. If they employ externally and it doesn't work out that's one position they have to re-advertise. If they promote a competent help desk person, it's not likely they'll go back to their former role if the new one doesn't work out. That's 2 positions they're risking having to re-fill. It only makes sense if they think they're going to lose you anyway in which case 2 positions are at risk. It is however very difficult to threaten to leave and save face when you don't follow through.
If you sit around talking shit about the idiot customers all day when you're not on the phone, you're probably not going anywhere except possibly the unemployment line.
If you do any job particularly badly that's true. However if you're mediocre at the job you may be moved. If you're really doing well at it, your company profits best leaving you there. Your best bet is to do really well and apply externally.
In short, any job will give you what you're willing to get from it.
You've clearly never worked for an oppressive boss.
Whether any particular job is a dead end or a door leading to bigger and better things is entirely up to the person doing the job.
The person doing the job doesn't get to decide when he or she is promoted, so it's quite literally not "entirely up to the person doing the job"
On a personal note, I was in help desk for 6 months before being promoted to Unix admin.
Key thing is you were there a very short time and didn't have time to become an irreplaceable asset although you would have if you'd stayed longer and it would have been harder to move.
I'm not knocking what you've done. Good on you for getting ahead and doing well for your company. However the whole world doesn't work like that.
I'm playing with Ubuntu on VMWare server at the moment, because I haven't tried a distro in a year or so.
I also saw the story today about Ubuntu and while reading the detail seems to indicate it's a non-issue, I am concerned about going from being Microsoft's bitch, to becoming Ubuntu's bitch. What turned me off Linux last time was the demise of Redhat's free distros and their painful rebirth as Fedora core. The time before that it was the inclusion of PAM (pluggable authentication) in an upgrade - I wasted a good day unable to access my system because suddenly my passwords weren't secure enough to log in. Once I found the answer on the web I fixed it, but who wants to be locked out of their own system? That's one thing I've never had happen on Windows (but I have had a Vista backup hose my system, so I'm not saying Windows doesn't have major problems too).
I've tried a lot of distros. Started with Slackware. Used that for a while. Moved to Redhat and used that to do my Astronomy Masters. Tried Debian, SUSE, Mandrake a while back, and now I'm trying Ubuntu. The Linux flavour of the day certainly is a moving target. It's all such a goddamn headache and I still am at the whim of one company or other, just not paying through the nose for it.
Anyway, my biggest issue isn't even just the conversion of my irreplaceable NTFS partitions (multiple backups of unique things) though that's daunting. It's the lack of software that does what I'd like to do in supporting my hobbies. Everything from photo editing to chess coaching to flight simulators has only poor substitutes in Linux. Open office is getting more impressive by the day but I still worry about incomparability and missing features compared to MS Office.
True, but also leaning towards defeatist nonsense. Follow that line of thinking and you achieve nothing but a boring life.
You have to take some risks
It's not defeatist nonsense to make an honest assessment of what you're going to be able to do to make a living before dumping a perfectly good career because you're a little bored with it. It really doesn't take much to go from making a decent living to ending up unable to provide for your family.
Also, I don't live in the US, so I don't have to worry about medical treatment being withheld because i don't have insurance...
I don't live in the US either, but no matter where you live not all life saving treatment will be covered by social security.
What a complete busload of bullshit. Have you even convinced yourself of what you're saying?
I never emphasized anything about captcha
You emphasized the cost of catering to the blind when building a web page. Go back and read what you wrote.
Although I did spend a lot of time talking about cost, that is because the OP's remarks were that cost of accessibility were negligible.
Ah so you agree that you did do so.
but in either case, there was no particular emphasis on my part.
Oh but now you don't. Do you understand the meaning of a logically consistent argument?
Covering some other issue when I was responding on that specific subject would have been trolling
No, that's called broadening the discussion. I don't think you understand the definition of trolling either. Trolling is about attacking someone verbally online with the intention of trying to get a reaction out of them rather than actually contributing to the discussion. Trolling isn't about broadening the discussion or disagreeing. It's about trying to piss someone off for the sake of the entertainment value.
To add accessibility for the blind, you are going to have to add a non-visual equivalent, which will always add to the cost, and that added cost is never going to be negligible, which is exactly what I said to start with, but you are apparently too stupid to understand without having your hand held every step of the way.
I completely disagree with you. Costs for basic compliance with standards that do give at least some access to the blind are negligible. Especially if you want quality code (meaning that you should be compliant with those standards anyway).
The delicious irony of you accusing me of trolling then calling me "too stupid to understand" without having my hand held is remarkable.
My phrasing wasn't at issue, but I submit your trolling is
Basically you're an idiot. You don't know the meaning of the word troll. You don't know how to make an argument, but instead accuse someone who disagrees strongly with some of the logically inconsistent garbage you spew a troll. No matter how you look at it, the post which I originally replied to emphasises the cost of granting blind people access to your web pages, and therefore implies that in a lot of circumstances this exaggerated cost isn't warranted. You can twist and turn your words all you like but all you're doing is making yourself sound stupider.
Sure, work hard at a boring job so that your child has all the right opportunities to grow up and do the same for his child.
:P
Trying to find fun and fulfilment in your job is a losing strategy. Most jobs are crap, that is why people must be paid to get the work done. It's a harsh world. What all your generations of family are suppose to do is go to work and then use what they earn to find happiness and fulfilment. That means not working 120 hours a week, spending time with your family and finding a hobby or two.
Also, don'tcha want to be the "cool dad" everyone else's kids want to have?
You mean the one who's about to wind up out on his arse as a deadbeat dad when his wife decides she's married to a child?
I say take the chance, or risk looking back in ten years and wondering where your life went, seriously.
That is a lovely sentiment when it works out. If you end up destitute and homeless, or your child ends up with a treatable disease and you can't afford the treatment, it doesn't work so well.
The real world can be a harsh place.
So what do you think of people that use their mothers or grandmothers as guinea pigs? Is that ageist? Is it only okay to now use young male subjects testing usability? See how quickly your rant becomes ridiculous and how quickly it leads to less equality and an increase in sexism?
The fact is there are more men interested in computers than women, and that means most males in IT end up with partners who aren't as computer savvy. It's not a stupid assumption, it's the reality of the world. The guy who posted the article didn't come across as disrespectful to his girlfriend at all.
I also object to the practice of headline writers to refer to any man by his occupation ("Local Janitor Loses Home") and any woman by her family relationship ("Local Mom Sues Company"). To my mind, the headline of this story does the same thing... defines the woman by her relationship rather than her occupation.
Mother is not just a relationship. It's also a full time 24/7 occuppation. Would you rather "Local Housewife Sues Company"? I'm betting you'd call that sexist too, yet some women do still stay home and raise their children. I'd argue one member of a household should stay home. I'd also argue the one that earns least should be it, and would be happy if that means dad stays home. Does that make me sexist? YOU are the one disrespecting the woman in the headline. Mother isn't an easy job to do properly.
As a female computer programmer, should people assume my husband is computer illiterate? No? Then why assume his girlfriend is?
You let your husband have girlfriends?
Where do I get this "with a girlfriend" release? .. of course with my luck, the "girlfriend" will be the openbsd version, and ship with all ports closed by default.
Still better than a girlfriend with ports open that is operating in promiscuous mode and contracts a virus.
Real geeks compile their girlfriends from source.
Eliza, is that you???
http://www-ai.ijs.si/eliza/eliza.html
...when the whole Universe was much denser at that stage. It's still good science, and another piece of information the human race possesses (especially in the detail) but I'm unsurprised.
Longhorn is stupid, but not as stupid as any of the Ubuntu code names. What I call it is irrelevant. I could call it Ubuntu Unicorn and people would just conclude I'm a nut. What it's advertised as and what the majority of the world call it matters much more.
Stop looking for fun at work. You get paid because people won't do it for free. If people did do it for free it'd be called a hobby or charity work. Jobs are where you make a trade. Your time doing crap for other people in exchange for them paying you money.
Most others responses have it pretty right. Spend time and effort on your family (including your wife not just the kids), find a hobby - the world's full of interesting things to do if you have a bit of spare cash. (I fly remote control aircraft, am into photography and astronomy, and computers - particularly simulation). If you don't have spare cash there are cheaper hobbies (If I couldn't fly r/c I'd go fly a kite as I find that fun)
Only if you're at the point where you're going to do something stupid (like harm yourself or your family, intentionally or otherwise) should you quit your job.
Also realize that if you jump into something else you love doing now, 10 years of doing it might make you disillusioned with that too.
That job might suck sometimes but life would be a lot worse without it.
The chess surprised me, so did the flight sims. To each his own I guess, why not dual boot for games or use wine?
Dual boot is an option, but it doesn't get me away from requiring Windows. If I have to run Windows anyway, why bother with another OS and it's quirks. (I use to bother for the sake of learning, but I learnt and can pick it back up any time. I occassionally use Unix at work so I'm not too rusty.)
Wine on the other hand is useless for 3D simulation. An excercise in frustration last time I bothered to try.
I haven't had any problem editing video. For media burning you are WAY off, its windows that doesnt have anything decent. K3B + KDE is a killer combo, rip, read, burn, create, no problem.
How much video editiing do you do? I dont do a lot but do find it painful so if Linux is truly better, that'd be a selling point. K3B certainly looks interesting. Screenshots look good. Bug fixes and version history leave me wondering about maturity.
I assume you mean photo editing, GIMP, Cinepaint, and Krita handle everything for me. Scribus, Xara, and Inkscape handle the vector graphics.
As I said I do try to use GIMP when I can, just so that if I ever do make the switch (looking more likely since Vista) I don't want it to be too big a shock. However GIMP handles alpha channels painfully, and is a quirky mess when it comes to the UI. It's usable for about 80% of what I do, but for the other 20% I go to something else. I haven't played with the other software you've listed, but as I understand it, it's either not as mature or not as capable as commercial counterparts. I have limited use for vector graphics at the present time so it wouldn't be s how stopper.
Moving the business over to OpenOffice was a godsend, I was writing 2-500 page grants and frankly Word is not competent for more then a letter. OO spreadsheets integrate better too. And you can output in PDF directly.
I've looked at OpenOffice too. It just doesn't compare I'm afraid. It can't open the latest Office formats, it can crash or freeze on complex Office 2003 documents. The spreadsheet isn't anywhere near as complete as Excel in terms of functions and graphing. (It's getting there, but it's a few years behind).
As for direct PDF output, that isn't a problem in Windows if you print to a PDF printer driver like PDFCreator.
Palm (do people still use those?)
Yes. Why should I throw out something I paid good money for, just because the fad is over?? In any case replace palm with crackberry or any other currently in vogue PDA and you get the idea.
There are a lot of tools, and remember they implemented several plugins and color schemes long before Palm did.
Half-implemented more like. Many features were missing compared to the native suites.
And Mobile phone? Yep got that covered too, can grab address books, dial, monitor batteries and answer calls. Pretty simple.
Those are essential functions you'd want with a phone (except dial and answer), but there's a LOT more to a mobile phone than that handful of things. Installing apps and ring tones, synchronizing calendar etc. I Haven't played with Linux too much on that side of things, but based on what I've seen on the forums I do know there's stuff missing.
NTFS? if you move over why would you want it?
I literally have terrabytes of data backed up to NTFS. Some of it is software but a lot of it is multiple copies of my photos (about 700Gb-1TB - My wife and I are right into photography, and have been known to shoot 4-6Gb on an outing to the zoo and up to 10-15Gb when photographing a wedding for friends or family - that includes files converted from RAW and copies that have been post processed). I also have my own wedding plus video - probably about 200-300Gb there including the raw digital video. I don't really feel like spending a few weekends (at least) sorting that conversion out. If I get it wrong because I rush it or do it late at night I fe
It's in Greek you genius.
Yeah you're right I didn't get that because. Now you've pointed out it's obvious uni, bi etc. but trying to pronounce it in the first place is like trying to talk baby talk. I don't care if its in Greek, Swahili, Turkish or Masedonian. It's awful naming and disparaging me doesn't change that.
This is one of the problems with GIMP.. Who wants to show someone a picture that they edited and say "I GIMPed her in this picture"?
I don't know what it is about open source software and attrocious names. Ubuntu is no better. Fiesty Fawn? Gutsy Gibbon? Hardy Herron? I mean it's hard to come up with sillier names (but I'll try). I don't think I'll be using Ubuntu until I can casually say my wife got upset at me spending my weekend with Slutty Sow, Homo-erotic Horse, Randy Rhino and Lewd Lama.
Unbiunium (pronounced /nbijunim/) is the temporary name of a chemical element in the periodic table that has the temporary symbol Ubu and has the atomic number 121.
/nbbim/) is the temporary name of a (purportedly) recently discovered[1] chemical element in the periodic table that has the temporary symbol Ubb and has the atomic number 122.
Unbibium (pronounced
These names are of course awful. What next? An element named bumbum?
No, not the size. I mean literally! With the exception of my resume and my marital status on my bio, I can't be bothered updating it.
Conclusion: I'm doing my bit to keep the web clean!
I think it's basic psychology that anybody who spends any significant amount of time pretending to be someone else will eventually manifest behavorial changes.
Yes but the point is that some people completely lose touch with reality. I think it depends most significantly on the type of game, and on the person playing it.
I spend a hell of a lot of time on flight simulators, but I don't want to be a pilot in real life - I just love the challenge and get immersed in the freedom of exploring such a large virtual space. Being a real pilot would be costly and stressful in a way that I'm not prepared for (plus I'd get airsick). There is very little social interaction on a flight simulator. (I could join online communities which simulate air traffic control, or I could try to formation fly with others, but those tasks require dedication I and most other simmers simply don't have, and the environments are limited in a way that makes them not worth the effort for a lot of simmers. It's easier to just go onto the computer and do your own thing). My point is a key aspect is whether or not it's an inherently social game, like a MMORPG. Less social games can still be addictive but apart from making you more withdrawn if you're addicted are less personality changing than games where you take on the role of a character with all their quirks and personality traits.
Now as to the person playing the game...some play to have fun while others play to escape their life for whatever reason. It's the later that are most susceptible to lose touch with reality.
Hibernate has its limitations. I seem to have hit them a few times. Hibernate is great for doing simple things, but if you use any vendor specific features or really complex SQL, you may find yourself falling back to JDBC.
You are completely wrong about drop/delete in HQL. Instead of quoting references you don't have, here's the result of a quick Google search.
http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/reference/en/html/batch.html
Your ignorance tells me you have very simple database needs. That's the siutation in which Hibernate will shine.
However, Hibernate can also be rather complex and unintuitive to control. The XML you have to write includes subtle options which need to be set correctly to get expected behaviour. It's very very easy to change an option and completely break a system.
Your smug attitude is awful. You've found a framework that meets your specific needs, but other coders have other needs that aren't met by your pet framework. By the way, I hope you're being paid to plug it, since otherwise you've been brainwashed.
what are you waiting for?
Well since you ask...
Decent chess software (Chessmaster, not GnuChess or Winboard), a decent flight simulator (MS Flight sim 2004), Remote control flight simulator (Realflight), a bunch of games which are less important to me, easy to use video editing software, decent media burning and authoring tools (instead of a hodge podge of incomplete crap), a better editor than gimp (though I use gimp on windows, it's not my main editor), 100% office compatibility, good mobile phone sync suite and palm pilot sync software (I know it exists but the out of the box solution and advanced tools are for windows). Oh and while we're at it proper full NTFS support that's not unstable, buggy or risky to use.
Oh and a pony, because I'll get one before all these things are fully ported to Linux.
I really would like to move, but it would change what I'm able to do.
What exactly do you mean by a false positive anyway? UAC prompts for exactly the same reasons as something like sudo prompts.
I mean alerting you to an action you've intiated that is not risky, and often doing it multiple times for the one action. That does not require your attention. It's a distraction from the task at hand, and with so many prompts you're liable to find yourself automatically hitting "allow" like Pavlov's dog gone wrong.