Re-reading is, indeed, very good advice. When we were in school, we didn't turn in first drafts of papers to our professors (well, most of us didn't ). In pre-email days (those came right after dinosaur times), people didn't just dash off business letters and immediately send them. They had to type them, and sign them, and somewhere in that process, the letter would be re-read at least once, offering a chance to correct mistakes.
But, I disagree with the TFA's idea of not being able to build a rapport over email. I met my wife that way, and all of our early communications were by email. The first time we talked by phone was probably three months after we "met" and by then we had already become a long-distance couple. That led to a lot of traveling back and forth, and good profits for the airlines:-) A year and a half later, we got married but the relationship still involved a lot of traveling back and forth and use of email, IM, and telephone because of my job commitments and hers. When I later accepted a job offer in her city and moved there, airline and telecom stocks tumbled:-)
All of my direct reports in my current job are in another city, too. In the case of some of them, the only time I saw them face to face was in a video conference interview. After hiring, all communication was by IM or email, until such time as I had need to make a trip to their office months later. It worked.
Do things work better/easier/smoother with more face to face, or even phone, contact? Yes, generally. But real rapport can be built over email.
This has nothing to do with 'being lazy' or not. It has to to with the school. They don't teach us ANYTHING in these computer classes except Excel, Access and Word. They're fucking pointless
To some extent, maybe. One could also make a good argument that teaching Excel/Access/Word is not pointless, because in many jobs and even in college knowing them (or some equivalent, and let's face it, Word and Excel are far more widely used than OO.org Writer and Calc) is a necessity.
The reason I say "to some extent" is that when I was in middle school and high school (1974 - 1980), there were no computer classes either. None. Zero. I don't think one teacher in either school even knew how to use a computer. But, we did have computer access in my middle school (my high school was private and had nothing).
We had dial-up 300 baud access to the city schools computer systems (HP 2000 Access machines). We had two terminals - a DECWriter II and some heinous CRT that would practically burn the eyeballs out of your head after a few hours.
Students had to join the computer club to use them (set up by the principal; I don't know if he knew computers himself or not, but he was a very insightful and forward-looking man who clearly appreciated their value and potential). You could play games like Star Trek or Wumpus, or you could program in BASIC. Most of us mostly programmed. One guy had a paper route, and had written a program to do all of his paper route accounting. Other people worked on games and stuff. One guy wrote the first malware I ever saw:-) It disabled the break key and pretended to be the login screen. You had to know *its* password to disable it. If you typed in your userid and password, it would save them to a file and return to its bogus login screen. Some of us had access to the source code, and this set off a little competition of sorts to see who could most improve upon it to make it more realistic.
The thing about this computer use and the computer club is, there wasn't really anybody who taught us. There were no classes. The club moderator (a teacher) wasn't a programmer, either. We taught ourselves and taught each other, as best we could. Experienced guys (and I mean guys; I went all through 7th, 8th, and 9th grade without ever seeing a girl attend a computer club meeting, let alone actually join) would help the n00bs get started, and when we were no longer n00bs, we'd pass it along.
So, while I agree with your point about a lack of programming classes, that's hardly the only thing that matters. You have so many more resources than I did when I was in junior high school. In most schools, most students have at least one computer of their own at home, and that one computer has more processing power than every computer in my entire city did in 1974. Compilers and IDEs are affordable (or free, if you're using *nix). There are more programming books in an average bookstore than you could even get home in your car. There are massive amount of free tutorials available on the web. We didn't have any of those resources in 1974. The one resource we had was one that you have, too: a group of like-minded peers who were interested in computers and helped each other learn. One of the things that got me into Linux in the late nineties was that I found the user community was very much like my old junior high school computer club: smart, very enthusiastic, talented, very often self-taught, and very willing, ready, and able to help others who wanted to help themselves.
I bet that if I had a list of names of all the students who were in the Taft Junior High computer club and could track them down today, I would find that most of them either are working, or have worked, in computer jobs.
The one resource I had available for learning computers in junior high is a resource you have available, too: a like-minded peer group. If you're not in touch with people like that, get in touch. If there's no club and you think it would be beneficial
I hate replying to myself, but I should have added that the IE blog is maintained by IE developers and and program managers, so if you file bug reports, they are being read by people who can do something about them.
There's probably more ownership at the top levels than you might think. No matter what PR spin they may put on it, I'm pretty sure the recent re-shufflings and re-alignments in our major business units were caused in large part by people ownership. The farthest up the management level I can comment on (I'm a first-level manager) is two levels above my own, my boss's boss. He definitely takes ultimate ownership and responsibility for what we do. He's quite driven, intense, extremly intelligent, and generally brings out the best efforts from those under him. We've done some of our best work since he took over leadership of our department.
I'm a Microsoft employee, so maybe I can shed a little bit of light on IE. I didn't work here when IE was developed, that was all way before my time, but from a cultural/business perspective, Microsoft is big on the idea of Ownership. You Own a project. You Own the code you write (or you Own your non-code deliverables, if you're not a programmer). If it's screwed up, you're the one person someone can come to and ask "How did this happen?" because you Own that item.
Yes, Microsoft could have perfectly well bundled Netscape with Windows (or even bought Netscape with pocket change) back in the 1990s and probably have done so for far less than the cost of developing IE. I think buying Netscape (in which case Netscape's web servers could have become IIS) would be the only way it would have been considered. Why we didn't go that way is an interesting question. I have no idea what the answer is.
You may have noticed that Microsoft isn't big on bundling others' software, and when they do, it's always fully branded and user-transparent. I think acquiring Netscape is the only way anyone would have considered bundling it as the official Windows browser. Who knows? Maybe we did approach Netscape about either a buyout or a branding deal and they told us to get stuffed? I've never heard anything like that, and it's not often that a company declines to be acquired by Microsoft, but I suppose it's not impossible.
Now, combine that lack of enthusiasm for bundling third-party products with the culture of Owning what you work on, and you get why (in my opinion) Microsoft would not have bundled Netscape unless it owned the company lock, stock, and barrel: you could technically lay any security problems at Netscape's feet, but our corporate culture wouldn't want to. Plus, even if we did, our customers wouldn't buy that. They'd say "You shipped it, it's your problem. Don't tell me to email Netscape for support." Anybody's customers would say that. If you sold it to them, you'd better be able to support it, even if it's a third-party product.
Finally, there's a lot of "not invented here" syndrome that runs around our company. It seems to me (I'm fairly new here, so if you've been around longer, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) if we don't have it, we're either going to buy someone who does have it or we're going to write it ourselves.
IE has certainly had its problems over the years, and has of late been feature-poor compared to other browsers. Heck, until IE 7 betas started coming out, I even used other browsers unless someone was watching, and I still most often do because I'm very used to Firefox now. However, IE 7 is honestly a good browser. Beta 1 was usable, beta 2 is slick, and both are extremely fast, render well, and have a good, minimal interface. And finally, they support tabs! That was the huge missing feature. The first time I ever used a tabbed browser was the last time I could stand to not use one. It's just that much better. IE 7 is going to be very good. Far fewer windows users will find themselves with a reason to install Firefox instead of IE7. I expect Firefox will rise to the challenge and also become better and faster and it will benefit the industry as a whole, but there's no question about it: IE 7 is raising the bar.
Overall, do I think IE was a mistake? No. It's true that I'm a n00b here, but as others have pointed out, IE was a good loss leader for our business that allows us to generate revenue in other areas, such as MSN. Was bundling it in the OS a mistake? Well, that's another issue . I hear there's a lot of decoupling of IE in Vista. You be the judge:)
Notes: I don't work on either IE or Windows, so my opinions are reasonably objective, but they do tend to support our products over the competition, naturally enough.
I have two young children myself, so I know exactly what you mean. They both hate commercials, and if they're watching something and a commercial comes on, they'll come and ask me or my wife to get their program back. Non-skippable commercials would be nothing short of torture. I would boycott any advertiser who had them.
About the patent, all I can say is that while I'm viewing this on a Philips monitor, this will be my last purchase of any Philips product. Ever. Just because they patented that. If anyone reading this works for Philips, be sure to let your boss know how much this pisses people off. Maybe it will work its way up the chain and they will have the sense to never build it. If they do build it, I'm sure there'll be no shortage of people willing to boycott Philips. I just started, and it's not even a product yet.
I work at a certain large software company that many here on/. loathe with every fiber of their beings, and I nearly fell off my chair from laughing while reading your post because it's only the slightest exaggeration of how some people around there talk. Nice job!
For the purposes of building a PC, any card that is no longer sold is not available for use.
I asked you to name a card that was no longer supported, since your original contention was that a lot of older cards aren't supported anymore (that is, of course, absolutely not true). Since there are few or no current cards (probably none) that aren't supported by X, getting a video card for use with Linux consists of just walking into the store and picking out one you like.
I'm beginning to suspect you of trolling, since your answer is about as non-sequitur as if I'd asked "What color is an apple?" and you'd replied "Moose."
You have a BSCS degree and you're out here griping out scanner support in SANE? You probably could have written the driver in less time than you've spent complaining about in on Slashdot:-)
I don't know where you live that you have a BSCS degree and can't get a job (the fast food thing I understand; if I were a fast food manager instead of an IT manager, I wouldn't want to hire anybody with a CS degree either; I'd figure they'd be gone at the first chance to get any kind of computer job), but if you live in Winnipeg and can read Korean (speaking isn't necessary, just reading), I may have one to offer you. Sorry, I know the odds are long on that, but I'm not trolling, I really do have a job opening for a Korean speaker in Winnipeg. Well, you don't have to actually speak it, just be able to read it well.
As to how you would go about contributing to the SANE project, I guess you didn't look very hard:
They have it linked on theirwebsite. Since you're a programmer and you have a (probably) unsupported scanner, I think contributing code to make it supported would be a much better donation than the scanner itself or cash.
Best wishes with your scanner. And your bitterness. When I was one of the "some people" instead of just bitching, I did something about it if I could, or waited on someone else to do something about it if I couldn't. But I don't get bitter, it helps no one.
Which video cards are still well-supported? Uh, would you care to tell me a card that was formerly supported but isn't now? 640 x 480 x 16-color X? Only if that's the best the hardware can do. Answer me this? How well is any currently supported Microsoft product going to work on hardware like that?
For really old drivers, there may or may not be a current maintainer, but since really old cards are not a moving target, that's also really not a problem. The cards work, the software works, no sweat. My dad has some really old computers with some really old cards that only have 1 or 2 meg of video memory. They're still supported by current Linux distros.
About your scanner, Microtek does seem to have a great deal of unsupported scanners. They could be the poster child. Is Microtek a hostile vendor, or is it maybe the case that no one on the SANE project has access to a Microtek 4850? If that's the problem, one solution is to give them one. It's less than the cost of a Windows or OS X upgrade. An even cheaper solution is to just buy a supported scanner. Epson's work very well, in my experience. Or, if you're a programmer, write the support yourself. I know none of those solutions are as good as having it just work out of the box, but they are solutions, none of which costs more than buying a copy of Windows. Heck, for the full retail price of a copy of Windows, you could probably get a CS student in college to write SANE support, GPL it, and contribute it to the project. People are pretty idealistic about that. At a company where I used to work, we hired a guy to make mods to some GPL software that we were using (we wanted some features it didn't have), and we wanted the features GPLed and contributed back. Because we were GPL-friendly, we got the work done for a fraction of the price we would have paid (about a tenth, probably) to have a consultant just come in and do it. And it was fast. And it was good quality. And everything we had done just for us was folded into the main product. Everybody won. Well, except competing proprietary solutions:-)
When I said managing digital photos, I was talking about digital photos, not scans of analog photos. But, that aside, why don't you just buy a supported scanner and eBay your Microtek? Like I said, it's cheaper than the cost of a Windows upgrade, and if you get a good deal on an Epson, you might be out almost nothing. And if you consider the cost of an upgrade to Vista (a whole new PC, for most current XP users), a new scanner really looks like a bargain.
I know having to buy a new scanner is not ideal, and some people are just stuck. My gripe about Linux is that you can't run Yahoo Messenger for Windows on it, most IM clients for Linux don't support Yahoo voice or video, and the ones that do support either of those do it very poorly. Yahoo Messenger, which for my wife is a bigger killer app even than email, is the sole application that keeps a Windows machine in our house. If Yahoo ever releases a native client that does voice, their Windows client ever works under Wine, or any of the open source clients ever support Yahoo voice well, that Windows install is history.
However, my gripe and your gripe notwithstanding, for most people (in both home use and business use) Linux is not only ready for the desktop right now, it has been ready for a good while now. This is especially true in many office environments, where you either have professionals on staff or on call to support users, or at least some in-house power-user who does it. Most Linux distros are now easier to install than Windows, and upgrades are even easier than that. None of the pain that goes with using the XP migration wizard. Moving my wife's machine up from Win2K to XP was so painful I still regret the decision to do it.
Linux isn't perfect - nothing is - but it's very, very good, and in most ways, it's now better than Windows. Most people don't know that yet, but they'll find out.
More expensive??? Huh??? Linux is well-known as running better than Windows on lower-end hardware, something that will become even more true when Vista finally makes it out the door. Most of the PCs out there today, including most of the ones on store shelves, don't have the guts to run Vista well. That's astonishing. Some of the computers I have running Linux are over four years old and have never been upgraded. They're still doing fine, and will still be doing fine when Vista comes out and Windows users have to start buying new PCs just to run it.
Unless your definition of cheap starts at the bottom of the professional scanner range, you're really off track here. My scanner, for example, is an Epson, and it's supported out of the box by SANE and was when I bought it. I paid about 50 bucks for it. So are most other scanners, especially consumer-grade scanners. SANE supports hundreds of scanners. SANE support is so broad that before I bought my scanner, I didn't even bother specifically checking to see it it was supported or not. All I had to do was bring it home and plug it in. None of this BS like having to install a driver from CD first, like with certain legacy operating systems. In fact, the level at which hardware "just works" on many distros these days is getting more and more Mac-like all the time.
Scanner software, on the other hand, is something else again. Kooka is not bad but doesn't have a Copy function (astonishing; if you're a Kooka developer, please add that), and X-Sane is pretty clunky but at least it has a copy function. Scanning into GIMP is fairly well-supported, but a Windows user (and even more so, a Mac user) will find scanning on Linux to be tedious.
Anyway, scanners aren't even a good choice of example IMO. Most people don't want a scanner bundled with a computer system because they either don't want/need a scanner, or if they want one, they usually already have one. Scanners aren't something people upgrade very often. Heck, I don't even want a printer bundled with a system. My HP Photosmart 7350 serves my needs just as well now as it did two years ago when I bought it. I see no point in replacing it.
Of course, if I did want a bundled one, no problem. You'd have to look a long time to find a printer that wasn't supported on Linux these days.
Where is Linux hardware support not generally up to the level of Windows? 3-D accelerated graphics, something you didn't touch on. For most people that's not a huge problem, because there aren't many games for Linux that really take advantage of it, either. If you're a gamer, you need a console and/or a Windows box, that's just a fact on the ground. But for most people, who just need a computer for Internet access, light word processing, managing digital photos, etc., Linux is ready. Right now. Today. Desktop-oriented distros are as easy to use as Windows, they're more reliable, there's more software available than anyone fitting the above profile could ever need, and that software is easier to install than it is on Windows (honest; if you haven't used Synaptic or Adept (on Ubuntu), you need to try it. Puts Windows Update to shame).
Linux has been my desktop OS since the late nineties. Back then, there were real challenges in doing a lot of stuff. Now, things are so easy it's almost not fun anymore:-) The hardest thing right now isn't hardware support, ease of use, application availability, or anything like that. The hardest thing right now is getting the word out to people that Linux is ready, it's easy to use, it's fun, it's reliable, and for most of you, it will meet all of your needs right out of the box. This is especially true for people getting their first computer. If you don't have a computer and need to get one, buy a Mac or a Linux box. You'll be glad you did.
Re:Gmail is constantly blacklisted
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Gmail vs Pine
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· Score: 2, Informative
I work for a well-known spam control service (not the one you mention; we don't blacklist gmail, don't know why anyone would).
WRT your comment that they either don't care or can't prevent gmail from being repeatedly blacklisted, I can't comment on whether or not they care (don't have a gmail account, even) but regarding prevention, I'm not surprised. Nobody can prevent themselves from being bl[ao]cklisted by anyone else. We get some of our IPs blocklisted all the time, not because of customers spamming, but because of backscatter from bounces on forged From addresses. Usually, it's only blocklists that are regarded as unreliable or full-on rogues that list us; we almost never get on a legit one. In any case, we can't *prevent* people from listing us if they really want to, although recently we have taken actions such as not doing double-bounces, as a means of limiting opportunities for it to happen.
It's a shame that the combination of spammers and bogus blocklist operators can force you to be non-RFC compliant in self-defense.
I was once bombarded with dirt clods by some kids in the neighborhood, and they stung. Considering that most people have a far greater mass than a dirt clod, wouldn't being bombarded with people really hurt and possibly cause serious injury or death?
Now, if you were bombarded by people telling you how great gmail was, that would be something else again...
They didn't say "don't ship without Windows installed" (although I'm sure that's what they meant), they said "Dont' ship without an OS installed."
There's a simple solution for vendors wishing to sell PCs without an OS installed:
"Our default operating system is Linux. Customers who wish to have Windows pre-installed may choose to do so for an additional fee. Since we realize that many of our customers will choose Windows, we always maintain a sufficient stock of Windows pre-installed machines to enable a customer to pick one up with no waiting."
Or, make your default OS FreeDOS and give customers the option of Linux at no extra charge or Windows for a fee.
Or, if the traffic will bear it, sell them all for the same price, which will boost the profit margin tremendously on Linux machines (note: this might piss off Microsoft).
I've been using Packet8 for over a year now, and have had very few (and none recent) sound quality problems. I've never tested 911, but they are going to introduce a number (933) for people using Packet8 to call that will verify their 911 info.
One thing I do recommend for people who are using a VoIP service, is that you have a dedicated UPS for your phone (if it requires AC power; mine does), cable or DSL modem, and router. I have one, and when we had a power outage of over three hours recently when multiple transformers in this area failed, I had phone service throughout.
For that matter, even if you have a POTS line, if your phone requires AC power to work, put it on a UPS. A small one will do, and it could save your life some day.
I've only gone to a movie theater three times in the last ten years: once in Japan in 1996, once in Viet Nam in 2001, and once in 2004. The motivations: in 1996, my friend was leaving Japan and neither of us had ever gone to a movie there, so we decided to try it. In 2001, my brother-in-law and his wife took me and my wife to a movie. In 2004, there was a movie that I just had to see and didn't want to wait for the DVD.
In none of those cases did I go because I thought a theater would be somehow a richer experience, although in the last case it wasn't bad. It seems like the kind of people who go to see The Passion of The Christ are also the kind of people who turn their cell phones off in theaters. However, there was still *way* to much advertising, and the snack bar prices were so high I bought nothing. How much of an annoyance was the advertising? Let me put it this way: I've been to theaters three times in the last ten years, and I expect to go a lot less often than that over the next ten years. Between the commercial bombardments and the high ticket prices, I have now decided that I can *always* wait for the DVD.
I doubt many theater owners or managers read Slashdot, but just on the off chance that there are any out there, you need to regard this as a big clue stick. Pretty much everyone I know holds this opinion, and pretty much everyone I know goes to movie theaters even less often than I have over the last ten years.
If you want better audiences, limit the commercials to five minutes or less at the beginning of the movie, like in the old days, install cell phone jammers everywhere, whether they are legal or not, have ushers who go around asking people to be quiet and to leave if they won't shut up (and bouncers to help, if needed), and if you want to sell me something at the snack bar, don't scalp me.
It's like this: people might pay nine bucks for an experience that really is richer and more rewarding, but pay nine bucks for an experience that pales compared to sitting in the comfort of my living room and watching a DVD? No chance.
I also went to UCSD. At the time (first half of the nineties), it was pretty rare to see anyone with a laptop on campus. In most of my classes (granted, I wasn't a CS or Engineering major; it might have been different in those majors even then) I was the only person who had one. In the beginning, I didn't often use it for the reasons you cite (hard to take notes on compared to a pen and pad) and the reasons others cite (bothers other students and makes it harder to actually pay attention to the prof).
Later, I never used it in class at all, only in study lounges or whatever, for transcribing notes, writing papers, that sort of thing. I found it much more effective to take notes on paper, and actually review them later as I transcribed them to my laptop. Boosted my retention quite a bit.
Granted, laptops are much quieter/lighter/common now than they were when I was in college, but I still see a lot of merit in not having a laptop in class unless it's really directly applicable, such as a CS class. Even there, I suspect there are many times when having a laptop is counter-productive.
I'm typing this on a tablet notebook, and I find that even a tablet notebook (I'm typing - not writing - this on a tablet notebook) isn't as effective for note-taking as a pad and paper.
I think the prof who banned notebooks in her classroom is a lot smarter than her critics give her credit for, and I bet her classes are good.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is other hardware costs that a lot of people are likely to encounter.
I'll assume there will be wireless networked printers all over the place, so that most people won't have to buy a printer, but who knows? That may be an invalid assumption, too.
I work at a large company where a great percentage of the staff have a notebook computer rather than a desktop, including most people in IT/IS/development (which is most people; that's our business). Everyone with a notebook also has an external keyboard and mouse, and at least a 19" external LCD monitor. Using a notebook all day long is just too much of a pain (literally).
Apart from the cost of the notebooks themselves, a lot of students are going to be shelling out for external keyboard, mice, and monitors out of their own pockets, unless you make it a required purchase and they can financial aid for that, too. Either course will make you unpopular; if you don't require it, the people who want those things will be upset. If you do, the people who don't want them (which may be a minority, if my company is anything to go by) will be upset.
Oh, one other point: every Thinkpad I've ever used was better than every Dell notebook I've ever used; do the students a favor, and require (if you really must require certain vendors) Thinkpads rather than Dells, and let them run whatever OS they feel like on them (Thinkpads being rather Linux/BSD friendly, after all). I wouldn't require specific vendors, though; I'd outline some general specs, such as "You need a notebook computer with W GB of disk or greater, X MB of memory or greater, a DVD +/- RW burner or a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, and a display of at least Y by Z pixels" and let people buy what they want. For those who don't know enough to choose something on their own, you could have a list of select Thinkpad and Apple models (OK, and Dell too, if you really want them).
It did all sound totally plausible in a Star Trek context:-) In fact, the only part that didn't pass the plausbility test was Takei saying the Sulu character was Japanese, insofar as Sulu is not a Japanese name, and morphing the "l" to an "r" wouldn't help (although it would get you the dictionary form of a Japanese verb). I supposed you could make up a history in which he had one Japanese parent and one non-Japanese one, but in what Asian ethnic groups is Sulu a family name? Maybe Chinese. although you'd romanize it differently. Not Korean, I'm pretty sure. I lived in Asia for 9 years and never met anybody named Sulu, or even heard of one.
I've managed to keep my laptops away from my kids, but they did manage to destroy a brand new dual-layer DVD burner that had been in my wife's computer only about 2 weeks.
I went to use it one day and it made some odd sound and the drawer wouldn't open. No dice with the manual release, either. I finally removed it from the machine to find a plastic measuring spoon completely inside the drive. The mechanics still worked, but it could neither read nor write anything after that.
They've also gone through a VCR and a DVD player. Remote controls for the surviving ones disappear for days at a time and turn up in the oddest places. Poltergeist? Nope, just toddlers:-)
How about "How much time can I spend reading Slashdot at work, like you hiring managers are doing right now?":-)
Seriously, though, I'm on the same page (I manage a team of nine, and don't really care if they ask me any questions or not. I'm being polite in case there's anything they actually need/want to know.
How about "How much time can I spend reading Slashdot at work, like you hiring managers are doing right now?":-)
That said, most chrisatslashdot's suggestions are good, not because I'd be impressed if someone asked me, but because those are valuable things a person might want to know:
----- What is the culture like? Why is the position open? Describe your (i.e. the interviewer's) career with the company. Who are the top competitors? What's the best thing about working here? What's the worst thing about working here? -----
With one exception: if I hear "Who are the top competitors?" I'm likely to translate that as "You did no research on this industry or this company before showing up for your interview?" which goes to your comment about people removing themselves by asking the wrong questions.
I'm also not likely to provide an honest answer to "What's the worst thing about working here?" to someone I don't even know, so don't bother asking me. It won't hurt your chances if you ask, but it won't get you any useful information either.
Out of the lot of those, I like the first one best: what is the culture like? I go for personality fit/cultural fit as much as I go for technical chops when I'm hiring. I don't want anyone I have to actively manage, I want people who fit in with my team, my style, and my company; if you don't, I don't care what your technical chops are. Time I spend having to actively manage people and program bad habits out of them is time I don't spend improving our product. That doesn't mean I don't take an interest in my staff and their development (I do), but I'm not interested in hiring people who are problems, I'm interested in hiring people who are solutions to problems.
IANAL, but no, it's not bribery. An example of bribery would be if Microsoft offered direct cash payments to the decision makers at various partners to induce them to choose HD-DVD over Blu-Ray. Bribery is generally illegal and is a violation of company policy even in places where it's not illegal.
Cash incentives and coupons are ways of providing an effective discount or reduction in cost of the technology, the same as if I buy something at Fry's that has a rebate. Sometimes the rebates are so large they make the item free, or nearly so. That is not bribery, even if the rebate it not available at other retailers, it's just a discount. Is it an incentive to get me to shop at Fry's instead of Best Buy? Sure, but it's not a bribe. At least not unless you consider putting items on sale, or factory cash-back incentives on new cars, to also be bribery. A rebate or cash incentive is just another way of packaging a discount. It's out in the open, and nothing stops the competition from offering an equal or better incentive. Nothing is stopping Sony from doing the same thing. Don't be surprised if they do it or are already doing it.
Full disclosure: I am a Microsoft employee, but am not involved in any way with anything related to HD-DVD or Windows Vista.
We use MySQL and have 100% uptime of our system over seven years with a multi-terabyte database in the backend (our SLA with our largest customers is five nines, and we've never missed). Are you sure the problem is the database, not your applications?
I work for one of the major email security companies. I can't say that CAN-SPAM has had much effect at all on spam and the spamming spammers who send it - we see just as much spam as ever, and it's just as obfuscated as ever. If anything, the spammers have evolved to be better at hiding their identities than ever before, to avoid CAN-SPAM prosecution. When the law took effect, zombies were out there, but there were also still a lot of netblocks handed to spammers by providers; now, zombies rule the day and static netblocks used by spammers are becoming rarer all the time. Defined in those terms, CAN-SPAM is a bust.
However, if you want to define "success" as "Good for us and our competitors, who are all signing up lots of new customers every month and seeing better revenue streams all the time" then yes, CAN-SPAM is a resounding success:-)
Absolutely, he's a troll. I don't read The Register so often that I knew who he was, and AFAIK I've never read one of his pieces (of feces?) before, but now that I know who he is and have read one, I shan't be reading The Reg again while he works there.
Was the article that touched off this whole controversy shameful, a bad joke gone worse, and something that points to a known flaw in *all* wikis? Absolutely. And it's a problem Wikipedia has wrestled with and continues to wrestle with. It's not like they don't *try* to deal with his and have a balance and a self-correcting system. But those things are hard to do, and Wikipedia is still young, really. On the other hand, is most of what Orlowsku wrote just a vicious, spiteful, one-sided attack which rates a few steps below diarrhea on the periodic table of undesirable substances? Absolutely. It's so abolutely vitriolic that it's easy to believe jealously over not having invented something as popular, useful, and generally reliable as Wikipedia could be a motivating factor.
It was noted that Wikipedia is a good reference for physics. It's also a good reference for naval history, one of my interests. Rather than even attempt to write a balanced article showing where there are problems with a resource that is excellent in many ways, he chose to just spew. His name should not be used in the same sentence as the word "journalist."
Also, since you mentioned ad hominem attacks, the OP did not make any ad hominem attacks. He called Orlowsku a troll and a whiner. Having just read the entire FA myself, those seem to me pretty accurate. However, neither is an ad hominem attack. Here is an ad hominem attack:
"I heard that Orlowsku supports greater accountability for wikis, but I think he's a troll and a whiner, therefore that must be utter and complete rubbish."
Calling him a troll and a whiner is just a personal attack, but it is not an ad hominem (although ad hominems can, and often do, include personal attacks).
If you want to know more about ad hominem, you might want to look it up on, well, Wikipedia:)
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Re-reading is, indeed, very good advice. When we were in school, we didn't turn in first drafts of papers to our professors (well, most of us didn't ). In pre-email days (those came right after dinosaur times), people didn't just dash off business letters and immediately send them. They had to type them, and sign them, and somewhere in that process, the letter would be re-read at least once, offering a chance to correct mistakes.
:-) A year and a half later, we got married but the relationship still involved a lot of traveling back and forth and use of email, IM, and telephone because of my job commitments and hers. When I later accepted a job offer in her city and moved there, airline and telecom stocks tumbled :-)
But, I disagree with the TFA's idea of not being able to build a rapport over email. I met my wife that way, and all of our early communications were by email. The first time we talked by phone was probably three months after we "met" and by then we had already become a long-distance couple. That led to a lot of traveling back and forth, and good profits for the airlines
All of my direct reports in my current job are in another city, too. In the case of some of them, the only time I saw them face to face was in a video conference interview. After hiring, all communication was by IM or email, until such time as I had need to make a trip to their office months later. It worked.
Do things work better/easier/smoother with more face to face, or even phone, contact? Yes, generally. But real rapport can be built over email.
To some extent, maybe. One could also make a good argument that teaching Excel/Access/Word is not pointless, because in many jobs and even in college knowing them (or some equivalent, and let's face it, Word and Excel are far more widely used than OO.org Writer and Calc) is a necessity.
The reason I say "to some extent" is that when I was in middle school and high school (1974 - 1980), there were no computer classes either. None. Zero. I don't think one teacher in either school even knew how to use a computer. But, we did have computer access in my middle school (my high school was private and had nothing).
We had dial-up 300 baud access to the city schools computer systems (HP 2000 Access machines). We had two terminals - a DECWriter II and some heinous CRT that would practically burn the eyeballs out of your head after a few hours.
Students had to join the computer club to use them (set up by the principal; I don't know if he knew computers himself or not, but he was a very insightful and forward-looking man who clearly appreciated their value and potential). You could play games like Star Trek or Wumpus, or you could program in BASIC. Most of us mostly programmed. One guy had a paper route, and had written a program to do all of his paper route accounting. Other people worked on games and stuff. One guy wrote the first malware I ever saw :-) It disabled the break key and pretended to be the login screen. You had to know *its* password to disable it. If you typed in your userid and password, it would save them to a file and return to its bogus login screen. Some of us had access to the source code, and this set off a little competition of sorts to see who could most improve upon it to make it more realistic.
The thing about this computer use and the computer club is, there wasn't really anybody who taught us. There were no classes. The club moderator (a teacher) wasn't a programmer, either. We taught ourselves and taught each other, as best we could. Experienced guys (and I mean guys; I went all through 7th, 8th, and 9th grade without ever seeing a girl attend a computer club meeting, let alone actually join) would help the n00bs get started, and when we were no longer n00bs, we'd pass it along.
So, while I agree with your point about a lack of programming classes, that's hardly the only thing that matters. You have so many more resources than I did when I was in junior high school. In most schools, most students have at least one computer of their own at home, and that one computer has more processing power than every computer in my entire city did in 1974. Compilers and IDEs are affordable (or free, if you're using *nix). There are more programming books in an average bookstore than you could even get home in your car. There are massive amount of free tutorials available on the web. We didn't have any of those resources in 1974. The one resource we had was one that you have, too: a group of like-minded peers who were interested in computers and helped each other learn. One of the things that got me into Linux in the late nineties was that I found the user community was very much like my old junior high school computer club: smart, very enthusiastic, talented, very often self-taught, and very willing, ready, and able to help others who wanted to help themselves.
I bet that if I had a list of names of all the students who were in the Taft Junior High computer club and could track them down today, I would find that most of them either are working, or have worked, in computer jobs.
The one resource I had available for learning computers in junior high is a resource you have available, too: a like-minded peer group. If you're not in touch with people like that, get in touch. If there's no club and you think it would be beneficial
I hate replying to myself, but I should have added that the IE blog is maintained by IE developers and and program managers, so if you file bug reports, they are being read by people who can do something about them.
I don't know, but you can ask them yourself on the IE Blog if you like.
There's probably more ownership at the top levels than you might think. No matter what PR spin they may put on it, I'm pretty sure the recent re-shufflings and re-alignments in our major business units were caused in large part by people ownership. The farthest up the management level I can comment on (I'm a first-level manager) is two levels above my own, my boss's boss. He definitely takes ultimate ownership and responsibility for what we do. He's quite driven, intense, extremly intelligent, and generally brings out the best efforts from those under him. We've done some of our best work since he took over leadership of our department.
I'm a Microsoft employee, so maybe I can shed a little bit of light on IE. I didn't work here when IE was developed, that was all way before my time, but from a cultural/business perspective, Microsoft is big on the idea of Ownership. You Own a project. You Own the code you write (or you Own your non-code deliverables, if you're not a programmer). If it's screwed up, you're the one person someone can come to and ask "How did this happen?" because you Own that item.
:)
Yes, Microsoft could have perfectly well bundled Netscape with Windows (or even bought Netscape with pocket change) back in the 1990s and probably have done so for far less than the cost of developing IE. I think buying Netscape (in which case Netscape's web servers could have become IIS) would be the only way it would have been considered. Why we didn't go that way is an interesting question. I have no idea what the answer is.
You may have noticed that Microsoft isn't big on bundling others' software, and when they do, it's always fully branded and user-transparent. I think acquiring Netscape is the only way anyone would have considered bundling it as the official Windows browser. Who knows? Maybe we did approach Netscape about either a buyout or a branding deal and they told us to get stuffed? I've never heard anything like that, and it's not often that a company declines to be acquired by Microsoft, but I suppose it's not impossible.
Now, combine that lack of enthusiasm for bundling third-party products with the culture of Owning what you work on, and you get why (in my opinion) Microsoft would not have bundled Netscape unless it owned the company lock, stock, and barrel: you could technically lay any security problems at Netscape's feet, but our corporate culture wouldn't want to. Plus, even if we did, our customers wouldn't buy that. They'd say "You shipped it, it's your problem. Don't tell me to email Netscape for support." Anybody's customers would say that. If you sold it to them, you'd better be able to support it, even if it's a third-party product.
Finally, there's a lot of "not invented here" syndrome that runs around our company. It seems to me (I'm fairly new here, so if you've been around longer, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) if we don't have it, we're either going to buy someone who does have it or we're going to write it ourselves.
IE has certainly had its problems over the years, and has of late been feature-poor compared to other browsers. Heck, until IE 7 betas started coming out, I even used other browsers unless someone was watching, and I still most often do because I'm very used to Firefox now. However, IE 7 is honestly a good browser. Beta 1 was usable, beta 2 is slick, and both are extremely fast, render well, and have a good, minimal interface. And finally, they support tabs! That was the huge missing feature. The first time I ever used a tabbed browser was the last time I could stand to not use one. It's just that much better. IE 7 is going to be very good. Far fewer windows users will find themselves with a reason to install Firefox instead of IE7. I expect Firefox will rise to the challenge and also become better and faster and it will benefit the industry as a whole, but there's no question about it: IE 7 is raising the bar.
Overall, do I think IE was a mistake? No. It's true that I'm a n00b here, but as others have pointed out, IE was a good loss leader for our business that allows us to generate revenue in other areas, such as MSN. Was bundling it in the OS a mistake? Well, that's another issue . I hear there's a lot of decoupling of IE in Vista. You be the judge
Notes: I don't work on either IE or Windows, so my opinions are reasonably objective, but they do tend to support our products over the competition, naturally enough.
I have two young children myself, so I know exactly what you mean. They both hate commercials, and if they're watching something and a commercial comes on, they'll come and ask me or my wife to get their program back. Non-skippable commercials would be nothing short of torture. I would boycott any advertiser who had them.
About the patent, all I can say is that while I'm viewing this on a Philips monitor, this will be my last purchase of any Philips product. Ever. Just because they patented that. If anyone reading this works for Philips, be sure to let your boss know how much this pisses people off. Maybe it will work its way up the chain and they will have the sense to never build it. If they do build it, I'm sure there'll be no shortage of people willing to boycott Philips. I just started, and it's not even a product yet.
I work at a certain large software company that many here on /. loathe with every fiber of their beings, and I nearly fell off my chair from laughing while reading your post because it's only the slightest exaggeration of how some people around there talk. Nice job!
:)
Hey, maybe you work here too?
I asked you to name a card that was no longer supported, since your original contention was that a lot of older cards aren't supported anymore (that is, of course, absolutely not true). Since there are few or no current cards (probably none) that aren't supported by X, getting a video card for use with Linux consists of just walking into the store and picking out one you like.
I'm beginning to suspect you of trolling, since your answer is about as non-sequitur as if I'd asked "What color is an apple?" and you'd replied "Moose."
You have a BSCS degree and you're out here griping out scanner support in SANE? You probably could have written the driver in less time than you've spent complaining about in on Slashdot
I don't know where you live that you have a BSCS degree and can't get a job (the fast food thing I understand; if I were a fast food manager instead of an IT manager, I wouldn't want to hire anybody with a CS degree either; I'd figure they'd be gone at the first chance to get any kind of computer job), but if you live in Winnipeg and can read Korean (speaking isn't necessary, just reading), I may have one to offer you. Sorry, I know the odds are long on that, but I'm not trolling, I really do have a job opening for a Korean speaker in Winnipeg. Well, you don't have to actually speak it, just be able to read it well.
As to how you would go about contributing to the SANE project, I guess you didn't look very hard:
They have it linked on theirwebsite. Since you're a programmer and you have a (probably) unsupported scanner, I think contributing code to make it supported would be a much better donation than the scanner itself or cash.
Best wishes with your scanner. And your bitterness. When I was one of the "some people" instead of just bitching, I did something about it if I could, or waited on someone else to do something about it if I couldn't. But I don't get bitter, it helps no one.
Which video cards are still well-supported? Uh, would you care to tell me a card that was formerly supported but isn't now? 640 x 480 x 16-color X? Only if that's the best the hardware can do. Answer me this? How well is any currently supported Microsoft product going to work on hardware like that?
:-)
For really old drivers, there may or may not be a current maintainer, but since really old cards are not a moving target, that's also really not a problem. The cards work, the software works, no sweat. My dad has some really old computers with some really old cards that only have 1 or 2 meg of video memory. They're still supported by current Linux distros.
About your scanner, Microtek does seem to have a great deal of unsupported scanners. They could be the poster child. Is Microtek a hostile vendor, or is it maybe the case that no one on the SANE project has access to a Microtek 4850? If that's the problem, one solution is to give them one. It's less than the cost of a Windows or OS X upgrade. An even cheaper solution is to just buy a supported scanner. Epson's work very well, in my experience. Or, if you're a programmer, write the support yourself. I know none of those solutions are as good as having it just work out of the box, but they are solutions, none of which costs more than buying a copy of Windows. Heck, for the full retail price of a copy of Windows, you could probably get a CS student in college to write SANE support, GPL it, and contribute it to the project. People are pretty idealistic about that. At a company where I used to work, we hired a guy to make mods to some GPL software that we were using (we wanted some features it didn't have), and we wanted the features GPLed and contributed back. Because we were GPL-friendly, we got the work done for a fraction of the price we would have paid (about a tenth, probably) to have a consultant just come in and do it. And it was fast. And it was good quality. And everything we had done just for us was folded into the main product. Everybody won. Well, except competing proprietary solutions
When I said managing digital photos, I was talking about digital photos, not scans of analog photos. But, that aside, why don't you just buy a supported scanner and eBay your Microtek? Like I said, it's cheaper than the cost of a Windows upgrade, and if you get a good deal on an Epson, you might be out almost nothing. And if you consider the cost of an upgrade to Vista (a whole new PC, for most current XP users), a new scanner really looks like a bargain.
I know having to buy a new scanner is not ideal, and some people are just stuck. My gripe about Linux is that you can't run Yahoo Messenger for Windows on it, most IM clients for Linux don't support Yahoo voice or video, and the ones that do support either of those do it very poorly. Yahoo Messenger, which for my wife is a bigger killer app even than email, is the sole application that keeps a Windows machine in our house. If Yahoo ever releases a native client that does voice, their Windows client ever works under Wine, or any of the open source clients ever support Yahoo voice well, that Windows install is history.
However, my gripe and your gripe notwithstanding, for most people (in both home use and business use) Linux is not only ready for the desktop right now, it has been ready for a good while now. This is especially true in many office environments, where you either have professionals on staff or on call to support users, or at least some in-house power-user who does it. Most Linux distros are now easier to install than Windows, and upgrades are even easier than that. None of the pain that goes with using the XP migration wizard. Moving my wife's machine up from Win2K to XP was so painful I still regret the decision to do it.
Linux isn't perfect - nothing is - but it's very, very good, and in most ways, it's now better than Windows. Most people don't know that yet, but they'll find out.
More expensive??? Huh??? Linux is well-known as running better than Windows on lower-end hardware, something that will become even more true when Vista finally makes it out the door. Most of the PCs out there today, including most of the ones on store shelves, don't have the guts to run Vista well. That's astonishing. Some of the computers I have running Linux are over four years old and have never been upgraded. They're still doing fine, and will still be doing fine when Vista comes out and Windows users have to start buying new PCs just to run it.
:-) The hardest thing right now isn't hardware support, ease of use, application availability, or anything like that. The hardest thing right now is getting the word out to people that Linux is ready, it's easy to use, it's fun, it's reliable, and for most of you, it will meet all of your needs right out of the box. This is especially true for people getting their first computer. If you don't have a computer and need to get one, buy a Mac or a Linux box. You'll be glad you did.
Unless your definition of cheap starts at the bottom of the professional scanner range, you're really off track here. My scanner, for example, is an Epson, and it's supported out of the box by SANE and was when I bought it. I paid about 50 bucks for it. So are most other scanners, especially consumer-grade scanners. SANE supports hundreds of scanners. SANE support is so broad that before I bought my scanner, I didn't even bother specifically checking to see it it was supported or not. All I had to do was bring it home and plug it in. None of this BS like having to install a driver from CD first, like with certain legacy operating systems. In fact, the level at which hardware "just works" on many distros these days is getting more and more Mac-like all the time.
Scanner software, on the other hand, is something else again. Kooka is not bad but doesn't have a Copy function (astonishing; if you're a Kooka developer, please add that), and X-Sane is pretty clunky but at least it has a copy function. Scanning into GIMP is fairly well-supported, but a Windows user (and even more so, a Mac user) will find scanning on Linux to be tedious.
Anyway, scanners aren't even a good choice of example IMO. Most people don't want a scanner bundled with a computer system because they either don't want/need a scanner, or if they want one, they usually already have one. Scanners aren't something people upgrade very often. Heck, I don't even want a printer bundled with a system. My HP Photosmart 7350 serves my needs just as well now as it did two years ago when I bought it. I see no point in replacing it.
Of course, if I did want a bundled one, no problem. You'd have to look a long time to find a printer that wasn't supported on Linux these days.
Where is Linux hardware support not generally up to the level of Windows? 3-D accelerated graphics, something you didn't touch on. For most people that's not a huge problem, because there aren't many games for Linux that really take advantage of it, either. If you're a gamer, you need a console and/or a Windows box, that's just a fact on the ground. But for most people, who just need a computer for Internet access, light word processing, managing digital photos, etc., Linux is ready. Right now. Today. Desktop-oriented distros are as easy to use as Windows, they're more reliable, there's more software available than anyone fitting the above profile could ever need, and that software is easier to install than it is on Windows (honest; if you haven't used Synaptic or Adept (on Ubuntu), you need to try it. Puts Windows Update to shame).
Linux has been my desktop OS since the late nineties. Back then, there were real challenges in doing a lot of stuff. Now, things are so easy it's almost not fun anymore
I work for a well-known spam control service (not the one you mention; we don't blacklist gmail, don't know why anyone would).
WRT your comment that they either don't care or can't prevent gmail from being repeatedly blacklisted, I can't comment on whether or not they care (don't have a gmail account, even) but regarding prevention, I'm not surprised. Nobody can prevent themselves from being bl[ao]cklisted by anyone else. We get some of our IPs blocklisted all the time, not because of customers spamming, but because of backscatter from bounces on forged From addresses. Usually, it's only blocklists that are regarded as unreliable or full-on rogues that list us; we almost never get on a legit one. In any case, we can't *prevent* people from listing us if they really want to, although recently we have taken actions such as not doing double-bounces, as a means of limiting opportunities for it to happen.
It's a shame that the combination of spammers and bogus blocklist operators can force you to be non-RFC compliant in self-defense.
Now, if you were bombarded by people telling you how great gmail was, that would be something else again...
They didn't say "don't ship without Windows installed" (although I'm sure that's what they meant), they said "Dont' ship without an OS installed."
There's a simple solution for vendors wishing to sell PCs without an OS installed:
"Our default operating system is Linux. Customers who wish to have Windows pre-installed may choose to do so for an additional fee. Since we realize that many of our customers will choose Windows, we always maintain a sufficient stock of Windows pre-installed machines to enable a customer to pick one up with no waiting."
Or, make your default OS FreeDOS and give customers the option of Linux at no extra charge or Windows for a fee.
Or, if the traffic will bear it, sell them all for the same price, which will boost the profit margin tremendously on Linux machines (note: this might piss off Microsoft).
I've been using Packet8 for over a year now, and have had very few (and none recent) sound quality problems. I've never tested 911, but they are going to introduce a number (933) for people using Packet8 to call that will verify their 911 info.
One thing I do recommend for people who are using a VoIP service, is that you have a dedicated UPS for your phone (if it requires AC power; mine does), cable or DSL modem, and router. I have one, and when we had a power outage of over three hours recently when multiple transformers in this area failed, I had phone service throughout.
For that matter, even if you have a POTS line, if your phone requires AC power to work, put it on a UPS. A small one will do, and it could save your life some day.
Richer and more fulfilling? Um, no.
I've only gone to a movie theater three times in the last ten years: once in Japan in 1996, once in Viet Nam in 2001, and once in 2004. The motivations: in 1996, my friend was leaving Japan and neither of us had ever gone to a movie there, so we decided to try it. In 2001, my brother-in-law and his wife took me and my wife to a movie. In 2004, there was a movie that I just had to see and didn't want to wait for the DVD.
In none of those cases did I go because I thought a theater would be somehow a richer experience, although in the last case it wasn't bad. It seems like the kind of people who go to see The Passion of The Christ are also the kind of people who turn their cell phones off in theaters. However, there was still *way* to much advertising, and the snack bar prices were so high I bought nothing. How much of an annoyance was the advertising? Let me put it this way: I've been to theaters three times in the last ten years, and I expect to go a lot less often than that over the next ten years. Between the commercial bombardments and the high ticket prices, I have now decided that I can *always* wait for the DVD.
I doubt many theater owners or managers read Slashdot, but just on the off chance that there are any out there, you need to regard this as a big clue stick. Pretty much everyone I know holds this opinion, and pretty much everyone I know goes to movie theaters even less often than I have over the last ten years.
If you want better audiences, limit the commercials to five minutes or less at the beginning of the movie, like in the old days, install cell phone jammers everywhere, whether they are legal or not, have ushers who go around asking people to be quiet and to leave if they won't shut up (and bouncers to help, if needed), and if you want to sell me something at the snack bar, don't scalp me.
It's like this: people might pay nine bucks for an experience that really is richer and more rewarding, but pay nine bucks for an experience that pales compared to sitting in the comfort of my living room and watching a DVD? No chance.
I also went to UCSD. At the time (first half of the nineties), it was pretty rare to see anyone with a laptop on campus. In most of my classes (granted, I wasn't a CS or Engineering major; it might have been different in those majors even then) I was the only person who had one. In the beginning, I didn't often use it for the reasons you cite (hard to take notes on compared to a pen and pad) and the reasons others cite (bothers other students and makes it harder to actually pay attention to the prof).
Later, I never used it in class at all, only in study lounges or whatever, for transcribing notes, writing papers, that sort of thing. I found it much more effective to take notes on paper, and actually review them later as I transcribed them to my laptop. Boosted my retention quite a bit.
Granted, laptops are much quieter/lighter/common now than they were when I was in college, but I still see a lot of merit in not having a laptop in class unless it's really directly applicable, such as a CS class. Even there, I suspect there are many times when having a laptop is counter-productive.
I'm typing this on a tablet notebook, and I find that even a tablet notebook (I'm typing - not writing - this on a tablet notebook) isn't as effective for note-taking as a pad and paper.
I think the prof who banned notebooks in her classroom is a lot smarter than her critics give her credit for, and I bet her classes are good.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is other hardware costs that a lot of people are likely to encounter.
I'll assume there will be wireless networked printers all over the place, so that most people won't have to buy a printer, but who knows? That may be an invalid assumption, too.
I work at a large company where a great percentage of the staff have a notebook computer rather than a desktop, including most people in IT/IS/development (which is most people; that's our business). Everyone with a notebook also has an external keyboard and mouse, and at least a 19" external LCD monitor. Using a notebook all day long is just too much of a pain (literally).
Apart from the cost of the notebooks themselves, a lot of students are going to be shelling out for external keyboard, mice, and monitors out of their own pockets, unless you make it a required purchase and they can financial aid for that, too. Either course will make you unpopular; if you don't require it, the people who want those things will be upset. If you do, the people who don't want them (which may be a minority, if my company is anything to go by) will be upset.
Oh, one other point: every Thinkpad I've ever used was better than every Dell notebook I've ever used; do the students a favor, and require (if you really must require certain vendors) Thinkpads rather than Dells, and let them run whatever OS they feel like on them (Thinkpads being rather Linux/BSD friendly, after all). I wouldn't require specific vendors, though; I'd outline some general specs, such as "You need a notebook computer with W GB of disk or greater, X MB of memory or greater, a DVD +/- RW burner or a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, and a display of at least Y by Z pixels" and let people buy what they want. For those who don't know enough to choose something on their own, you could have a list of select Thinkpad and Apple models (OK, and Dell too, if you really want them).
It did all sound totally plausible in a Star Trek context :-) In fact, the only part that didn't pass the plausbility test was Takei saying the Sulu character was Japanese, insofar as Sulu is not a Japanese name, and morphing the "l" to an "r" wouldn't help (although it would get you the dictionary form of a Japanese verb). I supposed you could make up a history in which he had one Japanese parent and one non-Japanese one, but in what Asian ethnic groups is Sulu a family name? Maybe Chinese. although you'd romanize it differently. Not Korean, I'm pretty sure. I lived in Asia for 9 years and never met anybody named Sulu, or even heard of one.
:-)
Nice joke, anyway
I've managed to keep my laptops away from my kids, but they did manage to destroy a brand new dual-layer DVD burner that had been in my wife's computer only about 2 weeks.
:-)
I went to use it one day and it made some odd sound and the drawer wouldn't open. No dice with the manual release, either. I finally removed it from the machine to find a plastic measuring spoon completely inside the drive. The mechanics still worked, but it could neither read nor write anything after that.
They've also gone through a VCR and a DVD player. Remote controls for the surviving ones disappear for days at a time and turn up in the oddest places. Poltergeist? Nope, just toddlers
How about "How much time can I spend reading Slashdot at work, like you hiring managers are doing right now?" :-)
:-)
Seriously, though, I'm on the same page (I manage a team of nine, and don't really care if they ask me any questions or not. I'm being polite in case there's anything they actually need/want to know.
How about "How much time can I spend reading Slashdot at work, like you hiring managers are doing right now?"
That said, most chrisatslashdot's suggestions are good, not because I'd be impressed if someone asked me, but because those are valuable things a person might want to know:
-----
What is the culture like?
Why is the position open?
Describe your (i.e. the interviewer's) career with the company.
Who are the top competitors?
What's the best thing about working here?
What's the worst thing about working here?
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With one exception: if I hear "Who are the top competitors?" I'm likely to translate that as "You did no research on this industry or this company before showing up for your interview?" which goes to your comment about people removing themselves by asking the wrong questions.
I'm also not likely to provide an honest answer to "What's the worst thing about working here?" to someone I don't even know, so don't bother asking me. It won't hurt your chances if you ask, but it won't get you any useful information either.
Out of the lot of those, I like the first one best: what is the culture like? I go for personality fit/cultural fit as much as I go for technical chops when I'm hiring. I don't want anyone I have to actively manage, I want people who fit in with my team, my style, and my company; if you don't, I don't care what your technical chops are. Time I spend having to actively manage people and program bad habits out of them is time I don't spend improving our product. That doesn't mean I don't take an interest in my staff and their development (I do), but I'm not interested in hiring people who are problems, I'm interested in hiring people who are solutions to problems.
IANAL, but no, it's not bribery. An example of bribery would be if Microsoft offered direct cash payments to the decision makers at various partners to induce them to choose HD-DVD over Blu-Ray. Bribery is generally illegal and is a violation of company policy even in places where it's not illegal.
Cash incentives and coupons are ways of providing an effective discount or reduction in cost of the technology, the same as if I buy something at Fry's that has a rebate. Sometimes the rebates are so large they make the item free, or nearly so. That is not bribery, even if the rebate it not available at other retailers, it's just a discount. Is it an incentive to get me to shop at Fry's instead of Best Buy? Sure, but it's not a bribe. At least not unless you consider putting items on sale, or factory cash-back incentives on new cars, to also be bribery. A rebate or cash incentive is just another way of packaging a discount. It's out in the open, and nothing stops the competition from offering an equal or better incentive. Nothing is stopping Sony from doing the same thing. Don't be surprised if they do it or are already doing it.
Full disclosure: I am a Microsoft employee, but am not involved in any way with anything related to HD-DVD or Windows Vista.
We use MySQL and have 100% uptime of our system over seven years with a multi-terabyte database in the backend (our SLA with our largest customers is five nines, and we've never missed). Are you sure the problem is the database, not your applications?
I work for one of the major email security companies. I can't say that CAN-SPAM has had much effect at all on spam and the spamming spammers who send it - we see just as much spam as ever, and it's just as obfuscated as ever. If anything, the spammers have evolved to be better at hiding their identities than ever before, to avoid CAN-SPAM prosecution. When the law took effect, zombies were out there, but there were also still a lot of netblocks handed to spammers by providers; now, zombies rule the day and static netblocks used by spammers are becoming rarer all the time. Defined in those terms, CAN-SPAM is a bust.
:-)
However, if you want to define "success" as "Good for us and our competitors, who are all signing up lots of new customers every month and seeing better revenue streams all the time" then yes, CAN-SPAM is a resounding success
Absolutely, he's a troll. I don't read The Register so often that I knew who he was, and AFAIK I've never read one of his pieces (of feces?) before, but now that I know who he is and have read one, I shan't be reading The Reg again while he works there.
:)
Was the article that touched off this whole controversy shameful, a bad joke gone worse, and something that points to a known flaw in *all* wikis? Absolutely. And it's a problem Wikipedia has wrestled with and continues to wrestle with. It's not like they don't *try* to deal with his and have a balance and a self-correcting system. But those things are hard to do, and Wikipedia is still young, really. On the other hand, is most of what Orlowsku wrote just a vicious, spiteful, one-sided attack which rates a few steps below diarrhea on the periodic table of undesirable substances? Absolutely. It's so abolutely vitriolic that it's easy to believe jealously over not having invented something as popular, useful, and generally reliable as Wikipedia could be a motivating factor.
It was noted that Wikipedia is a good reference for physics. It's also a good reference for naval history, one of my interests. Rather than even attempt to write a balanced article showing where there are problems with a resource that is excellent in many ways, he chose to just spew. His name should not be used in the same sentence as the word "journalist."
Also, since you mentioned ad hominem attacks, the OP did not make any ad hominem attacks. He called Orlowsku a troll and a whiner. Having just read the entire FA myself, those seem to me pretty accurate. However, neither is an ad hominem attack. Here is an ad hominem attack:
"I heard that Orlowsku supports greater accountability for wikis, but I think he's a troll and a whiner, therefore that must be utter and complete rubbish."
Calling him a troll and a whiner is just a personal attack, but it is not an ad hominem (although ad hominems can, and often do, include personal attacks).
If you want to know more about ad hominem, you might want to look it up on, well, Wikipedia