No offense intended, but you missed the point. If the paperclip were simply a graphic, there would be no problem. I've changed many of the icons I use in WordPerfect. But the paperclip is further work that MS is doing to bury the system so that users have little to no ability to configure systems to their own preferences. I tried to use Word97 at my old school but couldn't figure out how to make the paperclip stop appearing. All I wanted was a help system that waited for me to ask for help. WordPerfect let me do that, so I installed it (at a cost of $39 for the full suite--something my department chair was very happy about.)
As for "hotdog users", well, I think that you're referring to savvy users--those who take the time to learn about their tools and prefer craftsmanship to heavyhandedness. I've used keyboard commands in WordPerfect for years not because I feel cool doing it, but because I leave my hands on one input device rather than two. It's the same reason that I use one remote for my television and vcr--I don't want to be bothered with two of them. There are times when a mouse is useful, but when I can get things done faster on the keyboard, that's the way I will go.
No one at WordPerfect made anyone memorize keyboard commands. When you need one you can choose to remember it, look at the keyboard template, or go to the help system. I just don't want to deal with a program that forces me to use one method--this is what I've experienced when forced to use ms programming. It just doesn't work for me.
Last point: If you don't like bloat, don't buy it. There is only one language that commercial companies of any sort understand and that is the language of dollars and cents.
Why the objection to links to sex in american popular culture? European society seems to have a much healthier additude. This difference would seem to me to be more significant than any differences in gun control laws.
Perhaps...but I don't think of many of the images of sex to be especially healthy in our popular culture. It's one thing when Nabokov tells the story of Lolita and quite another when we suffer through the tales of Bill and Monica or Joey B and Amy Fisher.
I think maybe I'm just frustrated with the turns we're taking in our entertainment. That and I'm probably turning into an old prude! (grin)
Gun control is the first step in getting these weapons off the streets. Gun control is not a system that would cure the problem over night. Rather, I believe that it would inflate the problem for several years and then begin to have a positive effect.
The problem with current American gun policy is that it has produced a culture of weaponry and violence that we are finally finding out leads to our own destruction.
All this nonsense of having a gun to protect one's self is foolish. Owning a gun doesn't protect anyone. Actually, most gun owners who attempt to protect themselves with a gun increase their own chances of being shot and also increase the danger to their families. Why? Because most gun owners find, in the moment when they most need to, that pulling a trigger is a very difficult thing to do.
We have to work to combat the culture of violence and to help people understand the pain of a bullet wound. Hollywood, video games, the NRA, and a host of other forces work hard to blot out the pain of violence. So far they are winning. We are buying into the culture of violence with millions of dollars and finding our streets more and more littered with the bodies of the victims.
I teach school and have taugth at a suburban school very much like the one in Colorado. I now teach in an urban "small school". The difference is that in a small school kids are known and groups are splintered.
The problem is that schools are too large and so kids go unknown there. At home parents often hold jobs that keep them out of the house for far too long and so kids go unknown there. And kids then find other ways to attract the attention that they both need and deserve.
As for video games and the internet, well, we do have a problem. My wife and I lay in bed last night trying to think of something in our popular culture that isn't linked to violence, sex, lying, war, oppression, or the like. We figured out that Sesame Street fits the bill but beyond that, well, not much.
What is happening is that violence is glamorous. By this I mean that it is shown as something that is not painful and nearly desirable. A character in a movie is hit by a car, but he holds on to the hood and goes for a wild, wacky ride! Gee. Funny, when my brother was hit by a car the only thing that happened was an extended stay in the hospital and all of us praying that he would not die. The internet is not the problem. Doom and Quake are not the problem. Mel Gibson movies are not the problem. But consider the total package. Put all of these things together and feed them to young kids. There's a problem with that. We have to face it and it's up to us to figure out a way to do something about it. The answer is not to ban any of this stuff. That would be ridiculous, ineffective, and against our values here in the USA. But there are other ways.
When I was a kid I played some video games. My friend's family gave him a computer to fool around with instead. I learned how to beat the Atari 2600 in my sleep and he learned how to take apart, rebuild, and program his computer. When my kids come along and the decision comes down to a Playstation or a Linux box, we'll see what kind of machine we can build together.
Read the article. The tone is way to jocular for it to be real. If you doubt, read the bit about rewiring the old Zenith with nothing but some hair clippers and a hunk of wire. Please.
Oh, by the way, I was just listening to the radio and Orson Welles says that the martians are coming. I'm out of here.
This is the new direction of FUD for Linux. Microsoft is not bad, RedHat is. Ugh. The bad thing is that with CNN running it, people will buy into it. Seems like the worst thing we can do about this is to inflate it and lend it creedence. What's needed, seems to me, is a killer response to this such as the Petreley response to Muth's piece.
What is not needed is a lot of flame or ESR silliness on this one. At least, that's what I think anyway.
This is an excellent point. I don't think that an easy installation program is going to take over the world. Rather, it's going to get an extra 10% of people to try Linux. I'm in that extra ten because I want to run Linux, I'm not afraid of my machine, and I _do_ want to understand _how_ it works. If the installation becomes easy enough for folks like me to manage, then we will install, chuck Windows (not out of hatred but frustration) and then yell and scream until more manufacturers preinstall Linux on their machines.
Once that happens, the momentum takes over. I really believe that manufacturers will have a much easier time supporting Linux because they will naturally fall back on the Internet to do it. They will point people to user groups other free sources as well as the help lines for which they demand a Visa number.
Right now people are describing Linux as something to add to a system--make the switch! The real turnover will happen when the computer is already running Linux and the unaware masses have no idea that it's there.
The new comment system is great for me. I had given up on reading comments because I was so tired of first posts and the like. Now, with the new comment system, I've set my threshold to 3 and I'm reading stuff that keeps me interested and keeps me informed and thinking. And hell, my comments don't even make it up to that threshold, so the system is obviously working. *grin*
I was just talking to my students (middle school) about this. They see Bill Gates through the media's eyes as this incredibly important and wonderful guy. I asked them today what he had created. They said that he had created computers--I said no. They said that he had created the web, the GUI, and word processors. i said no, no, and no. The real problem is that people mistakenly perceive this guy. He created a company--a giant, dominating, ultrapowerful company. That's an incredible thing. I'm impressed, I think everyone should be. I don't think we should hold him up as something to be admired, but that's beside the point. The point, and I think I have one (at this point I'm not sure), is that our culture generally perceives Bill Gates as a technologist and as benevolent when he really is an opportunist and self-interested. That most of the world trusts him to take them where they want to go is what worries me. For what all that's worth.
William Zinsser wrote a book called _On Writing Well_ and it talks about the honor of writing well. That's what has finally sent me over the edge with Katz. I was willing to read through his stuff figuring, oh well, the web has brought writing down to this. But then Wood's piece is clear, it's well written, and it's edited. Made me wonder just what Katz is up to. I have to admit that I agree with the idea that he's just selling books now. That whole bit about the dog chewing the boards in his linux machine...it's just too much. Oh well. I won't set my/. prefs to remove him, but I won't be reading him right away. Too long, too cluttered, and too amateurish for me. I would much rather read something professional--not financed necessarily, but certainly something over which a writer has lingered and thought. I don't see that in Katz and I doubt that I ever will.
I disagree. I write, I've had editors work for me, I still self-edit. Just because we have word-processors and spell-check does not mean that we do not have to read and listen to our own prose. That's a basic task of the writer. I was hoping to email Jon about this, but could no longer find his email address. Perhaps he would like to send the text to one of us for editing. I wouldn't mind.
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No offense intended, but you missed the point. If the paperclip were simply a graphic, there would be no problem. I've changed many of the icons I use in WordPerfect. But the paperclip is further work that MS is doing to bury the system so that users have little to no ability to configure systems to their own preferences. I tried to use Word97 at my old school but couldn't figure out how to make the paperclip stop appearing. All I wanted was a help system that waited for me to ask for help. WordPerfect let me do that, so I installed it (at a cost of $39 for the full suite--something my department chair was very happy about.)
As for "hotdog users", well, I think that you're referring to savvy users--those who take the time to learn about their tools and prefer craftsmanship to heavyhandedness. I've used keyboard commands in WordPerfect for years not because I feel cool doing it, but because I leave my hands on one input device rather than two. It's the same reason that I use one remote for my television and vcr--I don't want to be bothered with two of them. There are times when a mouse is useful, but when I can get things done faster on the keyboard, that's the way I will go.
No one at WordPerfect made anyone memorize keyboard commands. When you need one you can choose to remember it, look at the keyboard template, or go to the help system. I just don't want to deal with a program that forces me to use one method--this is what I've experienced when forced to use ms programming. It just doesn't work for me.
Last point: If you don't like bloat, don't buy it. There is only one language that commercial companies of any sort understand and that is the language of dollars and cents.
Why the objection to links to sex in american popular culture? European society seems to have a much healthier additude. This difference would seem to me to be more significant than any differences in gun control laws.
Perhaps...but I don't think of many of the images of sex to be especially healthy in our popular culture. It's one thing when Nabokov tells the story of Lolita and quite another when we suffer through the tales of Bill and Monica or Joey B and Amy Fisher.
I think maybe I'm just frustrated with the turns we're taking in our entertainment. That and I'm probably turning into an old prude! (grin)
I'll give it a try.
Gun control is the first step in getting these weapons off the streets. Gun control is not a system that would cure the problem over night. Rather, I believe that it would inflate the problem for several years and then begin to have a positive effect.
The problem with current American gun policy is that it has produced a culture of weaponry and violence that we are finally finding out leads to our own destruction.
All this nonsense of having a gun to protect one's self is foolish. Owning a gun doesn't protect anyone. Actually, most gun owners who attempt to protect themselves with a gun increase their own chances of being shot and also increase the danger to their families. Why? Because most gun owners find, in the moment when they most need to, that pulling a trigger is a very difficult thing to do.
We have to work to combat the culture of violence and to help people understand the pain of a bullet wound. Hollywood, video games, the NRA, and a host of other forces work hard to blot out the pain of violence. So far they are winning. We are buying into the culture of violence with millions of dollars and finding our streets more and more littered with the bodies of the victims.
Begin rant here.
I teach school and have taugth at a suburban school very much like the one in Colorado. I now teach in an urban "small school". The difference is that in a small school kids are known and groups are splintered.
The problem is that schools are too large and so kids go unknown there. At home parents often hold jobs that keep them out of the house for far too long and so kids go unknown there. And kids then find other ways to attract the attention that they both need and deserve.
As for video games and the internet, well, we do have a problem. My wife and I lay in bed last night trying to think of something in our popular culture that isn't linked to violence, sex, lying, war, oppression, or the like. We figured out that Sesame Street fits the bill but beyond that, well, not much.
What is happening is that violence is glamorous. By this I mean that it is shown as something that is not painful and nearly desirable. A character in a movie is hit by a car, but he holds on to the hood and goes for a wild, wacky ride! Gee. Funny, when my brother was hit by a car the only thing that happened was an extended stay in the hospital and all of us praying that he would not die.
The internet is not the problem. Doom and Quake are not the problem. Mel Gibson movies are not the problem. But consider the total package. Put all of these things together and feed them to young kids. There's a problem with that. We have to face it and it's up to us to figure out a way to do something about it. The answer is not to ban any of this stuff. That would be ridiculous, ineffective, and against our values here in the USA. But there are other ways.
When I was a kid I played some video games. My friend's family gave him a computer to fool around with instead. I learned how to beat the Atari 2600 in my sleep and he learned how to take apart, rebuild, and program his computer. When my kids come along and the decision comes down to a Playstation or a Linux box, we'll see what kind of machine we can build together.
End of rant.
Read the article. The tone is way to jocular for it to be real. If you doubt, read the bit about rewiring the old Zenith with nothing but some hair clippers and a hunk of wire. Please.
Oh, by the way, I was just listening to the radio and Orson Welles says that the martians are coming. I'm out of here.
This is the new direction of FUD for Linux. Microsoft is not bad, RedHat is. Ugh. The bad thing is that with CNN running it, people will buy into it. Seems like the worst thing we can do about this is to inflate it and lend it creedence. What's needed, seems to me, is a killer response to this such as the Petreley response to Muth's piece.
What is not needed is a lot of flame or ESR silliness on this one. At least, that's what I think anyway.
This is an excellent point. I don't think that an easy installation program is going to take over the world. Rather, it's going to get an extra 10% of people to try Linux. I'm in that extra ten because I want to run Linux, I'm not afraid of my machine, and I _do_ want to understand _how_ it works. If the installation becomes easy enough for folks like me to manage, then we will install, chuck Windows (not out of hatred but frustration) and then yell and scream until more manufacturers preinstall Linux on their machines.
Once that happens, the momentum takes over. I really believe that manufacturers will have a much easier time supporting Linux because they will naturally fall back on the Internet to do it. They will point people to user groups other free sources as well as the help lines for which they demand a Visa number.
Right now people are describing Linux as something to add to a system--make the switch! The real turnover will happen when the computer is already running Linux and the unaware masses have no idea that it's there.
The new comment system is great for me. I had given up on reading comments because I was so tired of first posts and the like. Now, with the new comment system, I've set my threshold to 3 and I'm reading stuff that keeps me interested and keeps me informed and thinking. And hell, my comments don't even make it up to that threshold, so the system is obviously working. *grin*
I was just talking to my students (middle school) about this. They see Bill Gates through the media's eyes as this incredibly important and wonderful guy. I asked them today what he had created. They said that he had created computers--I said no. They said that he had created the web, the GUI, and word processors. i said no, no, and no. The real problem is that people mistakenly perceive this guy. He created a company--a giant, dominating, ultrapowerful company. That's an incredible thing. I'm impressed, I think everyone should be. I don't think we should hold him up as something to be admired, but that's beside the point. The point, and I think I have one (at this point I'm not sure), is that our culture generally perceives Bill Gates as a technologist and as benevolent when he really is an opportunist and self-interested. That most of the world trusts him to take them where they want to go is what worries me. For what all that's worth.
William Zinsser wrote a book called _On Writing Well_ and it talks about the honor of writing well. That's what has finally sent me over the edge with Katz. I was willing to read through his stuff figuring, oh well, the web has brought writing down to this. But then Wood's piece is clear, it's well written, and it's edited. Made me wonder just what Katz is up to. I have to admit that I agree with the idea that he's just selling books now. That whole bit about the dog chewing the boards in his linux machine...it's just too much. Oh well. I won't set my /. prefs to remove him, but I won't be reading him right away. Too long, too cluttered, and too amateurish for me. I would much rather read something professional--not financed necessarily, but certainly something over which a writer has lingered and thought. I don't see that in Katz and I doubt that I ever will.
I disagree. I write, I've had editors work for me, I still self-edit. Just because we have word-processors and spell-check does not mean that we do not have to read and listen to our own prose. That's a basic task of the writer. I was hoping to email Jon about this, but could no longer find his email address. Perhaps he would like to send the text to one of us for editing. I wouldn't mind.