"The way to an engineer's heart is through his/her stomach." It'a all about lots and lots of cookies.
You should also try loosening up the dress code. At my company (govt comm software and hardware, 1000+ employees) the normal dress for engineers is jeans, sneakers, and a polo shirt. A lot of people even get away with jeans and t-shirts.
Try compressed work weeks which allow employees to work more hours in fewer days than the usual 8-hour per day schedule. The "4/10" work week is where employees work 10 hours per day over four days. My company uses the 9/80 work week which occurs over a 2-week period as follows: employees work seven 9-hour days in a 2-week period, one 8-hour day and then receive one "free" day off every other week. We have every other Friday off. It only takes a couple of weeks working 9 hours a day before you don't even notice that extra hour a day, and you'll never want to go back to the old schedule.
This might be getting off topic, but what the heck. Here's a couple of good ones from my experience.
When I did tech Support for an ISP:
Me: "Sir, please right click in the box that says password."
Him: "Don't you mean type click in the box?"
Her: "Please help me! Somebody hacked into my computer and used it for something illegal, and now the cops are going to shut me down.
Me: "What exactly does it say on your screen right now? What does it look like?"
Her: "It's all blue and it says 'Your computer has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.'
Her: "Does your software work with Red Hat Linux?" Me: "What's Linux?" (and so began my journey...)
Everybody here is like "I'll take that article with a grain of salt", or "Statistics don't mean anything".
It seems a lot of people missed the point. That article focused less of stats and more on ways they can be interpreted.
The author is trying to present some alternative ways of interpreting the usual old Win vs. Linux stats that we hear so much. He isn't trying to carve anything in stone. So many of you engineering folks see things in black or white, but this article says there is a grey area. You can look at the grey aread two different ways and it can seem black or white depending on how you look at it. He's not trying to tell us that it's all black or that it's all white.
He makes a great point that there are key ideas in those stats that are often overlooked and are seldom addressed by the Linux community, and never addressed by the Win community(Win preinstalled, Lin more efficient requiring less installs, unsold copies of Win at Best Buy, etc). This is a very insightful article, and while it may be mostly speculation and interpretation, the one fact that we do know is that the Linux developer/user base is growing and will continue to grow(so let's not get hung up on how fast, etc).
It's obviously not legal to steal content(articles) from other sites due to copyrights, but do fares/prices fall into the category of copyrightable material?
With all the taxes and assorted fees being placed on CD-Rs and presumably DVD-R's, what are we supposed to use for legitimate backup purposes? Will it get to a point where normal people can't afford DVD-R's because the MPAA is afraid they will copy commercial DVD's? CD-R's and DVD-R's are the largest writeable media format for backup right now, but soon we won't be able to use them because of outrageous taxes. I was excited to hear that DVD writers would be available commercially but at this rate, normal folks won't be able to afford media due to taxes.
I have one more observation. Why don't they tax CD players, which are obviously necessary to listen to the pirated CDs. Computers have so many uses, yet CD players have only one. And what if I buy a Computer with NO CD-Rom drive? What then? How do I then pirate music? So many questions, so little karma.
I see where you're coming from, but let's give these students some credit. Are you telling me that if you sat down a jounalism student in front of Openoffice, they wouldn't be able to compose a paper? Or if all they knew was Openoffice, they would be lost using Word? Thanks to KDE and Gnome, just about anybody can figure out the Linux GUI.
And let's be honest here, any CS major who knows C++ well should have no problem learning VC++, VB, C#, or even Java from one of those dummies books in no time at all.
"arcade titles influence the kind of console games that fans buy"
just like... "nobody will ever need more than 4k of RAM"
Ironically both statements would be true if this was 1989. But is isn't.
For that much, they'd better not be MP3 compressed. I don't mind waiting for a 50 MB song to download, as long as I know it's not compressed. There is a major difference in sound quality between MP3s burned to CD-R and the actual CD. That's why I'm not paying $1 for an MP3. Would you pay full price for pr0n pics compressed to 8-color GIF? I think not. The sound quality issue bugs me because I'm a drummer and I know what cymbals are supposed sound like!
When I did tech support for an ISP, 50% of our calls where due to bugs in the Microsoft OS. When a customer has to reinstall TCP/IP on a monthly basis, I call that a bug. Is that something Linux users have to do regularly?
A good movie where and investment firm pushed sales of stock in a fake company that they made up. Here it seems the guy picked crappy companies at random and tried to push their stock, so he could sell his own shares.
If you haven't seen Boiler Room, I highly recommend it. It has Vin Diesel, Giavanni Ribisi, and Ben Affleck, but still manages to be a great movie.
"Funny that not a single reader emailed me in almost 2 hours to tell me. "
We all just figured you'd read all our "dupe" replys...uh, oh yeah, I guess if you read slashdot you wouldn't have posted it in the first play. Way, to make us look dumb.
I remember using Windows 95 to access MSN and probably Amazon before Windows 98 existed, so therefore it was before '98 (when these patents were granted). I don't understand how they could claim they invented such things in '98. Surely the patent office has made mistakes before and should be held accountable. Somebody there just didn't do their homework. Here are the facts: Amazon started in 1996 and Ebay started in 1995, according to the copyright statement at the bottom of their homepages(for what that's worth).
When I worked at a video store, we had this shrink-wrapping machine. Man it was sweet. You couldn't tell the difference between a new DVD and a used re-wrapped one(I guess that was the point).I wish I had one. All you would have to do then is re-wrap your software, games, etc, and bring them back to the store. Problem solved.
I've read that artists make more money from performing live than they from selling CDs. Since most of them (already) have contracts giving an enormous percent of the profit from (all types of) recordings to the label, this is a way for labels to profit more from live performances.
"I don't understand how this is different from a drug screening test."
Um, well, drugs are illegal. Bad credit is a normal part of life. And another thing, as a Psych major i've tried to find research results that may actually support the the theory that people with bad credit make bad drivers, bad employees, etc, and no such data exists. It's just a dirt cheap way for insurance companies and empoyers to filter people, but why is anybody's guess.
I recently wanted to purchase a game console around christmas time. I went to EB at the mall and noticed that they stock 5 times more games for PS2 and Xbox than they do for GC. It turned out there really are many more games for PS2 than for any system. Upon closer expection I found that most of the games for PS2 were really crappy, whereas all the games for GC were very high quality. PS2 games are hit or miss. GC games are hits and more hits.
Maybe this is simplifying it too much but . . . if Apple put a nice GUI on top of UNIX and called it OS X then why can't Microsoft develop a nice GUI to go on top of Linux and just call it Windows? If the GUI is nice looking enough, most people won't know the difference, so they'd still be able to sell "Windows 2003" for $100 per copy. Now that Apple has done it, MS could probably get away with the same thing.
From the article"That was the catalyst that prompted the New York native, already disgruntled with his choice of profession, to look into attending either business or law school."
Without engineers to make stuff the businessmen would have nothing to sell, and the lawyers would have nobody to sue.
Slashdot Mirror
"The way to an engineer's heart is through his/her stomach." It'a all about lots and lots of cookies.
You should also try loosening up the dress code. At my company (govt comm software and hardware, 1000+ employees) the normal dress for engineers is jeans, sneakers, and a polo shirt. A lot of people even get away with jeans and t-shirts.
Try compressed work weeks which allow employees to work more hours in fewer days than the usual 8-hour per day schedule. The "4/10" work week is where employees work 10 hours per day over four days. My company uses the 9/80 work week which occurs over a 2-week period as follows: employees work seven 9-hour days in a 2-week period, one 8-hour day and then receive one "free" day off every other week. We have every other Friday off. It only takes a couple of weeks working 9 hours a day before you don't even notice that extra hour a day, and you'll never want to go back to the old schedule.
This might be getting off topic, but what the heck. Here's a couple of good ones from my experience.
When I did tech Support for an ISP:
Me: "Sir, please right click in the box that says password."
Him: "Don't you mean type click in the box?"
Her: "Please help me! Somebody hacked into my computer and used it for something illegal, and now the cops are going to shut me down.
Me: "What exactly does it say on your screen right now? What does it look like?"
Her: "It's all blue and it says 'Your computer has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.'
Her: "Does your software work with Red Hat Linux?"
Me: "What's Linux?" (and so began my journey...)
I swear to God I'm not making those up.
Everybody here is like "I'll take that article with a grain of salt", or "Statistics don't mean anything".
It seems a lot of people missed the point. That article focused less of stats and more on ways they can be interpreted.
The author is trying to present some alternative ways of interpreting the usual old Win vs. Linux stats that we hear so much. He isn't trying to carve anything in stone. So many of you engineering folks see things in black or white, but this article says there is a grey area. You can look at the grey aread two different ways and it can seem black or white depending on how you look at it. He's not trying to tell us that it's all black or that it's all white.
He makes a great point that there are key ideas in those stats that are often overlooked and are seldom addressed by the Linux community, and never addressed by the Win community(Win preinstalled, Lin more efficient requiring less installs, unsold copies of Win at Best Buy, etc). This is a very insightful article, and while it may be mostly speculation and interpretation, the one fact that we do know is that the Linux developer/user base is growing and will continue to grow(so let's not get hung up on how fast, etc).
It's obviously not legal to steal content(articles) from other sites due to copyrights, but do fares/prices fall into the category of copyrightable material?
If you recall an article about Fatwallet getting in trouble for posting prices obtained from other sources, it was determined that prices were copyrightable. AA has a good arguement based on that precedent.
Ironic. Forty percent of spam is pork.
With all the taxes and assorted fees being placed on CD-Rs and presumably DVD-R's, what are we supposed to use for legitimate backup purposes? Will it get to a point where normal people can't afford DVD-R's because the MPAA is afraid they will copy commercial DVD's? CD-R's and DVD-R's are the largest writeable media format for backup right now, but soon we won't be able to use them because of outrageous taxes. I was excited to hear that DVD writers would be available commercially but at this rate, normal folks won't be able to afford media due to taxes.
I have one more observation. Why don't they tax CD players, which are obviously necessary to listen to the pirated CDs. Computers have so many uses, yet CD players have only one. And what if I buy a Computer with NO CD-Rom drive? What then? How do I then pirate music?
So many questions, so little karma.
I see where you're coming from, but let's give these students some credit. Are you telling me that if you sat down a jounalism student in front of Openoffice, they wouldn't be able to compose a paper? Or if all they knew was Openoffice, they would be lost using Word? Thanks to KDE and Gnome, just about anybody can figure out the Linux GUI.
And let's be honest here, any CS major who knows C++ well should have no problem learning VC++, VB, C#, or even Java from one of those dummies books in no time at all.
The icon should be a pic of Duke Nukem, which has become the universal symbol of vaporware.
=funniest post I've ever read on /. ever.
"arcade titles influence the kind of console games that fans buy"
just like...
"nobody will ever need more than 4k of RAM"
Ironically both statements would be true if this was 1989. But is isn't.
Ah, but they all also agree the Earth is round . . .
For that much, they'd better not be MP3 compressed. I don't mind waiting for a 50 MB song to download, as long as I know it's not compressed. There is a major difference in sound quality between MP3s burned to CD-R and the actual CD. That's why I'm not paying $1 for an MP3. Would you pay full price for pr0n pics compressed to 8-color GIF? I think not. The sound quality issue bugs me because I'm a drummer and I know what cymbals are supposed sound like!
You give somebody a monopoly and then they start monopolizing things! The nerve of them!
When I did tech support for an ISP, 50% of our calls where due to bugs in the Microsoft OS. When a customer has to reinstall TCP/IP on a monthly basis, I call that a bug. Is that something Linux users have to do regularly?
A good movie where and investment firm pushed sales of stock in a fake company that they made up. Here it seems the guy picked crappy companies at random and tried to push their stock, so he could sell his own shares.
If you haven't seen Boiler Room, I highly recommend it. It has Vin Diesel, Giavanni Ribisi, and Ben Affleck, but still manages to be a great movie.
"Funny that not a single reader emailed me in almost 2 hours to tell me. " ...uh, oh yeah, I guess if you read slashdot you wouldn't have posted it in the first play. Way, to make us look dumb.
We all just figured you'd read all our "dupe" replys
Nobody would notice a lawsuit. But a silly muppets reference gets the news posted on the frontpage of Slashdot!
I remember using Windows 95 to access MSN and probably Amazon before Windows 98 existed, so therefore it was before '98 (when these patents were granted). I don't understand how they could claim they invented such things in '98. Surely the patent office has made mistakes before and should be held accountable. Somebody there just didn't do their homework. Here are the facts: Amazon started in 1996 and Ebay started in 1995, according to the copyright statement at the bottom of their homepages(for what that's worth).
When I worked at a video store, we had this shrink-wrapping machine. Man it was sweet. You couldn't tell the difference between a new DVD and a used re-wrapped one(I guess that was the point).I wish I had one. All you would have to do then is re-wrap your software, games, etc, and bring them back to the store. Problem solved.
I've read that artists make more money from performing live than they from selling CDs. Since most of them (already) have contracts giving an enormous percent of the profit from (all types of) recordings to the label, this is a way for labels to profit more from live performances.
"I don't understand how this is different from a drug screening test."
Um, well, drugs are illegal. Bad credit is a normal part of life. And another thing, as a Psych major i've tried to find research results that may actually support the the theory that people with bad credit make bad drivers, bad employees, etc, and no such data exists. It's just a dirt cheap way for insurance companies and empoyers to filter people, but why is anybody's guess.
I recently wanted to purchase a game console around christmas time. I went to EB at the mall and noticed that they stock 5 times more games for PS2 and Xbox than they do for GC. It turned out there really are many more games for PS2 than for any system. Upon closer expection I found that most of the games for PS2 were really crappy, whereas all the games for GC were very high quality. PS2 games are hit or miss. GC games are hits and more hits.
Maybe this is simplifying it too much but . . . if Apple put a nice GUI on top of UNIX and called it OS X then why can't Microsoft develop a nice GUI to go on top of Linux and just call it Windows? If the GUI is nice looking enough, most people won't know the difference, so they'd still be able to sell "Windows 2003" for $100 per copy. Now that Apple has done it, MS could probably get away with the same thing.
2003's Vaporware of the year!
From the article"That was the catalyst that prompted the New York native, already disgruntled with his choice of profession, to look into attending either business or law school."
Without engineers to make stuff the businessmen would have nothing to sell, and the lawyers would have nobody to sue.