What makes buying software attractive to college kids who are accustomed to downloading it for free? (or using their iPod to grab it from Compusa.)
The only "benefits" of buying the software that I can see are the ones that have existed all along- pirated software has the increased risk of something "going wrong". (virus, backdoor program, or whatnot.)
Isn't the iPod overpriced when compared to other mp3 players/pdas of a similar or better feature set?
Sorry, but I want the best bang for my buck and I haven't seen Apple give us that since the original iMac days, or for the first few months of the white iBook's existence. Mostly they're overpriced, underpowered, fragile, and overdesigned at the expense of the end-user.
(Yes, I'm still pissed off that my rev-a G3 with THREE places to mount hard drives can only handle one at a time without data corruption or third-party drivers that lower the speed.)
Besides which--what no one seems to have mentioned... Aren't there easier ways to reconstruct data? And besides, anyone who wants to monitor us just has to go to www.slashdot.org. This *is* where most of us spend most of our time, is it not?
I'd be more concerned if things could be reconstructed from my typing them into the keyboard, or using something akin to the method described in cryptonomicon to reconstruct what I'm seeing on my monitor. It's a bit harder to throw a blanket over one's monitor, or type with a mouse than it is to slap some duct tape on the modem.
Doesn't KDE--one of the popular GUIs for Linux have an embedded browser? Or is that different?
Personally I like having a browser embedded in my operating system. Isn't there less redundant code if the HTML/browser engine is used to render things in the folders such as image previews, customized backgrounds (Yeah, I know, if you customize a folder background you've got way too much time on your hands.) Why would MS create a whole new hunk of code to do that embedding MSIE in their OS does quite easily/efficiently?
Instead of arguing that "it has to be MSIE", why not open it so that any browser can be used by the operating system and make it a preference? I'm betting most of the people using Windows wouldn't bother to change it anyway.
I thought there already was legislation in quite a few countries to the effect that "reproducing" and distributing copyright materials was illegal. Unless you're refering to legislation that would call for technological means to cripple the internet so that the filesharing networks could not exist, then I don't see what additional legislation would do. Trade embargos on countries that harbor companies like Kazzaa? I don't really see what type of legislation could be effective in killing filesharing. Besides, I think the filesharing community would come up with new ways to fill the void.
No. When they fractionate our market they ensure that if one of them goes down the others will still be up. Cell theory. One dies, another grows to take its place. A shifty-ever-moving industry with "leaders" that take the fall.
Rip, Mix, Burn, and sell on the streets of NYC. If the industry wants to come down on pirates they should just go to 42nd street or the penn station area, or chinatown/the village.
A.) Education is only a right from the ages of 5 to 18. (or longer if you're held back)
B.) This is America. America is still a capitalist country (Not that I'm about to ask it to change) In order for anything to survive in a capitalist country, it has to be run as a business, or it has to have people with very strong ideals backing it. (ie: the open source movement)
C.) The primary goal of schools is never "To make money"- if it were, the people involved would be in a different business. This, however, does not stop the people involved from trying to make money. (See B.)
I empathize with the idealistic views of education, and wish that they were the solid truth, however I don't believe they are. People do have the right to "Self education", but all too often knowledge is sold rather than made free, given to the person with the dollar in his hand rather than the person who wants to absorb it. The thing I like about opencourseware is that it puts education back into the field of being a "right". It puts the reins in the hands of those who are able to pursue knowledge on their own and who do not like the structure of a school environment, or who are unable to attend the schools they wish to for whatever reason.
Just making the information available online doesn't guarantee people will take advantage of it. Hey- look at all the people who PAY to go and then flunk out because they're too busy drinking beer and trying to get laid. For those few that are self-motivated and able to learn on their own, knowledge *should* be free.
Nah. I actually appreciate the advertising on TV. It gives me a chance to go get something to eat or check my email. It "gives" time rather than taking it away.
You can't walk away from your computer to do something else every time you get spam. : delete-empty trash. Sure, it's not time consuming but it's irritating. Same with telemarketers and those who send snail mail. You have to spend time disposing of their often-mistargeted salespitch.
That's the difference between advertising on an interactive medium and advertising on a passive medium. Interactive mediums require you to do something to get rid of whatever it is the company is selling. It also often uses up finite resources and confronts the target with issues such as running out of space on their mailserver, or having to check their mailbox more often to avoid having to walk somewhere to retrieve more important mail.
"giving away the latter doesn't devalue the former"-- So true. Course materials are a small part of the experience of going to a good school. If anything, experiencing the course materials would only increase my desire to go to the school and interact with the professors teaching the courses. (This is assuming that the course material is appealing. If it's not, then it would weed out the people who were disinterested and likely to be poor performers in the first place.)
It's like being allowed to use the world's fastest computer. You might be recieving most of the benefits of owning it-- but you still want to own it. You still want to be able to overclock it or modify the case... Or even set up the OS the way you like it.
I agree, it's great that schools are putting courses online and offering them for free to the public.
However, let's not lose sight that Education is a business and not a right. The universities that do not put their materials online have their reasons to not put their materials online. They believe that they're giving away something that others are paying for, etc. (Along with the fact that it is rather time consuming to put things online most times.)
That said, as someone who often takes exams and reads assignments online, I love the concept of Opencourseware and wish more Universities and schools would consider following the path. Perhaps if they were educated about the implications of opencourseware-- that it wouldn't take students away from the school as they would still want to attend for other reasons (diploma, social life, interaction with their peers and professors, etc.) then more schools would consider it. They could make use of volunteers to enter the information into a database, lobby for tax cuts for "donating" knowledge to the public, and so on.
I don't mind political spam as much as I mind political paper-mail. I live in NYC so my mailbox is smaller than a shoebox. In the latest election I had NO FEWER than 5 fliers for this canidate 'Ravitz'. I had to check my mailbox every day just to avoid having to make a 15+ block trek to the post office to pick up the mail that would not fit.
THAT annoys me. I guess that if I didn't check my email every day/have my email client set to check every 10 minutes/host my own mailservers, then I'd get angry at having to pay for a larger mailbox.
I don't vote, but I voted for the other party that time around. When will they learn that unsolicited phonecalls, snail mail, or email only creates intense dislike? It's the equivilent of Pavlovian training: See product name, delete. See person's face, throw it in the trash. See person's name on ballot vote for the other person even if he/she/it is a satanist, womanizer, and proponent of eliminating the internet.
All office XP does is spellcheck. Since igneous is a word it doesn't show up as a spelling error.
I believe that "grammar check" might point out that the word you intended *might* be different, but then you've got to put up with the nitpicking (and often wrong) grammar check.
Don't blame it on Office. =] The spell checker is there only to prevent us from spelling "house" as "houze", if you spell it as "hose" or as "mouse", you can't expect it to catch that since they're words that are in the dictionary.
1- Mozilla has no mozilla dependencies? Odd. I thought you had to have mozilla installed in order to run it.;)
2- Don't know what your description of a "beefy" machine is, but my Duron 900-off the shelf-Compaq with 300 odd megs of RAM is able to run Konqueror in gnome and Galeon in KDE without any problems or noticeable performance decrease. (This is KDE/Gnome with a theme applied, a.jpg file or four as the background, and multiple other applications running at the time.)
3-Agreed on the issue of NS6. It's the only browser that has successfully locked/crashed/hung my computer on multiple occasions no matter the OS I'm running it in.
4- Lynx is fun, but impractical to use too much due to the insanity of contemporary website designers.
Why not test Galeon under KDE? It runs pretty well under KDE. As for your question "Why test any under KDE", why not? KDE is one of the options, you know?
Personally, I'd like to see the results of tests of Konqueror, Mozilla, Netscape, Galeon, and Opera running on KDE and running on Gnome. Oh, wait. I can do that myself.;)
I recall reading somewhere that Google also will not accept sponsorship for words that aren't related to the contents of your site. IE: A porno site can't buy a listing for a search on "Programming", or maybe they can but it will just never show up.
Maybe I should research before I post things I'm unsure about. But I'm busy researching "programming".;)
-Sara
Re:And this is news...?
on
iWarez
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Typo. (Saying OS X instead of Office for OS X.) =] Haven't had my fill of cappuccino and penguin mints for the day.
The problem with dragging the Office folder-- aren't the preferences/serial/whatnot stored elsewhere? I remember in my days of using a Mac and buying a new one I'd have to sort out the preferences files in the system folder to move my programs over to my new computer and avoid the hassle of restoring them. Microsoft programs, in particular, like to scatter things all over the place.
Who knows. Maybe OS X is different, I haven't bothered to touch it after experiencing repeated kernel panics.
It's not a matter of "could afford" it's a matter of the mentality of people today. "Why buy it when it's free somewhere else?"
Hand out iPods for free and you won't see many people buying them anymore even if Microsoft employees stop everyone who has an iPod and demands to see a license. Statistically you're more likely to get struck by lightening than be caught stealing software.
Unless, of course, you're in a store with a bunch of people watching you. It's sort of the equivilent of standing on the top of a hill during a thunderstorm holding a fork up in the air.
Personally, I prefer the opensource equivilents of MS Office. They crash less, eat up less memory, and have all the features I want for my word processing needs. They also mean I don't have to worry about a Hackers-esque scene taking place in my home where my computer is at risk of being confiscated or whatnot.
Prevent piracy- educate about opensource. =]
-Sara
And this is news...?
on
iWarez
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
This is news? =] It was bound to happen eventually. Give a person a way to get something out of a store and they'll do their best to do it.
I would think that connecting to Limewire or Hotline would be a heck of a lot easier than trying to get all of the files for OS X off of a computer, though. Sort of like stealing a stick of gum from one store instead of stealing the ingredients for gum from another store.
You're asking geeks what the best design of a website is? Ut-oh.
The 10 Commandments of Designing Websites for Geeks:
1. Thou shalt make sure the site works in mozilla, galeon, konqueror, etc. while producing multiple errors under MSIE of any version.
2. Thou shalt make the background black and the text off-white. If you're confused about how this should look : a.) format drive b.) install Linux c.) without running startx look at the screen.
3. Thou shalt not use evil plugins.
4.) Websites designed to work with Lynx get extra points.
5.) I know it doesn't relate to design but it needs to be said anyway: ASP bad PHP good.
6.) If Netcraft doesn't report back that the site is running on Linux it doesn't matter, we don't want to see it anyway.
7.) Site must prominently list all important sections either across the top or on the left side. Do not hide your navigation under buttons. We do not like buttons. We surf with graphics off. Additionally, at least one of these links must take us to a page about Beowulf clusters.
8.) If graphics are necessary, please have them be Linux logos, penguins, or naked women.
9.)We like our screens set to utterly ridiculous resolutions. If your site is best viewed at 640x480 keep in mind it will look awfully odd on our screens. (Picture a teacup poodle wearing a sweater designed for a great dane.)
Hm. I basically agree with you, however I feel a few points must be made:
Coding one's own app from start to finish entails design, project management, coding, testing, quality assurance, etc. One person must play the part of an entire team. Programmers tend to be geek-inclined, therefore of higher-than-average intelligence. Take this highly proficient programmer and plop them in the middle of a group.
All of a sudden, the programmer who is used to overseeing their own projects from conceptualization to realization, they're plopped down in an environment where they either have to learn to "put up or shut up". The project managers are in charge of how things are done, and for a "new monkey" in the pack of typing monkeys, it's hard to make your voice heard no matter if you're right or not. FRUSTRATION.
For those who 'play well with others', making the leap into this environment of "distributed responsibility" won't be a difficult transition. However, geeks tend not to fit into this category. Can you name one single geek who is perfectly content to exist within an environment that must remind many of the whole "How many monkeys with how many typewriters..." question?
Hiring new grads of any "group" is a hard call to make, when the new grads consist of a group that is largely different than the majority of the population (ie: geeks) it's an even more difficult decision. Let's face it, we're a highly opinionated/unusual group and it's reassuring for employers to see past work experience on our resumes. That way they at least feel prepared when we start getting into battles with the project manager about releasing software labled as version 9 when it is really more along the lines of.9.
No one wants the responsibility of breaking the news that this is a flawed world we live in, and that sometimes, yes. Sometimes we must use a WYSIWYG editor.
First: The average Windows user is highly unlikely to swap OSes in the first place. They use what came on their computer. "Hey dude, want to upgrade that toaster of yours to be able to handle bagels?" Uhm. no.
Second: I have both KDE and Gnome installed on the computers that I manage, and I allow the users to choose which to use, they always choose one based on their first 10 minutes of impression, or even based on which one I show them first. "Yeah, that's fine." They do not want to learn the workings of two window managers, one is hard enough for the "average user".
The choice that is afforded by having both Gnome and KDE is great--Depending on the work habits of the individual they'll find one of the two more comfortable and gravitate towards it. Applications work under both, so that's not really a deciding factor.
Heck- I actually like the banners. I mean. They're geek stuff, I'm a geek. Why not? They let me find ThinkGeek and a few other nifty places. It's not like they're trying to get me to buy the latest and greatest shade of lipstick, or a new method of losing 20 lbs in 20 days.
That said, I completely understand why Slashdot would want to generate some sort of money to pay for the service it's offering. It has to be bogged down under a *LOT* of traffic, and it has to take up quite a bit of server space. We always talk about how a site gets "Slashdotted" and disappears. Slashdot never gets slashdotted, eh? That has to be an expensive feat to carry off.
Point me to a link where I can donate some money. =] I like Slashdot and dislike the idea that it does seem to be following the path of free-->free with banners--> free with special subscription deals --> free with special subscription deals and more banners for those who don't pay --> subscription only --> gone. Yeegh.
I say lets all give 'em a penny for every day of the year or something like that. =] Heck- we give 'em our "two cents worth" often enough.
Slashdot Mirror
What makes buying software attractive to college kids who are accustomed to downloading it for free? (or using their iPod to grab it from Compusa.)
The only "benefits" of buying the software that I can see are the ones that have existed all along- pirated software has the increased risk of something "going wrong". (virus, backdoor program, or whatnot.)
-Sara
Isn't the iPod overpriced when compared to other mp3 players/pdas of a similar or better feature set?
Sorry, but I want the best bang for my buck and I haven't seen Apple give us that since the original iMac days, or for the first few months of the white iBook's existence. Mostly they're overpriced, underpowered, fragile, and overdesigned at the expense of the end-user.
(Yes, I'm still pissed off that my rev-a G3 with THREE places to mount hard drives can only handle one at a time without data corruption or third-party drivers that lower the speed.)
-Sara
Besides which--what no one seems to have mentioned... Aren't there easier ways to reconstruct data? And besides, anyone who wants to monitor us just has to go to www.slashdot.org. This *is* where most of us spend most of our time, is it not?
I'd be more concerned if things could be reconstructed from my typing them into the keyboard, or using something akin to the method described in cryptonomicon to reconstruct what I'm seeing on my monitor. It's a bit harder to throw a blanket over one's monitor, or type with a mouse than it is to slap some duct tape on the modem.
-Sara
Doesn't KDE--one of the popular GUIs for Linux have an embedded browser? Or is that different?
Personally I like having a browser embedded in my operating system. Isn't there less redundant code if the HTML/browser engine is used to render things in the folders such as image previews, customized backgrounds (Yeah, I know, if you customize a folder background you've got way too much time on your hands.) Why would MS create a whole new hunk of code to do that embedding MSIE in their OS does quite easily/efficiently?
Instead of arguing that "it has to be MSIE", why not open it so that any browser can be used by the operating system and make it a preference? I'm betting most of the people using Windows wouldn't bother to change it anyway.
-Sara
I thought there already was legislation in quite a few countries to the effect that "reproducing" and distributing copyright materials was illegal. Unless you're refering to legislation that would call for technological means to cripple the internet so that the filesharing networks could not exist, then I don't see what additional legislation would do. Trade embargos on countries that harbor companies like Kazzaa? I don't really see what type of legislation could be effective in killing filesharing. Besides, I think the filesharing community would come up with new ways to fill the void.
-Sara
No. When they fractionate our market they ensure that if one of them goes down the others will still be up. Cell theory. One dies, another grows to take its place. A shifty-ever-moving industry with "leaders" that take the fall.
-Sara
Rip, Mix, Burn, and sell on the streets of NYC. If the industry wants to come down on pirates they should just go to 42nd street or the penn station area, or chinatown/the village.
-Sara
A.) Education is only a right from the ages of 5 to 18. (or longer if you're held back)
B.) This is America. America is still a capitalist country (Not that I'm about to ask it to change) In order for anything to survive in a capitalist country, it has to be run as a business, or it has to have people with very strong ideals backing it. (ie: the open source movement)
C.) The primary goal of schools is never "To make money"- if it were, the people involved would be in a different business. This, however, does not stop the people involved from trying to make money. (See B.)
I empathize with the idealistic views of education, and wish that they were the solid truth, however I don't believe they are. People do have the right to "Self education", but all too often knowledge is sold rather than made free, given to the person with the dollar in his hand rather than the person who wants to absorb it. The thing I like about opencourseware is that it puts education back into the field of being a "right". It puts the reins in the hands of those who are able to pursue knowledge on their own and who do not like the structure of a school environment, or who are unable to attend the schools they wish to for whatever reason.
Just making the information available online doesn't guarantee people will take advantage of it. Hey- look at all the people who PAY to go and then flunk out because they're too busy drinking beer and trying to get laid. For those few that are self-motivated and able to learn on their own, knowledge *should* be free.
-Sara
Nah. I actually appreciate the advertising on TV. It gives me a chance to go get something to eat or check my email. It "gives" time rather than taking it away.
You can't walk away from your computer to do something else every time you get spam. : delete-empty trash. Sure, it's not time consuming but it's irritating. Same with telemarketers and those who send snail mail. You have to spend time disposing of their often-mistargeted salespitch.
That's the difference between advertising on an interactive medium and advertising on a passive medium. Interactive mediums require you to do something to get rid of whatever it is the company is selling. It also often uses up finite resources and confronts the target with issues such as running out of space on their mailserver, or having to check their mailbox more often to avoid having to walk somewhere to retrieve more important mail.
-Sara
"giving away the latter doesn't devalue the former"-- So true. Course materials are a small part of the experience of going to a good school. If anything, experiencing the course materials would only increase my desire to go to the school and interact with the professors teaching the courses. (This is assuming that the course material is appealing. If it's not, then it would weed out the people who were disinterested and likely to be poor performers in the first place.)
It's like being allowed to use the world's fastest computer. You might be recieving most of the benefits of owning it-- but you still want to own it. You still want to be able to overclock it or modify the case... Or even set up the OS the way you like it.
-Sara
I agree, it's great that schools are putting courses online and offering them for free to the public.
However, let's not lose sight that Education is a business and not a right. The universities that do not put their materials online have their reasons to not put their materials online. They believe that they're giving away something that others are paying for, etc. (Along with the fact that it is rather time consuming to put things online most times.)
That said, as someone who often takes exams and reads assignments online, I love the concept of Opencourseware and wish more Universities and schools would consider following the path. Perhaps if they were educated about the implications of opencourseware-- that it wouldn't take students away from the school as they would still want to attend for other reasons (diploma, social life, interaction with their peers and professors, etc.) then more schools would consider it. They could make use of volunteers to enter the information into a database, lobby for tax cuts for "donating" knowledge to the public, and so on.
-Sara
I don't mind political spam as much as I mind political paper-mail. I live in NYC so my mailbox is smaller than a shoebox. In the latest election I had NO FEWER than 5 fliers for this canidate 'Ravitz'. I had to check my mailbox every day just to avoid having to make a 15+ block trek to the post office to pick up the mail that would not fit.
THAT annoys me. I guess that if I didn't check my email every day/have my email client set to check every 10 minutes/host my own mailservers, then I'd get angry at having to pay for a larger mailbox.
I don't vote, but I voted for the other party that time around. When will they learn that unsolicited phonecalls, snail mail, or email only creates intense dislike? It's the equivilent of Pavlovian training: See product name, delete. See person's face, throw it in the trash. See person's name on ballot vote for the other person even if he/she/it is a satanist, womanizer, and proponent of eliminating the internet.
-Sara
All office XP does is spellcheck. Since igneous is a word it doesn't show up as a spelling error.
I believe that "grammar check" might point out that the word you intended *might* be different, but then you've got to put up with the nitpicking (and often wrong) grammar check.
Don't blame it on Office. =] The spell checker is there only to prevent us from spelling "house" as "houze", if you spell it as "hose" or as "mouse", you can't expect it to catch that since they're words that are in the dictionary.
-Sara
1- Mozilla has no mozilla dependencies? Odd. I thought you had to have mozilla installed in order to run it. ;)
.jpg file or four as the background, and multiple other applications running at the time.)
2- Don't know what your description of a "beefy" machine is, but my Duron 900-off the shelf-Compaq with 300 odd megs of RAM is able to run Konqueror in gnome and Galeon in KDE without any problems or noticeable performance decrease. (This is KDE/Gnome with a theme applied, a
3-Agreed on the issue of NS6. It's the only browser that has successfully locked/crashed/hung my computer on multiple occasions no matter the OS I'm running it in.
4- Lynx is fun, but impractical to use too much due to the insanity of contemporary website designers.
-Sara
Why not test Galeon under KDE? It runs pretty well under KDE. As for your question "Why test any under KDE", why not? KDE is one of the options, you know?
;)
Personally, I'd like to see the results of tests of Konqueror, Mozilla, Netscape, Galeon, and Opera running on KDE and running on Gnome. Oh, wait. I can do that myself.
-Sara
I recall reading somewhere that Google also will not accept sponsorship for words that aren't related to the contents of your site. IE: A porno site can't buy a listing for a search on "Programming", or maybe they can but it will just never show up.
;)
Maybe I should research before I post things I'm unsure about. But I'm busy researching "programming".
-Sara
Typo. (Saying OS X instead of Office for OS X.) =] Haven't had my fill of cappuccino and penguin mints for the day.
The problem with dragging the Office folder-- aren't the preferences/serial/whatnot stored elsewhere? I remember in my days of using a Mac and buying a new one I'd have to sort out the preferences files in the system folder to move my programs over to my new computer and avoid the hassle of restoring them. Microsoft programs, in particular, like to scatter things all over the place.
Who knows. Maybe OS X is different, I haven't bothered to touch it after experiencing repeated kernel panics.
-Sara
It's not a matter of "could afford" it's a matter of the mentality of people today. "Why buy it when it's free somewhere else?"
Hand out iPods for free and you won't see many people buying them anymore even if Microsoft employees stop everyone who has an iPod and demands to see a license. Statistically you're more likely to get struck by lightening than be caught stealing software.
Unless, of course, you're in a store with a bunch of people watching you. It's sort of the equivilent of standing on the top of a hill during a thunderstorm holding a fork up in the air.
Personally, I prefer the opensource equivilents of MS Office. They crash less, eat up less memory, and have all the features I want for my word processing needs. They also mean I don't have to worry about a Hackers-esque scene taking place in my home where my computer is at risk of being confiscated or whatnot.
Prevent piracy- educate about opensource. =]
-Sara
This is news? =] It was bound to happen eventually. Give a person a way to get something out of a store and they'll do their best to do it.
I would think that connecting to Limewire or Hotline would be a heck of a lot easier than trying to get all of the files for OS X off of a computer, though. Sort of like stealing a stick of gum from one store instead of stealing the ingredients for gum from another store.
-Sara
You're asking geeks what the best design of a website is? Ut-oh.
The 10 Commandments of Designing Websites for Geeks:
1. Thou shalt make sure the site works in mozilla, galeon, konqueror, etc. while producing multiple errors under MSIE of any version.
2. Thou shalt make the background black and the text off-white. If you're confused about how this should look : a.) format drive b.) install Linux c.) without running startx look at the screen.
3. Thou shalt not use evil plugins.
4.) Websites designed to work with Lynx get extra points.
5.) I know it doesn't relate to design but it needs to be said anyway: ASP bad PHP good.
6.) If Netcraft doesn't report back that the site is running on Linux it doesn't matter, we don't want to see it anyway.
7.) Site must prominently list all important sections either across the top or on the left side. Do not hide your navigation under buttons. We do not like buttons. We surf with graphics off. Additionally, at least one of these links must take us to a page about Beowulf clusters.
8.) If graphics are necessary, please have them be Linux logos, penguins, or naked women.
9.)We like our screens set to utterly ridiculous resolutions. If your site is best viewed at 640x480 keep in mind it will look awfully odd on our screens. (Picture a teacup poodle wearing a sweater designed for a great dane.)
10.) Design is optional.
-Sara
You know you're a Linux user who spends a lot of time at the command line when...
-Sara
But then the drivers can go on and do something more productive with their lives... Oh. Wait. Won't this just put more people out of jobs?
-Sara
Hm. I basically agree with you, however I feel a few points must be made:
.9.
Coding one's own app from start to finish entails design, project management, coding, testing, quality assurance, etc. One person must play the part of an entire team. Programmers tend to be geek-inclined, therefore of higher-than-average intelligence. Take this highly proficient programmer and plop them in the middle of a group.
All of a sudden, the programmer who is used to overseeing their own projects from conceptualization to realization, they're plopped down in an environment where they either have to learn to "put up or shut up". The project managers are in charge of how things are done, and for a "new monkey" in the pack of typing monkeys, it's hard to make your voice heard no matter if you're right or not. FRUSTRATION.
For those who 'play well with others', making the leap into this environment of "distributed responsibility" won't be a difficult transition. However, geeks tend not to fit into this category. Can you name one single geek who is perfectly content to exist within an environment that must remind many of the whole "How many monkeys with how many typewriters..." question?
Hiring new grads of any "group" is a hard call to make, when the new grads consist of a group that is largely different than the majority of the population (ie: geeks) it's an even more difficult decision. Let's face it, we're a highly opinionated/unusual group and it's reassuring for employers to see past work experience on our resumes. That way they at least feel prepared when we start getting into battles with the project manager about releasing software labled as version 9 when it is really more along the lines of
No one wants the responsibility of breaking the news that this is a flawed world we live in, and that sometimes, yes. Sometimes we must use a WYSIWYG editor.
-Sara
First: The average Windows user is highly unlikely to swap OSes in the first place. They use what came on their computer. "Hey dude, want to upgrade that toaster of yours to be able to handle bagels?" Uhm. no.
Second: I have both KDE and Gnome installed on the computers that I manage, and I allow the users to choose which to use, they always choose one based on their first 10 minutes of impression, or even based on which one I show them first. "Yeah, that's fine." They do not want to learn the workings of two window managers, one is hard enough for the "average user".
The choice that is afforded by having both Gnome and KDE is great--Depending on the work habits of the individual they'll find one of the two more comfortable and gravitate towards it. Applications work under both, so that's not really a deciding factor.
-Sara
Heck- I actually like the banners. I mean. They're geek stuff, I'm a geek. Why not? They let me find ThinkGeek and a few other nifty places. It's not like they're trying to get me to buy the latest and greatest shade of lipstick, or a new method of losing 20 lbs in 20 days.
That said, I completely understand why Slashdot would want to generate some sort of money to pay for the service it's offering. It has to be bogged down under a *LOT* of traffic, and it has to take up quite a bit of server space. We always talk about how a site gets "Slashdotted" and disappears. Slashdot never gets slashdotted, eh? That has to be an expensive feat to carry off.
Point me to a link where I can donate some money. =] I like Slashdot and dislike the idea that it does seem to be following the path of free-->free with banners--> free with special subscription deals --> free with special subscription deals and more banners for those who don't pay --> subscription only --> gone. Yeegh.
I say lets all give 'em a penny for every day of the year or something like that. =] Heck- we give 'em our "two cents worth" often enough.
-Sara