Well, I don't mind pretty packages and beautiful people, but lately is getting to be too much. TV is unwatchable because of growing ad time - and skipping them is still work. I have to burn and re-rip a CD-RW to give a song I like to my girlfriend. I can not put a video of myself dancing on my home page without muting the sound. So I am starting to get off my butt and look for free (libre is more important for me at this point) stuff that I can still enjoy, even if it's kind of cheesy. At least if I like something from project Gutenburg, I can just send a link to a friend. Hey, anyone happens to know any good free ballroom dance music?
Critics say Apple's proprietary technology and its refusal to offer more ways to buy or to stray from its rigid 99 cents a song model is dampening legal sales of digital tunes.
If music industry is considering non-propietory technology and prices below 99 cents/song, there is nothing Apple can do to prevent that. All they have to do is put their stuff on mp3tunes.com
Copyright doesn't apply when presenting materials for legal disputes. Otherwise, how can you sue a newspaper for libel? Just consider this another instance of fair use.
IT professionals have a lot of responsibility and a lot of power, and can seriously f-up a company with a few clicks. Any sane employer doesn't want that to happen.
Critical thinking 101: If an IT person wanted to mess up the system, he/she would put the means to do so in place before giving the resignation notice. Any sane employer rewards considerate behavior that goes beyond job description. They may well want this guy to come and fix some small problem later.
All right, I admit that my main reason to prefer MacOSX over Linux is clean, consistent UI rather than theoretically available functionality. I have 15 years of programming experience on many platforms, but I have no desire to use command line scripts for managing my music and photos or remember 5 versions for copy and paste keyboard shortcuts. I will indeed put up or contribute to Gimp because is free, but there is no way I am paying for it, or other unprofessional-looking UI like Windows or Redhat. I will, however pay for software with good UI. Unfortunately Photoshop Elements is not meant for creating icons, which is the only area of my image processing needs not met by iPhoto.
I am glad that you can look past superficial issues and appreciate a program for it's inner beauty. Your dating life must be much easier than mine. (Imagining my date -> woman == Gimp -> MacOSX app) Shudder!
Nope, just a simple fact that Windows doesn't save content of obscured windows no matter how much RAM/VRAM you have. If you move something, EVERY background program has to process WM_PAINT and redraw itself before the screen looks "clean" again. This is every time you move the window by another pixel! MS own software, such as Explorer, Word and Visual Studio takes extraordinary time to redraw. I think Explorer actually starts reading each icon from a separate file on disk! I don't what to say when a company has $40B or whatever in cash and won't pay a few programmers to fix such simple glitches.
And for a simple reason - all the packages that I need have pretty much ancient versions in fink. And 'recompile yourself' is a step backwards from Linux, where the distros provide the last versions (or very close to) by default.
Well, if you use Linux I assume you like open source. Practice what you preach and contribute updated packages to fink. How do you think they got into Linux distros?
huh? is that what you do on your computer, move windows around? Try actually using the program you launched sometimes, you'll notice that it's *useful* (as opposed to 'just pretty') when you pay attention to the *content* of the window instead of wiggling it around. Perhaps then you'll discover things that actually matter to use in your arguments.
If you interviewed a C programmer who couldn't use printf, would you waste your time finding out what else he/she knows? If "Windows" OS can not move a Window smoothly on a dual P4 with the latest graphics card... well! In any case, it's pretty difficult to use "the program you launched" on your favorite OS. How the heck do I do copy and paste? Ctrl-V? Shift-Ins? Esc-W? Clicking left and right mouse buttons at the same time? There are two separate selections, not every program supports both and everyone has their own keyboard shortcuts. I use Gimp on OSX sometimes for philosophical reasons (I think Adobe should provide a reasonably priced version of Photoshop for casual users rather than relying on piracy to maintain their market share) and boy it's ugly!
For example, a distributed calendar that only 5% of the people used would be pointless. The calendar that I implemented in scripts works for 100% of the users on any browser, and scales up very nicely thank you.
I am glad that your PHP calendar works so well on PDAs, cell phones and notebooks without network connectivity. But other companies where executives do travel and make appointments on the go might ask non-Outlook users to use web interface for calendar. I assume you know that Exchange is not the only choice of server here.
And there certainly aren't 5% of websites that require IE.
MSDN, Windows Update, American Express... In addition, how does your company get customers outside slashdot if your own web designers are not testing their stuff with IE?
I guess it sucks to be you. We have a virus/suspicious attachment filter on the server, Norton Antivirus on standard base image and latest Windows updates. However, 99% of users use Outlook. Outlook Express or IE. Very occasionally, a bugger sneaks in and pollutes a corporate mailing list with a couple of junk messages, but it's not a problem that in any way affects our productivity.
If you are a system administrator, your e-mail/calendar/web access needs are drastically different from your users, so "understand from other people" is a necessity. You are doing a horrible job if 95% of users are happy and virus free, but 5% can not get their work done because they are unable to access an IE-only website or don't have access to a distributed calendar, to do lists and other collaboration tools. Those people have some function in the company and could very well bring it to standstill. If you want, install Firefox and Thunderbird by default, make IE and Outlook available for people who need the features and prepare countermeasures to deal with worms.
I am surprised MacOSX is behind Firefox. The later doesn't provide a huge functionality leap over earlier products such as Opera or Safari . On the other hand, everyone who used OSX for a month will never go back to Windows. Let's start with a fact that moving a window on XP leaves annoying flicker on the background while the "damaged" windows redraw themselves, while on MacOSX the movement is perfectly smooth.
I would give a nod to GMail though, because instant search and responsive UI for web mail are quite important.
After having a contractor who is technically very good, and has been working in this business longer than me, stand there and argue why he should be an exception to my "No Outlook" policy WHILE I'M CLEANING OUT HIS COMPUTER THAT WAS INFECTED THROUGH AN OUTLOOK HOLE... I reckon that there's some fundamental difference between "average computer users" (no matter how skilled) and people like myself myself that goes far beyond experience and training and into some kind of "Zen" thing... I don't know.
There is nothing worse than a sysadmin who forgets his place. I personally prefer Thunderbird or Opera, but I understand from other people that it's not nearly enough for serious business users. Install the latest, fully patched version of Outlook, educate users, run virus filters on your mail server and let your users do their jobs while you do yours. In the worst case, you can setup that guy with a Mac Mini running Mail.app or Entourage.
Well, nobody would bother you with those small discrepancies if 90% of politicians that share your face didn't try to control us based on one or two sentences in a Bible. Judging from their actions, Bible says "Control with whom, when and how other people have sex. Deny reproductive freedom to women. Kill lots of adults and children in foreign counties. Execute people who pose no immediate threat. Don't help the poor. Deny available medical treatments to the sick". Some of us got curious, read the book and found that in some places it says the opposite of what they do. That "Thou shall not kill" thingy, for example...
So anyway, if you want us to have a more accurate concept about your religion how about you go educated Christian politicians or better yet vote them out of office and replace them with candidates that you think represent your moral values. Including atheists/agnostics who want to help the poor or something.
As for growing up, I didn't have a religion and I wasn't a dickhead. Your millage may vary.
I am sure you already gave your problems a lot of thought, but did you try asking people to type on your notebook/PDA or write notes instead of talking. Meaningful talk over IM is very doable and for me it would be much less annoying than repeating the same thing many times. Alternatively, did you try to learn reading lips?
Ever assembled a desk or something after it was shipped to your place? Those instructions always have numbered steps and statements like "if you don't need to attach your desk to the wall, go to step 5". Makes perfect sense and since the steps are sorted, I can easily find step 5 in the manual rather than looking for a named label or (*horror*) closing brace with correct indentation.
Some programming concepts are cleanest when expressed with functions, some with loops and some with gotos. If you have a finite state machine with 7 states and non-trivial logic for transitions, using 7 well-named labels and gotos is cleaner than any other alternative. K&R C book is pretty slim. I think it's not too much to ask anyone to read it and use all the available language constructs and libraries appropriately.
It only makes glorified typewriters. By contrast, UN is supposed to be the last, impartial arbiter between two countries before the bombs start falling. Or a force to prevent a new holocaust, stop exploitation of children and so on. If they bow to pressure from a mere software company so easy, one has to wonder what kind of changes in UN resolutions were made by Saddam Hussein, US, Iraq or Russia before the bombs really started falling. Or say, oil companies and Nike. Unless we want World War III to be someday started by a typewriter or sneaker company, UN must be indeed disbanded and replaced by an organization that can command some respect.
Dude, you should stop modeling your business habits on your slashdot habits. Any company that doesn't aggressively encourage potential customers to contact them in the way of his/her choice and especially by phone is bound to fail. I am not going to sit in front of computer for 2 hours and wait for your return e-mail when I can get the information from somebody else in 10 minutes and be done with my shopping plans. Moreover, you have chance to convince me I need your product and sell me a case, extra battery or offer me a deal on a higher-end model.
Do I really need to tell you that you can and should put a 1-800 number on your website so that the customer doesn't have to look for the Google's link? Why should anyone trust a business that goes to that much trouble to save 20 or 25 cents on long distance?
Well, the company is not going to care until the 5 human operators start to process account cancelation requests non-stop. Then they will either go under or open a big customer service call center in Bay Area (where else can you find people who speak without an accent but can understand every one else perfectly?).
I always genuinely need to interact with a human being. It's the company's job to know their product and mine to just use it. I am going to explain what I want in natural language and THEY can figure out which department it belongs to and what's my account number.
Even without technology advances brought up by other callers, there are pleanty of places where people are crowded into small spaces. Slave traders can scan the crowd exiting an airport for their "goods". An undercover police officer could just walk through a crowd of protestors and identify everybody there.
Yes, because BitTorrent can not be used for human trafficking or for keeping track of citizens' movements in a totalitarian state, such as one that considers copyright infringement to be more important than these things.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I don't mind pretty packages and beautiful people, but lately is getting to be too much. TV is unwatchable because of growing ad time - and skipping them is still work. I have to burn and re-rip a CD-RW to give a song I like to my girlfriend. I can not put a video of myself dancing on my home page without muting the sound. So I am starting to get off my butt and look for free (libre is more important for me at this point) stuff that I can still enjoy, even if it's kind of cheesy. At least if I like something from project Gutenburg, I can just send a link to a friend. Hey, anyone happens to know any good free ballroom dance music?
How can we complain about known evil companies if slashdot resorts to unclosable popups that obscure the content? Screenshot in Safari
One book is still, well, just a fucking book.
I missed the part where requesting a copy of Karma Sutra triggers a visit from Kenneth Star
Critics say Apple's proprietary technology and its refusal to offer more ways to buy or to stray from its rigid 99 cents a song model is dampening legal sales of digital tunes.
If music industry is considering non-propietory technology and prices below 99 cents/song, there is nothing Apple can do to prevent that. All they have to do is put their stuff on mp3tunes.com
Copyright doesn't apply when presenting materials for legal disputes. Otherwise, how can you sue a newspaper for libel? Just consider this another instance of fair use.
IT professionals have a lot of responsibility and a lot of power, and can seriously f-up a company with a few clicks. Any sane employer doesn't want that to happen.
Critical thinking 101: If an IT person wanted to mess up the system, he/she would put the means to do so in place before giving the resignation notice. Any sane employer rewards considerate behavior that goes beyond job description. They may well want this guy to come and fix some small problem later.
Or is there someother good way to get singles?
Pay for them?
Import them from Russia?
All right, I admit that my main reason to prefer MacOSX over Linux is clean, consistent UI rather than theoretically available functionality. I have 15 years of programming experience on many platforms, but I have no desire to use command line scripts for managing my music and photos or remember 5 versions for copy and paste keyboard shortcuts. I will indeed put up or contribute to Gimp because is free, but there is no way I am paying for it, or other unprofessional-looking UI like Windows or Redhat. I will, however pay for software with good UI. Unfortunately Photoshop Elements is not meant for creating icons, which is the only area of my image processing needs not met by iPhoto.
I am glad that you can look past superficial issues and appreciate a program for it's inner beauty. Your dating life must be much easier than mine. (Imagining my date -> woman == Gimp -> MacOSX app) Shudder!
Nope, just a simple fact that Windows doesn't save content of obscured windows no matter how much RAM/VRAM you have. If you move something, EVERY background program has to process WM_PAINT and redraw itself before the screen looks "clean" again. This is every time you move the window by another pixel! MS own software, such as Explorer, Word and Visual Studio takes extraordinary time to redraw. I think Explorer actually starts reading each icon from a separate file on disk! I don't what to say when a company has $40B or whatever in cash and won't pay a few programmers to fix such simple glitches.
And for a simple reason - all the packages that I need have pretty much ancient versions in fink. And 'recompile yourself' is a step backwards from Linux, where the distros provide the last versions (or very close to) by default.
Well, if you use Linux I assume you like open source. Practice what you preach and contribute updated packages to fink. How do you think they got into Linux distros?
huh? is that what you do on your computer, move windows around? Try actually using the program you launched sometimes, you'll notice that it's *useful* (as opposed to 'just pretty') when you pay attention to the *content* of the window instead of wiggling it around. Perhaps then you'll discover things that actually matter to use in your arguments.
If you interviewed a C programmer who couldn't use printf, would you waste your time finding out what else he/she knows? If "Windows" OS can not move a Window smoothly on a dual P4 with the latest graphics card... well! In any case, it's pretty difficult to use "the program you launched" on your favorite OS. How the heck do I do copy and paste? Ctrl-V? Shift-Ins? Esc-W? Clicking left and right mouse buttons at the same time? There are two separate selections, not every program supports both and everyone has their own keyboard shortcuts. I use Gimp on OSX sometimes for philosophical reasons (I think Adobe should provide a reasonably priced version of Photoshop for casual users rather than relying on piracy to maintain their market share) and boy it's ugly!
For example, a distributed calendar that only 5% of the people used would be pointless. The calendar that I implemented in scripts works for 100% of the users on any browser, and scales up very nicely thank you.
I am glad that your PHP calendar works so well on PDAs, cell phones and notebooks without network connectivity. But other companies where executives do travel and make appointments on the go might ask non-Outlook users to use web interface for calendar. I assume you know that Exchange is not the only choice of server here.
And there certainly aren't 5% of websites that require IE.
MSDN, Windows Update, American Express... In addition, how does your company get customers outside slashdot if your own web designers are not testing their stuff with IE?
I guess it sucks to be you. We have a virus/suspicious attachment filter on the server, Norton Antivirus on standard base image and latest Windows updates. However, 99% of users use Outlook. Outlook Express or IE. Very occasionally, a bugger sneaks in and pollutes a corporate mailing list with a couple of junk messages, but it's not a problem that in any way affects our productivity.
If you are a system administrator, your e-mail/calendar/web access needs are drastically different from your users, so "understand from other people" is a necessity. You are doing a horrible job if 95% of users are happy and virus free, but 5% can not get their work done because they are unable to access an IE-only website or don't have access to a distributed calendar, to do lists and other collaboration tools. Those people have some function in the company and could very well bring it to standstill. If you want, install Firefox and Thunderbird by default, make IE and Outlook available for people who need the features and prepare countermeasures to deal with worms.
I am surprised MacOSX is behind Firefox. The later doesn't provide a huge functionality leap over earlier products such as Opera or Safari . On the other hand, everyone who used OSX for a month will never go back to Windows. Let's start with a fact that moving a window on XP leaves annoying flicker on the background while the "damaged" windows redraw themselves, while on MacOSX the movement is perfectly smooth.
I would give a nod to GMail though, because instant search and responsive UI for web mail are quite important.
After having a contractor who is technically very good, and has been working in this business longer than me, stand there and argue why he should be an exception to my "No Outlook" policy WHILE I'M CLEANING OUT HIS COMPUTER THAT WAS INFECTED THROUGH AN OUTLOOK HOLE... I reckon that there's some fundamental difference between "average computer users" (no matter how skilled) and people like myself myself that goes far beyond experience and training and into some kind of "Zen" thing... I don't know.
There is nothing worse than a sysadmin who forgets his place. I personally prefer Thunderbird or Opera, but I understand from other people that it's not nearly enough for serious business users. Install the latest, fully patched version of Outlook, educate users, run virus filters on your mail server and let your users do their jobs while you do yours. In the worst case, you can setup that guy with a Mac Mini running Mail.app or Entourage.
They already do
Well, nobody would bother you with those small discrepancies if 90% of politicians that share your face didn't try to control us based on one or two sentences in a Bible. Judging from their actions, Bible says "Control with whom, when and how other people have sex. Deny reproductive freedom to women. Kill lots of adults and children in foreign counties. Execute people who pose no immediate threat. Don't help the poor. Deny available medical treatments to the sick". Some of us got curious, read the book and found that in some places it says the opposite of what they do. That "Thou shall not kill" thingy, for example...
So anyway, if you want us to have a more accurate concept about your religion how about you go educated Christian politicians or better yet vote them out of office and replace them with candidates that you think represent your moral values. Including atheists/agnostics who want to help the poor or something.
As for growing up, I didn't have a religion and I wasn't a dickhead. Your millage may vary.
I am sure you already gave your problems a lot of thought, but did you try asking people to type on your notebook/PDA or write notes instead of talking. Meaningful talk over IM is very doable and for me it would be much less annoying than repeating the same thing many times. Alternatively, did you try to learn reading lips?
Ever assembled a desk or something after it was shipped to your place? Those instructions always have numbered steps and statements like "if you don't need to attach your desk to the wall, go to step 5". Makes perfect sense and since the steps are sorted, I can easily find step 5 in the manual rather than looking for a named label or (*horror*) closing brace with correct indentation.
Some programming concepts are cleanest when expressed with functions, some with loops and some with gotos. If you have a finite state machine with 7 states and non-trivial logic for transitions, using 7 well-named labels and gotos is cleaner than any other alternative. K&R C book is pretty slim. I think it's not too much to ask anyone to read it and use all the available language constructs and libraries appropriately.
It only makes glorified typewriters. By contrast, UN is supposed to be the last, impartial arbiter between two countries before the bombs start falling. Or a force to prevent a new holocaust, stop exploitation of children and so on. If they bow to pressure from a mere software company so easy, one has to wonder what kind of changes in UN resolutions were made by Saddam Hussein, US, Iraq or Russia before the bombs really started falling. Or say, oil companies and Nike. Unless we want World War III to be someday started by a typewriter or sneaker company, UN must be indeed disbanded and replaced by an organization that can command some respect.
Dude, you should stop modeling your business habits on your slashdot habits. Any company that doesn't aggressively encourage potential customers to contact them in the way of his/her choice and especially by phone is bound to fail. I am not going to sit in front of computer for 2 hours and wait for your return e-mail when I can get the information from somebody else in 10 minutes and be done with my shopping plans. Moreover, you have chance to convince me I need your product and sell me a case, extra battery or offer me a deal on a higher-end model.
Do I really need to tell you that you can and should put a 1-800 number on your website so that the customer doesn't have to look for the Google's link? Why should anyone trust a business that goes to that much trouble to save 20 or 25 cents on long distance?
Well, the company is not going to care until the 5 human operators start to process account cancelation requests non-stop. Then they will either go under or open a big customer service call center in Bay Area (where else can you find people who speak without an accent but can understand every one else perfectly?).
I always genuinely need to interact with a human being. It's the company's job to know their product and mine to just use it. I am going to explain what I want in natural language and THEY can figure out which department it belongs to and what's my account number.
Even without technology advances brought up by other callers, there are pleanty of places where people are crowded into small spaces. Slave traders can scan the crowd exiting an airport for their "goods". An undercover police officer could just walk through a crowd of protestors and identify everybody there.
Yes, because BitTorrent can not be used for human trafficking or for keeping track of citizens' movements in a totalitarian state, such as one that considers copyright infringement to be more important than these things.
In Soviet Russia DRM violates YOU!