Yes, the reason that Britney Spears sucks is that she just doesn't have enough $200,000 SUVs. A few more Hummers and her music would really improve I think. Really? How many hummers would she have to give you before you would say her music was good?
Linux is generally nice and stable, but when it does go wrong, to most people it's just far, far too hard to recover your installation back into a working state - much more so than, dare I say it, Windows. I think that that is the case ONLY because those people are coming from a Windows background Wrong. It's because Linux generally sucks worse at handling failure cases in a usable way. Granted, Windows often sucks at it too, but not as badly as Linux does.
Example:
In Windows, if you plug in a USB printer for which Windows has no built-in driver, Windows automatically detects that you've plugged in a new device, searches for a built-in driver, and then explains that it cannot find a suitable driver and offers to send you off to Windows Update to find one. Windows Update almost always finds one (or at least digs up a link to the printer manufacturer's web site where you can go get it yourself).
In Linux, if you plug in a USB printer for which Linux has no built-in driver (say, the Canon i450), nothing happens. You first have to go manually launch a printer installation wizard. When you inevitably discover that your printer isn't in the list of printers built-in to Linux, the dialog gives you no further instructions or help to get things working. So you have to go scour the web to find out that the Canon bjc7500 driver should work for the i450. So you go back through the wizard and pick bjc7500, but then you get a mysterious error dialog as if the driver cannot be found -- even though it was in the list to begin with. So you go back online and post in a forum for help, and people suggest you may need to run the add printer wizard using root priveleges. So you do that, but it doesn't fix anything. So now you're stuck, and you've wasted two days (due to help forum turnaround time) trying to just get your printer (which works fine under Windows, by the way) working under Linux, which multiple sources say should be possible but which clearly doesn't work the way they say.
That's the kind of thing where Linux sucks. If it works the expected way, it's fine, but if not, you're up a creek.
Welcome to Linux, where things are implemented not according to the greatest user need, but according to which things are of interest to geeks with their heads up their collective asses.
Most people perceive unpopular people as "black holes" in the popularity space: get too close to one, and you yourself will become unpopular. Most people will stay way from independents for that reason alone (even if they wholeheartedly align with the independent's stances on the actual issues).
Independents are perceived as unpopular for a number of reasons. They rarely get much of the vote, and they always seem to be pissed off about something that most people don't understand or care much about. They also tend to focus on the actual issues (dry boring shit to most people) instead of trying to pass themselves off as charismatic inspiring leaders (way more interesting to most people).
It's unfortunate, but consistently true, that the most popular people are the ones who abuse unpopular people. After all, according to the black hole theory of popularity, the way to maximize your popularity is to stay as far the fuck away from unpopular people as possible, which means actively and publicly abusing them. School bullies, Adolf Hitler, the Republican party, and Lord Voldemort all used the same tactic to boost themselves and round up supporters.
Unless you're the CEO, a manager sits in between two layers: higher-level managers above, and lower-level contributors below.
To be a good manager, you have to stay in touch with, and informed by, both sides. Give both sides real consideration, make decisions that strike the right balance, and then make sure to explain to both sides how you arrived at your decisions using their input.
The biggest mistake many managers make is to only worry about pleasing the managers they report to, ignoring all the people under them.
Of course, this is just one piece of an overarching philosophy, which is: always make decisions that are in the best long-term interest of the business as a whole. Don't make short-sighted decisions that provide benefit now while making things worse later, and don't prioritize your own career and reputation over the health of the business.
Yeah, let's stick it to those dirty bastards who want to be paid for producing the content everyone else wants for free. I see where the MPAA has the ethics problem here.
They're not dirty bastards for wanting to get paid for their work. They're dirty bastards for trying to control and restrict how paying customers use what they've bought, and for demanding to be paid over and over again for the same content.
If I buy a DVD, I've already paid for it! I own it. (Don't tell me I've only "licensed" it, that's bullshit. I own it.) I shouldn't have to buy the same movie again to get a backup copy, get it in a different format, or be able to play it on a different device -- because I already paid for the content, and it's no one's business but MINE what I do with the things I own. And I shouldn't be restricted by my DVD player from fast-forwarding through the fucking ads and previews. I shouldn't have to endure any ads or previews because I already paid for the damn thing!
That's the unethical MPAA behavior I'm talking about.
Your comment reveals a deep misunderstanding about what's going on.
No, his comment reveals a correct understanding of the ethics of the issue. No company should hold unnecessary control over its customers. Consumers should always have choices. Everything should always be open and in the customers' best interests.
Linux-based systems have awful usability. They are unnecessarily convoluted and complex, riddled with inconsistencies in both function and appearance. They are geared for success only in the most common cases, but don't provide adequate failure handling and resolution steps for when things don't go as planned.
It doesn't matter how technically great something is if it's stupidly hard to use, wastes users' valuable time and energy, and is too easy to accidentally foul up if you aren't a trained expert. And making something properly usable does NOT mean dumbing it down so that it's obnoxious for experts; good usability makes the experience better for everyone by saving people time and annoyance. It's about time the Linux community grokked that and started caring about the poor users instead of telling them to RTFM. If a piece of software requires reading a manual to understand it, rather than the user being able to explore and discover and figure it out intuitively, then the fault lies with the design of the thing, not with its user.
So if I were king, I would immediately require ALL people working on Linux to read all the standard classic books on usability (The Design of Everyday Things, etc). Then I would transfer 75% of all Linux-related manpower and thinking to usability improvements. (The other 25% I would allocate to improving device support/drivers).
The worst are posted job listings with impossible requirements such as:
"Must have 10+ years of Vista experience"
or
"Must have at least 7 years experience with C#"
You know some retards in the HR department wrote those. If a company is really that dumb, you have to ask yourself if it's a place you want to work at in the first place.
There's also a strong (and obvious) correlation between physical attractiveness and IQ as well.
People who aren't physically attractive don't get as many social, romantic, or sexual opportunities as attractive people do. As a result, they are forced to spend a lot of time alone and often feel like failures when it comes to the opposite sex or socializing in general. So it's only natural that they spend their time in non-social activities that they can excel at and feel empowered by. And it's only natural that they don't make sex a high priority, because they've learned that it's just a dead-end, frustrating endeavor that shouldn't even be attempted.
As for the old theory about smart people not taking care of their appearance being the cause of their lack of attractiveness, that's clearly wrong. Plenty of smart people have great hygeine, dress well, smell good, etc, but are still cursed with being unattractive due to circumstances out of their control (ugly face, acne, balding, weight issues due to metabolism, etc).
Here in the United States, almost nobody wants a tiny underpowered car, even knowing its fuel-efficiency and parking advantages.
That's because there are other factors most people are more concerned about: power, safety, and carrying capacity.
POWER: If your car is underpowered, especially in a hilly area, you feel endangered, because most cars on the road are bigger and more powerful, and the drivers of those cars tend to tailgate (to try to "push" you into going faster) or swerve around you and cut you off (to get around you).
SAFETY: Most people don't feel safe in small cars, because most cars on the road are big cars. I don't care how safe you make a Smart Car -- when it collides head-on with a Hummer or an Escalade, it's going to be on the losing end of the stick. Also, lack of power is a safety issue because "the best defense is a strong offense". And having a tiny car that may be difficult for drivers of bigger, taller vehicles to see is also a safety issue.
CAPACITY: If you can spend $20000 and get a 2-seater car with no trunk, or spend $25000 and get a car that can seat four and has a big trunk, it just makes financial sense to buy the larger car. And most people here in the states cannot afford an "extra" car just for people-commuting.
So tiny underpowered cars will only ever work in the US if:
- the vast majority of other vehicles on the road are also tiny underpowered cars (Catch-22)
- they get so cheap (say, $8000 or less) that people can afford to buy them as "extra" cars for commuting
- they start coming with modular "add-ons" to add more seating or carrying capacity when you need it
(sorta like a pull-behind trailer, but more convenient to own and operate and connect/disconnect)
The recommendation comes following issues stemming from Thompson's Bully case last year where there were issues regarding his professional conduct.
Translation: "The recommendation comes following issues stemming from Thompson's Bully case last year where there were issues regarding his inability to refrain from ranting like a raving lunatic and exposing his genitalia to the courtroom while prancing around like a chicken with jock itch."
There are three principles that need to be applied to fix the broken health-care system here in the U.S.:
1. Transparency and accountability These drive up quality and drive down costs. When patients can see that a particular doctor or particular hospital overcharges relative to others, offers no corresponding advantage in care quality, or actually has a track record of medical malpractice, then patients will go elsewhere. That would create incentive for hospitals and doctors to improve the quality of care and/or drop their prices.
Today the costs are hidden from most patients because insurance picks them up (in part or in full), and that means there's no competition among healthcare providers to keep costs down. That's why you see hospitals charging ridiculous amounts (like $200 for an ACE bandage).
Healthcare providers should be required by law to clearly publish all over their premises:
- their costs (boiled down to some kind of a "score" that patients can easily understand)
- their quality (again, boiled down to some kind of a "score")
The method for calculating the "score" should be defined by the law in a standard way that the public can inspect and challenge, and federal inspectors should be able to revoke a healthcare provider's license and shut them down if their scores are found to be inaccurate or beyond certain threshholds. The law should require scores to be updated monthly.
2. Supply and demand The number of patients (demand) is increasing far faster than the number of healthcare providers (supply). This drives costs (and long waits) up, and quality of care down (as doctors are overworked and tired and make more mistakes). The only possible solution here is to increase the rate of supply creation until it is actually faster than the rate of demand increase. The way you do this (as others here have correctly noted) is to fix the broken medical schooling system so that it's not so unnecessarily hellish to become a doctor, nurse, surgeon, etc. People shouldn't have to give up their own lives and families and run up hundreds of thousands of dollars in college debt in order to enter the medical profession.
The most immediate way to fix this broken system is to grant federal funds to state colleges ONLY if they offer medical programs that charge less than $5,000/year for tuition and that require no more than 6 years (total) of schooling to graduate with a medical degree.
3. Timeliness of medical care and burden of proof Just because a medical condition is not immediately life-threatening, that doesn't mean it's a wise idea to postpone medical care. Postponing minor medical treatment almost always results in bigger medial problems later, which end up costing more, which is bad for everyone involved (the patient, the medical provider, the insurance company, etc).
The reason most people don't get medical care when they ought to is that they know it will put them into debt. They know that after they've received the treatment, they won't be able to pay it off without going bankrupt and losing their home or other basic possessions. So the only way to fix the system so people get medical care early is to give patients peace of mind that their legitimate medical needs will always be covered.
Federal law should REQUIRE insurance companies to pay for all medical costs, so that the patient never owes ANYTHING to an insurance company. Federal law should ALSO REQUIRE an insurance company to then PROVE before a CIVIL COURT that a patient actually DEFRAUDED them in order to recoup payments made on behalf of a fraudulent claim. In other words, the burden of proof needs to be shifted from the patient (from having to prove the legitimacy of their need for medical care) to the insurance company (to have to prove that a claim was indeed fraudulent), and coverage should only ever be denied based on actual FRAUD.
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Example:
In Windows, if you plug in a USB printer for which Windows has no built-in driver, Windows automatically detects that you've plugged in a new device, searches for a built-in driver, and then explains that it cannot find a suitable driver and offers to send you off to Windows Update to find one. Windows Update almost always finds one (or at least digs up a link to the printer manufacturer's web site where you can go get it yourself).
In Linux, if you plug in a USB printer for which Linux has no built-in driver (say, the Canon i450), nothing happens. You first have to go manually launch a printer installation wizard. When you inevitably discover that your printer isn't in the list of printers built-in to Linux, the dialog gives you no further instructions or help to get things working. So you have to go scour the web to find out that the Canon bjc7500 driver should work for the i450. So you go back through the wizard and pick bjc7500, but then you get a mysterious error dialog as if the driver cannot be found -- even though it was in the list to begin with. So you go back online and post in a forum for help, and people suggest you may need to run the add printer wizard using root priveleges. So you do that, but it doesn't fix anything. So now you're stuck, and you've wasted two days (due to help forum turnaround time) trying to just get your printer (which works fine under Windows, by the way) working under Linux, which multiple sources say should be possible but which clearly doesn't work the way they say.
That's the kind of thing where Linux sucks. If it works the expected way, it's fine, but if not, you're up a creek.
Welcome to Linux, where things are implemented not according to the greatest user need, but according to which things are of interest to geeks with their heads up their collective asses.
It's because politics is a popularity contest.
Most people perceive unpopular people as "black holes" in the popularity space: get too close to one, and you yourself will become unpopular. Most people will stay way from independents for that reason alone (even if they wholeheartedly align with the independent's stances on the actual issues).
Independents are perceived as unpopular for a number of reasons. They rarely get much of the vote, and they always seem to be pissed off about something that most people don't understand or care much about. They also tend to focus on the actual issues (dry boring shit to most people) instead of trying to pass themselves off as charismatic inspiring leaders (way more interesting to most people).
It's unfortunate, but consistently true, that the most popular people are the ones who abuse unpopular people. After all, according to the black hole theory of popularity, the way to maximize your popularity is to stay as far the fuck away from unpopular people as possible, which means actively and publicly abusing them. School bullies, Adolf Hitler, the Republican party, and Lord Voldemort all used the same tactic to boost themselves and round up supporters.
Unless you're the CEO, a manager sits in between two layers: higher-level managers above, and lower-level contributors below.
To be a good manager, you have to stay in touch with, and informed by, both sides. Give both sides real consideration, make decisions that strike the right balance, and then make sure to explain to both sides how you arrived at your decisions using their input.
The biggest mistake many managers make is to only worry about pleasing the managers they report to, ignoring all the people under them.
Of course, this is just one piece of an overarching philosophy, which is: always make decisions that are in the best long-term interest of the business as a whole. Don't make short-sighted decisions that provide benefit now while making things worse later, and don't prioritize your own career and reputation over the health of the business.
Yeah, let's stick it to those dirty bastards who want to be paid for producing the content everyone else wants for free. I see where the MPAA has the ethics problem here.
They're not dirty bastards for wanting to get paid for their work. They're dirty bastards for trying to control and restrict how paying customers use what they've bought, and for demanding to be paid over and over again for the same content.
If I buy a DVD, I've already paid for it! I own it. (Don't tell me I've only "licensed" it, that's bullshit. I own it.) I shouldn't have to buy the same movie again to get a backup copy, get it in a different format, or be able to play it on a different device -- because I already paid for the content, and it's no one's business but MINE what I do with the things I own. And I shouldn't be restricted by my DVD player from fast-forwarding through the fucking ads and previews. I shouldn't have to endure any ads or previews because I already paid for the damn thing!
That's the unethical MPAA behavior I'm talking about.
Nelson says: "Haaah-haaaaah!"
Your comment reveals a deep misunderstanding about what's going on.
No, his comment reveals a correct understanding of the ethics of the issue. No company should hold unnecessary control over its customers. Consumers should always have choices. Everything should always be open and in the customers' best interests.
If you've got a distinguished and influential guest addressing your class, you need to show him respect.
Why? Respect is something that must be earned, and people devoid of ethics deserve none.
But spawns of satan don't burn.
Linux-based systems have awful usability. They are unnecessarily convoluted and complex, riddled with inconsistencies in both function and appearance. They are geared for success only in the most common cases, but don't provide adequate failure handling and resolution steps for when things don't go as planned.
It doesn't matter how technically great something is if it's stupidly hard to use, wastes users' valuable time and energy, and is too easy to accidentally foul up if you aren't a trained expert. And making something properly usable does NOT mean dumbing it down so that it's obnoxious for experts; good usability makes the experience better for everyone by saving people time and annoyance. It's about time the Linux community grokked that and started caring about the poor users instead of telling them to RTFM. If a piece of software requires reading a manual to understand it, rather than the user being able to explore and discover and figure it out intuitively, then the fault lies with the design of the thing, not with its user.
So if I were king, I would immediately require ALL people working on Linux to read all the standard classic books on usability (The Design of Everyday Things, etc). Then I would transfer 75% of all Linux-related manpower and thinking to usability improvements. (The other 25% I would allocate to improving device support/drivers).
Am I the only one who read this as LG Phillips Patents Oil and Water Display ?
The worst are posted job listings with impossible requirements such as:
"Must have 10+ years of Vista experience"
or
"Must have at least 7 years experience with C#"
You know some retards in the HR department wrote those. If a company is really that dumb, you have to ask yourself if it's a place you want to work at in the first place.
Monkeys and Humans Learn the Same Way
Monkeys read Slashdot?!?
There's also a strong (and obvious) correlation between physical attractiveness and IQ as well.
People who aren't physically attractive don't get as many social, romantic, or sexual opportunities as attractive people do. As a result, they are forced to spend a lot of time alone and often feel like failures when it comes to the opposite sex or socializing in general. So it's only natural that they spend their time in non-social activities that they can excel at and feel empowered by. And it's only natural that they don't make sex a high priority, because they've learned that it's just a dead-end, frustrating endeavor that shouldn't even be attempted.
As for the old theory about smart people not taking care of their appearance being the cause of their lack of attractiveness, that's clearly wrong. Plenty of smart people have great hygeine, dress well, smell good, etc, but are still cursed with being unattractive due to circumstances out of their control (ugly face, acne, balding, weight issues due to metabolism, etc).
Here in the United States, almost nobody wants a tiny underpowered car, even knowing its fuel-efficiency and parking advantages.
That's because there are other factors most people are more concerned about: power, safety, and carrying capacity.
POWER: If your car is underpowered, especially in a hilly area, you feel endangered, because most cars on the road are bigger and more powerful, and the drivers of those cars tend to tailgate (to try to "push" you into going faster) or swerve around you and cut you off (to get around you).
SAFETY: Most people don't feel safe in small cars, because most cars on the road are big cars. I don't care how safe you make a Smart Car -- when it collides head-on with a Hummer or an Escalade, it's going to be on the losing end of the stick. Also, lack of power is a safety issue because "the best defense is a strong offense". And having a tiny car that may be difficult for drivers of bigger, taller vehicles to see is also a safety issue.
CAPACITY: If you can spend $20000 and get a 2-seater car with no trunk, or spend $25000 and get a car that can seat four and has a big trunk, it just makes financial sense to buy the larger car. And most people here in the states cannot afford an "extra" car just for people-commuting.
So tiny underpowered cars will only ever work in the US if:
- the vast majority of other vehicles on the road are also tiny underpowered cars (Catch-22)
- they get so cheap (say, $8000 or less) that people can afford to buy them as "extra" cars for commuting
- they start coming with modular "add-ons" to add more seating or carrying capacity when you need it
(sorta like a pull-behind trailer, but more convenient to own and operate and connect/disconnect)
- gas prices shoot up to $10/gallon
The electric current generated by the Crowd Farm could then be used for educational purposes, such as lighting up a sign about energy.
He reached out and pressed an invitingly large red button on a nearby panel. The panel lit up with the words 'Please do not press this button again.
I always wanted to get a Prius and cut the logo apart and stick an "M" in it.
Toyota Primus!
The recommendation comes following issues stemming from Thompson's Bully case last year where there were issues regarding his professional conduct.
Translation: "The recommendation comes following issues stemming from Thompson's Bully case last year where there were issues regarding his inability to refrain from ranting like a raving lunatic and exposing his genitalia to the courtroom while prancing around like a chicken with jock itch."
I did not have inappropriate downloads with that source code!
The logfile in my server closet says otherwise -- your grep is all over it.
It's not going to be a military super-computing network that will become self-sentient and kill us all with super-advanced weaponry.
It's going to be a self-aware army of super-evolved spam-bots and rootkits that will forcibly overdose us all on Cialis and Viagra.
There are three principles that need to be applied to fix the broken health-care system here in the U.S.:
1. Transparency and accountability
These drive up quality and drive down costs. When patients can see that a particular doctor or particular hospital overcharges relative to others, offers no corresponding advantage in care quality, or actually has a track record of medical malpractice, then patients will go elsewhere. That would create incentive for hospitals and doctors to improve the quality of care and/or drop their prices.
Today the costs are hidden from most patients because insurance picks them up (in part or in full), and that means there's no competition among healthcare providers to keep costs down. That's why you see hospitals charging ridiculous amounts (like $200 for an ACE bandage).
Healthcare providers should be required by law to clearly publish all over their premises:
- their costs (boiled down to some kind of a "score" that patients can easily understand)
- their quality (again, boiled down to some kind of a "score")
The method for calculating the "score" should be defined by the law in a standard way that the public can inspect and challenge, and federal inspectors should be able to revoke a healthcare provider's license and shut them down if their scores are found to be inaccurate or beyond certain threshholds. The law should require scores to be updated monthly.
2. Supply and demand
The number of patients (demand) is increasing far faster than the number of healthcare providers (supply). This drives costs (and long waits) up, and quality of care down (as doctors are overworked and tired and make more mistakes). The only possible solution here is to increase the rate of supply creation until it is actually faster than the rate of demand increase. The way you do this (as others here have correctly noted) is to fix the broken medical schooling system so that it's not so unnecessarily hellish to become a doctor, nurse, surgeon, etc. People shouldn't have to give up their own lives and families and run up hundreds of thousands of dollars in college debt in order to enter the medical profession.
The most immediate way to fix this broken system is to grant federal funds to state colleges ONLY if they offer medical programs that charge less than $5,000/year for tuition and that require no more than 6 years (total) of schooling to graduate with a medical degree.
3. Timeliness of medical care and burden of proof
Just because a medical condition is not immediately life-threatening, that doesn't mean it's a wise idea to postpone medical care. Postponing minor medical treatment almost always results in bigger medial problems later, which end up costing more, which is bad for everyone involved (the patient, the medical provider, the insurance company, etc).
The reason most people don't get medical care when they ought to is that they know it will put them into debt. They know that after they've received the treatment, they won't be able to pay it off without going bankrupt and losing their home or other basic possessions. So the only way to fix the system so people get medical care early is to give patients peace of mind that their legitimate medical needs will always be covered.
Federal law should REQUIRE insurance companies to pay for all medical costs, so that the patient never owes ANYTHING to an insurance company. Federal law should ALSO REQUIRE an insurance company to then PROVE before a CIVIL COURT that a patient actually DEFRAUDED them in order to recoup payments made on behalf of a fraudulent claim. In other words, the burden of proof needs to be shifted from the patient (from having to prove the legitimacy of their need for medical care) to the insurance company (to have to prove that a claim was indeed fraudulent), and coverage should only ever be denied based on actual FRAUD.
That sounds like my dad's old tipping philosophy:
1. Start your dining experience by laying a stack of one-dollar bills on the edge of the table.
2. Every time the waitperson fouls up, remove a dollar from the stack.
3. Whatever's left at the end of the meal is their tip.
Now they just need to build a robot that sits permanently attached in the robot chair, and they'll have implemented Futurama's HedonismBot!
...oh, now I remember:
"PLEASE EXIT THE CHAIR! YOU HAVE 10 SECONDS TO COMPLY! 9! 8! 7!..."