I believe that it is ALWAYS our job to teach, and I always try to teach EVERY user that I help. I was a desktop support technician and now I work freelance and do home office work (with much more competence than GeekSquad). I'm not an admin. But for fifteen years I have always had the attitude that if I did not teach the user something new while fixing the problem, I have not done my job properly.
It depends on the situation. Once the problem is fixed, I usually say something like, "Please sit down here with the keyboard and the mouse and let me walk you through how to fix this, so that you don't have to call us for help the next time this happens."
Some users are oblivious, but I always try.
I don't think that part is ridiculous. There's a distinction between a real estate agent and a Realtor®. One is a person who has a license to sell real estate, and another is a person who pays dues to and is a member of the National Association of Realtors®. It's been that way for many decades, as far as I know.
I use NeoOffice on Macintosh, which of course is derived from OpenOffice.
I always set it to save all relevant documents in Microsoft Windows 2003 format, and I set the Macintosh Finder to open.doc,.xls and.ppt files with NeoOffice by default.
This is because the documents I receive as email attachments, and the documents I email to others for collaboration, need to be in Microsoft format.
Practically speaking, I can't think of any situation in which I would prefer OpenOffice native format to Microsoft Windows 2003.
NeoOffice is developed by a (very) small team of people who have worked very hard and acheived some wonderful results in the last year. The program has become much faster and more responsive. And it's quite Mac-like.
If you use it, please donate a couple of $10 bills to their efforts through PayPal on their web page. I've made several small donations to them over the past three years and I think it was money well spent.
The word that worries me in your discussion above is where you say that you have been "disgusted" with the Motion Picture Association's activities.
If you've got a distinguished and influential guest addressing your class, you need to show him respect.
You are not in the business of making or financing motion pictures or record albums, so you have no real stake in the argument. It does not affect your ability to earn a living and feed your family one way or another. Richard Taylor, on the other hand, speaks for tens of thousands of people who earn their livings making and financing motion pictures and record albums. He wants to present their point of view, and he knows what he is talking about.
So show some class, act like a gentleman, and make sure your students are respectful as well.
You won't convince or influence anybody with scorn and invective. If you listen to Richard Taylor, you might learn a few things and better understand his point of view.
I'm a longtime Slashdot reader and occasional poster and I have always supported the activities of the RIAA. This year I officially became a member of the RIAA.
Not everybody here is against the record business.
OpenOffice.org runs on Mac OS X under X11. NeoOffice is an independently developed version of OpenOffice.org 2.1 which runs on Mac OS X natively and without the need for X11. I've been using it for years.
I learned to touch-type the conventional way circa 1979. I switched to Dvorak in 1988 shortly after I got my first Macintosh. I've also used Dvorak on Apple II, MS DOS, and all versions of Windows from 3.0 up, and any Linux distros that I've ever gotten my hands on.
With the standard keyboard layout, I could never do better than 35 words per minute. Within a year of switching to Dvorak, I was typing 90 words per minute, and experiencing less stress in my wrists, hands and fingers.
But as far as an increase in popularity of Dvorak, I haven't seen that. People are always clueless and incredulous whenever I try to explain to them what Dvorak is and why anybody would care.
"Maths" is the term used in England, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. "Math" is exclusively an American term. The word being abbreviated is "mathematics", which is plural and has an "s" at the end, so saying "maths" makes more sense than "math".
Last August I purchased the only stand-alone external terrestrial digital TV receiver I could identify on the market. It's a Samsung unit, and it cost US $200.
We don't have cable TV or satellite TV and we don't want it. I bought the Samsung unit to interface to a 32-inch Sony CRT television that is about twelve years old.
All the stations in my area, save one, are already broadcasting both analog and digital. With digital, I get dramatically better picture quality, though it's harder to use because you tend to have to re-tune the antenna (see below) when you change channels, particularly between UHF and VHF (those distinctions persist into the digital realm, too).
It takes some getting used to. When signals are weak, your TV displays weird freezing and pixellation, and the sound stutters. It's quite disconcerting at first.
Somebody awhile back wrote that with digital broadcast TV, you either get a perfect display of the channel on your screen, or you get no image or sound at all. That's just not true. You always have to deal with the freezing, stuttering, distorted audio and pixellation, although if you are persistent, you can learn how to tune in each station correctly and the breakup happens far less often.
And by the way, you still need the rabbit ears. Broadcast digital TV requires an antenna--the same kind of antenna required for broadcast analog TV.
The main reason that the US government is starting this program is two-fold. First, broadcast television is where most citizens (who don't have cable or satellite) still get their news, and being able to hear the news daily is considered a part of participating in democracy. Second, Congress mandated the cessation of analog broadcast TV at the end of 2009, so Congress is placing a burden on some (mostly poor) citizens who could become disenfranchised from the democracy through not being able to watch news broadcasts on their TV as a direct result of Congress' actions.
Apple is already a successful and profitable company, and they have been for years. There is no "win" or "lose". Microsoft makes tons of money and Apple makes a good deal of money. Everybody wins. If Apple's "market share" never changes much, they will continue to be a successful and profitable company in perpetuity. What's all the fuss about market share and "who wins"?
You guys need to learn how to rewrite and edit these story descriptions.
I read this one and had absolutely no idea what the submitter was talking about. It was gibberish.
The description said nothing to inform the reader that this was about a cartoon program on a cable television channel, depicting characters named "Ignignot" and "Err".
The first sentence of the AP wire story that this post refers to explained things intelligibly: "Nine blinking electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday in what turned out to be a marketing campaign for a late-night cable cartoon."
That explains things.
You should not assume that your readers already know what the heck you are writing about. Good writing informs the un-informed; it doesn't cater only to people who watch obscure television programs.
Tieing the web browser to the operating system and creating Active X controls, and then putting no security on them, ushered in the era of spyware and caused tremendous suffering for users and the tech support people scrambling to try to stamp out the spyware.
When a songwriter dies, his wife, children or other surviving relatives have a legal expectation to continue to earn a little royalty income from his songs. In most cases involving famous songwriters, the songwriter has formed a corporation and/or publishing company with a staff of employees who maintain the catalog of songs and continue to market them. Songwriters write songs with the idea that they will continue to bring in money for their spouses and children for decades after they die.
What's wrong with that?
One problem with the current reality of Internet file sharing is that successful songwriters have far less certainty of being able to provide for their loved ones in the future. I think that's very unfortunate.
I've been saying this for years. Give your grandma something easy to use. She won't need to worry about viruses and spyware. She can just enjoy receiving emails with pictures of her grandkids attached. She'll love you for it.
If they run Macintosh, they will have no viruses, trojans, or spyware. They will not become zombies on a botnet. They will not acquire keyloggers or malicious rootkits. Mac OS X Tiger's security features will take care of them. No need for anti-virus software or anti-spyware software.
Your parents still need to know how to protect themselves from phishing attacks and other human engineering fraud. They still need to know how to protect their privacy.
But if you simply switch them to Macintosh, the most serious and malignant problems simply won't exist any more, and you won't have to worry about protecting your parents from them.
We convinced my father-in-law to carry a cell phone about a year ago. He bristled at the idea of ever using any functions other than placing and receiving calls. Voice mail? Forget it. If the person is not sitting at the phone at the time John calls, he doesn't want to leave any message for them anyway. An address book? No way. He's proud of the fact that he has memorized the phone numbers of several dozens of friends, and snorts at the idea of using a machine to list phone numbers alphabetized by names. He actually made me delete all the entries of family members in the address book I had programmed for him the night before. Ringtones? Pictures and graphics? Menus full of functions? Text messaging? We never needed any of those during the Eisenhower administration. Hmmph.
When his new hunting dog puppy chewed up and destroyed John's cell phone, we had to go looking for the absolutely cheapest replacement with the fewest features obtainable, because that's all he would spend any money on.
Probably because Slashdot readers recognize that when Apple comes out with a new model, there's usually some serious innovation involved. Dell, HP or Lenovo certainly innovate, just not as often and not as dramatically.
Actually this MacBook Pro is lower on the innovation scale than the last model, but it looks like a really good deal and a better value than the last model.
Market share does not matter, and never has. Apple sells millions of computers and makes a nice profit for the stockholders.
Twenty years ago Apple had a certain market share of a small number of personal computers sold in the world.
Today Apple has a certain smaller percentage of a much larger number of personal computers in the world. But it's selling more new computers now than it ever has, many more per year than it did twenty years ago.
As long as Apple makes money, putting out sophisticated computer systems, who cares about market share?
If I only had US$0.05 for every time I heard somebody predict doom for Apple over its tiny market share...
Some people think that protecting copyrights on music, literature and film is more important than technological innovation, and that technological capabilities should not be allowed to dictate how society and the marketplace deal with music, literature and films. Some people think that democracy should determine protection for intellectual property, regardless of what technology might be capable of doing with it. Otherwise technocrats will have the power to rule over and damage art, culture and literature. I'm a computer geek who is also a musician and I think this is a valid point of view.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that it is ALWAYS our job to teach, and I always try to teach EVERY user that I help. I was a desktop support technician and now I work freelance and do home office work (with much more competence than GeekSquad). I'm not an admin. But for fifteen years I have always had the attitude that if I did not teach the user something new while fixing the problem, I have not done my job properly. It depends on the situation. Once the problem is fixed, I usually say something like, "Please sit down here with the keyboard and the mouse and let me walk you through how to fix this, so that you don't have to call us for help the next time this happens." Some users are oblivious, but I always try.
Geeky wedding band? Hire Devo or They Might Be Giants. Oingo Boingo and Adam Sandler are no longer working.
I don't think that part is ridiculous. There's a distinction between a real estate agent and a Realtor®. One is a person who has a license to sell real estate, and another is a person who pays dues to and is a member of the National Association of Realtors®. It's been that way for many decades, as far as I know.
I use NeoOffice on Macintosh, which of course is derived from OpenOffice.
.doc, .xls and .ppt files with NeoOffice by default.
I always set it to save all relevant documents in Microsoft Windows 2003 format, and I set the Macintosh Finder to open
This is because the documents I receive as email attachments, and the documents I email to others for collaboration, need to be in Microsoft format.
Practically speaking, I can't think of any situation in which I would prefer OpenOffice native format to Microsoft Windows 2003.
NeoOffice is developed by a (very) small team of people who have worked very hard and acheived some wonderful results in the last year. The program has become much faster and more responsive. And it's quite Mac-like.
If you use it, please donate a couple of $10 bills to their efforts through PayPal on their web page. I've made several small donations to them over the past three years and I think it was money well spent.
DataViz MacLink Plus is a commercial program which can handle your conversion needs with your older AppleWorks or ClarisWorks documents.
The word that worries me in your discussion above is where you say that you have been "disgusted" with the Motion Picture Association's activities.
If you've got a distinguished and influential guest addressing your class, you need to show him respect.
You are not in the business of making or financing motion pictures or record albums, so you have no real stake in the argument. It does not affect your ability to earn a living and feed your family one way or another. Richard Taylor, on the other hand, speaks for tens of thousands of people who earn their livings making and financing motion pictures and record albums. He wants to present their point of view, and he knows what he is talking about.
So show some class, act like a gentleman, and make sure your students are respectful as well.
You won't convince or influence anybody with scorn and invective. If you listen to Richard Taylor, you might learn a few things and better understand his point of view.
I'm a longtime Slashdot reader and occasional poster and I have always supported the activities of the RIAA. This year I officially became a member of the RIAA.
Not everybody here is against the record business.
OpenOffice.org runs on Mac OS X under X11.
NeoOffice is an independently developed version of OpenOffice.org 2.1 which runs on Mac OS X natively and without the need for X11. I've been using it for years.
I'm a professional writer of prose.
I learned to touch-type the conventional way circa 1979. I switched to Dvorak in 1988 shortly after I got my first Macintosh. I've also used Dvorak on Apple II, MS DOS, and all versions of Windows from 3.0 up, and any Linux distros that I've ever gotten my hands on.
With the standard keyboard layout, I could never do better than 35 words per minute. Within a year of switching to Dvorak, I was typing 90 words per minute, and experiencing less stress in my wrists, hands and fingers.
But as far as an increase in popularity of Dvorak, I haven't seen that. People are always clueless and incredulous whenever I try to explain to them what Dvorak is and why anybody would care.
"Maths" is the term used in England, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. "Math" is exclusively an American term. The word being abbreviated is "mathematics", which is plural and has an "s" at the end, so saying "maths" makes more sense than "math".
Last August I purchased the only stand-alone external terrestrial digital TV receiver I could identify on the market. It's a Samsung unit, and it cost US $200.
We don't have cable TV or satellite TV and we don't want it. I bought the Samsung unit to interface to a 32-inch Sony CRT television that is about twelve years old.
All the stations in my area, save one, are already broadcasting both analog and digital. With digital, I get dramatically better picture quality, though it's harder to use because you tend to have to re-tune the antenna (see below) when you change channels, particularly between UHF and VHF (those distinctions persist into the digital realm, too).
It takes some getting used to. When signals are weak, your TV displays weird freezing and pixellation, and the sound stutters. It's quite disconcerting at first.
Somebody awhile back wrote that with digital broadcast TV, you either get a perfect display of the channel on your screen, or you get no image or sound at all. That's just not true. You always have to deal with the freezing, stuttering, distorted audio and pixellation, although if you are persistent, you can learn how to tune in each station correctly and the breakup happens far less often.
And by the way, you still need the rabbit ears. Broadcast digital TV requires an antenna--the same kind of antenna required for broadcast analog TV.
The main reason that the US government is starting this program is two-fold. First, broadcast television is where most citizens (who don't have cable or satellite) still get their news, and being able to hear the news daily is considered a part of participating in democracy. Second, Congress mandated the cessation of analog broadcast TV at the end of 2009, so Congress is placing a burden on some (mostly poor) citizens who could become disenfranchised from the democracy through not being able to watch news broadcasts on their TV as a direct result of Congress' actions.
Apple is already a successful and profitable company, and they have been for years. There is no "win" or "lose". Microsoft makes tons of money and Apple makes a good deal of money. Everybody wins. If Apple's "market share" never changes much, they will continue to be a successful and profitable company in perpetuity. What's all the fuss about market share and "who wins"?
You guys need to learn how to rewrite and edit these story descriptions.
I read this one and had absolutely no idea what the submitter was talking about. It was gibberish.
The description said nothing to inform the reader that this was about a cartoon program on a cable television channel, depicting characters named "Ignignot" and "Err".
The first sentence of the AP wire story that this post refers to explained things intelligibly: "Nine blinking electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday in what turned out to be a marketing campaign for a late-night cable cartoon."
That explains things.
You should not assume that your readers already know what the heck you are writing about. Good writing informs the un-informed; it doesn't cater only to people who watch obscure television programs.
Tieing the web browser to the operating system and creating Active X controls, and then putting no security on them, ushered in the era of spyware and caused tremendous suffering for users and the tech support people scrambling to try to stamp out the spyware.
You are exactly right. It's about estates and trustees. Somebody wants to leave some annual income to his children. There is nothing wrong with that.
When a songwriter dies, his wife, children or other surviving relatives have a legal expectation to continue to earn a little royalty income from his songs. In most cases involving famous songwriters, the songwriter has formed a corporation and/or publishing company with a staff of employees who maintain the catalog of songs and continue to market them. Songwriters write songs with the idea that they will continue to bring in money for their spouses and children for decades after they die.
What's wrong with that?
One problem with the current reality of Internet file sharing is that successful songwriters have far less certainty of being able to provide for their loved ones in the future. I think that's very unfortunate.
I've been saying this for years. Give your grandma something easy to use. She won't need to worry about viruses and spyware. She can just enjoy receiving emails with pictures of her grandkids attached. She'll love you for it.
If they run Macintosh, they will have no viruses, trojans, or spyware. They will not become zombies on a botnet. They will not acquire keyloggers or malicious rootkits. Mac OS X Tiger's security features will take care of them. No need for anti-virus software or anti-spyware software.
Your parents still need to know how to protect themselves from phishing attacks and other human engineering fraud. They still need to know how to protect their privacy.
But if you simply switch them to Macintosh, the most serious and malignant problems simply won't exist any more, and you won't have to worry about protecting your parents from them.
We convinced my father-in-law to carry a cell phone about a year ago. He bristled at the idea of ever using any functions other than placing and receiving calls. Voice mail? Forget it. If the person is not sitting at the phone at the time John calls, he doesn't want to leave any message for them anyway. An address book? No way. He's proud of the fact that he has memorized the phone numbers of several dozens of friends, and snorts at the idea of using a machine to list phone numbers alphabetized by names. He actually made me delete all the entries of family members in the address book I had programmed for him the night before. Ringtones? Pictures and graphics? Menus full of functions? Text messaging? We never needed any of those during the Eisenhower administration. Hmmph.
When his new hunting dog puppy chewed up and destroyed John's cell phone, we had to go looking for the absolutely cheapest replacement with the fewest features obtainable, because that's all he would spend any money on.
Yup, this new Motorola would be ideal for John.
Probably because Slashdot readers recognize that when Apple comes out with a new model, there's usually some serious innovation involved. Dell, HP or Lenovo certainly innovate, just not as often and not as dramatically.
Actually this MacBook Pro is lower on the innovation scale than the last model, but it looks like a really good deal and a better value than the last model.
Maybe that's why.
The act of abducting 6.5 million people from the planet would doubtless consume colossal amounts of energy and create massive pollution.
Unfortunatley, Earth is stuck with us.
Market share does not matter, and never has. Apple sells millions of computers and makes a nice profit for the stockholders.
Twenty years ago Apple had a certain market share of a small number of personal computers sold in the world.
Today Apple has a certain smaller percentage of a much larger number of personal computers in the world. But it's selling more new computers now than it ever has, many more per year than it did twenty years ago.
As long as Apple makes money, putting out sophisticated computer systems, who cares about market share?
If I only had US$0.05 for every time I heard somebody predict doom for Apple over its tiny market share...
Some people think that protecting copyrights on music, literature and film is more important than technological innovation, and that technological capabilities should not be allowed to dictate how society and the marketplace deal with music, literature and films. Some people think that democracy should determine protection for intellectual property, regardless of what technology might be capable of doing with it. Otherwise technocrats will have the power to rule over and damage art, culture and literature. I'm a computer geek who is also a musician and I think this is a valid point of view.
This is the first sensible statement, and the first intelligent article that I have read from John Dvorak in the last twenty years.