'When I think when I type I think the entire words and my hands type them without spelling the words out. (Kind of like playing the piano)'
Keyboards don't contain words. Keyboards contain letters. When you learn to type you learn the commands that make your fingers move to and press the key in question and then return to home row. When you are first learning to type you are very aware of all of those movements. As you become more familiar you no longer have to think about the movements but you still think the letters. Then you think about individual words. Eventually some of us don't even think about individual words anymore. Instead we simply speak inside our head and our fingers magically put the words on the screen. I might stop to consider how I would like to say something and that would make me pay attention to a word but I don't actually think about typing the word. (if only someone would show me a spell checker that found similar correctly spelled words that my fingers rebelliously type instead of what I want).
What makes you think using this interface would be any different than using a keyboard in that way? Just because you no longer pay attention to them does not mean that your brain isn't going through all the same little impulses and signals it went through when you first learned to type. Much like breathing, just because you don't have to consciously pay attention to the effort does not mean that your brain doesn't still have to send the same commands.
Your thoughts don't merely include your conscious thoughts, they include your sub-conscious thoughts as well.
'If an employee chooses to contact a client from outside of the work place, outside of their working hours'
With ya.
'this is not official communication by the bank and thus is unrelated'
Who says? If I am a client and a bank employee contacts me about something related to my account while catching up work from home after hours I certainly consider that to be both 'related to' the business AND official communication from the bank.
Just because communication is outside of normal business hours doesn't mean it isn't work.
But there it is, if it is work related email then it is not part of your private life. If it is not work related then you shouldn't be sending or receiving it while at work.
The size limits the number of useful applications for now but that will improve. What concerns me is that this will be used to produce consumer products with a limited shelf life.
It seems you are the clueless one. Works does NOT come with word. There is an edition of works suite that includes word but it will run you about $150. I did some part time work for a retail store that sold computers. The biggest complaint we had were that there were sales people spreading the same non-sense about word coming with works. These salesmen in other stores (and I suspect a former used car salesmen co-worker) told these people that the computers come with a free copy of works suite (true) and that works suite included word (false). Naturally pissed off customers would come back complaining.
What truly pissed me off is that the customers usually ended up keeping the computers and the salesmen ultimately profited from this deception (whether they believed it or not). Because it was such a commonly spread misconception management would never chastise a salesman who spread that piece of misinformation.
If they are distributing the stock openoffice then they can point to existing repositories. They don't need to setup their own or pay for the bandwidth.
'with no measurable increase in revenue'
There would be an increase in revenue but I couldn't begin to imagine how you would measure it. Including a full featured office suite that doesn't carry a ridiculous price tag that is half again the cost of the machine would go a long way toward generating word of mouth and customer retention.
Then again, all advertising vehicles fail to generate a 'measurable' increase in revenue. That doesn't stop Dell from spending millions on other forms of advertising.
MS Office is $200+ depending on what version you purchase and that is more than your average bear wants to pay to type letters. The business case for this is obvious but doesn't factor in to new school thinking.
The doesn't really help dell gain new customers directly. Adding OO is a cheap way to retain happy and loyal customers and generate positive word of mouth. Dell spends millions on marketing and advertising to gain new customers. Having a full featured office suite included with the system goes a long way toward the PC being a complete solution for many customers.
'There are patches to the main diseases, like campaign finance, prohibitions on party conspiracies, and routine investigations of any corruption/malfeasance/incompetence evidence by actually competing powers.'
Nothing you have said changes the core facts. The fact that every American can vote for a third party on a diebold machine and the numbers it spits out will still elect the same candidate that nobody voted for. People can be outraged and demand action but who are they demanding it from? The same corrupt public officials that need ousted? The police don't take orders from the people and neither do the officials they do take orders from. If millions of American voices rise in unison the men with the guns will still ignore them. If those Americans raise guns of their own they will be branded terrorists and their fellow outraged Americans will turn against them with the first innocent collateral damage.
I can only assume that by campaign finance you are referring to reforms since almost all the nations wealth rests with the 5% of the nation that represents the problem. Reforms, Investigations, and prohibitions are not things the people may do under our system of government. Those are things that representatives do and the representatives don't have an interest in reforming the system that gives them power; investigating themselves; or prohibiting their own conspiracies.
Even without rigged elections the rigged candidate system comes into play. Only the two parties get enough press coverage to sway Americans. The rest are excluded by the press. The major parties do not accomplish this through back alley bribes, mass conspiracy, or secret men with guns. It is much more simple. Any media outlet that was denied access to the political candidates of either party would quickly lose its voice with the public. This means that no media outlet dares to anger the entrenched political parties too much and they shut out opposition voluntarily. The parties don't even need to make threats the news outlets will obey their wishes out of fear of the power they wield. Imagine how CNN would view the possibility of NEVER having a representative at another presidential press conference.
Yup, those are the ones who arrange the plea bargin. Maybe you will have some sort of defense as an ACLU poster boy but public defenders will con you into a plea bargin every time.
Can anyone explain to me the reasonable justification for making the file formats used by works and word/excel incompatible? To this day works can't open word docs and word can't open works. If someone starts using works and later finds they need word they effectively lose all their data.
No but I have seen webpages rendered on a Pentium 1 versus a Pentium III with the same amount of ram and on the same network connection. My guestimate is that about the P2 400mhz w/256mb ram and background processes cleaned up is where the machine doesn't matter and the network connection is the only substantial bottleneck.
Downloading the content is not the only aspect of browsing the web, the machine must parse and render that content as well.
Last I checked all the distros ship the same kernel anyway. Just so long as Dell grants permission to redistribute those binary models then all will still be well.
Now lets make it a desktop of the most popular variety, with hardware that is 100% functional with all features available under linux, from the largest PC vendor, that actually has the cost of a windows license deducted from the price and is physically identical to the model with windows.
Until we are comparing Apples to Apples, you have no point.
For the wealthy that can afford private attorneys perhaps. For your average citizen who can't afford $300/hr failing to kiss the tail of an officer is a guaranteed plea bargin.
'Another part of the American way is to stand against those abuses. To publicly denounce them. To demand accountability.'
Perhaps during the lifetime of some previous generation. The generation before my own did something like that with Vietnam. The government ignored the people and continued to slaughter American children until it had shown the people it wouldn't cow on their say so before opting to pull out on its own.
This is seen again with Iraq. The people opposed the so called 'war' in Iraq from the start and the popularity has only continued to decline and yet the government persists despite them. The government will pull out when they feel like it and a few fools will believe they bowed to the public pressure they have somehow ignored for years now.
The reality is that the people have no power in our government anymore. Public outcry lost its thunder when the politicians realized that the attention span of the people is short and they lose focus when the next issue arises.
'America's is the interactive citizen/government model.'
What interaction? Voting in rigged elections for candidates you didn't pick in the first place? The power to vote is meaningless if the powers at be select the candidates.
'but would be more effective if pointing out how to fix it despite its propensity for breaking'
I never claimed there was a fix. Only that the system is broken. I have come up with a skeleton for a new system of democracy where the candidates we vote on reach that potential status by merit in previous positions but that isn't a patch for the existing US system. It is a replacement.
I disagree with your argument that OO should mimic excel. Certainly those who have learned excel don't want to switch. Just as those who learned all the keybindings and functionality in wordperfect didn't want to switch to word. And just as notes users didn't want to learn to use excel. In the end this didn't stop either of those programs from being more or less usurped by the office suite (neither did arguably superior functionality at the time this changeover occurred).
Once the business environment decides to switch to OO individual users will either grow and adapt with the industry or move to new fields. The ability to learn new programs that replace what you have used for the past 10 years is an essential skill for any office role that requires computer use.
On the contrary the constitution is the first law and the highest law of the land. The codes of law in the constitution trump any laws passed by congress and any such congressional laws are invalid the moment they are passed.
At least that is the way it is supposed to work. The reality is quite different.
My person and my bank account aren't the only things that are valuable. My privacy is as well. If you wanted me to give up privacy I would want MASSIVE compensation.
'1. I don't know; it should be. The Supreme Court has generally been good about upholding these basic constitutional principles like the exclusionary rule. I guess we'll just have to wait and see on the test case.'
The problem is that the cop will claim it is a legal search either way. Usually there will be 5 cops there in 10 seconds and all 5 will be willing to testify that it was a legal search. Cops are some of the most crooked SOB's around and the scary thing is that those same crooked and dirty cops have actually deluded themselves to the point where they believe that they are the good guys.
It doesn't matter if the benefactor is public or private, foreign or domestic; just so long as they line the right political pockets. That's the American way my friend. After all any republican will tell you that any business move is ethical so long as it isn't illegal or the business is willing to pay the cost of its actions.
Funny you should mention that. I just got my first chance to work with excel in Office 2007. I can certainly say that it was a nightmare.
I am not an excel user nor am I tied to a UI scheme. I am a frequent game player (each UI unique with different levels of quality) and also commonly use various new open source tools (again, many have unique UI's of various quality levels). I can truly say that I have never seen anything quite so horrid as the user interface in 2007. It took a full 10 seconds just to figure out how to print my spreadsheet. The standard File, Edit, View, etc menubar that is found in every windows application known to man no longer exists. The set of toolbars that is used instead is an absolute clusterfuck. There are options scattered about. You might have two options on top of one another and then the next option is skinnier but as tall as the two before; a third segment will again have two elements but that are as thick as 1.5 of the first elements. It hurts just trying to find an element in that.
I couldn't tell you how quickly you could graph data in office 2007 because I'll be damned if anyone could ever figure out how to do such a thing.
The value of time is relative. A given increment of your time is only worth what you would otherwise be using it for. I would normally take spending a couple hours building a computer over wasting time watching sports. Others might be willing to spend $27 to watch sports. Even if you claim to value your time at $10,000/hour, a football game isn't going to put a dime in your pocket.
True enough. Although this model can be replaced with shorter lessons and classwork. Also, repetition is important but there is no reason to make it tediously excessive. From personal experience I can usually say that an assignment that takes an hour doesn't seem to be any more effective than one that takes 5 minutes.
'Maybe it's magic, but I suspect it has more to do with me being competent at what I do, having a fairly good idea of what HR people are looking for, and knowing how to interview well.'
Maybe you just got your foot in the door by breaking into a fledgling field when talent was in demend rather having to compete against hundreds of other applicants for a given position. After that first position you have experience and then it is an entirely different ball game.
'that their own well-being is more important to them than integrity'
Along with anyone else with an IQ over 5.
'They've demonstrated that honesty doesn't have a place in their value system'
Oh brother. Everyone lies. Most people lie on a daily basis. The best employee is the one who doesn't have their view of the tasks before them filtered by a 'values' lense anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
'When I think when I type I think the entire words and my hands type them without spelling the words out. (Kind of like playing the piano)'
Keyboards don't contain words. Keyboards contain letters. When you learn to type you learn the commands that make your fingers move to and press the key in question and then return to home row. When you are first learning to type you are very aware of all of those movements. As you become more familiar you no longer have to think about the movements but you still think the letters. Then you think about individual words. Eventually some of us don't even think about individual words anymore. Instead we simply speak inside our head and our fingers magically put the words on the screen. I might stop to consider how I would like to say something and that would make me pay attention to a word but I don't actually think about typing the word. (if only someone would show me a spell checker that found similar correctly spelled words that my fingers rebelliously type instead of what I want).
What makes you think using this interface would be any different than using a keyboard in that way? Just because you no longer pay attention to them does not mean that your brain isn't going through all the same little impulses and signals it went through when you first learned to type. Much like breathing, just because you don't have to consciously pay attention to the effort does not mean that your brain doesn't still have to send the same commands.
Your thoughts don't merely include your conscious thoughts, they include your sub-conscious thoughts as well.
'If an employee chooses to contact a client from outside of the work place, outside of their working hours'
With ya.
'this is not official communication by the bank and thus is unrelated'
Who says? If I am a client and a bank employee contacts me about something related to my account while catching up work from home after hours I certainly consider that to be both 'related to' the business AND official communication from the bank.
Just because communication is outside of normal business hours doesn't mean it isn't work.
But there it is, if it is work related email then it is not part of your private life. If it is not work related then you shouldn't be sending or receiving it while at work.
The size limits the number of useful applications for now but that will improve. What concerns me is that this will be used to produce consumer products with a limited shelf life.
It seems you are the clueless one. Works does NOT come with word. There is an edition of works suite that includes word but it will run you about $150. I did some part time work for a retail store that sold computers. The biggest complaint we had were that there were sales people spreading the same non-sense about word coming with works. These salesmen in other stores (and I suspect a former used car salesmen co-worker) told these people that the computers come with a free copy of works suite (true) and that works suite included word (false). Naturally pissed off customers would come back complaining.
What truly pissed me off is that the customers usually ended up keeping the computers and the salesmen ultimately profited from this deception (whether they believed it or not). Because it was such a commonly spread misconception management would never chastise a salesman who spread that piece of misinformation.
If they are distributing the stock openoffice then they can point to existing repositories. They don't need to setup their own or pay for the bandwidth.
'with no measurable increase in revenue'
There would be an increase in revenue but I couldn't begin to imagine how you would measure it. Including a full featured office suite that doesn't carry a ridiculous price tag that is half again the cost of the machine would go a long way toward generating word of mouth and customer retention.
Then again, all advertising vehicles fail to generate a 'measurable' increase in revenue. That doesn't stop Dell from spending millions on other forms of advertising.
MS Office is $200+ depending on what version you purchase and that is more than your average bear wants to pay to type letters. The business case for this is obvious but doesn't factor in to new school thinking.
The doesn't really help dell gain new customers directly. Adding OO is a cheap way to retain happy and loyal customers and generate positive word of mouth. Dell spends millions on marketing and advertising to gain new customers. Having a full featured office suite included with the system goes a long way toward the PC being a complete solution for many customers.
Actually as long as they distribute the stock openoffice they can just point customers to an existing repository.
'There are patches to the main diseases, like campaign finance, prohibitions on party conspiracies, and routine investigations of any corruption/malfeasance/incompetence evidence by actually competing powers.'
Nothing you have said changes the core facts. The fact that every American can vote for a third party on a diebold machine and the numbers it spits out will still elect the same candidate that nobody voted for. People can be outraged and demand action but who are they demanding it from? The same corrupt public officials that need ousted? The police don't take orders from the people and neither do the officials they do take orders from. If millions of American voices rise in unison the men with the guns will still ignore them. If those Americans raise guns of their own they will be branded terrorists and their fellow outraged Americans will turn against them with the first innocent collateral damage.
I can only assume that by campaign finance you are referring to reforms since almost all the nations wealth rests with the 5% of the nation that represents the problem. Reforms, Investigations, and prohibitions are not things the people may do under our system of government. Those are things that representatives do and the representatives don't have an interest in reforming the system that gives them power; investigating themselves; or prohibiting their own conspiracies.
Even without rigged elections the rigged candidate system comes into play. Only the two parties get enough press coverage to sway Americans. The rest are excluded by the press. The major parties do not accomplish this through back alley bribes, mass conspiracy, or secret men with guns. It is much more simple. Any media outlet that was denied access to the political candidates of either party would quickly lose its voice with the public. This means that no media outlet dares to anger the entrenched political parties too much and they shut out opposition voluntarily. The parties don't even need to make threats the news outlets will obey their wishes out of fear of the power they wield. Imagine how CNN would view the possibility of NEVER having a representative at another presidential press conference.
Yup, those are the ones who arrange the plea bargin. Maybe you will have some sort of defense as an ACLU poster boy but public defenders will con you into a plea bargin every time.
Can anyone explain to me the reasonable justification for making the file formats used by works and word/excel incompatible? To this day works can't open word docs and word can't open works. If someone starts using works and later finds they need word they effectively lose all their data.
No but I have seen webpages rendered on a Pentium 1 versus a Pentium III with the same amount of ram and on the same network connection. My guestimate is that about the P2 400mhz w/256mb ram and background processes cleaned up is where the machine doesn't matter and the network connection is the only substantial bottleneck.
Downloading the content is not the only aspect of browsing the web, the machine must parse and render that content as well.
Last I checked all the distros ship the same kernel anyway. Just so long as Dell grants permission to redistribute those binary models then all will still be well.
Now lets make it a desktop of the most popular variety, with hardware that is 100% functional with all features available under linux, from the largest PC vendor, that actually has the cost of a windows license deducted from the price and is physically identical to the model with windows.
Until we are comparing Apples to Apples, you have no point.
For the wealthy that can afford private attorneys perhaps. For your average citizen who can't afford $300/hr failing to kiss the tail of an officer is a guaranteed plea bargin.
'Another part of the American way is to stand against those abuses. To publicly denounce them. To demand accountability.'
Perhaps during the lifetime of some previous generation. The generation before my own did something like that with Vietnam. The government ignored the people and continued to slaughter American children until it had shown the people it wouldn't cow on their say so before opting to pull out on its own.
This is seen again with Iraq. The people opposed the so called 'war' in Iraq from the start and the popularity has only continued to decline and yet the government persists despite them. The government will pull out when they feel like it and a few fools will believe they bowed to the public pressure they have somehow ignored for years now.
The reality is that the people have no power in our government anymore. Public outcry lost its thunder when the politicians realized that the attention span of the people is short and they lose focus when the next issue arises.
'America's is the interactive citizen/government model.'
What interaction? Voting in rigged elections for candidates you didn't pick in the first place? The power to vote is meaningless if the powers at be select the candidates.
'but would be more effective if pointing out how to fix it despite its propensity for breaking'
I never claimed there was a fix. Only that the system is broken. I have come up with a skeleton for a new system of democracy where the candidates we vote on reach that potential status by merit in previous positions but that isn't a patch for the existing US system. It is a replacement.
I disagree with your argument that OO should mimic excel. Certainly those who have learned excel don't want to switch. Just as those who learned all the keybindings and functionality in wordperfect didn't want to switch to word. And just as notes users didn't want to learn to use excel. In the end this didn't stop either of those programs from being more or less usurped by the office suite (neither did arguably superior functionality at the time this changeover occurred).
Once the business environment decides to switch to OO individual users will either grow and adapt with the industry or move to new fields. The ability to learn new programs that replace what you have used for the past 10 years is an essential skill for any office role that requires computer use.
On the contrary the constitution is the first law and the highest law of the land. The codes of law in the constitution trump any laws passed by congress and any such congressional laws are invalid the moment they are passed.
At least that is the way it is supposed to work. The reality is quite different.
My person and my bank account aren't the only things that are valuable. My privacy is as well. If you wanted me to give up privacy I would want MASSIVE compensation.
'1. I don't know; it should be. The Supreme Court has generally been good about upholding these basic constitutional principles like the exclusionary rule. I guess we'll just have to wait and see on the test case.'
The problem is that the cop will claim it is a legal search either way. Usually there will be 5 cops there in 10 seconds and all 5 will be willing to testify that it was a legal search. Cops are some of the most crooked SOB's around and the scary thing is that those same crooked and dirty cops have actually deluded themselves to the point where they believe that they are the good guys.
It doesn't matter if the benefactor is public or private, foreign or domestic; just so long as they line the right political pockets.
That's the American way my friend. After all any republican will tell you that any business move is ethical so long as it isn't illegal or the business is willing to pay the cost of its actions.
Funny you should mention that. I just got my first chance to work with excel in Office 2007. I can certainly say that it was a nightmare.
I am not an excel user nor am I tied to a UI scheme. I am a frequent game player (each UI unique with different levels of quality) and also commonly use various new open source tools (again, many have unique UI's of various quality levels). I can truly say that I have never seen anything quite so horrid as the user interface in 2007. It took a full 10 seconds just to figure out how to print my spreadsheet. The standard File, Edit, View, etc menubar that is found in every windows application known to man no longer exists. The set of toolbars that is used instead is an absolute clusterfuck. There are options scattered about. You might have two options on top of one another and then the next option is skinnier but as tall as the two before; a third segment will again have two elements but that are as thick as 1.5 of the first elements. It hurts just trying to find an element in that.
I couldn't tell you how quickly you could graph data in office 2007 because I'll be damned if anyone could ever figure out how to do such a thing.
The value of time is relative. A given increment of your time is only worth what you would otherwise be using it for. I would normally take spending a couple hours building a computer over wasting time watching sports. Others might be willing to spend $27 to watch sports. Even if you claim to value your time at $10,000/hour, a football game isn't going to put a dime in your pocket.
True enough. Although this model can be replaced with shorter lessons and classwork. Also, repetition is important but there is no reason to make it tediously excessive. From personal experience I can usually say that an assignment that takes an hour doesn't seem to be any more effective than one that takes 5 minutes.
'Maybe it's magic, but I suspect it has more to do with me being competent at what I do, having a fairly good idea of what HR people are looking for, and knowing how to interview well.'
Maybe you just got your foot in the door by breaking into a fledgling field when talent was in demend rather having to compete against hundreds of other applicants for a given position. After that first position you have experience and then it is an entirely different ball game.
'that their own well-being is more important to them than integrity'
Along with anyone else with an IQ over 5.
'They've demonstrated that honesty doesn't have a place in their value system'
Oh brother. Everyone lies. Most people lie on a daily basis. The best employee is the one who doesn't have their view of the tasks before them filtered by a 'values' lense anyway.