Hehehe. Actually I think what a lot of us crave is faster input. Until we have a way to connect our brains to our computers, I think we will alwys feel limited. There has to be a faster way to input text/ideas into a machine than a QWERTY KB.
Can you explain this a little clearer? What do you mean by zero years of user interface experience? The QWERTY layout has been used as a computer user interface for as long as I can remember. Unless your definition of user interface is different from mine: a way for a user to get data into a computer.
Oh great... We'll be in the Matrix sooner than you think. But the machines won't be using our body heat for energy, they'll be using the vibrations from our bodies as we screw like crazed animals.
Feh! That's nothing... My cat does about 2-5 cps when she's hardwired to my PC. (Oh yeah... she uses Linux too. I have a Linux powered water and food dispenser with a web based interface. I'm just having trouble getting her to use Ctrl-Alt-F1 to have the bot clean the litter box)
Sounds like you have an ego problem. The whole point is that titles are meaningless if you don't have the intelligence to go with them. Intelligence is something that no experience, studying or certification will give you. See here for an illustration.
I argue that most people in IT who pride themselves soley on their titles probably have little substance behind them. Think about it. I have a college degree, certifications and a couple of decades of experience behind me, but you don't see me wanting to brandish my title everywhere. In fact, I try and avoid using it since it really isn't accurate. I learn something new every day, so calling myself a "specialist" or "expert" is a misnomer.
I had my intellect LONG before I had any of the certifications or experience. (Keep in mind that being intelligent doesn't prevent one from misspelling, punctuation errors or using incorrect grammar.) This is what truly counts, and what a lot of "name droppers" seem to completely miss: An idiot is an idiot, even if he has a title, certification or experience that imply otherwise. Conversely an intelligent person is intelligent no matter if he works as a janitor, in a factory or doesn't have a college education.
I've seen plenty of examples of this in my lifetime: A manager at an old job was a total buffoon with no clue about anything, but still got big bucks and a "good reputation" because he was good at shmoozing. On the other hand, a friend who worked at the same company was VERY intelligent. He knew a hell of a lot more about the business than that damned idiot manager did. But, he wasn't the manager of the place because he didn't have a college degree. Eventually he broke off, started his own company and put the other one out of business. The best thing is that the other dork had an MBA, and my friend just barely had a highschool education. It's all about the level of intelligence. NO certification or experience will ever change that.
The real point that most intelligent people realize is that, at the end of the day the title doesn't matter a lick when you need to get the job done. Only the brain does.
Please mod the parent up. This is an insanely great observation. In addition to the possibility of "poisoning" potential OSS developers, this move could pose a threat to Linux on embedded devices. While the shared source license might not be as well thought out as the GPL in terms of public benefit, I think it's extremely well thought out in terms of benefit to Microsoft. After all, to quote one of the guys from the OSS vs. Shared Source debate from last year, "...there are a lot of smart people at Microsoft..."
Time to spout off about things you don't want to understand. OSS BAD NO MATTAR WUT I KNOW OR DON'T KNOW
The real issue as many people have pointed out here before is the "poisoning" of developers. The companies who go with the shared source program are going to be signing up with a contract that will make it nearly impossible for those developers to work on GNU (and potentially other) OSS projects should they want to in the future. In the end, this may not matter since the developer who write for Windows don't typically work on OSS projects. (NOTE that I said 'typically', not 'never')
For all the caring about the "software ecosystem" that Microsoft proports to be doing, they are actually a lot more like the tobacco companies who knew that Nictotine was addictive but put it out there anyway. Microsoft is going to put this out there and wait for people to bite. Then when some of these places decide that they've had enough with the WinCE and want to try a Linux or BSD kernel for their devices, MS will come down hard on them. Worse still... MS might wait and then come down on the projects that the former Shared Source coders contributed to claiming IP infringement. The end restul being that the project is either shut down or set back really seriously.
I've always had problems with titles like "expert" and "specialist" (even though my title contains the word specialist in it). Mainly because I don't believe in experts or specialist. People who actively WANT to be addressed by these titles are typically not very qualified to carry them. And in general, the titles are quite misleading. I'm VERY GOOD at what I do, but I am no expert or specialist by any means. Anyone who has the pride to think that they can fill those titles is delusional.
I've always preferred "admin" myself since it carries the correct ring of authority, but still stops at classifying the holder as a complete expert. The problem is that a lot of suits don't like it because they feel it's their term. I remember once proposing to a former employer that they change my title from "Technology Specialist" to "Network Admin" since that's what I really was. they balked at that. But about a year later, the employer conceded that it was a legitimate title and more fitting of what I did. Their hesitance seemed to have to do with the fact that they felt that the word "Administration" applied to the suites on the top floor and not with the grunts on the ground floor. (Or in the basement as was my case at the time)
On the other hand, some other titles that might fit are:
-IT Manager (as in, the manager of the information technology used by others) -Digital Information Stylist (tongue in cheek here folks) -AEtherlord (OK... now I'm going way over the top)
One particular title I can't STAND is "Knowledge Manager". These guys are typically suits who wish they knew about technology but are really an obstruction standing between the computers and the people who know how to ue them. It's sad because Knowledge Management really DOES have a real purpose, but it's been co-opted by the middle managers who want to "orchestrate" things they don't understand. (And schmooze and play golf three days of every work week)
WHY DID THEY PUT IT ON THE INTERNET IF THEY ONLY WANTED A FEW PEOPLE TO SEE IT?
This is just idiotic. You have to realize that not everyone who puts up a website expects to have that kind of traffic. Nor should they. The other aspect to this is the folks who put up a website that may have some appeal on Slashdot, but don't really realize that. Maybe they are hosting it on an NT4 Workstation running Personal Web Services. Should they be expected to be able to withstand the onslaught of a Slashdotting? Do we ask the people who put flyers on cars in parking lots to publish on four color glossies? Would we expect them to? No. This is no different. Slashdot needs to consider these things. They should first ASK a site if it's OK to post their URL. Slashdot should then offer sites that WANT Slashdot exposure, but may not have the bandwidth or hardware to support a Slashdotting, the option of caching their site. All of this could be done very easily if the folks at Slashdot were to create an internal Slashdot site for themselves where they just point and click for this to be an automatic process.
And for all you idiots who keep ripping on CmdrTaco for not being a "journalist"... get a fucking clue. Slashdot has NOTHING to do with journalism. It's basically a very advanced blog. That's it. They can't be held to any journalistic standards or accountability ebcause they are not a news source. That would be like asking a company who puts out a newsletter to fact check everything before it goes out to the staff. NO COMPANY truly does this. So to all you people who cry about journalistic integrity: get fucked.
That's the whole point... they should be forthright with the information they have. Under the kind of rules we are operating now, I should be able to start my own little dictatorship and declare that all the fools who choose to use Windows should be collected and held in concentration camps. Our government is no better than that apparently.
I can tell you it's a lame and unnecessary hack, designed to compensate for incompetant users.
Hmmm... don't you think that's who we should be writing programming for? I wouldn't put it in those unkind terms of course. I tend to refer to them as "Joe Average" since that's who you are really talking about. Metadata is not a lame and unnecessary hack for the guy who can't tell the difference between a GIF a JPEG and an MPEG.
Why do I think the "evil bit" thing is going to be the next "In Soviet Russia" for a lot of people? (I happen to like a good "In Soviet Russia" joke BTW...
Not meaning to sound like a troll but give me a little room for criticism here... (Keep in mind that I am a hardcore Linux user: RedHat, SuSE, Gentoo, Debian, Linux from Scratch... just to name a few distros I've used)
Selecting a network profile from the GRUB menu is OK, but it implies rebooting. Who wants to reboot just to change their network configuration? I know you don't NEED to reboot if you know what you are doing. But, if you are "Joe User" who just decided to try RH 9 because people are saying it rocks, you are probably going to be stuck either rebooting (if you have a friend who can set GRUB up to do this for you), or at worst you are just going to get frustrated with the fact that when you unplug your laptop from the network that the wireless NIC doesn't just fire up and work. This is exactly what "Joe User" will expect if he is coming from Windows XP land.
Say all you want about XP being a piece of crap (and I agree wholeheartedly), it's still got features that really need to make their way to a Linux distro or two. One of them being that the system is usually smart enough to figure out which route to take for network access when there is more than one interface. If no access is available, then it just indidcates that you are "offline".
I know this will get me modded down, but I had to point it out.
You think wrong. The problem is that we have "big government" that is keen to control it's citizens a lot more than it should be allowed to. We haven't faced threats to our personal lives like this since the original Reagan/Bush era. (George Bush Sr. was paranoid of computers, the Internet and geeks. Who's administration was responsible for the unjust treatment of Kevin Mitnik after all?) Remember this next time you're at the polls and vote for anyone but the conservative candidate. The only freedom they are concerned with is the freedom to take money out of your hands and put it in to the hands of big business. Keep that in mind folks: "Big Government" + "Big Business" = "Corporate Fascist State" We're 90% there right now...
Hehehehe... silly troll, everyone knows that professional technical publications back then were done on PCs. No Macs could deal with the CAD/CAM files that were designed on the PC. I did quite a lot of work for the Eaton Corporation.
Slashdot Mirror
Ya think? ;P I wonder if you can guess who wrote it?
Hehehe. Actually I think what a lot of us crave is faster input. Until we have a way to connect our brains to our computers, I think we will alwys feel limited. There has to be a faster way to input text/ideas into a machine than a QWERTY KB.
Can you explain this a little clearer? What do you mean by zero years of user interface experience? The QWERTY layout has been used as a computer user interface for as long as I can remember. Unless your definition of user interface is different from mine: a way for a user to get data into a computer.
Ahhh yes.... A new freidn added to my list. I love giving people that green dot when they say something really cool.
Hmmm... I know *I* haven't. I'm just plain liberal. That's it.
Oh great... We'll be in the Matrix sooner than you think. But the machines won't be using our body heat for energy, they'll be using the vibrations from our bodies as we screw like crazed animals.
Moderators: -1 Sleazy
Rather.
You have no idea...
You don't like Rush? You make it to my Friends list!! :)))
Feh! That's nothing... My cat does about 2-5 cps when she's hardwired to my PC. (Oh yeah... she uses Linux too. I have a Linux powered water and food dispenser with a web based interface. I'm just having trouble getting her to use Ctrl-Alt-F1 to have the bot clean the litter box)
If it makes you fell better I don't think you are either. ;P
Sounds like you have an ego problem. The whole point is that titles are meaningless if you don't have the intelligence to go with them. Intelligence is something that no experience, studying or certification will give you. See here for an illustration.
I argue that most people in IT who pride themselves soley on their titles probably have little substance behind them. Think about it. I have a college degree, certifications and a couple of decades of experience behind me, but you don't see me wanting to brandish my title everywhere. In fact, I try and avoid using it since it really isn't accurate. I learn something new every day, so calling myself a "specialist" or "expert" is a misnomer.
I had my intellect LONG before I had any of the certifications or experience. (Keep in mind that being intelligent doesn't prevent one from misspelling, punctuation errors or using incorrect grammar.) This is what truly counts, and what a lot of "name droppers" seem to completely miss: An idiot is an idiot, even if he has a title, certification or experience that imply otherwise. Conversely an intelligent person is intelligent no matter if he works as a janitor, in a factory or doesn't have a college education.
I've seen plenty of examples of this in my lifetime: A manager at an old job was a total buffoon with no clue about anything, but still got big bucks and a "good reputation" because he was good at shmoozing. On the other hand, a friend who worked at the same company was VERY intelligent. He knew a hell of a lot more about the business than that damned idiot manager did. But, he wasn't the manager of the place because he didn't have a college degree. Eventually he broke off, started his own company and put the other one out of business. The best thing is that the other dork had an MBA, and my friend just barely had a highschool education. It's all about the level of intelligence. NO certification or experience will ever change that.
The real point that most intelligent people realize is that, at the end of the day the title doesn't matter a lick when you need to get the job done. Only the brain does.
Please mod the parent up. This is an insanely great observation. In addition to the possibility of "poisoning" potential OSS developers, this move could pose a threat to Linux on embedded devices. While the shared source license might not be as well thought out as the GPL in terms of public benefit, I think it's extremely well thought out in terms of benefit to Microsoft. After all, to quote one of the guys from the OSS vs. Shared Source debate from last year, "...there are a lot of smart people at Microsoft..."
Time to spout off about things you don't want to understand. OSS BAD NO MATTAR WUT I KNOW OR DON'T KNOW
The real issue as many people have pointed out here before is the "poisoning" of developers. The companies who go with the shared source program are going to be signing up with a contract that will make it nearly impossible for those developers to work on GNU (and potentially other) OSS projects should they want to in the future. In the end, this may not matter since the developer who write for Windows don't typically work on OSS projects. (NOTE that I said 'typically', not 'never')
For all the caring about the "software ecosystem" that Microsoft proports to be doing, they are actually a lot more like the tobacco companies who knew that Nictotine was addictive but put it out there anyway. Microsoft is going to put this out there and wait for people to bite. Then when some of these places decide that they've had enough with the WinCE and want to try a Linux or BSD kernel for their devices, MS will come down hard on them. Worse still... MS might wait and then come down on the projects that the former Shared Source coders contributed to claiming IP infringement. The end restul being that the project is either shut down or set back really seriously.
Yeah. While Baby Bush was AWOL. Snorting up lines of coke and drunk off his ass, no doubt. Hypocrite.
I've always had problems with titles like "expert" and "specialist" (even though my title contains the word specialist in it). Mainly because I don't believe in experts or specialist. People who actively WANT to be addressed by these titles are typically not very qualified to carry them. And in general, the titles are quite misleading. I'm VERY GOOD at what I do, but I am no expert or specialist by any means. Anyone who has the pride to think that they can fill those titles is delusional.
I've always preferred "admin" myself since it carries the correct ring of authority, but still stops at classifying the holder as a complete expert. The problem is that a lot of suits don't like it because they feel it's their term. I remember once proposing to a former employer that they change my title from "Technology Specialist" to "Network Admin" since that's what I really was. they balked at that. But about a year later, the employer conceded that it was a legitimate title and more fitting of what I did. Their hesitance seemed to have to do with the fact that they felt that the word "Administration" applied to the suites on the top floor and not with the grunts on the ground floor. (Or in the basement as was my case at the time)
On the other hand, some other titles that might fit are:
-IT Manager (as in, the manager of the information technology used by others)
-Digital Information Stylist (tongue in cheek here folks)
-AEtherlord (OK... now I'm going way over the top)
One particular title I can't STAND is "Knowledge Manager". These guys are typically suits who wish they knew about technology but are really an obstruction standing between the computers and the people who know how to ue them. It's sad because Knowledge Management really DOES have a real purpose, but it's been co-opted by the middle managers who want to "orchestrate" things they don't understand. (And schmooze and play golf three days of every work week)
Just my $.02
...if you can wipe away the "Evil bits" from the TCP/IP data stream... :)
This is just idiotic. You have to realize that not everyone who puts up a website expects to have that kind of traffic. Nor should they. The other aspect to this is the folks who put up a website that may have some appeal on Slashdot, but don't really realize that. Maybe they are hosting it on an NT4 Workstation running Personal Web Services. Should they be expected to be able to withstand the onslaught of a Slashdotting? Do we ask the people who put flyers on cars in parking lots to publish on four color glossies? Would we expect them to? No. This is no different. Slashdot needs to consider these things. They should first ASK a site if it's OK to post their URL. Slashdot should then offer sites that WANT Slashdot exposure, but may not have the bandwidth or hardware to support a Slashdotting, the option of caching their site. All of this could be done very easily if the folks at Slashdot were to create an internal Slashdot site for themselves where they just point and click for this to be an automatic process.
And for all you idiots who keep ripping on CmdrTaco for not being a "journalist"... get a fucking clue. Slashdot has NOTHING to do with journalism. It's basically a very advanced blog. That's it. They can't be held to any journalistic standards or accountability ebcause they are not a news source. That would be like asking a company who puts out a newsletter to fact check everything before it goes out to the staff. NO COMPANY truly does this. So to all you people who cry about journalistic integrity: get fucked.
That's the whole point... they should be forthright with the information they have. Under the kind of rules we are operating now, I should be able to start my own little dictatorship and declare that all the fools who choose to use Windows should be collected and held in concentration camps. Our government is no better than that apparently.
Hehehe... or they can always run the 'file' command in Linux to tell them what kind of file it is....
I can tell you it's a lame and unnecessary hack, designed to compensate for incompetant users.
Hmmm... don't you think that's who we should be writing programming for? I wouldn't put it in those unkind terms of course. I tend to refer to them as "Joe Average" since that's who you are really talking about. Metadata is not a lame and unnecessary hack for the guy who can't tell the difference between a GIF a JPEG and an MPEG.
Why do I think the "evil bit" thing is going to be the next "In Soviet Russia" for a lot of people? (I happen to like a good "In Soviet Russia" joke BTW...
Not meaning to sound like a troll but give me a little room for criticism here... (Keep in mind that I am a hardcore Linux user: RedHat, SuSE, Gentoo, Debian, Linux from Scratch... just to name a few distros I've used)
Selecting a network profile from the GRUB menu is OK, but it implies rebooting. Who wants to reboot just to change their network configuration? I know you don't NEED to reboot if you know what you are doing. But, if you are "Joe User" who just decided to try RH 9 because people are saying it rocks, you are probably going to be stuck either rebooting (if you have a friend who can set GRUB up to do this for you), or at worst you are just going to get frustrated with the fact that when you unplug your laptop from the network that the wireless NIC doesn't just fire up and work. This is exactly what "Joe User" will expect if he is coming from Windows XP land.
Say all you want about XP being a piece of crap (and I agree wholeheartedly), it's still got features that really need to make their way to a Linux distro or two. One of them being that the system is usually smart enough to figure out which route to take for network access when there is more than one interface. If no access is available, then it just indidcates that you are "offline".
I know this will get me modded down, but I had to point it out.
You think wrong. The problem is that we have "big government" that is keen to control it's citizens a lot more than it should be allowed to. We haven't faced threats to our personal lives like this since the original Reagan/Bush era. (George Bush Sr. was paranoid of computers, the Internet and geeks. Who's administration was responsible for the unjust treatment of Kevin Mitnik after all?) Remember this next time you're at the polls and vote for anyone but the conservative candidate. The only freedom they are concerned with is the freedom to take money out of your hands and put it in to the hands of big business. Keep that in mind folks: "Big Government" + "Big Business" = "Corporate Fascist State" We're 90% there right now...
Hehehehe... silly troll, everyone knows that professional technical publications back then were done on PCs. No Macs could deal with the CAD/CAM files that were designed on the PC. I did quite a lot of work for the Eaton Corporation.