I am "color blind" - like most people termed such, I'm actually just slightly red-green deficient. I fail the Ishihara (dot-pattern) color test but can see most colors quite well including the red, yellow, and green in traffic lights. I think I have seen the blue lights that the parent and GP are referring to, and I hate them - they are pale blue, almost white, and blend in perfectly (for me) with the mercury vapor street lamps at night, so that I don't even realize the traffic light is there until it turns yellow in front of me. I certainly hope they are not done for the benefit of color blind folks cause they suck for me. (luckily most street lamps are sodium now, so its not as big a problem)
False advertising pretty much happens ALL of the time. No advertisement is 100% truthful. I guess you have to cross some invisible, arbitrary line before it becomes a civil tort issue.
Truthfulness has absolutely nothing to do with that arbitrary line. That line is crossed when you start insulting your competition (even if it is the truth), and they have lots of money and lawyers. Whether they win the case might have something to do with the truth, but I wouldn't count on it.
If you want to take advantage of the advanced PDF features like embedded javascript or forms that submit to the web, you're basically SOL without Acrobat and even if you could create them, most of the OSS readers don't support the advanced features.
If you want a form that submits to the web, why wouldn't you use a form that is on the web, and built with HTML/Javascript?
If you want a form you can fill out and save and email back to someone (which is also quite useful), then I agree that PDF is nice, and I also agree there is a lack of non-Adobe software, both for creation and for using the form. Since PDF is rarely used that way, there is not much software to support that use, and since there is not much software it is rarely used that way. Which sucks.
(you can also use Word for forms, and almost everyone has Word, but using Word for forms is highly painful (I've done it))
There has been a lot of compatible PDF viewers, but the pool of PDF creation software is limited. Most OSS solutions implement a subset of the features. Even now, there really is nothing to complete with the feature level in Adobe Acrobat.
I'm not sure what all the features are, what I need (and probably what 99% of the population needs) is "convert some non-PDF document to PDF". Mac OS X does this natively, and I have used several free/cheap PC utilities to do the same. I've never had a document they couldn't do. They generally plug in through the print utility, so if you can print it you can convert it to PDF.
Apple makes its money from its (vastly overpriced) hardware.
Vastly overpriced? They are pricey, but you get a very good quality product and truly incredible customer service. When they couldn't replace the screen on my PowerBook in a timely fashion (it would have taken 2 weeks to get the part) they offered my a completely new MacBook Pro for free. They offered, I didn't even have to ask. And I was just a month shy of the 3 year extended warranty, so my initial investment has gotten me 2 computers and lasted 4.5 years. I have never had a PC laptop last half that long, so they may cost half as much (if you go really low end), but your total cost of ownership over time is more. They completely replaced the guts of my wife's laptop (everything but the case and screen) for free. They'll replace just about anything they even suspect it's defective with no hesitation. In contrast I had to send my HP in twice before they replaced an obviously bad hard drive.
not sure how "open" PDF really is but its pretty universal
Wikipedia says "Formerly a proprietary format, PDF was officially released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO/IEC 32000-1:2008". It also says Adobe has patents on it "but licenses them for royalty-free use in developing software complying with its PDF specification".
even if that wasn't the case there has long been a lot of fully compatible implementations of it (unlike Word).
The computer did exactly as instructed, it's just that the pilot's (unintentionally given) instructions were stupid, and the fact that it took the pilot over 3 minutes to realize just how stupid he had been.
Sounds like a user interface problem to me. Given the potential consequences of that particular user error, the fact that the autopilot was still engaged should have been made more obvious to the pilot. (e.g. when the plane computer sees that a struggle is going on between the autopilot and the manual controls, it should prompt a loud, un-maskable synthesized voice shouting "THE AUTOPILOT IS ENGAGED, YOU IDIOT!")
Or if the pilot is pushing hard on the stick the autopilot should disengage (with loud alarms). If I tap on the breaks in my car the cruise control disengages, it does not fight me. - Dan
Mostly they want it in Word so they can remove your contact info and add theirs. It prevents the client company from screwing them over by contacting you directly. Which seems pretty reasonable. Unfortunately they are usually extremely careless so my beautifully formatted resume becomes an unreadable mess in the process.
Citation needed, what with this patient being allegedly being the first recipient here to get a new artificial heart that pumps blood continuously
I don't have citations on hand but I seem to remember pulseless systems from back in the 80s, and that they were abandoned because of problems (perhaps clotting, I am not sure). Mind you the pulsed systems are not much better. There is a reason we still mostly rely on transplants despite the trouble of finding donors and rejection.
They gave the vaccine to people who didn't have aids in two groups, and then looked at who got aids after 3 years.
It could just be that people on the placebo took more risks than the people who didn't which is why it is a statistical outlier.
This is the most ridiculously published study I've ever seen, but if they are looking for funding, I guess it's a good way to get it.
The participants wouldn't know if they got the placebo or not, so it shouldn't affect their behavior. The group is large enough that random statistical variation is highly unlikely to show those results. So the study is not ridiculous at all, it was very well done. The vaccine is not effective enough to be practical, but it has some affect, which is a big improvement over what we had before - it's just more work is needed.
By your definition then, a dead-tree edition of the King James bible would qualify as a database. It's even indexed by book/chapter/verse. Anything that has information would be a database. It's not great for rapid search and retrieval, but neither is the manual Excel search you describe above.
(and I am not bored enough to continue this discussion further)
According to Merriam-Webster, a database is "a usually large collection of data organized especially for rapid search and retrieval (as by a computer)." Based on that definition, how is an SQL database (which, you agree, could use a spreadsheet format for storing data) AT ALL different from a "spreadsheet"?
The "rapid search and retrieval" part. Yes, you could store a database in any fricking format you want: XLS, CSV, even English text. But Excel (the software) does not support database functionality, e.g. queries, joins, etc. Databases are software and data, and a "real" database has auxiliary data as well (e.g. indices) to help with the "rapid search and retrieval" part.
Your talking about modem protocols, authentication to get onto a network - but TFA was talking about passwords onto an ebilling system. Which you should be accessing with https, so the password should be encrypted (albeit reversibly) at that point, and there should be no reason it isn't a one-way hash in the database.
A. It doesn't have to be SQL, but there does have to be some sort of query language. I suppose I could have said "relational database". Just rows and columns does not make it a database. MS Word has tables too:-)
B. Give me 20 minutes and I could too. I would probably find a lib that would load an excel spreadsheet into a real database and run the query against that. Although a CSV file would be easier.
Ummm. Where I work spreadsheets are called "databases".
But surely you don't have an ebilling login system trying to look up passwords in an excel spreadsheet? Or even an MS Access database? Although maybe Demon Internet does, given their extreme lack of clue.
(and spreadsheets aren't databases, you can't write SQL queries against them)
The idiotic marble isn't really a part of the ribbon. There should have been a "file" tab as part of the ribbon design. But your example does illustrate a major design flaw -- the ribbon simply doesn't cover every feature available to the program, and the stuff they didn't put in the ribbon they just shuffled into a catchall menu, but they made sure not to make it look like a menu because, you know, they're doing away with menus...
The bottom line being, menus were actually good, and the current design sucks. With menus you can actually find stuff that you don't know exists, and thus learn. With the current design you can't find it even if you do know it exists.
I can't believe this still happens. They shouldn't even be storing the passwords anywhere, even in their primary database, much less an Excel spreadsheet. Use a one was hash with salt, folks!
Also "the company introduced a different ebilling system some months ago, but returned to paper billing following technical difficulties". Who hasn't managed to implement an ebilling system by 2009? Especially an ISP. They must be truly incompetent.
I fully expected to hate that damn ribbon, but the reluctant truth is that I find the more I use it the more generally useful it becomes -- especially for exposing semi-obscure but useful Microsoft Word features (like creating cross references). Still, there's a catch. When it doesn't work it falls flat on its face and you spend the next three hours trying to figure out how to do something that should only have taken 5 minutes.
It took me forever to just find "Save As," and if wasn't for Google I doubt I ever would have found it (FYI, its under that circle with the office logo, in the upper left, which I never would have guessed was a menu drop down, or anything other than a logo). I hate the whole design.
Actually the ribbon style is not built for eye candy but rather for usability. The problem with menu style systems is that it is not intuitive... Putting features in front of the user rather than 3 to 4 deep in a menu system is far more intuitive. In fact I think the office ribbon layout is due to a massive amount of consumer research on Microsoft's Behalf.
Not even remotely true. There are still multiple tabs on the ribbon, so you still have to click through all the tabs to find what you want. But with menus you can quick scan the words to find what you want, and 99% of what you want is on the first level. Scanning the ribbon icons is a much slower and more tedious process (and you still have to go multiple levels deep to access the more obscure features. Plus it takes a lot more screen real-estate.
The behavioral questions are way to easy to BS through. All they tell you is that the candidate is in tune with what you want to hear and has had a few other interviews recently to practice.
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I am "color blind" - like most people termed such, I'm actually just slightly red-green deficient. I fail the Ishihara (dot-pattern) color test but can see most colors quite well including the red, yellow, and green in traffic lights. I think I have seen the blue lights that the parent and GP are referring to, and I hate them - they are pale blue, almost white, and blend in perfectly (for me) with the mercury vapor street lamps at night, so that I don't even realize the traffic light is there until it turns yellow in front of me. I certainly hope they are not done for the benefit of color blind folks cause they suck for me. (luckily most street lamps are sodium now, so its not as big a problem)
False advertising pretty much happens ALL of the time. No advertisement is 100% truthful. I guess you have to cross some invisible, arbitrary line before it becomes a civil tort issue.
Truthfulness has absolutely nothing to do with that arbitrary line. That line is crossed when you start insulting your competition (even if it is the truth), and they have lots of money and lawyers. Whether they win the case might have something to do with the truth, but I wouldn't count on it.
If you want to take advantage of the advanced PDF features like embedded javascript or forms that submit to the web, you're basically SOL without Acrobat and even if you could create them, most of the OSS readers don't support the advanced features.
If you want a form that submits to the web, why wouldn't you use a form that is on the web, and built with HTML/Javascript?
If you want a form you can fill out and save and email back to someone (which is also quite useful), then I agree that PDF is nice, and I also agree there is a lack of non-Adobe software, both for creation and for using the form. Since PDF is rarely used that way, there is not much software to support that use, and since there is not much software it is rarely used that way. Which sucks.
(you can also use Word for forms, and almost everyone has Word, but using Word for forms is highly painful (I've done it))
There has been a lot of compatible PDF viewers, but the pool of PDF creation software is limited. Most OSS solutions implement a subset of the features. Even now, there really is nothing to complete with the feature level in Adobe Acrobat.
I'm not sure what all the features are, what I need (and probably what 99% of the population needs) is "convert some non-PDF document to PDF". Mac OS X does this natively, and I have used several free/cheap PC utilities to do the same. I've never had a document they couldn't do. They generally plug in through the print utility, so if you can print it you can convert it to PDF.
Apple makes its money from its (vastly overpriced) hardware.
Vastly overpriced? They are pricey, but you get a very good quality product and truly incredible customer service. When they couldn't replace the screen on my PowerBook in a timely fashion (it would have taken 2 weeks to get the part) they offered my a completely new MacBook Pro for free. They offered, I didn't even have to ask. And I was just a month shy of the 3 year extended warranty, so my initial investment has gotten me 2 computers and lasted 4.5 years. I have never had a PC laptop last half that long, so they may cost half as much (if you go really low end), but your total cost of ownership over time is more. They completely replaced the guts of my wife's laptop (everything but the case and screen) for free. They'll replace just about anything they even suspect it's defective with no hesitation. In contrast I had to send my HP in twice before they replaced an obviously bad hard drive.
not sure how "open" PDF really is but its pretty universal
Wikipedia says "Formerly a proprietary format, PDF was officially released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO/IEC 32000-1:2008". It also says Adobe has patents on it "but licenses them for royalty-free use in developing software complying with its PDF specification".
even if that wasn't the case there has long been a lot of fully compatible implementations of it (unlike Word).
The computer did exactly as instructed, it's just that the pilot's (unintentionally given) instructions were stupid, and the fact that it took the pilot over 3 minutes to realize just how stupid he had been.
Sounds like a user interface problem to me. Given the potential consequences of that particular user error, the fact that the autopilot was still engaged should have been made more obvious to the pilot. (e.g. when the plane computer sees that a struggle is going on between the autopilot and the manual controls, it should prompt a loud, un-maskable synthesized voice shouting "THE AUTOPILOT IS ENGAGED, YOU IDIOT!")
Or if the pilot is pushing hard on the stick the autopilot should disengage (with loud alarms).
If I tap on the breaks in my car the cruise control disengages, it does not fight me.
- Dan
Then why does congress get this kind of protection when private citizens suspected of a crime do not?
Juveniles usually get this protection as well. And since congress usually behaves like a bunch of spoiled children, I guess this makes sense.
I've been on the internet since 1989. n00b!
But it is faster to type www than web. And you can say "dubya dubya dubya" :-)
Mostly they want it in Word so they can remove your contact info and add theirs. It prevents the client company from screwing them over by contacting you directly. Which seems pretty reasonable. Unfortunately they are usually extremely careless so my beautifully formatted resume becomes an unreadable mess in the process.
The thought that you could hit a reef was a great incentive to get your observations absolutely right
And filters out the data of the people who got it wrong!
Citation needed, what with this patient being allegedly being the first recipient here to get a new artificial heart that pumps blood continuously
I don't have citations on hand but I seem to remember pulseless systems from back in the 80s, and that they were abandoned because of problems (perhaps clotting, I am not sure). Mind you the pulsed systems are not much better. There is a reason we still mostly rely on transplants despite the trouble of finding donors and rejection.
There is a secondary bump around September in each of these charts - it's much smaller but consistent every year. Fascinating.
They gave the vaccine to people who didn't have aids in two groups, and then looked at who got aids after 3 years.
It could just be that people on the placebo took more risks than the people who didn't which is why it is a statistical outlier.
This is the most ridiculously published study I've ever seen, but if they are looking for funding, I guess it's a good way to get it.
The participants wouldn't know if they got the placebo or not, so it shouldn't affect their behavior. The group is large enough that random statistical variation is highly unlikely to show those results. So the study is not ridiculous at all, it was very well done. The vaccine is not effective enough to be practical, but it has some affect, which is a big improvement over what we had before - it's just more work is needed.
By your definition then, a dead-tree edition of the King James bible would qualify as a database. It's even indexed by book/chapter/verse. Anything that has information would be a database. It's not great for rapid search and retrieval, but neither is the manual Excel search you describe above.
(and I am not bored enough to continue this discussion further)
According to Merriam-Webster, a database is "a usually large collection of data organized especially for rapid search and retrieval (as by a computer)." Based on that definition, how is an SQL database (which, you agree, could use a spreadsheet format for storing data) AT ALL different from a "spreadsheet"?
The "rapid search and retrieval" part. Yes, you could store a database in any fricking format you want: XLS, CSV, even English text. But Excel (the software) does not support database functionality, e.g. queries, joins, etc. Databases are software and data, and a "real" database has auxiliary data as well (e.g. indices) to help with the "rapid search and retrieval" part.
Your talking about modem protocols, authentication to get onto a network - but TFA was talking about passwords onto an ebilling system. Which you should be accessing with https, so the password should be encrypted (albeit reversibly) at that point, and there should be no reason it isn't a one-way hash in the database.
A. It doesn't have to be SQL, but there does have to be some sort of query language. I suppose I could have said "relational database". Just rows and columns does not make it a database. MS Word has tables too :-)
B. Give me 20 minutes and I could too. I would probably find a lib that would load an excel spreadsheet into a real database and run the query against that. Although a CSV file would be easier.
Ummm. Where I work spreadsheets are called "databases".
But surely you don't have an ebilling login system trying to look up passwords in an excel spreadsheet? Or even an MS Access database? Although maybe Demon Internet does, given their extreme lack of clue.
(and spreadsheets aren't databases, you can't write SQL queries against them)
The idiotic marble isn't really a part of the ribbon. There should have been a "file" tab as part of the ribbon design. But your example does illustrate a major design flaw -- the ribbon simply doesn't cover every feature available to the program, and the stuff they didn't put in the ribbon they just shuffled into a catchall menu, but they made sure not to make it look like a menu because, you know, they're doing away with menus...
The bottom line being, menus were actually good, and the current design sucks. With menus you can actually find stuff that you don't know exists, and thus learn. With the current design you can't find it even if you do know it exists.
I can't believe this still happens. They shouldn't even be storing the passwords anywhere, even in their primary database, much less an Excel spreadsheet. Use a one was hash with salt, folks!
Also "the company introduced a different ebilling system some months ago, but returned to paper billing following technical difficulties". Who hasn't managed to implement an ebilling system by 2009? Especially an ISP. They must be truly incompetent.
I fully expected to hate that damn ribbon, but the reluctant truth is that I find the more I use it the more generally useful it becomes -- especially for exposing semi-obscure but useful Microsoft Word features (like creating cross references). Still, there's a catch. When it doesn't work it falls flat on its face and you spend the next three hours trying to figure out how to do something that should only have taken 5 minutes.
It took me forever to just find "Save As," and if wasn't for Google I doubt I ever would have found it (FYI, its under that circle with the office logo, in the upper left, which I never would have guessed was a menu drop down, or anything other than a logo). I hate the whole design.
Actually the ribbon style is not built for eye candy but rather for usability. The problem with menu style systems is that it is not intuitive ... Putting features in front of the user rather than 3 to 4 deep in a menu system is far more intuitive. In fact I think the office ribbon layout is due to a massive amount of consumer research on Microsoft's Behalf.
Not even remotely true. There are still multiple tabs on the ribbon, so you still have to click through
all the tabs to find what you want. But with menus you can quick scan the words to find what you
want, and 99% of what you want is on the first level. Scanning the ribbon icons is a much slower
and more tedious process (and you still have to go multiple levels deep to access the more obscure
features. Plus it takes a lot more screen real-estate.
The behavioral questions are way to easy to BS through. All they tell you is that the candidate is in tune with what you want to hear and has had a few other interviews recently to practice.