All this talk about sexual harrassment is disturbing. I've recently started my 'proper' (i.e. graduate) job. It's a HUGE company. There are loads of hot girls there but, of course, they work everywhere except the 'software lab'.
Anyway, what's so bad in actually trying to ask a girl that you like and work with out on a date? I thought we were all humans just trying to score. Is there anything really bad with that? Once you don't actually harrass someone or say things are too inappropriate, what's the harm?
To be honest a lot of this "I won't talk to girls 'cause I'll get fired" talk is just a cover story for techie blokes that find it hard to chat up girls.
I think all desktops should have batteries in them. Just a small one that lasts 5 minutes or so so in a power failure, you have time to close all your programs and safely turn the computer off. I know stuff like this already exists. But the battery should come for free.
I actually think it's quite refreshing to read a well written and measured article on the web. So much stuff on the web seems to be written by the same people that graffiti public toilets.
Yeah, as an owner of a first gen iBook G4, I can vouch that Apple hardware isn't the greatest. The CD-ROM drive failed in the first 6 months and it also suffered from the famous logic board failure. I think I'll still stick with Macs though. They hardware isn't better than normal PC hardware but it sure is prettier and Mac OS X rocks of course.
I wonder about this data mining thing. In order to train any statistically based linguistic system, you need lots of data. I'm not sure that even if you had access to someone's outbox, that you'd have enough data to train a reliable system. Plus, subtle features such as automatically detecting someone's written style would be extremely sophisticated. I suppose you could write a system to pick certain synonyms over others or detect whether someone writes their email in 'leet speech' or 'mobile phone speech' but I doubt a system could be built that can detect subtle differences in users' writing styles based on such a small corpus.
That's true. But they're usually asked in that manner because the interviewer wants to be 'tough' on the interviewee. These questions were pointed in an underhanded way. They served no purpose other than to try and get some quote from Linus that bashed MS.
Well, I usually get my news from the BBC, RTE (they're Irish) and Euronews (that's a great channel!). I look at Fox News for pure entertainment purposes. Every now and again I flick through CNN and it doesn't seem as crazy as Fox... I suppose appearances can be deceiving.
It seemed that CNN were trying to ask very pointed questions, trying to make Linus out to be some warrior against Microsoft. I like this part:
KLS: Another reason, because it's an alternative to Microsoft?
LT: Well that is, I think, played up more than it necessarily needs to be. Because there is a very vocal side to this which is the whole anti Microsoft thing. I think it makes a better story than is necessarily true in real life.
For a techie guy who doesn't have reams of PR guys behind him and telling him what he should say, he handled the press pretty well.
I thought CNN were supposed to be respectable, like the US version of the BBC or something? It seemed like they were just looking for some big scoop with regards to people being Anti-Microsoft rather than trying to have an interesting interview with a major contributor to an alternative OS.
Yeah, disappointing article. I thought it would would have been written by a developer or something. Anyway, I worked for a few months in customer tech support last year. The actual work of giving tech support wasn't that bad. Customers not knowing much about computers didn't really bother me. The work wasn't very interesting and there's no way I'd stick at it. That's because very little technical knowledge is needed. Like you said, at least half of the job comprises of being able to communicate well over the phone. Actually, tech support probably doesn't suit techies at all. The thing that I didn't like about the job was the employers. Every second counted. You had to account for the time you went to the toilet etc. Also, the managers were mostly annoying and unhelpful. The morale wasn't great. Everyone hated their job and moaned about it a lot. Also, the pay was terrible. So the reasons I didn't like the job had little to do with the actual work. I've had worse jobs. I worked in McDonalds! Now that was a shit job.
I looks nice but it is also clear looking. The fonts are a bit bigger or something. They're easier to read anyway. Although I like the animation on no. 3s'...
I remember after 9/11 and the 9/11 commission or whatever that was founded to find out how 9/11 happened. They found that the breakdown in intelligence was rooted in the over reliance on technology and not having enough spies and stuff on the ground, infiltrating these terrorist groups. It seems that the Government hasn't learnt its lesson because this over reliance on technology is what allowed 9/11 to happen.
I'm not much of a gamer. I find that new games look great but they're annoying to play because the controls seem to be so hard. I always liked Nintendo. I have a NES and a SNES. I got a playstation 2 now and I hardly ever play it. Even games like Grand Theft Auto leave me feeling frustrated. When I sit down to play a game, I want to be able to play it straight away. I want to play it for maybe an hour and then do something else. I spend enough time in front of a computer, trying to figure things out with college stuff that I don't want to do it when I'm trying to relax.
The wand thing sounds a little strange but it sounds fun too. If I get another console, I'll probably get a Wii instead of a PS3 or GameCube. Computer games that are fun! Who'd have thunk it?
I thought some bits were good. The bit in the virus ad was funny when the PC guy crashed. The restart ad was funny too. TBH it's the way I explain using a Mac to my friends. They'd go on about how cool iTunes is. I'd say "Imagine if your whole OS was as cool as iTunes!". It's much better than the switch ads even though it's in the same vein. I suppose they learned from their mistakes by not focussing so heavily on the faults of the PC.
I have to admit though that I generally hate all computer ads. Ones like the IBM ads are reallly smug and patronising. The Apple ads are like that too. The Dell ads are boring too. I suppose at the end of the day, they're selling computers which is hard 'cause if you go on about the tech specs you've lost most of your audience and if you don't try and sell your computers on their merits, you lose respect.
What good is it to click on the link to the article and then only read half of it?
You're new here, aren't you.
Maybe classes in MS Office aren't such a bad idea
on
Do Kids Still Program?
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· Score: 1
I'm writing up my thesis at the moment and I spent about 3 hours yesterday trying to figure out how to make a simple graph in Excel!
Seriously though, what do they teach in those classes? Don't you just pick most of the Office functions when using them to write up your projects? Surely learning programming or even web design in high school would be more beneficial to students.
Ironically when I was in high school, the school got loads of brand new computers when I was in my final year. The teachers wouldn't let us use them, let alone give computer classes because "we'd only end up looking at porn". I kid you not. God...just thinking about high school pisses me off...
Heh, yeah I thought that was a bit ironic all right that the trailer was in QuickTime format and not OGM. I wonder if they'll put their money where their mouth is and release the film on the internet for free
Yeah. In the end it turns out that the Really Big Thing isn't that big at all. After reading The DaVinci Code I wondered what the point of the whole book was. It seemed that all these famous people throughout history who were part of this secret society (not very secret was it?) who all thought that women were really sacred (even though there weren't any women members) spent lots of effort keeping this secret which was going to bring the church down. But they have no intention of ever letting the secret out. Talk about anti-climax!
We got Sky digital in my home about 2 years ago. We (well my Dad. I'm still a poor student) have to pay about 60 a month and that's not even the "Sky+" thingy. I can't believe how many ads are on, especially compared to the terrestrial TV! It feels like we're paying loads of money to watch a bunch of ads. The majority of the programmes are crap, the good programmes are all repeats. The films are shown about 3 times a day. I know when I move out, there's no way in hell I'm gonna fork out that money for crap.
So your basic argument then is that the only reason to upgrade to Vista is "Interface and Technical Stuff", "security patches and supported software", "Better Graphics", "speed improvement", "things a little easier to use" and "better security".
They seem like good enough reasons to upgrade to me...
Re:Google Calendar Reviewed in PC World...
on
Google Calendar
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· Score: 1
Seriously neat is the ability to quickly add an entry by typing 'dinner with Chris next Thursday 5pm'.
This kind of functionality is pretty straight forward. When the domain is pinned down, natural language processing works really well. If you're guaranteed that any sentence will follow a certain formula, parsing the sentences is pretty trivial. Still though, it's nice that they added it in. It makes interaction with the app much simpler.
Yeah, in Dublin here we've got IBM, Microsoft, Google, Sun, Yahoo, Amazon, Cisco... I'm sure there are many others who I haven't even heard of. Even in those companies though, it seems that the 'sexy' IT jobs are still in America.
The consensus amongst IT workers in America that most of the jobs have been shipped off to India isn't true though. The IT sector is doing pretty well from all reports.
Slashdot Mirror
All this talk about sexual harrassment is disturbing. I've recently started my 'proper' (i.e. graduate) job. It's a HUGE company. There are loads of hot girls there but, of course, they work everywhere except the 'software lab'.
Anyway, what's so bad in actually trying to ask a girl that you like and work with out on a date? I thought we were all humans just trying to score. Is there anything really bad with that? Once you don't actually harrass someone or say things are too inappropriate, what's the harm?
To be honest a lot of this "I won't talk to girls 'cause I'll get fired" talk is just a cover story for techie blokes that find it hard to chat up girls.
I think all desktops should have batteries in them. Just a small one that lasts 5 minutes or so so in a power failure, you have time to close all your programs and safely turn the computer off. I know stuff like this already exists. But the battery should come for free.
I actually think it's quite refreshing to read a well written and measured article on the web. So much stuff on the web seems to be written by the same people that graffiti public toilets.
I wonder if Dell will start calling their AMD server a Whopper.
Yeah, as an owner of a first gen iBook G4, I can vouch that Apple hardware isn't the greatest. The CD-ROM drive failed in the first 6 months and it also suffered from the famous logic board failure. I think I'll still stick with Macs though. They hardware isn't better than normal PC hardware but it sure is prettier and Mac OS X rocks of course.
I wonder about this data mining thing. In order to train any statistically based linguistic system, you need lots of data. I'm not sure that even if you had access to someone's outbox, that you'd have enough data to train a reliable system. Plus, subtle features such as automatically detecting someone's written style would be extremely sophisticated. I suppose you could write a system to pick certain synonyms over others or detect whether someone writes their email in 'leet speech' or 'mobile phone speech' but I doubt a system could be built that can detect subtle differences in users' writing styles based on such a small corpus.
That's true. But they're usually asked in that manner because the interviewer wants to be 'tough' on the interviewee. These questions were pointed in an underhanded way. They served no purpose other than to try and get some quote from Linus that bashed MS.
Well, I usually get my news from the BBC, RTE (they're Irish) and Euronews (that's a great channel!). I look at Fox News for pure entertainment purposes. Every now and again I flick through CNN and it doesn't seem as crazy as Fox... I suppose appearances can be deceiving.
It seemed that CNN were trying to ask very pointed questions, trying to make Linus out to be some warrior against Microsoft. I like this part:
KLS: Another reason, because it's an alternative to Microsoft?
LT: Well that is, I think, played up more than it necessarily needs to be. Because there is a very vocal side to this which is the whole anti Microsoft thing. I think it makes a better story than is necessarily true in real life.
For a techie guy who doesn't have reams of PR guys behind him and telling him what he should say, he handled the press pretty well.
I thought CNN were supposed to be respectable, like the US version of the BBC or something? It seemed like they were just looking for some big scoop with regards to people being Anti-Microsoft rather than trying to have an interesting interview with a major contributor to an alternative OS.
There's an Indian restaurant down the road that does nice stuff but the aftermath is horrendous! They should buy heaps of this stuff!
Yeah, disappointing article. I thought it would would have been written by a developer or something. Anyway, I worked for a few months in customer tech support last year. The actual work of giving tech support wasn't that bad. Customers not knowing much about computers didn't really bother me. The work wasn't very interesting and there's no way I'd stick at it. That's because very little technical knowledge is needed. Like you said, at least half of the job comprises of being able to communicate well over the phone. Actually, tech support probably doesn't suit techies at all. The thing that I didn't like about the job was the employers. Every second counted. You had to account for the time you went to the toilet etc. Also, the managers were mostly annoying and unhelpful. The morale wasn't great. Everyone hated their job and moaned about it a lot. Also, the pay was terrible. So the reasons I didn't like the job had little to do with the actual work. I've had worse jobs. I worked in McDonalds! Now that was a shit job.
I looks nice but it is also clear looking. The fonts are a bit bigger or something. They're easier to read anyway. Although I like the animation on no. 3s'...
I remember after 9/11 and the 9/11 commission or whatever that was founded to find out how 9/11 happened. They found that the breakdown in intelligence was rooted in the over reliance on technology and not having enough spies and stuff on the ground, infiltrating these terrorist groups. It seems that the Government hasn't learnt its lesson because this over reliance on technology is what allowed 9/11 to happen.
I'm not much of a gamer. I find that new games look great but they're annoying to play because the controls seem to be so hard. I always liked Nintendo. I have a NES and a SNES. I got a playstation 2 now and I hardly ever play it. Even games like Grand Theft Auto leave me feeling frustrated. When I sit down to play a game, I want to be able to play it straight away. I want to play it for maybe an hour and then do something else. I spend enough time in front of a computer, trying to figure things out with college stuff that I don't want to do it when I'm trying to relax.
The wand thing sounds a little strange but it sounds fun too. If I get another console, I'll probably get a Wii instead of a PS3 or GameCube. Computer games that are fun! Who'd have thunk it?
Sorry, what? I wasn't paying attention.
Or maybe you should stop using lynx
I thought some bits were good. The bit in the virus ad was funny when the PC guy crashed. The restart ad was funny too. TBH it's the way I explain using a Mac to my friends. They'd go on about how cool iTunes is. I'd say "Imagine if your whole OS was as cool as iTunes!". It's much better than the switch ads even though it's in the same vein. I suppose they learned from their mistakes by not focussing so heavily on the faults of the PC.
I have to admit though that I generally hate all computer ads. Ones like the IBM ads are reallly smug and patronising. The Apple ads are like that too. The Dell ads are boring too. I suppose at the end of the day, they're selling computers which is hard 'cause if you go on about the tech specs you've lost most of your audience and if you don't try and sell your computers on their merits, you lose respect.
You're new here, aren't you.
I'm writing up my thesis at the moment and I spent about 3 hours yesterday trying to figure out how to make a simple graph in Excel!
Seriously though, what do they teach in those classes? Don't you just pick most of the Office functions when using them to write up your projects? Surely learning programming or even web design in high school would be more beneficial to students.
Ironically when I was in high school, the school got loads of brand new computers when I was in my final year. The teachers wouldn't let us use them, let alone give computer classes because "we'd only end up looking at porn". I kid you not. God...just thinking about high school pisses me off...
Heh, yeah I thought that was a bit ironic all right that the trailer was in QuickTime format and not OGM. I wonder if they'll put their money where their mouth is and release the film on the internet for free
Yeah. In the end it turns out that the Really Big Thing isn't that big at all. After reading The DaVinci Code I wondered what the point of the whole book was. It seemed that all these famous people throughout history who were part of this secret society (not very secret was it?) who all thought that women were really sacred (even though there weren't any women members) spent lots of effort keeping this secret which was going to bring the church down. But they have no intention of ever letting the secret out. Talk about anti-climax!
We got Sky digital in my home about 2 years ago. We (well my Dad. I'm still a poor student) have to pay about 60 a month and that's not even the "Sky+" thingy. I can't believe how many ads are on, especially compared to the terrestrial TV! It feels like we're paying loads of money to watch a bunch of ads. The majority of the programmes are crap, the good programmes are all repeats. The films are shown about 3 times a day. I know when I move out, there's no way in hell I'm gonna fork out that money for crap.
So your basic argument then is that the only reason to upgrade to Vista is "Interface and Technical Stuff", "security patches and supported software", "Better Graphics", "speed improvement", "things a little easier to use" and "better security".
They seem like good enough reasons to upgrade to me...
This kind of functionality is pretty straight forward. When the domain is pinned down, natural language processing works really well. If you're guaranteed that any sentence will follow a certain formula, parsing the sentences is pretty trivial. Still though, it's nice that they added it in. It makes interaction with the app much simpler.
I'm actually from Ireland. Close but no cigar :)
Yeah, in Dublin here we've got IBM, Microsoft, Google, Sun, Yahoo, Amazon, Cisco... I'm sure there are many others who I haven't even heard of. Even in those companies though, it seems that the 'sexy' IT jobs are still in America.
The consensus amongst IT workers in America that most of the jobs have been shipped off to India isn't true though. The IT sector is doing pretty well from all reports.