Yeah, from having studied both speech processing and information retrieval in my degree, I know that this idea is by no means a novel one. How the fuck could this patent have been granted? I'm flabbergasted!
The problem is that the veneer is an important part of one of society's Big Lies: that people know what they are doing. The truth is that most people, even in technical fields, have no clue what they are doing and never will. Given our economic structure it is necessary to employ these people lest society collapse.
Amen to that! Just yesterday, I helped a bank clerk through the process of my loan application. This was a middle aged woman. It seemed like she was working for banks quite a long time but she didn't have a clue what to do. I was telling her "Right, you need me to fill in a form?" and she'd go "OK, hang on" and run off. It was shocking how she could be so incompetent.
Then of course, you have the HR (or recruitment or whatever) people. Of the people I've met over the past few months (which is quite a lot since I was looking for a job), they were all completely useless! I'm not just talking about the fact that these people were hiring for jobs which they didn't have a clue about, they didn't know how to do their own jobs!
It certainly does seem, that the older I get, the more I realise that the majority of people are utterly incompetent at doing their jobs.
I did try it out but I found that Safari became unstable. I installed SafariBlock which is free and it works well enough. You have to reload a page for blocks to come into affect but it doesn't crash Safari:)
It'd be cool to have his influence
on
I, Woz
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· Score: 1
Once in a while, though, if a computer doesn't work with a cellphone I have, I loan my cellphone to some engineers and they'll make sure the next operating system version works with it.
It'd be cool to drop some hints like "I'm not too fond of Finder..." or "Wouldn't it be great if Safari had really good ad-blocking features?!" and have them implemented in the next OS revision! It'd also be cool to have loads of money...
I use Pico when I'm SSHed into somewhere. I don't get all the big hype about vi/emacs. I mean, it's only a text editor. I figure that a text editor should be easy enough to use that it doesn't need you to complete a 24 hour tutorial to use it.
Even now I just use (J|K|G)Edit and edit files directly on the server. I just use Pico for little things like writing emails in mutt or writing posts in slrn (only when I'm logged in via SSH). I think people only use mutt/vi/emacs/whatever other archaic piece of shite software because being seen as a crusty makes them feel empowered or something.
Yeah, I had a faulty logic board on my iBook G4 too. It was still in warranty. It took over a month for them to replace the logic board even though they said that it would only take about 3 days. I had told them that I was in the middle of my final year at college so I didn't want them to take too long with it. I had the Applecare warranty and it was tied to the Serial Number of the iBook. I recently noticed that my iBook doesn't have a serial number anymore! This was my first Apple machine. I'd love to get another one, maybe a new iMac but I am very hesitant in getting one 'cause Apple's service is so shoddy.
In Ireland, there are loads of big US IT companies. They all seem to have their 'interesting' (i.e. programming on their actual products) jobs in America. So if the jobs aren't in their offshore offices and, from what I read on slashdot, they're not in America, where are these elusive IT jobs?
Seriously though, you have to organise your windows around your different virtual desktops. Plus, you have to remember which desktop has which window. With one desktop and something like exposé (or whatever they're calling it in Vista), you don't need to manage your windows. You don't need to remember. If you want a window, hit a key, see all your windows and click on the one you want.
Have you tried this new feature yet? Maybe virtual deskops work great for you but check this new stuff out. You might like it!
In the screenshots even the titlebar of the focused window is transparent. The only difference seems to be that the minimize, maximize, close buttons in the top right hand corner are coloured while the unfocused windows' minimize, maximize, close buttons are greyed out. This looks confusing to me because it looks like the focused window is unfocused.
If you're not in IT then what else are you going to do? I'm finishing my degree in about 3 months time (which reminds me, I really should start doing some work) and one of my friends who's been working in IT for nearly 2 years paints a pretty bleak picture of it. He doesn't really like working in IT at all even though he loves programming (and that's his job). Knowing this however, I'm still looking for IT jobs for when I finish college because I wouldn't know what else to do. I mean, I figure that you have to be at least half interested in your job in order for you not to be miserable all the time. You said that you had left IT. What sector are you planning to move in to?
I know this is probably a bit OT but out of interest, what's the average starting wage for the IT sector? I'm talking grad positions here. And preferably places in the mid-west.
In Ireland, starting wages tend to be between €23 and €27 grand which isn't great but it's about average for people starting fresh out of college. Of course, after about 2 years you'd expect to be on over €30 grand.
I have to say. I think the idea that Linux is not user friendly is a bit of a red herring. My Mam is a legal executive (paralegal in American-English). She said to me the other day that if she were to get another PC (the PC we have at the moment is on its last legs), she'd install Linux on it. I was pretty surprised by this but she said that Linux (the old PC for the family has Ubuntu installed on it) is much faster and more stable than Windows (the computers where she works have Windows 2000 installed on them).
Now and again she (and other members of my family) have problems with it but I'm pretty sure that they'd ask me for help as much or even more if I had Windows installed on the PC (viruses, spyware, popups and general computer questions which their Linux questions tend to be).
I was talking to someone in my class the other week and he was saying that his TINY laptop was better than my iBook because the CPU in his was IBM (it was AMD but I got that he was talking about x86 versus PPC). I then said that Macs actually had IBM chips in them and newer Macs had Intel chips in them but my iBook had Motorola chips in them. He was utterly confused.
But what about the McCarthy era? Don't try and fool yourself by thinking that Bush is doing anything new. Sure he might be doing things that are slightly more extreme than what Clinton did but there are broad similarities between all US Governments of the past 30 odd years.
Maybe the US Government's tactics are more apparent now because the USA's world domination is beginning to fade.
Well he didn't really err by two decades 'cause it was happening in the 80's. I think the reason why Orwell was so good was because he knew the way Governments acted in the past and how they were acting in his present. Governments have done this kind of stuff before, are doing it right now and will continue to do it.
I know that this sounds like an off the wall conspiracy theory but when you think about it, it's true.
Methods that peek into people's credit card transactions won't find terrorists. Terrorists are, as much as people might not want to admit, intelligent people. They are not going to do anything that gets them noticed. This includes buying semtex with their credit cards.
I'm pretty sure that the Government knows this obvious truth. So if they are not using the PATRIOT Act to spy on terrorists (since things like the PATRIOT Act is useless in finding terrorists), then who are they spying on? You of course!
The whole idea of a 'war on terror' is not a new one. Various Governments have used the same scare mongering tactics to try and control their populations. I know I'm not saying anything here that people don't already know but I feel it has to be said until people actually listen.
Slashdot Mirror
Bollocks. Outsourcing didn't happen nearly as much as slashdotters like to piss and moan about.
Yeah, from having studied both speech processing and information retrieval in my degree, I know that this idea is by no means a novel one. How the fuck could this patent have been granted? I'm flabbergasted!
Amen to that! Just yesterday, I helped a bank clerk through the process of my loan application. This was a middle aged woman. It seemed like she was working for banks quite a long time but she didn't have a clue what to do. I was telling her "Right, you need me to fill in a form?" and she'd go "OK, hang on" and run off. It was shocking how she could be so incompetent.
Then of course, you have the HR (or recruitment or whatever) people. Of the people I've met over the past few months (which is quite a lot since I was looking for a job), they were all completely useless! I'm not just talking about the fact that these people were hiring for jobs which they didn't have a clue about, they didn't know how to do their own jobs!
It certainly does seem, that the older I get, the more I realise that the majority of people are utterly incompetent at doing their jobs.
I did try it out but I found that Safari became unstable. I installed SafariBlock which is free and it works well enough. You have to reload a page for blocks to come into affect but it doesn't crash Safari :)
It'd be cool to drop some hints like "I'm not too fond of Finder..." or "Wouldn't it be great if Safari had really good ad-blocking features?!" and have them implemented in the next OS revision! It'd also be cool to have loads of money...
Yeah! Dell should switch to PPC and Yellow Dog Linux! That'd show 'em!
My final year project does more or less the same thing that this algorithm does :( I hope my project supervisors don't read slashdot!
Wait. There have already been 2 dotcom booms? I know there was one in the mid to late 90s. When was the other one?
:)
Plus, I hope you're right. I'm starting my graduate IT job in July. I'm gonna start earning loads of money!
I use Pico when I'm SSHed into somewhere. I don't get all the big hype about vi/emacs. I mean, it's only a text editor. I figure that a text editor should be easy enough to use that it doesn't need you to complete a 24 hour tutorial to use it.
Even now I just use (J|K|G)Edit and edit files directly on the server. I just use Pico for little things like writing emails in mutt or writing posts in slrn (only when I'm logged in via SSH). I think people only use mutt/vi/emacs/whatever other archaic piece of shite software because being seen as a crusty makes them feel empowered or something.
Am I the only one that got a bit of a rubbery one whilst reading this? I'm either a pervert, normal, sex starved or had too much beer.
Like most things, it's probably all of the above.
Yeah, I had a faulty logic board on my iBook G4 too. It was still in warranty. It took over a month for them to replace the logic board even though they said that it would only take about 3 days. I had told them that I was in the middle of my final year at college so I didn't want them to take too long with it. I had the Applecare warranty and it was tied to the Serial Number of the iBook. I recently noticed that my iBook doesn't have a serial number anymore! This was my first Apple machine. I'd love to get another one, maybe a new iMac but I am very hesitant in getting one 'cause Apple's service is so shoddy.
In Ireland, there are loads of big US IT companies. They all seem to have their 'interesting' (i.e. programming on their actual products) jobs in America. So if the jobs aren't in their offshore offices and, from what I read on slashdot, they're not in America, where are these elusive IT jobs?
You've obviously never seen tubgirl before.
Having multiple desktops is so 80s
Seriously though, you have to organise your windows around your different virtual desktops. Plus, you have to remember which desktop has which window. With one desktop and something like exposé (or whatever they're calling it in Vista), you don't need to manage your windows. You don't need to remember. If you want a window, hit a key, see all your windows and click on the one you want.
Have you tried this new feature yet? Maybe virtual deskops work great for you but check this new stuff out. You might like it!
In the screenshots even the titlebar of the focused window is transparent. The only difference seems to be that the minimize, maximize, close buttons in the top right hand corner are coloured while the unfocused windows' minimize, maximize, close buttons are greyed out. This looks confusing to me because it looks like the focused window is unfocused.
If you're not in IT then what else are you going to do? I'm finishing my degree in about 3 months time (which reminds me, I really should start doing some work) and one of my friends who's been working in IT for nearly 2 years paints a pretty bleak picture of it. He doesn't really like working in IT at all even though he loves programming (and that's his job). Knowing this however, I'm still looking for IT jobs for when I finish college because I wouldn't know what else to do. I mean, I figure that you have to be at least half interested in your job in order for you not to be miserable all the time. You said that you had left IT. What sector are you planning to move in to?
I know this is probably a bit OT but out of interest, what's the average starting wage for the IT sector? I'm talking grad positions here. And preferably places in the mid-west.
In Ireland, starting wages tend to be between €23 and €27 grand which isn't great but it's about average for people starting fresh out of college. Of course, after about 2 years you'd expect to be on over €30 grand.
I could think of better things to spend my money on. Like 16,666.67 cups of coffee!
I have to say. I think the idea that Linux is not user friendly is a bit of a red herring. My Mam is a legal executive (paralegal in American-English). She said to me the other day that if she were to get another PC (the PC we have at the moment is on its last legs), she'd install Linux on it. I was pretty surprised by this but she said that Linux (the old PC for the family has Ubuntu installed on it) is much faster and more stable than Windows (the computers where she works have Windows 2000 installed on them).
Now and again she (and other members of my family) have problems with it but I'm pretty sure that they'd ask me for help as much or even more if I had Windows installed on the PC (viruses, spyware, popups and general computer questions which their Linux questions tend to be).
I was talking to someone in my class the other week and he was saying that his TINY laptop was better than my iBook because the CPU in his was IBM (it was AMD but I got that he was talking about x86 versus PPC). I then said that Macs actually had IBM chips in them and newer Macs had Intel chips in them but my iBook had Motorola chips in them. He was utterly confused.
But what about the McCarthy era? Don't try and fool yourself by thinking that Bush is doing anything new. Sure he might be doing things that are slightly more extreme than what Clinton did but there are broad similarities between all US Governments of the past 30 odd years.
Maybe the US Government's tactics are more apparent now because the USA's world domination is beginning to fade.
Well he didn't really err by two decades 'cause it was happening in the 80's. I think the reason why Orwell was so good was because he knew the way Governments acted in the past and how they were acting in his present. Governments have done this kind of stuff before, are doing it right now and will continue to do it.
I know that this sounds like an off the wall conspiracy theory but when you think about it, it's true.
Methods that peek into people's credit card transactions won't find terrorists. Terrorists are, as much as people might not want to admit, intelligent people. They are not going to do anything that gets them noticed. This includes buying semtex with their credit cards.
I'm pretty sure that the Government knows this obvious truth. So if they are not using the PATRIOT Act to spy on terrorists (since things like the PATRIOT Act is useless in finding terrorists), then who are they spying on? You of course!
The whole idea of a 'war on terror' is not a new one. Various Governments have used the same scare mongering tactics to try and control their populations. I know I'm not saying anything here that people don't already know but I feel it has to be said until people actually listen.
Mac OSX?
Yeah. When I first saw this story, I was expecting Marge to be hot like in the cartoon. The real life Marge just looks like any other Ma :(