It's "Craigslist" not "Craiglist". It's just not that difficult to get right for pity's sake, and the difference is quite crucial when you type the respective.com URLs into your browser's address bar on your work PC. Just try it now, I dare you.
But of course, being from the UK I had no idea what "Craigslist" is, because it only covers a few places here so isn't terribly useful, hence I decided to find out, and hence the rather unpleasant surprise I got.
Hey Chris, if you're expetations are this high for your first job, I pity you. You've got a long way to go and a great many things to learn.
The latter part of this is undoubtedly true... however, I'd suggest that if Chris's expectations are so high, it's only because they've been raised by people old and experienced enough to know better.
To expand on this, wherever possible I like to take people at face value since it vastly simplifies social interaction, and generally makes life much less stressful... unless of course they're an accomplished barefaced liar. They're a barefaced liar if:
They tell you the place is great and everyone is happy in their work, and in general it's not so.
They tell you you'll get 6-monthly pay-reviews, and you don't.
They tell you they place a high value on training, but never send you on a course.
They tell you they like to keep an open mind... as long as you do everything their way.
They show you a long list of past customers, but neglect to mention that none of them ever came back for more (obviously you need to apply some judgement here because the frequency of repeat custom will depend on exactly what the company does).
They tell you about all the exciting projects they're working on, or have worked on, but never show you any software that's past the beta, alpha or prototype phases, and can't point to any software actually in production use (clearly this does not apply to very new startups).
...etc, etc. I'm sure you can think of plenty of others.
Personally though, I couldn't care less about cubicles. I've pretty much always worked in an entirely open-plan environment with groups of desks clumped together (3 out of 4 jobs). So yeah, sometimes it's a bit noisy, but I just put headphones on and listen to music, so it's no problem. The one time I did have my own office, once the novelty wore off I found I was actually quite lonely, and so was only too pleased when the opportunity arose to share an office with somebody else.
I will say this though, because there is a very valid point in that article. If you do really put your heart and soul into a job, and I'm sure many of us have experienced this, and it all goes to waste (for whatever reason) it does leave you feeling disillusioned and demotivated, at least if you care about what you're doing. It is extremely difficult to remain motivated in the face of futility. I've had this kind of experience, and I can honestly say it's taken a few *years* for me to get to the point where I've regained my passion for software engineering again. So beware.
Before I go any further: I'm *NOT* having a go at you in any way, but rather at the people who did that to your girlfriend, and at people in a more general sense who think that doing that kind of thing is "OK", or even "right".
OK, then...
[rant]Wouldn't normally get involved in an discussion like this (at least not online), however I need to point something out about these "god nuts" who bust people's windshields etc. They probably call themselves Christians, actually I'm sure they do... but the fact is that well they're not. They may think they are, but they're wrong. As in, they are objectively and absolutely mistaken (if you take the whole Bible as your absolute standard).
They're not Christians, they're not saved, and if the things the Bible says are correct then Jesus is going to be pretty upset with them on judgement day (OK, I'm being pretty bold there I'll admit, but understand that I'm not saying they *can't* be saved or are irredeemable).
If you were to read the whole of the Bible from beginning to end and interpret everything you read within the context of that book (or collection of books, as it in fact is) you'd find that, if you're a Christian, persecuting others for any reason is simply not acceptable. This means, using your example, that smashing somebody's windscreen and putting graffiti all over their car because they're a witch (or black, or gay, or a Muslim, or they have terrible taste in sandals, or whatever) is *REALLY* *NOT* acceptable if you're a Christian... and if you really are a Christian, then you really are just going to know that. And that's it.
1 Corinthians 13 quite plainly points out that a Christian without love is nothing. I find it hard to see a situation in which the above actions could be interpreted as love.[/rant]
OK, first off I admit that I haven't read the article because I basically can't be bothered, however.... if the incident happened two years ago when the girl was 15 how can she now be 19? There's definitely an inaccuracy in there somewhere.
Er, hey, that's exactly what happened at a company I used to work for (it definitely WAS NOT ME EITHER because it was some months before I started there). Exactly as you describe, even down to the 2 TB of data on an NFS mounted filesystem. Ran over the weekend. Gone Monday morning. Who were you working for at this point?
Umm, I don't know which version of Firefox you're using, or on which platform, but I can assure you that on WinXP running Firefox 0.9.2 (oops, better upgrade)/. renders just fine... in fact it looks exactly like it does in IE6 with WinXP SP 2 installed. Have you actually tried using Firefox recently?
To be honest this sounds interesting, I think branding it as another Matrix etc rip-off is probably missing the point, and I think slating it for using ideas that have occurred in other SF novels is probably doing the same. No novel is ever entirely original in all aspects: if you're going to nitpick about the reuse of ideas you may as well give up now and never read another book in your life.
However:
The citizens of this future America, weaned on the Feed, are shockingly illiterate.
The fact is that for most of human history, most of humanity, most of the time has been shockingly illiterate. Even today, if you look at literacy throughout the world, rather than looking at just the U.S.... it's quite shockingly low (America is not and never has been representative of the world at large). But the reasons are different and tend to be a reflection of the rich / poor divide, rather than because education is controlled by powerful corporations. The difference is that many people who are illiterate today would give almost anything for an education and some decent opportunities in life, whereas the characters in this novel just don't care.
OK, before I go any further there are a couple of points I should make:
(1) I haven't read the original article because, well frankly because I've got better things to do and I just can't be bothered.
(2) I'm not a Linux advocate: I use Windows almost exclusively and am generally quite happy with it, although I CAN use Linux when I need to.
However, my one experience with Linux and sound cards was back in April 2000, when I installed SuSE Linux 6.4 on my (new at the time) 600 MHz Athlon, which is kitted out with a Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! card -- I can't remember exactly what version of this card. I booted from the DVD and used YAST2 to install, and guess what? The sound worked first time with no problems at all... and this was 4 (FOUR!!!!!) years ago when Linux was MUCH less user friendly than it is now.
I don't know what sort of card this guy was using, but I have to doubt his competence if with either RH9 or the latest version of SuSE he can't get the thing to make some sort of noise. Honestly! I don't want to be rude but where do they get these people?
Slashdot Mirror
It's "Craigslist" not "Craiglist". It's just not that difficult to get right for pity's sake, and the difference is quite crucial when you type the respective .com URLs into your browser's address bar on your work PC. Just try it now, I dare you.
But of course, being from the UK I had no idea what "Craigslist" is, because it only covers a few places here so isn't terribly useful, hence I decided to find out, and hence the rather unpleasant surprise I got.
The latter part of this is undoubtedly true... however, I'd suggest that if Chris's expectations are so high, it's only because they've been raised by people old and experienced enough to know better.
To expand on this, wherever possible I like to take people at face value since it vastly simplifies social interaction, and generally makes life much less stressful... unless of course they're an accomplished barefaced liar. They're a barefaced liar if:
...etc, etc. I'm sure you can think of plenty of others.
Personally though, I couldn't care less about cubicles. I've pretty much always worked in an entirely open-plan environment with groups of desks clumped together (3 out of 4 jobs). So yeah, sometimes it's a bit noisy, but I just put headphones on and listen to music, so it's no problem. The one time I did have my own office, once the novelty wore off I found I was actually quite lonely, and so was only too pleased when the opportunity arose to share an office with somebody else.
I will say this though, because there is a very valid point in that article. If you do really put your heart and soul into a job, and I'm sure many of us have experienced this, and it all goes to waste (for whatever reason) it does leave you feeling disillusioned and demotivated, at least if you care about what you're doing. It is extremely difficult to remain motivated in the face of futility. I've had this kind of experience, and I can honestly say it's taken a few *years* for me to get to the point where I've regained my passion for software engineering again. So beware.
Just my two-pence.
Before I go any further: I'm *NOT* having a go at you in any way, but rather at the people who did that to your girlfriend, and at people in a more general sense who think that doing that kind of thing is "OK", or even "right".
OK, then...
[rant]Wouldn't normally get involved in an discussion like this (at least not online), however I need to point something out about these "god nuts" who bust people's windshields etc. They probably call themselves Christians, actually I'm sure they do... but the fact is that well they're not. They may think they are, but they're wrong. As in, they are objectively and absolutely mistaken (if you take the whole Bible as your absolute standard).
They're not Christians, they're not saved, and if the things the Bible says are correct then Jesus is going to be pretty upset with them on judgement day (OK, I'm being pretty bold there I'll admit, but understand that I'm not saying they *can't* be saved or are irredeemable).
If you were to read the whole of the Bible from beginning to end and interpret everything you read within the context of that book (or collection of books, as it in fact is) you'd find that, if you're a Christian, persecuting others for any reason is simply not acceptable. This means, using your example, that smashing somebody's windscreen and putting graffiti all over their car because they're a witch (or black, or gay, or a Muslim, or they have terrible taste in sandals, or whatever) is *REALLY* *NOT* acceptable if you're a Christian... and if you really are a Christian, then you really are just going to know that. And that's it.
1 Corinthians 13 quite plainly points out that a Christian without love is nothing. I find it hard to see a situation in which the above actions could be interpreted as love.[/rant]
... Aah, blood pressure returning to normal. ;-)
OK, first off I admit that I haven't read the article because I basically can't be bothered, however.... if the incident happened two years ago when the girl was 15 how can she now be 19? There's definitely an inaccuracy in there somewhere.
Er, hey, that's exactly what happened at a company I used to work for (it definitely WAS NOT ME EITHER because it was some months before I started there). Exactly as you describe, even down to the 2 TB of data on an NFS mounted filesystem. Ran over the weekend. Gone Monday morning. Who were you working for at this point?
Umm, I don't know which version of Firefox you're using, or on which platform, but I can assure you that on WinXP running Firefox 0.9.2 (oops, better upgrade) /. renders just fine... in fact it looks exactly like it does in IE6 with WinXP SP 2 installed. Have you actually tried using Firefox recently?
To be honest this sounds interesting, I think branding it as another Matrix etc rip-off is probably missing the point, and I think slating it for using ideas that have occurred in other SF novels is probably doing the same. No novel is ever entirely original in all aspects: if you're going to nitpick about the reuse of ideas you may as well give up now and never read another book in your life.
However:
The citizens of this future America, weaned on the Feed, are shockingly illiterate.
The fact is that for most of human history, most of humanity, most of the time has been shockingly illiterate. Even today, if you look at literacy throughout the world, rather than looking at just the U.S.... it's quite shockingly low (America is not and never has been representative of the world at large). But the reasons are different and tend to be a reflection of the rich / poor divide, rather than because education is controlled by powerful corporations. The difference is that many people who are illiterate today would give almost anything for an education and some decent opportunities in life, whereas the characters in this novel just don't care.
OK, before I go any further there are a couple of points I should make: (1) I haven't read the original article because, well frankly because I've got better things to do and I just can't be bothered. (2) I'm not a Linux advocate: I use Windows almost exclusively and am generally quite happy with it, although I CAN use Linux when I need to. However, my one experience with Linux and sound cards was back in April 2000, when I installed SuSE Linux 6.4 on my (new at the time) 600 MHz Athlon, which is kitted out with a Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! card -- I can't remember exactly what version of this card. I booted from the DVD and used YAST2 to install, and guess what? The sound worked first time with no problems at all... and this was 4 (FOUR!!!!!) years ago when Linux was MUCH less user friendly than it is now. I don't know what sort of card this guy was using, but I have to doubt his competence if with either RH9 or the latest version of SuSE he can't get the thing to make some sort of noise. Honestly! I don't want to be rude but where do they get these people?