for the final episode, they'll find out they accidentaly brought a crate full of spiders on board, and will have to find a way to eject the arachnid menace into the vaccuum!
If we are talking about civil or mechanical or chemical engineers why do we need more?
built out? I know it's pulling at obvious strings, but does New Orleans mean anything to you? Built-out == old and crumbling in a great many cases. how about today's apartment building collapse in new jersey? civil engineers are needed in droves to keep people alive (that's totally conjecture, but you know what i mean)
my housemate, for example, is a CE who's field is earthquake engineering... here in CA that's a pretty important field! and as for chemical engineers? i don't know about you, but i'm not going to buy a car until it runs on something other than petrolium products. our future as a society is entirely in the hands of next year's civil, mechanical, and engineering graduates
in the same vein, users also tend to think that "it" is an acceptale pronoun for any piece of software, hardware, process, gadget, whatever, that may or may not be using. It's not that it doesn't occur to them to qualify their pronouns, it's that they don't know we aren't psychic.
I had one today: "Someone [in a different company] called and says she can't send us email. She got a message that said it can't talk to the server." He's trying to be helpful, I know, but really, he should know that I don't know what "it" is, and (b), I highly doubt that's what the error said, unless it was an Outlook error, in which cases, what the hell does he want *me* to do about it?
Very often, people asking me for technical help have problems that refuse to manifest themselves when I am present. My wife calls this my "aura". It is not just computers.
I reckon this has most to do with approach... users, especially the non-techy variety, tend to approach things in the same casual way they approach TV, or writing a reprort... casually, and intuitively... we aren't like that, generally; geeks are methodical... every step we take is scripted, and we're analyzing what we're doing as we're doing it...
remember trying to get those first couple of computers to talk to each other when you were a kid? one of the things we learned from that was approach: mentally cataloging each step along the way so it could be duplicated later... we deal with most things (and *especially* troubleshooting things) with the scientific method *firmly* implanted at the front of our conciousness
when the dvd doesn't work right for the non-tech, it's probably error related, but they wouldn't know that, because they just did what *feels* right... our "aura" is our ability to approach things methodically
Sorry to use such strong language, but my gut response is "What a load of crap."
To explain: Imagine if you get an email from your boss telling you to do something that you think is risky; a month later, when it backfires, you can't use the email to show that the decision was not yours. Excuses me? Is this slashdot? Don't we know how to copy/paste here? If your company (a) has magic disapearing email, you presumably know about it, so when (b), your company asks you to do something risky, you could copy/paste the text to file, forward the email to your own non-magically-deleting email account.
I trust the everyone reading this discussion is smart enough to know how to work around a technology like this. Good grief.
everyone trouped around the countryside methodicly completing task A before moving on to task B. Felt more like they were connecting the dots than telling a story.
that was actually my primary criticism of LOTR; i hated it for exactly that reason
[puts on flame-proof suit and hides...]
Re:no laughing matter (and how to avoid it)
on
Merck's Deleted Data
·
· Score: 1
So you admit that you work at a place that uses illegal practices?
Not all changes are about illigal stuff. How about "The state agrees to pay $1,000,000^H^H^H^H^H^H^H500,000 for the whatever..."
you don't want the casual reader to be able to see what sort of numbers were in various versions of the agreement before the final public document is ready
Re:no laughing matter (and how to avoid it)
on
Merck's Deleted Data
·
· Score: 1
:) easy to say on slashdot... it's amazing what kind of emails you get when you *only* make documents available in pdf!
no laughing matter (and how to avoid it)
on
Merck's Deleted Data
·
· Score: 5, Informative
An entire multi-national corporation brought down by Microsoft's TrackChanges feature...
Wow. I didn't realize that qualified me as "ancient". I've got *heaps* of tabs from OLGA that still have the full lyrics. When that stuff started happening, I grabbed as much as I could. Of course, the new ones sans full lyrics aren't much less usefull, and still containt about all the information you need to have a decent go of the song.
users shouldn't _need_ to concern themselves with the nuances of hardware and software just to browse the web, check their email or play a game
this is 100% right on. at the end of the day, coolness doesn't mean bupkis if users aren't getting what they expect, which usually is the ability to get a whole lot of work of done with the fewest possible apps, on a machine that they can intuitively operate
for all of windows' flaws, and certainly there are many, it generally acomplishes this goal, if only through force of habit, but does accomplish it none the less
sure, I'm a geek. at home I use fedora and os x. at work it's XP. I wouldn't dream of suggesting that my users migrate to *anything* other xp right now, because the learning curve and other problems down the road would be tremendous
maybe in a few years (i hope i hope i hope) things will be different
BTW, anyone know a way for me to toggle link text format fron standard (blue w/ underline) to normal (black no underline) and back, quickly?
css. make a personal stylesheet and tell your browser to use it and to let your personal styles override site styles, then turn it off when you don't want it.
IANAL, but i can predict how this goes: the courts would (IMO bloody obviously) rule that blanket declarations of law enforcement/pygmies/blondes are not allowed are invalid - such disallows must be specific, "*you* are not allowed"
So how about if, when you are seeking a patent, you have to stump up a fixed non-refundable deposit; and the first person who comes forward within, say, six months or a year with proof of prior art that would invalidate the patent, gets half that money, as a sort of bounty?
I'm torn. I like the system you're proposing, and it sounds effective. The only problem is that the socialist in me doesn't like the idea of having to sump a deposit - that would sumarilly reduce pattent applications from smaller business, poor people, etc. It would help to ensure a monopoly on IP by large companies who have a vested interest in reducing competition.
A system and method for creating tamper-resistant code are described herein. In one embodiment, the method comprises receiving a first object code block. The method also comprises translating the first object code block into a second code block, wherein the translating includes applying taper-resistance techniques to the first object code block or the second object code block. The method also comprises executing the second object code block.
Right on. While it's really an elegant solution, highly cool, I imagine there is an asteroid-size pile of kinks to work out before this becomes reality though.
Launching the craft. How much fuel would it take to get escape velocity on something this massive? Probably not a small amount.
The crew. The time the crew would be away from earth would be how long? 10 years? 20 years? Managing and provisioning crews for such a long amount of time is probably among the major challenges facing the extension of our space travel abilities.
Coming home. What happens when a ship this large is re-entering Earth's atmosphere? That sucker will have a lot of force coming down.
Would it work? How do you test something like this before sinking billions into the final product and subsequent launch? what if it didn't work? What kind of contingency plans could we have?
Shelf life. So we make a ginormous space tractor. Maybe we don't face an asteroid threat for 15,000 years. That's a lot of upkeep.
who pays for it? This would turn into what, a trillion USD project? Who's footing that bill? What kind of bickering will we get in to breaking up those kinds of costs among dozens of nations?
All in all, I think it's a brilliant solution that just may not be feasable, but it's nice to see creative people are thinking about it.
i've read else where that this is actually a serious concern... lets hope google can find a link quickly... this one looks okay: the university of california is fighting a lawsuit because they refuse to certify as "meeting university entrance requirements" high school courses that teach ID
Slashdot Mirror
absolutely... biggest category -> middle category -> most restrictive category is good, going the other directions makes no sense at all
for the final episode, they'll find out they accidentaly brought a crate full of spiders on board, and will have to find a way to eject the arachnid menace into the vaccuum!
built out? I know it's pulling at obvious strings, but does New Orleans mean anything to you? Built-out == old and crumbling in a great many cases. how about today's apartment building collapse in new jersey? civil engineers are needed in droves to keep people alive (that's totally conjecture, but you know what i mean)
my housemate, for example, is a CE who's field is earthquake engineering... here in CA that's a pretty important field! and as for chemical engineers? i don't know about you, but i'm not going to buy a car until it runs on something other than petrolium products. our future as a society is entirely in the hands of next year's civil, mechanical, and engineering graduates
I had one today: "Someone [in a different company] called and says she can't send us email. She got a message that said it can't talk to the server." He's trying to be helpful, I know, but really, he should know that I don't know what "it" is, and (b), I highly doubt that's what the error said, unless it was an Outlook error, in which cases, what the hell does he want *me* to do about it?
I reckon this has most to do with approach... users, especially the non-techy variety, tend to approach things in the same casual way they approach TV, or writing a reprort... casually, and intuitively... we aren't like that, generally; geeks are methodical... every step we take is scripted, and we're analyzing what we're doing as we're doing it...
remember trying to get those first couple of computers to talk to each other when you were a kid? one of the things we learned from that was approach: mentally cataloging each step along the way so it could be duplicated later... we deal with most things (and *especially* troubleshooting things) with the scientific method *firmly* implanted at the front of our conciousness
when the dvd doesn't work right for the non-tech, it's probably error related, but they wouldn't know that, because they just did what *feels* right... our "aura" is our ability to approach things methodically
To explain: Imagine if you get an email from your boss telling you to do something that you think is risky; a month later, when it backfires, you can't use the email to show that the decision was not yours. Excuses me? Is this slashdot? Don't we know how to copy/paste here? If your company (a) has magic disapearing email, you presumably know about it, so when (b), your company asks you to do something risky, you could copy/paste the text to file, forward the email to your own non-magically-deleting email account.
I trust the everyone reading this discussion is smart enough to know how to work around a technology like this. Good grief.
that was actually my primary criticism of LOTR; i hated it for exactly that reason
[puts on flame-proof suit and hides...]
Not all changes are about illigal stuff. How about "The state agrees to pay $1,000,000^H^H^H^H^H^H^H500,000 for the whatever..."
you don't want the casual reader to be able to see what sort of numbers were in various versions of the agreement before the final public document is ready
:) easy to say on slashdot... it's amazing what kind of emails you get when you *only* make documents available in pdf!
where i work, we enforce use of the Remove Hidden Data Tool to prevent this happening
we once got some documents from DOJ that were supposed to go up on our website that had obvious edditing changes in them
Wow. I didn't realize that qualified me as "ancient". I've got *heaps* of tabs from OLGA that still have the full lyrics. When that stuff started happening, I grabbed as much as I could. Of course, the new ones sans full lyrics aren't much less usefull, and still containt about all the information you need to have a decent go of the song.
Note: William Quick coined the term on January 1, 2002, at 12:54 a.m in his Daily Pundit blog.
however, this result is from a quick & dirty google for "blogosphere etymology", and i have no info on the validity of the source
That's in there. I think it's page four of TFA. They hit all the key points:
Accessiblity
Valid HTML/CSS
Good, Well written content
This article seems to know what it's talking about, and doubles as a decent guide to good web design principle. Awesome.
this is 100% right on. at the end of the day, coolness doesn't mean bupkis if users aren't getting what they expect, which usually is the ability to get a whole lot of work of done with the fewest possible apps, on a machine that they can intuitively operate
for all of windows' flaws, and certainly there are many, it generally acomplishes this goal, if only through force of habit, but does accomplish it none the less
sure, I'm a geek. at home I use fedora and os x. at work it's XP. I wouldn't dream of suggesting that my users migrate to *anything* other xp right now, because the learning curve and other problems down the road would be tremendous
maybe in a few years (i hope i hope i hope) things will be different
really? doest it = sony in both cases?
i think the response hear pretty much answers that question, eh?
css. make a personal stylesheet and tell your browser to use it and to let your personal styles override site styles, then turn it off when you don't want it.
he gets it right here
IANAL, but i can predict how this goes: the courts would (IMO bloody obviously) rule that blanket declarations of law enforcement/pygmies/blondes are not allowed are invalid - such disallows must be specific, "*you* are not allowed"
I'm torn. I like the system you're proposing, and it sounds effective. The only problem is that the socialist in me doesn't like the idea of having to sump a deposit - that would sumarilly reduce pattent applications from smaller business, poor people, etc. It would help to ensure a monopoly on IP by large companies who have a vested interest in reducing competition.
Takes some getting used to, but when you are traveling across that country by train, it is *mighty* convenient
it's candle proof? it can't be narrowed?
i think you've just identified why *i'm* not in charge of this project!
Right on. While it's really an elegant solution, highly cool, I imagine there is an asteroid-size pile of kinks to work out before this becomes reality though.
Launching the craft. How much fuel would it take to get escape velocity on something this massive? Probably not a small amount.
The crew. The time the crew would be away from earth would be how long? 10 years? 20 years? Managing and provisioning crews for such a long amount of time is probably among the major challenges facing the extension of our space travel abilities.
Coming home. What happens when a ship this large is re-entering Earth's atmosphere? That sucker will have a lot of force coming down.
Would it work? How do you test something like this before sinking billions into the final product and subsequent launch? what if it didn't work? What kind of contingency plans could we have?
Shelf life. So we make a ginormous space tractor. Maybe we don't face an asteroid threat for 15,000 years. That's a lot of upkeep.
who pays for it? This would turn into what, a trillion USD project? Who's footing that bill? What kind of bickering will we get in to breaking up those kinds of costs among dozens of nations?
All in all, I think it's a brilliant solution that just may not be feasable, but it's nice to see creative people are thinking about it.
i've read else where that this is actually a serious concern... lets hope google can find a link quickly... this one looks okay: the university of california is fighting a lawsuit because they refuse to certify as "meeting university entrance requirements" high school courses that teach ID