new media is now a surgical strike at your wallet via the phone in your pocket.
Except if you don't have a smart phone, you can't be tracked or have ads shoved in your face. If you don't have Kindle/Nook/iPad/whatever, you also can't be tracked. Thus, you are one of many unknown, untargetable people, not consumers, who refuse to be told what they "need" to have.
On a related note, those QRC codes you see plastered everywhere? The ones which were supposed to revolutionize the way businesses communicate to people? Recent studies show that only a small fraction of people use them, with most people, even the supposedly tech savvy ones, saying either it is too difficult to get the codes to work with their camera, they require a dedicated piece of software to use or don't care to stop and click to see what is being offered.
So yeah, I understand where you're coming from, but there is a large segment of the population who, for one reason or another, are either refusing to be tracked or don't care what advertisement is being shoved at them and just ignore it.
Considering what a giant, steaming pile of aardvark crap Windows 7 is, and having seen a beta of 8, it is quite clear that Microsoft's goal is to make it as difficult as possible for people to get work done.
The amount of effort needed to do simple things in 7 is staggering, when one considers that as far back as 95 you could find what you needed without having to wade through more than 3 menus. Now, you might as well be drilling to the Earth's core with how deep you have to go to find something.
I'll just have to look to Linux (shudder) to be able to do what I need, though it appears from the Natty Narwhal release of Ubuntu, Linux folk are taking cues from Microsoft on how to make sure the user can't control their own system.
We're talking about developers here. People that think you can always throw more RAM or disc space at a problem rather than keep their code neat and clean.
We all know what to do if a fire breaks out in a spaceship or station. Didn't you people watch Red Planet?
You grab your fire extinguisher, point it at the fire, release the locking pin, pull the handle and get propelled across the room due to no gravity holding you in place and the fire retardant being ejected from the nozzle
Yes, it was the IAEA, but that agency is under the umbrella of the United Nations who used the information from the IAEA to issue reports on the status of wmds in Iraq.
Regardless, and as you pointed out, the point still stands. First we claim that the U.N. (or IAEA) can't be trusted, that they're wrong, now we're giving them pats on the back for the great job they're doing (sound familiar?)
I'm confused. Wasn't the U.N. that organization which was lying when it said Iraq had no wmds?
The one we called liars but when we sent not one, not two, but three teams of our own investigators after we had invaded Iraq to find the wmds which we knew were there, found that the multiple reports that had come out were correct?
It would be nice if people would make up their minds. Either the reports generated by the same organization are false or they're not. Pick one.
I'll agree with your assessment. I'm trying to move from a general IT position to a project management job and the salaries I see, considering the experience they want, are generally shit.
On rare occasions, when they want at least ten years hardcore experience, you might find a few jobs over $80K, but most are in the $50K - $60K range, even with the experience.
Granted, I'm only looking on the east coast so maybe the midwest, south and west coast are different.
when you violate Rule #1 of the Rules of IT that Should Never Be Broken: Never let programmers program your applications.
When you let programmers program your applications, you get "Ooooh, shiny!" instead of something easy to use.
But look, you get all these shiny, glowing buttons who bounce on the screen! See, see! What, you want to use this? Easily? I'm sorry, we are programmers, we don't do that sort of thing.*
Programmers need to be kept on a short leash and given clear, concise and explicit instructions on what needs to be done. Not how, that's micromanaging, but what. You won't get shiny, but you will get usable.
*My apologies to Sneakers for bastardizing one of the best lines of the entire movie.
are you really thinking about cooking dinner when the volcano erupts?
Sure! You take the tin foil from your hat, wrap your food in it, stick it near the flowing lava and you'll have a perfectly cooked meal in a few minutes.
Then you can sit back in your lawn chair and watch the spectacle.
there isn't any difference in finding all the buttons going from XP to Win 7 or Win 8.
WHAT!!!??? There is a HUUUUGGGE difference in button location from XP to 7, let alone from 7 to 8. In XP, everything was there for the user to see. They could get to what they wanted in almost an instant.
In 7, everything is hidden. You can't get to what you want without a lot of hunting and hoping you get to where you want to go. Programs? Hidden. You have to open a secondary screen to seem them.
Want to see everything that is installed on your PC? You can't do that from one location in 7. You have to go to a second location to see everything else that isn't shown in the first location.
Want to turn off the annoying effects which slow things down? No longer is it a simple matter of going into display and removing the fade effects. Now you have to go several menus deep to find the same options and even then there are still effects which remain.
Windows 7 is a ginormous pile of steaming shit. It's as if the programmers went out of their way to make things harder for the user, more obtuse, more frustrating. Even simple things that administrators used to be able to do are now a round about cludge of turning things off so you can do what you need to get done.
and that's in no small part due to our individual genetic make-up.
I know this is a semantically pedantic rant, but when I see comments like that, it just makes me want to face palm. Of course our genetic make-up determines who we are. Whether we're happy (as in this study), the color of our eyes, male/female/miscellaneous (Hindu! There are 700 million of us!), how tall we are or whatever, it is our genes that, almost without exception, determine who we are.
To say otherwise, or feign surprise, is just stupid.
There's a pyramid in Gaza? Better not let the Israeli's know about it. They'll just declare the area around the pyramid a "restricted military zone", kick out the people who have been living there since before there was an Israel, then two years later allow Israelis to start building in the zone.
This is what I said in the previous article about this situation when commenting about someone who said they couldn't monitor every trade:
Yes, they do. Every trade is supposed to be monitored. Even if it means a few bad trades get through, they can and are supposed to review the accounts, timing, etc that go in to every trade to determine legitimacy and adherence to trading rules.
It's one thing to say you can't check an instantaneous trade. It's quite another to say you can't look at multiple trades your traders make and not pick up on improprieties.
This comes down to willful ignorance. So long as the guy was doing well, it didn't matter if the both internal and external rules were being violated. It is only when trades go bad that, "Oh my! How could that have happened?" comes into play.
For a short time I worked at a brokerage firm and I can tell you, everything you do is watched.
So yes, UBS' systems did detect the trades (as I said they would). It was the people who failed.
It's the same thing where I work. When people turn off their PCs at night, rather than restart as they've been told, our CIO talks about getting Wake-on-Lan implemented. When she and our Security head couldn't remember two passwords to sign on to their laptops (SafeBoot first then domain sign-on) she had us change to autoboot.
In both instances she was advocating a technical solution to resolve an issue of human failure. Same with UBS. The technical side worked as planned. It was the human side that failed.
You show precisely why religion is so evil and debilitating to society and why those who believe don't grasp the simple concept that they are bowing down to a narcissistic dictator.*
Further, I find it amazing that people have no problem idolizing/worshiping/whatever someone who was obviously a hippie. Long hair, no job, bumming off of others for food and shelter, preaching peace and love. If that isn't the definition of a hippie, I don't know what is. Whatever happened to working for what you want rather than asking for handouts?
"You didn't give God credit! You're going to hell!"
"You had all this money and you didn't give any to God! You're going to hell!"
"You dared to expand the human mind and not worship God! You're going to hell!"
And before those out there who do believe in the guy** in the sky try to explain away that these nuts are just aberrations, take a good, hard look at your beliefs. Do you give thanks to the invisible being? Do you give it*** credit for your success/failure? Further, when people talk about terrorist from the Islamic faith and how they are representative of that faith, could not the same be said of these folks?****
* Anyone who tells a father he has to kill one of his sons to prove his obedience definitely falls into the dictator category. Not to mention that to keep in good graces you have to follow all the various rules.
And what's up with standing by and doing nothing while your only son is killed? Talk about psychopathic.
** Why is God a guy? Why can't he be a she? Was it because the stories were written by men during a time and in a region where women were (and to some extent still are) considered property and subservient to men?
*** Why must God be male or female? Surely an omnipotent and omniscient being wouldn't have a gender. Or is this like calling a ship a 'she' when obviously an inanimate object is neither.
**** All these arguments leave aside the question of whether such a being exists. As we've seen over the centuries, no such evidence has come forth and based on our actions, this being, if it exists, certainly isn't perfect or it wouldn't have created such fallible beings and allowed them to go astray so easily.
It seems that no matter how badly you fuck up, no matter how many pooches you screw,... you will always get hired.
I have been saying the same thing for who knows how long, but I usually say, "They could film these people eating live babies and someone would still hire them because of their "experience"."
Of course, this is also the fourth way to be successful; be a failure. It seems the more you fail, the greater you are wanted.
In case you are wondering, the first three ways to be successful are be attractive, be able to sell ice cubes to Eskimos in January and blame someone else.
For some light reading and the answer to why you don't get anywhere. The fourth part I haven't added but I may make an addendum in the near future.
Because in a corporate environment, where you are trying to have a standard image and you don't let people randomly install whatever they want to avoid infections, you want something to be able to be installed and updated without administrative privileges.
what I really want to be doing is looking at the world through the screen of my smartphone!
You obviously haven't been out of your mother's basement in some time because if you were to go to any major city, let's say New York for shits and giggles, all you see are people with their heads down, looking at the screens of their smartphones.
I recently took some foreign relatives of my aunt on a tour of New York and one of them commented on all the people who were glued to their smartphones.
So yes, there will be people who will walk down the Champs-Elysees looking at their smartphone.
Even if you aren't a technologist, it's a bad situation to be in the 21st century and have no understanding of how systems work,
I work with people in IT, programmers no less, who don't know how systems work. As soon as we gave them admin rights to install what they wanted, the amount of problems on their machines went up by a significant amount.
You think someone who doesn't care about technology will absorb anything from these courses? All they want to know is how to send a twit or update their Facebook page from whatever device is in their hands. They don't care about how system work, they just want it to work.
Slashdot Mirror
new media is now a surgical strike at your wallet via the phone in your pocket.
Except if you don't have a smart phone, you can't be tracked or have ads shoved in your face. If you don't have Kindle/Nook/iPad/whatever, you also can't be tracked. Thus, you are one of many unknown, untargetable people, not consumers, who refuse to be told what they "need" to have.
On a related note, those QRC codes you see plastered everywhere? The ones which were supposed to revolutionize the way businesses communicate to people? Recent studies show that only a small fraction of people use them, with most people, even the supposedly tech savvy ones, saying either it is too difficult to get the codes to work with their camera, they require a dedicated piece of software to use or don't care to stop and click to see what is being offered.
So yeah, I understand where you're coming from, but there is a large segment of the population who, for one reason or another, are either refusing to be tracked or don't care what advertisement is being shoved at them and just ignore it.
Considering what a giant, steaming pile of aardvark crap Windows 7 is, and having seen a beta of 8, it is quite clear that Microsoft's goal is to make it as difficult as possible for people to get work done.
The amount of effort needed to do simple things in 7 is staggering, when one considers that as far back as 95 you could find what you needed without having to wade through more than 3 menus. Now, you might as well be drilling to the Earth's core with how deep you have to go to find something.
I'll just have to look to Linux (shudder) to be able to do what I need, though it appears from the Natty Narwhal release of Ubuntu, Linux folk are taking cues from Microsoft on how to make sure the user can't control their own system.
Oh come on, that makes too much sense.
We're talking about developers here. People that think you can always throw more RAM or disc space at a problem rather than keep their code neat and clean.
You mean it's not a horrendous conglomeration of Flash ads, moving type, slideouts/slideins and inconsistent use of font sizes?
I'm glad they went with a simple, easy to use to design that allows one to get to what they want without having to wade through piles of cruft.
Quite obviously they didn't let a web designer design their site.
$27.63 is approximately $54,130/year. I'm referencing my pay scale sheet which shows $27.41 = $53,614/yr and $28 = $54,768/yr
This is what the Department of Labor has to say about people in IT who make that salary: Link
We all know what to do if a fire breaks out in a spaceship or station. Didn't you people watch Red Planet?
You grab your fire extinguisher, point it at the fire, release the locking pin, pull the handle and get propelled across the room due to no gravity holding you in place and the fire retardant being ejected from the nozzle
Come on you geeks, get with the program!
Yes, it was the IAEA, but that agency is under the umbrella of the United Nations who used the information from the IAEA to issue reports on the status of wmds in Iraq.
Regardless, and as you pointed out, the point still stands. First we claim that the U.N. (or IAEA) can't be trusted, that they're wrong, now we're giving them pats on the back for the great job they're doing (sound familiar?)
I'm confused. Wasn't the U.N. that organization which was lying when it said Iraq had no wmds?
The one we called liars but when we sent not one, not two, but three teams of our own investigators after we had invaded Iraq to find the wmds which we knew were there, found that the multiple reports that had come out were correct?
It would be nice if people would make up their minds. Either the reports generated by the same organization are false or they're not. Pick one.
I'll agree with your assessment. I'm trying to move from a general IT position to a project management job and the salaries I see, considering the experience they want, are generally shit.
On rare occasions, when they want at least ten years hardcore experience, you might find a few jobs over $80K, but most are in the $50K - $60K range, even with the experience.
Granted, I'm only looking on the east coast so maybe the midwest, south and west coast are different.
While I too will be hunkering down, I'll have my bags of chocolate to keep me happy while my cat will sit in my lap keeping me warm.
Ahh, this is living!
when you violate Rule #1 of the Rules of IT that Should Never Be Broken: Never let programmers program your applications.
When you let programmers program your applications, you get "Ooooh, shiny!" instead of something easy to use.
But look, you get all these shiny, glowing buttons who bounce on the screen! See, see! What, you want to use this? Easily? I'm sorry, we are programmers, we don't do that sort of thing.*
Programmers need to be kept on a short leash and given clear, concise and explicit instructions on what needs to be done. Not how, that's micromanaging, but what. You won't get shiny, but you will get usable.
*My apologies to Sneakers for bastardizing one of the best lines of the entire movie.
are you really thinking about cooking dinner when the volcano erupts?
Sure! You take the tin foil from your hat, wrap your food in it, stick it near the flowing lava and you'll have a perfectly cooked meal in a few minutes.
Then you can sit back in your lawn chair and watch the spectacle.
Don't you watch any Alton Brown?
there isn't any difference in finding all the buttons going from XP to Win 7 or Win 8.
WHAT!!!??? There is a HUUUUGGGE difference in button location from XP to 7, let alone from 7 to 8. In XP, everything was there for the user to see. They could get to what they wanted in almost an instant.
In 7, everything is hidden. You can't get to what you want without a lot of hunting and hoping you get to where you want to go. Programs? Hidden. You have to open a secondary screen to seem them.
Want to see everything that is installed on your PC? You can't do that from one location in 7. You have to go to a second location to see everything else that isn't shown in the first location.
Want to turn off the annoying effects which slow things down? No longer is it a simple matter of going into display and removing the fade effects. Now you have to go several menus deep to find the same options and even then there are still effects which remain.
Windows 7 is a ginormous pile of steaming shit. It's as if the programmers went out of their way to make things harder for the user, more obtuse, more frustrating. Even simple things that administrators used to be able to do are now a round about cludge of turning things off so you can do what you need to get done.
To quote the tape deck robot on robot island:
WHAT?!
we are sometimes known as Pennsyltucky.
and that's in no small part due to our individual genetic make-up.
I know this is a semantically pedantic rant, but when I see comments like that, it just makes me want to face palm. Of course our genetic make-up determines who we are. Whether we're happy (as in this study), the color of our eyes, male/female/miscellaneous (Hindu! There are 700 million of us!), how tall we are or whatever, it is our genes that, almost without exception, determine who we are.
To say otherwise, or feign surprise, is just stupid.
Thats what happens when mbas take over running of corporations.
This is my number 1 rule of business: never let an MBA run your company.
Ever
I have yet to meet anyone with an MBA, in any capacity, who has any idea of what they're doing.
Software developers themselves, you end up with a beautifully written documents that will bare no resemblance to the finished product
A perfect explanation of Rule #1 of IT that should never be broken:
Never let a programmer program your application.
with the Great Pyramid at Gaza
There's a pyramid in Gaza? Better not let the Israeli's know about it. They'll just declare the area around the pyramid a "restricted military zone", kick out the people who have been living there since before there was an Israel, then two years later allow Israelis to start building in the zone.
This is what I said in the previous article about this situation when commenting about someone who said they couldn't monitor every trade:
Yes, they do. Every trade is supposed to be monitored. Even if it means a few bad trades get through, they can and are supposed to review the accounts, timing, etc that go in to every trade to determine legitimacy and adherence to trading rules.
It's one thing to say you can't check an instantaneous trade. It's quite another to say you can't look at multiple trades your traders make and not pick up on improprieties.
This comes down to willful ignorance. So long as the guy was doing well, it didn't matter if the both internal and external rules were being violated. It is only when trades go bad that, "Oh my! How could that have happened?" comes into play.
For a short time I worked at a brokerage firm and I can tell you, everything you do is watched.
So yes, UBS' systems did detect the trades (as I said they would). It was the people who failed.
It's the same thing where I work. When people turn off their PCs at night, rather than restart as they've been told, our CIO talks about getting Wake-on-Lan implemented. When she and our Security head couldn't remember two passwords to sign on to their laptops (SafeBoot first then domain sign-on) she had us change to autoboot.
In both instances she was advocating a technical solution to resolve an issue of human failure. Same with UBS. The technical side worked as planned. It was the human side that failed.
You show precisely why religion is so evil and debilitating to society and why those who believe don't grasp the simple concept that they are bowing down to a narcissistic dictator.*
Further, I find it amazing that people have no problem idolizing/worshiping/whatever someone who was obviously a hippie. Long hair, no job, bumming off of others for food and shelter, preaching peace and love. If that isn't the definition of a hippie, I don't know what is. Whatever happened to working for what you want rather than asking for handouts?
"You didn't give God credit! You're going to hell!"
"You had all this money and you didn't give any to God! You're going to hell!"
"You dared to expand the human mind and not worship God! You're going to hell!"
And before those out there who do believe in the guy** in the sky try to explain away that these nuts are just aberrations, take a good, hard look at your beliefs. Do you give thanks to the invisible being? Do you give it*** credit for your success/failure? Further, when people talk about terrorist from the Islamic faith and how they are representative of that faith, could not the same be said of these folks?****
* Anyone who tells a father he has to kill one of his sons to prove his obedience definitely falls into the dictator category. Not to mention that to keep in good graces you have to follow all the various rules.
And what's up with standing by and doing nothing while your only son is killed? Talk about psychopathic.
** Why is God a guy? Why can't he be a she? Was it because the stories were written by men during a time and in a region where women were (and to some extent still are) considered property and subservient to men?
*** Why must God be male or female? Surely an omnipotent and omniscient being wouldn't have a gender. Or is this like calling a ship a 'she' when obviously an inanimate object is neither.
**** All these arguments leave aside the question of whether such a being exists. As we've seen over the centuries, no such evidence has come forth and based on our actions, this being, if it exists, certainly isn't perfect or it wouldn't have created such fallible beings and allowed them to go astray so easily.
It seems that no matter how badly you fuck up, no matter how many pooches you screw, ... you will always get hired.
I have been saying the same thing for who knows how long, but I usually say, "They could film these people eating live babies and someone would still hire them because of their "experience"."
Of course, this is also the fourth way to be successful; be a failure. It seems the more you fail, the greater you are wanted.
In case you are wondering, the first three ways to be successful are be attractive, be able to sell ice cubes to Eskimos in January and blame someone else.
For some light reading and the answer to why you don't get anywhere. The fourth part I haven't added but I may make an addendum in the near future.
here the end-users are not administrators.
Because in a corporate environment, where you are trying to have a standard image and you don't let people randomly install whatever they want to avoid infections, you want something to be able to be installed and updated without administrative privileges.
what I really want to be doing is looking at the world through the screen of my smartphone!
You obviously haven't been out of your mother's basement in some time because if you were to go to any major city, let's say New York for shits and giggles, all you see are people with their heads down, looking at the screens of their smartphones.
I recently took some foreign relatives of my aunt on a tour of New York and one of them commented on all the people who were glued to their smartphones.
So yes, there will be people who will walk down the Champs-Elysees looking at their smartphone.
It is Tamaribuchi Heavy Manufacturing Concern who merged with Matsumura Fishworks a while back. They're the ones who make Mr. Sparkle.
Even if you aren't a technologist, it's a bad situation to be in the 21st century and have no understanding of how systems work,
I work with people in IT, programmers no less, who don't know how systems work. As soon as we gave them admin rights to install what they wanted, the amount of problems on their machines went up by a significant amount.
You think someone who doesn't care about technology will absorb anything from these courses? All they want to know is how to send a twit or update their Facebook page from whatever device is in their hands. They don't care about how system work, they just want it to work.