OS X 10.3, aka Panther, shipped in October 2003. 10.4, aka Tiger, shipped in April 2005. 10.5, aka Leopard, is due in spring of 2007.
they name each one after a wild feline of some sort, "to disguise the fact that they're charging every year for minor updates".
Leaving aside the question of whether the point releases (of Windows or OS X) have been minor, let's see... apple menu, About This Mac... "Mac OS X Version 10.4.8." That sure is one crafty disguise!
Even if you had a point, "but those guys do it too!" is not a valid response.
Yeah, and those black American slaves in the 19th century were grateful, because they were getting fed and had a regular roof over their heads instead of living in mud huts as hunter-gatherers on the African savannah, getting eaten by lions and whatever. See, if there's any worse condition your workers could possibly be in, that totally justifies whatever rapacious maltreatment you care to dish out.
What's that? Stop punching you in the face? Why? Hey, at least I'm not stabbing you in the neck!
Besides you not knowing anything about feng shui and assuming it's nothing but mystical horseshit, parent clearly said doorway, not door. Cubicles have doorless "doorways."
Sounds to me like not every decision "lends itself" to CBA, although CBA can be made to perform some uncomfortable contortions in order to address those uncoöperative decisions. Personally, I've mostly worked in smallish organizations, where there aren't large enough employee populations to roll out test perquisite initiatives (e.g., free soda) to a subset thereof without pissing off the rest of them, so #1 isn't a viable option. Likewise, there's not a wealth of external studies amongst similar organizations, since a key aspect of their similarity includes said smallishness, so #2 is out too. Which leaves the W.A.G. -- but it's not necessarily all that wild-assed, depending on the nature, experience, and intelligence of the management. Nerf guns may not inspire much dedication or loyalty, especially if there's a perception that they're the product of some calculated managerial strategy, but a well-appointed break room you can take a nap in, or free dinners on extra-long overtime shifts, or just sincere public appreciation and respect can do wonders. A good manager will understand this almost intuitively, which is a little different than wild guessing.
In my experience, the things that most rub employees wrong are the feelings of a) being nickel-and-dimed, and b) that their performance is being appraised with inflexible and arbitrary metrics, i.e. the length of their bathroom breaks instead of the more difficult measurement of actual individual productivity. Any manager who can't make the effort to evaulate his immediate underlings on an individual basis is either overextended or undercompetent.
To what degree do your CBAs include intangibles, and how do you measure them? The cost of, say, a fridge full of free soft drinks or a ping-pong table in the break room is a concrete dollar amount, but how do you precisely measure the intangible benefits thereof? Some employees will inevitably avail themselves of such perks more than others, but can you measure a specific individual's productivity difference with vs. without the ping-pong table, and can you extrapolate a department-wide generalization from that measurement? Some people don't give a shit about ping-pong, preferring to grind away at their appointed tasks for twelve hours a day. Others accomplish just as much productivity in a fraction of the time, given adequate leisure to de-stress or siesta or collect their thoughts or whatever. How do you put a dollar amount on the former approach vs. the latter?
I think there's a legitimate place for what some might term "push-polling." For instance, if you poll a cross-section of Americans as to whether we should spend more or less of our budget on foreign aid, a large majority responds "less." However, this majority closely corresponds to a wildly inflated perception of what portion of our budget is actually spent on foreign aid -- most of the respondents who say "less" think we spend about 25% of the Federal budget on it. When informed that in fact less than 1% of the budget goes to foreign aid, most respondents change their tune. (reference)
Does this count as "push-polling," or does that term necessarily imply scurrilous slander directed at an opponent, e.g. "would you still be inclined to vote for Senator Palpatine if you knew that he'd been arrested for hamster rape?" Maybe in the strictest sense polling should simply measure the opinions of the masses, no matter how ignorant. Personally, I don't see as much value in measuring ignorance as in alleviating it.
"Banned" isn't an absolute term. A book can be banned from the libraries of a school district while remaining for sale at the local bookstore. It's still a banned book, just not universally so.
I doubt a single parent's complaint would get a book on any "Most Challenged list." Even if a book on the list hasn't actually been banned, it takes probably thousands of challenges to get it on the list. It's true that that's not the same as school district censorship, but it does serve to highlight the fact that the forces of ignorance and prudishness remain a significant factor in American culture. These people run for school boards too, and sometimes win; it would be a mistake to think that book banning is nothing more than an obsession of a few powerless fringe cranks who make a lot of noise at PTA meetings.
How is it fundamentally different than any other company's hype? Just because Apple is better at it? I'm a lot more offended by companies that deliver shoddy products than I am by a company that effectively advertises its quality wares.
Does our culture place too much emphasis on shopping and consumption? Of course. But as long as that's the prevalent culture we live in, isn't it preferable to have good Stuff than just-barely-good-enough-if-that Stuff? Maybe I'm naïve, but I think that the more people are exposed to quality and functionality, the more they will value those aspects over novelty and status and bling. From there, mindless consumerism gives way to judicious discernment.
Quasimodo wants to go on vacation, so he gets his clumsy brother to fill in for him at Notre Dame. The brother's first day up in the tower, he loses his footing and falls forward, smacking his forehead against the carillon as he falls to his death. Two priests gather around the fallen corpse; one says "This isn't Quasimodo at all! Who was this man?" Other priest says "I don't know... but his face sure rings a bell."
Is there an existing method to "stealth encrypt" data? That is, encrypt it such that there's an alternate decryption key which would return innocuous results instead of the true encrypted contents?
Gosh, you're right. Let's not do anything, on the off chance that this is a natural cycle caused by nothing more than the dramatic increase in volcanic activity and cow farts over the past century. We wouldn't want to err on the side of caution, because that might affect profits.
I leave it as an academic exercise to figure out the percentage of the sun's energy output that reaches Earth. After that you can explain exactly how that infinitesimal percentage has undergone any significant variation in the past ten million years.
This is what it boils down to: If you're wrong, and human activity is the cause of climate change, and we keep doing what we're doing, we're fucked. And we could have alleviated the fuckedness, if not prevented it outright. On the other hand, if the entire community of climatologists (which I'm just guessing you're not a member of) is wrong, all that happens is that more stringent controls take a small bite out of energy companies' financials, which in turn ultimately puts some people out of work. Basic principles of cost-benefit analysis very much apply here.
the fact is Apple proved this week that OSX can be just as insecure as any XP machine
You have a unique understanding of the phrase "just as." So because someone somewhere can get away with punching Mike Tyson in the face, Tyson is "just as" vulnerable as Pee-Wee Herman?
I can't speak to the technical details here, but this is pinning my bullshit meter pretty hard. So Apple "leans on" security researchers to basically falsify or at least obscure a vulnerability, and these supposed security researchers for some reason comply? And then Apple, having made an effort to squash this information, is perfectly okay with the journalistic kludge of using a third-party wireless card, even though Apple knows perfectly well that the headlines will read "MACBOOK WIRELESS ROOT EXPLOIT DISCOVERED!!!!!" regardless? Please. "We were leaned on" is neither a believable nor an ethical excuse. If you're leaned on, you either coöperate or you fold; trying to play it halfway gets you nothing... except page hits. Why not show us the exploit using the Macbook's built-in wifi hardware and drivers? It's not as if you have to worry about Apple's goodwill, right?
Yeah, I can go into a DMV and get the address on my license changed in just half an hour, but it takes WEEKS with a private bank for me to buy a house. And there's more people going to the DMV than buying houses.
It's not so much specific references as the general shared cultural understanding of what is and isn't appropriate workplace behavior. Comedy that relies on specific references tends to be pretty weak, or at least ages poorly. It seems to me that the comedies that successfully cross the Atlantic untranslated are the more absurd ones -- Monty Python, Red Dwarf, HHGTTG. I don't know exactly who the bellowing beachgoer with a napkin tied square on his head is supposed to be, but I don't have to in order to find him funny. It might well be even funnier if I recognized him as "ah yes, that's the stereotypical bricklayer from Leeds on holiday" or whatever, but his behavior is ridiculous enough to be funny without knowing that.
No one in The Office acts that bizarrely, however. The humor is based on a plausibly realistic overstepping of social norms, which differ enough between y'all and us that it changes what constitutes "plausible," "realistic," and "overstepping." I'm told you're expected to wear pants, for instance, while here Speedos or opaque briefs tend to be contractually sufficient.
The Office relies so heavily on subtle cultural details that a US "translation" makes sense. Specifically, there are lots of things that might be considered embarrassing to a British person that are unremarkable to an American; since a great deal of the show's humor revolves around inappropriate remarks and behavior, Americans were likely not getting the full effect of the original.
Have you actually watched the US Office, or are you having a (perfectly understandable) knee-jerk reaction to the rampant copycat epidemic in TV and film? I think it's one of the best TV shows I've ever seen. Also, Jenna Fischer.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the median, not the average.
OS X 10.3, aka Panther, shipped in October 2003. 10.4, aka Tiger, shipped in April 2005. 10.5, aka Leopard, is due in spring of 2007.
they name each one after a wild feline of some sort, "to disguise the fact that they're charging every year for minor updates".
Leaving aside the question of whether the point releases (of Windows or OS X) have been minor, let's see... apple menu, About This Mac... "Mac OS X Version 10.4.8." That sure is one crafty disguise!
Even if you had a point, "but those guys do it too!" is not a valid response.
What's that? Stop punching you in the face? Why? Hey, at least I'm not stabbing you in the neck!
Besides you not knowing anything about feng shui and assuming it's nothing but mystical horseshit, parent clearly said doorway, not door. Cubicles have doorless "doorways."
It's not a round-trip ticket.
In my experience, the things that most rub employees wrong are the feelings of a) being nickel-and-dimed, and b) that their performance is being appraised with inflexible and arbitrary metrics, i.e. the length of their bathroom breaks instead of the more difficult measurement of actual individual productivity. Any manager who can't make the effort to evaulate his immediate underlings on an individual basis is either overextended or undercompetent.
To what degree do your CBAs include intangibles, and how do you measure them? The cost of, say, a fridge full of free soft drinks or a ping-pong table in the break room is a concrete dollar amount, but how do you precisely measure the intangible benefits thereof? Some employees will inevitably avail themselves of such perks more than others, but can you measure a specific individual's productivity difference with vs. without the ping-pong table, and can you extrapolate a department-wide generalization from that measurement? Some people don't give a shit about ping-pong, preferring to grind away at their appointed tasks for twelve hours a day. Others accomplish just as much productivity in a fraction of the time, given adequate leisure to de-stress or siesta or collect their thoughts or whatever. How do you put a dollar amount on the former approach vs. the latter?
Does this count as "push-polling," or does that term necessarily imply scurrilous slander directed at an opponent, e.g. "would you still be inclined to vote for Senator Palpatine if you knew that he'd been arrested for hamster rape?" Maybe in the strictest sense polling should simply measure the opinions of the masses, no matter how ignorant. Personally, I don't see as much value in measuring ignorance as in alleviating it.
Who exactly are you addressing that comment to? I don't see anyone suggesting otherwise.
But: just because you have the right to do something doesn't make it the right thing to do.
"Banned" isn't an absolute term. A book can be banned from the libraries of a school district while remaining for sale at the local bookstore. It's still a banned book, just not universally so.
(Good point on the Holocaust denial etc. though.)
I doubt a single parent's complaint would get a book on any "Most Challenged list." Even if a book on the list hasn't actually been banned, it takes probably thousands of challenges to get it on the list. It's true that that's not the same as school district censorship, but it does serve to highlight the fact that the forces of ignorance and prudishness remain a significant factor in American culture. These people run for school boards too, and sometimes win; it would be a mistake to think that book banning is nothing more than an obsession of a few powerless fringe cranks who make a lot of noise at PTA meetings.
The product is iTunes, not "iTunes 5." iTunes still works just fine, even with his older iPod..
Does our culture place too much emphasis on shopping and consumption? Of course. But as long as that's the prevalent culture we live in, isn't it preferable to have good Stuff than just-barely-good-enough-if-that Stuff? Maybe I'm naïve, but I think that the more people are exposed to quality and functionality, the more they will value those aspects over novelty and status and bling. From there, mindless consumerism gives way to judicious discernment.
Quasimodo wants to go on vacation, so he gets his clumsy brother to fill in for him at Notre Dame. The brother's first day up in the tower, he loses his footing and falls forward, smacking his forehead against the carillon as he falls to his death. Two priests gather around the fallen corpse; one says "This isn't Quasimodo at all! Who was this man?" Other priest says "I don't know... but his face sure rings a bell."
Is there an existing method to "stealth encrypt" data? That is, encrypt it such that there's an alternate decryption key which would return innocuous results instead of the true encrypted contents?
Republicans != Conservatives, for a while now already.
I leave it as an academic exercise to figure out the percentage of the sun's energy output that reaches Earth. After that you can explain exactly how that infinitesimal percentage has undergone any significant variation in the past ten million years.
This is what it boils down to: If you're wrong, and human activity is the cause of climate change, and we keep doing what we're doing, we're fucked. And we could have alleviated the fuckedness, if not prevented it outright. On the other hand, if the entire community of climatologists (which I'm just guessing you're not a member of) is wrong, all that happens is that more stringent controls take a small bite out of energy companies' financials, which in turn ultimately puts some people out of work. Basic principles of cost-benefit analysis very much apply here.
You have a unique understanding of the phrase "just as." So because someone somewhere can get away with punching Mike Tyson in the face, Tyson is "just as" vulnerable as Pee-Wee Herman?
I can't speak to the technical details here, but this is pinning my bullshit meter pretty hard. So Apple "leans on" security researchers to basically falsify or at least obscure a vulnerability, and these supposed security researchers for some reason comply? And then Apple, having made an effort to squash this information, is perfectly okay with the journalistic kludge of using a third-party wireless card, even though Apple knows perfectly well that the headlines will read "MACBOOK WIRELESS ROOT EXPLOIT DISCOVERED!!!!!" regardless? Please. "We were leaned on" is neither a believable nor an ethical excuse. If you're leaned on, you either coöperate or you fold; trying to play it halfway gets you nothing... except page hits. Why not show us the exploit using the Macbook's built-in wifi hardware and drivers? It's not as if you have to worry about Apple's goodwill, right?
Yeah, I can go into a DMV and get the address on my license changed in just half an hour, but it takes WEEKS with a private bank for me to buy a house. And there's more people going to the DMV than buying houses.
As I keep having to tell every trying-too-hard pedant that thinks he's being oh so clever: A republic is a form of democracy. They're not exclusive.
No one in The Office acts that bizarrely, however. The humor is based on a plausibly realistic overstepping of social norms, which differ enough between y'all and us that it changes what constitutes "plausible," "realistic," and "overstepping." I'm told you're expected to wear pants, for instance, while here Speedos or opaque briefs tend to be contractually sufficient.
Have you actually watched the US Office, or are you having a (perfectly understandable) knee-jerk reaction to the rampant copycat epidemic in TV and film? I think it's one of the best TV shows I've ever seen. Also, Jenna Fischer.
I think you meant the inverse (converse?): the cost is low thus the V.o.C. is high.
Gibson was born in Peekskill, New York, and moved to Australia when he was twelve.