it really depends. the czechs and slovaks used to be under a totalitarian russian regime and they have a very intelligent and subtle sense of humor and they pick up small humorous nuances, that lots of people from other countries wouldn't even get.
then there's the germans who, though having been free people for quite some time, basically have absolutely no subtleness in their humor. everything is outspoken and nothing is left unsaid. austria is directly next to germany and austrians have an extremely playful and ironic sense of humor but the overall mentality of the country is completely different to germany.
i think, that the regime plays a big role, but IMO the social environment is at least as important. people who are very organized and devoted to their leaders or their work tend not to develop a sense of humor, where irony and unsaid things are understood.
it's really sad to see what capitalism is doing to a country that had such high goals when i was first created. now it seems mostly you will get incarcerated, sued, beaten up or criminalized for things that are perfectly normal in the rest of the free world.
i think it's really cynical of american polititians to even use the word "freedom" in their campaigns since it has basically lost all meaning due to the entanglement of business, military and politics.
nvidia graphics cards under linux are a dream. anyone who ever had the misfortune of being forced to use an ati card under linux will agree. i don't agree with their binary-only policy, but my experience with their linux drivers over the last 12 years has been 100% good.
i have been in almost exactky the same situation as you are, only that i am in my early thirties and that i am already decided to go into management, after i get my degree. here's what my motivations were.
first, i have been a java/j2ee/oracle coder for 10 years now and being a very inquisitive guy i learned a lot of the tech stuff on my own. while i think i could of course benefit from CS i think the benefit of learning something that is connected to and extends my current knowledge is greater, than just to deepen what i already know.
i talked to quite a few people inside and outside my company and asked them for their opinions and the responses were also very much towards business informatics. one of the reasons is, that if you have a degree and your company does any partner-projects with other companies, they can send you in there and charge more money for your time. another reason is, that there are many business informatics types out there who have the theoretical knowledge, but have never even seen a database schema from the inside, so your tech background will give you extra credibility with both your own company and other companies. another thing is IMO, that after so many years of programming, eventually you might lose interest in it...at least this is happening to me. your choices then are to switch companies and start basically with a high wage, but few chances of advancing, or to switch jobs and start as a total noob at something, where you don't have any expertise. i thought that IT management is the most useful, seamless and natural way to go. you can get into something new, that you haven't been doing for the last 10 years AND you don't start from zero.
of course my personal story won't be the same for everyone...people who love getting into tons of details and remember millions of LOC will prolly get CS degree, but for me i think getting a business informatics degree makes sense. ask yourself if you want to write code when you're 50 or if you'd rather design application architecture or guide a team of young gifted devs and help them profit from your experience. as for the bullshit bingo...i think this is rather fun...especially if you are one of those people who actually know what the words mean because you have the background:D
that i never understood their business model in the first place. what does RIM aside from undesirable vendor lock-in provide, that cannot be achieved with normal means such as imaps and smtp with ssl/tls? i (like many other people) have been using encrypted email services for decades.
i don't know how it looks in other parts of the world but here in austria it is close to impossible to even find a provider that will offer you a routable ipv6 address. i checked the biggest providers available in my area and the only thing i could get would have been a tunnel.
is maintainability. we have around 150 desktops here where i work (all servers except one run linux) and we were thinking about migrating the desktops to linux. i have used linux exclusively as a desktop OS for the last 8 years (also at work, i am a programmer), but i have to agree that it's just not possible to run and maintain a mid- to large scale client network of linux desktop computers. here's why:
1.) linux aims at providing the most possible freedom to its users this is what you don't want when you administer hundreds of computers. you want the possibility to restrict the user as much as possible, so that they don't break everything all the time and require your assistance.
2.) AD, logonscripts, group policies, authentication again the same story. linux is built from ground up to fulfill the user's wishes, not the admin's. just take for example some very basic thing like browser-settings. you cannot force firefox, konqueror, opera or whatever to use a proxy server while inhibiting the users to change it themselves. (yes transparent proxying but that sucks). it looks like chrome is trying to make something like that possible with the policies.d directory, but this is not widely available. the whole configuration-concept of unix-based programs is to load system-wide settings first, and let the user override them. windows' concept is exactly the other way around, which is why it is so successful in companies.
what is also done very well on windows is the logon process. no matter if the PDC is there you can still use your computer. did you ever try that on linux with/home mounted via NFS? impossible. kerberos and ldap auth are a step in the right direction on the server side, but client support for these things is poor at best.
3.) MS office this point can be illustrated ad infinitum, so i won't go into details, but eveyone who actually works with office documents that contains at least macros, pivots or charts will agree that openoffice/libreoffice is not usable there, as soon as you need to be compatible with clients. MS access is another story of its own.
4.) printing cups has improved a lot over the years, but there are still lots of specific printer features that you cannot use if you use cups. this is why we have exactly 1 windows server. especially larger printers (in the 3-10k euro area) work only half-assed via cups. either you cannot do accounting or page stats, or you cannot privilege jobs or whatever.
5.) ACL there is no possibility to set ACLs via a gui on linux. also posix acls suck. i am very happy to see that nfs4 acls are more and more adopted, but there is still a long way to go until they will be widely available. you can just not explain some sales guy or client service lady how to use setfacl to share a document with a different group via commandline, when all they have to do in windows is check a checkbox.
it breaks my heart to say this as a long time linux user and open source developer, but linux on the corporate desktop is an illusion. not because linux is bad, but because the concept is fundamentally incompatible with what administrators of hundreds if clients need.
Slashdot Mirror
nope, these guys are dutch :>
it really depends. the czechs and slovaks used to be under a totalitarian russian regime and they have a very intelligent and subtle sense of humor and they pick up small humorous nuances, that lots of people from other countries wouldn't even get.
then there's the germans who, though having been free people for quite some time, basically have absolutely no subtleness in their humor. everything is outspoken and nothing is left unsaid. austria is directly next to germany and austrians have an extremely playful and ironic sense of humor but the overall mentality of the country is completely different to germany.
i think, that the regime plays a big role, but IMO the social environment is at least as important. people who are very organized and devoted to their leaders or their work tend not to develop a sense of humor, where irony and unsaid things are understood.
"christian science".
i think you are right in many aspects. sorry to see, that slashdotters don't even seem to try to think out of the box anymore.
'the company has driven innovation for decades.'
they are a logical consequence of reckless capitalism.
it's really sad to see what capitalism is doing to a country that had such high goals when i was first created. now it seems mostly you will get incarcerated, sued, beaten up or criminalized for things that are perfectly normal in the rest of the free world.
i think it's really cynical of american polititians to even use the word "freedom" in their campaigns since it has basically lost all meaning due to the entanglement of business, military and politics.
nvidia graphics cards under linux are a dream. anyone who ever had the misfortune of being forced to use an ati card under linux will agree. i don't agree with their binary-only policy, but my experience with their linux drivers over the last 12 years has been 100% good.
hi!
i have been in almost exactky the same situation as you are, only that i am in my early thirties and that i am already decided to go into management, after i get my degree. here's what my motivations were.
first, i have been a java/j2ee/oracle coder for 10 years now and being a very inquisitive guy i learned a lot of the tech stuff on my own. while i think i could of course benefit from CS i think the benefit of learning something that is connected to and extends my current knowledge is greater, than just to deepen what i already know.
i talked to quite a few people inside and outside my company and asked them for their opinions and the responses were also very much towards business informatics. one of the reasons is, that if you have a degree and your company does any partner-projects with other companies, they can send you in there and charge more money for your time. another reason is, that there are many business informatics types out there who have the theoretical knowledge, but have never even seen a database schema from the inside, so your tech background will give you extra credibility with both your own company and other companies. another thing is IMO, that after so many years of programming, eventually you might lose interest in it...at least this is happening to me. your choices then are to switch companies and start basically with a high wage, but few chances of advancing, or to switch jobs and start as a total noob at something, where you don't have any expertise. i thought that IT management is the most useful, seamless and natural way to go. you can get into something new, that you haven't been doing for the last 10 years AND you don't start from zero.
of course my personal story won't be the same for everyone...people who love getting into tons of details and remember millions of LOC will prolly get CS degree, but for me i think getting a business informatics degree makes sense. ask yourself if you want to write code when you're 50 or if you'd rather design application architecture or guide a team of young gifted devs and help them profit from your experience. as for the bullshit bingo...i think this is rather fun...especially if you are one of those people who actually know what the words mean because you have the background :D
any other solution will just cause more suffering.
facebook does not serve its pages using php.
http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/358/
http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/358/
thanks to islam.
that i never understood their business model in the first place. what does RIM aside from undesirable vendor lock-in provide, that cannot be achieved with normal means such as imaps and smtp with ssl/tls? i (like many other people) have been using encrypted email services for decades.
is this downlad.com you speak of? are you saying there are people who install software without a package manager? well i never *faint*
i don't know how it looks in other parts of the world but here in austria it is close to impossible to even find a provider that will offer you a routable ipv6 address. i checked the biggest providers available in my area and the only thing i could get would have been a tunnel.
that extremists are usually complete idiots.
is maintainability. we have around 150 desktops here where i work (all servers except one run linux) and we were thinking about migrating the desktops to linux. i have used linux exclusively as a desktop OS for the last 8 years (also at work, i am a programmer), but i have to agree that it's just not possible to run and maintain a mid- to large scale client network of linux desktop computers. here's why:
1.) linux aims at providing the most possible freedom to its users
this is what you don't want when you administer hundreds of computers. you want the possibility to restrict the user as much as possible, so that they don't break everything all the time and require your assistance.
2.) AD, logonscripts, group policies, authentication
again the same story. linux is built from ground up to fulfill the user's wishes, not the admin's. just take for example some very basic thing like browser-settings. you cannot force firefox, konqueror, opera or whatever to use a proxy server while inhibiting the users to change it themselves. (yes transparent proxying but that sucks). it looks like chrome is trying to make something like that possible with the policies.d directory, but this is not widely available. the whole configuration-concept of unix-based programs is to load system-wide settings first, and let the user override them. windows' concept is exactly the other way around, which is why it is so successful in companies.
what is also done very well on windows is the logon process. no matter if the PDC is there you can still use your computer. did you ever try that on linux with /home mounted via NFS? impossible. kerberos and ldap auth are a step in the right direction on the server side, but client support for these things is poor at best.
3.) MS office
this point can be illustrated ad infinitum, so i won't go into details, but eveyone who actually works with office documents that contains at least macros, pivots or charts will agree that openoffice/libreoffice is not usable there, as soon as you need to be compatible with clients. MS access is another story of its own.
4.) printing
cups has improved a lot over the years, but there are still lots of specific printer features that you cannot use if you use cups. this is why we have exactly 1 windows server. especially larger printers (in the 3-10k euro area) work only half-assed via cups. either you cannot do accounting or page stats, or you cannot privilege jobs or whatever.
5.) ACL
there is no possibility to set ACLs via a gui on linux. also posix acls suck. i am very happy to see that nfs4 acls are more and more adopted, but there is still a long way to go until they will be widely available. you can just not explain some sales guy or client service lady how to use setfacl to share a document with a different group via commandline, when all they have to do in windows is check a checkbox.
it breaks my heart to say this as a long time linux user and open source developer, but linux on the corporate desktop is an illusion. not because linux is bad, but because the concept is fundamentally incompatible with what administrators of hundreds if clients need.
i always thought the old design was super-ugly. way to go slashdot!
had i any modpoints you would get them. full time linux user and coder here too.
what do you guys think?
ah no wait, that was linux.
i have 4 and 2 are unused.
systemsettings -> keyboard & mouse -> global keyboard shortcuts -> select kwin
there you can bind whatever shortcuts you want to "Window to screen X".
i don't know about fwm but if you want advanced features you should prolly user a more advanced wm :>
well if you really like shit it's no wonder you prefer windows :D