As a fellow teacher, let me speak in this woman's defense:
As a teacher, and especially as a K-12 teacher, no one has ever asked her to be anything other than an ignorant, time-wasting simpleton bent on convincing the children in her charge that all adults are blathering morons and that education is for douchebags. In fact, I'm pretty sure "Time-Wasting" and "Self-Righteous Ignorance" are required courses in most teacher-training programs.
There is a reason why most people don't learn much until they get into college. College professors have never had to take any classes in the education department.
So cut the lady some slack, folks. She's just doing what she was trained to do.
It'd suck for you, but society shouldn't be designed to placate and protect people with addictive personalities. Either you control yourself or you die. Either is a positive outcome for society.
Not positive for you, however. This is why we hope you can train yourself to do the former.
But if you can't, well... You will go extinct. And that's not a bad thing, in the long run.
I don't think he was implying it was running all the time. I do a similar thing, but only when I need a Windows app (haven't had much luck with Crossover), which is not that often.
That being said, VMware Fusion is really fast. I notice absolutely no slowdown on my Mac Pro, and only a slight degradation of performance on my Macbook. It's a pretty amazing VM package.
I'm pretty sure that invading a resource-rich country unprovoked, killing its leadership, and setting up a military government in its stead is illegal somehow.
I'm a pretty big socialist, but even I balk at the idea of a large inheritance tax. People are not individuals; they are the product of many generations. I don't stand to inherit that much, but I'd like all of it, because I'd like to pass part of that on to my heirs myself.
We do almost everything we do for our children. Taking that away violates a fundamental instinct in the human animal. It's a terrible idea, just as communism is a terrible idea.
The beauty of socialist capitalism is that it uses the basic greedy, competitive drive of human animals as the engine by which we can improve conditions for all members of a society, allowing them to use their greedy, competitive drives, too, effecting more positive change... Take away one of the basic assumptions--that what you do can be passed to your offspring--and I think you're looking at breaking the system.
Everyone likes the idea of sharing and of everyone being happy, but you have to be very careful about how you engineer that. People don't like working for those to whom they aren't related, even if they like it in theory. That's why communism fails, and why an inheritance tax is a bad idea.
To be honest, I don't think there should be any inheritance tax. My parents' assets transferring to me is not really a transaction. It's not income. It's something that belongs to me as the current incarnation of the bloodline.
The American myth of the individual is dangerous on a lot of levels. If people truly were individuals, then we wouldn't need affirmative action.
I switched to the Mac for the options it gave me. I can run any software in the world on this box. Plus, the Finder is my favorite window manager. It's got stuff in there I don't know how I ever lived without (labels, for one!).
I'm pretty good at math, but don't particularly like it. Also, science is cool and I like reading about it, but it has always looked like a pretty dreary profession.
Basically, though, math skills are indicative of structured, logical thought. That is useful everywhere.
Don't push her into something just because she's good at it. Let her do whatever she wants. If she's smart, she'll probably be fine.
What makes anyone think that the next release of an OS is going to be faster? It's not going to be. I don't care who developed it, either, whether it be the giant of Redmond, the hipster of Cupertino, or a bunch of unwashed shut-ins writing lines of code in their moms' basements. Every iteration of an OS is actually going to be slower, and that is just a consequence of it doing more.
The only real question, then, is if the balance between the added functionality and the slowdown is coming down enough on the functionality side to stop people from getting pissed off. For XP, the balance was nice. For Vista, it's not. For Tiger, it was. For Leopard, I guess it's not for some people (but it is for me). Linux doesn't do anything regardless of distro or update, so it's kind of hard to talk about.
The point of the story is this: I don't actually care if something doesn't run that fast, because I'll probably replace my hardware before that OS runs its course, and it'll work great on the next kit. All I really care about is if it runs well enough to enjoy the added benefits of that extra code.
I am a university lecturer. I have been in or working for (it's the same as in, but you're paid) universities since 1993. None of my universities have been famous, and I'll back up what you say.
When I was in college, I thought college was about learning. It isn't. Well, I should say, it is but that's only part of it. The main part, as I see it now, is about building your resume. You can, you see, learn anywhere.
As a teacher, let me tell you what most of the education research and my experience finds again and again: Great students are born, not made. Teaching is easy, because it's actually impossible. You can't teach anyone anything. All you can do is help the people who want to learn get where they are going. I work for a pretty unknown school, but I have some stellar students (and a lot of not-so-hot students) who are doing truly amazing thing, and I feel honored and privileged to give them a helping hand whenever I can, and help them fill in the gaps between what they already know. That's all I can do, but I'm happy to do it.
However, these students are not likely to fare as well as students who come from some of the more famous schools, regardless of their inherent intelligence or drive (honestly, I've come to believe the former is pretty common, but it's the latter that makes the difference). They won't have the resume that opens the doors.
In my own experience, I basically couldn't get a job after uni. I am now 34, and I am finally starting to make a livable middle-class wage. Part of that was my ridiculous degree; part of that was my unknown school. I had to go back to school (on my dime) to get a master's before I could get a real job. However, my master's isn't that famous either (I hadn't figured the name-value bit out yet). In my current situation, I have a colleague from Columbia, whose program in our field is not really as good as the one I graduated from (based on conversations and observations), who doesn't have the theoretical grounding I have, who has done almost no research in our field (and what he has done is not quantitative because he never learned research methodology, stats, or even how to write a journal article in his program), and who (according to inside sources) didn't interview well--but the job that we both applied for recently actually had a week-long debate on who to hire--the guy with the publication list (me) or the guy who went to Columbia--and they finally just found the funding to hire both of us (thank god).
But see what happened there? I work every night and every weekend on building a publication list; he catches up on satellite TV. I spend my breaks in my office studying and plowing through stats; he literally, by his own account, sits on the couch and watches DVDs with his wife for 2 months (he shows up at the end of breaks and he hasn't had a haircut or shaved since school got out). And yet we end up getting the same job (at a prestigious university).
Folks, if you're in college now, or if you have kids who are heading that way, take a close look at what you're getting for your money. My friends and colleagues who spent a little more and went to famous places are all doing better than I am, even in the same goofy field. Name-value doesn't mean a better education; it means better options for the future. You can learn anywhere. Hell, if you're highly motivated, you can teach yourself. That's not what college is about. College is about getting a job.
And take it from me: The people who say what you major in doesn't matter, as long as you get the degree are wrong. If you are in the college of liberal arts now, change majors. If your kids are talking about going that way, but don't want to be teachers, refuse to pay. There is a lot of great stuff in those majors--important stuff!--but majoring in them is sacrificing your life for them, unless you really want to teach them. Don't point at people like me, who are doing fine, and say "See? He majored in En
It will only make a difference when an option for pre-installed Linux system is provided by most major OEMs along side other non-Linux systems with these benchmarks highlighted.
Why would that make any difference whatsoever?
You can already buy a number of systems pre-configured with Linux. And yet, average people and businesses aren't biting. Why?
Because no one really cares about the OS. The people who do--hell, the people who even perceive it as a separate entity, do not run Windows.
No, people care about applications. That's it. Period. End of story.
I recently moved to the Mac to get off Windows, but I didn't do so until they went Intel and I saw that VMware Fusion worked really well so I could run whatever Windows-only software I needed. If MS Office were not available for the Mac, though, I wouldn't have even bothered. Now I really only recommend a switch to the Mac if the user is technical enough to understand what a virtual machine is and how to install Windows on it. Otherwise, I just recommend running Windows.
See my anecdote there? Even I didn't switch to Linux. Why? No MS Office, and OO.o is an inferior product (search your feelings; you know it to be true). I'm not going to run my most-used suite of applications in a virtual machine or play the CrossOver crapshoot. I need to know it works.
So, to return to your claim that people will move to Linux when they can buy a pre-configured system with it: No. They will just buy Windows, either because they know that it'll run Office, or because they don't know anything else. And the few who don't know either and end up getting Linux will figure out they've made a mistake soon enough and have their brother install a cracked copy of Windows anyway.
People, generally speaking, have no interest in, and would not even be particularly well-served by, Linux. It's true.
I'm sorry, but I've never, ever met a professional audio or video producer who used anything but the Mac. And, being an artsy fartsy type, I've met a lot.
Don't forget that Clinton pardoned like a million friends and supporters basically on his way out the White House door. As a big Clinton supporter in the day, it broke my heart. It basically confirmed all the bad things the right had said about him.
People are going to flame you and call you stupid, so let me just head off some of their inevitable criticisms:
You should have checked!
No, you shouldn't have had to have checked. Besides, this assumes that you still have to have MS Office and OO.o, and isn't the whole point of this bru-ha-ha to say that you don't need MS Office if you have the free and wonderful OO.o? No, Word did not screw up your CV. OO.o does not export to Word correctly. It's OO.o's responsibility to properly support the de facto industry standard.
You should have sent a PDF!
Okay, smart guys, you try sending PDFs instead of Word documents. There are still lots of moronic HR departments (well, are there any other kind?) who don't even know what they are. The first time I started sending those, I got a call back from an angry HR person saying "We don't take scanned CVs!" I was honestly confused. "I'm sorry, but that is just a PDF of my CV. It's not scanned." "We have to be able to search the text. Please send us the original Word document."
Well you know, and I know that you can very well search the text of a PDF, but that isn't the point; the point is whether HR knows, and, as I think I've already established, those people are borderline retarded.
Also, a lot of places actually request.docs. If OO.o can't produce them correctly, then you look like an idiot. In my case in the above story, where I was requested to send a.doc? It meant I had to get ahold of MS Office, because I'd been using (and liking) OO.o for a year.
Hell, the next problem I had was that I had my "letterhead" in my header in Word, and an HR guy called me complaining that I'd used a "gray font," and that it was no wonder I didn't have a job if I didn't know how to format a Word document correctly. "It's conventional to make your name and address legibile to the person looking at your CV," he said. So I went back and reformatted all of that stuff by hand, like an idiot who can't use software.
In all of these cases, I did the right thing. In none of these cases was the company itself really to blame. They might have been nice places to work. But when you're applying for a job, you first have to get through the imbeciles in HR who stand guard at the gate. Anything that they don't understand--and that's a lot, it turns out--is going to get your CV tossed in the bin.
Why would you want to work somewhere that wants.docs and doesn't worship at the throne of OSS???
Because he needs a job so he can, you know, eat.
OO.o is damn nice for being free, and I really liked some of its features that are missing in Office. But, in all honestly, Office does more better and is the industry standard.
And finally, to all the people going on about having to pay for PDF export? Um, sourceforge up yourself some PDFcreator. It's free. I've been using it for years without issue.
Preach it! I'm a college teacher, but I'm totally against college loans. They just turn you into a slave when you graduate. My friends who DIDN'T go to college have more discretionary income and cushier jobs than the ones who did. They don't make as much, yes, but they also don't have anywhere near the same expenses.
My wife and I live in an apartment and paid cash for our car. The only monthly bills we have are for utilities (including internet and cellphones--but just the cheapest, cheapest plan).
It's simply missing decent apps in several key areas.
And that, right there, is why I switched to the Mac when I wanted out of Windows hell. I really wanted to move to Ubuntu, but at the end of the day, I don't need MS Office compatibility; I need MS Office. I run any Windows stuff I need in VMware Fusion, which cost me $40.
I hope that one day I can switch to Ubuntu. In fact, what I liked about OSX when I first started playing with it was how much it reminded me of the Ubuntu UI, which is pretty stellar these days.
After using half Windows and half Mac for 6 months last year, I switched totally to the Mac about 6 months ago. Here's what I've concluded:
1) OSX is not very fast. I think it's bloated. I've got a ridiculous amount of processing power on this Mac Pro, but it just doesn't move that fast.
2) XP is not very fast. I know it's bloated.
So what's the difference?
OSX is still as slow on my MacBook as it was the day I bought it. I've already formatted my XP Boot Camp gaming partition once this year to get my speed back.
The big problem with Windows is that it gets slower as you go. I haven't noticed that at all with the Mac, even as I wantonly install and uninstall programs. I used to be terrified of what new programs would do to my XP machine. I just haven't had that problem with OSX. Plus, I have access to lots of cool things developed for UNIX that don't seem to slow anything down, stay out of my way, and Just Work.
Every time I have tried sending a CV as PDF, I've had a whiny call back from a pissed HR person. They don't want them. They want Word so they can search the text.
Actually, I used to have my name and address in the header of my CV, where it makes sense, but I got a call from the first company I sent it to where the guy said, "I can barely read your name; why did you do it in gray? Are you stupid? You know, you usually want people to BE ABLE TO READ YOUR NAME when you send them a CV! How could I hire someone who doesn't even realize that?" If that happened now, I think I would have said, "Okay, asshole, since we both know I'm not going to even be considered for this job, let me point this out: The fact that it is gray is proof that I know what a header is and what it is for. The fact that you think I did it in a gray font is proof that you're a fucking moron who should be cleaning urinals, not in charge of hiring people. Fuck off."
Wow, that rage has been floating around in there for 7 years... I feel much better now.
Ever since then, when they want a Word copy (which is always), I laboriously copy/paste the header on every page and adjust the text to fit. It's insane.
Don't confuse HR people. They just aren't that bright to begin with.
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As a fellow teacher, let me speak in this woman's defense:
As a teacher, and especially as a K-12 teacher, no one has ever asked her to be anything other than an ignorant, time-wasting simpleton bent on convincing the children in her charge that all adults are blathering morons and that education is for douchebags. In fact, I'm pretty sure "Time-Wasting" and "Self-Righteous Ignorance" are required courses in most teacher-training programs.
There is a reason why most people don't learn much until they get into college. College professors have never had to take any classes in the education department.
So cut the lady some slack, folks. She's just doing what she was trained to do.
It'd suck for you, but society shouldn't be designed to placate and protect people with addictive personalities. Either you control yourself or you die. Either is a positive outcome for society.
Not positive for you, however. This is why we hope you can train yourself to do the former.
But if you can't, well... You will go extinct. And that's not a bad thing, in the long run.
I'm sorry, but it's true.
I don't think he was implying it was running all the time. I do a similar thing, but only when I need a Windows app (haven't had much luck with Crossover), which is not that often.
That being said, VMware Fusion is really fast. I notice absolutely no slowdown on my Mac Pro, and only a slight degradation of performance on my Macbook. It's a pretty amazing VM package.
Perhaps people should consider that it's better to do things because they are the right thing, not because they are the "in thing".
No shit. I was into electric cars, like, way before they were cool. I even have the t-shirt to prove it.
Fuckin' sheeple.
This is a stupid idea. Listen to your mom.
I'm pretty sure that invading a resource-rich country unprovoked, killing its leadership, and setting up a military government in its stead is illegal somehow.
I'm a pretty big socialist, but even I balk at the idea of a large inheritance tax. People are not individuals; they are the product of many generations. I don't stand to inherit that much, but I'd like all of it, because I'd like to pass part of that on to my heirs myself.
We do almost everything we do for our children. Taking that away violates a fundamental instinct in the human animal. It's a terrible idea, just as communism is a terrible idea.
The beauty of socialist capitalism is that it uses the basic greedy, competitive drive of human animals as the engine by which we can improve conditions for all members of a society, allowing them to use their greedy, competitive drives, too, effecting more positive change... Take away one of the basic assumptions--that what you do can be passed to your offspring--and I think you're looking at breaking the system.
Everyone likes the idea of sharing and of everyone being happy, but you have to be very careful about how you engineer that. People don't like working for those to whom they aren't related, even if they like it in theory. That's why communism fails, and why an inheritance tax is a bad idea.
To be honest, I don't think there should be any inheritance tax. My parents' assets transferring to me is not really a transaction. It's not income. It's something that belongs to me as the current incarnation of the bloodline.
The American myth of the individual is dangerous on a lot of levels. If people truly were individuals, then we wouldn't need affirmative action.
If you need only 64 GB of storage, as most handhelds, laptops, and desktops do
My laptop has a 250GB drive that's almost full with work files. I haven't had less than a few hundred GB of storage on a desktop for almost a decade.
Hell, even my iPod is 80GB, and almost full.
Are you from the past?
I switched to the Mac for the options it gave me. I can run any software in the world on this box. Plus, the Finder is my favorite window manager. It's got stuff in there I don't know how I ever lived without (labels, for one!).
...These are sarcastic mod points, right?
I'm pretty good at math, but don't particularly like it. Also, science is cool and I like reading about it, but it has always looked like a pretty dreary profession.
Basically, though, math skills are indicative of structured, logical thought. That is useful everywhere.
Don't push her into something just because she's good at it. Let her do whatever she wants. If she's smart, she'll probably be fine.
That is the excuse I hear from successful people who think they got where they got via hard work instead of mostly mere chance. Everyone works hard.
Okay, this has bothered me for over a decade.
What makes anyone think that the next release of an OS is going to be faster? It's not going to be. I don't care who developed it, either, whether it be the giant of Redmond, the hipster of Cupertino, or a bunch of unwashed shut-ins writing lines of code in their moms' basements. Every iteration of an OS is actually going to be slower, and that is just a consequence of it doing more.
The only real question, then, is if the balance between the added functionality and the slowdown is coming down enough on the functionality side to stop people from getting pissed off. For XP, the balance was nice. For Vista, it's not. For Tiger, it was. For Leopard, I guess it's not for some people (but it is for me). Linux doesn't do anything regardless of distro or update, so it's kind of hard to talk about.
The point of the story is this: I don't actually care if something doesn't run that fast, because I'll probably replace my hardware before that OS runs its course, and it'll work great on the next kit. All I really care about is if it runs well enough to enjoy the added benefits of that extra code.
Yes.
I am a university lecturer. I have been in or working for (it's the same as in, but you're paid) universities since 1993. None of my universities have been famous, and I'll back up what you say.
When I was in college, I thought college was about learning. It isn't. Well, I should say, it is but that's only part of it. The main part, as I see it now, is about building your resume. You can, you see, learn anywhere.
As a teacher, let me tell you what most of the education research and my experience finds again and again: Great students are born, not made. Teaching is easy, because it's actually impossible. You can't teach anyone anything. All you can do is help the people who want to learn get where they are going. I work for a pretty unknown school, but I have some stellar students (and a lot of not-so-hot students) who are doing truly amazing thing, and I feel honored and privileged to give them a helping hand whenever I can, and help them fill in the gaps between what they already know. That's all I can do, but I'm happy to do it.
However, these students are not likely to fare as well as students who come from some of the more famous schools, regardless of their inherent intelligence or drive (honestly, I've come to believe the former is pretty common, but it's the latter that makes the difference). They won't have the resume that opens the doors.
In my own experience, I basically couldn't get a job after uni. I am now 34, and I am finally starting to make a livable middle-class wage. Part of that was my ridiculous degree; part of that was my unknown school. I had to go back to school (on my dime) to get a master's before I could get a real job. However, my master's isn't that famous either (I hadn't figured the name-value bit out yet). In my current situation, I have a colleague from Columbia, whose program in our field is not really as good as the one I graduated from (based on conversations and observations), who doesn't have the theoretical grounding I have, who has done almost no research in our field (and what he has done is not quantitative because he never learned research methodology, stats, or even how to write a journal article in his program), and who (according to inside sources) didn't interview well--but the job that we both applied for recently actually had a week-long debate on who to hire--the guy with the publication list (me) or the guy who went to Columbia--and they finally just found the funding to hire both of us (thank god).
But see what happened there? I work every night and every weekend on building a publication list; he catches up on satellite TV. I spend my breaks in my office studying and plowing through stats; he literally, by his own account, sits on the couch and watches DVDs with his wife for 2 months (he shows up at the end of breaks and he hasn't had a haircut or shaved since school got out). And yet we end up getting the same job (at a prestigious university).
Folks, if you're in college now, or if you have kids who are heading that way, take a close look at what you're getting for your money. My friends and colleagues who spent a little more and went to famous places are all doing better than I am, even in the same goofy field. Name-value doesn't mean a better education; it means better options for the future. You can learn anywhere. Hell, if you're highly motivated, you can teach yourself. That's not what college is about. College is about getting a job.
And take it from me: The people who say what you major in doesn't matter, as long as you get the degree are wrong. If you are in the college of liberal arts now, change majors. If your kids are talking about going that way, but don't want to be teachers, refuse to pay. There is a lot of great stuff in those majors--important stuff!--but majoring in them is sacrificing your life for them, unless you really want to teach them. Don't point at people like me, who are doing fine, and say "See? He majored in En
It will only make a difference when an option for pre-installed Linux system is provided by most major OEMs along side other non-Linux systems with these benchmarks highlighted.
Why would that make any difference whatsoever?
You can already buy a number of systems pre-configured with Linux. And yet, average people and businesses aren't biting. Why?
Because no one really cares about the OS. The people who do--hell, the people who even perceive it as a separate entity, do not run Windows.
No, people care about applications. That's it. Period. End of story.
I recently moved to the Mac to get off Windows, but I didn't do so until they went Intel and I saw that VMware Fusion worked really well so I could run whatever Windows-only software I needed. If MS Office were not available for the Mac, though, I wouldn't have even bothered. Now I really only recommend a switch to the Mac if the user is technical enough to understand what a virtual machine is and how to install Windows on it. Otherwise, I just recommend running Windows.
See my anecdote there? Even I didn't switch to Linux. Why? No MS Office, and OO.o is an inferior product (search your feelings; you know it to be true). I'm not going to run my most-used suite of applications in a virtual machine or play the CrossOver crapshoot. I need to know it works.
So, to return to your claim that people will move to Linux when they can buy a pre-configured system with it: No. They will just buy Windows, either because they know that it'll run Office, or because they don't know anything else. And the few who don't know either and end up getting Linux will figure out they've made a mistake soon enough and have their brother install a cracked copy of Windows anyway.
People, generally speaking, have no interest in, and would not even be particularly well-served by, Linux. It's true.
Audio and video production... on XP.
I'm sorry, but I've never, ever met a professional audio or video producer who used anything but the Mac. And, being an artsy fartsy type, I've met a lot.
Anecdotal evidence, to be sure, but...
If you're a Dem, you can't really go there.
Don't forget that Clinton pardoned like a million friends and supporters basically on his way out the White House door. As a big Clinton supporter in the day, it broke my heart. It basically confirmed all the bad things the right had said about him.
I don't see President Obama doing that.
People are going to flame you and call you stupid, so let me just head off some of their inevitable criticisms:
You should have checked!
No, you shouldn't have had to have checked. Besides, this assumes that you still have to have MS Office and OO.o, and isn't the whole point of this bru-ha-ha to say that you don't need MS Office if you have the free and wonderful OO.o? No, Word did not screw up your CV. OO.o does not export to Word correctly. It's OO.o's responsibility to properly support the de facto industry standard.
You should have sent a PDF!
Okay, smart guys, you try sending PDFs instead of Word documents. There are still lots of moronic HR departments (well, are there any other kind?) who don't even know what they are. The first time I started sending those, I got a call back from an angry HR person saying "We don't take scanned CVs!" I was honestly confused. "I'm sorry, but that is just a PDF of my CV. It's not scanned." "We have to be able to search the text. Please send us the original Word document."
Well you know, and I know that you can very well search the text of a PDF, but that isn't the point; the point is whether HR knows, and, as I think I've already established, those people are borderline retarded.
Also, a lot of places actually request .docs. If OO.o can't produce them correctly, then you look like an idiot. In my case in the above story, where I was requested to send a .doc? It meant I had to get ahold of MS Office, because I'd been using (and liking) OO.o for a year.
Hell, the next problem I had was that I had my "letterhead" in my header in Word, and an HR guy called me complaining that I'd used a "gray font," and that it was no wonder I didn't have a job if I didn't know how to format a Word document correctly. "It's conventional to make your name and address legibile to the person looking at your CV," he said. So I went back and reformatted all of that stuff by hand, like an idiot who can't use software.
In all of these cases, I did the right thing. In none of these cases was the company itself really to blame. They might have been nice places to work. But when you're applying for a job, you first have to get through the imbeciles in HR who stand guard at the gate. Anything that they don't understand--and that's a lot, it turns out--is going to get your CV tossed in the bin.
Why would you want to work somewhere that wants .docs and doesn't worship at the throne of OSS???
Because he needs a job so he can, you know, eat.
OO.o is damn nice for being free, and I really liked some of its features that are missing in Office. But, in all honestly, Office does more better and is the industry standard.
And finally, to all the people going on about having to pay for PDF export? Um, sourceforge up yourself some PDFcreator. It's free. I've been using it for years without issue.
Ecstasy "addicts?" Going to heroin? Do you even know what these drugs are?
Preach it! I'm a college teacher, but I'm totally against college loans. They just turn you into a slave when you graduate. My friends who DIDN'T go to college have more discretionary income and cushier jobs than the ones who did. They don't make as much, yes, but they also don't have anywhere near the same expenses.
My wife and I live in an apartment and paid cash for our car. The only monthly bills we have are for utilities (including internet and cellphones--but just the cheapest, cheapest plan).
It's simply missing decent apps in several key areas.
And that, right there, is why I switched to the Mac when I wanted out of Windows hell. I really wanted to move to Ubuntu, but at the end of the day, I don't need MS Office compatibility; I need MS Office. I run any Windows stuff I need in VMware Fusion, which cost me $40.
I hope that one day I can switch to Ubuntu. In fact, what I liked about OSX when I first started playing with it was how much it reminded me of the Ubuntu UI, which is pretty stellar these days.
After using half Windows and half Mac for 6 months last year, I switched totally to the Mac about 6 months ago. Here's what I've concluded:
1) OSX is not very fast. I think it's bloated. I've got a ridiculous amount of processing power on this Mac Pro, but it just doesn't move that fast.
2) XP is not very fast. I know it's bloated.
So what's the difference?
OSX is still as slow on my MacBook as it was the day I bought it. I've already formatted my XP Boot Camp gaming partition once this year to get my speed back.
The big problem with Windows is that it gets slower as you go. I haven't noticed that at all with the Mac, even as I wantonly install and uninstall programs. I used to be terrified of what new programs would do to my XP machine. I just haven't had that problem with OSX. Plus, I have access to lots of cool things developed for UNIX that don't seem to slow anything down, stay out of my way, and Just Work.
But, as I said on Ars, that's fine. The audio folks will eventually just move to an alternate OS platform.
No they won't. OSX is where ProTools lives. That's where audio engineers will continue to live.
Every time I have tried sending a CV as PDF, I've had a whiny call back from a pissed HR person. They don't want them. They want Word so they can search the text.
Actually, I used to have my name and address in the header of my CV, where it makes sense, but I got a call from the first company I sent it to where the guy said, "I can barely read your name; why did you do it in gray? Are you stupid? You know, you usually want people to BE ABLE TO READ YOUR NAME when you send them a CV! How could I hire someone who doesn't even realize that?" If that happened now, I think I would have said, "Okay, asshole, since we both know I'm not going to even be considered for this job, let me point this out: The fact that it is gray is proof that I know what a header is and what it is for. The fact that you think I did it in a gray font is proof that you're a fucking moron who should be cleaning urinals, not in charge of hiring people. Fuck off."
Wow, that rage has been floating around in there for 7 years... I feel much better now.
Ever since then, when they want a Word copy (which is always), I laboriously copy/paste the header on every page and adjust the text to fit. It's insane.
Don't confuse HR people. They just aren't that bright to begin with.
Also: Get off my lawn.