The keyboarding capabilities of the Mac OS are superior, overall, to pretty much any other system I can think of.
Indeed. I have been back on the platform for about 6 months and the biggest thing that drives me crazy when I use Windows now is how much I have to use the mouse.
...Which is ironic, because one of the main reasons I moved to Windows in 1999 was because I was sick of having to use the mouse for every damned thing.
Also, the MacOS keyboard commands are a hell of a lot easier to remember. Cmd-W for closing a window. Cmd-Q for quitting an application... Now when I'm back on Windows I just keep going "Dammit! Why is this Alt-F4??? What is that even supposed to MEAN???"
The only one that drives me crazy, though, and it used to drive me crazy under System 8 as well, is the ridiculous "hit 'enter' to rename a file" nonsense. That should open the file, plain and simple.
I wish Apple would realize how many people fall into this group. I'll probably be biting the bullet here in a few days and getting the new lowest-end Mac Pro, because I need multiple drive bays and I want to be able to upgrade video. And because I already have a monitor I like. And because I already have an Apple laptop and love it, but don't really see the point of pulling the keyboard off of it and standing it on my desk (i.e. an iMac).
It's been explained to me multiple times, and I think these people are right, that basically Apple doesn't want to put something in between the iMacs and the Pros because that would totally kill the Pros, which would pull them out of the pro graphics/video production/audio production/what-have-you market that they have really used as their lifeblood for these many years. By forcing people like you and me to choose, they force us to (usually) buy a Pro (or, in the olden days, a PowerMac) and keep those lines alive. I am absolutely positive that they discuss a "normal" Mac all the damned time in Cupertino, but that they have (probably rightly) deemed this a line- and market-killer.
I have been on the Mac for about 6 months now, and I absolutely love it, after 9 years off the platform, when I was perfectly happy using Win2k and XP Pro. Now that XP is getting a little worn around the edges, and Vista just looks like more of the same, only slower, plus bad copies of Apple UI ideas, I took a tentative step into the fruity waters and have seen my productivity skyrocket. I never noticed how many little problems I had under XP--because I was used to them and because I knew how to fix them or work around them--until I saw what a computer was like without them. I still use all my Windows-only apps flawlessly with Fusion, and I can still boot a native Windows machine for games. I absolutely agree with you that Apple has succeeded where Linux has failed--it has become a viable alternative to Redmond. I love the idea of Linux, but at the end of the day, check my sig:
Okay, you've illustrated how cloning might be bad for the organism that is cloned, but where you--and everyone wringing their hands about this--falter is by then suggesting that this has some sort of health impact on someone who eats it.
Your stomach and small intestine have absolutely no interest whatsoever in the quality of food's DNA. It's just matter to be converted into glucose for cells to burn. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that your body somehow incorporates DNA, good or otherwise, into your body. If that were the case, I'd be a fish right about now, being that I eat some every single day (living in Japan). But last I checked, I was still a crap swimmer, and afraid of water to boot.
To sum up, of course cloned animals are safe to eat. So are GM products. Pesticides, herbicides, growth hormones, antibiotics... Not so much. But animals and plants that do not produce toxins or aren't full of rocks or whatever? Absolutely fine.
I simply cannot understand how so many people can problematize such a simple thing as digestion of organic matter. There are plenty of things to consider when talking about mass cloning and/or mass GM, but health most certainly is not one of them.
...Yes, that's the point I'm making exactly. But when your parents have stupid liberal arts degrees and have done very well for themselves, and they assure you you can too, as do all your teachers, then you have a tendency to believe them, having no clear evidence to the contrary.
It is this that I am addressing. It's not just me, though, and it's not just liberal arts. People are told that a degree will bestow upon them magical earning power. And it doesn't.
I don't necessarily want out of academia. I just didn't want in. There are drawbacks (teaching classes to students who don't care--a big problem in Japan--so much much much worse than in the US), but there are great benefits (money to study interesting problems in the field, money to learn arcane statistical analysis methods, and four months when you don't have to even come in but the paycheck still come on time). I don't hate my job. In fact, I like my job. I wish it had more opportunity for advancement (or, rather, that advancements paid more than they do!), but it's pretty good.
My sig is making a jibe at the desktop Linux people 'round here who forget that most people have specific software packages they need to do their jobs, and that those are not available on Linux (e.g. I have a bunch of IRT programs that I use--all of them are Windows-only, and even though it'd be cool to design something that did the same for Linux, who would use it?--the Linux chicken-and-egg show). I actually intend to learn R in the next year, which won't allow me to write an app, but it will allow me to write small programs that handle complex statistical and logical procedures for my research.
Hmm, I'd never say I got no real education. I know a lot about a lot of things. I cared about every class I took. In fact, I'd say that was my problem. I didn't know what the point was, so I just took a lot of classes, and worked very hard at them.
And yes, people should know why they are going to college, but therein lies the rub. The point the original poster was trying to make, I think, is that the reasons people think they are going to school are fabrications. I won't deny that a lot of what I was doing was college because that's what you're supposed to do, but actually, I dropped out of my first college because I didn't like the school and I didn't think my major was going anywhere (double major music and theater--both really interesting and probably the hardest classes I've ever had, believe it or not). It was then I got into IT, and worked for a year, then went back to school because I didn't want to get stuck at that kind of low-level job. I then worked through a couple other degrees while working IT part-time, learned a class 4 language, and graduated with honors.
When I got out, though, I found it difficult to get a job. I found myself in a very similar job as before I went back to school. I then went back to Japan for 2 years to work and to improve my Japanese, thinking that after that, I'd be able to get into business where I could use it.
Two years later, I still couldn't get a job, and the tech bubble had burst and even my CS friends were in trouble and doing the kind of job I had been doing before with an English degree.
So, as money ran out, and I'd searched for jobs full-time in two different states for almost a year, I decided to go back to school to get a master's in TEFL/TESL, because I knew that university jobs in Japan were plentiful and that I'd be a shoo-in. I graduated with distinction, and got a pretty damned good job here in Japan, money-wise.
The point, however, is that my MA is the first time I had seen education as a stepping stone to something else. I realize now that's how I should have always looked at it, but my point, and the grandparent's point, is that many parents and most teachers do not present it as such. They say you should go to college to get a better job. They say that you can make more money and work less. Telling this to kids who have never worked is unforgivable. I didn't know what life was going to be like. I didn't know about thinks like bills and loans and retirement and idiot bosses and useless coworkers... It's impossible for kids to understand any of this.
College is not a magic bullet, but it is sold as such. I think that I would probably be making about as much as I am now had I not gone. But that's after spending a lot of money, so I'm actually in the hole.
I know now that you cannot expect a job just because you have a degree, but that is not what was sold to me.
See, once upon a time, only the rich or very talented got degrees. Now it's become normal for middle-class kids to get them. Actually, if you look at what those very old-timers had to do for their degrees, it's clear that current grads are no slouches--we are very well-educated! But getting a job from college had nothing to do with studying or knowledge. The rich people, if they were going to work at all, just worked for daddy. And whether they'd be working or not, they could probably hook up a few of their friends. That is why, for a very long time, college = job. The middle class, as usual, totally missed the point and thought that the game was about how good you are. The game is, and always has been, and always will be, about who you know and how much money they have.
The only out there, then, is a vocational degree, and I will still classify any engineering degree as "vocational," and that is in absolutely no way a pejorative. In fact, it's that classist bullshit that causes the whole problem. There's nothing wrong with studying a vocation. Unless your last name is Hilton or something, you're goi
Yeah, actually, I tried to go that route as well, but what I found was that, for anything requiring Japanese language, they'll just hire a Japanese person. And that's what I would do as well. Also, there aren't as many jobs like that as you would expect. Or, rather, as I expected. Business and Asian studies, you might be able to find something, but it may not have that much to do with Asia, about which I studied a lot.
And this is why, despite whining about my position a few posts up, I thank the gods that I am an academic. They can run me into the ground same as anywhere, yes, but every 4 months I get 2 months that I can use as I please. I use them to research and further my career; most of my colleagues travel. Either way, though, we don't have to get up at 6:30 and work until it's time for bed during that period, and I think we're saner for it.
I'm right there with you. I'm in the throes of trying to decide how/if I am going to get a PhD, because with my master's, I'm probably at about the top of what I can make, and while it's comfortable, it's not great.
I look at my friends, though, who didn't go back for their master's--the friends who, like me, have degrees in bullshit--and I'm glad I'm not them. I'm pretty sure my master's has been paid for by the increase in salary it's gotten me, in comparison to them, and I've already paid it off.
If I have a kid (unlikely), I'm not pushing him toward college like I was pushed. That was a complete and total waste of my time and money and the best years of my life.
I think the teachers are indeed well-meaning, but, and I say this as a teacher (albeit at the university level), most teachers don't have any idea what they're talking about. They've been in school their whole lives. First as students, then as teachers. I'm glad I had a few years in the corporate world, and I can see that what I was told was total nonsense. Degrees are kind of an old-world currency, and the only place they seem to still be taken at face value is in the world of education.
I worked my butt off for my degrees. I don't actually think my friends who make more than me with more skills-based degrees could even hack it. But that ultimately doesn't matter. They know how to read core dumps. I know how to read Shakespeare. They know how to write programs. I know how to write journal articles. My job sounds much more romantic, but theirs pay better.
I have many more thoughts on the matter, but I actually have to get back to work at my job that cost many tens of thousands of dollars to get, and which will evaporate at this time next year, with the only possibility of a better job sitting behind a 5-10-year-long stint of poverty known as "getting a PhD."
I was very, very high in my very, very large class. I found that I was unemployable.
What most of the people on Slashdot are talking about are vocational degrees--even if they come from universities. Computer science is a vocational degree. Electrical engineering is a vocational degree. What are English and Asian studies with a minor in Japanese?
I'll tell you. They are toilet paper.
What I'm saying is that many of us--even those like I, who have an analytical/technical bent--are swayed by these magical promises of riches, only to find that not only are they mostly untrue, but that they are only somewhat more true in vocational degrees.
My buddy who graduated low in his class of CS majors still makes a lot more than I do. His wife, who graduated at the top, makes even more. I, with multiple certificates and a master's and an ever-growing list of publications, make very little and will need to go in for a PhD to even keep the job I have--I have educated myself into a corner, and the only way out is more education.
As a university lecturer who seems to be liked by his students enough to have them come to me for advice, I have the same advice for everyone: Get a degree that entails learning specific, demonstrable skills. A vocational degree.
Wait, that's not the only advice. A lot of times when I hear people talking about how much they hate school and are just doing it because their parents say they'll get a better job with their BA, I tell them "Your parents are wrong. If you hate school, you should drop out instead of going into debt for something that isn't even going to help you. Go get a job instead. If you learn it well, you'll move up the ladder no matter what. And if you discover later that there really is something you want to learn in college, come back."
I wish I'd never gone. I got a decent start in IT, and if I had stayed there, I'd be like a third friend who didn't even finish high school and is making almost as much as the CS people, and works less.
College is kind of a scam, and that is coming from one of the guys who runs it.
I'm an academic, and the single biggest reason is that I'm a workaholic and if the place didn't almost shut down for 4 months of the year, I'd work myself to an early grave. As it is now, though, I work my ass off 8 months of the year, and 4 months of the year I'm blessed and cursed to be able to get almost nothing done (well, nothing that requires the organization). It's been very good for my health and mental well-being, if not necessarily for my wallet.
Over the last summer break, I spent about a week staying with my friends who work at a major IT company as developers. I saw their lives, and was envious. They make a lot more money, they come home earlier, and it is virtually impossible for them to work at home, so they don't. "Damn," I thought, "I really did pick the wrong career." But then I noticed something: I was staying at their house in a different country from where I live for a week, and that was just one week out of about 7 or 8 in a row that I didn't have to report to work. I was still getting some things done on the laptop, but that had much more to do with my workaholic nature than necessity. "Damn," I thought, "maybe I picked the right career after all."
The point I'm trying to make is that you are ultimately in control of your time. You are. Really. It's your time. Your life. If you feel that you are losing it to a company, and the money isn't worth it, you need to change gears. It's not their fault. It's your fault for doing it.
Now, this decision will most certainly result in a decrease in income. It may mean you aren't buying a house (if you're in the US, this is a terrible time to buy anyway--wait for the market to really crash first--and if you already bought, you have my sympathy), it may mean that vacation is usually spent on the couch instead of on the beach. It may mean you will be hanging on to your old car and just keeping it going until it dies. It means you don't get the "American Dream" kind of life people in my generation seem to somehow feel is necessary. BUT, you will get your life back.
Depending on who you are as a person--whether you value money or time more--this may or may not be a viable lifestyle choice. But the choice is there.
Finally, however, I want to address this idea that we work harder than our elders. I think that is really only the case on Leave it to Beaver. In talking to my parents, both of their parents worked. Mom got home earlier than Dad (schoolteachers in both cases), but Dad (a lawyer on one side and a shopkeeper on the other) got home late. Anecdotal evidence, I know, but I really think that we have too rosy a view of our elders' lives. In my own parents' case, they run a business that is attached to the house, so they were around a lot, but were also usually working. When my dad had to go out, which was/is almost every day, he didn't come home until late (8-9). He also gets called out to truck wrecks (independent insurance adjuster specializing in the hard stuff that companies hire a third party to handle) in the middle of the night fairly regularly, and might not come shuffling back home for 18 hours, after dealing with cops, insurance companies, grief-ridden truck drivers, and the survivors of the family they just killed. That being said, there are down periods with little work and no money, and I grew up being pulled out of school during those periods to drive around the country and learn things. My parents basically made the same choice I did. Time is more important than money.
Further, think of the Depression generation! They didn't work because there wasn't any. Lots of time, but absolutely no money. If they did work, it was long hours in a dusty field. And before that? The agriculture- and manufacturing-based economy. The ag business is still crazy hours (grew up in a little town--had lots of friends who were farm kids and grew up working), and the only reason manufacturing went to 8 hours a day is that in the 20s factories were literally working people to deat
I pooh-poohed HDTV until I got an Xbox 360 and realized that gaming was going to suck on it without it. I really like it.
That being said, as for regular TV goes, I'm still just watching SDTV. The image on the new TV is brighter and better looking than our old TV, and although the HD content would be nice, it wouldn't be nice enough to fuss with the cost and this card thing and all that crap. I've never complained about the quality of TV images, and certainly not about DVD, so why would I go to a bunch of trouble to fix a problem that doesn't exist? I watch TV and movies for the content. The story. Making a better resolution screen is like upgrading the paper in a novel. Yeah, it's nice, but when you're wrapped up in the tale being spun, the last thing you're going to care about is the paper.
It's different for games, though, where you're expected to interact with what's onscreen.
I'll be happy to join the HD movie and broadcast fray when it costs the same as what I have (and like) now. In the meantime, I still really like my TV. Battlestar Galactica is just as well-written in SD as HD, so what's the harm?
Yeah, like I said, he's a problematic fellow. But that doesn't mean that the way he explains business is incorrect. He takes the approach of "This is how it works, whether we like it or not." He makes it clear how business is basically a game, and what the general rules are, and what buffs and nerfs the classes have, heh. Even though he recommends a business owner-based financial lifestyle, he has solid ideas on what to do if you want to have the safety and freedom of a self-employed or employee-based financial lifestyle. Investments are open to everyone, and the same laws apply to everyone. You don't need to complain about the way things are if you know that that is how they are and why they are that way, because you can adjust to accommodate.
Me? I work my butt off, but I also get 4 months of the year where I don't have to go to work. One of the things I do in that time is work on my investment portfolio, or invest in short-term property deals through my brother's company. I take another piece of Kiyosaki's advice: Surround yourself with people smarter than you. I don't know all that much about property, but my brother knows a lot. Sure, sometimes you don't make as much as other times. Sometimes you lose. But overall, if the person setting things up for you knows what they are doing, you generally make money.
I can see why people might have some serious problems with Kiyosaki. He's kind of a snake-oil salesman. But that doesn't mean his pitch is totally bogus, or even that the snake-oil doesn't work sometimes. Basically, he got rich doing what he does best: selling books that explain things to people. He's really just a teacher who has some basic business concepts that have allowed him to run a business that makes a lot of money.
I was flat broke after the tech crash, living in my parents' basement. But his books explained things to me in a way I'd never thought about before. You grow up, go to college, get a job, lose it, and go "what did I do wrong? I thought everything was supposed to work magically." That's an employee mindset. It's not looking at the whole picture. In the whole picture, especially in a country where people move freely between jobs, you are a free agent. You are selling your time and energy and expertise to someone else. That is the relationship. Once your paycheck clears, they've held up their part of the bargain. They don't owe you anything else. If they find that they can get more or better work out of you, or draw better people, by adding, say, a nice benefits package, they'll do it. It's an investment. But what holophrastic is saying is that that is their choice. It is not a right.
I will differ from holophrastic here in that I do think that government should regulate business, based on the desires of the society at large. Tying business' hands isn't a handicap as long as it is across the board. A lot of the problems we have now are because in order to remain competitive and keep their heads above water, businesses cannot afford to do some of the things we'd like for their employees. It doesn't help, of course, that in the US we tax the shit out of everyone except the really big businesses. These things contribute to a dangerous divide between rich and poor. Society is safest when the most people possible are middle class.
Ben & Jerry's, when it was independent, was probably a great place to work on the low end. They had a setup where the top person could only be paid 7 times that of the bottom. Well guess what? The top people could always find better deals elsewhere, and so they moved to companies that would pay significantly more. Even if these people agreed in principle with the sentiment expressed by that policy, the truth of the matter is they'd be nuts to stay at that company. The only way such a policy would work is if everyone in the country had to follow it! And that ain't gonna happen.
Anyway, before you get pissed off at your boss, try looking at things from his/her perspective.
I, for one, have your back on this. I am an academic (talk about no risk--we don't have any sales that are tied to my job, working harder/better/smarter will have no effect on the business, and I'm not really asked to do anything--I'm not paid all that well, but I'm not expected to invest much, so I have no sympathy for my colleagues who whine), but my dad is a business owner. The owner(s) accepts almost all of the risk. He deserves the reward. A well-designed business incentivizes dedicated work on the part of the employees, but the owners deserve the big rewards.
You don't start a business to be a nice guy and provide employment. You do it as an investment. Your time, your capital, in the attempt to make something that kicks money out at you for the rest of your life, with decreasing time investment from you. That's what it is. You look for people to handle the tasks that you either don't want or can't do. It's a delicate balance between sharing the spoils enough to incentivize good work and giving away the farm.
I suspect the tone of your post is due to some unknown frustration at work now--people sometimes do amazingly shit work that leaves you holding the bag, and you don't even know why (I am in charge of a research project--I'm responsible to my superiors for its progress, but sometimes my committee members hand me just plain garbage, and I don't know why. It's an insult both personally and professionally, and leaves me to do their jobs on top of mine--it's easy to get frustrated.), but what you're saying is basically true. Business owners invest all their money, all their time, all their skill. Employees invest a certain, agreed-upon subset of their time and skill. It's a totally different dynamic.
To those of you who think this fellow is out of his mind, pick up Kiyosaki's The Cashflow Quadrant. Kiyosaki might be a little bit of a fraud (his Rich Dad, Poor Dad is full of anecdotes that he most certainly did not live), but he explains financial philosophy in a way that will change the way you look at working and business forevermore. In a good way.
What really pisses me off is my current XP laptop is certainly going to be the last Windows unit I own so I'll be forced to make the jump on the next one to Ubuntu or OSX. I've grudgingly settled for Microsoft products because it's a shitty platform that also happens to support most of the software I use and shitty support is better than nothing. With OSX I'll still be able to run XP in a VM. Shit. Looks like I'm going to finally become one of those Mac weenies I used to make fun of.
I made the same call in July, but not before trying to get Ubuntu to run right on my laptop. I never got wireless to work, and besides, it doesn't run anything I need for work. I hadn't given the Mac a serious look in years, but I went down to the store and started fiddling. I liked what I saw. I bought a MacBook.
5 months into owning it, it is now my main machine (wish I'd gotten the Pro!). Every time I have to use XP, I get pissed at how horrible it is in comparison. Leopard has been great; having my mounted drives and servers on the desktop like in Ubuntu is wonderful (I have never understood MS's weird "My Computer" UI decision); labeling folders in a list of them with a color so I can find ones I'm currently using a lot is amazingly useful; it actually does better on the Windows Server 2003 network at work than the XP machine they gave me, so I don't use that anymore; it comes with Gutenprint drivers for every printer under the sun; It manages moving between multiple networks without me having to do anything; when it crashes, it does so gracefully; it wakes from sleep in about 1 second; it handles external monitors better than Windows; I can still run all my necessary Windows apps (statistics apps) via VMware or Boot Camp with absolutely no noticeable degradation in speed or reliability; I have never typed on such a rock-solid laptop keyboard in my life; multitouch trackpads are awesome--why isn't this the norm?; bluetooth peripherals without any stupid little dongles hanging off the USB ports are just so slick; the iLife suite is actually usable and useful; I picked up iWork for Keynote--it is as great as rumored...
I have gone from viciously mocking my Mac-loving graphic designer friends to seriously wanting nothing to do with MS OSes again. It's been so much better than I'd thought. You can customize the OS more than in Windows, so it doesn't have to be so dopey as it can be. It scales very nicely from noob to power user. And it's UNIX!
I do not work for Apple. I just have been kicking myself for not getting on the platform earlier. It's really good. Jump!
I, like most people here, build my own PCs. I, like most people here, think that's falling-off-a-log easy. But try to get a noob friend of yours into it. No really, try. They'll come up with the goofiest, craziest, hardest questions you've ever heard. I understand on a conceptual, top-down level what is going on when I'm putting a system together and getting drivers, etc. I've been doing it long enough that when I build a new one, it's a simple matter of just learning the changes since last time I did it. Usually I already know about them because I'm a geek and keep up on such things for fun. But, for example, the change from 20-pin to 24-pin ATX connectors caught me completely by surprise and required another trip to the store to get an adapter. It still happens. I know to look up beep codes. I know what to do if it doesn't start up. When all is said and done, I forget these little problems because they are not memorable--they are not salient events because I calmly and quickly solved them. This is not the case to a person who doesn't have that comparatively vast storehouse of latent knowledge.
For someone just starting out, though, that "24-pin ATX connector" confusion happens with every single step of the process. What seems simple to us only seems that way because we've got a massive backlog of understanding that we just take for granted. We only need to make adjustments to it.
This is the same phenomenon when you're talking to a Linux person. They often have sysadmin experience or training, or a CS degree that required them to do a lot of work in UNIX, or just got into *nix systems for fun and had that level of intrinsic motivation to learn where learning itself was the end, not the means to an end. They take that experience for granted.
So when I set up a Linux system, even though I have a pretty good top-down understanding of what's going on, every little problem is like that 24-pin adapter. Except there's no store to go to. And the fix I find on the internet might not actually fix it. It might actually screw something else up. I don't know enough about *nix system structure to intelligently solve the problem, and I end up with many hours of frustration, no one to help me, and at the end a system that may not actually work right that doesn't run any of the software I need to do for my job.
And that's the problem with Linux. It's a lot of work to get a system that does virtually nothing (GIMP, OO.o, etc. are cheap, crummy knockoffs of Photoshop, MS Office, etc.--only viable replacements if you don't actually use them that much or don't use them for anything serious). Yeah, you can plug your camera into an Ubuntu box. Big whoop. It has mass storage drivers. Yeah, it detects your hardware and gives you minimal support for its features, as opposed to Windows asking you to put in a CD so you have all of them. This is setting the bar ridiculously low for Linux.
I've recently switched to the Mac, actually. It's like Linux in that it's tough and solid and robust, but it's like Windows in that it runs MS Office, iTunes--and VMware Fusion for the rest only cost me $40. Oh, and I have never had to edit a.conf file just to get something to run.
I've said it many times before. Linux on the desktop is a hobby. A political statement. A worldview. It is not, however, a viable operating system for the masses. The masses have jobs that don't involve reading core dumps.
Yup, it was this thinking that prompted me to buy a Mac laptop a few months ago; now it's my main machine and I cart it from work to home for everything I do. I only wish they'd switched to Intel sooner (it makes choosing no choice at all--I VMware everything I still need from Windows, or just boot into Windows with Boot Camp if I want to play games). It makes me wonder how productive I'd have been all these years on a Mac. I am sold, sold, sold.
It isn't without drawbacks, to be sure (being tied to one vendor really irks me, but when the vendor usually does excellent work it's not so bad), but overall, I can't believe how much I love this thing.
I'm hoping the Mac Pro will finally get a refresh here in a couple weeks. I'd really like to pitch my PC boat anchor (or, rather, make it into a MythTV box, after all the work I've done to make it virtually silent--and I'll take OSS over proprietary for video any day--Front Row is not a competitor).
Even though I was irritated with the Leopard change made to the Dock, I think I was more sold on the platform when fixing it was no more difficult than firing up a terminal and tapping a reasonable command in there, and restarting Finder. It's nice having a CLI that draws on my (small) CLI knowledge from UNIX.
Thank you. I am sick to death of these armchair psychologists saying that psychological research findings are obvious. They're only obvious in retrospect.
Besides, the study wasn't to find out if time slowed down; it was to find out if our perception of time slowed down (er... sped up...). When it was discovered that it did not, the researchers posited that it really only seems that way when we think about it later.
Interesting research answering an interesting question.
It's true. People 'round here bag on CompUSA all the time, but in Colorado, that was the only brick-and-mortar option, and I actually had to drive there (usually the Westminster one) for about 30 min or more if I needed something right away.
I've lived in S. Cal for awhile, too, and again, even though people bag on Fry's as well, the first time I walked into one, my jaw dropped. I'd never seen anyplace with that much actual hardware before, at prices comparable to buying online with shipping.
Now that I live in Japan, I actually know of two so-so, overpriced places nearby, but other than that, it's a trip to Akihabara, and putting up with all the goddamned otaku.
Yeah, I haven't really had any trouble, aside from X11 being changed which means Inkscape doesn't work anymore. But I'm assuming that one or the other will be fixed, and until then, I don't really use it that much.
The dock is ridiculous, to be sure, but it's just a quick little command line prompt away from one that looks a lot nicer (not as good as the old one, though). Also, the menubar translucency is preposterous, especially if you use a solid desktop color. But it's not a big deal.
As for the complaints about network problems... I have found Leopard better than Tiger at instantly finding everything on my work network. It's so much better at getting around on a Windows network than Windows, it's more than a little concerning. What is up with MS developers when Linux and the Mac handle SMB better than their products... And they invented SMB?
All told, Leopard has been fine. It's not mind-blowingly great or anything, but basically, it's the only way to get Boot Camp, and that is mission-critical for me.
I used to be a total MacAddict douchebag (until 1999). Then I got tired of not being able to do anything on my computer and switched to Windows. Then I got tired of MS stopping me from doing anything on my computer, so I'm switching back.
As for the perennial question, "Have you tried Linux," as always, yes, I have. Knoppix, plain old Debian, and every version of Ubuntu since 6.0.4. Until the latest version, installation was a bit touch and go. I was able to get a Debian fileserver to work pretty well on a Windows workgroup network, but when I was honest with myself, a Win95 machine would have done a better job (sans the rebooting, of course!).
People always seem to think that just because the functionality of some random FOSS package is there, that it's a replacement for the proprietary software it clumsily mimics. It isn't. OpenOffice is an ugly headache with compatibility problems with the office suite people actually use, no iTunes is a dealbreaker for most people (not "music playing software" iTunes.), and although Firefox works great on Linux, it also works great on Windows and MacOS.
Linux is a lifestyle and a political statement more than it is an OS. I used to say the same about the Mac until they switched to Intel, thereby becoming viable.
That said, if I ever buy another whole computer (which I haven't done since 1987, I just upgrade parts as needed) It will be a Mac.
Be careful. I bought a Mac laptop because I couldn't stand the thought of living in a Vista world and I actually have to do things with my computer so Linux isn't an option. Now the Mac is starting to take over my entire computing life. I have put my work-provided computer in my filing cabinet because that MacBook plays better with the Windows domain than Windows, hits the wi-fi when I'm elsewhere on campus every time, and comes home and goes right to work here as well. It's astonishing how good it is.
I'm not particularly averse to setting things up but... I can't complain about not having to!
I'm now eying a MacPro for my home computer because right now I just don't even want to turn my XP computer on anymore, but that's where I have my music, etc., so I have to.
I kid you not, this time last year I was mocking the Mac something fierce. Now I'm recommending it to anyone who asks. It's like running Linux, but with developer support and it doesn't look like ass and you don't have to edit text files just to make it boot right (as of Ubuntu 7.10, I shouldn't be using this complaint anymore, though).
Yes, I suppose you're right. But my point is that this is not the case in any other country I've ever heard of. Also that this wasn't explained to me when I got the visa. In fact, what they said was, "Just come back next year with these forms," and handed me the forms, which I filled out that afternoon, and then just took them in a year later.
Furthermore, when I originally got the visa, I was actually just planning on extending my professor visa, but the guy at the counter basically refused to give it to me because "the spousal is better." So I got all the nonsense together, submitted it, and was given a ONE YEAR visa, despite the fact that I was eligible for a 3-year professorial, and that getting and renewing a professor visa is a trivial matter of proving you're employed by an accredited university.
This is how I got the 3-year spousal visa, actually. My wife and I complained that we didn't want to come in every year with documentation from the city hall in the middle of nowhere where she grew up, plus all the green papers from where we live now, and all the driving and expense associated with that. We had originally just wanted the professor visa, but if we switched from the spousal to the professor, we'd be given a one-year professor visa, and getting a spousal in the future would be hard because it would raise the question "why did you abandon your spousal status?"
Yes, of course I was at fault. But where else in the world--among the developed countries anyway--is a spouse of a citizen kept on this short a leash? I was not upset about the amount of trouble it took to get the visa in the first place--it really does offer a lot of freedom, so I understand why they would need to make sure it was a real and stable marriage--I was upset that I had to do most of that again every year for 5 years (what they originally told me, before we pointed out that this was insane). That is the point. I have every right to live here. However, since I don't have the mythical Japanese blood, I am treated with suspicion. It's insane.
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Indeed. I have been back on the platform for about 6 months and the biggest thing that drives me crazy when I use Windows now is how much I have to use the mouse.
...Which is ironic, because one of the main reasons I moved to Windows in 1999 was because I was sick of having to use the mouse for every damned thing.
Also, the MacOS keyboard commands are a hell of a lot easier to remember. Cmd-W for closing a window. Cmd-Q for quitting an application... Now when I'm back on Windows I just keep going "Dammit! Why is this Alt-F4??? What is that even supposed to MEAN???"
The only one that drives me crazy, though, and it used to drive me crazy under System 8 as well, is the ridiculous "hit 'enter' to rename a file" nonsense. That should open the file, plain and simple.
I wish Apple would realize how many people fall into this group. I'll probably be biting the bullet here in a few days and getting the new lowest-end Mac Pro, because I need multiple drive bays and I want to be able to upgrade video. And because I already have a monitor I like. And because I already have an Apple laptop and love it, but don't really see the point of pulling the keyboard off of it and standing it on my desk (i.e. an iMac).
It's been explained to me multiple times, and I think these people are right, that basically Apple doesn't want to put something in between the iMacs and the Pros because that would totally kill the Pros, which would pull them out of the pro graphics/video production/audio production/what-have-you market that they have really used as their lifeblood for these many years. By forcing people like you and me to choose, they force us to (usually) buy a Pro (or, in the olden days, a PowerMac) and keep those lines alive. I am absolutely positive that they discuss a "normal" Mac all the damned time in Cupertino, but that they have (probably rightly) deemed this a line- and market-killer.
I have been on the Mac for about 6 months now, and I absolutely love it, after 9 years off the platform, when I was perfectly happy using Win2k and XP Pro. Now that XP is getting a little worn around the edges, and Vista just looks like more of the same, only slower, plus bad copies of Apple UI ideas, I took a tentative step into the fruity waters and have seen my productivity skyrocket. I never noticed how many little problems I had under XP--because I was used to them and because I knew how to fix them or work around them--until I saw what a computer was like without them. I still use all my Windows-only apps flawlessly with Fusion, and I can still boot a native Windows machine for games. I absolutely agree with you that Apple has succeeded where Linux has failed--it has become a viable alternative to Redmond. I love the idea of Linux, but at the end of the day, check my sig:
Okay, you've illustrated how cloning might be bad for the organism that is cloned, but where you--and everyone wringing their hands about this--falter is by then suggesting that this has some sort of health impact on someone who eats it.
Your stomach and small intestine have absolutely no interest whatsoever in the quality of food's DNA. It's just matter to be converted into glucose for cells to burn. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that your body somehow incorporates DNA, good or otherwise, into your body. If that were the case, I'd be a fish right about now, being that I eat some every single day (living in Japan). But last I checked, I was still a crap swimmer, and afraid of water to boot.
To sum up, of course cloned animals are safe to eat. So are GM products. Pesticides, herbicides, growth hormones, antibiotics... Not so much. But animals and plants that do not produce toxins or aren't full of rocks or whatever? Absolutely fine.
I simply cannot understand how so many people can problematize such a simple thing as digestion of organic matter. There are plenty of things to consider when talking about mass cloning and/or mass GM, but health most certainly is not one of them.
1) Yeah, I imagined a lot of things...
2) Love that sig.
Yeah... But I bet you don't get 4 months off...
...Yes, that's the point I'm making exactly. But when your parents have stupid liberal arts degrees and have done very well for themselves, and they assure you you can too, as do all your teachers, then you have a tendency to believe them, having no clear evidence to the contrary.
It is this that I am addressing. It's not just me, though, and it's not just liberal arts. People are told that a degree will bestow upon them magical earning power. And it doesn't.
I don't necessarily want out of academia. I just didn't want in. There are drawbacks (teaching classes to students who don't care--a big problem in Japan--so much much much worse than in the US), but there are great benefits (money to study interesting problems in the field, money to learn arcane statistical analysis methods, and four months when you don't have to even come in but the paycheck still come on time). I don't hate my job. In fact, I like my job. I wish it had more opportunity for advancement (or, rather, that advancements paid more than they do!), but it's pretty good.
My sig is making a jibe at the desktop Linux people 'round here who forget that most people have specific software packages they need to do their jobs, and that those are not available on Linux (e.g. I have a bunch of IRT programs that I use--all of them are Windows-only, and even though it'd be cool to design something that did the same for Linux, who would use it?--the Linux chicken-and-egg show). I actually intend to learn R in the next year, which won't allow me to write an app, but it will allow me to write small programs that handle complex statistical and logical procedures for my research.
Hmm, I'd never say I got no real education. I know a lot about a lot of things. I cared about every class I took. In fact, I'd say that was my problem. I didn't know what the point was, so I just took a lot of classes, and worked very hard at them.
And yes, people should know why they are going to college, but therein lies the rub. The point the original poster was trying to make, I think, is that the reasons people think they are going to school are fabrications. I won't deny that a lot of what I was doing was college because that's what you're supposed to do, but actually, I dropped out of my first college because I didn't like the school and I didn't think my major was going anywhere (double major music and theater--both really interesting and probably the hardest classes I've ever had, believe it or not). It was then I got into IT, and worked for a year, then went back to school because I didn't want to get stuck at that kind of low-level job. I then worked through a couple other degrees while working IT part-time, learned a class 4 language, and graduated with honors.
When I got out, though, I found it difficult to get a job. I found myself in a very similar job as before I went back to school. I then went back to Japan for 2 years to work and to improve my Japanese, thinking that after that, I'd be able to get into business where I could use it.
Two years later, I still couldn't get a job, and the tech bubble had burst and even my CS friends were in trouble and doing the kind of job I had been doing before with an English degree.
So, as money ran out, and I'd searched for jobs full-time in two different states for almost a year, I decided to go back to school to get a master's in TEFL/TESL, because I knew that university jobs in Japan were plentiful and that I'd be a shoo-in. I graduated with distinction, and got a pretty damned good job here in Japan, money-wise.
The point, however, is that my MA is the first time I had seen education as a stepping stone to something else. I realize now that's how I should have always looked at it, but my point, and the grandparent's point, is that many parents and most teachers do not present it as such. They say you should go to college to get a better job. They say that you can make more money and work less. Telling this to kids who have never worked is unforgivable. I didn't know what life was going to be like. I didn't know about thinks like bills and loans and retirement and idiot bosses and useless coworkers... It's impossible for kids to understand any of this.
College is not a magic bullet, but it is sold as such. I think that I would probably be making about as much as I am now had I not gone. But that's after spending a lot of money, so I'm actually in the hole.
I know now that you cannot expect a job just because you have a degree, but that is not what was sold to me.
See, once upon a time, only the rich or very talented got degrees. Now it's become normal for middle-class kids to get them. Actually, if you look at what those very old-timers had to do for their degrees, it's clear that current grads are no slouches--we are very well-educated! But getting a job from college had nothing to do with studying or knowledge. The rich people, if they were going to work at all, just worked for daddy. And whether they'd be working or not, they could probably hook up a few of their friends. That is why, for a very long time, college = job. The middle class, as usual, totally missed the point and thought that the game was about how good you are. The game is, and always has been, and always will be, about who you know and how much money they have.
The only out there, then, is a vocational degree, and I will still classify any engineering degree as "vocational," and that is in absolutely no way a pejorative. In fact, it's that classist bullshit that causes the whole problem. There's nothing wrong with studying a vocation. Unless your last name is Hilton or something, you're goi
Yeah, actually, I tried to go that route as well, but what I found was that, for anything requiring Japanese language, they'll just hire a Japanese person. And that's what I would do as well. Also, there aren't as many jobs like that as you would expect. Or, rather, as I expected. Business and Asian studies, you might be able to find something, but it may not have that much to do with Asia, about which I studied a lot.
And this is why, despite whining about my position a few posts up, I thank the gods that I am an academic. They can run me into the ground same as anywhere, yes, but every 4 months I get 2 months that I can use as I please. I use them to research and further my career; most of my colleagues travel. Either way, though, we don't have to get up at 6:30 and work until it's time for bed during that period, and I think we're saner for it.
I'm right there with you. I'm in the throes of trying to decide how/if I am going to get a PhD, because with my master's, I'm probably at about the top of what I can make, and while it's comfortable, it's not great.
I look at my friends, though, who didn't go back for their master's--the friends who, like me, have degrees in bullshit--and I'm glad I'm not them. I'm pretty sure my master's has been paid for by the increase in salary it's gotten me, in comparison to them, and I've already paid it off.
If I have a kid (unlikely), I'm not pushing him toward college like I was pushed. That was a complete and total waste of my time and money and the best years of my life.
I think the teachers are indeed well-meaning, but, and I say this as a teacher (albeit at the university level), most teachers don't have any idea what they're talking about. They've been in school their whole lives. First as students, then as teachers. I'm glad I had a few years in the corporate world, and I can see that what I was told was total nonsense. Degrees are kind of an old-world currency, and the only place they seem to still be taken at face value is in the world of education.
I worked my butt off for my degrees. I don't actually think my friends who make more than me with more skills-based degrees could even hack it. But that ultimately doesn't matter. They know how to read core dumps. I know how to read Shakespeare. They know how to write programs. I know how to write journal articles. My job sounds much more romantic, but theirs pay better.
I have many more thoughts on the matter, but I actually have to get back to work at my job that cost many tens of thousands of dollars to get, and which will evaporate at this time next year, with the only possibility of a better job sitting behind a 5-10-year-long stint of poverty known as "getting a PhD."
I was very, very high in my very, very large class. I found that I was unemployable.
What most of the people on Slashdot are talking about are vocational degrees--even if they come from universities. Computer science is a vocational degree. Electrical engineering is a vocational degree. What are English and Asian studies with a minor in Japanese?
I'll tell you. They are toilet paper.
What I'm saying is that many of us--even those like I, who have an analytical/technical bent--are swayed by these magical promises of riches, only to find that not only are they mostly untrue, but that they are only somewhat more true in vocational degrees.
My buddy who graduated low in his class of CS majors still makes a lot more than I do. His wife, who graduated at the top, makes even more. I, with multiple certificates and a master's and an ever-growing list of publications, make very little and will need to go in for a PhD to even keep the job I have--I have educated myself into a corner, and the only way out is more education.
As a university lecturer who seems to be liked by his students enough to have them come to me for advice, I have the same advice for everyone: Get a degree that entails learning specific, demonstrable skills. A vocational degree.
Wait, that's not the only advice. A lot of times when I hear people talking about how much they hate school and are just doing it because their parents say they'll get a better job with their BA, I tell them "Your parents are wrong. If you hate school, you should drop out instead of going into debt for something that isn't even going to help you. Go get a job instead. If you learn it well, you'll move up the ladder no matter what. And if you discover later that there really is something you want to learn in college, come back."
I wish I'd never gone. I got a decent start in IT, and if I had stayed there, I'd be like a third friend who didn't even finish high school and is making almost as much as the CS people, and works less.
College is kind of a scam, and that is coming from one of the guys who runs it.
I'm an academic, and the single biggest reason is that I'm a workaholic and if the place didn't almost shut down for 4 months of the year, I'd work myself to an early grave. As it is now, though, I work my ass off 8 months of the year, and 4 months of the year I'm blessed and cursed to be able to get almost nothing done (well, nothing that requires the organization). It's been very good for my health and mental well-being, if not necessarily for my wallet.
Over the last summer break, I spent about a week staying with my friends who work at a major IT company as developers. I saw their lives, and was envious. They make a lot more money, they come home earlier, and it is virtually impossible for them to work at home, so they don't. "Damn," I thought, "I really did pick the wrong career." But then I noticed something: I was staying at their house in a different country from where I live for a week, and that was just one week out of about 7 or 8 in a row that I didn't have to report to work. I was still getting some things done on the laptop, but that had much more to do with my workaholic nature than necessity. "Damn," I thought, "maybe I picked the right career after all."
The point I'm trying to make is that you are ultimately in control of your time. You are. Really. It's your time. Your life. If you feel that you are losing it to a company, and the money isn't worth it, you need to change gears. It's not their fault. It's your fault for doing it.
Now, this decision will most certainly result in a decrease in income. It may mean you aren't buying a house (if you're in the US, this is a terrible time to buy anyway--wait for the market to really crash first--and if you already bought, you have my sympathy), it may mean that vacation is usually spent on the couch instead of on the beach. It may mean you will be hanging on to your old car and just keeping it going until it dies. It means you don't get the "American Dream" kind of life people in my generation seem to somehow feel is necessary. BUT, you will get your life back.
Depending on who you are as a person--whether you value money or time more--this may or may not be a viable lifestyle choice. But the choice is there.
Finally, however, I want to address this idea that we work harder than our elders. I think that is really only the case on Leave it to Beaver. In talking to my parents, both of their parents worked. Mom got home earlier than Dad (schoolteachers in both cases), but Dad (a lawyer on one side and a shopkeeper on the other) got home late. Anecdotal evidence, I know, but I really think that we have too rosy a view of our elders' lives. In my own parents' case, they run a business that is attached to the house, so they were around a lot, but were also usually working. When my dad had to go out, which was/is almost every day, he didn't come home until late (8-9). He also gets called out to truck wrecks (independent insurance adjuster specializing in the hard stuff that companies hire a third party to handle) in the middle of the night fairly regularly, and might not come shuffling back home for 18 hours, after dealing with cops, insurance companies, grief-ridden truck drivers, and the survivors of the family they just killed. That being said, there are down periods with little work and no money, and I grew up being pulled out of school during those periods to drive around the country and learn things. My parents basically made the same choice I did. Time is more important than money.
Further, think of the Depression generation! They didn't work because there wasn't any. Lots of time, but absolutely no money. If they did work, it was long hours in a dusty field. And before that? The agriculture- and manufacturing-based economy. The ag business is still crazy hours (grew up in a little town--had lots of friends who were farm kids and grew up working), and the only reason manufacturing went to 8 hours a day is that in the 20s factories were literally working people to deat
I pooh-poohed HDTV until I got an Xbox 360 and realized that gaming was going to suck on it without it. I really like it.
That being said, as for regular TV goes, I'm still just watching SDTV. The image on the new TV is brighter and better looking than our old TV, and although the HD content would be nice, it wouldn't be nice enough to fuss with the cost and this card thing and all that crap. I've never complained about the quality of TV images, and certainly not about DVD, so why would I go to a bunch of trouble to fix a problem that doesn't exist? I watch TV and movies for the content. The story. Making a better resolution screen is like upgrading the paper in a novel. Yeah, it's nice, but when you're wrapped up in the tale being spun, the last thing you're going to care about is the paper.
It's different for games, though, where you're expected to interact with what's onscreen.
I'll be happy to join the HD movie and broadcast fray when it costs the same as what I have (and like) now. In the meantime, I still really like my TV. Battlestar Galactica is just as well-written in SD as HD, so what's the harm?
Yeah, like I said, he's a problematic fellow. But that doesn't mean that the way he explains business is incorrect. He takes the approach of "This is how it works, whether we like it or not." He makes it clear how business is basically a game, and what the general rules are, and what buffs and nerfs the classes have, heh. Even though he recommends a business owner-based financial lifestyle, he has solid ideas on what to do if you want to have the safety and freedom of a self-employed or employee-based financial lifestyle. Investments are open to everyone, and the same laws apply to everyone. You don't need to complain about the way things are if you know that that is how they are and why they are that way, because you can adjust to accommodate.
Me? I work my butt off, but I also get 4 months of the year where I don't have to go to work. One of the things I do in that time is work on my investment portfolio, or invest in short-term property deals through my brother's company. I take another piece of Kiyosaki's advice: Surround yourself with people smarter than you. I don't know all that much about property, but my brother knows a lot. Sure, sometimes you don't make as much as other times. Sometimes you lose. But overall, if the person setting things up for you knows what they are doing, you generally make money.
I can see why people might have some serious problems with Kiyosaki. He's kind of a snake-oil salesman. But that doesn't mean his pitch is totally bogus, or even that the snake-oil doesn't work sometimes. Basically, he got rich doing what he does best: selling books that explain things to people. He's really just a teacher who has some basic business concepts that have allowed him to run a business that makes a lot of money.
I was flat broke after the tech crash, living in my parents' basement. But his books explained things to me in a way I'd never thought about before. You grow up, go to college, get a job, lose it, and go "what did I do wrong? I thought everything was supposed to work magically." That's an employee mindset. It's not looking at the whole picture. In the whole picture, especially in a country where people move freely between jobs, you are a free agent. You are selling your time and energy and expertise to someone else. That is the relationship. Once your paycheck clears, they've held up their part of the bargain. They don't owe you anything else. If they find that they can get more or better work out of you, or draw better people, by adding, say, a nice benefits package, they'll do it. It's an investment. But what holophrastic is saying is that that is their choice. It is not a right.
I will differ from holophrastic here in that I do think that government should regulate business, based on the desires of the society at large. Tying business' hands isn't a handicap as long as it is across the board. A lot of the problems we have now are because in order to remain competitive and keep their heads above water, businesses cannot afford to do some of the things we'd like for their employees. It doesn't help, of course, that in the US we tax the shit out of everyone except the really big businesses. These things contribute to a dangerous divide between rich and poor. Society is safest when the most people possible are middle class.
Ben & Jerry's, when it was independent, was probably a great place to work on the low end. They had a setup where the top person could only be paid 7 times that of the bottom. Well guess what? The top people could always find better deals elsewhere, and so they moved to companies that would pay significantly more. Even if these people agreed in principle with the sentiment expressed by that policy, the truth of the matter is they'd be nuts to stay at that company. The only way such a policy would work is if everyone in the country had to follow it! And that ain't gonna happen.
Anyway, before you get pissed off at your boss, try looking at things from his/her perspective.
I, for one, have your back on this. I am an academic (talk about no risk--we don't have any sales that are tied to my job, working harder/better/smarter will have no effect on the business, and I'm not really asked to do anything--I'm not paid all that well, but I'm not expected to invest much, so I have no sympathy for my colleagues who whine), but my dad is a business owner. The owner(s) accepts almost all of the risk. He deserves the reward. A well-designed business incentivizes dedicated work on the part of the employees, but the owners deserve the big rewards.
You don't start a business to be a nice guy and provide employment. You do it as an investment. Your time, your capital, in the attempt to make something that kicks money out at you for the rest of your life, with decreasing time investment from you. That's what it is. You look for people to handle the tasks that you either don't want or can't do. It's a delicate balance between sharing the spoils enough to incentivize good work and giving away the farm.
I suspect the tone of your post is due to some unknown frustration at work now--people sometimes do amazingly shit work that leaves you holding the bag, and you don't even know why (I am in charge of a research project--I'm responsible to my superiors for its progress, but sometimes my committee members hand me just plain garbage, and I don't know why. It's an insult both personally and professionally, and leaves me to do their jobs on top of mine--it's easy to get frustrated.), but what you're saying is basically true. Business owners invest all their money, all their time, all their skill. Employees invest a certain, agreed-upon subset of their time and skill. It's a totally different dynamic.
To those of you who think this fellow is out of his mind, pick up Kiyosaki's The Cashflow Quadrant. Kiyosaki might be a little bit of a fraud (his Rich Dad, Poor Dad is full of anecdotes that he most certainly did not live), but he explains financial philosophy in a way that will change the way you look at working and business forevermore. In a good way.
I made the same call in July, but not before trying to get Ubuntu to run right on my laptop. I never got wireless to work, and besides, it doesn't run anything I need for work. I hadn't given the Mac a serious look in years, but I went down to the store and started fiddling. I liked what I saw. I bought a MacBook. 5 months into owning it, it is now my main machine (wish I'd gotten the Pro!). Every time I have to use XP, I get pissed at how horrible it is in comparison. Leopard has been great; having my mounted drives and servers on the desktop like in Ubuntu is wonderful (I have never understood MS's weird "My Computer" UI decision); labeling folders in a list of them with a color so I can find ones I'm currently using a lot is amazingly useful; it actually does better on the Windows Server 2003 network at work than the XP machine they gave me, so I don't use that anymore; it comes with Gutenprint drivers for every printer under the sun; It manages moving between multiple networks without me having to do anything; when it crashes, it does so gracefully; it wakes from sleep in about 1 second; it handles external monitors better than Windows; I can still run all my necessary Windows apps (statistics apps) via VMware or Boot Camp with absolutely no noticeable degradation in speed or reliability; I have never typed on such a rock-solid laptop keyboard in my life; multitouch trackpads are awesome--why isn't this the norm?; bluetooth peripherals without any stupid little dongles hanging off the USB ports are just so slick; the iLife suite is actually usable and useful; I picked up iWork for Keynote--it is as great as rumored...
I have gone from viciously mocking my Mac-loving graphic designer friends to seriously wanting nothing to do with MS OSes again. It's been so much better than I'd thought. You can customize the OS more than in Windows, so it doesn't have to be so dopey as it can be. It scales very nicely from noob to power user. And it's UNIX!
I do not work for Apple. I just have been kicking myself for not getting on the platform earlier. It's really good. Jump!
Preach it!
I, like most people here, build my own PCs. I, like most people here, think that's falling-off-a-log easy. But try to get a noob friend of yours into it. No really, try. They'll come up with the goofiest, craziest, hardest questions you've ever heard. I understand on a conceptual, top-down level what is going on when I'm putting a system together and getting drivers, etc. I've been doing it long enough that when I build a new one, it's a simple matter of just learning the changes since last time I did it. Usually I already know about them because I'm a geek and keep up on such things for fun. But, for example, the change from 20-pin to 24-pin ATX connectors caught me completely by surprise and required another trip to the store to get an adapter. It still happens. I know to look up beep codes. I know what to do if it doesn't start up. When all is said and done, I forget these little problems because they are not memorable--they are not salient events because I calmly and quickly solved them. This is not the case to a person who doesn't have that comparatively vast storehouse of latent knowledge.
For someone just starting out, though, that "24-pin ATX connector" confusion happens with every single step of the process. What seems simple to us only seems that way because we've got a massive backlog of understanding that we just take for granted. We only need to make adjustments to it.
This is the same phenomenon when you're talking to a Linux person. They often have sysadmin experience or training, or a CS degree that required them to do a lot of work in UNIX, or just got into *nix systems for fun and had that level of intrinsic motivation to learn where learning itself was the end, not the means to an end. They take that experience for granted.
So when I set up a Linux system, even though I have a pretty good top-down understanding of what's going on, every little problem is like that 24-pin adapter. Except there's no store to go to. And the fix I find on the internet might not actually fix it. It might actually screw something else up. I don't know enough about *nix system structure to intelligently solve the problem, and I end up with many hours of frustration, no one to help me, and at the end a system that may not actually work right that doesn't run any of the software I need to do for my job.
And that's the problem with Linux. It's a lot of work to get a system that does virtually nothing (GIMP, OO.o, etc. are cheap, crummy knockoffs of Photoshop, MS Office, etc.--only viable replacements if you don't actually use them that much or don't use them for anything serious). Yeah, you can plug your camera into an Ubuntu box. Big whoop. It has mass storage drivers. Yeah, it detects your hardware and gives you minimal support for its features, as opposed to Windows asking you to put in a CD so you have all of them. This is setting the bar ridiculously low for Linux.
I've recently switched to the Mac, actually. It's like Linux in that it's tough and solid and robust, but it's like Windows in that it runs MS Office, iTunes--and VMware Fusion for the rest only cost me $40. Oh, and I have never had to edit a .conf file just to get something to run.
I've said it many times before. Linux on the desktop is a hobby. A political statement. A worldview. It is not, however, a viable operating system for the masses. The masses have jobs that don't involve reading core dumps.
Yup, it was this thinking that prompted me to buy a Mac laptop a few months ago; now it's my main machine and I cart it from work to home for everything I do. I only wish they'd switched to Intel sooner (it makes choosing no choice at all--I VMware everything I still need from Windows, or just boot into Windows with Boot Camp if I want to play games). It makes me wonder how productive I'd have been all these years on a Mac. I am sold, sold, sold.
It isn't without drawbacks, to be sure (being tied to one vendor really irks me, but when the vendor usually does excellent work it's not so bad), but overall, I can't believe how much I love this thing.
I'm hoping the Mac Pro will finally get a refresh here in a couple weeks. I'd really like to pitch my PC boat anchor (or, rather, make it into a MythTV box, after all the work I've done to make it virtually silent--and I'll take OSS over proprietary for video any day--Front Row is not a competitor).
Even though I was irritated with the Leopard change made to the Dock, I think I was more sold on the platform when fixing it was no more difficult than firing up a terminal and tapping a reasonable command in there, and restarting Finder. It's nice having a CLI that draws on my (small) CLI knowledge from UNIX.
Out of points, but let me just say:
Thank you. I am sick to death of these armchair psychologists saying that psychological research findings are obvious. They're only obvious in retrospect.
Besides, the study wasn't to find out if time slowed down; it was to find out if our perception of time slowed down (er... sped up...). When it was discovered that it did not, the researchers posited that it really only seems that way when we think about it later.
Interesting research answering an interesting question.
It's true. People 'round here bag on CompUSA all the time, but in Colorado, that was the only brick-and-mortar option, and I actually had to drive there (usually the Westminster one) for about 30 min or more if I needed something right away.
I've lived in S. Cal for awhile, too, and again, even though people bag on Fry's as well, the first time I walked into one, my jaw dropped. I'd never seen anyplace with that much actual hardware before, at prices comparable to buying online with shipping.
Now that I live in Japan, I actually know of two so-so, overpriced places nearby, but other than that, it's a trip to Akihabara, and putting up with all the goddamned otaku.
Yeah, I haven't really had any trouble, aside from X11 being changed which means Inkscape doesn't work anymore. But I'm assuming that one or the other will be fixed, and until then, I don't really use it that much.
The dock is ridiculous, to be sure, but it's just a quick little command line prompt away from one that looks a lot nicer (not as good as the old one, though). Also, the menubar translucency is preposterous, especially if you use a solid desktop color. But it's not a big deal.
As for the complaints about network problems... I have found Leopard better than Tiger at instantly finding everything on my work network. It's so much better at getting around on a Windows network than Windows, it's more than a little concerning. What is up with MS developers when Linux and the Mac handle SMB better than their products... And they invented SMB?
All told, Leopard has been fine. It's not mind-blowingly great or anything, but basically, it's the only way to get Boot Camp, and that is mission-critical for me.
I used to be a total MacAddict douchebag (until 1999). Then I got tired of not being able to do anything on my computer and switched to Windows. Then I got tired of MS stopping me from doing anything on my computer, so I'm switching back.
As for the perennial question, "Have you tried Linux," as always, yes, I have. Knoppix, plain old Debian, and every version of Ubuntu since 6.0.4. Until the latest version, installation was a bit touch and go. I was able to get a Debian fileserver to work pretty well on a Windows workgroup network, but when I was honest with myself, a Win95 machine would have done a better job (sans the rebooting, of course!).
People always seem to think that just because the functionality of some random FOSS package is there, that it's a replacement for the proprietary software it clumsily mimics. It isn't. OpenOffice is an ugly headache with compatibility problems with the office suite people actually use, no iTunes is a dealbreaker for most people (not "music playing software" iTunes.), and although Firefox works great on Linux, it also works great on Windows and MacOS.
Linux is a lifestyle and a political statement more than it is an OS. I used to say the same about the Mac until they switched to Intel, thereby becoming viable.
Be careful. I bought a Mac laptop because I couldn't stand the thought of living in a Vista world and I actually have to do things with my computer so Linux isn't an option. Now the Mac is starting to take over my entire computing life. I have put my work-provided computer in my filing cabinet because that MacBook plays better with the Windows domain than Windows, hits the wi-fi when I'm elsewhere on campus every time, and comes home and goes right to work here as well. It's astonishing how good it is.
I'm not particularly averse to setting things up but... I can't complain about not having to!
I'm now eying a MacPro for my home computer because right now I just don't even want to turn my XP computer on anymore, but that's where I have my music, etc., so I have to.
I kid you not, this time last year I was mocking the Mac something fierce. Now I'm recommending it to anyone who asks. It's like running Linux, but with developer support and it doesn't look like ass and you don't have to edit text files just to make it boot right (as of Ubuntu 7.10, I shouldn't be using this complaint anymore, though).
Yes, I suppose you're right. But my point is that this is not the case in any other country I've ever heard of. Also that this wasn't explained to me when I got the visa. In fact, what they said was, "Just come back next year with these forms," and handed me the forms, which I filled out that afternoon, and then just took them in a year later.
Furthermore, when I originally got the visa, I was actually just planning on extending my professor visa, but the guy at the counter basically refused to give it to me because "the spousal is better." So I got all the nonsense together, submitted it, and was given a ONE YEAR visa, despite the fact that I was eligible for a 3-year professorial, and that getting and renewing a professor visa is a trivial matter of proving you're employed by an accredited university.
This is how I got the 3-year spousal visa, actually. My wife and I complained that we didn't want to come in every year with documentation from the city hall in the middle of nowhere where she grew up, plus all the green papers from where we live now, and all the driving and expense associated with that. We had originally just wanted the professor visa, but if we switched from the spousal to the professor, we'd be given a one-year professor visa, and getting a spousal in the future would be hard because it would raise the question "why did you abandon your spousal status?"
Yes, of course I was at fault. But where else in the world--among the developed countries anyway--is a spouse of a citizen kept on this short a leash? I was not upset about the amount of trouble it took to get the visa in the first place--it really does offer a lot of freedom, so I understand why they would need to make sure it was a real and stable marriage--I was upset that I had to do most of that again every year for 5 years (what they originally told me, before we pointed out that this was insane). That is the point. I have every right to live here. However, since I don't have the mythical Japanese blood, I am treated with suspicion. It's insane.
That is the point.