People need to understand a simple concept: if you wouldn't feel comfortable saying something in front of a packed auditorium, you probably shouldn't say it in a public forum online. I absolutely defend an individual's right to express his views as he sees fit; similarly, I absolutely defend an employer's right to base his hiring decision on all publicly available information.
Shouldn't they be looking at, say, your ability to do the job and stay the fuck away from your personal life?
It's like going to the restroom and unexpectedly finding your longtime neighbor who asks if he can watch you shower and take a dump. Even if he leaves after you tell him no, he shouldn't have been there in the first place. And you're never going to trust him again.
That's the best analogy of Microsoft I've ever heard.
BTW Google did something like that integrating gtalk into gmail. Like I'd want anyone to know when I'm checking my email. However, once you turn it off, it stays there and you basically never hear about it again unless you want to. Stupid idea, but at least they made the saving throw.
A third of a mile wide? They really need some higher standards for moon qualification.
Let them have some fun with it. It's not like a categorization is actually meaningful. Besides, all the schools I've heard about still teach Pluto as a planet.
The third paragraph of the Smart Questions How-To calls its readers idiots. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more unfriendly article.
I think you misread something. Read further:
If you're reading this document because you need help, and you walk away with the impression you can get it directly from the authors of this document, you are one of the idiots in question. Don't ask us questions. We'll just ignore you. We are here to show you how to get help from people who actually know about the software or hardware you're dealing with, but 99.9% of the time that will not be us.
As long as all of the truly bright people in the world come to the U.S. to work then the U.S. will continue to have a long-lasting advantage over the rest of the world.
Maybe you should fix your educational system so you'd have smart people on your own. Of course that means you'd also have to pay real wages to teachers, fire the incompetent ones who are unable to learn anything new, but have laid low long enough so you can't fire them legally, etc.
Oh, and actually teach the kids to think for themselves. In short: I don't see that happening anytime soon.
P.S. Do any of you find idiotic as well, that kids should learn everything at the same age, regardless of talent, abilities, potential and personal interests? For example, I've learned English from Cartoon Network, and by the time I got to English class at age 14, I was laughing at my teacher's horrible accent. Yet I still had to sit there for four years.
You need to give the help to the people who ask, "hey, last week the doohickey worked with the internets thing, but now the button doesn't go anywhere and the doohickey disappeared!" That's a substantially harder problem, and if you could solve it you'd have one-up on Microsoft and Apple.
Yes, it's called the Cupholder Problem, and it's been haunting tech support workers for decades.
How exactly do you plan to help someone who can't even tell you what distro they run? The only thing you can do with them is to point them to the Smart Questions Howto and some generic information collecting howtos so they can choose the right place to look for help. Maybe something like this, too.
A centralized source of Linux info would be GREAT! Especially if it had a search function that pointed you to a good complete answer to inexpertly phrased questions. Right now, pointing newbies at Google is one of the big linux turnoffs for them.
You cannot get more centralized than Google. And it also has a search function! Also, maybe there is no "good complete answer" that will work for everyone.
Who wants to open up a page that suddenly uses all of their cycles and makes their computer useless for anything else while this is running.
Can you actually do that on a modern OS and a modern CPU? I regularly have my CPUs on 101% load and it stays snappy as ever. Only heavy I/O on the system drive makes it unresponsive. This applies for both Gentoo and Vista. (The default install of Linux Mint, however, sucks horribly.)
Another informative jewel by our "friend" kdawson. Silverlight is just another technology, like flash, java, or you name it.
And a closed one at that.
He does bring up a good point: Shouldn't public interfaces use speech-free technologies? Why is Javascript not good enough?
It's just getting more and more popular, and there is direct support for Windows and MacOs. The mono team is doing a wonderful work bringing Silverlight for Linux as Moonlight. True, 2.0 is not really supported yet, but it's on it's way, really soon now (TM).
Translation: if you want to use it without hassles, you'll have to buy something from an american company.
P.S. HURD is "on its way, really soon now (TM)", too.
drugs coming from a bunch of guys in their garages
As long as experts contribute, there shouldn't be a problem. Maybe a registration with credentials would be good.
Software is special, in that all the hardware required is now commodity, and all the knowledge can be accessed fairly easily. At least, you won't see $300 biochem labs from Dell.
Many of the old school peer to peer file sharing apps *by default* shared your documents folder. You could turn it off, but most people don't.
'Nuff said.
Shouldn't sensitive data be protected or something? I mean, why does he even have the right to have access to the internet at the same time as the right to install arbitrary applications that can read said data?
This isn't a theme competition, it's a user interface competition - usability counts much more than the style of the buttons.
Also, it's a genious move. When the clients are released, you'll have plenty to choose from. Also, being open source. you can merge the best bits of all the clients into one really good one.
Whoever came up with this idea should get a massive pay rise.
BTW, we could adopt the methodology in other areas too.
Because I can certainly point out where in the contract they state that they reserve the right to cut off people for using too much.
Do they define "too much", or is it just a "when we feel like it" thing?
My point is, 1. you pay for a service, 2. there is a contract about said service. Now, if they don't make it clear when they cut you off, they shouldn't be allowed to. The contract also applies to them. If they say unlimited, it'd better be unlimited. If they say 300 Gb a month, they shouldn't be able to cut you off at 290.
There are those of us who depend on the internet for a living, and being cut off for no good reason and no way of knowing it in advance can mean massive losses.
"Company image" is a top priority for every business, second only to money/profit. Especially when it comes to publicly traded companies, image is everything, and there is absolutely ZERO room for negotiation when it comes to an employee's personal life potentially tainting the company's image.
"Hey, we believe what any anonymous moron writes on the internet!"
How's that for a public image? These people should be ridiculed, at least.
Or send them for some reeducation on/b/. Let's see what they think of anonymous comments afterwards.
(the okay button was off the bottom of the screen)
If you press alt while clicking the window, you can drag it. Did you try to press tab and/or enter? You don't need to see a button to use it if it's selected as default.
Second, the fix was to go into the Konsole CLI and type a command to fix the resolution, but not knowing the command, I was unable to do anything.
In another instance I couldn't connect to my Dialup ISP. Once again the solution was to use Konsole to issue a series of setup commands, and once again I didn't know these commands, so I never was able to connect to my ISP.
So how exactly do you know you had to use konsole? In my K Menu, there's an entry called "KPPP - Internet Dial-Up Tool". Didn't it work for you? Did you bother to look at it? Did you actually try anything?
You may call this "bullshit" but if you don't know the CLI, it's a real obstacle to overcome.
I still am. You try to blame the CLI for your laziness. Which is fine, we all want it to Just Work. But don't blame the tools for you not even wanting to try to fix it.
Use Linux with nothing but a mouse for a week, and see how "easy" it is to use. Not very.
No, thank you. I'm much faster having 5-10 consoles open at the same time. My mom, however, uses Debian, had been using it for two months, and still doesn't know what a command line is. Or how to get there. Of course, she has me to fix her problems, but so far, she had none. Which is more than I can say for some other OSes she used in the past.
As for the mouse thing, I grew up on DOS. I distinctly remember seeing Windows 95 for the first time, and thinking "Pretty, but where do I type 'nc'?"
I'm not comprehending why you were modded funny. Having just tried Linux myself, I didn't find it easy to use, simply because I didn't know how to use the CLI.
I call bullshit. There's no way that can be an issue if you got one of the user friendly distros.
And if you started with LFS or something, you deserve it.
Slashdot Mirror
People need to understand a simple concept: if you wouldn't feel comfortable saying something in front of a packed auditorium, you probably shouldn't say it in a public forum online. I absolutely defend an individual's right to express his views as he sees fit; similarly, I absolutely defend an employer's right to base his hiring decision on all publicly available information.
Shouldn't they be looking at, say, your ability to do the job and stay the fuck away from your personal life?
It's like going to the restroom and unexpectedly finding your longtime neighbor who asks if he can watch you shower and take a dump. Even if he leaves after you tell him no, he shouldn't have been there in the first place. And you're never going to trust him again.
That's the best analogy of Microsoft I've ever heard.
BTW Google did something like that integrating gtalk into gmail. Like I'd want anyone to know when I'm checking my email. However, once you turn it off, it stays there and you basically never hear about it again unless you want to. Stupid idea, but at least they made the saving throw.
Slashdot manages it on an eee and xubuntu. Both were developed recently, if that counts as 'modern'.
Slashdot managed to freeze firefox for 5-6 seconds on a Core 2 Duo, until I disabled Javascript for it. Now it behaves.
A third of a mile wide? They really need some higher standards for moon qualification.
Let them have some fun with it. It's not like a categorization is actually meaningful. Besides, all the schools I've heard about still teach Pluto as a planet.
The third paragraph of the Smart Questions How-To calls its readers idiots. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more unfriendly article.
I think you misread something. Read further:
If you're reading this document because you need help, and you walk away with the impression you can get it directly from the authors of this document, you are one of the idiots in question. Don't ask us questions. We'll just ignore you. We are here to show you how to get help from people who actually know about the software or hardware you're dealing with, but 99.9% of the time that will not be us.
As long as all of the truly bright people in the world come to the U.S. to work then the U.S. will continue to have a long-lasting advantage over the rest of the world.
Maybe you should fix your educational system so you'd have smart people on your own. Of course that means you'd also have to pay real wages to teachers, fire the incompetent ones who are unable to learn anything new, but have laid low long enough so you can't fire them legally, etc.
Oh, and actually teach the kids to think for themselves. In short: I don't see that happening anytime soon.
P.S. Do any of you find idiotic as well, that kids should learn everything at the same age, regardless of talent, abilities, potential and personal interests? For example, I've learned English from Cartoon Network, and by the time I got to English class at age 14, I was laughing at my teacher's horrible accent. Yet I still had to sit there for four years.
You need to give the help to the people who ask, "hey, last week the doohickey worked with the internets thing, but now the button doesn't go anywhere and the doohickey disappeared!" That's a substantially harder problem, and if you could solve it you'd have one-up on Microsoft and Apple.
Yes, it's called the Cupholder Problem, and it's been haunting tech support workers for decades.
How exactly do you plan to help someone who can't even tell you what distro they run? The only thing you can do with them is to point them to the Smart Questions Howto and some generic information collecting howtos so they can choose the right place to look for help. Maybe something like this, too.
A centralized source of Linux info would be GREAT! Especially if it had a search function that pointed you to a good complete answer to inexpertly phrased questions. Right now, pointing newbies at Google is one of the big linux turnoffs for them.
You cannot get more centralized than Google. And it also has a search function! Also, maybe there is no "good complete answer" that will work for everyone.
The main reason it's a turnoff is "Google it you moron" vs. "Have a look at http://www.google.com/search?q=nvidia+direct+rendering+slackware and see if someone already solved it". See the difference?
Who wants to open up a page that suddenly uses all of their cycles and makes their computer useless for anything else while this is running.
Can you actually do that on a modern OS and a modern CPU? I regularly have my CPUs on 101% load and it stays snappy as ever. Only heavy I/O on the system drive makes it unresponsive. This applies for both Gentoo and Vista. (The default install of Linux Mint, however, sucks horribly.)
If the company were Chinese would that make you happier?
You shouldn't have to pay to use a government website. Especially not someone in a different country.
Am I asking too much?
Another informative jewel by our "friend" kdawson. Silverlight is just another technology, like flash, java, or you name it.
And a closed one at that.
He does bring up a good point: Shouldn't public interfaces use speech-free technologies? Why is Javascript not good enough?
It's just getting more and more popular, and there is direct support for Windows and MacOs. The mono team is doing a wonderful work bringing Silverlight for Linux as Moonlight. True, 2.0 is not really supported yet, but it's on it's way, really soon now (TM).
Translation: if you want to use it without hassles, you'll have to buy something from an american company.
P.S. HURD is "on its way, really soon now (TM)", too.
in your name
I'm sure it's not my name. Or is there a part of the propaganda referring to Hungarians I've never heard before?
For most Americans, I belong to the "rest of the world" category, and as such, I don't exist if not for cheap labour.
We should change the laws to hold devices used in state and federal elections to similar or same standards as life-critical medical devices.
They are life-critical. Just ask Saddam.
drugs coming from a bunch of guys in their garages
As long as experts contribute, there shouldn't be a problem. Maybe a registration with credentials would be good.
Software is special, in that all the hardware required is now commodity, and all the knowledge can be accessed fairly easily. At least, you won't see $300 biochem labs from Dell.
but they keep re-electing their congressmen. Same thing applies here.
Are these people elected? You're right bout the lack of responsibility though.
This is more spot-on than the joker seems to realize.
It wasn't a joke.
Many of the old school peer to peer file sharing apps *by default* shared your documents folder. You could turn it off, but most people don't.
'Nuff said.
Shouldn't sensitive data be protected or something? I mean, why does he even have the right to have access to the internet at the same time as the right to install arbitrary applications that can read said data?
Clearly there would be less copyright infringement without all these PC's lying around.
getting modded 0, Funny: priceless.
This isn't a theme competition, it's a user interface competition - usability counts much more than the style of the buttons.
Also, it's a genious move. When the clients are released, you'll have plenty to choose from. Also, being open source. you can merge the best bits of all the clients into one really good one.
Whoever came up with this idea should get a massive pay rise.
BTW, we could adopt the methodology in other areas too.
Because I can certainly point out where in the contract they state that they reserve the right to cut off people for using too much.
Do they define "too much", or is it just a "when we feel like it" thing?
My point is, 1. you pay for a service, 2. there is a contract about said service. Now, if they don't make it clear when they cut you off, they shouldn't be allowed to. The contract also applies to them. If they say unlimited, it'd better be unlimited. If they say 300 Gb a month, they shouldn't be able to cut you off at 290.
There are those of us who depend on the internet for a living, and being cut off for no good reason and no way of knowing it in advance can mean massive losses.
"Company image" is a top priority for every business, second only to money/profit. Especially when it comes to publicly traded companies, image is everything, and there is absolutely ZERO room for negotiation when it comes to an employee's personal life potentially tainting the company's image.
"Hey, we believe what any anonymous moron writes on the internet!"
How's that for a public image? These people should be ridiculed, at least.
Or send them for some reeducation on /b/. Let's see what they think of anonymous comments afterwards.
And yes, P2P filesharing does have design goals other than clogging your tubes.
The way I see it, the portion I paid for is my tubes. And unlimited means unlimited.
(the okay button was off the bottom of the screen)
If you press alt while clicking the window, you can drag it. Did you try to press tab and/or enter? You don't need to see a button to use it if it's selected as default.
Second, the fix was to go into the Konsole CLI and type a command to fix the resolution, but not knowing the command, I was unable to do anything.
I didn't know it until now either. http://www.google.com/search?q=x+resolution+change First hit. And the second, and the third.
In another instance I couldn't connect to my Dialup ISP. Once again the solution was to use Konsole to issue a series of setup commands, and once again I didn't know these commands, so I never was able to connect to my ISP.
So how exactly do you know you had to use konsole? In my K Menu, there's an entry called "KPPP - Internet Dial-Up Tool". Didn't it work for you? Did you bother to look at it? Did you actually try anything?
You may call this "bullshit" but if you don't know the CLI, it's a real obstacle to overcome.
I still am. You try to blame the CLI for your laziness. Which is fine, we all want it to Just Work. But don't blame the tools for you not even wanting to try to fix it.
Use Linux with nothing but a mouse for a week, and see how "easy" it is to use. Not very.
No, thank you. I'm much faster having 5-10 consoles open at the same time. My mom, however, uses Debian, had been using it for two months, and still doesn't know what a command line is. Or how to get there. Of course, she has me to fix her problems, but so far, she had none. Which is more than I can say for some other OSes she used in the past.
As for the mouse thing, I grew up on DOS. I distinctly remember seeing Windows 95 for the first time, and thinking "Pretty, but where do I type 'nc'?"
I'm not comprehending why you were modded funny. Having just tried Linux myself, I didn't find it easy to use, simply because I didn't know how to use the CLI.
I call bullshit. There's no way that can be an issue if you got one of the user friendly distros.
And if you started with LFS or something, you deserve it.