Kids, much less adults, understand the repercussions of 'inking' something on the internet. This is why it's so important for their parents to step in and stop them from such things. Yes, kids need censors for some of the stupidity that they perpetrate while they are (gasp) children! That doesn't mean you suspend or expel. You take corrective action, and smack down the parents for not doing their job. Yes, their JOB. Having a child is a JOB. I get so tired of people that try to blame schools and governments for childrens stupidity. If their parents didn't allow it, it wouldn't happen.
On the flip side of this, I think that there is a majority of adults who don't understand the implications of 'inking' something on the 'net, either. The root of the problem isn't even the ink. It's the social contract tat people hold themselves to. Just saying "rape" with someones name connected to it can ruin their life, and that is crappy as hell.
Lets not forget speed of development, great community support, massive amounts of libraries to do just about anything you want, and the ability to work in any environment you want. They are the very definition of agile.
...and lets not even get started on build (maven, ant, et al) processes of Java. So, so tired of doing java builds every time I need to test new features.
Not so. In fact, yours is the circular dependency. Because technically, any 'computing device' including a calculator, a radio or anything else that utilized some form of a RISC or CISC processor, could -technically- be considered and used as a general purpose computing. Do I want my calculator to be a full powered computer? No! Because I want my calculator to do the one thing it does well- Calculate!
The iPad is not marketed, nor intended, as a general purpose computing device. I don't know why that's so hard to understand for geeks.
In more words: Which do you find more likely that is going to do what's right for the greater customers, Apple or Google? (I say this while typing on an Apple laptop, which I happen to love)
Google has a far better track record than Apple does, along with much better expectations and relations with those companies it's trying to make inroads with. That's not even speaking of the phones. Personally, I think there is a quiet revolution going on with Android right now. We used to have phones that couldn't talk nicely to each other, or talk nicely to computers, or the 'net... We're seeing lots of smart phones that can, now. Because the software (android) isn't limited to one piece of hardware.
...so I can develop using xCode, which seems like a really good development environment...
Clearly, you have never used a modern programming IDE. Please check out Eclipse, IntelliJ, or even M$ Visual Studio, then, compare with XCode. Please check back in with your results.
Oh, and to the parent: Freedom == Friendliness, for a developer. Some of us don't feel like spending (read: wasting) a ton of time developing for a system that can summarily dismiss our application submission, without anything other than a "We don't like it."
What if you're not looking for an experience, but instead, a functional system that can run whatever app you put on it (or develop for it), without question?
The OS of any device has exactly one goal: Get out of my way and let me do what I want. That's it. Eye candy is certainly nice, but when the OS (of whatever device is in question) actually stops me from doing what I want it to do (provided an app has already been developed), that's a big BIG problem. One that I don't understand why more iPhone users aren't flapping their gap more, about. I love the iPhone OS. It's pretty. But any proprietary/controlled/gimped device is basically worthless to me (and plenty of others, as Android has shown). I own the device, I get to choose what I want to put on it. End of story. It's just iPhone users trying to console themselves by claiming that the iPhone is an "experience" when in fact they are being manipulated. Just like Kindle users are, with Amazon. It's no different, and just as insidious a way to control users as any other corp has ever put out.
Not to mention, someone had to come along eventually and start innovating telephones. Lord knows the Telco's weren't going to.:P
Yeah. The monkey-kind are a dime a dozen. Which is proven by how many crappy web pages/applications there are out there. The non-monkey kind exist too. Just like the difference between script kiddies that "play" with their *nix boxes and real system administrators that know how to solve real world problems.
Those mainframe "dudes" as you put it, make similar to what good (read: proficient, non-monkey) web designers make. Moreover, I know several mainframe admins that make significantly less. It just depends on if you're actually good at what you do.
It will not surprise me if the hard core of geeks that abandoned Mozilla Suite for Firefox now abandon Firefox for Chrome and Safari. The first one of those browsers to get an extensions/plugin framework allowing for ad-blocking and development tools will start sucking a lot of folks over.
It's already too late on both of those. Chrome + Privoxy is a very solid setup, though I'm not happy with that particular development setup. Safari 4 actually has the best development set of tools (or the ones I like the best, at least). It comes real close to the Firebug plug-in that you get for Firefox, and it all runs and much, much faster speeds. I'm not 100% off of Firefox yet, but I'm headed that direction. I can't deal with Firefox crashing 4-5 times per day, just because I have a bunch of plug-ins. If I can't use plug-ins, I might as well be using Chrome or Safari 4.
You may be right, but how did we get to using the knife as a solid every day tool for buttering bread, et al?
If it didn't exist in the first place (which is what the RIAA would like), how would we get to the point where we could use it as an everyday tool?
They're trying to stall progress because their business is suffering from it. In continuing with the same example: That's like saying that just because the butter knife is an 'acceptable' implement to cut meat with, that one shouldn't ever be allowed to invent a serrated knife to cut more easily with.
..I'm pretty sure I just took that metaphor too far.
If I had mod points, I'd have modded you troll immediately for that comment.
Just because someone attempts to value what they are buying, and is willing to spend a few more moments than a standard corporate acquirement person, does not make them a "Wal-Mart"ite. I value shop, and I wont set foot in Wal-Mart. That doesn't mean I immediately go shop at Byerlys or Lunds or Kowalski's or whatever your local carpeted-chandeliered grocery store is.
Corps are notorious for spending ridiculous amounts of money where they don't need to. If you spend twice the price on everything you purchase, you may create loyalty with a particular company. And you may end up being able to work things out with them that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to if you shopped around. That doesn't equate to saving money. Because you shouldn't be fooled in to thinking that they're doing you any favors; They aren't. They're bending over backwards for you because you're paying TWICE the price on everything, which costs them almost nothing.
Buy ten units of X at $2,000 each. $20,000 in merchandise. Return $2000. Net: $18000.
Buy ten units of X at $1,000 each. $10,000 in merchandise. Unable to return. Buy another. Net: $11,000.
I wish corporate automatons would wake up and realize that just because it's "their business practice" does not make it better, economical, or worth doing.
Advertisements only exist if you make them out to be a huge issue.. Or if you have a ridiculously small screen resolution (like.. 800x600).
I've used gmail since 2003, and I barely even notice the ads. Once in a GREAT while I even see something worth clicking on (and do!). Ads are not necessarily evil things. Particularly the targeted kind (though I find the whole privacy issue kind of...iffy). They're irritating when they take up your entire screen. The old Web1/90's banners were hideous, yes.
While I'm not going to respond specifically to your points:
I lived right next to the Mayo Clinic for a long, long time. My ex worked there and brought home her pager every day. Only recently have I moved away. They still use pagers (as of last year anyways). Why? Because they're far more professional than busting out your cellphone (intrusive) on your patient. There are plenty of other reasons, but professionalism alone is enough for a hospital (which I absolutely expect the epitome of professionalism from - just like, I also expect, most others do).
The Americans would bitch and moan and threaten and swagger, but since they're basically bankrupt and have dumped a substantial amount of their wealth into non-wealth generating assets (the military, first and foremost) the USA is really at the mercy of the rest of the planet and some.
That has got to be the funniest thing I've read on Slashdot thus far today.
So.. because we have the biggest military...we're...at...everyone elses..mercy?
It's when the theory hits the practice. Problem is, when you hand communism (or any 'everyone works together' theory) to the people, they're still greedy and inherently flawed. Thereby ending up with a situation similar to... China.
Unbiased does not mean incorrect or fallible results. It just means they have something at stake....and the engineers? They're usually the first ones to cry fowl. It's the marketeers and the business people pitching their fancy frilly words that you have to worry about. Not to mention the PR people.
It sounds to me like your (both you and the *parent articles, have had experience with standard IT-Support positions for Mac users. Any help desk position is going to make you jaded about whatever it is you're working with, because really...you're only hearing the problems. I completely agree with the other person who responded saying that it's probably because Mac users experience less problems, so they're more likely to get frustrated when they do experience them.
There are just as many stupid PC (read as: Windows) users as there are Mac users (by definition, there are more, when not speaking of per capita).
I have five systems at my home. Each with a different OS. Win2k3, XP/Vista Dual-boot, Linux (of the Ubuntu variety) x2, and Mac. Mac is the one I have the least problems with. Is it problem free? Certainly not. But for every hour I spend fixing something on one of the windows systems, I spend maybe half that (if not less) fixing something on my Mac. Or the *nix systems, for that matter. I switched because Mac == Linux. There are still plenty of old "Cult of Mac" users out there though, and unfortunately, you're going to have to deal with them just as much as the "where's the 'any' key?" PC users.
Do you have any of those pesky things known as "facts" to back that comment up?
I, for one, would never have used a Mac before OS X came out. Their rewrite to place themselves on a BSD kernel is what got them a lot of converts fromt he *nix community (I'm one of them). Mac OS 0 was basically only useful for those that wanted a powerful graphics/video editing system. Not to say that was the only thing they could do, but the cross platform capabilities only started really showing up in the OS X era (which is what makes the system viable now).
So, if you mean by writing an OS that appeals to a much greater market share (read: customers) and giving them what they want (iLife, something that just works, et al) shows that they 'ignore' their customers and that they are worse (in your eyes) than every other IT giant out there, absolutely.
Don't get me wrong. They have their share of flaws. Vendor lock in is my biggest complaint. But... This "Apple doesn't listen to their customers" thing? Sounds like a heavy dose of FUD to me.
[macfanboi] This is exactly what I try to tell people when they start talking about how wonderful Windows is, and how it can be adjusted to -exactly what you want-, because there are so many different switches and dials and buttons to effect a change in the pretty color of the desktop, so and so forth. You can have you own hardware, mod it up, throw eight pipes with water into your computer case. Make it glow. Change out all your hardware...
While what they're not getting, is that they're not getting anything done. That's why I like my Mac, in a nutshell. Yes, there's lock in, yes, you have to take their hardware. That makes the choices simple, and you get to actually do stuff, rather than tweak stuff, all the time. Worry less about the OS, more about your task. [/macfanboi]
That said, I think they should qualify their "Vista Capable" sticker. They could have the big bold letters "Vista Capable" with another set beneath it like.. "Home" or "Premium" in smaller print, or in another typeset. That sort of thing. Would make it far less confusing.
Y'know, you're saying all the right things, but without the realization that there are tons of options out there. It has absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft being the greatest innovator of our time, as you seem to think.
Office is exactly one type of application on the personal computer. That doesn't account for a hundreds of others out there. Office exists on the Mac. You can create a document from a Mac and put it on a Sharepoint server, too. For that matter, there are plenty of other Document Management Systems out there that are not proprietary to Microsoft. I don't know the names of them off the top of my head, but then again, that's not something I deal with on a day to day basis in my IT position. Personally, I find the solutions on Mac OS to be far superior to those on Windows. Windows applications haven't really attempted to much innovation in a long time. It's just a bunch of rehashes.
Take a look at Pages (A Word AND Publisher replacement), and Keynote (Far better than it's Powerpoint cousin - Much better animation, very easy to use), and Numbers (Okay, so it's still not as good as Excel. It definitely looks better though.. Oh yeah, and Excel is on the Mac too), and Project X (Better than Microsoft Project in Many, Many ways) or Merlin (Almost an exact look alike for Project, except prettier), and Omnigraph...and..on and on. Oh! And of course: Entourage = Outlook. Though with OS X Leopard having been released, Mail + Calendar are now basically at the same level as Outlook (which you actually have to purchase with Office).
All those "killer apps" out there for Windows, are on Mac too. The hold over is not coming from Microsoft being better than the rest. Far from it. It's coming from users being familiar with Windows and not wanting their cheese moved.
Slashdot Mirror
Kids, much less adults, understand the repercussions of 'inking' something on the internet. This is why it's so important for their parents to step in and stop them from such things. Yes, kids need censors for some of the stupidity that they perpetrate while they are (gasp) children! That doesn't mean you suspend or expel. You take corrective action, and smack down the parents for not doing their job. Yes, their JOB. Having a child is a JOB. I get so tired of people that try to blame schools and governments for childrens stupidity. If their parents didn't allow it, it wouldn't happen.
On the flip side of this, I think that there is a majority of adults who don't understand the implications of 'inking' something on the 'net, either. The root of the problem isn't even the ink. It's the social contract tat people hold themselves to. Just saying "rape" with someones name connected to it can ruin their life, and that is crappy as hell.
Lets not forget speed of development, great community support, massive amounts of libraries to do just about anything you want, and the ability to work in any environment you want. They are the very definition of agile.
Not so. In fact, yours is the circular dependency. Because technically, any 'computing device' including a calculator, a radio or anything else that utilized some form of a RISC or CISC processor, could -technically- be considered and used as a general purpose computing. Do I want my calculator to be a full powered computer? No! Because I want my calculator to do the one thing it does well- Calculate!
The iPad is not marketed, nor intended, as a general purpose computing device. I don't know why that's so hard to understand for geeks.
In one word: Google.
In more words: Which do you find more likely that is going to do what's right for the greater customers, Apple or Google? (I say this while typing on an Apple laptop, which I happen to love)
Google has a far better track record than Apple does, along with much better expectations and relations with those companies it's trying to make inroads with. That's not even speaking of the phones. Personally, I think there is a quiet revolution going on with Android right now. We used to have phones that couldn't talk nicely to each other, or talk nicely to computers, or the 'net... We're seeing lots of smart phones that can, now. Because the software (android) isn't limited to one piece of hardware.
...so I can develop using xCode, which seems like a really good development environment...
Clearly, you have never used a modern programming IDE. Please check out Eclipse, IntelliJ, or even M$ Visual Studio, then, compare with XCode. Please check back in with your results.
Oh, and to the parent: Freedom == Friendliness, for a developer. Some of us don't feel like spending (read: wasting) a ton of time developing for a system that can summarily dismiss our application submission, without anything other than a "We don't like it."
This is a point I get so tired of.
What if you're not looking for an experience, but instead, a functional system that can run whatever app you put on it (or develop for it), without question?
The OS of any device has exactly one goal: Get out of my way and let me do what I want. That's it. Eye candy is certainly nice, but when the OS (of whatever device is in question) actually stops me from doing what I want it to do (provided an app has already been developed), that's a big BIG problem. One that I don't understand why more iPhone users aren't flapping their gap more, about. I love the iPhone OS. It's pretty. But any proprietary/controlled/gimped device is basically worthless to me (and plenty of others, as Android has shown). I own the device, I get to choose what I want to put on it. End of story. It's just iPhone users trying to console themselves by claiming that the iPhone is an "experience" when in fact they are being manipulated. Just like Kindle users are, with Amazon. It's no different, and just as insidious a way to control users as any other corp has ever put out.
Not to mention, someone had to come along eventually and start innovating telephones. Lord knows the Telco's weren't going to. :P
"Web monkeys"?
Yeah. The monkey-kind are a dime a dozen. Which is proven by how many crappy web pages/applications there are out there. The non-monkey kind exist too. Just like the difference between script kiddies that "play" with their *nix boxes and real system administrators that know how to solve real world problems.
Those mainframe "dudes" as you put it, make similar to what good (read: proficient, non-monkey) web designers make. Moreover, I know several mainframe admins that make significantly less. It just depends on if you're actually good at what you do.
It will not surprise me if the hard core of geeks that abandoned Mozilla Suite for Firefox now abandon Firefox for Chrome and Safari. The first one of those browsers to get an extensions/plugin framework allowing for ad-blocking and development tools will start sucking a lot of folks over.
It's already too late on both of those. Chrome + Privoxy is a very solid setup, though I'm not happy with that particular development setup. Safari 4 actually has the best development set of tools (or the ones I like the best, at least). It comes real close to the Firebug plug-in that you get for Firefox, and it all runs and much, much faster speeds. I'm not 100% off of Firefox yet, but I'm headed that direction. I can't deal with Firefox crashing 4-5 times per day, just because I have a bunch of plug-ins. If I can't use plug-ins, I might as well be using Chrome or Safari 4.
You may be right, but how did we get to using the knife as a solid every day tool for buttering bread, et al?
If it didn't exist in the first place (which is what the RIAA would like), how would we get to the point where we could use it as an everyday tool?
They're trying to stall progress because their business is suffering from it. In continuing with the same example: That's like saying that just because the butter knife is an 'acceptable' implement to cut meat with, that one shouldn't ever be allowed to invent a serrated knife to cut more easily with.
The slashdot community never takes anything out of context.
I like this idea.
Send the politicians politicking the politicians.
Meanwhile, the programmers will be busy actually getting some real work done!
> Let me guess: you shop at Wal-Mart exclusively?
If I had mod points, I'd have modded you troll immediately for that comment.
Just because someone attempts to value what they are buying, and is willing to spend a few more moments than a standard corporate acquirement person, does not make them a "Wal-Mart"ite. I value shop, and I wont set foot in Wal-Mart. That doesn't mean I immediately go shop at Byerlys or Lunds or Kowalski's or whatever your local carpeted-chandeliered grocery store is.
Corps are notorious for spending ridiculous amounts of money where they don't need to. If you spend twice the price on everything you purchase, you may create loyalty with a particular company. And you may end up being able to work things out with them that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to if you shopped around. That doesn't equate to saving money. Because you shouldn't be fooled in to thinking that they're doing you any favors; They aren't. They're bending over backwards for you because you're paying TWICE the price on everything, which costs them almost nothing.
Buy ten units of X at $2,000 each. $20,000 in merchandise. Return $2000. Net: $18000.
Buy ten units of X at $1,000 each. $10,000 in merchandise. Unable to return. Buy another. Net: $11,000.
I wish corporate automatons would wake up and realize that just because it's "their business practice" does not make it better, economical, or worth doing.
Advertisements only exist if you make them out to be a huge issue.. Or if you have a ridiculously small screen resolution (like.. 800x600).
I've used gmail since 2003, and I barely even notice the ads. Once in a GREAT while I even see something worth clicking on (and do!). Ads are not necessarily evil things. Particularly the targeted kind (though I find the whole privacy issue kind of...iffy). They're irritating when they take up your entire screen. The old Web1/90's banners were hideous, yes.
While I'm not going to respond specifically to your points:
I lived right next to the Mayo Clinic for a long, long time. My ex worked there and brought home her pager every day. Only recently have I moved away. They still use pagers (as of last year anyways). Why? Because they're far more professional than busting out your cellphone (intrusive) on your patient. There are plenty of other reasons, but professionalism alone is enough for a hospital (which I absolutely expect the epitome of professionalism from - just like, I also expect, most others do).
He'd be the oldest guy on record to get elected to a first term. To my (admittedly lacking) knowledge.
The Americans would bitch and moan and threaten and swagger, but since they're basically bankrupt and have dumped a substantial amount of their wealth into non-wealth generating assets (the military, first and foremost) the USA is really at the mercy of the rest of the planet and some.
That has got to be the funniest thing I've read on Slashdot thus far today.
So.. because we have the biggest military...we're...at...everyone elses..mercy?
I like it. :)
Marx is great, in theory.
Just like communism is great, in theory.
It's when the theory hits the practice. Problem is, when you hand communism (or any 'everyone works together' theory) to the people, they're still greedy and inherently flawed. Thereby ending up with a situation similar to... China.
Note: Similar to, not exactly like.
I think that's half the problem that's going to see. No matter who wins, there are going to be cries of fowl.
The old guy and the woman are firsts.
The black guy is a first.
So either way, the opposite group is going to bitch about racism or sexism or ageism. It's a no-win either way.
Psssh.
Unbiased does not mean incorrect or fallible results. It just means they have something at stake. ...and the engineers? They're usually the first ones to cry fowl. It's the marketeers and the business people pitching their fancy frilly words that you have to worry about. Not to mention the PR people.
You picked the wrong group to ask the GPL'd Microsoft Office question to. ;)
It sounds to me like your (both you and the *parent articles, have had experience with standard IT-Support positions for Mac users. Any help desk position is going to make you jaded about whatever it is you're working with, because really...you're only hearing the problems. I completely agree with the other person who responded saying that it's probably because Mac users experience less problems, so they're more likely to get frustrated when they do experience them.
There are just as many stupid PC (read as: Windows) users as there are Mac users (by definition, there are more, when not speaking of per capita).
I have five systems at my home. Each with a different OS. Win2k3, XP/Vista Dual-boot, Linux (of the Ubuntu variety) x2, and Mac. Mac is the one I have the least problems with. Is it problem free? Certainly not. But for every hour I spend fixing something on one of the windows systems, I spend maybe half that (if not less) fixing something on my Mac. Or the *nix systems, for that matter. I switched because Mac == Linux. There are still plenty of old "Cult of Mac" users out there though, and unfortunately, you're going to have to deal with them just as much as the "where's the 'any' key?" PC users.
Do you have any of those pesky things known as "facts" to back that comment up?
I, for one, would never have used a Mac before OS X came out. Their rewrite to place themselves on a BSD kernel is what got them a lot of converts fromt he *nix community (I'm one of them). Mac OS 0 was basically only useful for those that wanted a powerful graphics/video editing system. Not to say that was the only thing they could do, but the cross platform capabilities only started really showing up in the OS X era (which is what makes the system viable now).
So, if you mean by writing an OS that appeals to a much greater market share (read: customers) and giving them what they want (iLife, something that just works, et al) shows that they 'ignore' their customers and that they are worse (in your eyes) than every other IT giant out there, absolutely.
Don't get me wrong. They have their share of flaws. Vendor lock in is my biggest complaint. But... This "Apple doesn't listen to their customers" thing? Sounds like a heavy dose of FUD to me.
..They finally figured out what the rest of us have known for quite some time now.
[macfanboi]
This is exactly what I try to tell people when they start talking about how wonderful Windows is, and how it can be adjusted to -exactly what you want-, because there are so many different switches and dials and buttons to effect a change in the pretty color of the desktop, so and so forth. You can have you own hardware, mod it up, throw eight pipes with water into your computer case. Make it glow. Change out all your hardware...
While what they're not getting, is that they're not getting anything done. That's why I like my Mac, in a nutshell. Yes, there's lock in, yes, you have to take their hardware. That makes the choices simple, and you get to actually do stuff, rather than tweak stuff, all the time. Worry less about the OS, more about your task.
[/macfanboi]
That said, I think they should qualify their "Vista Capable" sticker. They could have the big bold letters "Vista Capable" with another set beneath it like.. "Home" or "Premium" in smaller print, or in another typeset. That sort of thing. Would make it far less confusing.
Y'know, you're saying all the right things, but without the realization that there are tons of options out there. It has absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft being the greatest innovator of our time, as you seem to think.
Office is exactly one type of application on the personal computer. That doesn't account for a hundreds of others out there. Office exists on the Mac. You can create a document from a Mac and put it on a Sharepoint server, too. For that matter, there are plenty of other Document Management Systems out there that are not proprietary to Microsoft. I don't know the names of them off the top of my head, but then again, that's not something I deal with on a day to day basis in my IT position. Personally, I find the solutions on Mac OS to be far superior to those on Windows. Windows applications haven't really attempted to much innovation in a long time. It's just a bunch of rehashes.
Take a look at Pages (A Word AND Publisher replacement), and Keynote (Far better than it's Powerpoint cousin - Much better animation, very easy to use), and Numbers (Okay, so it's still not as good as Excel. It definitely looks better though.. Oh yeah, and Excel is on the Mac too), and Project X (Better than Microsoft Project in Many, Many ways) or Merlin (Almost an exact look alike for Project, except prettier), and Omnigraph...and..on and on. Oh! And of course: Entourage = Outlook. Though with OS X Leopard having been released, Mail + Calendar are now basically at the same level as Outlook (which you actually have to purchase with Office).
All those "killer apps" out there for Windows, are on Mac too. The hold over is not coming from Microsoft being better than the rest. Far from it. It's coming from users being familiar with Windows and not wanting their cheese moved.