I was being optimistic. Hoping that since MS has produced their big Hurrah, the Wow Starts Now, and ends about 2010 with Vienna SP1.
Apple will have delivered at least 2 more solid copies of OS X not counting this year's, Linux communities will have 3.5 years to do... something.
Intel will have mainline Quad chips next year, AMD is due the year after that. OS, Hardware, _____
I'm hoping by that point we can officially turn the corner of IT maturity, and let Apps have their day. 2010 is the symbolic timeline, not a business-school deadline. Use Winter Solstice 2012 if that makes you happier.
For stretchable values of Near-Future, VR is coming at the ultra-bleeding edge. I don't expect the "affordable versions" in ANY reasonable time.
This is especially because I have shuffled temporary solutions for a long time. I'm aiming for one last long haul Windows machine which I will take several months to set up perfectly, because I expect it to last 5 years minimum.
On my lazy temp systems, I have the necessities done in 1-day's-work spread over a week.
1. "Paperless office". I think word got around that this was as much Management Glamor. Of course you couldn't ban the Scribble-Note. What everyone meant was Paper-Reduced, and this HAS happened. When you're actually working on something, you're gonna have some paper floating around. (Anyone want to join me in a round of PrintReport, FurrowBrow, FixMistake ?) When everyone signs off and it becomes a done-deal, *then* you scan it, & store it on servers.
2. Virtual Reality. This hasn't happened... *yet*. Just because the Adoption Curve is 35 years instead of 15 doesn't make it a flop. The Revenge of the Nerds movies were signs of their times. Today, we wail about Joe Average, but Joe Average *doesn't* ridicule computers anymore. 3 years from now when the eruption from the Microsoft Volcano dies down, we'll be able to concentrate a little more on *apps*, not OS's. (And 2010 is the next symbolic Arthur Clarke date, though his timeline was torched by many people.) In 2010, some elite gamers will have acquired some high end VR gaming hardware, and There It Will Be. It will take ANOTHER 5 years minimum (And getting past another OS crisis!) before Joe Average types Memos in Thin Air.
I don't want "Anything with a browser". For me, my uses are modest, but I do want a *computer*.
I had tremendous patience with the "limitations of the day". My poor old Free-Gift P133 from June 1999 with the Then-New Win98 was my introduction to Windows. "Poor thing, it's trying, but it can't play music while calculating anything".
I'll be putting together a stripped DarkBox with an Intel Yorkfield Quad and WinXP next year. I plan to use all that CPU power running apps I never could previously. I refuse to waste all that power on an OS playing solitaire with itself.
(Why do people keep raving about Desktop Search? I agree with the guy who said "put it where you want it.")
This configuration will be a critical mass point. No reason to upgrade ever, until a next-generation killer-app flips the switch.
You wrote "...but did we not hear effectively the same thing when Windows XP came out? "Few users are planning to upgrade from Windows 98!" "My Windows 2000 works just fine!" "They can have my Windows 95 when they pry the drivers from my cold, dead peripherals!" "
I do not think this was the prevailing mood at all.
I think Everyone hated Windows 3.11 - way too much "promising but not here". I think everyone stuck with DOS. "Easier to program, blecch to the Windows GUI" etc.
Windows 95 may have been "relative quality" for Microsoft, but it was the OS that sold Corporate America into Windows for 15-ish years. (5 to go on the minimum ROI.) It was quite clearly the direction MS was going, and proved Apple had missed the corporate dealmaking.
It turned out tech types thought it was as stable as an exhausted 3-year-old, but that mattered not to the managers, who, once they had "spent that hard earned money, were done spending for now".
Windows 98 rolled around, and I recalled it basically billed as "Windows 95 was the Beta for this." or "Win95 with 25% fewer BlueScreens". I received a Win98 machine as a gift in 1999, knew what to expect... and did "okay". (Not Great.)
By 2000, it became obvious that the fading powers of DOS-root OS were struggling mightily, and losing. Windows Millenium, or LoseMe (play on WinMe), was this mysterious April Fools joke that was best ignored, but was like an urban legend, only true. But right at that cusp, Microsoft's one & only DreamShot landed... Windows 2000 woke everyone up to "buy now, and hold on tight before MS screws it all up again". Windows XP was ridiculed as a slightly dumbed-down version of Win2000, but not counting the SP2 fiasco, an hour's work could remove most of the junk and you basically had a Win2000 machine again. Certain Apps relied on some of the new drivers there too.... and then MS melted.
So, no. We WANTED people to pry Win95 out of our clammy hands. If it wasn't violently illegal, I'd die to get my hands on something like a Fork of WinXP, to see what a brutally efficient programmer would do with the design, so that it somehow made all the proprietary apps happy but ran like greased lightning on today's hardware.
Not counting world class hobbyists, I don't know of *anyone* who could copy their own vinyl music onto other blank vinyl.
There was the first version of this outcry when standard tapes became the 10-year standard. If you were indeed willing to suffer some quality loss, you *could* form small sneaker-nets of 1st generation copies of tapes. Youth of the 1980's got to experiment with Mixing. After a little serious thought, the world realized that in this case the professional package was still seriously better, and the "Free Advertising" of amateur mixes was wholly beneficial.
You are correct that the *entire* rule-set changed with the advent of the CD, and the msuic industry wasted their 8-year warning of things to come. Meanwhile, they convinced us that Tapes were worth $9.99 and CD's were worth $16.99. No wonder I stayed with tapes until just 4 years ago.
It's too bad Shawn Fanning got crushed in the aftermath, but Napster '99 was a glorious product of 1999's mood. He woke everyone up, and "left the future as a homework exercise for the class."
Clearly, the music world will splinter soon. The music industries are thrashing about, and they have a lot of inertia to thrash with.
I'm pretty sure at least ONE person out there has learned it. (Non-zero). I didn't say it had to be remotely popular. If all 4 programs had to appear in my list, well, I stuck it on the bottom for the reasons you describe.
Someone needs to integrate the standard/. theme here: "Think of the AverageUser!".
I think even fewer people know about.ca.uk.au than even the existence of linux! Web 1.0 worked tremendously to make ".com" the place to be. ".net" and ".org" became known as slightly more "reputable".
I think this poses a small security risk, because "Ford.cx" is not the same as "Ford.com". I can see the hordes of mis-clicks into phish sites.
I've used Redirectors for years, because "fun.at/home" type addresses are always crisper than "www.JoesFreeWebhost.com/members/username/index.ht ml". (Your redirector stays put even if you shift hosts, which is a huge gain IMO.) The problem - beginner users consistently try "www.funathome.com" or such and then tie themselves in knots.
In Descending Order, "average" users are learning the following:
1. Firefox 2. Open Office
3. Audacity 4. GIMP
Firefox seems to be the easiest. Unless he(she) is a web researcher, the web pages are all "no risk". "Let's download that Foxie thingie and see what happens".
Open Office is that small step down because it requires negotiating serious concepts like file types, proprietary export plugins, etc. I am promoting it because of the serious cost savings. However, This involves Documents, which can make "average business users" squirm.
I stumbled onto Audacity to do very basic audio editing of music. Slicing off 4 secs of bad noise, speed/pitch/tempo alterations, volume amplifying. Music is the rage, and I wouldn't be surprised if Audacity plays a part in the converting to/from WMP or iTunes.
I have never even had the desire to look at GIMP... because I have no use for it. But then "average user" has no need for Photoshop. If you took the Subset of Picture fans, some of them may have used GIMP.
Why hasn't anyone brought the Copyright tricks into this?
"Considering that putting a link on the internet does not restrict who can use it, it really is a broadcast, so that means that anyone can use it.
Unless you put the images behind an https link or something else that requires authorization, the entire point of the 'net is "available to all". "... So we can put songs that we purchased onto our website, where it is available to all, right? Oh wait. So is an image that you own now different from a song that you own? (Purchased at standard retail.)
How is McCain's "borrowing/other" the image that wasn't his, different from users "borrowing" songs?
I hate "singles", defined as 2 pieces of music per playable object.
The way to do it is flea markets & charity sales, where $100 buys not five, but FIFTY albums. Then you round out your collection with the quality albums you want.
I also damn near skipped the entire CD era, because tapes were more rugged. (Fewer Tape-Melts compared to CD-Scratches). And these were the ones you could get turbo-cheap, when CD's were the rage.
Digital tunes are not "singles", they're menu items. Stack as many as your wallet and/or your music player can take.
Didn't Net 1.0 end... because people abandoned shopping on random net sites in favor of desiring that local tangible buying experience? Let's separate out the Top Ten Most Vulnerable Industries from the overall practice.
Amazon has done well enough to be cited as the Internet Gorilla that terrifies the Brick stores. The Twin B's (B&N/Borders) have a chunk of money between them - let them get really wild and find *something* that kicks over the buy decision to prevent the behavior in the article.
Also, aren't shipping costs factored into Amazon? What exactly is the money saved?
I'd suggest Super-JIT as one idea. In the next management meeting over, the movie execs are nervous too. The tech is being worked out to deliver *any* book from an automated machine in under an hour. So these groups need to get together to offer an Evening of Media.
A. Stay at home, put something on the DVD player, order a book online, visit the convenience store for the Mike&Ikes.
B. Go to the entertainment complex, where at least one screen is determined by vote, and can be anything in the pantheon. "Look! Hunt For Red October! The Sean Connery fans showed up." Wander over to the in-house full service mini-restaurant for dinner. That day, the book version is on discount (tied to the movie.) Stop by the Net Terminal. Check Rotten Tomatoes. Wander over to the production side. With your movie ticket, you get your own DVD copy, or soundtrack, discount on the pair.
Kid will look fondly back on his college days, when that cool lawyer from the RIAA bought him a double Jack Daniels, and they settled for $5000, payable on a plan. The kid's broke from the tuition anyway, what does he care about another debt?
Then for Nostalgia, he'll go pay $18.99 for a CD in Memoriam of Tower Records, and the Separate iTunes single because Steve Jobs is Da Man.
"Self Esteem" is a lot easier to negotiate into when you have a 2-year cushion of savings, rather than living week-to-week. I've seen my share of ugly times. My hard work is paying off for now.
Mileage varies heavily, and at the moment, I'm doing well enough. This depends so heavily on individual company politics. I've mis-judged a couple times and found myself "alone with my boundaries" a couple times.
Huge swaths of people around me have their jobs on their minds, because they have to cut their finances really tight. When someone else skips a day, they are glad to get the "Extra hours".
Scores of personal advice books advocate "be willing to work whatever is necessary to make it in today's world...". I've generally found this to be true. The only compromises I negotiate are to try to encourage the senior team from crash scheduling stuff in the 12th hour of a day - for me that really does lead to fatigue errors. I usually offer to have it by the next morning, or even better, over the weekend.
I find work has rhythmic cycles, and I'd far prefer to work on the weekend than have to smash 6 hours of work into time that simply isn't there the following Tuesday.
Even at my humble level, I still lurch around the office doing version control, documenting software bugs sorted by upgrade version, typo-checking accounting data, and so on.
Tech work requires a certain style of thinking. It makes perfect sense that to develop an instinct for manipulating fine details, a young IT trainee would... play a game that requires an instinct for manipulating fine details.
McDonalds is currently running what I consider to be the best example of corporate humor I have ever seen. Their Dollar Menu is something like 50% cheaper by weight than the standard items. Geeks can save themselves $3-$5 per visit. Pointy Headed Customers (PHC) can be coddled... for a fee. McDonald's. I'm Lovin' *IT*.
Or as Robert Heinlein put it, "3 perfectly parallel lines forming a perfect square with 7 triangular sides".
(One of you Geometry experts, help me here: what marvels are possible in Non-Euclidian Sphere geometry?)
I'll vote for Taco Bell, "Think Outside the Bun". They have developed the best spread of creations I have ever seen for a fast food chain. Then they're usually accomodating when I come up with my own spin, like adding the second tortilla shell to the base so the whole thing doesn't cave and drop 2.7 ounces of neo-mexican stirfry on my shirt.
Steve Ballmer might hold the current award for trying so desperately to think outside boxes, that he gets himself into trouble.
This post brought to you by a Magic the Gathering Planar Chaos ad.
You pegged it perfectly. It's the GRADES that matter. If someone is bright and gets their work done,... then they graduate with honors. Having completed their fixed task, they get to socialize, which INCLUDES Net access. If you have to work out a high-bandwidth fee, figure it out.
As someone else pointed out, students were lazing about in drunken stupors in the days before net access. I don't care about how someone washes out. Self control is PART of the unstated education of college, where you don't need Bathroom Passes.
As a much larger issue, in the 21st century, Content Lockdown mentalities are OBSOLETE. Yes, this terrifies many Powers-That-Be. Deal. The Information Age is here forever, and it's only going to get MORE intense.
Universities are ridiculously expensive anyway. They can afford the loss-leader (excepting lawsuits) of a Net connection.
This is just another instance of PowerLust disguised as Think of the Children.
Slashdot Mirror
I was being optimistic. Hoping that since MS has produced their big Hurrah, the Wow Starts Now, and ends about 2010 with Vienna SP1.
... something.
Apple will have delivered at least 2 more solid copies of OS X not counting this year's, Linux communities will have 3.5 years to do
Intel will have mainline Quad chips next year, AMD is due the year after that.
OS, Hardware, _____
I'm hoping by that point we can officially turn the corner of IT maturity, and let Apps have their day. 2010 is the symbolic timeline, not a business-school deadline. Use Winter Solstice 2012 if that makes you happier.
For stretchable values of Near-Future, VR is coming at the ultra-bleeding edge. I don't expect the "affordable versions" in ANY reasonable time.
This is especially because I have shuffled temporary solutions for a long time. I'm aiming for one last long haul Windows machine which I will take several months to set up perfectly, because I expect it to last 5 years minimum.
On my lazy temp systems, I have the necessities done in 1-day's-work spread over a week.
Since it's only your name, a hotshot with a sound editor could probably do it. Just assemble the phonemes from the stock of voice material.
1. "Paperless office". I think word got around that this was as much Management Glamor. Of course you couldn't ban the Scribble-Note. What everyone meant was Paper-Reduced, and this HAS happened. When you're actually working on something, you're gonna have some paper floating around. (Anyone want to join me in a round of PrintReport, FurrowBrow, FixMistake ?) When everyone signs off and it becomes a done-deal, *then* you scan it, & store it on servers.
... *yet*. Just because the Adoption Curve is 35 years instead of 15 doesn't make it a flop. The Revenge of the Nerds movies were signs of their times. Today, we wail about Joe Average, but Joe Average *doesn't* ridicule computers anymore. 3 years from now when the eruption from the Microsoft Volcano dies down, we'll be able to concentrate a little more on *apps*, not OS's. (And 2010 is the next symbolic Arthur Clarke date, though his timeline was torched by many people.) In 2010, some elite gamers will have acquired some high end VR gaming hardware, and There It Will Be. It will take ANOTHER 5 years minimum (And getting past another OS crisis!) before Joe Average types Memos in Thin Air.
2. Virtual Reality. This hasn't happened
I don't want "Anything with a browser". For me, my uses are modest, but I do want a *computer*.
I had tremendous patience with the "limitations of the day". My poor old Free-Gift P133 from June 1999 with the Then-New Win98 was my introduction to Windows. "Poor thing, it's trying, but it can't play music while calculating anything".
I'll be putting together a stripped DarkBox with an Intel Yorkfield Quad and WinXP next year. I plan to use all that CPU power running apps I never could previously. I refuse to waste all that power on an OS playing solitaire with itself.
(Why do people keep raving about Desktop Search? I agree with the guy who said "put it where you want it.")
This configuration will be a critical mass point. No reason to upgrade ever, until a next-generation killer-app flips the switch.
You wrote "...but did we not hear effectively the same thing when Windows XP came out? "Few users are planning to upgrade from Windows 98!" "My Windows 2000 works just fine!" "They can have my Windows 95 when they pry the drivers from my cold, dead peripherals!" "
... Windows 2000 woke everyone up to "buy now, and hold on tight before MS screws it all up again". Windows XP was ridiculed as a slightly dumbed-down version of Win2000, but not counting the SP2 fiasco, an hour's work could remove most of the junk and you basically had a Win2000 machine again. Certain Apps relied on some of the new drivers there too. ... and then MS melted.
I do not think this was the prevailing mood at all.
I think Everyone hated Windows 3.11 - way too much "promising but not here". I think everyone stuck with DOS. "Easier to program, blecch to the Windows GUI" etc.
Windows 95 may have been "relative quality" for Microsoft, but it was the OS that sold Corporate America into Windows for 15-ish years. (5 to go on the minimum ROI.) It was quite clearly the direction MS was going, and proved Apple had missed the corporate dealmaking.
It turned out tech types thought it was as stable as an exhausted 3-year-old, but that mattered not to the managers, who, once they had "spent that hard earned money, were done spending for now".
Windows 98 rolled around, and I recalled it basically billed as "Windows 95 was the Beta for this." or "Win95 with 25% fewer BlueScreens". I received a Win98 machine as a gift in 1999, knew what to expect... and did "okay". (Not Great.)
By 2000, it became obvious that the fading powers of DOS-root OS were struggling mightily, and losing. Windows Millenium, or LoseMe (play on WinMe), was this mysterious April Fools joke that was best ignored, but was like an urban legend, only true. But right at that cusp, Microsoft's one & only DreamShot landed
So, no. We WANTED people to pry Win95 out of our clammy hands. If it wasn't violently illegal, I'd die to get my hands on something like a Fork of WinXP, to see what a brutally efficient programmer would do with the design, so that it somehow made all the proprietary apps happy but ran like greased lightning on today's hardware.
Thank you for finally bringing this aspect in.
Not counting world class hobbyists, I don't know of *anyone* who could copy their own vinyl music onto other blank vinyl.
There was the first version of this outcry when standard tapes became the 10-year standard. If you were indeed willing to suffer some quality loss, you *could* form small sneaker-nets of 1st generation copies of tapes. Youth of the 1980's got to experiment with Mixing. After a little serious thought, the world realized that in this case the professional package was still seriously better, and the "Free Advertising" of amateur mixes was wholly beneficial.
You are correct that the *entire* rule-set changed with the advent of the CD, and the msuic industry wasted their 8-year warning of things to come. Meanwhile, they convinced us that Tapes were worth $9.99 and CD's were worth $16.99. No wonder I stayed with tapes until just 4 years ago.
It's too bad Shawn Fanning got crushed in the aftermath, but Napster '99 was a glorious product of 1999's mood. He woke everyone up, and "left the future as a homework exercise for the class."
Clearly, the music world will splinter soon. The music industries are thrashing about, and they have a lot of inertia to thrash with.
Of course they're not equal.
Someone forgot to Format Cells/Decimals=1.
Then you discover the other cell is holding 4.4 rounded to 4.
This reminds me of:
Limit as User --> 0 (Users learning GIMP).
I'm pretty sure at least ONE person out there has learned it. (Non-zero). I didn't say it had to be remotely popular. If all 4 programs had to appear in my list, well, I stuck it on the bottom for the reasons you describe.
Do we agree Audacity is easier?
Someone needs to integrate the standard /. theme here: "Think of the AverageUser!".
.ca .uk .au than even the existence of linux! Web 1.0 worked tremendously to make ".com" the place to be. ".net" and ".org" became known as slightly more "reputable".
t ml". (Your redirector stays put even if you shift hosts, which is a huge gain IMO.) The problem - beginner users consistently try "www.funathome.com" or such and then tie themselves in knots.
I think even fewer people know about
I think this poses a small security risk, because "Ford.cx" is not the same as "Ford.com". I can see the hordes of mis-clicks into phish sites.
I've used Redirectors for years, because "fun.at/home" type addresses are always crisper than "www.JoesFreeWebhost.com/members/username/index.h
In Descending Order, "average" users are learning the following:
1. Firefox
2. Open Office
3. Audacity
4. GIMP
Firefox seems to be the easiest. Unless he(she) is a web researcher, the web pages are all "no risk". "Let's download that Foxie thingie and see what happens".
Open Office is that small step down because it requires negotiating serious concepts like file types, proprietary export plugins, etc. I am promoting it because of the serious cost savings. However, This involves Documents, which can make "average business users" squirm.
I stumbled onto Audacity to do very basic audio editing of music. Slicing off 4 secs of bad noise, speed/pitch/tempo alterations, volume amplifying. Music is the rage, and I wouldn't be surprised if Audacity plays a part in the converting to/from WMP or iTunes.
I have never even had the desire to look at GIMP... because I have no use for it. But then "average user" has no need for Photoshop. If you took the Subset of Picture fans, some of them may have used GIMP.
Why hasn't anyone brought the Copyright tricks into this?
... So we can put songs that we purchased onto our website, where it is available to all, right? Oh wait. So is an image that you own now different from a song that you own? (Purchased at standard retail.)
"Considering that putting a link on the internet does not restrict who can use it, it really is a broadcast, so that means that anyone can use it.
Unless you put the images behind an https link or something else that requires authorization, the entire point of the 'net is "available to all". "
How is McCain's "borrowing/other" the image that wasn't his, different from users "borrowing" songs?
Where are the comments championing the blogger's freedom from the clutches of media employment politics?
Each blogger would be evaluated by the content they produce.
Merl Ledford III is gonna ...
... New Clients! ... Profits!
(cue Rocky Balboa movie theme)
"Hit 'em with the left, then he'll hit 'em with the right.
It's a fight, it's a fight
Head-Bust 'em, Head-Bust 'em."
P.S. Everyone look up Visalia, CA on the map now.
Interesting. I tossed this whole phrase into Yahoo.
"We did not find results for: "thin skulled client". Try the suggestions below or type a new query above."
I hate "singles", defined as 2 pieces of music per playable object.
The way to do it is flea markets & charity sales, where $100 buys not five, but FIFTY albums. Then you round out your collection with the quality albums you want.
I also damn near skipped the entire CD era, because tapes were more rugged. (Fewer Tape-Melts compared to CD-Scratches). And these were the ones you could get turbo-cheap, when CD's were the rage.
Digital tunes are not "singles", they're menu items. Stack as many as your wallet and/or your music player can take.
Watch out gang.
... because people abandoned shopping on random net sites in favor of desiring that local tangible buying experience? Let's separate out the Top Ten Most Vulnerable Industries from the overall practice.
Didn't Net 1.0 end
Amazon has done well enough to be cited as the Internet Gorilla that terrifies the Brick stores. The Twin B's (B&N/Borders) have a chunk of money between them - let them get really wild and find *something* that kicks over the buy decision to prevent the behavior in the article.
Also, aren't shipping costs factored into Amazon? What exactly is the money saved?
I'd suggest Super-JIT as one idea. In the next management meeting over, the movie execs are nervous too. The tech is being worked out to deliver *any* book from an automated machine in under an hour. So these groups need to get together to offer an Evening of Media.
A. Stay at home, put something on the DVD player, order a book online, visit the convenience store for the Mike&Ikes.
B. Go to the entertainment complex, where at least one screen is determined by vote, and can be anything in the pantheon. "Look! Hunt For Red October! The Sean Connery fans showed up." Wander over to the in-house full service mini-restaurant for dinner. That day, the book version is on discount (tied to the movie.) Stop by the Net Terminal. Check Rotten Tomatoes. Wander over to the production side. With your movie ticket, you get your own DVD copy, or soundtrack, discount on the pair.
I'd choose B.
Profits!
Kid will look fondly back on his college days, when that cool lawyer from the RIAA bought him a double Jack Daniels, and they settled for $5000, payable on a plan. The kid's broke from the tuition anyway, what does he care about another debt?
Then for Nostalgia, he'll go pay $18.99 for a CD in Memoriam of Tower Records, and the Separate iTunes single because Steve Jobs is Da Man.
Same mistake as the last poster.
"Self Esteem" is a lot easier to negotiate into when you have a 2-year cushion of savings, rather than living week-to-week. I've seen my share of ugly times. My hard work is paying off for now.
Mileage varies heavily, and at the moment, I'm doing well enough. This depends so heavily on individual company politics. I've mis-judged a couple times and found myself "alone with my boundaries" a couple times.
Lots of comments here that *almost* make sense.
Huge swaths of people around me have their jobs on their minds, because they have to cut their finances really tight. When someone else skips a day, they are glad to get the "Extra hours".
Scores of personal advice books advocate "be willing to work whatever is necessary to make it in today's world...". I've generally found this to be true. The only compromises I negotiate are to try to encourage the senior team from crash scheduling stuff in the 12th hour of a day - for me that really does lead to fatigue errors. I usually offer to have it by the next morning, or even better, over the weekend.
I find work has rhythmic cycles, and I'd far prefer to work on the weekend than have to smash 6 hours of work into time that simply isn't there the following Tuesday.
Possibly you don't need that job. This heads into Pointy territory, where there are always things to squeeze in.
Mod jd up!
... play a game that requires an instinct for manipulating fine details.
... for a fee. McDonald's. I'm Lovin' *IT*.
Even at my humble level, I still lurch around the office doing version control, documenting software bugs sorted by upgrade version, typo-checking accounting data, and so on.
Tech work requires a certain style of thinking. It makes perfect sense that to develop an instinct for manipulating fine details, a young IT trainee would
McDonalds is currently running what I consider to be the best example of corporate humor I have ever seen. Their Dollar Menu is something like 50% cheaper by weight than the standard items. Geeks can save themselves $3-$5 per visit. Pointy Headed Customers (PHC) can be coddled
Or as Robert Heinlein put it, "3 perfectly parallel lines forming a perfect square with 7 triangular sides".
(One of you Geometry experts, help me here: what marvels are possible in Non-Euclidian Sphere geometry?)
I'll vote for Taco Bell, "Think Outside the Bun".
They have developed the best spread of creations I have ever seen for a fast food chain. Then they're usually accomodating when I come up with my own spin, like adding the second tortilla shell to the base so the whole thing doesn't cave and drop 2.7 ounces of neo-mexican stirfry on my shirt.
Steve Ballmer might hold the current award for trying so desperately to think outside boxes, that he gets himself into trouble.
This post brought to you by a Magic the Gathering Planar Chaos ad.
Bravo!
... then they graduate with honors. Having completed their fixed task, they get to socialize, which INCLUDES Net access. If you have to work out a high-bandwidth fee, figure it out.
You pegged it perfectly. It's the GRADES that matter. If someone is bright and gets their work done,
As someone else pointed out, students were lazing about in drunken stupors in the days before net access. I don't care about how someone washes out. Self control is PART of the unstated education of college, where you don't need Bathroom Passes.
As a much larger issue, in the 21st century, Content Lockdown mentalities are OBSOLETE. Yes, this terrifies many Powers-That-Be. Deal. The Information Age is here forever, and it's only going to get MORE intense.
Universities are ridiculously expensive anyway. They can afford the loss-leader (excepting lawsuits) of a Net connection.
This is just another instance of PowerLust disguised as Think of the Children.