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Comment Re:Is anyone actually stuck on Snow Leopard? (Score 2) 241

We tried option B, and when the software received an update a few days later, link annotations were no longer available.

At that point, we went digging in the parts closet for the machines.

Personally, I think the Apple/Adobe relationship is driving this. Get people hooked on a feature, then yank that feature to force them to purchase an expensive product (Acrobat).

Comment Re:Is anyone actually stuck on Snow Leopard? (Score 2) 241

One piece of older OSX that is no longer in newer versions is an (apparently) often used function of Preview. The ability to add link annotations to PDF documents has been removed. You can still add text and arrows and circles (the things we don't use it for). That particular function is the most often used, but there are others.

We used it for customer reports generated in other applications. To make it easier on our customers, we would create table of contents and link it in preview before sending it out. With older Snow Leopard machines in the office, the process now must be performed on an older machine before being sent out. Of course, we are now very protective of these older machines.

Comment Re:Is anyone actually stuck on Snow Leopard? (Score 1) 241

There are reasons not to upgrade. Apple has silently removed features from OSX that my business has come to rely on. New equipment, of course, runs Lion or Mavericks - but we keep a few older machines around to do the tasks that Apple doesn't think we need to do anymore (tasks that require us to spend $2500 on software for Lion or Mavericks but could do in Snow Leopard).

Comment Re:Its too bad.. (Score 1) 357

This was done in the ancient olympic games - sort of. It wasn't really that the competitors used the same gear - they competed in the nude, covering their bodies with olive oil.

The athletes usually competed nude, not only as the weather was appropriate, but also as the festival was meant to celebrate, in part, the achievements of the human body. Olive oil was used by the competitors, not only as a substitute for soap for washing, bathing, and cleaning, but also as a natural cosmetic, to keep skin smooth, and provide an appealing look for the participants. Because the men competed nude, married women were forbidden to watch the Olympics under penalty of death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

Comment Re:It's more science than religion (Score 1) 625

The positions of the planets and angular relationships isn't science? What the hell have astronomers been doing all these years?

The portion of astrology that deals with the positions of the heavenly bodies is exactly a science, and is provable FACT. When someone is born and their sun sign is, say Aquarius - this means that the sun was in Aquarius when the person was born, which is a provable FACT.

Astronomy was born from astrology. Many of the terms still used in astronomy came from astrology (conjunction, opposition, aspect, etc.)

Astrology has one non-scientific aspect (pun intended), the assignment of meaning to planetary positions and angular relationships.

Comment It's more science than religion (Score 3, Interesting) 625

While on par with most religious beliefs, at least astrology has some basis in science. Planetary positions and angular relationships between those planets isn't something that astrologers make up. The data is largely calculated from ephemeris (usually the Swiss ephemeris) and there is a lot of math involved.

If religion had as much science as astrology, everyone would believe in god.

The only thing not science about astrology is the interpreted meanings of the positions and angular relationships.

Comment Re:The more simple you make it the less complex it (Score 1) 876

The more simple you make it the less complex it is

Did you come up with that all by yourself?

What's wisdom will you bestow next? here are some suggestions off the top of my head:

"the more warm something gets, the less cold it is",
"more light leads to less darkness",
"as something dies, it becomes less alive" or
"as things speed up, they move less slowly"

Thank you, Captain FormulAiC.

Comment Re:Typical.... (Score 4, Interesting) 176

In my life I've had only one boss that respected IT personnel. None of them were technical, and had some strange image in their heads of a magical fairy land where us IT folk would wave our wands and shit would get done.

I had one non-programmer boss who proposed an amazing CONTACT FORM to her bosses, and I was required to be there so I could take notes and implement it. After watching her presentation, I was asked if I had any questions or comments. I had comments. Gems like: "Why am I putting EACH FIELD on a separate page? That's going to cause the users to submit the form 10 times before they're done" and "I'm supposed to look these addresses up in the CRM, but the CRM guys have plainly stated over the years that they will never ever Ever EVER let anyone query their DB, did something change?".

By the end of the meeting, the contact form was cancelled and my new task was to make a slideshow screensaver for someone's special project.

Comment Re:Newtonian physics and ballistics don't apply! (Score 1) 202

With a beam that powerful, it won't take a direct hit to the cornea to cause eye damage. Catching a glint off of the windshield of the target (car, plane, tank, building) might be enough.

Forget walking around with mirrors, battlefield dress of the future might include welding goggles or a helmet mounted HUD to protect a soldiers eyes behind a video feed.

Comment Re:Replusive (Score 1) 505

OK. Unlike the Dos Equis "Most Interesting Man" - it occasionally is "my bad"

Frequently these types of threads turn into bashing contests between different language enthusiasts. Usually things go downhill for my contributions to the thread when I mention that I enjoy my (infrequent) opportunities to code in the first language I learned - COBOL.

(cue the COBOL haters in 3, 2, 1)

Javascript is one of those languages that I love to hate and hate to love.

Comment Re:Replusive (Score 1) 505

Yes, I understand that C is virtually everywhere, but requires much more to deploy an application everywhere.

Javascript: write once - deploy everywhere
C: Write once, compile for every target, deploy everywhere.

See the difference?

And how often is it necessary to alter a compiled application for nuances on specific targets? Javascript is often written wifh fallbacks for targets that don't support a specific feature.

I'm not saying Javascript is superior or inferior to C. They have different strengths and weaknesses. Why must there be a "best language" or arguments over "my language is better than yours"? It's all a personal preference when more than one language can perform a given task. What about tasks that are possible in one language and not in another? Apples and oranges comparing C and Javascript.

Thursday I was writing Objective-C, Friday I was writing Java, today I was replacing the fuel-injectors in my truck, sometime next week I expect to be writing some PHP. Personally, I enjoyed replacing the fuel-injectors more than the work I did Thursday or Friday - and now my truck is running better. Because fuel-system work makes my truck run better, does that make auto-repair better than Objective-C or Java - because neither of them make my truck run better? Objective-C and Java pay the bills while working on my truck does not - does that make programming better than auto-repair? Apples and oranges.

I think it's safe to say that you prefer C to the exclusion of everything else.

Comment Re:Replusive (Score 1) 505

Write once - deploy everywhere.

Name one other language that is as well supported and as broadly implemented as JavaScript?

With technologies like Node.js - it can run on both the client and the server.

Sure, there are inconsistencies in implementation - but the bulk of functionality is supported in every implementation.

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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