Comment Surprised that OS/2 wasn't on the list (Score 2, Interesting) 378
Stable? Yes
Ugly? Yes
Last release? 2001.
Still widely used in the 2000's? Definitely, though declining precipitously.
Good or bad, it should have been on the list.
Stable? Yes
Ugly? Yes
Last release? 2001.
Still widely used in the 2000's? Definitely, though declining precipitously.
Good or bad, it should have been on the list.
That would sure be nice, but where I live has absolutely nothing of the kind available.
Yeah, like I could sell a house in this economy. Really, though, I bought a house, signed the papers, lost my job the following day, and then found the job I'm at (true story). I'm not moving for a while.
I really, truly, *hope* you are kidding with the sleeping-under-the-desk thing.
I drive 60 miles a day for work, whether I work 15 minutes or 14 hours. I'm all for whatever has me driving one less day, since that's 60 miles off my car and gas tank at a whack. Actually, 4 longer days would work really well, since that would put a sizable amount of my work day outside of normal office hours, so I'd get fewer people contacting me for help during my work day, which translates into more concentration.
How will I use two mice then? I usually have two computers with their monitors close to each other, one set up for right-hand mouse and the other set up for left-hand mouse, so if I need to do two different things on the computers, I can sit between the monitors and grab a mouse in each hand and glance back and forth and alternate what I'm doing. There's no way I'm the only one doing this...
Leinster foresaw this only 63 years ago. Go look it up; it's a good and amazingly prescient story.
That's where being older can be either a curse or a benefit. If you can age but still retain the ability and desire to learn new things, you have the potential of possessing several assets newer workers don't have:
1) A sense of perspective. This problem may be bad, but you've likely seen worse.
2) More emotional maturity. The ability to deal with non-IT types and not lose your cool is invaluable.
3) Deeper troubleshooting senses. Familiar or not, if the device's optical drive doesn't work, you're not likely going to shout "Defrag!".
4) A grasp of the way computer systems in general work. Bits are bits. Directory systems are directory systems. Permissions are permissions. The implementations change, but if you're around long enough, you will have seen something like it before.
5) You've learned that specializing is great for the short term, but if you want to keep it up, that can be a real bear. A CCIE from 1999 won't still be a CCIE in 2009 unless they've been studying for the last decade. But that 1999 CCIE is likely a very good networking tech.
Doctor Dan Streetmentioner called, and he wants royalties for your use of his tenses!
Well, of course! It just doesn't sound the same when one says "I wouldn't touch that with a 3-meter pole."
And, I forgot one other intersection: the INT* character type.
Old news, old news. The portrait of J. Random Hacker from way back still holds true.
http://catb.org/jargon/html/appendixb.html
I find, however, that my best understanding of programmers and other computer gurus is by visualizing them as the intersection of several descriptions:
Asperger's intersecting J. Random Hacker intersecting the local definitions of "weird", "geeky", and "nerdy". Usually, no one of us fits any one of these definitions exactly, but in that confluence of them, a very real commonality emerges.
And if a passenger in the car is on the phone, then what? If people won't make the right/safe decisions, then technology won't do much to correct that without stepping on aspects of cell phone use that aren't driver-related.
It's about equal for me. Most times, going into Canada from Alaska or Washington, they've asked if I have any produce and why I'm coming to Canada, how long I plan to stay, etc. Coming into the States, they usually ask where the driver is from, what their visit to Canada was for, etc. Last time, the US border guard talked to the driver, found out he was from Texas, and asked "are you from the capital of Texas, Dallas?" The driver blinked and said, "you mean Austin?" The border guard agreed without missing a beat and waved us on. Of course, all of these instances were more than a decade ago, before 9-11.
Well said!
This file will self-destruct in five minutes.