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Hey you know those States Rights you want to drone on about and vote about and tear your hair and cover yourselves in ashes about?

Yeah, SUCK IT.

Then hoist the jolly roger and run out the guns and money nets Cap'n - thars GOLD in them thar server cabinets Arrrr!!

I only wish I had mod points for you. Panspermia always has rated a "So what?" in my book.

" I did not find it a good device for sketching; the interface in Photoshop CS5 (my usual painting program)"

When all you have is a hammer....

Seriously, PS5 is what you based a thousand dollar machine on? Considering the plethora of very good sketching programs out there the fact that you used PS5 tells me that you didn't really give the thing a chance, or that your idea of sketching is different than using a pencil and paper. I have a Surface 1 with Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro and it is a joy to work with. Smooth drawing, grea tool set you name it. I hope to get my hands on a copy of Manga Studio, but it isn't in the cards at the moment. Penny Arcade has been drawn on Surfaces for a while now, though I understand that Gabe has had some issues with the SP3. There are plenty of artists out there who are very happy to have an alternative to the side pad and the the surfaces are scratching that itch. Next time you try one, grab some 30 day trials of some software that is actually meant to do what you are looking for, PS is great and all, but lets be honest, it is becomming a backwater in the sketching deparment for a reason.

"and preferred working with them to men. (I'm a man^H^H^H^H^H an Uruk-hai BTW.)" FTFY ;)

Thank you for your comment. You are spot on.

Yeah, now if I want to listen or watch something that isn't 6 months old or less my options are either buy it if it is even available or not hear/see it. Boy did we show those dinosaurs, AmIRight?

but no lives depended on my 6502 code.

I am sure the guy(s) who came up with apple maps said the same thing. If I remember correctly they were *almost* wrong.

Which is why when you read you don't have to care if it is a tab and three spaces, two short tabs or 8 spaces. Using a non-visible character for control is just a bad idea. And don't even get me started on code clarity - what I find clear to read vs what you do vs what a compiler demands - ICK! To put it into web terms, go try posting something about how the new (place your browser here) is going to impose its manufacture's CSS on every page, ignoring the user's css prefs, hell even ignoring the page authors css and see what kind of firestorm you light off, and with good reason. Code should be no different. Especially when it comes to white space as commands.

As far as amateurs, the barrier to entry for programming is far less than for working with electricity. Which requires more training - writing an Apple Store app, or safely changing out the breaker box in your basement?

Changing out your breaker box. Hands down. There is no arcana, English as a language, no IDE, no security, no graphics to work out, no logic. You almost can't buy the wrong materials, and if you actually ask the guy at the store you won't and after that it is pretty much tab A, slot B, kind of work. It is so easy that most munis don't require that a licensed electrician do the work. Oh, and for the small fee to the city you have to pay for the permit theey have a guy come out to inspect the work to make sure you didn't screw up.

I am a programmer and I have a vague idea where to start with making an app for iOS, but specifics? It would take me longer to dig them up than driving down to the local hardware store to buy a breaker box and some fuses. In short, you posted as if electrical work was "a vocation requiring rare talents, grueling training, and total dedication" while trying to down play programming. I agree that programming really isn't that hard, but there is a reason programmers get paid what they do.

Serendipity. It has not been digitally reproduced. Go to a large university library and go browse the stacks. There is no web experience like it. On a smaller scale, that is what the good corner Mom and Pop video store used to provide as well. Smaller yet, the local paper, then magazines. And when you said "like moving pictures or keyword-search" did you mean info-tainment and echo chambers? Or perhaps distractions and monomania? Training wheels and ADHD?

Or it just adds to the confusion:

'Are you running Trust Tahr?'

'Um...'

'Or 14.04?'

'Yes?'


If the numbers were arbitrary you would have an excellent point. But if I can place in my head about when I installed it, then that is the version I search on. Quick - when was Hardy Herring? Did you have to go look?

And yeah, I *know*.

Well here goes 'nuthin - Disclaimer: I am a SharePoint Administrator and consultant. I see a few things reading though this thread, but I will hit your responses.

We do have an administrator, now internal. Originally we were using an outside vendor.

Sounds like what you had was a guy that kept the lights on, and the new guy isn't much more. As a rule of thumb outside SharePoint(SP hereafter) work is running about what mid to top tier SQL work is running. In other words, though I know cost != competence the checks to the outside vendor should have at least pinched petty hard. Capable SP Admins/Consultants are relatively rare, they know this and charge accordingly. My bet is those checks didn't pinch, thus my statement.

Either way, I'm not sure how the administrator could be responsible for the embarrassing kludge that is the Office-Sharepoint "integration". It is so clearly a bolt-on afterthought to the whole office suite that I'm a little surprised I have to defend my position.

Your SP Admin is partly at fault, from your post it sounds like your SQL Admin, Domain Admin, and network guys all need to get on boeard with making this work right.

...Try copying a folder with a few thousand files in it to Sharepoint...

Ah - there is a training issue, and a setup issue at once. If you are trying to use SP as it is intended there are very few cases where you would move several thousand files at once. SP has the ability to look into and use file shares, let them live where they used to. There also seems to be a setup issue with SQL in any event, my bet is that the guy who installed it didn't optimize the SQL instance, and yah, if you are new to the game there are some big holes to miss.

Every once in a while, it simply fails to save the document you are editing silently. The result is that people make a local copy to work on and then upload it as a new version manually...

I guarantee this is a setup issue where the domain admin didn't give enough leash to the SP admin to do his job. When it is being set up you pretty much have to have the domain admin cede some control to the SP admin for the time it takes to set the thing up, . Guess what almost never happens.... It sounds extreme I know, but you have to get some latitude to do things right. Without knowing the specifics I would bet there are timeout issues or network permission issues. When setup right the integration reallly is that good but the big bugaboo is training.

I don't find the searches to be any better than the Twiki searches were with the Google appliance.

Well, to be honest, one thing I tell people is that SP search administration is almost a job unto itself (and certainly is over a certain size SP install). It also comes back to training (yeah I know I am sounding like a broken record here). It can dig into all sorts of things and index them for search, but without the proper meta data surrounding each item it isn't anywhere near what it can be. So if people aren't properly constructing their meta data ...

Yes, the admin will remove them when I request... sometimes. Apparently some of them are big security problems when hosted on a "trusted" internal site so he won't unblock all of them.

That is just a well weird way to say that. (no offense intended). The only "trust" comes from the web browser. If you can't download .exe's off of your browser then that really isn't a SP issue. Also SP keeps a single list of what it will and will not host. That list by default is restrictive as you would hope it would be, but it is editable. Our local SP happily hosts .bat and .exe files without issue. Hell, the .bats launch right from the browser.


So to sum up, it sounds like you have had two relatively inexperienced SP admins who aren't getting the cooperation they need from their IT counterparts to get things set up right and because of it you have a bad taste for SP in your mouth. Honestly, it happens. SP is a **huge** beast of software that even MS doen't see the whole picture on sometimes. Some things it does very very well, and some it just sucks at but it sounds like you have had a bad run in with what are supposed to be the good parts. I put that at the feet of your SP Admin, and whoever was in charge of roll out / education.

SP is a wily beast and not easy to admin sometimes. If I can offer any advice I would be glad to help out (and no I am not looking for a gig, I have too much work as it stands).

Machinist Workshop

Strategy & Tactics, Modern War, World at War

History Today

And with D&D Next if they don't bring back the print versions of Dragon and Dungeon I won't be held responsible for my actions ...

And Oracle just cut loose with Java Magazine. I now have a vague notion wtf Hadoop is.