Information Overload Overblown, Says Gates 258
Aarthi writes "Microsoft's annual CEO meet-and-greet kicked off on Thursday with the company's Chairman, Bill Gates, countering the notion that the workers today are not overloaded with information.'We still want a lot of information.' He also outlined plans for Office 12, the next version of its desktop software, which is due to arrive in the second half of next year." From the article: "There is a real temptation that the thing that comes in the latest is the one you shift your attention to, even though that may be the least important...That turns you into a filing clerk."
What if... (Score:4, Insightful)
Security vulnerabilities make money for Microsoft. (Score:5, Interesting)
'What if
For Bill Gates, it makes sense to have huge security vulnerabilities. Most people who have a huge amount of spyware and viruses notice that their computer is slow and buy another computer, thus making more money for Gates, because he then sells another copy of Windows. So, for Gates, there is hidden logic in selling the most vulnerable commonly used program in history, Internet Explorer. This vicious, hostile trick only works if most people are ignorant about what is causing their computer to be slow.
Your sig is interesting. Another seemingly wildly illogical issue:
On 9/11, 15 of the 18 attackers were Saudis. However, the U.S. invaded Iraq.
When Saudis attack, invade Iraq? Actually, that's not illogical, it is just that the logic is hidden. People in the U.S. now get some of the profit from Iraqi oil. Before they didn't.
For a president who comes from an oil family and a vice-president who worked for an oil company, it makes sense to use the attack by Saudis, angry at U.S. government influence on their country, to justify an attack on an oil-rich country.
This only works, of course, if most citizens in the U.S. are unaware of the largely secret U.S. government meddling, for private profit, in the affairs of other countries.
Re:Security vulnerabilities make money for Microso (Score:2, Funny)
In case you didn't hear, Saddam is best mates with Bin Laden. They hang out, and smoke dope, get drunk, chase ladies together, and draw up 9-11/Mk2 plans.
Completly OT (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What if... (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead of IT, News, Microsoft, etc. can't we just add a section for 'Microsoft Claims' and bung all this crap in there? I see these kind of stories all the time on slashdot now and we all know, without reading any of the articles, that they're all a bunch of rubbish; whether the claims are right or not.
Who cares what Gates thinks? I have a lot of opinions about things in this world too, which arent driven by money making schemes, or claims that popular big companies who may pose a 0.1% p
Gee, what does Mr Gates think about neurology? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who gives a fuck what Bill Gates thinks about every little thing?
Apparently... (Score:5, Insightful)
It appears that Bill Gates is not immune to this ego inflating weakness of the human condition.
I only know this, due to having read a bit of study a year or so back. So, my information could be wrong, out of date or otherwise inaccurate.
Re:Apparently... (Score:2)
Re:Apparently... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apparently... (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's not necessarily that people think he's an expert at neurology or informatics or cognitive science -- he's just a highly successful business man and technologist, and his thoughts on a given topic could prove useful or inspiring to others with similar aspirations.
That book, btw, is terrible.
Re:Correction (Score:2)
This should read, "....built to create....piles of information...". Think "signal-to-noise".
Re:Apparently... (Score:2)
Definition of an expert (Score:2)
Derives from Ex - meaning, has been and
Spurt - meaning, drip under pressure
Don't you get it? (Score:5, Insightful)
We see this everyday. Some call it bullshit. Others call it spin. Regardless of what is actually is, it's destructive.
What is surprising is that more don't call this stuff out like you did. I wish that happened more.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't you get it? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Odd, I thought the UN proved this to be a species-wide characteristic, not limited to one nation or ideology or race or region or religion ... although Oakland Raiders fans do seem to have a disproportionate amount.
Re:Gee, what does Mr Gates think about neurology? (Score:2)
family connections, genetics, and good education (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:family connections, genetics, and good educatio (Score:5, Informative)
'Old Money' has nothing to do with computer industry. Gate's great-grandfather was J.W. Maxwell - founder of Seattle's National City Bank (1906). Gate's grandfather was James Willard Maxwell - banker, who established a million dollar trust for William (Bill) Henry Gates III.
From the article:
William Henry Gates, Jr. and Mary Maxwell were among Seattle's social and financial elite. Bill Gates, Jr. was a prominent corporate lawyer while Mary Maxwell was a board member of First Interstate Bank and Pacific Northwest Bell. She was also on the national board of United Way, along with John Opel, the chief executive officer of IBM who approved the inclusion of MS/DOS with the original IBM PC.
Remind your parents not to send you to public school. Bill Gates went to Lakeside, Seattle's most exclusive prep school where tuition in 1967 was $5,000 (Harvard tuition that year was $1760). Typical classmates included the McCaw brothers, who sold the cellular phone licenses they obtained from the U.S. Government to AT&T for $11.5 billion in 1994. When the kids there wanted to use a computer, they got their moms to hold a rummage sale and raise $3,000 to buy time on a DEC PDP-10, the same machine used by computer science researchers at Stanford and MIT.
and so on. Does this answer your question?
Re:family connections, genetics, and good educatio (Score:2)
Quote: "The father of Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates told Indian reporters he attributes much of his billionaire son's success to luck."
Re:family connections, genetics, and good educatio (Score:2)
I need more evidence before I believe. For all I know, Gates is like George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Arnold, who have or had a team of people making all important decisions for them.
It's really the most likely scenario if you think about it. If you have the money, you do not leave the prospect of success to chance. Why would you if you can afford not to.
Re:family connections, genetics, and good educatio (Score:2)
Re:family connections, genetics, and good educatio (Score:2)
I would argue that it depends on the team structure. And these guys have the best team structures that money can buy. In the end, though, whether I believe these guys simply hire smart people and then take the credit or not is unimportant. I grow weary of talking about these people.
Re:family connections, genetics, and good educatio (Score:2)
Sorry, it's you who is wrong. Gates' family had a large fortune long before he built a giant fortune.
'Old Money' in the computer industry is a self-contradiction.
The Gates fortune came from banking, not computers, so I'm not arguing with this statement. They had money long before little Billy [greenspun.com]made his own pile. That's why he could afford to drop out of Harvard and start a business: he had mommy and daddy and a million dollar trust fund to back him u
Re:Gee, what does Mr Gates think about neurology? (Score:4, Insightful)
He is creating hype to sell product.
And, of course Microsoft will sell you their new improved office suite, MSN search, yada yada, to fill this "perceived" need.Re:Gee, what does Mr Gates think about neurology? (Score:2)
> >in one place and cannot be easily viewed in a meaningful way using today's software.
> And, of course Microsoft will sell you their new improved office suite,
>MSN search, yada yada, to fill this "perceived" need.
Heck, Microsoft will dis their own software once a few years have passed. Ad in yesterday's Independent [independent.co.uk] for the latest version of Office had people in an office wearing various dinosaur masks; one dino
Re:Gee, what does Mr Gates think about neurology? (Score:2)
"information exists, but it is not in one place and cannot be easily viewed in a meaningful way using today's software",
he's referring to the information needed to run and/or administer Windows properly (can you say "Event Logs") or the absence of any useful tools provided by Microsoft.
One workaround, of course, is a full Cygwin installation with its compliment of shells, interpreters, text editors, compiler, network utilities and so on, along with a handful of other third-party pro
Re:Gee, what does Mr Gates think about neurology? (Score:2)
One of the reasons I left my last company was because I received something like 150 messages a day, most were useless, broadcasts about things I didn't need, or things that should have been put elsewhere. I had a large number
Why care about Gates' thoughts? (Score:2)
Even when you are dead wrong.
Its fun to be in control of the worlds largest monopoly..
Re:Well... (Score:2, Funny)
countering ... not (Score:5, Informative)
I think he is countering the notion that workers areoverloaded with info
selling Office (Score:3, Insightful)
I think he's trying to get everybody all worried about overloading each other with information so that they'll think it's necessary to upgrade to Office 12. I mean, how many more new features are really necessary by most humans who work in an office environment?
Instead of adding a bunch of complicated features that solve contrived problems for a thin slice of Office users, I'd like to see them put some serious effort into making Wo
Re:countering ... not (Score:3, Funny)
"not un-countering the notion that the workers today aren't not un-overloaded with information"
No such thing as too much information (Score:5, Interesting)
I am connected to a web with a lot of gigabytes of data - the Internet. It's a lot of data, but with the right tools and knowledge, it's not useless.
It's when you factor in using the wrong tools, lack of knowledge and malicious attempts to attract your attention that you get information overload.
It's an overrated buzzword anyway. It seems to be most used for the same reason the previous generation complained about the pace of life being quicker these days.
Data != Information. (Score:5, Insightful)
Data is facts.
Information is what you have when you process data.
It is possible to have too much data and not enough information. And that is the point we have hit. We can capture just about any amount of data on a subject, but we aren't getting any better information on that subject.
If you have enough data points, you will start to see patterns even when there aren't any.
That is data overload.
Re:Data != Information. (Score:2)
No, data are facts.
Re:No such thing as too much information (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed, there is data, information, knowledge and wisdom. Only the first of these is found on the Internet. It seems that we have lots of data, quite a bit of information, but very little knowledge and even less wisdom to prevent hatered, war, selfish greed, etc... a list as long as you want to make it. If a person has much knowledge without the wisdom to apply it, the usual result is pride leading to a downfall.
Hmmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
In many cases, things fall through the cracks when the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing. However, is that a causal relationship or a correlative one? I think that a strong corporate heirarchy where managers *gasp* are well trained employees that have moved through the system and proved that they are capable of seeing a picture bigger than "insert part A in slot B," is much more likely to not have the same sort of issues that a less well managed company would (assuming of course that the actual workers have very little clue what is going on outside of their area). Again, to bring up Plato, I think he is correct to say that people are happier when they are able to specialize in a specific task and work toward the perfection of said task. This does not mean that they cannot move up, but that the base job is a platform to the next level.
However, Gates is in an itneresting position. Software problems can be directly attributed to having too many programmers working in too small of a scope. When they lack the information to understand exactly how their code is part of the whole, they make mistakes.
But well coded, well documented, libraries, functions, programs, etc. should provide enough information for those who utilize the code to understand exactly how it will work within their project. Again, I think a well informed management that actually does work is a much better structure than building a staff of well informed workers from the ground up.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2)
Is that a real paradigm, a corporate speak paradigm, a metaphysical paradigm or does the sentence create a new paradigm in and of itself by pushing the paradigm envelope?
What is information? (Score:5, Insightful)
"I'd say in all of these cases, we are really dealing with information underload," Gates said in his talk, which kicked off Microsoft's annual CEO Summit. "We still want a lot of information."
From TFA2:
Raikes noted studies that show that the average worker gets about 10 times as much e-mail now as in 1997. That's projected to increase another fivefold in the next four years, Raikes said.
Either Raikes and Gates don't know each other, or they use different definitions for "information". From Gates' point of view, information is probably what's left after his army of PAs has filtered the e-mail box and the income paper bin, leaving only neat reports and meaningful mails out of the whole damn mess. A typical grunt, however, will have to do the whole thing himself. Even the simple act of recognizing an e-mail as spam is an information gathering and processing system, and you have to do that for each spam that goes through the filter. And then there's the unavoidable corporate and friendly spam (don't tell me you don't have it), in the form of memos you don't care about, rules for using the printer and the latest joke your buddy across the hall has found on the Net.
These ARE harmful to your concentration, to your productivity and to the level of stress that you aquire at the end of the day. Information oveload? You bet. Every context shift you do sets you back at least 15 minutes in concentration (scientifically proven, ask any serious psychologist). More than half the job of a competent PA is to shield you from that. And there's no software out there that can replace a PA.
Re:What is information? (Score:2)
> a PA.
Not right at this moment, give it one to five years. It's the next killer app.
Re:What is information? (Score:2)
Yes, Gates has an entire MS department filtering his email [slashdot.org]?
Why listen to what Gates says about office life? (Score:2)
How to minimize Information Overload (Score:5, Insightful)
Train your brain and read a book (Score:3, Interesting)
Turn all that electronic shit off. Make a nice cup of tea or coffee, sit down on a couch and read a good book for 30 minutes.
It works wonders.
Microsoft Saves The Dumb (Score:5, Funny)
How about hiring people that understand how to prioritize their own work? If someone can't figure out whether to run a report for their boss or send on a chain letter, I don't think a new version of Office is going to fix the problem.
The typical Web search takes 11 minutes these days. Gates acknowledged that that is a big improvement over search times and capabilities of a few years ago, when half of the searches didn't yield the needed information. He added, however, that a Web search is still a "treasure hunt" in which one hopes that the top few links contain the desired information.
Who the hell is taking 11 minutes to find what they want on the web. I timed myself just now, and I was looking at "hot teen lesbians" within 13 seconds. If that doesn't count for what people want on the web, I don't know what does. In 11 minutes, I could build my own website for it.
If I were to file this release into folders, it would probably go into my Marketing/Propaganda one.
Re:Microsoft Saves The Dumb (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft Saves The Dumb (Score:2)
The new version of Office will AUTOMATICALLY send on any chain letters you receive, leaving you free to focus your attentions on running reports!
Re:Microsoft Saves The Dumb (Score:2)
What is the future? (Score:2)
Re:What is the future? (Score:2)
The 1992 MS Word 5.1 still works just fine to make nice looking letters. It runs on an old Color Classic and still also works on a new 2Ghz dual PowerMac. Office 2004 on the PowerMac opens the old Word 5.1 files without problems. Both computers print perfectly to an ancient Laserwriter 2g on the network. The old Classic is used mostly as an answering/fax machine, but sometimes still get used with Word for a quick reply.
Perspectives (Score:5, Insightful)
The article, though, is a sales pitch. Uncle Bill is talking to a bunch of CEOs, and he's trying to do two things:
A) Trash Google and Yahoo and anyone else's desktop search program
B) Promote the windows environment and Microsoft's desktop search stuff.
Ultimately, the most annoying part of the whole article is the explicit point that Microsoft is primarily interested in developing software for the corporate world. So the ultimate bottom line for any development is how the new, human power elite accepts it. Sure the slaves in the trenches or in non-corporate fields suffer from information overload, increased stress and lack of concentration -- my life has become an anchorless drift across continents and task panes since Windows XP came out -- where was I? oh yeah -- but as long as the guy making decisions (who, as well all know, is always the worst informed. Hell he's buying microsoft products ain't he?) can yell at some slob and say "give me all my correspondence with Ballmer, except that april-fools yamauchi thing", and that slob can choke it up in the next 15 minutes, nobody suffers .
just prep work (Score:2)
Just curious (Score:2)
Information Overload (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Information Overload (Score:2)
Consider a gradient from a low saturation of a color to a high saturation. For this to have any visual impact, infrequently used menu items would end up with their background colors getting pretty saturated. You could potentially have the mouseover of all items be consistent, but then you're
Data overload (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Data overload (Score:2)
Wish list (Score:5, Insightful)
2) The idea of server-based Excel spreadsheets is intriguing. Unfortunately, the article does not go into any details about this. Excel could benefit from improved multi-user editing. The granularity of locking and editing needs to be increased. When more than one user works on a spreadsheet, instead of locking the whole thing, Excel should only lock smaller pieces. Built in version control, with formalized checkout, check-in, and merging of individual spreadsheet pieces, would make multi-user editing much easier to keep under control.
Re:Wish list (Score:2)
or perhaps use a file format that isn't encoded in some weird way, and allow people to use a rational version control system of their choice.
I think this was meant to be funny... it's hard to tell in this subject area...
He's right about one thing (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with the info glut is how we respond to it. If you let yourself get distracted by every little thing then your performance will suffer.
Recently there was a story that using email decreased your IQ worse than marijuana. That's true if you insist on answering every email the minute it comes in.
www.infoconomy.com/pages/news-and-gossip/group1
MSN Search not a cure-all (Score:3, Funny)
But if you want to know how many calories there are in sperm, you'll have to ask Uncle Cecil [straightdope.com].
I can't figure out (Score:5, Interesting)
...if I have a serious problem. I spend my whole day filtering information, code, tech manuals, slashdot etc. and only taking in the bits that I think are useful/interesting/funny. If I miss something I figure I can always go back and read it again.
The problem is I can't switch it off. I skim everything, and now the problem is spreading: it's affecting my listening too! I have to really focus on someone to take in everything they tell me, especially people I listen too a lot, like my girlfriend. If she is talking to me about something 'really important', like shopping, holidays, TV or hair and my brain doesn't agree how important it is I simply don't hear what she's saying. What worse is that she has a typical female ability to multiplex two or more streams of information, one of which might actually be important. This has lead to all sorts of arguments.
Does this affect anyone else?
Re:I can't figure out (Score:2)
If I can't shut-off the inner monologue, or at least tone it down, I find myself unable to direct my attention.
Classical ADD, or perhaps ADHD.
You either need to find a way to relax, and find focus, or get stimulants (no, not illegal ones, either coffee/caffeine, or prescription).
Re:I can't figure out (Score:5, Interesting)
I've started hyperlinking my brain. I hear snippets of what people are telling me, I free associate during a conversation, I tune out my wife (most of the time with good reason) but even during important lectures or trainings, I start needing to check my laptop or my PDA.
I've consdiered resorting to meditation to help me stop the inner dialog and outwardly focus on things. I picked up my O'Reilley Advanced Perl Prrogramming book last night, because yet again I was struggling with references (pointers) and the book at one point just faded into symbols. I couldn't force myself to concentrate and read the code. Ok, perl can be like that sometimes, but this was TEXTBOOK perl, so it was supposed to be readable and understandable. But I couldn't focus on it.
I think I need to do something. I don't know what. Historically, reading a long book of non-fiction, like a biography, over the course a day or so sitting outside, has helped alot.
Re:I can't figure out (Score:2)
This becomes an issue at work when I miss important details, and it can also become an issue when talking with my husband - I go off on a tangent ("multiplexing") and he's confused, becaus
Re:I can't figure out (Score:2)
I find this correlates to whether or not I have some interesting work to do which gets me back in the habit of concentrating. When I have a contract with some good, meaty, stuff (as now) I check
When I am out of
Re:I can't figure out (Score:2)
He's right, you know (Score:4, Funny)
Such as "How do I get Windows to the point where I'm not having to continually force quit stalled applications" or "Why on God's green Earth would Windows go out and waste my time trying to access a server pointed to by a shortcut I am telling it to delete, and then it bogs down because it can't find the server and does not realize that, well, that's why I want to DELETE THE FUCKING SHORTCUT!!!!" or "Why are most Cancel buttons in Windows cruel hoaxes?"
You know... little factoids like that.
He's fallen prey to one of the classic blunders (Score:5, Interesting)
"...workers today are not overloaded with information." and "We still want a lot of information."
Hello? Can you say "Unrelated statements"? The fact that we want "a lot" of information does not preclude information overload.
The useful bit of information we want is (usually) a nugget that has to be carefully sifted from the deluge of meaningless noise that constantly flows through our every-day lives. These days, I'm finding that filtering out the noise now takes almost as long as accomplishing the task that I'm looking for information to complete.
How many of us waste a good deal of time each day dealing with spam? I'm not talking about "spam" in the classic sense; I get a lot of what I call "internal spam" where someone thinks it's important to tell me about things that have zero impact on my particular work... Or what about your organization's Intranet? Is it well-organized? Can you find the information you need without sifting through piles of marketing drek?
In any event, this is one of those situations where failing to acknowledge the problem could quite well be one of its symptoms. There's so much noise that the you think you're getting 100% of the signal.
Tiger - Dashboard - info overload - does it help? (Score:2)
When will Linux be getting this feature?
Pfft! Information overload indeed! (Score:2, Funny)
Overload (Score:2)
I, for one, welcome... Nah, you get the picture
grammar much? (Score:4, Informative)
TFAS, OTOH, garbled it: "Microsoft's . . . meet-and-greet kicked off on Thursday with . . . Gates . . . countering the notion that the workers today are not overloaded with information.
Welcome to slashdot, I guess.
Quality Vs. Quantity - Using Information (Score:3, Interesting)
I find it instinctive to be an information packrat, collecting bits and pieces, and marveling at the relationships between a current situation and some idea observed long ago. However, there is so much information that is difficult to really organize since it is encapsulated in some vague relationship to dozens of subjects.
In spite of all the information free for the taking, the big problem remaining is to obtain the relevant in-depth knowledge useful for reaching a major goal.
According to information theory, information aids us by telling us what is true or believable, as opposed to the randomness akin to ignorance (example - the ignorance of the next lottery winning numbers as illustrated by the fact that even winners check their tickets).
A snapshot of thought is information leading from unsolved goal to solved goal. Deduction is so delicate that every step must be completed in order for the ultimate conclusion to deserve confidence.
It is likely that in the years to come the Internet will contain, freely available, information requisite for most problem solutions. It would be helpful for us to collect information and compile it into the form of knowledge that can be easily used. It's very expensive to search for information and separating the so called wheat from the chaff. Computers and the Internet are tools that will decrease the cost of obtaining relevant information, and organizing it would only help in problem solving.
Another aspect of information overload is handling it. Information triggers ideas and may sway beliefs. I say, live and let live. It would be nice to foster a tendency towards achieving new and unique goals and the belief that the information for attaining these goals is readily available. This comes down to the producers and providers of information to output quality while keeping in mind utility.
Right now I see so much information available but so difficult to organize into verifiable deductions. We've come quite a long way though.
Where is the wisdom (Score:2)
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge
Where is the knowledge we have list in information
T.S. Eliot The Rock
WTF is wrong with MS? (Score:2)
Gate's Idea Is Not Humane (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider your an audio ripping program. If a user were required to fully detail each file before they could listen to them in a player, one would spend all of their time typing information into each file instead of listening to the data. Filling out metadata seems to be a machine task not a user one. It is good to know what files where written by what artists. It is not good to force people to enter it. That would be tedious and prone to error: these are things machines actually excell at accomplishing so why make users do it?
Apple and Google have been putting tons of effort into making machines fill out the metadata instead of making users do it because it is really a task for the machine. If Gates expect users to fill out all of this stuff he is bonkers.
Real problem is tiny signal/noise ratio (Score:2)
Clippy, for example, was almost always noise. I would estimate that about 50% of the words in the Windows Resource Kits are noise. Rah-rah, let's-all-get-on-the
New Office Features.. (Score:2)
Information overload is a real problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Many young people may be tempted to think that their brains are indestructible, that they can work for as many hours as they want, sleep as less as possible, and constantly ove
Why Gates is Wrong (Score:2)
Full entry on my blog [dubinko.info] -m
Well of course he doesn't get information overload (Score:2)
I'm already overloaded. (Score:2)
What would be useful is some kind of filter that can filter out the inforrmation that I want and drop other information. The big problem is when information is dropped - was it something there that I could have used anyway...
I see what you... ohhh shiny! (Score:2)
Sorry, I'm distracted by the announcement of the latest version of Office. Let me do some involuntary beta-testing of it after it's released and then I'll file it a
Re:Linux on the desktop? Just a fanboy fantasy (Score:2, Interesting)
From your post it sounds like you can't find your way out of a paper bag without a <right-click><properties> at your disposal.
I recompile the kernel all the time because of either kernel updates or because I need an additional feature without breaking any apps. This statement is crap.
Man pages do their job perfectly. They are for
Re:Linux on the desktop? Just a fanboy fantasy (Score:2)
Man pages do their job perfectly. They are for reference, not for reading like a manual. You should already be familiar with the program and you use the man pages for remembering what a command line argument does.
Then why are they called "Man(ual)" pages and not "Ref(erence)" pages?
Re:Linux on the desktop? Just a fanboy fantasy (Score:4, Insightful)
Any time I have to use a GUI to make a particular change, you as a developer have failed. Try to script configuration changes which require a GUI. Try to make those changes while logged in to a headless server using ssh.
Thomas
Re:Linux on the desktop? Just a fanboy fantasy (Score:2)
I thought this article was about Linux desktop systems for the ordinary non-geek users. The command line is like an old truck with a non-sychro transmission. I order to shift gears the driver has to double clutch it. It works fine once you get the hang of it. The GUI is a modern 5 speed automatic transmission. This is what most people want -- namely to do their work instead of futzing with the inner workings of the machine. Unti
Re:Linux on the desktop? Just a fanboy fantasy (Score:2)
My wife logs into our headless server using SSH. It is a non-geek exercise. Why does she do it? Because it's by far the easiest way to analyze apache and sendmail logs -- using a primitive command line tool called grep. It took her several seconds to learn.
Okay, I assume this is just humor, since no such beast exists. But the analogy is apt -- a manual transmission is
Re:Linux on the desktop? Just a fanboy fantasy (Score:2)
Agreed. [shudders]
Or try adding and manipulating more than two IPs in a Windows machine. What the #@$% is with that damned TEENY interface to work with IPs in Windows? (You see a whopping 3.5 IPs in the 'IP Settings' tab.) Is that thing yanked straight from the book of 'What Can I Do
Re:Linux on the desktop? Just a fanboy fantasy (Score:4, Funny)
SO true. Everybody knows that a desktop completely cluttered with retarded paperclips is the way to go!
By the way, if you switch the paperclip for the wizard, the messages become even more helpfull!!
Back to unix now, just to see what MAN remove_troll says...
Re:Linux on the desktop? Just a fanboy fantasy (Score:2)
How is using the command line a failure of the developer? How are command lines "idiocy that needs to be exorcised from the OS?" Command lines are very powerful tools; they're not the easiest for beginners t
Re:I used to be one. (Score:2)
Sorry if that sounds like a tr
Re:Hmmm...take Gates seriously? (Score:2)
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6305495181.01.L
Spot the difrence
Re:I agree (Score:5, Funny)
Homer Simpson invented the 'everything's fine' alarm. It was a device that played an ear-piercing siren whenever everything was okay.
Wouldn't it be simpler to just have one of these installed in your car. that way, while the siren plays, you'll know that everything is fine.
Re:He's great at marketing, but sadly a poor engin (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Easy for him to say... (Score:2)
My experience is closer to 11 seconds, so who out there is taking 20 minutes o do a search?
Horribly off-topic but... (Score:2)
If you're working at a company that's given you a separate container in which you put your recycling, try the following experiment: Next time you're working late, watch and see what the cleaning people do with the contents of your recycling can and your trash can.
Re:Info Overload? Not until Longhorn. (Score:2)