• (cs) in reply to jordanwb
    jordanwb:
    realmerlyn:
    even right clicking (take that, Mac applicant)

    Hey, stop dissing on the Mac, using your decade-old view of what a Mac does. OS9 and OS X have had completely integrated support for multi-button mice from the beginning. Be nice.

    Certainly took them long enough. Windows had multibutton mouses in Windows 3.1 (possibly earlier)

    Windows didn't make serious use of right-clicking until Windows 95. Until then, you could get by reasonably well with a single-button mouse.

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to Chalito
    Chalito:
    I never really understood commissions, I mean on one hand it seems like a highly capilistic system, yet it always seems to fail in practice. What you end up with is people trying to get the "most" of anyting that's comissioned (sales, referrals whatever) instead of the best.

    Congratulations, you've just realised the main problem with capitalism :)

    While this may have happened at a basically capitalist institution, it is more typical of the problems of socialism. Under capitalism, people are rewarded in proportion to how they satisfy the customer efficiently. Give the customers what they want at a reasonable price, and they come back for more. Under socialism, people are rewarded in proportion to how they satisfy a bureaucrat's arbitrary rules, that have no direct relationship to satisfying the actual customer.

    Like in the United States for the past few years, banks have been rewarded by the government based on the number of mortgage loans they made to people from various demographic groups: basically they had to loan money to people from poor neighborhoods and to ethnic minorities. The probability that the money could be repaid was not a factor in the equation. (Well, except in the perverse sense that they were rewarded for loaning to poor people, and poor people are presumably less likely to be able to repay.) The results were a shocking surprise only to government officials.

    Many commission schemes give counter-productive results because they are arbitrary and poorly thought out. Like, a company I worked for many years ago considered giving programmers bonuses based on lines of code produced. They never implemented the plan, which is too bad, because I had it all worked out how to make a bundle. Like, never write "x=x+7;". Instead write "x=x+1;" seven times. Never use a loop, just copy and paste the same code repeatedly. Etc.

    In this case, an obvious better plan would be to pay the commission only if the new hire proved to be a good choice, like if he got a favorable rating on his first annual review or some such. Also, it creates a pretty obvious conflict of interest if an employee gets a bonus when a candidate that he proposes is hired, and that same employee or his friends have a say in which candidates are hired. That's like saying that the coach of one of the teams is also the umpire.

  • 008 (unregistered)

    Mr. Buttle's name is really Mr. Asshole. "Ass" gets censored to "Butt", then "ho" gets deleted (censored to ""). The person writing the XML for the censorship program forgot to take a picture of the copy with the "asshole" regex on a wooden table, accidentally using the glass table. This messed up the OCR when it was scanned in.

  • katastrofa (unregistered) in reply to SeekerDarksteel
    SeekerDarksteel:
    Chalito:
    I never really understood commissions, I mean on one hand it seems like a highly capilistic system, yet it always seems to fail in practice. What you end up with is people trying to get the "most" of anyting that's comissioned (sales, referrals whatever) instead of the best.

    Congratulations, you've just realised the main problem with improperly executed capitalism :)

    FTFY.

    In a properly functioning capitalist system, producers are rewarded for producing the highest quality product for the lowest cost by selling an increased volume of product. The problem in the commission system described in this story is that it fails to reward quality properly. This is a fault in the commission system, rather than the idea of capitalism.

    Some people claim that properly executed socialism is also quite nice.

  • Grig Larson (unregistered)

    Um... as the original writer of this piece, I have to say there are some rather... embellished points. Some things were just plain changed. I guess they didn't want to use real names, so let's just say I worked for a VERY large ISP out of Northern Virginia.

    1. Not "layouts" but "layoffs." We had layoffs like crazy in good times and in bad, about 2-3 a year, and it was nerve wracking. There was often no rhyme or reason, either, considering they would lay off an entire department, and then replace the department with new hires with bigger salaries. And they would be laid off later in the year. Or renamed. Or "reorganized" which was the most common name for layoffs. That and "restructuring." But it was like the HR department wasn't connected to any other reality but their own.

    2. The resume of the "man page" guy was actually not huff and puff, but a sheepish Nigerian guy who later admitted his brother had written it the resume for him. His brother was head of a "resume writing service" he ran out of his home. I suspect he didn't really file taxes for his "business."

    3. The guy doing the porn browsing was a temp, who was let go when we didn't need him anymore. He was testing a script that would load web pages and time the results (for web caching metrics). Man, I wished we could have fired that guy because of all the f*^*$%ng trojans he put on our test machines, but he was a 3 month hire, and we opted to not keep him when his contract was up. In his defense, loading 15 of the top (non porn) websites our company got with a stopwatch over and over was mindlessly dull work to do for 8 hours a day. But that's why we hired a temp. He did claim he was an MCSE, though, but we got a lot of applicants who got a lot of certifications from overseas places that were hard to verify. "You were a CS major at a Yugoslavian University? Which is now a pile of rubble?" At least with an MCSE or a CCNA, you can call them and verify, but HR didn't do that with their annoying negligence. But as you can see, we didn't NEED an MCSE to do that work (even though HR put it as a requirement).

    4. The CCNA guy I did not interview personally, but a coworker's boss did. He did really point out a thermostat on the wall even though he was RIGHT NEXT to a rack of Cisco 2500s and 7500s.

    5. The guy who minored in philosophy who asked that question to the PhD really reached out, didn't he? He's a long-time friend of mine, and cohort in our IT shenanigans. He asked as a private joke, like one guy with a useless degree to another, but when the guy didn't KNOW philosophy, we smelled a rat, even though it wasn't a requirement. Turned out he lied about a lot of stuff. We didn't hire him for those reasons, but the philosophy thing was too good not to share.

    Just... wanted to clarify a few things. But as a writer, I am used to editors changing stuff around. MOST of that was dead accurate, so the concept of HR's moron hiring policies was pretty accurate.

  • Pete (unregistered) in reply to Kiss me I'm Polish

    It's not two hands, it's two fingers. What's wrong with an external mouse or control-clicking?

  • antistotle (unregistered) in reply to RBoy
    RBoy:
    At the very least, I know that in capitalist system, it costs way too much for poor people to be able to afford their eros.

    Given the birth rate of the poor it's rather obvious that eros is something they can afford.

  • (cs)

    Wow, a PhD in Philosophy...

    He eventually got a job with the Department of Redundancy Department.

  • (cs) in reply to jspenguin
    jspenguin:
    HR:
    Qualcomm?

    The first company I thought of was Comcast... I've heard horror stories from people dealing with them. I haven't dealt with them since they're not the cable provider around here.

    I work for Qualcomm. I (unfortunately) buy services from Comcast. I agree with jspenguin's estimate.

    (Besides, we don't even make routers at Qualcomm.)

  • sribe (unregistered) in reply to Kiss me I'm Polish

    "Using an Apple notebook, where you get to use only one button and not even a touchpad tapping to simulate click"

    Perhaps you should take a moment to look in the "Trackpad" section of "System Preferences".

  • psb (unregistered) in reply to Grig Larson
    Grig Larson:
    In his defense, loading 15 of the top (non porn) websites our company got with a stopwatch over and over was mindlessly dull work to do for 8 hours a day.

    There are tools that do that. There have been tools that do that for years!

    JMeter for one.

    All those trojans were for nothing, really.

  • Montoya (unregistered) in reply to Kiss me I'm Polish

    CTRL + click, you noob.

  • (cs) in reply to sribe
    sribe:
    "Using an Apple notebook, where you get to use only one button and not even a touchpad tapping to simulate click"

    Perhaps you should take a moment to look in the "Trackpad" section of "System Preferences".

    Why would he let the facts get in the way of his opinion?

  • (cs)

    If I caught an employee browsing porn at work, I'd pretend I didn't see it then ask him to stand up and get me something...

  • EXH (unregistered) in reply to Spectere
    Spectere:
    I'm sorry, Apple, but I doubt I'd be able to give up my 18-year-long habit of resting my fingers on the mouse while I work just to suit a silly gimmick like touch-sensitive "buttons."

    So use whatever mouse you like. You wouldn't use whatever piece-o-junk mouse that came with a Windows box, either, would you?

    Apple's still all about the single-button mouse, but at least OS X finally supports higher-end mice.

    "Finally"? It always has. Even the highly craptastic "Classic" Mac OS supported multi-button mice out of the box.

    Let's just say, I hope that they finally fixed that thing with Exposé (and possibly other features, I don't really know) that allows you to bind a certain function to one of 64 mouse buttons. Yikes.

    What the hell are you talking about? (And yes, that mouse has 8 buttons.) I swear, the only people more stupid than Mac fanbois are Mac bashers.

  • Some Random Jedi Master (unregistered)

    Qualification matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my qualifications, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Router, and a powerful ally it is. Whether we're talking plumbing, electricity... Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Router around you; here, between you, me, the conference room table, the thermostat, everywhere, yes. Even between the resume and the applicant.

  • (cs) in reply to Some Random Jedi Master
    Some Random Jedi Master:
    Qualification matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my qualifications, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Router, and a powerful ally it is. Whether we're talking plumbing, electricity... Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Router around you; here, between you, me, the conference room table, the thermostat, everywhere, yes. Even between the resume and the applicant.

    Everybody knows routers connect series of tubes...

  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    gabba:
    Gotta respect CommQuack. Not every company has the expertise to interview a philosopher intelligently.

    True. My company once hired a philosophy major to be a software engineer after an inadequate interview, only later to discover that he was completely unable to implement Anselm's Ontological Argument in Java.

    I know at least one thing that you can do:

    public boolean hamlet() { return (2B || !2B); }

  • phd (unregistered)
    And then there was the "Dr. Applicant" who proudly touted his PhD in philosophy. On a hunch, one of the interviewers who happened to have an undergraduate in philosophy asked, "so tell me, what is Kant's Categorical Imperative, and how would you live your life by it?" The question was met with a blank stare.

    I would venture that had the interviewer asked the average Bachelor of Arts about French impressionist painters because the applicant had an arts degree, that he would similarly be met with a blank stare. Asking a Ph.D. (literally, doctor of philosophy) a specialized question on deontological ethics is no less absurd.

  • Mappy (unregistered)

    Mr. Buttle may have learned his mousing ways in a day or two. With all that porn, has he mastered the art of left handed surfing?

  • dubious (unregistered) in reply to North Bus
    North Bus:
    (Besides, we don't even make routers at Qualcomm.)

    Then how do you control the furnace when it gets cold out?

  • (cs) in reply to phd
    phd:
    And then there was the "Dr. Applicant" who proudly touted his PhD in philosophy. On a hunch, one of the interviewers who happened to have an undergraduate in philosophy asked, "so tell me, what is Kant's Categorical Imperative, and how would you live your life by it?" The question was met with a blank stare.

    I would venture that had the interviewer asked the average Bachelor of Arts about French impressionist painters because the applicant had an arts degree, that he would similarly be met with a blank stare. Asking a Ph.D. (literally, doctor of philosophy) a specialized question on deontological ethics is no less absurd.

    But if your Ph.D. is specifically in philosophy, you should be able to answer elementary questions. For crying out loud, I don't have a Ph.D., and I studied nothing like philosophy, but I was taught about Kant's Categorical Imperative. It's like asking a Math Ph.D. what 2+2 is.

  • Iago (unregistered) in reply to danixdefcon5
    danixdefcon5:
    Jay:

    True. My company once hired a philosophy major to be a software engineer after an inadequate interview, only later to discover that he was completely unable to implement Anselm's Ontological Argument in Java.

    I know at least one thing that you can do:

    public boolean hamlet() { return (2B || !2B); }

    How about a bit of NUnit? :

    <test>Public class Bec{ Assert.IsReasonable("existance of Superior Being"); }

  • (cs) in reply to Steeldragon
    Op:
    The upshot of this is that this meant that if you were qualified but not referred by someone in HR, you didn't get hired. The upshot of this is that a lot of unqualified boobs got browsed.
    ftfy
  • Nerf Herder (unregistered) in reply to Grig Larson
    Grig Larson:
    Um... as the original writer of this piece, I have to say there are some rather...

    Just curious - what kind of name is Grig? I've never run across that name before. I assumed it was Greg misspelled but apparently not.

  • James (unregistered) in reply to realmerlyn

    [quote user="realmerlyn"][quote]Hey, stop dissing on the Mac, using your decade-old view of what a Mac does. OS9 and OS X have had completely integrated support for multi-button mice from the beginning. Be nice.[/quote]

    If Apple isn't all about the one-button mouse, tell me this quote from the Apple page isn't representative of the company getting dragged along by Microsoft kicking and screaming:

    "Alas the fate of the one-button mouse in today’s multibutton world. Who has time for intuitive, elegant design when there is so much clicking to do?"

    captcha: vulputate (Is that when you cut a fox's head off?)

  • Duke of New York (unregistered)

    This is what happens when the HR department looks for people whose most specific qualification for the job is being "good with computers."

  • Nigel (unregistered) in reply to sribe
    sribe:
    "Using an Apple notebook, where you get to use only one button and not even a touchpad tapping to simulate click"

    Perhaps you should take a moment to look in the "Trackpad" section of "System Preferences".

    The multi-touch and tapping options are not on by default? Why?

  • phd (unregistered) in reply to Bappi
    But if your Ph.D. is specifically in philosophy, you should be able to answer elementary questions. For crying out loud, I don't have a Ph.D., and I studied nothing like philosophy, but I was taught about Kant's Categorical Imperative. It's like asking a Math Ph.D. what 2+2 is.

    If he truly had postgraduate experience in philosophy, then I am more inclined to agree with you, although I can still empathize with an interviewee caught off-guard by a personal philosophical question at an interview for a CS position. It's also not given how much time had elapsed since the degree was ostensibly issued: it is plausible that the interviewee had failed to find employment in the economic powerhouse that is philosophy, and instead progressed to a computer science career with the philosophy degree serving as only an indicator of his intellectual capacity. After many years in an unrelated field, it is natural that much of the underlying knowledge would atrophy.

    This is not to defend the applicant, and were I the interviewer I would certainly consider the applicant's nondescript response as rationale for demanding additional verification of the degree. (And, of course, exclude the candidate from consideration were it fraudulant, from a degree mill, etc.) But I think to dismiss an applicant based on a random question wholly unrelated to to the position, if that was what was done here, is inappropriate.

  • christophocles (unregistered)

    "CTRL + click, you noob."

    Don't you still think it's crappy that Apple will not include a physical button for something used as FREQUENTLY as right-click? I'd estimate that I right-click about 50-75% as often as I left-click, and I could not tolerate having to use my OTHER hand to hold the CTRL key every time I wanted to right-click. It takes two hands to properly use a freaking trackpad or mouse, that's what I'd call inconvenient. Sure, this may be fixable with tapping features (i.e. set two-finger tap to be right-click), but I'm not even sure this is possible on any notebook other than the Air. I sure ain't buyin it.

  • Bob... Billy Bob (unregistered)

    The real WTF is all the crying mac users and apple fanbois with hurt feelings attempting to justify the laughable design choice of a single buttoned mouse as though it were the pinnacle of user interface enlightenment.

    I'm embarressed for you.

  • 50% Opacity (unregistered) in reply to christophocles
    christophocles:
    Sure, this may be fixable with tapping features (i.e. set two-finger tap to be right-click), but I'm not even sure this is possible on any notebook other than the Air.

    Has been possible on all Apple portables for years now.

    The general idea behind the one-button-only approach is to discourage software developers to rely on the right click. They want them to spend a little more time thinking about how to make a good, intuitive interface instead of cramming every new feature that doesn't fit into the toolbar anymore into a context menu.

    "If you really care about software, you make your own hardware."

    PS: two-finger right click > secondary button right click

  • Mizzy (unregistered) in reply to Dazed
    Dazed:
    Another gentleman's résumé was two pages long.

    A couple of years ago we needed someone who was fairly experienced for a consultancy position. One of the CV's submitted was indeed just two pages long, with everything described so briefly that one really couldn't tell what he'd done. But another one was - wait for it - forty-eight pages long! It's the only time I've rejected a candidate without reading his CV.

    I never submit a resume longer than a page. I seriously don't expect the company to read more, so I put everything important on one page. It also forces you to only submit relevant experience. No one wants a life story.

  • Nick (unregistered) in reply to Dazed
    Dazed:
    Another gentleman's résumé was two pages long.

    A couple of years ago we needed someone who was fairly experienced for a consultancy position. One of the CV's submitted was indeed just two pages long, with everything described so briefly that one really couldn't tell what he'd done. But another one was - wait for it - forty-eight pages long! It's the only time I've rejected a candidate without reading his CV.

    My family owns a retail clothing store, we once had an applicant for a salesperson position submit a 57 page PDF resume, it described EVERYTHING he did in every job he has had. He was only mid twenties too.
  • 50% Opacity (unregistered) in reply to Nick
    Nick:
    ...it described EVERYTHING he did in every job he has had. He was only mid twenties too.

    You mean he saved his Twitter feed to PDF?

    9:15am Just got in, hate the traffic. 10:00am Working on that new project, it's actually fun. 11:23am Took a piss, anybody up for a smoke?

  • (cs) in reply to Steeldragon
    Steeldragon:
    Op:
    The upshot of this is that this meant that if you were qualified but not referred by someone in HR, you didn't get hired. The upshot of this is that a lot of unqualified boobs got hired.
    shouldnt that be downshot...and 1st finally good story btw

    not for HR. Those unqualified people get quickly fired again, causing a need for more people to be hired (thus more bonusses for HR).

  • Duke of New York (unregistered) in reply to Mizzy
    Mizzy:
    I never submit a resume longer than a page. I seriously don't expect the company to read more, so I put everything important on one page. It also forces you to only submit *relevant* experience. No one wants a life story.
    CVs running several pages are the norm in Europe, where it is more difficult to get rid of someone you hired by mistake.
  • OutWithTheTroll (unregistered) in reply to EXH
    EXH:
    What the hell are you talking about? (And yes, that mouse has 8 buttons.) I swear, the only people more stupid than Mac fanbois are Mac bashers.

    Mine has 7 and works like a charm on my Mac and PC. Both systems have their merits and flaws.

  • AdT (unregistered) in reply to jordanwb
    jordanwb:
    Certainly took them long enough. Windows had multibutton mouses in Windows 3.1 (possibly earlier)

    Yes, but unfortunately, Windows still sucks. For example, Vista's network performance is a sick joke.

  • ch. (unregistered)
    [image] Btw what about the missing delete key?
  • (cs) in reply to SeekerDarksteel
    SeekerDarksteel:
    Chalito:
    I never really understood commissions, I mean on one hand it seems like a highly capilistic system, yet it always seems to fail in practice. What you end up with is people trying to get the "most" of anyting that's comissioned (sales, referrals whatever) instead of the best.

    Congratulations, you've just realised the main problem with improperly executed capitalism :)

    FTFY.

    In a properly functioning capitalist system, producers are rewarded for producing the highest quality product for the lowest cost by selling an increased volume of product. The problem in the commission system described in this story is that it fails to reward quality properly. This is a fault in the commission system, rather than the idea of capitalism.

    So... capitalism only fails when it is improperly executed, which (witness current events) it basically always is, while communism always fails in practice?

  • (cs) in reply to Frenchier than thou
    Frenchier than thou:
    immitto:
    tsr:
    I never really understood commissions, I mean on one hand it seems like a highly capilistic system
    So what capital (means of production) do the people getting the commissions have?
    Whatever they pull the candidates out of....

    Hence the term "assets".

    (Pardon me, that should be buttets.)

  • AdT (unregistered) in reply to Kiss me I'm Polish
    Kiss me I'm Polish:
    Using an Apple notebook, where you get to use only one button and not even a touchpad tapping to simulate clicks, I always feel like somebody just cut my fingers. I've just recently discovered they had some cryptic multitouch, which involves putting your TWO hands on the touchpad. I'm sorry, it's difficult to be nice ;,(

    It's ostensibly even more difficult to be informed. I won't give you a lecture about all of the factual mistakes in your post as others have done so before me.

    However, I find it fascinating how long time Windows users, when using a Mac, notice that many things are different and are then very eager to conclude that they are worse, when it's all a question of

    a) Finding out how to do things on a Mac. b) Getting used to it.

    If you don't like to do that, fine, but don't rail about how Macs ought to follow the One Microsoft Way. If Apple did that, they could just cease business for the world doesn't need another Dell. Creativity and conformity have always been opposing poles.

    A coworker used to using Dell computers (notice how no one likes to use Dell, HP or Lenovo trackpads, they all lug their mice around with them rsp. use the trackpoint?) wanted to show me something yesterday on my MacBook Pro (no mouse), running a Windows XP VM. At first he was aghast because he couldn't figure out how to right-click. I then enabled two-finger tapping in the System Preferences and showed him how to do it (I prefer ctrl-clicking, but that's just me). He was astonished. He then used the cursor keys to scroll up and down in a source file, so I asked him what he was doing and showed him how he could use two-finger scrolling on the trackpad. This almost knocked him off his feet. He later tried to enable the same tricks on his Dell Inspiron, but that didn't work.

    Finally, I want to clarify on the emergence of "multi-touch" on Mac trackpads. Right-clicking and scrolling with two fingers have been supported on all Mac trackpads for years (myne olde PowerBook G4 from the January 2005 series did, for one). The new multi-touch trackpads found on MacBook Air and the Penryn MacBook Pro (which I have) add support for gestures with three fingers as well as more complex two finger gestures:

    Pinching with two fingers to zoom in and out Swiping with three fingers to flip pages Rotating with two fingers in order to, err, rotate images or other graphical objects

    Using third-party tools such as MultiClutch, it is also possible to map these gestures to application-dependent keyboard shortcuts. This allowed me to add pinching (for zooming) and swiping (for going forward or back) support to Firefox 3, for example. Zooming is slow in Firefox (much slower than in Safari), but it's still much more convenient than using the keyboard.

  • rainer (unregistered) in reply to christophocles
    christophocles:
    "CTRL + click, you noob."

    Don't you still think it's crappy that Apple will not include a physical button for something used as FREQUENTLY as right-click? I'd estimate that I right-click about 50-75% as often as I left-click, and I could not tolerate having to use my OTHER hand to hold the CTRL key every time I wanted to right-click.

    99 per cent of Windows users don't know the right button exists, even if it's right before their eyes (yes, that statistic is made-up on the spot, but it corresponds to my personal experience). Face it, the right button is for highly advanced users way above the average.

    Personally, as a Linux user I care much more about the middle button (paste, except for brain-dead apps that emulate stupid MS behaviour).

  • (cs)

    The one-button mouse was responsible for the worst atrocity in user interface design, the double-click.

    Ever tried to teach a complete newbie how to double-click? It's painful.

    To be fair to Apple, Douglas Engelbart's original mouse only had one button, though I believe that was a technical limitation and Englebart always wanted it to have 3 buttons.

    B

  • (cs) in reply to Kernschatten
    Kernschatten:
    They're both downshots

    boobs should always be upshot. I don't like it when they are downshot.

  • (cs) in reply to Mike Aukherts
    Mike Aukherts:
    I mean on one hand it seems like a highly capilistic system
    I don't think that word means what you think it means.

    cabbi... cabitili... shubby... cabbilishhhhdick... hick, cabbilishit

  • 50% Opacity (unregistered) in reply to havokk
    havokk:
    The one-button mouse was responsible for the worst atrocity in user interface design, the double-click.

    Ever tried to teach a complete newbie how to double-click? It's painful.

    Ever had users ask you "right click or left click"? Both are painful, really. And Windows uses both techniques extensively... ;-)

  • itsmo (unregistered) in reply to Bob... Billy Bob
    Bob... Billy Bob:
    The real WTF is all the crying mac users and apple fanbois with hurt feelings attempting to justify the laughable design choice of a single buttoned mouse as though it were the pinnacle of user interface enlightenment.

    I'm embarrassed for you.

    There - fixed that for you (don't be embarressed)

  • (cs) in reply to ClaudeSuck.de
    ClaudeSuck.de:
    Kernschatten:
    They're both downshots

    boobs should always be upshot. I don't like it when they are downshot.

    The shot direction is irrelevant, it's lighting levels that makes all the difference!

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