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IT's Musical Habits
operand sent in a fun little article about the listening habits of IT. It seems that developers are headbangers, Microsoft certified pros are Britney fans, and management goes for Mozart. Tragically The Who is not included... Linux users tend toward Electronica, and Security goes for The Dead.
I'm waiting for somebody to turn this into a 20 question "What IT Professional am I?" quiz and put it on http://seventeen.com/
I'm glad they took a well-sized sample of 200 people to represent the 7 job classifications. That's almost 29 datapoints per class. It've been more interesting if they would've tried to find corollaries to see who listens to what. Hell, I'd assume there's probably an age distinction more at play into someone listening to Classical than to job type (although I think age might play into that as well. I don't know many 19 year old IT managers).
And not to nitpick, but 'Electro' (in the article) is not short for Electronic. It is actually an identifiable style deriving from Kraftwerk (which they have on there, but the Orb and Underworld are not Electro) meshing electronics with funk (see "Planet Rock"). It then has all of its offshoots over the years like Darkwave (which most folks just confuse with Industrial anway) and Electroclash (Adult., Dopplereffekt, Fischerspooner, Peaches).
So what's on our lab iPod playlist?
Twine Twine, IDM/ambient.
Mr Vegas Pull Up, Dancehall.
various Welcome to the D: Electro, Electro.
various Lo Fibre Companion, grindy bass ambient from Birmingham, UK.
What is music when you despise all sound?
I listen to Nintendo remixes. The songs are memorable and catchy, and most of them don't have lyrics so I can concentrate on my work.
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It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
It's great geek music... the sci-fi.. the long instrumental passages...
Personally, I like King Crimson, Genesis, Gong (of Radio GNOME Invisible fame, no less!) among other stuff.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
I guess the differences in Rock styles can be explained by the age profile of people going to IT courses:
Developer profile: 25-35 years old, teenager when Iron Maiden and Megadeth were all that.
Project manager profile: 40-50 years old, teenager when Pink Floyd was hot.
Security profile: same age or slightly older than a project manager, given up hopes of ever becoming a project manager, not young enough to be a top-of-the-line developer anymore. Gone into security (and taking courses on that) because the "experience of old age" does give an edge in (a) making young developers listen to you when you give them security advice, and (b) not having enough dreams for the future anymore to let features go before security (no enthusiasm to cloud judgment), etcetera. Just the kind of person to have grown up in the days when Grateful Dead / The Doors / Jimi Hendrix were cool.
Or am I way off the mark here?
I know lots of European history. Once you get past all the insufferable kings and queens it all comes down to a huge continental civil war that has been going on for 2000 years. It flares up in roughly 100 year intervals (except for the 'hundred years war' in the 1600's where it started and forgot to stop and continued until so many people were dead that they decided to stop and fuck for a generation before going back to it.
The last episode of the great endless European war was a double-header that started in 1914, wiped out an entire generation by 1918. It would have just gone on and on had not the flu wiped out everybody that the bullets and gas didn't. They took a generational break and went back at it in 1939. By then the Europeans had so impressed everyone else with their savageness and blood-lust that entire continent was kept split right down the center for two whole generations with the threat that if they didn't behave, they would get nuked out of existence and written out of the history books. The Europeans responded by refusing to fuck and go to church, so now they have the lowest birthrate in the world, to the relief of their neighbors.
So now they pretend to be united so they occupiers will ignore them. But if history is any guide, they'll restart their endless war again sometime between 2010 and 2020 with the latest generation of techno death toys. Maybe this time they will succeed in actually completing the massive continental suicide that they have been working on for the past 2000 years. God knows, next time around there's going to be a lot of people around to help them do it.