The guy who wrote this article clearly has no friends anymore. My friends and I have a massive LAN party every friday night. Upwards of 2 dozen PC's, 3 or 4 360's, 3 or 4 PS3's. There is everything from MVC2 running on MAME, to SF4 to Counter-Strike to Unreal Tournament 2k6, and even some Worms(Holy hand Grenade FTW). VPN into the LAN party is sometimes accepted depending on the event, but generally, you gotta show up. It's a ton of fun cramming between 12 and 36 people into a small 800 square foot 2 bedroom apartment and beating the crap out of each other or blowing each other up. I've said for years that nothing brings friends closer together then blowing each others heads off. Yelling and screaming, betting and losing, 1 on 1 grudge matches, what else could anyone want? Local MP/Co-Op is NOT dead, it has just evolved into something different. We've had LAN parties for years with PC's but now with consoles in the mix, it has simply changed from 2-4 players to dozens.
Re:Can someone please explain this Americanism to
on
Anxiety and IT?
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· Score: 0
In North America some people see salaried as a bad thing because 1) even after taxes and insurance, contractors make WAY more and 2) Many employers take advantage of salaried workers. They give us Blackberry's, expect us to reply to any message within 5 minutes of receiving, even at 2:30 in the morning, and they feel like they are entitled to have us work overtime and not pay us. Over here, most on-call work gets you no compensation unless you get called in, and even then, many employers still don't end up paying, they just try to dodge the bullet. It's very unfair sometimes. I know I've had my fair share of employers who never paid overtime, and then when you tried to use your lieu time to get an afternoon off, they made you feel like a worthless useless piece of crap for it. Europe is more understanding and left wing then North America as a whole. Sometimes, the left actually is better then the right
IT is a stressful industry and as you become more and more skilled you get more and more stress. Look at the CCIE certification. I remember reading an article that said CCIE certified network admins have the highest divorce rate of anyone in IT. They also mentioned that IT has a higher divorce rate then most industries. The stress comes from the job, and it comes from home. Many times spouses have issues dealing with the on-call nature of IT and feel like their spouse cares more about work then about the relationship/family. I have had this issue with my girlfriend when I did network operations at an ISP(hooray for call-ins on Thanksgiving and Christmas, boy was I in the dog house). As far as minimizing stress, regardless of your situation, make time for you(Playing with the kids doesn't count). Even just 5 minutes of busting heads on the ps3 or 360 can be very relieving. Maybe you're a DnD player, find a group and make time in your life to play. Paint some warhammer. Or the best of all, lots of sex. Sex is what I have found to be #1 stress reliever, come home and take out your stress on the girlfriend/wife. She'll probably enjoy it and itll take the stress away from home life too. One or any combination of such things will make you a happier, more personable, and less stressed IT worker.
I'm in Ottawa and most DEFINITELY felt this one. A few years back we had a smaller one that woke me up, I thought it was a dream, but this time I was in my server room. First I thought my new medication was making me trip out, then once the racks started creaking and shaking and the big cable "baskets" from the ceiling that the cat5 runs in started moving back and forth about 4 feet in distance, I realized what was going on. Felt like being on a dock in a lake after a great big 30+ foot boat goes by and the wake makes the dock move up and down. No structural damage and after it was over there was an extremely large bang, sounded like a server falling out of a rack, but nothing was fallen down when I went back in and checked. A lot of people don't realize that the "Ottawa Valley" isn't a valley from mountains... it's a rift valley between 2 fault lines. one of which runs about 2KM from where I work, and the proceeds underneath Carleton University. Scientists aren't quite sure why the area is as inactive as it is... as these quakes seem to be getting more and more powerful as the years are going by(Lived here all 22 years of my life), I begin to worry that perhaps these faults are building up more and more energy, just waiting to release the big one. Food for thought - the Richter scale is a logarithmic scale where each.1 is 10x stronger... if this is what a 5.0 feels like, I can't imagine even 6.0 at 10,000,000,000x as powerful, you California folk are crazy;)
It's only a matter of time until a change that wasn't properly tested completely screws everything up and some exec is lookin at you for answers. I've learned that the best interpersonal skill to have is deflection. Nice guys finish last, especially in a corporate environment, so try to get test equipment and when they say no, like all companies do, SAVE IT so you can blame someone else! This is what you can send to the CTO when he asks why you didn't properly test the changes that caused the company to lose millions of dollars in operating costs cause the network was down for 6 hours. "well, I warned people in this email trail and proposal, but they shot me down, and I was right". If by some incredible miracle this never has to happen, then count your lucky stars and when they ask why nothing has gone wrong, toot your own horn and say that it's because you are so damn good. No matter what, you show value, you secure your position. As for basic testing, any of the programs mentioned here will work, Packet Tracer is limited in the models it supports so you might want to look at something else first.
If you're going through the north east a stop in Ottawa might be a good idea. We have a pretty decent Science and Tech Museum, and our nature museum is an entire castle, that has recently been redone and is very nice. Just across the bridge in Quebec there is the Museum of Civilization. Our best museum though is our War Museum. Also recently redone, it has an incredible array of old weaponry, and modern. It covers everything from colonial times, to the American Civil War, all the way to modern times. In the basement they have an impressive collection of vehicles. Everything from trucks to tanks to airplanes. Our Aviation museum is also impressive. It includes the only remaining piece of an Avro Arrow(you can still see the torch marks), large World War 2 bombers, a rotating jet engine from a Sabre Jet, and many others. Not only do we have a great array of museums, you can also explore Canada's capital, visit Parliament, see the changing of the guard in the summer time, enjoy a beach on the river(no sharks, yay!), go to the National Art Gallery, stay in the beautiful and luxurious Chateau Laurier Hotel (another castle, and right beside the Parliament Buildings). If you are in the mood for a nice picnic or something, Hogs Back is a nice spot. There are only 2 other locations in the world with the same type of rock formation. it's caused by the rift valley we live on. And when you are done, you can take a walk up the Rideau Canal. If you are really adventurous you can come in February when it's -40 and skate down the canal, the longest skating rink in the world. Then you can take in an NHL hockey game in a town that truely loves hockey(it's an experience if you live somewhere that doesn't love the game). A must see city for museums and history.
My friends and I play Street Fighter so we call it 'Hadouken Hands'. If you want to prevent it all you have to do is just put your shirt over your hand. allows for you to slide across buttons easily and minimizes the blisters. Also, if this was truly a legitimate condition don't you think we would have seen this starting about 20 years ago? Of course we didn't... because they are just blisters... and in the last 20+ years only this little brats over-protective parents were stupid enough to take their kid to the doctor over some blisters(minor ones at that). I think porn stars get bigger blisters on their wangs from friction burns...
What happens if your ISP decides it doesn't like this service and starts to throttle it because it takes too much bandwidth? Or the whole net neutrality deal ends in the worst way possible and all the ISP's and companies that provide both Digital Cable/Satelite and Internet decide that this netflix thing is bad for their business so they just completely block it? There are WAY too many variables out there right now for me to even begin to feel comfortable buying into a service like this. If the ISP's can't keep up with torrents, they sure as hell won't be able to keep up with this service if it takes off.
I work for a fairly large software company(about $1 Billion of revenue per year) and our turnaround time really varies. If we are talking a HUGE issue that effects lots of customers or one of our largest customers, then we are looking at 3-4 weeks once it gets sent from Support to Dev and then goes through the whole QC and testing process(example was a bug we had in our DST patch). Other issues can take over a year to get fixed, or if it is a small bug that effects one small customer, it may never get fixed. It's all about priority. 48 hours is totally unreasonable for any fix though. Someone needs to sit down with your customer and give them a wake up call.
I can't say this makes much sense to me. If Linux and major open source projects are infringing on soooooo many MS patents... Shouldn't everything already be completely compatable 'cause it's all the same? Oh wait... MS is full of crap and Linux ISN'T using their technology! Alright, now it all makes sense;)
For a long time now people have feared that the MS and Novell deal might lead to something like this. Could it not be said that part of the intent of this deal was to make an example out of Novell and basically call their deal a "settlement" shall we say. And then, use that as leverage for lawsuits against other companies and/or people for profit? If that doesn't qualify as "questionable business practices" then I really don't know what does.
I graduated high school only 2 years ago, and still have a little brother that is in high school. Just the other day he was saying how he can never do any research on the computers at school because all the websites are blocked, including wikipedia. I found this problem as well. Fortunately for me I had a computer science teacher who liked me and trusted me enough to let me bypass the security measures as long as I was in his class and he was there. Chances are, these students simply want to get their work done and not be inhibited by these horrible systems that keep students "safe". Just supervise the kids the way you are supposed to and there won't be a problem.
Here's the ultimate question: Was the game fun? That is all that really matters. You can have all the story line you want, the best graphics in the world, but if it isn't fun to play, then it's no god damn good now is it? Ocarina Of Time is PHENOMINAL game with an awsome story line, great graphics(for the time), and was an absolute BLAST to play. Then again, so was the original Super Mario. Both games are a complete blast to play over and over again. But they are nowhere near the same game. The true questions are: Was it fun back in the day? and Is it still fun now? If you can answer "Yes" to both, then it is a great game...
Unfortunately, Nintendo will probably lose this one. Has anyone seen the videos of the straps breaking? These people are doing absolutely crazy things with the wiimote. Here are my observations:
1) The person is pretending that they actually are throwing a fastball in Wii Sports Baseball.
Solution: Don't be stupid. You don't need to pretend that you are throwing a 90 MPH fast ball. All you need to do is a soft, yet solid throwing action to accomplish the exact same thing.
2) People are letting go of the Wiimote
Solution: Same as above. Those wrist straps have some slack on them, in order for them to become taught and to break, you would have to lose your grip on the wiimote in the first place.
I personally tried to break the light looking string that attaches the strap to the wiimote... I could not do it with my bare hands. My thought was that it looked flimsy. It is not flimsy by any means. If I was to put enough force on the string with my bare hands to break it, my skin would lacerate before the string would break. There is no defect. People are just morons and are abusing the product.
They definitely were. My grandparents have an old Sony reel to reel tape player that is about 25-30 years old. It has never needed a replacement part... ever... Now, they do take good care of it, but the point remains, with the amount that they use it, any other company would have had their product die long ago. Sony no longer has that kind of quality in their products.
Once again, Sony drops the ball. I used to tell people to buy Sony equipment when they would ask me what brand to go for. I personally think that there must be something going on behind the scenes at Sony that we are not seeing. I cannot think of anything else that would cause a company to go so downhill, so fast. For years Sony was one of the best names in home electronics. If you had Sony equipment, you knew it was going to last for a lifetime. Now when you buy a Sony product, you are lucky if it lasts a year. Root kits on CD's, blue laser shortages, the PSP, exploding batteries, PS3 pruduction cuts(I don't think I missed anything), and now defective camera's. When will this downhill spiral for Sony come to an end?
wow... that was horribly off topic and horribly incorrect. Don't be a smart ass. Gaming is a term that is used for computer games too, not just gambling. And also, I am an avid gamer(and WoW addict), I have played FPS games since I was young and I never wanted to go shoot up my school. There is a big difference between pointing a mouse and clicking, and shooting a gun. So its not "train-kids-to-shoot-up-schools". Ignorance like that is why North America is going into the shitter.
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The guy who wrote this article clearly has no friends anymore. My friends and I have a massive LAN party every friday night. Upwards of 2 dozen PC's, 3 or 4 360's, 3 or 4 PS3's. There is everything from MVC2 running on MAME, to SF4 to Counter-Strike to Unreal Tournament 2k6, and even some Worms(Holy hand Grenade FTW). VPN into the LAN party is sometimes accepted depending on the event, but generally, you gotta show up. It's a ton of fun cramming between 12 and 36 people into a small 800 square foot 2 bedroom apartment and beating the crap out of each other or blowing each other up. I've said for years that nothing brings friends closer together then blowing each others heads off. Yelling and screaming, betting and losing, 1 on 1 grudge matches, what else could anyone want? Local MP/Co-Op is NOT dead, it has just evolved into something different. We've had LAN parties for years with PC's but now with consoles in the mix, it has simply changed from 2-4 players to dozens.
In North America some people see salaried as a bad thing because 1) even after taxes and insurance, contractors make WAY more and 2) Many employers take advantage of salaried workers. They give us Blackberry's, expect us to reply to any message within 5 minutes of receiving, even at 2:30 in the morning, and they feel like they are entitled to have us work overtime and not pay us. Over here, most on-call work gets you no compensation unless you get called in, and even then, many employers still don't end up paying, they just try to dodge the bullet. It's very unfair sometimes. I know I've had my fair share of employers who never paid overtime, and then when you tried to use your lieu time to get an afternoon off, they made you feel like a worthless useless piece of crap for it. Europe is more understanding and left wing then North America as a whole. Sometimes, the left actually is better then the right
IT is a stressful industry and as you become more and more skilled you get more and more stress. Look at the CCIE certification. I remember reading an article that said CCIE certified network admins have the highest divorce rate of anyone in IT. They also mentioned that IT has a higher divorce rate then most industries. The stress comes from the job, and it comes from home. Many times spouses have issues dealing with the on-call nature of IT and feel like their spouse cares more about work then about the relationship/family. I have had this issue with my girlfriend when I did network operations at an ISP(hooray for call-ins on Thanksgiving and Christmas, boy was I in the dog house). As far as minimizing stress, regardless of your situation, make time for you(Playing with the kids doesn't count). Even just 5 minutes of busting heads on the ps3 or 360 can be very relieving. Maybe you're a DnD player, find a group and make time in your life to play. Paint some warhammer. Or the best of all, lots of sex. Sex is what I have found to be #1 stress reliever, come home and take out your stress on the girlfriend/wife. She'll probably enjoy it and itll take the stress away from home life too. One or any combination of such things will make you a happier, more personable, and less stressed IT worker.
I'm in Ottawa and most DEFINITELY felt this one. A few years back we had a smaller one that woke me up, I thought it was a dream, but this time I was in my server room. First I thought my new medication was making me trip out, then once the racks started creaking and shaking and the big cable "baskets" from the ceiling that the cat5 runs in started moving back and forth about 4 feet in distance, I realized what was going on. Felt like being on a dock in a lake after a great big 30+ foot boat goes by and the wake makes the dock move up and down. No structural damage and after it was over there was an extremely large bang, sounded like a server falling out of a rack, but nothing was fallen down when I went back in and checked. A lot of people don't realize that the "Ottawa Valley" isn't a valley from mountains... it's a rift valley between 2 fault lines. one of which runs about 2KM from where I work, and the proceeds underneath Carleton University. Scientists aren't quite sure why the area is as inactive as it is... as these quakes seem to be getting more and more powerful as the years are going by(Lived here all 22 years of my life), I begin to worry that perhaps these faults are building up more and more energy, just waiting to release the big one. Food for thought - the Richter scale is a logarithmic scale where each .1 is 10x stronger... if this is what a 5.0 feels like, I can't imagine even 6.0 at 10,000,000,000x as powerful, you California folk are crazy ;)
It's only a matter of time until a change that wasn't properly tested completely screws everything up and some exec is lookin at you for answers. I've learned that the best interpersonal skill to have is deflection. Nice guys finish last, especially in a corporate environment, so try to get test equipment and when they say no, like all companies do, SAVE IT so you can blame someone else! This is what you can send to the CTO when he asks why you didn't properly test the changes that caused the company to lose millions of dollars in operating costs cause the network was down for 6 hours. "well, I warned people in this email trail and proposal, but they shot me down, and I was right". If by some incredible miracle this never has to happen, then count your lucky stars and when they ask why nothing has gone wrong, toot your own horn and say that it's because you are so damn good. No matter what, you show value, you secure your position. As for basic testing, any of the programs mentioned here will work, Packet Tracer is limited in the models it supports so you might want to look at something else first.
If you're going through the north east a stop in Ottawa might be a good idea. We have a pretty decent Science and Tech Museum, and our nature museum is an entire castle, that has recently been redone and is very nice. Just across the bridge in Quebec there is the Museum of Civilization. Our best museum though is our War Museum. Also recently redone, it has an incredible array of old weaponry, and modern. It covers everything from colonial times, to the American Civil War, all the way to modern times. In the basement they have an impressive collection of vehicles. Everything from trucks to tanks to airplanes. Our Aviation museum is also impressive. It includes the only remaining piece of an Avro Arrow(you can still see the torch marks), large World War 2 bombers, a rotating jet engine from a Sabre Jet, and many others. Not only do we have a great array of museums, you can also explore Canada's capital, visit Parliament, see the changing of the guard in the summer time, enjoy a beach on the river(no sharks, yay!), go to the National Art Gallery, stay in the beautiful and luxurious Chateau Laurier Hotel (another castle, and right beside the Parliament Buildings). If you are in the mood for a nice picnic or something, Hogs Back is a nice spot. There are only 2 other locations in the world with the same type of rock formation. it's caused by the rift valley we live on. And when you are done, you can take a walk up the Rideau Canal. If you are really adventurous you can come in February when it's -40 and skate down the canal, the longest skating rink in the world. Then you can take in an NHL hockey game in a town that truely loves hockey(it's an experience if you live somewhere that doesn't love the game). A must see city for museums and history.
My friends and I play Street Fighter so we call it 'Hadouken Hands'. If you want to prevent it all you have to do is just put your shirt over your hand. allows for you to slide across buttons easily and minimizes the blisters. Also, if this was truly a legitimate condition don't you think we would have seen this starting about 20 years ago? Of course we didn't... because they are just blisters... and in the last 20+ years only this little brats over-protective parents were stupid enough to take their kid to the doctor over some blisters(minor ones at that). I think porn stars get bigger blisters on their wangs from friction burns...
What happens if your ISP decides it doesn't like this service and starts to throttle it because it takes too much bandwidth? Or the whole net neutrality deal ends in the worst way possible and all the ISP's and companies that provide both Digital Cable/Satelite and Internet decide that this netflix thing is bad for their business so they just completely block it? There are WAY too many variables out there right now for me to even begin to feel comfortable buying into a service like this. If the ISP's can't keep up with torrents, they sure as hell won't be able to keep up with this service if it takes off.
I work for a fairly large software company(about $1 Billion of revenue per year) and our turnaround time really varies. If we are talking a HUGE issue that effects lots of customers or one of our largest customers, then we are looking at 3-4 weeks once it gets sent from Support to Dev and then goes through the whole QC and testing process(example was a bug we had in our DST patch). Other issues can take over a year to get fixed, or if it is a small bug that effects one small customer, it may never get fixed. It's all about priority. 48 hours is totally unreasonable for any fix though. Someone needs to sit down with your customer and give them a wake up call.
I can't say this makes much sense to me. If Linux and major open source projects are infringing on soooooo many MS patents... Shouldn't everything already be completely compatable 'cause it's all the same? Oh wait... MS is full of crap and Linux ISN'T using their technology! Alright, now it all makes sense ;)
For a long time now people have feared that the MS and Novell deal might lead to something like this. Could it not be said that part of the intent of this deal was to make an example out of Novell and basically call their deal a "settlement" shall we say. And then, use that as leverage for lawsuits against other companies and/or people for profit? If that doesn't qualify as "questionable business practices" then I really don't know what does.
I graduated high school only 2 years ago, and still have a little brother that is in high school. Just the other day he was saying how he can never do any research on the computers at school because all the websites are blocked, including wikipedia. I found this problem as well. Fortunately for me I had a computer science teacher who liked me and trusted me enough to let me bypass the security measures as long as I was in his class and he was there. Chances are, these students simply want to get their work done and not be inhibited by these horrible systems that keep students "safe". Just supervise the kids the way you are supposed to and there won't be a problem.
Here's the ultimate question: Was the game fun? That is all that really matters. You can have all the story line you want, the best graphics in the world, but if it isn't fun to play, then it's no god damn good now is it? Ocarina Of Time is PHENOMINAL game with an awsome story line, great graphics(for the time), and was an absolute BLAST to play. Then again, so was the original Super Mario. Both games are a complete blast to play over and over again. But they are nowhere near the same game. The true questions are: Was it fun back in the day? and Is it still fun now? If you can answer "Yes" to both, then it is a great game...
Unfortunately, Nintendo will probably lose this one. Has anyone seen the videos of the straps breaking? These people are doing absolutely crazy things with the wiimote. Here are my observations: 1) The person is pretending that they actually are throwing a fastball in Wii Sports Baseball. Solution: Don't be stupid. You don't need to pretend that you are throwing a 90 MPH fast ball. All you need to do is a soft, yet solid throwing action to accomplish the exact same thing. 2) People are letting go of the Wiimote Solution: Same as above. Those wrist straps have some slack on them, in order for them to become taught and to break, you would have to lose your grip on the wiimote in the first place. I personally tried to break the light looking string that attaches the strap to the wiimote... I could not do it with my bare hands. My thought was that it looked flimsy. It is not flimsy by any means. If I was to put enough force on the string with my bare hands to break it, my skin would lacerate before the string would break. There is no defect. People are just morons and are abusing the product.
They definitely were. My grandparents have an old Sony reel to reel tape player that is about 25-30 years old. It has never needed a replacement part... ever... Now, they do take good care of it, but the point remains, with the amount that they use it, any other company would have had their product die long ago. Sony no longer has that kind of quality in their products.
Once again, Sony drops the ball. I used to tell people to buy Sony equipment when they would ask me what brand to go for. I personally think that there must be something going on behind the scenes at Sony that we are not seeing. I cannot think of anything else that would cause a company to go so downhill, so fast. For years Sony was one of the best names in home electronics. If you had Sony equipment, you knew it was going to last for a lifetime. Now when you buy a Sony product, you are lucky if it lasts a year. Root kits on CD's, blue laser shortages, the PSP, exploding batteries, PS3 pruduction cuts(I don't think I missed anything), and now defective camera's. When will this downhill spiral for Sony come to an end?
wow... that was horribly off topic and horribly incorrect. Don't be a smart ass. Gaming is a term that is used for computer games too, not just gambling. And also, I am an avid gamer(and WoW addict), I have played FPS games since I was young and I never wanted to go shoot up my school. There is a big difference between pointing a mouse and clicking, and shooting a gun. So its not "train-kids-to-shoot-up-schools". Ignorance like that is why North America is going into the shitter.