Unfortunately, a lot of people who no longer are employed used to enjoy the same luxury. Working at Uni job probably affords some degree of job security, but certainly in the private sector all of that downtime (deserved, justified, or otherwise) does NOT go unnoticed by management. More and more, it's being decided that it's better off to save the money by cutting the position, and having a couple people in the office who can't use the color printer. I'm not saying you don't deserve the job, or anything else derogatory towards you, but be ever concious at any job that people take note of your _perceived_ workload, and tend not to care why you might not have much to do. Take pains to appear busy and useful, now more than ever.;)
That's another oft-neglated area of IT. I specialized in that at my last job, running servers for the noc to use to ensure server and site health. I was more than a little diligent about the work I did, and managed to maintain a state where most problems were able to be fixed, or at least noticed almost immediately, without management ever needing to get involved; what IT views as a job well done is viewed by people who choose who to lay off as an unnecesary expense, at least for a little while, until the systems become obsolete and downtime starts cutting into profits again. That cycle seems to have repeated itself any number of times over the last several years in the IT trade at many companies, but it hasn't come to a head until recently, when there is no way to hire anyone new to fix weeks or months of neglect, and then the developers are asked to take time off from their own projects to do IT work...
All this IT manpower actually requires men(/women)
on
The New IT Crisis
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· Score: 1
While he seemed to hint at it, I didn't see very clear mention of the fact that ITs main problems in a lot of companies is the huge scaleback of IT employees vs. a much less proportionate drop of infrastructure to maintain. Obviously this results in the all too common scenario of one person taking over the work of his 5 laid-off coworkers, who is expected to do so happily because he's allowed to keep his job. Yes, times are tough and it's not unreasonable to be expected to do more than was asked previously, but I'm sure everyone has at least known someone that has been overworked beyond the limits of labor laws and humane treatment by a company that knows it can replace him with someone with 3 phDs for half the salary. While the issues of finding better technical solutions to manage IT more efficiently is an important topic, it will never alleviate what I feel to be a severe labor crisis. I'm far more curious as to where IT is headed along THOSE lines.
Hmm, good point, but I can only hope that wouldn't be the case again. Hypothetically, all politics and economics aside, does anyone have any insight as to what impact it would have purely on an engineering level?
If this pans out, I can imagine there would be a significant change in the strucure of aircraft. I'm no aeronautical engineer, but some of you probably are. Hypothetically, what could we expect to change in the design of an aircraft that was significantly relieved of the restriction of having to provide large amounts of lift, in addition to thrust?
I'm not sure a mag-lev train would be the best example of a magnetism vs. gravity device. The same relationship exists in the process of jumping up and down.:)
If the initial limitation to it's application is indeed a massive power consumption, which I imagine would be the case, then there are still a fair number of immediate candidates. What supermassive, nuclear powered vessels are under the jurisdiction of an organization with a virtually unlimited budget? How about aircraft carriers and submarines, both of which stand to benefit from even a 2% weight reduction. Maybe Reagan will see his supercarrier yet... Or did he die already? Whoever owns amideadornot.com needs to get to work:P
It has a lot of implications as to what might be a true relationship between energy and mass. Maybe, if nothing else, this research would be a stepping stone to a better understanding of the particle-wave theory, and the behavior of photons, even it it would disprove their existence.
I say 50/50 is in order. Massive amounts of easy energy would only be slightly interesting without anything neat to apply it towards. Cold fusion powering this technology would be excellent.:P
Yes it should, but it's easier for media to distort it a little bit in order to let more people take an interest in it, and thereby keep a wider audience. "Black hole" sounds far cooler and more interesting than "Singularity" even though it isn't a very accurate description.
Without getting into my opinions on the legitimacy of this research, I would say that the fact that several major aerospace companies are expending significant amounts of money to look into this indicates that a lot of people are taking this very seriously, even if they aren't making a media-blitz about it.
One would say the same thing about a rocket if they didn't understand how chemical cumbustion thrust worked, either. With so little known about this research, including whether or not it is legitimate, it's only speculation to assume that. With the model of it reducing an objects effective weight, such a device could never make something "float up into the air" With zero weight, it would still require external forces to propel it away from the earth. It would be reasonable to assume that the amount of energy that would be expended in reducing the objects weight and propelling it up the rail would be more than any work that it's descent would produce.
The article's speaking from the point of vview of an initial use of the concept, and doesn't pretend to look ahead too far. Making the very stretched assumption that all the theory is sound, this would seem to be a logical first step for the technology, instead of building flying saucers for everyone immediately.
As for the forward thrust, it wouldn't be that much of a stretch from this concept to be able to manipulate gravity wells in order to pull or push a craft through space. When you start talking about gravity manipulation, the concepts of up, down, and "forward" become meaningless.
It's all speculation of course, and highly dubious, but that doesn't warrant everyone turning up their nose at the prospect.
It was only a couple months ago that feminist groups made something akin to a threat, that men would no longer be vital for the propagation of the species when a means to create a fertilized egg from two females was developed. I've been thinking this would come along to give them a good scare, and they would get their comeuppance, but I never thought it would be this soon.
...we've come upon another technology that could be amazing or horrific. It brings to mind the old adage "The love of money is the root of all evil" and the fact that most people leave out the first three words when they recall it. I'm an advocate of developing technology (or I wouldn't be here), Without offering my personal views that will offend at least one person, I think it is safe to safe that I believe this should be cautiously pursued.
Unreal tourney all the way
on
No Next Q3Test
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· Score: 1
I ahven't played the two games side by side to compare the graphics, but if they are that close that I need to, it's pretty much a moot point. But the fun value of UT is SO much more that that of Q3. the weapons are so much more fun to use, and all the mutated modes are great as well, I love the one with ultra shock rifles only. Q3 is so dry compared to all the nice juicy guns of UT.
Ah, one HUGE differece...
on
No Next Q3Test
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· Score: 1
The collision detection is FAR superior to Q2, which is something I'm big on having. Where in Q2 tryin to fire around a corner, with the crosshair dozens of pixels from the wall, you would inevitably shoot the wall then get plastered. Q3 seems to have improved it vastly
Re:Does it really matter?
on
No Next Q3Test
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· Score: 1
I'm not a huge Quakeoid game fan, but they have a certani appeal to me for the killkillkill aspect, and thats really the whole point, it's NOT a strategic game whatsoever, and was never intended to be. Anyone that says otherwise is just looking to expand their target audience. If you really like tactical firefight games, try something like Rogue Spear or Delta Force (I highly recommend the former, but I haven't heard of any sort of Linux client yet:/) As for differences between Q2 and Q3, I can certainly notice some. In my experience between the two games, 3 is much more on the twitchy side of gameplay, with the action much more fast and heated. With the lack of a real single player mode, it makes it all the more obvious the tactical element was ignored in favor of reflex. BTW, for action shooters, I much prefer Unreal tourney.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, a lot of people who no longer are employed used to enjoy the same luxury. Working at Uni job probably affords some degree of job security, but certainly in the private sector all of that downtime (deserved, justified, or otherwise) does NOT go unnoticed by management. More and more, it's being decided that it's better off to save the money by cutting the position, and having a couple people in the office who can't use the color printer. ;)
I'm not saying you don't deserve the job, or anything else derogatory towards you, but be ever concious at any job that people take note of your _perceived_ workload, and tend not to care why you might not have much to do. Take pains to appear busy and useful, now more than ever.
That's another oft-neglated area of IT. I specialized in that at my last job, running servers for the noc to use to ensure server and site health. I was more than a little diligent about the work I did, and managed to maintain a state where most problems were able to be fixed, or at least noticed almost immediately, without management ever needing to get involved; what IT views as a job well done is viewed by people who choose who to lay off as an unnecesary expense, at least for a little while, until the systems become obsolete and downtime starts cutting into profits again. That cycle seems to have repeated itself any number of times over the last several years in the IT trade at many companies, but it hasn't come to a head until recently, when there is no way to hire anyone new to fix weeks or months of neglect, and then the developers are asked to take time off from their own projects to do IT work...
While he seemed to hint at it, I didn't see very clear mention of the fact that ITs main problems in a lot of companies is the huge scaleback of IT employees vs. a much less proportionate drop of infrastructure to maintain. Obviously this results in the all too common scenario of one person taking over the work of his 5 laid-off coworkers, who is expected to do so happily because he's allowed to keep his job. Yes, times are tough and it's not unreasonable to be expected to do more than was asked previously, but I'm sure everyone has at least known someone that has been overworked beyond the limits of labor laws and humane treatment by a company that knows it can replace him with someone with 3 phDs for half the salary. While the issues of finding better technical solutions to manage IT more efficiently is an important topic, it will never alleviate what I feel to be a severe labor crisis. I'm far more curious as to where IT is headed along THOSE lines.
Hmm, good point, but I can only hope that wouldn't be the case again.
Hypothetically, all politics and economics aside, does anyone have any insight as to what impact it would have purely on an engineering level?
If this pans out, I can imagine there would be a significant change in the strucure of aircraft. I'm no aeronautical engineer, but some of you probably are. Hypothetically, what could we expect to change in the design of an aircraft that was significantly relieved of the restriction of having to provide large amounts of lift, in addition to thrust?
I'm not sure a mag-lev train would be the best example of a magnetism vs. gravity device. The same relationship exists in the process of jumping up and down. :)
If the initial limitation to it's application is indeed a massive power consumption, which I imagine would be the case, then there are still a fair number of immediate candidates. What supermassive, nuclear powered vessels are under the jurisdiction of an organization with a virtually unlimited budget? How about aircraft carriers and submarines, both of which stand to benefit from even a 2% weight reduction. Maybe Reagan will see his supercarrier yet... Or did he die already? Whoever owns amideadornot.com needs to get to work :P
It has a lot of implications as to what might be a true relationship between energy and mass. Maybe, if nothing else, this research would be a stepping stone to a better understanding of the particle-wave theory, and the behavior of photons, even it it would disprove their existence.
I say 50/50 is in order. Massive amounts of easy energy would only be slightly interesting without anything neat to apply it towards. :P
Cold fusion powering this technology would be excellent.
Yes it should, but it's easier for media to distort it a little bit in order to let more people take an interest in it, and thereby keep a wider audience. "Black hole" sounds far cooler and more interesting than "Singularity" even though it isn't a very accurate description.
Without getting into my opinions on the legitimacy of this research, I would say that the fact that several major aerospace companies are expending significant amounts of money to look into this indicates that a lot of people are taking this very seriously, even if they aren't making a media-blitz about it.
One would say the same thing about a rocket if they didn't understand how chemical cumbustion thrust worked, either.
With so little known about this research, including whether or not it is legitimate, it's only speculation to assume that. With the model of it reducing an objects effective weight, such a device could never make something "float up into the air" With zero weight, it would still require external forces to propel it away from the earth. It would be reasonable to assume that the amount of energy that would be expended in reducing the objects weight and propelling it up the rail would be more than any work that it's descent would produce.
The article's speaking from the point of vview of an initial use of the concept, and doesn't pretend to look ahead too far. Making the very stretched assumption that all the theory is sound, this would seem to be a logical first step for the technology, instead of building flying saucers for everyone immediately.
As for the forward thrust, it wouldn't be that much of a stretch from this concept to be able to manipulate gravity wells in order to pull or push a craft through space. When you start talking about gravity manipulation, the concepts of up, down, and "forward" become meaningless.
It's all speculation of course, and highly dubious, but that doesn't warrant everyone turning up their nose at the prospect.
It was only a couple months ago that feminist groups made something akin to a threat, that men would no longer be vital for the propagation of the species when a means to create a fertilized egg from two females was developed. I've been thinking this would come along to give them a good scare, and they would get their comeuppance, but I never thought it would be this soon.
...we've come upon another technology that could be amazing or horrific. It brings to mind the old adage "The love of money is the root of all evil" and the fact that most people leave out the first three words when they recall it. I'm an advocate of developing technology (or I wouldn't be here), Without offering my personal views that will offend at least one person, I think it is safe to safe that I believe this should be cautiously pursued.
I ahven't played the two games side by side to compare the graphics, but if they are that close that I need to, it's pretty much a moot point. But the fun value of UT is SO much more that that of Q3. the weapons are so much more fun to use, and all the mutated modes are great as well, I love the one with ultra shock rifles only. Q3 is so dry compared to all the nice juicy guns of UT.
The collision detection is FAR superior to Q2, which is something I'm big on having. Where in Q2 tryin to fire around a corner, with the crosshair dozens of pixels from the wall, you would inevitably shoot the wall then get plastered. Q3 seems to have improved it vastly
I'm not a huge Quakeoid game fan, but they have a certani appeal to me for the killkillkill aspect, and thats really the whole point, it's NOT a strategic game whatsoever, and was never intended to be. Anyone that says otherwise is just looking to expand their target audience. If you really like tactical firefight games, try something like Rogue Spear or Delta Force (I highly recommend the former, but I haven't heard of any sort of Linux client yet :/) As for differences between Q2 and Q3, I can certainly notice some. In my experience between the two games, 3 is much more on the twitchy side of gameplay, with the action much more fast and heated. With the lack of a real single player mode, it makes it all the more obvious the tactical element was ignored in favor of reflex. BTW, for action shooters, I much prefer Unreal tourney.