The "brains" of the system run on useless software that will not work without a hardware dongle. Check before you buy, I'm sure there are plenty of vendors who pull the same shit out there
Also, are you SURE that a keypress box (lockable box with hooks for hanging keys) won't do? When I was in the military, that's what we did. Never had a problem as:
a) We exchanged keys for identification (no ID, no key!)
b) If you lose the key or run away, we have your id, and we will hunt you down.
With a well-kept logbook, you cannot go wrong. Not to mention, no dicking about auditing whose keycard has access to which area when. If the key is missing from the keypress box, someone is using it. If it's missing after the official visitor hours, you have a problem. Scales pretty well up to a few hundred keys.
Of course, make sure you buy decent locks. Also, someone could always try to forge the keys. But that's what armed escorts are for.
>2) teach yourself whatever language you feel you eventually want to program in
Haven't learned much of languages such as Java and VB.Net other than hooking up to databases and providing a GUI for user input along with basic input validation.
Also, I have no experience in a for-real SDLC. Frankly, I have no idea what "real" programmers do.
How far is this from what employers are expecting?
I will be doing some work using PHP for a friend's small e-commerce site, but I don't think that will look particularly impressive on my future resume.
>3) start programming, solve the problems you have now.
I'm starting a new job today (in IT, was formerly in marketing). I'm hoping to be able to get to do some simple scripting and moving my way up to simple programming from there.
>4) Make a resume that focuses completely on your programming projects.
I hear ya -- noticed that I did not start getting phone calls until I got rid of my marketing/business development background in my resume.
You would think that employers would prefer a fellow who not only understood tech but also the business side of things and is comfortable making presentations to clients and stuff.
Hi. I would like to know, how did you make the transition from IT tech to programmer?
Did you work on open source projects for the exposure and experience or did you just learn to code on your own and show up for the interviews?
And do you think that being from IT made it easier or harder for you to secure that first programming job?
How do you prove to the interviewer that you're a worthy hire when you might not have done any programming in your previous IT roles? I see very few job postings for entry-level programmers these days.
Reason I'm asking is because I would like to move out from IT in a couple of years and would like some advice from someone who's done it.
>Certainly, but i was refering to historical pork eating practices.
Yes, I understand that. The point I was trying to make was that most religions such as Islam are not compatible with modern life as their rules are not subjected to revision. Also, why they did not simply tell people: "Pork may kill you if it is unclean."
And then allow the dumb ones to remove themselves from the gene pool. No prohibition required.
Prohibiting pork in this era is just the tip of the iceberg which to me indicates a close-minded religion unable to deal with changing times. That is also true of religions such as Catholicism, of course.
> That said, there's quite a large tapeworm problem in france because > of their tendency to undercook pork and other meats.
I did not know that. But tapeworms are managable yeah. It's better to let people know how things work in reality and let them make up their minds about whether the risks are worth taking than to say "Thou shall not..."
Humanity has grown up; we can do better than to adhere to outmoded beliefs. Take the good parts of religions (love they neighbor, peace, compasssion) and leave the bad, I say.
>...to merely show the kinds of reasons that religions like Islam, Christianity etc. > have survived memetically
As Lewis Black says, the older generation always passes down a tradition of shit to the next generation, ha ha.
> I wonder, however, what the techniques are/were in South-East Asia, where pork is also a common item on the > menu...
I'm South-East Asian, you insensitive clod!
Sorry, always wanted to say that.
For the Chinese, the traditional way to preserve meats was smoking and/or salting. Heavy, heavy amounts of salt and other crud -- you can't really eat the stuff out of the tin like you do with smoked salmon, instead you use bits of it in dishes so the taste isn't so overwhelming:
If you have ever had a Taiwanese sausage, that's more or less the same thing. It's pretty much the same for most parts of South East Asia with a heavy Chinese presence -- Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand etc. Hope that helps.
> Absolutely. In Indonesia, for instance, lots of tribes and people that just recently > converted to Islam are abandoning pig breeding and culinary traditions around pork > meat, just for the sake of religion
Well I hope Allah does the magic trick with the fish and the loaves too, then.
With modern processes and medical care, eating pig flesh is not such a problem anymore. There is no reason to avoid eating pork, other than that it can be fatty and pumped full of chemicals, and require a vast amount of resources to rear -- but then again you can say about almost any modern farm animal.
Of course, the problem with religion is, what was once a good idea is now dogma. I am of the opinion that science is superior to religion as science (done properly) is self-correcting.
Whether the need to believe is wired in or not, I wished that more people would realise that our brains are for thinking, and not just chalk it up to "it's human nature."
I'm in my late-20s and am out of work (company folded -- it was a shitty marketing/sysadmin/everything-else job anyways).
I'm pursuing a higher diploma in IT (and a degree in CompSci after that). Believe it or not, I get my income from twisting balloon animals at crappy kids' parties. I make enough to survive on, barely.
We should start a support group for people scraping by and trying to break into IT. I do wonder if I'm insane sometimes. IT = little money and lotsa stress.
I could be working in marketing. But then I would have to kill myself.
>One day a virtual currency with have enough value to cause the same >economic stress that results when a countries currency is displaced.
Well I would agree that this is very likely. However, that would probably mean that game companies will have to be subjected to tight legal controls, which is something that they will fight tooth and nail.
And I don't know what will happen when a game dies. For example, if WoW goes down to 1000 members and is no longer profitable for Blizzard to operate, what happens to the players' in-game gold and items when the servers are shut down? Would Blizzard be obligated to compensate them with real world dollars?
Like I said in another post, this will open up a can of worms.
> You know, FUN, the reason for playing the game in the first place.
And that's what makes me so mad about the whole virtual currency deal. Games are meant to be fun. Many hardcore gamers tend to forget that and absolutely have to "win". So the rest of us have to put up with Punkbuster and rampant virtual inflation because of these jackasses.
>The problem is that game producers are trying to make games last for >a couple of months, even for those who play >14 hours every day. Putting that much fun into a game would cost huge >amounts of money
I agree that developers are largely to blame for the sorry state of games right now. However, I don't think it's reasonable to expect much more content from MMORPGs. There's only so much manpower that can be thrown into creating new content.
Instead, give the gamers the tools of creation. Something like Second Life. Shift the focus away from merely procuring items and levelling up. Encourage volunteer DMs and give them the ability to insert their own quests.
Stop nerfing MMORPGs, in general. No more banks where your gold is safe. At least, no more banks which can't be robbed. Magic weapons should last 10 charges and break after that, so that it means something when you see someone wielding a flame sword in battle.
No more teleportation. There should be plagues. Natural diasters. Climate changes. Weathering effects on weapons and armor and items. And none of that "fixing" shit either. If half your helmet is melted, it's gone, until you can find an armorer.
Make metals something rare, like they really were in the past. Want to make a new sword? You'll have to scrap together the metal and pray that you find an armorer with the skills to forge a decent sword. No more of that Walmart shit.
Supply carts with raw materials and gold should be assailable.
That's the way I would do things in an MMORPG.
>This is not just WoW (or Final Fantasy Xwhatever). Just about every >MMORPG does this. Gran Turismo does this. Lots of games do it, some call >it "levelling up", others call it "unlockables". Personally I'm getting to >the point where I'm not planning on buying any more of those games.
You're doing the right thing. No point wasting money on console games especially. Fucktards don't seem to understand the concept of "save anywhere".
Why not try out some adventure games? I'm playing Grim Fandango now and it's a blast. And there are tons of good adventure games you can find in the bargain bins these days.
When your "assets" can be arbitrarily erased by the company that is holding them, only the truly foolish will see value in making a business out of trading virtual currency.
Oh, I know -- the standard smartass retort to the above is:
"But your money in the bank doesn't actually exist either! It's all make-believe!"
To that, all I have to say is that there are many laws and regulations governing real world currency and stocks. There are checks and balances in place to such that my bank can't simply decide to erase my funds.
Of course, there are still cases of fraud and whatnot, but when you compare MMORPGs to the real world:
1. If the USD becomes worthless tomorrow, there will probably be more,ass hysteria, chaos, depression and
iminent war.
I know exactly what you mean about scratching under the surface and finding a nutbar.
I reckon it's the mental programming left by society kicking in. She may be a nice person, but she has been brought up to WANT material shit and to have her way by flaunting her wares; hence the drama queen behavior.
But the point I was trying to make is to run the fuck away from narcissistic psychopath women in the first place. It's a good way to avoid pain in the long run.
Isn't society fucked up? I wish we would stop bringing up children to harbor such retarded notions of what love is about.
Well, I don't know what love is, either. But it's not Hollywood, it's not dinners and flowers, and it's not about all the bullshit games that people play.
But thanks to the mass media and the continual dumbing down of the populace, I reckon I will die alone.
Of course, the saddest thing is, if we would only bother getting our shit together, and apply some will in to seriously funding space tech, we could be enjoying the bounties of our solar system (and hopefully the galaxy later on), instead of fighting over scraps here on earth.
Even the extremist nutjobs can benefit from this -- fanatical Muslims can fuck off and go build the Mecca 5 space station; Bible-thumpers can go terraform Mars and create Bible-World, and so on...
Everybody CAN be a winner. But I'm just a fucking dreamer. Will never happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever you do, avoid Chubb like the plague.
The "brains" of the system run on useless software that will not work without a hardware dongle. Check before you buy, I'm sure there are plenty of vendors who pull the same shit out there
Also, are you SURE that a keypress box (lockable box with hooks for hanging keys) won't do? When I was in the military, that's what we did. Never had a problem as:
a) We exchanged keys for identification (no ID, no key!)
b) If you lose the key or run away, we have your id, and we will hunt you down.
With a well-kept logbook, you cannot go wrong. Not to mention, no dicking about auditing whose keycard has access to which area when. If the key is missing from the keypress box, someone is using it. If it's missing after the official visitor hours, you have a problem. Scales pretty well up to a few hundred keys.
Of course, make sure you buy decent locks. Also, someone could always try to forge the keys. But that's what armed escorts are for.
Thanks for the advice, I hope things pan out.
First day on the job was all right...
>2) teach yourself whatever language you feel you eventually want to program in
.Net other than
Haven't learned much of languages such as Java and VB
hooking up to databases and providing a GUI for user input along with
basic input validation.
Also, I have no experience in a for-real SDLC. Frankly, I have no idea
what "real" programmers do.
How far is this from what employers are expecting?
I will be doing some work using PHP for a friend's small
e-commerce site, but I don't think that will look particularly
impressive on my future resume.
>3) start programming, solve the problems you have now.
I'm starting a new job today (in IT, was formerly in marketing).
I'm hoping to be able to get to do some simple scripting and moving my way up to
simple programming from there.
>4) Make a resume that focuses completely on your programming projects.
I hear ya -- noticed that I did not start getting phone calls until I got rid
of my marketing/business development background in my resume.
You would think that employers would prefer a fellow who not only understood
tech but also the business side of things and is comfortable making presentations
to clients and stuff.
Shows you how little I know about the real world.
Hi. I would like to know, how did you make the transition from IT tech to programmer?
Did you work on open source projects for the exposure and experience or did you just learn to code on your own and show up for the interviews?
And do you think that being from IT made it easier or harder for you to secure that first programming job?
How do you prove to the interviewer that you're a worthy hire when you might not have done
any programming in your previous IT roles? I see very few job postings for entry-level programmers these days.
Reason I'm asking is because I would like to move out from IT in a couple of years and would like some advice from someone who's done it.
Yeah, I hate that about new movies.
It's like a bad Photoshop effect and everything looks so washed out.
And I also hate jerky, unwatchable, fight sequences. I know it's supposed to convey a verite feel, but the results are usually bleh...
They should take a look at Apocalypse Now. Glorious colors. And that chopper attack segment -- THAT'S the
way to do an action sequence.
>Certainly, but i was refering to historical pork eating practices.
Yes, I understand that. The point I was trying to make was that most religions
such as Islam are not compatible with modern life as their rules are not subjected
to revision. Also, why they did not simply tell people: "Pork may kill you if it is
unclean."
And then allow the dumb ones to remove themselves from the gene pool. No
prohibition required.
Prohibiting pork in this era is just the tip of the iceberg which to me
indicates a close-minded religion unable to deal with changing times. That is also true
of religions such as Catholicism, of course.
> That said, there's quite a large tapeworm problem in france because
> of their tendency to undercook pork and other meats.
I did not know that. But tapeworms are managable yeah. It's better to let people
know how things work in reality and let them make up their minds about whether the
risks are worth taking than to say "Thou shall not..."
Humanity has grown up; we can do better than to adhere to outmoded beliefs. Take the
good parts of religions (love they neighbor, peace, compasssion) and leave the bad, I say.
>...to merely show the kinds of reasons that religions like Islam, Christianity etc.
> have survived memetically
As Lewis Black says, the older generation always passes down a tradition of shit
to the next generation, ha ha.
> I wonder, however, what the techniques are/were in South-East Asia, where pork is also a common item on the
h .html
> menu...
I'm South-East Asian, you insensitive clod!
Sorry, always wanted to say that.
For the Chinese, the traditional way to preserve meats was smoking and/or salting. Heavy, heavy amounts of salt and other crud -- you can't really eat the stuff out of the tin like you do with smoked salmon, instead you use bits of it in dishes so the taste isn't so overwhelming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_sausage
http://www.inchem.org/documents/iarc/vol56/01-fis
If you have ever had a Taiwanese sausage, that's more or less the same thing. It's pretty much the same for most parts of South East Asia with a heavy Chinese presence -- Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand etc. Hope that helps.
> Absolutely. In Indonesia, for instance, lots of tribes and people that just recently
> converted to Islam are abandoning pig breeding and culinary traditions around pork
> meat, just for the sake of religion
Well I hope Allah does the magic trick with the fish and the loaves too, then.
With modern processes and medical care, eating pig flesh is not such a problem anymore.
There is no reason to avoid eating pork, other than that it can be fatty and pumped full
of chemicals, and require a vast amount of resources to rear -- but then again you can say
about almost any modern farm animal.
Of course, the problem with religion is, what was once a good idea is now dogma. I am of the
opinion that science is superior to religion as science (done properly) is self-correcting.
Whether the need to believe is wired in or not, I wished that more people would realise that
our brains are for thinking, and not just chalk it up to "it's human nature."
Thanks for the tip, I'll give that a shot...
I'm in my late-20s and am out of work (company folded -- it was a shitty marketing/sysadmin/everything-else job anyways).
I'm pursuing a higher diploma in IT (and a degree in CompSci after that). Believe it or not, I get my income from twisting balloon animals at crappy kids' parties. I make enough to survive on, barely.
We should start a support group for people scraping by and trying to break into IT. I do wonder if I'm insane sometimes. IT = little money and lotsa stress.
I could be working in marketing. But then I would have to kill myself.
Sigh. Tell me it gets better than this.
>One day a virtual currency with have enough value to cause the same
>economic stress that results when a countries currency is displaced.
Well I would agree that this is very likely. However, that would probably mean that game companies will have to be subjected to tight legal controls, which is something that they will fight tooth and nail.
And I don't know what will happen when a game dies. For example, if WoW goes down to 1000 members and is no longer profitable for Blizzard to operate, what happens to the players' in-game gold and items when the servers are shut down? Would Blizzard be obligated to compensate them with real world dollars?
Like I said in another post, this will open up a can of worms.
Let the suckers be fleeced, then. I wonder who's going to be left holding the bag.
Either the gamers have their assets vanish into thin air and/or the developers get sued into oblivion.
This will not end well for all involved.
I'd rather speculate on tulips.
> You know, FUN, the reason for playing the game in the first place.
And that's what makes me so mad about the whole virtual currency deal.
Games are meant to be fun. Many hardcore gamers tend to forget that and
absolutely have to "win". So the rest of us have to put up with Punkbuster
and rampant virtual inflation because of these jackasses.
>The problem is that game producers are trying to make games last for
>a couple of months, even for those who play
>14 hours every day. Putting that much fun into a game would cost huge
>amounts of money
I agree that developers are largely to blame for the sorry state of games
right now. However, I don't think it's reasonable to expect much more content
from MMORPGs. There's only so much manpower that can be thrown into creating new content.
Instead, give the gamers the tools of creation. Something like Second Life. Shift the
focus away from merely procuring items and levelling up. Encourage volunteer DMs and
give them the ability to insert their own quests.
Stop nerfing MMORPGs, in general. No more banks where your gold is safe. At least, no
more banks which can't be robbed. Magic weapons should last 10 charges and break after
that, so that it means something when you see someone wielding a flame sword in battle.
No more teleportation. There should be plagues. Natural diasters. Climate changes.
Weathering effects on weapons and armor and items. And none of that "fixing" shit either.
If half your helmet is melted, it's gone, until you can find an armorer.
Make metals something rare, like they really were in the past. Want to make a new
sword? You'll have to scrap together the metal and pray that you find an armorer
with the skills to forge a decent sword. No more of that Walmart shit.
Supply carts with raw materials and gold should be assailable.
That's the way I would do things in an MMORPG.
>This is not just WoW (or Final Fantasy Xwhatever). Just about every
>MMORPG does this. Gran Turismo does this. Lots of games do it, some call
>it "levelling up", others call it "unlockables". Personally I'm getting to
>the point where I'm not planning on buying any more of those games.
You're doing the right thing. No point wasting money on console games especially. Fucktards don't
seem to understand the concept of "save anywhere".
Why not try out some adventure games? I'm playing Grim Fandango now and it's a blast. And
there are tons of good adventure games you can find in the bargain bins these days.
When your "assets" can be arbitrarily erased by the company that is holding them, only the truly foolish will see value in making a business out of trading virtual currency.
,ass hysteria, chaos, depression and
Oh, I know -- the standard smartass retort to the above is:
"But your money in the bank doesn't actually exist either! It's all make-believe!"
To that, all I have to say is that there are many laws and regulations governing real world currency and stocks. There are checks and balances in place to such that my bank can't simply decide to erase my funds.
Of course, there are still cases of fraud and whatnot, but when you compare MMORPGs to the real world:
1. If the USD becomes worthless tomorrow, there will probably be more
iminent war.
2. If WoW gold becomes worthless tomorrow, BFD.
And that, is why virtual currency is bullshit.
If those "3 hours" are put aside as leisure time, guess what, you weren't going to work anyway! Why should your
hourly wage come into the equation?
And what with this "I make $X/hr, therefore I am too important to spend Xhr on something like levelling up meme"?
Do you make $X/hr when you are asleep? In the shower? Driving?
You should look up what "billable hours" mean.
I guess your kid had a SPARSAM or something and dropped the bulb huh.
Ha ha ha.
Sorry, I'm such an ass.
Ha if I knew where, I would tell you.
I know exactly what you mean about scratching under the surface and finding a nutbar.
I reckon it's the mental programming left by society kicking in. She may be a nice person, but
she has been brought up to WANT material shit and to have her way by flaunting her wares; hence
the drama queen behavior.
Not that men aren't totally fucked up either...
Damn society.
Sadly, in today's world, a pre-nup is a given.
But the point I was trying to make is to run the fuck away from narcissistic psychopath
women in the first place. It's a good way to avoid pain in the long run.
Isn't society fucked up? I wish we would stop
bringing up children to harbor such retarded notions
of what love is about.
Well, I don't know what love is, either. But it's not
Hollywood, it's not dinners and flowers, and it's not
about all the bullshit games that people play.
But thanks to the mass media and the continual
dumbing down of the populace, I reckon I will
die alone.
I know, I know, I'm a real downer at parties.
...run, not walk, away from your woman.
Especially if you have explained to her what a scam DeBeers has perpetuated
upon the world, and it has not changed her mind.
Sure, you can offer her a non-blood diamond. But you have to ask yourself
if a person like that is someone you want to spent time with.
Of course, I carry a cellphone with tantalum capacitors in them. The world's a fucked up place.
Of course, the saddest thing is, if we would only bother getting our shit together, and apply some will in to seriously funding space tech, we could be enjoying the bounties of our solar system (and hopefully the galaxy later on), instead of fighting over scraps here on earth.
Even the extremist nutjobs can benefit from this -- fanatical Muslims can fuck off and go build the Mecca 5 space station; Bible-thumpers can go terraform Mars and create Bible-World, and so on...
Everybody CAN be a winner. But I'm just a fucking dreamer. Will never happen.
RocketDrive...drool...
Well, if I ever feel like installing Oblivion, I might spring for one. Thanks
for the link.
I think you will do fine -- I was running the above on
my old AMD XP 2400+ with 1GB for a long long time without any issues.
I only upgraded because the old system is being turned in to an all
Linux workstation.
Only regrets are not springing for a SATA drive. Hard drive speed
is really the bottleneck here...
Well, it really depends on which apps you are running, I
run these all the time:
1. Firefox with 30-40 tabs open and numerous extensions.
2. Thunderbird hooked up to 3-6 IMAP accounts
3. Gaim
4. Poweroff
5. AVG anti-virus
6. Sharpreader
7. Daemontools
8. VNC server
9. Openssh server
10. Kerio firewall
11. Auctionintelligence
12. Excel, word, etc.
13. Notepad++
14. Spybot's Teatimer
15. Truecrypt
16. Passwordsafe
And so far, no issues with the system keeling over. YMMV, of course, but
I think the key is to have 1GB+ of ram before turning off swap.
FYI, I'm running an AMD64 3000+ with 2GB of ram, nothing fancy.
This should answer your question:
http://majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=12