A degree is helpful, it tells the employer that you are dedicated to the field and have the ambition to learn the subject material, but as others have said, it only tells half the story. In IT there are certificate programs which Degree vs. Certificate is often a good debate but again it depends on the employer and location for what they value more. Often what it comes down to is experience, can you do what the job requires? I've just turned 28 in the past month and nailed my first sysadmin position. Up to this point I have worked help desk like positions and assistant to the sysadmin. That admin recognized that I liked doing that stuff and delegated lots of his tasks to me so it brought lots of on the job training. I do have a 4 year degree, a couple of entry level certificates, but almost 10 years of experience now which like I said earlier, it depends on how much value the employer puts on those things to determine if they are necessary.
We were having one of our incoming trunk phone lines spoofed on and off through the year. The number was one of 4 lines for incoming calls only and the spoofers were calling 911. We had a full top to bottom analysis of our phone system and security system to make sure that it wasn't us, and when I was talking to the security system guy he said that another local abandoned building had the same thing going on, which is when I realized it was spoofing. Nothing like being met with the police first thing in the morning about numerous hangup 911 calls from your location to make you get to the bottom of the situation. Hasn't come back in a number of months.
I'd say if the lady is worried and doesn't want to change the number, get caller ID and turn off the answering machine when it is a number that she doesn't recognize.
First of all, and this has been said a hundred times already, it is not difficult to make a voting software program that is secure, collects and counts votes. Fairly simple programming, no ports on the machine, no additional software like virus/spyware needed, etc...
And secondly, with failure after failure of this system, lets go back to the big booth with the buttons and all that other stuff. I've only used it once since I could vote, but that was always considered 100% accurate.
I prefer the fill in the bubble method, it is pretty hard to mess up, but after a local election I'm getting skeptical of those. I knew the mayor that got voted out and allegedly they randomized the ballots for who appears on the top. Now what I remember about OCR testing is you have to send a master through to determine scoring, so you could be voting for the person in spot 2, but the OCR is programmed to count that as spot 1. Hmmm...maybe I should have told the mayor that.
I'm still not convinced that these are real, or at least staged. I've had a yahoo account for years that was only set up for using the IM, I never used it for any real emailing. Right now I have over 4000 messages in the inbox, all junk, and another 4000 in the spam folder. With stats like that on an unused account, something just doesn't seem right on an active account.
Even my "professional" email account gets more spam than her, and all that has been used for is sending resumes to employers when I was job hunting and setting up accounts on legitimate websites.
I'd expect that a personal account would be tied to other things like online accounts, subscriptions, etc...and being a government official she would probably be on some things like this, and there is nothing. Yahoo's spam filter just isn't that good to make her inbox that clean when an unused account is full of crap.
Is anyone with the FCC even aware that the digital signals suck especially in severe weather? This past summer we had some severe weather come through the area and the local channels went out along with the satellite dish. When I changed back to the analog signal the picture was just fine.
Why don't they spend more time on something that really matters instead of waiting for the next big disaster when cell phones will be down from system overuse, and television will be down because the signal is getting too much interference. They haven't screwed up radio too much yet.
Ever notice that technologies like Morse code, radio (ham), and other "antiquated" technologies are always the thing used for communication in disaster movies but not the new state of the art communication system? Why is that? Oh, yeah, because they work and the new stuff doesn't.
And let me say it sucks. It was implemented and we were told everything would be transparent...well its about as transparent as mud. Most of the problems happen when we have password change day because the program will check to sync the safeboot and windows passwords at a random time within 30 minutes of turning the PC on, and then every 8 hours afterwards. So it is possible to change a password and not have it actually change for another day. So then I get the call to reset the password, and the program doesn't recognize that when the safeboot password gets reset it should check to resync with the windows password. Sorry about my rant, but good luck to Ohio, they're going to need it.
I was watching a Charlie Rose on PBS last year and they had a guy talking about this issue. He said that it really isn't an issue of supply and demand, but more of greedy corporations trying to get every possible cent for a service. In South Korea the cell phones can receive live television, but here the cell companies are sitting on features like that saying that the cost to implement it is too much, the technology doesn't exist (but for some reason it is in S. Korea), the consumers don't want it, and are trying to figure out how to maximize profits when they introduce it. I'm not one of those anti-corporate folks, but what he was saying makes sense. Why is it that the majority of internet users are still on dial up? High speed companies don't want to offer service to a rural area because it doesn't have immediate profits. I don't want to get on a rant here but do you get what I'm saying?
I had Comcast a year ago and canceled it, then back at the beginning of the year I subscribed again because I needed remote access for work and they are the only high speed provider in my area. When I canceled originally, they only disabled my internet and not my TV, which was only basic, but it was nice keeping my channels and not having to pay for it. When I resubscribed I got a new self installation kit and called the number to get the modem added to the active list. They said that a tech had to come out and connect a signal to my house. After arguing with them that I already had a signal, I gave in and had them send the tech. A couple of hours later my modem started working so I called back to cancel the tech visit which wasn't for a couple of days anyway. When my first month's bill came they charged me for a tech visit. So back to the customer "service" line, 2 hours and 3 supervisors later arguing that they were charging me for no goods or services, the last manager admitted that it was a new user fee that they have to charge everyone...BULL. Well 7 months later I'm canceling them again!
Back in 2002 I got a Lexmark laser printer in a going out of business sale. Since I got it, it had the low ink warning flashing. Only about 2 months ago did the actual ink start to fade, which prompted me to take out the drum, shake it, and everything was normal again.
When I was in college I was a computer lab assistant, which pretty much meant that I'm the go between for students and the printers. There were times that my supervisors were replacing the ink weekly when it wasn't necessary to do so. After a little research I found that there were page counters in the ink drums that triggered the low ink warnings, that typically triggered at 5000 pages. This might be accurate if you were printing 5000 pages of solid black ink, but when you are printing text documents you use much less ink. So just for fun I replaced a toner cartridge and ran 5000 blank pages through the printer, and sure enough the low ink warning came on.
Granted both cases are for 10 year old printers, now the newer ones have the digital display showing how full the ink is, and some even have the "window" to see if there is any color left. Back when I still used an ink jet I remember saving cartridges that only had one color that ran out and swap it when I was printing images that didn't use much of the missing color, just so I could use it up.
The rule of thumb should always be keep using the same ink until it actually runs out, or if it is a laser printer ignore the "life cycle" warning until it actually stops. I've been doing it this way for nearly 10 years and haven't had any problems.
We had this happen too with our cable connection. Back when we had high speed internet set up, comcast had to pull a filter from our line because it was interfering with our signal, I thought that this was the reason, not QAM...but I never bothered looking up if anyone else could do this too. Now years later, the old tv went out so upgraded to an HDTV, it was surprising when it detected 300 channels when we previously had 20.
The problem is when trying to watch what the neighbors are on-demanding, the channels are registering on a channel.other number, so you will get channel 25, 25.1, 25.3, etc... but when on demand users on the lower numbered dot channels turn off their signal, the channels collectively drop down. So one second you could be watching a Disney movie, the next could be a Debbie Does... movie, so it is certainly something to use at your own risk if there are kids around.
I don't see anything wrong with watching these channels either. If the cable company screwed up and didn't configure my connection correctly is it my fault that they made a mistake that let me do this? I'm not going to go out of my way to let them know so they can fix it, it has saved on movie rental over the last few months. I usually stick to conventional programming that I can predict what is on and play in the "naughty channels" only when there isn't anything else worth watching on.
I've had a wonderful experience with netware over the years. Its a shame that many of the places that I've hear from migrate away from a perfectly functional netware environment because they purchase a new application that requires a windows server and suddenly the managers have to convert the entire network over to MS for compatibility because the sales rep convinced them that a mixed environment won't run correctly.
As other postings addressed, what defines an email? Who is going to keep track of all of the emails to count them? What if I go offshore with a foreign account, is that taxed? What about at work, are my internal emails taxed?
Seriously, the job of trying to count emails will be a nearly impossible task. It would probably decrease spam because who would want to pay to send out all that junk mail, but what happens when a computer gets infected with a virus that sends email? Who is responsible for the tax in that case?
Since email is pretty much a requirement in the business world, are they going to get email taxed too? If they decide to say any message that's source is from the U.S. I can only image how many companies, including yahoo, microsoft, google, etc... that would outsource or even go offshore with their operations to avoid paying the tax.
There would be so many negative repercussions of an email tax that anyone politician that voted for the tax would be voted out so fast their heads would be spinning.
They are attacking their own advertisers now. Most people purchase music after hearing it, which they usually hear it on the radio. Lets fast forward 5 years pretending this is successful. Radio stations are now put out of business because of lawsuits or refusal to pay the RIAA's ransom so as CD sales continue to fall; that will leave the RIAA scratching their heads wondering why, when they just killed their most wide spread advertising tool.
Whats next? Suing stores that play music inside for shoppers?
I haven't played a Zelda game since Ocarina of Time and it doesn't sound like much has changed for the better since then. When I saw the concept for the next game Majora's Mask, I thought the franchise went jumped the shark and wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. Now with the Wii, it looks like it might be worth my checking into again.
Still the games are too formula. Bomb the cracks in the wall, waste countless hours finding something trivial for an item that is useful for one specific event, finding pieces of hearts instead of entire containers...Yeah time to make more of a challenge.
I recently started replaying Illusion of Gaia from SNES, a game that I had memorized inside and out back in its day, and I'm getting stuck at places again like the first few times that I played it.
Minigames are starting to become a pain too. I remember playing FF8's card game trying to get the character cards, wasting hours trying to do this task...and I had to remind myself that "this is supposed to be fun...its a game." It must be something lost in the cultural differences in the concept of fun.
Now I can't speak for Zelda games since Ocarina of Time but I especially hated how it got dumbed down with that faerie that would fly off and highlight anything of interest or kept screaming "Hey" whenever I decided to go off game script and collect hearts, or Biggeron's Sword, etc...
What happened to the bosses too? Defeating them are more of a formality than an accomplishment. How about bosses that instead of attacking them directly you have to smash the pillars around the room and collapse a structure on them, or things that involve heroic traits other that brute force, or make use of some of those useless items like that flute I've been carrying around the whole game, play it and the resonance in the chamber will deafen/stun the enemy for a short period. Avoid the FF12 method of, "oh this boss is too easy, lets let it cast a spell that makes it immune to physical and magical attacks for 20 min or so..." Trade-offs in strengths vs. weaknesses are expected, not complete invincibility which means you have to just survive for an amount of time.
I used to work in a school district that had a program that gave laptops to special needs students. Big mistake! The whenever the computers would have a problem the organizers would frantically bring them back saying "the student can't communicate without it!" so stop working on the crashed server and order the replacement cd drive for their computer. I can't even count how many times I had to clear spyware and porn off of the computers that the parents decided to take over, but locking down the systems would prevent the people that ran the program from putting on software that they needed, they absolutely refused to let us make an image of what the students needed. They also complained about the Office licensing constantly, when left alone they would install Office on every computer that they had from the same single license CD. I introduced them to OpenOffice, which they liked at first but then it suddenly had problems with the spell checker and grammar check...they had to add things like their last name, etc...just like in MS office and it didn't like the net-lingo grammar that they are letting students get away with writing these days. Sorry about the rant, but I've been saying from the beginning of the program it was a waste of time and money...especially when we are giving students better equipment to play games on when we have staff that are still using Win98 because the department doesn't have a budget to get updated equipment.
How long until someone loads Vista on a MacBook and compares run time? Why would anyone want to ruin a perfectly good MacBook by installing Vista even if it is to compare run time?
I work in a bank environment and it isn't just women leaving the 24x7 on call environments, its men too. Mainly in our case it is due to idiot users that find it easier to call the on call tech all night long to do the parts of their job that they have been taught at least a hundred times before. I completely dread the weeks that my I'm on call. I already have to be in early, about 7 a.m. work until 4 p.m. which gives me an hour to get home before on call starts. At that point I may or may not get calls until about midnight, then wake up at 6-ish to do it again. Most of the calls that I get are routine things that happen every day, but for some reason the operator can't remember what to do, goes into panic mode and runs to the phone instead of asking one of the 10 other operators. There is nothing worst than getting that call after midnight, sleepily remote into the person's system and walk them through what they need to do, only to hear "oh yeah...I can do that can't I?" Companies really need to address 24x7 environments and better compensate their on call operators for the crappy hours that we end up working, and the life we need to give up. I didn't realize how much of a life I actually had until I started working on call and can't do the things I like to do anymore.
I want to make sure that I'm getting this right...Sliverlight is going to kill Flash (which is everywhere on the internet right now) just like Zune killed the iPod, and Vista killed all other OSes, Xbox killed Playstation and Nintendo...and I'm sure I'm missing a few. Is it just me or is MS getting violent these days? I thought they were supposed to (try) writing software, not be some sort of wannabe hit man that keeps missing its target.
If the adoption of Zune and Vista are any indication of how quickly Sliverlight is going to be adopted, I'm not worried, and everything I have at home runs on Linux.
Yes video gaming back in the day was way better. Sure we didn't have the graphics, or the joysticks with 5 buttons for each finger, but the games were fun and challenging. I was a wee lad in my single digit ages when we got our Atari 2600 and I still remember games like Target Fun and Combat! Featherweights by today's standard of shooting games, but we used to make up or own games to make Combat more challenging, like you had to ricochet off of 3 walls before hitting our opponent. Now games are all graphics and special effects, you don't even have the challenge of having to play the game to beat it with all of the cheat codes and mod devices, if it gets too hard just pause, type in a combo and skip the level or become invincible. It wasn't until the minigame in Donkey Kong 64 did I finally sit down and beat the original DK, and that was much harder since they only give you one life. And I had more fun playing the DK mini game than I did playing the N64 game. I love seeing the retro Atari 2600 with the 30 or so games pre-loaded, I haven't gotten one yet, but it did make me dig out my old system and hook it up again. Raiders of the Lost Ark anyone?
I don't really think Zune will stand up to the iPod for a few generations of the device, even if that. But lets pretend that they do come out with a competitive alternative...will it create a price war between MS and Apple? Judging from the pricing of PC's vs Macs I'd say no, it might be a $50-100 drop in prices but there is something about the iPod, call it social acceptance or prestige of owning one, its kind of a status symbol to own an iPod. Unless Zune can get to that level as whatever you want to call it they won't be much of a competitor. Just look at how many other MP3 players are out on the market, but the first one anyone will mention is always the iPod.
When I canceled cable and satellite tv, gym memberships, and cell phones in the past I've told the companies that I'm being relocated for work. In the past, many of the companies have a clause that say if you are moving out of the local service area your contract can be terminated without penalties. I don't know if that is still the case but it worked for me in the past.
I've been hearing since 2004 that IBM was going to buy Novell, which the rumor spread faster after Novell purchased SUSE and partnered with IBM and started co-branding some Linux training packages. The rumors took off again in 2006 at Brainshare where most of the signs around the conference were white and blue rather than the red and white that is typical of the host's branding colors. Looks like they missed out and MS swallowed their soul instead.
I must have played at a different skill level as you because I don't remember a smart AI at all. I'd be in a jungle level and fire a loud weapon to kill one enemy, nobody else visible on my radar, do a wide circle around where I left the guy, but somehow every soldier would seem to casually walk right to my location, no matter how far apart kills were, loud or quiet weapons, or distance I'd move in-between kills.
I know exactly why these students are settling. Back in the days where hacking satellite tv was the craze and the lawsuits came out I was ending college and purchased a smart card reader from what ended up being a flagged website and received one of their settlement notices. Well when you are a college student trying to get out in the workforce, you don't want a background check to uncover that you are in a lawsuit. After a couple of months trying to explain that I'm an IT guy and was tinkering with the smart card technologies as something to learn, I got fed up with the run around and settled. Biggest mistake I made. If I could go back I would because they didn't have a case, but just because I was job hunting out of college and didn't want anything questionable on my record I gave in and paid up. And yes, I did attempt to get free channels, but never was successful.
It's sounding more and more like the world of V for Vendetta is going to be here before we realize it. Time to break out your Guy Fawkes mask and black cape.
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A degree is helpful, it tells the employer that you are dedicated to the field and have the ambition to learn the subject material, but as others have said, it only tells half the story. In IT there are certificate programs which Degree vs. Certificate is often a good debate but again it depends on the employer and location for what they value more. Often what it comes down to is experience, can you do what the job requires? I've just turned 28 in the past month and nailed my first sysadmin position. Up to this point I have worked help desk like positions and assistant to the sysadmin. That admin recognized that I liked doing that stuff and delegated lots of his tasks to me so it brought lots of on the job training. I do have a 4 year degree, a couple of entry level certificates, but almost 10 years of experience now which like I said earlier, it depends on how much value the employer puts on those things to determine if they are necessary.
We were having one of our incoming trunk phone lines spoofed on and off through the year. The number was one of 4 lines for incoming calls only and the spoofers were calling 911. We had a full top to bottom analysis of our phone system and security system to make sure that it wasn't us, and when I was talking to the security system guy he said that another local abandoned building had the same thing going on, which is when I realized it was spoofing. Nothing like being met with the police first thing in the morning about numerous hangup 911 calls from your location to make you get to the bottom of the situation. Hasn't come back in a number of months.
I'd say if the lady is worried and doesn't want to change the number, get caller ID and turn off the answering machine when it is a number that she doesn't recognize.
First of all, and this has been said a hundred times already, it is not difficult to make a voting software program that is secure, collects and counts votes. Fairly simple programming, no ports on the machine, no additional software like virus/spyware needed, etc...
And secondly, with failure after failure of this system, lets go back to the big booth with the buttons and all that other stuff. I've only used it once since I could vote, but that was always considered 100% accurate.
I prefer the fill in the bubble method, it is pretty hard to mess up, but after a local election I'm getting skeptical of those. I knew the mayor that got voted out and allegedly they randomized the ballots for who appears on the top. Now what I remember about OCR testing is you have to send a master through to determine scoring, so you could be voting for the person in spot 2, but the OCR is programmed to count that as spot 1. Hmmm...maybe I should have told the mayor that.
I'm still not convinced that these are real, or at least staged. I've had a yahoo account for years that was only set up for using the IM, I never used it for any real emailing. Right now I have over 4000 messages in the inbox, all junk, and another 4000 in the spam folder. With stats like that on an unused account, something just doesn't seem right on an active account.
Even my "professional" email account gets more spam than her, and all that has been used for is sending resumes to employers when I was job hunting and setting up accounts on legitimate websites.
I'd expect that a personal account would be tied to other things like online accounts, subscriptions, etc...and being a government official she would probably be on some things like this, and there is nothing. Yahoo's spam filter just isn't that good to make her inbox that clean when an unused account is full of crap.
Is anyone with the FCC even aware that the digital signals suck especially in severe weather? This past summer we had some severe weather come through the area and the local channels went out along with the satellite dish. When I changed back to the analog signal the picture was just fine.
Why don't they spend more time on something that really matters instead of waiting for the next big disaster when cell phones will be down from system overuse, and television will be down because the signal is getting too much interference. They haven't screwed up radio too much yet.
Ever notice that technologies like Morse code, radio (ham), and other "antiquated" technologies are always the thing used for communication in disaster movies but not the new state of the art communication system? Why is that? Oh, yeah, because they work and the new stuff doesn't.
And let me say it sucks. It was implemented and we were told everything would be transparent...well its about as transparent as mud. Most of the problems happen when we have password change day because the program will check to sync the safeboot and windows passwords at a random time within 30 minutes of turning the PC on, and then every 8 hours afterwards. So it is possible to change a password and not have it actually change for another day. So then I get the call to reset the password, and the program doesn't recognize that when the safeboot password gets reset it should check to resync with the windows password. Sorry about my rant, but good luck to Ohio, they're going to need it.
I was watching a Charlie Rose on PBS last year and they had a guy talking about this issue. He said that it really isn't an issue of supply and demand, but more of greedy corporations trying to get every possible cent for a service. In South Korea the cell phones can receive live television, but here the cell companies are sitting on features like that saying that the cost to implement it is too much, the technology doesn't exist (but for some reason it is in S. Korea), the consumers don't want it, and are trying to figure out how to maximize profits when they introduce it. I'm not one of those anti-corporate folks, but what he was saying makes sense. Why is it that the majority of internet users are still on dial up? High speed companies don't want to offer service to a rural area because it doesn't have immediate profits. I don't want to get on a rant here but do you get what I'm saying?
I had Comcast a year ago and canceled it, then back at the beginning of the year I subscribed again because I needed remote access for work and they are the only high speed provider in my area. When I canceled originally, they only disabled my internet and not my TV, which was only basic, but it was nice keeping my channels and not having to pay for it. When I resubscribed I got a new self installation kit and called the number to get the modem added to the active list. They said that a tech had to come out and connect a signal to my house. After arguing with them that I already had a signal, I gave in and had them send the tech. A couple of hours later my modem started working so I called back to cancel the tech visit which wasn't for a couple of days anyway. When my first month's bill came they charged me for a tech visit. So back to the customer "service" line, 2 hours and 3 supervisors later arguing that they were charging me for no goods or services, the last manager admitted that it was a new user fee that they have to charge everyone...BULL. Well 7 months later I'm canceling them again!
Back in 2002 I got a Lexmark laser printer in a going out of business sale. Since I got it, it had the low ink warning flashing. Only about 2 months ago did the actual ink start to fade, which prompted me to take out the drum, shake it, and everything was normal again.
When I was in college I was a computer lab assistant, which pretty much meant that I'm the go between for students and the printers. There were times that my supervisors were replacing the ink weekly when it wasn't necessary to do so. After a little research I found that there were page counters in the ink drums that triggered the low ink warnings, that typically triggered at 5000 pages. This might be accurate if you were printing 5000 pages of solid black ink, but when you are printing text documents you use much less ink. So just for fun I replaced a toner cartridge and ran 5000 blank pages through the printer, and sure enough the low ink warning came on.
Granted both cases are for 10 year old printers, now the newer ones have the digital display showing how full the ink is, and some even have the "window" to see if there is any color left. Back when I still used an ink jet I remember saving cartridges that only had one color that ran out and swap it when I was printing images that didn't use much of the missing color, just so I could use it up.
The rule of thumb should always be keep using the same ink until it actually runs out, or if it is a laser printer ignore the "life cycle" warning until it actually stops. I've been doing it this way for nearly 10 years and haven't had any problems.
We had this happen too with our cable connection. Back when we had high speed internet set up, comcast had to pull a filter from our line because it was interfering with our signal, I thought that this was the reason, not QAM...but I never bothered looking up if anyone else could do this too. Now years later, the old tv went out so upgraded to an HDTV, it was surprising when it detected 300 channels when we previously had 20.
The problem is when trying to watch what the neighbors are on-demanding, the channels are registering on a channel.other number, so you will get channel 25, 25.1, 25.3, etc... but when on demand users on the lower numbered dot channels turn off their signal, the channels collectively drop down. So one second you could be watching a Disney movie, the next could be a Debbie Does... movie, so it is certainly something to use at your own risk if there are kids around.
I don't see anything wrong with watching these channels either. If the cable company screwed up and didn't configure my connection correctly is it my fault that they made a mistake that let me do this? I'm not going to go out of my way to let them know so they can fix it, it has saved on movie rental over the last few months. I usually stick to conventional programming that I can predict what is on and play in the "naughty channels" only when there isn't anything else worth watching on.
I've had a wonderful experience with netware over the years. Its a shame that many of the places that I've hear from migrate away from a perfectly functional netware environment because they purchase a new application that requires a windows server and suddenly the managers have to convert the entire network over to MS for compatibility because the sales rep convinced them that a mixed environment won't run correctly.
As other postings addressed, what defines an email? Who is going to keep track of all of the emails to count them? What if I go offshore with a foreign account, is that taxed? What about at work, are my internal emails taxed?
Seriously, the job of trying to count emails will be a nearly impossible task. It would probably decrease spam because who would want to pay to send out all that junk mail, but what happens when a computer gets infected with a virus that sends email? Who is responsible for the tax in that case?
Since email is pretty much a requirement in the business world, are they going to get email taxed too? If they decide to say any message that's source is from the U.S. I can only image how many companies, including yahoo, microsoft, google, etc... that would outsource or even go offshore with their operations to avoid paying the tax.
There would be so many negative repercussions of an email tax that anyone politician that voted for the tax would be voted out so fast their heads would be spinning.
They are attacking their own advertisers now. Most people purchase music after hearing it, which they usually hear it on the radio. Lets fast forward 5 years pretending this is successful. Radio stations are now put out of business because of lawsuits or refusal to pay the RIAA's ransom so as CD sales continue to fall; that will leave the RIAA scratching their heads wondering why, when they just killed their most wide spread advertising tool.
Whats next? Suing stores that play music inside for shoppers?
I haven't played a Zelda game since Ocarina of Time and it doesn't sound like much has changed for the better since then. When I saw the concept for the next game Majora's Mask, I thought the franchise went jumped the shark and wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. Now with the Wii, it looks like it might be worth my checking into again.
Still the games are too formula. Bomb the cracks in the wall, waste countless hours finding something trivial for an item that is useful for one specific event, finding pieces of hearts instead of entire containers...Yeah time to make more of a challenge.
I recently started replaying Illusion of Gaia from SNES, a game that I had memorized inside and out back in its day, and I'm getting stuck at places again like the first few times that I played it.
Minigames are starting to become a pain too. I remember playing FF8's card game trying to get the character cards, wasting hours trying to do this task...and I had to remind myself that "this is supposed to be fun...its a game." It must be something lost in the cultural differences in the concept of fun.
Now I can't speak for Zelda games since Ocarina of Time but I especially hated how it got dumbed down with that faerie that would fly off and highlight anything of interest or kept screaming "Hey" whenever I decided to go off game script and collect hearts, or Biggeron's Sword, etc...
What happened to the bosses too? Defeating them are more of a formality than an accomplishment. How about bosses that instead of attacking them directly you have to smash the pillars around the room and collapse a structure on them, or things that involve heroic traits other that brute force, or make use of some of those useless items like that flute I've been carrying around the whole game, play it and the resonance in the chamber will deafen/stun the enemy for a short period. Avoid the FF12 method of, "oh this boss is too easy, lets let it cast a spell that makes it immune to physical and magical attacks for 20 min or so..." Trade-offs in strengths vs. weaknesses are expected, not complete invincibility which means you have to just survive for an amount of time.
I used to work in a school district that had a program that gave laptops to special needs students. Big mistake! The whenever the computers would have a problem the organizers would frantically bring them back saying "the student can't communicate without it!" so stop working on the crashed server and order the replacement cd drive for their computer. I can't even count how many times I had to clear spyware and porn off of the computers that the parents decided to take over, but locking down the systems would prevent the people that ran the program from putting on software that they needed, they absolutely refused to let us make an image of what the students needed. They also complained about the Office licensing constantly, when left alone they would install Office on every computer that they had from the same single license CD. I introduced them to OpenOffice, which they liked at first but then it suddenly had problems with the spell checker and grammar check...they had to add things like their last name, etc...just like in MS office and it didn't like the net-lingo grammar that they are letting students get away with writing these days. Sorry about the rant, but I've been saying from the beginning of the program it was a waste of time and money...especially when we are giving students better equipment to play games on when we have staff that are still using Win98 because the department doesn't have a budget to get updated equipment.
I work in a bank environment and it isn't just women leaving the 24x7 on call environments, its men too. Mainly in our case it is due to idiot users that find it easier to call the on call tech all night long to do the parts of their job that they have been taught at least a hundred times before. I completely dread the weeks that my I'm on call. I already have to be in early, about 7 a.m. work until 4 p.m. which gives me an hour to get home before on call starts. At that point I may or may not get calls until about midnight, then wake up at 6-ish to do it again. Most of the calls that I get are routine things that happen every day, but for some reason the operator can't remember what to do, goes into panic mode and runs to the phone instead of asking one of the 10 other operators. There is nothing worst than getting that call after midnight, sleepily remote into the person's system and walk them through what they need to do, only to hear "oh yeah...I can do that can't I?" Companies really need to address 24x7 environments and better compensate their on call operators for the crappy hours that we end up working, and the life we need to give up. I didn't realize how much of a life I actually had until I started working on call and can't do the things I like to do anymore.
I want to make sure that I'm getting this right...Sliverlight is going to kill Flash (which is everywhere on the internet right now) just like Zune killed the iPod, and Vista killed all other OSes, Xbox killed Playstation and Nintendo...and I'm sure I'm missing a few. Is it just me or is MS getting violent these days? I thought they were supposed to (try) writing software, not be some sort of wannabe hit man that keeps missing its target.
If the adoption of Zune and Vista are any indication of how quickly Sliverlight is going to be adopted, I'm not worried, and everything I have at home runs on Linux.
Yes video gaming back in the day was way better. Sure we didn't have the graphics, or the joysticks with 5 buttons for each finger, but the games were fun and challenging. I was a wee lad in my single digit ages when we got our Atari 2600 and I still remember games like Target Fun and Combat! Featherweights by today's standard of shooting games, but we used to make up or own games to make Combat more challenging, like you had to ricochet off of 3 walls before hitting our opponent. Now games are all graphics and special effects, you don't even have the challenge of having to play the game to beat it with all of the cheat codes and mod devices, if it gets too hard just pause, type in a combo and skip the level or become invincible. It wasn't until the minigame in Donkey Kong 64 did I finally sit down and beat the original DK, and that was much harder since they only give you one life. And I had more fun playing the DK mini game than I did playing the N64 game. I love seeing the retro Atari 2600 with the 30 or so games pre-loaded, I haven't gotten one yet, but it did make me dig out my old system and hook it up again. Raiders of the Lost Ark anyone?
I don't really think Zune will stand up to the iPod for a few generations of the device, even if that. But lets pretend that they do come out with a competitive alternative...will it create a price war between MS and Apple? Judging from the pricing of PC's vs Macs I'd say no, it might be a $50-100 drop in prices but there is something about the iPod, call it social acceptance or prestige of owning one, its kind of a status symbol to own an iPod. Unless Zune can get to that level as whatever you want to call it they won't be much of a competitor. Just look at how many other MP3 players are out on the market, but the first one anyone will mention is always the iPod.
When I canceled cable and satellite tv, gym memberships, and cell phones in the past I've told the companies that I'm being relocated for work. In the past, many of the companies have a clause that say if you are moving out of the local service area your contract can be terminated without penalties. I don't know if that is still the case but it worked for me in the past.
I've been hearing since 2004 that IBM was going to buy Novell, which the rumor spread faster after Novell purchased SUSE and partnered with IBM and started co-branding some Linux training packages. The rumors took off again in 2006 at Brainshare where most of the signs around the conference were white and blue rather than the red and white that is typical of the host's branding colors. Looks like they missed out and MS swallowed their soul instead.
I must have played at a different skill level as you because I don't remember a smart AI at all. I'd be in a jungle level and fire a loud weapon to kill one enemy, nobody else visible on my radar, do a wide circle around where I left the guy, but somehow every soldier would seem to casually walk right to my location, no matter how far apart kills were, loud or quiet weapons, or distance I'd move in-between kills.
I know exactly why these students are settling. Back in the days where hacking satellite tv was the craze and the lawsuits came out I was ending college and purchased a smart card reader from what ended up being a flagged website and received one of their settlement notices. Well when you are a college student trying to get out in the workforce, you don't want a background check to uncover that you are in a lawsuit. After a couple of months trying to explain that I'm an IT guy and was tinkering with the smart card technologies as something to learn, I got fed up with the run around and settled. Biggest mistake I made. If I could go back I would because they didn't have a case, but just because I was job hunting out of college and didn't want anything questionable on my record I gave in and paid up. And yes, I did attempt to get free channels, but never was successful.
It's sounding more and more like the world of V for Vendetta is going to be here before we realize it. Time to break out your Guy Fawkes mask and black cape.