Nothing like a little economic reality to get a bunch of Slashdotters up in arms, and to prove once again why "geek culture" has become the elitist shithole that I've tried so hard to avoid dealing with for the past few years. So many posts decrying the audacity of the author to suggest that a programmer's skills are less important than those of a project manager.
Look, I've done some coding. I started with VB, continued on to Java, tinkered with some C++, and hacked on Perl. I wouldn't call myself a "programmer," per se, but I have done a fair bit of coding, sometimes as part of my job as a systems administrator for a small company. And you know what? My degree is in English. I never took a single computer science course in school -- I'm entirely self-taught. The simple fact of the matter is that coding is NOT the difficult nonrepeatable skill that so many programmers think it is. Once you understand logical structure, it's little more than a matter of memorization.
You want proof? Think about it: How many competent programmers do you know vs. how many competent managers? Anyone who's read the rest of the drivel in response to this article can plainly see that the programmers aren't the ones in short supply. And yet so many programmers assume that managers are unskilled, talentless boobs whose value is inflated. It's no different from a construction worker who thinks that the architect is overvalued because he can't drive a forklift.
The Geek Elite has been given a hard wake-up call and they still refuse to admit to themselves that all the hype five years ago surrounding their skills was just that -- hype. Programmers aren't being outsourced because management is grasping at straws to find a way to prove its superiority. They're being outsourced because they are easily replaced by cheaper labor with similar skills.
Believe me, I understand. As a systems and network admin, I once overestimated my own value as well, thinking that my skills were important enough to warrant respect from my superiors -- until I realized that my job was still to do what I was told, like anyone else, and that I was little more than a plumber or appliance repairman. The sooner everyone finds a little humility and admits to themselves that their computer science degrees and taste for cheap sci-fi don't make them better than their peers, the sooner they can get on with improving their skill sets and finding a way to combat the economic difficulties we are currently facing.
1. If you think it's cool now, wait until it gets embedded into the latest spread-by-Outlook email virus that's bringing the internet to its knees.
2. Didn't anybody here see Grosse Pointe Blank? The whole thing about the main character not wanting to join the Hit Man's union that his friend is starting up? And he points out that it's the lone gunman lifestyle that he likes, that it's unnatural for the rogues to band together.
Yeah... and men make more money than women, right?
Old article, but continuing problem
on
Is Louder Better?
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· Score: 1
I read this article a year ago when it was first published. The problem is indeed still around, but it rarely affects such tech-savvy audiophile-type bands such as Rush. Vapor Trails is a good album musically, but I have to agree with Rip's assessment that the compression and limiting done to those recordings is criminal. The band members themselves have hinted in interviews that they were not particularly pleased with how the sonics turned out.
Speed be damned, I don't think this is as great a concept as some might. At best, it's cool for video editing workstations who really need that kind of speed. But if I was going to pay more for a high-end disk, I'd go whole hog and pay for SCSI and reap the benefits of far greater reliability. To me, that's far more important than speed or price.
I beg to differ. Manga is no deeper than American comics - catgirls with huge chests and people who change gender when water is splashed on them do not high literature make.
Sure, there are gems, but there are gems in American comics as well. Pick up any run of Cerebus: The Aardvark and you'll find intelligent criticism of politics, religion, or gender issues, mixed with a fair dose of wit and humor. Even the superhero books have done their share of groundbreaking - Superman has become an icon of justice. Spider-Man is possibly the only hero I can think of who never compromised his central ideal of personal responsibility. The X-Men have paralleled race relations in society since their inception.
People forget these things because they get bored with them. So they find something else for a while. Manga doesn't differ from American comics all that much, conceptually. The real difference is style. As such, I'm inclined to say that the fascination with these things is something of a fad. It may never die out, but it will peak, fall, and plateau, as all things in pop culture do.
I find it amusing that the title of the post is "why does Manga succeed where American comics fail," and yet the first answer to the first question in the article basically states that the manga industry is falling into decline in exactly the same way that the U.S. comics industry has.
It's simple, really. Manga is no different from American comics, in terms of writing quality and artwork. It's simply a matter of what's in style. Manga, like Anime, has enjoyed quite a lot of success in foreign markets like the U.S., where it is something of a novelty.
People enjoy the exotic flavor of things like this. Often times this is augmented by feeling like you're in part of a niche audience - it makes you feel like you're clued into something that everybody else is ignorant of. But these are not good foundations for any business that desires longevity and stability.
Manga is just the hip new thing, that's all. It's what's in style. But it is already starting to wear thin (Let's face it - there's only so far you can take an industry when everything is drawn with so little variance in art style). So I think this is a loaded question - manga has nothing to teach American comics. If anything, American comics have learned the hard lessons first, having had a lot more experience dealing with a fickle readership. I think they could probably teach the manga industry a lesson or two.
MPlayer has been referred to as "The Project From Hell" with good reason. This story is just the latest in a long history of less-than-professional behavior from the project's authors. I find it quite humorous that MPlayer's authors accuse everyone under the sun of violating the GPL when their own code is suspect.
MPlayer might play every format, but the software is not particularly intuitive for someone who just wants to play the occasional video clip, the authors see fit to throw public temper tantrums on the project's website, and their support has garnished a lackluster reputation due to the attitude of the authors toward the uninitiated.
The simple answer to the question of why Xine gets more respect from major distributions is that Xine's authors conduct themselves with a far more professional attitude. Remember the MPlayer/Red Hat spat? MPlayer's authors refused to even deal with anyone using Red Hat 7.x because they claimed the compiler that shipped with Red Hat was buggy and problematic, when in fact it was their own code that was not up to the level of C compliance that the compiler required.
You attract more flies with honey. As it is, I don't even bother with MPlayer. Xine, coupled with the gXine frontend, makes a fantastic video player as far as I'm concerned, and it's far more intuitive. I'll take a friendly project over a back-biting one any day.
I have to agree with this - make the transfer as soon as possible. My company has 13 domains registered, and I recently transferred every single one of them away from Network Solutions. Not only did Network Solutions not offer the services I wanted (such as being able to use a web-based interface to set up DNS entries on their own servers, a service that eNom.com offers for FREE), but their support was horrendous.
I have found that their customer support department is set up entirely under the presumption that Network Solutions has not made any mistakes, and that the user simply needs help. That's fine when the user doesn't know how to do something, but it means that when Network Solutions screws up (and they can and do screw up BIG), nothing can be done by anyone that you are able to contact. The support staff isn't unwilling to help - they simply don't have the authority, or even the ability to fix things. All they can do is answer your questions.
Case in point: Most registrars offer a service whereby you can electronically transfer a domain to another registrar. You tell the new registrar what you want to transfer, they make the request to the old registrar, and the old registrar emails the owner of the domain (you) with detail on how to authorize the transaction, along with a tracking number for the order so you can call support if need be.
The problem with it is that it doesn't work correctly. Every time I've used this, Network Solutions entirely refuses to even acknowledge that the request has been made. I get no mail about it, not even the tracking number, which makes things even worse because the Network Solutions support staff can't even find your request in their system without it. This is not something you want to do in a rush. I've had to do this at least twice for every single domain I've tried to transfer. Eventually, it takes, but their system is broken, they refuse to believe it, and the only people you can talk to are too low on the food chain to do anything about it. I have dealt with telemarketers, businesses, angry customers, you name it - but the only time I ever yelled at someone over the phone was when I had to deal with Network Solutions. They are an abysmal excuse for a company.
What's worse, when I tried to transfer a domain at the end of its registration period, a Network Solutions support staffer told me that you have to request the transfer at least 30 days before the domain expires. Couldn't explain why that's necessary. A higher-up the next day said that wasn't necessarily true, but it *is* company policy, so beware!
Ugh, and now I have yet another domain that needs transferring from that bureaucratic monster.
Alternatives are eNom.com, which has lousy support but fantastic user control and features - Their support is slow at best, but I've almost never needed it. There is also gkg.net, which is said to have the best customer support, though I've found them to be light on features.
I second that emotion, man... This is EXACTLY the problem I've had with the Linux AND Slashdot communities, ever since I first came into contact with them. It's this type of half-cocked knee-jerk reactionary response that is keeping major software companies from supporting Linux in the fashion that would allow it to be used by a much larger consumer base. Not to mention the fact that it makes Linux supporters look like a pack of rabid, mindless fanatics. ID Software is one of the most prominent software companies to support Linux. And I see people here calling them the 'new evil empire'... What a bunch of losers. If this is the way you treat your partners, screw it - I'll stick with Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing like a little economic reality to get a bunch of Slashdotters up in arms, and to prove once again why "geek culture" has become the elitist shithole that I've tried so hard to avoid dealing with for the past few years. So many posts decrying the audacity of the author to suggest that a programmer's skills are less important than those of a project manager.
Look, I've done some coding. I started with VB, continued on to Java, tinkered with some C++, and hacked on Perl. I wouldn't call myself a "programmer," per se, but I have done a fair bit of coding, sometimes as part of my job as a systems administrator for a small company. And you know what? My degree is in English. I never took a single computer science course in school -- I'm entirely self-taught. The simple fact of the matter is that coding is NOT the difficult nonrepeatable skill that so many programmers think it is. Once you understand logical structure, it's little more than a matter of memorization.
You want proof? Think about it: How many competent programmers do you know vs. how many competent managers? Anyone who's read the rest of the drivel in response to this article can plainly see that the programmers aren't the ones in short supply. And yet so many programmers assume that managers are unskilled, talentless boobs whose value is inflated. It's no different from a construction worker who thinks that the architect is overvalued because he can't drive a forklift.
The Geek Elite has been given a hard wake-up call and they still refuse to admit to themselves that all the hype five years ago surrounding their skills was just that -- hype. Programmers aren't being outsourced because management is grasping at straws to find a way to prove its superiority. They're being outsourced because they are easily replaced by cheaper labor with similar skills.
Believe me, I understand. As a systems and network admin, I once overestimated my own value as well, thinking that my skills were important enough to warrant respect from my superiors -- until I realized that my job was still to do what I was told, like anyone else, and that I was little more than a plumber or appliance repairman. The sooner everyone finds a little humility and admits to themselves that their computer science degrees and taste for cheap sci-fi don't make them better than their peers, the sooner they can get on with improving their skill sets and finding a way to combat the economic difficulties we are currently facing.
For two reasons:
1. If you think it's cool now, wait until it gets embedded into the latest spread-by-Outlook email virus that's bringing the internet to its knees.
2. Didn't anybody here see Grosse Pointe Blank? The whole thing about the main character not wanting to join the Hit Man's union that his friend is starting up? And he points out that it's the lone gunman lifestyle that he likes, that it's unnatural for the rogues to band together.
Seriously, this is just silly.
Yeah... and men make more money than women, right?
I read this article a year ago when it was first published. The problem is indeed still around, but it rarely affects such tech-savvy audiophile-type bands such as Rush. Vapor Trails is a good album musically, but I have to agree with Rip's assessment that the compression and limiting done to those recordings is criminal. The band members themselves have hinted in interviews that they were not particularly pleased with how the sonics turned out.
Speed be damned, I don't think this is as great a concept as some might. At best, it's cool for video editing workstations who really need that kind of speed. But if I was going to pay more for a high-end disk, I'd go whole hog and pay for SCSI and reap the benefits of far greater reliability. To me, that's far more important than speed or price.
I beg to differ. Manga is no deeper than American comics - catgirls with huge chests and people who change gender when water is splashed on them do not high literature make.
Sure, there are gems, but there are gems in American comics as well. Pick up any run of Cerebus: The Aardvark and you'll find intelligent criticism of politics, religion, or gender issues, mixed with a fair dose of wit and humor. Even the superhero books have done their share of groundbreaking - Superman has become an icon of justice. Spider-Man is possibly the only hero I can think of who never compromised his central ideal of personal responsibility. The X-Men have paralleled race relations in society since their inception.
People forget these things because they get bored with them. So they find something else for a while. Manga doesn't differ from American comics all that much, conceptually. The real difference is style. As such, I'm inclined to say that the fascination with these things is something of a fad. It may never die out, but it will peak, fall, and plateau, as all things in pop culture do.
I find it amusing that the title of the post is "why does Manga succeed where American comics fail," and yet the first answer to the first question in the article basically states that the manga industry is falling into decline in exactly the same way that the U.S. comics industry has.
It's simple, really. Manga is no different from American comics, in terms of writing quality and artwork. It's simply a matter of what's in style. Manga, like Anime, has enjoyed quite a lot of success in foreign markets like the U.S., where it is something of a novelty.
People enjoy the exotic flavor of things like this. Often times this is augmented by feeling like you're in part of a niche audience - it makes you feel like you're clued into something that everybody else is ignorant of. But these are not good foundations for any business that desires longevity and stability.
Manga is just the hip new thing, that's all. It's what's in style. But it is already starting to wear thin (Let's face it - there's only so far you can take an industry when everything is drawn with so little variance in art style). So I think this is a loaded question - manga has nothing to teach American comics. If anything, American comics have learned the hard lessons first, having had a lot more experience dealing with a fickle readership. I think they could probably teach the manga industry a lesson or two.
MPlayer has been referred to as "The Project From Hell" with good reason. This story is just the latest in a long history of less-than-professional behavior from the project's authors. I find it quite humorous that MPlayer's authors accuse everyone under the sun of violating the GPL when their own code is suspect.
MPlayer might play every format, but the software is not particularly intuitive for someone who just wants to play the occasional video clip, the authors see fit to throw public temper tantrums on the project's website, and their support has garnished a lackluster reputation due to the attitude of the authors toward the uninitiated.
The simple answer to the question of why Xine gets more respect from major distributions is that Xine's authors conduct themselves with a far more professional attitude. Remember the MPlayer/Red Hat spat? MPlayer's authors refused to even deal with anyone using Red Hat 7.x because they claimed the compiler that shipped with Red Hat was buggy and problematic, when in fact it was their own code that was not up to the level of C compliance that the compiler required.
You attract more flies with honey. As it is, I don't even bother with MPlayer. Xine, coupled with the gXine frontend, makes a fantastic video player as far as I'm concerned, and it's far more intuitive. I'll take a friendly project over a back-biting one any day.
I have to agree with this - make the transfer as soon as possible. My company has 13 domains registered, and I recently transferred every single one of them away from Network Solutions. Not only did Network Solutions not offer the services I wanted (such as being able to use a web-based interface to set up DNS entries on their own servers, a service that eNom.com offers for FREE), but their support was horrendous.
I have found that their customer support department is set up entirely under the presumption that Network Solutions has not made any mistakes, and that the user simply needs help. That's fine when the user doesn't know how to do something, but it means that when Network Solutions screws up (and they can and do screw up BIG), nothing can be done by anyone that you are able to contact. The support staff isn't unwilling to help - they simply don't have the authority, or even the ability to fix things. All they can do is answer your questions.
Case in point: Most registrars offer a service whereby you can electronically transfer a domain to another registrar. You tell the new registrar what you want to transfer, they make the request to the old registrar, and the old registrar emails the owner of the domain (you) with detail on how to authorize the transaction, along with a tracking number for the order so you can call support if need be.
The problem with it is that it doesn't work correctly. Every time I've used this, Network Solutions entirely refuses to even acknowledge that the request has been made. I get no mail about it, not even the tracking number, which makes things even worse because the Network Solutions support staff can't even find your request in their system without it. This is not something you want to do in a rush. I've had to do this at least twice for every single domain I've tried to transfer. Eventually, it takes, but their system is broken, they refuse to believe it, and the only people you can talk to are too low on the food chain to do anything about it. I have dealt with telemarketers, businesses, angry customers, you name it - but the only time I ever yelled at someone over the phone was when I had to deal with Network Solutions. They are an abysmal excuse for a company.
What's worse, when I tried to transfer a domain at the end of its registration period, a Network Solutions support staffer told me that you have to request the transfer at least 30 days before the domain expires. Couldn't explain why that's necessary. A higher-up the next day said that wasn't necessarily true, but it *is* company policy, so beware!
Ugh, and now I have yet another domain that needs transferring from that bureaucratic monster.
Alternatives are eNom.com, which has lousy support but fantastic user control and features - Their support is slow at best, but I've almost never needed it. There is also gkg.net, which is said to have the best customer support, though I've found them to be light on features.
No, that's a standard assload. A metric assload would be 1.016 times your standard assload, or in this case, 7.27 libraries of congress.
I second that emotion, man... This is EXACTLY the problem I've had with the Linux AND Slashdot communities, ever since I first came into contact with them. It's this type of half-cocked knee-jerk reactionary response that is keeping major software companies from supporting Linux in the fashion that would allow it to be used by a much larger consumer base. Not to mention the fact that it makes Linux supporters look like a pack of rabid, mindless fanatics. ID Software is one of the most prominent software companies to support Linux. And I see people here calling them the 'new evil empire'... What a bunch of losers. If this is the way you treat your partners, screw it - I'll stick with Windows.