I know a lot of people who are pretty pissed that they paid MS lot of money for "guaranteed" upgrades but the major new products didn't come out until AFTER their subscription had expired. It was a total waste of money.
The last step of letting a vendor manage a sandbox on your hard drive is not far away. One could argue that file sharing/torrent models already do this hands-off.
Uh, what? What in the world does file sharing/torrent models have to do with vendor's managed a "sandbox" on your harddrive? What does that even MEAN?
In the end, companies just want their employees to have an appliance for productivity -
It isn't the users that need freedom, it is the companies. Each company is unique and runs a unique set of apps. Having one vendor supply it all just makes vendor lockin/monoculture all the more worse and leaves no room for orgianizations to adapt to changing needs or migrate to alternative products.
1) Patches. MS releases patches for Windows and everything associated with it, and tests those patches to make sure they work. If an incompatibility is found (it's rare one survives the initial testing) it gets fixed. Now of course there is OSS that does that, but there's no guarantee. With MS it's not really a question of if the software will be patched during it's supported life. Same deal with supported OSS software like RHEL. Sure, Fedora also does patches, but they aren't tested like the RHEL ones are, and if the developers of the component don't release a patch, they aren't likely to patch it for them.
Don't forget about user supplied patches. Even if an OSS vendor doesn't supply an official patch, i've often been able to find a user supplied patch for problems. The fact that comercial vendors "test" their patches is a red herring. I don't care if they've tested a patch to make sure it works for everyone in every situation. I just care that it works for *me*. Why should I wait for vendor to "test" the patch? If I hit a project/server stopping bug, I don't have time to wait for them to officially release it, or worse, wait for them to include it in a service pack. I want it now.
Sometimes vendors take their sweet time fixing a problem. I'm currently in this situation with Retrospect backup. There is a bug that only a couple people are experienceing and EMC is totally dragging their feet on providing a patch. I've been waiting MONTHS for a fix. My backups are incomplete on one server. If it were open source, I would dig through the source and fix the damn bug (or at least work around it) myself!
2) The knowledge base. MS has a massive knowledge base that is really very good. I use it all the time at work. When a Windows system bluescreens do I start a debugger? Hell no, I'm not a programmer. I write down the details and look it up in the knowledge base. The answers tend to be just want I needed. If some weird problems comes up, again I go looking in the knowledge base. It is a central, easy to search, repository of solutions tested by MS themselves. You don't get that with a no-charge OSS product. Sure there are news group posts, and IRC logs and such out there but man, tracking down the answer can be hell, if anyone has found an answer at all.
While I haven't dealt much with the Microsoft knowledge base, I have used the Novell knowledge base quite extensively and have had a similarly positive experience. I also use a LOT of OSS and while the information isn't cnetralized, I have about about the same success rate at finding solutions to my problems. All in all, I would say that I "enjoy" dealing with OSS problems more than dealing with Novell/Microsoft problem. The reason is simple: transparency. Access to the code has saved my ass more than once. And when I find an OSS solution, more often than not, I *understand* what went wrong. Where with Microsoft, the solution is often just "apply this patch" or "click this check box" or "replace this DLL" with not much help regarding what is really going on.
3) Vendor support. When a vendor sells you a system with Windows, they are guaranteeing hardware support (at least if they aren't shady). When Gateway sells me a rackmount server with Windows installed, I know that it will be working, and I know that it will have drivers for all it's hardware. However when I try and install FC4 on it, maybe it doesn't work. In fact what does happen is it kernel panics on install (we still have never figured out why). Should it not work, I can call them and get it fixed, if it's a Windows problem they'll call MS and get it fixed. You can get the same thing with Linux, but only buying a system with a supported Linux distro on it, which is usually an enterprise Linux.
This rarely happens to me. For one thing, I usually base my server purchase decisions on what is known to be supported well. I don't just take any random server and expec
Perhaps it could be the MMOG version of the Web - worlds with links (portals) to other worlds ?
"The web" was kind of what I was thinking. I think we're talking about a "game" in a very loose sense of the term.
Owning the server doesn't necessarily equate to "power" unless you are worried about cheating.
It does - you can force a locally running program to do whatever you want, or, using Real Ultimate Power, remove the plug from the wall.
So you move to another server with a maintainer that you like. Isn't that what the p2p design would probably amount to anyway? You'd just spend all your time in whatever subworld (peer) you liked best... only it wouldn't always be online when you wanted to visit. It would pop in and out of existence at the whim of the user! At least a dedicated server is likely to be online 24/7.
Well, if you can get the underlaying technology layer working well, then what's stopping you from designing your own ? Or joining an existing world and making your corner of it work differently ? That's one of the reasons I'm so interested in p2p-MMOG. It would reduce the barrier of entry significantly by removing the need to run a server.
But finding a server to host your game is not the barrier to writing a free MMOG. Look at any current FOSS multiplayer game out there. They have servers. What they often don't have are good artwork, balanced game mechanics, and overall polish. The hard part is actualy developing the game. Trying to make it work peer to peer adds yet another layer of complexity that I don't think your average open source project can handle without taking away from the three things they are already lacking.
But if the game is open source, anyone can start a free server. Anyone who dared charge for the game would quickly see people leaving for the free servers that are out there.
You do realize that this is a good thing for the players, right ?
Indeed it is. That is why I'm not worried about an open source game server demanding money. If an open source multiplayer game is any good, and people are interested in it, there will be plenty of free servers to choose from. It is really a non-issue.
Free hosting that scales to thousands or tens of thousands of players
Show me a free, open source game that is good enough to attract tens of thousands of simutaneous users, and I'll consider the idea of making it run p2p.
and doesn't pull the plug when someone finds their kid engaged in cybersex in-game ? I don't think so.
Oh please. When does this happen? You are totally making up "barriers" that don't exist and ignoring the real barriers to making a good FOSS game.
Don't get me wrong, I think that a peer to peer game would be neat but only as a academic excercise. I don't really think there is much of a need for it. It would hardly be a "game" at all. It would be more like the web with isolated "sites" that pop in and out of existence.
If you don't care about making the gameworld a single space, you could even work such events into the game plotline - maybe the universe collapsed, and the cells are the remaining splinters, connected loosely to each other with ever-changing connections and popping in and out of existence randomly ? The players would then try to survive in this post-apocalyptic multiverse.
Ok, if the game plot/mechanics were specifically taylored to the nature of peer to peer networks, I imagine it could work. But given the limitations, you'd have a very specific type of game. What I think you would end up with is only a very loosely connected group of worlds rather than cells within a single, coherent game.
At some point you are going to need a dedicated "tracker." And you might as well just make that the game server. And if that server can't handle the whole game world, then you add another and have them control cells.
That costs money, so you'll have to make it somehow.
Plenty of games manage to find servers to host games for free. Even open source games. I could host one where I work if I really wanted to. I've hosted free MUDs before.
It also means that you have all the power in the game (since you control the server on which everything depends), so no other user has any.
Owning the server doesn't necessarily equate to "power" unless you are worried about cheating. But I thought you said cheating wasn't a consideration. If you mean "power" in the sense of low ping times, then you have the same issue with peer to peer. The "owner" of a cell always has the best ping time.
It solved some technical issues, but added a lot of social ones. Basically, only large corporations can run MMOG servers, but nearly anyone can run a Gnutella client. I want to see a MMOG that does not depend on any such authority, but only from its players.
I would like to see a free MMOG idea that was even worth such an effort to design as p2p.
But nothing says that modern massively multiplayer gaming needs to stay incompatible with the concept. Or that this thing has anything to do with modern MMORPGs - my interest is seeing if such a thing could be done as Free Open Source and without the need of central server (which always means that someone has final control over the game, and likely monthly fees as well).
But if the game is open source, anyone can start a free server. Anyone who dared charge for the game would quickly see people leaving for the free servers that are out there. There would have to be some technical requirement driving the P2P design. I don't see any real "social" barriers. Free hosting is not really that hard to find.
You still need to specify behavior for when parts of gameworld crash, for example.
Oh, gee, is that all? Seems to me that that is the difficult part. Not only do clients crash, but also disconnect, reconnect, etc. Any game with lots of players has clients connecting and disconnecting all the time. You're going to spend all your time repartitioning and synchronizing the game world. Not to mention all the game data that will be lost when a cell disappears leaving any player in it in limbo. At some point you are going to need a dedicated "tracker." And you might as well just make that the game server. And if that server can't handle the whole game world, then you add another and have them control cells. Having centralized game servers actually SOLVED the problems with peer to peer gaming... not the other way around.
And to make things worse, you are not guaranteed information in any particular order. Your client performance would only be as good as your weakest peer link. A peer to peer game would be quite unscalable beyond 2 or maybe 3 clients.
Like I hope I showed, this is purely a design issue, not a fundamental property of P2P networks.
You're right. You'd have to at least partition the game world. But as I hope I showed, there are fundamental problem with P2P networks that make it totally unsuitable for modern massively multiplayer gaming.
I didn't get any impression that the grand parent was trying to be the "moral arbiter" of anything. When he said it is "dangerous" to discuss violence in video games, he was saying that we need to be careful not to equate the two forms of violence (abstract and real). Not that the actual discussion is dangerous.
You totally overreacted... probably because you play too many violent video games.;-)
Games are supposed to be a way to virtually get out frustrations that are illegal and wrong to do in real life. If you aren't capable of making the distinction between fantasy and real life, and if your fantasies involve killing people or whatever, then violent games are NOT FOR YOU!
I think it is more complicated than than. Running your brain over violent situations repeatedly will strengthen those neuropathways. Even if you do make a conscious distinction between fantasy and rea life, you still have those patterns influencing how you act on an unconscious level. No, playing a violent game isn't going to cause people to go on a shooting spree, but it could have more subtle effects such as making you more aggressive or defensive or intolerant.
I think it is even worse if you are using violent games to act out real world frustrations. Not only do you have the violent patterns fresh in your brain, they are also associated with frustration and negative feelings. So when emotions heat up in real life and rational control loosens its hold on behavior, you are much more likely to act out "fantasy."
I have had similar thoughts myself. It should be possible to get it working as a peer to peer system and it occurs to me that the network topology would be similar in some ways to bittorrent. If you have open protocols you could ensure interoperability however there would be no guarantee about the behavior of an open source client. Centralised systems (WoW, etc) have DRM in some form to ensure that the players play by the rules.
"DRM?" Are you f'n serious? A server that enforces certain game mechanics is not DRM in any way shape or form. You sound like a politician refering to hacking as "terrorism."
And a peer to peer game like that would not work. Note that with bittorrent you don't have a connection to every other person in the swarm, which would be required to synchronize game data. And to make things worse, you are not guaranteed information in any particular order. Your client performance would only be as good as your weakest peer link. A peer to peer game would be quite unscalable beyond 2 or maybe 3 clients.
I agree. Don't monitor/censor by default. Trust your kids. When you lose trust in your kids, they lose trust in you. Like you said, talk to them. Make them tell you waht they are doing and where they are going. Sure, they are going to lie to you every now and then. Call them on it when it happens, but continue to trust.
The exception would be that extreme case where you have good reason to suspect that the child is already getting into big trouble. Like with law enforcement, you should have probable cause.
Of course most folks who are actually working in IT could have told you this. I know a number of folks at companies who experienced several rounds of layoffs. They have survived the layoffs, but they are also currently doing the job of two to three employees now versus prior to the layoffs.
Makes sense. Several years ago companies were hiring any certified idiot because that is all they could find. Now it is time to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.
Morale is low,
Well yeah, nobody likes to see people get fired.
pay has not kept up with the cost of living increases, the cost of health care or inflation.
Again, makes sense. IT workers are traditionally overpaid. Reality is setting in.
Productivity is still there,
And that is what matters.
but burnout is likely in these individuals.
Or maybe they'll find ways to reduce the overall amount of work through better practices and technologies. Work smarter, not harder.;-)
Other people I know that did lose their jobs ended up going back to school and getting out of IT entirely which I suspect is not an isolated situation and would lead to skewed unemployment statistics.
Several years ago, everyone and their mother wanted to be in IT. I could have predicted all this. It has very little to do with globalization.
I'm sure this has a lot to do with it. I remember back in the 90's when everyone and their mother wanted to get in on the IT bandwagon and make the big bucks. All people had to do was get some half-assed certification and they could get a job. So the market was oversaturated with overpaid mouse jockeys. I quote the First Post:
"I know a number of folks at companies who experienced several rounds of layoffs. They have survived the layoffs, but they are also currently doing the job of two to three employees now versus prior to the layoffs"
Maybe the job only required 1 person in the first place. I can't tell you how many companies I've walked into (as an IT consultant) who had 2 or 3 overpaied monkeys doing the job of one talented human . Ok, maybe you can't always find a "talented" person to do the job of 2 or 3, but why overpay them? A Windows desktop support guy does not deserve $40k+ per year. And guess what? Companies are finally figuring it out!
I'm curious if many of the competent, professional I.T. people are really losing their jobs.
It depends on where you set the bar of course, but not very many in my estimation. Talented, competent IT professionals are in high demand because they are hard to find. I certainly have not found it difficult to find a job in IT. I moved to a new US city a year ago and had a job after sending out only 3 resumes. YMMV.
I must admit, though, that programmers do have some pretty stiff global competition due to the mobility of the job.
How are you gonna do that? Threaten to invade any country that takes service contracts with US coporations? Come on. Offshoring is inevitable in a globalized economy. It is Karma, if you think about it. For so long the West has made poor countries do the real dirty manual labor in exchange for peanuts. It was only a matter of time before some of them saved up enough peanuts to get a half-way decent education which would enable them to take a good portion of the more offshorable jobs away from half-way educated Americans... for only a little more than peanuts.
The only way to fight offshoring is to make the average American worker more valuable. But even then, there is only so valuable you can make a help-desk/phone support person, for example. We're just going to have to accept that some jobs can go anywhere. And if they can, they will.
So your answer to periodically updated DVDs is to not buy your favorite movie on DVD at all? Oh yeah, you show 'em! Don't you think that you might be the only one hurt by this?
What extra features could possibly matter that much anyway?
Ripple effect is fine. I just don't want to see a butterfly effect. One person pirates, and the next thing you know we have a chimpanzee for president and our rights are being eroded every day... Oh damn.
I did mate, Dept of Philosophy courses in Rationalisation, Logic and Reasoning formed part of my degree at first and second year level. I used logic in a general lay sense, not in a formal declarative sense, you are correct that rationalisation would be a better term.
The thing about rationalisation is that it doesn't consistently come to the same conclusion. Everyone rationalizes. And everyone comes to their own conclusions.
I'm also not saying that either stance is correct, nor better, simply that many of us here at/. will have this view as/.'ers tend to be more rational, "colder" if you like than the general populace, and as such, having children typically has less appeal.
You are saying that it is "rational" to not want children, which is ridiculous. If you don't want children, you will find some way to rationalize that. If you want them, then you will rationalize that. Do NOT confuse the rationalization with the reasons or causes. There are reasons (which we may or may not be aware of) for why we desire or don't desire something... and then there is the rationalization we us justify those desires or lack thereof. They are not the same thing.
I quite like using OS X, but I have been very disappointed with its performance, even on relatively fast machines like my mum's G5 iMac, dual-processor G5 PowerMacs and Core Duo Minis (although my Mini is memory constrained with only 512MB). On my 1Ghz/768MB iBook, it's frustratingly slow to use more than one app at a time (and even the one can get chunky).
Wow, I have a 1Ghz G4 eMac w/ 1GB RAM here at work and I have several applications running* as we speak and this system is just fine. I have a similar machine at home and I am having a difficult time justififying an upgrade to a new Intel Mac. I'll probably wait for the next generation. I mean, compiling programs and such could be a lot faster, but for the most part everything runs smoothly. Granted, I'm not doing Photoshop or video editing, but I do do some software (both web and desktop) development. I actually find it is s helpful to develop on a slower machine. That way performance bottlenecks stand out more prominently and there is more incentive to fix them.;-)
-matthew
* Running as in "open." Not necessarily chugging away.
Wow, that is awesome, man. Well, except for the form letters. That seems kind of tacky. But if it gives you a oppportunity to see the world, more power to you. BTW, did you have to learn a new language? Well, not that a new language would be a bad thing, but it would certainly be a complication to moving to another country.
Perhaps because results varied with where he was looking? You know, what he said in the content of his comment?
But he is a variable himself. He assumes that he should hold the same appeal to women, and therefore draw the same quality of replies, no matter where he goes. He might be attractive to Houston women, but in Iowa things might be different. Maybe women tend to shy away from guys who have only recently moved. Maybe they prefer the perceived financial/social security of a person who knows their way around. There could be many variables at work.
Note that he was basing his observation on the quality/quanitity of REPLIES he got... not necessarily the quality of the people he was trying to get replies from. Like i said, if I moved from one place to another and found that none of hte hot chicks were talking to me, I might wonder if I am just relatively less attractive in the new location. I wouldn't just rant about how all the women that want to talk to me are ugly trolls.
You either want children or you don't. What you are calling "logic" is nothing more than rationalizatizing of existing desires. If you want to learn about logic, take a formal logic course or two.
Slashdot Mirror
I know a lot of people who are pretty pissed that they paid MS lot of money for "guaranteed" upgrades but the major new products didn't come out until AFTER their subscription had expired. It was a total waste of money.
--matthew
In case you hadn't noticed this is locally installed software.
Nothing revolutionary about software phoning home to validate a key.
As opposed to what, floppy disks? Nothing new here. Been downloading updates via FTP since I first got on the internet 11 years ago.
You have a strange idea of what "everything" is.
Uh, what? What in the world does file sharing/torrent models have to do with vendor's managed a "sandbox" on your harddrive? What does that even MEAN?
It isn't the users that need freedom, it is the companies. Each company is unique and runs a unique set of apps. Having one vendor supply it all just makes vendor lockin/monoculture all the more worse and leaves no room for orgianizations to adapt to changing needs or migrate to alternative products.
-matthew
Don't forget about user supplied patches. Even if an OSS vendor doesn't supply an official patch, i've often been able to find a user supplied patch for problems. The fact that comercial vendors "test" their patches is a red herring. I don't care if they've tested a patch to make sure it works for everyone in every situation. I just care that it works for *me*. Why should I wait for vendor to "test" the patch? If I hit a project/server stopping bug, I don't have time to wait for them to officially release it, or worse, wait for them to include it in a service pack. I want it now.
Sometimes vendors take their sweet time fixing a problem. I'm currently in this situation with Retrospect backup. There is a bug that only a couple people are experienceing and EMC is totally dragging their feet on providing a patch. I've been waiting MONTHS for a fix. My backups are incomplete on one server. If it were open source, I would dig through the source and fix the damn bug (or at least work around it) myself!
While I haven't dealt much with the Microsoft knowledge base, I have used the Novell knowledge base quite extensively and have had a similarly positive experience. I also use a LOT of OSS and while the information isn't cnetralized, I have about about the same success rate at finding solutions to my problems. All in all, I would say that I "enjoy" dealing with OSS problems more than dealing with Novell/Microsoft problem. The reason is simple: transparency. Access to the code has saved my ass more than once. And when I find an OSS solution, more often than not, I *understand* what went wrong. Where with Microsoft, the solution is often just "apply this patch" or "click this check box" or "replace this DLL" with not much help regarding what is really going on.
This rarely happens to me. For one thing, I usually base my server purchase decisions on what is known to be supported well. I don't just take any random server and expec
"The web" was kind of what I was thinking. I think we're talking about a "game" in a very loose sense of the term.
So you move to another server with a maintainer that you like. Isn't that what the p2p design would probably amount to anyway? You'd just spend all your time in whatever subworld (peer) you liked best... only it wouldn't always be online when you wanted to visit. It would pop in and out of existence at the whim of the user! At least a dedicated server is likely to be online 24/7.
But finding a server to host your game is not the barrier to writing a free MMOG. Look at any current FOSS multiplayer game out there. They have servers. What they often don't have are good artwork, balanced game mechanics, and overall polish. The hard part is actualy developing the game. Trying to make it work peer to peer adds yet another layer of complexity that I don't think your average open source project can handle without taking away from the three things they are already lacking.
Indeed it is. That is why I'm not worried about an open source game server demanding money. If an open source multiplayer game is any good, and people are interested in it, there will be plenty of free servers to choose from. It is really a non-issue.
Show me a free, open source game that is good enough to attract tens of thousands of simutaneous users, and I'll consider the idea of making it run p2p.
Oh please. When does this happen? You are totally making up "barriers" that don't exist and ignoring the real barriers to making a good FOSS game.
Don't get me wrong, I think that a peer to peer game would be neat but only as a academic excercise. I don't really think there is much of a need for it. It would hardly be a "game" at all. It would be more like the web with isolated "sites" that pop in and out of existence.
-matthew
That's why we have the concept of "necessary evil"
-matthew
Ok, if the game plot/mechanics were specifically taylored to the nature of peer to peer networks, I imagine it could work. But given the limitations, you'd have a very specific type of game. What I think you would end up with is only a very loosely connected group of worlds rather than cells within a single, coherent game.
Plenty of games manage to find servers to host games for free. Even open source games. I could host one where I work if I really wanted to. I've hosted free MUDs before.
Owning the server doesn't necessarily equate to "power" unless you are worried about cheating. But I thought you said cheating wasn't a consideration. If you mean "power" in the sense of low ping times, then you have the same issue with peer to peer. The "owner" of a cell always has the best ping time.
I would like to see a free MMOG idea that was even worth such an effort to design as p2p.
But if the game is open source, anyone can start a free server. Anyone who dared charge for the game would quickly see people leaving for the free servers that are out there. There would have to be some technical requirement driving the P2P design. I don't see any real "social" barriers. Free hosting is not really that hard to find.
-matthew
Oh, gee, is that all? Seems to me that that is the difficult part. Not only do clients crash, but also disconnect, reconnect, etc. Any game with lots of players has clients connecting and disconnecting all the time. You're going to spend all your time repartitioning and synchronizing the game world. Not to mention all the game data that will be lost when a cell disappears leaving any player in it in limbo. At some point you are going to need a dedicated "tracker." And you might as well just make that the game server. And if that server can't handle the whole game world, then you add another and have them control cells. Having centralized game servers actually SOLVED the problems with peer to peer gaming... not the other way around.
You're right. You'd have to at least partition the game world. But as I hope I showed, there are fundamental problem with P2P networks that make it totally unsuitable for modern massively multiplayer gaming.
-matthew
I didn't get any impression that the grand parent was trying to be the "moral arbiter" of anything. When he said it is "dangerous" to discuss violence in video games, he was saying that we need to be careful not to equate the two forms of violence (abstract and real). Not that the actual discussion is dangerous.
;-)
You totally overreacted... probably because you play too many violent video games.
-matthew
Oh, the irony!
I think it is more complicated than than. Running your brain over violent situations repeatedly will strengthen those neuropathways. Even if you do make a conscious distinction between fantasy and rea life, you still have those patterns influencing how you act on an unconscious level. No, playing a violent game isn't going to cause people to go on a shooting spree, but it could have more subtle effects such as making you more aggressive or defensive or intolerant.
I think it is even worse if you are using violent games to act out real world frustrations. Not only do you have the violent patterns fresh in your brain, they are also associated with frustration and negative feelings. So when emotions heat up in real life and rational control loosens its hold on behavior, you are much more likely to act out "fantasy."
-matthew
"DRM?" Are you f'n serious? A server that enforces certain game mechanics is not DRM in any way shape or form. You sound like a politician refering to hacking as "terrorism."
And a peer to peer game like that would not work. Note that with bittorrent you don't have a connection to every other person in the swarm, which would be required to synchronize game data. And to make things worse, you are not guaranteed information in any particular order. Your client performance would only be as good as your weakest peer link. A peer to peer game would be quite unscalable beyond 2 or maybe 3 clients.
-matthew
I agree. Don't monitor/censor by default. Trust your kids. When you lose trust in your kids, they lose trust in you. Like you said, talk to them. Make them tell you waht they are doing and where they are going. Sure, they are going to lie to you every now and then. Call them on it when it happens, but continue to trust.
The exception would be that extreme case where you have good reason to suspect that the child is already getting into big trouble. Like with law enforcement, you should have probable cause.
-matthew
The MBA is the new Visual Basic certification.
-matthew
Makes sense. Several years ago companies were hiring any certified idiot because that is all they could find. Now it is time to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.
Well yeah, nobody likes to see people get fired.
Again, makes sense. IT workers are traditionally overpaid. Reality is setting in.
And that is what matters.
Or maybe they'll find ways to reduce the overall amount of work through better practices and technologies. Work smarter, not harder.
Several years ago, everyone and their mother wanted to be in IT. I could have predicted all this. It has very little to do with globalization.
-matthew
"I know a number of folks at companies who experienced several rounds of layoffs. They have survived the layoffs, but they are also currently doing the job of two to three employees now versus prior to the layoffs"
Maybe the job only required 1 person in the first place. I can't tell you how many companies I've walked into (as an IT consultant) who had 2 or 3 overpaied monkeys doing the job of one talented human . Ok, maybe you can't always find a "talented" person to do the job of 2 or 3, but why overpay them? A Windows desktop support guy does not deserve $40k+ per year. And guess what? Companies are finally figuring it out!
It depends on where you set the bar of course, but not very many in my estimation. Talented, competent IT professionals are in high demand because they are hard to find. I certainly have not found it difficult to find a job in IT. I moved to a new US city a year ago and had a job after sending out only 3 resumes. YMMV.
I must admit, though, that programmers do have some pretty stiff global competition due to the mobility of the job.
-matthew
How are you gonna do that? Threaten to invade any country that takes service contracts with US coporations? Come on. Offshoring is inevitable in a globalized economy. It is Karma, if you think about it. For so long the West has made poor countries do the real dirty manual labor in exchange for peanuts. It was only a matter of time before some of them saved up enough peanuts to get a half-way decent education which would enable them to take a good portion of the more offshorable jobs away from half-way educated Americans... for only a little more than peanuts.
The only way to fight offshoring is to make the average American worker more valuable. But even then, there is only so valuable you can make a help-desk/phone support person, for example. We're just going to have to accept that some jobs can go anywhere. And if they can, they will.
-matthew
So your answer to periodically updated DVDs is to not buy your favorite movie on DVD at all? Oh yeah, you show 'em! Don't you think that you might be the only one hurt by this?
What extra features could possibly matter that much anyway?
-matthew
Ripple effect is fine. I just don't want to see a butterfly effect. One person pirates, and the next thing you know we have a chimpanzee for president and our rights are being eroded every day... Oh damn.
-matthew
The thing about rationalisation is that it doesn't consistently come to the same conclusion. Everyone rationalizes. And everyone comes to their own conclusions.
You are saying that it is "rational" to not want children, which is ridiculous. If you don't want children, you will find some way to rationalize that. If you want them, then you will rationalize that. Do NOT confuse the rationalization with the reasons or causes. There are reasons (which we may or may not be aware of) for why we desire or don't desire something... and then there is the rationalization we us justify those desires or lack thereof. They are not the same thing.
-matthew
No case of the yellow fever, then? If I were looking for dates in Asia, it certainly wouldn't have anything to do with timezones.
-matthew
Wow, I have a 1Ghz G4 eMac w/ 1GB RAM here at work and I have several applications running* as we speak and this system is just fine. I have a similar machine at home and I am having a difficult time justififying an upgrade to a new Intel Mac. I'll probably wait for the next generation. I mean, compiling programs and such could be a lot faster, but for the most part everything runs smoothly. Granted, I'm not doing Photoshop or video editing, but I do do some software (both web and desktop) development. I actually find it is s helpful to develop on a slower machine. That way performance bottlenecks stand out more prominently and there is more incentive to fix them.
-matthew
* Running as in "open." Not necessarily chugging away.
Wow, that is awesome, man. Well, except for the form letters. That seems kind of tacky. But if it gives you a oppportunity to see the world, more power to you. BTW, did you have to learn a new language? Well, not that a new language would be a bad thing, but it would certainly be a complication to moving to another country.
-matthew
No, they just love long-distance relationships with you.
But he is a variable himself. He assumes that he should hold the same appeal to women, and therefore draw the same quality of replies, no matter where he goes. He might be attractive to Houston women, but in Iowa things might be different. Maybe women tend to shy away from guys who have only recently moved. Maybe they prefer the perceived financial/social security of a person who knows their way around. There could be many variables at work.
Note that he was basing his observation on the quality/quanitity of REPLIES he got... not necessarily the quality of the people he was trying to get replies from. Like i said, if I moved from one place to another and found that none of hte hot chicks were talking to me, I might wonder if I am just relatively less attractive in the new location. I wouldn't just rant about how all the women that want to talk to me are ugly trolls.
-matthew
You either want children or you don't. What you are calling "logic" is nothing more than rationalizatizing of existing desires. If you want to learn about logic, take a formal logic course or two.
-matthew