He may have been after more than just subduing the attacker -- he may have been trying to make sure that the attacker never came after him again. I know a family who got mugged during Mardi Gras this year. Like any normal citizen, they went to the police, filed a report, and gave a description of the attacker. And the attacker was actually caught. 2 weeks later he's out on bail, pissed off, and calling their house threatening them with bodily harm, etc., etc. Unfortunately, shit like this does happen.
Now, take the GP's post. If you were the mugger who was very soundly beat by this martial artist, would you have much motivation to try to come after the guy later, after you're healed up? Machiavelli said (and I'm paraphrasing here since I no longer have a copy of The Prince) that the only way to truly win a conflict is to beat your enemy so soundly and completely that they won't even entertain the notion of coming back for another attack later. The same can be said for a mugging as can be said for an actual war.
Hahaha. It's times like this that I wish/. had a (+1 Geek Cred) moderation. Let's hope you still manage to gain a few karma points for that one, my friend.
I want one that lets me do what I need to do as efficiently as possible. Yeah, becuase we all know that a phone with only one bloddy softkey is the absolute height of cell phone efficiency: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3210. I almost threw this thing off my grandmother's balcony while trying to program her phone book. After you entered a new number, the soft-key changed to "Call". The Clear key backed you out to the main menu (or maybe the idle screen), and the arrow keys would scroll to the next name in the book. Took 30 minutes to program 10 numbers into the stupid thing since you had to go back to the main menu and go through all of the steps over again to add a new phone number. On the whole, I felt the menu layouts were crap in earlier Nokias when compared to some of their competitors. They may have caught up now, but their earlier phones (in the US anyway) weren't much to talk about.
Seriously, I do. Of course, I don't know how that will help the rest of my family...
Anyway, I wonder how many people have every actually experienced an environment where there's been a total breakdown in civil services. If there is one due to a pandemic, it will be scary.
Glad you get my point though, only thing that gets my juices going now in terms of working hard on something then finally accomplishing it is taking down raid bosses in WoW...
Sounds like me a few years back when I played TFC and CS. I remember one particular day on a slow server where myself and a roommate were playing TFC, got bored, joined opposite teams and collaberated to lock down the entire map on The Well as snipers. Oh, and I can't forget the day that I was really on my game and managed to lock down the bridge in Badlands as a sniper with support for health and ammo from medics and engineers. And then there was the CS game in Dust where my entire team was wiped out, the terrorists couldn't seem to find the bomb (probably clipping problem), and I managed to sneak around and take out the last 5 players on my own. That experience was made all the better when, after I took out 2 & 3 back to back (literally -- I shot them both in the back of the head with the silenced M4), one of the two remaining players shouted out "He's just one guy!" like he was in some sort of bad action movie.
Anyway, I could go on, but I won't. I don't find as much time to play these days and when I do play, half the time it just ends up being another game of Galactic Civilizations II or Gran Turismo 4. Sometimes it sucks to grow up.
(Forgetting that the game was so cool that you'd go back and take out the bosses again and again just to do cooler bullet-time things) Nice to know that I wasn't the only one to do that. I would replay sequences of enemies or bosses again and again until I managed to do something so ridiculously cool that I knew I wouldn't be able to match it.
I think I might see what you're saying, though. I think there are still a few games out there that are made with increasing difficulty, though. I seem to remember having trouble with the Shinobi remake that came out a few years ago. I eventually got to a boss that I just couldn't defeat and I know it was all for lack of skill on my part, so that might be worth checking out if you haven't already. Also, I haven't played it yet, but I picked up Gunvalkyrie for the XBox a few weeks ago because one of my friends said that it got very difficult the further you progressed, so that might be another to check out. I have noticed that I seem to finish more games these days than I did before, but I also tend to think that some of that may be due to more perseverance on my part. Regardless, I think that a lot of it has to do with what people value out of games these days. Which is more or less what you said, but I tend to think that we all get a different perceived value out of these games and that your desire for greater difficulty is simply a different sort of perceived value than what most people look for. I will have to keep my eyes open for more games with increasing difficulty, though.
you rarely watch movies (at the theater) under the influence *sigh* Yet another thing I miss about New Orleans: daquiri machines at the concession stand. Combine that with the flask of whiskey in my pocket, and, well I really don't remember some of the movies I went to see.
Oooh! Thanks for the tip. I was trying to find my copy of TIM the other day, with no luck. Now, I just have to brave the unwashed masses and stand in line for an hour to get it... maybe I'll wait until midnight to go get it. Those really were some of my favorite "casual" games back in the day.
While you do make some interesting points, I feel the need to chime in. For one, games these days are more about telling a story than they are about progressing through infinite difficulty levels. Technology has progressed a long way since Pac-Man and game creators are able to do a lot more with what they have. Furthermore, it's not like you can't go back and play Pac-Man any time you want. We live in a digital age and it's not like Pac-Man has somehow degraded to the point where it's no longer playable. The fact of the matter is that designers pretty much took the infinite level concept as far as possible and gamers have gotten tired of it. That said, people are still developing games with infinite play. Look at Geometry Wars, for instance. At one point it was the most downloaded game on XBox Live Arcade. People are also still building new puzzle games with inifinite levels. For instance Bejeweled/Bejeweled 2. In fact, my mom and I have entered into a sort of informal competition to see who can get the highest Bejeweled 2 score (mostly becuase I sat at her computer one night and soundly trounced her highest score in one sitting -- and because it's easy to play on the laptop while I'm lounging around watching TV at my house.)
However, I think one of the most significant developments in gaming over the last 20 years was the introduction of the dynamic difficulty level. Granted, it's been implemented better in some games than in others, but it is an idea that should satisfy both gamers such as you who enjoy increasing skill in games and gamers such as your typical casual gamers who want to enjoy the story and experience of the game and who may get discouraged easily. Lego Star Wars II seemed to do a pretty decent job with this. I noticed that, if I was breezing through levels, the storm troopers became much better shots and much quicker shots. It did make the game more fun, although the game was a little easy overall. A better example that I can think of would be Max Payne. While I seemed to constantly be out of ammo and constantly on the verge of dying, I watched another friend play the game on my computer and he was constantly dying, but always had plenty of ammo -- he just sucked so bad that they had to make the enemies easier for him and/or drop more ammo.
I will concede that dynamic difficulty levels isn't a perfect solution for all games, though. I can remember being kind of pissed while playing Cruisin' USA at the Arcade. If I just set the fastest time on a track and drove it better than I ever had, I should have come in first place, in my opinion. In a racing simulation like the GT series, it's one thing to drive your best race and still lose, but an arcade racer is another story.
There is a third option for games difficulty these days though: online play. Look at Counter Strike for a good example. CS was/is a game that will reward a player whose skill increases. You will play the same 10 levels over and over again, but the more you play and the more skill you acquire, the better you will finish. Plus you have the added benefit of being able to instantly compare skill ranking with other friends on the server by comparing kill/death ratios at the end of a game. For a while back in college (when I had no job and no money), this game really did it for me. I would seek out the most challenging servers I could find in order to increase my skill and thereby obtained a real sense of satisfaction when I would occasionally dominate over my oponents. Granted there was a varying level of skill involved, but if, like me, you frequented the same few servers along with a core set of regular players, it was easy to see who was getting better than whom. You want to talk about gaming as a martial art, then I would say that for today's generation CS was probably as close as you could get. Those of us who played all of the time would know the secrets of the game, know where the good sniping spots were, had our buttons configured for quick access to secondary skills, and were able to h
Heck, the dialogue up to that point also supported the fact that we wouldn't be able to beat the agents. Especially since my friends (who'd already played through the game) told me how truly bad those guys were. I did feel a little guilty as well, but I went back later and replayed the game and saved my brother in the process. Actually, that's one game that I wouldn't mind playing again.
Was there really anything wrong in this game that we haven't seen before in games like the GTA series? No.
Well, I don't remember being able to kill kids in the GTA series. Unfortunately.;)
All kidding aside, this is a little OT, but lately I've slowly been working my way through episodes of the Blade TV series. (The show is crap, but it makes for adequate background noise while surfing the net.) This morning, while eating breakfast, I caught a scene where a child vampire was given a baby that she obviously meant to eat (drink, whatever). I felt a vile disgust for that vampire at that moment, which I think was probably the point. But I don't think I ever once read an outraged article by some reporter lambasting the show for this particular scene. I think that's because nobody was watching it. Therefore, we should be taking this "outrage" over the killing of little girl zombies as a good sign. It's a sign that people out there are actually paying attention to this game. People are actually playing the game. And the only reason that reporters want to right articles about the shock and vulgarity of killing the little sisters in the game is because they too want to get their names in print and ride the shockwave of publicity that the game is receiving. Look at these articles and whining forum posts another way: there's no such thing as bad publicity.
Now, if only I had a system that could play Bioshock.
So what you're saying is that we should just kill them all, right? You'll get no argument from me.
(Note that I am also the same guy who, much to his friends' disbelief, left my brother to die in my apartment in Deus Ex, so maybe I have some morality issues.;)
Exactly! Or if we are sure we can guide landing of objects fairly well, why not just ship unmanned payloads to Mars ahead of time? It would require some long term planning, but as long as you were able to land the payloads reasonably close to each other, there's no reason you couldn't send them ahead of time. Then all you need is to send the astronauts at the end along with a "pick-up truck" to pick up the various payloads and bring them back to base camp.
(On a side note, I wonder if any of the major automobile manufacturers have made any strides in creating a lower power, all electric pick-up truck. Can you imagine the advertising points that would give you? "Ford: so tough they use it on Mars!")
I think that's true to a point. Being able to get good candidates off of CL depends, at least partially, on how active CL is in your market. Granted, market size probably also factors in here, but let's compare my market to, say, Houston. Yesterday, there were 14 system/network admin jobs posted on CL for Houston. Here, there were 14 jobs posted in a over a month. The last job posting here was on Sunday, and in the past month the most active day was Jul 19 with 3 total posts.
That said, I was hired via Monster.com. My previous job I received due to who I knew and the contacts I'd made, but this job was a cold hire straight from Monster.com. When I moved, I didn't know anybody with any sort of connetions in the IT market here, so I used Monster and was successful. I also managed a couple of other job offers from Monster during my job hunt. IME, it wasn't nearly as useless as people make it out to be.
I've literally had a recruiter forward me a resume one time for a candidate who didn't even know what company he was interviewing for. I've been forwarded resumes that looked like they were typed by a 5 year old. I've been sent resumes for candidates who have no technical experience at all. Period. I look at HR as nothing but a block to the actual hiring process. I'd rather they let me go to Monster.com and look at resumes than have somebody without technical skills do it for me.
That said, I did have one IT outsourcing company that found my resume on Monster.com and when they called me, they wanted a social security number as part of their pre-interview screening process. When I refused, they claimed that it was necessary to save time by performing a background check before they potentially wasted their time on a candidate who wasn't able to pass a background check. I basically told them that they were idiots and that if they were legitimate, the only candidates they'd get with that policy are also idiots who had no business maintaining computer systems. Especially if the systems are considered sensitive enough to warrant a background check. The best part was that they had the gall to call me back and try to get my social one more time after that conversation.
One other point is that it's nice to have the install media for situations where a server connection may not be available for a reinstall.
For instance, I just purchased the Dark Avatar expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II. (Yeah, I know I'm behind the curve, but I'm a busy guy.) Instead of purchasing it from a brick & mortar store, I elected to purchase it direct from Stardock so that more of my purchase went directly to them. I prefer to give as much money as possible to a game manufacturer that's decided against using copy protection methods on their media. Only problem is that when you download from them, you have to use their product management software (really quite good, actually) but you don't just get a discrete file that you can burn to CD as backup. So, I elected to spend the extra to have them mail the disc to me. Not only will I still have a way to install the software if Stardock ever goes under, but I also have a way to install the game on, say, my laptop if I'm in the middle of BFE with only a dial-up connection.
I plan to do the same with Sam & Max as soon as I run out of stuff to play. Plus, they offer a cool bonus disc with Sam & Max that I don't think I can live without.;)
...natural disasters, bad luck... Yup. That right there explained my situation after Hurricane Katrina. I just finally paid off my balance on my Bank of America card, all of it acrued post-Katrina. Being a geek doesn't necessarily translate to being financially secure.
Works well as long as your infrastructure can handle it. I've worked at facilities before where they've attempted to enable roaming profiles in Windows, with undesireable results. Namely, veeeerrryyy long profile load times.
Notice that "knowingly" statement? There should still be an investigation to make sure that somebody didn't "knowingly" leave the firewall open to allow this to happen. "Knowingly" can have several meanings in this case, if the lawyers get to it. But, no. The hospitals won't gain any money out of this.
Also the country that has incredibly restrictive legislation on health care information (HIPAA). I don't know about you, but I quite appreciate the fact that it's hard for people to obtain my personal healthcare records. And this is coming from somebody who used to perform IT in the healthcare industry and so was responsible for implementing security procedures and maintaining HIPAA compliance of our systems. Yeah, it was a pain but the benefit was worth it. What if, for instance, you found out you were HIV positive. With the stigma that surrounds AIDS would you really want your co-workers and/or boss to find out that you have it? Or what if you were in an accident and hurt your knee. The other guy's insurance company obtains your prior health records and discovers that you had knee surgery back in 1988. Suddenly they declare your hurt knee to be a preexisting condition and you get stuck with the medical bills.
HIPAA may seem restrictive, but it's better for all of us.
It's been over a year since I last read the HIPAA regulations, but its possible that whomever was responsible for the coding problem could face fines and/or jail time. Personally, I think it's unlikely that it would happen since there was no malice involved, but I'm not quite sure how the laws are written, so if somebody decides to seriously press the matter, we may yet see some people getting in trouble.
This is ridiculous. To ask a child at that age to make an educational decision that could affect his career track is just downright asinine. Hell, I didn't know what subject I wanted to major in four years later when I went to college -- after experiencing a full four years of high school and taking a wide variety of subjects while there. Frankly, I think that even asking high school seniors to try to decide what they want to do for a living is a little foolish. I know many people my age (26) who still haven't decided on a career track and are still going back to school in order to gain new knowledge in the hopes that they will be able to decide on a career that they do like.
I know that I, for one, would have loved to take a year or two off after high school to work and explore my interests. It would have been nice to have the time to develop new skills before I went to college to further my education. And I would have done so, were it not for my scholarship. Alas, it is very hard to get a scholarship at or even to gain entry to a good university as a freshman if you don't do it directly after high school. This is a problem born of the steep post-secondary education costs in our country. I for one wouldn't have had the funds go attend the university I attended were it not for the scholarship, and the same goes for most universities. Unfortunately, I can think of no way to rectify this other than to increase the quality of our educational system from the bottom up. Pay the friggin' teachers more - they deserve it. Lower the costs of tuition at public universities each year instead of raising them - our children deserve every opportunity they can get to obtain a college education; especially in this day and age where more and more jobs list a bachelor's degree as a basic qualification.
I wish more people would understand that an investment in our children's education now is equivalent to an investment in the future well being of our country. Then again, we're talking about a country where financial investors demand to see short term profits and damn the long term longevity of the company. It appears that some people wish to apply the same sort of thinking to our educational system, and this saddens me. Reorganizing school curriculum to force high school students to declare a major is comparable to a corporate reorganization to more narrowly focus a product line. Both are signs that the organization is in trouble and neither situation points to a good future for the organization and its citizens.
I hope these schools drop this nonsense and attempt to concentrate on the root of the problem - under funding most likely - instead of trying to apply short term solutions to a long term problem.
That's a slippery slope you're treading down there, however. Why not complain about it now, proactively, instead of waiting until it's too late to complain?
In general, in terms of cars, the more unsprung weight, the worse the performance. Race cars, which of course tread on the very edge of car technology (except for NASCAR, of course) tend to use wheels made of very light alloys as well as aluminum control arms, etc. The reason is just as you point out: inertia. You can't fight the laws of physics, and we all know Newton's laws of motions. A heavy electric motor in each wheel would really compromise ride quality and handling ability.
Here's an interesting thought, though: has anybody desiged an electric car with individual wheel motors mounted inboard? IE, keep the individual motors for each wheel, but mount them inboard, as part of the chasis which IS sprung and then use driveshafts to connect the motors to the wheels. A car in such a configuration would retain the ability to modulate the power to each wheel separately, but would have no more unsprung weight than any other conventional 4-wheel car.
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He may have been after more than just subduing the attacker -- he may have been trying to make sure that the attacker never came after him again. I know a family who got mugged during Mardi Gras this year. Like any normal citizen, they went to the police, filed a report, and gave a description of the attacker. And the attacker was actually caught. 2 weeks later he's out on bail, pissed off, and calling their house threatening them with bodily harm, etc., etc. Unfortunately, shit like this does happen.
Now, take the GP's post. If you were the mugger who was very soundly beat by this martial artist, would you have much motivation to try to come after the guy later, after you're healed up? Machiavelli said (and I'm paraphrasing here since I no longer have a copy of The Prince) that the only way to truly win a conflict is to beat your enemy so soundly and completely that they won't even entertain the notion of coming back for another attack later. The same can be said for a mugging as can be said for an actual war.
Hahaha. It's times like this that I wish /. had a (+1 Geek Cred) moderation. Let's hope you still manage to gain a few karma points for that one, my friend.
... I work in a fully stocked fall-out shelter.
Seriously, I do. Of course, I don't know how that will help the rest of my family...
Anyway, I wonder how many people have every actually experienced an environment where there's been a total breakdown in civil services. If there is one due to a pandemic, it will be scary.
Glad you get my point though, only thing that gets my juices going now in terms of working hard on something then finally accomplishing it is taking down raid bosses in WoW...
Sounds like me a few years back when I played TFC and CS. I remember one particular day on a slow server where myself and a roommate were playing TFC, got bored, joined opposite teams and collaberated to lock down the entire map on The Well as snipers. Oh, and I can't forget the day that I was really on my game and managed to lock down the bridge in Badlands as a sniper with support for health and ammo from medics and engineers. And then there was the CS game in Dust where my entire team was wiped out, the terrorists couldn't seem to find the bomb (probably clipping problem), and I managed to sneak around and take out the last 5 players on my own. That experience was made all the better when, after I took out 2 & 3 back to back (literally -- I shot them both in the back of the head with the silenced M4), one of the two remaining players shouted out "He's just one guy!" like he was in some sort of bad action movie.
Anyway, I could go on, but I won't. I don't find as much time to play these days and when I do play, half the time it just ends up being another game of Galactic Civilizations II or Gran Turismo 4. Sometimes it sucks to grow up.
I think I might see what you're saying, though. I think there are still a few games out there that are made with increasing difficulty, though. I seem to remember having trouble with the Shinobi remake that came out a few years ago. I eventually got to a boss that I just couldn't defeat and I know it was all for lack of skill on my part, so that might be worth checking out if you haven't already. Also, I haven't played it yet, but I picked up Gunvalkyrie for the XBox a few weeks ago because one of my friends said that it got very difficult the further you progressed, so that might be another to check out. I have noticed that I seem to finish more games these days than I did before, but I also tend to think that some of that may be due to more perseverance on my part. Regardless, I think that a lot of it has to do with what people value out of games these days. Which is more or less what you said, but I tend to think that we all get a different perceived value out of these games and that your desire for greater difficulty is simply a different sort of perceived value than what most people look for. I will have to keep my eyes open for more games with increasing difficulty, though.
Oooh! Thanks for the tip. I was trying to find my copy of TIM the other day, with no luck. Now, I just have to brave the unwashed masses and stand in line for an hour to get it... maybe I'll wait until midnight to go get it. Those really were some of my favorite "casual" games back in the day.
While you do make some interesting points, I feel the need to chime in. For one, games these days are more about telling a story than they are about progressing through infinite difficulty levels. Technology has progressed a long way since Pac-Man and game creators are able to do a lot more with what they have. Furthermore, it's not like you can't go back and play Pac-Man any time you want. We live in a digital age and it's not like Pac-Man has somehow degraded to the point where it's no longer playable. The fact of the matter is that designers pretty much took the infinite level concept as far as possible and gamers have gotten tired of it. That said, people are still developing games with infinite play. Look at Geometry Wars, for instance. At one point it was the most downloaded game on XBox Live Arcade. People are also still building new puzzle games with inifinite levels. For instance Bejeweled/Bejeweled 2. In fact, my mom and I have entered into a sort of informal competition to see who can get the highest Bejeweled 2 score (mostly becuase I sat at her computer one night and soundly trounced her highest score in one sitting -- and because it's easy to play on the laptop while I'm lounging around watching TV at my house.)
However, I think one of the most significant developments in gaming over the last 20 years was the introduction of the dynamic difficulty level. Granted, it's been implemented better in some games than in others, but it is an idea that should satisfy both gamers such as you who enjoy increasing skill in games and gamers such as your typical casual gamers who want to enjoy the story and experience of the game and who may get discouraged easily. Lego Star Wars II seemed to do a pretty decent job with this. I noticed that, if I was breezing through levels, the storm troopers became much better shots and much quicker shots. It did make the game more fun, although the game was a little easy overall. A better example that I can think of would be Max Payne. While I seemed to constantly be out of ammo and constantly on the verge of dying, I watched another friend play the game on my computer and he was constantly dying, but always had plenty of ammo -- he just sucked so bad that they had to make the enemies easier for him and/or drop more ammo.
I will concede that dynamic difficulty levels isn't a perfect solution for all games, though. I can remember being kind of pissed while playing Cruisin' USA at the Arcade. If I just set the fastest time on a track and drove it better than I ever had, I should have come in first place, in my opinion. In a racing simulation like the GT series, it's one thing to drive your best race and still lose, but an arcade racer is another story.
There is a third option for games difficulty these days though: online play. Look at Counter Strike for a good example. CS was/is a game that will reward a player whose skill increases. You will play the same 10 levels over and over again, but the more you play and the more skill you acquire, the better you will finish. Plus you have the added benefit of being able to instantly compare skill ranking with other friends on the server by comparing kill/death ratios at the end of a game. For a while back in college (when I had no job and no money), this game really did it for me. I would seek out the most challenging servers I could find in order to increase my skill and thereby obtained a real sense of satisfaction when I would occasionally dominate over my oponents. Granted there was a varying level of skill involved, but if, like me, you frequented the same few servers along with a core set of regular players, it was easy to see who was getting better than whom. You want to talk about gaming as a martial art, then I would say that for today's generation CS was probably as close as you could get. Those of us who played all of the time would know the secrets of the game, know where the good sniping spots were, had our buttons configured for quick access to secondary skills, and were able to h
Heck, the dialogue up to that point also supported the fact that we wouldn't be able to beat the agents. Especially since my friends (who'd already played through the game) told me how truly bad those guys were. I did feel a little guilty as well, but I went back later and replayed the game and saved my brother in the process. Actually, that's one game that I wouldn't mind playing again.
Was there really anything wrong in this game that we haven't seen before in games like the GTA series? No.
;)
Well, I don't remember being able to kill kids in the GTA series. Unfortunately.
All kidding aside, this is a little OT, but lately I've slowly been working my way through episodes of the Blade TV series. (The show is crap, but it makes for adequate background noise while surfing the net.) This morning, while eating breakfast, I caught a scene where a child vampire was given a baby that she obviously meant to eat (drink, whatever). I felt a vile disgust for that vampire at that moment, which I think was probably the point. But I don't think I ever once read an outraged article by some reporter lambasting the show for this particular scene. I think that's because nobody was watching it. Therefore, we should be taking this "outrage" over the killing of little girl zombies as a good sign. It's a sign that people out there are actually paying attention to this game. People are actually playing the game. And the only reason that reporters want to right articles about the shock and vulgarity of killing the little sisters in the game is because they too want to get their names in print and ride the shockwave of publicity that the game is receiving. Look at these articles and whining forum posts another way: there's no such thing as bad publicity.
Now, if only I had a system that could play Bioshock.
So what you're saying is that we should just kill them all, right? You'll get no argument from me.
;)
(Note that I am also the same guy who, much to his friends' disbelief, left my brother to die in my apartment in Deus Ex, so maybe I have some morality issues.
Exactly! Or if we are sure we can guide landing of objects fairly well, why not just ship unmanned payloads to Mars ahead of time? It would require some long term planning, but as long as you were able to land the payloads reasonably close to each other, there's no reason you couldn't send them ahead of time. Then all you need is to send the astronauts at the end along with a "pick-up truck" to pick up the various payloads and bring them back to base camp.
(On a side note, I wonder if any of the major automobile manufacturers have made any strides in creating a lower power, all electric pick-up truck. Can you imagine the advertising points that would give you? "Ford: so tough they use it on Mars!")
I think that's true to a point. Being able to get good candidates off of CL depends, at least partially, on how active CL is in your market. Granted, market size probably also factors in here, but let's compare my market to, say, Houston. Yesterday, there were 14 system/network admin jobs posted on CL for Houston. Here, there were 14 jobs posted in a over a month. The last job posting here was on Sunday, and in the past month the most active day was Jul 19 with 3 total posts.
That said, I was hired via Monster.com. My previous job I received due to who I knew and the contacts I'd made, but this job was a cold hire straight from Monster.com. When I moved, I didn't know anybody with any sort of connetions in the IT market here, so I used Monster and was successful. I also managed a couple of other job offers from Monster during my job hunt. IME, it wasn't nearly as useless as people make it out to be.
I've literally had a recruiter forward me a resume one time for a candidate who didn't even know what company he was interviewing for. I've been forwarded resumes that looked like they were typed by a 5 year old. I've been sent resumes for candidates who have no technical experience at all. Period. I look at HR as nothing but a block to the actual hiring process. I'd rather they let me go to Monster.com and look at resumes than have somebody without technical skills do it for me.
That said, I did have one IT outsourcing company that found my resume on Monster.com and when they called me, they wanted a social security number as part of their pre-interview screening process. When I refused, they claimed that it was necessary to save time by performing a background check before they potentially wasted their time on a candidate who wasn't able to pass a background check. I basically told them that they were idiots and that if they were legitimate, the only candidates they'd get with that policy are also idiots who had no business maintaining computer systems. Especially if the systems are considered sensitive enough to warrant a background check. The best part was that they had the gall to call me back and try to get my social one more time after that conversation.
One other point is that it's nice to have the install media for situations where a server connection may not be available for a reinstall.
;)
For instance, I just purchased the Dark Avatar expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II. (Yeah, I know I'm behind the curve, but I'm a busy guy.) Instead of purchasing it from a brick & mortar store, I elected to purchase it direct from Stardock so that more of my purchase went directly to them. I prefer to give as much money as possible to a game manufacturer that's decided against using copy protection methods on their media. Only problem is that when you download from them, you have to use their product management software (really quite good, actually) but you don't just get a discrete file that you can burn to CD as backup. So, I elected to spend the extra to have them mail the disc to me. Not only will I still have a way to install the software if Stardock ever goes under, but I also have a way to install the game on, say, my laptop if I'm in the middle of BFE with only a dial-up connection.
I plan to do the same with Sam & Max as soon as I run out of stuff to play. Plus, they offer a cool bonus disc with Sam & Max that I don't think I can live without.
...natural disasters, bad luck... Yup. That right there explained my situation after Hurricane Katrina. I just finally paid off my balance on my Bank of America card, all of it acrued post-Katrina. Being a geek doesn't necessarily translate to being financially secure.Works well as long as your infrastructure can handle it. I've worked at facilities before where they've attempted to enable roaming profiles in Windows, with undesireable results. Namely, veeeerrryyy long profile load times.
There were zwei peanuts walking down der strasse. Und one was assaulted... peanut!
HIPAA may seem restrictive, but it's better for all of us.
It's been over a year since I last read the HIPAA regulations, but its possible that whomever was responsible for the coding problem could face fines and/or jail time. Personally, I think it's unlikely that it would happen since there was no malice involved, but I'm not quite sure how the laws are written, so if somebody decides to seriously press the matter, we may yet see some people getting in trouble.
This is ridiculous. To ask a child at that age to make an educational decision that could affect his career track is just downright asinine. Hell, I didn't know what subject I wanted to major in four years later when I went to college -- after experiencing a full four years of high school and taking a wide variety of subjects while there. Frankly, I think that even asking high school seniors to try to decide what they want to do for a living is a little foolish. I know many people my age (26) who still haven't decided on a career track and are still going back to school in order to gain new knowledge in the hopes that they will be able to decide on a career that they do like.
I know that I, for one, would have loved to take a year or two off after high school to work and explore my interests. It would have been nice to have the time to develop new skills before I went to college to further my education. And I would have done so, were it not for my scholarship. Alas, it is very hard to get a scholarship at or even to gain entry to a good university as a freshman if you don't do it directly after high school. This is a problem born of the steep post-secondary education costs in our country. I for one wouldn't have had the funds go attend the university I attended were it not for the scholarship, and the same goes for most universities. Unfortunately, I can think of no way to rectify this other than to increase the quality of our educational system from the bottom up. Pay the friggin' teachers more - they deserve it. Lower the costs of tuition at public universities each year instead of raising them - our children deserve every opportunity they can get to obtain a college education; especially in this day and age where more and more jobs list a bachelor's degree as a basic qualification.
I wish more people would understand that an investment in our children's education now is equivalent to an investment in the future well being of our country. Then again, we're talking about a country where financial investors demand to see short term profits and damn the long term longevity of the company. It appears that some people wish to apply the same sort of thinking to our educational system, and this saddens me. Reorganizing school curriculum to force high school students to declare a major is comparable to a corporate reorganization to more narrowly focus a product line. Both are signs that the organization is in trouble and neither situation points to a good future for the organization and its citizens.
I hope these schools drop this nonsense and attempt to concentrate on the root of the problem - under funding most likely - instead of trying to apply short term solutions to a long term problem.
That's a slippery slope you're treading down there, however. Why not complain about it now, proactively, instead of waiting until it's too late to complain?
In general, in terms of cars, the more unsprung weight, the worse the performance. Race cars, which of course tread on the very edge of car technology (except for NASCAR, of course) tend to use wheels made of very light alloys as well as aluminum control arms, etc. The reason is just as you point out: inertia. You can't fight the laws of physics, and we all know Newton's laws of motions. A heavy electric motor in each wheel would really compromise ride quality and handling ability.
Here's an interesting thought, though: has anybody desiged an electric car with individual wheel motors mounted inboard? IE, keep the individual motors for each wheel, but mount them inboard, as part of the chasis which IS sprung and then use driveshafts to connect the motors to the wheels. A car in such a configuration would retain the ability to modulate the power to each wheel separately, but would have no more unsprung weight than any other conventional 4-wheel car.