You're bang on the money. Those of us that worked in the industry before the dotcom bubble inflated know the real toil and frustration of the real tech industry. Then along come a bunch of cocky, buzzword-spouting, razor-scooter-riding, goatee-sporting, frappuccino-swilling MBAs who pretend to actually know the first thing about computers (they don't) and getting paid ridiculous sums of money. Please leave the IT industry to those that found their way there because they loved computers and not because they saw it as a way to get rich. Good riddance indeed.
Well.... I think a somewhat competent 15-year old is more likely to, a few years down the road, be espousing the virtues of Linux to his employer. It happened to me!
Somewhat less competent $Kr1p7 K16613$ on the other hand...
If you have a couple of like-minded friends, I think I disagree. On ebay you can pick up large collections of Magic cards for pretty cheap prices compared to buying them new. Discovering this game really is a positive experience. That and sealed-deck play which eliminates the "rich kid advantage" can make this game fun, just not in the way it was in '94
Analysts said Microsoft is cracking down on licensees amid lackluster financials.
This, in a nutshell, may be the biggest reasons to choose a non-proprietary OS over one belonging to a company that has "appeasing shareholders" as it's primary goal. This decision has nothing to do with unpaid licenses growing in number; it is a case of M$ taking advantage of a known phenomenon (many companies are likely have a few more desktops and/or servers running NT than they report) to inflate profits during a bad quarter. The behaviour of the company is subject to corporate whims rather than consistantly enforced policy. No wonder so many shops are implementing mid-to-long range plans to phase out NT.
Normally, my comments are more related to the meat of the article, but after yesterday's (somewhat grudging) consensus that jaime's post about the IE security hole story was beneficial to Windows-using Slashdotters, here's a post by none other than CmdrTaco himself to generate dozens of Windows-bashing posts as well as a few refutes from M$ apologists. Well... at least they're fun threads to read:)
I saw some dudes in a store in Toronto a year or so ago with a pretty cool rule for keeping the "old Magic" alive - they didn't allow any cards later than The Dark. Pretty biased against late-joiners, but it beats trying to get your head around 5000 different cards for each colour!
It's a fair bit easier with the Black Lotus. Sacrifice the lotus for 3 green and play/tap a mountain for a red. Use 2 of the green for channel, then channel 19 life plus the one remaining green for 20. The red from the mountain is for the fireball. Badda-bing badda-boom
I think this was more of a 'funny' story than a 'panic' story. As timothy noted, the committee seemed leery, and as others have noted, this wouldn't likely stand up in court. This is more of a case of a technophobe using personal experience to generalize about computer-related issues ("anyone over 30"?! I thought I misread that at first!). The fact that this person has enough power to get this bill to be considered is somewhat unnerving, however.
As a side note, I think Texas should probably already be pretty low on timothy's list of 'States to move to when my lease runs out'. The Lonestar state seems to be in the news fairly regularly with regards to wacky legislation (both tech- and non-tech related).
I for one would pay for Slashdot, and possibly even $30 per year (although that's definitely approaching my upper threshold), but that's for my favourite website. Salon is a site I check out once a week tops, and 'unique content' isn't much of an attraction. AOL has unique content for free and nobody looks at it. I'm curious to see if they'll release any numbers w.r.t. how the service is performing. Maybe there is a business model that can be profitable for content sties, but I predict some XFL-style statistics for this venture.
Not only did the woman in question drink and drive of her own free will, she drove drunk to a bar to drink more alcohol BEFORE the accident. This shattered my previous notion that Canada has some sense of sanity when it comes to ruling on ridiculous lawsuits (I gave up on the U.S. a long time ago).
This is an issue of people these days not taking responsibility for their own actions, always looking for a scapegoat. What kind of a lesson is this to our children? It sickened me more than all the lame software patents in the world.
Very insightful. I plan on paraphrasing these points and some others in a letter I'm preparing to send to my congressman (and anyone else who will listen), and I encourage others to do the same.
True geeks only race computers. I still remember racing the build speeds of a project my team was working on one late night in my university days. An impartial judge would holler "GO!" and we'd both hit make. Loser had to go down to the lounge for Cokes. The "engine noise" in this case could be the guy with 6 fans in his box cooling his poor overclocked CPU.
What about support for Virtual Boy games?! This is Nintendo's chance to get back the fans it alienated by cancelling the much-maligned system. Just look at the Hordes clamouring to have it brought back (well, come to think of it, all these people have probably gone blind by now, never mind...)
OK, some have you may have noticed this already my 4th post to this story... Maybe I just hate cell phones more than the average person, but since when did making a cellphone call go from being a privilege[1] to a right?! Will a sys admin sue an airport without net access for the crime of preventing him from remotely administering his network during a downtime crisis? This can cost a company money, but the notion is ridiculous. As someone aptly said "We managed before cell phones".
[1] Thanks to dictionary.com for saving the spelling Nazis the trouble of correcting my mangling of the word privilege.
No more than you could sue the cell phone company for being unable to get a signal at a 911-moment. Or the state of Alaska for not providing a pay phone at a close enough location to call 911 in a timely fashion.
Foolish me, I thought it was there to protect the right of citizens to criticize their government, but it seems to protect the right of a person to yak away on a cell phone
This annoys you too, huh? Unfortunately we can't campaign for DeCSS and Napster and not also make allowances for spammers, pedophiles and cell-phone scum. Irony sucks.
IANAL, but I suppose they could get away with it if there are signs posted in movie theatres and restaurants stating that if you enter you agree to abide by their "no cellphone" policy (oh dammit, now I have to defend fascist EULA's too:-P Curse this foul beast).
While reading the comments attached to this story, I was torn between thinking this really could fly, or if it would go down the tubes in 2 months. Some big picture things that I think are vitally important:
- Location, location, location. You need to be somewhere with a high-traffic flow of gen-X aged geeks. Silicon Valley between large company campuses and residential areas was the first place that sprung to mind.
- Ambience. A place with a combination of retro arcade games and newer games opened near me and closed in under 6 months. The problem was that the old games were all beat up and stuck in the back. Someone earlier metioned to go for mint machines and not $250 cheapies. I couldn't agree more. There's nothing worse than playing Karate Champ on a machine with cigarette burns all over it reeking of 12 year old smoke. I went once and was turned off by the place. If you are going to have an arcade area, make it clean, spacious and inviting.
- Selection. There's a million E.T. carts buried under New Mexico for a reason - the game sucked! You need to keep the best games in stock, and don't put 10 Combats on the shelf next to 1 Spy Hunter. You probably know which games will be easy to stock and which will be next to impossible. I still remember going into Microplay (Canadian game chain) and seeing 10 NES Karnov carts in the case - I can tell the game sucks without even have ever played it! Very unprofessional.
-Box/Instructions. If I saw Yars Revenge in an unopened box for $20 next to just the cart for $3, I'd probably still buy the boxed one. Just the feeling of ripping open a 2600 box and looking at the game promotional catalogs is worth the money.
-Knowledgable staff. Another poster mentioned how terrible the FuncoLand staff were. You need to find some employees who love the old games as much as you do. These people may not be easy to find (especially since a lot of them are well paid programmers these days), but it will be worth putting in the interviewing time.
That's enough from me. I believe that if you tie in a web business too, this can work (Hell, I'd order from you). Congratulations on doing what you want to do. Now I'm going to go write a sitcom about a sassy robot!
Obviously, metered phone access is unthinkable to those of us in North America, but $7.50 for 3 months of unlimited evenings and weekends doesn't sound too unreasonable to me, even for lower-middle class. I'm also curious about the penetration of high-speed alternatives to dial-up (cable, DSL) in the U.K. and prices. Are there any Brits out there who can enlighten me?
Congrats to marty, submitter of this story, for the story with the most sarcastic tone ever submitted to Slashdot. It was a pleasure to read:)
But seriously, it sems that every copyright story I read these days makes the "fair use" clause more and more unattainable. These stories NEVER get press in the mainstream media, only Napster soundbytes with undertones that imply all Napster users are criminals. I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but is there really no interest to John Q. Public about these issues? Does anyone else feel that groups like RIAA are trying to hurry decisions through the courts at rocket-speed so that by the time Joe Average realizes he's fucked, your friendly neighbourhood megacorp can say "Why didn't you complain back then?"
We shouldn't care about our karma? Well, in that case, I don't really feel like making Insightful, Interesting, Informative, Funny, or Underrated comments on Slashdot anymore.
I wish I could think of a better way to put this, but good fucking riddance. The system is in place to promote and maintain intelligent discussion while simultaneously hiding the drivel from us. If you're only posting for self-gratification, you're posting for the wrong reasons.
Getting modded up and replied to is nice, but the karma thing is NOT a game, it's the internet's best way (thus far) of maintaining a large community. Thank you CowboyNeal, I appreciate it.
Slashdot Mirror
You're bang on the money. Those of us that worked in the industry before the dotcom bubble inflated know the real toil and frustration of the real tech industry. Then along come a bunch of cocky, buzzword-spouting, razor-scooter-riding, goatee-sporting, frappuccino-swilling MBAs who pretend to actually know the first thing about computers (they don't) and getting paid ridiculous sums of money. Please leave the IT industry to those that found their way there because they loved computers and not because they saw it as a way to get rich. Good riddance indeed.
Well.... I think a somewhat competent 15-year old is more likely to, a few years down the road, be espousing the virtues of Linux to his employer. It happened to me!
Somewhat less competent $Kr1p7 K16613$ on the other hand...
If you have a couple of like-minded friends, I think I disagree. On ebay you can pick up large collections of Magic cards for pretty cheap prices compared to buying them new. Discovering this game really is a positive experience. That and sealed-deck play which eliminates the "rich kid advantage" can make this game fun, just not in the way it was in '94
Analysts said Microsoft is cracking down on licensees amid lackluster financials.
This, in a nutshell, may be the biggest reasons to choose a non-proprietary OS over one belonging to a company that has "appeasing shareholders" as it's primary goal. This decision has nothing to do with unpaid licenses growing in number; it is a case of M$ taking advantage of a known phenomenon (many companies are likely have a few more desktops and/or servers running NT than they report) to inflate profits during a bad quarter. The behaviour of the company is subject to corporate whims rather than consistantly enforced policy. No wonder so many shops are implementing mid-to-long range plans to phase out NT.
Normally, my comments are more related to the meat of the article, but after yesterday's (somewhat grudging) consensus that jaime's post about the IE security hole story was beneficial to Windows-using Slashdotters, here's a post by none other than CmdrTaco himself to generate dozens of Windows-bashing posts as well as a few refutes from M$ apologists. Well... at least they're fun threads to read :)
I saw some dudes in a store in Toronto a year or so ago with a pretty cool rule for keeping the "old Magic" alive - they didn't allow any cards later than The Dark. Pretty biased against late-joiners, but it beats trying to get your head around 5000 different cards for each colour!
It's a fair bit easier with the Black Lotus. Sacrifice the lotus for 3 green and play/tap a mountain for a red. Use 2 of the green for channel, then channel 19 life plus the one remaining green for 20. The red from the mountain is for the fireball. Badda-bing badda-boom
I think this was more of a 'funny' story than a 'panic' story. As timothy noted, the committee seemed leery, and as others have noted, this wouldn't likely stand up in court. This is more of a case of a technophobe using personal experience to generalize about computer-related issues ("anyone over 30"?! I thought I misread that at first!). The fact that this person has enough power to get this bill to be considered is somewhat unnerving, however.
As a side note, I think Texas should probably already be pretty low on timothy's list of 'States to move to when my lease runs out'. The Lonestar state seems to be in the news fairly regularly with regards to wacky legislation (both tech- and non-tech related).
I for one would pay for Slashdot, and possibly even $30 per year (although that's definitely approaching my upper threshold), but that's for my favourite website. Salon is a site I check out once a week tops, and 'unique content' isn't much of an attraction. AOL has unique content for free and nobody looks at it. I'm curious to see if they'll release any numbers w.r.t. how the service is performing. Maybe there is a business model that can be profitable for content sties, but I predict some XFL-style statistics for this venture.
That sound you hear is thousnads of Scientologists gasping at the thought of Xenu getting held up at the border upon his triumphant return.
Not only did the woman in question drink and drive of her own free will, she drove drunk to a bar to drink more alcohol BEFORE the accident. This shattered my previous notion that Canada has some sense of sanity when it comes to ruling on ridiculous lawsuits (I gave up on the U.S. a long time ago).
This is an issue of people these days not taking responsibility for their own actions, always looking for a scapegoat. What kind of a lesson is this to our children? It sickened me more than all the lame software patents in the world.
I would have given it "+1 Stating the obvious to a community notorious for missing the forest for the trees"
Very insightful. I plan on paraphrasing these points and some others in a letter I'm preparing to send to my congressman (and anyone else who will listen), and I encourage others to do the same.
True geeks only race computers. I still remember racing the build speeds of a project my team was working on one late night in my university days. An impartial judge would holler "GO!" and we'd both hit make. Loser had to go down to the lounge for Cokes. The "engine noise" in this case could be the guy with 6 fans in his box cooling his poor overclocked CPU.
The manufacturer's web side...
Is this what you call it when you're mooned by Spider Man?
The end of Moore's Law my ass! Bring on the single-electron transistor! THEN we'll be getting somewhere (quarks notwithstanding).
What about support for Virtual Boy games?! This is Nintendo's chance to get back the fans it alienated by cancelling the much-maligned system. Just look at the Hordes clamouring to have it brought back (well, come to think of it, all these people have probably gone blind by now, never mind...)
OK, some have you may have noticed this already my 4th post to this story... Maybe I just hate cell phones more than the average person, but since when did making a cellphone call go from being a privilege[1] to a right?! Will a sys admin sue an airport without net access for the crime of preventing him from remotely administering his network during a downtime crisis? This can cost a company money, but the notion is ridiculous. As someone aptly said "We managed before cell phones".
[1] Thanks to dictionary.com for saving the spelling Nazis the trouble of correcting my mangling of the word privilege.
I think this would only be an issue if your car accident involved you driving through the front window of a restaurant.
No more than you could sue the cell phone company for being unable to get a signal at a 911-moment. Or the state of Alaska for not providing a pay phone at a close enough location to call 911 in a timely fashion.
Foolish me, I thought it was there to protect the right of citizens to criticize their government, but it seems to protect the right of a person to yak away on a cell phone
:-P Curse this foul beast).
This annoys you too, huh? Unfortunately we can't campaign for DeCSS and Napster and not also make allowances for spammers, pedophiles and cell-phone scum. Irony sucks.
IANAL, but I suppose they could get away with it if there are signs posted in movie theatres and restaurants stating that if you enter you agree to abide by their "no cellphone" policy (oh dammit, now I have to defend fascist EULA's too
While reading the comments attached to this story, I was torn between thinking this really could fly, or if it would go down the tubes in 2 months. Some big picture things that I think are vitally important:
- Location, location, location. You need to be somewhere with a high-traffic flow of gen-X aged geeks. Silicon Valley between large company campuses and residential areas was the first place that sprung to mind.
- Ambience. A place with a combination of retro arcade games and newer games opened near me and closed in under 6 months. The problem was that the old games were all beat up and stuck in the back. Someone earlier metioned to go for mint machines and not $250 cheapies. I couldn't agree more. There's nothing worse than playing Karate Champ on a machine with cigarette burns all over it reeking of 12 year old smoke. I went once and was turned off by the place. If you are going to have an arcade area, make it clean, spacious and inviting.
- Selection. There's a million E.T. carts buried under New Mexico for a reason - the game sucked! You need to keep the best games in stock, and don't put 10 Combats on the shelf next to 1 Spy Hunter. You probably know which games will be easy to stock and which will be next to impossible. I still remember going into Microplay (Canadian game chain) and seeing 10 NES Karnov carts in the case - I can tell the game sucks without even have ever played it! Very unprofessional.
-Box/Instructions. If I saw Yars Revenge in an unopened box for $20 next to just the cart for $3, I'd probably still buy the boxed one. Just the feeling of ripping open a 2600 box and looking at the game promotional catalogs is worth the money.
-Knowledgable staff. Another poster mentioned how terrible the FuncoLand staff were. You need to find some employees who love the old games as much as you do. These people may not be easy to find (especially since a lot of them are well paid programmers these days), but it will be worth putting in the interviewing time.
That's enough from me. I believe that if you tie in a web business too, this can work (Hell, I'd order from you). Congratulations on doing what you want to do. Now I'm going to go write a sitcom about a sassy robot!
Obviously, metered phone access is unthinkable to those of us in North America, but $7.50 for 3 months of unlimited evenings and weekends doesn't sound too unreasonable to me, even for lower-middle class. I'm also curious about the penetration of high-speed alternatives to dial-up (cable, DSL) in the U.K. and prices. Are there any Brits out there who can enlighten me?
Congrats to marty, submitter of this story, for the story with the most sarcastic tone ever submitted to Slashdot. It was a pleasure to read :)
But seriously, it sems that every copyright story I read these days makes the "fair use" clause more and more unattainable. These stories NEVER get press in the mainstream media, only Napster soundbytes with undertones that imply all Napster users are criminals. I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but is there really no interest to John Q. Public about these issues? Does anyone else feel that groups like RIAA are trying to hurry decisions through the courts at rocket-speed so that by the time Joe Average realizes he's fucked, your friendly neighbourhood megacorp can say "Why didn't you complain back then?"
We shouldn't care about our karma? Well, in that case, I don't really feel like making Insightful, Interesting, Informative, Funny, or Underrated comments on Slashdot anymore.
I wish I could think of a better way to put this, but good fucking riddance. The system is in place to promote and maintain intelligent discussion while simultaneously hiding the drivel from us. If you're only posting for self-gratification, you're posting for the wrong reasons.
Getting modded up and replied to is nice, but the karma thing is NOT a game, it's the internet's best way (thus far) of maintaining a large community. Thank you CowboyNeal, I appreciate it.