The best part about the soundtrack was that the format was just tracks on the CD.
The original Quake did that as well. To this day there are 2 Smashing Pumkins albums, a Soundgarden album and a Ministry album that make me want to play some old Quakeworld CTF every time I hear them. The game played a certain track for each lev, so every song is associated with a particular map. Gave "Blow up the ouside world' new meaning;)
My first day as an operator, they had me printing on the old Xerox 9790. I was happily typing jobs into the queue via JES2 with $pprt2. The whole system froze about a 15 minutes in. Panic ensued, but nobody - especially me - knew what happened. They sent me to lunch while systems, the HSM guys and the operators tried to figure it out.
When I got back everything was fine and there was a big "$P" on my locker. I flubbed a key and typed in $P which is the command to halt JES2 (yes, systems should have disabled it from the print terminal). They were all very good humored about it and showed me how to IPL that Sunday where I got my chance to type it at the correct time.
Ever write a sort routine? Know the difference between bubble-sort and quick-sort? The average MF doesn't. He calls the system level command SORT and he's done.
You're right except for the Sysprog. Working directly on a MF at the systems level is akin to kernel programming. All of those utilities have to be maintained as well as the JES and JCL "scripting" and new utilities are needed all the time to save resources and optimize performance.
The best example of this is Documentation. From operator logs to the big IBM books - here you will find everything. Something named ICKDSF messing with your process? Go into the computer room or grab an IBM CD and look it up. Why did your process crash last night? Look at the operator log and find out it had to be killed because of a tape problem.
Lack of documentation is what irks me most about the PC world.
Now don't IEFBR14 reading Slashdot right after work so much;)
Unix and mainframe programmers are more likely to know multiple systems, out of necessity, and consequently have a more general understanding of the commonalities of all computer systems.
You know, this is something that I have taken for granted for years. Thanks for making this point. Having done big iron, desktop and server programming has given me a definite edge in the past and I couldn't put my finger on it until your comment. The period I spent integrating some Alpha NT boxen to an S390 system (showing my age a little) really taught me a lot of versatility.
I'm a bit rusty on the mainframe side, but I'll give this a stab.
The main difference is one of resources. The mainframe folk utilize a shared resource: the Mainframe System. You may have parallel hardware, but from their point of view it's a single system. There's no ability to install a quick machine to use as a test server. Sure you can have test CICS regions or test OS partitions, but if you bring the hardware down you bring the datacenter to a screetching panic. Worse, you can piss off the operators and have 0.00001%CPU for the rest of your tenure. This keeps a certian unspoken level of panic about. Don't worry if you notice it bubble up when one of your coders fucks up. The panic symptoms will pass as it goes back down to it's normal level. It won't go away though.;-)
Which brings me to scheduling. Remember that production=batch and batch knows no sleep. When code goes to production, it's just as bad for the stress level as a major version release of other software or a website launch. Unfortunately for the MF coder it happens a lot more often. Having to talk to your operators when you can't even see straight (from sleep or other things) takes something that is unique to this kind of coder. On-call programming takes talent and some craziness. If you can find where that is for each of them, you will realate to them well.
One last thing: make your coders work in operations for at least a week. They will have a better understanding of the hardware end and productivity will go up. There's a reason that the best coders are in the computer room a lot.
Sooo, what were you expecting, thermonuclear noisemakers?
The big debate is example. Imagine if the US had blown up a small ghost town or uninhabited island - maybe even right next to Japan and said "surrender now or this will happen to you." There's a peaeful means to every quetion. Flame me for that if you want, but it's a simple truth.
"Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity," Einstein once remarked, "and I'm not sure about the former."
Something for your pipe. Smoke it well.
"WebPoison.org is an open source project... (at the bottom of the page) *Technically speaking, webpoison.org is not "open source" because the source code may never be made public- doing so would undermine the project's central goal.
Sorry, but it rubs me wrong when a project claims to be OSS on the first line of their about page only to tell me they lied in the fine print at the bottom. They may be doing a good thing, but they should be blunt and honest about it.
Which can be a win-win for MS. If accepted, they win. If not: "But you've turned down every proposal we've submitted. They've all been reasonable (at first glance)! The EU is just out to get us and stifle innovation." I wonder if there's a loophole that they're leading up to if no offers are accepted. Anyone know what happens then?
So does this mean that the XP box I'm sitting at right now could run OSX in a year or do I have to buy an Intel machine from Apple? For a long time now the PPC has been why you had to buy a Mac. Is this now direct competition to MS? How will Apple keep their hardware standards then? Will there be a serial number or some other such DRM scheme to keep me from converting said XP box? A BIOS lock perhaps?
Absolute and total rubbish and obviously you have little idea about the realities of the cg industry. What you describe never happens because for Alias or anyone to go round doing that puts them in an incredibly unproffesional and accusatory position which is rather hard to wiggle out of. It also kill offs an enormous source of fresh new artwork and animation.
Hate to tell you, but I've seen an audit. Fucking sucks barely covers it. I was just like you until that happened, which was recent and the process scared the living hell out of me.
The "but nobody else cares" excuse is also bullshit and you know it. Sure everyone jokes about it, but nobody will say to everyone else they thought you were a complete ass until you walk away. If you make enough of an ass of yourself, someone makes a call to the BSA. Even if the vendor in question is not a BSA member, they'll let them know and pull an audit themselves while they're at it.
it's just a status symbol for the more-money-than-sense types like a nice new car.
Having a _valid_ license for your software might be a status symbol to some, but to others it shows that you are actually responsible, reliable and know how to get what you want and do it right. It's taken me 4 years of hard work (FOUR FUCKING YEARS) to afford a personal copy of Maya and it's worth it. I don't have some silver spoon in my mouth like you make it out to be. In fact, I ride a bike everywhere to save/have money. There goes that car analogy.
Sadly you cannot buy into artistic ability and creativity by buying software.
Too bad for you. Acting like your cool isn't working either is it?
Why am I wasting my fingers? You're an AC. You won't even know I resonded because you won't put a name to your claim. Oh well...
This is getting waaayyyy offtopic. I de-bonus-ed this comment so hopefuly it won't show up in the actual thread. If a mod comes by to bless it with an "off-topic" please do so. While I'm at it, I'll reply to the AC as well.
I like to poke at grammar nazis, but pride myself on spelling well. "Asinine" is such a seldomly used word that it's easy to be misspelled by members of the grammar ruling class. It is true that the only "e" in the word is at the end, but you can't believe how many people try to "correct" it. It's there as bait. So far today is the only actual post that's tried to correct it, but soooo many over the shoulder non-posters have let their egos get the best of them. Trying not to give in myself, I am making a point of not correcting them (god it's taking some will though). I do it as a poke, but intend it all in fun.
By the way, my journal entries are where I archive my sigs, so please talk about them there and leave the articles clean.
I was searching yesterday to see if 3D Studio Max was going to be ported to *nix as it is my program
Mind you that there is no oficial word from Discreet... yet. It's just a rumor (from a good personal source though) that they are "looking into it". If you're a licensed user, you should let them know that you want a Linux version. The more users they see wanting it, the closer it will come to reality.
Now go out and buy yourself a nice pc and get to work
Maya was a Mac app before ever running under Win32. Despite what you say, Linux is fast becoming the major platform for content creation - thus carring the Mac along with it. There are _native_ Linux builds of Maya and Softimage. 3D Studio is rumored to be looking at it as well and a native version of Lightwave is in the pipe. All of the Win32 3D folks I know would gladly give up that damn MS resource hogging so they could give those extra CPU cycles to their App.
Though it won't get you very ready for the Maya mindset and you may want more, GMax is free and will train you to use 3D Studio Max. Game modelling is quite an art nowadays, so if you lurk the game development message boards you'll find lots of information about free/cheap packages. There are plenty of people doing some great photo-quality stuff, but a lot of them know little when compared to the serious game dev folks. Game developers are your friends. They know about the latest hardware, software and some good technique.
Blender was a good pick. The developers are doing a good job of maturing it to a professional level app for any type of content (including film). It's the only other modelling app I have installed or ever use since I found the grail... When it comes down to it, I'm a Maya guy (big bullet to bite $$$). I can't really see myself going back to anything else after I started using it. It is a complete package with versatility that is unmatched. Whatever you do, try Maya last or you'll end up begging your wife until she lets you blow that $2500:D.
Please ignore the guy who posted the crack and torrent to Maya - especially if you ever plan to do serious work. When you show/submit/release what you create, Alias may very well come asking how you ended up with Maya and have no license for it on record (I've seen it happen now and it's ugly). It's a good feeling to say that "this was created with Maya and Photoshop" without looking over your shoulder. People are usually genuinely impressed that you have a Maya license. It makes you look a bit more professional. Conversly, saying that "I can't tell you" or some other vague excuse for how you created your work makes you look more foolish than mysterious.
Confirmed, at least for the 20 minutes the toolbar was installed for me. Netcraft has a lot more porting to do to get a FF version of the toolbar working right. The toolbar doesn't appear to be aware of tabs itself and the other open tabs stopped updating the address bar when they are switched to. FYI: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4 - Already submitted to Netcraft.
Slashdot Mirror
My first day as an operator, they had me printing on the old Xerox 9790. I was happily typing jobs into the queue via JES2 with $pprt2. The whole system froze about a 15 minutes in. Panic ensued, but nobody - especially me - knew what happened. They sent me to lunch while systems, the HSM guys and the operators tried to figure it out.
When I got back everything was fine and there was a big "$P" on my locker. I flubbed a key and typed in $P which is the command to halt JES2 (yes, systems should have disabled it from the print terminal). They were all very good humored about it and showed me how to IPL that Sunday where I got my chance to type it at the correct time.
Lack of documentation is what irks me most about the PC world.
Now don't IEFBR14 reading Slashdot right after work so much ;)
Yeah. That was lame. Would you believe an abbreviation for MILF? Coders i'd like to f*ck? CILF?
All right. I meant mainframe. ;)-~
The main difference is one of resources. The mainframe folk utilize a shared resource: the Mainframe System. You may have parallel hardware, but from their point of view it's a single system. There's no ability to install a quick machine to use as a test server. Sure you can have test CICS regions or test OS partitions, but if you bring the hardware down you bring the datacenter to a screetching panic. Worse, you can piss off the operators and have 0.00001%CPU for the rest of your tenure. This keeps a certian unspoken level of panic about. Don't worry if you notice it bubble up when one of your coders fucks up. The panic symptoms will pass as it goes back down to it's normal level. It won't go away though. ;-)
Which brings me to scheduling. Remember that production=batch and batch knows no sleep. When code goes to production, it's just as bad for the stress level as a major version release of other software or a website launch. Unfortunately for the MF coder it happens a lot more often. Having to talk to your operators when you can't even see straight (from sleep or other things) takes something that is unique to this kind of coder. On-call programming takes talent and some craziness. If you can find where that is for each of them, you will realate to them well.
One last thing: make your coders work in operations for at least a week. They will have a better understanding of the hardware end and productivity will go up. There's a reason that the best coders are in the computer room a lot.
DarthGatus01.jpg
DarthGatus02.jpg
The first one turned out the best.
So does this mean that the XP box I'm sitting at right now could run OSX in a year or do I have to buy an Intel machine from Apple? For a long time now the PPC has been why you had to buy a Mac. Is this now direct competition to MS? How will Apple keep their hardware standards then? Will there be a serial number or some other such DRM scheme to keep me from converting said XP box? A BIOS lock perhaps?
The "but nobody else cares" excuse is also bullshit and you know it. Sure everyone jokes about it, but nobody will say to everyone else they thought you were a complete ass until you walk away. If you make enough of an ass of yourself, someone makes a call to the BSA. Even if the vendor in question is not a BSA member, they'll let them know and pull an audit themselves while they're at it.
Having a _valid_ license for your software might be a status symbol to some, but to others it shows that you are actually responsible, reliable and know how to get what you want and do it right. It's taken me 4 years of hard work (FOUR FUCKING YEARS) to afford a personal copy of Maya and it's worth it. I don't have some silver spoon in my mouth like you make it out to be. In fact, I ride a bike everywhere to save/have money. There goes that car analogy.Too bad for you. Acting like your cool isn't working either is it?Why am I wasting my fingers? You're an AC. You won't even know I resonded because you won't put a name to your claim. Oh well...
I like to poke at grammar nazis, but pride myself on spelling well. "Asinine" is such a seldomly used word that it's easy to be misspelled by members of the grammar ruling class. It is true that the only "e" in the word is at the end, but you can't believe how many people try to "correct" it. It's there as bait. So far today is the only actual post that's tried to correct it, but soooo many over the shoulder non-posters have let their egos get the best of them. Trying not to give in myself, I am making a point of not correcting them (god it's taking some will though). I do it as a poke, but intend it all in fun.
By the way, my journal entries are where I archive my sigs, so please talk about them there and leave the articles clean.
I stand corrected by someone with a better memory than I. Thanks. Mac or Irix was the platform of choice though. Especially given the wonkiness of NT.
Blender was a good pick. The developers are doing a good job of maturing it to a professional level app for any type of content (including film). It's the only other modelling app I have installed or ever use since I found the grail... When it comes down to it, I'm a Maya guy (big bullet to bite $$$). I can't really see myself going back to anything else after I started using it. It is a complete package with versatility that is unmatched. Whatever you do, try Maya last or you'll end up begging your wife until she lets you blow that $2500 :D.
Please ignore the guy who posted the crack and torrent to Maya - especially if you ever plan to do serious work. When you show/submit/release what you create, Alias may very well come asking how you ended up with Maya and have no license for it on record (I've seen it happen now and it's ugly). It's a good feeling to say that "this was created with Maya and Photoshop" without looking over your shoulder. People are usually genuinely impressed that you have a Maya license. It makes you look a bit more professional. Conversly, saying that "I can't tell you" or some other vague excuse for how you created your work makes you look more foolish than mysterious.
Good luck. Nice to have you back.
Confirmed, at least for the 20 minutes the toolbar was installed for me. Netcraft has a lot more porting to do to get a FF version of the toolbar working right. The toolbar doesn't appear to be aware of tabs itself and the other open tabs stopped updating the address bar when they are switched to. FYI: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4 - Already submitted to Netcraft.