Although those Aqous TV ads are trying to do exactly what the grandparent was joking about: Sell image quality through bad image quality devices. I always thought it was such a stalemate.
Although people go to the movies every once and a while and maybe they'd notice the gap between the big screen and their dated tube. Maybe that's why "home theater" was coined. It was a good way to describe that clear picture you remember from the real cinema. 1. Go to movies 2. See pretty picture 3. Point at screen, "me want that" 4. --- 5. Profit!
Maybe eventually you'd be influenced by peers if you visited their houses (dinner party etc) and saw their screens. If everyone had 800" wall TVs (see Total Recall) that looked crystal clear, I'd probably wonder what I'm doing with a tube on a table. The disparity would probably influence me.
But at the same time it's not like an iPod where you see white earbuds everywhere. It's not so 'public'. Meh, getting OT.
Well it's based on Elite but also heavily influenced by Privateer (which was awesome). I really can't wait for X3 to be out. If it goes multi-platform great. The idea of an open-ended space exploration and trading game really sounds nice.
Fine. Stealing is wrong both ways. But if everyone had a "Test Answers" P2P client and a "Grocercy" P2P client, I bet people would download food and quiz answer sheets illegally. It's apples and oranges, similar in fruit.
Let's go through the steps of cheating, stealing goods and downloading illegal mp3s.
Cheating Go to school to learn. Decide that you'd rather not study and goof off. Test time. Get answers from a smart friend (if you can). Write them down on a small piece of paper. Cleverly work through the test without getting caught. Get a higher grade you don't deserve. Get into a nice school, pay for your diploma, (maybe) get a job you can't do or a job no one thinks you deserve. Or turn out fine. Hard to say. But the process of getting test answers is really quite hard! If the teacher gives the same test to 7 periods a day, maybe you could get the test answers from an earlier period friend, maybe not. Most teachers shuffle the questions around. Plagurizing is a much better example. Download an essay from the Internet and turn it in as your work. Maybe you get caught, maybe you don't. For sure there's no fair use or gray material. I can't stream essays legally. I can't download an essay remix that isn't covered by copyrights. I have to make my own essay, equivalent of producing my own mp3.
It doesn't relate. Maybe on a moral level but the details are so different in my opinion that it's not relavant. Like saying it rained on Monday so Monday causes rain.
Stealing Go to the store to buy food you need or CDs you don't 'need'. Steal, go to jail, get fined. At no point can I easily copy food stuffs or luxury goods with a piece of software. Atoms are atoms and don't copy like bits. I steal all the food in the world illegally and everyone else starves to death. Not to mention the criminal element. I'd probably have to buy a gun or a large jacket and perform some stealthy manuvering inside a physical store. It's just not as accessible.
I definitely see the point about loss of values though. But I don't think it means that everyone is going to start stealing and cheating. And even if we do, is the RIAA going to stop it? How is moral decay their problem?
The RIAA has a hell of a task on their plate. Taking in the shoplifting example, the information age is such that I can create a virtual store (VPN) with my friends and copy soup between all of us without anyone else knowing about it and still retain my original soup. How is putting people in jail going to stop that? I'd hate to be the RIAA; then, now or ever.
That's why I like the open source model so much. Build code, share it out because you yourself used a code that someone else wrote. Sharing is good. Illegal sometimes, but IMHO good overall. Look at the success of Windows and Quake (both rumored to be intentionally warezable).
By the way, if you use this crappy post in an essay, I'll kill you.
I expect a Grid Wizard and a Brown-Out reporting tool that no one says yes to.
IE: [bzzt] Power grid crashed unexpectedly. Send error report to Microsoft? No. Ok.
More on-topic, do other industries go in a distributed/consolidated cycle like computing? Distributed computing isn't without faults, like centralized computing.
It's possible to program this well. Look at Amazon's "if you like this... check out this" or "customers who bought this, also bought this". If you shop on Amazon, you know that the latter is incredibly accurate even if your taste of music is "outsider" or "underground". Of course, stuff on Amazon isn't underground but that's not my point.
You could build a system that does this well and could introduce you to media that is very much what you want to watch. It is this interactivity, linking/memes, neural learning/data gathering that standard TV is very severely lacking.
Of course the flipside is if the system is learning who I am and suggesting stuff to match me then I'm always watching stuff that has been labeled or rated as "stuff I'd like". It's a cycle. I'm in a box. Where's my exposure to classic movies or other horizon-expanding stuff that I don't regularly get flagged for? How will I grow as a person if I get exposed to "me". It's a feedback loop!
Another trade off. Damn it! Everything is a double-edged sword. I'm going to go sit in a field and play with dandelions.
I would agree with the usefulness of a Data Structures Course. It just so happens that I started a Jr Development (Java mostly) position recently and I was not a CIS/CS major (career change from SA/Unix).
I find myself trying to create a data structure/tree like a family tree or a directory structure. Each node has multiple children, a node can have no children, a fast way to find a path from a child to the root, etc. And in wondering how to create such a tree I find the usefulness of textbook knowledge, specifically the jargon. I'm reading like crazy about red/black trees, linked lists, doubly linked lists, binary trees, what a map is compared to a list, etc etc. It goes on and on. And I'm sure a course would have covered this or at least given me the knowledge to see quickly if the standard Java libraries have this structure already built.
Many of the Java books I'm reading have wording like, "if you remember from your CS class what a binary tree is, here's how to implement one in Java..." The theory background would have made this a lot easier/faster, rather than jumping right into a specific language.
I definitely envy those who took any kind of data structures course.
In the screenshot shown here, the line that says "Capacity 2 200 038 744 064 2,00 TB" is clearly digitally edited. The "TB" at the end of the line (lower right) isn't aligned correctly to the "2,00", to the left. The real screen wouldn't be misaligned, even if it had to display "TB". Smart-guides in Photoshop could have helped them align it correctly. Clearly, a fake.
On the tech side, Atomchip says "4x Pentium M 1.7 Chz"[sic]. Since when did anyone have dual or quad Pentium M systems? Pentium M SMP? What? What motherboard/chipset?
The closest thing to Pentium M SMP I've heard of is the new Yonah chip, which is a stretch. Pentium M's are the reference for the new Yonah 65nm chip (ousting the P4). Yonah will be dual core and similar to Pentium Ms. But will likely not be called M.
But SMP in the sense of dual core not "4x Pentium M" chips as they claim. Dual Yonah / dual core = 4x? What? Bah, I'm done thinking about this.
Fine, you know what you're doing, I rename them too (My Computer ->.box and My Network Places ->.net or something clever and non-default) see: One True Way. Not a big deal to you but a big deal to a teacher/instructor.
What about in a classroom where all the lab/learning computers are set up like this by default? It's confusing as hell.
"Class, double click on My Computer." "What do you mean Your Computer?" "No, I mean your My Computer." "What?!" "Click on the icon My Computer on Your Computer. *sigh*" "Computers are stupid." "Yes. Now do it or your resume will suck."
etc, etc. I always hated that My Computer organization, I never go to network shares via My Computer. Really, the only thing I use My Computer for is getting to the Properties screen so I can fiddle with Device Manager or some other crap. Windows-break is much faster of course. If I'm trying to get to the C: drive I just hit Windows+R and type "C:". it's 4 key strokes (if you count the windows key).
I like Gnome's Home Directory on the Desktop or "Macintosh HD" on the Desktop. It's much more logical in my mind.
Not bashing Windows. I'm still trying to learn to keyboard navigate under OSX as fast as I can in Windows. Someone should organize a GUI race between OS keyboard navigating experts.
Did you know that in Windows detail view in explorer you can auto-fit the columns with ctrl-shift-numpad +? I haven't gotten those kinds of shortcuts down under Gnome and OSX.
Lock yourself in? You download, you own, you leave. You're free. It's not like you stream off the Apple Store forever.
iTunes not playing.ogg is annoying, yeah I'll admit that. I know there's an open-source plugin that allows you do to that. But your indie player probably won't do stuff like play your music over wireless to your living room (simply) as the airport express does.
But most importantly, I'm an apple fan-boy because my I.T. job is complicated enough. Do what you want. In fact, everyone shut up, including me. Run Linux, run Windows, buy Apple products, don't buy Apple products, go jogging, watch TV, listen to [music genre], hate [music genre], play [sport], ignore [sport]. It's your choice and my opinions don't fit in your choice.
Meh, maybe it's a status symbol. But sometimes I can't see what audio player someone has because they keep it in their pocket and replace the stock headphones with 3rd party ones.
I bought one because I'm a sell-out consumer that can't build my own. I wish I were more underground like my neighbor who has one made out of cardboard and cheetos.
At least it's possible. Apple allows you to rip as MP3. Sony's products encrypt/protect your songs on the portable device in such a way that you'd never be able to get them off.
On your iPod, the songs are there, they're just in a vast confusing hierarchy of folders. This plugin (and other projects like it), simply the process of going iPod -> Computer.
You can always go Computer -> iPod because they figure you already have the MP3 file (legal or not). But you can't go Computer -> iPod -> Computer, not with iTunes and probably not with any corporate software.
I think "sucking" is a bit of a simplification. I think it's more "business decision'ing".:)
Ok, ok. I totally got this reference right away. Which maybe dates me a bit (I'm under 30). But what makes that movie (and that scene) so special? Is it the fact that it was kinda weird and original way back when? I mean, you had the guy with the weird braces talking to god while popcorn while exploding all around him.
Definitely stands out.
Group think. Meh, original scenes make group think happen because the group remembers them.
- Horse head in Godfather - Shark tank with Lasers on their heads - I know Kung Foo - I am your Father
Most of these things were kinda catchy/shocking/surprising/rememberable in their originality, so does Group Think kinda feed of original ideas and then become cliche?
Idea -> Reuse -> Cliche -> Rut -> Originality -> Idea
I can't wait to get my first offtopic for this one, even though it's ontopic in a micro-scale.
This is just electronic writes. Those who have worked with a high-performance SAN like the Hitachi 9900, Sun 6920, know that electronic writes is where all the performance comes from. When our SAN's 4gig of cache goes offline, my DBAs come running and everyone complains about terrible write/read speeds.
Electronic writes (in a good amount) means that the data flies into memory and later on the disk system pumps the data out to the disk platters. Netapp is really great at doing this kind of operation. Talk to someone with a Netapp and they'll tell you that you can watch all the activity lights on an array light up in a fury of activity with the Netapp head pushes from cache->disk. It's really fantastic. Of course, it's really expensive too.
I'm not saying that Samsung's disks are going to be enterprise-class. But I'm hoping that this cache thing catches on to make SATA2 (or whatever) based arrays feasible for desktops. Imagine a chain of large-cache drives on desktops, large-cache single drives on laptops... For example, if you had 128MB of cache per drive, then an array of 8 disks would have 1gig of cache. That would be so great for the power-user. The Sun T4 bricks cost $50k and they have 2gb of cache per controller. 2gb of electronic writes/read = amazing performance.
I can't wait to learn more about the quality and speed of the disk cache. It's what I've always wanted to see in consumer grade disks.
But the Apple G5 hair drier reportedly pulls much less. Seriously, how are we going to put these in 1U units, stacked tight?! When will air not cut it? I bought a dual xeon box that seriously will blow a piece of paper out of your hands if you stand at the back of it in the rack.
Apple has liquid-cooled options (dual 2.5ghz), Dell does not (yes, custom PCs exist). When will we start seeing major PC names going liquid?
I can't take this janitor/wrench metaphor any longer. Janitors don't have their building compromised by remote exploits. Janitors don't get burned by lack of documentaion (usually). There's no banging a hammer harder in the information world. If a command doesn't work or code doesn't compile, it probably won't start working if you type harder and exert more physical effort.
There are lots of broken/inaccurate metaphors in IT (modem != telephone, desktop != top of desk, cpu != brains) but I understand why they are there I guess.
Besides, it's not "News for Janitors, Stuff that matters." No www.slashmop.org.:)
I agree with your free market insight. The marketplace sorts out slow businesses and kills them. But, we're talking about repect and that's a human thing. The marketplace might not look out for happiness. It certainly doesn't look after the environment until the environment is destroyed and makes getting new resources more expensive.
"HTML is frontpage right?". That quote stuck in my head all the way home. I mean, that really sums it up. No one cares about what HTML is just that Frontpage spews it out.
"That's how it is with people - nobody cares how it works as long as it works." --Councillor Hamann, talking about the engineering department from Matrix Reloaded.
But is it really a commodity? I guess it depends on need. Mr. Frontpage might work for a cookie-cutter web design company someday. He might have the skills to change a web site template and cookie-cut corporate websites as a consultant. Fine, but Mr Frontpage isn't going to be designing a servlet to generate HTML from, say, a configurable set of datasources (XML, tables in a DB). So even though HTML is a skill that people have grown to disrepect, working around and with HTML isn't always simple and that might earn you respect from a variety of people.
The information age is completely unmanagable. No one can do it. Yahoo.com (a large IT company) gets spam and people complain about spam at work even in the smallest company. What do you expect? Everything?
Feature increase. You can type a document in a program that gives you a zillion options compared to what was available ten years ago. You expect it.
You paid $1000 for a computer last year. This year, you'll pay $500. Next year, you'll expect to pay $250.
The only time people get mad/frustrated is when they learn what they cannot do. You just posted on slashdot using a browser that works, using a backend database that works, using a network that works and you didn't even care until I mentioned it (I'm guessing).
There's one problem with explaining things nicely. It's really, really hard to do.
Prepare for huge blanket statements...
Why are programmers usually geeky properllerheads with little social skills? Probably because they stare at code all day. Did you hire them to smooze?
Why are sales guys finger shooting suits? Probably because they sell things to people who don't want to spend money, smooth out issues and network all day. Did you hire them to be introverted and shy?
Sorry to generalize but IT people are bitter because the job is fighting fires all day. Make a sales guy code for a year and most will start watching Star Wars and have little to say at parties. Make a developer sling deals and pitch to high powered VPs and I bet people think he's greasy and fake. I'm stereo-typing in a major way but I've seen really happy people turn sour in a position like helpdesk/desktop support.
It's just a thankless job where you only can dump on your PC/desktop vendor. People seek power and bottom rung is no fun for most.
That's not fair at all. You can't judge a group of things by one individual unless you've taken the time to judge all the individuals, thereby judging the entire group.
I think anything else is called 'pre-judging'.
Programmers make horrible mistakes too (including you). Many developers have test case tools at their disposal (something IT does not have) and yet they fail to utilize them. If I could apply a patch cluster from Sun and "assertTrue(server_is_still_up)" my job would be so much more precise. But this functionality is hard to come by and test labs are expensive.
Firewalls that block IM are a policy decision. Ie: we don't block anything in our shop and you're just mad because you have no power over the situation.
And why would management pay for seagulls? Don't you think eventually those people wouldn't have jobs?
I need OS X and my Apple hardware and not because it's shiney. In a small office SA job, I get some desktop stuff my way. OS superiority, easy interface aside, Windows/Linux/x86 is not something I want to come home to.
[Add users to local Adminstrator group on XP] [ipconfig/flushdns] [download putty.exe for developers again] [cry, go home]
[open laptop from suspend which works everytime] Mail = Mail client Terminal = terminal application [sigh of relief]
It just works. No regedit, no krb5 library mismatches. Apple makes the hardware, Apple makes the OS. Solaris/Sparc is in my datacenter and OSX/G4 is on my desk at home.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure make fun of me, but I'm a level 4 manager with a nametag that gives me +2 wisdom when I equip it.
In Soviet Russia, the roach freezes you!
I agree. That was funny as crap.
Although those Aqous TV ads are trying to do exactly what the grandparent was joking about: Sell image quality through bad image quality devices. I always thought it was such a stalemate.
Although people go to the movies every once and a while and maybe they'd notice the gap between the big screen and their dated tube. Maybe that's why "home theater" was coined. It was a good way to describe that clear picture you remember from the real cinema.
1. Go to movies
2. See pretty picture
3. Point at screen, "me want that"
4. ---
5. Profit!
Maybe eventually you'd be influenced by peers if you visited their houses (dinner party etc) and saw their screens. If everyone had 800" wall TVs (see Total Recall) that looked crystal clear, I'd probably wonder what I'm doing with a tube on a table. The disparity would probably influence me.
But at the same time it's not like an iPod where you see white earbuds everywhere. It's not so 'public'. Meh, getting OT.
Well it's based on Elite but also heavily influenced by Privateer (which was awesome). I really can't wait for X3 to be out. If it goes multi-platform great. The idea of an open-ended space exploration and trading game really sounds nice.
:D
I just miss Tradewars, the BBS game.
Fine. Stealing is wrong both ways. But if everyone had a "Test Answers" P2P client and a "Grocercy" P2P client, I bet people would download food and quiz answer sheets illegally. It's apples and oranges, similar in fruit.
Let's go through the steps of cheating, stealing goods and downloading illegal mp3s.
Cheating
Go to school to learn. Decide that you'd rather not study and goof off. Test time. Get answers from a smart friend (if you can). Write them down on a small piece of paper. Cleverly work through the test without getting caught. Get a higher grade you don't deserve. Get into a nice school, pay for your diploma, (maybe) get a job you can't do or a job no one thinks you deserve. Or turn out fine. Hard to say. But the process of getting test answers is really quite hard! If the teacher gives the same test to 7 periods a day, maybe you could get the test answers from an earlier period friend, maybe not. Most teachers shuffle the questions around. Plagurizing is a much better example. Download an essay from the Internet and turn it in as your work. Maybe you get caught, maybe you don't. For sure there's no fair use or gray material. I can't stream essays legally. I can't download an essay remix that isn't covered by copyrights. I have to make my own essay, equivalent of producing my own mp3.
It doesn't relate. Maybe on a moral level but the details are so different in my opinion that it's not relavant. Like saying it rained on Monday so Monday causes rain.
Stealing
Go to the store to buy food you need or CDs you don't 'need'. Steal, go to jail, get fined. At no point can I easily copy food stuffs or luxury goods with a piece of software. Atoms are atoms and don't copy like bits. I steal all the food in the world illegally and everyone else starves to death. Not to mention the criminal element. I'd probably have to buy a gun or a large jacket and perform some stealthy manuvering inside a physical store. It's just not as accessible.
I definitely see the point about loss of values though. But I don't think it means that everyone is going to start stealing and cheating. And even if we do, is the RIAA going to stop it? How is moral decay their problem?
The RIAA has a hell of a task on their plate. Taking in the shoplifting example, the information age is such that I can create a virtual store (VPN) with my friends and copy soup between all of us without anyone else knowing about it and still retain my original soup. How is putting people in jail going to stop that? I'd hate to be the RIAA; then, now or ever.
That's why I like the open source model so much. Build code, share it out because you yourself used a code that someone else wrote. Sharing is good. Illegal sometimes, but IMHO good overall. Look at the success of Windows and Quake (both rumored to be intentionally warezable).
By the way, if you use this crappy post in an essay, I'll kill you.
I expect a Grid Wizard and a Brown-Out reporting tool that no one says yes to.
IE:
[bzzt]
Power grid crashed unexpectedly. Send error report to Microsoft?
No.
Ok.
More on-topic, do other industries go in a distributed/consolidated cycle like computing? Distributed computing isn't without faults, like centralized computing.
It's possible to program this well. Look at Amazon's "if you like this ... check out this" or "customers who bought this, also bought this". If you shop on Amazon, you know that the latter is incredibly accurate even if your taste of music is "outsider" or "underground". Of course, stuff on Amazon isn't underground but that's not my point.
You could build a system that does this well and could introduce you to media that is very much what you want to watch. It is this interactivity, linking/memes, neural learning/data gathering that standard TV is very severely lacking.
Of course the flipside is if the system is learning who I am and suggesting stuff to match me then I'm always watching stuff that has been labeled or rated as "stuff I'd like". It's a cycle. I'm in a box. Where's my exposure to classic movies or other horizon-expanding stuff that I don't regularly get flagged for? How will I grow as a person if I get exposed to "me". It's a feedback loop!
Another trade off. Damn it! Everything is a double-edged sword. I'm going to go sit in a field and play with dandelions.
I would agree with the usefulness of a Data Structures Course. It just so happens that I started a Jr Development (Java mostly) position recently and I was not a CIS/CS major (career change from SA/Unix).
..." The theory background would have made this a lot easier/faster, rather than jumping right into a specific language.
I find myself trying to create a data structure/tree like a family tree or a directory structure. Each node has multiple children, a node can have no children, a fast way to find a path from a child to the root, etc. And in wondering how to create such a tree I find the usefulness of textbook knowledge, specifically the jargon. I'm reading like crazy about red/black trees, linked lists, doubly linked lists, binary trees, what a map is compared to a list, etc etc. It goes on and on. And I'm sure a course would have covered this or at least given me the knowledge to see quickly if the standard Java libraries have this structure already built.
Many of the Java books I'm reading have wording like, "if you remember from your CS class what a binary tree is, here's how to implement one in Java
I definitely envy those who took any kind of data structures course.
I'm beating a dead horse.
In the screenshot shown here, the line that says "Capacity 2 200 038 744 064 2,00 TB" is clearly digitally edited. The "TB" at the end of the line (lower right) isn't aligned correctly to the "2,00", to the left. The real screen wouldn't be misaligned, even if it had to display "TB". Smart-guides in Photoshop could have helped them align it correctly. Clearly, a fake.
On the tech side, Atomchip says "4x Pentium M 1.7 Chz"[sic]. Since when did anyone have dual or quad Pentium M systems? Pentium M SMP? What? What motherboard/chipset?
The closest thing to Pentium M SMP I've heard of is the new Yonah chip, which is a stretch. Pentium M's are the reference for the new Yonah 65nm chip (ousting the P4). Yonah will be dual core and similar to Pentium Ms. But will likely not be called M.
But SMP in the sense of dual core not "4x Pentium M" chips as they claim. Dual Yonah / dual core = 4x? What? Bah, I'm done thinking about this.
Dead horse.
Damn. You're right! Well ... sorta. C doesn't need to be capitalized.
windows key
r key
c
:
[enter]
equals 5.
Fine, you know what you're doing, I rename them too (My Computer -> .box and My Network Places -> .net or something clever and non-default) see: One True Way. Not a big deal to you but a big deal to a teacher/instructor.
What about in a classroom where all the lab/learning computers are set up like this by default? It's confusing as hell.
"Class, double click on My Computer."
"What do you mean Your Computer?"
"No, I mean your My Computer."
"What?!"
"Click on the icon My Computer on Your Computer. *sigh*"
"Computers are stupid."
"Yes. Now do it or your resume will suck."
etc, etc. I always hated that My Computer organization, I never go to network shares via My Computer. Really, the only thing I use My Computer for is getting to the Properties screen so I can fiddle with Device Manager or some other crap. Windows-break is much faster of course. If I'm trying to get to the C: drive I just hit Windows+R and type "C:". it's 4 key strokes (if you count the windows key).
I like Gnome's Home Directory on the Desktop or "Macintosh HD" on the Desktop. It's much more logical in my mind.
Not bashing Windows. I'm still trying to learn to keyboard navigate under OSX as fast as I can in Windows. Someone should organize a GUI race between OS keyboard navigating experts.
Did you know that in Windows detail view in explorer you can auto-fit the columns with ctrl-shift-numpad +? I haven't gotten those kinds of shortcuts down under Gnome and OSX.
Lock yourself in? You download, you own, you leave. You're free. It's not like you stream off the Apple Store forever.
.ogg is annoying, yeah I'll admit that. I know there's an open-source plugin that allows you do to that. But your indie player probably won't do stuff like play your music over wireless to your living room (simply) as the airport express does.
iTunes not playing
But most importantly, I'm an apple fan-boy because my I.T. job is complicated enough. Do what you want. In fact, everyone shut up, including me. Run Linux, run Windows, buy Apple products, don't buy Apple products, go jogging, watch TV, listen to [music genre], hate [music genre], play [sport], ignore [sport]. It's your choice and my opinions don't fit in your choice.
Meh, maybe it's a status symbol. But sometimes I can't see what audio player someone has because they keep it in their pocket and replace the stock headphones with 3rd party ones.
I bought one because I'm a sell-out consumer that can't build my own. I wish I were more underground like my neighbor who has one made out of cardboard and cheetos.
At least it's possible. Apple allows you to rip as MP3. Sony's products encrypt/protect your songs on the portable device in such a way that you'd never be able to get them off.
:)
On your iPod, the songs are there, they're just in a vast confusing hierarchy of folders. This plugin (and other projects like it), simply the process of going iPod -> Computer.
You can always go Computer -> iPod because they figure you already have the MP3 file (legal or not). But you can't go Computer -> iPod -> Computer, not with iTunes and probably not with any corporate software.
I think "sucking" is a bit of a simplification. I think it's more "business decision'ing".
iTunes is copying it to your library folder. If you disabled your WiFi, or walked away from it, winamp wouldn't play your library but iTunes would.
I guess it's annoying but it buys you a real library, not just a playlist.
Ok, ok. I totally got this reference right away. Which maybe dates me a bit (I'm under 30). But what makes that movie (and that scene) so special? Is it the fact that it was kinda weird and original way back when? I mean, you had the guy with the weird braces talking to god while popcorn while exploding all around him.
Definitely stands out.
Group think. Meh, original scenes make group think happen because the group remembers them.
- Horse head in Godfather
- Shark tank with Lasers on their heads
- I know Kung Foo
- I am your Father
Most of these things were kinda catchy/shocking/surprising/rememberable in their originality, so does Group Think kinda feed of original ideas and then become cliche?
Idea -> Reuse -> Cliche -> Rut -> Originality -> Idea
I can't wait to get my first offtopic for this one, even though it's ontopic in a micro-scale.
Gimmick? Hmm...
... For example, if you had 128MB of cache per drive, then an array of 8 disks would have 1gig of cache. That would be so great for the power-user. The Sun T4 bricks cost $50k and they have 2gb of cache per controller. 2gb of electronic writes/read = amazing performance.
This is just electronic writes. Those who have worked with a high-performance SAN like the Hitachi 9900, Sun 6920, know that electronic writes is where all the performance comes from. When our SAN's 4gig of cache goes offline, my DBAs come running and everyone complains about terrible write/read speeds.
Electronic writes (in a good amount) means that the data flies into memory and later on the disk system pumps the data out to the disk platters. Netapp is really great at doing this kind of operation. Talk to someone with a Netapp and they'll tell you that you can watch all the activity lights on an array light up in a fury of activity with the Netapp head pushes from cache->disk. It's really fantastic. Of course, it's really expensive too.
I'm not saying that Samsung's disks are going to be enterprise-class. But I'm hoping that this cache thing catches on to make SATA2 (or whatever) based arrays feasible for desktops. Imagine a chain of large-cache drives on desktops, large-cache single drives on laptops
I can't wait to learn more about the quality and speed of the disk cache. It's what I've always wanted to see in consumer grade disks.
But the Apple G5 hair drier reportedly pulls much less. Seriously, how are we going to put these in 1U units, stacked tight?! When will air not cut it? I bought a dual xeon box that seriously will blow a piece of paper out of your hands if you stand at the back of it in the rack.
Apple has liquid-cooled options (dual 2.5ghz), Dell does not (yes, custom PCs exist). When will we start seeing major PC names going liquid?
I can't take this janitor/wrench metaphor any longer. Janitors don't have their building compromised by remote exploits. Janitors don't get burned by lack of documentaion (usually). There's no banging a hammer harder in the information world. If a command doesn't work or code doesn't compile, it probably won't start working if you type harder and exert more physical effort.
:)
There are lots of broken/inaccurate metaphors in IT (modem != telephone, desktop != top of desk, cpu != brains) but I understand why they are there I guess.
Besides, it's not "News for Janitors, Stuff that matters." No www.slashmop.org.
I agree with your free market insight. The marketplace sorts out slow businesses and kills them. But, we're talking about repect and that's a human thing. The marketplace might not look out for happiness. It certainly doesn't look after the environment until the environment is destroyed and makes getting new resources more expensive.
"HTML is frontpage right?". That quote stuck in my head all the way home. I mean, that really sums it up. No one cares about what HTML is just that Frontpage spews it out.
"That's how it is with people - nobody cares how it works as long as it works."
--Councillor Hamann, talking about the engineering department from Matrix Reloaded.
But is it really a commodity? I guess it depends on need. Mr. Frontpage might work for a cookie-cutter web design company someday. He might have the skills to change a web site template and cookie-cut corporate websites as a consultant. Fine, but Mr Frontpage isn't going to be designing a servlet to generate HTML from, say, a configurable set of datasources (XML, tables in a DB). So even though HTML is a skill that people have grown to disrepect, working around and with HTML isn't always simple and that might earn you respect from a variety of people.
The information age is completely unmanagable. No one can do it. Yahoo.com (a large IT company) gets spam and people complain about spam at work even in the smallest company. What do you expect? Everything?
Feature increase. You can type a document in a program that gives you a zillion options compared to what was available ten years ago. You expect it.
You paid $1000 for a computer last year. This year, you'll pay $500. Next year, you'll expect to pay $250.
The only time people get mad/frustrated is when they learn what they cannot do. You just posted on slashdot using a browser that works, using a backend database that works, using a network that works and you didn't even care until I mentioned it (I'm guessing).
There's one problem with explaining things nicely. It's really, really hard to do.
...
Prepare for huge blanket statements
Why are programmers usually geeky properllerheads with little social skills? Probably because they stare at code all day. Did you hire them to smooze?
Why are sales guys finger shooting suits? Probably because they sell things to people who don't want to spend money, smooth out issues and network all day. Did you hire them to be introverted and shy?
Sorry to generalize but IT people are bitter because the job is fighting fires all day. Make a sales guy code for a year and most will start watching Star Wars and have little to say at parties. Make a developer sling deals and pitch to high powered VPs and I bet people think he's greasy and fake. I'm stereo-typing in a major way but I've seen really happy people turn sour in a position like helpdesk/desktop support.
It's just a thankless job where you only can dump on your PC/desktop vendor. People seek power and bottom rung is no fun for most.
That's not fair at all. You can't judge a group of things by one individual unless you've taken the time to judge all the individuals, thereby judging the entire group.
I think anything else is called 'pre-judging'.
Programmers make horrible mistakes too (including you). Many developers have test case tools at their disposal (something IT does not have) and yet they fail to utilize them. If I could apply a patch cluster from Sun and "assertTrue(server_is_still_up)" my job would be so much more precise. But this functionality is hard to come by and test labs are expensive.
Firewalls that block IM are a policy decision. Ie: we don't block anything in our shop and you're just mad because you have no power over the situation.
And why would management pay for seagulls? Don't you think eventually those people wouldn't have jobs?
I need OS X and my Apple hardware and not because it's shiney. In a small office SA job, I get some desktop stuff my way. OS superiority, easy interface aside, Windows/Linux/x86 is not something I want to come home to.
/flushdns]
[Add users to local Adminstrator group on XP]
[ipconfig
[download putty.exe for developers again]
[cry, go home]
[open laptop from suspend which works everytime]
Mail = Mail client
Terminal = terminal application
[sigh of relief]
It just works. No regedit, no krb5 library mismatches. Apple makes the hardware, Apple makes the OS. Solaris/Sparc is in my datacenter and OSX/G4 is on my desk at home.
It's like beer and football after work for geeks.