This was not intended as an argument... it's more of an illustration. I took a bit of economics, so I totally follow what you're talking about. I'm simply saying that I believe that they are currently artificially "limiting" supply (via DRM, exotic licenses, spyware, etc) in order to force a higher optimal price. Most people would argue that the profit margins on CDs are extremely high, much like the profit margins on books. Movies, OTH, I'd say are about right. They require insane amounts of skilled labor when compared to recording a good album, and deliver quite a bit more 'content' per dollar. I rarely see people argue that movies should be free/cheap.
My point was that the market (from my weekly/bi-monthly observation) is quite healthy at the point were supply *should* meet demand, and it is not nearly as healthy at the point where *they* thing it should meet.
It is NOT a career path. It is a very short curve with a sharp swift drop at the end. You go from wire monkey or help desk (depending on how you start... possibly a too cheap to be outsourced code monkey) and you eventually end up as a systems administrator or lead developer or something. The only path "up" is into management, where the manager can learn to be hated by their reports, shunned by fellow management, and feeling desperate and out of touch by the time they reach mid-life.
No thanks.
I prefer to think of sysadm/IT stuff as technical. It is the same career path as Medicine, Pharmacy, Automotive, Engineering, etc. Important, expensive, reasonably well compensated, and fun in and of itself (to the right people).
I enjoy what I do. I *love* tech. I would happily jump ship to a shop where I made less money but got to work with cooler systems/hardware. I love wearing multiple hats and being responsible for programming, design, debugging, installation, configuration, etc. The only thing about this field that depresses me are the people. They are killing me. I'm sick of the ignorant college grads, the hostile public, and the repressive management. Treat IT like you treat any other technical field. It is what you make of it.
Oh, and like my GeekCode says, I wear slacks and nice shirts most of the time (unless I'm doing installs or pulling cable or something).
I don't know about you, but I purchase the majority of my CDs used (in good or great condition) for about $6-$8 each.
They are legal.
They sound just as good.
I can afford them.
Just to add another point, I have never been in a used CD store without it being full of people. I'd say it usually has *at least* as many people as the Tower across the street. The economics doesn't really make sense, since obviously someone has to buy all those CDs new, but... I'll just enjoy it while it lasts:)
I just did the same test, with my Powerbook 15 and my Thinkpad T42 side by side... I'd say that except for the fact that the Thinkpad screen flashed twice they were identical. About 3 seconds.
The fact that the Powerbook has a sleep light on the hinge button is about the only real benefit as far as that is concerned.
Hibernation, however... that takes almost as long as a boot up on Windows, and I'm not even sure how to activate it for OSX.
Ironically, this is something of a new direction from SAP. I recall distinctly that a looooong time about (about 2001) SAP wanted the future of everything to be Linux. Linux was the future, Linux was the way to go, and soon the universe would be open source. They purchased Adabase and made it SAPDB, which they released as free open source. Then they sold it to MySQL, who made it MaxDB, which is both expensive, and I believe closed source.
ABAP (the now passe SAP programming language) was designed to be an 'open' language, but now that they failed in that the future is now all about Linux with Java! Woo!!
Of course, they also used to be the best of buddies with Oracle, and now they only recommend their new best friend, IBM. Of course, they don't recommend AIX... they recommend things like Solaris DB2. They recommend things like Linux DB2 production systems over AIX DB2 or Solaris Oracle.
I think they're nuts, and I'm exiting SAP support as quickly as possible. Their new stuff is broken, crazy, and will do nothing but make my job a LOT harder.
I am a unix user who switched. As people may know from my large volume of posts, I'm a VMS bigot who currently does Sun Solaris admin and used to do AIX stuff. I run DB2 and SAP on Solaris, ran DB2 and SAP on AIX, and administered lots of Oracle RDB and 8x, 9x, and 10x. I have a collection of SPARCs that I *used* to run everything with.
I only have one left, and it is going into retirement tommorrow when I replace it with a Mac Mini. The only thing I like better than a SPARC station is an Indy 2, and those are pitifully slow now. The mini was totally worth the money, and was about 3k cheaper than a new SPARC. No, an AMD wouldn't do, since the main reason I used SPARC was for binary compatibility. It's just simply not worth the grief anymore.
Someone else posted that Cygwin on Windows does all they need. Good for them. Cygwin on my Thinkpad is a DOG. PuTTY is nice and all, but the SFTP totally sucks ass. No get * support? Puhleeese! I really love Solaris 10 with KDE, but I just can't afford to upgrade it. The box is already maxed out, and I can't afford a new one... or even a nearly new one. I got a nice mini cheap, though. The only app I will miss ( a LOT) is KATE. Pretty much the best editor since TPU.
Oh, and hey... the terminal transparency actually works:)
Unfortunately. my job is currently so over-tasked that I leave home at 0530, and frequently don't return until 2100. Then there are several support calls during the night.
Hopefully, this will be temporary, otherwise thats it for me.
I was an SGI systems admin at a Uni in 95 and 96. I really miss the old indy boxes we had there. That was from my personal favorite era of computing. NeXT, SGI, Apple, Sun, DEC, Cray, Amiga... it just seemed like the world was full of exciting new toys, amazing new technology, and that the future was wide open.
Here I am, 10 years later, a cynical and bitter admin running Solaris at work and Apple at home. It seems (to me, at least) that most of the 'wow' has gone out of it all. CS now is a joke, the computing giants are all re-sellers and mass-production zones (Dell? HP? Give me a break).
I don't think the industry is dead, but I really do worry for its future. My kids couldn't even care less about computers, and many kids I see these days are the same. Where have the dreamers and the innovators gone? Where is the next OpenGL type tech coming from?
I have this exact problem with all sorts of documents. Products that simply don't exist anymore. Splash. Wordstar. MS Works (though I seem to recall someone found a converter). DeScribe. I have docs I wrote on the Commodore Plus 4 that I was only able to retrieve via some lovely commodore emulation software that allowed copy and paste:)
My motto these days is that if you can't read it right now in several different tools (ala PDF) and you don't own the code; don't trust it to be there when you need it.
-WS
Re:"Ma Bell" should be called "Big Brother" instea
on
Ma Bell is Back
·
· Score: 1
I'd say you need to move... or stop having all those doughnuts on the kitchen table:)
I am 90% confident it will be fixed, though possibly by Aspyr when they do the Mac port. Many Macs have ATI cards, and I would bet good money they would simply return the software if it didn't work. You can do that with Macs, you know:) (done it myself)
I didn't think the post was petty at all. I agree with many of the other people here in that I thought it was simply an essay on the impact of names. I use one of two names everywhere these days (WinterSolstice and WntSolstice). I use them interchangeably depending on how long a UID I am allowed, usually:).
However, I came to this name through a conscious effort to kill off an earlier name that I had used online since about '83. I wished to deliberatly kill off that nick, and also to choose a new nick that wouldn't be as easily found.:) Googling for WinterSolstice will not land you very many hits, but my previous nick still shows up in old newsgroup compliations and such.
Hope you decide to post more often... it seems like you're never around anymore:)
I remember quite well the serious concerns that ICANN would ruin everything... ironically, those may finally come true:)
I don't personally believe this is much more than a tempest in a teacup, but what the heck. Let's just sack ICANN and call it good:) I was happy with INN, GEnie, and CompuServe years before, and if worst comes to worse that's what we'll have again.
Slashdot Mirror
That, and playing WoW :)
-WS
Actually, considering that SAP NetWeaver (Basis 7.0) is heavily based on Java, I would do just that -
-WS
-WS
This was not intended as an argument... it's more of an illustration. I took a bit of economics, so I totally follow what you're talking about. I'm simply saying that I believe that they are currently artificially "limiting" supply (via DRM, exotic licenses, spyware, etc) in order to force a higher optimal price. Most people would argue that the profit margins on CDs are extremely high, much like the profit margins on books. Movies, OTH, I'd say are about right. They require insane amounts of skilled labor when compared to recording a good album, and deliver quite a bit more 'content' per dollar. I rarely see people argue that movies should be free/cheap.
My point was that the market (from my weekly/bi-monthly observation) is quite healthy at the point were supply *should* meet demand, and it is not nearly as healthy at the point where *they* thing it should meet.
-WS
I couldn't agree more.
I love working with tech. It rocks. I can't stand being stuck in just *one* aspect of it, however. Or Auditors...
-WS
I've done IT for 10 years.
It is NOT a career path. It is a very short curve with a sharp swift drop at the end. You go from wire monkey or help desk (depending on how you start... possibly a too cheap to be outsourced code monkey) and you eventually end up as a systems administrator or lead developer or something. The only path "up" is into management, where the manager can learn to be hated by their reports, shunned by fellow management, and feeling desperate and out of touch by the time they reach mid-life.
No thanks.
I prefer to think of sysadm/IT stuff as technical. It is the same career path as Medicine, Pharmacy, Automotive, Engineering, etc. Important, expensive, reasonably well compensated, and fun in and of itself (to the right people).
I enjoy what I do. I *love* tech. I would happily jump ship to a shop where I made less money but got to work with cooler systems/hardware. I love wearing multiple hats and being responsible for programming, design, debugging, installation, configuration, etc. The only thing about this field that depresses me are the people. They are killing me. I'm sick of the ignorant college grads, the hostile public, and the repressive management. Treat IT like you treat any other technical field. It is what you make of it.
Oh, and like my GeekCode says, I wear slacks and nice shirts most of the time (unless I'm doing installs or pulling cable or something).
-WS
I don't know about you, but I purchase the majority of my CDs used (in good or great condition) for about $6-$8 each.
:)
They are legal.
They sound just as good.
I can afford them.
Just to add another point, I have never been in a used CD store without it being full of people. I'd say it usually has *at least* as many people as the Tower across the street. The economics doesn't really make sense, since obviously someone has to buy all those CDs new, but... I'll just enjoy it while it lasts
-WS
Neither is the feature in Windows...
I just did the same test, with my Powerbook 15 and my Thinkpad T42 side by side... I'd say that except for the fact that the Thinkpad screen flashed twice they were identical. About 3 seconds.
The fact that the Powerbook has a sleep light on the hinge button is about the only real benefit as far as that is concerned.
Hibernation, however... that takes almost as long as a boot up on Windows, and I'm not even sure how to activate it for OSX.
-WS
Ironically, this is something of a new direction from SAP. I recall distinctly that a looooong time about (about 2001) SAP wanted the future of everything to be Linux. Linux was the future, Linux was the way to go, and soon the universe would be open source. They purchased Adabase and made it SAPDB, which they released as free open source. Then they sold it to MySQL, who made it MaxDB, which is both expensive, and I believe closed source.
ABAP (the now passe SAP programming language) was designed to be an 'open' language, but now that they failed in that the future is now all about Linux with Java! Woo!!
Of course, they also used to be the best of buddies with Oracle, and now they only recommend their new best friend, IBM. Of course, they don't recommend AIX... they recommend things like Solaris DB2. They recommend things like Linux DB2 production systems over AIX DB2 or Solaris Oracle.
I think they're nuts, and I'm exiting SAP support as quickly as possible. Their new stuff is broken, crazy, and will do nothing but make my job a LOT harder.
-WS
Ha!
:)
Yes, if your luck with PHP on linux is like mine, you'll have to resolve dependencies for about 15 minutes first
-WS
I am a unix user who switched. As people may know from my large volume of posts, I'm a VMS bigot who currently does Sun Solaris admin and used to do AIX stuff. I run DB2 and SAP on Solaris, ran DB2 and SAP on AIX, and administered lots of Oracle RDB and 8x, 9x, and 10x. I have a collection of SPARCs that I *used* to run everything with.
:)
I only have one left, and it is going into retirement tommorrow when I replace it with a Mac Mini. The only thing I like better than a SPARC station is an Indy 2, and those are pitifully slow now. The mini was totally worth the money, and was about 3k cheaper than a new SPARC. No, an AMD wouldn't do, since the main reason I used SPARC was for binary compatibility. It's just simply not worth the grief anymore.
Someone else posted that Cygwin on Windows does all they need. Good for them. Cygwin on my Thinkpad is a DOG. PuTTY is nice and all, but the SFTP totally sucks ass. No get * support? Puhleeese! I really love Solaris 10 with KDE, but I just can't afford to upgrade it. The box is already maxed out, and I can't afford a new one... or even a nearly new one. I got a nice mini cheap, though. The only app I will miss ( a LOT) is KATE. Pretty much the best editor since TPU.
Oh, and hey... the terminal transparency actually works
-WS
I find tea is also quite nice. Some lightly steeped herbal jasmine is practically water, and it can really help.
-WS
I would love to do this.
Unfortunately. my job is currently so over-tasked that I leave home at 0530, and frequently don't return until 2100. Then there are several support calls during the night.
Hopefully, this will be temporary, otherwise thats it for me.
-WS
Actually, I would suspect almost everyone gets the reference; it is, after all, basic English Lit. Well, this *is* slashdot... ok. Maybe you're right.
-WS
Those are some interesting points. I will check these out!
-WS
I was an SGI systems admin at a Uni in 95 and 96. I really miss the old indy boxes we had there. That was from my personal favorite era of computing. NeXT, SGI, Apple, Sun, DEC, Cray, Amiga... it just seemed like the world was full of exciting new toys, amazing new technology, and that the future was wide open.
Here I am, 10 years later, a cynical and bitter admin running Solaris at work and Apple at home. It seems (to me, at least) that most of the 'wow' has gone out of it all. CS now is a joke, the computing giants are all re-sellers and mass-production zones (Dell? HP? Give me a break).
I don't think the industry is dead, but I really do worry for its future. My kids couldn't even care less about computers, and many kids I see these days are the same. Where have the dreamers and the innovators gone? Where is the next OpenGL type tech coming from?
-WS
I have this exact problem with all sorts of documents. Products that simply don't exist anymore. Splash. Wordstar. MS Works (though I seem to recall someone found a converter). DeScribe. I have docs I wrote on the Commodore Plus 4 that I was only able to retrieve via some lovely commodore emulation software that allowed copy and paste :)
My motto these days is that if you can't read it right now in several different tools (ala PDF) and you don't own the code; don't trust it to be there when you need it.
-WS
I'd say you need to move... or stop having all those doughnuts on the kitchen table :)
-WS
I am 90% confident it will be fixed, though possibly by Aspyr when they do the Mac port. Many Macs have ATI cards, and I would bet good money they would simply return the software if it didn't work. You can do that with Macs, you know :) (done it myself)
-WS
It's pretty, but I'll stick with the Project Gutenberg stuff. Plain vanilla ASCII, huge selection of books.
-WS
I didn't think the post was petty at all. I agree with many of the other people here in that I thought it was simply an essay on the impact of names. I use one of two names everywhere these days (WinterSolstice and WntSolstice). I use them interchangeably depending on how long a UID I am allowed, usually :).
:) Googling for WinterSolstice will not land you very many hits, but my previous nick still shows up in old newsgroup compliations and such.
:)
However, I came to this name through a conscious effort to kill off an earlier name that I had used online since about '83. I wished to deliberatly kill off that nick, and also to choose a new nick that wouldn't be as easily found.
Hope you decide to post more often... it seems like you're never around anymore
-WS
That's a good one... and the TRS-80 ruled :)
-WS
I remember quite well the serious concerns that ICANN would ruin everything... ironically, those may finally come true :)
:) I was happy with INN, GEnie, and CompuServe years before, and if worst comes to worse that's what we'll have again.
I don't personally believe this is much more than a tempest in a teacup, but what the heck. Let's just sack ICANN and call it good
-WS
What you are looking for is the old quote:
"Puritan : Someone who is afraid that, somewhere, someone else is having a good time."
- H. L. Mencken.
-WS
I'd say. There was quite a stir over one of those hard to see people... ;)
-WS