Why not bring back the remaining original cast for a new show?
And when they bring it back, don't have kirk play some overly mature captain who doesn't fight with klingons every week or womanize green aliens. TOS wasn't about political correctness, it was a fun show to watch that occasionally tossed in a life lesson. I want my kirk to be the womanizing manwhore he was in TOS.
Enterpise sucks, sorry I just can't stand to watch that sugar coated politically correct basterdization of my favorite show. It's way to complicated.
TOS had 3 main plots for every show.
1. Kirk gets laid. 2. Kirk kicks butt 3. Kirk enlightens an otherwise un-enlighted species to their wrongdoings, using steps 1 or 2 or a combination of them and in turn, gave a social commentary to the social injustices of the day (racism, prejudice, tyranical rule, ect)
Everything past TOS got way to complex and sucky, you don't need SGI indy made FX for a great show.
If I were a CEO, and it was a choice between someone that runs around building internal services for the company, vs someone that can build a product I can sell, buh bye unix admin, hello developer/unix admin.
and I haven't had a real full time IT job in 2 years. Help even the rats are fighting over my ramen now!
It's not that I can't find work, I mean sure, I found a great job bouncing at a karaoke bar on friday nights, then I have another job delivering signs for a real estate office, and a third job goin door to door dropping off these little flyers that hang on a door knob for a pizza joint.
I guess i'm pretty good at putting signs in the ground, breaking up fights, and hanging shit off peoples doorknobs..
WTF am I saying? I didn't spend 8 years teaching myself all this stuff to be doing this right now. Even when I wasn't working, I still kept my skills up to date with constant reading, and playtesting on my machines at home.
According to everyone I know, I'm smart enough to do anything. I could have been a doctor they say. Fixing computers, learning about them in the process, fixing networking, it was the only job that I just felt that perfect fit in.
Now I do these useless shit jobs, I do get an occasional call for some consulting work, but it's never steady and never anything more interesting past "Something crashed, my e-mail won't work" I want to get paid for doing something cool again, I want to get paid for running a network that just keeps on running, where the servers never crash and most of your problems are with windows tcp/ip issues.
Companies are tightening their belts. They're outsourcing IT only using it when it's needed and they aren't buying new hardware. I'm sure there is a lot of 2+year old servers out there, that are starting to just fall apart from use, and some poor hapless junior engineer at a consulting firm is having to explain to some CEO why his mail server keeps crashing without telling him "You're running on outdated hardware and MS software"
And I say "MS software" because it's a fact most companies with over 20 employees use MS exchange.
A freind of mine, who still happens to be working at a consulting firm, recently burned the midnight oil to show the president nagios/snort running on freebsd. He explained the whole open source idea to him, BSD licensing, GPL, ect. The president, being in sales instantly saw the potential for being able to tell the customer "The software is free, we just charge you for customizing it:)"
The customer inquired, "How many unix admins you got?" The company just has 1, my friend. "How much would it cost us to find a qualified unix admin in case we break our relationship?" How would they?
In a company of 6 people, only 1 of them is what I would call Unix qualified. The rest of them, are all a mixmash of MS and novell qualified people with no idea of how to move around in a unix shell.
Out of all my geek freinds (about 5 of us) only myself and this cat are unix qualified. So if I were to take the total number of admins I know personally and professionally, only %20 of them know unix!
If definetly tough out there right now for any type of admin. *nix admins will find it especially tough, because companies perceive a higher cost for unix admins over their windows/novell only counterparts. This in spite of the fact that I would GLADLY commute 20 miles to work right now for an $8 dollar an hour Unix admin job if it was 40 hours a week. (Hollar if you're as desperate as me!)
Boy, this is turnin into a long post.
Now I don't want to stray OT here, but I have to mention this war going on.
1. It will cut the number of tech jobs due to war funding. 2. It will cut down on the number of younger less experienced people applying for jobs as they head for war. 3. Large corporations are leveraging off-shore IT pools in foriegn countries.
From what i've seen over the last 2 years, the pace of companies dying from a lack of funding is greater than that of people leaving. Net result, no real job boom, just a steady decline in the number of "admin wanted" positions.
No, it's not getting better, it's getting progressivly worse. Maybe i'd support this war if I had my old job back.
I tried to submit a story about this same subject a while back. Instead of
some corporation creating it though, it's slashdots favorite
hard disk
speaker creating Ghetto modder
Afroman with
his version.
Good instructions if you want to make this pad DIY. (I wonder if splashpower reads afrotech as well?)
If you look at the post I am responding to, it's my own. It was somehow modded as "redundant" I thought redundant meant that a comment close to or equal to mine was posted prior to mine, and from all accounts on this story no such comment was made.
Since this story is on Game Voice culture, I thought I would chirp in that yes, trolls do exist here, and the tactics described in my parent post could be backed up by any number of gamers that play either counterstrike or the MS Xbox live thingy.
One more thing to say on the aspect of in game voice communication trolling, then i'll end this. I talk differently than normal when I play. Sometimes I can be heard telling my teammates, "YOU WORTHLESS BUNCH OFF MAGGOTS! I'VE SEEN BETTER RUSHING FROM COLLEGE BOYS" in a voice that resembles the drill Sargent from Discovery Channels "Mail Call" tv show.
I have a goatse tag I use occasionally! I'm a camping terrorist on bomb maps! I tell crappy "In soviet russia" jokes based on what people type in chat. (In soviet russia the BOMB sets up you!) I sing songs over the in game voice while flooding the lyrics in chat! (CS karaoke anyone?) I duplicate people's nicks or sometimes dupe it with "is_a_fag" attatched at the end of it. I use the weakest gun in the game kill lots of people with it.
Yes I am a counter-strike troll!
I was going to be a karma whore and
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Post a bunch of links to high tech weapons like the ABL, and the new mobile artillery we have, then I thought, is this appropriate?
Some geek in Iraq, who just doesn't want to be involved in the fighting is sitting on his pc same as me, reading slashdot (if they're a fan) and probably see's thousands of people fleeing the streets, heading for the hills. Maybe he's just some student hoping to come here someday, but now has to face the horror of war.
Iraq is no stranger to war, the middle east has had ongoing wars as long as the bible has been written. Before USA intervention, who was the country trying to break up fights between middle eastern neighbors? Was it the british? the french?
I just heard a jet fly overhead, and it scares me, but that poor shmuck, who probably isn't too different than you or me, is hearing gunshots, sonic booms, and people running and screaming for cover.
On top of all that, his leader, wouldn't hesitate to turn the world into one giant jonestown. Rumors of anthrax, smallpox are everywhere.
If anyone is out there going through this shit right now, could you be brave please? Stay where you are and let the rest of us on slashdot know how you're doing?
Good luck if you're out there Iraqi slashdoter. May whoever you worship watch over you and keep you safe.
Look at my sig, see my little sig? That's my brother in law's website i've been working on for 2 years, Unpaid, volunteer if you will.
Well, yesterday I had one of those straws that broke the camels back. I quit! We've been hosting happily on hurricane electric for the last 2 years now, but recently a buddy of his from a competing website offered to host the site for us. Since I am the only guy that can read PHP, move databases and the site around, I thought I'd ask the new hoster a few questions...
My brother in law told me you were gonna stoke us out? How far are you willing to stoke us out? I'd like to run 2 daemons. One will be a shoutcast radio station supplied by licensed local bay area talent. The other doesn't really have anything to do with zero, it's called kaillera, it basically allows you to play emulator games online, and I'd like to run a small 20 person server(optional, up to you of course).
Also minimally we'd like 4 databases. I'd like two for a playground, then I need 2 for production.
How about 1u of rack? We have a dual PIII Xeon, but no place decent to put the little red bsd devil.
Now I didn't make any demands, I just asked a few questions about the enviroment, and was checking to see if they would let us have any "extra's"
Well I got a call from him the day after sending that mail out accusing me of making demands on the new hoster, and how it wasn't my place as webmaster to ask these kinds of questions, blah blah blah. Instead of getting upset and arguing with him on the spot, I just calmly said "O.K." and took the last 2 years into consideration before I gave him a response.
The database on the site is a mess, mainly due to being moved off an old host that was doing weird things to our data (sometimes normal behavior) by replacing apostrophe's with/s's or other characters like & with/a's. Not to mention some of the messy installs by postnuke modules. Over the last 2 years, there were 3 occasions I cleaned it up, got it running on another server, said "Here look! I just spent 40 hours putting the database back together, can I implement the cleaned up database now? Unfortunatly he didn't understand what I was doing, and rather than make the smart choice, he went with the safe choice. I.e. it appears to be workin right, so it must be working right, let's not fuck with it.
I feel for these open source developers. Sometimes, hell most times bugs are user error, but the users pride is so great that it's just easier to "blame the tech" instead listening to the good advice the tech is trying to give them. (I can't recall how many times I told this guy to NOT use the paralell port zip drive because it would fuck up his win2k system)
The worst is when something is broken and you, the developer doesn't know what's going on, and the user is calling every 15 minutes suggesting what it will take to fix it, despite their suggestions having absolutely no bearing or effect on the problem itself. It's very distracting to have them calling every 15 minutes with their obvious inferior skills trying to tell you what to do. When I work, I don't tell the accountant how to count beans, I don't tell the janitor how to empty trash, it's not what I'm skilled at, so I just leave it up to them.
But why, why in gods name is it that in my career, there are so many accountant, janitors, plumbers that think they are expert tech people?
Maybe bugzilla should have some sort of quiz to make sure the person submitting the bug has the qualified intelligence to do so. Having to sort the real bugs from the fake one's i'm sure is time consuming.
Just my 2cents and a rant. Hopefully I wasn't too off topic with this one.
I couldn't understand why dell dropped linux support, they don't have a UNIX product like HP does. HP with HPUX, why would they want to sell and support linux?
I guess I could see them doing it for a number of reasons, mainly because it would be a gateway into the small/medium sized business market.
Just about any of the big name chipset vendors have decent documentation. Also there's a lot of howto's on things like installing hard drives, what not.
It's really not that difficult when you get down to it. Buy brand name components, read manual, install drivers, if problem still exists goto troubleshooting section of manual or web site.
I know apple fans like doggin the x86 platform. Good hardware = no problems, doesn't matter it's an apple manufactured board or one from intel, if the QA has high standards then you will not recieve an inferior product.
This Google search turns up quite a few results of the problem if you need to see in more detail what problem I was referring too.
Being a PC tech, I never really get to play with macs too much. I have had 3 with shot monitors come across my desk though.
My buddy bought some Imac with firewire for $150 bucks. AV version I think it was called. Anyways he brought it over, I patched his OS9 to its latest patches. He had it for about 2 weeks until the monitor gave out.
So of course, he brings it back to me. Having never ripped one of these things open I was excited at the prospect of tinkering around with some new hardware. Before I grabbed a screwdriver I called apple.
tech: No matter what the problem is, hold the special programmers button on the side, it erases the nvram which will make your monitor work because it has a bad analog board.
After several attempts at this and failing he gave me something else to try.
tech: press the apple key + q r a t during bootup, again this will fix your problem.
Well, again that lead nowhere.
So with the help of my fine freind google, I found a PDF service manual and some more docs. I converted the imac into a pile of electronic parts, pressed some magic button inside and still, black screen:(
Eventually I read that the analog boards on these things go out quite frequently, the replacement cost of the board went way above the $150 my friend had originally paid for it. I talked him into getting an external monitor (works now) and things were happy again.
LOL I remember sitting at the breakfast table when I was 12 one sunday when the best jingle to star in a strip ever came across my paper...
(Sung to "Felix the Cat") Billy the cat The wonderful wonderful cat If he can't find a litter box He'll go straight in your hat! Billy the cat The wonderful wonderful cat! ---
Yah i'm a member of Igames already. Paid my membership, same username there as here.
I don't want to knock igames too bad, but either i'm to dumb to find the license agreement igames has with publishers or the license agreements aren't hosted anywhere easily found on the site.
BTW, if you ever want to give a guy some insight feel free to, since i've never worked in one before:D
Id has a team of lawers to enforce the issue.. Here read a exerpt from here
b. Royalties. Licensee agrees to pay Id Software a royalty ("Royalty") at the rate of twelve and one-half (12.5%) of Net Income. The term "Net Income" shall mean all revenue received by Licensee from the commercial use of the Authorized Copy, less only Licensee's actual and documented costs relating directly to such use. A Royalty shall only be due for those months in which Licensee's gross revenue from the commercial use of the Authorized Copy exceeds U.S. Five Thousand Dollars ($5,000.00) and in such months Licensee shall pay a full Royalty on one hundred percent (100%) of the gross revenue received. For those months where gross revenue is Five Thousand and No/100 Dollars ($5,000.00) or less, Licensee shall not be obligated to pay a Royalty.
So in laymans terms, that basically complicates up the accounting system most gamehouses have set up. I originally thought my per unit was based on hourly consumption of the station. Now I have to break my units down even further and store more accounting data. (I.e. when the process was run, for how long, ect) Sure it's 12.5% now, but you add in the cost of having to account for it's use, that number could jump as high as 15-16% depending on how much more data your accountant has to chew on.
I'm planning a 12@day hour operation, some run 24, others 8. The amount of employee's needed is totally dependant on that.
My family has a 160acre ranch and several junked vehicles we use as "go karts"
If anyone in the San Jose Bay area can prove to me you can do the software/servo's and other software, I can at least provide a peice of shit car and a ranch for "beta testing"
I told you to sit in a corner because name calling is a childish. The parent poster didn't personally sling mud at you, he just had an opinion that you didn't like so you went off base and called him an idiot.
And evidentally you didn't read my post that well. It's more than just cutting into the owners profits, the current licensing schemes by Id, Valve, EA, Blizzard and others is going to leave me with $500@mo if i'm lucky. Even my minimum wage employee's will be making more than me, but this is the burden I take as the owner.
Funny as this sounds, even MS has a better game house licensing than those formentioned companies. MS and Epic both only require you to purchase a copy of the game for each station, with no recurring licensing fee's. Isn't that funny? Here I am showcasing their games on dope ass hardware, even selling copies when I load demo games on my systems, and they still want a cut of that.
Carmack and the rest of Id needs to think about their pricing issues.
Oh and as far as What do you mean by "corporate and greedy"? goes, well yeah, I'm corporate now. CEO of my own corporation yay! In America though, we have laws (rules) that are there to keep things in fair play. Sometimes corporations go beyond the boundries of fair play, which is why MS, standard oil, enron and a host of other companies got bitchslapped by the DOJ.
Calling someone an idiot on slashdot uncalled for. That show's a lack of maturity on your part, now go sit in a corner and think about what you just said.
And if you think Id is sugar coated candy and spice that gives and gives, think again. Read my post here on this very same article. Id is just as corporate and as greedy as any other corporation. Just because they make the coolest games and contributes stuff to open source, doesn't mean they're not in it for the money. Shame you got a +1 modifier.
I totally agree with this post, $15 is a lot for such an old game. Id's greed doesn't just end there though, and please folks, consider what i'm about to say.
I'm in the process of opening up a game house / pc bang, whatever you want to call it. During my research I found out that some companies require gamehouses to pay licensing fee's for each title they carry. This isn't just a one time fee or even something reasonable, if you're running a 40 pc gamehouse you can expect to pay 10k + per year per title.
Now my argument against this goes along these lines. Capcom, Atari, ect all provided more than just a cabinet when they sold you a game. You got a cabinet (physical security) Coin Mech (money validator) Access software (credits) Input Device (Joystick, buttons) Service contracts, monitor, and the game. Usually it was anywhere between a 50/50 to a 25/75 split for the quarters between the cabinet owner and the person that owned the property.
Now with a gamehouse, I'm providing those first 6 items, while the game company only provides the game. After looking at paying off employee's, loans, and a lease, these fee's are going to be eating up enough of my profits to where me, the owner is going to be lucky to break even at the end of the month. On top of all that I have a machine that needs to be replaced every 2-3 years to stay current with the CPL standard so I can host CPL qualifyers at my place.
Now I could see paying licensing fee's if there was some sort of value added service, like my cdkey's were bound to my subnet in their multiplayer authentication database, that way if some smart ass kid try's to steal it for use on their home computer it would just say "Hey you're not playing from toqers gamehouse, sorry" (Note, i'm doing my best to secure machines so it doesn't happen but you never know) At least that would take care of one of the 6 items I have to provide.
I'm going to pay these fee's only because I have too. I wouldn't mind testing the legal waters of this, but as a startup gamehouse I am in no position to do so. In the future though, I want the game companies to understand that if they don't want me taking them to court and suing their asses under fair use laws, they better step up to the plate and at least make a better case for these fee's than "Well you're making money on it" Better CYA now and start adding features to the gamehouse versions of your games, because I'm a comin for you.
Yes folks, I have realized, as an american citizen I stand NO chance of getting a tech job right now. So I put my plan into action.
I'll renounce my american citizenship, fly to india, marry a native woman (to gain indian citizenship) and change my last name to Apu. Then, and only then will I apply for an american job under H1B visa laws. AND I'LL GET THE JOB WOOHOO!!! Oh and let's not forget, I'll need to bring 8k with me for that phony CS degree.
Boy will my bosses be surprised when they see toqer Apu is really a white dude that speaks perfect english! They might even sponsor me to become an american citizen again!/end satire
Slashdot Mirror
Why not bring back the remaining original cast for a new show?
And when they bring it back, don't have kirk play some overly mature captain who doesn't fight with klingons every week or womanize green aliens. TOS wasn't about political correctness, it was a fun show to watch that occasionally tossed in a life lesson. I want my kirk to be the womanizing manwhore he was in TOS.
Enterpise sucks, sorry I just can't stand to watch that sugar coated politically correct basterdization of my favorite show. It's way to complicated.
TOS had 3 main plots for every show.
1. Kirk gets laid.
2. Kirk kicks butt
3. Kirk enlightens an otherwise un-enlighted species to their wrongdoings, using steps 1 or 2 or a combination of them and in turn, gave a social commentary to the social injustices of the day (racism, prejudice, tyranical rule, ect)
Everything past TOS got way to complex and sucky, you don't need SGI indy made FX for a great show.
about 5 years ago ;P
Oh I totally agree with your "speculation"
If I were a CEO, and it was a choice between someone that runs around building internal services for the company, vs someone that can build a product I can sell, buh bye unix admin, hello developer/unix admin.
and I haven't had a real full time IT job in 2 years. Help even the rats are fighting over my ramen now!
:)"
It's not that I can't find work, I mean sure, I found a great job bouncing at a karaoke bar on friday nights, then I have another job delivering signs for a real estate office, and a third job goin door to door dropping off these little flyers that hang on a door knob for a pizza joint.
I guess i'm pretty good at putting signs in the ground, breaking up fights, and hanging shit off peoples doorknobs..
WTF am I saying? I didn't spend 8 years teaching myself all this stuff to be doing this right now. Even when I wasn't working, I still kept my skills up to date with constant reading, and playtesting on my machines at home.
According to everyone I know, I'm smart enough to do anything. I could have been a doctor they say. Fixing computers, learning about them in the process, fixing networking, it was the only job that I just felt that perfect fit in.
Now I do these useless shit jobs, I do get an occasional call for some consulting work, but it's never steady and never anything more interesting past "Something crashed, my e-mail won't work" I want to get paid for doing something cool again, I want to get paid for running a network that just keeps on running, where the servers never crash and most of your problems are with windows tcp/ip issues.
Companies are tightening their belts. They're outsourcing IT only using it when it's needed and they aren't buying new hardware. I'm sure there is a lot of 2+year old servers out there, that are starting to just fall apart from use, and some poor hapless junior engineer at a consulting firm is having to explain to some CEO why his mail server keeps crashing without telling him "You're running on outdated hardware and MS software"
And I say "MS software" because it's a fact most companies with over 20 employees use MS exchange.
A freind of mine, who still happens to be working at a consulting firm, recently burned the midnight oil to show the president nagios/snort running on freebsd. He explained the whole open source idea to him, BSD licensing, GPL, ect. The president, being in sales instantly saw the potential for being able to tell the customer "The software is free, we just charge you for customizing it
The customer inquired, "How many unix admins you got?" The company just has 1, my friend. "How much would it cost us to find a qualified unix admin in case we break our relationship?" How would they?
In a company of 6 people, only 1 of them is what I would call Unix qualified. The rest of them, are all a mixmash of MS and novell qualified people with no idea of how to move around in a unix shell.
Out of all my geek freinds (about 5 of us) only myself and this cat are unix qualified. So if I were to take the total number of admins I know personally and professionally, only %20 of them know unix!
If definetly tough out there right now for any type of admin. *nix admins will find it especially tough, because companies perceive a higher cost for unix admins over their windows/novell only counterparts. This in spite of the fact that I would GLADLY commute 20 miles to work right now for an $8 dollar an hour Unix admin job if it was 40 hours a week. (Hollar if you're as desperate as me!)
Boy, this is turnin into a long post.
Now I don't want to stray OT here, but I have to mention this war going on.
1. It will cut the number of tech jobs due to war funding.
2. It will cut down on the number of younger less experienced people applying for jobs as they head for war.
3. Large corporations are leveraging off-shore IT pools in foriegn countries.
From what i've seen over the last 2 years, the pace of companies dying from a lack of funding is greater than that of people leaving. Net result, no real job boom, just a steady decline in the number of "admin wanted" positions.
No, it's not getting better, it's getting progressivly worse. Maybe i'd support this war if I had my old job back.
I tried to submit a story about this same subject a while back. Instead of some corporation creating it though, it's slashdots favorite hard disk speaker creating Ghetto modder Afroman with his version. Good instructions if you want to make this pad DIY. (I wonder if splashpower reads afrotech as well?)
I'm replying because i'm noticing strange behavior (like my comments disapearing) and weird formatting on the pages.
Woah!
Now my comment has disapearred! Neato!
Anyone with modpoints...
If you look at the post I am responding to, it's my own. It was somehow modded as "redundant"
I thought redundant meant that a comment close to or equal to mine was posted prior to mine, and from all accounts on this story no such comment was made.
Since this story is on Game Voice culture, I thought I would chirp in that yes, trolls do exist here, and the tactics described in my parent post could be backed up by any number of gamers that play either counterstrike or the MS Xbox live thingy.
One more thing to say on the aspect of in game voice communication trolling, then i'll end this. I talk differently than normal when I play. Sometimes I can be heard telling my teammates, "YOU WORTHLESS BUNCH OFF MAGGOTS! I'VE SEEN BETTER RUSHING FROM COLLEGE BOYS" in a voice that resembles the drill Sargent from Discovery Channels "Mail Call" tv show.
It makes people laugh in the very least.
I have a goatse tag I use occasionally!
I'm a camping terrorist on bomb maps!
I tell crappy "In soviet russia" jokes based on what people type in chat. (In soviet russia the BOMB sets up you!)
I sing songs over the in game voice while flooding the lyrics in chat! (CS karaoke anyone?)
I duplicate people's nicks or sometimes dupe it with "is_a_fag" attatched at the end of it.
I use the weakest gun in the game kill lots of people with it.
Yes I am a counter-strike troll!
Post a bunch of links to high tech weapons like the ABL, and the new mobile artillery we have, then I thought, is this appropriate?
Some geek in Iraq, who just doesn't want to be involved in the fighting is sitting on his pc same as me, reading slashdot (if they're a fan) and probably see's thousands of people fleeing the streets, heading for the hills. Maybe he's just some student hoping to come here someday, but now has to face the horror of war.
Iraq is no stranger to war, the middle east has had ongoing wars as long as the bible has been written. Before USA intervention, who was the country trying to break up fights between middle eastern neighbors? Was it the british? the french?
I just heard a jet fly overhead, and it scares me, but that poor shmuck, who probably isn't too different than you or me, is hearing gunshots, sonic booms, and people running and screaming for cover.
On top of all that, his leader, wouldn't hesitate to turn the world into one giant jonestown. Rumors of anthrax, smallpox are everywhere.
If anyone is out there going through this shit right now, could you be brave please? Stay where you are and let the rest of us on slashdot know how you're doing?
Good luck if you're out there Iraqi slashdoter. May whoever you worship watch over you and keep you safe.
Same goes for the US troops too.
Look at my sig, see my little sig? That's my brother in law's website i've been working on for 2 years, Unpaid, volunteer if you will.
/s's or other characters like & with /a's. Not to mention some of the messy installs by postnuke modules. Over the last 2 years, there were 3 occasions I cleaned it up, got it running on another server, said "Here look! I just spent 40 hours putting the database back together, can I implement the cleaned up database now? Unfortunatly he didn't understand what I was doing, and rather than make the smart choice, he went with the safe choice. I.e. it appears to be workin right, so it must be working right, let's not fuck with it.
Well, yesterday I had one of those straws that broke the camels back. I quit! We've been hosting happily on hurricane electric for the last 2 years now, but recently a buddy of his from a competing website offered to host the site for us. Since I am the only guy that can read PHP, move databases and the site around, I thought I'd ask the new hoster a few questions...
My brother in law told me you were gonna stoke us out? How far are you willing to stoke us out?
I'd like to run 2 daemons. One will be a shoutcast radio station supplied by licensed local bay area talent. The other doesn't really have anything to do with zero, it's called kaillera, it basically allows you to play emulator games online, and I'd like to run a small 20 person server(optional, up to you of course).
Also minimally we'd like 4 databases. I'd like two for a playground, then I need 2 for production.
How about 1u of rack? We have a dual PIII Xeon, but no place decent to put the little red bsd devil.
Now I didn't make any demands, I just asked a few questions about the enviroment, and was checking to see if they would let us have any "extra's"
Well I got a call from him the day after sending that mail out accusing me of making demands on the new hoster, and how it wasn't my place as webmaster to ask these kinds of questions, blah blah blah. Instead of getting upset and arguing with him on the spot, I just calmly said "O.K." and took the last 2 years into consideration before I gave him a response.
The database on the site is a mess, mainly due to being moved off an old host that was doing weird things to our data (sometimes normal behavior) by replacing apostrophe's with
I feel for these open source developers. Sometimes, hell most times bugs are user error, but the users pride is so great that it's just easier to "blame the tech" instead listening to the good advice the tech is trying to give them. (I can't recall how many times I told this guy to NOT use the paralell port zip drive because it would fuck up his win2k system)
The worst is when something is broken and you, the developer doesn't know what's going on, and the user is calling every 15 minutes suggesting what it will take to fix it, despite their suggestions having absolutely no bearing or effect on the problem itself. It's very distracting to have them calling every 15 minutes with their obvious inferior skills trying to tell you what to do. When I work, I don't tell the accountant how to count beans, I don't tell the janitor how to empty trash, it's not what I'm skilled at, so I just leave it up to them.
But why, why in gods name is it that in my career, there are so many accountant, janitors, plumbers that think they are expert tech people?
Maybe bugzilla should have some sort of quiz to make sure the person submitting the bug has the qualified intelligence to do so. Having to sort the real bugs from the fake one's i'm sure is time consuming.
Just my 2cents and a rant. Hopefully I wasn't too off topic with this one.
time to go change that sig.
I couldn't understand why dell dropped linux support, they don't have a UNIX product like HP does. HP with HPUX, why would they want to sell and support linux?
I guess I could see them doing it for a number of reasons, mainly because it would be a gateway into the small/medium sized business market.
You can't get a schematic for an imac!
Creative
Nvidia
Intel
Ati
Just about any of the big name chipset vendors have decent documentation. Also there's a lot of howto's on things like installing hard drives, what not.
It's really not that difficult when you get down to it. Buy brand name components, read manual, install drivers, if problem still exists goto troubleshooting section of manual or web site.
I know apple fans like doggin the x86 platform. Good hardware = no problems, doesn't matter it's an apple manufactured board or one from intel, if the QA has high standards then you will not recieve an inferior product.
This Google search turns up quite a few results of the problem if you need to see in more detail what problem I was referring too.
Being a PC tech, I never really get to play with macs too much. I have had 3 with shot monitors come across my desk though.
:(
My buddy bought some Imac with firewire for $150 bucks. AV version I think it was called. Anyways he brought it over, I patched his OS9 to its latest patches. He had it for about 2 weeks until the monitor gave out.
So of course, he brings it back to me. Having never ripped one of these things open I was excited at the prospect of tinkering around with some new hardware. Before I grabbed a screwdriver I called apple.
tech: No matter what the problem is, hold the special programmers button on the side, it erases the nvram which will make your monitor work because it has a bad analog board.
After several attempts at this and failing he gave me something else to try.
tech: press the apple key + q r a t during bootup, again this will fix your problem.
Well, again that lead nowhere.
So with the help of my fine freind google, I found a PDF service manual and some more docs. I converted the imac into a pile of electronic parts, pressed some magic button inside and still, black screen
Eventually I read that the analog boards on these things go out quite frequently, the replacement cost of the board went way above the $150 my friend had originally paid for it. I talked him into getting an external monitor (works now) and things were happy again.
LOL I remember sitting at the breakfast table when I was 12 one sunday when the best jingle to star in a strip ever came across my paper...
(Sung to "Felix the Cat")
Billy the cat
The wonderful wonderful cat
If he can't find a litter box
He'll go straight in your hat!
Billy the cat
The wonderful wonderful cat!
---
That song still gives me a smile.
Yah i'm a member of Igames already. Paid my membership, same username there as here.
:D
I don't want to knock igames too bad, but either i'm to dumb to find the license agreement igames has with publishers or the license agreements aren't hosted anywhere easily found on the site.
BTW, if you ever want to give a guy some insight feel free to, since i've never worked in one before
Id has a team of lawers to enforce the issue.. Here read a exerpt from
here
b. Royalties. Licensee agrees to pay Id Software a royalty ("Royalty") at the
rate of twelve and one-half (12.5%) of Net Income. The term "Net Income" shall
mean all revenue received by Licensee from the commercial use of the Authorized
Copy, less only Licensee's actual and documented costs relating directly to such
use. A Royalty shall only be due for those months in which Licensee's gross
revenue from the commercial use of the Authorized Copy exceeds U.S. Five
Thousand Dollars ($5,000.00) and in such months Licensee shall pay a full
Royalty on one hundred percent (100%) of the gross revenue received. For those
months where gross revenue is Five Thousand and No/100 Dollars ($5,000.00) or
less, Licensee shall not be obligated to pay a Royalty.
So in laymans terms, that basically complicates up the accounting system most
gamehouses have set up. I originally thought my per unit was based on hourly
consumption of the station. Now I have to break my units down even further and
store more accounting data. (I.e. when the process was run, for how long, ect)
Sure it's 12.5% now, but you add in the cost of having to account for it's use,
that number could jump as high as 15-16% depending on how much more data your
accountant has to chew on.
I'm planning a 12@day hour operation, some run 24, others 8. The amount of
employee's needed is totally dependant on that.
My family has a 160acre ranch and several junked vehicles we use as "go karts"
If anyone in the San Jose Bay area can prove to me you can do the software/servo's and other software, I can at least provide a peice of shit car and a ranch for "beta testing"
I told you to sit in a corner because name calling is a childish. The parent poster didn't personally sling mud at you, he just had an opinion that you didn't like so you went off base and called him an idiot.
And evidentally you didn't read my post that well. It's more than just cutting into the owners profits, the current licensing schemes by Id, Valve, EA, Blizzard and others is going to leave me with $500@mo if i'm lucky. Even my minimum wage employee's will be making more than me, but this is the burden I take as the owner.
Funny as this sounds, even MS has a better game house licensing than those formentioned companies. MS and Epic both only require you to purchase a copy of the game for each station, with no recurring licensing fee's. Isn't that funny? Here I am showcasing their games on dope ass hardware, even selling copies when I load demo games on my systems, and they still want a cut of that.
Carmack and the rest of Id needs to think about their pricing issues.
Oh and as far as What do you mean by "corporate and greedy"? goes, well yeah, I'm corporate now. CEO of my own corporation yay! In America though, we have laws (rules) that are there to keep things in fair play. Sometimes corporations go beyond the boundries of fair play, which is why MS, standard oil, enron and a host of other companies got bitchslapped by the DOJ.
Yes you can dude! check out my link above your reply! I'm gonna test it out :P
I remember there being a sound blaster pro emulator for windows, acessing
...
...
google
Item Found!
You could also try doing the right click, compatibility mode thing, not sure if
it'll work though.
--toq
Calling someone an idiot on slashdot uncalled for. That show's a lack of
maturity on your part, now go sit in a corner and think about what you just
said.
And if you think Id is sugar coated candy and spice that gives and gives, think
again. Read my post
here on this
very same article. Id is just as corporate and as greedy as any other
corporation. Just because they make the coolest games and contributes stuff to
open source, doesn't mean they're not in it for the money. Shame you got a +1 modifier.
I totally agree with this post, $15 is a lot for such an old game. Id's greed doesn't just end there though, and please folks, consider what i'm about to say.
I'm in the process of opening up a game house / pc bang, whatever you want to call it. During my research I found out that some companies require gamehouses to pay licensing fee's for each title they carry. This isn't just a one time fee or even something reasonable, if you're running a 40 pc gamehouse you can expect to pay 10k + per year per title.
Now my argument against this goes along these lines. Capcom, Atari, ect all provided more than just a cabinet when they sold you a game. You got a cabinet (physical security) Coin Mech (money validator) Access software (credits) Input Device (Joystick, buttons) Service contracts, monitor, and the game. Usually it was anywhere between a 50/50 to a 25/75 split for the quarters between the cabinet owner and the person that owned the property.
Now with a gamehouse, I'm providing those first 6 items, while the game company only provides the game. After looking at paying off employee's, loans, and a lease, these fee's are going to be eating up enough of my profits to where me, the owner is going to be lucky to break even at the end of the month. On top of all that I have a machine that needs to be replaced every 2-3 years to stay current with the CPL standard so I can host CPL qualifyers at my place.
Now I could see paying licensing fee's if there was some sort of value added service, like my cdkey's were bound to my subnet in their multiplayer authentication database, that way if some smart ass kid try's to steal it for use on their home computer it would just say "Hey you're not playing from toqers gamehouse, sorry" (Note, i'm doing my best to secure machines so it doesn't happen but you never know) At least that would take care of one of the 6 items I have to provide.
I'm going to pay these fee's only because I have too. I wouldn't mind testing the legal waters of this, but as a startup gamehouse I am in no position to do so. In the future though, I want the game companies to understand that if they don't want me taking them to court and suing their asses under fair use laws, they better step up to the plate and at least make a better case for these fee's than "Well you're making money on it" Better CYA now and start adding features to the gamehouse versions of your games, because I'm a comin for you.
Yes folks, I have realized, as an american citizen I stand NO chance of getting a tech job right now. So I put my plan into action.
/end satire
I'll renounce my american citizenship, fly to india, marry a native woman (to gain indian citizenship) and change my last name to Apu. Then, and only then will I apply for an american job under H1B visa laws. AND I'LL GET THE JOB WOOHOO!!! Oh and let's not forget, I'll need to bring 8k with me for that phony CS degree.
Boy will my bosses be surprised when they see toqer Apu is really a white dude that speaks perfect english! They might even sponsor me to become an american citizen again!