I had a Turbo Duo, basically a Turbo Grafx16 (PC Engine in Japan) with a CD-ROM attached (all-in-one unit) and let me say this, Konami's "Castlevania: Dracula-X" was the best 2D Castlevania game I have ever played.
I thought "Dracula-X" was superior in music and graphics to the much later released "Symphony Of The Night" on the Playstation and is one of those very memorable moments in gaming from that era.
SNK's "Fatal Fury 2" and "World Heroes 2" were also ported over (for the Japanese market) and were awesome 2D fighting games.
Having played "Fatal Fury 2" on a bonafide SNK Neo Geo system (it featured oversized and ueber expensive game catridges since the code in the carts was exactly what you found in the arcade) I was stunned to see "Fatal Fury 2" on the Turbo Duo - the differences were neglible.
Alas, my best gaming experiences on the Turbo Duo were all import titles - I had the requisite "converter" to play this stuff. Most of the games released for the US market were garbage so no wonder TurboGrafx16 failed miserably in the states...
You couldn't disagree with me more strongly because it seems YOU ARE a Phd candidate since it seems Spazoid12 took the time to look at your profile. I didn't.
Kinda funny really, the fact that it crossed my mind and it turned out to be true. In fact, it was the FIRST thing when I read your post.
Unlike academia, APIs rule our lives in the IT trenches. It's not about O(N), chaos theory, Turing Machines, NP Completeness, it's about what APIs you've used of late not about mental masturb*ti*n.
While APIs may "superfluous details" for your ilk, it's our bread and butter and often dictates whether we get hired or not... that's because we need to list all those API acronyms in our resumes to get past the HR goons.
So forgive me for disagreeing with your disagreeing with me, you simply don't have the frame of reference and if you stay in academia, you likely never will... I say likely since some Phds are the exception to the rule, e.g., Comer.
And my opinion isn't just some bad attitude but also the opinions of two people who had been in Phd programs, one of which dropped out. It's interesting that both mutually exlusive of each other said, "It's all about ego."
If you're starting out, I have bad news - given the decreases in salaries for people who've had 10 years experience, I hate to say this but the timing of your graduation is QUITE BAD. Offshoring fueling the latter along with the economic downturn and I don't expect things to improve much.
I have over 10+ years in tech, worked at a major software company and left for the dot bomb craze. I gave up lots of salary for equity and while the company was profitable and public, the market tanked a mere few weeks before my first vesting period. Even if it hadn't the AMT tax would have probably screwed me over anyway.
Since then I've worked some side stuff, waited tables, had the stupidity to try to sell cars and only in the last few months have things returned to what I call "normal."
Never mind that I worked on shrink wrapped products, developed a source level debugger, have had lots of experience on both Windows and UNIX. It all didn't matter to anyone.
I have to say, despite returning to a salary level that bests my previous best. I'm a changed person. Save, save, save.
IT blows. That's my 2 cents. HR people simply care about the last six months and are clueless if you are well ahead of your peers. They don't have the capacity to make this judgement.
You could tell them you architected (as an example) SSH and Kerberos have encryption patents and they might ask some stupid arse question like "Do you know JavaScript?"
Anyone starting school today... my advice is forget tech. If you feel it in your soul (like you should do it), fine, go to a tech school like DeVry, start making money and save it. Going to traditional 4 year programs for CS is an utter waste of time. Way too much change and like I said it's always about what you did in the last six months.
I meant software support, e.g., Adaptec supporting Windows with drivers for its products, by "support" I mean empowering end users to use device not support of the emotional variety, e.g. "Rah, rah, rah! Go go go LINUX!"
As an end user what do I care if I can or cannot see the source code to some drivers. Yeah sure some people do (and on this site, lots), but um, ultimately computing is about getting work done as much as it is being a dweeb. Speaking as a practical dweeb myself.
It is precisely this mentality, people whining about software "X" not being released as open source when binaries are targeted at LINUX that gives ammunition to Microsoft to make non-sensical statements like "We believe in protecting intellectual property" when they have had occasion to pooh pooh LINUX. Implying that some just because you write code that targets LINUX you must release it as open source. Not. Though MS would be perfectly happy if you believe this and the very nature of this thread goes in that direction.
Doesn't mean every piece of code you write should be released for others to see. It's ATI's code, their call, the fact that they're support XFree86 finally is a good thing. So who cares if their drivers are not open source.
Go pick up an Atari 2600 and play the original PITFALL and see if you feel the same way. Then come back and tell me how uninteresting it was... much like the subject of this thread.
It's all relative, hasn't this subject already been hashed on here?
And no, personally I don't like insanely hard games. Games are supposed to be fun, I have no interest in replaying an area OVER and OVER to stroke a gaming ego that no one else cares about (including me).
You say you don't want Budweiser knowing when you buy other brands... um, how the heck would they know that? For example, they're not tracking sales of Samuel Adams. "Danger Will Robinson! Budweiser is tracking the fact that I don't drink their beer!!!" Guess what? I don't drink beer period. Nothing religious I simply never developed a taste for it and being in my 30's I'm not likely to. I fail to see how the heck this is a concern for anyone...
Guilty about what? Being productive with a choice that empowers you more than another? That seems plain silly (to even pose the question).
I have a Windows XP desktop and a LINUX desktop and they appear as one large desktop thanks to x2vnc.
Yeah this may be/., but um, I like to run lots of retail software under Windows, e.g., games. And no, I'm not interested in WineX or WINE thanks. I'm cool with Mozilla, OpenOffice, RedHat's BlueCurve desktop but if it doesn't cut the mustard, I'll quickly go elsewhere.
-M
PS: This thread presupposes desktops... if you're talking about backend systems, I'm *NIX all the way.
Well to each his own however I beg to differ with your statements. Microsoft did not innovate, neither the World Wide Web nor the web browser came out of Microsoft.
And no they are not innovating in that space either. To my knowledge Microsoft does not fully support cascading style sheets as they should (long standing bugs) nor do they empower users with such options as blocking popups, images from specific servers, etc., etc.
Ignorance is bliss... for some (such as yourself).
"Embrace and extinguish"? Based on the thread you seem to be the first to bring it up.
I think "embrace and extinguish" does not apply here.
There is a difference between a platform where applications are developed where the end users are not potentially technical people, e.g., very robust Java applets (the user doesn't care about the underlying technology) VERSUS providing some UNIX like tools and/or interfaces to UNIX services. The audience for the latter compared to the "Joe Average" masses running some Java applet unbeknownst to them is small. The same "masses" who if Sun had seen its dream of Java realized, would be downloading Java applets into their browsers all the time (whether they knew it or not).
Microsoft did a very good job of "embrace, extend, extinguish" with Java since they saw it as a threat in terms of another application platform that diminished the need for Microsoft's desktop.
If Java applets HAD become all the rage, the thin client would be that much more entrenched and Java applets would be as common as Flash ads - only in Sun's long gone dreams.
"Sitting in front of computer" may be fine if you're web surfing but I stream music ALL the time... and I don't need to be front of the computer for that.
Well from the people I've talked to Tomcat was dog slow (pun intended). The context I'm talking about is a financial site with very, very heavy HTTP traffic vs. some site dishing out product information with one or two page requests every now and again.
Which is why the WEB team of my former employer went with Caucho's Resin:
http://www.caucho.com/
Open source is great but sometimes commercial solutions are called for... on top of an open source platform of course. (smile)
How is a win32 ext2/3 filesystem driver relevant? The topic is the use of FAT in device media such as digital cameras. Windows is not involved here.
Why is this soooo shocking???
on
Kylix in Limbo
·
· Score: 1
The top three activies on home desktops are email, WEB surfing and games. While LINUX may have two of three covered (no I don't count WineX to be ideal) and RedHat's own CEO saying LINUX was not ready for prime time on the desktop, why is this a surprise? Kylix harkens back to the days of "resource editors" starting with NeXTStep's GUI builder in the 1980's that allowed you prototype applications. Everyone was like "Wow!" But in hindsight it let's be real, it was nothing more than prototyping dialog boxes. Big deal. It seemed like a big deal and was reinforced on the Windows side with the release of "QuickC for Windows." It also brought the idea of "drawing" dialog forms into a popular environment under Windows. A couple of commercial products had been offering developers that choice already (not surprisingly after QuickC their market disappeared). Eventually IDEs encompassed more and more functionality. But applications being created today have little relation. The days of lots of developed of form based applications using something OTHER than a WEB browser are LOOOOONG gone. Most applications today are either web applications or the customization of ERP, CRM packages. Kylix is as an "important IDE" is an anachronistic notion since while IDEs are great for generating boilerplate projects are not critical to getting work done. IDEs don't have the relevance that they once did, Kylix is pretty irrelevant to the kind of development going on under LINUX - LINUX's forte is server side deployments. Add to that the programming language of Kylix is Object Pascal and I see yet another strike against it. While *NIX types tend to be very open to alternative programming languages I don't see a cogent case for using Object Pascal. In terms of semantics it offers no greater expressive power than let's say C++. Yeah sure I remember my days with Turbo Pascal fondly but I don't see much relevance. And lastly there's the mess that are X desktops - a lack of common controls and no consistent look and feel. This means great difficulty in achieving an "integrated" feel with the very disparate environments. This may not be a big deal to most people on Slashdot but it is for businesses training non-technical users with custom applications. And since RedHat just canned its desktop LINUX, Kylix can't ride those coattails. Probably the biggest in terms of having a crack at success. All of these factors add up to Kylix being an evolutionary dead end IMHO.
The subject being a reference to what makes dung beetles happy (guess what BS stands for?).
I think that in some cases you have some individuals who genuinely do accelerate some facet of computer science, however the average developer is pretty far removed from the day to day reality of most Phds.
Also, knowing one person who got a Phd and another who decided not to pursue it (after being in the program with a master's) both commented that Phd programs are so much about ego and very little else.
Apologies to all those exceptions out there but recollecting my observations of a certain "Dr." who ran the graphics lab at my alma mater, that does not sound very off the mark.
No offense Paradox but I'm reading lots of platitudes - "Quick learner", "less training", "practice learning." Not sure this translates into anything solid given my 20 years of coding in various ways.
I had a recent experience that I found amusing (kind of). I kept reading how employers were looking at "soft skills" now a lot more than the past and how "pure tech" wasn't going to cut it. Recently I wound up hooking up with some head hunter whose client insisted that any potential candidate take exams on Brainbench.com. Fine. I went along. I took an exam they set me up with. I scored 79% on the C++ exam. Not bad since it had been YEARS since I had actively coded in C++ (real stuff like class design, not simple subclasses to handle GUI events).
In my day I would keep up with the ANSI committee and enjoy reading what Scott Meyers et al had to say. (Aside: I just dumped my entire collection of "C++ Report" into the recycle bin)
That was then, this is now.
Turns out, the head hunter's client (who I might work for) had REALLY wanted me to take the Visual C++ Brainbench exam. I thought to myself, "Wow, so much for soft skills if all they are interested in is a number on some exam." Despite having Microsoft on my resume and having a capacity of "Lead Architect" in my last employer it seemed they were looking for some "magic number". I told the head hunter "No thanks" (much to his chagrin) and sent a polite letter to the HR person who sent me the URL for taking the test stating that I didn't think it was a "fit."
Truth is, today I WOULD in fact like to leverage my soft skills more than in the past. These people were looking for a grunt coder. Plain and simple. Been there, done that.
Fed up with the idiotic HR people and the dearth of anything interesting, today I'm selling cars by choice. Hondas specifically.
Let me make things clear, my biggest frustration in tech is the idiotic HR people in various organizations that are the gate keepers. Next come the moronic head hunters. But it's just the nature of the business and a necessary evil, particulary with the limited opportunities nowadays.
When I look at all I've done and what I know... then to have to deal with people who haven't the slightest clue and are simply matching buzzwords, well, it's all quite frustrating, really. Never mind that I transitioned from my last employer in a major way from Windows to the LINUX platform, never mind that I worked at Microsoft and have shrink wrapped software to my credit, never mind that I worked on a source level debugger at one point in time for Motorola... HR people don't understand any of the latter. Nothing.
To all tech people let me just say this, something I am passing along from a high level manager I once heard - "I know you love all that technical minutiae but don't forget about the soft skills." More importantly, since we're in a down time, if you go try something utterly non-tech it may spark surprising changes in how you view the world and yourself.
To give you some food for thought, how many CEOs do you know that were prime time developers? Yeah, Bill Gates might have coded in his day but I can assure you he hasn't done shyt for the last 15+ years. He was a businessman first and that's what succeeds in our society (the social element of the equation). Always has, always will.
Something I've had to learn the hard way...
-M
PS: Oh yeah, I'm the one selling cars that SPAZOID12 up above eludes to.
What are you talking about dude.... I have a Dreamcast and still use it.
It had a lot of bytchin' games and some of these are still readily enjoyable. I got the European import version of Shenmue II for the Dreamcast and I would rather hear Japanese and the heinous voice acting in the XBox version. Then there's "Metropolis Street Racer" still quite pleasant to play today (the predecessor of the Platinum hit "Project Gotham Racing" on the XBox). Then there's "San Francisco ush 2049" and "Sega Rally Championship"
Not to mention that I can game on a VGA monitor with the Dreamcast affording a level of crispness that requires an HDTV on the contemporary consoles. I'm not ready to drop $3K on an HDTV yet (the one I want).
Then there's the fact you can put the Dreamcast to use in ways not originally envisioned:
I can't understand why YOU would use GNOME when KDE exists.;-)
The point of KDE is to provide easy access to LINUX. Not everyone in this world is interested in being a sys admin demigod in order to be able to work against their computer.
Yes, that's a bit of an extreme view, but there are many, MANY people who have difficulty even with Macintoshes and Windows boxes.
KDE is simply trying to make computing more accessible. There is nothing wrong with that.
At this point I think all *NIX desktops suck for the most part. I heavily use LINUX at the backend but for now I prefer to have a Windows XP head. I use SSH and an X server to make the entire debate irrelevant, e.g., I'm running Mozilla as I type this message yet it is displayed on my Windows XP desktop.
Depending on my mode I might fire up Cygwin's X server (with WindowMaker) or use Hummingbir's Exceed.
Ultimately it all depends what your intentions are. If you do what you need to get done, who cares about what desktop someone uses.
It's not odd that Microsoft is losing money on games. Most of the XBox games are trash. As XBox owner I have seen little compelling content outside of "Halo."
The reality is, there is far more interesting content on both the Playstation2 and GameCube.
The argument of "the only problem is that there are very few ported X applications to run with it" is not a problem at all.
The reality is UNIX, LINUX et al will not rule the desktop anytime soon.
Cygwin's X Server is extremely useful when dealing with OTHER UN*X boxes. I run various apps on various LINUX boxes all the time, displaying them on my Windows XP desktop with the Cygwin X Server. This to me is very useful and quite sufficient.
I'm of the philosophy, "The best tool for the job." When I need to use a word processor et al I stick with Windows.
Well, thinking idealistically can lead to naivte, and the whole argument for "finding your humanity" through a college education is pretty weak.
A lack of self-respect is what tends to undermine any young mind.
If you've already got that and you have a chance to seize the moment through a well paying technology job, then to heck with college.
As someone who went through college and formally got a computer engineering degree, my actual college education has played a very insignificant role in my success.
I was pretty driven from the get go and it is what underlies my success.
Today I work for an Internet company and a bunch of the early people find themselves in a position to retire if they wanted to. One of them was an individual who opted on his last year of college.
A college degree vs. having the position of setting your own agenda for the rest of your life?
Sorry, I'll take the latter any day.
And unless you find yourself in a liberal arts college, a lot of the philosophy that you are eluding to just doesn't happen. I speak from experience as I went through the college of engineering at a state univeristy.
Liberal arts courses played a miniscule and insignificant portion of my education.
I found that stuff on my own in recent years, e.g., Shakepeare, theatre, philosophy, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
I had a Turbo Duo, basically a Turbo Grafx16 (PC Engine in Japan) with a CD-ROM attached (all-in-one unit) and let me say this, Konami's "Castlevania: Dracula-X" was the best 2D Castlevania game I have ever played.
I thought "Dracula-X" was superior in music and graphics to the much later released "Symphony Of The Night" on the Playstation and is one of those very memorable moments in gaming from that era.
SNK's "Fatal Fury 2" and "World Heroes 2" were also ported over (for the Japanese market) and were awesome 2D fighting games.
Having played "Fatal Fury 2" on a bonafide SNK Neo Geo system (it featured oversized and ueber expensive game catridges since the code in the carts was exactly what you found in the arcade) I was stunned to see "Fatal Fury 2" on the Turbo Duo - the differences were neglible.
Alas, my best gaming experiences on the Turbo Duo were all import titles - I had the requisite "converter" to play this stuff. Most of the games released for the US market were garbage so no wonder TurboGrafx16 failed miserably in the states...
-M
You couldn't disagree with me more strongly because it seems YOU ARE a Phd candidate since it seems Spazoid12 took the time to look at your profile. I didn't.
Kinda funny really, the fact that it crossed my mind and it turned out to be true. In fact, it was the FIRST thing when I read your post.
Unlike academia, APIs rule our lives in the IT trenches. It's not about O(N), chaos theory, Turing Machines, NP Completeness, it's about what APIs you've used of late not about mental masturb*ti*n.
While APIs may "superfluous details" for your ilk, it's our bread and butter and often dictates whether we get hired or not... that's because we need to list all those API acronyms in our resumes to get past the HR goons.
So forgive me for disagreeing with your disagreeing with me, you simply don't have the frame of reference and if you stay in academia, you likely never will... I say likely since some Phds are the exception to the rule, e.g., Comer.
And my opinion isn't just some bad attitude but also the opinions of two people who had been in Phd programs, one of which dropped out. It's interesting that both mutually exlusive of each other said, "It's all about ego."
That my friend truly *is* a waste of time.
Good luck,
-M
If you're starting out, I have bad news - given the decreases in salaries for people who've had 10 years experience, I hate to say this but the timing of your graduation is QUITE BAD. Offshoring fueling the latter along with the economic downturn and I don't expect things to improve much.
I have over 10+ years in tech, worked at a major software company and left for the dot bomb craze. I gave up lots of salary for equity and while the company was profitable and public, the market tanked a mere few weeks before my first vesting period. Even if it hadn't the AMT tax would have probably screwed me over anyway.
Since then I've worked some side stuff, waited tables, had the stupidity to try to sell cars and only in the last few months have things returned to what I call "normal."
Never mind that I worked on shrink wrapped products, developed a source level debugger, have had lots of experience on both Windows and UNIX. It all didn't matter to anyone.
I have to say, despite returning to a salary level that bests my previous best. I'm a changed person. Save, save, save.
IT blows. That's my 2 cents. HR people simply care about the last six months and are clueless if you are well ahead of your peers. They don't have the capacity to make this judgement.
You could tell them you architected (as an example) SSH and Kerberos have encryption patents and they might ask some stupid arse question like "Do you know JavaScript?"
Anyone starting school today... my advice is forget tech. If you feel it in your soul (like you should do it), fine, go to a tech school like DeVry, start making money and save it. Going to traditional 4 year programs for CS is an utter waste of time. Way too much change and like I said it's always about what you did in the last six months.
I have never seen the behavior you speak of... I leave my computer running for days... and days... and days... both Windows XP and LINUX.
-M
I meant software support, e.g., Adaptec supporting Windows with drivers for its products, by "support" I mean empowering end users to use device not support of the emotional variety, e.g. "Rah, rah, rah! Go go go LINUX!"
As an end user what do I care if I can or cannot see the source code to some drivers. Yeah sure some people do (and on this site, lots), but um, ultimately computing is about getting work done as much as it is being a dweeb. Speaking as a practical dweeb myself.
It is precisely this mentality, people whining about software "X" not being released as open source when binaries are targeted at LINUX that gives ammunition to Microsoft to make non-sensical statements like "We believe in protecting intellectual property" when they have had occasion to pooh pooh LINUX. Implying that some just because you write code that targets LINUX you must release it as open source. Not. Though MS would be perfectly happy if you believe this and the very nature of this thread goes in that direction.
Just my 2 cents,
-M
Doesn't mean every piece of code you write should be released for others to see. It's ATI's code, their call, the fact that they're support XFree86 finally is a good thing. So who cares if their drivers are not open source.
IMHO,
-M
Go pick up an Atari 2600 and play the original PITFALL and see if you feel the same way. Then come back and tell me how uninteresting it was... much like the subject of this thread.
It's all relative, hasn't this subject already been hashed on here?
And no, personally I don't like insanely hard games. Games are supposed to be fun, I have no interest in replaying an area OVER and OVER to stroke a gaming ego that no one else cares about (including me).
-M
You say you don't want Budweiser knowing when you buy other brands... um, how the heck would they know that? For example, they're not tracking sales of Samuel Adams. "Danger Will Robinson! Budweiser is tracking the fact that I don't drink their beer!!!" Guess what? I don't drink beer period. Nothing religious I simply never developed a taste for it and being in my 30's I'm not likely to. I fail to see how the heck this is a concern for anyone...
Guilty about what? Being productive with a choice that empowers you more than another? That seems plain silly (to even pose the question).
/., but um, I like to run lots of retail software under Windows, e.g., games. And no, I'm not interested in WineX or WINE thanks. I'm cool with Mozilla, OpenOffice, RedHat's BlueCurve desktop but if it doesn't cut the mustard, I'll quickly go elsewhere.
I have a Windows XP desktop and a LINUX desktop and they appear as one large desktop thanks to x2vnc.
Yeah this may be
-M
PS: This thread presupposes desktops... if you're talking about backend systems, I'm *NIX all the way.
Well to each his own however I beg to differ with your statements. Microsoft did not innovate, neither the World Wide Web nor the web browser came out of Microsoft.
And no they are not innovating in that space either. To my knowledge Microsoft does not fully support cascading style sheets as they should (long standing bugs) nor do they empower users with such options as blocking popups, images from specific servers, etc., etc.
Ignorance is bliss... for some (such as yourself).
-M
"Embrace and extinguish"? Based on the thread you seem to be the first to bring it up.
I think "embrace and extinguish" does not apply here.
There is a difference between a platform where applications are developed where the end users are not potentially technical people, e.g., very robust Java applets (the user doesn't care about the underlying technology) VERSUS providing some UNIX like tools and/or interfaces to UNIX services. The audience for the latter compared to the "Joe Average" masses running some Java applet unbeknownst to them is small. The same "masses" who if Sun had seen its dream of Java realized, would be downloading Java applets into their browsers all the time (whether they knew it or not).
Microsoft did a very good job of "embrace, extend, extinguish" with Java since they saw it as a threat in terms of another application platform that diminished the need for Microsoft's desktop.
If Java applets HAD become all the rage, the thin client would be that much more entrenched and Java applets would be as common as Flash ads - only in Sun's long gone dreams.
-M
"Sitting in front of computer" may be fine if you're web surfing but I stream music ALL the time... and I don't need to be front of the computer for that.
Well from the people I've talked to Tomcat was dog slow (pun intended). The context I'm talking about is a financial site with very, very heavy HTTP traffic vs. some site dishing out product information with one or two page requests every now and again.
Which is why the WEB team of my former employer went with Caucho's Resin:
http://www.caucho.com/
Open source is great but sometimes commercial solutions are called for... on top of an open source platform of course. (smile)
-Betelgeuse
How is a win32 ext2/3 filesystem driver relevant? The topic is the use of FAT in device media such as digital cameras. Windows is not involved here.
The top three activies on home desktops are email, WEB surfing and games. While LINUX may have two of three covered (no I don't count WineX to be ideal) and RedHat's own CEO saying LINUX was not ready for prime time on the desktop, why is this a surprise? Kylix harkens back to the days of "resource editors" starting with NeXTStep's GUI builder in the 1980's that allowed you prototype applications. Everyone was like "Wow!" But in hindsight it let's be real, it was nothing more than prototyping dialog boxes. Big deal. It seemed like a big deal and was reinforced on the Windows side with the release of "QuickC for Windows." It also brought the idea of "drawing" dialog forms into a popular environment under Windows. A couple of commercial products had been offering developers that choice already (not surprisingly after QuickC their market disappeared). Eventually IDEs encompassed more and more functionality. But applications being created today have little relation. The days of lots of developed of form based applications using something OTHER than a WEB browser are LOOOOONG gone. Most applications today are either web applications or the customization of ERP, CRM packages. Kylix is as an "important IDE" is an anachronistic notion since while IDEs are great for generating boilerplate projects are not critical to getting work done. IDEs don't have the relevance that they once did, Kylix is pretty irrelevant to the kind of development going on under LINUX - LINUX's forte is server side deployments. Add to that the programming language of Kylix is Object Pascal and I see yet another strike against it. While *NIX types tend to be very open to alternative programming languages I don't see a cogent case for using Object Pascal. In terms of semantics it offers no greater expressive power than let's say C++. Yeah sure I remember my days with Turbo Pascal fondly but I don't see much relevance. And lastly there's the mess that are X desktops - a lack of common controls and no consistent look and feel. This means great difficulty in achieving an "integrated" feel with the very disparate environments. This may not be a big deal to most people on Slashdot but it is for businesses training non-technical users with custom applications. And since RedHat just canned its desktop LINUX, Kylix can't ride those coattails. Probably the biggest in terms of having a crack at success. All of these factors add up to Kylix being an evolutionary dead end IMHO.
Bah, that's like saying, "No one uses anything but IE."
Google's search for media content is not the greatest. AltaVista seems to do a better job there.
This site is also fairly good:
http://www.alltheweb.com
Yes I use Google a lot but not exclusively.
-B
$50 for 300 songs is not a bad deal. Why don't you go buy 300 songs on roughly 30 CDs sold at music stores and look at your tab.
Jeez Louise.
This is the same sort of whining when various WEB content that had been previously free suddenly required an account post the dot com bubble.
Deal with it. Things cost money to produce, WEB content, music, yada, yada, yada.
Quit your b*tchin'.
-M
The subject being a reference to what makes dung beetles happy (guess what BS stands for?).
I think that in some cases you have some individuals who genuinely do accelerate some facet of computer science, however the average developer is pretty far removed from the day to day reality of most Phds.
Also, knowing one person who got a Phd and another who decided not to pursue it (after being in the program with a master's) both commented that Phd programs are so much about ego and very little else.
Apologies to all those exceptions out there but recollecting my observations of a certain "Dr." who ran the graphics lab at my alma mater, that does not sound very off the mark.
No offense Paradox but I'm reading lots of platitudes - "Quick learner", "less training", "practice learning." Not sure this translates into anything solid given my 20 years of coding in various ways.
I had a recent experience that I found amusing (kind of). I kept reading how employers were looking at "soft skills" now a lot more than the past and how "pure tech" wasn't going to cut it. Recently I wound up hooking up with some head hunter whose client insisted that any potential candidate take exams on Brainbench.com. Fine. I went along. I took an exam they set me up with. I scored 79% on the C++ exam. Not bad since it had been YEARS since I had actively coded in C++ (real stuff like class design, not simple subclasses to handle GUI events).
In my day I would keep up with the ANSI committee and enjoy reading what Scott Meyers et al had to say. (Aside: I just dumped my entire collection of "C++ Report" into the recycle bin)
That was then, this is now.
Turns out, the head hunter's client (who I might work for) had REALLY wanted me to take the Visual C++ Brainbench exam. I thought to myself, "Wow, so much for soft skills if all they are interested in is a number on some exam." Despite having Microsoft on my resume and having a capacity of "Lead Architect" in my last employer it seemed they were looking for some "magic number". I told the head hunter "No thanks" (much to his chagrin) and sent a polite letter to the HR person who sent me the URL for taking the test stating that I didn't think it was a "fit."
Truth is, today I WOULD in fact like to leverage my soft skills more than in the past. These people were looking for a grunt coder. Plain and simple. Been there, done that.
Fed up with the idiotic HR people and the dearth of anything interesting, today I'm selling cars by choice. Hondas specifically.
Let me make things clear, my biggest frustration in tech is the idiotic HR people in various organizations that are the gate keepers. Next come the moronic head hunters. But it's just the nature of the business and a necessary evil, particulary with the limited opportunities nowadays.
When I look at all I've done and what I know... then to have to deal with people who haven't the slightest clue and are simply matching buzzwords, well, it's all quite frustrating, really. Never mind that I transitioned from my last employer in a major way from Windows to the LINUX platform, never mind that I worked at Microsoft and have shrink wrapped software to my credit, never mind that I worked on a source level debugger at one point in time for Motorola... HR people don't understand any of the latter. Nothing.
To all tech people let me just say this, something I am passing along from a high level manager I once heard - "I know you love all that technical minutiae but don't forget about the soft skills." More importantly, since we're in a down time, if you go try something utterly non-tech it may spark surprising changes in how you view the world and yourself.
To give you some food for thought, how many CEOs do you know that were prime time developers? Yeah, Bill Gates might have coded in his day but I can assure you he hasn't done shyt for the last 15+ years. He was a businessman first and that's what succeeds in our society (the social element of the equation). Always has, always will.
Something I've had to learn the hard way...
-M
PS: Oh yeah, I'm the one selling cars that SPAZOID12 up above eludes to.
What are you talking about dude.... I have a Dreamcast and still use it.
r ge.net/
c as t.htm
It had a lot of bytchin' games and some of these are still readily enjoyable. I got the European import version of Shenmue II for the Dreamcast and I would rather hear Japanese and the heinous voice acting in the XBox version. Then there's "Metropolis Street Racer" still quite pleasant to play today (the predecessor of the Platinum hit "Project Gotham Racing" on the XBox). Then there's "San Francisco ush 2049" and "Sega Rally Championship"
Not to mention that I can game on a VGA monitor with the Dreamcast affording a level of crispness that requires an HDTV on the contemporary consoles. I'm not ready to drop $3K on an HDTV yet (the one I want).
Then there's the fact you can put the Dreamcast to use in ways not originally envisioned:
http://dcphonehome.com
http://linuxdc.sourcefo
http://netbsd.org/Ports/dreamcast/
And here's a very practical use of a Dreamcast with a broadband adapter (Ethernet):
http://www-public.tu-bs.de:8080/~y0018536/dream
I'm glad I cleared up your ignorance....
-M
I can't understand why YOU would use GNOME when KDE exists. ;-)
The point of KDE is to provide easy access to LINUX. Not everyone in this world is interested in being a sys admin demigod in order to be able to work against their computer.
Yes, that's a bit of an extreme view, but there are many, MANY people who have difficulty even with Macintoshes and Windows boxes.
KDE is simply trying to make computing more accessible. There is nothing wrong with that.
At this point I think all *NIX desktops suck for the most part. I heavily use LINUX at the backend but for now I prefer to have a Windows XP head. I use SSH and an X server to make the entire debate irrelevant, e.g., I'm running Mozilla as I type this message yet it is displayed on my Windows XP desktop.
Depending on my mode I might fire up Cygwin's X server (with WindowMaker) or use Hummingbir's Exceed.
Ultimately it all depends what your intentions are. If you do what you need to get done, who cares about what desktop someone uses.
It's not odd that Microsoft is losing money on games. Most of the XBox games are trash. As XBox owner I have seen little compelling content outside of "Halo."
;-)
The reality is, there is far more interesting content on both the Playstation2 and GameCube.
You're obviously not a gamer.
The argument of "the only problem is that there are very few ported X applications to run with it" is not a problem at all.
The reality is UNIX, LINUX et al will not rule the desktop anytime soon.
Cygwin's X Server is extremely useful when dealing with OTHER UN*X boxes. I run various apps on various LINUX boxes all the time, displaying them on my Windows XP desktop with the Cygwin X Server. This to me is very useful and quite sufficient.
I'm of the philosophy, "The best tool for the job." When I need to use a word processor et al I stick with Windows.
-M
Well, thinking idealistically can lead to naivte, and the whole argument for "finding your humanity" through a college education is pretty weak. A lack of self-respect is what tends to undermine any young mind. If you've already got that and you have a chance to seize the moment through a well paying technology job, then to heck with college. As someone who went through college and formally got a computer engineering degree, my actual college education has played a very insignificant role in my success. I was pretty driven from the get go and it is what underlies my success. Today I work for an Internet company and a bunch of the early people find themselves in a position to retire if they wanted to. One of them was an individual who opted on his last year of college. A college degree vs. having the position of setting your own agenda for the rest of your life? Sorry, I'll take the latter any day. And unless you find yourself in a liberal arts college, a lot of the philosophy that you are eluding to just doesn't happen. I speak from experience as I went through the college of engineering at a state univeristy. Liberal arts courses played a miniscule and insignificant portion of my education. I found that stuff on my own in recent years, e.g., Shakepeare, theatre, philosophy, etc.