I work at IBM and I've seen the results of this. It doesn't matter that they've created 70,000 jobs over there while getting rid of 50,000 jobs over here. The actual functional code/fix writing rate of Indian/Mexican/Chinese programmers is less than 1/4 the rate of their US counterparts. Why? It's not because they're dumb or uneducated. It's because those areas treat their employees like commodity replaceable units. They shuffle their people around month to month so they NEVER get any skill continuity or real expertise on a specific project. They view anyone with 5 years C++ experience, doesn't matter that you have have written embedded systems for 5 years and now they want you to write high availability communications software.
So they really need to hire 4-6 times the amount of programmers/engineers, at least for a few years, to keep up their current pace. And once the pace falls behind, the support goes to crap, and a few other things, the customers will leave in stampedes for better places...
Yup you're exactly right:) I also work for IBM as a contractor perma-temp and we've been seeing the writing on the wall for a LONG time. The sales force simply pushes products out the door, promising ANYTHING at all, even features that aren't possible, and selling the machines at a loss just to make the sales numbers. The support behind that, Global Services, is left holding the bag. And they too are forced to lowball contract bids to get the work fixing everything. I've been hearing whispers that many of the contracts are going to be dumped because they're not cost-effective - they were bid too low just to get the contract and they'll be dropped at renewal time. So yes, when you cut out a large portion of the contracts, you don't have a large portion of the work any more either. So you lay off workers and/or farm them out where the labor's cheaper.
Actually, yes. I have a PS2 USB keyboard, and you could get a GameCube keyboard/controller hybrid that some games supported. Also the DreamCast supported a keyboard in some form or another from what I remember.
Besides, the Wii has USB ports built-in...why the hell didn't they put in a few lines of code to support a goddamn keyboard?
...is a goddamn KEYBOARD I can plug in! Everything I heard said you'd be able to plug in any old USB keyboard and it would work, but now I find out that I'm stuck 1-letter-at-a-time-point-&-clicking to get anything typed!
Grab the jeep, run around shooting crap randomly, get the local authorities pissed off, then duck into the nearest Covenant camp for a Deathrace 2000-inspired mowing festival. Presto, new color for the jeep!
"I swear Arbiter, it wasn't me! The guy that did it was in a green jeep, not a red one!"
Besides if you ever get lost, just keep drivin, you'll come back around in a while;)
Nope, they were Win2K clients. However, even if they were XP clients I'd have their Windows firewall turned off anyway. That thing annoys me to no end and I never, EVER run it inside a secured environment. I've got a NAT box and a separate firewall/VPN gateway on the incoming side, so I'm decently secure there.
I use Sygate Personal Firewall, it's very easy, relatively non-intrusive, and decently powerful for for people who don't need a PIIX but want something a bit more flexible than Windows Firewall. Unfortunately, it's also gone forever.
Symantec engulf & devoured Sygate and if you go looking for their old free firewall, you get a page asking you to buy Symantec Internet Security. God I hate corporate America...
I'll third this comment also. I use AVG Free at home, my parents use it on their computers, my siblings use it (at my insistence), and the church I run IT for uses AVG Network edition.
The client is very light and non-intrusive as opposed to some well known others *COUGHNORTONCOUGHSYMANTECCOUGH*. I actually like that every email, both incoming and outgoing, gets a stamp that it was scanned. Lets me know that yes, it's still working properly and lets everybody else know that the email was definitively scanned.
The corporate network edition we use at the church is definitely VERY nice to work with. For $250 we got 10 licenses, 2 years of updates, and a central administration program. Installation is the easiest I've ever done on any networked antivirus:
1) Turn on all machines 2) Install AVG network admin tool on your file server (or any other machine) 3) Click Services > Install Antivirus, put in the relevant info, click Scan Network, and it will find all the active computers on your subnet. 4) Select the workstations you want done and click Install.
It's that simple. I think I installed all 8 workstations in under 5 minutes (and that includes turning them on and waiting for them to boot). You can also very easily set the server admin to download updates and push them out to the clients however often you want so the clients aren't bogging your network down with update requests.
I haven't used Avast but I've heard both good and bad things about it from other people, but I have yet to hear true negative feedback about AVG (true as opposed to fanboy whining).
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK wrong company! The company that produces the DA-88 is TASCAM, not Alesis. Don't know what I was smoking, it's too damn early still...
I would also highly reccommend going for a stand-alone solution for simply capturing audio. My dad runs a professional on-site recording business and also works for a small local recording studio. Both his own business and the studio use an Alesis DA-88 for recording on-location work. It's a true 8 track recorder, putting down 8 channels of digital audio at a time which you can then later pull off and mix down yourself. This tends to be a really good option for capturing live stuff as you're not trying to mix down on the fly, only later to realize that you don't like the mix you did.
If you want something on a computer, then I'd suggest looking for a breakout box that can do 8 channels simultaneously. Either way, I'd definitely reccommend using a mixer as little as possible. For recording work, mixing should be done as absolutely much as possible AFTER then performing is done, when you can go in and tweak everything in the mix until it's just right.
I'm quite sure they were Amish. I'm not sure whose saws they were though, it might have belonged to one of the other workers there. Whoever owned it, they used it and to good ends. Between two guys, they got all the trusses up and the entire roof decked in a single day. Granted that's not that difficult if you know what you're doing and have a good crew, but for two guys that's impressive.
Actually, most Amish will USE technology to some extent, as long as it does not affect their base way of life. I've hired Amish workers for hanging trusses and they come with really nice Milwaukee circular saws and other associated things. I also know that one of the companies that produces ambulances employs many, many Amish people to do the wiring and aluminum braising since they work very hard and fix things rather than throwing them out.
The big thing seems to be they won't OWN technology. Don't ask me what the difference is, but that seems to be it.
My stragemety was usually a bit different. Since the FuzzBomb tended to be in large cities, I could usually find a room in the city with only one entrance. First, go through the city very carefully, dropping crystals to disinfect the general populace. Then head to the one opening room, barricading the door with crystals and laying a huge crystal farm in there. Generally I could keep them growing faster than the fuzzes and normal people would pick them up.
Once I had 100 with a good crop of crystals left there, I'd seek out Fuzzy himself. By this time also a good portion of the people in the city would be disinfected, so it'd make the run to the fuzz a lot easier.
But I'm sure all of us who played it remember being fuzzed and letting your computer run for hours on end, hoping you would hop a train for somewhere you left crystals growing...just waiting to hear that ZAPPO sound...
I still play SC2 from time to time (via UQM) and it's still one of the best games ever. The gameplay kicks ass, they combat is intuitive yet still quite challenging, the humor is hilarious, the overall world is ENORMOUS (especially for the time), and it's just all around fun.
Star Control 3, on the other hand, absolutely destroyed the franchise. WTF was up with those lame-ass animated puppets? And the fact that you had to micromanage your colonies to get anything decent from them? It went from a game of exploration and returns based on what you personally accomplish to a game of frustrating micromanagement and stupidity. The story was pretty lame, the humor was unbelievably stale, the combat got just too unbalanced and weird with the new ships, and it just stank overall. It was so painfully obvious that the two guys who made SC2 great (heck who made SC2 period) were completely absent from the development.
I haven't received as big of a letdown since then. Although Revenant was damn close...
Nah I know a bunch of other people who bought the undubbed, unsubtitled import. I've watched both that and the fansubbed download and I can tell you that it's almost better watching the Japanese version. Let's face it, the plot's nigh unto incomprehensible, even for a hardcore FF freak like me. I still loved it though and I'll still be another first in line to buy it.
Why?
Because the action was A-FRIKKIN-MAZING! Easily the best action sequences I've watched in years, even beyond Casshern (which was another great but incomprehensible movie). It's all such delicious eye candy...mmmmmmm....*drool*
ooooooooooo where does one find said fine literature? I had to get my set of Lensman books from Ripping Publishing in the UK, who are unfortunately now out of business:( Shoot me an email or just reply on here, I'd LOVE to get my hands on a new set!
What the hell backwater swamp do you live in? Every store around here, even Wally World, has plenty of Xbox360's in stock. And no I don't live in NYC or any other major market.
Maybe the stores in your area did something really piss Microsoft off...
Or have you just not gone shopping since launch date?
From what I've heard/read off and on, the launch schedule of the PS3 has been ANYTHING but definite.
Other than that, nope I'm fine. Just wondering why you're posting this as an AC and not on your account so you can accrue the wonderful karma your post will give you for correcting me;)
Actually quite large pieces of the medical and defense industries are developing products based on Cell processors because they represent a huge leap in single processor floating point throughput (from widely available processors that is).
Slashdot Mirror
I work at IBM and I've seen the results of this. It doesn't matter that they've created 70,000 jobs over there while getting rid of 50,000 jobs over here. The actual functional code/fix writing rate of Indian/Mexican/Chinese programmers is less than 1/4 the rate of their US counterparts. Why? It's not because they're dumb or uneducated. It's because those areas treat their employees like commodity replaceable units. They shuffle their people around month to month so they NEVER get any skill continuity or real expertise on a specific project. They view anyone with 5 years C++ experience, doesn't matter that you have have written embedded systems for 5 years and now they want you to write high availability communications software.
So they really need to hire 4-6 times the amount of programmers/engineers, at least for a few years, to keep up their current pace. And once the pace falls behind, the support goes to crap, and a few other things, the customers will leave in stampedes for better places...
Yup you're exactly right :) I also work for IBM as a contractor perma-temp and we've been seeing the writing on the wall for a LONG time. The sales force simply pushes products out the door, promising ANYTHING at all, even features that aren't possible, and selling the machines at a loss just to make the sales numbers. The support behind that, Global Services, is left holding the bag. And they too are forced to lowball contract bids to get the work fixing everything. I've been hearing whispers that many of the contracts are going to be dumped because they're not cost-effective - they were bid too low just to get the contract and they'll be dropped at renewal time. So yes, when you cut out a large portion of the contracts, you don't have a large portion of the work any more either. So you lay off workers and/or farm them out where the labor's cheaper.
Hey you forgot:
4) Get the Vikings to win the superbowl. No, seriously, it'll work...
Actually, yes. I have a PS2 USB keyboard, and you could get a GameCube keyboard/controller hybrid that some games supported. Also the DreamCast supported a keyboard in some form or another from what I remember.
Besides, the Wii has USB ports built-in...why the hell didn't they put in a few lines of code to support a goddamn keyboard?
...the fact that I STILL HAVE TO TYPE EVERYTHING WITH THE !@#$%@#%^#$^&E$%& CLICKY THINGY???
Why in the world can't I plug my USB keyboard in it and type?
WHY, GOD, WHY???
...is a goddamn KEYBOARD I can plug in! Everything I heard said you'd be able to plug in any old USB keyboard and it would work, but now I find out that I'm stuck 1-letter-at-a-time-point-&-clicking to get anything typed!
ARGH!
Other than that, I love it =)
Good call, Conway Costigan as George Washington Jones in a uranite mine on Eridan :D
Didn't know anybody reads quality writing like that any more...
Grab the jeep, run around shooting crap randomly, get the local authorities pissed off, then duck into the nearest Covenant camp for a Deathrace 2000-inspired mowing festival. Presto, new color for the jeep!
;)
"I swear Arbiter, it wasn't me! The guy that did it was in a green jeep, not a red one!"
Besides if you ever get lost, just keep drivin, you'll come back around in a while
Nope, they were Win2K clients. However, even if they were XP clients I'd have their Windows firewall turned off anyway. That thing annoys me to no end and I never, EVER run it inside a secured environment. I've got a NAT box and a separate firewall/VPN gateway on the incoming side, so I'm decently secure there.
I use Sygate Personal Firewall, it's very easy, relatively non-intrusive, and decently powerful for for people who don't need a PIIX but want something a bit more flexible than Windows Firewall. Unfortunately, it's also gone forever.
Symantec engulf & devoured Sygate and if you go looking for their old free firewall, you get a page asking you to buy Symantec Internet Security. God I hate corporate America...
I'll third this comment also. I use AVG Free at home, my parents use it on their computers, my siblings use it (at my insistence), and the church I run IT for uses AVG Network edition.
The client is very light and non-intrusive as opposed to some well known others *COUGHNORTONCOUGHSYMANTECCOUGH*. I actually like that every email, both incoming and outgoing, gets a stamp that it was scanned. Lets me know that yes, it's still working properly and lets everybody else know that the email was definitively scanned.
The corporate network edition we use at the church is definitely VERY nice to work with. For $250 we got 10 licenses, 2 years of updates, and a central administration program. Installation is the easiest I've ever done on any networked antivirus:
1) Turn on all machines
2) Install AVG network admin tool on your file server (or any other machine)
3) Click Services > Install Antivirus, put in the relevant info, click Scan Network, and it will find all the active computers on your subnet.
4) Select the workstations you want done and click Install.
It's that simple. I think I installed all 8 workstations in under 5 minutes (and that includes turning them on and waiting for them to boot). You can also very easily set the server admin to download updates and push them out to the clients however often you want so the clients aren't bogging your network down with update requests.
I haven't used Avast but I've heard both good and bad things about it from other people, but I have yet to hear true negative feedback about AVG (true as opposed to fanboy whining).
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK wrong company! The company that produces the DA-88 is TASCAM, not Alesis. Don't know what I was smoking, it's too damn early still...
I would also highly reccommend going for a stand-alone solution for simply capturing audio. My dad runs a professional on-site recording business and also works for a small local recording studio. Both his own business and the studio use an Alesis DA-88 for recording on-location work. It's a true 8 track recorder, putting down 8 channels of digital audio at a time which you can then later pull off and mix down yourself. This tends to be a really good option for capturing live stuff as you're not trying to mix down on the fly, only later to realize that you don't like the mix you did.
If you want something on a computer, then I'd suggest looking for a breakout box that can do 8 channels simultaneously. Either way, I'd definitely reccommend using a mixer as little as possible. For recording work, mixing should be done as absolutely much as possible AFTER then performing is done, when you can go in and tweak everything in the mix until it's just right.
I'm quite sure they were Amish. I'm not sure whose saws they were though, it might have belonged to one of the other workers there. Whoever owned it, they used it and to good ends. Between two guys, they got all the trusses up and the entire roof decked in a single day. Granted that's not that difficult if you know what you're doing and have a good crew, but for two guys that's impressive.
Actually, most Amish will USE technology to some extent, as long as it does not affect their base way of life. I've hired Amish workers for hanging trusses and they come with really nice Milwaukee circular saws and other associated things. I also know that one of the companies that produces ambulances employs many, many Amish people to do the wiring and aluminum braising since they work very hard and fix things rather than throwing them out.
The big thing seems to be they won't OWN technology. Don't ask me what the difference is, but that seems to be it.
Well, MY dna's nationality is Norwegian & German, so I'll spell it how I damn well please ;)
My stragemety was usually a bit different. Since the FuzzBomb tended to be in large cities, I could usually find a room in the city with only one entrance. First, go through the city very carefully, dropping crystals to disinfect the general populace. Then head to the one opening room, barricading the door with crystals and laying a huge crystal farm in there. Generally I could keep them growing faster than the fuzzes and normal people would pick them up.
Once I had 100 with a good crop of crystals left there, I'd seek out Fuzzy himself. By this time also a good portion of the people in the city would be disinfected, so it'd make the run to the fuzz a lot easier.
But I'm sure all of us who played it remember being fuzzed and letting your computer run for hours on end, hoping you would hop a train for somewhere you left crystals growing...just waiting to hear that ZAPPO sound...
I still play SC2 from time to time (via UQM) and it's still one of the best games ever. The gameplay kicks ass, they combat is intuitive yet still quite challenging, the humor is hilarious, the overall world is ENORMOUS (especially for the time), and it's just all around fun.
Star Control 3, on the other hand, absolutely destroyed the franchise. WTF was up with those lame-ass animated puppets? And the fact that you had to micromanage your colonies to get anything decent from them? It went from a game of exploration and returns based on what you personally accomplish to a game of frustrating micromanagement and stupidity. The story was pretty lame, the humor was unbelievably stale, the combat got just too unbalanced and weird with the new ships, and it just stank overall. It was so painfully obvious that the two guys who made SC2 great (heck who made SC2 period) were completely absent from the development.
I haven't received as big of a letdown since then. Although Revenant was damn close...
OMFG I can't believe someone else in the entire world actually remembers Agent USA too...
I can still hear the music in my head on that wonderful bloop sound system:
Doo doo doodoodoodoo doodoodoo doodoodoo, doo doo doodoodooDOO...doo doodoo
blipblipblipblip blip blip blipblipblipblip!
Nah I know a bunch of other people who bought the undubbed, unsubtitled import. I've watched both that and the fansubbed download and I can tell you that it's almost better watching the Japanese version. Let's face it, the plot's nigh unto incomprehensible, even for a hardcore FF freak like me. I still loved it though and I'll still be another first in line to buy it.
Why?
Because the action was A-FRIKKIN-MAZING! Easily the best action sequences I've watched in years, even beyond Casshern (which was another great but incomprehensible movie). It's all such delicious eye candy...mmmmmmm....*drool*
ooooooooooo where does one find said fine literature? I had to get my set of Lensman books from Ripping Publishing in the UK, who are unfortunately now out of business :( Shoot me an email or just reply on here, I'd LOVE to get my hands on a new set!
I would, but I didn't have any more character space left in my .sig :(
:D
But I'm overjoyed that you recognize it, means someone else besides me is still reading those fantastic books
What the hell backwater swamp do you live in? Every store around here, even Wally World, has plenty of Xbox360's in stock. And no I don't live in NYC or any other major market.
Maybe the stores in your area did something really piss Microsoft off...
Or have you just not gone shopping since launch date?
From what I've heard/read off and on, the launch schedule of the PS3 has been ANYTHING but definite.
;)
Other than that, nope I'm fine. Just wondering why you're posting this as an AC and not on your account so you can accrue the wonderful karma your post will give you for correcting me
Actually quite large pieces of the medical and defense industries are developing products based on Cell processors because they represent a huge leap in single processor floating point throughput (from widely available processors that is).