I've got Mass Effect 1 - haven't gotten around to playing it yet.
I've played BioShock 1. It was fun... I thoroughly enjoyed the setting. But I couldn't help seeing elements of SystemShock 2 in it, and kept feeling like it could have been a much better game.
Have not yet played BioShock 2 - I will when the price comes down. I'm hopeful that it will be at least as much fun as BioShock 1 was. I'm also looking forward to BioShock Infinite, which looks to be fun.
Well why wouldn't you? Clearly you seem to enjoy hopping from respawn to respawn, why not server to server?
I don't really have a problem with being killed and having to respawn. It happens. It happens more when you aren't a good player.
I'm more than willing to admit that I'm not a good player.
But if you're playing with decent people it isn't actually all that unpleasant to die and respawn. I've played some very enjoyable games where I wound up losing.
But those are really the exception these days. It really seems like most multi-player games are just filled with assholes who enjoy insulting people. Which is fine, I guess, if that's how they have fun.
But I don't enjoy it. Which is why I don't play those games. Which leaves me with relatively few options, since game companies seem to prefer making multi-player focused titles.
I'm really sorry to say this. Most games are competitive.
These days that's largely true. Which is part of my complaint. Cooperative and/or single-player games are getting harder to find. Which is a problem, if I don't feel like playing something competitive.
If you're not having fun, you probably suck.
I'm very willing to accept that I suck. I don't have hours to devote to practicing enough to become good. And I'm ok with that. You aren't going to insult me by telling me that I suck. I know this already.
But simply losing at a game can still be enjoyable - if the people you're playing with are not jerks.
There's a difference between playing a friendly match and losing to somebody who is a good sport, and playing with somebody who is screaming random obscenities and insulting you every time you die.
Yep, there's nothing more fun than being teabagged by some jerk who has no life or job so they spend 24/7 practising so they can feel their life has meaning when some wage slave logs on to go find some fun for a few hours.
Indeed.
I used to have more time on my hands. I used to be able to play Unreal (pre-tournament!) for multiple hours a day. I got halfway-decent at it. It was fun.
But those days are long-gone. I don't have the time to get good enough at a modern multi-player title for it to actually be fun. If I log into something multi-player these days I just get my ass handed to me time and again. Usually while somebody mocks me. Not my idea of fun.
This wouldn't really be a problem if there was more single-player content out there. Seems like everyone prefers multi-player these days.
I can understand the appeal... You build just a few maps and your players can entertain themselves for hours. Saves you money. Makes you more money. Makes good sense from a business standpoint.
But I miss the days when I could pay $50 and get a good 50 hours or so of gameplay.
Yes, some RPGs still offer that kind longevity... And I do enjoy a good RPG... Had a lot of fun with Dragon Age...
And there's always MMOGs... They offer almost limitless gameplay, as long as you keep paying your subscription...
But I enjoy playing different types of games. And sometimes I really feel like a good shooter. Used to be you could get 50 hours out of a shooter. These days it's more like 10.
I suppose I could crank the difficulty up... Make it so hard that I'm dying every 5 minutes... That'd drag things out quite a bit longer... But that isn't exactly my idea of fun.
Right. Because after a 12+ hour day at work, when I'm trying to find a way to relax and let off some steam, what I really want to do is hop from one server to the next in the hopes that I'll find one that isn't full of jerks.
With current technology (and current technology discovery rates), anything we send past the outer planets will, almost certainly, be overtaken by something else that we send later way before it ever makes any new discoveries. The speeds and distances involved mean that waiting 100 years (twice as long as the entire history of spaceflight) is more sensible because then we'd be able to build something that would overtake ANYTHING that we could send today. And, to be honest, it's quite probably that even THAT would be overtaken LONG before it got anywhere interesting (e.g. nearest star).
So when do you decide it's good enough?
I mean... We launch now and in 100 years we could easily overtake them.
So we launch in 100 years... And 100 years after that we could overtaken them...
So we wait 200 years to launch... But 100 years later we can overtake them...
And there really is a limit to how much self-education you can expect your average consumer to do. Do you go out and research what kind of spark plugs are factory installed in your new car? I sure as hell don't.
no just as I said earlier about the little survey, I look in the book hanging off the shelf to quickly decide what I need for a sparkplug
The book hanging off the shelf... At the car dealership?
I'm not talking about replacing the spark plugs in a vehicle you already own. I'm talking about going out to the dealership and purchasing a car. I don't think most people check to see what type of spark plugs are factory installed when they go looking for a new car. Either they know enough to care, and they'll just replace them with their preferred type when they get the vehicle home... Or they don't know enough to care, and they'll just use whatever is in there.
Yeah. I just assumed they were referring to the 2010 version, as the earlier ones probably didn't feature DX11 graphics. But just saying "AvP" doesn't really clarify things much at this point.
The 2010 game is a mixed bag.
The marine campaign is a ton of fun. The predator campaign is fun, but doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The alien campaign was a disappointment.
The multiplayer can be fun, or frustrating, depending on the map and who you're playing as/against. Some of the maps seriously favor one race over the others, and it makes things very frustrating. If you're playing as the right race, you slaughter everyone. If you're playing as the wrong race you get slaughtered. And there isn't a whole hell of a lot you can do about it.
I played through the singleplayer storylines. Did some multiplayer. And then forgot about it. There's been some map pack DLC released... But the multiplayer just wasn't compelling enough to keep me coming back.
well they always could, but they are too ill informed to make a good choice for their needs
The problem hasn't really been one of information.
Until fairly recently, your average off-the-shelf computer shipped with very crappy graphics. If you just ordered whatever was on Dell's website or grabbed something from Best Buy it would have enough integrated graphics to run Windows and not much else.
Sure, you can generally customize them with a video card of your choice... At least if you're ordering on-line... But even then the offerings weren't terribly impressive.
And there really is a limit to how much self-education you can expect your average consumer to do. Do you go out and research what kind of spark plugs are factory installed in your new car? I sure as hell don't.
Recently the situation has been changing. Windows now wants a halfway-decent 3D card. And integrated graphics are getting better. And gaming is becoming more mainstream, so more stock systems are coming with halfway-decent video cards. But, again, that's all a fairly recent change.
I've got no idea how fast an "Alien vs. Predator" video game needs the graphics system to be, since I stopped caring once any modern hardware could play Nethack or Solitaire.
AvP is a relatively modern game. Came out in the last year or so. It isn't mind-shatteringly amazing, but it looks pretty decent.
Traditionally, integrated graphics have done a lousy job with serious gaming on PCs. Basically any FPS has required a discrete 3D card.
If Joe Sixpack can go out and buy an off-the-shelf machine at Best Buy and play a game on it without having to upgrade the hardware, it'll be a huge step in the right direction.
But this chip doesn't look like it'll be replacing 3D cards for serious gamers anytime soon.
Can the hardware play 1080p video without needing a noisy fan? How low power is "low-power"?
It's a desktop chip, so I can't imagine it'll do anything without a fan. Although the integrated graphics means that you wouldn't need a separate graphics card with its own fan. So it should be at least a little quieter.
They are trained to take control of situations and something silly like not respecting their authority and blowing bubbles can sometimes escalate quickly into something worse.
He didn't take control. He lost control. He was acting like an idiot. There's another officer standing next to him who looks more than a little uncomfortable with what he's saying/doing.
It was really a no win situation for the police officer.
No it wasn't. That officer standing next to him looked just fine. Smiling at the lady blowing bubbles. Not acting like an idiot. She looked far more "in control" than he did.
The mainstream media has screwed this one up for years, but it's embarrassing to see hacker and cracker...
The *only* people that differentiate between the two are the Slashdot crowd. To *everyone* else, an hacker is a hacker is a hacker.
It isn't just the Slashdot crowd. Lots of IT folks understand the difference and use the terms appropriately. Especially folks who would actually label themselves as hackers or crackers.
I suppose it wouldn't be quite so annoying if it was just the mainstream media screwing it up... But this is a publication on a website calling itself SecurityWeek. You'd think they might know something about IT.
There's a hell of a lot more to success than simply being new or revolutionary.
There was Friendster way before it came along,
And others.
Granted, FB was a lot better than MySpace (it's biggest competitor at the time), but that was more due to a failing on the part of MySpace than on the merits of FB.
Facebook also had a bit of exclusivity going for it, since you initially had to be a college student. Folks like exclusivity.
Social networking sites are not really complicated..
Nope, they aren't. Which is why there are so many different variations on the theme.
Why so much worship, hatred, and jealousy over this?
Facebook is the de-facto standard. It's the one that caught on. It's the one that pretty much everyone uses. It's the 800lb gorilla in the room.
Luckily the rest of the world is not limited by your arrogance.
Arrogance? Or realism?
Who gives a fuck if you don't think IPv6 will ever be wide-spread?
I never said anything about wide-spread. I said "Not any time soon. Maybe not ever." We've been talking about IPv6 for how long now? A decade? Longer? And it's always got to happen right now because we're all out of addresses! But it doesn't happen. And we keep limping along as-is. And I see no reason to believe that'll change any time soon.
Or if you're sceptical of power grids also carrying data?
The fact of the matter is that embedding a signal in a power line turns it into an antenna. Wreaks havoc with the local EM band. It isn't really a matter of opinion. Physics is like that.
Broadband over powerlines keeps popping up. It isn't going to happen. Yeah, it sounds like a good idea on paper... You've already got all those copper lines carrying electricity, why not throw a signal in there and do double duty? Except that it just doesn't work. I don't know how many times I've seen it here on Slashdot.
And IPv6? Not any time soon. Maybe not ever. Yeah, I know, we're running out of addresses. NAT is horrible. I know. And I'd love to roll out IPv6 today just for the hell of it (because I don't have enough work to do already). But folks have been talking about IPv6 for years now.
I'd say, the concept of desktop as it was defined through 80s and 90s is beginning to die.
Agreed.
Smartphones, iPhones, iPods, and iPads are becoming major players. We've got an assortment of ebook readers and netbooks and whatnot that don't really run a traditional "desktop" OS of any kind. Even conventional Windows machines are shipping with stripped-down non-desktop environments loaded on them. My new Dell latitude came with some kind of Linux-based instant-on environment for surfing the web and reading email. Folks buy televisions and set-top boxes that'll stream content from YouTube or Hulu or Google or Netflix or wherever.
I have no doubt that Windows is going to hang around for a long time. And we're going to have desktop computers running desktop OS'es for a long time. But I think the relevance of the desktop is waning.
Folks are more interested in the content than how they access it. Folks want to pull up Facebook, they don't really care if they're doing it on an iPhone, or an Android phone, or a Mac, or a Windows box, or what. They just want their Facebook.
Re:"Not Sexy"
on
Why Microsoft?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I think you're kind of missing the point.
Why should I work for X? is certainly a valid question. Depending on the company you have different pros and cons. Maybe they pay well, but they've got crappy benefits. Maybe they don't pay so good but they've got great benefits. Maybe there's tremendous name recognition. Maybe there's an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of something spectacular. Whatever.
What's vaguely interesting about this is that until fairly recently, nobody would have asked that question about Microsoft because the answer was flat-out obvious.
They were, for a very long time, the IT company to work for. They were big. They were doing interesting things. They were turning out huge products. Everyone used their software. It almost didn't matter what they were paying, people wanted to work for them.
That's changing. And that's why this is a story.
It isn't flat-out obvious anymore. And there are plenty of reasons why you wouldn't want to work for Microsoft. Or why you'd rather work for someone else.
Re:In the End...
on
Why Microsoft?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
We all trash Microsoft for making shitty products, but in the end we would all work for them given the chance.
I've trashed Microsoft's shitty products, but I don't trash the ones that generally work well. I'm quite happy with Windows 7, thank you.
But I don't think I'd want to work for them. Partly because I hate writing code, and when I think of Microsoft I think of programming. Obviously they've got some kind of beefy network to handle all that coding... And they need someone to run it all... Which would potentially be the kind of thing I'm interested in... But that brings me to problem #2 - I don't want a giant organization where I wind up with an uber-specialized position. I like my little IT department where I can get involved in literally everything.
I had the idea of building our own PCs for considerably less.
Seriously?
You may very well be able to source the parts for less... But then you're going to have to build and support them.
Dell has an army of minimum-wage employees. If you're a government agency, you probably don't have anybody who makes that little. So the cost for you to build one of these computers will be more than what it costs Dell. And it won't be as simple a build as reloading some Dell box because you'll have to grab drivers for each individual component.
There'll still be a warranty on most of the parts... But you'll have to identify which part actually failed, figure out the appropriate number, and call them. This will require more time and effort than simply calling Dell on anything that breaks. Good luck getting anything even remotely resembling one of Dell's 4-hour warranties.
And any real problems you have are going to come back to bite you in the ass. Get a batch of bad motherboards? That's not Dell's fault, that's your fault. Get some funky driver conflicts? That's your fault. Can't get replacement parts in a timely manner? Your fault.
You might very well see some up-front savings... The sticker price of the box you can build, compared to the sticker price of the same hardware with a Dell logo, may very well be lower. But once you start spending time building and supporting them I think your savings are going to vanish very quickly.
Honestly, I'm not sure what you're complaining about as far as Dell's prices go... We typically spend $1,500 for a machine. The hardware is generally more than sufficient for our current needs and there's always room to upgrade the RAM and CPU at least once. We typically order them with the 3-year warranty. We usually get Office and Adobe bundled, plus whatever monitor they're throwing in. The machine will generally last us 3-5 years depending on which bits of hardware fail in that time.
What if we only have the ability to divert it a little bit, if and when that comes? Then we only control WHERE it hits, not WHETHER it hits. So how do we choose, I wonder?
If the asteroid is big enough, it won't really matter where it hits. Anywhere on the planet will be a global disaster.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got Mass Effect 1 - haven't gotten around to playing it yet.
I've played BioShock 1. It was fun... I thoroughly enjoyed the setting. But I couldn't help seeing elements of SystemShock 2 in it, and kept feeling like it could have been a much better game.
Have not yet played BioShock 2 - I will when the price comes down. I'm hopeful that it will be at least as much fun as BioShock 1 was. I'm also looking forward to BioShock Infinite, which looks to be fun.
Well why wouldn't you? Clearly you seem to enjoy hopping from respawn to respawn, why not server to server?
I don't really have a problem with being killed and having to respawn. It happens. It happens more when you aren't a good player.
I'm more than willing to admit that I'm not a good player.
But if you're playing with decent people it isn't actually all that unpleasant to die and respawn. I've played some very enjoyable games where I wound up losing.
But those are really the exception these days. It really seems like most multi-player games are just filled with assholes who enjoy insulting people. Which is fine, I guess, if that's how they have fun.
But I don't enjoy it. Which is why I don't play those games. Which leaves me with relatively few options, since game companies seem to prefer making multi-player focused titles.
I'm really sorry to say this. Most games are competitive.
These days that's largely true. Which is part of my complaint. Cooperative and/or single-player games are getting harder to find. Which is a problem, if I don't feel like playing something competitive.
If you're not having fun, you probably suck.
I'm very willing to accept that I suck. I don't have hours to devote to practicing enough to become good. And I'm ok with that. You aren't going to insult me by telling me that I suck. I know this already.
But simply losing at a game can still be enjoyable - if the people you're playing with are not jerks.
There's a difference between playing a friendly match and losing to somebody who is a good sport, and playing with somebody who is screaming random obscenities and insulting you every time you die.
Yep, there's nothing more fun than being teabagged by some jerk who has no life or job so they spend 24/7 practising so they can feel their life has meaning when some wage slave logs on to go find some fun for a few hours.
Indeed.
I used to have more time on my hands. I used to be able to play Unreal (pre-tournament!) for multiple hours a day. I got halfway-decent at it. It was fun.
But those days are long-gone. I don't have the time to get good enough at a modern multi-player title for it to actually be fun. If I log into something multi-player these days I just get my ass handed to me time and again. Usually while somebody mocks me. Not my idea of fun.
This wouldn't really be a problem if there was more single-player content out there. Seems like everyone prefers multi-player these days.
I can understand the appeal... You build just a few maps and your players can entertain themselves for hours. Saves you money. Makes you more money. Makes good sense from a business standpoint.
But I miss the days when I could pay $50 and get a good 50 hours or so of gameplay.
Yes, some RPGs still offer that kind longevity... And I do enjoy a good RPG... Had a lot of fun with Dragon Age...
And there's always MMOGs... They offer almost limitless gameplay, as long as you keep paying your subscription...
But I enjoy playing different types of games. And sometimes I really feel like a good shooter. Used to be you could get 50 hours out of a shooter. These days it's more like 10.
I suppose I could crank the difficulty up... Make it so hard that I'm dying every 5 minutes... That'd drag things out quite a bit longer... But that isn't exactly my idea of fun.
got it... jerks don't deserve fun.
Sure they do. I'd just prefer it if their fun wasn't had at my expense.
why don't you make your own games?
Because I already have a job. I don't want to spend my few leisure hours trying to code up a video game. I want to relax and enjoy myself.
Find a better server.
Right. Because after a 12+ hour day at work, when I'm trying to find a way to relax and let off some steam, what I really want to do is hop from one server to the next in the hopes that I'll find one that isn't full of jerks.
Should be encrypted by default. Should not be an unencrypted option.
someone in the same network sniffing your unencrypted traffic is facebooks fault ?
or the fact that someone made a UI to do it for dummies ?
The fact that it is unencrypted is, yes.
With current technology (and current technology discovery rates), anything we send past the outer planets will, almost certainly, be overtaken by something else that we send later way before it ever makes any new discoveries. The speeds and distances involved mean that waiting 100 years (twice as long as the entire history of spaceflight) is more sensible because then we'd be able to build something that would overtake ANYTHING that we could send today. And, to be honest, it's quite probably that even THAT would be overtaken LONG before it got anywhere interesting (e.g. nearest star).
So when do you decide it's good enough?
I mean... We launch now and in 100 years we could easily overtake them.
So we launch in 100 years... And 100 years after that we could overtaken them...
So we wait 200 years to launch... But 100 years later we can overtake them...
So we wait 300 years...
And there really is a limit to how much self-education you can expect your average consumer to do. Do you go out and research what kind of spark plugs are factory installed in your new car? I sure as hell don't.
no just as I said earlier about the little survey, I look in the book hanging off the shelf to quickly decide what I need for a sparkplug
The book hanging off the shelf... At the car dealership?
I'm not talking about replacing the spark plugs in a vehicle you already own. I'm talking about going out to the dealership and purchasing a car. I don't think most people check to see what type of spark plugs are factory installed when they go looking for a new car. Either they know enough to care, and they'll just replace them with their preferred type when they get the vehicle home... Or they don't know enough to care, and they'll just use whatever is in there.
That's the situation with computers.
Yeah. I just assumed they were referring to the 2010 version, as the earlier ones probably didn't feature DX11 graphics. But just saying "AvP" doesn't really clarify things much at this point.
The 2010 game is a mixed bag.
The marine campaign is a ton of fun. The predator campaign is fun, but doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The alien campaign was a disappointment.
The multiplayer can be fun, or frustrating, depending on the map and who you're playing as/against. Some of the maps seriously favor one race over the others, and it makes things very frustrating. If you're playing as the right race, you slaughter everyone. If you're playing as the wrong race you get slaughtered. And there isn't a whole hell of a lot you can do about it.
I played through the singleplayer storylines. Did some multiplayer. And then forgot about it. There's been some map pack DLC released... But the multiplayer just wasn't compelling enough to keep me coming back.
It worked, I have travelled back to the year 2000.
Hmmm...
Well, I assumed they were talking about the 2010 AvP game. As that would make more sense (seeing as DX11 didn't even exist in 2000).
But I suppose it could be the 2000 AvP game. In which case I'm less impressed.
well they always could, but they are too ill informed to make a good choice for their needs
The problem hasn't really been one of information.
Until fairly recently, your average off-the-shelf computer shipped with very crappy graphics. If you just ordered whatever was on Dell's website or grabbed something from Best Buy it would have enough integrated graphics to run Windows and not much else.
Sure, you can generally customize them with a video card of your choice... At least if you're ordering on-line... But even then the offerings weren't terribly impressive.
And there really is a limit to how much self-education you can expect your average consumer to do. Do you go out and research what kind of spark plugs are factory installed in your new car? I sure as hell don't.
Recently the situation has been changing. Windows now wants a halfway-decent 3D card. And integrated graphics are getting better. And gaming is becoming more mainstream, so more stock systems are coming with halfway-decent video cards. But, again, that's all a fairly recent change.
I've got no idea how fast an "Alien vs. Predator" video game needs the graphics system to be, since I stopped caring once any modern hardware could play Nethack or Solitaire.
AvP is a relatively modern game. Came out in the last year or so. It isn't mind-shatteringly amazing, but it looks pretty decent.
Traditionally, integrated graphics have done a lousy job with serious gaming on PCs. Basically any FPS has required a discrete 3D card.
If Joe Sixpack can go out and buy an off-the-shelf machine at Best Buy and play a game on it without having to upgrade the hardware, it'll be a huge step in the right direction.
But this chip doesn't look like it'll be replacing 3D cards for serious gamers anytime soon.
Can the hardware play 1080p video without needing a noisy fan? How low power is "low-power"?
It's a desktop chip, so I can't imagine it'll do anything without a fan. Although the integrated graphics means that you wouldn't need a separate graphics card with its own fan. So it should be at least a little quieter.
They are trained to take control of situations and something silly like not respecting their authority and blowing bubbles can sometimes escalate quickly into something worse.
He didn't take control. He lost control. He was acting like an idiot. There's another officer standing next to him who looks more than a little uncomfortable with what he's saying/doing.
It was really a no win situation for the police officer.
No it wasn't. That officer standing next to him looked just fine. Smiling at the lady blowing bubbles. Not acting like an idiot. She looked far more "in control" than he did.
The mainstream media has screwed this one up for years, but it's embarrassing to see hacker and cracker ...
The *only* people that differentiate between the two are the Slashdot crowd. To *everyone* else, an hacker is a hacker is a hacker.
It isn't just the Slashdot crowd. Lots of IT folks understand the difference and use the terms appropriately. Especially folks who would actually label themselves as hackers or crackers.
I suppose it wouldn't be quite so annoying if it was just the mainstream media screwing it up... But this is a publication on a website calling itself SecurityWeek. You'd think they might know something about IT.
Facebook was nothing new or revolutionary.
There's a hell of a lot more to success than simply being new or revolutionary.
There was Friendster way before it came along,
And others.
Granted, FB was a lot better than MySpace (it's biggest competitor at the time), but that was more due to a failing on the part of MySpace than on the merits of FB.
Facebook also had a bit of exclusivity going for it, since you initially had to be a college student. Folks like exclusivity.
Social networking sites are not really complicated..
Nope, they aren't. Which is why there are so many different variations on the theme.
Why so much worship, hatred, and jealousy over this?
Facebook is the de-facto standard. It's the one that caught on. It's the one that pretty much everyone uses. It's the 800lb gorilla in the room.
Luckily the rest of the world is not limited by your arrogance.
Arrogance? Or realism?
Who gives a fuck if you don't think IPv6 will ever be wide-spread?
I never said anything about wide-spread. I said "Not any time soon. Maybe not ever." We've been talking about IPv6 for how long now? A decade? Longer? And it's always got to happen right now because we're all out of addresses! But it doesn't happen. And we keep limping along as-is. And I see no reason to believe that'll change any time soon.
Or if you're sceptical of power grids also carrying data?
The fact of the matter is that embedding a signal in a power line turns it into an antenna. Wreaks havoc with the local EM band. It isn't really a matter of opinion. Physics is like that.
Broadband over powerlines keeps popping up. It isn't going to happen. Yeah, it sounds like a good idea on paper... You've already got all those copper lines carrying electricity, why not throw a signal in there and do double duty? Except that it just doesn't work. I don't know how many times I've seen it here on Slashdot.
And IPv6? Not any time soon. Maybe not ever. Yeah, I know, we're running out of addresses. NAT is horrible. I know. And I'd love to roll out IPv6 today just for the hell of it (because I don't have enough work to do already). But folks have been talking about IPv6 for years now.
My friend is on facebook all day at work. His corporate firewall is ruthless. It is without ruth. It is a brick wall with no peeping holes.
He doesn't care since he's sitting back in his chair on his droid.
How the heck can IT battle this? (Is it obviously a social issue?)
Yup.
I've got a a Blackberry with 3G access. I can pull up Facebook on it just fine.
I've also got a nook which does a less impressive job of rendering web pages, but generally gets the job done.
Folks around me have iPhones and iPads available.
It isn't the corporate network and workstations you need to worry about. It's all the Internet-connected devices your employees are carrying around.
I'd say, the concept of desktop as it was defined through 80s and 90s is beginning to die.
Agreed.
Smartphones, iPhones, iPods, and iPads are becoming major players. We've got an assortment of ebook readers and netbooks and whatnot that don't really run a traditional "desktop" OS of any kind. Even conventional Windows machines are shipping with stripped-down non-desktop environments loaded on them. My new Dell latitude came with some kind of Linux-based instant-on environment for surfing the web and reading email. Folks buy televisions and set-top boxes that'll stream content from YouTube or Hulu or Google or Netflix or wherever.
I have no doubt that Windows is going to hang around for a long time. And we're going to have desktop computers running desktop OS'es for a long time. But I think the relevance of the desktop is waning.
Folks are more interested in the content than how they access it. Folks want to pull up Facebook, they don't really care if they're doing it on an iPhone, or an Android phone, or a Mac, or a Windows box, or what. They just want their Facebook.
I think you're kind of missing the point.
Why should I work for X? is certainly a valid question. Depending on the company you have different pros and cons. Maybe they pay well, but they've got crappy benefits. Maybe they don't pay so good but they've got great benefits. Maybe there's tremendous name recognition. Maybe there's an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of something spectacular. Whatever.
What's vaguely interesting about this is that until fairly recently, nobody would have asked that question about Microsoft because the answer was flat-out obvious.
They were, for a very long time, the IT company to work for. They were big. They were doing interesting things. They were turning out huge products. Everyone used their software. It almost didn't matter what they were paying, people wanted to work for them.
That's changing. And that's why this is a story.
It isn't flat-out obvious anymore. And there are plenty of reasons why you wouldn't want to work for Microsoft. Or why you'd rather work for someone else.
We all trash Microsoft for making shitty products, but in the end we would all work for them given the chance.
I've trashed Microsoft's shitty products, but I don't trash the ones that generally work well. I'm quite happy with Windows 7, thank you.
But I don't think I'd want to work for them. Partly because I hate writing code, and when I think of Microsoft I think of programming. Obviously they've got some kind of beefy network to handle all that coding... And they need someone to run it all... Which would potentially be the kind of thing I'm interested in... But that brings me to problem #2 - I don't want a giant organization where I wind up with an uber-specialized position. I like my little IT department where I can get involved in literally everything.
I had the idea of building our own PCs for considerably less.
Seriously?
You may very well be able to source the parts for less... But then you're going to have to build and support them.
Dell has an army of minimum-wage employees. If you're a government agency, you probably don't have anybody who makes that little. So the cost for you to build one of these computers will be more than what it costs Dell. And it won't be as simple a build as reloading some Dell box because you'll have to grab drivers for each individual component.
There'll still be a warranty on most of the parts... But you'll have to identify which part actually failed, figure out the appropriate number, and call them. This will require more time and effort than simply calling Dell on anything that breaks. Good luck getting anything even remotely resembling one of Dell's 4-hour warranties.
And any real problems you have are going to come back to bite you in the ass. Get a batch of bad motherboards? That's not Dell's fault, that's your fault. Get some funky driver conflicts? That's your fault. Can't get replacement parts in a timely manner? Your fault.
You might very well see some up-front savings... The sticker price of the box you can build, compared to the sticker price of the same hardware with a Dell logo, may very well be lower. But once you start spending time building and supporting them I think your savings are going to vanish very quickly.
Honestly, I'm not sure what you're complaining about as far as Dell's prices go... We typically spend $1,500 for a machine. The hardware is generally more than sufficient for our current needs and there's always room to upgrade the RAM and CPU at least once. We typically order them with the 3-year warranty. We usually get Office and Adobe bundled, plus whatever monitor they're throwing in. The machine will generally last us 3-5 years depending on which bits of hardware fail in that time.
What if we only have the ability to divert it a little bit, if and when that comes? Then we only control WHERE it hits, not WHETHER it hits. So how do we choose, I wonder?
If the asteroid is big enough, it won't really matter where it hits. Anywhere on the planet will be a global disaster.