Small businesses will delay their upgrades until they absolutely have to get off XP/2000 server/2003 server. The small businesses that I've done contract work all own their machines, they don't lease. They upgrade as much as possible until it no longer makes sense. Many are still using P2's and P3's loaded with as much RAM as possible to be able to run XP smoothly. Because their current environment simply works, there's no rush to upgrade.
Medium sized businesses may test the waters, but will ultimately delay upgrades until their leases are up on the current batch of PC's. As lease refreshes begin, Vista will roll in, creating a support headache as techs now have another platform to learn and keep track of. They'll eventually get over to Vista, but it'll take a couple of years.
Large businesses may follow the same pattern as medium sized business clients and upgrade with lease refreshes. Having two platforms to support isn't much of a problem as they can usually afford to get their techs up to speed quickly and some may even dedicate a group to Vista support.
I don't see many businesses running out to buy new machines just for Vista. In fact, I see the opposite; very few will. They'll just get Vista with new PCs during lease refresh cycles.
MIDI Maze on the Atari ST (released in 1987) not only gave you the first FPS, but it also gave you 16 person Deathmatch by using the Midi ports on the ST to create a network of machines.
nearly 10 years later...
on
Duke in Trouble?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
C'mon now... Duke Nukem Forever is taking forever to release. The majority of people that were waiting for this game have forgotten about it. Those that remember it treat it as a joke. The hype surrounding this game once rivaled or surpassed Daikatana but, hey, at lease Daikatana was actually released. Duke Nukem Forever will go down in history as the one piece of software that completely defines the term "Vaporware".
I would have appreciated it more if 3DRealms said "Hey, we fucked up on this one... DNF will never be released. We're busy working on 'Rise of the Triads 2006' and 'Blake Stone: I Come To Kick Ass'". At least you can respect them for admitting a screw-up instead of constantly dragging Duke's good name through the mud.
Briefly mentioned it my ass, that was a part of their developer push! They were trying to get developers to use that functionality and from what I remember, the only one that was remotely interested was the guys working on AVP.
Yes, it's terribly high priced. From $299 for the PSS and PS2 to $500-$600USD??? For a GAME system??? I'll pass on that, it's too expensive, just like the 3D0 was, just like the NeoGeo.
Sony really doesn't pay attention to past failures. Atari tried to do this very same thing with the Jaguar and Lynx. You could use the Lynx to control the Jaguar via the ComLynx port waaaay back in '93. Back then, no one was really willing to pay for a $100 portable to go with a $250 game system, so there were no games developed for that feature (supposedly, Aliens vs Predator was going to include this functionality).
I don't really see how Sony, with it's terribly high priced PS3 and PSP with few games, would ever wish to make the same mistake that Atari did.
so then Prey = Serious Sam for 2006?
on
Prey Review
·
· Score: 1
I seem to remember some of the same comments being made about Serious Sam, that it was a lot of mindless blasting fun and not some overly complex find-the-switch-and-kill fest.
Sega launches the Genesis, and people went "ooooooooooooooooo... Altered Beasts looks just like the arcade version!" and Sega smiled. Countless arcade ports, Madden, and fighting games later and, arguably, the most innovative game released for the console is still prety much unknown. Herzog Zwei can credit itself for bringing us Dune II, Warcraft, Starcraft, and pretty much every other RTS game being released, but was a flop by 1989 standards (or any other for that matter).
Ummmm.... No it wasn't! Dragon's Lair was "Cellular Animation", shot on film and dumped to LaserDisc. Nothing was computer generated. The reason we were stuck in "Nintendo Hell" as you call it was because the computers that COULD do it in 1983 were incredibly expensive.
Years later, The game was released for the Amiga and AtariST's, the only two home computers that could approximate the games visuals well enough that people could have some of the arcade experience. (If I remember right, it came on 4 or 5 DSDD 3,5" floppies)
DL is being re-released for the nth time... Big whoop. I remember DL from Showbiz Pizza the day it was first powered up there. I remember the line of tokens on the marquee holding places for a chance to play. I remember it was the first game I ever saw that demanded two tokens or 50 cents to play. I do have some fond memories of the game, but playing it was not one of them.
To be honest with you, I think we can attribute Dragons Lair whole concept to today's game model - Solve a puzzle, move on to the next area, solve another one, move on, beat the game, that's it. Dragon's Lair, as far as gameplay goes, was horrible. The appeal was the display, the cartoon. We wanted to see what happens next, we wanted to see each area and the action that took place. We wanted to know more of the storyline, wanted to see how it unfolded. We wanted to see someone beat the game, and ultimately, do the same ourselves. The problem was that once you beat it, like pretty much every game released these days, you're done with it. There's no real reason to play it again. That's the problem with Dragon's Lair and every other game like it; ZERO replay value.
To their credit, the programmers DID try to make a few games that were more like traditional games, they just happened to use a laserdisc for backgrounds, storylines, etc. M.A.C.H. 3, FireFox, and Bega's Battle (which used footage from the anime "Harmageddon") were better games than DL simply because they had more traditional interaction than DL (I blistered my fingers on MACH3 several times).
That said... Space Ace, from a storyline point of view, was a better experience. The story was far more linear than Dragon's Lair, and the characters themselves were more fleshed out and not as one-dimentional as Dragon's Lair's. It was more entertaining to watch and arguably more interactive than Dragon's Lair. The same goes for Cliffhanger; better story, better characters, better experience most likely because it was based on a real movie (I freaked out the first time I saw "Castle of Cagliostro" some 10 years later).
I was speaking with a coworker today about his car ('98 Ford Escort) and also about my '90 Taurus. I was describing the difficult repairs I've done on my numerous cars over the years and his eyes got big. He's an engineer w/CS , I'm a pretend engineer (job title but no degree) and sys engineer. He told me that he'd much rather have a professional look at his car for the serious work, but is happy to change sparkplugs and wires on occasion. I told him to get a repair manual for his car, some tools, and get to work on it with the rationale that "If I can build PC's, design networks, and build all of this crap here in the lab, why can't I work on a car? That would be childs play compared to this stuff!".
He still refuses to do anything more than basic maintenance, while I have two outer tie rods, subframe mounts, and a transmission to repair this weekend. Shouldn't take more than a day and a 12 pack of beer.
I've owned 3 S3 cards, a Virge DX, Savage 3D, and a Savage4 (which I still own two of though neither are in service). What I've learned about S3 is that their first few driver revisions are atrocious. Historically, S3's drivers usually take a few revisions to get to the point where they're useable, and by the time S3 stops supporting the product they're great drivers. M
y last straw was when I bought my Diamond Stealth S540. $129 for a 32MB card was a steal at the time and it was one of the few 2D/3D solutions that worked properly with my Alladin V Socket7 board. The driver that shipped with the card couldn't play the just released Quake 3 Arena Test (my Real3D i740 and Permedia2 cards could play it flawlessly). AnandTech gave owners a ray of hope during a round-up by stating that engineering drivers included a working OpenGL ICD that worked with Q3ATest. Performance with the Savage4 got better with each driver release and I was completely blown away when I finally got a chance to run Unreal Tournament using the special textures under S3Metal. My next card was a Geforce2MX and I haven't looked at S3 ever since, especially when I could use the Geforce to play Q3A under Linux.
I tried using the Savage4 with TrueSpace3 and Ray Dream Studio only to find artifacts and garbage being left all over the screen. I got in touch with one of the OpenGL driver engineers and, to his credit, he took my input and screenshots to try to fix the driver.
Anyways, it seems S3 is still up to their old tricks. Make huge claims about their products, then release them knowing they don't live up to their claims.
First off, I agree that Nvidia's stance is more than a tad bit arrogant. The open source community has written plenty of good, stable 3D video drivers in the past, so he's waaaaay off base there.
There is still the matter of IP. If memory serves me right, Nvidia licensed S3's S3Texture Compression years ago, which isn't open source at all. There's no telling what else has been licensed from other companies. Nvidia may not be in a position, from a legal standpoint, to open source any part of their code.
To be honest, I really don't care if my kernel is "tainted" with closed source drivers. If that's what it takes for me to be able to use my hardware under Linux, so be it.
You need to get two turntables and a mixer first..
on
Learning to DJ?
·
· Score: 1
I've been djing for 16 years now and I can tell you from experience that you need to learn the basics before you get into "digital" djing. Get yourself a cheap pair of direct drive turntables, a mixer, and a bunch of vinyl (used vinyl can usually be had for $1 or less) and learn how to beatmatch. Once you get decent at it, start blending different songs together to see what works and what doesn't. Learn how to control the sound usig the decks, learn how to recover from drifting pitch.
Being a DJ is more than just playing songs together; any fool can do that. A good dj knows WHY two songs should or shouldn't go together. A good dj can use vinyl, CD's or whatever. A good DJ is versatile, jumping into the digital thing will limit you and you'll never make it too far.
what kind of d_ckhead are you? Can you not read? I said that I'll be able to land a $50/hr gig. NOT that I make that much! It's nice that you're only 26 and making that kind of coin. Granted, no one ASKED you how much you make, so it appears that you're the one who think's he's the shit.
And you're right. There's always going to be someone that makes more than you.
And you're the guy that would hire someone like myself. I don't have single vender cert (save for Dell Optiplex Technician, but that really doesn't count), but have the experience to do whatever job I apply for. When it comes to being hired as a full-time employee, I have crappy luck because HR screens the resumes for buzzwords that I don't have. Contracting, however, gets my resume in the manager's hands and if they see the experience they want, I've got a much better chance of getting an interview.
A few years ago, I found out the hard way that many companies are requiring their IT employees be somewhat versed in everything. I had been passed up for many a position because my resume was Win32 focused. It wasn't until I began to highlight the fact that I had a unix background that I began to get interest from contract companies. Now, I get calls nearly every day because I have WinNT/2000 admin skills along with Solaris, HPUX, System V, AIX, Linux, and AS/400. I've been a desktop guru, NT/2000/2003 admin, Unix Admin, and Unix QA engineer. It became necessary to expand on my skillset because no one wants to employ JUST a Win32 admin or JUST a Unix admin or JUST a Cisco admin. You have to have it all just to get someone to look at you nowadays. The only thing I'm really missing now is DB administration. Once I have it, I'm a candidate for those wonderful $50/hr+ positions.
It's a good thing to be able to flip-flop between environments though. It helps you to be able to troubleshoot any issues that arise and it's kinda cool to be the one-stop-shopping guys for IT.
VHS is still the only cheap, easy to use, rewritable medium for recording TV shows, weddings, baby's first steps, and whatnot. That, along with the fact that there's absolutely nothing wrong with VHS, will keep it going for a long time. VHS is durable, CD/DVD can be destroyed very easily and unintentionally. VHS has a long shelf life, CD/DVD needs to be replaced every few years. Simple folk use VCR's with ease, but a DVD recorder would throw them for a loop. For VHS, there's one type of medium that does it all. With DVD you have to be bothered with the various forms of recordable DVD media.
Besides, Bubba 'aint tryin tah figger out which doohicky makes da DVD 'corder werk fer 'cordin "The Dukes uh Hazzard" and "Bass Fisherman" shows.
Hrm... I figured Slashdot would have covered this long ago. To most of us in the electronic dance community, this is quite old news. But, figuring that most of us here are NOT in the electronic dance community, I guess it's discovery is newsworthy.
For those that remember the excellent SID music from the C64 and have always wanted it as a synth, have a look at the SidStation (http://www.sidstation.com) and the HardSID card (http://www.hardsid.com/). Excellent stuff there.
I tried to write a sequencer for my old Atari 800XL back in '1988 or so. Never finished it. Now migh be a good time to pick up on it again.
"Add another thing that's wrong with Unix: the elitist attitude towards outsiders."
Which is something I stated in a similar article on linux going to the desktop (http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=93340&cid =8018882). Unix has it, but I think Linux users are worse when it comes to elitism. I've been able to get help with Irix and Solaris without the attitude that Linux users have. Irix users seemed almost happy to help out.
Build PC's (duh) Rave DJ Install Custom Car Audio (my profession for 6 years while in college and beyond) Produce tracks for local rappers
Soon I'll add voiceover/vocal acting and recording artist whenever I actually get up offa my duff to get into them.
Actually, IT IS my side job nowadays. I left IT a few months ago to work as an account executive for a mortgage lender. The competition for jobs is entirely too tough and there aren't enough jobs left unless I want to move the family to India...
RAID anything using IDE drives is a hack to get the same performance from using a fast, reliable SCSI drive. If I'm gonna spend twice then money, I might as well use SCSI. Real men (and women) use U160 and U320, not ATA/SATA.
I seriously doubt that the analong modem will go away anytime soon in favor of "broadband" devices. Much like everyone predicted the floppy would go away, here we are in 2004 still using them (although fewer people rely on them as each day goes by). There are people in remote areas that will probably never see a broadband provider in their rural neighborhood and they will rely on a 56K modem for their internet access. There will be a few people that may think that broadband isn't necessary because they only use the internet for email and the occasional stock quote, news, or whatever. There are 2 other factors that the providers themselves need to address before there is a more widespread broad band uptake: Price and Availability.
BB right now is too expensive for what it is. if the price of BB can come down to something more reasonable (ie $15 per month) then people would consider it over analog, but it's availability in all areas will keep that from becoming a reality. No matter how cheap it gets, if it's not in your area, you're stuck with a modem.
I think we'll see BB overtake analog in about 10 more years, but it'll be another 10 or so before we see the analog modem go away completely.
Considering that there's a lot of us in the IT sector out of work, Virii can be a godsend. Why? 'Cause, even if it's only for a week or so, we get called by the local contract companies to clean it up. I did a 2 week stint at Honeywell in Phoenix doing just that. I was unemployed when they got hit by whatever virus back in August and got the call to help with it's cleanup. This later turned into a longer contract to help out their PC Techs clean out their ticket backlog caused by the virus; some 2000 or so tickets generated and left untouched during the cleanup. We were out there for a total of 5 weeks.
Stuff like this, large comapnies needing to outsource virus cleanup, is also a major factor to be considered when looking at those numbers. Figuring that the contract companies got an average of $25/hr for each of us and multiply that by the initial order of just over 100 techs for the first 2 weeks of cleanup (Honeywell has numerous, large facilities around Phoenix), and you see just how much money these things can cost a company.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's what I see happening:
Small businesses will delay their upgrades until they absolutely have to get off XP/2000 server/2003 server. The small businesses that I've done contract work all own their machines, they don't lease. They upgrade as much as possible until it no longer makes sense. Many are still using P2's and P3's loaded with as much RAM as possible to be able to run XP smoothly. Because their current environment simply works, there's no rush to upgrade.
Medium sized businesses may test the waters, but will ultimately delay upgrades until their leases are up on the current batch of PC's. As lease refreshes begin, Vista will roll in, creating a support headache as techs now have another platform to learn and keep track of. They'll eventually get over to Vista, but it'll take a couple of years.
Large businesses may follow the same pattern as medium sized business clients and upgrade with lease refreshes. Having two platforms to support isn't much of a problem as they can usually afford to get their techs up to speed quickly and some may even dedicate a group to Vista support.
I don't see many businesses running out to buy new machines just for Vista. In fact, I see the opposite; very few will. They'll just get Vista with new PCs during lease refresh cycles.
|-|3'/!!! 1 |-|4\/3 0 d4'/ \/\/4R3Z Ph0R j00Z! dR0L, $|\|4(| 4774(|, |4R473|4, (|-|0PL1Ph73R 4|\|D d19 dU9! |-|34D 0\/3R 70 7|-|3 p1R4735 (0\/3 bB$ Ph0R /\/\0R3. \/\/3 |\|0\/\/ 5UPP0R7 2400 b4UD!
wait... were you guys talking about the other kind of pirate???
MIDI Maze on the Atari ST (released in 1987) not only gave you the first FPS, but it also gave you 16 person Deathmatch by using the Midi ports on the ST to create a network of machines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI_Maze/
C'mon now... Duke Nukem Forever is taking forever to release. The majority of people that were waiting for this game have forgotten about it. Those that remember it treat it as a joke. The hype surrounding this game once rivaled or surpassed Daikatana but, hey, at lease Daikatana was actually released. Duke Nukem Forever will go down in history as the one piece of software that completely defines the term "Vaporware".
I would have appreciated it more if 3DRealms said "Hey, we fucked up on this one... DNF will never be released. We're busy working on 'Rise of the Triads 2006' and 'Blake Stone: I Come To Kick Ass'". At least you can respect them for admitting a screw-up instead of constantly dragging Duke's good name through the mud.
Briefly mentioned it my ass, that was a part of their developer push! They were trying to get developers to use that functionality and from what I remember, the only one that was remotely interested was the guys working on AVP.
Yes, it's terribly high priced. From $299 for the PSS and PS2 to $500-$600USD??? For a GAME system??? I'll pass on that, it's too expensive, just like the 3D0 was, just like the NeoGeo.
Sony really doesn't pay attention to past failures. Atari tried to do this very same thing with the Jaguar and Lynx. You could use the Lynx to control the Jaguar via the ComLynx port waaaay back in '93. Back then, no one was really willing to pay for a $100 portable to go with a $250 game system, so there were no games developed for that feature (supposedly, Aliens vs Predator was going to include this functionality).
I don't really see how Sony, with it's terribly high priced PS3 and PSP with few games, would ever wish to make the same mistake that Atari did.
I seem to remember some of the same comments being made about Serious Sam, that it was a lot of mindless blasting fun and not some overly complex find-the-switch-and-kill fest.
Sega launches the Genesis, and people went "ooooooooooooooooo... Altered Beasts looks just like the arcade version!" and Sega smiled. Countless arcade ports, Madden, and fighting games later and, arguably, the most innovative game released for the console is still prety much unknown. Herzog Zwei can credit itself for bringing us Dune II, Warcraft, Starcraft, and pretty much every other RTS game being released, but was a flop by 1989 standards (or any other for that matter).
Just one more thing PC Fanboys have to criticize Apple about. Then too, Mac Zealots do have the exploding Dell laptop thingy...
Ummmm.... No it wasn't! Dragon's Lair was "Cellular Animation", shot on film and dumped to LaserDisc. Nothing was computer generated. The reason we were stuck in "Nintendo Hell" as you call it was because the computers that COULD do it in 1983 were incredibly expensive.
Years later, The game was released for the Amiga and AtariST's, the only two home computers that could approximate the games visuals well enough that people could have some of the arcade experience. (If I remember right, it came on 4 or 5 DSDD 3,5" floppies)
DL is being re-released for the nth time... Big whoop. I remember DL from Showbiz Pizza the day it was first powered up there. I remember the line of tokens on the marquee holding places for a chance to play. I remember it was the first game I ever saw that demanded two tokens or 50 cents to play. I do have some fond memories of the game, but playing it was not one of them.
To be honest with you, I think we can attribute Dragons Lair whole concept to today's game model - Solve a puzzle, move on to the next area, solve another one, move on, beat the game, that's it. Dragon's Lair, as far as gameplay goes, was horrible. The appeal was the display, the cartoon. We wanted to see what happens next, we wanted to see each area and the action that took place. We wanted to know more of the storyline, wanted to see how it unfolded. We wanted to see someone beat the game, and ultimately, do the same ourselves. The problem was that once you beat it, like pretty much every game released these days, you're done with it. There's no real reason to play it again. That's the problem with Dragon's Lair and every other game like it; ZERO replay value.
To their credit, the programmers DID try to make a few games that were more like traditional games, they just happened to use a laserdisc for backgrounds, storylines, etc. M.A.C.H. 3, FireFox, and Bega's Battle (which used footage from the anime "Harmageddon") were better games than DL simply because they had more traditional interaction than DL (I blistered my fingers on MACH3 several times).
That said... Space Ace, from a storyline point of view, was a better experience. The story was far more linear than Dragon's Lair, and the characters themselves were more fleshed out and not as one-dimentional as Dragon's Lair's. It was more entertaining to watch and arguably more interactive than Dragon's Lair. The same goes for Cliffhanger; better story, better characters, better experience most likely because it was based on a real movie (I freaked out the first time I saw "Castle of Cagliostro" some 10 years later).
To that, I offer this:
I was speaking with a coworker today about his car ('98 Ford Escort) and also about my '90 Taurus. I was describing the difficult repairs I've done on my numerous cars over the years and his eyes got big. He's an engineer w/CS , I'm a pretend engineer (job title but no degree) and sys engineer. He told me that he'd much rather have a professional look at his car for the serious work, but is happy to change sparkplugs and wires on occasion. I told him to get a repair manual for his car, some tools, and get to work on it with the rationale that "If I can build PC's, design networks, and build all of this crap here in the lab, why can't I work on a car? That would be childs play compared to this stuff!".
He still refuses to do anything more than basic maintenance, while I have two outer tie rods, subframe mounts, and a transmission to repair this weekend. Shouldn't take more than a day and a 12 pack of beer.
I've owned 3 S3 cards, a Virge DX, Savage 3D, and a Savage4 (which I still own two of though neither are in service). What I've learned about S3 is that their first few driver revisions are atrocious. Historically, S3's drivers usually take a few revisions to get to the point where they're useable, and by the time S3 stops supporting the product they're great drivers. M
y last straw was when I bought my Diamond Stealth S540. $129 for a 32MB card was a steal at the time and it was one of the few 2D/3D solutions that worked properly with my Alladin V Socket7 board. The driver that shipped with the card couldn't play the just released Quake 3 Arena Test (my Real3D i740 and Permedia2 cards could play it flawlessly). AnandTech gave owners a ray of hope during a round-up by stating that engineering drivers included a working OpenGL ICD that worked with Q3ATest. Performance with the Savage4 got better with each driver release and I was completely blown away when I finally got a chance to run Unreal Tournament using the special textures under S3Metal. My next card was a Geforce2MX and I haven't looked at S3 ever since, especially when I could use the Geforce to play Q3A under Linux.
I tried using the Savage4 with TrueSpace3 and Ray Dream Studio only to find artifacts and garbage being left all over the screen. I got in touch with one of the OpenGL driver engineers and, to his credit, he took my input and screenshots to try to fix the driver.
Anyways, it seems S3 is still up to their old tricks. Make huge claims about their products, then release them knowing they don't live up to their claims.
First off, I agree that Nvidia's stance is more than a tad bit arrogant. The open source community has written plenty of good, stable 3D video drivers in the past, so he's waaaaay off base there.
There is still the matter of IP. If memory serves me right, Nvidia licensed S3's S3Texture Compression years ago, which isn't open source at all. There's no telling what else has been licensed from other companies. Nvidia may not be in a position, from a legal standpoint, to open source any part of their code.
To be honest, I really don't care if my kernel is "tainted" with closed source drivers. If that's what it takes for me to be able to use my hardware under Linux, so be it.
I've been djing for 16 years now and I can tell you from experience that you need to learn the basics before you get into "digital" djing. Get yourself a cheap pair of direct drive turntables, a mixer, and a bunch of vinyl (used vinyl can usually be had for $1 or less) and learn how to beatmatch. Once you get decent at it, start blending different songs together to see what works and what doesn't. Learn how to control the sound usig the decks, learn how to recover from drifting pitch.
Being a DJ is more than just playing songs together; any fool can do that. A good dj knows WHY two songs should or shouldn't go together. A good dj can use vinyl, CD's or whatever. A good DJ is versatile, jumping into the digital thing will limit you and you'll never make it too far.
what kind of d_ckhead are you? Can you not read? I said that I'll be able to land a $50/hr gig. NOT that I make that much! It's nice that you're only 26 and making that kind of coin. Granted, no one ASKED you how much you make, so it appears that you're the one who think's he's the shit.
And you're right. There's always going to be someone that makes more than you.
BTW, I'm older than you, son.
And you're the guy that would hire someone like myself. I don't have single vender cert (save for Dell Optiplex Technician, but that really doesn't count), but have the experience to do whatever job I apply for. When it comes to being hired as a full-time employee, I have crappy luck because HR screens the resumes for buzzwords that I don't have. Contracting, however, gets my resume in the manager's hands and if they see the experience they want, I've got a much better chance of getting an interview.
A few years ago, I found out the hard way that many companies are requiring their IT employees be somewhat versed in everything. I had been passed up for many a position because my resume was Win32 focused. It wasn't until I began to highlight the fact that I had a unix background that I began to get interest from contract companies. Now, I get calls nearly every day because I have WinNT/2000 admin skills along with Solaris, HPUX, System V, AIX, Linux, and AS/400. I've been a desktop guru, NT/2000/2003 admin, Unix Admin, and Unix QA engineer. It became necessary to expand on my skillset because no one wants to employ JUST a Win32 admin or JUST a Unix admin or JUST a Cisco admin. You have to have it all just to get someone to look at you nowadays. The only thing I'm really missing now is DB administration. Once I have it, I'm a candidate for those wonderful $50/hr+ positions.
It's a good thing to be able to flip-flop between environments though. It helps you to be able to troubleshoot any issues that arise and it's kinda cool to be the one-stop-shopping guys for IT.
VHS is still the only cheap, easy to use, rewritable medium for recording TV shows, weddings, baby's first steps, and whatnot. That, along with the fact that there's absolutely nothing wrong with VHS, will keep it going for a long time. VHS is durable, CD/DVD can be destroyed very easily and unintentionally. VHS has a long shelf life, CD/DVD needs to be replaced every few years. Simple folk use VCR's with ease, but a DVD recorder would throw them for a loop. For VHS, there's one type of medium that does it all. With DVD you have to be bothered with the various forms of recordable DVD media.
Besides, Bubba 'aint tryin tah figger out which doohicky makes da DVD 'corder werk fer 'cordin "The Dukes uh Hazzard" and "Bass Fisherman" shows.
Hrm... I figured Slashdot would have covered this long ago. To most of us in the electronic dance community, this is quite old news. But, figuring that most of us here are NOT in the electronic dance community, I guess it's discovery is newsworthy.
For those that remember the excellent SID music from the C64 and have always wanted it as a synth, have a look at the SidStation (http://www.sidstation.com) and the HardSID card (http://www.hardsid.com/). Excellent stuff there.
I tried to write a sequencer for my old Atari 800XL back in '1988 or so. Never finished it. Now migh be a good time to pick up on it again.
"Add another thing that's wrong with Unix: the elitist attitude towards outsiders."
d =8018882). Unix has it, but I think Linux users are worse when it comes to elitism. I've been able to get help with Irix and Solaris without the attitude that Linux users have. Irix users seemed almost happy to help out.
Which is something I stated in a similar article on linux going to the desktop (http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=93340&ci
I do the following as "side jobs":
Build PC's (duh)
Rave DJ
Install Custom Car Audio (my profession for 6 years while in college and beyond)
Produce tracks for local rappers
Soon I'll add voiceover/vocal acting and recording artist whenever I actually get up offa my duff to get into them.
Actually, IT IS my side job nowadays. I left IT a few months ago to work as an account executive for a mortgage lender. The competition for jobs is entirely too tough and there aren't enough jobs left unless I want to move the family to India...
RAID anything using IDE drives is a hack to get the same performance from using a fast, reliable SCSI drive. If I'm gonna spend twice then money, I might as well use SCSI. Real men (and women) use U160 and U320, not ATA/SATA.
I seriously doubt that the analong modem will go away anytime soon in favor of "broadband" devices. Much like everyone predicted the floppy would go away, here we are in 2004 still using them (although fewer people rely on them as each day goes by). There are people in remote areas that will probably never see a broadband provider in their rural neighborhood and they will rely on a 56K modem for their internet access. There will be a few people that may think that broadband isn't necessary because they only use the internet for email and the occasional stock quote, news, or whatever. There are 2 other factors that the providers themselves need to address before there is a more widespread broad band uptake: Price and Availability.
BB right now is too expensive for what it is. if the price of BB can come down to something more reasonable (ie $15 per month) then people would consider it over analog, but it's availability in all areas will keep that from becoming a reality. No matter how cheap it gets, if it's not in your area, you're stuck with a modem.
I think we'll see BB overtake analog in about 10 more years, but it'll be another 10 or so before we see the analog modem go away completely.
Considering that there's a lot of us in the IT sector out of work, Virii can be a godsend. Why? 'Cause, even if it's only for a week or so, we get called by the local contract companies to clean it up. I did a 2 week stint at Honeywell in Phoenix doing just that. I was unemployed when they got hit by whatever virus back in August and got the call to help with it's cleanup. This later turned into a longer contract to help out their PC Techs clean out their ticket backlog caused by the virus; some 2000 or so tickets generated and left untouched during the cleanup. We were out there for a total of 5 weeks.
Stuff like this, large comapnies needing to outsource virus cleanup, is also a major factor to be considered when looking at those numbers. Figuring that the contract companies got an average of $25/hr for each of us and multiply that by the initial order of just over 100 techs for the first 2 weeks of cleanup (Honeywell has numerous, large facilities around Phoenix), and you see just how much money these things can cost a company.