I'm just trying to understand how basic personal freedoms and personal responsibility as an ideology are so difficult for people to understand.
The drug thing, the gun thing, the capitalism thing, the immigration thing, etc. are pragmatic issues that need addressed, true. But being a civil libertarian hardly seems like a bizarre belief system.
I mean, Apple has had iDisk since even before Mac OS X came out on the scene, I was using it to keep my documents synced at school when I was still using Mac OS 8 (I think.... may have been early 9)
Just as an FYI, iDisk required OS 9 (I'm pretty sure it was the security features included, Keychain etc.) to function.
Getting my wife pregnant is the WORST mistake I ever made.
I don't suppose you ever took the effort to consider your point of view, and both your wishes, before getting married? Or are you one of those idiots who "gave in" so your wife would quit whining about kids?
You didn't make a mistake, you're just an idiot.:)
My wife and I have been married for 8 years, and we were enjoying a CF (Child Free for the uninitiated) lifestyle for 6 of those, until the goalie was asleep in the goal and let one in.;)
We always knew we wanted to be parents "when the time was right," and it took a hiccup of nature to convince us this was the right time. My son is 18 months old, an absolute gem, and my wife is expecting out second (and likely last) child.
I preface with this background because during the time before having children, my wife fell in with some very angry, selfish people that populate Internet message boards. These people's sole purpose was to rant about filthy, dirty "crotch fruits" and how society's child fetish causes them so much grief.
To some degree, I agree with them. Having children is not for everyone in the same way that going to college is not for everyone, being a computer geek is not for everyone, etc. My brother never wants children. My friend and his wife never want children (though she had to spend 5 years shopping OBs until she found one who would do a tubal ligation on a woman under 30). This is a prefectly reasonable point of view, and I definitely recommend enjoying your "selfish" time with your spouse. I doubt my wife and I would have as strong a relationship as we do if we would have had children immediately after getting married at 20.
What I do have a beef with is the scare tactics and rants coming up from the know-it-alls on the Brats Rant page, et al who think their point of view is the only one. Yeah it's freaking stupid for people to bring their child to Dave and Buster's at 12:30 am, or bring a toddler to see a 9:00pm PG-rated movie. Sensible people know that. But what you do is take all of the caring, nurturing parents who rear their children appropriately and lump them all is as "st00pid breeders."
I just wanted to take this opportunity to tell warn you about this mindset, and publicly ask the ranters to STFU. The reason you can't handle children is likely that you haven't stopped being children yourselves. I'm not trying to excuse the bad behavior of bad parents... most of the miserable people who should not have had children... but I do want to stop hearing about my choices are hurting your enjoyment of the planet. Your enjoyment of the planet ain't gonna last, but respectable children brought up to be respectable adults are the only hope we have to improve society over time.
Unless you've prefer us to all be "decanted" from our "bottles," raised to wait in line for our SOMA rations. *smirk*
Re:All I know is...
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Then do us all a favor and stop pretending that you're an American.
This is the rhetoric we've come to. "If you support outsourcing, you're not an American," and others... "If you criticize the government..." "...if you don't submit to a full body-cavity search and background investigation before boarding a plane..." etc. etc. you are not an American.
I SWEAR that I am not deliberately invoking Godwin's law here, but think about it. Getting the country afraid of unseen enemies, and promoting unquestioned nationalistic mindset is exactly how, over the course of a few years, Nazi Germany came about. I would HOPE that American society is intelligent enough to stand up and see what is happening, and stop it, before all civil liberties are lost. I don't think Bush is a dictator in waiting, I don't think we're sitting here compacently waiting to become a fascist state. However there can be no question that as we go down this avenue of language and mindset, bigger and bigger breeches of freedom will be justified in the name of security or patriotism.
I can already take an Xbox controller, cut off the tip, solder on a USB connector, load a generic HID-compliant driver in Windows' "Game Controllers" control panel, and use them for MAME or console emulators. Xbox uses standard USB (plus an unknown yellow wire, maybe force feedback?) with a custom connector.
Anyway, there are even little converters available on eBay for a couple bucks each to avoid the soldering part, but I had a lot of fun modifying a $19 Xbox joystick from Pelican for running MAME games better than a $40 PC joystick. YMMV.
Capital migrates to where it is most profitably invested. That's just a fact of the market. If I can get a 10% return in Country A and a 25% return in Country B, you know where I'll be investing.
We can deal with that reality, or we can fight it. If we fight it, we'll lose.
I agree with Mr. Badnarik here. Arthur C. Clarke wrote in 1953 (Childhood's End, excellent SciFi that stands the test of time):
True intelligence never resents inevitability.
Once we accept that globalization is a rough but worthwhile phenomenon, we can better adapt our goverments and corporations to exploit it, rather than fear it.
I'm sorry, I think protecting people (such as the press and people likely to make emotional and financial investments in video gaming interests) from shady people who show up with exciting marketing material. If society can avoid spinning gears for 12-18 months before the vaporous marketing is revealed for the truth, I'd call that a good thing.
Truth was revealed to many people, I'm sorry if I made it seem like "the gaming industry needs to be protected." Is was trying to take a different approach the the benefit of Kyle's report.
AP: Why did you rework the original trilogy into the special-edition versions in the late 1990s?
Lucas: To me, the special edition ones are the films I wanted to make. Anybody that makes films knows the film is never finished. It's abandoned or it's ripped out of your hands, and it's thrown into the marketplace, never finished. It's a very rare experience where you find a filmmaker who says, "That's exactly what I wanted. I got everything I needed. I made it just perfect. I'm going to put it out there." And even most artists, most painters, even composers would want to come back and redo their work now. They've got a new perspective on it, they've got more resources, they have better technology, and they can fix or finish the things that were never done.... I wanted to actually finish the film the way it was meant to be when I was originally doing it. At the beginning, people went, "Don't you like it?" I said, "Well, the film only came out to be 25 or 30 percent of what I wanted it to be." They said, "What are you talking about?" So finally, I stopped saying that, b! ut if you read any interviews for about an eight- or nine-year period there, it was all about how disappointed I was and how unhappy I was and what a dismal experience it was. You know, it's too bad you need to get kind of half a job done and never get to finish it. So this was my chance to finish it.
This is heartbreakingly wrong on so many levels. The Aldous Huxley quote in another Score:5 comment hit so close to home, I hope it falls under Lucas's eyes at some point and moves him to reconsider. If you can make the movie and modify it now, what's to stop musicians from changing CDs every time a new batch is stamped? Movies are not dynamic, they are static releases. If someone wants to invent an evolving art form and continually update something on whims, great. But world-renowned cinema is not the place to experiment with this concept. The movies spoke to people as they were. They produced reactions, both positive and negative, for good reason.
I could type about this for an hour and still not make all the points I want to, so I think I'll just stop.
AP: Do you pay much attention to fan reactions to your choices?
Lucas: Not really. The movies are what the movies are.... The thing about science-fiction fans and "Star Wars" fans is they're very independent-thinking people. They all think outside the box, but they all have very strong ideas about what should happen, and they think it should be their way. Which is fine, except I'm making the movies, so I should have it my way.
Because I have seen more than my share of whiny SciFi fans, I begin to identify with the "it's nice to have an opinion..." part. But the second half of his cocky statement is a self-aggrandizing "...but my opinion is the only important one." "I'm making the movies" is a ridiculously over-simplified remark, especially considering the crap about hundreds of people losing their jobs if someone downloads a movie on the Internet.
This only punctuates the assessment that Lucas is not an artist, not a true filmmaker; but more of a hack who got a lucky break by being in the right place at the right time with a good (at the time) product. In fact, the changes he's made and the tack he's taken now seem to indicate that either 1) He never had real talent, but had exceptional help making a good product in the 70s and 80s, or 2)He's gone through some sort of change where a legitimate genius has dissolved into a worthless husk of a man who's banking on previous successes, with an egotistical mindset that power and wealth have obviated the need for QUALITY.
I'm banking on the latter.
I never thought I'd say it, but George Lucas, you really ARE an ASSHOLE.
Look, I don't know if you have thought about it from this angle or not, but Kyle was doing something to protect not only the gaming industry, but also potential investors.
When that article was posted 12 months ago, Infinium had burned through several million dollars in venture capital with nothing to show but some renders and a glossy page of marketing lingo. They were "quite anxious" to get their hands on another 25-50 million US dollars. And it was pretty evident to those who were trying to get info on the console that- not only was it vaporware, it was vaporware hawked by a guy with a really shady history of business dealings.
Kyle's article, while written in a sophomoric style, was very enlightening. It was truthful and Infinium's complaint is that it chased away potential investors. Damn right it it did, and rightfully so!
...and my sessions are typically a month long, or whenever Critical Updates are released.
I even go into suspend mode every night. XP Pro, properly configured, with brand-name hardware and WHQL drivers, has never crashed for me.
Caveat: it crashed when I used nVidia's tweak utility to overzealously set my memory timings faster. The whole machine went toes up until I reset the CMOS.
The plural or anecdote is not data, however using the stat of "% of 'sessions' ending in reboot" is not remotely useful as a guage of stability.
After posting this comment, and then reading some of the personal background that was not on his own website, looks like I'm back on the "anybody but the guy backing Ashcroft" bandwagon. Dammit, Badnarik, why'd you have to turn out to be nucking futs? It hurts the reputation of rational civil libertarians everywhere.
Let me preface my question by saying I have voted for mainly Libertarian candidates for four years, and take a largely Libertarian political mindset when voting on ballot issues.
Mr. Badnarik, do you personally feel that the Libertarian Party's public image is tarnished by the perception that they cater to the interests of Drug Legalization and unregulated Gun Ownership?
I'm not looking for the party line, as I can read lp.org on my own. The idealogues who wrote the platform believe that personal responsibility trumps government oversight, which in my heart I believe is the right way for society to go.
I am someone who believes that guns are useful tools, but live in a household with unstable emotional variables so do not need to own one. I also have never taken recreational substances and don't feel that I'm missing out by avoiding them. I agree that our current state of government overregulates both of these issues (Guns and Drugs) to irrational extremes, to the detriment of the civil rights of responsible adults nationwide. On the flip side, the reality is that a large part of our population would be completely unable to function if left to their own sense of responsibility to make decisions regarding recreational drugs and weapons.
The point I'm getting at is that, as an intellectual and rational human being, I have a hard time "selling" the Libertarian Party as a viable alternative to our two party system. The LP clearly has a perception problem when like-minded civil libterians refer to the LP as "a bunch of gun and drug nuts." The crux of this gets lost when the candidates turn idealogues and say "Smaller Government! No Income Tax! Legalize Drugs! Hold sacred the Second Amendment!" All of these things are good, but this mindset excludes discussion on a lot of pragmatic issues that need addressed before American Society is ready to accept them as truth.
Subject: Companies and Corporations. The Answer: This company has a workforce of 17000 people, whose average working year is only 4 months long.
I thought about it a while, and am thinking it could be some seasonal work. I was thinking it might be a sports league, but most seasons are longer than 4 months and/or employ scouts, etc. year round.
one can't assume that people or institutions will update their hardware to include USB ports.
Yes, it's terribly costly ($9 for a USB PCI card), and few computers have USB ports standard. Except for pretty much every PC since 1997, those new-fangled ones have the fancy USB ports.
But other than that, you're absolutely right!
If schools are using equipment older than 1996, they must be having a lot of fun supporting Windows for Workgroups over Banyan Vines networking, huh?
Of course forcing people to get other offers may not be the best retention method...
Agreed, and thanks. If you go to your boss and try to justify a raise, and they tell you either they can't afford it, or you're not worth it... and you go somewhere else and get a better offer... what are you supposed to think when they can suddenly match it?
They lied to you? As my mentor told me, "It's one tactic tehy can use... not a good one, but they can and do use it."
Thanks for trying to see where I'm coming from.:) Yes, I am an early slashdotter. My company currently "suggests" a 48-hour work week. (Those who do not meet those requirements are not looked upon favorably.) I could do under-the-table tech work in my "spare time," but with a wife, son, and second on the way... I'd rather be at home with my family. Here's my background:
No college degree, 2 years toward an BA in EE. Strong written and verbal communication skills. Yes I know a paper degree carries weight with some hiring managers, however I feel comfortable putting my technical and soft skills against any of my peers. Not a paper MCSE nor A+ certified, but quiz me and I could pass most MCSE reqs except Exchange (we're a Notes shop). A+ has never been mentioned by any of my peers as having any value in our industry.
Joe jobs (7 years ago +) included running ethernet/phone cable, installing hubs, building PCs, repairing PC/Mac hardware and OS, and a brief PC retail experience as a customer service rep.
My corporate experience includes support of Novell Netware 3/4 and NT domain users on NT 3.51, 4, 2000 and 2003. DOS and Win3.1/Win95/98/Me/MacOS 7/8/9 in background, but who uses those anymore?:)
I've been primarily working on Compaq/HP/IBM servers and IBM desktops, running Microsoft operating systems. I consider myself a Hardware God, but there's no money in that; so I hack hardware as a hobby at home.
Have built Windows clusters and done some IIS support. Spent 18 months "matrixed" into a Unix/Web group, so can find my way around Solaris, iPlanet/SunOne, "IBM Tivoli Access Manager for eBusiness" (Note to IBM, pick a better name please!), Websphere, AIX. Supported corprate LDAP infrastructure and coordinated secure cert requests and installs for secure web servers. I would say "marginal Unix proficiency," but I am very resourceful when I need to figure things out.
Experience in "cut-copy-paste" scripting: Perl, VBscript, and some REXX. I have modified, maintained, and deciphered existing scripts... but I'm not much of a programmer because I won't spend hours focusing on code. I guess you could say I'm a "hack.":)
My main focus has been desktop support and software distribution, currently using proprietary vendor package. Packaging of applications and hotfixing, building and supporting distribution environment, including automation of repetitive tasks.
Overall, I feel my value-add is resourcefulness, flexibility, and service-oriented mindset. I am technically capable but focus more on effective communication in understanding what people want to accomplish, and coming up with the best possible way to accomplish it with the constraints I'm given.
I'm in Cleveland, and I'm willing to leave my company for 62,500. When do I start?:)
Well, you've found differently here. I replace video cards every 12-18 months, motherboards about every two years, memory about the same, and CPU about every 12 months (always at the $100-$120) range. Added up, over a 3 year period I spend about $1600 on a PC. And at the end of the 3 years, I have something that's at the top of the price-performance curve, "eBay resale value" be damned.:)
That is uncanny! The HR department at our company, faced with complaints about salaries, launched a "Total Compensation" intranet site to show people how much better the retirement plans and benefits were when considering the "total compensation." Look, you can give me lies, damn lies, and statistics all day. When I can walk out the door for a 20% raise, you matching 2% more on the 401K doesn't mean squat.
Ironic aside: my co-worker with an MBA and 12 years with the company left today for the SAME JOB at a different company for a 40% raise!
Here's a flipside. I took a steady corporate job 7 years ago, fresh out of 3 years of part-time pizza delivery, part time PC repair and Windows support.
I now have completed so much "career development," with 10 years of industry experience, that my resume places me around $65,000 for my regional job market. My company pays me more than 25% below that number. Most of this is from a cumulative 3% raise over the past three years, even as layoffs have happened, workload has increased, skillset has improved, and performance reviews have remained consistently "full to exceeds performance."
So now, with the market opening up, I find myself shopping for another steady, stable job. What really yanks my crank is that despite the games our HR has been playing with compensation, I have a lot of great professional relationships built up inside the company that I am now forced to abandon to acheive "market value." And with the potential for a 25% raise, that isn't much of a counter-argument.
When I sit down and speak candidly with my boss about my concerns about compensation, try to sell myself with what I am tasked with and how my client and peer feedback backs me up, I get a story about how a new compensation is coming... first it was October, now it is next April... and raises are "un-doable" until then.... and besides, teh market is rough, we're all lucky just to have jobs... as he plans the landscaping upgrades to his new-development home and getting ready to trade in his Jeep Grand Cherokee.
I don't have time for this BS. The same games get played in cycles at many, many companies. But for a 20-25% raise, I'm more than willing to play someone else's game. Maybe then I can afford "the BIG Hyundai" when this one's paid off. Steady, stable employment is good, but don't let them convince you that it's worth far less money for "security." We had layoffs again yesterday, and it can happen to you tomorrow for all you really know.
I play a fair number of games. The xBox, Game Cube, and PS2 do not provide me the same selection and flexibility of control that my GeForce cards and Nostromo Speedpads do. Even if I were into droppign 300 dollars per platform every three years, plus $50 per game.
All the games I want to play are on Windows. That is a simple reality of my universe. If your universe allows you the limited scope of Mac gaming or the full enjoyment a console can bring, great.
For "real work," well, considering I'm an "M$" admin of desktops and servers, handling software distribution to 20,000 corporate Windows desktops... well buying a Mac just seems kind of silly now, doesn't it.
The world's best interests do not resolve around your personal desires, nor do they mine. I just buy what works for me and let others do the same. It doesn't all have to be evangelism.
Threads like these are the reasons I save all my mod points to mark Apple posts overrated.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm just trying to understand how basic personal freedoms and personal responsibility as an ideology are so difficult for people to understand.
The drug thing, the gun thing, the capitalism thing, the immigration thing, etc. are pragmatic issues that need addressed, true. But being a civil libertarian hardly seems like a bizarre belief system.
then starts SHARING terabytes of copyrighted data.
:)
Kind of impractical with about a 10MB size limit
I mean, Apple has had iDisk since even before Mac OS X came out on the scene, I was using it to keep my documents synced at school when I was still using Mac OS 8 (I think.... may have been early 9)
Just as an FYI, iDisk required OS 9 (I'm pretty sure it was the security features included, Keychain etc.) to function.
My iMac with MacOS 8.6 wouldn't do it.
Getting my wife pregnant is the WORST mistake I ever made.
:)
I don't suppose you ever took the effort to consider your point of view, and both your wishes, before getting married? Or are you one of those idiots who "gave in" so your wife would quit whining about kids?
You didn't make a mistake, you're just an idiot.
My wife and I have been married for 8 years, and we were enjoying a CF (Child Free for the uninitiated) lifestyle for 6 of those, until the goalie was asleep in the goal and let one in. ;)
We always knew we wanted to be parents "when the time was right," and it took a hiccup of nature to convince us this was the right time. My son is 18 months old, an absolute gem, and my wife is expecting out second (and likely last) child.
I preface with this background because during the time before having children, my wife fell in with some very angry, selfish people that populate Internet message boards. These people's sole purpose was to rant about filthy, dirty "crotch fruits" and how society's child fetish causes them so much grief.
To some degree, I agree with them. Having children is not for everyone in the same way that going to college is not for everyone, being a computer geek is not for everyone, etc. My brother never wants children. My friend and his wife never want children (though she had to spend 5 years shopping OBs until she found one who would do a tubal ligation on a woman under 30). This is a prefectly reasonable point of view, and I definitely recommend enjoying your "selfish" time with your spouse. I doubt my wife and I would have as strong a relationship as we do if we would have had children immediately after getting married at 20.
What I do have a beef with is the scare tactics and rants coming up from the know-it-alls on the Brats Rant page, et al who think their point of view is the only one. Yeah it's freaking stupid for people to bring their child to Dave and Buster's at 12:30 am, or bring a toddler to see a 9:00pm PG-rated movie. Sensible people know that. But what you do is take all of the caring, nurturing parents who rear their children appropriately and lump them all is as "st00pid breeders."
I just wanted to take this opportunity to tell warn you about this mindset, and publicly ask the ranters to STFU. The reason you can't handle children is likely that you haven't stopped being children yourselves. I'm not trying to excuse the bad behavior of bad parents... most of the miserable people who should not have had children... but I do want to stop hearing about my choices are hurting your enjoyment of the planet. Your enjoyment of the planet ain't gonna last, but respectable children brought up to be respectable adults are the only hope we have to improve society over time.
Unless you've prefer us to all be "decanted" from our "bottles," raised to wait in line for our SOMA rations. *smirk*
Then do us all a favor and stop pretending that you're an American.
This is the rhetoric we've come to. "If you support outsourcing, you're not an American," and others... "If you criticize the government..." "...if you don't submit to a full body-cavity search and background investigation before boarding a plane..." etc. etc. you are not an American.
I SWEAR that I am not deliberately invoking Godwin's law here, but think about it. Getting the country afraid of unseen enemies, and promoting unquestioned nationalistic mindset is exactly how, over the course of a few years, Nazi Germany came about. I would HOPE that American society is intelligent enough to stand up and see what is happening, and stop it, before all civil liberties are lost. I don't think Bush is a dictator in waiting, I don't think we're sitting here compacently waiting to become a fascist state. However there can be no question that as we go down this avenue of language and mindset, bigger and bigger breeches of freedom will be justified in the name of security or patriotism.
THAT IS A BAD THING.
I can already take an Xbox controller, cut off the tip, solder on a USB connector, load a generic HID-compliant driver in Windows' "Game Controllers" control panel, and use them for MAME or console emulators. Xbox uses standard USB (plus an unknown yellow wire, maybe force feedback?) with a custom connector.
Anyway, there are even little converters available on eBay for a couple bucks each to avoid the soldering part, but I had a lot of fun modifying a $19 Xbox joystick from Pelican for running MAME games better than a $40 PC joystick. YMMV.
Capital migrates to where it is most profitably invested. That's just a fact of the market. If I can get a 10% return in Country A and a 25% return in Country B, you know where I'll be investing.
We can deal with that reality, or we can fight it. If we fight it, we'll lose.
I agree with Mr. Badnarik here. Arthur C. Clarke wrote in 1953 (Childhood's End, excellent SciFi that stands the test of time):
True intelligence never resents inevitability.
Once we accept that globalization is a rough but worthwhile phenomenon, we can better adapt our goverments and corporations to exploit it, rather than fear it.
I'm sorry, I think protecting people (such as the press and people likely to make emotional and financial investments in video gaming interests) from shady people who show up with exciting marketing material. If society can avoid spinning gears for 12-18 months before the vaporous marketing is revealed for the truth, I'd call that a good thing.
Truth was revealed to many people, I'm sorry if I made it seem like "the gaming industry needs to be protected." Is was trying to take a different approach the the benefit of Kyle's report.
AP: Why did you rework the original trilogy into the special-edition versions in the late 1990s?
... I wanted to actually finish the film the way it was meant to be when I was originally doing it. At the beginning, people went, "Don't you like it?" I said, "Well, the film only came out to be 25 or 30 percent of what I wanted it to be." They said, "What are you talking about?" So finally, I stopped saying that, b! ut if you read any interviews for about an eight- or nine-year period there, it was all about how disappointed I was and how unhappy I was and what a dismal experience it was. You know, it's too bad you need to get kind of half a job done and never get to finish it. So this was my chance to finish it.
... The thing about science-fiction fans and "Star Wars" fans is they're very independent-thinking people. They all think outside the box, but they all have very strong ideas about what should happen, and they think it should be their way. Which is fine, except I'm making the movies, so I should have it my way.
Lucas: To me, the special edition ones are the films I wanted to make. Anybody that makes films knows the film is never finished. It's abandoned or it's ripped out of your hands, and it's thrown into the marketplace, never finished. It's a very rare experience where you find a filmmaker who says, "That's exactly what I wanted. I got everything I needed. I made it just perfect. I'm going to put it out there." And even most artists, most painters, even composers would want to come back and redo their work now. They've got a new perspective on it, they've got more resources, they have better technology, and they can fix or finish the things that were never done.
This is heartbreakingly wrong on so many levels. The Aldous Huxley quote in another Score:5 comment hit so close to home, I hope it falls under Lucas's eyes at some point and moves him to reconsider. If you can make the movie and modify it now, what's to stop musicians from changing CDs every time a new batch is stamped? Movies are not dynamic, they are static releases. If someone wants to invent an evolving art form and continually update something on whims, great. But world-renowned cinema is not the place to experiment with this concept. The movies spoke to people as they were. They produced reactions, both positive and negative, for good reason.
I could type about this for an hour and still not make all the points I want to, so I think I'll just stop.
AP: Do you pay much attention to fan reactions to your choices?
Lucas: Not really. The movies are what the movies are.
Because I have seen more than my share of whiny SciFi fans, I begin to identify with the "it's nice to have an opinion..." part. But the second half of his cocky statement is a self-aggrandizing "...but my opinion is the only important one." "I'm making the movies" is a ridiculously over-simplified remark, especially considering the crap about hundreds of people losing their jobs if someone downloads a movie on the Internet.
This only punctuates the assessment that Lucas is not an artist, not a true filmmaker; but more of a hack who got a lucky break by being in the right place at the right time with a good (at the time) product. In fact, the changes he's made and the tack he's taken now seem to indicate that either 1) He never had real talent, but had exceptional help making a good product in the 70s and 80s, or 2)He's gone through some sort of change where a legitimate genius has dissolved into a worthless husk of a man who's banking on previous successes, with an egotistical mindset that power and wealth have obviated the need for QUALITY.
I'm banking on the latter.
I never thought I'd say it, but George Lucas, you really ARE an ASSHOLE.
Look, I don't know if you have thought about it from this angle or not, but Kyle was doing something to protect not only the gaming industry, but also potential investors.
When that article was posted 12 months ago, Infinium had burned through several million dollars in venture capital with nothing to show but some renders and a glossy page of marketing lingo. They were "quite anxious" to get their hands on another 25-50 million US dollars. And it was pretty evident to those who were trying to get info on the console that- not only was it vaporware, it was vaporware hawked by a guy with a really shady history of business dealings.
Kyle's article, while written in a sophomoric style, was very enlightening. It was truthful and Infinium's complaint is that it chased away potential investors. Damn right it it did, and rightfully so!
...and my sessions are typically a month long, or whenever Critical Updates are released.
I even go into suspend mode every night. XP Pro, properly configured, with brand-name hardware and WHQL drivers, has never crashed for me.
Caveat: it crashed when I used nVidia's tweak utility to overzealously set my memory timings faster. The whole machine went toes up until I reset the CMOS.
The plural or anecdote is not data, however using the stat of "% of 'sessions' ending in reboot" is not remotely useful as a guage of stability.
Wow.
After posting this comment, and then reading some of the personal background that was not on his own website, looks like I'm back on the "anybody but the guy backing Ashcroft" bandwagon. Dammit, Badnarik, why'd you have to turn out to be nucking futs? It hurts the reputation of rational civil libertarians everywhere.
Let me preface my question by saying I have voted for mainly Libertarian candidates for four years, and take a largely Libertarian political mindset when voting on ballot issues.
Mr. Badnarik, do you personally feel that the Libertarian Party's public image is tarnished by the perception that they cater to the interests of Drug Legalization and unregulated Gun Ownership?
I'm not looking for the party line, as I can read lp.org on my own. The idealogues who wrote the platform believe that personal responsibility trumps government oversight, which in my heart I believe is the right way for society to go.
I am someone who believes that guns are useful tools, but live in a household with unstable emotional variables so do not need to own one. I also have never taken recreational substances and don't feel that I'm missing out by avoiding them. I agree that our current state of government overregulates both of these issues (Guns and Drugs) to irrational extremes, to the detriment of the civil rights of responsible adults nationwide. On the flip side, the reality is that a large part of our population would be completely unable to function if left to their own sense of responsibility to make decisions regarding recreational drugs and weapons.
The point I'm getting at is that, as an intellectual and rational human being, I have a hard time "selling" the Libertarian Party as a viable alternative to our two party system. The LP clearly has a perception problem when like-minded civil libterians refer to the LP as "a bunch of gun and drug nuts." The crux of this gets lost when the candidates turn idealogues and say "Smaller Government! No Income Tax! Legalize Drugs! Hold sacred the Second Amendment!" All of these things are good, but this mindset excludes discussion on a lot of pragmatic issues that need addressed before American Society is ready to accept them as truth.
Thank you for your time.
... a fool and his money are soon parted.
You're getting a great deal. A PowerBook G4 667 is still a nice machine, but it ain't worth no 1200 bucks.
Baseball (Major League Baseball) and Football (the National Footbal League) are both six month seasons.
Thanks anyway.
Subject: Companies and Corporations. The Answer: This company has a workforce of 17000 people, whose average working year is only 4 months long.
I thought about it a while, and am thinking it could be some seasonal work. I was thinking it might be a sports league, but most seasons are longer than 4 months and/or employ scouts, etc. year round.
Any ideas?
one can't assume that people or institutions will update their hardware to include USB ports.
Yes, it's terribly costly ($9 for a USB PCI card), and few computers have USB ports standard. Except for pretty much every PC since 1997, those new-fangled ones have the fancy USB ports.
But other than that, you're absolutely right!
If schools are using equipment older than 1996, they must be having a lot of fun supporting Windows for Workgroups over Banyan Vines networking, huh?
Of course forcing people to get other offers may not be the best retention method...
Agreed, and thanks. If you go to your boss and try to justify a raise, and they tell you either they can't afford it, or you're not worth it... and you go somewhere else and get a better offer... what are you supposed to think when they can suddenly match it?
They lied to you? As my mentor told me, "It's one tactic tehy can use... not a good one, but they can and do use it."
Quoth the AC: The lack of viruses is a fact. Your reasoning why is only supposition.
Yes, but in fact, your supposition that my supposition is not fact is, indeed, factual.
But who's supposing what now?
Thanks for trying to see where I'm coming from. :) Yes, I am an early slashdotter. My company currently "suggests" a 48-hour work week. (Those who do not meet those requirements are not looked upon favorably.) I could do under-the-table tech work in my "spare time," but with a wife, son, and second on the way... I'd rather be at home with my family. Here's my background:
:)
:)
:)
No college degree, 2 years toward an BA in EE. Strong written and verbal communication skills. Yes I know a paper degree carries weight with some hiring managers, however I feel comfortable putting my technical and soft skills against any of my peers. Not a paper MCSE nor A+ certified, but quiz me and I could pass most MCSE reqs except Exchange (we're a Notes shop). A+ has never been mentioned by any of my peers as having any value in our industry.
Joe jobs (7 years ago +) included running ethernet/phone cable, installing hubs, building PCs, repairing PC/Mac hardware and OS, and a brief PC retail experience as a customer service rep.
My corporate experience includes support of Novell Netware 3/4 and NT domain users on NT 3.51, 4, 2000 and 2003. DOS and Win3.1/Win95/98/Me/MacOS 7/8/9 in background, but who uses those anymore?
I've been primarily working on Compaq/HP/IBM servers and IBM desktops, running Microsoft operating systems. I consider myself a Hardware God, but there's no money in that; so I hack hardware as a hobby at home.
Have built Windows clusters and done some IIS support. Spent 18 months "matrixed" into a Unix/Web group, so can find my way around Solaris, iPlanet/SunOne, "IBM Tivoli Access Manager for eBusiness" (Note to IBM, pick a better name please!), Websphere, AIX. Supported corprate LDAP infrastructure and coordinated secure cert requests and installs for secure web servers. I would say "marginal Unix proficiency," but I am very resourceful when I need to figure things out.
Experience in "cut-copy-paste" scripting: Perl, VBscript, and some REXX. I have modified, maintained, and deciphered existing scripts... but I'm not much of a programmer because I won't spend hours focusing on code. I guess you could say I'm a "hack."
My main focus has been desktop support and software distribution, currently using proprietary vendor package. Packaging of applications and hotfixing, building and supporting distribution environment, including automation of repetitive tasks.
Overall, I feel my value-add is resourcefulness, flexibility, and service-oriented mindset. I am technically capable but focus more on effective communication in understanding what people want to accomplish, and coming up with the best possible way to accomplish it with the constraints I'm given.
I'm in Cleveland, and I'm willing to leave my company for 62,500. When do I start?
Well, you've found differently here. I replace video cards every 12-18 months, motherboards about every two years, memory about the same, and CPU about every 12 months (always at the $100-$120) range. Added up, over a 3 year period I spend about $1600 on a PC. And at the end of the 3 years, I have something that's at the top of the price-performance curve, "eBay resale value" be damned. :)
That is uncanny! The HR department at our company, faced with complaints about salaries, launched a "Total Compensation" intranet site to show people how much better the retirement plans and benefits were when considering the "total compensation." Look, you can give me lies, damn lies, and statistics all day. When I can walk out the door for a 20% raise, you matching 2% more on the 401K doesn't mean squat.
Ironic aside: my co-worker with an MBA and 12 years with the company left today for the SAME JOB at a different company for a 40% raise!
Here's a flipside. I took a steady corporate job 7 years ago, fresh out of 3 years of part-time pizza delivery, part time PC repair and Windows support.
I now have completed so much "career development," with 10 years of industry experience, that my resume places me around $65,000 for my regional job market. My company pays me more than 25% below that number. Most of this is from a cumulative 3% raise over the past three years, even as layoffs have happened, workload has increased, skillset has improved, and performance reviews have remained consistently "full to exceeds performance."
So now, with the market opening up, I find myself shopping for another steady, stable job. What really yanks my crank is that despite the games our HR has been playing with compensation, I have a lot of great professional relationships built up inside the company that I am now forced to abandon to acheive "market value." And with the potential for a 25% raise, that isn't much of a counter-argument.
When I sit down and speak candidly with my boss about my concerns about compensation, try to sell myself with what I am tasked with and how my client and peer feedback backs me up, I get a story about how a new compensation is coming... first it was October, now it is next April... and raises are "un-doable" until then.... and besides, teh market is rough, we're all lucky just to have jobs... as he plans the landscaping upgrades to his new-development home and getting ready to trade in his Jeep Grand Cherokee.
I don't have time for this BS. The same games get played in cycles at many, many companies. But for a 20-25% raise, I'm more than willing to play someone else's game. Maybe then I can afford "the BIG Hyundai" when this one's paid off. Steady, stable employment is good, but don't let them convince you that it's worth far less money for "security." We had layoffs again yesterday, and it can happen to you tomorrow for all you really know.
...and here's another party-line Mac troll.
:)
I play a fair number of games. The xBox, Game Cube, and PS2 do not provide me the same selection and flexibility of control that my GeForce cards and Nostromo Speedpads do. Even if I were into droppign 300 dollars per platform every three years, plus $50 per game.
All the games I want to play are on Windows. That is a simple reality of my universe. If your universe allows you the limited scope of Mac gaming or the full enjoyment a console can bring, great.
For "real work," well, considering I'm an "M$" admin of desktops and servers, handling software distribution to 20,000 corporate Windows desktops... well buying a Mac just seems kind of silly now, doesn't it.
The world's best interests do not resolve around your personal desires, nor do they mine. I just buy what works for me and let others do the same. It doesn't all have to be evangelism.
Threads like these are the reasons I save all my mod points to mark Apple posts overrated.