Except I'm not an "IT guy" any more than a draftsman is an engineer, a legal assistant is a lawyer, and so on. Yet people aren't so daft that they can't remember those titles and roles, despite such roles having nothing to do with their own life (and being completely outside their realm of experience).
People just have a general contempt for those who do all that "fancy, complex stuff, quickly" with computers. It's one thing to not understand what goes into the end product, but we're generally looked down upon as liars, thieves, and generally amoral/sociopathic. Sure, some are, but no moreso than there are lawyers, etc. who fit that description. It's an unfairly gained stigma, I think. I blame the 1980s.
As someone who "fixes windows" for a partial living, and who was an actual "IT guy" - ie, an IT professional - once upon a time, let me say...
Yeah, it's quite denigrating to call someone with a degree, professional experience, and what have you, an "IT guy". That shmuck at Best Buy who mans the Geek Squad desk? He's an IT Guy. The majority of "IT guys" people know, or know of, are incompetent. Many do not know the differences (or why it would matter) between different processors or other system components. Many, if not most, are "fanboys" (whether it's for Windows, Linux, or Mac).
Not only do most "IT Guys" (who would prefer not being called that) know how to do what you do - they know a better way to do it. (Hint: I very rarely boot a client's computer to their installed OS if it's been brought in to be looked at. It's usually at least the third step unless I've already diagnosed the issue, fixing much of it already.)
Right now, I call myself a Computer Janitor, partially in jest - because that's what I'm doing. I'm unplugging shit and fixing the things people break. I'm not even at the level of an "IT Guy". Honestly, it's an embarrassing line of work.
Except it's not the same as "IT" because IT, whether it's development, QA,
Imagine a large physical engineering company that had HR, finance, executives, etc. referring to all their technical staff (architects, PEs, surveyors, materials specialists, draftsmen, etc.) as some sort of generalized and removed term which has gained a social stigma (say, "geek"). That's what calling technologists "IT guys" has become.
Sure, call the whole collection of working groups "IT", but just having "IT" or calling a programmer/developer/DBA/sysadmin/tech suport "IT guys" is a bit denigrating - it shows, at least, a general disdain. I've seen it as "the IT guy" and I'm sure many others have, too. It doesn't matter if your title is technologist, system administrator, database administrator, development lead, or anything else: you're just the IT guy, and that's the way it will probably remain. Nevermind they know the PE (engineer) by name as well as his title; them being the low-end of the social order was then; this is now.
Buy/rent a shell or a virtual host from a reputable reseller and use the account/host to set up an SSH tunnel (socks5) through which you should tunnel everything of importance, so the data is not as easily retrieved (ie 2-level encryption - browser and TCP).
I wouldn't say "AMD is better", necessarily. I will say, however, that the Xeons seem to have been plagued from the very beginning with problems like this. They're just fringe enough to not get enough run-in testing, and the bugs don't get as quickly found as they do with the more mainstream/many users processors.
Yeah, or when you've got a real African American who happens to be white getting expelled from his school, and his life effectively ruined.
I'm sorry, but how other than "African American" are you supposed to identify an American citizen who immigrated from South Africa? If you say a white man can not claim that mantle when a black man can, and it applies, then you are being racist in the name of political correctness (which is, it seems, half the purpose of 'political correctness' in the first place - secreted systematic racism). Period. Either it's racism when it's done to anyone, or you shouldn't be done at all.
Additionally, PC behavior extends well beyond politeness to the point of ignoring reality - recasting the facts in a
Let's pick racism as a "for example". So-called "race baiters" - Al Sharpton, Louis Farakan, and their ilk - lie outright, cast blame, and try to gain favor. It's "politically correct" to respect the black man, and to give him what he wants. But are the facts in support of the claims of these men, or for that matter, beneficial (in the long term) to the actual people? No, they're not. But they do help the political system which such claims ultimately foist.
Affirmative action is "politically correct" but it's also racist, supporting the idea that minorities are somehow less able to achieve success. Systematic racism like this helps support the political system which benefits from a people group thinking they are oppressed - and that system then benefiting as the saviors.
Political correctness is a ruse to gain political power (and they weren't even all that subtle about calling it such). It's bullshit, and has nothing to do with politeness.
Oh, I disagree, emphatically. Political correctness is much, much more (or less, in some cases) than politeness.
It is politically incorrect to hold a door for a woman. Yet, an orgy or swinging, and its general acceptance (which probably couldn't be considered 'polite') is quite politically correct. It is politically incorrect to even simply have ideas which are unpopular (about demographics, statistics, climate change, economics, etc.). It is politically incorrect to not hold sympathy for the oppressed in some dystopia (say, Sudan) but at the same time, it's PC to see a dystopia like Cuba as something to be aspired to.
Political correctness is, well, politically oriented. Almost anything politically correct supports a Marxist or Bolshevik political agenda - one in support of the destruction of traditional values, the support of the State, and the erosion of dignity and self-determination.
What industry abuses their customers, dangles features and incentives of questionable value in a quid pro quo for contractual lock-in and then produces unilateral unpredictable billing and surcharges to this captive market? No. You are right! That describes Credit Card companies, the only business hated more by their customer base than the mobile phone providers.
Actually, the question could easily apply to the federal government, as well. At least if you consider the actual taxpayers to be "customers". They're getting shafted, and there's even less that can be done for it.
You're not paying attention. Total world domination needs cannon fodder or it tends to fizzle out in the "take out Russia and/or overseas powers" stage of things.
When I tried bing, it not only didn't give me relevant results, but it stuck me with ads as the first several links - without disclosing the fact that they were ads. It tricked me, and I clicked on one. That is reprehensible behavior, and not the kind of thing I'd expect from a large multinational corporation. I equate that kind of behavior with shady porn sites and the like.
I might add, Google isn't half as good as it was years ago - tech info has become increasingly difficult to find, and any qualifiers (+, -, quotation marks) don't seem to work as well at finding the results as they used to, either. I'd love to use their old search algorithms; that's what made them popular in the first place. They were, in all likelihood, search routines for geeks, by geeks. Only in recent years have they become more "user centric", making geeky things less relevant.
The amount of energy imparted has little to do with actual weapon performance. What matters is how well that energy is imparted to the subject/target. This is why many consider the.45ACP (a cartridge which has relatively little energy) a better stopping caliber than, say,.223 Remmington/5.56 NATO (which has a relatively larger energy). The percentage of PE to energy imparted from the.45 is significantly higher than from the.223 (which tends to just pass on through) due to bullet design.
To get a laser cannon capable of "stopping power" (regardless of your target) you would need to, essentially, burn a crater into or a hole through the subject. I have no idea how much power is required for that, but if we're talking about kjoules, we haven't got nearly the technology for it. The article is pure fantasy: short of portable, weapon magazine ("clip") like nuclear power cells capable of short, multiple, controlled explosions, this won't be actionable for some time.
Frankly, I don't see the appeal. You can get a fanless Asus/Gigabyte/etc. 8400GS with 512M for $25-35. It's a DX10 card, and it's good enough to play Fallout 3 on "medium". It can also play many other games quite suitably.
I can see the appeal to having a non-onboard graphics controller, particularly if the onboard controller is of the Intel type. ATI onboard stuff, even the older ones, are usually just fine for even light gaming for the casual computer user, and can handle most of their needs.
Why would it be that Obama carried the black vote so heavily, unless blacks are, overwhelmingly, racist? Demographic and typical party affiliation considered, it still doesn't account for the landslide "black" vote.
I wouldn't say there's "no barrier to entry". As someone with a BS in IT, 5 years of experience, and a record of successful projects which cut and/or save costs in equipment and man hours, there most certainly is a barrier to entry. It's "are you employed?" If you're not employed, they don't seem to even consider you.
No argument about "computer janitors" though. We're respected about as much as the janitors unless we're working in an IT shop, in which case we're a large enough proportion that respect has to be begrudgingly given.
You think that's bad. My wife has a slider phone and for the first month she had it, she didn't have the key lock enabled. This means the 'up' directional is going to be pressed - often - while in a pocket or purse. And it will happen randomly. And it will be costly.
Beck is a bit of an idiot when it comes to making an argument on the radio, because he uses entirely too much sarcasm for the point to be made well (and its often fairly subtle sarcasm).
What this guy was criticizing was Beck's way of saying things which are usually/often offensive to many people, and (on their face) sometimes not true or a platitude. But, in doing so, I think he stepped over the line by making a very direct statement about Beck - very specifically - claiming he was performing some fairly hideous acts. That's what I find odious about this whole thing, not that he did it, but that he picked something so socially reprehensible to substitute within Beck's diatribe style.
One of my favorite college courses was unexpectedly so: it was titled simply "Marriage" or something equally specific, and was a 200 level sociology course. I had a 9AM in the same building, it was at 8, and I had to pass the cafeteria to get there: score, I'd eat in the Marriage class.
It turned out to be a really good class. I don't remember a textbook (I rarely bought them after freshman year, never mind opened them, unless I knew I'd need to - and I rarely did unless it was something important), but the course did involve every student keeping a 3-ring notebook. He made all the notes available, to one exception: the class notes were not notes, so much as they were his notes with random important words missing. He went over these notes very thoroughly in class (large 300-seat lecture hall), and it was planned out day-by-day (he'd been teaching the course for years and had it down to a science).
At the end of the course, you were graded on two things: the completeness of your notes, and the final exam. There was no duplicity in giving different sections of the class different notes, you could copy them or do whatever you wanted with them (and the notes amounted to about 1" thick of duplexed print). I ended up getting an A in the course without any substantial studying (skimmed through the notes the night before for an hour or two), and the exam took the better part of the hour. He had a very high "pass" rate.
(And no, the A I got in that class wasn't a fluke in my college career.)
That's a pointless distinction, when you consider that people pay for McAfee, Avast, etc. and expect it to protect them (user-ambiguous distinctions between "virus", "trojan" and "malware" aside) from harmful software.
MalwareBytes is useful as a clean-up tool, but only (IMO) as a detection tool telling you that you need to reinstall/reimage, or in a home client computer repair scenario. Once you're infected, you're infected; I've found there's really no going back to a clean, well-performing system after that happens.
The results are interesting, in that they show MS Security Essentials - which is free and new to the market - performing essentially as well as the Symantec AV, and better than everything else. That's somewhat surprising, given the geek preference for NOD32/F-Secure/etc. over Semantec and MS products.
I think I'll just keep recommending MS Security Essentials to my clients over Symantec or McAfee, though. Those products are junk and aren't worth the system overhead.
I've not bought an ATI card (intentionally - unless it was bundled with something) since the All In Wonder cards were new, and I've been buying Nvidia since my G400 bit the dust years ago. But they do have their act together in all but the driver department, IMO.
The biggest thing for me is thermal footprint. In many ways, it demonstrates the overall quality of the design, I think.
I met a Nvidia engineer in the Denver (I think) airport last winter. We sat and talked for about half an hour while we waited for our late flights. His job was, for the time being, to work the thermal issues out of nvidia's chips and decrease their power use. He agreed that, while they were ahead in terms of raw performance, they were inferior to AMD/ATI chips in performance per watt as well as overall thermal footprint, and that it tended to be quite a problem when trying to run a cool system without much noise - and one big reason they hadn't pursued the whole 'integrated system' with too much effort in the past.
Hopefully ATI can get their driver situation figured out, and Nvidia the thermal issues... we will see.
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Except I'm not an "IT guy" any more than a draftsman is an engineer, a legal assistant is a lawyer, and so on. Yet people aren't so daft that they can't remember those titles and roles, despite such roles having nothing to do with their own life (and being completely outside their realm of experience).
People just have a general contempt for those who do all that "fancy, complex stuff, quickly" with computers. It's one thing to not understand what goes into the end product, but we're generally looked down upon as liars, thieves, and generally amoral/sociopathic. Sure, some are, but no moreso than there are lawyers, etc. who fit that description. It's an unfairly gained stigma, I think. I blame the 1980s.
As someone who "fixes windows" for a partial living, and who was an actual "IT guy" - ie, an IT professional - once upon a time, let me say...
Yeah, it's quite denigrating to call someone with a degree, professional experience, and what have you, an "IT guy". That shmuck at Best Buy who mans the Geek Squad desk? He's an IT Guy. The majority of "IT guys" people know, or know of, are incompetent. Many do not know the differences (or why it would matter) between different processors or other system components. Many, if not most, are "fanboys" (whether it's for Windows, Linux, or Mac).
Not only do most "IT Guys" (who would prefer not being called that) know how to do what you do - they know a better way to do it. (Hint: I very rarely boot a client's computer to their installed OS if it's been brought in to be looked at. It's usually at least the third step unless I've already diagnosed the issue, fixing much of it already.)
Right now, I call myself a Computer Janitor, partially in jest - because that's what I'm doing. I'm unplugging shit and fixing the things people break. I'm not even at the level of an "IT Guy". Honestly, it's an embarrassing line of work.
Except it's not the same as "IT" because IT, whether it's development, QA,
Imagine a large physical engineering company that had HR, finance, executives, etc. referring to all their technical staff (architects, PEs, surveyors, materials specialists, draftsmen, etc.) as some sort of generalized and removed term which has gained a social stigma (say, "geek"). That's what calling technologists "IT guys" has become.
Sure, call the whole collection of working groups "IT", but just having "IT" or calling a programmer/developer/DBA/sysadmin/tech suport "IT guys" is a bit denigrating - it shows, at least, a general disdain. I've seen it as "the IT guy" and I'm sure many others have, too. It doesn't matter if your title is technologist, system administrator, database administrator, development lead, or anything else: you're just the IT guy, and that's the way it will probably remain. Nevermind they know the PE (engineer) by name as well as his title; them being the low-end of the social order was then; this is now.
Buy/rent a shell or a virtual host from a reputable reseller and use the account/host to set up an SSH tunnel (socks5) through which you should tunnel everything of importance, so the data is not as easily retrieved (ie 2-level encryption - browser and TCP).
I wouldn't say "AMD is better", necessarily. I will say, however, that the Xeons seem to have been plagued from the very beginning with problems like this. They're just fringe enough to not get enough run-in testing, and the bugs don't get as quickly found as they do with the more mainstream/many users processors.
Yeah, or when you've got a real African American who happens to be white getting expelled from his school, and his life effectively ruined.
I'm sorry, but how other than "African American" are you supposed to identify an American citizen who immigrated from South Africa? If you say a white man can not claim that mantle when a black man can, and it applies, then you are being racist in the name of political correctness (which is, it seems, half the purpose of 'political correctness' in the first place - secreted systematic racism). Period. Either it's racism when it's done to anyone, or you shouldn't be done at all.
Sorry to reply to myself here, but...
Additionally, PC behavior extends well beyond politeness to the point of ignoring reality - recasting the facts in a
Let's pick racism as a "for example". So-called "race baiters" - Al Sharpton, Louis Farakan, and their ilk - lie outright, cast blame, and try to gain favor. It's "politically correct" to respect the black man, and to give him what he wants. But are the facts in support of the claims of these men, or for that matter, beneficial (in the long term) to the actual people? No, they're not. But they do help the political system which such claims ultimately foist.
Affirmative action is "politically correct" but it's also racist, supporting the idea that minorities are somehow less able to achieve success. Systematic racism like this helps support the political system which benefits from a people group thinking they are oppressed - and that system then benefiting as the saviors.
Political correctness is a ruse to gain political power (and they weren't even all that subtle about calling it such). It's bullshit, and has nothing to do with politeness.
Oh, I disagree, emphatically. Political correctness is much, much more (or less, in some cases) than politeness.
It is politically incorrect to hold a door for a woman. Yet, an orgy or swinging, and its general acceptance (which probably couldn't be considered 'polite') is quite politically correct. It is politically incorrect to even simply have ideas which are unpopular (about demographics, statistics, climate change, economics, etc.). It is politically incorrect to not hold sympathy for the oppressed in some dystopia (say, Sudan) but at the same time, it's PC to see a dystopia like Cuba as something to be aspired to.
Political correctness is, well, politically oriented. Almost anything politically correct supports a Marxist or Bolshevik political agenda - one in support of the destruction of traditional values, the support of the State, and the erosion of dignity and self-determination.
Libby Hoeler agrees.
What industry abuses their customers, dangles features and incentives of questionable value in a quid pro quo for contractual lock-in and then produces unilateral unpredictable billing and surcharges to this captive market? No. You are right! That describes Credit Card companies, the only business hated more by their customer base than the mobile phone providers.
Actually, the question could easily apply to the federal government, as well. At least if you consider the actual taxpayers to be "customers". They're getting shafted, and there's even less that can be done for it.
You're not paying attention. Total world domination needs cannon fodder or it tends to fizzle out in the "take out Russia and/or overseas powers" stage of things.
When I tried bing, it not only didn't give me relevant results, but it stuck me with ads as the first several links - without disclosing the fact that they were ads. It tricked me, and I clicked on one. That is reprehensible behavior, and not the kind of thing I'd expect from a large multinational corporation. I equate that kind of behavior with shady porn sites and the like.
I might add, Google isn't half as good as it was years ago - tech info has become increasingly difficult to find, and any qualifiers (+, -, quotation marks) don't seem to work as well at finding the results as they used to, either. I'd love to use their old search algorithms; that's what made them popular in the first place. They were, in all likelihood, search routines for geeks, by geeks. Only in recent years have they become more "user centric", making geeky things less relevant.
The amount of energy imparted has little to do with actual weapon performance. What matters is how well that energy is imparted to the subject/target. This is why many consider the .45ACP (a cartridge which has relatively little energy) a better stopping caliber than, say, .223 Remmington/5.56 NATO (which has a relatively larger energy). The percentage of PE to energy imparted from the .45 is significantly higher than from the .223 (which tends to just pass on through) due to bullet design.
To get a laser cannon capable of "stopping power" (regardless of your target) you would need to, essentially, burn a crater into or a hole through the subject. I have no idea how much power is required for that, but if we're talking about kjoules, we haven't got nearly the technology for it. The article is pure fantasy: short of portable, weapon magazine ("clip") like nuclear power cells capable of short, multiple, controlled explosions, this won't be actionable for some time.
Frankly, I don't see the appeal. You can get a fanless Asus/Gigabyte/etc. 8400GS with 512M for $25-35. It's a DX10 card, and it's good enough to play Fallout 3 on "medium". It can also play many other games quite suitably.
I can see the appeal to having a non-onboard graphics controller, particularly if the onboard controller is of the Intel type. ATI onboard stuff, even the older ones, are usually just fine for even light gaming for the casual computer user, and can handle most of their needs.
You know what I love about OS X on a large display?
"Hmm, I want to use the menu." *One-handed mouse marathon ensues as the mouse cursor hops across the screen* ... waiting ... *click*
Same basic problem with Windows, really. But OS X is worse due to the brainfucked mouse acceleration.
Why would it be that Obama carried the black vote so heavily, unless blacks are, overwhelmingly, racist? Demographic and typical party affiliation considered, it still doesn't account for the landslide "black" vote.
I wouldn't say there's "no barrier to entry". As someone with a BS in IT, 5 years of experience, and a record of successful projects which cut and/or save costs in equipment and man hours, there most certainly is a barrier to entry. It's "are you employed?" If you're not employed, they don't seem to even consider you.
No argument about "computer janitors" though. We're respected about as much as the janitors unless we're working in an IT shop, in which case we're a large enough proportion that respect has to be begrudgingly given.
You think that's bad. My wife has a slider phone and for the first month she had it, she didn't have the key lock enabled. This means the 'up' directional is going to be pressed - often - while in a pocket or purse. And it will happen randomly. And it will be costly.
Beck is a bit of an idiot when it comes to making an argument on the radio, because he uses entirely too much sarcasm for the point to be made well (and its often fairly subtle sarcasm).
What this guy was criticizing was Beck's way of saying things which are usually/often offensive to many people, and (on their face) sometimes not true or a platitude. But, in doing so, I think he stepped over the line by making a very direct statement about Beck - very specifically - claiming he was performing some fairly hideous acts. That's what I find odious about this whole thing, not that he did it, but that he picked something so socially reprehensible to substitute within Beck's diatribe style.
One of my favorite college courses was unexpectedly so: it was titled simply "Marriage" or something equally specific, and was a 200 level sociology course. I had a 9AM in the same building, it was at 8, and I had to pass the cafeteria to get there: score, I'd eat in the Marriage class.
It turned out to be a really good class. I don't remember a textbook (I rarely bought them after freshman year, never mind opened them, unless I knew I'd need to - and I rarely did unless it was something important), but the course did involve every student keeping a 3-ring notebook. He made all the notes available, to one exception: the class notes were not notes, so much as they were his notes with random important words missing. He went over these notes very thoroughly in class (large 300-seat lecture hall), and it was planned out day-by-day (he'd been teaching the course for years and had it down to a science).
At the end of the course, you were graded on two things: the completeness of your notes, and the final exam. There was no duplicity in giving different sections of the class different notes, you could copy them or do whatever you wanted with them (and the notes amounted to about 1" thick of duplexed print). I ended up getting an A in the course without any substantial studying (skimmed through the notes the night before for an hour or two), and the exam took the better part of the hour. He had a very high "pass" rate.
(And no, the A I got in that class wasn't a fluke in my college career.)
That's a pointless distinction, when you consider that people pay for McAfee, Avast, etc. and expect it to protect them (user-ambiguous distinctions between "virus", "trojan" and "malware" aside) from harmful software.
MalwareBytes is useful as a clean-up tool, but only (IMO) as a detection tool telling you that you need to reinstall/reimage, or in a home client computer repair scenario. Once you're infected, you're infected; I've found there's really no going back to a clean, well-performing system after that happens.
There's no need if you're running a firewall and an block-everything scanner like the Spybot S&D Teatimer.
The results are interesting, in that they show MS Security Essentials - which is free and new to the market - performing essentially as well as the Symantec AV, and better than everything else. That's somewhat surprising, given the geek preference for NOD32/F-Secure/etc. over Semantec and MS products.
I think I'll just keep recommending MS Security Essentials to my clients over Symantec or McAfee, though. Those products are junk and aren't worth the system overhead.
No no, it's "Measure twice, cut once... oh fuck, how did I do that? Measure twice, cut a second time..."
I've not bought an ATI card (intentionally - unless it was bundled with something) since the All In Wonder cards were new, and I've been buying Nvidia since my G400 bit the dust years ago. But they do have their act together in all but the driver department, IMO.
The biggest thing for me is thermal footprint. In many ways, it demonstrates the overall quality of the design, I think.
I met a Nvidia engineer in the Denver (I think) airport last winter. We sat and talked for about half an hour while we waited for our late flights. His job was, for the time being, to work the thermal issues out of nvidia's chips and decrease their power use. He agreed that, while they were ahead in terms of raw performance, they were inferior to AMD/ATI chips in performance per watt as well as overall thermal footprint, and that it tended to be quite a problem when trying to run a cool system without much noise - and one big reason they hadn't pursued the whole 'integrated system' with too much effort in the past.
Hopefully ATI can get their driver situation figured out, and Nvidia the thermal issues... we will see.