This is why university students are uncapbable of speaking of living in the Real World...
When you're at college, whether undergrad or grad school, you have a number or things going in your favor. First of all, everything you need, aside from a job, is definitely within walking distance (or even reachable via free shuttle bus, as the case in my school). Second, universities provide health insurance at a reasonable cost. Third, you can take out loans and/or work for your education, but the fact of the matter is yearly housing, food, and a whole range of expenses are covered rather cheaply or easily here. For less than $20,000 a year, you can survive quite nicely.
For me, out of college, health insurance is expensive, and my job provides it. I don't NEED the car, but then again I'm only paying liability insurance on my old college car (which is falling apart) to save money... and when it dies, I get rides to work and I lose my personal life. I can't afford a decent used car and the cost of insurance in NJ with my current salary. (This is because I was a delivery driver in college, and I paid harshly with several out-of-state tickets for ridiculous offenses given by local cops / university public safety) Without a car I lose access to food and laundry as well. Finally, my rent is twice what it was when I was living off campus senior year of college, and yet is one third of what it would cost to live in NYC across the river - so we have a bargain. My rent costs more than one week of my current salary.
Oh, and by the way, I am NOT well paid. I am in this job because I was desperate for a job. There are no other jobs out there, I looked for 9 months, and when all was said and done my CS education left me with $150 in my pocket 4 months after graduation. This is less than what it costs for a one way plane ticket back home to my parents so I can live with them in their retirement in the boondocks of Florida. Right now I am still making considerably less than most people in programming-related jobs make... even for the really cheapo entry level jobs.
But I'm not in poverty. I'm not rich, but I'm saving money. Later on, when I can actually get a job when this horrid job market passes, I'll consider "following my heart". For now, I'll put food on the table and avoid living with my parents.
Of course, since I'm debt free (college paid with trust fund) and I'm saving up money, I could go get my masters at Rutgers or some other state school really cheaply, take out loans to do it, and go back to living in college La-La Land. Those were the days where it cost $3 to get into a party for unlimited beer and keg stands. Around here, it's $4 for a Coors Light.
Oh, and don't DARE suggest that I move somewhere else. Yes, the cost of living is cheaper in Oklahoma than it is here. I would also commit suicide in Oklahoma. And I probably wouldn't find a job there, either.
I majored in computer science. Had a totally futile experience in getting a job in my field. So, I was forced to accept a job with my best friend's mother's company. This is not something I'd normally do (because of pride and friendship concerns), but I gave it a shot. It was a position working in the shipping area of a warehouse. Not a glamorous job.
It worked out fairly well at first. I applied my computing expertise and intuitive skills to fix up all the shipping systems, and as a result I'm now the shipping manager of the company four months after my first day. I'm about due for a performance review, a raise, and a bonus. Plus, I love the people I work with (for the most part) and I don't hate my job.
But...
Not to sound spoiled, but I don't know if there's any real advancement for me in this company. I mean, I might eventually get promoted to being an assistant warehouse manager, or perhaps a program manager in the office, but that doesn't mean I look forward to working a couple of years at both my current and future possible positions. I simply don't see myself going in that direction.
Additionally, our warehouse manager resigned, and now we have an interim warehouse manager that has no idea what technical improvements I've made to these shipping systems. Furthermore, this new manager blames me for random things in front of company VPs, walks away from me when I'm talking to her, and dumps unreal amounts of work into my lap. Sometimes it seems like she doesn't even know what my major was in college.
I would find it easier to program 60 hours a week than to work in a warehouse 60 hours a week, no doubt. The 10 - 11 hour days are wearing me down. I like my job, but I'm not THAT passionate about it.
However, I can't quit. I'm getting shit on and people have said I should quit. But I have to pay rent and car insurance. The job market is that tough such that I can't rely on it to give me a decent job right away. Just last year, I looked 9 months for a job in ANY FIELD and didn't find one. Temp agencies wouldn't employ me... they would rather hire people with business skills than comp-sci skills, I was told. I had to work at Starbucks 40 hours a week to make ends meet. I can't go back to that now.
That's just a personal anecdote, but in times when the economy is sour, it really is hard to switch careers. So I don't blame college students for wanting to hit the nail on the head the first time around. Everyone wants to do that, but with the way things are now, life is a lot easier if you get on the right career path early.
If I had decided to stay near my University and stick to computer science for sure, I'd be making 50% more money and I would have had a job right away. And I may or may not have been miserable with such a choice, but perhaps the money would have made it a sweeter deal. (Of course, I hated my University and the area that it was in, so it's not a regret that I didn't take that path. I'm too much of a city kid.)
And there's nothing that gets you a job or boosts your salary more than being well trained and educated in the field you want to enter. I'm sure all the journalism-major web programmers are finding that out the hard way right now. (Not that there's anything wrong with doing that, but managers and HR execs tend to disagree)
Yes, in a good economy, you have flexibility. But it's hard to have a job that sucks while you wait for the economy to get better. Once again, I don't blame anyone for doing some research to avoid getting stuck in that position. It's a smart thing to do.
Also, computer science as a major can be a messy conglomeration of a lot of different fields and interests (and people), and many people find it hard to find a focused interest in such a ball-breaking major. But that's a whole other story.
How many people died is not the point. It's also irrelevant that they already died.
But the way you reference such deaths is heinously callous. I seriously hope you aren't in a position to make decisions about anything I'll ever have to come in contact with. I could be "experimental error" then, perhaps.
Oh, and mail can be MARKED to avoid irradiation and therefore damage of the goods contained. Such items need a different method of decontamination, though. Please spend less time arguing how irradiation can indirectly kill people and more time thinking of ways to solve the problem of goods that would be damaged by irradiation - other than eliminating it in exchange for no treatment whatsoever, which is dangerous and inconsiderate to postal workers and mail recipients alike.
You have a good point. And I agree about the article not being worded elegantly.
I suppose my point was lost in this, though: the submission itself was appalingly careless about human life. The issues of irradiating mail and/or sending electronics in the mail are certainly worth some discussion, and this is a perfect forum to do so. However, such issues are not quite as urgent as the safety of Postal Service employees as well as the mail sending/receiving public in general. I'm not trying to be melodramatic, but I personally find that attitude intolerable and harmful to society. It's even scarier to consider that supposedly intelligent people think that way. What good is anything you do in life if you don't give a shit about anyone else?
Some people forget that non-postal workers died from the anthrax contamination, including some lady who lived out in the boondocks in CT. Scary stuff. It could have been one of you who read this site.
I personally find it inconvienent that I can't depend on the mail system to ship electronics if I needed to without some sort of irradiation protection... but who gives a shit if that's what it takes to solve the anthrax problem at the moment? I don't question it one bit, and if it's a reliable, inexpensive, and safe method of decontaminating mail, then I'm all for it. I also support research that would find any other reliable, inexpensive, and safe method of decontaminating mail that would not risk damaging anything being sent through the mail, too. For the time being, though, irradiation is fine with me.
And as for the fact that you can't stop terrorism... well, you can try to contain it. And I'm willing to try hard. I've been willing to try hard to contain terrorism for years, and that emotion only grew stronger in me as I watched, with my own eyes, the collapse of the World Trade Center from 4 miles away.
This is why I also don't complain about being thoroughly searched by airport security and having to wait in a long line for it. If it's effective, and it's what we got for now, I've got nothing to say about it... and anyone who complains about it too much really doesn't deserve the benefits we have from our (relatively) free society. If they don't like it, they can move to Afghanistan.
I don't even have to repeat the quote from the title, you all know what it is. It is tasteless, uncaring, and selfish in a disturbing way.
It is even further disturbing to see the discussions about it here... how everyone who argues against such emotion gets even more selfish, uncaring responses, and how some people are relating this to deaths from drunk driving or careless eating.
This is a PUBLIC HEALTH SAFETY MATTER. French fries don't kill you the same way anthrax does. Drunk driving is a result of irresponsible behavior and is not tolerated much at all in this country, and our society has gone to great lengths to prevent needless deaths from auto accidents in general... why could we not apply this to eliminating anthrax and other biological threats from our postal mail system?
Because you want to send a compact flash card unwrapped in a 34 cent envelope? Shame on you.
But it's not even that. It's that you think that your needs for freedom and convienience are more powerful and weighty than the public's need for safety and security. And on top of that, you implicitly and coldheartedly suggest that if those 5 people hadn't died yet, but they would if they stopped irradiation, you'd still consider stopping it because you don't want to risk damaging improperly marked electronic equipment.
It's not all of you. Some of you are actually appalled by this, as am I. But the rest of you... that's just sick. And, sadly, this kind of stuff happens all the time on here. And it's Michael who usually posts it, too. He does a poor job of weeding out such bad taste from what might be an interesting discussion. Rather than say "All because 5 people died...", we could ask "How can we eliminate the public health threat AND ensure the safety of our equipment?" The fact that it isn't appalling to you to say the former is appalling to the people among us who value human life, no matter how sick and fucked up it can be at times.
Ah, who's listening to me anyway? Go back to your coffee, games, and coding.
Exactly. And one would argue that, strictly from balance sheets and income statements based on product line, most of Microsoft's money did not come from sales of their consumer level PC OS monopoly - they swear it's a money losing product. Of course, then you can argue that it came from their office application suite monopoly...
But you know, who's to say that a company that makes money from one product is not allowed to reinvest that money in another product, whether it be through original R&D, buying/licensing another company's R&D, or buying another company outright? I don't think Microsoft plays by unfair business rules like that... I think it's just good business, and I don't see why anyone should be bitter or upset in this case. I'm sure the original owners of Bungie are FAR from upset about the whole thing...
Free bread and vegetables would change the world. Free steel would change the world. Free software? It's an interesting concept for a particular industry. However, I would say 80-90% of the world doesn't give a damn about free software.
First of all, there are more important things to work for than for free software... which is why music, film, art, and literature are all not free either, and those have been important to culture far longer than software has been (collectively). Second, there are a lot of people who are not directly affected by software, how it was obtained, and who worked on it. Third, most people who use any kind of software in their day to day lives are concerned neither with the quality or the price of the software that they use... far too often the quality and price of computer hardware greatly offsets that concern, and no one cares about software unless it starts to break... and then even at that point, most people live with it and are not inclined to complain too loudly, given the overall convenience that modern computer systems provide.
Free software changing the world? Free software having revolutionary social implications? That's a tough sell. Segway has a better shot at changing the world, and I don't even know if they'll last 3 years. Please don't spout off comments like this without direct, convincing evidence to state these claims, otherwise Slashdot is nothing more than the online version of the Weekly World News, Linux edition. You might have far better, convincing arguments if you simply take a more rational view of what free software can affect.
It's not surprising to see ATI do something like this. In the business world, this kind of thing may pass off as slightly unethical, but for the target market of graphics card vendors, this is just plain #$*&'ed up. It's quite true that Quake 3 Arena is a very standard benchmarking application nowadays, so any performance gain in the driver for that specific application that does not apply to all programs in general will mislead the consumer in making a purchasing decision. An analogy: no one would appreciate it if a company said their car goes from 0 to 60 in 3.2 seconds and in reality it takes 3.2 seconds just to make it up to 20.
Carmack's right, this whole driver situation in general is a slippery slope. One of the biggest hassles of his job since Quake (#1) came out has been to get all the graphics card companies to play nice and write good drivers. This has not happened for one second. Some companies are better than others (Nvidia is an example of one of the better companies in the field all around), and the situation right now is FAR better than it was. But, between the race for speed, trying to keep up with the most popular applications, and having to support various APIs being pushed by different 500 lb gorillas in the field... it's a mess. ATI was ALWAYS a mess with their drivers, so this doesn't really surprise me. But this isn't right, cause it'll lead to a day when nothing but the lastest Quake game works on new graphics cards. I mean, nothing works AT ALL. And if it's easy enough to get to that situation, I can just see bribes and payoffs... ahem, "strategic partnerships" being made to accomodate game vendors who want to publish a working 3D game at some point in time...
But anyway...
One small comfort is that no one buys ATI cards for performance. Any cards of the GeForce (Nvidia's brand) variety handily whip anything at the same price point with ATI. The big thing ATI has is OEM agreements, and they also sell some really exotic TV/Video Capture/MPEG recording cards that are really snazzy sometimes. I know cause I'm using one of em right now. But their drivers suck in a lot of ways, they were never the fastest, and I'd love to see them stick to a product release schedule EVER. This is the kind of company that gets wiped out when someone new on the scene releases something better/faster/cheaper.
Unfortunately, the last time we saw better/faster/cheaper in the graphics industry was five years ago. Nowadays, you usually get one of those improvements in a new release video card... never all three.
In my CIS program, anything hands-on at all was outside of the scope of discussion for all of my classes. We were never taught anything relating to any programs... hell, on the first day of school freshman year, it was assumed that we knew what text editor we were using in Unix for C++ programming. Granted, something like this would slow down an "Intro to Comp Sci" class greatly, but there were no references, or even advice for references, given by anybody.
Your best bet to learn anything was to go to the nearest Borders - about a half hour drive away, and no Barnes and Noble anywhere even close - and pick up the best book you saw. Or, you could gamble even further, and choose one off of Amazon.com to be delivered. Our professors, when asked for advice about picking out books to learn ANY subject, generally just said "Well, get any book you can find, it should be good enough."
My favorite was my Databases class... and thank god I knew SQL already. The syntax in the book was just plain WRONG and would not work in Oracle even though that's what the book was written with... the syntax was like pseudocode, except it was supposed to really work! Then the professor gave us the first assignment and told us the class before it was due, "Well, you should be able to figure out stuff within Oracle to reconcile commands with what's the book... just use the help command and you can get help on anything." This would have worked had the school renewed the help license... however, it was deemed unnecessary, and the help file was blank. The professor was politely informed of this by the entire class on the due date of the assignment. His response? "Really? Interesting. I'll have to look into that." The helpfile was never restored, and I spent more than half the time on all my projects searching vigorously for SQL help and examples on corporate sites and other universities' web pages. I remember the first project took me 9 hours of looking up commands and 1/2 hour of actual work.
I would say that my school is bad like that, and it is a special case, but I've heard similar horror stories elsewhere.
Yea... I think that kinda sums up how I feel about it. I mean, don't get me wrong, if someone comes up with a really VILE dirty joke about it, I'm going to have to laugh in a way. But for the most part, this is not a light matter for anyone. I mean, even The Onion took a week off just because they felt their irony was inappropriate at a time like this. I would have normally disagreed with such a move, except this time we're dealing with something more severe than any of us have ever seen or read about.
I ain't gonna bitch out anyone who makes a post on here to a story with a dirty joke about it, because some people have a sick sense of humor and if you disagree about it, well then all that happens is that you disagree... I'm not going to the FCC or the FBI about it. But when the editor of the site lets a couple of "Wow, look at these nifty maps of the WTC site" go, I just felt I had to say, you know, that's not appropriate. I felt things were going to continue in that direction and I didn't want to see that happen. Furthermore, judging from some of the responses to my post, and from the moderation done to it, I'd have to say that not only was my concern valid, but that people here can be very disappointing beyond their OS zealotry and bitterness toward the world. Sad indeed.
(Not to knock the couple of people that posted something with a little bit of thought and class)
This isn't a statement about life in general. I just think that the WTC tragedy will always be a somber event in history, just like Pearl Harbor or the sinking of the Titanic, etc. etc. Yea, we go on with life, and we're not upset about such things day-to-day, but I just think it's being under-sensitive to be using words like "nifty" in a story ABOUT the WTC disaster. Hey, I still think Lego blocks are nifty, and I have no problem with anyone calling them that... even the day of the disaster...
I'm sure the Irish don't refer to anything as nifty while mentioning Bloody Sunday in the same breath...
I'm quite glad that you read this and took the time out to respond.
I'm do agree with you; this is not the time to be over-sensitive. And you did not make light of the disaster; to some extent, I think that the "pun intended" part was somewhat distasteful but only in the sense of juxtaposition of serious matters and a cheeky phrase like that. I guess it's a bit hypocritical, cause I thought it was funny when I heard that Howard Stern said that all the hookers in NYC should go downtown and give the rescue workers free blowjobs. I suppose that I wouldn't have made that wording choice after any length of time after the disaster. But it's not like a grudge thing or something like that - it's just your writing style. I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder.
As for michael... well, on a different level, he's supposed to "catch" things like that. As an editor with no bias to writing style, he definitely should have removed that "nifty" from yesterday's story, at least. For him to post two stories in a 24 hour period with a questionable juxtaposition of references to light words and a serious disaster... well, to some extent he's not doing his job. The stories were at least good. But he can edit the descriptions a little bit to keep things in a somber mood for the general populace. It's a tough job sometimes, but in my mind this would have been obvious: Just get rid of those words, they don't contribute to the "story" and they clash with the somber mood of the event itself.
All that stuff about patriotism... well, I'd be saying the same thing if it were an earthquake that killed 6,000 people.
Finally, that guy who said "Well, we're nerds, we're antisocial, we don't have to mourn"... well I told him, and I'll say it again: that's really sad. And that does not speak for all of us. I think it's terrible if you're a human being, you hear of something like this, and it doesn't make you upset. Yea, we can't cry about it forever, but I think it affects many of us deeply. I mean, it's just sad to think that on some level, we have NO support from these BOFH's that sit in their Fortresses of Solititude and only care about their IRC channels. They don't care about society, they don't care about freedom, and they don't care about America. To that extent, they're not Americans, even at this time when most people in the world agree, for right now, "We are all Americans".
With things like this, I wonder less why I hated some of the people in my (CIS) major in college... not all of them, just the people like this who are selfish and rude, unapologetically so. (You're not, though. Thanks for the response)
I can understand that perhaps you're an intellectual, and maybe not in touch with the general populace... but to be unapologetically antisocial... well, I'm sorry, but I find that saddening.
I know Michael got reamed for this yesterday, but this once again is a story that uses an inappropriate introduction... with words like "nifty" and "(pun intended)" to refer to something regarding this tragedy...
I mean, I'm not one to be oversensitive, but come on people... I think that you disrespect the dead and the affected when you use cavalier words while referring to this situation. I only live 5 miles from Ground Zero and I saw the towers collapse with my own eyes. This makes me no more or less affected than any other American (save for those who lost a loved one in the disaster), but for a story poster to consistently make the same error in judgement like this obviously shows something about his regard for human life, for American pride, and for the people around him that are deeply affected by this terrible situation.
I ask not that we refrain from bringing it up, as I'm very proud of Slashdot in general for its coverage of this situation. But, to repeat the point from yesterday, there is nothing "nifty" about 6,700 innocent Americans dying in the most horrible way possible at the hands of a few highly irrational people... people whose peers live among us today waiting to give us our next big tragedy, our next week of continuous news coverage, our next spilling of innocent blood.
I mean, I don't want to be too dramatic, but our American flags don't just cheer us up and bring us together... they remind us of our freedom and the horrible things that happened because we insisted on having it. It may be 13 days later, but it's still a horrible thing. Please treat it accordingly.
On one level, I spent four years in college doing coding assingments, and I felt I wasted the time. I'm jaded partially because I don't like spending lots of forced time in front of a keyboard and monitor. I would resent any job that made me spend 12 hours a day doing that.
Also... yes I am jaded through observation. Slashdot, Dilbert, FuckedCompany, and other places detailing horror stories come to mind. Yes, I've had a few internships through college, and I think they worked out well, but you do need to take every job on a case-by-case basis. It's just that this is a fairly large industry that went kaput recently, so I don't even get the chance to evaluate jobs beyond a blurb in the classifieds or a website description. For most of the jobs I applied for, I never make it to an interview. And from what's done sometimes on these interviews, how could I not be at least partially jaded? I take a 2 hour car trip or an $80 train ride to get an interview with a company where all they do is talk about themselves for 45 minutes, they ask me one or two vague questions at the end and ask my GPA, and it's whoosh out the door...
I dunno. I've just heard a lot of bad things. I keep an open mind with this stuff, cause on some level I do like doing it. But I am partially convinced that a lot of these tech jobs are not for me. That's what I meant.
It's not off topic at all. I wholeheartedly agree with you. As a recent college grad with no job, I have a bit of anxiety about being hired in a serious job position simply because I don't have a lot of confidence in my skills to write serious programs - even though I was a skilled coder in college. I really feel as if I could use some help in getting to the point where I can contribute to major software projects.
Unfortunately, the industry and the academic world is relatively unconcerned with providing fresh people with the skills to take their knowledge beyond the point of "I know SQL and Java." In my experience, no one even wants interns anymore for that kind of stuff, as tech companies in my area are hemmoraging badly and I need to support myself with an income rather than do serious work for a company for free. (I'm a strange case, because I'm jaded with the industry and I'm not sure I love it; however, I haven't heard a lot of good luck stories from my peers, either)
They were probably competing with viruses of both kinds. You really have to have a sterile environment both over the network and in the operating room.
More bizarre thoughts:
Will doctors sue for carpal tunnel? Will doctors sue for carpal tunnel after performing remote surgeries on carpal tunnel patients? (The ultimate in irony)
Can doctors now prescribe medication remotely? And if so, can I just buy 10 different masks and walk in with each saying "Yea, 100 Vicodin to go please..."
Do the robot arms have bad handwriting as well?
Will the nurses now look like Seven of Nine and give me sponge baths?
Will dentist robots be bugging me now about how bad my brushing habits are, even though I never have cavities?
And finally, will all the script kiddies be hacking into those remote boob-job surgeries? I hope they get grossed out and short circuit their 31337 keyboards with vomit, cause it's not for the squeamish.
That's sad that we can't build 110 story buildings, though. I happen to love buildings that are super tall like that. And I detest people that think it's a good idea to try and detonate them.
The problem is not in the size of the building, it's in the society of the world. We fix nothing by building more shorter buildings to replace fewer larger ones.
Well... depending on the store... they might actually. Some stores have deals like that, and some might just take the broken CD and ship it back to the manufacturer as a mark-out even if they don't have a deal like that. But, it's not a standard thing, and certainly not required...
But that's aside from the point.
Specifically, the record label should be the ones providing free replacement copies if they want to argue "license" over "physical purchase". Or at least it would help them out in their theoretical argument. But they don't offer any warranties on physical media, yet they also want to have complete control over what you do with it. They may be able to, yet I can also see a certain angle: someone should very closely examine the fine print on CD sleeves and see whether or not providing a replacement disc in place of a worn/damaged one is a necessary part of complying with the license. Because, if not, it is the part of the burden of the record company to comply with the license if the terms are stated so strictly. In that case, you have a separate lawsuit against the record company - a giant, multibillion-dollar class action suit involving millions of consumers - covering breach of contract for nearly every broken CD on the face of the planet that the recording industry will not replace.
And on top of that, some CDs don't have this kind of info visible upon sale - you must break shrink wrap to see these terms. That's another consumer loophole... shouldn't have to comply to any license that isn't stated in clear terms BEFORE purchase, as that constitutes fraud.
(As if we didn't know charging $20 for a factory produced CD was fraud anyway)
Rather, GNU is slowly becoming irrelevant as people decide to release free software on their own terms.
Besides, just cause the source is being opened doesn't mean that Unix is becoming free. It's just becoming open source. This seems to be the same ghastly mistake that I've seen many people modded down for. Surely such an error should be clarified on the front page... unless it's really that confusing and we should just admit that the ideologies so highly regarded (and viciously defended) here are arranged as a house of cards similar to Microsoft's own source code.
Hey, at least "embrace, extend, crush to death" is easy to follow along with.
The core that is needed to whom? YOU? What if I need Xfree86, BSD, and perhaps other commercial applications as part of my operating system? Then do I refer to all of them?
I mean, surely when I tell people what OS I use, I say Windows 98, not Windows98/Office2000/Winamp/AOL/ATI Drivers/Creative Labs Drivers/Winzip/Acrobat Reader...
I approve of different vendors calling their distributions whatever they want, based on Linux or not. Let Red Hat Linux simply be Red Hat... let them call it Red Hat Linux if they have a Red Hat Windows Compatible OS too. Maybe there's good reasons not to do that either, but I see no reason why Linux should be called GNU/Linux. GNU does not own Linux. And I would laugh if Linus sold the rights off to the kernel one day, as Stallman would be very very screwed...
Not to be blasphemous, and I'm sure Gamecube will have a couple of smash hit games (Dreamcast had a few...)
First of all, graphics mean a lot in today's day and age, but it's really a game's total design - playability, difficulty, sound, graphics, plot, etc. - that really has to shine. Good graphics mean crap, because I still play some pretty good games that have very shitty graphics (Marble Madness anyone?)
Second, I wouldn't say it has much better games before it even comes out. We don't know if most of the games will be duds or not. Of course, comparing it with N64 and Playstation, perhaps there will be some good games that are only outmatched by the most popular PS2 titles, or perhaps MS has a real ace up their sleeve and we'll be talking about X-Box games as the console games to have this Christmas.
But enough negative talk. Right now, there's never been a better time to be a video game enthusiast. Now if only that damn GT3 steering wheel didn't cost me a month of food...
Slashdot Mirror
This is why university students are uncapbable of speaking of living in the Real World...
When you're at college, whether undergrad or grad school, you have a number or things going in your favor. First of all, everything you need, aside from a job, is definitely within walking distance (or even reachable via free shuttle bus, as the case in my school). Second, universities provide health insurance at a reasonable cost. Third, you can take out loans and/or work for your education, but the fact of the matter is yearly housing, food, and a whole range of expenses are covered rather cheaply or easily here. For less than $20,000 a year, you can survive quite nicely.
For me, out of college, health insurance is expensive, and my job provides it. I don't NEED the car, but then again I'm only paying liability insurance on my old college car (which is falling apart) to save money... and when it dies, I get rides to work and I lose my personal life. I can't afford a decent used car and the cost of insurance in NJ with my current salary. (This is because I was a delivery driver in college, and I paid harshly with several out-of-state tickets for ridiculous offenses given by local cops / university public safety) Without a car I lose access to food and laundry as well. Finally, my rent is twice what it was when I was living off campus senior year of college, and yet is one third of what it would cost to live in NYC across the river - so we have a bargain. My rent costs more than one week of my current salary.
Oh, and by the way, I am NOT well paid. I am in this job because I was desperate for a job. There are no other jobs out there, I looked for 9 months, and when all was said and done my CS education left me with $150 in my pocket 4 months after graduation. This is less than what it costs for a one way plane ticket back home to my parents so I can live with them in their retirement in the boondocks of Florida. Right now I am still making considerably less than most people in programming-related jobs make... even for the really cheapo entry level jobs.
But I'm not in poverty. I'm not rich, but I'm saving money. Later on, when I can actually get a job when this horrid job market passes, I'll consider "following my heart". For now, I'll put food on the table and avoid living with my parents.
Of course, since I'm debt free (college paid with trust fund) and I'm saving up money, I could go get my masters at Rutgers or some other state school really cheaply, take out loans to do it, and go back to living in college La-La Land. Those were the days where it cost $3 to get into a party for unlimited beer and keg stands. Around here, it's $4 for a Coors Light.
Oh, and don't DARE suggest that I move somewhere else. Yes, the cost of living is cheaper in Oklahoma than it is here. I would also commit suicide in Oklahoma. And I probably wouldn't find a job there, either.
Yea, but life is rough like that.
Consider this:
I majored in computer science. Had a totally futile experience in getting a job in my field. So, I was forced to accept a job with my best friend's mother's company. This is not something I'd normally do (because of pride and friendship concerns), but I gave it a shot. It was a position working in the shipping area of a warehouse. Not a glamorous job.
It worked out fairly well at first. I applied my computing expertise and intuitive skills to fix up all the shipping systems, and as a result I'm now the shipping manager of the company four months after my first day. I'm about due for a performance review, a raise, and a bonus. Plus, I love the people I work with (for the most part) and I don't hate my job.
But...
Not to sound spoiled, but I don't know if there's any real advancement for me in this company. I mean, I might eventually get promoted to being an assistant warehouse manager, or perhaps a program manager in the office, but that doesn't mean I look forward to working a couple of years at both my current and future possible positions. I simply don't see myself going in that direction.
Additionally, our warehouse manager resigned, and now we have an interim warehouse manager that has no idea what technical improvements I've made to these shipping systems. Furthermore, this new manager blames me for random things in front of company VPs, walks away from me when I'm talking to her, and dumps unreal amounts of work into my lap. Sometimes it seems like she doesn't even know what my major was in college.
I would find it easier to program 60 hours a week than to work in a warehouse 60 hours a week, no doubt. The 10 - 11 hour days are wearing me down. I like my job, but I'm not THAT passionate about it.
However, I can't quit. I'm getting shit on and people have said I should quit. But I have to pay rent and car insurance. The job market is that tough such that I can't rely on it to give me a decent job right away. Just last year, I looked 9 months for a job in ANY FIELD and didn't find one. Temp agencies wouldn't employ me... they would rather hire people with business skills than comp-sci skills, I was told. I had to work at Starbucks 40 hours a week to make ends meet. I can't go back to that now.
That's just a personal anecdote, but in times when the economy is sour, it really is hard to switch careers. So I don't blame college students for wanting to hit the nail on the head the first time around. Everyone wants to do that, but with the way things are now, life is a lot easier if you get on the right career path early.
If I had decided to stay near my University and stick to computer science for sure, I'd be making 50% more money and I would have had a job right away. And I may or may not have been miserable with such a choice, but perhaps the money would have made it a sweeter deal. (Of course, I hated my University and the area that it was in, so it's not a regret that I didn't take that path. I'm too much of a city kid.)
And there's nothing that gets you a job or boosts your salary more than being well trained and educated in the field you want to enter. I'm sure all the journalism-major web programmers are finding that out the hard way right now. (Not that there's anything wrong with doing that, but managers and HR execs tend to disagree)
Yes, in a good economy, you have flexibility. But it's hard to have a job that sucks while you wait for the economy to get better. Once again, I don't blame anyone for doing some research to avoid getting stuck in that position. It's a smart thing to do.
Also, computer science as a major can be a messy conglomeration of a lot of different fields and interests (and people), and many people find it hard to find a focused interest in such a ball-breaking major. But that's a whole other story.
How many people died is not the point. It's also irrelevant that they already died.
But the way you reference such deaths is heinously callous. I seriously hope you aren't in a position to make decisions about anything I'll ever have to come in contact with. I could be "experimental error" then, perhaps.
Oh, and mail can be MARKED to avoid irradiation and therefore damage of the goods contained. Such items need a different method of decontamination, though. Please spend less time arguing how irradiation can indirectly kill people and more time thinking of ways to solve the problem of goods that would be damaged by irradiation - other than eliminating it in exchange for no treatment whatsoever, which is dangerous and inconsiderate to postal workers and mail recipients alike.
You have a good point. And I agree about the article not being worded elegantly.
I suppose my point was lost in this, though: the submission itself was appalingly careless about human life. The issues of irradiating mail and/or sending electronics in the mail are certainly worth some discussion, and this is a perfect forum to do so. However, such issues are not quite as urgent as the safety of Postal Service employees as well as the mail sending/receiving public in general. I'm not trying to be melodramatic, but I personally find that attitude intolerable and harmful to society. It's even scarier to consider that supposedly intelligent people think that way. What good is anything you do in life if you don't give a shit about anyone else?
Some people forget that non-postal workers died from the anthrax contamination, including some lady who lived out in the boondocks in CT. Scary stuff. It could have been one of you who read this site.
I personally find it inconvienent that I can't depend on the mail system to ship electronics if I needed to without some sort of irradiation protection... but who gives a shit if that's what it takes to solve the anthrax problem at the moment? I don't question it one bit, and if it's a reliable, inexpensive, and safe method of decontaminating mail, then I'm all for it. I also support research that would find any other reliable, inexpensive, and safe method of decontaminating mail that would not risk damaging anything being sent through the mail, too. For the time being, though, irradiation is fine with me.
And as for the fact that you can't stop terrorism... well, you can try to contain it. And I'm willing to try hard. I've been willing to try hard to contain terrorism for years, and that emotion only grew stronger in me as I watched, with my own eyes, the collapse of the World Trade Center from 4 miles away.
This is why I also don't complain about being thoroughly searched by airport security and having to wait in a long line for it. If it's effective, and it's what we got for now, I've got nothing to say about it... and anyone who complains about it too much really doesn't deserve the benefits we have from our (relatively) free society. If they don't like it, they can move to Afghanistan.
There's a lot of things you can't send in the mail. Add unprotected electronics to the list.
I don't even have to repeat the quote from the title, you all know what it is. It is tasteless, uncaring, and selfish in a disturbing way.
It is even further disturbing to see the discussions about it here... how everyone who argues against such emotion gets even more selfish, uncaring responses, and how some people are relating this to deaths from drunk driving or careless eating.
This is a PUBLIC HEALTH SAFETY MATTER. French fries don't kill you the same way anthrax does. Drunk driving is a result of irresponsible behavior and is not tolerated much at all in this country, and our society has gone to great lengths to prevent needless deaths from auto accidents in general... why could we not apply this to eliminating anthrax and other biological threats from our postal mail system?
Because you want to send a compact flash card unwrapped in a 34 cent envelope? Shame on you.
But it's not even that. It's that you think that your needs for freedom and convienience are more powerful and weighty than the public's need for safety and security. And on top of that, you implicitly and coldheartedly suggest that if those 5 people hadn't died yet, but they would if they stopped irradiation, you'd still consider stopping it because you don't want to risk damaging improperly marked electronic equipment.
It's not all of you. Some of you are actually appalled by this, as am I. But the rest of you... that's just sick. And, sadly, this kind of stuff happens all the time on here. And it's Michael who usually posts it, too. He does a poor job of weeding out such bad taste from what might be an interesting discussion. Rather than say "All because 5 people died...", we could ask "How can we eliminate the public health threat AND ensure the safety of our equipment?" The fact that it isn't appalling to you to say the former is appalling to the people among us who value human life, no matter how sick and fucked up it can be at times.
Ah, who's listening to me anyway? Go back to your coffee, games, and coding.
Well, it doesn't matter where you look. Won't find much of it anyway.
Exactly. And one would argue that, strictly from balance sheets and income statements based on product line, most of Microsoft's money did not come from sales of their consumer level PC OS monopoly - they swear it's a money losing product. Of course, then you can argue that it came from their office application suite monopoly...
But you know, who's to say that a company that makes money from one product is not allowed to reinvest that money in another product, whether it be through original R&D, buying/licensing another company's R&D, or buying another company outright? I don't think Microsoft plays by unfair business rules like that... I think it's just good business, and I don't see why anyone should be bitter or upset in this case. I'm sure the original owners of Bungie are FAR from upset about the whole thing...
Pardon me for pissing in the punch here, but...
Free software won't change the world.
Free bread and vegetables would change the world. Free steel would change the world. Free software? It's an interesting concept for a particular industry. However, I would say 80-90% of the world doesn't give a damn about free software.
First of all, there are more important things to work for than for free software... which is why music, film, art, and literature are all not free either, and those have been important to culture far longer than software has been (collectively). Second, there are a lot of people who are not directly affected by software, how it was obtained, and who worked on it. Third, most people who use any kind of software in their day to day lives are concerned neither with the quality or the price of the software that they use... far too often the quality and price of computer hardware greatly offsets that concern, and no one cares about software unless it starts to break... and then even at that point, most people live with it and are not inclined to complain too loudly, given the overall convenience that modern computer systems provide.
Free software changing the world? Free software having revolutionary social implications? That's a tough sell. Segway has a better shot at changing the world, and I don't even know if they'll last 3 years. Please don't spout off comments like this without direct, convincing evidence to state these claims, otherwise Slashdot is nothing more than the online version of the Weekly World News, Linux edition. You might have far better, convincing arguments if you simply take a more rational view of what free software can affect.
(I'm all for free software, by the way)
Hey, we need magazines. What else can I read on the toilet?
Besides, if the article winds up to be no good, then guess what else I can use it for while I'm on the bowl...
It's not surprising to see ATI do something like this. In the business world, this kind of thing may pass off as slightly unethical, but for the target market of graphics card vendors, this is just plain #$*&'ed up. It's quite true that Quake 3 Arena is a very standard benchmarking application nowadays, so any performance gain in the driver for that specific application that does not apply to all programs in general will mislead the consumer in making a purchasing decision. An analogy: no one would appreciate it if a company said their car goes from 0 to 60 in 3.2 seconds and in reality it takes 3.2 seconds just to make it up to 20.
Carmack's right, this whole driver situation in general is a slippery slope. One of the biggest hassles of his job since Quake (#1) came out has been to get all the graphics card companies to play nice and write good drivers. This has not happened for one second. Some companies are better than others (Nvidia is an example of one of the better companies in the field all around), and the situation right now is FAR better than it was. But, between the race for speed, trying to keep up with the most popular applications, and having to support various APIs being pushed by different 500 lb gorillas in the field... it's a mess. ATI was ALWAYS a mess with their drivers, so this doesn't really surprise me. But this isn't right, cause it'll lead to a day when nothing but the lastest Quake game works on new graphics cards. I mean, nothing works AT ALL. And if it's easy enough to get to that situation, I can just see bribes and payoffs... ahem, "strategic partnerships" being made to accomodate game vendors who want to publish a working 3D game at some point in time...
But anyway...
One small comfort is that no one buys ATI cards for performance. Any cards of the GeForce (Nvidia's brand) variety handily whip anything at the same price point with ATI. The big thing ATI has is OEM agreements, and they also sell some really exotic TV/Video Capture/MPEG recording cards that are really snazzy sometimes. I know cause I'm using one of em right now. But their drivers suck in a lot of ways, they were never the fastest, and I'd love to see them stick to a product release schedule EVER. This is the kind of company that gets wiped out when someone new on the scene releases something better/faster/cheaper.
Unfortunately, the last time we saw better/faster/cheaper in the graphics industry was five years ago. Nowadays, you usually get one of those improvements in a new release video card... never all three.
In my CIS program, anything hands-on at all was outside of the scope of discussion for all of my classes. We were never taught anything relating to any programs... hell, on the first day of school freshman year, it was assumed that we knew what text editor we were using in Unix for C++ programming. Granted, something like this would slow down an "Intro to Comp Sci" class greatly, but there were no references, or even advice for references, given by anybody.
Your best bet to learn anything was to go to the nearest Borders - about a half hour drive away, and no Barnes and Noble anywhere even close - and pick up the best book you saw. Or, you could gamble even further, and choose one off of Amazon.com to be delivered. Our professors, when asked for advice about picking out books to learn ANY subject, generally just said "Well, get any book you can find, it should be good enough."
My favorite was my Databases class... and thank god I knew SQL already. The syntax in the book was just plain WRONG and would not work in Oracle even though that's what the book was written with... the syntax was like pseudocode, except it was supposed to really work! Then the professor gave us the first assignment and told us the class before it was due, "Well, you should be able to figure out stuff within Oracle to reconcile commands with what's the book... just use the help command and you can get help on anything." This would have worked had the school renewed the help license... however, it was deemed unnecessary, and the help file was blank. The professor was politely informed of this by the entire class on the due date of the assignment. His response? "Really? Interesting. I'll have to look into that." The helpfile was never restored, and I spent more than half the time on all my projects searching vigorously for SQL help and examples on corporate sites and other universities' web pages. I remember the first project took me 9 hours of looking up commands and 1/2 hour of actual work.
I would say that my school is bad like that, and it is a special case, but I've heard similar horror stories elsewhere.
Yea... I think that kinda sums up how I feel about it. I mean, don't get me wrong, if someone comes up with a really VILE dirty joke about it, I'm going to have to laugh in a way. But for the most part, this is not a light matter for anyone. I mean, even The Onion took a week off just because they felt their irony was inappropriate at a time like this. I would have normally disagreed with such a move, except this time we're dealing with something more severe than any of us have ever seen or read about.
I ain't gonna bitch out anyone who makes a post on here to a story with a dirty joke about it, because some people have a sick sense of humor and if you disagree about it, well then all that happens is that you disagree... I'm not going to the FCC or the FBI about it. But when the editor of the site lets a couple of "Wow, look at these nifty maps of the WTC site" go, I just felt I had to say, you know, that's not appropriate. I felt things were going to continue in that direction and I didn't want to see that happen. Furthermore, judging from some of the responses to my post, and from the moderation done to it, I'd have to say that not only was my concern valid, but that people here can be very disappointing beyond their OS zealotry and bitterness toward the world. Sad indeed.
(Not to knock the couple of people that posted something with a little bit of thought and class)
This isn't a statement about life in general. I just think that the WTC tragedy will always be a somber event in history, just like Pearl Harbor or the sinking of the Titanic, etc. etc. Yea, we go on with life, and we're not upset about such things day-to-day, but I just think it's being under-sensitive to be using words like "nifty" in a story ABOUT the WTC disaster. Hey, I still think Lego blocks are nifty, and I have no problem with anyone calling them that... even the day of the disaster...
I'm sure the Irish don't refer to anything as nifty while mentioning Bloody Sunday in the same breath...
I'm quite glad that you read this and took the time out to respond.
I'm do agree with you; this is not the time to be over-sensitive. And you did not make light of the disaster; to some extent, I think that the "pun intended" part was somewhat distasteful but only in the sense of juxtaposition of serious matters and a cheeky phrase like that. I guess it's a bit hypocritical, cause I thought it was funny when I heard that Howard Stern said that all the hookers in NYC should go downtown and give the rescue workers free blowjobs. I suppose that I wouldn't have made that wording choice after any length of time after the disaster. But it's not like a grudge thing or something like that - it's just your writing style. I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder.
As for michael... well, on a different level, he's supposed to "catch" things like that. As an editor with no bias to writing style, he definitely should have removed that "nifty" from yesterday's story, at least. For him to post two stories in a 24 hour period with a questionable juxtaposition of references to light words and a serious disaster... well, to some extent he's not doing his job. The stories were at least good. But he can edit the descriptions a little bit to keep things in a somber mood for the general populace. It's a tough job sometimes, but in my mind this would have been obvious: Just get rid of those words, they don't contribute to the "story" and they clash with the somber mood of the event itself.
All that stuff about patriotism... well, I'd be saying the same thing if it were an earthquake that killed 6,000 people.
Finally, that guy who said "Well, we're nerds, we're antisocial, we don't have to mourn"... well I told him, and I'll say it again: that's really sad. And that does not speak for all of us. I think it's terrible if you're a human being, you hear of something like this, and it doesn't make you upset. Yea, we can't cry about it forever, but I think it affects many of us deeply. I mean, it's just sad to think that on some level, we have NO support from these BOFH's that sit in their Fortresses of Solititude and only care about their IRC channels. They don't care about society, they don't care about freedom, and they don't care about America. To that extent, they're not Americans, even at this time when most people in the world agree, for right now, "We are all Americans".
With things like this, I wonder less why I hated some of the people in my (CIS) major in college... not all of them, just the people like this who are selfish and rude, unapologetically so. (You're not, though. Thanks for the response)
I can understand that perhaps you're an intellectual, and maybe not in touch with the general populace... but to be unapologetically antisocial... well, I'm sorry, but I find that saddening.
I know Michael got reamed for this yesterday, but this once again is a story that uses an inappropriate introduction... with words like "nifty" and "(pun intended)" to refer to something regarding this tragedy...
I mean, I'm not one to be oversensitive, but come on people... I think that you disrespect the dead and the affected when you use cavalier words while referring to this situation. I only live 5 miles from Ground Zero and I saw the towers collapse with my own eyes. This makes me no more or less affected than any other American (save for those who lost a loved one in the disaster), but for a story poster to consistently make the same error in judgement like this obviously shows something about his regard for human life, for American pride, and for the people around him that are deeply affected by this terrible situation.
I ask not that we refrain from bringing it up, as I'm very proud of Slashdot in general for its coverage of this situation. But, to repeat the point from yesterday, there is nothing "nifty" about 6,700 innocent Americans dying in the most horrible way possible at the hands of a few highly irrational people... people whose peers live among us today waiting to give us our next big tragedy, our next week of continuous news coverage, our next spilling of innocent blood.
I mean, I don't want to be too dramatic, but our American flags don't just cheer us up and bring us together... they remind us of our freedom and the horrible things that happened because we insisted on having it. It may be 13 days later, but it's still a horrible thing. Please treat it accordingly.
On one level, I spent four years in college doing coding assingments, and I felt I wasted the time. I'm jaded partially because I don't like spending lots of forced time in front of a keyboard and monitor. I would resent any job that made me spend 12 hours a day doing that.
Also... yes I am jaded through observation. Slashdot, Dilbert, FuckedCompany, and other places detailing horror stories come to mind. Yes, I've had a few internships through college, and I think they worked out well, but you do need to take every job on a case-by-case basis. It's just that this is a fairly large industry that went kaput recently, so I don't even get the chance to evaluate jobs beyond a blurb in the classifieds or a website description. For most of the jobs I applied for, I never make it to an interview. And from what's done sometimes on these interviews, how could I not be at least partially jaded? I take a 2 hour car trip or an $80 train ride to get an interview with a company where all they do is talk about themselves for 45 minutes, they ask me one or two vague questions at the end and ask my GPA, and it's whoosh out the door...
I dunno. I've just heard a lot of bad things. I keep an open mind with this stuff, cause on some level I do like doing it. But I am partially convinced that a lot of these tech jobs are not for me. That's what I meant.
It's not off topic at all. I wholeheartedly agree with you. As a recent college grad with no job, I have a bit of anxiety about being hired in a serious job position simply because I don't have a lot of confidence in my skills to write serious programs - even though I was a skilled coder in college. I really feel as if I could use some help in getting to the point where I can contribute to major software projects.
Unfortunately, the industry and the academic world is relatively unconcerned with providing fresh people with the skills to take their knowledge beyond the point of "I know SQL and Java." In my experience, no one even wants interns anymore for that kind of stuff, as tech companies in my area are hemmoraging badly and I need to support myself with an income rather than do serious work for a company for free. (I'm a strange case, because I'm jaded with the industry and I'm not sure I love it; however, I haven't heard a lot of good luck stories from my peers, either)
They were probably competing with viruses of both kinds. You really have to have a sterile environment both over the network and in the operating room.
More bizarre thoughts:
Will doctors sue for carpal tunnel? Will doctors sue for carpal tunnel after performing remote surgeries on carpal tunnel patients? (The ultimate in irony)
Can doctors now prescribe medication remotely? And if so, can I just buy 10 different masks and walk in with each saying "Yea, 100 Vicodin to go please..."
Do the robot arms have bad handwriting as well?
Will the nurses now look like Seven of Nine and give me sponge baths?
Will dentist robots be bugging me now about how bad my brushing habits are, even though I never have cavities?
And finally, will all the script kiddies be hacking into those remote boob-job surgeries? I hope they get grossed out and short circuit their 31337 keyboards with vomit, cause it's not for the squeamish.
That's sad that we can't build 110 story buildings, though. I happen to love buildings that are super tall like that. And I detest people that think it's a good idea to try and detonate them.
The problem is not in the size of the building, it's in the society of the world. We fix nothing by building more shorter buildings to replace fewer larger ones.
Well... depending on the store... they might actually. Some stores have deals like that, and some might just take the broken CD and ship it back to the manufacturer as a mark-out even if they don't have a deal like that. But, it's not a standard thing, and certainly not required...
But that's aside from the point.
Specifically, the record label should be the ones providing free replacement copies if they want to argue "license" over "physical purchase". Or at least it would help them out in their theoretical argument. But they don't offer any warranties on physical media, yet they also want to have complete control over what you do with it. They may be able to, yet I can also see a certain angle: someone should very closely examine the fine print on CD sleeves and see whether or not providing a replacement disc in place of a worn/damaged one is a necessary part of complying with the license. Because, if not, it is the part of the burden of the record company to comply with the license if the terms are stated so strictly. In that case, you have a separate lawsuit against the record company - a giant, multibillion-dollar class action suit involving millions of consumers - covering breach of contract for nearly every broken CD on the face of the planet that the recording industry will not replace.
And on top of that, some CDs don't have this kind of info visible upon sale - you must break shrink wrap to see these terms. That's another consumer loophole... shouldn't have to comply to any license that isn't stated in clear terms BEFORE purchase, as that constitutes fraud.
(As if we didn't know charging $20 for a factory produced CD was fraud anyway)
Rather, GNU is slowly becoming irrelevant as people decide to release free software on their own terms.
Besides, just cause the source is being opened doesn't mean that Unix is becoming free. It's just becoming open source. This seems to be the same ghastly mistake that I've seen many people modded down for. Surely such an error should be clarified on the front page... unless it's really that confusing and we should just admit that the ideologies so highly regarded (and viciously defended) here are arranged as a house of cards similar to Microsoft's own source code.
Hey, at least "embrace, extend, crush to death" is easy to follow along with.
The core that is needed to whom? YOU? What if I need Xfree86, BSD, and perhaps other commercial applications as part of my operating system? Then do I refer to all of them?
I mean, surely when I tell people what OS I use, I say Windows 98, not Windows98/Office2000/Winamp/AOL/ATI Drivers/Creative Labs Drivers/Winzip/Acrobat Reader...
I approve of different vendors calling their distributions whatever they want, based on Linux or not. Let Red Hat Linux simply be Red Hat... let them call it Red Hat Linux if they have a Red Hat Windows Compatible OS too. Maybe there's good reasons not to do that either, but I see no reason why Linux should be called GNU/Linux. GNU does not own Linux. And I would laugh if Linus sold the rights off to the kernel one day, as Stallman would be very very screwed...
Not to be blasphemous, and I'm sure Gamecube will have a couple of smash hit games (Dreamcast had a few...)
First of all, graphics mean a lot in today's day and age, but it's really a game's total design - playability, difficulty, sound, graphics, plot, etc. - that really has to shine. Good graphics mean crap, because I still play some pretty good games that have very shitty graphics (Marble Madness anyone?)
Second, I wouldn't say it has much better games before it even comes out. We don't know if most of the games will be duds or not. Of course, comparing it with N64 and Playstation, perhaps there will be some good games that are only outmatched by the most popular PS2 titles, or perhaps MS has a real ace up their sleeve and we'll be talking about X-Box games as the console games to have this Christmas.
But enough negative talk. Right now, there's never been a better time to be a video game enthusiast. Now if only that damn GT3 steering wheel didn't cost me a month of food...