First off... I think libertarians are idiots, so we're already off to a bad start. Next, a real world example of how Yahoo fails where Google succeeds:
I was trying to find out why my Echo Layla 20 wasn't loading firmware last night and Google got me the answer. Had I tried Yahoo, I wouldn't have gotten anywhere apparently.
Printing maps has worked fine for me every time I used it this Summer. I don't know about you, but I'm using Firefox within GNOME on RedHat 9 printing to an Epson Stylus 800 printer. Works for me.
Regarding Google maps overall, it's all about the directions. I used to use Mapquest because they still beat the pants off of Yahoo maps. Of course their directions were sometimes the long way around. Everytime I've used Google maps, it has chosen the most efficient route by local standards. I even tested by using examples of routes I know and it always chose my way of going rather than the "main roads". Usually this equates to the most efficient path.
...Yahoo's suckage. I still can't believe that anyone ever gave Yahoo any credence. What exactly is it that they do again? It certainly was never a decent search engine to being with. I was an Altavista fan in the early days of search engines and then I moved to the current and permanent king of searches: Google. I find it interesting that Yahoo has been so anti-Google for so long and has yet to offer anything that surpasses Googles new entries into various web apps. People money hummed around Yahoo during the dot bomb bubble. Again... why? Their search engine sucked then and it still sucks now. Their "portal" was pretty much next to useless. Face it Yahoo, About.com does it better. So go join in Microsoft in a unified war against Google (because that's what this really is). Let's see you both come up with something that is actually new and different. I'll bet you can't.
Or... roll your own. That's what I did with Fedora Core. Mine is actually just the standard GNOME interface with a bunch of Bash scripts, some easy to understand icons and the excellent Zenity GUI plugin to allow Bash to interact with users via GUI elements. Since my wife is very familiar with the concept of using standard GUI features like menus, icons, and the like, why force her to learn a new interface? Instead I have launcher icons for "Watch TV", "Schedule a Recording", "Pause TV", etc... right on the launch bar. And Xine is the backend engine to the whole thing. She is absolutely elated at how easy it is to use. Just press a button and a minimal number of dialogues or effort are required to do just about anything. We can easily skip commercials, schedule for an entire season, pause, archive from MPEG2 to DiVX, etc... The only reason I haven't released this is that people would probably laugh at the scripting. But hey... it works. And my wife is somewhat of a computer-phobe too. So this is a testament to the truth that standard GUIs are better than GUIs designed for set top boxes.
You think so? You must have never experienced first virtual love in a virtual soda shop with a virtual girl, wearing virtual glasses and a virtual poodle skirt.
I agree that people who use the internet to the point that they aren't eating, sleeping, bathing, holding down jobs or keeping grades up is a bad thing. But how common a problem is it that it becomes that drastic? Personally, I see this as the continuing war against people who simply want to be left alone. The article is talking about China, but I see it here in the US in the form of general pressures for people to be "team players" and the encouragment of competitive behavior. Like it or not, not everyone was meant to be an outgoing social person who likes being with other people. But those people want some kind of connection to the outside world and the internet gives them that. From what I've seen, most introverts don't like the fact that they aren't in control. Again, computers and the internet address that. There is nothing wrong with wanting to control the way things happen and it can be very frustrating and distressing when you can't control other people. At least machines and the internet allow introverts that kind of control.
I have to wonder how long before the corporate world (who seem to abhor individuality and introverts) tries to make it a "disease" when you want to be alone and dislike most people? We've already seen the introduction of drugs for social anxiety disorder. Again, there are certainly people who can benefit from that. But the problem lies in these sorts of things being overdiagnosed. All of those people out there who like to spend time alone working on their own interests will suddenly be labelled "disordered" because they don't want to join the rest of the morons in haging out at bars, watching sports or reality TV and buying into mainstream political views. We're fast moving towards a kind of hell that I really don't want to be a part of. Anyone who tells me I've got some kind of "disorder" is full of crap. I just genuinely don't like most people unless they pass my social litmus test. There's nothing wrong with being selective and making friends online... That's not an addiction, it's an outlet.
If you're a do-it-yourselfer like me, those days are quickly coming to an end in the US. They don't want a producer society, they want a consumer society. It's good for their pockets. But they are not going to be able to stop people with the intelligence to be able to do this stuff on their own. The GNU Radio Project is a perfect example. It might eventually be "illegal" but for no good reason other than the supposed protection of intellectual property which is also a crock. I plan to be experimenting with this stuff myself since... science is not a crime.
OK. I am pretty sure I'm in the minority here, but there are very few instances where I would buy the DVD of a movie without having seen the film first. And the only reason I would ever watch something on pay-per-view is because I missed it in the theater. I'm not an impulse buyer. I consider my purchases for a very long time before making them and I wait until something is on the used market before I buy it. Especially where media like DVDs or CDs are concerned. The last thing I want to do is fall into the trap of owning stuff I don't really care for and then later losing money by trading it in for just a few pennies. I can't be the only person who thinks like this.
I would suggest that a lot of you who don't think like this re-evaluate your approach if you find that you are trading lots of stuff in at a loss. I used to trade stuff in thinking that I was still getting a return on my investment. But over time I noticed that unless I sold the stuff directly (without the middle man that a store or online used retailer is) I would stand to get more of my money back. But that's also too much effort for the return. So it's better to make sure when you buy something, that it's something you REALLY want. Unfortunately, this approach like so many others is going to sucker a bunch of people into thinking they're getting some kind of deal by combining their DVD purchase with a pay-per-view viewing.
Finally, don't say: "Hey... it's only media/a movie/music. Chill out". Some of us value our entertainment quite highly and therefore are extremely selective and cautious about pricing. I have yet to ever watch a pay-per-view movie because they all pretty much suck in general on DirecTV.
...you can't tweak an image and get it "just right" when you send it off to a lab who is just going to print it with whatever flat tonality was in the image you took. Sure you can modify the files before you send them off, but then can you be certain they'll come back exactly as you adjusted them on your monitor at home without needing to use color calibration tools? I don't see how they can compete. Now if all you want is ten cent family photos printed to stick in an album, then you're part of a very small market. Most people want to play with their photos and highly customize them for specific applications and printing. Again, this is something that a photo lab can't provide. Now... the one thing photo labs CAN do that you can't typically do at home without investing in really expensive equipment is print large formats. But that's about the only thing they've got over home printing at this point. I just don't see it.
First of all. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! That's actually the best summation of what Slashdot really is that I've ever read. But I'm still suprised that a lot of Gen-Xers aren't as into computers as I am. (I don't think I fall into the Gen-X category because I was never a "slacker" like so many of them were.) Oddly enough, I'm only 35, but I still seem to have a lot more in common with Baby Boomers. I was raised in a virtual 1950 environment.
Those two statements alone are the most frightening I've seen in a while and probably the most illustrative of why the quality of American IT workers is dismal. I've been reading this site and have been a member since 1997. I can attest to the fact that it certainly started off as a TECHNOLOGY site. Sadly, all the people who filtered in later are simply noise generators. Much of the readership created by the 90s internet bubble and still attempting to stick with the IT moniker without having any actual undestanding or experience of IT. That is completely counter to everything this site originally stood for. I guess it's ture. Slashdot really has changed. For the worse.
Some good points. But I have to wonder why so many people are so concerned with getting "onto the commercial market"? This software is made for the sake of people who want to use it. Not to make money. That is to say, that the software is not made for people who want to make a profit by selling/marketing software. It's made for people like me who want to edit images. It's fine if GIMP is used by someone to edit images for profit. That's different. The point being that GIMP is simply a tool to many of us and not something to be sold in the traditional sense. Now if you're talking about grabbing more mindshare (vs. marketshare), then I can agree that more people should look at GIMP and that adding newer innovative features is only a good thing. Nothing against you or your comment, I just get a bit annoyed when people think that this stuff is done to make money. I see it this way;
GNU Software is to Proprietary/Commercial Software as Libraries are to Bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble.
One organization is interested in getting something into the hands of their users for their users' edification, the others are interested soley in profit.
I agree with you 100%. I also make sure that all important financial transactions happen offline. Anything online is done with a debit card with a fictitious name and address and only keeps a balance of $500 or less. That makes sure you're pretty safe. It's just getting a hold of a ficitious driver's license that's the hard part. But it's worth it.
So interoperabtility between Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange is not a problem then, ehhh? Get over yourself. It happens anywhere once you diverge from the church of Microsoft. I used to be a part of that congregation and believed in the implentation of an all Microsoft shop. I preached it loud and far. Until I discovered that it didn't do what I needed and their answer was, "Why in the hell would you want to anyway"? At that point I left the flock and realized that there was so much more out there that was so much better. And most of that "so much more" was in the FOSS world. Sorry, but you lose.
What the hell are you talking about? You have no business reading Slashdot if you can't put together a PVR, or a home HDTV system. This is a TECHNOLOGY site. It's for people who can work with TECHNOLOGY. I was under the assumption that most of us here have built and designed electronic equipment from scratch before moving onto PCs...
Funny about that dude... I've been doing the same thing with my home made PVR for nrealy a year now. And the soy milk is quite tasty thank you very much. There is something to be said for doing it yourself. Nothing commercial ever compares unless you're less of a tech and more of a gadget guy. In that case, enjoy yourself. Whenever I have to buy something already built, I feel a great sense of disappointment because the quality can't compare to home made/custom built. Ever.
I don't trust anything that I don't control. This is why...
1. I bake my own bread 2. I make home made soy milk 3. I did all the wiring in my house myself 4. I build my own computer systems and compile everything from source code
If it's something outside of my scope of expertise, then I will go to someone else. But not until I've done an extensive background check to make sure that they hold the right ideologies. You were saying...
My comedy detector was off. I've been engaged in a battle of wits with the enemy and they managed to hit my comedy detector with a photon torpedo. I think repairs should have it online in another twenty to thirty minutes. Eno out.
The point is that some intercommunication between certain technologies is SUPPOSED to be difficult because they are INCOMPATIBLE. As soon as you find a way to make it "easier" you've likely inserted a ton of limitations. That's what Microsoft is best at, putting limitations on technology. I suppose I should correct my earlier assertion. Microsoft has innvoated both mediocrity and artificially imposed limitations within the technology realm.
OK I finished reading the rest of his tragic blog posting. It sounds like his eventual conclusion is that Microsoft innovated mediocrity. Which is probably OK considering that VHS (mediocre technology) beat out Betamax (superior technology). And IDE (mediocre technology) beat out SCSI (superior technology) on the desktop. for people who don't want to deal with mediocre software solutions, Microsoft still isn't the answer. Having a consistent technology backend that becomes the "de facto standard" is never a good thing when you are looking for the BEST solution. Usually you are making some compromises, at best, if you go with a solution like that. Witness the dismal quality of commercial software today. Everyone and his brother is a coder due to the logic this guy is suggesting (a desktop developer could also develop for handhelds). That's NOT a good thing. While the guy might write excellent apps on the desktop, do you really want him implementing things that he CAN implement on a handheld but probably shouldn't? And you know he will implenet them because he's never worked with handhelds before. This is NOT a good thing.
Just think about all the people out there who call themselves "web masters" and "publish" their sites with Microsoft Word on Windows 95 with Personal Web Server and you'll see where I'm coming from. Sometimes it's better to leave things to people who actually were trained within the problem domain. Trying to make them spread their reach may not be a good thing in every case.
You're not getting old. The conditioning to be a consumer instead of a producer is working on you is all.;P Whenever I hear someone say "it just works" I usually head the other direction because any system that "just works" is likely to suck away IQ.
...no relation to reality. The first mistake is that the article is about "your first job in IT". But then he goes on to list a bunch of perks that you will NEVER get in a first IT job unless you hit right smack dab in the middle of some kind of weird bubble like the DotCom bubble. Then he gripes about cubicles. Yeah. They suck ass. But, software engineers aren't the ONLY people in IT no matter what this guy thinks. Most IT folks are guys who do nothing but fix IT related problems all day. Windows support for the most part but a lot of hardware support as well (printers, monitors, desktops, etc...). They ARE IT guys just as much as a software engineer is. But, technicians like that are always going to be in cubicles because there is no "zone" to get into. It also depends on where they work in IT. If they work IT for a chain of drugstores, they aren't likely to be developing software AND fixing PCs and servers at the same time. Technicians work on the boxes and coders are usually a scarce or even non-existent resource in most IT departments. This is REALITY. The author is lucky he got the experience he did. And any improvements he encouters along his career path will have been enriched by that experience even though it ended negatively.
The problem with the author is that he believes he is entitled to more than he really is worth. He needs to get a few bumps and bruises along the way. From what I see the article is nothing more than a crybaby whine to mom about the little booboo. Don't get me wrong. I'm not siding with his former employer at all. Layoffs are horrible. I have my own concerns there as well, so I can relate to that. But, my first thought when reading this was... "Oh hell. How many self-proclaimed 'whiz-kids' (read: no experience or education in the IT world) out there are going to read this and think; 'hell yeah! I need a corner office and a massage three times a week, and if they don't give it to me, it's because they're assholes!'" He should have really been more accurate about his target: career programmers. Not just "IT guys".
Slashdot Mirror
Winner based on first result:http://www.google.com/search?q=%22get_firm
Loser overall. Not even close: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%22get_firmware%
I was trying to find out why my Echo Layla 20 wasn't loading firmware last night and Google got me the answer. Had I tried Yahoo, I wouldn't have gotten anywhere apparently.
Printing maps has worked fine for me every time I used it this Summer. I don't know about you, but I'm using Firefox within GNOME on RedHat 9 printing to an Epson Stylus 800 printer. Works for me.
Regarding Google maps overall, it's all about the directions. I used to use Mapquest because they still beat the pants off of Yahoo maps. Of course their directions were sometimes the long way around. Everytime I've used Google maps, it has chosen the most efficient route by local standards. I even tested by using examples of routes I know and it always chose my way of going rather than the "main roads". Usually this equates to the most efficient path.
Your turn.
...Yahoo's suckage. I still can't believe that anyone ever gave Yahoo any credence. What exactly is it that they do again? It certainly was never a decent search engine to being with. I was an Altavista fan in the early days of search engines and then I moved to the current and permanent king of searches: Google. I find it interesting that Yahoo has been so anti-Google for so long and has yet to offer anything that surpasses Googles new entries into various web apps. People money hummed around Yahoo during the dot bomb bubble. Again... why? Their search engine sucked then and it still sucks now. Their "portal" was pretty much next to useless. Face it Yahoo, About.com does it better. So go join in Microsoft in a unified war against Google (because that's what this really is). Let's see you both come up with something that is actually new and different. I'll bet you can't.
Or... roll your own. That's what I did with Fedora Core. Mine is actually just the standard GNOME interface with a bunch of Bash scripts, some easy to understand icons and the excellent Zenity GUI plugin to allow Bash to interact with users via GUI elements. Since my wife is very familiar with the concept of using standard GUI features like menus, icons, and the like, why force her to learn a new interface? Instead I have launcher icons for "Watch TV", "Schedule a Recording", "Pause TV", etc... right on the launch bar. And Xine is the backend engine to the whole thing. She is absolutely elated at how easy it is to use. Just press a button and a minimal number of dialogues or effort are required to do just about anything. We can easily skip commercials, schedule for an entire season, pause, archive from MPEG2 to DiVX, etc... The only reason I haven't released this is that people would probably laugh at the scripting. But hey... it works. And my wife is somewhat of a computer-phobe too. So this is a testament to the truth that standard GUIs are better than GUIs designed for set top boxes.
You think so? You must have never experienced first virtual love in a virtual soda shop with a virtual girl, wearing virtual glasses and a virtual poodle skirt.
I agree that people who use the internet to the point that they aren't eating, sleeping, bathing, holding down jobs or keeping grades up is a bad thing. But how common a problem is it that it becomes that drastic? Personally, I see this as the continuing war against people who simply want to be left alone. The article is talking about China, but I see it here in the US in the form of general pressures for people to be "team players" and the encouragment of competitive behavior. Like it or not, not everyone was meant to be an outgoing social person who likes being with other people. But those people want some kind of connection to the outside world and the internet gives them that. From what I've seen, most introverts don't like the fact that they aren't in control. Again, computers and the internet address that. There is nothing wrong with wanting to control the way things happen and it can be very frustrating and distressing when you can't control other people. At least machines and the internet allow introverts that kind of control.
I have to wonder how long before the corporate world (who seem to abhor individuality and introverts) tries to make it a "disease" when you want to be alone and dislike most people? We've already seen the introduction of drugs for social anxiety disorder. Again, there are certainly people who can benefit from that. But the problem lies in these sorts of things being overdiagnosed. All of those people out there who like to spend time alone working on their own interests will suddenly be labelled "disordered" because they don't want to join the rest of the morons in haging out at bars, watching sports or reality TV and buying into mainstream political views. We're fast moving towards a kind of hell that I really don't want to be a part of. Anyone who tells me I've got some kind of "disorder" is full of crap. I just genuinely don't like most people unless they pass my social litmus test. There's nothing wrong with being selective and making friends online... That's not an addiction, it's an outlet.
If you're a do-it-yourselfer like me, those days are quickly coming to an end in the US. They don't want a producer society, they want a consumer society. It's good for their pockets. But they are not going to be able to stop people with the intelligence to be able to do this stuff on their own. The GNU Radio Project is a perfect example. It might eventually be "illegal" but for no good reason other than the supposed protection of intellectual property which is also a crock. I plan to be experimenting with this stuff myself since... science is not a crime.
OK. I am pretty sure I'm in the minority here, but there are very few instances where I would buy the DVD of a movie without having seen the film first. And the only reason I would ever watch something on pay-per-view is because I missed it in the theater. I'm not an impulse buyer. I consider my purchases for a very long time before making them and I wait until something is on the used market before I buy it. Especially where media like DVDs or CDs are concerned. The last thing I want to do is fall into the trap of owning stuff I don't really care for and then later losing money by trading it in for just a few pennies. I can't be the only person who thinks like this.
I would suggest that a lot of you who don't think like this re-evaluate your approach if you find that you are trading lots of stuff in at a loss. I used to trade stuff in thinking that I was still getting a return on my investment. But over time I noticed that unless I sold the stuff directly (without the middle man that a store or online used retailer is) I would stand to get more of my money back. But that's also too much effort for the return. So it's better to make sure when you buy something, that it's something you REALLY want. Unfortunately, this approach like so many others is going to sucker a bunch of people into thinking they're getting some kind of deal by combining their DVD purchase with a pay-per-view viewing.
Finally, don't say: "Hey... it's only media/a movie/music. Chill out". Some of us value our entertainment quite highly and therefore are extremely selective and cautious about pricing. I have yet to ever watch a pay-per-view movie because they all pretty much suck in general on DirecTV.
...you can't tweak an image and get it "just right" when you send it off to a lab who is just going to print it with whatever flat tonality was in the image you took. Sure you can modify the files before you send them off, but then can you be certain they'll come back exactly as you adjusted them on your monitor at home without needing to use color calibration tools? I don't see how they can compete. Now if all you want is ten cent family photos printed to stick in an album, then you're part of a very small market. Most people want to play with their photos and highly customize them for specific applications and printing. Again, this is something that a photo lab can't provide. Now... the one thing photo labs CAN do that you can't typically do at home without investing in really expensive equipment is print large formats. But that's about the only thing they've got over home printing at this point. I just don't see it.
First of all. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! That's actually the best summation of what Slashdot really is that I've ever read. But I'm still suprised that a lot of Gen-Xers aren't as into computers as I am. (I don't think I fall into the Gen-X category because I was never a "slacker" like so many of them were.) Oddly enough, I'm only 35, but I still seem to have a lot more in common with Baby Boomers. I was raised in a virtual 1950 environment.
So you only have one Slashdot account? How do you do any trolling? Oh that's right, like the rest of the chum monkeys: AC.
Those two statements alone are the most frightening I've seen in a while and probably the most illustrative of why the quality of American IT workers is dismal. I've been reading this site and have been a member since 1997. I can attest to the fact that it certainly started off as a TECHNOLOGY site. Sadly, all the people who filtered in later are simply noise generators. Much of the readership created by the 90s internet bubble and still attempting to stick with the IT moniker without having any actual undestanding or experience of IT. That is completely counter to everything this site originally stood for. I guess it's ture. Slashdot really has changed. For the worse.
Some good points. But I have to wonder why so many people are so concerned with getting "onto the commercial market"? This software is made for the sake of people who want to use it. Not to make money. That is to say, that the software is not made for people who want to make a profit by selling/marketing software. It's made for people like me who want to edit images. It's fine if GIMP is used by someone to edit images for profit. That's different. The point being that GIMP is simply a tool to many of us and not something to be sold in the traditional sense. Now if you're talking about grabbing more mindshare (vs. marketshare), then I can agree that more people should look at GIMP and that adding newer innovative features is only a good thing. Nothing against you or your comment, I just get a bit annoyed when people think that this stuff is done to make money. I see it this way;
GNU Software is to Proprietary/Commercial Software as Libraries are to Bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble.
One organization is interested in getting something into the hands of their users for their users' edification, the others are interested soley in profit.
I agree with you 100%. I also make sure that all important financial transactions happen offline. Anything online is done with a debit card with a fictitious name and address and only keeps a balance of $500 or less. That makes sure you're pretty safe. It's just getting a hold of a ficitious driver's license that's the hard part. But it's worth it.
So interoperabtility between Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange is not a problem then, ehhh? Get over yourself. It happens anywhere once you diverge from the church of Microsoft. I used to be a part of that congregation and believed in the implentation of an all Microsoft shop. I preached it loud and far. Until I discovered that it didn't do what I needed and their answer was, "Why in the hell would you want to anyway"? At that point I left the flock and realized that there was so much more out there that was so much better. And most of that "so much more" was in the FOSS world. Sorry, but you lose.
What the hell are you talking about? You have no business reading Slashdot if you can't put together a PVR, or a home HDTV system. This is a TECHNOLOGY site. It's for people who can work with TECHNOLOGY. I was under the assumption that most of us here have built and designed electronic equipment from scratch before moving onto PCs...
What the hell are you talking about?
SATAN and SAINT appear to be gone. Now Nessus. What other projects are out there for security auditing tools? This is not a good trend.
Funny about that dude... I've been doing the same thing with my home made PVR for nrealy a year now. And the soy milk is quite tasty thank you very much. There is something to be said for doing it yourself. Nothing commercial ever compares unless you're less of a tech and more of a gadget guy. In that case, enjoy yourself. Whenever I have to buy something already built, I feel a great sense of disappointment because the quality can't compare to home made/custom built. Ever.
I don't trust anything that I don't control. This is why...
1. I bake my own bread
2. I make home made soy milk
3. I did all the wiring in my house myself
4. I build my own computer systems and compile everything from source code
If it's something outside of my scope of expertise, then I will go to someone else. But not until I've done an extensive background check to make sure that they hold the right ideologies. You were saying...
My comedy detector was off. I've been engaged in a battle of wits with the enemy and they managed to hit my comedy detector with a photon torpedo. I think repairs should have it online in another twenty to thirty minutes. Eno out.
The point is that some intercommunication between certain technologies is SUPPOSED to be difficult because they are INCOMPATIBLE. As soon as you find a way to make it "easier" you've likely inserted a ton of limitations. That's what Microsoft is best at, putting limitations on technology. I suppose I should correct my earlier assertion. Microsoft has innvoated both mediocrity and artificially imposed limitations within the technology realm.
OK I finished reading the rest of his tragic blog posting. It sounds like his eventual conclusion is that Microsoft innovated mediocrity. Which is probably OK considering that VHS (mediocre technology) beat out Betamax (superior technology). And IDE (mediocre technology) beat out SCSI (superior technology) on the desktop. for people who don't want to deal with mediocre software solutions, Microsoft still isn't the answer. Having a consistent technology backend that becomes the "de facto standard" is never a good thing when you are looking for the BEST solution. Usually you are making some compromises, at best, if you go with a solution like that. Witness the dismal quality of commercial software today. Everyone and his brother is a coder due to the logic this guy is suggesting (a desktop developer could also develop for handhelds). That's NOT a good thing. While the guy might write excellent apps on the desktop, do you really want him implementing things that he CAN implement on a handheld but probably shouldn't? And you know he will implenet them because he's never worked with handhelds before. This is NOT a good thing.
Just think about all the people out there who call themselves "web masters" and "publish" their sites with Microsoft Word on Windows 95 with Personal Web Server and you'll see where I'm coming from. Sometimes it's better to leave things to people who actually were trained within the problem domain. Trying to make them spread their reach may not be a good thing in every case.
Never mind the man behind the curtain. Look at this!!! Ooooh shiny!!!
Honestly. From what I've read so far, he doesn't have a solid basis for his statements.
You're not getting old. The conditioning to be a consumer instead of a producer is working on you is all. ;P Whenever I hear someone say "it just works" I usually head the other direction because any system that "just works" is likely to suck away IQ.
...no relation to reality. The first mistake is that the article is about "your first job in IT". But then he goes on to list a bunch of perks that you will NEVER get in a first IT job unless you hit right smack dab in the middle of some kind of weird bubble like the DotCom bubble. Then he gripes about cubicles. Yeah. They suck ass. But, software engineers aren't the ONLY people in IT no matter what this guy thinks. Most IT folks are guys who do nothing but fix IT related problems all day. Windows support for the most part but a lot of hardware support as well (printers, monitors, desktops, etc...). They ARE IT guys just as much as a software engineer is. But, technicians like that are always going to be in cubicles because there is no "zone" to get into. It also depends on where they work in IT. If they work IT for a chain of drugstores, they aren't likely to be developing software AND fixing PCs and servers at the same time. Technicians work on the boxes and coders are usually a scarce or even non-existent resource in most IT departments. This is REALITY. The author is lucky he got the experience he did. And any improvements he encouters along his career path will have been enriched by that experience even though it ended negatively.
The problem with the author is that he believes he is entitled to more than he really is worth. He needs to get a few bumps and bruises along the way. From what I see the article is nothing more than a crybaby whine to mom about the little booboo. Don't get me wrong. I'm not siding with his former employer at all. Layoffs are horrible. I have my own concerns there as well, so I can relate to that. But, my first thought when reading this was... "Oh hell. How many self-proclaimed 'whiz-kids' (read: no experience or education in the IT world) out there are going to read this and think; 'hell yeah! I need a corner office and a massage three times a week, and if they don't give it to me, it's because they're assholes!'" He should have really been more accurate about his target: career programmers. Not just "IT guys".