While Rc5 was very popular, it was only really amongst us geeks.
Seti@home has attracted a LOT of attention over the years, and now A LOT of non-technical PC users know what it is and what distributed computing is.
But, to quote a line from my favorite show (SG-1). "If it wasn't for the Dark Ages, we'd be colonizing planets by now."
The Dark ages was not only a period of stagnation, but actually set us BACK in terms of technology. And this lasted for HUNDREDS OF YEARS.
So really, imagine that if this technological stage actually started hundreds of years ago. With this "exponential technology advance" you speak of, us actually flying through space isn't so far-fetched.
However, if this is the case, and other races didn't have this backwards period, they probably aren't using radio. Instead, they're probably listening for us (if they haven't found us already).
Also, Windows lets you adjust the scale of the fonts. I don't mean by changing the font size-point (10, 12). But under the video advanced settings, you can adjust it to preset sizes: Normal, Large. Or even set it to a custom setting.
Back in the bad old days of Win 9x amd Win Me; yes, the apps would crash the ENTIRE OS. Those OS's were utter pieces of trash. I even started using BeOS instead.
Anyway, fast forward to TODAY, we see that Win2k and WinXP are VERY TOLERANT of apps crashing. Sure, I've had an app crash (even Internet Explorer). HOWEVER the os's keep un trucking. Right now I'm on 90 days of uptime.
Pre Windows 2000 SP1 sucked ass. But since then, it hasn't been that bad.
Contractors and consultants don't automatically get benefits. They have to pay out of their own pockets. SOMETIMES, the consulting company offers a medical package a an ok rate, but not always and the savings is still small.
I know a lot of companies that hire contractors to do their work because they're cheaper and they can keep tighter reigns on them. Heck, I'm a contractor. I make ok money, but subtract benefits and what-not, it's that great.
You're forgetting contractors (consultants). Sure, back in "the day" consultants were paid BIG BUCKS. Now, it's hard to find a consulting gig that pars for than 30, sometimes 50 an hour.
Anyway, my point is consultants DONT GET ANY BENEFITS. My place has a number of consultants, including myself. We're not paid enormous amounts of money, but comfortable. However, when you factor in that we have to cover our own benefits, that takes a big chunk of our or wage.
If you read my child-post, you will say I have no problem with it. I'm just saying a lot of people don't realize it. Some people I know think it doesn't matter or doesn't play any part in the process.
I'm not bitter, because a) there's nothing wrong with it, and b) I still have a job.
I merely added the "bitter" part of the comment because I mentioned the "not the what, but who" philosophy to someone, and they said "only bitter morons that can't find work say that." And on the other side, I've heard from someone say "anyone with an iota of skill can easily find a job in programming."
Meanwhile, most of the people I know that recently got jobs was because they were internally recommended by a friend/relative within the company. I say "Good for them!"
I only hope the connections I've made work out for me if/when the axe falls.
Stalin and the lot were HORRIBLE. I admit that. And communist Russia was a bad place, my parents fled to the US to get away from there.
When I said communists, I meant the McCarthy hearings, which were essentially a witch trial. The slightest whisper that you might be a communist, and you were screwed; blacklisted and made a parija. In fact, that's what the play/book "The Crucible" is realyl about; not the Salem witch trials (which it was using as an analogy), but the hearings that were going on at roughly the same time.
By lumping witch-craft and communism together, I mean the complete unsubstantiated frenzy that followed the subject.
Back then: " at a poarty you mention you liked book x." Some literary officianado says "Book x is commie propoganda." The book is taken out of the stores, and someone reports that you stated you liked Book x. Therefore, you are a communist.
This is somewhat the same as today with terrorists, as some technical officianado says "flight sim x can be used to train terrorists" and the flight sim is pulled off the market.
However, where the McCarthy hearings embodied free thought and speech for pure political gain, the attempt to remove tools from potential terrorsist hands at least displays some safety concerns.
I'm think we push the envelope too far with the whole "terrorist" thing (if you drive an SUV you support terrorism, dontcha know). But it is nothing compared to the 1950's communist witch hunt, that needlessly destroyed many innocent lives.
I take it you haven't been unemployed too recently. Fortunately, I'm still employed right now, but I can see the writing on the wall. Our department has been doing some machete-style slashing of the budget, and has been letting A LOT of IT people go (programmers and technicians). And those they let go were great at their job.
A bunch of people at work were saying the SAME THING YOU ARE. They said their skills were current, had qualifications, and were good at their job. Now, it's 3 months later and they're still outta work.
Sure, I know some people (from elsewhere) that got jobs reasonably quick, but that's because they KNEW SOMEONE on the inside, or had some high connections. I'm not being bitter, they've admitted it to me.
Some people with jobs or in school tend to think that everything is fine-and-dandy for people so long as they know their stuff and look hard. But those people are usually the first to start freaking out that they can't find jobs.
It's a cliche, but in today's market it's not what you know, but who you know.
and when I say the communist ideology threatened ours, I mean schmucks and politicians tried to convince the public it threatened ours. I have nothing against communists.
You're wrong lumping terrorists into the "witch, sorcerer, communist, etc" category. While our fear of the latter was purely unsubstantiated, the fear of terrorists is a little different. People were afraid of "witches" because either they hated that particular person anyway, were trying to gain monetray/political ground, or were just bored. We were "afraid" of communists because their ideology threatened ours and the gov needed a scapegoat (better dead than red).
BUT...
We're afraid of terrorists because, well, TERRORISTS KILL PEOPLE. Sure, their ideology doesn't jive with ours, but the communists in the 50's weren't blowing up too many buildings or killing people. and 9-11 showed us how dedicated some of them are to the cause.
Sure, I think we take this fear too far at times (the anti-flight sim is a PERFECT example), but saying that it is an unjustified fear is taking it too far.
And putting GEEKS in the same category as terrorists? Jeez.
There's a flaw in your logic. In they end, the can sue whoever's name is on the bill. This is probably what they'd do if the ACTUAL violator was a minor.
- Chris
It's a little worry-some that the world doesn't take this threat too seriously. One would think that we'd pool our resources and make more of a collaborative effort across the globe to prevent such a catastrophe. I'm not saying each country spend ludicrous amounts of money, but maybe set up an observation post with a couple of people
Like another poster said, it'll probably take a populated area getting hit to make us realize the importance of such monitoring.
Could someone please enlighten me? I hear a lot about NASA and how our budget for monitoring dangerous objects has been way too low.
Are other countries partaking in this? I know we're not the only ones with a space program, and I've BEEN to observatories across the globe. Yet in all of these stories, I never read about a comparison between us and, let's say, France.
Are there any other countries that make it a point to monitor the skies for this stuff? How do their budgets compare to ours? I'm not saying "Go USA," I'm actually curious.
You're assuming General Use of desktops. Sure, Joe Sixpack at company Z that just writes memos all day could use redhat and open office.
But in companies that do a lot of research, they have a lot more invested in windows. They have third-party solutions that only run on windows, and in most cases all of their in-house apps are for windows. As another poster mentioned, it's the general momentum Windows has in the market. People write a lot software for it that isn't cross-platformable. "Switching" (be it Linux or Apple) would entitle not just using Open Office, but re-writing all of our own code, trying to find specialized products to handle our research, paying out for these new contracts, etc. There's more to corporate computing than Word.
For example, at my pharmacutical company, we use a combination of Solaris and Linux for our servers. But ALL of our desktop stuff is Windows only. All of our third-part apps are windows, everything we write inhouse is windows, etc.
One example is ActivityBase. ABase is a software package that handles most of our experimental data. It uses Oracle as a backend (so the backend could technically be Linux), but the frontend is Windows. The frontend is particularly important, becase it allows the scientists to interact with the system.
The frontend is written in a mixture of VC++ and VB, and is IMMENSE. It's WAY too large to rewrite in Java or some other cross platformable language. And there's NO WAYA the company would even bother considering it. Likewise, there are few solutions such as this in Linux at this point, and if there were they would not be so feature free.
If we were to switch, while the data would still be accessible 'cause it's in Oracle, we would have to find an alternative to ABase that is full of such features and PAY OUT THE ASS for it. A consulting company or vendor isn't going to charge LESS because it's Linux.
Sure, accounting and secretaries can switch, but research (for the most part) can't. Too many companies are too invested. Either they use windows, or they sell software for use only with windows.
Since I first installed Windows XP Pro, which was before it was released to consumers (got the OEM version a week before everyone else), the OS has NEVER crashed. And I run it 24/7/365, minus a reboot every few weeks (by my own preference, not because it needed it).
The worst that's happened is that maybe an APP crashed a total of 3 times. But XP shrugged it off and kept running.
Again, if you have bad drivers or cheap hardware, I'm sure XP will turn into a nightmare (one of my friends has bad luck with it, but bought the cheapest motherboard he could).
I think he's talking about the DNA "archiving and obtaining" system, not THE system. I'm not in total disagreement with you about the way THE system works either.
Re:I can't believe the time waste and paper waste.
on
Picking Up the Pieces
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· Score: 1
I don't think he's talking abou buld, but time spent. And I agree with him.
If you let it gor for a few weeks, you can spend 30 minutes to an hour shredding paper. While that may seem like a trivial amount of time, remember, YOU"RE SHREDDING PAPER. You might as well be picking up grains of sand with a tweezer.
It's mind-numbingly boring and takes forever if not done regularly.
PS. I understand the parent post is probably just a harmless joke. My post was in regards to the general flaiming of windows. MS is an evil corp, sure, but some people need to stop knocking people that use windows.
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If China Syndrome is when the core of a nuclear plant gets so hot that it starts to melt through the earth's core, theoretically towards China...
What is it called when hundreds of AMD CPU's get equally hot and start to melt through the earth's core, theoretically towards the US?
While Rc5 was very popular, it was only really amongst us geeks. Seti@home has attracted a LOT of attention over the years, and now A LOT of non-technical PC users know what it is and what distributed computing is.
But, to quote a line from my favorite show (SG-1). "If it wasn't for the Dark Ages, we'd be colonizing planets by now." The Dark ages was not only a period of stagnation, but actually set us BACK in terms of technology. And this lasted for HUNDREDS OF YEARS. So really, imagine that if this technological stage actually started hundreds of years ago. With this "exponential technology advance" you speak of, us actually flying through space isn't so far-fetched. However, if this is the case, and other races didn't have this backwards period, they probably aren't using radio. Instead, they're probably listening for us (if they haven't found us already).
Also, Windows lets you adjust the scale of the fonts. I don't mean by changing the font size-point (10, 12). But under the video advanced settings, you can adjust it to preset sizes: Normal, Large. Or even set it to a custom setting.
My stats: Old Win98SE box my borther uses: 4 times a day My WinXP Pro: 0 times a day
Back in the bad old days of Win 9x amd Win Me; yes, the apps would crash the ENTIRE OS. Those OS's were utter pieces of trash. I even started using BeOS instead. Anyway, fast forward to TODAY, we see that Win2k and WinXP are VERY TOLERANT of apps crashing. Sure, I've had an app crash (even Internet Explorer). HOWEVER the os's keep un trucking. Right now I'm on 90 days of uptime. Pre Windows 2000 SP1 sucked ass. But since then, it hasn't been that bad.
Contractors and consultants don't automatically get benefits. They have to pay out of their own pockets. SOMETIMES, the consulting company offers a medical package a an ok rate, but not always and the savings is still small.
I know a lot of companies that hire contractors to do their work because they're cheaper and they can keep tighter reigns on them. Heck, I'm a contractor. I make ok money, but subtract benefits and what-not, it's that great.
You're forgetting contractors (consultants). Sure, back in "the day" consultants were paid BIG BUCKS. Now, it's hard to find a consulting gig that pars for than 30, sometimes 50 an hour. Anyway, my point is consultants DONT GET ANY BENEFITS. My place has a number of consultants, including myself. We're not paid enormous amounts of money, but comfortable. However, when you factor in that we have to cover our own benefits, that takes a big chunk of our or wage.
Don't forget "The Chronicle"!!! That show kicked some major ass!!! And they yanked it.
If you read my child-post, you will say I have no problem with it. I'm just saying a lot of people don't realize it. Some people I know think it doesn't matter or doesn't play any part in the process.
I'm not bitter, because a) there's nothing wrong with it, and b) I still have a job.
I merely added the "bitter" part of the comment because I mentioned the "not the what, but who" philosophy to someone, and they said "only bitter morons that can't find work say that." And on the other side, I've heard from someone say "anyone with an iota of skill can easily find a job in programming."
Meanwhile, most of the people I know that recently got jobs was because they were internally recommended by a friend/relative within the company. I say "Good for them!"
I only hope the connections I've made work out for me if/when the axe falls.
EDIT - by embodied free thought speech, I meant embodied the stiffling/oppression of free thought and speech.
Stalin and the lot were HORRIBLE. I admit that. And communist Russia was a bad place, my parents fled to the US to get away from there. When I said communists, I meant the McCarthy hearings, which were essentially a witch trial. The slightest whisper that you might be a communist, and you were screwed; blacklisted and made a parija. In fact, that's what the play/book "The Crucible" is realyl about; not the Salem witch trials (which it was using as an analogy), but the hearings that were going on at roughly the same time. By lumping witch-craft and communism together, I mean the complete unsubstantiated frenzy that followed the subject. Back then: " at a poarty you mention you liked book x." Some literary officianado says "Book x is commie propoganda." The book is taken out of the stores, and someone reports that you stated you liked Book x. Therefore, you are a communist. This is somewhat the same as today with terrorists, as some technical officianado says "flight sim x can be used to train terrorists" and the flight sim is pulled off the market. However, where the McCarthy hearings embodied free thought and speech for pure political gain, the attempt to remove tools from potential terrorsist hands at least displays some safety concerns. I'm think we push the envelope too far with the whole "terrorist" thing (if you drive an SUV you support terrorism, dontcha know). But it is nothing compared to the 1950's communist witch hunt, that needlessly destroyed many innocent lives.
I take it you haven't been unemployed too recently. Fortunately, I'm still employed right now, but I can see the writing on the wall. Our department has been doing some machete-style slashing of the budget, and has been letting A LOT of IT people go (programmers and technicians). And those they let go were great at their job.
A bunch of people at work were saying the SAME THING YOU ARE. They said their skills were current, had qualifications, and were good at their job. Now, it's 3 months later and they're still outta work.
Sure, I know some people (from elsewhere) that got jobs reasonably quick, but that's because they KNEW SOMEONE on the inside, or had some high connections. I'm not being bitter, they've admitted it to me.
Some people with jobs or in school tend to think that everything is fine-and-dandy for people so long as they know their stuff and look hard. But those people are usually the first to start freaking out that they can't find jobs.
It's a cliche, but in today's market it's not what you know, but who you know.
and when I say the communist ideology threatened ours, I mean schmucks and politicians tried to convince the public it threatened ours. I have nothing against communists.
I hear ya an agree on a level, but...
You're wrong lumping terrorists into the "witch, sorcerer, communist, etc" category. While our fear of the latter was purely unsubstantiated, the fear of terrorists is a little different. People were afraid of "witches" because either they hated that particular person anyway, were trying to gain monetray/political ground, or were just bored. We were "afraid" of communists because their ideology threatened ours and the gov needed a scapegoat (better dead than red).
BUT...
We're afraid of terrorists because, well, TERRORISTS KILL PEOPLE. Sure, their ideology doesn't jive with ours, but the communists in the 50's weren't blowing up too many buildings or killing people. and 9-11 showed us how dedicated some of them are to the cause.
Sure, I think we take this fear too far at times (the anti-flight sim is a PERFECT example), but saying that it is an unjustified fear is taking it too far.
And putting GEEKS in the same category as terrorists? Jeez.
There's a flaw in your logic. In they end, the can sue whoever's name is on the bill. This is probably what they'd do if the ACTUAL violator was a minor. - Chris
A special thanks to everyone that responded.
It's a little worry-some that the world doesn't take this threat too seriously. One would think that we'd pool our resources and make more of a collaborative effort across the globe to prevent such a catastrophe. I'm not saying each country spend ludicrous amounts of money, but maybe set up an observation post with a couple of people
Like another poster said, it'll probably take a populated area getting hit to make us realize the importance of such monitoring.
Could someone please enlighten me? I hear a lot about NASA and how our budget for monitoring dangerous objects has been way too low.
Are other countries partaking in this? I know we're not the only ones with a space program, and I've BEEN to observatories across the globe. Yet in all of these stories, I never read about a comparison between us and, let's say, France.
Are there any other countries that make it a point to monitor the skies for this stuff? How do their budgets compare to ours? I'm not saying "Go USA," I'm actually curious.
Seriously, any information would be appreciated.
You're assuming General Use of desktops. Sure, Joe Sixpack at company Z that just writes memos all day could use redhat and open office. But in companies that do a lot of research, they have a lot more invested in windows. They have third-party solutions that only run on windows, and in most cases all of their in-house apps are for windows. As another poster mentioned, it's the general momentum Windows has in the market. People write a lot software for it that isn't cross-platformable. "Switching" (be it Linux or Apple) would entitle not just using Open Office, but re-writing all of our own code, trying to find specialized products to handle our research, paying out for these new contracts, etc. There's more to corporate computing than Word. For example, at my pharmacutical company, we use a combination of Solaris and Linux for our servers. But ALL of our desktop stuff is Windows only. All of our third-part apps are windows, everything we write inhouse is windows, etc. One example is ActivityBase. ABase is a software package that handles most of our experimental data. It uses Oracle as a backend (so the backend could technically be Linux), but the frontend is Windows. The frontend is particularly important, becase it allows the scientists to interact with the system. The frontend is written in a mixture of VC++ and VB, and is IMMENSE. It's WAY too large to rewrite in Java or some other cross platformable language. And there's NO WAYA the company would even bother considering it. Likewise, there are few solutions such as this in Linux at this point, and if there were they would not be so feature free. If we were to switch, while the data would still be accessible 'cause it's in Oracle, we would have to find an alternative to ABase that is full of such features and PAY OUT THE ASS for it. A consulting company or vendor isn't going to charge LESS because it's Linux. Sure, accounting and secretaries can switch, but research (for the most part) can't. Too many companies are too invested. Either they use windows, or they sell software for use only with windows.
Since I first installed Windows XP Pro, which was before it was released to consumers (got the OEM version a week before everyone else), the OS has NEVER crashed. And I run it 24/7/365, minus a reboot every few weeks (by my own preference, not because it needed it). The worst that's happened is that maybe an APP crashed a total of 3 times. But XP shrugged it off and kept running. Again, if you have bad drivers or cheap hardware, I'm sure XP will turn into a nightmare (one of my friends has bad luck with it, but bought the cheapest motherboard he could).
Yeh, a pretty stable OS.
Sure, back in Win9x/Me the OS was utter crap. But it's pretty damn stable now, so long as you don't have sh!t hardware or use bad drivers.
I think he's talking about the DNA "archiving and obtaining" system, not THE system. I'm not in total disagreement with you about the way THE system works either.
I don't think he's talking abou buld, but time spent. And I agree with him.
If you let it gor for a few weeks, you can spend 30 minutes to an hour shredding paper. While that may seem like a trivial amount of time, remember, YOU"RE SHREDDING PAPER. You might as well be picking up grains of sand with a tweezer.
It's mind-numbingly boring and takes forever if not done regularly.
PS. I understand the parent post is probably just a harmless joke. My post was in regards to the general flaiming of windows. MS is an evil corp, sure, but some people need to stop knocking people that use windows.