"AC because I really didn't say anything for the discussion."
I fail to see how that makes any difference? Ohh, you're a karma whore. Nevermind.
For good or bad, I post everything under my name. Yet, my karma is still Excellent, and I get a ton of mod points. Even when being modded down a lot. The Slashdot system rewards users like me.
Ohh yea, that would be wonderful. Support not one, not two, but three OS's on a single machine. That would be sweet..
I don't see how getting Macs and running Windows on them would pave any paths to OSX, if I even considered that to be a valid move. Ya, like I wanna trade one vendor lock in for another.
#2 isn't good enough for a company used to being #1 by a large margin. I think Microsoft feels as though this market is very important to the continued success of their other divisions. They've tied the Xbox 360 into the Windows OS.
I don't always think Microsoft's ideas are bad. They take good ideas, and turn them into something usable. Unfortunately, it all turns to shit because they always turn things around so that only Microsoft can ever use any of it. Interoperability is something that they are not just uninterested in, but completely opposed to. Instead of saying "Hey, here's Sony with the PlayStation that's wildly successful. Let's work with them to hook it into our stuff" they say "Hey, here's Sony with the PS2 that's wildly successful. Let's fuck them and make our own system so we can rake in *ALL* of the profits and put them out of business." They do this with everything they touch.
They might not be doing anything illegal, but that doesn't mean I have to like the way they do business. The company is founded on scrupulous tactics with marketing being more important then product; because of that they will never change.
And who knows, we might have been better off is Sony didn't pull their own stunts. But, it was indeed a little different at the time the original Playstation hit the market - it was a technically better system, with better controllers, and was so for quite awhile. Nintendo might have done better if they used CD media instead of $70 carts, and maybe that would have changed things too.
I don't think Sony deserves to have a monopoly on the game system market, and who know, maybe it's a good thing that Microsoft is there to foster some competition. Unfortunately, it's gotten to such a scale that it doesn't matter which game system is better or cheaper or more available - Sony and Microsoft are both idiots.
Nintendo created a very profitable environment where they owned the game systems and controlled what could be played on them; demanding royalties. What we're seeing now is other companies trying to do the same thing as Nintento did, and I just don't think the market will ever be as fertile as it once was. Especially since these things are selling for close to half a grand - the SNES was thought to be outrageously expensive at $200 - I don't know how parents can afford these things these days.
eBay has been a good and evil influence on society. This is an example of the bad. Last night, when I looked, there were over 10,000 XBox 360's for sale - and almost all sellers were asking over $1400 - some of the bids were going over $2000.
Because of eBay, there's many, many thousands of legit average income folks that will be unable to get the system for their kids since so many of them were purchased for the sole reason of reselling them for huge profit.
I don't blame eBay - I do blame the people that do these things - but eBay is a really easy vehicle for these guys to ride on.
No. The market already exists. This is the cost of doing things the Microsoft way - push your way into an established market because you have billions of dollars to cover the losses.
"And you're able to discern this over FM.. right."
Ohh yes, it's pretty obvious too. FM might not be the highest in Khz as a CD, but it doesn't distort in the same way as compression. The FM dynamic range limitation doesn't magically mask the compression artifacts.
When you work with studio equipment, you work with the highest absolute quality settings you can. Often times, it's 96Khz 32-bit sampling. Which, obviously, is way overkill for normal listening since our ears can only discern about a 22Khz range, but what happens when you perform effects, levels, and mixing? The higher the sampling, the better these effects will perform. Once you're done, you have a lot more source sample data to use to get an accurate 44.1Khz 16-bit CD quality representation of your original sound.
If you worked with 44.1Khz 16-bit the entire time in the studio, you'd be left with a much lower quality CD then if you used higher sampling. So, the same applies to FM radio. You want to pump in the highest quality signal you can, so that you don't *ADD* to the distortion and range limitations of the FM carrier.
Yea, for real. A Company is *people* and it's people that do these things. It's not Microsoft screwing people, it's the people that run the company that are screwing people.
A lot of companies produce products that work and work well. If Microsoft was seriously interested in a better product, they could have either started earlier or waited to release it. It's not more complicated then that.
And what needs to be improved? Sure, duplicate stories are redundant but I can just skip them. I usually do, too, because wars like this pop up every time.
Slashdot is still one of the only places you can go and discuss issues without logging in. And, the moderation system *does* work, although it doesn't work exceptionally well. But it's better then most.
I don't see why you think you need to improve it or bitch about it. I think it's fine. I don't love it or hate it; it's just Slashdot.
Re:If I had a million dollars...
on
Barenaked USB Drive
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Ya that's what I was thinking.. I mean, kudos for it being MP3 and not DRM infested, and it's neat you get a usable USB drive. But 128Kbps MP3 just doesn't cut it anymore - much in the same way MPEG1 video just doesn't cut it anymore.
MP3 was great when you could use your modem and download a full (Stereo!) song in less then 10 minutes, but I've always hated the heavy distorted sounds with cymbals and guitars. Have you listened to the radio lately? All the big music stations in my area have converted to these digital juke box things - which I'm sure are great for them but it's very obviously low quality 128Kbps encoding and I hate listening to it.
In the end though I guess I'd rather have 128Kbps MP3's then higher quality VBR 384K WMA's or HQ iTunes songs with DRM.
That's exactly the point of the protest against these invasive technologies. How free can we really be if we're always within 5 minutes of being located? Or 5 seconds from our entire history, movements, purchases, and any other records?
There's never once been a people tracking system that has not been abused at least once - and once is far too many times.
I too agree that it's good they apprehended the killers. That's a good thing. Unfortunately, the technology isn't just switched off when they don't need it anymore.
I am not a criminal but I also don't want every action I've done held against me for my entire life. I'm no saint. Sometimes I drive too aggressively or fast. I commit little misdemeanors like everyone else. I'm *human* and these systems can and probably eventually will be used to criminalize just about everything if nobody steps up against them. I can picture a job interview "Well, we like you, but our policy is to never hire anyone that's ever driven over 90MPH ever in their lives. And it says here you've jaywalked fifteen times. That's far too many."
I play a fair amount of Counter Strick Source multiplayer, and there's a big difference between good players.
One type of good player plays the game. He will will awesome aim, fast reflexes, and know the maps very well. He'll know all the little spots to be careful of, and he will try to reach the objectives of the game (instead of the secondary objective of just killing everyone on the other team.) He'll work with the team to get the mission won. This type of player often does well on the kill board, but often not at the top.
The other type is the player that attempts to use every cheezy, "not in the spirit of the game or map" tactic to gain an advantage over the other players. He will primarily use a sniper rifle because he can find little spots that only a handful of people can get to (some special jump or something gets him up to a spot the map developer never intended) and kill half the opposing team from a distance. He will then proceed to clean up the rest of the players because most of them will be half dead already. This type of player will almost always be #1 on the kill board by a fair margin.
I realize that these are commonly found on public internet servers, and an actual clan war would make things different. But in a lot of "real" LAN games I've seen replays of, it's not that far off from what you find in many of those games either. With Quake 3, I believe the problem became epidemic. All the "good" players would do things like set video quality to 0, and put on skins that make other players glow. For some reason, these things became acceptable for official matches. When you watch these players play, it's almost as if a computer player is playing. They run the same circle areas, they have timers that tell them when to get a power up, and they use ever unintended function of the game they can. To me, this just isn't much fun. Quake tournaments are a gathering of who has mastered all the cheezy exploits while still walking the line of cheating.
That's not to say every player is like that, nor that I would have any hope of defeating any of them. But, I'm not impressed at all. I'm a lot more impressed with team wars in a game like CS because it's a lot more about working together and strategy, and less about finding that new loophole.
I wouldn't say most DVD's today come with 2 discs unless you count bonus features or some such; which even they they usually fit it all on one disc.
But I do agree - I think they should be using MPEG4 or H.264. We'd get a lot more quality out of it - probably approaching what would be possible with no compression.
My guess is that most HD hardware in existance today utilizes MPEG-2; broadcasters, OTA stuff, cable, etc.
MPEG2 requires very high bit rates to look decent. Even at 25 megabits, a 1920x1080 stream (even interlaced) will look blocky and messy in fast motion scenes - even when a camera moves quickly in any direction. 25Mbit is commonly used for OTA broadcasts. Sometimes you'll see 30Mbit.
At 25Mbit, you can only fit 2.3 hours of video on a single layer Blu-Ray disc. Dual layer will grant the ability to do 50Mbit for the same length, or 25Mbit for over 4.5 hours.
So, while you can transfer the data off the disc quickly, you have a finite amount of space on the disc. MPEG-4/H264 isn't just for low bandwidth applictions - it allows for much higher quality video in the same space.
I'm sure the Blu-Ray discs with MPEG-2 will provide good video quality but it still won't reach the potential of HDTV.
Two and a half years isn't that long to be in the IT industry. You need to have experienced not only changing technologies, but you need that base of experience to draw from so that you can pick up new things quickly.
That's not to say that you or your friends can't, but in the eyes of an employer, it's all what's on paper. 2 years simply isn't enough time to be working in the field, according to employers. I agree with them to a point (I feel as though there's always exceptions) but getting an interview is hard. At age 26, I have over 7 years experience with production IT systems, and I've been working with computers since I was 9 years old. I've worked pretty hard to get where I am today - it doesn't happen over night.
There's also the issue with terminology here - I don't really consider "IT" as being software development. While some IT duties may involve creating small programs to tie things together, it's hardly the same field and I don't have any experience with the software development field.
You're right, but I'm not the best by any means and I still do well. I think I'm proficient at my work and I care about doing a good job, but I know some guys that are really top of their game and I hope to someday be one of them. I'm not one of them yet.
You don't have to be the best to make good money in IT. Sure, you won't make $100k, but when you take a step back and see what the average American makes and how hard they work to get it, it's really quite good to be in IT. And, there's always room for advancement in the field; there's not much of a plateau until you get into six figure salaries.
Just because they're a company doesn't mean they are required to be unethical shitheads that destroy entire industries because they have enough cash to do so.
And the way I figure it, Microsoft probably doesn't want to be convicted of monopoly practices again - becuase there IS a limit to how far companies are allowed to take capitalism.
Ohh, I don't know. If you're a good IT engineer that's well versed in lots of technologies and an expert in a couple, you'll pull a real good salary - at least in the US.
I won't post my salary but it's really quite good, in the top 7% of the income in the state. I don't expect my salary to ever decrease; the problem of course can be finding jobs. It's either no job, or a really good paying job. There's not much in between - nobody would hire me for a Help Desk position becuase I'd leave as soon as I got an admin job and they'd be right.
IT is still a difficult field to get into, it does take many years of work experience to really get moving - and you have to make the right descisions on when to move on. You also really need to be into it, enough so that you keep up on new tech at home to stay sharp.
I am overworked to a degree, but I do enjoy being busy. My work days go by fast doing things that I like doing. I really can't complain about that.
For me, I'm not all that upset that more people aren't coming into the IT field. That means more demand for qualified people such as myself. Of course, a CS graduate could have much better prospects if they specialize in a very high tech field, such as microprocessor design. But that's more science work, and not so much IT work and thus not my competitor.
And in the end, the last thing the IT industry needs is more CS grads anyways. You certainly need no degree to do the type of work I do. Hell, I beleive you don't need a degree to do work in most fields; seriously - who needs a Bachelors or Masters to configure network systems, to admin Unix or Windows boxes, or to manage e-mail? Nobody. It's all about technical training, experience with production systems, interest, and half a brain in your head.
This isn't as far fetched as it sounds. At my last contract, they were in the process of forcing the entire IT staff, which was over 200 people, to use locked down workstations.
As long as your server admin tools are available on your workstation, you don't actually need local admin access.
They were doing this because too many admins were getting spyware and crap they'd have to deal with in the client group.
I think it's both. They need to get people to upgrade to their latest version, but because of OpenOffice and other alternatives being just as good as Office XP, they need to actually work to make the software better instead of just shit-canning support for old versions and changing the document format to something that the old version can't open.
Well, I guess maybe with a video game, if you click enough settings you might get it to work on your system. But, I believe Microsoft software to be some of the most complicated software there is. I mean, look at Active Directory. It's an LDAP directory, which in itself isn't all that complicated - and yet AD is so incredibly complicated and intricate when you get into a large deployment. It's not difficult to work with once you have a lot of experience with it, but it's sure a beast. ISA server can do some really great things, but you can bury yourself so fast and never get the damned thing working right. And we won't even get into Exchange and SMS.
I'm not saying that complicated software is a bad thing nor that I have any particular distain for Microsoft software or Windows itself, but it sure can be if you can't get into the nitty gritty of the software with the tools as they are presented to you. There's a lot of little tricks and hacks that you eventually need to use with any larger scale deployment of Microsoft stuff; once it comes to that I always think to myself that it would be easier to have full access to every feature from the beginning - before researching every problem while scratching your head looking for some obscure registry key you didn't even know existed. The software looks really easy with the nice GUI, and for a lot of tasks it is.
I agree that you'll find bad admins in any camp, that's a given. For me, when I need to learn a new peice of software, I always find Unix software easier to handle then Windows software, be it from Microsoft or otherwise.
It's not only the fact that some of the Linux claims must be true, but the fact that Microsoft continues to attempt to discredit Linux says one thing: It's a viable alternative to Microsoft.
They put Linux on the radar more and more with every one of these stunts. I'm with you - I really enjoy working with Unix systems. It's not because it's trendy to do so, it's because the Shit Just Works. I don't have to pour through vague event log entries on to fix problems with a clean install, I don't have to have a Microsoft tech come out and live with us for three weeks to address odd AD anomolies, and I don't have to use undocumented features to make something work.
The power of the Linux community simply can't be ignored. If you have a problem with just about anything with any OSS, you can always find a lot of information about it with a quick google search. The same is not true with Windows software - often times I get the dreaded "Sorry, no results found."
Nobody can honestly claim that Microsoft software hasn't improved in the last few years. It's a lot better then how things used to be. Unfortunately for them, it just doesn't matter anymore. They blew it. Linux is here, it's a lot more flexible, and it's not going away. It surrounds Microsoft from all sides (Very high end, embedded, very small (PDA's, cell phones)) and it's only a matter of time before it completely replaces Windows on core desktop and traditionally Windows based server environments.
It goes beyond the generic server arena, though. Have you have the chance to work with VMWare ESX server? It's awesome! Completely Linux based. Not only is the "service console" running Linux, the vmkernel itself is a customized Linux kernel which runs on top of it. VMWare ESX is so nice - you can really see what a Linux system is capable of: powerful, customizable, very easy to use.
That's the way I see it, anyways. And I do primarily Windows server work.
Slashdot Mirror
"AC because I really didn't say anything for the discussion."
I fail to see how that makes any difference? Ohh, you're a karma whore. Nevermind.
For good or bad, I post everything under my name. Yet, my karma is still Excellent, and I get a ton of mod points. Even when being modded down a lot. The Slashdot system rewards users like me.
Ohh yea, that would be wonderful. Support not one, not two, but three OS's on a single machine. That would be sweet..
I don't see how getting Macs and running Windows on them would pave any paths to OSX, if I even considered that to be a valid move. Ya, like I wanna trade one vendor lock in for another.
#2 isn't good enough for a company used to being #1 by a large margin. I think Microsoft feels as though this market is very important to the continued success of their other divisions. They've tied the Xbox 360 into the Windows OS.
I don't always think Microsoft's ideas are bad. They take good ideas, and turn them into something usable. Unfortunately, it all turns to shit because they always turn things around so that only Microsoft can ever use any of it. Interoperability is something that they are not just uninterested in, but completely opposed to. Instead of saying "Hey, here's Sony with the PlayStation that's wildly successful. Let's work with them to hook it into our stuff" they say "Hey, here's Sony with the PS2 that's wildly successful. Let's fuck them and make our own system so we can rake in *ALL* of the profits and put them out of business." They do this with everything they touch.
They might not be doing anything illegal, but that doesn't mean I have to like the way they do business. The company is founded on scrupulous tactics with marketing being more important then product; because of that they will never change.
And who knows, we might have been better off is Sony didn't pull their own stunts. But, it was indeed a little different at the time the original Playstation hit the market - it was a technically better system, with better controllers, and was so for quite awhile. Nintendo might have done better if they used CD media instead of $70 carts, and maybe that would have changed things too.
I don't think Sony deserves to have a monopoly on the game system market, and who know, maybe it's a good thing that Microsoft is there to foster some competition. Unfortunately, it's gotten to such a scale that it doesn't matter which game system is better or cheaper or more available - Sony and Microsoft are both idiots.
Nintendo created a very profitable environment where they owned the game systems and controlled what could be played on them; demanding royalties. What we're seeing now is other companies trying to do the same thing as Nintento did, and I just don't think the market will ever be as fertile as it once was. Especially since these things are selling for close to half a grand - the SNES was thought to be outrageously expensive at $200 - I don't know how parents can afford these things these days.
eBay has been a good and evil influence on society. This is an example of the bad. Last night, when I looked, there were over 10,000 XBox 360's for sale - and almost all sellers were asking over $1400 - some of the bids were going over $2000.
Because of eBay, there's many, many thousands of legit average income folks that will be unable to get the system for their kids since so many of them were purchased for the sole reason of reselling them for huge profit.
I don't blame eBay - I do blame the people that do these things - but eBay is a really easy vehicle for these guys to ride on.
Oh well, enough of that talk.
"It's the cost of establishing a market."
No. The market already exists. This is the cost of doing things the Microsoft way - push your way into an established market because you have billions of dollars to cover the losses.
"And you're able to discern this over FM.. right."
Ohh yes, it's pretty obvious too. FM might not be the highest in Khz as a CD, but it doesn't distort in the same way as compression. The FM dynamic range limitation doesn't magically mask the compression artifacts.
When you work with studio equipment, you work with the highest absolute quality settings you can. Often times, it's 96Khz 32-bit sampling. Which, obviously, is way overkill for normal listening since our ears can only discern about a 22Khz range, but what happens when you perform effects, levels, and mixing? The higher the sampling, the better these effects will perform. Once you're done, you have a lot more source sample data to use to get an accurate 44.1Khz 16-bit CD quality representation of your original sound.
If you worked with 44.1Khz 16-bit the entire time in the studio, you'd be left with a much lower quality CD then if you used higher sampling. So, the same applies to FM radio. You want to pump in the highest quality signal you can, so that you don't *ADD* to the distortion and range limitations of the FM carrier.
Perhaps, but it's usually the first run equipment that's the most easily hacked. Playstation rev 1, Xbox rev 1.0, PSP with first firmware.. etc..
Eventually, workarounds tend to appear, but if you're serious about modding at some point it's best to have the first run stuff.
Yea, for real. A Company is *people* and it's people that do these things. It's not Microsoft screwing people, it's the people that run the company that are screwing people.
A lot of companies produce products that work and work well. If Microsoft was seriously interested in a better product, they could have either started earlier or waited to release it. It's not more complicated then that.
Who gives a fuck?
And what needs to be improved? Sure, duplicate stories are redundant but I can just skip them. I usually do, too, because wars like this pop up every time.
Slashdot is still one of the only places you can go and discuss issues without logging in. And, the moderation system *does* work, although it doesn't work exceptionally well. But it's better then most.
I don't see why you think you need to improve it or bitch about it. I think it's fine. I don't love it or hate it; it's just Slashdot.
Ya that's what I was thinking.. I mean, kudos for it being MP3 and not DRM infested, and it's neat you get a usable USB drive. But 128Kbps MP3 just doesn't cut it anymore - much in the same way MPEG1 video just doesn't cut it anymore.
MP3 was great when you could use your modem and download a full (Stereo!) song in less then 10 minutes, but I've always hated the heavy distorted sounds with cymbals and guitars. Have you listened to the radio lately? All the big music stations in my area have converted to these digital juke box things - which I'm sure are great for them but it's very obviously low quality 128Kbps encoding and I hate listening to it.
In the end though I guess I'd rather have 128Kbps MP3's then higher quality VBR 384K WMA's or HQ iTunes songs with DRM.
Too bad you guys put on AC mode..
One modded down post won't make your karma bad, in fact, if you only get good karma you have less of a chance to get mod points.
That's exactly the point of the protest against these invasive technologies. How free can we really be if we're always within 5 minutes of being located? Or 5 seconds from our entire history, movements, purchases, and any other records?
There's never once been a people tracking system that has not been abused at least once - and once is far too many times.
I too agree that it's good they apprehended the killers. That's a good thing. Unfortunately, the technology isn't just switched off when they don't need it anymore.
I am not a criminal but I also don't want every action I've done held against me for my entire life. I'm no saint. Sometimes I drive too aggressively or fast. I commit little misdemeanors like everyone else. I'm *human* and these systems can and probably eventually will be used to criminalize just about everything if nobody steps up against them. I can picture a job interview "Well, we like you, but our policy is to never hire anyone that's ever driven over 90MPH ever in their lives. And it says here you've jaywalked fifteen times. That's far too many."
Aww come on, do you have to use a $ instead of an S? Otherwise, your post was fine - hold off on the $ it makes you seem a little too zealotish.
I'll be the one here to agree with you.
I play a fair amount of Counter Strick Source multiplayer, and there's a big difference between good players.
One type of good player plays the game. He will will awesome aim, fast reflexes, and know the maps very well. He'll know all the little spots to be careful of, and he will try to reach the objectives of the game (instead of the secondary objective of just killing everyone on the other team.) He'll work with the team to get the mission won. This type of player often does well on the kill board, but often not at the top.
The other type is the player that attempts to use every cheezy, "not in the spirit of the game or map" tactic to gain an advantage over the other players. He will primarily use a sniper rifle because he can find little spots that only a handful of people can get to (some special jump or something gets him up to a spot the map developer never intended) and kill half the opposing team from a distance. He will then proceed to clean up the rest of the players because most of them will be half dead already. This type of player will almost always be #1 on the kill board by a fair margin.
I realize that these are commonly found on public internet servers, and an actual clan war would make things different. But in a lot of "real" LAN games I've seen replays of, it's not that far off from what you find in many of those games either. With Quake 3, I believe the problem became epidemic. All the "good" players would do things like set video quality to 0, and put on skins that make other players glow. For some reason, these things became acceptable for official matches. When you watch these players play, it's almost as if a computer player is playing. They run the same circle areas, they have timers that tell them when to get a power up, and they use ever unintended function of the game they can. To me, this just isn't much fun. Quake tournaments are a gathering of who has mastered all the cheezy exploits while still walking the line of cheating.
That's not to say every player is like that, nor that I would have any hope of defeating any of them. But, I'm not impressed at all. I'm a lot more impressed with team wars in a game like CS because it's a lot more about working together and strategy, and less about finding that new loophole.
I wouldn't say most DVD's today come with 2 discs unless you count bonus features or some such; which even they they usually fit it all on one disc.
But I do agree - I think they should be using MPEG4 or H.264. We'd get a lot more quality out of it - probably approaching what would be possible with no compression.
My guess is that most HD hardware in existance today utilizes MPEG-2; broadcasters, OTA stuff, cable, etc.
MPEG2 requires very high bit rates to look decent. Even at 25 megabits, a 1920x1080 stream (even interlaced) will look blocky and messy in fast motion scenes - even when a camera moves quickly in any direction. 25Mbit is commonly used for OTA broadcasts. Sometimes you'll see 30Mbit.
At 25Mbit, you can only fit 2.3 hours of video on a single layer Blu-Ray disc. Dual layer will grant the ability to do 50Mbit for the same length, or 25Mbit for over 4.5 hours.
So, while you can transfer the data off the disc quickly, you have a finite amount of space on the disc. MPEG-4/H264 isn't just for low bandwidth applictions - it allows for much higher quality video in the same space.
I'm sure the Blu-Ray discs with MPEG-2 will provide good video quality but it still won't reach the potential of HDTV.
Two and a half years isn't that long to be in the IT industry. You need to have experienced not only changing technologies, but you need that base of experience to draw from so that you can pick up new things quickly.
That's not to say that you or your friends can't, but in the eyes of an employer, it's all what's on paper. 2 years simply isn't enough time to be working in the field, according to employers. I agree with them to a point (I feel as though there's always exceptions) but getting an interview is hard. At age 26, I have over 7 years experience with production IT systems, and I've been working with computers since I was 9 years old. I've worked pretty hard to get where I am today - it doesn't happen over night.
There's also the issue with terminology here - I don't really consider "IT" as being software development. While some IT duties may involve creating small programs to tie things together, it's hardly the same field and I don't have any experience with the software development field.
You're right, but I'm not the best by any means and I still do well. I think I'm proficient at my work and I care about doing a good job, but I know some guys that are really top of their game and I hope to someday be one of them. I'm not one of them yet.
You don't have to be the best to make good money in IT. Sure, you won't make $100k, but when you take a step back and see what the average American makes and how hard they work to get it, it's really quite good to be in IT. And, there's always room for advancement in the field; there's not much of a plateau until you get into six figure salaries.
Just because they're a company doesn't mean they are required to be unethical shitheads that destroy entire industries because they have enough cash to do so.
And the way I figure it, Microsoft probably doesn't want to be convicted of monopoly practices again - becuase there IS a limit to how far companies are allowed to take capitalism.
Ohh, I don't know. If you're a good IT engineer that's well versed in lots of technologies and an expert in a couple, you'll pull a real good salary - at least in the US.
I won't post my salary but it's really quite good, in the top 7% of the income in the state. I don't expect my salary to ever decrease; the problem of course can be finding jobs. It's either no job, or a really good paying job. There's not much in between - nobody would hire me for a Help Desk position becuase I'd leave as soon as I got an admin job and they'd be right.
IT is still a difficult field to get into, it does take many years of work experience to really get moving - and you have to make the right descisions on when to move on. You also really need to be into it, enough so that you keep up on new tech at home to stay sharp.
I am overworked to a degree, but I do enjoy being busy. My work days go by fast doing things that I like doing. I really can't complain about that.
For me, I'm not all that upset that more people aren't coming into the IT field. That means more demand for qualified people such as myself. Of course, a CS graduate could have much better prospects if they specialize in a very high tech field, such as microprocessor design. But that's more science work, and not so much IT work and thus not my competitor.
And in the end, the last thing the IT industry needs is more CS grads anyways. You certainly need no degree to do the type of work I do. Hell, I beleive you don't need a degree to do work in most fields; seriously - who needs a Bachelors or Masters to configure network systems, to admin Unix or Windows boxes, or to manage e-mail? Nobody. It's all about technical training, experience with production systems, interest, and half a brain in your head.
This isn't as far fetched as it sounds. At my last contract, they were in the process of forcing the entire IT staff, which was over 200 people, to use locked down workstations.
As long as your server admin tools are available on your workstation, you don't actually need local admin access.
They were doing this because too many admins were getting spyware and crap they'd have to deal with in the client group.
I think it sucks, but it's not impossible.
I think it's both. They need to get people to upgrade to their latest version, but because of OpenOffice and other alternatives being just as good as Office XP, they need to actually work to make the software better instead of just shit-canning support for old versions and changing the document format to something that the old version can't open.
Well, I guess maybe with a video game, if you click enough settings you might get it to work on your system. But, I believe Microsoft software to be some of the most complicated software there is. I mean, look at Active Directory. It's an LDAP directory, which in itself isn't all that complicated - and yet AD is so incredibly complicated and intricate when you get into a large deployment. It's not difficult to work with once you have a lot of experience with it, but it's sure a beast. ISA server can do some really great things, but you can bury yourself so fast and never get the damned thing working right. And we won't even get into Exchange and SMS.
I'm not saying that complicated software is a bad thing nor that I have any particular distain for Microsoft software or Windows itself, but it sure can be if you can't get into the nitty gritty of the software with the tools as they are presented to you. There's a lot of little tricks and hacks that you eventually need to use with any larger scale deployment of Microsoft stuff; once it comes to that I always think to myself that it would be easier to have full access to every feature from the beginning - before researching every problem while scratching your head looking for some obscure registry key you didn't even know existed. The software looks really easy with the nice GUI, and for a lot of tasks it is.
I agree that you'll find bad admins in any camp, that's a given. For me, when I need to learn a new peice of software, I always find Unix software easier to handle then Windows software, be it from Microsoft or otherwise.
It's not only the fact that some of the Linux claims must be true, but the fact that Microsoft continues to attempt to discredit Linux says one thing: It's a viable alternative to Microsoft.
They put Linux on the radar more and more with every one of these stunts. I'm with you - I really enjoy working with Unix systems. It's not because it's trendy to do so, it's because the Shit Just Works. I don't have to pour through vague event log entries on to fix problems with a clean install, I don't have to have a Microsoft tech come out and live with us for three weeks to address odd AD anomolies, and I don't have to use undocumented features to make something work.
The power of the Linux community simply can't be ignored. If you have a problem with just about anything with any OSS, you can always find a lot of information about it with a quick google search. The same is not true with Windows software - often times I get the dreaded "Sorry, no results found."
Nobody can honestly claim that Microsoft software hasn't improved in the last few years. It's a lot better then how things used to be. Unfortunately for them, it just doesn't matter anymore. They blew it. Linux is here, it's a lot more flexible, and it's not going away. It surrounds Microsoft from all sides (Very high end, embedded, very small (PDA's, cell phones)) and it's only a matter of time before it completely replaces Windows on core desktop and traditionally Windows based server environments.
It goes beyond the generic server arena, though. Have you have the chance to work with VMWare ESX server? It's awesome! Completely Linux based. Not only is the "service console" running Linux, the vmkernel itself is a customized Linux kernel which runs on top of it. VMWare ESX is so nice - you can really see what a Linux system is capable of: powerful, customizable, very easy to use.
That's the way I see it, anyways. And I do primarily Windows server work.