That's strange, because while I have a slightly faster machine (Athlon 1600+), I have a lower spec video card (GeForce 2 MX 400).... I run a dual monitor setup, and frequently have a 1024x768 visualisation running on screen 2 while I work in screen 1. Typically, I'll be working in either my low-spec mentality (word processing), or my high-spec mentality (3D modelling) - in both situations, the visualisations never drop below 25fps.
Perhaps you need to consider installing nVidia drives (since the MS ones sucked pretty badly).
I don't see these hardware requirements as being excessive - A P3/800? A third of the top-of-the-line speed isn't a big ask. A decent video card? All they really ask for is a basic GeForce level card. And 128meg is nothing, given the price of RAM these days.
The rest of the extra requirements are beta requirements obviously - they've probably only had time to test on nVidia cards (since they'd be the most common out there anyway). The hard disk requirements is due to them shipping the beta on CD, not DVD (probably for cost reasons).
If you want to play latest and greatest games, be grateful they aren't asking for latest and greatest hardware. If you cry out at these specs, imagine being asked for a P4/2200, 1gig RAM, GeForce 4 video card, etc. (at least then you'd all have a point)
What do you mean, buy added peripherals? I have FFX (almost finished, woohoo!), and they don't even SELL the hard drives here in Australia. The game has full funcationality, in fact from what I read online we actually ended up with a stack more cool things than the US version had (Dark Aeons, Ribbon, etc).
PS2, while an inferior platform, is far cheaper than a PC version.
Incidently, having owned FF8 on both PC and PS1, I would rather play these particular games on Playstation - the PC version sucked.
I think the key factor everybody here is missing is that it's not all about money.
Yes, money pays the bills, but isn't it more important to compare the two job offers based on how you FEEL about working at each company? After all, if they are matching each other dollar for dollar, the issue isn't one of money - it's of loyalty (yours AND theirs), personal preferance, and opportunity.
If you really hated the place you are currently at, you'd jump ship. If the money was the key motivation, we'd be discussing how to leverage these two offers against each other to improve them both. But we're not, and you don't (from the sound of it).
Counter offers can work in your favour - I've been through a couple, and one worked well, the other worked out badly. In the first instance, I was very happy with my job, with the people, and with the company. The second time 'round, I hated the place and it was an awful decision to stay.
My personal opinion is that money is secondary - if I hate a job, there's no amount of money that will compensate me for spending 50-60 hours each week feeling like shit. On this basis, I have progressed my career, made my decisions, and (finally started to) live a happier life.
What an awful concept, you collect your groceries, walk up the the register... I'll let you figure the rest out.
The chances of my putting my eye against a retinal scanner, my fingerprints on some 2-bit companies files, or my DNA into some poorly secured database are ZERO.
How long will it take before a major oil company interferes to the point where the project ceases? Alternative fuels threaten the very existance of the main oil players, and based on previous topics posted to/. (and many other sites), they could find themselves facing a rather forceful opposition.
(for some reason, I equate the oil companies with the record companies. I'm not sure why, perhaps it's their business model or approach to business...)
-- Disclaimer: All comments were made by randomly mashing my forehead against the keyboard - they do not represent the true opinions of myself, my employer, or the garden gnome sitting next to me.
Harsh? He called his users goofballs... that has to be the nicest name I've EVER heard users called!
And he's not "between a rock and a hard place" - he just needs to learn where and when to take out the hammer.
As for publicly insulting his users, he didn't post the name of his workplace... but just so he doesn't feel lonely, I'd love to have a userbase that could be described as merely goofballs.
-- Disclaimer: All comments were made by randomly mashing my forehead against the keyboard - they do not represent the true opinions of myself, my employer, or the garden gnome sitting next to me.
Here's another thought though.... if the staff are all getting away with this on a daily basis, wouldn't this count as an excellent smoke screen for your own P2P/pr0n/chat habits? Naturally, some throttling is required to boost your relative performance versus theirs, but I think you get the idea....
-- Disclaimer: All comments were made by randomly mashing my forehead against the keyboard - they do not represent the true opinions of myself, my employer, or the garden gnome sitting next to me.
You could always just log it all, and generate a handy little database on each of your users. When you get enough info on them, you could be a true BOFH and utilize their browsing/p2p/irc/msn habits for personal gain...
Mind you, that'd be illegal and WRONG, so I can't truly advise doing that. Mind you, an less than ethical BOFH might even be able to isolate two categories of users - say the p2p sharers, and the MSN/chat junkies. On week 1, break P2P by blocking all the ports, and blame some new virus brought in via MSN. Week 2, you break MSN (but re-enable P2P) and blame the P2P users for chewing up all the bandwidth. Rinse, repeat, then sit back and wait for a riot to begin.
-- Disclaimer: All comments were made by randomly mashing my forehead against the keyboard - they do not represent the true opinions of myself, my employer, or the garden gnome sitting next to me.
This opens up a whole different can of worms - just printing out the list and handing it to them (or waving it in their face, or even just generating it in the first place) can be an invasion of privacy. If you can't reliably tie the activities to the person, you risk being accused of defamation, which from what I hear about US law is begging to be sued.
I worked in an education institution a few years ago, and this sort of thing was commonplace. Initially, there were no rules or procedures in place that applied to staff. Students were covered, but staff continued to be a problem. Until formal rules and policies were put in place, there was no real option other than to break the software and plead ignorance.
It was not uncommon for us to hunt down executables that were doing "bad things", and corrupt them. People rarely complained, knowing that they were breaking the law in the first place.
I don't buy IDE drives for my servers because I require features that simply don't exist in the IDE world - RAID5 using more than four disks, and hot-swap.
Performance means next to nothing on the day you have a hard disk failure. On that (rather dark, unfortunate) day, all you really want is to be able to remove the failed disk without an outage, and plug in a fresh one. Show me an IDE RAID solution that supports these requirements, and I'll change my mind.
As for overall speed, there's no doubt in my mind that IDE and SCSI are pretty much equal in a single disk configuration. If you take cost into account, SCSI is a total waste. Going to multiple disks is still hard to justify, unless you bring RAID into the equation.
As with all computer system purchases, the requirements almost always define the solution. Define your requirements carefully, with the right priorities in mind, and the answer will almost always be obvious.
Incidently, I buy SCSI based RAID solutions for production servers, single IDE disks for development (non-production, non-backup servers), and IDE for all workstations (including some extremely high-end graphical workstations).
-- This would be my 2 cents worth, except we don't have 2 cent pieces in Australia any more, and rounding it down makes my opinion worthless!
I probably should have read your followup before I posted, because this one made a lot more sense. Personally, I think the key is picking the area we find the most happiness in. With a bit of luck, that'll be the same area we are actually good at, and if everybody just slots into the profession they are best at, we'll all be a lot better off.
I almost started a rambling rant about the wannabes in IT, the kids who jumped in because the money looked good (and it ain't, no money is worth the stress that IT puts on most young people), but I won't. I just won't. Grrr.
That's funny.... almost every single university lecturer I've ever dealt with was underskilled, illiterate (yes! many could barely communicate), and lacked even the most basic of teaching abilities.
There were certainly a few notable exceptions (truly gifted teachers that may not have had much success in the corporate world, but who could certainly teach), however even these exceptions seemed to demonstrate that good teachers are rarely good consultants.
In Australia, it seems we have more trouble with our University system, what with the number of non-english speaking lecturers, the outdated systems, software, and methodologies being taught.
I pity some of the higher level tech support guys (NT admins, for example), who have to spend their time cleaning up the mistakes of bad programmers (yes, I'm an NT admin, and at least 90% of my work comes from shitty programming - guess I should be grateful eh?)
Lol. Nope, but solutions can be found two ways (in my experience)... firstly, and most commonly, through process, methodology and experience. Secondly, through brilliance.
Nobody is brilliant 100% of the time. If you can't make use of option one in the spaces between your brilliant moments, you aren't much use in the business world.
Now there's a thought. The more I read this thread, the more interested in the subject I'm getting...
Whiteboards are definitely good in grouped areas - we had one in my teams area until somebody (a programming team) stole it!
Pacing seems to be a common theme amongst good techs. All my best geeks are restless buggers. Most of them stand when they're on a tricky phone call, and most walk around while considering solutions.
Here's another factor though - surrounding yourself with likeminded, skilled workers. Nothing kills my mood as fast as incompetence.
Snack machines aren't a distraction - they're fuel.
Pool tables, video games, TV's, etc are distractions. Mind you, I have worked in a company where there was a playstation and TV in the rec room, and it didn't see a hell of a lot of use. It got used a lot after working hours, or during lunch breaks, but people rarely used them during the day.
Munchie machines (and coke machines) should be mandatory in all workplaces!
My workstation at home is far more suited to high productivity than the one I have at the office. Dual monitors are a must, lots of screen realestate to make it easier to view lots of data at once.
Decent sound helps, but lately I find music just slows me down.
And Coke. Lotsa Coke. Diet Coke is not what I'm talking about here, I mean the original thing, in the red can, plenty of suger (not that horrible cancer inducing artificial rubbish).
I thought long and hard before posting this comment... it's a bit on the harsh side, but being a part of the IT industry, I feel I'm entitled to offer an observation (as most/. readers are!)
There are far too many IT employees, especially programmers, who are under the misconception that they are something special. There are many industries and jobs that involve enourmous levels of creativity and innovation, however I can't think of many that contain so many whining graduates.
Take teaching for example. Every day, a teacher is required to educate their students. They don't get the option of saying "I can't find my zone, I'll be back in a few hours". The don't have the option of rearranging their working environment to suit themselves (as opposed to suiting their students/team). Sure, you can point out that teachers are generally following a process that is predefined... so are programmers though.
Looking back within the IT community, take a look at the higher level support engineers. When a server farm catches fire, triggers the sprinklers, and dies a gurgling death, do you really think it would be appropriate for any of them to say "the room just doesn't _feel_ right"? Nope - they have to get the job done.
Programming, for the most part, is a case of following the yellow brick road. The road is paved by your team leaders, in most cases, and when it isn't there is very little stopping programmers from following the processes and methodologies they claim make them special ("I have a DEGREE!").
And what about childcare workers? Have you ever considered what it would be like working in an environment totally designed in favour of creatures half your size? I happen to know one or two of these people, and let me tell you that they never bitch or moan about their working environment not being ideal for their "thought process"!
Face it - we're nothing special. We carry out a job, and not a very hard one at that. Sure, once in a while we need to demonstrate flashes of brilliance, but based on the ones I know, the vast majority of IT workers probably shouldn't have jobs in the first place.
Be grateful you have the opportunity to work in a field that pays well, offers good working environments, decent job security (those who lie to themselves, and believe that we are any less secure than the rest of the world are fools), and cool toys to play with. Personally, I feel lucky to have the opportunity to work within the field.
(Incidently, I sit in a cubicle that is rather small, at a desk that isn't particularly comfortable, with a window behind me that casts glare all over my screen, in an open plan office. I can hear my team chatting with their wives, the aircon is unpredictable, and the lighting annoys me. But I get to work in a field I love. Personally, I think I'm winning here)
Price drops won't save this product in Australia... the biggest customer-base for this sort of product consists of geeks - many of which are currently out of work, job-threatened, or just plain too damn busy to play games right now.
Kids (in Australia at least) don't tend to buy console systems in the XBox's price bracket. Even the PS2 didn't really kick off until it had a huge range of games available to it.
Is it just me, or did Microsoft screw up by not releasing enough games for this platform?
I have to admit, despite being able to stay alert and functional past that shitty 30 hour barrier, things do get very surreal and detached around that point.
I like it when you're working away, it's hour #32, and you notice breathing (but no actual person beside you). Hour #33 rolls around, and you wonder why there is a person there suddenly, accompanying the breathing. When you ask them (usually around hour #34), they point out you've been conversing with them on and off for four hours!
What about those of us who can't handle caffeine? Personally, I can't drink coffee - it causes extremely intense migraines, usually followed by loss of vision. There have been plenty of all-nighters when all I've wanted was a single cup of coffee:(
My job occassionaly (read two or three times a year) requires me to be onsite, alert, productive and at my absolute best for up to 3 days straight. I make it through these with carefully controlled amounts of coca-cola, plenty of appropriate food, and self control. A drug like this could make my life so much more bearable at these rare times.
(incidently, I also suffer from insomnia AND sleep apnia - anything that could help me stay alert and effective during the day wouldn't go astray)
Perhaps the laws are anti-competitive... anybody know anybody at the DOJ to ask?
(I suspect the artists themselves wouldn't see listening to music at work as a public performance - they'd probably see it as a way of having their music played without being interupted/talked over by shitty radio announcers)
Slashdot Mirror
That's strange, because while I have a slightly faster machine (Athlon 1600+), I have a lower spec video card (GeForce 2 MX 400).... I run a dual monitor setup, and frequently have a 1024x768 visualisation running on screen 2 while I work in screen 1. Typically, I'll be working in either my low-spec mentality (word processing), or my high-spec mentality (3D modelling) - in both situations, the visualisations never drop below 25fps.
Perhaps you need to consider installing nVidia drives (since the MS ones sucked pretty badly).
I don't see these hardware requirements as being excessive - A P3/800? A third of the top-of-the-line speed isn't a big ask. A decent video card? All they really ask for is a basic GeForce level card. And 128meg is nothing, given the price of RAM these days.
The rest of the extra requirements are beta requirements obviously - they've probably only had time to test on nVidia cards (since they'd be the most common out there anyway). The hard disk requirements is due to them shipping the beta on CD, not DVD (probably for cost reasons).
If you want to play latest and greatest games, be grateful they aren't asking for latest and greatest hardware. If you cry out at these specs, imagine being asked for a P4/2200, 1gig RAM, GeForce 4 video card, etc. (at least then you'd all have a point)
What do you mean, buy added peripherals? I have FFX (almost finished, woohoo!), and they don't even SELL the hard drives here in Australia. The game has full funcationality, in fact from what I read online we actually ended up with a stack more cool things than the US version had (Dark Aeons, Ribbon, etc).
PS2, while an inferior platform, is far cheaper than a PC version.
Incidently, having owned FF8 on both PC and PS1, I would rather play these particular games on Playstation - the PC version sucked.
I think the key factor everybody here is missing is that it's not all about money.
Yes, money pays the bills, but isn't it more important to compare the two job offers based on how you FEEL about working at each company? After all, if they are matching each other dollar for dollar, the issue isn't one of money - it's of loyalty (yours AND theirs), personal preferance, and opportunity.
If you really hated the place you are currently at, you'd jump ship. If the money was the key motivation, we'd be discussing how to leverage these two offers against each other to improve them both. But we're not, and you don't (from the sound of it).
Counter offers can work in your favour - I've been through a couple, and one worked well, the other worked out badly. In the first instance, I was very happy with my job, with the people, and with the company. The second time 'round, I hated the place and it was an awful decision to stay.
My personal opinion is that money is secondary - if I hate a job, there's no amount of money that will compensate me for spending 50-60 hours each week feeling like shit. On this basis, I have progressed my career, made my decisions, and (finally started to) live a happier life.
An entire industry could spring up, providing customers with gelatin models of their own fingers - to protect against disease!
... that they don't use a semen test instead!
What an awful concept, you collect your groceries, walk up the the register... I'll let you figure the rest out.
The chances of my putting my eye against a retinal scanner, my fingerprints on some 2-bit companies files, or my DNA into some poorly secured database are ZERO.
How long will it take before a major oil company interferes to the point where the project ceases? Alternative fuels threaten the very existance of the main oil players, and based on previous topics posted to /. (and many other sites), they could find themselves facing a rather forceful opposition.
(for some reason, I equate the oil companies with the record companies. I'm not sure why, perhaps it's their business model or approach to business...)
--
Disclaimer: All comments were made by randomly mashing my forehead against the keyboard - they do not represent the true opinions of myself, my employer, or the garden gnome sitting next to me.
Harsh? He called his users goofballs... that has to be the nicest name I've EVER heard users called!
And he's not "between a rock and a hard place" - he just needs to learn where and when to take out the hammer.
As for publicly insulting his users, he didn't post the name of his workplace... but just so he doesn't feel lonely, I'd love to have a userbase that could be described as merely goofballs.
--
Disclaimer: All comments were made by randomly mashing my forehead against the keyboard - they do not represent the true opinions of myself, my employer, or the garden gnome sitting next to me.
Here's another thought though.... if the staff are all getting away with this on a daily basis, wouldn't this count as an excellent smoke screen for your own P2P/pr0n/chat habits? Naturally, some throttling is required to boost your relative performance versus theirs, but I think you get the idea....
--
Disclaimer: All comments were made by randomly mashing my forehead against the keyboard - they do not represent the true opinions of myself, my employer, or the garden gnome sitting next to me.
You could always just log it all, and generate a handy little database on each of your users. When you get enough info on them, you could be a true BOFH and utilize their browsing/p2p/irc/msn habits for personal gain...
Mind you, that'd be illegal and WRONG, so I can't truly advise doing that. Mind you, an less than ethical BOFH might even be able to isolate two categories of users - say the p2p sharers, and the MSN/chat junkies. On week 1, break P2P by blocking all the ports, and blame some new virus brought in via MSN. Week 2, you break MSN (but re-enable P2P) and blame the P2P users for chewing up all the bandwidth. Rinse, repeat, then sit back and wait for a riot to begin.
--
Disclaimer: All comments were made by randomly mashing my forehead against the keyboard - they do not represent the true opinions of myself, my employer, or the garden gnome sitting next to me.
This opens up a whole different can of worms - just printing out the list and handing it to them (or waving it in their face, or even just generating it in the first place) can be an invasion of privacy. If you can't reliably tie the activities to the person, you risk being accused of defamation, which from what I hear about US law is begging to be sued.
I worked in an education institution a few years ago, and this sort of thing was commonplace. Initially, there were no rules or procedures in place that applied to staff. Students were covered, but staff continued to be a problem. Until formal rules and policies were put in place, there was no real option other than to break the software and plead ignorance.
It was not uncommon for us to hunt down executables that were doing "bad things", and corrupt them. People rarely complained, knowing that they were breaking the law in the first place.
Next thing you know, we'll see some figures about lost productivity caused by Slashdot. And we ALL know that's not true, don't we?
I don't buy IDE drives for my servers because I require features that simply don't exist in the IDE world - RAID5 using more than four disks, and hot-swap.
Performance means next to nothing on the day you have a hard disk failure. On that (rather dark, unfortunate) day, all you really want is to be able to remove the failed disk without an outage, and plug in a fresh one. Show me an IDE RAID solution that supports these requirements, and I'll change my mind.
As for overall speed, there's no doubt in my mind that IDE and SCSI are pretty much equal in a single disk configuration. If you take cost into account, SCSI is a total waste. Going to multiple disks is still hard to justify, unless you bring RAID into the equation.
As with all computer system purchases, the requirements almost always define the solution. Define your requirements carefully, with the right priorities in mind, and the answer will almost always be obvious.
Incidently, I buy SCSI based RAID solutions for production servers, single IDE disks for development (non-production, non-backup servers), and IDE for all workstations (including some extremely high-end graphical workstations).
--
This would be my 2 cents worth, except we don't have 2 cent pieces in Australia any more, and rounding it down makes my opinion worthless!
I probably should have read your followup before I posted, because this one made a lot more sense. Personally, I think the key is picking the area we find the most happiness in. With a bit of luck, that'll be the same area we are actually good at, and if everybody just slots into the profession they are best at, we'll all be a lot better off.
I almost started a rambling rant about the wannabes in IT, the kids who jumped in because the money looked good (and it ain't, no money is worth the stress that IT puts on most young people), but I won't. I just won't. Grrr.
That's funny.... almost every single university lecturer I've ever dealt with was underskilled, illiterate (yes! many could barely communicate), and lacked even the most basic of teaching abilities.
There were certainly a few notable exceptions (truly gifted teachers that may not have had much success in the corporate world, but who could certainly teach), however even these exceptions seemed to demonstrate that good teachers are rarely good consultants.
In Australia, it seems we have more trouble with our University system, what with the number of non-english speaking lecturers, the outdated systems, software, and methodologies being taught.
I pity some of the higher level tech support guys (NT admins, for example), who have to spend their time cleaning up the mistakes of bad programmers (yes, I'm an NT admin, and at least 90% of my work comes from shitty programming - guess I should be grateful eh?)
Lol. Nope, but solutions can be found two ways (in my experience)... firstly, and most commonly, through process, methodology and experience. Secondly, through brilliance.
Nobody is brilliant 100% of the time. If you can't make use of option one in the spaces between your brilliant moments, you aren't much use in the business world.
Now there's a thought. The more I read this thread, the more interested in the subject I'm getting...
Whiteboards are definitely good in grouped areas - we had one in my teams area until somebody (a programming team) stole it!
Pacing seems to be a common theme amongst good techs. All my best geeks are restless buggers. Most of them stand when they're on a tricky phone call, and most walk around while considering solutions.
Here's another factor though - surrounding yourself with likeminded, skilled workers. Nothing kills my mood as fast as incompetence.
Snack machines aren't a distraction - they're fuel.
Pool tables, video games, TV's, etc are distractions. Mind you, I have worked in a company where there was a playstation and TV in the rec room, and it didn't see a hell of a lot of use. It got used a lot after working hours, or during lunch breaks, but people rarely used them during the day.
Munchie machines (and coke machines) should be mandatory in all workplaces!
My workstation at home is far more suited to high productivity than the one I have at the office. Dual monitors are a must, lots of screen realestate to make it easier to view lots of data at once. Decent sound helps, but lately I find music just slows me down. And Coke. Lotsa Coke. Diet Coke is not what I'm talking about here, I mean the original thing, in the red can, plenty of suger (not that horrible cancer inducing artificial rubbish).
I thought long and hard before posting this comment... it's a bit on the harsh side, but being a part of the IT industry, I feel I'm entitled to offer an observation (as most /. readers are!)
There are far too many IT employees, especially programmers, who are under the misconception that they are something special. There are many industries and jobs that involve enourmous levels of creativity and innovation, however I can't think of many that contain so many whining graduates.
Take teaching for example. Every day, a teacher is required to educate their students. They don't get the option of saying "I can't find my zone, I'll be back in a few hours". The don't have the option of rearranging their working environment to suit themselves (as opposed to suiting their students/team). Sure, you can point out that teachers are generally following a process that is predefined... so are programmers though.
Looking back within the IT community, take a look at the higher level support engineers. When a server farm catches fire, triggers the sprinklers, and dies a gurgling death, do you really think it would be appropriate for any of them to say "the room just doesn't _feel_ right"? Nope - they have to get the job done.
Programming, for the most part, is a case of following the yellow brick road. The road is paved by your team leaders, in most cases, and when it isn't there is very little stopping programmers from following the processes and methodologies they claim make them special ("I have a DEGREE!").
And what about childcare workers? Have you ever considered what it would be like working in an environment totally designed in favour of creatures half your size? I happen to know one or two of these people, and let me tell you that they never bitch or moan about their working environment not being ideal for their "thought process"!
Face it - we're nothing special. We carry out a job, and not a very hard one at that. Sure, once in a while we need to demonstrate flashes of brilliance, but based on the ones I know, the vast majority of IT workers probably shouldn't have jobs in the first place.
Be grateful you have the opportunity to work in a field that pays well, offers good working environments, decent job security (those who lie to themselves, and believe that we are any less secure than the rest of the world are fools), and cool toys to play with. Personally, I feel lucky to have the opportunity to work within the field.
(Incidently, I sit in a cubicle that is rather small, at a desk that isn't particularly comfortable, with a window behind me that casts glare all over my screen, in an open plan office. I can hear my team chatting with their wives, the aircon is unpredictable, and the lighting annoys me. But I get to work in a field I love. Personally, I think I'm winning here)
Price drops won't save this product in Australia... the biggest customer-base for this sort of product consists of geeks - many of which are currently out of work, job-threatened, or just plain too damn busy to play games right now.
Kids (in Australia at least) don't tend to buy console systems in the XBox's price bracket. Even the PS2 didn't really kick off until it had a huge range of games available to it.
Is it just me, or did Microsoft screw up by not releasing enough games for this platform?
I have to admit, despite being able to stay alert and functional past that shitty 30 hour barrier, things do get very surreal and detached around that point.
I like it when you're working away, it's hour #32, and you notice breathing (but no actual person beside you). Hour #33 rolls around, and you wonder why there is a person there suddenly, accompanying the breathing. When you ask them (usually around hour #34), they point out you've been conversing with them on and off for four hours!
So I assume you avoid asprin, since it too fits into that (very large) category of medicine nobody fully understands, eh?
Face it - doctors barely understand how a lot of effective, common, sometimes life saving drugs work.
What about those of us who can't handle caffeine? Personally, I can't drink coffee - it causes extremely intense migraines, usually followed by loss of vision. There have been plenty of all-nighters when all I've wanted was a single cup of coffee :(
My job occassionaly (read two or three times a year) requires me to be onsite, alert, productive and at my absolute best for up to 3 days straight. I make it through these with carefully controlled amounts of coca-cola, plenty of appropriate food, and self control. A drug like this could make my life so much more bearable at these rare times.
(incidently, I also suffer from insomnia AND sleep apnia - anything that could help me stay alert and effective during the day wouldn't go astray)
Perhaps the laws are anti-competitive... anybody know anybody at the DOJ to ask?
(I suspect the artists themselves wouldn't see listening to music at work as a public performance - they'd probably see it as a way of having their music played without being interupted/talked over by shitty radio announcers)