You too can be completely unemployable in half the time it used to take! Get a completely worthless degree in only two years, instead of the usual four! Skip directy to the head of the unemployment line, beat your friends and get a head start on your slashdot karma and improve your CounterStrike game.
Funny thing though - all the guys that pirated Doom I and II are now 10 years further up the corporate ladder and $55 is, as you say, a speed bump. Little gamer punks are going to pirate it - more power to them, and more power to id in ten years when the gamer punk pirates of 2004 become the well paid consumers of 2014, buying up Doom V in droves because they got hooked on pirated warez (like we did a decade ago on Doom I).
Something tells me that the MSRP is going to be 'street price' until all the crack junkie id fanboys (like me) buy our copy of and remember what it was like to be a 'day one warez d00d'.
Doom I got a chance to revolutionize the gaming industry because they gave it away - so id worked. It is still going to work, even if the pirates need a fatter pipe this time around.
I use the same password on all my systems
on
Fun With Passwords?
·
· Score: 4, Funny
The password I use on all the systems I access is ********
Sorry, but I'm going to have to go with 'What is the throughput of his hard drives?' for $400, Alex.
CPU faster than BUS faster memory faster than hard drive. The gigabit NIC fits in there somewhere between memory and bus, and on different systems you can interchange memory and bus for faster / slower - but the CPU is generally fastest, and the hard drive generally slowest.
On your best day a random IDE drive is going to read or write 30 megs a second (average, on the fairly high side for anything short of SATA or nice SCSI) for completely sequential data in a large contiguous file; that's 240 megabits maximum throughput at the drive heads, or effectively 'wire speed'. That's assuming you are using relatively new hard drives in all these machines.
Throw in all the Samba and other protocol overhead, throw in the fact that you probably aren't running P4 3.2GHz boxes, in fact maybe much less, throw in the lack of a dedicated switch and all of a sudden getting 50% of your theoretical peak throughput (hard drive being the limiting factor, not network) isn't too harsh of a reality.
And it's a 'Windows' box, you stupid fuck. Maybe if Linux users (yea, I'm posting this in Mozilla on a RH9 install) would grow up and learn to spell the word 'Windows', Corporate America wouldn't instantly dismiss Linux users as a bunch of fucking retards. I spend a part of my work day trying to convince my boss that Linux is the choice of a new generation of professionals and every time someone says M$ or 'Windoze' I have to start over from ground zero. If you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
Actually if you buy (or bought) the trilogy on tape, you can download and view those. If anybody ever gives you any shit about it, tell 'em I said it was ok.
OP: Doom III comes out this week. If that doesn't fix your 'I don't wanna do computer stuff no more' blues, then it is time to start a new path in life, one without computers.
I have found that by occasionally buying myself new things like computers, cars, motorcycles, toys, lap-dances, clothes, healthy food, paying my rent and bills, and the like... I can justify to myself the day to day regular job I attend 40-50 hours each week, loving every minute of it (but I'm still new there so give me some time.)
I'm not developing real time guidance systems for rockets, nor count-down or proximity devices for nuclear weapons, nor re-entry modules for NASA - I'm doing IT for an insurance company. Hardly exciting, unless I want to look for reasons to get excited. I got a new AIX box last week, a nice quad CPU toy. Got another new AIX box (quad CPU) the week before that. Got a new laptop this week, with VPN access from the house. So basically they gave me two quad CPU AIX boxes to play with at work / from the house.
And if that wasn't enough, they pay me enough to go out and buy a copy of Doom III this week. Makes it all worth while, when I think about it.
My first system was a Dragon32 if you ever heard of such system.
Oh man, you young kids were spoiled with your fancy 4 voice sound chips, 32K RAM and 16K ROM, Motorola chips running almost a full kilohertz... when I was a kid the PONG game was about our third upgrade. Not the fancy one with the gun either - just plain pong. And we had to work our way up to that one, after years of Etch-a-Sketch and Lite-Brite. Multi-player combat consisted of fist-fights with my brothers when everybody wanted to play pong at the same time.
This Sony seems like a reasonable alternative so long as you don't mind the interface and... their proprietary (file) format
That's like saying prison isn't so bad as long as you don't mind getting fscked up the ass.
Guess what Sony - we mind. We have a zillion songs already on our hard drives in.MP3 format. Our music lives on as data long after the physical media had died / scratched / been lost or stolen.
Easy - hardware that doesn't suck and doesn't cost a thousand fscking dollars. - software that doesn't suck and doesn't do DRM crap. - a display that can be read indoors, outdoors, in darkness or direct sunlight. - decent battery life, with batteries that don't cost a hundred fscking dollars. - see a whole page at once, and still be able to read it. - not fragile. Well nowhere near as fragile as a laptop, for example. As fragile as a PDA is fine. - books that I would actually want to read - this means anything by O'Reilly. - eBook files that don't cost an arm and a leg. - Throw in wifi and an Internet browser, since you already have the display.
It isn't about the hardware. Fsck the computers, I'm more concerned about the DATA.
If someone steals a pair of shoes from the factory, a dozen shoes from the factory... hell if he scores an entire truckload full of Air Jordans... he has your shoes.
If he sneaks out with a CD-R burned with the fiscal / medical / credit card info / complete personal identity and profile of 10,000 Americans he has walked out the door with TEN MILLION DOLLARS under his shirt. And that is being conservative, at $1,000 apiece, roughly the amount each identity theft victim gets hit for on the average each year in the US. God forbid we count up the amount of extortion and really big scores they could get if the took the time to weed through the list.
This isn't about Nike losing a pair of shoes. That's Nike's loss. It is about a company putting YOU in a position to lose a pretty good chunk of your entire net worth. And it's your loss. Big difference.
Equipment exists to drill a water well and get the water to the surface for water tables easily as deep as 1000' (330m) (they do this all the time in the US for people outside of city limits.) Granted, the water tables may be so deep that drilling for water isn't viable... so maybe the real focus ought to be on coming up with a viable water source instead of shipping already grown food half way around the world.
The issue was just as hard to solve in the 1600's when America was settled. It was solved by locating the major cities near water, and using pipelines to move water around when necessary.
I would say the real issues are motivating and educating the populace, and getting them past the break-even point of creating enough food to be self sustaining while resisting the warlords and petty thieves. A culture of social conscience needs to be universal, with everybody committed to helping the collective to a positive effect.
I wish there was a way to put seeds or spuds into the ground (dirt), put some water on them, shoo away the birds and rodents, and a few months or so later collect up baskets full of food. That would solve the hunger problems in Africa for sure.
Naw that would never work. Folks need to understand that food doesn't grow on trees, for Christ's sake.
Actually I doubt she was specifically interested in the physics books, but more or less found you as an opportunistic score. She was looking for easier to sell loot and came across your listing for $1,300 in books, figured that it was worth her 5 minutes to see if she could scam you because if she does succeed she gets free books, and if she doesn't there is absolutely no recourse nor any real punishment for trying. You may not exactly need a new wall poster of Mike Tyson but if the carnie gives you a free dart to throw at the balloon, you will probably give it a throw.
It isn't a coincidence that the highest rates or crime are found in the poorest areas (neighborhoods, cities, countries.) And any country that is a fiscal bargain compared to India is very, very poor.
I will leave the rest of that equation as an exercise for the reader.
Hell, they trust our sensitive data to the Indians in the name of 'saving money' - yea, they will eagerly and happily hand it over to the Nigerians. Because we are going to let them, just like we let them hand it over to the Indians.
The day people start calling in and canceling our accounts and orders because the company has moved 'operations' or 'development' overseas is the day the trend starts to reverse. Until then, expect it to get worse.
First of all - you make it sound like you are making enough money to be worth sticking around in a bad situation for 1 to 2.5 years. Unless you are talking six digits, it probably isn't. If you are worthy of having a submission approved on slashdot, you are probably technically adept enough to find another job.
Second - unless you were in a peachy arrangement with the company and they assigned the new boss to run your group... you are partially responsible. The interview process goes both ways and I have walked away from more than one position because of the lack of chemistry. You pick your boss just as much as your boss picks you. Same deal with a lateral within your company.
Finally, if you think you are going to last 30 months under an abusive boss, you are sadly mistaken. If the boss is harsh on the entire group, he will be replaced. If you are the only one he doesn't get along with, you are being singled out for a reason (even if the reason is simply conflicting personalities.) If you have already had a face to face behind closed doors (regardless of who initiated it) to discuss the friction between the two of you and it didn't get resolved, then you are already being replaced behind the scenes. Get out now, whether you lateral to another position in the company or get hired on at another company. You will do a LOT better for yourself if you are still employed when you are looking for your next company.
One last thing he could try : save the bossman from being gunned down by a raving lunatic. The hardest part about this strategy is arranging for the armed raving lunatic and the boss to be at the same place at the same time. Figure that one out and the rest sort of falls into place.
You have to admit - you save someone from being gunned down by a raving lunatic and you can pretty much write your own ticket after that...
Or you could remember Glonoinha's Rule #32 : don't buy a new video card until a) your old one is no longer fast enough to play the game you want to play, and b) you actually have the game you want to play in your hands (and it doesn't play on your video card.)
I have been chomping at the bit for new hardware for a year now, but as I wasn't installing any new software I decided to wait (it was fast enough for my existing games, etc.) Doom III gets announced, my new P4 2.8GHz w/ HT and a gig of memory arrives and I go out to buy a new fx5900se. Maybe I planned it that way, and maybe I got lucky. Actually I got lucky, but it makes for a good lesson.
If I had bought in December, I would be facing another upgrade.
Shit I moved half way across the country for faster Internet - TWICE (had v.32bis, moved somewhere to get 1.5Mb/s, then moved two years later again half way across the country to get 3.0Mb/s.) Granted both times were to start a new job, but the fat pipe in the new city was a contributing factor for taking the job both times.
Anybody that isn't willing to move one city over to score a decent connection...
Lets say there are three tiers of people: High tech Low tech Aztek
Any time. You would think that people would have figured that one out by themselves by now, but it's only the 21st Century and some folks are still not catching a clue. Nothing wrong with living in a Police State - heck I'm living in America and enjoying it:-)
Could be worse - your government could sensor your Internet access and you wouldn't be able to read what is between the quotes : ""
The UK as in England? You don't live in a police state?
Tell you what : drive down to the local store, bring some money, and buy a nice Sig Sauer P226 9mm pistol. Pick up half a case of 9mm hollowpoint ammunition while you are there, and maybe a nice Remington 870 Express 12 gauge shotgun with a few boxes of 00buck shells.
When you can do that, I will support the 'not a police state' there in England thing. Until then, it is 1984 for you.
For the record, don't feel bad. They can't do what I just described in Boston either - not that Boston is rapidly becoming a police state or anything.
Slashdot Mirror
You too can be completely unemployable in half the time it used to take!
Get a completely worthless degree in only two years, instead of the usual four!
Skip directy to the head of the unemployment line, beat your friends and get a head start on your slashdot karma and improve your CounterStrike game.
Hurry, classes are filling fast.
Funny thing though - all the guys that pirated Doom I and II are now 10 years further up the corporate ladder and $55 is, as you say, a speed bump. Little gamer punks are going to pirate it - more power to them, and more power to id in ten years when the gamer punk pirates of 2004 become the well paid consumers of 2014, buying up Doom V in droves because they got hooked on pirated warez (like we did a decade ago on Doom I).
Something tells me that the MSRP is going to be 'street price' until all the crack junkie id fanboys (like me) buy our copy of and remember what it was like to be a 'day one warez d00d'.
Doom I got a chance to revolutionize the gaming industry because they gave it away - so id worked. It is still going to work, even if the pirates need a fatter pipe this time around.
The password I use on all the systems I access is ********
Sorry, but I'm going to have to go with 'What is the throughput of his hard drives?' for $400, Alex.
CPU faster than BUS faster memory faster than hard drive. The gigabit NIC fits in there somewhere between memory and bus, and on different systems you can interchange memory and bus for faster / slower - but the CPU is generally fastest, and the hard drive generally slowest.
On your best day a random IDE drive is going to read or write 30 megs a second (average, on the fairly high side for anything short of SATA or nice SCSI) for completely sequential data in a large contiguous file; that's 240 megabits maximum throughput at the drive heads, or effectively 'wire speed'. That's assuming you are using relatively new hard drives in all these machines.
Throw in all the Samba and other protocol overhead, throw in the fact that you probably aren't running P4 3.2GHz boxes, in fact maybe much less, throw in the lack of a dedicated switch and all of a sudden getting 50% of your theoretical peak throughput (hard drive being the limiting factor, not network) isn't too harsh of a reality.
And it's a 'Windows' box, you stupid fuck. Maybe if Linux users (yea, I'm posting this in Mozilla on a RH9 install) would grow up and learn to spell the word 'Windows', Corporate America wouldn't instantly dismiss Linux users as a bunch of fucking retards. I spend a part of my work day trying to convince my boss that Linux is the choice of a new generation of professionals and every time someone says M$ or 'Windoze' I have to start over from ground zero. If you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
Actually if you buy (or bought) the trilogy on tape, you can download and view those.
If anybody ever gives you any shit about it, tell 'em I said it was ok.
Cary.Sherman@RIAA.com
OP: Doom III comes out this week.
... I can justify to myself the day to day regular job I attend 40-50 hours each week, loving every minute of it (but I'm still new there so give me some time.)
If that doesn't fix your 'I don't wanna do computer stuff no more' blues, then it is time to start a new path in life, one without computers.
I have found that by occasionally buying myself new things like computers, cars, motorcycles, toys, lap-dances, clothes, healthy food, paying my rent and bills, and the like
I'm not developing real time guidance systems for rockets, nor count-down or proximity devices for nuclear weapons, nor re-entry modules for NASA - I'm doing IT for an insurance company. Hardly exciting, unless I want to look for reasons to get excited. I got a new AIX box last week, a nice quad CPU toy. Got another new AIX box (quad CPU) the week before that. Got a new laptop this week, with VPN access from the house. So basically they gave me two quad CPU AIX boxes to play with at work / from the house.
And if that wasn't enough, they pay me enough to go out and buy a copy of Doom III this week. Makes it all worth while, when I think about it.
My first system was a Dragon32 if you ever heard of such system.
... when I was a kid the PONG game was about our third upgrade. Not the fancy one with the gun either - just plain pong. And we had to work our way up to that one, after years of Etch-a-Sketch and Lite-Brite. Multi-player combat consisted of fist-fights with my brothers when everybody wanted to play pong at the same time.
Oh man, you young kids were spoiled with your fancy 4 voice sound chips, 32K RAM and 16K ROM, Motorola chips running almost a full kilohertz
But yea, I'm looking forward to playing Doom III.
The easiest way to get the real hackers of the world to do something is to declare it 'impossible'.
This Sony seems like a reasonable alternative so long as you don't mind the interface and ... their proprietary (file) format
.MP3 format. Our music lives on as data long after the physical media had died / scratched / been lost or stolen.
That's like saying prison isn't so bad as long as you don't mind getting fscked up the ass.
Guess what Sony - we mind. We have a zillion songs already on our hard drives in
What Will It Take For eBook Adoption?
Easy
- hardware that doesn't suck and doesn't cost a thousand fscking dollars.
- software that doesn't suck and doesn't do DRM crap.
- a display that can be read indoors, outdoors, in darkness or direct sunlight.
- decent battery life, with batteries that don't cost a hundred fscking dollars.
- see a whole page at once, and still be able to read it.
- not fragile. Well nowhere near as fragile as a laptop, for example. As fragile as a PDA is fine.
- books that I would actually want to read - this means anything by O'Reilly.
- eBook files that don't cost an arm and a leg.
- Throw in wifi and an Internet browser, since you already have the display.
It isn't about the hardware. Fsck the computers, I'm more concerned about the DATA.
... hell if he scores an entire truckload full of Air Jordans ... he has your shoes.
If someone steals a pair of shoes from the factory, a dozen shoes from the factory
If he sneaks out with a CD-R burned with the fiscal / medical / credit card info / complete personal identity and profile of 10,000 Americans he has walked out the door with TEN MILLION DOLLARS under his shirt. And that is being conservative, at $1,000 apiece, roughly the amount each identity theft victim gets hit for on the average each year in the US. God forbid we count up the amount of extortion and really big scores they could get if the took the time to weed through the list.
This isn't about Nike losing a pair of shoes. That's Nike's loss.
It is about a company putting YOU in a position to lose a pretty good chunk of your entire net worth. And it's your loss. Big difference.
Equipment exists to drill a water well and get the water to the surface for water tables easily as deep as 1000' (330m) (they do this all the time in the US for people outside of city limits.) Granted, the water tables may be so deep that drilling for water isn't viable ... so maybe the real focus ought to be on coming up with a viable water source instead of shipping already grown food half way around the world.
The issue was just as hard to solve in the 1600's when America was settled. It was solved by locating the major cities near water, and using pipelines to move water around when necessary.
I would say the real issues are motivating and educating the populace, and getting them past the break-even point of creating enough food to be self sustaining while resisting the warlords and petty thieves. A culture of social conscience needs to be universal, with everybody committed to helping the collective to a positive effect.
I wish there was a way to put seeds or spuds into the ground (dirt), put some water on them, shoo away the birds and rodents, and a few months or so later collect up baskets full of food. That would solve the hunger problems in Africa for sure.
Naw that would never work. Folks need to understand that food doesn't grow on trees, for Christ's sake.
Shoulda sent her some P-P-Physics Books!
Actually I doubt she was specifically interested in the physics books, but more or less found you as an opportunistic score. She was looking for easier to sell loot and came across your listing for $1,300 in books, figured that it was worth her 5 minutes to see if she could scam you because if she does succeed she gets free books, and if she doesn't there is absolutely no recourse nor any real punishment for trying. You may not exactly need a new wall poster of Mike Tyson but if the carnie gives you a free dart to throw at the balloon, you will probably give it a throw.
It isn't a coincidence that the highest rates or crime are found in the poorest areas (neighborhoods, cities, countries.)
And any country that is a fiscal bargain compared to India is very, very poor.
I will leave the rest of that equation as an exercise for the reader.
Hell, they trust our sensitive data to the Indians in the name of 'saving money' - yea, they will eagerly and happily hand it over to the Nigerians.
Because we are going to let them, just like we let them hand it over to the Indians.
The day people start calling in and canceling our accounts and orders because the company has moved 'operations' or 'development' overseas is the day the trend starts to reverse. Until then, expect it to get worse.
The guy got the death penalty.
Come to think of it, so did the kid that ripped the guy off over the Internet. Got his mom all fuxored in the process.
Maybe there is a moral to that story.
First of all - you make it sound like you are making enough money to be worth sticking around in a bad situation for 1 to 2.5 years. Unless you are talking six digits, it probably isn't. If you are worthy of having a submission approved on slashdot, you are probably technically adept enough to find another job.
... you are partially responsible. The interview process goes both ways and I have walked away from more than one position because of the lack of chemistry. You pick your boss just as much as your boss picks you. Same deal with a lateral within your company.
Second - unless you were in a peachy arrangement with the company and they assigned the new boss to run your group
Finally, if you think you are going to last 30 months under an abusive boss, you are sadly mistaken. If the boss is harsh on the entire group, he will be replaced. If you are the only one he doesn't get along with, you are being singled out for a reason (even if the reason is simply conflicting personalities.) If you have already had a face to face behind closed doors (regardless of who initiated it) to discuss the friction between the two of you and it didn't get resolved, then you are already being replaced behind the scenes. Get out now, whether you lateral to another position in the company or get hired on at another company. You will do a LOT better for yourself if you are still employed when you are looking for your next company.
Google Cache of the full text of Sun Tzu's The Art of War
One last thing he could try : save the bossman from being gunned down by a raving lunatic. The hardest part about this strategy is arranging for the armed raving lunatic and the boss to be at the same place at the same time. Figure that one out and the rest sort of falls into place.
You have to admit - you save someone from being gunned down by a raving lunatic and you can pretty much write your own ticket after that...
Or you could remember Glonoinha's Rule #32 : don't buy a new video card until a) your old one is no longer fast enough to play the game you want to play, and b) you actually have the game you want to play in your hands (and it doesn't play on your video card.)
I have been chomping at the bit for new hardware for a year now, but as I wasn't installing any new software I decided to wait (it was fast enough for my existing games, etc.) Doom III gets announced, my new P4 2.8GHz w/ HT and a gig of memory arrives and I go out to buy a new fx5900se. Maybe I planned it that way, and maybe I got lucky. Actually I got lucky, but it makes for a good lesson.
If I had bought in December, I would be facing another upgrade.
Shit I moved half way across the country for faster Internet - TWICE (had v.32bis, moved somewhere to get 1.5Mb/s, then moved two years later again half way across the country to get 3.0Mb/s.) Granted both times were to start a new job, but the fat pipe in the new city was a contributing factor for taking the job both times.
...
:
Anybody that isn't willing to move one city over to score a decent connection
Lets say there are three tiers of people
High tech
Low tech
Aztek
Any time. You would think that people would have figured that one out by themselves by now, but it's only the 21st Century and some folks are still not catching a clue. Nothing wrong with living in a Police State - heck I'm living in America and enjoying it :-)
Could be worse - your government could sensor your Internet access and you wouldn't be able to read what is between the quotes : ""
The UK as in England? You don't live in a police state?
Tell you what : drive down to the local store, bring some money, and buy a nice Sig Sauer P226 9mm pistol. Pick up half a case of 9mm hollowpoint ammunition while you are there, and maybe a nice Remington 870 Express 12 gauge shotgun with a few boxes of 00buck shells.
When you can do that, I will support the 'not a police state' there in England thing. Until then, it is 1984 for you.
For the record, don't feel bad. They can't do what I just described in Boston either - not that Boston is rapidly becoming a police state or anything.