What does it matter if Amazon has 100 or 1000 more IT personal than you?
The more I hear about cloud, the more I realize that everyone isn't talking about the same thing and truly doesn't understand it. Are you hosting your applications in someone else's datacenter and still maintaining them yourself? Are you paying someone else to support them? Or are you using hosted applications such as Salesforce.com?
The bottleneck in most part isn't the IT resources, its the failure of management to let their resources do the job properly. So in alot of cases it doesn't matter if you maintain your own server room or in the cloud. If your management won't allow downtime for security patches, or what not, then it doesn't really matter where your applications are. Unless your used hosted applications and have no control.
Cloud has nothing to do with who can do it better, but management taking a layer of risk off their own shoulders and making someone else liable. Speaking as someone who supports applications hosted in the "cloud".
I don't mean to sound insulting, I just don't understand why people have that much storage at home for tv shows/movies? Maybe its just me but I rarely watch something more than once.. There are only a few select movies that I have watched more than once.. Star Wars, LOTR, just to name a couple. So to have that much space holding on to things i'll never watch again, I just don't get it.
On top of that, i've run custom setups and I just got tired of maintaining it. Now with Netflix, US Netflix, Shomi and my PVR I have a long list of content I have to watch. I have been eligible for a new PVR for quite awhile now but I can't seem to clear the backlog.
That depends are you getting the information you need?
Are your business analysts/architects even able to answer questions such as, how many net new users, concurrent users, able to summarize the typical workload? Back in the day and i'm only in my early 40's, this stuff used to be well defined. We used to have large documents which go down to the level of expected network load. So its either as you said, its too difficult given the diversity of the systems or they just don't know how to do their jobs anymore. I honestly think its about a 20/80 split. Yes the environments are more difficult to manage, but BA's/architects haven't adapted or frankly just don't care.
BA's can't give me any information which would help me forsee or estimate how much load a project/change is going to have on the environment. So when i'm asked if we need new hardware, I just usually tell them to make sure they plan a proper load test and be prepared to spend money.
In my company, its my job to make sure lights on runs well and highlight any issues related to capacity. For new projects, then its part of the project team which I may or may not be a part of.
Storage, for us, seems to be the largest constraint, with memory and cpu coming in behind. Since we can't get much information, we just make sure we have all our servers hooked up to a large san so we can quickly provision more space.
Your wife doesn't need to code, thats what the hospital has Business Analysts and an IT department for. The only reason your writing these scripts for her is that it would be too painful/time consuming for her to get this done through the proper channels.
Her time is better spent doing "doctor" stuff, not sitting behind a computer coding. (Unless it was her hobby of course..)
Most jobs don't require any coding skills.. I work in a company of 300 people... We have 6 programmers in amongst 30 IT staff. There are probably another 5-6 people who write a little bit of code here and there as part of their job.. The other 15 or so have absolutely no need. Company wide, the other 270, no need. I've worked for huge IT companies as well, and while the ratio may change, the clear majority were not required to be able to code in any shape or form. So why do we have all these articles about pushing kids to code? Why do people think this will benefit them in any way long term?
There seems to be some confusion that teaching someone to code, will teach them how to use computers.
Some features: PV Huge Pages dtrace ocsf2 btfrs ksplice..
From what I have seen on Oracle systems OEL is better for largest systems with heavy workloads.
If your running Oracle, IMHO it makes sense to run a tuned kernel. If you've already invested in the Oracle stack, then it makes sense to me to run Oracle Linux as well. Why have unnecessary bloat in there? Sure you could always compile and tune it yourself. Any improvements are sent back to kernel.org.
Do you expect them to say open source has a lower TCO? They are bidding/positioning themselves for contracts. If you were a real estate agent on a client interview and asked about a competitor, would you give them a glowing review? I doubt it.
There are many factors which contribute to TCO and the code itself is just one piece.
Security, both OpenSource and Oracle have fallen short in this area. In some cases Oracle has left security bugs sitting for a very long time. Sometimes until called on it publicly. However, with open source your relying on the code maintainers to put in a fix quick. Alot of times they do but that depends on the software and how actively supported it is. Sure, you can modify the code yourself but that affects TCO.
We have both Oracle and open source software in house. Based on our experiences i'm not sure that the open source software has a lower TCO than its more commercial alternative. The upfront costs to open source are cheaper but the long term support costs were higher. Before I get flamed, i'm talking about a particular open source product. Since i'm posting from work i'll leave specifics out of it. But the point is, just because its open source doesn't always mean overall TCO is lower. You have to do the analysis on a product by product basis and factor in both upfront and long term costs.
A week or two??? How many enterprise systems have you installed? I've been on a couple of these implementations and it just takes a team of people many months of work. The larger the company the longer it takes. One install, for a customer with less than 300 employees took 8 months. Its not as simple as you make it out to be.
change for the sake of change. Let me say up front that i've worked in IT for over 15 years. Mostly as a DBA but I did network admin, hardware, development and OS.
I keep hearing how the next version will do X, save Y amount of time and Z money. Won't require as many people to maintain it, etc. Yet it never seems to be the case. Vendors keep us on a continuous upgrade cycle because bug fixes aren't back ported or to get the latest security patches, etc. Managers, architects seem to focus more on resume building than a stable environment.
I can't get any commitment for maintaining production but if i'm an hour late on a project task i'll have an army standing in my cubicle harassing me. I constantly hear developers wanting to go back to the basics because the new piece of software that's supposed to make their life easier isn't as stable.
Yes, I love to play with the latest and greatest features but i'm not sure if from the companies perspective if its always worth the money. I have to say working in IT support can be a very frustrating and stressful job.
We have the Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, PS3, DS XL, DSi, PSP. Old gamer dad, 13 year old daughter who games infrequently.. Mostly the Kinect/Dancing games. 11 year old gamer son.
The Xbox gets used the most, PS3 gets used for netflix (because of the tv its hooked into) and blurays. DSXL haven't seen that one picked up in awhile.. DSi, very rarely. PSP barely used since it was bought, except for some good titles like God of War.
The Wii U has some cool features. The tablet works much better than I thought it would. Some of the games are pretty fun to play, especially the party games where the tablet has a different view. As group play, its probably been the most fun of any console. However, it gets old quick. I think its been a couple of weeks since the Wii U has been on.
I think the Wii was under powered, especially for first person shooters. I think the Wii U has enough power now so that the console can "keep up" and they can focus on game play. Quite honestly, I think the graphics on the Xbox PS3 are fine. The processors are fast enough to provide smoothly play. I'm really not sure what these new systems can do other than make the games prettier. They certainly aren't going to fix the horrible spawning issues in CoD. The maps only seem to have gotten smaller.. No decent MMORPG multiplayer seamless worlds that require extra horsepower, etc.
IMHO Nintendo should have waited and released around the same time, or shortly before with a beefier system for the same price its offering now. There are plenty of one console households around. Your not going to get them to switch until they see what all the systems offer. If at that point the Wii U is slightly less powerful but cheaper, then you may have people switch over to it. If its popular, then common titles like CoD will probably be developed based on the least powerful system, so won't matter if the other consoles are better.
If the new consoles that come out aren't that much more powerful than the Wii U and the Wii U has most of the games, then I won't buy another console. If the next generation of games can't be played on the Wii U, then I'll be buying an Xbox or PS4, not both this time. I think its a gamble for Nintendo because as we have see with the Wii, casual gamers don't buy alot of games. If the Wii U can't play the next gen games then I think its long term success is dismal.
Granted, I don't have the details on the licenses but how exactly is MS losing money? 95% of PC's shipped still have a version of windows on it. Vista was considered a dismal failure and it still brought in a ton of money. Unless new PC's are being shipped with Linux or Mac OS then i'm not sure how MS is not making money?
I went to a resort in Cayo Coco last year. The resort was nice and modern. Took a day trip into Ciego de Avila and it was a different story. The center of the city looks fine but you go a few blocks out of the way and it goes downhill pretty fast. In general everything looked pretty run down, especially on the drive in.
I didn't see as many 1950's cars as I thought I would. I saw plenty of small motor bikes, horses, bikes, etc. Saw newer cars at the resort but don't recall seeing many in the city. I'm sure it would have stood out.
In general it appeared that the vast majority of people lived in or close to poverty. That was reinforced by the many talks we had with Hotel staff and our tour guides. But who knows,they could have been playing us for tips.;) They generally seem to be a very happy bunch of people tho.
Personally I love playing FPS games on a console. While I may not be as accurate as on a PC I find it much more relaxing to play.
I've played my share of FPS games on PC's. From Doom, Quake, America's Army and countless others.
It just comes down to personal preference. The only games I have found that really work better on a PC are RTS games. However, after playing C&C on the xbox, once you got the shortcuts memorized it wasn't too bad at all.
Why on earth would they sell that off? Makes absolutely no sense. This type of reporting is totally and utterly a pile of crap. Must be a slow news day and this guy has an article quota to keep.
I can understand how some of the idealists are upset.. But frankly I could care less.. I've bought a few humble bundles now and the main reason is because a portion of the proceeds (or all if you wish) goes to charity. I also like this pay what you can type model. Quite honestly I haven't played many of the games but if they look semi interesting i'll by them on the off chance I will.
This deal seems to be the best value yet, so I paid more than I normally would.
This is exactly why Google+ has a feature called circles. Given the audience here i'm sure I don't have to go into details.
Unfortunately tho, Google+ hasn't really caught on outside some specific groups such as photographers. As well, while the tech savvy have no issues migrating to yet another social network, the problem is your not going to get most of your 'friends' and family to do so. I'm lucky my mom is on facebook, let alone trying to get her to move to Google+.
Since I live away from most of my family I use facebook to upload pictures of the kids, keep in touch etc. So as long as even a few of them stay on facebook then i'm not going anywhere anytime soon.
So given that, I basically treat facebook as a public bulletin board. I don't say or post anything there that I would be ashamed of saying in front of my mom or boss.
Who plays the same game for 5-6 years? How is having a game for a console any different than an Xbox? If your kids were PC gaming 5-6 years ago chances are you'd still have a ton of games on the shelf. Unless they've been stuck on WoW and only had to buy a few expansions.
Any game after about 2 years is basically worthless. You'll get a couple of bucks trading it in. At least with a console you can easily trade in a game a few months after you bought it for a decent amount. I only keep certain games, like FPS, for a long period of time. Other games, where I don't enjoy the multiplayer or played for the story I trade or sell relatively quickly and get a decent price for them.
Personally I use my xbox for games and more. If I miss a tv show or my PVR acts up, I can download it and stream it to my xbox. You can use it for netflix, hulu, some cable companies have apps, youtube, crackle, etc. IMHO the xbox is well worth the price.
I grew up on Atari 2600 and Vic-20 games. Mobile platform games are light years ahead of those. Today I use mostly my xbox but have a few games on my phone for times i'm stuck in a line somewhere and bored.
I don't think you can predict what types of platforms people will use based on the games they play growing up.
We have quite a few iPads at work... Along with Playbooks, iPhones, Android Phones, BB's, etc.
Playbooks are sitting on shelves and never used... I took one home for my daughter after it was on the shelf for 6 months and she barely uses it. So thats saying something. I never see people in meetings with their playbooks.. I do see the scattered person with their ipad. However, the vast majority still come to meetings with their laptops, even tho they have iPads. Myself included. Most of us also have keyboards for them which in my opinion makes them usable for "creating content".
I use my iPad for when i'm sitting around the house and when i'm on call. Its lighter and easier to carry around than my laptop and has a great battery life. I also use it when i'm at a conference to take notes, look things up, etc for the same reasons. If I want to get any real work done tho, I use my laptop/desktop.
I honestly don't see the take up with mobile devices even tho in reality (as you've said) most people don't need a full computer.
Yes, I have a computer science degree. Maybe if Andrew Oliver went to university he would know that most of us are actually self-taught when it comes to programming. I believe I took 3 courses which taught programming and they were all first/second year. The rest of the courses were on software development, algorithms, graphics programming, etc, etc. The programming courses taught Pascal, PDP-11, etc. For the other courses you could program in any language you wanted. So if you wanted to program C/C++, Java, etc you had to teach yourself, which everyone did.
Now our local college on the other hand, did have a 2 year diploma specifically teaching programming.
Maybe he should learn how to perform an interview. Its not rocket science. Its very easy to tell in a few minutes (if you know what your doing) as to whether or not the applicant knows what they are talking about. Sure, sometimes one will slip by but that's what probationary periods are for.
Some games I play for the story, sometimes for the game play.
For example.. Call of Duty, I rarely play the story mode, just jump straight to multiplayer. However, Gears of War or Uncharted I play for the story. I don't think you generalize and say the focus should be entirely on gameplay.
Just because your sending an IM now, or a tweet, or a facebook group or something doesn't meant someone is sitting on the other end reading it. So how is that different than email? I know people who set their status invisible in IM's because it has gotten so annoying. I find IM's take much longer for me to understand what the person on the other end wants. Typical scenario:
coworker: Hi Me: Hi coworker: typing for seems like an eternity and I know as soon as I switch away that damn taskbar icon will start blinking. I wait, and wait, get annoyed, switch to a new window, blink blink blink!!
Its surprising in this day in age that most IT workers still can't type worth a damn.
For the record, I have never purchased an apple product with my own money. My iphone and ipad was provided by work. As for the ipad, a senior manager didn't want his so I was the lucky recipient and about the only non-manager in our group to have one.
All employee's have laptops instead of desktops now. That was a company initiative years ago and you really don't have a choice in the matter.
Geoffrey.Landis: "What "20%" of my use of a computer am I going to have problems with if I switch to an iPad+keyboard for my portable?"
That 20% is going to be different for most people and depends on how you use a computer day to day. For me its bouncing between ssh sessions, most of our enterprise applications (which I support) won't work on an iPad. I find its great for short duration tasks such as an app server crashing, logging in to take a quick look, restart it, etc. Its great for bringing to meetings to look stuff up quick, meeting materials, etc. I brought it while on vacation last summer and had to login to work for a couple of hours. I could get the job done but it was much more time consuming to do on an ipad.
"Well, maybe because it weighs half as much and has three times the battery lifetime?"
Once you factor in a Zaggmate keyboard, they are pretty close in weight. I haven't used either an ipad or a air until they were drained to do a valid comparison of battery life.
serviscope_minor: "To be fair, a decent 13" laptop with a spare house brick would be easier to tote around than the average 17" laptop."
For sure, I had a Lenovo X200 with an extra battery. Loved it but unfortunately it wasn't fast enough and they replaced it with a T61.
To the Anonymous Coward's:
"Because he his a fucking hipster apple faggot thats why"
As I said, for the record, I have never purchased an apple product. I'm lucky enough to have work provide me with some nice toys. Other than the iPhone, I am not sure I would spend my own money on it. I get the sense your the jealous type who can't afford apple stuff.
"There are so many subnotebooks with ~1kg weights and built-in Ethernet, 3G and even DVD drives. The Air hype is just fanboy self-fellatio."
I'm sure there are.. Just as i'm sure management is just waiting for me to research it and provide them a recommendation. For one, thats not my job, its someone elses. For the uneducated, like yourself, there is much more than picking a piece of hardware and asking management to buy it for you. There are such a thing called support costs.
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What does it matter if Amazon has 100 or 1000 more IT personal than you?
The more I hear about cloud, the more I realize that everyone isn't talking about the same thing and truly doesn't understand it. Are you hosting your applications in someone else's datacenter and still maintaining them yourself? Are you paying someone else to support them? Or are you using hosted applications such as Salesforce.com?
The bottleneck in most part isn't the IT resources, its the failure of management to let their resources do the job properly. So in alot of cases it doesn't matter if you maintain your own server room or in the cloud. If your management won't allow downtime for security patches, or what not, then it doesn't really matter where your applications are. Unless your used hosted applications and have no control.
Cloud has nothing to do with who can do it better, but management taking a layer of risk off their own shoulders and making someone else liable. Speaking as someone who supports applications hosted in the "cloud".
I don't mean to sound insulting, I just don't understand why people have that much storage at home for tv shows/movies? Maybe its just me but I rarely watch something more than once.. There are only a few select movies that I have watched more than once.. Star Wars, LOTR, just to name a couple. So to have that much space holding on to things i'll never watch again, I just don't get it.
On top of that, i've run custom setups and I just got tired of maintaining it. Now with Netflix, US Netflix, Shomi and my PVR I have a long list of content I have to watch. I have been eligible for a new PVR for quite awhile now but I can't seem to clear the backlog.
That depends are you getting the information you need?
Are your business analysts/architects even able to answer questions such as, how many net new users, concurrent users, able to summarize the typical workload? Back in the day and i'm only in my early 40's, this stuff used to be well defined. We used to have large documents which go down to the level of expected network load. So its either as you said, its too difficult given the diversity of the systems or they just don't know how to do their jobs anymore. I honestly think its about a 20/80 split. Yes the environments are more difficult to manage, but BA's/architects haven't adapted or frankly just don't care.
BA's can't give me any information which would help me forsee or estimate how much load a project/change is going to have on the environment. So when i'm asked if we need new hardware, I just usually tell them to make sure they plan a proper load test and be prepared to spend money.
In my company, its my job to make sure lights on runs well and highlight any issues related to capacity. For new projects, then its part of the project team which I may or may not be a part of.
Storage, for us, seems to be the largest constraint, with memory and cpu coming in behind. Since we can't get much information, we just make sure we have all our servers hooked up to a large san so we can quickly provision more space.
So that can only be doing by teaching programming???
I can code in quite a few languages.. how on earth is that going to help me learn how to properly use software for irrigation systems?
Your wife doesn't need to code, thats what the hospital has Business Analysts and an IT department for. The only reason your writing these scripts for her is that it would be too painful/time consuming for her to get this done through the proper channels.
Her time is better spent doing "doctor" stuff, not sitting behind a computer coding. (Unless it was her hobby of course..)
Most jobs don't require any coding skills.. I work in a company of 300 people... We have 6 programmers in amongst 30 IT staff. There are probably another 5-6 people who write a little bit of code here and there as part of their job.. The other 15 or so have absolutely no need. Company wide, the other 270, no need. I've worked for huge IT companies as well, and while the ratio may change, the clear majority were not required to be able to code in any shape or form. So why do we have all these articles about pushing kids to code? Why do people think this will benefit them in any way long term?
There seems to be some confusion that teaching someone to code, will teach them how to use computers.
One based off of RedHats and one based off Kernel.org. The RHEL kernel has alot more code it in, naturally.
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/linux/technologies/uekr2-features-1897094.html
Some features:
PV Huge Pages
dtrace
ocsf2
btfrs
ksplice..
From what I have seen on Oracle systems OEL is better for largest systems with heavy workloads.
If your running Oracle, IMHO it makes sense to run a tuned kernel. If you've already invested in the Oracle stack, then it makes sense to me to run Oracle Linux as well. Why have unnecessary bloat in there? Sure you could always compile and tune it yourself. Any improvements are sent back to kernel.org.
Do you expect them to say open source has a lower TCO? They are bidding/positioning themselves for contracts. If you were a real estate agent on a client interview and asked about a competitor, would you give them a glowing review? I doubt it.
There are many factors which contribute to TCO and the code itself is just one piece.
Security, both OpenSource and Oracle have fallen short in this area. In some cases Oracle has left security bugs sitting for a very long time. Sometimes until called on it publicly. However, with open source your relying on the code maintainers to put in a fix quick. Alot of times they do but that depends on the software and how actively supported it is. Sure, you can modify the code yourself but that affects TCO.
We have both Oracle and open source software in house. Based on our experiences i'm not sure that the open source software has a lower TCO than its more commercial alternative. The upfront costs to open source are cheaper but the long term support costs were higher. Before I get flamed, i'm talking about a particular open source product. Since i'm posting from work i'll leave specifics out of it. But the point is, just because its open source doesn't always mean overall TCO is lower. You have to do the analysis on a product by product basis and factor in both upfront and long term costs.
A week or two??? How many enterprise systems have you installed? I've been on a couple of these implementations and it just takes a team of people many months of work. The larger the company the longer it takes. One install, for a customer with less than 300 employees took 8 months. Its not as simple as you make it out to be.
change for the sake of change. Let me say up front that i've worked in IT for over 15 years. Mostly as a DBA but I did network admin, hardware, development and OS.
I keep hearing how the next version will do X, save Y amount of time and Z money. Won't require as many people to maintain it, etc. Yet it never seems to be the case. Vendors keep us on a continuous upgrade cycle because bug fixes aren't back ported or to get the latest security patches, etc. Managers, architects seem to focus more on resume building than a stable environment.
I can't get any commitment for maintaining production but if i'm an hour late on a project task i'll have an army standing in my cubicle harassing me. I constantly hear developers wanting to go back to the basics because the new piece of software that's supposed to make their life easier isn't as stable.
Yes, I love to play with the latest and greatest features but i'm not sure if from the companies perspective if its always worth the money. I have to say working in IT support can be a very frustrating and stressful job.
We have the Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, PS3, DS XL, DSi, PSP. Old gamer dad, 13 year old daughter who games infrequently.. Mostly the Kinect/Dancing games. 11 year old gamer son.
The Xbox gets used the most, PS3 gets used for netflix (because of the tv its hooked into) and blurays. DSXL haven't seen that one picked up in awhile.. DSi, very rarely. PSP barely used since it was bought, except for some good titles like God of War.
The Wii U has some cool features. The tablet works much better than I thought it would. Some of the games are pretty fun to play, especially the party games where the tablet has a different view. As group play, its probably been the most fun of any console. However, it gets old quick. I think its been a couple of weeks since the Wii U has been on.
I think the Wii was under powered, especially for first person shooters. I think the Wii U has enough power now so that the console can "keep up" and they can focus on game play. Quite honestly, I think the graphics on the Xbox PS3 are fine. The processors are fast enough to provide smoothly play. I'm really not sure what these new systems can do other than make the games prettier. They certainly aren't going to fix the horrible spawning issues in CoD. The maps only seem to have gotten smaller.. No decent MMORPG multiplayer seamless worlds that require extra horsepower, etc.
IMHO Nintendo should have waited and released around the same time, or shortly before with a beefier system for the same price its offering now. There are plenty of one console households around. Your not going to get them to switch until they see what all the systems offer. If at that point the Wii U is slightly less powerful but cheaper, then you may have people switch over to it. If its popular, then common titles like CoD will probably be developed based on the least powerful system, so won't matter if the other consoles are better.
If the new consoles that come out aren't that much more powerful than the Wii U and the Wii U has most of the games, then I won't buy another console. If the next generation of games can't be played on the Wii U, then I'll be buying an Xbox or PS4, not both this time. I think its a gamble for Nintendo because as we have see with the Wii, casual gamers don't buy alot of games. If the Wii U can't play the next gen games then I think its long term success is dismal.
Granted, I don't have the details on the licenses but how exactly is MS losing money? 95% of PC's shipped still have a version of windows on it. Vista was considered a dismal failure and it still brought in a ton of money. Unless new PC's are being shipped with Linux or Mac OS then i'm not sure how MS is not making money?
I went to a resort in Cayo Coco last year. The resort was nice and modern. Took a day trip into Ciego de Avila and it was a different story. The center of the city looks fine but you go a few blocks out of the way and it goes downhill pretty fast. In general everything looked pretty run down, especially on the drive in.
I didn't see as many 1950's cars as I thought I would. I saw plenty of small motor bikes, horses, bikes, etc. Saw newer cars at the resort but don't recall seeing many in the city. I'm sure it would have stood out.
In general it appeared that the vast majority of people lived in or close to poverty. That was reinforced by the many talks we had with Hotel staff and our tour guides. But who knows,they could have been playing us for tips. ;) They generally seem to be a very happy bunch of people tho.
Personally I love playing FPS games on a console. While I may not be as accurate as on a PC I find it much more relaxing to play.
I've played my share of FPS games on PC's. From Doom, Quake, America's Army and countless others.
It just comes down to personal preference. The only games I have found that really work better on a PC are RTS games. However, after playing C&C on the xbox, once you got the shortcuts memorized it wasn't too bad at all.
Why on earth would they sell that off? Makes absolutely no sense. This type of reporting is totally and utterly a pile of crap. Must be a slow news day and this guy has an article quota to keep.
I can understand how some of the idealists are upset.. But frankly I could care less.. I've bought a few humble bundles now and the main reason is because a portion of the proceeds (or all if you wish) goes to charity. I also like this pay what you can type model. Quite honestly I haven't played many of the games but if they look semi interesting i'll by them on the off chance I will.
This deal seems to be the best value yet, so I paid more than I normally would.
This is exactly why Google+ has a feature called circles. Given the audience here i'm sure I don't have to go into details.
Unfortunately tho, Google+ hasn't really caught on outside some specific groups such as photographers. As well, while the tech savvy have no issues migrating to yet another social network, the problem is your not going to get most of your 'friends' and family to do so. I'm lucky my mom is on facebook, let alone trying to get her to move to Google+.
Since I live away from most of my family I use facebook to upload pictures of the kids, keep in touch etc. So as long as even a few of them stay on facebook then i'm not going anywhere anytime soon.
So given that, I basically treat facebook as a public bulletin board. I don't say or post anything there that I would be ashamed of saying in front of my mom or boss.
Who plays the same game for 5-6 years? How is having a game for a console any different than an Xbox? If your kids were PC gaming 5-6 years ago chances are you'd still have a ton of games on the shelf. Unless they've been stuck on WoW and only had to buy a few expansions.
Any game after about 2 years is basically worthless. You'll get a couple of bucks trading it in. At least with a console you can easily trade in a game a few months after you bought it for a decent amount. I only keep certain games, like FPS, for a long period of time. Other games, where I don't enjoy the multiplayer or played for the story I trade or sell relatively quickly and get a decent price for them.
Personally I use my xbox for games and more. If I miss a tv show or my PVR acts up, I can download it and stream it to my xbox. You can use it for netflix, hulu, some cable companies have apps, youtube, crackle, etc. IMHO the xbox is well worth the price.
I grew up on Atari 2600 and Vic-20 games. Mobile platform games are light years ahead of those. Today I use mostly my xbox but have a few games on my phone for times i'm stuck in a line somewhere and bored.
I don't think you can predict what types of platforms people will use based on the games they play growing up.
We have quite a few iPads at work... Along with Playbooks, iPhones, Android Phones, BB's, etc.
Playbooks are sitting on shelves and never used... I took one home for my daughter after it was on the shelf for 6 months and she barely uses it. So thats saying something. I never see people in meetings with their playbooks.. I do see the scattered person with their ipad. However, the vast majority still come to meetings with their laptops, even tho they have iPads. Myself included. Most of us also have keyboards for them which in my opinion makes them usable for "creating content".
I use my iPad for when i'm sitting around the house and when i'm on call. Its lighter and easier to carry around than my laptop and has a great battery life. I also use it when i'm at a conference to take notes, look things up, etc for the same reasons. If I want to get any real work done tho, I use my laptop/desktop.
I honestly don't see the take up with mobile devices even tho in reality (as you've said) most people don't need a full computer.
Yes, I have a computer science degree. Maybe if Andrew Oliver went to university he would know that most of us are actually self-taught when it comes to programming. I believe I took 3 courses which taught programming and they were all first/second year. The rest of the courses were on software development, algorithms, graphics programming, etc, etc. The programming courses taught Pascal, PDP-11, etc. For the other courses you could program in any language you wanted. So if you wanted to program C/C++, Java, etc you had to teach yourself, which everyone did.
Now our local college on the other hand, did have a 2 year diploma specifically teaching programming.
Maybe he should learn how to perform an interview. Its not rocket science. Its very easy to tell in a few minutes (if you know what your doing) as to whether or not the applicant knows what they are talking about. Sure, sometimes one will slip by but that's what probationary periods are for.
Some games I play for the story, sometimes for the game play.
For example.. Call of Duty, I rarely play the story mode, just jump straight to multiplayer. However, Gears of War or Uncharted I play for the story. I don't think you generalize and say the focus should be entirely on gameplay.
Just because your sending an IM now, or a tweet, or a facebook group or something doesn't meant someone is sitting on the other end reading it. So how is that different than email? I know people who set their status invisible in IM's because it has gotten so annoying. I find IM's take much longer for me to understand what the person on the other end wants. Typical scenario:
coworker: Hi
Me: Hi
coworker: typing for seems like an eternity and I know as soon as I switch away that damn taskbar icon will start blinking. I wait, and wait, get annoyed, switch to a new window, blink blink blink!!
Its surprising in this day in age that most IT workers still can't type worth a damn.
For the record, I have never purchased an apple product with my own money. My iphone and ipad was provided by work. As for the ipad, a senior manager didn't want his so I was the lucky recipient and about the only non-manager in our group to have one.
All employee's have laptops instead of desktops now. That was a company initiative years ago and you really don't have a choice in the matter.
Geoffrey.Landis:
"What "20%" of my use of a computer am I going to have problems with if I switch to an iPad+keyboard for my portable?"
That 20% is going to be different for most people and depends on how you use a computer day to day. For me its bouncing between ssh sessions, most of our enterprise applications (which I support) won't work on an iPad. I find its great for short duration tasks such as an app server crashing, logging in to take a quick look, restart it, etc. Its great for bringing to meetings to look stuff up quick, meeting materials, etc. I brought it while on vacation last summer and had to login to work for a couple of hours. I could get the job done but it was much more time consuming to do on an ipad.
"Well, maybe because it weighs half as much and has three times the battery lifetime?"
Once you factor in a Zaggmate keyboard, they are pretty close in weight. I haven't used either an ipad or a air until they were drained to do a valid comparison of battery life.
serviscope_minor:
"To be fair, a decent 13" laptop with a spare house brick would be easier to tote around than the average 17" laptop."
For sure, I had a Lenovo X200 with an extra battery. Loved it but unfortunately it wasn't fast enough and they replaced it with a T61.
To the Anonymous Coward's:
"Because he his a fucking hipster apple faggot thats why"
As I said, for the record, I have never purchased an apple product. I'm lucky enough to have work provide me with some nice toys. Other than the iPhone, I am not sure I would spend my own money on it. I get the sense your the jealous type who can't afford apple stuff.
"There are so many subnotebooks with ~1kg weights and built-in Ethernet, 3G and even DVD drives. The Air hype is just fanboy self-fellatio."
I'm sure there are.. Just as i'm sure management is just waiting for me to research it and provide them a recommendation. For one, thats not my job, its someone elses. For the uneducated, like yourself, there is much more than picking a piece of hardware and asking management to buy it for you. There are such a thing called support costs.