I think an easy solution to the situation is to create more tier 0 sets. One for each spec tree for each class. Add a few 5-10 man dungeons within which certain bosses drop said items (maybe make a few drop off of Strat, Scholo, etc). The casual player can get a decent blue item in a few hours of gameplay.
That should solve the problem for a number of months. The casual players get more content and the hardcore gamer keeps what's important to them, the differentiation between casual and hardcore players based upon the color of their item names.
Cyan closed due to lack of funding. They had additional projects planned but tried for about a year to find funding for them. I don't doubt any of the projects kicked ass but studios like Cyan will always fight Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention: Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will reject the proposal. Innovators always will fight RLoI.
Of course, Cyan's recent MMO failure may have scared off investors. I only know this crap from a source within Cyan but I'm scarce on details beyond this. Maybe someone from Cyan can comment?
Our shop deploys Debian in house whenever we get a chance. There's something to be said about a true concern for stability and hardware compatibility. Unfortunately, Debian ends with our in-house servers. Most of our clients really to prefer to hear the name Red Hat mentioned in conjunction with Linux. Red Hat offers support, something that is very appreciated by business types (not that they'd ever had to go beyond us for support). If someone has heard of Linux, then they've invariably heard of Red Hat.
Debian is a legitimate distro but it will stay a margin player. Marginalization of non-commercial offerings appears to be an emergent property of the growing popularity of Linux.
For what it's worth, it wouldn't hurt Debian to release something. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Debian Unstable is ready for "mass" consumption. Caution is one thing but Debian borders on the fascist side of conservativeness.;)
Re:I would buy a Mac...
on
Return of the Mac
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I would be careful about purchasing g3 iBooks. I have owned two g3 iBooks and they both have had logic board issues that are not covered under Apple's logic board repair program. The overall quality of g3 iBook's are suspect in my book and you may just want to save a bit and just buy a g4 instead.
OS X runs great on the g3 iBooks provided you have 256 MB of RAM. 128 MB runs OS X but not much more. I could keep a browser of varying flavor open, iTunes, and one other app (Mathematica, et cetera) open before experiencing significant slow down. I really like iBooks but "caveat emptor" if you seek to buy an older model.
I'm surprised that one would have a six year struggle with Linux and not find a distro that fit their needs. Likewise, six years is a long time to be unable to learn how the operating system works.
I'm not attacking you as a person but how much of an investment did you make into Linux? There was a time for me, as a user, that learning Windows required an investment of time. It was frustrating but I did it because I had to. When I migrated to Linux, it was frustrating but I did it because I wanted to. Has this been 6 years of true investment or 6 years of dabbling? There's a strong difference there.
Regardless, I hope you eventually find a distro that you like. Linux is an exciting operating system that with sufficient investment, can turn into the most mallable OS I've ever encountered.
I agree 100%. Well, maybe 50%. I learned and continue to learn Linux on Slackware machines. I've have a Gentoo and Fedora Core test box as well at home too. At work, however; my workstation is a Fedora Core box. I keep my box up to date with apt-get and the administration is relatively pain free. That's one thing that some people may miss, if you're administrating servers the last thing you need to be doing is fiddling to get something to work. As a double bonus, there's a couple of boxes that run Red Hat Enterprise Linux here and having a Fedora Core workstation helps me prepare for any gotchas that RHEL may have.
On everything else we run Debian or Free BSD. The stability and security is really nice and quite important. Oh, we do have one Gentoo box but it's internal only.
I personally feel that Slackware is my one true distro. I've used it for years and I'm quite fond of it but having a Fedora box for work is for the best.
There is a time and a place to outsource. I work for a small business (8 employees) doing web application development work. We also provide shared hosting environments for customers that don't have the infrastructure for dedicated hosting or don't care to pay the recurring costs colocating. Once these companies are in place, there is residual support that needs to take place. New employees need help with their mail client, et cetera. It's perfectly reasonable for a business such as ours to find outsourced technical support. We did do so (the company wasn't in India).
The results have been mixed; the outsourced employees fail to correctly troubleshoot symptoms and pass them along sometimes, et cetera. One can say that is true for most tech support deparments. What was gained was more than an increased bottom line. The two system administrators (myself and someone else) are now able to perform true systems work without getting nickel dimed by every Outlook user. Going to work is much more rewarding than it was in the past.
Could we have hired our own support technicians? No. Shared hosting is a marginal business and we lacked the critical mass to make it more than nominally profitable. It was the best possible solution for our needs and business model.
Is this story all fluff and happiness? Absolutely not. Our outsourced representatives are hard to manage. The managers and owners are sometimes hard to get a hold of. Furthermore, we sometimes feel that support is escalated expressly for the purpose of keeping time on the phones minimized. When the honeymoon effect wore off between our two companies and the situation began to turn dire, we made a veiled statement at having to look elsewhere and things improve immediately. For a situation where final payment has been made, the options are few. Perhaps a statement that if this work isn't completed fully then further business from your company is unlikely as are referrals. Appeal to their bottom line. Sometimes it's the only language a company will speak.
In addition to the excellent above points, obfuscating the changelog also hurts his project. The true foundation of open source is the ability for Joe Coder to submit patches and additions to the project. He will limit others abilities and/or willingness to commit code to his project.
The unfortunate aspect of an Ask Slashdot like this is we don't know the other developer's story. The developer has probably missed the point of open source and he's might even be a complete jackass but ultimately he's not here to defend himself. He may have some points missed by the author by mere nature of author's own subjectivity.
That said, I'd keep on keepin' on. You are well within your rights to use code as long as it's credited. Furthermore, I think it's ethical and in keeping with the spirit of the GPL and open source culture to apply code that makes your application better. The point is to collaborate and make software that Sucks Less.
I guess it all depends on what you're using it for. If I have to forward X, it follows that the application I am using is either not my current host or is not available to be done from a vanilla SSH session. Instances of usage include using StarOffice, Mozilla, and even XMMS. There were very legitimate reasons for using each of these applications at the time (well, except XMMS). It is noted that VNC requires fewer roundtrips than X, hence high bandwidth applications appear faster when using VNC despite having to account for an entire desktop environment.
So, no, I'm not kidding. Here's a quote from this article I found while looking for evidence to support my stance, "When using X, I always make sure to turn compression on with the -C option (Compression yes in the config file), as X is bandwidth intensive, to put it politely. With compression on and a fast cipher such as blowfish (the default for recent versions of OpenSSH), Netscape is just about usable over a ten-megabit network. Without compression, it is rather painful, and I would certainly recommend against running any complex X application over less then ten megabits."
Agreed. There are plenty of situations like the one you describe where this is appropriate over a Live CD such as Knoppix or where Cygwin/X forwarding is needed over VNC. I don't think that the developers wasted their time at all. This is a tool worth downloading and putting onto a CD just in case.
Personally, I believe that when the situations where I do need open source tools on a CD arise, that Knoppix will probably fit the bill fine. But what's a couple of cents and some time spent downloading for those rarer situations?
My experience has been that VNC is less bandwidth intensive which can be real handy if you're working in an environment without business/commercial connectivity. I've found myself in that situation a couple of times here in Alaska where bandwidth is kind of expensive.
I imagine there's times when one would want their entire session encrypted beyond the authentication process and forwarding X is great for that. Many individuals are less security conscious and would probably have a better experience with VNC
I would argue that certain distributions are usable by Joe Sixpack if they don't have to unlearn any computing habits instilled by using alternate operating systems. I have a brother in law who doesn't care one wit about computing. He's a pretty average high school kid. He uses apps provided by KDE under SuSe to surf the web, check his email, write his term papers, et cetera. I installed it for him one day and have answered one question since then regarding it. It just kind of works for him.
I know it's anecdotal evidence but that's what most of us have, especially when the vast majority of searchable and citable evidence regarding open source is TCO studies sponsored by third parties with a vested interest in the outcome. Those studies focus on a completely different environment.
On topic: I'm glad that MS has thrown its hat into the desktop search ring. I think that search is a much needed feature for that Windows. Finding a file in Windows seems unreasonably resource intensive. Likewise, there's nothing like downloading a file and forgetting where IE tossed it and you're fumbling about your OS to find it. No, not me, I don't do Windows. Friends.
Best free software out there, if you ask me. Just make sure you set it up to never die (windows service options: on fail, reset..)
No more running home to fix anything... even printer diagnostics can usually be fixed via phone (unless its some weird HW anomaly..)
I won't set up a dependant (on me) user without it.
Agreed. There is the mentioned issue with Internet connectivity but most of the time, the Internet not's the problem and if it is, then I can use the "call your tech support" egress if I'm busy or just not feeling like dealing with Windows-isms.
On that note, I try to install Suse on every computer I can. My brother in law uses SuSe. He's a complete computer noob so he didn't have to unlearn much. He was also receptive to things like having to type in a root password when attempting to install software from Yast. His parents, on the other hand, stuck with Windows so they didn't have to fight with getting their digital-camera to work. Of all the support I've handled from my in-laws, I've only had to support the SuSe install once.
Is it with the state or a private company? There's good jobs to be had up here if you are patient and continue to invest in your skillset. Either way, congratulations on the job. Juneau is a nice little town but it's very political; it's to be expected as it's the capitol. You'll see what I mean when you get there. I've had some friends work down there and their advice is to keep your head low when the talk turns to politics. Good advice in most work environments but especially so down there I understand.
Tech jobs here are few and far between. The two ISPs here, ACS and GCI are the two biggest players outside of the state for tech jobs. Turnover is slow because there's not much to move into. Leaving Alaska for a job is tougher than elsewhere (except possibly Hawaii) due to distances. Moving in and out of Alaska is expensive with respect to time and money. For many folks, getting a tech job is a waiting game.
Corporations and locals governments aren't really interested in Alaska from a tech standpoint. Alaska, by and large, has a higher cost of living (about 30% average state-side average). That excuse only seems to go so far, especially when there's still 600,000 people living in Alaska. With the median income being about 50ka year, Alaska has high computer ownership than most other states(sorry no figures, just winging that one from memory), one would believe that there'd be ample market to exploit. With corporations and local government possessing slow turn-over and little growth in Alaska otherwise, getting a tech job is kind of hard.
Personal note: I have a tech job and I'm very happy with it. It was highly contested and I was hired in part due to my knowledge of Linux but that's a discussion for another topic.
Linux jobs really have very little to do with the desktop. Most desktop jobs will be with respect to software development and support. The former currently offers little monetary incentive as many have noted while the latter is an immense undertaking that few engage in unless it's within the enterprise environment. Building a prepackaged Linux PC your wife can use offers little immediate reward. Desktop usability will be slow growth, as it has been.
On an aside, I have complete non-geek relatives using Suse 9.0 with little trouble, nor more they'd experience in different ways with a Windows desktop.
It appears that most available Linux jobs are systems positions. A quick survey from the mentioned job site the article, Dice.com, shows a great number of systems development or administration jobs compared to desktop development and support. No need for a pretty prepackaged distro there.
I'm currently a system adminstrator for a small web hosting company, and we have about twenty systems, and only three of them run Windows server. When I was hired, IIS experience was a plus but not needed. We even had a bit of a laugh at its expense. They were looking for strong Linux skills and logical thinking. I have to learn IIS on the way now and it is challenging. It's even a bit of fun. Also, the documentation availability isn't quite like it is for Linux systems.
My biggest mistake was dropping Slackware into my CD drive and turning my computer on (all by accident!). Now, I spend myself tinkering with configuration files, downloading programs from Sourceforge, reading man pages, and generally wasting my time.
To quote the Lego Guy quoting British highbrow Bertrand Russell, "Time you enjoy wasting isn't wasted time". I kid, I don't consider it wasted time.
Unfortunately, I've screwed systems up so bad so many times over the few years that I've been using Linux that I can't list them. I know that almost every single one of them was fixable had I backed up the file I was screwing with. I think after a year or so of increasing knowledge and increasingly devastating screw-ups that comes with increasing awareness, I've finally learned to back up my files with regularity.
All new Linux users, pay heed, back up your files! man tar.:)
It does but in such a way that would keep an individual such as myself away. Now, granted I haven't installed Cedega yet but Hearts of Iron had pointer speed slow down at times. Same thing for Warcraft 3. I had huge issues with Steam and Counter-Strike/Day of Defeat with WineX 3 where I had framerates of 3-7 fps whereas under Windows XP, it averages 60-70 fps. Transgaming's support asks for me to install the latest version and try it. I will eventually.
I'm unfortunately addicted to Hearts of Iron which runs decently enough under WineX 3.
I also read Scientific American but it's kind of sensationalistic. I have a guilty pleasure of reading Wired, "Linus Torvalds, Leader of the Free World - His open source software is making Bill Gates sweat. What's next: Open Source science, law, and design". After reading that article , it's hard not to imagine him laughing after reading it.
I'd probably subscribe to an dead tree tech Linux journal but what's online seems sufficient.
Unfortunately, it probably will be hard for hobbyists to gain any sort popular sympathy. For every person with a degree of common sense there's two that believe that government initiatives such as these will help keep terrorists at bay...
Further, it seems that some of the powers that be believe this stuff works. For me, that's alarming.
My mother was diagnosed with schizo-effective disorder when I was very young. With the right prescriptions and the regular intake, one can lead a relatively normal life. The impact that it had on myself and my siblings is that one really has to have check up and make sure that the medication is being taken at regular intervals.
The biggest impact, is now that everyone's up and moved out, someone from family must always stay in town to keep an eye on her. That also means being prepared to drop everything you're doing for about 24 hours during a breakdown. The legal system is a reactive entity. That means that one has a choice of either spending quite a bit of time attempting to get someone submitted based upon symptoms the legal system won't necessarily view as insanity or waiting for that person to hurt themselves or someone else. There's no clean method for dealing with someone who's stopping take their meds and is on that slippery slope to mental breakdown.
Oh, yea. In my experience, schizos are pretty crafty about hiding their lack of medicine intake.
There's always the possibility of working on an open source project. Granted, as a network engineer it's not very likely you know any programming languages but even some network troubleshooting scripts written in Perl that are publicly viewable probably would help.
I've only known one person to do that personally. He's also a sysadmin for the ISP I work at. He's since moved off of network troubleshooting and develops customer facing apps and toolsets for different groups but he started out doing network type stuff early on. It's not easy to get that kind of job here in Alaska, supply outstrips demand so that example does have a bit of relevance.
Certification won't set you apart but maybe having a couple of simple open source apps the interviewers can see might. It'll also demonstrate you're a self starter (although they should know that by the number of certs you have). You're fighting against a pretty shitty time to be in the IT industry though. Good luck.
Winamp's a good thing. Gnutella was even better. I think that was his best project yet. The part of this state of affairs that I believe makes the RIAA so upset is that they do not control the technology, and given recentrulings, containing the technology will prove difficult as well.
In fact, if anything, by decentralizing the technology, Frankel has helped the RIAA spend copious amounts of money on legal fees chasing individuals (I doubt the lawyers are working pro-bono. I also doubt that the entirety of their payments will come from settlements/legal winnings) instead of facing down corporations like Napster
Slashdot Mirror
I think an easy solution to the situation is to create more tier 0 sets. One for each spec tree for each class. Add a few 5-10 man dungeons within which certain bosses drop said items (maybe make a few drop off of Strat, Scholo, etc). The casual player can get a decent blue item in a few hours of gameplay.
That should solve the problem for a number of months. The casual players get more content and the hardcore gamer keeps what's important to them, the differentiation between casual and hardcore players based upon the color of their item names.
Cyan closed due to lack of funding. They had additional projects planned but tried for about a year to find funding for them. I don't doubt any of the projects kicked ass but studios like Cyan will always fight Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention: Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will reject the proposal. Innovators always will fight RLoI.
Of course, Cyan's recent MMO failure may have scared off investors. I only know this crap from a source within Cyan but I'm scarce on details beyond this. Maybe someone from Cyan can comment?
Our shop deploys Debian in house whenever we get a chance. There's something to be said about a true concern for stability and hardware compatibility. Unfortunately, Debian ends with our in-house servers. Most of our clients really to prefer to hear the name Red Hat mentioned in conjunction with Linux. Red Hat offers support, something that is very appreciated by business types (not that they'd ever had to go beyond us for support). If someone has heard of Linux, then they've invariably heard of Red Hat.
Debian is a legitimate distro but it will stay a margin player. Marginalization of non-commercial offerings appears to be an emergent property of the growing popularity of Linux.
For what it's worth, it wouldn't hurt Debian to release something. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Debian Unstable is ready for "mass" consumption. Caution is one thing but Debian borders on the fascist side of conservativeness. ;)
I would be careful about purchasing g3 iBooks. I have owned two g3 iBooks and they both have had logic board issues that are not covered under Apple's logic board repair program. The overall quality of g3 iBook's are suspect in my book and you may just want to save a bit and just buy a g4 instead.
OS X runs great on the g3 iBooks provided you have 256 MB of RAM. 128 MB runs OS X but not much more. I could keep a browser of varying flavor open, iTunes, and one other app (Mathematica, et cetera) open before experiencing significant slow down. I really like iBooks but "caveat emptor" if you seek to buy an older model.
I'm surprised that one would have a six year struggle with Linux and not find a distro that fit their needs. Likewise, six years is a long time to be unable to learn how the operating system works.
I'm not attacking you as a person but how much of an investment did you make into Linux? There was a time for me, as a user, that learning Windows required an investment of time. It was frustrating but I did it because I had to. When I migrated to Linux, it was frustrating but I did it because I wanted to. Has this been 6 years of true investment or 6 years of dabbling? There's a strong difference there.
Regardless, I hope you eventually find a distro that you like. Linux is an exciting operating system that with sufficient investment, can turn into the most mallable OS I've ever encountered.
My apologies for the weird formatting. I've never seen Konqueror do that before. C'est la vie.
I agree 100%. Well, maybe 50%. I learned and continue to learn Linux on Slackware machines. I've have a Gentoo and Fedora Core test box as well at home too. At work, however; my workstation is a Fedora Core box. I keep my box up to date with apt-get and the administration is relatively pain free. That's one thing that some people may miss, if you're administrating servers the last thing you need to be doing is fiddling to get something to work. As a double bonus, there's a couple of boxes that run Red Hat Enterprise Linux here and having a Fedora Core workstation helps me prepare for any gotchas that RHEL may have.
On everything else we run Debian or Free BSD. The stability and security is really nice and quite important. Oh, we do have one Gentoo box but it's internal only.
I personally feel that Slackware is my one true distro. I've used it for years and I'm quite fond of it but having a Fedora box for work is for the best.
There is a time and a place to outsource. I work for a small business (8 employees) doing web application development work. We also provide shared hosting environments for customers that don't have the infrastructure for dedicated hosting or don't care to pay the recurring costs colocating. Once these companies are in place, there is residual support that needs to take place. New employees need help with their mail client, et cetera. It's perfectly reasonable for a business such as ours to find outsourced technical support. We did do so (the company wasn't in India).
The results have been mixed; the outsourced employees fail to correctly troubleshoot symptoms and pass them along sometimes, et cetera. One can say that is true for most tech support deparments. What was gained was more than an increased bottom line. The two system administrators (myself and someone else) are now able to perform true systems work without getting nickel dimed by every Outlook user. Going to work is much more rewarding than it was in the past.
Could we have hired our own support technicians? No. Shared hosting is a marginal business and we lacked the critical mass to make it more than nominally profitable. It was the best possible solution for our needs and business model.
Is this story all fluff and happiness? Absolutely not. Our outsourced representatives are hard to manage. The managers and owners are sometimes hard to get a hold of. Furthermore, we sometimes feel that support is escalated expressly for the purpose of keeping time on the phones minimized. When the honeymoon effect wore off between our two companies and the situation began to turn dire, we made a veiled statement at having to look elsewhere and things improve immediately. For a situation where final payment has been made, the options are few. Perhaps a statement that if this work isn't completed fully then further business from your company is unlikely as are referrals. Appeal to their bottom line. Sometimes it's the only language a company will speak.
In addition to the excellent above points, obfuscating the changelog also hurts his project. The true foundation of open source is the ability for Joe Coder to submit patches and additions to the project. He will limit others abilities and/or willingness to commit code to his project.
The unfortunate aspect of an Ask Slashdot like this is we don't know the other developer's story. The developer has probably missed the point of open source and he's might even be a complete jackass but ultimately he's not here to defend himself. He may have some points missed by the author by mere nature of author's own subjectivity.
That said, I'd keep on keepin' on. You are well within your rights to use code as long as it's credited. Furthermore, I think it's ethical and in keeping with the spirit of the GPL and open source culture to apply code that makes your application better. The point is to collaborate and make software that Sucks Less.
I guess it all depends on what you're using it for. If I have to forward X, it follows that the application I am using is either not my current host or is not available to be done from a vanilla SSH session. Instances of usage include using StarOffice, Mozilla, and even XMMS. There were very legitimate reasons for using each of these applications at the time (well, except XMMS). It is noted that VNC requires fewer roundtrips than X, hence high bandwidth applications appear faster when using VNC despite having to account for an entire desktop environment.
So, no, I'm not kidding. Here's a quote from this article I found while looking for evidence to support my stance, "When using X, I always make sure to turn compression on with the -C option (Compression yes in the config file), as X is bandwidth intensive, to put it politely. With compression on and a fast cipher such as blowfish (the default for recent versions of OpenSSH), Netscape is just about usable over a ten-megabit network. Without compression, it is rather painful, and I would certainly recommend against running any complex X application over less then ten megabits."
This has been my experience.
Agreed. There are plenty of situations like the one you describe where this is appropriate over a Live CD such as Knoppix or where Cygwin/X forwarding is needed over VNC. I don't think that the developers wasted their time at all. This is a tool worth downloading and putting onto a CD just in case.
Personally, I believe that when the situations where I do need open source tools on a CD arise, that Knoppix will probably fit the bill fine. But what's a couple of cents and some time spent downloading for those rarer situations?
My experience has been that VNC is less bandwidth intensive which can be real handy if you're working in an environment without business/commercial connectivity. I've found myself in that situation a couple of times here in Alaska where bandwidth is kind of expensive.
I imagine there's times when one would want their entire session encrypted beyond the authentication process and forwarding X is great for that. Many individuals are less security conscious and would probably have a better experience with VNC
I would argue that certain distributions are usable by Joe Sixpack if they don't have to unlearn any computing habits instilled by using alternate operating systems. I have a brother in law who doesn't care one wit about computing. He's a pretty average high school kid. He uses apps provided by KDE under SuSe to surf the web, check his email, write his term papers, et cetera. I installed it for him one day and have answered one question since then regarding it. It just kind of works for him.
I know it's anecdotal evidence but that's what most of us have, especially when the vast majority of searchable and citable evidence regarding open source is TCO studies sponsored by third parties with a vested interest in the outcome. Those studies focus on a completely different environment.
On topic: I'm glad that MS has thrown its hat into the desktop search ring. I think that search is a much needed feature for that Windows. Finding a file in Windows seems unreasonably resource intensive. Likewise, there's nothing like downloading a file and forgetting where IE tossed it and you're fumbling about your OS to find it. No, not me, I don't do Windows. Friends.
Best free software out there, if you ask me. Just make sure you set it up to never die (windows service options: on fail, reset..)
No more running home to fix anything... even printer diagnostics can usually be fixed via phone (unless its some weird HW anomaly..)
I won't set up a dependant (on me) user without it.
Agreed. There is the mentioned issue with Internet connectivity but most of the time, the Internet not's the problem and if it is, then I can use the "call your tech support" egress if I'm busy or just not feeling like dealing with Windows-isms.
On that note, I try to install Suse on every computer I can. My brother in law uses SuSe. He's a complete computer noob so he didn't have to unlearn much. He was also receptive to things like having to type in a root password when attempting to install software from Yast. His parents, on the other hand, stuck with Windows so they didn't have to fight with getting their digital-camera to work. Of all the support I've handled from my in-laws, I've only had to support the SuSe install once.
Is it with the state or a private company? There's good jobs to be had up here if you are patient and continue to invest in your skillset. Either way, congratulations on the job. Juneau is a nice little town but it's very political; it's to be expected as it's the capitol. You'll see what I mean when you get there. I've had some friends work down there and their advice is to keep your head low when the talk turns to politics. Good advice in most work environments but especially so down there I understand.
Tech jobs here are few and far between. The two ISPs here, ACS and GCI are the two biggest players outside of the state for tech jobs. Turnover is slow because there's not much to move into. Leaving Alaska for a job is tougher than elsewhere (except possibly Hawaii) due to distances. Moving in and out of Alaska is expensive with respect to time and money. For many folks, getting a tech job is a waiting game.
Corporations and locals governments aren't really interested in Alaska from a tech standpoint. Alaska, by and large, has a higher cost of living (about 30% average state-side average). That excuse only seems to go so far, especially when there's still 600,000 people living in Alaska. With the median income being about 50ka year, Alaska has high computer ownership than most other states(sorry no figures, just winging that one from memory), one would believe that there'd be ample market to exploit. With corporations and local government possessing slow turn-over and little growth in Alaska otherwise, getting a tech job is kind of hard.
Personal note: I have a tech job and I'm very happy with it. It was highly contested and I was hired in part due to my knowledge of Linux but that's a discussion for another topic.
Linux jobs really have very little to do with the desktop. Most desktop jobs will be with respect to software development and support. The former currently offers little monetary incentive as many have noted while the latter is an immense undertaking that few engage in unless it's within the enterprise environment. Building a prepackaged Linux PC your wife can use offers little immediate reward. Desktop usability will be slow growth, as it has been.
On an aside, I have complete non-geek relatives using Suse 9.0 with little trouble, nor more they'd experience in different ways with a Windows desktop.
It appears that most available Linux jobs are systems positions. A quick survey from the mentioned job site the article, Dice.com, shows a great number of systems development or administration jobs compared to desktop development and support. No need for a pretty prepackaged distro there.
I'm currently a system adminstrator for a small web hosting company, and we have about twenty systems, and only three of them run Windows server. When I was hired, IIS experience was a plus but not needed. We even had a bit of a laugh at its expense. They were looking for strong Linux skills and logical thinking. I have to learn IIS on the way now and it is challenging. It's even a bit of fun. Also, the documentation availability isn't quite like it is for Linux systems.
Long story short, I disagree.
My biggest mistake was dropping Slackware into my CD drive and turning my computer on (all by accident!). Now, I spend myself tinkering with configuration files, downloading programs from Sourceforge, reading man pages, and generally wasting my time.
To quote the Lego Guy quoting British highbrow Bertrand Russell, "Time you enjoy wasting isn't wasted time". I kid, I don't consider it wasted time.
Unfortunately, I've screwed systems up so bad so many times over the few years that I've been using Linux that I can't list them. I know that almost every single one of them was fixable had I backed up the file I was screwing with. I think after a year or so of increasing knowledge and increasingly devastating screw-ups that comes with increasing awareness, I've finally learned to back up my files with regularity.
All new Linux users, pay heed, back up your files! man tar. :)
It does but in such a way that would keep an individual such as myself away. Now, granted I haven't installed Cedega yet but Hearts of Iron had pointer speed slow down at times. Same thing for Warcraft 3. I had huge issues with Steam and Counter-Strike/Day of Defeat with WineX 3 where I had framerates of 3-7 fps whereas under Windows XP, it averages 60-70 fps. Transgaming's support asks for me to install the latest version and try it. I will eventually.
I'm unfortunately addicted to Hearts of Iron which runs decently enough under WineX 3.
You're right. It's #2.
American Scientist is a great magazine for general science articles. Past articles include work on Non-determinstic polynomials, neutrino oscillations, and sustainable yield models for fisheries management. It's a great survey magazine. Unfortunately, it's hit or miss sometimes. Some of the articles are boring, even from a scientific perspective.
I also read Scientific American but it's kind of sensationalistic. I have a guilty pleasure of reading Wired, "Linus Torvalds, Leader of the Free World - His open source software is making Bill Gates sweat. What's next: Open Source science, law, and design". After reading that article , it's hard not to imagine him laughing after reading it.
I'd probably subscribe to an dead tree tech Linux journal but what's online seems sufficient.
OMG TEH TERRAR!
Unfortunately, it probably will be hard for hobbyists to gain any sort popular sympathy. For every person with a degree of common sense there's two that believe that government initiatives such as these will help keep terrorists at bay...
Further, it seems that some of the powers that be believe this stuff works. For me, that's alarming.
My mother was diagnosed with schizo-effective disorder when I was very young. With the right prescriptions and the regular intake, one can lead a relatively normal life. The impact that it had on myself and my siblings is that one really has to have check up and make sure that the medication is being taken at regular intervals.
The biggest impact, is now that everyone's up and moved out, someone from family must always stay in town to keep an eye on her. That also means being prepared to drop everything you're doing for about 24 hours during a breakdown. The legal system is a reactive entity. That means that one has a choice of either spending quite a bit of time attempting to get someone submitted based upon symptoms the legal system won't necessarily view as insanity or waiting for that person to hurt themselves or someone else. There's no clean method for dealing with someone who's stopping take their meds and is on that slippery slope to mental breakdown.
Oh, yea. In my experience, schizos are pretty crafty about hiding their lack of medicine intake.
There's always the possibility of working on an open source project. Granted, as a network engineer it's not very likely you know any programming languages but even some network troubleshooting scripts written in Perl that are publicly viewable probably would help.
I've only known one person to do that personally. He's also a sysadmin for the ISP I work at. He's since moved off of network troubleshooting and develops customer facing apps and toolsets for different groups but he started out doing network type stuff early on. It's not easy to get that kind of job here in Alaska, supply outstrips demand so that example does have a bit of relevance.
Certification won't set you apart but maybe having a couple of simple open source apps the interviewers can see might. It'll also demonstrate you're a self starter (although they should know that by the number of certs you have). You're fighting against a pretty shitty time to be in the IT industry though. Good luck.
Winamp's a good thing. Gnutella was even better. I think that was his best project yet. The part of this state of affairs that I believe makes the RIAA so upset is that they do not control the technology, and given recent rulings, containing the technology will prove difficult as well.
In fact, if anything, by decentralizing the technology, Frankel has helped the RIAA spend copious amounts of money on legal fees chasing individuals (I doubt the lawyers are working pro-bono. I also doubt that the entirety of their payments will come from settlements/legal winnings) instead of facing down corporations like Napster
The article isn't too bad for a buff-puff piece