Re:Pretend this works well, for a moment...
on
Got Sleep?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I absolutely agree. If I were in a foxhole, I'd want this.
Well, if you're in a foxhole, you won't need it. Combat is way too stressful for people to just suddenly fall asleep. The real problem on the battlefield is the prolonged stress which causes lapses in judgement and concentration.
The other angle here you should think about is that most people in the military aren't 100% combat oriented. Like civilian life, the military needs a LOT of services that are not directly combat related in order to function. Examples: transportation (air, land, and sea), food/water supply, quartermastering. Those are the people who really feel the staff shortages and these are the people they'll drug first in order to get more work per day out of a single person. I personally feel sorry for the poor bastard who is forced to go on a sleepless regimen with the help of drugs just to cover a personnel shortage.
Make no mistake about it: this isn't just designed to give us a combat edge; it's designed to help keep the military functional and efficient in the presence of limited funding. But let's not talk about all the medical bills we as taxpayers are going to be paying to compensate the individuals we brain damage in the name of efficiency.
Criminy people.. start reading between the lines, will ya?!
In this society, ideas are not able to be protected by intellectual property laws. That said, good ideas are still the most precious intellectual capital anyone here has.
what reason do they still have to stick with Windows?
Work. Granted, OpenOffice, Evolution and other products make working without Windows + Office very do-able, but what possible reason does John Doe have to switch to Linux when he's already well trained on Windows, and it's paid for already, and it's already running and works fine thankyouverymuch.
Let's face it, Windows has inertia, and a LOT of it. The average user will not switch to another OS unless they have to.
But running e.g counterstrike at 1600x1200 is merely an exercise in jerking off among the hardware lovers, and serves no real purpose that isn't fulfilled at 800x600.
Amen! Playability and replayability have NOTHING to do with graphics resolution, unless the graphics themselves interfere with the gameplay. Now read the corollary to that: Graphics resolution can not improve the playability, it can only interfere with it.
Now let's take this one step further, so far this is only about graphics resolution. I submit that graphics "dimensionality" (2D vs. 3D) is also part of the discussion. A game should not be rendered in 3D unless the 3D aspect enhances playability. End of story. Requiring, developing for, and supporting a 3D engine is far too expensive a proposition for games that don't need it.
I'll take a game with a well designed game UI over a 3D game with lower playability any day. Want an example: Age of Empires 2 vs. Warcraft III. I'm still pissed that I bought Warcraft III. My only complaint about AOE2 is that I didn't buy it when it first came out. I only bought it after being disappointed with WCIII. I hadn't realized what I'd been missing.
I don't think you've done your homework here. Sure, if you want those games to run with all the eye-candy, at the maximum resolution possible, and smoothly at that; you'll need a premium setup. With UT2003 though (for example), my AMD 1.2Ghz + GeForce 2 card (read: OLD setup now) worked just fine. Turn off some eye candy and it worked just great (and it still looked great). Games like Q3, UT, NOLF, Serious Sam, etc. all ran with all the goodies turned on with that config with serious frame rates.
It's interesting that you mention the Radeon 9700 graphics card. One problem I'm starting to see with the likes of UT2003 and possibly others is that the game is specifically developed using the GeForce series of cards. Consequently, I wonder if owners of GPU from other lineages don't need a more powerful graphics card to get equivalent effects from the game? Just a thought. As a gamer, the bias in games is running so heavily towads nVidia that I don't know if it even makes sense to bother with ATI.
Anyway, a GeForce 4 Ti 4400 based graphics card (PNY Verto) costs well under $200 these days, and that sucker runs UT2003 like a champ. If there's a game that requires even more power than that, then I'm not buying it anyway. Any game that concentrates that heavily on graphics has more than likely made tradeoffs from playability in order to make schedule, so I try to avoid those.
Now let's discuss the steps one would follow to play a user mod for your favorite game.
PC: Your steps + give or take a few. Download mod and install. Maybe tweak the mod. Play.
Console: You are either SOL and can't do this OR you get to subscribe to some premium service that only allows you to download approved (and one would hope, pre-tested) mods. Furthermore, you will start paying at some point for the privilege of downloading a specific mod. Of course, that's not true right now, but it will be.
Add to this the fact that RTS and FPS games are essentially unplayable without a keyboard and mouse (which consoles haven't done yet and probably won't). Even when that gets fixed, there are fundamental loss of control issues inherent in consoles.
Actually, I think PCs will remain important in gaming too. PCs will probably always be the first place where cutting edge gaming ideas get implemented first. After all, PC users are more tolerant of problems, steep hardware requirements, etc. It only makes sense to piss off the smaller market segment first in order to prove out the ideas that will ultimately get used on the larger (console) market.
Oddly enough, the misspelled or incorrect information in question is considered a form of expression, and is therefore copyrightable. So, if you copy the map with the errors intact on it, you have violated the copyright. This is also done with phone books AFAIK.
Without errors, maps and phone books could be copied verbatim and the publishers wouldn't be able to do anything about it because, without the errors, the published content is considered purely factual and is therefore not copyrightable.
Well, given the fact that one can get by quite nicely without following the standard, very few people will care about this. It would be nice, IMO, if browsers were less tolerant of sloppy standards violations. If my HTML says it's HTML 4.0 compliant, and I do something not in the standard, then the browser should just throw it back up with an error message.
That would solve a lot of problems. It woulc create some problems for people who shouldn't be coding in the first place, but I won't lose sleep over that one.
Obfuscated HTML?! Anyone can do that! Sorry, but most HTML out there is fairly crappy.
Wouldn't an un-obfuscated HTML contest where the code is judged by how well it plays and demonstrates advanced features on multiple browsers be more challenging?
Some reusable bits may actually come about as the result of this sort of contest.
Get over yourself dude. By putting the wedding stuff on here they're admitting that there's more that matters to 'nerds' than just technology.
There are practical reasons that we can not take an interest in everyone's wedding here, but it's nice to see that the subject got a teensy bit of attention anyway. Besides, it helps dispel the whole anti-social nerd image.
Get the point now? I think the bottom line here is that if you want to be the hard-bitten anti-social nerd that you pretend, then you ought not to be here anyway. Why socialize, even online, if you don't care? If you're that far gone, no one will notice anyway, so just who are you threatening with your I start to lose interest in Slashdot quote anyway? Get a grip..
GA is good for a lot of things. For instance, it was used to redesign diesel engines to be more efficient.
The big problem with GA though, IIRC, is that the resulting solution is often incomprehensible to a human. I believe Bill Joy did some work with GAs and had comments along those lines (sorry, I couldn't find the quote). Consider for a moment though trying to troubleshoot code generated by a computer. Bad variable names would be just the start of your problems. The logic patterns employed would be essentially random to a human. Many of the patterns would be vestigial and wouldn't even be relevant, but you wouldn't even know that. Identifying the primary execution paths would be a huge chore... never mind actually understanding the basis for why the generated solution actually works.
How comfortable would you be deploying a solution (hardware or software) where the fundamental design isn't even understood? How the heck do you fix such a thing once it's deployed?
Quite readable != the ability to consistently process.
Today's HTML is a travesty. Standards overlap each other, attributes for a tag are more or less context sensitive and dependent upon the given browser's interpretation, etc. Producing a readable HTML page might be fairly easy, as long as you don't care about the little things (like font size, positioning, etc.) across multiple browsers and their different versions (where each browser + version + platform is yet another testing permutation).
XHTML gives you the ability to standardize your markup and extend the markup in a systematic way. I haven't had the opportunity to use it in a project, so I won't say anymore than that right now. However, I do think that anything that clarifies HTML rendering is a good thing.
Hmm... so if I get Linux, then I can get Python, Perl, etc. running too? Good thought... I do wonder about the robustness of languages like that (including Java) in a mainframe situation, but it could definitely work. It would be interesting to hear how (if) others have done it.
... can I reasonably recommend a "from scratch" mainframe solution to a customer? Let's say ACME Inc. is just getting started. They expect huge volumes of data, etc. Is a "mainframe" a good choice for them if their primary considerations are: cost, expandability, and maintainability (which is to say we don't want to use COBOL/RPG/PL1/other old language; we want Java or something else from the "new school").
First off, you're an idiot. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Anyone who bites the hand that feeds them by categorically referring to their users as stupid is, unquestionably, an idiot. Maybe you'll know better in the future after getting canned by a "stupid user". Good luck...
Secondly, it is a bandaid. Sometimes I'm just trying something out. Since I can't trust every piece of software without having tried it first, the personal firewall lets me know when something's up. I don't have to run the firewall all the time, only when I'm trying out something new that I don't trust yet.
I'm with you on the PnP aspect of consoles, that is their forte. However, I'm *NOT* ditching my PC for games until the following happens:
1. I can use a mouse and keyboard for FPS and RTS games. That includes the ability to customize the keyboard and mouse game command mappings.
2. The console in question functions a bit like a PC and allows me to install, without limitation, software of my choosing. They don't have to allow me to run that software while licensed titles are running, I'm not looking to create a security nightmare for anyone. However, it's a bit ridiculous that a $200 XBOX can't even run Angband or MAME. This would allow me to move my *whole* gaming experience into the living room where it belongs without the need for a laptop.
To be honest, I think consoles have gotten a lot better. Now that they play DVDs and have hard drives, they're really close to where I want them. They just need to open up just a little more and let us do things other than just generate revenue for the producers, and I'll be there.
It would have been a better post if there was an *actual* stated need for such a software instead of speculating about cheating on security/authentity callbacks.
Perhaps you haven't had your morning coffee.
One word for you: Spyware. Spyware is any piece of software that attempts to "phone home" without my permission. By my definition spyware includes, but is not limited to, Windows XP (for several reasons - it's the worst offender), WinAmp, Kazaa and other P2P applications, etc. Besides this, it helps me the user know just what applications are accessing the network at a given time. If I can not determine why they're accessing the network, I smack 'em down.
In the future, outbound traffic control will be even more important to users. As far as a real firewall goes, I use an IPCop box in front of my (very small) home LAN. If you don't think that's a real firewall, I'd love to know your recommendations for home users.
Re: Egos - I'm in total agreement on that one. Just because someone wears a suit and has an MBA, doesn't mean that person knows anything about the real world. On that note, now that the dot com bubble has burst, we're going to see a lot more of the suit types going around, good and bad. I may have to cloak to that effect myself if the market gets weird enough. At least I'll have the advantage of knowing what the hell I'm doing.;+)
Re: The reality of the work place - Perhaps I'm unique, but I recognized early on (in college) that the work force wasn't designed to be fair. It's designed to make entrepreneurs money through competition, nothing more or less. I've known good people who work far harder than me, and they will never get ahead because of the strategies they employ. I've adopted the whole "work smart, not hard" to such a degree that I'm hard pressed to imagine a "difficult" situation that I couldn't game up-front to make things work out in the long run. That said, my overall meta-strategy requires being able to game the strategy, so I was really curious about your situation and whether it represented untenable situations. Obviously, there's a limit on how far all of this can go, but it's worked out well so far.
I see you're not local to my area (Minneapolis/St. Paul in MN) so we'll probably never get to BS face to face, but feel free to email me anyway sometime at VincePlatt at yahoo dot com.
Amen! I about cried when I realized I really needed to get with the program and switch to a PC. The Amiga games I was used to (e.g. Speedball II, Chaos Engine, etc.) were FAR superior to anything on the PC.
The only PC game at the time that convinced me that my switch to the Windows world wouldn't be total drudgery was Doom II. But then, Doom II pretty much kicked off the whole "PC as game machine" idea anyway. Microsoft owes a lot to id as far as I'm concerned.
I enjoyed your post and I hope it sees some moderation so others can see it.
That said, I'm curious about something: Why did you put up with those sorts of conditions? You can tame unruly customers through a variety of techniques. What immediately comes to mind are contract clauses that provide for extra compensation when certain conditions are present, calls to law enforcement about threats, calls to your lawyer to sue for defamation, calls to OSHA, calls to BSA, etc. Also, simply confronting people with a given behavior and asking for a change can go a long ways towards ameliorating a situation. Failing that, it seems like a good lawyer could help even the playing ground for you.
I just know you're not going to say something like "because I couldn't afford to lose the work". That would imply that you really didn't have a choice and you seem like a person who wouldn't make the simple strategic mistake of allowing yourself to become desperate. Right? From my point of view, IT isn't getting respect because your IT leaders (and possibly yourself) aren't demanding respect. It's easy for perceptions to become jaded when a well run IT department exists. People start taking it for granted.
Also, please don't think I'm trolling. I realize I haven't been in your shoes yet, but I could see how that might happen to me someday, so I'm really curious why you didn't resort to any of the above recourses.
I would agree that OS manufacturers are going to be less important over the long haul. But I doubt that they will ever become as invisible as a headlight manufacturer, or even as invisible as a car manufacturer.
Why not?
Because of our data. Our data needs to survive each and every technology transition. Open standards help this along a bit, but not nearly enough. And I can't honestly say that the situation is improving. We can help ourselves a bit by only using open formats for data, etc. but this is not a practical option for many applications.
So, when you get your brand spanking new tablet PC, you're going to start from scratch with your data right? Me neither (assuming I buy a tablet PC and it's not in the budget right now and probably won't be).
Slashdot Mirror
I absolutely agree. If I were in a foxhole, I'd want this.
Well, if you're in a foxhole, you won't need it. Combat is way too stressful for people to just suddenly fall asleep. The real problem on the battlefield is the prolonged stress which causes lapses in judgement and concentration.
The other angle here you should think about is that most people in the military aren't 100% combat oriented. Like civilian life, the military needs a LOT of services that are not directly combat related in order to function. Examples: transportation (air, land, and sea), food/water supply, quartermastering. Those are the people who really feel the staff shortages and these are the people they'll drug first in order to get more work per day out of a single person. I personally feel sorry for the poor bastard who is forced to go on a sleepless regimen with the help of drugs just to cover a personnel shortage.
Make no mistake about it: this isn't just designed to give us a combat edge; it's designed to help keep the military functional and efficient in the presence of limited funding. But let's not talk about all the medical bills we as taxpayers are going to be paying to compensate the individuals we brain damage in the name of efficiency.
Criminy people.. start reading between the lines, will ya?!
Great post! I think I'll print this one out and save a copy to re-read when/if I decide to do something more enterprising.
In this society, ideas are not able to be protected by intellectual property laws. That said, good ideas are still the most precious intellectual capital anyone here has.
:+)
And you want them for free?
Find yer own niche dangit!
I have to agree. But then, wouldn't the XBOX be your speed. Clearly, a GameCube would not.
what reason do they still have to stick with Windows?
Work. Granted, OpenOffice, Evolution and other products make working without Windows + Office very do-able, but what possible reason does John Doe have to switch to Linux when he's already well trained on Windows, and it's paid for already, and it's already running and works fine thankyouverymuch.
Let's face it, Windows has inertia, and a LOT of it. The average user will not switch to another OS unless they have to.
But running e.g counterstrike at 1600x1200 is merely an exercise in jerking off among the hardware lovers, and serves no real purpose that isn't fulfilled at 800x600.
Amen! Playability and replayability have NOTHING to do with graphics resolution, unless the graphics themselves interfere with the gameplay. Now read the corollary to that: Graphics resolution can not improve the playability, it can only interfere with it.
Now let's take this one step further, so far this is only about graphics resolution. I submit that graphics "dimensionality" (2D vs. 3D) is also part of the discussion. A game should not be rendered in 3D unless the 3D aspect enhances playability. End of story. Requiring, developing for, and supporting a 3D engine is far too expensive a proposition for games that don't need it.
I'll take a game with a well designed game UI over a 3D game with lower playability any day. Want an example: Age of Empires 2 vs. Warcraft III. I'm still pissed that I bought Warcraft III. My only complaint about AOE2 is that I didn't buy it when it first came out. I only bought it after being disappointed with WCIII. I hadn't realized what I'd been missing.
I don't think you've done your homework here. Sure, if you want those games to run with all the eye-candy, at the maximum resolution possible, and smoothly at that; you'll need a premium setup. With UT2003 though (for example), my AMD 1.2Ghz + GeForce 2 card (read: OLD setup now) worked just fine. Turn off some eye candy and it worked just great (and it still looked great). Games like Q3, UT, NOLF, Serious Sam, etc. all ran with all the goodies turned on with that config with serious frame rates.
It's interesting that you mention the Radeon 9700 graphics card. One problem I'm starting to see with the likes of UT2003 and possibly others is that the game is specifically developed using the GeForce series of cards. Consequently, I wonder if owners of GPU from other lineages don't need a more powerful graphics card to get equivalent effects from the game? Just a thought. As a gamer, the bias in games is running so heavily towads nVidia that I don't know if it even makes sense to bother with ATI.
Anyway, a GeForce 4 Ti 4400 based graphics card (PNY Verto) costs well under $200 these days, and that sucker runs UT2003 like a champ. If there's a game that requires even more power than that, then I'm not buying it anyway. Any game that concentrates that heavily on graphics has more than likely made tradeoffs from playability in order to make schedule, so I try to avoid those.
Now let's discuss the steps one would follow to play a user mod for your favorite game.
PC:
Your steps + give or take a few.
Download mod and install.
Maybe tweak the mod.
Play.
Console:
You are either SOL and can't do this OR
you get to subscribe to some premium service that only allows you to download approved (and one would hope, pre-tested) mods. Furthermore, you will start paying at some point for the privilege of downloading a specific mod. Of course, that's not true right now, but it will be.
Add to this the fact that RTS and FPS games are essentially unplayable without a keyboard and mouse (which consoles haven't done yet and probably won't). Even when that gets fixed, there are fundamental loss of control issues inherent in consoles.
Actually, I think PCs will remain important in gaming too. PCs will probably always be the first place where cutting edge gaming ideas get implemented first. After all, PC users are more tolerant of problems, steep hardware requirements, etc. It only makes sense to piss off the smaller market segment first in order to prove out the ideas that will ultimately get used on the larger (console) market.
Oddly enough, the misspelled or incorrect information in question is considered a form of expression, and is therefore copyrightable. So, if you copy the map with the errors intact on it, you have violated the copyright. This is also done with phone books AFAIK.
Without errors, maps and phone books could be copied verbatim and the publishers wouldn't be able to do anything about it because, without the errors, the published content is considered purely factual and is therefore not copyrightable.
Strange but true....
Well, given the fact that one can get by quite nicely without following the standard, very few people will care about this. It would be nice, IMO, if browsers were less tolerant of sloppy standards violations. If my HTML says it's HTML 4.0 compliant, and I do something not in the standard, then the browser should just throw it back up with an error message.
That would solve a lot of problems. It woulc create some problems for people who shouldn't be coding in the first place, but I won't lose sleep over that one.
Obfuscated HTML?! Anyone can do that! Sorry, but most HTML out there is fairly crappy.
Wouldn't an un-obfuscated HTML contest where the code is judged by how well it plays and demonstrates advanced features on multiple browsers be more challenging?
Some reusable bits may actually come about as the result of this sort of contest.
Get over yourself dude. By putting the wedding stuff on here they're admitting that there's more that matters to 'nerds' than just technology.
There are practical reasons that we can not take an interest in everyone's wedding here, but it's nice to see that the subject got a teensy bit of attention anyway. Besides, it helps dispel the whole anti-social nerd image.
Get the point now? I think the bottom line here is that if you want to be the hard-bitten anti-social nerd that you pretend, then you ought not to be here anyway. Why socialize, even online, if you don't care? If you're that far gone, no one will notice anyway, so just who are you threatening with your I start to lose interest in Slashdot quote anyway? Get a grip..
GA is good for a lot of things. For instance, it was used to redesign diesel engines to be more efficient.
The big problem with GA though, IIRC, is that the resulting solution is often incomprehensible to a human. I believe Bill Joy did some work with GAs and had comments along those lines (sorry, I couldn't find the quote). Consider for a moment though trying to troubleshoot code generated by a computer. Bad variable names would be just the start of your problems. The logic patterns employed would be essentially random to a human. Many of the patterns would be vestigial and wouldn't even be relevant, but you wouldn't even know that. Identifying the primary execution paths would be a huge chore... never mind actually understanding the basis for why the generated solution actually works.
How comfortable would you be deploying a solution (hardware or software) where the fundamental design isn't even understood? How the heck do you fix such a thing once it's deployed?
Quite readable != the ability to consistently process.
Today's HTML is a travesty. Standards overlap each other, attributes for a tag are more or less context sensitive and dependent upon the given browser's interpretation, etc. Producing a readable HTML page might be fairly easy, as long as you don't care about the little things (like font size, positioning, etc.) across multiple browsers and their different versions (where each browser + version + platform is yet another testing permutation).
XHTML gives you the ability to standardize your markup and extend the markup in a systematic way. I haven't had the opportunity to use it in a project, so I won't say anymore than that right now. However, I do think that anything that clarifies HTML rendering is a good thing.
If you love your PVR, the cable industry is not your friend.
Heh... that just gave me a whole new reason to consider buying a PVR. Previously, I just thought they were just interesting; now they're cool.
Well, how about this then: I got the joke and I still thought the interview sucked. Really.
...
To his credit though, the questions really sucked too. So, we asked a bunch of stupid questions and
Duh..
Hmm... so if I get Linux, then I can get Python, Perl, etc. running too? Good thought... I do wonder about the robustness of languages like that (including Java) in a mainframe situation, but it could definitely work. It would be interesting to hear how (if) others have done it.
... can I reasonably recommend a "from scratch" mainframe solution to a customer? Let's say ACME Inc. is just getting started. They expect huge volumes of data, etc. Is a "mainframe" a good choice for them if their primary considerations are: cost, expandability, and maintainability (which is to say we don't want to use COBOL/RPG/PL1/other old language; we want Java or something else from the "new school").
Any thoughts?
First off, you're an idiot. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Anyone who bites the hand that feeds them by categorically referring to their users as stupid is, unquestionably, an idiot. Maybe you'll know better in the future after getting canned by a "stupid user". Good luck...
Secondly, it is a bandaid. Sometimes I'm just trying something out. Since I can't trust every piece of software without having tried it first, the personal firewall lets me know when something's up. I don't have to run the firewall all the time, only when I'm trying out something new that I don't trust yet.
I'm with you on the PnP aspect of consoles, that is their forte. However, I'm *NOT* ditching my PC for games until the following happens:
1. I can use a mouse and keyboard for FPS and RTS games. That includes the ability to customize the keyboard and mouse game command mappings.
2. The console in question functions a bit like a PC and allows me to install, without limitation, software of my choosing. They don't have to allow me to run that software while licensed titles are running, I'm not looking to create a security nightmare for anyone. However, it's a bit ridiculous that a $200 XBOX can't even run Angband or MAME. This would allow me to move my *whole* gaming experience into the living room where it belongs without the need for a laptop.
To be honest, I think consoles have gotten a lot better. Now that they play DVDs and have hard drives, they're really close to where I want them. They just need to open up just a little more and let us do things other than just generate revenue for the producers, and I'll be there.
It would have been a better post if there was an *actual* stated need for such a software instead of speculating about cheating on security/authentity callbacks.
;+)
Perhaps you haven't had your morning coffee.
One word for you: Spyware. Spyware is any piece of software that attempts to "phone home" without my permission. By my definition spyware includes, but is not limited to, Windows XP (for several reasons - it's the worst offender), WinAmp, Kazaa and other P2P applications, etc. Besides this, it helps me the user know just what applications are accessing the network at a given time. If I can not determine why they're accessing the network, I smack 'em down.
In the future, outbound traffic control will be even more important to users. As far as a real firewall goes, I use an IPCop box in front of my (very small) home LAN. If you don't think that's a real firewall, I'd love to know your recommendations for home users.
Now, go get that coffee.
Re: Egos - I'm in total agreement on that one. Just because someone wears a suit and has an MBA, doesn't mean that person knows anything about the real world. On that note, now that the dot com bubble has burst, we're going to see a lot more of the suit types going around, good and bad. I may have to cloak to that effect myself if the market gets weird enough. At least I'll have the advantage of knowing what the hell I'm doing. ;+)
Re: The reality of the work place - Perhaps I'm unique, but I recognized early on (in college) that the work force wasn't designed to be fair. It's designed to make entrepreneurs money through competition, nothing more or less. I've known good people who work far harder than me, and they will never get ahead because of the strategies they employ. I've adopted the whole "work smart, not hard" to such a degree that I'm hard pressed to imagine a "difficult" situation that I couldn't game up-front to make things work out in the long run. That said, my overall meta-strategy requires being able to game the strategy, so I was really curious about your situation and whether it represented untenable situations. Obviously, there's a limit on how far all of this can go, but it's worked out well so far.
I see you're not local to my area (Minneapolis/St. Paul in MN) so we'll probably never get to BS face to face, but feel free to email me anyway sometime at VincePlatt at yahoo dot com.
Best of luck...
Amen! I about cried when I realized I really needed to get with the program and switch to a PC. The Amiga games I was used to (e.g. Speedball II, Chaos Engine, etc.) were FAR superior to anything on the PC.
The only PC game at the time that convinced me that my switch to the Windows world wouldn't be total drudgery was Doom II. But then, Doom II pretty much kicked off the whole "PC as game machine" idea anyway. Microsoft owes a lot to id as far as I'm concerned.
I enjoyed your post and I hope it sees some moderation so others can see it.
That said, I'm curious about something: Why did you put up with those sorts of conditions? You can tame unruly customers through a variety of techniques. What immediately comes to mind are contract clauses that provide for extra compensation when certain conditions are present, calls to law enforcement about threats, calls to your lawyer to sue for defamation, calls to OSHA, calls to BSA, etc. Also, simply confronting people with a given behavior and asking for a change can go a long ways towards ameliorating a situation. Failing that, it seems like a good lawyer could help even the playing ground for you.
I just know you're not going to say something like "because I couldn't afford to lose the work". That would imply that you really didn't have a choice and you seem like a person who wouldn't make the simple strategic mistake of allowing yourself to become desperate. Right? From my point of view, IT isn't getting respect because your IT leaders (and possibly yourself) aren't demanding respect. It's easy for perceptions to become jaded when a well run IT department exists. People start taking it for granted.
Also, please don't think I'm trolling. I realize I haven't been in your shoes yet, but I could see how that might happen to me someday, so I'm really curious why you didn't resort to any of the above recourses.
Thanks!
I would agree that OS manufacturers are going to be less important over the long haul. But I doubt that they will ever become as invisible as a headlight manufacturer, or even as invisible as a car manufacturer.
Why not?
Because of our data. Our data needs to survive each and every technology transition. Open standards help this along a bit, but not nearly enough. And I can't honestly say that the situation is improving. We can help ourselves a bit by only using open formats for data, etc. but this is not a practical option for many applications.
So, when you get your brand spanking new tablet PC, you're going to start from scratch with your data right? Me neither (assuming I buy a tablet PC and it's not in the budget right now and probably won't be).