You can get a lot of dates when you're in IT. You just have to realize that most girls aren't (most guys neither) and demonstrate your ability to speak about other topics as well.
Girls really don't care much what you do. They care what you are, and see your job in that light, as an expression of your personality. So if you say "I work as a java programmer because C is so pre-OO and C++ never takes of really, but I dig Linux more than FreeBSD" then all she hears is a string of foreign words. Same as if she were to tell you about the differences between various nail polish products. Now if you say "I work in IT because I enjoy the challenge of new technology and solving difficult problems." that says something about you and might be a much better conversation starter. Bonus points if you add something like "not only with computers".
It ain't the IT. It's the obsession with it. If you were equally obsessed with some bio-chemistry stuff it wouldn't matter that you're a doctor, you'd be avoided just the same.
First, there's a good amount of production servers running OpenBSD. I happen to be the developer of an OpenBSD-based firewall, and the things are running rock solid. The only failures we've had in 5 years are hardware-related. One of the firewalls sits in front of our developer network and has by far the best uptime of anything in the company, including several so-called high-availability systems.
More importantly, only a fraction of the OpenBSD development efforts have moved into other systems, and then often incomplete or much later. I don't wanna start a W^X vs. other methods discussion here, but if you've ever seen a presentation where Theo or one of the other core dudes explained just what is really new under the hood in the latest release, you'd be quite surprised. There's a lot of actual research and development going on in OpenBSD.
What do they run? Windows, windows, windows. Many companies standardize on Windows.
Which makes total sense given that it's cheaper to support one system even if it's only moderately suited to some tasks than it is to support multiple systems each ideal for their specific jobs.
Question remains: Would they standardize on something else if there were zero trouble moving their applications, documents, etc. over?
I don't see how they could refuse. A company with 1000 desktops stands to save anywhere between a quarter and half a million on the next update cycle. At that point, some will stay with windos for a variety of reasons (they like being tortured, or their IT stuff knows nothing else, or the CEO has some M$ shares, whatever), but a good number would switch, for the cost benefit alone.
And for a 1000-people company, half a million is enough money to have a noticeable impact on your quarterly statement.
If (my original premisis) app support would be 100% identical between windos and Linux, windos would lose about half of its market share within 2 years.
Why? Corporations. Saving $100-$500 (depending on your license deal) on each and every desktop in your company would practically force you as a company to adopt Linux.
Not to mention the 1%-2% of literally instant loss - all us Linux people who keep a windos installation around only because our beloved games or our tax software require it.
Today's computer games don't really lend themselves well for "pro-gaming". They're too easy. Everyone can play them at a decent level.
You've not played True Combat against me, or Descent (I, II, no matter) against a friend of mine. He practically ate us all for lunch, even when we banded together. In TC I used to go on servers without armour and only a pistol and still ruled. I've seen other people play RTS games at such a speed that I could barely follow what was going on.
Skill's most definitely a factor. Yes, everyone can play at some level. Same with sports. I'd even say that is exactly why sports are so huge - most of the huge sports are those that the most people are familiar with, like soccer or in the US football/basketball.
Windows is better, hands down because everyone knows it, it's UI is beautiful and easy to use to most people,
Can I get a copy of that mysterious software you must've imported from some parallel dimension? Because in this one we happen to have one with the same name, only it's UI is ugly, horribly bloated, inconsistent, and it takes a considerable beating until people have learnt it (the beating probably includes brainwashing because after using the abomination for several years, and often without ever having seen another UI option, victims often claim that the UI is actually pretty good).
there is a great deal of software support for it, and games are written for it.
Yepp, can't argue with that. #1 (of 1) reason I keep the XP my notebook came with.
XP provides an adequate operating system for hosting a number of applications.
The correct - and more important - distinguisher would be that XP provides the only hosting choice for a large number of applications.
We all, and Bill Gates and even Wallstreet know that if all software available for Windos were available for OSX and Linux as well, with no difference in price, support or ease of installation, Windos market share would drop faster than you can possibly sell your M$ shares. Not to zero, some people just use whatever is there or don't know any better, but users are already moving to OSX in droves despite the app count disadvantage.
Access is , but the correct replacement isn't a real database, but OpenBase (part of OpenOffice 2.0). That's because the audience for Access isn't people who know the difference between JOIN and WHERE, but people who want a database and a frontend they can build by point&click.
Legal DVD players - frankly, I consider that a non-issue. What people want are DVD players. I don't think any normal desktop user gives a damn about DMCA or not.
Yeah, I know/. is more a blog than a newspaper, but some more neutrality would be nice.
Anything that's more than a year away from market simply can't be an anything killer, yet. At least a prototype should be ready before anyone judges whether it'll be a killer product or tank.
You already got your +5 Insightful, so I'll comment instead:
Brilliant point there. Yes, Gates' entire world appears to circle around the "provider" concept. M$ and windos is never "done", is never "enough" and is very obviously not designed to be or make you independent. On the contrary, every version adds more strings to Big Daddy Gates, from verification numbers to windos update.
Yes, lots of these things are great to have, and windos update is as basic and necessary to windos as apt-get is to Debian (though not half as powerful, but let's leave that flamewar for some other time). But like the vaccinations, they also create dependencies. Your post really made me wonder how much of his efforts for the poor are driven by a desire to do good - and how much by a desire to be seen as provider, supporter, good guy, helper. There's a subtle but important difference here - people whose desire is to bring good to others will applaud and support others who do the same. But people who want to be seen as the providers of good will hinder, ridicule and fight anyone else because they see them as competition.
And Gates sure doesn't like competition, we've known that for a long time.
I'd really like to have a demo of that in my hands. No matter if it's beta. I'll even forgive it crashing every now and then, but it looks interesting enough to make me want to play with it.
It has potential. For example, different from the real world, the same photo can be a member in multiple piles. That alone would make sorting and finding stuff a ton easier. Likewise, the thing seen in the videos, the ability to spread out the pile in an instant, allows you to find a specific picture fairly quickly. Now if I can also group piles together (i.e. subfolders), things start to be interesting.
I can't imagine two languages less suited for mixing than PHP and XML.
PHP is losely typed, full of hacks (excellent hacks that make coding easier) and is great exactly because it allows the coder to be pretty careless and have the language look out for him as far as possible.
XML, on the other hand, is strict and harsh on the coder. Forgot to close a tag? Wrong character somewhere? Not got the tag order correct? Sorry, your entire tree fails parsing.
They just don't mix well, and it shows everywhere. I'm currently coding a PHP app using XML-RPC, and gosh is it convoluted. You've gotta cast practically everything into the special XML-RPC values and back out again. You'd expect the libraries to have functions doing that for you, but you'd be mistaken. On the average line stuffing together an XML-RPC call, the whole "new XML_RPC_VALUE" stuff takes up twice the space of the actual variables.
Doesn't mix well. Sorry, I like PHP a lot and XML is an excellent thing. But they just don't mix well.
There's a strong trend towards notebooks as the everyday computer of most people, replacing desktop machines. Once you have a notebook, you use the mobility. Whether you go into the living room for a comfortable surf or take it with you on the train.
And all these stupid CD-Checks force you to carry a bundle of CDs with you all the time? How stupid is that? Not to mention that they're all fooled, cracked, broken in less time than it takes them to write new versions.
Like I said before: If game developers would save the money for copy restriction stuff and instead pour it into writing better games, they'd probably sell more.
Those who pirate always have, always will. Mostly it's the kids who couldn't afford more than one game every other month anyways if they had to buy them. Most of the pirated copies would not have been sales with harsher laws, better copy restriction or whatever else to prevent copying. They would simply be less people playing the game, not more people paying for it.
I would love to switch to Postgres. The main reasons I don't are:
a) I have third-party applications that only run on MySQL. So I'd have to run two different database engines. Bah.
b) Even though I've used an abstraction layer from the get go, I found out that subtle differences still would cause me a lot of effort to move my own applications from MySQL to Postgres. And right now, it simply isn't worth the effort.:(
By rejecting everything in Windows as "evil", they're rejecting many good things like the UI and configuration consistency.
Can I please get a copy of that "Windows" thing you brought in from an alternate dimension?
Because, you know, we have something of the same name here, only it's totally inconsistent (there are 12 different places to drop things you want to launch at startup, for example) and it's UI is so shitty, they had to include a "click here to start" animated arrow on its first incarnation because they hadn't bother testing it until just before launch and their crew of last-minute testers looked at the screen blankly and wondered where everything is.
Seriously: Windows is not consistent, and it most definitely is not even anywhere remotely close to something that's once seen someone who was a good UI design's brother's neighbour back in school. The reason so many people think it is, has to do with familiarity, not consistency or UI.
What exactly is consistent about windos? Let's ignore that every release works differently. Let's ignore that even within releases, there are differences (e.g. XP Pro vs. XP Home). But even within the same release, the same version, the same installation on the same system, there are huge inconsistencies.
Take the system settings thing. Not only are there multiple paths to arrive there, you also end up with different views depending on where you go (e.g. a menu-look if you come through the start menu, but a folder look if you open the menu item).
Then there's the plethora of dialogs, many of them subtly different from each other. Sometimes you have tree views, sometimes you have folder views, sometimes you have lists, all of that on items that are essentially the same (i.e. lists). When you go about changing things, you sometimes get a wizard, sometimes you get an options dialog.
Not to mention the subtle and very unintuitive connections between not obviously (e.g. visually) connected elements.
Sorry, there's very little about windos that is consistent. There's a reason it has its own section in the Interface Hall of Shame.
Honestly, I don't think we really know how much we've fucked this planet up. I'm sure the real data is either kept locked away or drowned out by the noise of paid-for studies and nonsense pseudo-science.
But if we assume that either the planet is already beyond repair, or will be so before humanity as a whole learns better (and remember that for the 1 billion or so of us westerns who are slowly starting to get the idea, there's 5 billion africans and asians who also want to drive SUVs and live in luxury!) - well, if we assume that Earth is probably a lost cause anyway, then that's the best reason I can think of to move somewhere else.
Now if we find out that there's no way to do that in the timeframe we have left down here - that's when the real fun starts.
Thing is, I'm not in school anymore, I don't need to brag that I've already played the latest game released yesterday. I can wait until stuff hits the bargain bin, and I've got more than enough other games to cover me in the meantime.
I understand the pricing model - if you have people willing to pay 50, you'd be stupid not to sell to them at that price. And then you have people willing to pay 35, 25, 10. After you've emptied the 50 market, and since you've already paid for the development, anything above and beyond your production costs (which I figure are around 5 a box, including the retailer's cut) is profit.
Yes, I consider StarForce evil. Anything that installs in order to protect a software I paid for against me, the owner of the machine it's installed on, has its priorities seriously messed up.
Check: X3, a game I considered buying until I found out it's got SF in it. No sale. Check2: GalCiv2, a game I might buy when it becomes more affordable (sorry, 50 for a game isn't fair. Let's talk again when it's 35). No stupid copy protection is a good argument - my main machine is a notebook...
Also, there's literally tons of tools out there to circumvent SF. Most of them appear to be a PITA to use, but they're there. The largest group of gamers who copy regularily are kids with not enough money and more than enough time, so they won't mind.
Plus, of course, the cracker groups who'll break any new SF game in a day or two.
Nah, to me SF and its likes are a big scam designed to rip off software companies who should better spend the money on making their games less buggy.
There is no question MS should be penalized if they break the law but we shouldn't fine a company just because they are the major player or because they can afford it.
Glad that we agree. Because, you know, last I checked anti-trust law is still a law, and they've broken it, and they're now paying the fines for continuing to do so.
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You can get a lot of dates when you're in IT. You just have to realize that most girls aren't (most guys neither) and demonstrate your ability to speak about other topics as well.
Girls really don't care much what you do. They care what you are, and see your job in that light, as an expression of your personality. So if you say "I work as a java programmer because C is so pre-OO and C++ never takes of really, but I dig Linux more than FreeBSD" then all she hears is a string of foreign words. Same as if she were to tell you about the differences between various nail polish products.
Now if you say "I work in IT because I enjoy the challenge of new technology and solving difficult problems." that says something about you and might be a much better conversation starter. Bonus points if you add something like "not only with computers".
It ain't the IT. It's the obsession with it. If you were equally obsessed with some bio-chemistry stuff it wouldn't matter that you're a doctor, you'd be avoided just the same.
Do have have any idea what you're talking about?
First, there's a good amount of production servers running OpenBSD. I happen to be the developer of an OpenBSD-based firewall, and the things are running rock solid. The only failures we've had in 5 years are hardware-related. One of the firewalls sits in front of our developer network and has by far the best uptime of anything in the company, including several so-called high-availability systems.
More importantly, only a fraction of the OpenBSD development efforts have moved into other systems, and then often incomplete or much later. I don't wanna start a W^X vs. other methods discussion here, but if you've ever seen a presentation where Theo or one of the other core dudes explained just what is really new under the hood in the latest release, you'd be quite surprised. There's a lot of actual research and development going on in OpenBSD.
What do they run? Windows, windows, windows. Many companies standardize on Windows.
Which makes total sense given that it's cheaper to support one system even if it's only moderately suited to some tasks than it is to support multiple systems each ideal for their specific jobs.
Question remains: Would they standardize on something else if there were zero trouble moving their applications, documents, etc. over?
I don't see how they could refuse. A company with 1000 desktops stands to save anywhere between a quarter and half a million on the next update cycle. At that point, some will stay with windos for a variety of reasons (they like being tortured, or their IT stuff knows nothing else, or the CEO has some M$ shares, whatever), but a good number would switch, for the cost benefit alone.
And for a 1000-people company, half a million is enough money to have a noticeable impact on your quarterly statement.
If (my original premisis) app support would be 100% identical between windos and Linux, windos would lose about half of its market share within 2 years.
Why? Corporations. Saving $100-$500 (depending on your license deal) on each and every desktop in your company would practically force you as a company to adopt Linux.
Not to mention the 1%-2% of literally instant loss - all us Linux people who keep a windos installation around only because our beloved games or our tax software require it.
Today's computer games don't really lend themselves well for "pro-gaming". They're too easy. Everyone can play them at a decent level.
You've not played True Combat against me, or Descent (I, II, no matter) against a friend of mine. He practically ate us all for lunch, even when we banded together. In TC I used to go on servers without armour and only a pistol and still ruled. I've seen other people play RTS games at such a speed that I could barely follow what was going on.
Skill's most definitely a factor. Yes, everyone can play at some level. Same with sports. I'd even say that is exactly why sports are so huge - most of the huge sports are those that the most people are familiar with, like soccer or in the US football/basketball.
Sorry, I'm not convinced. Besides, you can connect OpenBase to a MySQL backend. Not only that, you have the choice of:
* Access
* MySQL
* Oracle JDBC
* Adabas D
* dBase
* JDBC
* ODBC
So I guess pretty much every major database out there can be tied to OpenBase one way or the other.
I've got the wrong job. 12 hours Oblivion? Before it's released? And being paid to do that? Where can I apply? :)
Seriously, I guess it stops being fun when you have to do it, and can't go "'nough for tonight, I need some sleep" when you feel like it.
errrr... not that 12 hours is that long. I think I've had longer sessions myself...
Windows is better, hands down because everyone knows it, it's UI is beautiful and easy to use to most people,
Can I get a copy of that mysterious software you must've imported from some parallel dimension? Because in this one we happen to have one with the same name, only it's UI is ugly, horribly bloated, inconsistent, and it takes a considerable beating until people have learnt it (the beating probably includes brainwashing because after using the abomination for several years, and often without ever having seen another UI option, victims often claim that the UI is actually pretty good).
there is a great deal of software support for it, and games are written for it.
Yepp, can't argue with that. #1 (of 1) reason I keep the XP my notebook came with.
XP provides an adequate operating system for hosting a number of applications.
The correct - and more important - distinguisher would be that XP provides the only hosting choice for a large number of applications.
We all, and Bill Gates and even Wallstreet know that if all software available for Windos were available for OSX and Linux as well, with no difference in price, support or ease of installation, Windos market share would drop faster than you can possibly sell your M$ shares. Not to zero, some people just use whatever is there or don't know any better, but users are already moving to OSX in droves despite the app count disadvantage.
Access is , but the correct replacement isn't a real database, but OpenBase (part of OpenOffice 2.0). That's because the audience for Access isn't people who know the difference between JOIN and WHERE, but people who want a database and a frontend they can build by point&click.
Legal DVD players - frankly, I consider that a non-issue. What people want are DVD players. I don't think any normal desktop user gives a damn about DMCA or not.
Yeah, I know /. is more a blog than a newspaper, but some more neutrality would be nice.
Anything that's more than a year away from market simply can't be an anything killer, yet. At least a prototype should be ready before anyone judges whether it'll be a killer product or tank.
You already got your +5 Insightful, so I'll comment instead:
Brilliant point there. Yes, Gates' entire world appears to circle around the "provider" concept. M$ and windos is never "done", is never "enough" and is very obviously not designed to be or make you independent. On the contrary, every version adds more strings to Big Daddy Gates, from verification numbers to windos update.
Yes, lots of these things are great to have, and windos update is as basic and necessary to windos as apt-get is to Debian (though not half as powerful, but let's leave that flamewar for some other time).
But like the vaccinations, they also create dependencies. Your post really made me wonder how much of his efforts for the poor are driven by a desire to do good - and how much by a desire to be seen as provider, supporter, good guy, helper. There's a subtle but important difference here - people whose desire is to bring good to others will applaud and support others who do the same. But people who want to be seen as the providers of good will hinder, ridicule and fight anyone else because they see them as competition.
And Gates sure doesn't like competition, we've known that for a long time.
I'd really like to have a demo of that in my hands. No matter if it's beta. I'll even forgive it crashing every now and then, but it looks interesting enough to make me want to play with it.
It has potential. For example, different from the real world, the same photo can be a member in multiple piles. That alone would make sorting and finding stuff a ton easier.
Likewise, the thing seen in the videos, the ability to spread out the pile in an instant, allows you to find a specific picture fairly quickly.
Now if I can also group piles together (i.e. subfolders), things start to be interesting.
I can't imagine two languages less suited for mixing than PHP and XML.
PHP is losely typed, full of hacks (excellent hacks that make coding easier) and is great exactly because it allows the coder to be pretty careless and have the language look out for him as far as possible.
XML, on the other hand, is strict and harsh on the coder. Forgot to close a tag? Wrong character somewhere? Not got the tag order correct? Sorry, your entire tree fails parsing.
They just don't mix well, and it shows everywhere. I'm currently coding a PHP app using XML-RPC, and gosh is it convoluted. You've gotta cast practically everything into the special XML-RPC values and back out again. You'd expect the libraries to have functions doing that for you, but you'd be mistaken. On the average line stuffing together an XML-RPC call, the whole "new XML_RPC_VALUE" stuff takes up twice the space of the actual variables.
Doesn't mix well. Sorry, I like PHP a lot and XML is an excellent thing. But they just don't mix well.
Two words: Notebook, CD-Check.
There's a strong trend towards notebooks as the everyday computer of most people, replacing desktop machines. Once you have a notebook, you use the mobility. Whether you go into the living room for a comfortable surf or take it with you on the train.
And all these stupid CD-Checks force you to carry a bundle of CDs with you all the time? How stupid is that? Not to mention that they're all fooled, cracked, broken in less time than it takes them to write new versions.
Like I said before: If game developers would save the money for copy restriction stuff and instead pour it into writing better games, they'd probably sell more.
Those who pirate always have, always will. Mostly it's the kids who couldn't afford more than one game every other month anyways if they had to buy them. Most of the pirated copies would not have been sales with harsher laws, better copy restriction or whatever else to prevent copying. They would simply be less people playing the game, not more people paying for it.
I would love to switch to Postgres. The main reasons I don't are:
:(
a) I have third-party applications that only run on MySQL. So I'd have to run two different database engines. Bah.
b) Even though I've used an abstraction layer from the get go, I found out that subtle differences still would cause me a lot of effort to move my own applications from MySQL to Postgres. And right now, it simply isn't worth the effort.
By rejecting everything in Windows as "evil", they're rejecting many good things like the UI and configuration consistency.
Can I please get a copy of that "Windows" thing you brought in from an alternate dimension?
Because, you know, we have something of the same name here, only it's totally inconsistent (there are 12 different places to drop things you want to launch at startup, for example) and it's UI is so shitty, they had to include a "click here to start" animated arrow on its first incarnation because they hadn't bother testing it until just before launch and their crew of last-minute testers looked at the screen blankly and wondered where everything is.
Seriously: Windows is not consistent, and it most definitely is not even anywhere remotely close to something that's once seen someone who was a good UI design's brother's neighbour back in school.
The reason so many people think it is, has to do with familiarity, not consistency or UI.
What exactly is consistent about windos? Let's ignore that every release works differently. Let's ignore that even within releases, there are differences (e.g. XP Pro vs. XP Home). But even within the same release, the same version, the same installation on the same system, there are huge inconsistencies.
Take the system settings thing. Not only are there multiple paths to arrive there, you also end up with different views depending on where you go (e.g. a menu-look if you come through the start menu, but a folder look if you open the menu item).
Then there's the plethora of dialogs, many of them subtly different from each other. Sometimes you have tree views, sometimes you have folder views, sometimes you have lists, all of that on items that are essentially the same (i.e. lists). When you go about changing things, you sometimes get a wizard, sometimes you get an options dialog.
Not to mention the subtle and very unintuitive connections between not obviously (e.g. visually) connected elements.
Sorry, there's very little about windos that is consistent. There's a reason it has its own section in the Interface Hall of Shame.
Maybe things have changed, but when I worked in retail as a student, the shop's cut was about 30%. That'd be $15 of a $50 box, or $3 of a $10 box.
Might be precisely because.
Honestly, I don't think we really know how much we've fucked this planet up. I'm sure the real data is either kept locked away or drowned out by the noise of paid-for studies and nonsense pseudo-science.
But if we assume that either the planet is already beyond repair, or will be so before humanity as a whole learns better (and remember that for the 1 billion or so of us westerns who are slowly starting to get the idea, there's 5 billion africans and asians who also want to drive SUVs and live in luxury!) - well, if we assume that Earth is probably a lost cause anyway, then that's the best reason I can think of to move somewhere else.
Now if we find out that there's no way to do that in the timeframe we have left down here - that's when the real fun starts.
Great! Less wait until I'll consider buying it.
Thing is, I'm not in school anymore, I don't need to brag that I've already played the latest game released yesterday. I can wait until stuff hits the bargain bin, and I've got more than enough other games to cover me in the meantime.
I understand the pricing model - if you have people willing to pay 50, you'd be stupid not to sell to them at that price. And then you have people willing to pay 35, 25, 10. After you've emptied the 50 market, and since you've already paid for the development, anything above and beyond your production costs (which I figure are around 5 a box, including the retailer's cut) is profit.
One thing, though: At least SF does provide a removal tool. That's the one reason I don't consider it a trojan.
Yes, I consider StarForce evil. Anything that installs in order to protect a software I paid for against me, the owner of the machine it's installed on, has its priorities seriously messed up.
Check: X3, a game I considered buying until I found out it's got SF in it. No sale.
Check2: GalCiv2, a game I might buy when it becomes more affordable (sorry, 50 for a game isn't fair. Let's talk again when it's 35). No stupid copy protection is a good argument - my main machine is a notebook...
Also, there's literally tons of tools out there to circumvent SF. Most of them appear to be a PITA to use, but they're there. The largest group of gamers who copy regularily are kids with not enough money and more than enough time, so they won't mind.
Plus, of course, the cracker groups who'll break any new SF game in a day or two.
Nah, to me SF and its likes are a big scam designed to rip off software companies who should better spend the money on making their games less buggy.
There is no question MS should be penalized if they break the law but we shouldn't fine a company just because they are the major player or because they can afford it.
Glad that we agree. Because, you know, last I checked anti-trust law is still a law, and they've broken it, and they're now paying the fines for continuing to do so.