"I am boycotting a new theater in town because they show 15 minutes of paid commecials (just like TV) interspersed within the trailers (which I sometimes do want to watch). I refuse to pay $8 to fill a seat, $8 for a light snack, and then still provide the theater with another income stream by being a captive eyeball. "
I haven't been to a theater in ages that doesn't do that..
And here's an idea.. why not go buy your light snack DURING the commercials? No really.. come on. That's a pretty stupid reason to "Boycott". Not only does your local theater manager probably have absolutely no pull over the advertising, I doubt they're going to miss you that much. Just go see the movie you want to enjoy, play arcade games in the lobby for 15 minutes, then show up in your seat after the ads are over.
I got a TiVo two weeks ago, and the statement made in the article is so incredibly true. I don't watch live tv - at all anymore. I come home, turn on the Tivo and I'm greeted by my favorite television shows. I have no idea what network the show got recorded from, nor do I care. I fastforward through all commercials, and yet I watch more Tv than before.
The networks must hate me.
I've never had Red Bull, but I encountered a very similar situation you describe after chugging a 20 oz bottle of Jolt way too fast. I was really dehydrated after riding my bike to a 7-11, and promptly bought the bottle and drank it in under 2 minutes probably. Dizziness/blurred vision resulted. My unofficial diagnose.. don't drink any stimulants when your body doesn't have the proper amounts of water in it.
Hey, does this mean I "own" all the air above my house now? I don't like the planes from the local reserve base flying overhead. Can I start charging them flyover tolls?
As a previous poster pointed out, I think this is most likely do to the boatload of personal firewall software out there. A lot of people who go buy Norton's firewall, use BlackIce, ZoneAlarm or whatever see that "A computer has tried to connect to your machine via FTP" and panic. I do deskside support and I get people who worry that they've done something "illegal" when they get the BSOD (no I'm NOT joking). The simple answer seems to be you've got people who don't know what the hell they're doing installing/using firewalls.
Nothing beats the one time I tried to telnet into an old shell, attempted to logon, and after login failed I realized it was a different machine. The admin somehow or another ran a finger query on the shell machine I was logged onto and sent me email demanding to know who I was and why I was connected to his machine. There are some psychos out there..
Does anyone else see a large shipment of Magic Antenna and Radiation shields arriving at that guys warehouse next to all the 2600 cartirdges, vibrating Mr. Potato-heads and Aura vests?..
Actually it's not even $300 anymore. I noticed Best Buy now has it for $199. Very cool.
http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11030956&m=4 88 &cat=538&scat=539
I work at a school and over the past year we've received over 10 donated 486 laptops from the Nuclear Regulatory Committee whose hard drives weren't wiped in any form whatsoever.
Mind you, I haven't found g any data on them, but they still had an operating system + programs. I was really shocked when I booted them up and their DOS Batch menus popped up "NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMITEE.... 1 Wordperfect..... 2 Windows" etc. Funny, but disturbing. If anyone did "cleanse" these computers before they donated them it was simply by using "DEL *.DOC". Yeah - real secure...
You sum up what I'm thinking perfectly. Part of the reason I cannot get into literature/english classes at school is that everyone sucks the joy out of books and movies just like you said. Overanalyss and "intellectual" criticism is so incredibly selfish. I've also seen people devote so much energy to pointing out what they found wrong in books or movies. Some criticism is good, but examples like yours prove all too often the academic crowd goes overboard.
My brains initial response:
How'd this crap get onto Slashdot's front page?
Ok anyways..
Am I the only one who makes use of the extensive 30 second audio samples from such major online retailers as CDNow etc?
Whenever I want to hear what a song/artist sounds like, I goto CDNow and listen to the sound clips. If CDNow doesn't have the sound clip, I just search for the artist on Google. You're always bound to find it somewhere. And this is perfectly legal.
I've found indie rock artists tend to post track samples on their websites. Independent labels tend to always have audio samples. The latest mass-produced pop can be heard if you just turn on the radio.
MP3s are the last resort for me when it comes to previewing tracks. There are a wealth of resources out there which people do not take advantage of.
[insert replies below thread from bitchy linux users about how they can't listen to these audio samples because they all use "proprietary codecs from satan". ok - that's a valid argument]
Judging by the screenshots in the full article Next Generation did on this system, the games didn't look like much. Some looked like they wouldn't even belong on the Playstation. The concept of MAME + emulators in a tiny box appealed to me though..
Re:Geek Trivia (why engineers don't do well on Jeo
on
Apple: First to Latest
·
· Score: 1
"I'll take Macintosh Codenames for $400, Alex"
"This 13.6 pound Mac with 32-bit clean ROMs was originally nicknamed "Stingray""
"What is the Mac IIci?
"Correct!"
The Lone Gunmen are contacted by Scully about paranormal activities that are taking place on an oil rig in the ocean.
Can The Lone Gunmen hax0r the ships mainframe before the government sinks it?
Special guest star: Angelina Jolie.."
To answer your question - yeah it does make it suck. Especially when you build your show around three-computer geeks and throw it at the computer-geek audience. Is it too much to ask them to get the details right? I can suspend disbelief to an extent, but when you start trying to tell me the evil modems built inside the CPUs (by the way - where do I plug in my RJ11 jack? Are they wireless? I guess at wireless rates they should have my hard drive contents by say.. 2073?)
I can't take the show seriously..
"Maybe there's no technically accurate way to make stuff like that look exciting on a film or video. Think about it; even most of what, say, a script kiddie does is just typing gunzip rootkit.tar.gz | tar -xf rootkit.tar |/rootkit/r00t.sh."
I think you hit the nail on the head. My solution? Don't focus on the computers as a "prop", put the energy into the story!
And yes, if anyone in Hollywood would like to hire me on as a technical advisor on any films/tv shows let me know. I'm not any kind of guru but I've at least probably used more OS' and computers then all of your effects guys combined..
Sorry Taco - The Lone Gunmen sucked. Does anyone else have this urge to become a hollywood special effects supervisor so we can put an end to shit like this?
Excuse me - I have to go secure my cookies with my new sector editor so the spooks don't steal my new Socket-7 CPU or my USERDATA.INI file. Maybe I should defrag it to make sure the modem inside my CPU doesn't upload any information to the internet..
Re:Dreamed up by sick venture capitalists
on
Juno And Privacy
·
· Score: 2
You've obviously never ran SETI@Home or RC5. The uplink speed is irrelevant to parallel processing. It downloads large chunks of data, analyzes them offline for a while, and then uploads results. It is not a continuous up/down link.
It won't sound better - at all. The major fault I see with THX inside a PC is the uninformed buying public will expect all audio coming out of their PC to automagically become THX. Unless your source material is THX, which very little material from a PC is, it will sound just the same as it would from a good pair of speakers.
19 inch monitor, or 43 inch TV. Good point. I'll take the TV any day of the week.
If you like non-upgradable damn near almost propiterary solutions, then I guess a Destination is for you.
I had to reinstall the OS/Apps for one of these from scratch at work. I was using Windows 98 SE. Bad, bad, mistake. The components inside those systems are awfully strange and only seem to like perfectly with their factory-preinstalled Windows 95. I spent literally about two months before I got everything working in Win98 SE, and still the Tuner software doesn't deal with the audio channels perfectly. It requires you to pick one input then go back to TV before it actually starts feeding audio. The multimedia software isn't somewhat buggy, it's really buggy. I couldn't get audio to the DVD for weeks. Spent hours on the phone with Gateway support (who don't even officially support anything other than 95 on the system). They replaced the DVD Drive, the internal audio cables, the sound card. I kept explaining to them I didn't think the hardware was bad at all. I was right. For the DVD to work in 98 SE it required just the right combination of factory/downgraded/MS Default/updated drivers. I don't think I'd ever be able to duplicate that again (three cheers for Norton Ghost!)
Fresh out of the box, a Destination is probably a beautiful thing. Anyone who wants to use a relatively modern operating system it will be a nightmare for. And don't even THINK of using Linux on one. The insides of those systems are a nightmare. Multiple inputs to multiple inputs on seemingly custom designed cards. Barely an industry standard thing inside the beasts.
I know this situation ALL too well. This could have happened to me.
I have recently encountered a similar situation with my local school district (which I am not a student at).
My local school districts website address is "school-district".org. In late October I registered "school-district".com and "School-district".net.
I setup both sites to forward to page I had setup where I had a parody of a fundraiser they were currently running. Everyone who saw it thought it thought it was funny. You'd have to be an idiot to mistake it for the real website.
The result? Near Christmas I received a cease and desist letter demanding I take down my "libelous and unfounded attacks" against the district .
"If you do not cease and desist your activities within ten (10) days of the date of this letter, the District will pursue any and all legal remedies available to my client in a Court of competent jurisdiction for injuctive relief as well as money damages."
Money damages. Yeah what money damages? It's a FUNDRAISER in question. What, of the 76 unique visitors my page had I damaged your fundraising ability? What the hell?!
"You are in violation of both [my state] and Federal law; including but not limited to the anticybersquatting provisions of the Lanham Act and [my states] Unfair Trade Practices Act."
Pretty amazing how I can be guilty of cybersquatting when I never tried to sell the domain, never represented myself as them and for the past oh what.. FIVE YEARS they never had enough brains to register it themselves. Aren't such laws designed to protect the rights of corporations being taken advantage of my domain speculators?
I'm also apparently guilty of the PA Trade Act. How can I be guilty of a trade act when there's no TRADE INVOLVED?! Once again, I can't figure it out..
They also had a "proposal" that I transfer the domain name to them "in exchange for the District's forberance in bringing any claims against you."
Having no other choice then well, get sued, I took down the content and notified them I did that. The domain name however, I have kept, and said nothing about it to them.
Individuals can't afford to throw money at a lawyer to fight against the bottomless pockets of orginizations and corporations hellbent on destroying our freedom.
Freedom of speech is slowly dying as rabid packs of lawyers and policemen attack our first amendment rights of fair use and parody. I am disgusted at the actions my local district took, and I am disgusted at the police in that case.
Does your local cable company use two-way cable modems? If so, then I don't think that's a real great valid reason not to go with them. You'd seriously rather suffer on 56K then figure out on your own how to get a cable modem to work in Linux?
"Video on D-VHS tapes is uncompressed, so it's enormous. A 75GB hard disk would only hold around 30 minutes of the video, according to company officials, making the trading of HD content over the Internet impossible..."
HA HA HA. Excuse me while I pick myself off the floor from laughing.
What kind of illogical argument is that? "Well since it's really big, they won't be able to copy it!". Excuse me, but such thinking is incredibly shortsighted.
DVD's were thought to be probably "impossible" to copy. But what happened? We have people who used hacked MPEG-4 CODEC DivX who distribute movies on 2 CD-ROMs. Nothing is impossible. You are merely taunting the pirates by proclaiming since it's so big they won't be able to pirate it.
I repeat - what an awful, awful, argument. The size has nothing to do with its ability to be pirated. Just as people watched crappy VCD's of Star Wars Episode 1 Bootlegs (come on Slashdot people, ADMIT IT) there will be people who will compress this new format down into a reasonable size while sacrificing quality.
This begs the question from me - why reinvent the wheel?
Couldn't resources be better spent optimizing or developing any number of open graphics standards instead of pumping dev time into a relatively closed standard such as DirectX?
IMO, the advances made with DirectX compatibility via WINE will be redundant by the time they are finished. Graphics technologies move at insanely fast rate (I had read moores law CUBED somewhere) and by the time that yesteday's great DirectX functions are working great in WINE, we will already be two generations ahead.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but DirectX is primarily used by games. I've never seen a killer office app that depends heavily on complex graphic functions via DirectX. Most applications dont need insane graphics acceleration. This move seems to be targeted towards making three-year old games run well in WINE. Why devote such resources to something in which very few people will actually have any benefit from?
I'm 18, just graduated, and finished up my first semester of college. I too wondered whether I should pursue the CIS route of Networking or CS with more programming.
Since I have previous vocational education in CIS from 11th and 12th grade I decided that route.
CS as you mentioned, does seem to require a lot of math. I really dislike math. It's not that I find it hard, it's well... I'm lazy. I can't get myself interested in doing it. If you're not a big math fan I think you may want to veer away from CS. If you love math and programming, go for CS.
As other posters have mentioned, CIS does mix mostly networking courses in with Accounting, Economics and other fun stuff. CS is a lot of math and programming languages. My advice would be to find a common ground for both courses.
Locate classes that are required for both paths or can be used for credit. For instance, my CIS path requires I take a programming language. The programming language would ALSO get me credit for a CS path though. Take a programming course or two, a networking course and see what you like doing best. I get my kicks crawling around under desks troubleshooting hardware and network problems, but you may like banging out that last code revision at 4am better.
Go with what you feel is the best for you. I think the CIS will definitely be easier, but if you want to really challenge yourself then go for CS.
Slashdot Mirror
If you have Dynamic IP's check out many of the fine Dynamic DNS services such as:
DynDNS & custom www.dyndns.org
Yi www.yi.org
DtDNS www.dtdns.com
HammerNode www.hn.org
EyeP www.eyep.net
DynU www.dynu.com
easyDNS www.easydns.com
No-IP www.no-ip.com
dyns.cx www.dyns.cx
dnsQ.org www.dnsq.org
myIP.org www.myip.org
ns1.net ns1.net
ZoneEdit www.zoneedit.com
dyn.ee www.dyn.ee
Central Information System www.centralinfo.net
NOLS www.nols.com
dhs.org www.dhs.org
YYweb.com www.yyweb.com
dyn.ca www.dyn.ca
DDNS.nu www.ddns.nu
miniDNS www.minidns.net
(This last gathered from the DirectUpdate homepage at www.directupdate.net)
"I am boycotting a new theater in town because they show 15 minutes of paid commecials (just like TV) interspersed within the trailers (which I sometimes do want to watch). I refuse to pay $8 to fill a seat, $8 for a light snack, and then still provide the theater with another income stream by being a captive eyeball. "
I haven't been to a theater in ages that doesn't do that..
And here's an idea.. why not go buy your light snack DURING the commercials? No really.. come on. That's a pretty stupid reason to "Boycott". Not only does your local theater manager probably have absolutely no pull over the advertising, I doubt they're going to miss you that much. Just go see the movie you want to enjoy, play arcade games in the lobby for 15 minutes, then show up in your seat after the ads are over.
I got a TiVo two weeks ago, and the statement made in the article is so incredibly true. I don't watch live tv - at all anymore. I come home, turn on the Tivo and I'm greeted by my favorite television shows. I have no idea what network the show got recorded from, nor do I care. I fastforward through all commercials, and yet I watch more Tv than before. The networks must hate me.
I've never had Red Bull, but I encountered a very similar situation you describe after chugging a 20 oz bottle of Jolt way too fast. I was really dehydrated after riding my bike to a 7-11, and promptly bought the bottle and drank it in under 2 minutes probably. Dizziness/blurred vision resulted. My unofficial diagnose .. don't drink any stimulants when your body doesn't have the proper amounts of water in it.
Hey, does this mean I "own" all the air above my house now? I don't like the planes from the local reserve base flying overhead. Can I start charging them flyover tolls?
As a previous poster pointed out, I think this is most likely do to the boatload of personal firewall software out there. A lot of people who go buy Norton's firewall, use BlackIce, ZoneAlarm or whatever see that "A computer has tried to connect to your machine via FTP" and panic. I do deskside support and I get people who worry that they've done something "illegal" when they get the BSOD (no I'm NOT joking). The simple answer seems to be you've got people who don't know what the hell they're doing installing/using firewalls.
..
Nothing beats the one time I tried to telnet into an old shell, attempted to logon, and after login failed I realized it was a different machine. The admin somehow or another ran a finger query on the shell machine I was logged onto and sent me email demanding to know who I was and why I was connected to his machine. There are some psychos out there
Then again, you never can be too paranoid.
Does anyone else see a large shipment of Magic Antenna and Radiation shields arriving at that guys warehouse next to all the 2600 cartirdges, vibrating Mr. Potato-heads and Aura vests? ..
As seen on TV!
Actually it's not even $300 anymore. I noticed Best Buy now has it for $199. Very cool.4 88 &cat=538&scat=539
http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11030956&m=
Or my dream home:
http://www.missilebases.com/new/
I work at a school and over the past year we've received over 10 donated 486 laptops from the Nuclear Regulatory Committee whose hard drives weren't wiped in any form whatsoever.
.... 1 Wordperfect ..... 2 Windows" etc. Funny, but disturbing. If anyone did "cleanse" these computers before they donated them it was simply by using "DEL *.DOC". Yeah - real secure...
Mind you, I haven't found g any data on them, but they still had an operating system + programs. I was really shocked when I booted them up and their DOS Batch menus popped up "NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMITEE
You sum up what I'm thinking perfectly. Part of the reason I cannot get into literature/english classes at school is that everyone sucks the joy out of books and movies just like you said. Overanalyss and "intellectual" criticism is so incredibly selfish. I've also seen people devote so much energy to pointing out what they found wrong in books or movies. Some criticism is good, but examples like yours prove all too often the academic crowd goes overboard.
My brains initial response:
How'd this crap get onto Slashdot's front page?
Ok anyways..
Am I the only one who makes use of the extensive 30 second audio samples from such major online retailers as CDNow etc?
Whenever I want to hear what a song/artist sounds like, I goto CDNow and listen to the sound clips. If CDNow doesn't have the sound clip, I just search for the artist on Google. You're always bound to find it somewhere. And this is perfectly legal.
I've found indie rock artists tend to post track samples on their websites. Independent labels tend to always have audio samples. The latest mass-produced pop can be heard if you just turn on the radio.
MP3s are the last resort for me when it comes to previewing tracks. There are a wealth of resources out there which people do not take advantage of.
[insert replies below thread from bitchy linux users about how they can't listen to these audio samples because they all use "proprietary codecs from satan". ok - that's a valid argument]
Judging by the screenshots in the full article Next Generation did on this system, the games didn't look like much. Some looked like they wouldn't even belong on the Playstation. The concept of MAME + emulators in a tiny box appealed to me though ..
"I'll take Macintosh Codenames for $400, Alex"
"This 13.6 pound Mac with 32-bit clean ROMs was originally nicknamed "Stingray""
"What is the Mac IIci?
"Correct!"
"On next week's lone gumen:
..
The Lone Gunmen are contacted by Scully about paranormal activities that are taking place on an oil rig in the ocean.
Can The Lone Gunmen hax0r the ships mainframe before the government sinks it?
Special guest star: Angelina Jolie.."
To answer your question - yeah it does make it suck. Especially when you build your show around three-computer geeks and throw it at the computer-geek audience. Is it too much to ask them to get the details right? I can suspend disbelief to an extent, but when you start trying to tell me the evil modems built inside the CPUs (by the way - where do I plug in my RJ11 jack? Are they wireless? I guess at wireless rates they should have my hard drive contents by say.. 2073?)
I can't take the show seriously
"Maybe there's no technically accurate way to make stuff like that look exciting on a film or video. Think about it; even most of what, say, a script kiddie does is just typing gunzip rootkit.tar.gz | tar -xf rootkit.tar | /rootkit/r00t.sh."
..
I think you hit the nail on the head. My solution? Don't focus on the computers as a "prop", put the energy into the story!
And yes, if anyone in Hollywood would like to hire me on as a technical advisor on any films/tv shows let me know. I'm not any kind of guru but I've at least probably used more OS' and computers then all of your effects guys combined
Sorry Taco - The Lone Gunmen sucked. Does anyone else have this urge to become a hollywood special effects supervisor so we can put an end to shit like this?
Excuse me - I have to go secure my cookies with my new sector editor so the spooks don't steal my new Socket-7 CPU or my USERDATA.INI file. Maybe I should defrag it to make sure the modem inside my CPU doesn't upload any information to the internet..
You've obviously never ran SETI@Home or RC5. The uplink speed is irrelevant to parallel processing. It downloads large chunks of data, analyzes them offline for a while, and then uploads results. It is not a continuous up/down link.
tada.wav - PCM 22,050 kHz, 16 Bit, Stereo
ding.wav - PCM 22,050 kHz, 16 Bit, Stereo
It won't sound better - at all. The major fault I see with THX inside a PC is the uninformed buying public will expect all audio coming out of their PC to automagically become THX. Unless your source material is THX, which very little material from a PC is, it will sound just the same as it would from a good pair of speakers.
19 inch monitor, or 43 inch TV. Good point. I'll take the TV any day of the week.
If you like non-upgradable damn near almost propiterary solutions, then I guess a Destination is for you.
I had to reinstall the OS/Apps for one of these from scratch at work. I was using Windows 98 SE. Bad, bad, mistake. The components inside those systems are awfully strange and only seem to like perfectly with their factory-preinstalled Windows 95. I spent literally about two months before I got everything working in Win98 SE, and still the Tuner software doesn't deal with the audio channels perfectly. It requires you to pick one input then go back to TV before it actually starts feeding audio. The multimedia software isn't somewhat buggy, it's really buggy. I couldn't get audio to the DVD for weeks. Spent hours on the phone with Gateway support (who don't even officially support anything other than 95 on the system). They replaced the DVD Drive, the internal audio cables, the sound card. I kept explaining to them I didn't think the hardware was bad at all. I was right. For the DVD to work in 98 SE it required just the right combination of factory/downgraded/MS Default/updated drivers. I don't think I'd ever be able to duplicate that again (three cheers for Norton Ghost!)
Fresh out of the box, a Destination is probably a beautiful thing. Anyone who wants to use a relatively modern operating system it will be a nightmare for. And don't even THINK of using Linux on one. The insides of those systems are a nightmare. Multiple inputs to multiple inputs on seemingly custom designed cards. Barely an industry standard thing inside the beasts.
I know this situation ALL too well. This could have happened to me.
..
I have recently encountered a similar situation with my local school district (which I am not a student at).
My local school districts website address is "school-district".org. In late October I registered "school-district".com and "School-district".net.
I setup both sites to forward to page I had setup where I had a parody of a fundraiser they were currently running. Everyone who saw it thought it thought it was funny. You'd have to be an idiot to mistake it for the real website.
The result? Near Christmas I received a cease and desist letter demanding I take down my "libelous and unfounded attacks" against the district .
"If you do not cease and desist your activities within ten (10) days of the date of this letter, the District will pursue any and all legal remedies available to my client in a Court of competent jurisdiction for injuctive relief as well as money damages."
Money damages. Yeah what money damages? It's a FUNDRAISER in question. What, of the 76 unique visitors my page had I damaged your fundraising ability? What the hell?!
"You are in violation of both [my state] and Federal law; including but not limited to the anticybersquatting provisions of the Lanham Act and [my states] Unfair Trade Practices Act."
Pretty amazing how I can be guilty of cybersquatting when I never tried to sell the domain, never represented myself as them and for the past oh what.. FIVE YEARS they never had enough brains to register it themselves. Aren't such laws designed to protect the rights of corporations being taken advantage of my domain speculators?
I'm also apparently guilty of the PA Trade Act. How can I be guilty of a trade act when there's no TRADE INVOLVED?! Once again, I can't figure it out
They also had a "proposal" that I transfer the domain name to them "in exchange for the District's forberance in bringing any claims against you."
Having no other choice then well, get sued, I took down the content and notified them I did that. The domain name however, I have kept, and said nothing about it to them.
Individuals can't afford to throw money at a lawyer to fight against the bottomless pockets of orginizations and corporations hellbent on destroying our freedom.
Freedom of speech is slowly dying as rabid packs of lawyers and policemen attack our first amendment rights of fair use and parody. I am disgusted at the actions my local district took, and I am disgusted at the police in that case.
Does your local cable company use two-way cable modems? If so, then I don't think that's a real great valid reason not to go with them. You'd seriously rather suffer on 56K then figure out on your own how to get a cable modem to work in Linux?
"Video on D-VHS tapes is uncompressed, so it's enormous. A 75GB hard disk would only hold around 30 minutes of the video, according to company officials, making the trading of HD content over the Internet impossible..."
HA HA HA. Excuse me while I pick myself off the floor from laughing.
What kind of illogical argument is that? "Well since it's really big, they won't be able to copy it!". Excuse me, but such thinking is incredibly shortsighted.
DVD's were thought to be probably "impossible" to copy. But what happened? We have people who used hacked MPEG-4 CODEC DivX who distribute movies on 2 CD-ROMs. Nothing is impossible. You are merely taunting the pirates by proclaiming since it's so big they won't be able to pirate it.
I repeat - what an awful, awful, argument. The size has nothing to do with its ability to be pirated. Just as people watched crappy VCD's of Star Wars Episode 1 Bootlegs (come on Slashdot people, ADMIT IT) there will be people who will compress this new format down into a reasonable size while sacrificing quality.
This begs the question from me - why reinvent the wheel?
Couldn't resources be better spent optimizing or developing any number of open graphics standards instead of pumping dev time into a relatively closed standard such as DirectX?
IMO, the advances made with DirectX compatibility via WINE will be redundant by the time they are finished. Graphics technologies move at insanely fast rate (I had read moores law CUBED somewhere) and by the time that yesteday's great DirectX functions are working great in WINE, we will already be two generations ahead.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but DirectX is primarily used by games. I've never seen a killer office app that depends heavily on complex graphic functions via DirectX. Most applications dont need insane graphics acceleration. This move seems to be targeted towards making three-year old games run well in WINE. Why devote such resources to something in which very few people will actually have any benefit from?
I've encountered the same problem myself.
I'm 18, just graduated, and finished up my first semester of college. I too wondered whether I should pursue the CIS route of Networking or CS with more programming.
Since I have previous vocational education in CIS from 11th and 12th grade I decided that route.
CS as you mentioned, does seem to require a lot of math. I really dislike math. It's not that I find it hard, it's well... I'm lazy. I can't get myself interested in doing it. If you're not a big math fan I think you may want to veer away from CS. If you love math and programming, go for CS.
As other posters have mentioned, CIS does mix mostly networking courses in with Accounting, Economics and other fun stuff. CS is a lot of math and programming languages. My advice would be to find a common ground for both courses.
Locate classes that are required for both paths or can be used for credit. For instance, my CIS path requires I take a programming language. The programming language would ALSO get me credit for a CS path though. Take a programming course or two, a networking course and see what you like doing best. I get my kicks crawling around under desks troubleshooting hardware and network problems, but you may like banging out that last code revision at 4am better.
Go with what you feel is the best for you. I think the CIS will definitely be easier, but if you want to really challenge yourself then go for CS.