Maybe they're just following in the footsteps of President Bush's call for weaning America of its oil addiction. It's a new year, time to put on a new face!
Once my wife and I had kids, we rediscovered the utility of the public library - plenty of books and DVD's that are already paid for through taxes (excepting late fees, of course). I can't remember the last time we rented a DVD, but now we take the kids to the library almost weekly and constantly have new books or DVD's for ourselves as well.
I'd add another item: eliminate (or reduce to Sunday's only) the newspaper subscription. At least on Sunday's there are usually coupons that can make the paper pay for itself.
And when it comes to gaming accounts, there are free options out there - for example, with online poker, many sites have freerolls which, if you can cash in, can get you started with a modest bankroll. I did that at Hollywood Poker, and ended up cashing out $600 between December and January. Now I'm down to zero again, so it's back to the freerolls....
Wow, that's a flashback. I remember Midi Maze from tournaments at GenCon back in 1990 (I think that's right...). Back then it was a huge novelty to have multiple computers hooked up playing the same game. I think it was the Milwaukee Atari club that had a 16-computer ring set up, with tournaments running every hour or so. Very fun...
"My problem with booth babes is that while hiding behind 'free expression', these companies are trying to push their moral standards upon me trying to tell me what I should be looking at while going to a game show."
Thanks for that - I needed a good laugh this morning. By that definition, anything anyone does in a public space is "pushing their moral standards" on everyone else in the area. Settle down, already! If you think you're going to turn into a pillar of salt for looking at a booth babe, just don't look!
The thing to remember, however, is that what your company may consider worth training for may not be in your own best interest from a career perspective. They made need support for a legacy application written in RPG or COBOL, for example, while an individual's situation may be better off heading towards Java.
In short, you gotta keep your own interests in mind, and look for opportunities where you can make the case for the employer to foot the bill. They're not likely to just toss money around letting you take whatever course you like, that's for sure.
Ban, boycott... what's the difference? The editorial position on the importance of the English language has been obvious long before the article posted last week that basically said, "words don't count".
You forget, this is/. - if the article talks about big-business, then editorializing has to focus on exploitation and deceit. They figure only 1% will actually follow the links anyway!
What people don't get is that the jobs discussed here have almost nothing to do with tech . They're seasonal warehousing jobs, which by their very nature are going to be low-paying jobs. Whether it's an Amazon.com warehouse or a Walmart warehouse, it's the same thing.
Is the fact that temporary, low-skill jobs don't pay very much supposed to be news?
A masterful/. diatribe that's sure to soak up the mod points - heavy on the cynicism and anti-government blather, but ultimately off-topic and full of naivete.
It all comes down to cost/benefit - unfortunately, the cost of those older workers tends to outweigh the benefits of their experience. It just goes to show how critical the health-care crisis is in the US. We like to think we've got the best health care system in the world, but the costs are out of control and it's creating a drag on labor costs (and by extension the competitiveness of our increasingly service-driven economy).
If done right, this could be a real winner. Star Trek has been a tantalizing setting for computer games since the days of keying in BASIC code from a book or magazine. I'm just hoping they offer a selection of time periods - gimme Kirk's old rust bucket leading the charge against a squadron of old War Birds any day.
Assuming of course that later time periods include the pr0n-enabled holodeck sessions...
Baselining and measurement are key to the day-to-day operational management of any group, not just IT, and while it can become a very difficult task to define those measurements, it can build major credibility with other managers in the company if you can provide a clear picture on how the department is functioning and where improvements are being made.
Another challenge altogether is how to prioritize the IT department's request backlog. Do you have senior management prioritize tasks above a certain level of effort/risk? Do you implement a chargeback system to make other departments bear the cost of those "gotta haves"?
I've seen a few different approaches to this, and feel that a chargeback system is helpful in trimming the junk work out of the backlog. The trick, however, is implementing a time-tracking & billing process that places as small a burden as possible on the IT staff, but provides visibility to what's being done and for whom.
There's a zillion other issues as well, and there are plenty of good suggestions getting posted here. I've got a new organization to set up as well in the coming months, so it's nice to get some useful input.
Now here's a question for the crowd... is there anything like a multiplayer Nethack? Something you could telnet into with a single dungeon, but multiple players running through it? And no, I'm not talking standard MUD's or other games, but actual multiplayer Nethack.
Platform requirements can easily put constraints around the solution choice, while providing plenty of room to pick the app that does the job for the company. Don't forget that ERP's don't operate in a vaccuum. Quite often they have to interface with financial packages, transportation modules, document archival, etc., which may impact the decision due to hardware & support staff that are already in place.
Micrsoft's ERP products for manufacturing are second to none
Huh??? Microsoft is a wannabe in the serious ERP market - but regardless of software vendor, if you're considering the platform question, it becomes a matter of scale. If you need rock-solid reliability, high-volume throughput and widespread realtime access to the data and application, then the iSeries is the obvious choice.
Just as an example, I'm currently the IT project lead on an ERP installation. The ERP itself can run on a number of different platforms, of which we're going with the iSeries. Their collaborative gateway package runs on Windows, but our order volumes made their techies soil their shorts, so we're going with an alternative (iSeries-based) solution for that part.
If the situation here is for a low order-volume, low user base or other smaller scenario (say, for a niche manufacturer of high-dollar, low volume product), then maybe Windows becomes an affordable option. But if they've already got iSeries inhouse (both the hardware and the support staff), then they probably need that level of stability.
Recently I took a new job in a new city, and until I found a home for the family I stayed in a corporate apartment with a modest cable lineup, which included G4. I caught myself watching X-Play quite a few times, and thought it was actually a pretty good show (and this coming from a guy who hasn't bought a video or computer game in years), especially the reviews of the awful games.
Very true, however, that the ScreenSaver/Call for Help purge wiped out any chance the channel had of staying relevant. But hey, give me X-Play and a rerun of the Man Show and I'm happy for an hour or so...
That's because in the grand scheme of the business, the "browser war" is a border skirmish that has very little to no effect on the bottom line. Delivering Vista to market and actually getting businesses on board with it is far more important.
Forget open source, and think of other in-house developed legacy applications. I recently moved to Tennessee to take a lead role in a project to replace an ancient Cobol homegrown system with a purchased, packaged solution. In light of this tax, would the firm have had an added incentive to keep the old code in use? Blech...
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe they're just following in the footsteps of President Bush's call for weaning America of its oil addiction. It's a new year, time to put on a new face!
If you RTFA, (I know, I know) you'll see it's the Entertainment Software Association praising the bust.
The bigger question, though, is a how a post like that got modded "Informative"?
Once my wife and I had kids, we rediscovered the utility of the public library - plenty of books and DVD's that are already paid for through taxes (excepting late fees, of course). I can't remember the last time we rented a DVD, but now we take the kids to the library almost weekly and constantly have new books or DVD's for ourselves as well.
I'd add another item: eliminate (or reduce to Sunday's only) the newspaper subscription. At least on Sunday's there are usually coupons that can make the paper pay for itself.
And when it comes to gaming accounts, there are free options out there - for example, with online poker, many sites have freerolls which, if you can cash in, can get you started with a modest bankroll. I did that at Hollywood Poker, and ended up cashing out $600 between December and January. Now I'm down to zero again, so it's back to the freerolls....
But after reading the article, I'm convinced guys like this really are better off staying in their parents' basement.
'By 2020 the market for nuclear power generation is expected to grow 50 percent compared to 2005,'
Which adds up to a whopping 2.75% annual growth rate. What's to get excited about?
Wow, that's a flashback. I remember Midi Maze from tournaments at GenCon back in 1990 (I think that's right...). Back then it was a huge novelty to have multiple computers hooked up playing the same game. I think it was the Milwaukee Atari club that had a 16-computer ring set up, with tournaments running every hour or so. Very fun...
Wow, and what do you hope to get for your 14th birthday, kiddie?
"My problem with booth babes is that while hiding behind 'free expression', these companies are trying to push their moral standards upon me trying to tell me what I should be looking at while going to a game show."
Thanks for that - I needed a good laugh this morning. By that definition, anything anyone does in a public space is "pushing their moral standards" on everyone else in the area. Settle down, already! If you think you're going to turn into a pillar of salt for looking at a booth babe, just don't look!
The thing to remember, however, is that what your company may consider worth training for may not be in your own best interest from a career perspective. They made need support for a legacy application written in RPG or COBOL, for example, while an individual's situation may be better off heading towards Java.
In short, you gotta keep your own interests in mind, and look for opportunities where you can make the case for the employer to foot the bill. They're not likely to just toss money around letting you take whatever course you like, that's for sure.
Ban, boycott... what's the difference? The editorial position on the importance of the English language has been obvious long before the article posted last week that basically said, "words don't count".
You forget, this is /. - if the article talks about big-business, then editorializing has to focus on exploitation and deceit. They figure only 1% will actually follow the links anyway!
What people don't get is that the jobs discussed here have almost nothing to do with tech . They're seasonal warehousing jobs, which by their very nature are going to be low-paying jobs. Whether it's an Amazon.com warehouse or a Walmart warehouse, it's the same thing.
Is the fact that temporary, low-skill jobs don't pay very much supposed to be news?
A masterful /. diatribe that's sure to soak up the mod points - heavy on the cynicism and anti-government blather, but ultimately off-topic and full of naivete.
It all comes down to cost/benefit - unfortunately, the cost of those older workers tends to outweigh the benefits of their experience. It just goes to show how critical the health-care crisis is in the US. We like to think we've got the best health care system in the world, but the costs are out of control and it's creating a drag on labor costs (and by extension the competitiveness of our increasingly service-driven economy).
I don't think the article said anything about originating IP's - rather, it was about how often porn comes up in search results on average.
If done right, this could be a real winner. Star Trek has been a tantalizing setting for computer games since the days of keying in BASIC code from a book or magazine. I'm just hoping they offer a selection of time periods - gimme Kirk's old rust bucket leading the charge against a squadron of old War Birds any day.
Assuming of course that later time periods include the pr0n-enabled holodeck sessions...
Baselining and measurement are key to the day-to-day operational management of any group, not just IT, and while it can become a very difficult task to define those measurements, it can build major credibility with other managers in the company if you can provide a clear picture on how the department is functioning and where improvements are being made.
Another challenge altogether is how to prioritize the IT department's request backlog. Do you have senior management prioritize tasks above a certain level of effort/risk? Do you implement a chargeback system to make other departments bear the cost of those "gotta haves"?
I've seen a few different approaches to this, and feel that a chargeback system is helpful in trimming the junk work out of the backlog. The trick, however, is implementing a time-tracking & billing process that places as small a burden as possible on the IT staff, but provides visibility to what's being done and for whom.
There's a zillion other issues as well, and there are plenty of good suggestions getting posted here. I've got a new organization to set up as well in the coming months, so it's nice to get some useful input.
Now here's a question for the crowd... is there anything like a multiplayer Nethack? Something you could telnet into with a single dungeon, but multiple players running through it? And no, I'm not talking standard MUD's or other games, but actual multiplayer Nethack.
Platform requirements can easily put constraints around the solution choice, while providing plenty of room to pick the app that does the job for the company. Don't forget that ERP's don't operate in a vaccuum. Quite often they have to interface with financial packages, transportation modules, document archival, etc., which may impact the decision due to hardware & support staff that are already in place.
Micrsoft's ERP products for manufacturing are second to none
Huh??? Microsoft is a wannabe in the serious ERP market - but regardless of software vendor, if you're considering the platform question, it becomes a matter of scale. If you need rock-solid reliability, high-volume throughput and widespread realtime access to the data and application, then the iSeries is the obvious choice.
Just as an example, I'm currently the IT project lead on an ERP installation. The ERP itself can run on a number of different platforms, of which we're going with the iSeries. Their collaborative gateway package runs on Windows, but our order volumes made their techies soil their shorts, so we're going with an alternative (iSeries-based) solution for that part.
If the situation here is for a low order-volume, low user base or other smaller scenario (say, for a niche manufacturer of high-dollar, low volume product), then maybe Windows becomes an affordable option. But if they've already got iSeries inhouse (both the hardware and the support staff), then they probably need that level of stability.
That must be a long tube, because I've seen that "/. is going down the tubes" post since BroadBand internet meant a Go-Go's fansite...
Recently I took a new job in a new city, and until I found a home for the family I stayed in a corporate apartment with a modest cable lineup, which included G4. I caught myself watching X-Play quite a few times, and thought it was actually a pretty good show (and this coming from a guy who hasn't bought a video or computer game in years), especially the reviews of the awful games.
Very true, however, that the ScreenSaver/Call for Help purge wiped out any chance the channel had of staying relevant. But hey, give me X-Play and a rerun of the Man Show and I'm happy for an hour or so...
That's because in the grand scheme of the business, the "browser war" is a border skirmish that has very little to no effect on the bottom line. Delivering Vista to market and actually getting businesses on board with it is far more important.
Forget open source, and think of other in-house developed legacy applications. I recently moved to Tennessee to take a lead role in a project to replace an ancient Cobol homegrown system with a purchased, packaged solution. In light of this tax, would the firm have had an added incentive to keep the old code in use? Blech...
First, you need a large enough group of players who earn enough money to move out of their mother's basement...