Dude I know what you mean. My Vista 64 gaming PC is very reliable as well, I mean on the occasions ATI decides to release a driver that doesn't bork my crossfire config:)
However you must admit, compared to XP, Vista does following things - grinds the hard drive an insane amount, even with indexing turned off - is slower than XP - does nothing I want that XP can't do except for DirectX10 and aero, again that's an artificial decision by MS, there's no reason why they couldn't have released DirectX for XP.
Don't even get me started on OSX or linux (of which I run both - OSX on laptop, linux on server)
So basically i feel like Vista is being imposed upon me esp. as someone who plays a fair amount (a lot? a fair amount? lol) of games. Basically if it wasn't for games I'd be happy with my macbook for normal usage and linux for server type stuff and tinkering around with netbooks, appliance type devices etc.
what I wouldn't give for the MS equivalent of vm.swappiness
In fact vista runs better if you turn off the page file, assuming 4Gb RAM and you're not running huge 3D apps, crunching big databases or the like.
also the system restore grinds the hard drive for MINUTES AFTER MINUTES after any install/remove type activity - resource monitor shows tonns of disk thrashing in the system volume hidden folders. I found out later its system restore doing its thing as it attempts to catalogue and backup all changes etc.
Even turning off indexing, the hard drive thrashing is what drives off most 'normal' users.
Funny how any modern unix system with a decent packaging system doesn't need 'system restore' to attempt to reinvent the wheel, badly, so it can back out of the DLL hell its created itself through bad initial design and backward compatibility being deemed more important.
Its truly hilarious how all singing, all dancing OSX time machine thrashes less disk than Vista's sytem restore feature whilst doing a whole lot more...
Guys it already exists. Its called a Dell Mini 9 and it hackintoshes perfectly.
Bluetooth, wireless, integrated 3G, all 100% working. Software updates too believe it or not (though I wouldn't do a major upgrade like leopard --> upcoming snow leopard).
You can even install using retail OSX disk now and a custom bootloader, you don't even need to use a specially hacked version, just use the custom bootloader, install, then patch using the magic that the community has put out (and its a next-next-next type of patch, no brainer).
It also runs OSX like a champ (yes, even integrated 3G modem and bluetooth).
I would do ubuntu except I can't get the friggin wvdial config down to work with the integrated 3G card, and network manager spasms out (something to do with a nonstandard AT string from my research) and after wasting a weekend on it I decided to waste a weekend on hackintosh instead of the possibility of finding a fix:)
RTFA and learn what the CSIRO is and what actually happened.
Others below have refuted your ill informed claims in far greater detail than I can ever bother to muster.
American firms acting like they're above everybody else and stealing other people's research with the left hand whilst they shaft everybody else with the right (with the help of their govt who shove 'free' trade agreements down the throats of every other govt that do wonderful things like extend your wonderfully fair DCMA act to our legal domain): geeze that's a useful skill.
No you miss the point. They want it to work 'as easily' as windows.
FOr some things its a straw man, the linux way is just as easy or even easier, its just they're too used to the windows monoculture and cannot conceive an alternative.
FOr some other things its absolutely spot on. Why does an average user have to understand iptables and smb.conf files just to 'map a shared drive'. (this may have changed with FC10 and up, I stopped using Fedora on desktop since around F8). Why do they have to jump through hoops just to get flash and xvid - and the proprietary argument is another straw man. Hint: USERS DON'T CARE and ubuntu seems to have no issues giving them one package to install that sorts out flash, mp3, xvid and truetype fonts.
The amount of time it took me to get an F8 install fully 'desktop ready' compared to ubuntu 8.10 is abysmal. I can spend 5 minutes post install on ubuntu and wow people. Fedora, takes way longer to get all that 'normal' stuff working, then also I'm forever answering questions about how to do XYZ and they seem to not have those questions if I point them at ubuntu......
Not trying to start a fedora vs ubuntu flamewar, and I know the two distros are for different jobs. I always prefer to run 'server' type apps in Fedora and my nice familiar RH environment. But I am replying to your comments above.
IPREDator and any other VPN or tunnelling solution is moot.
Only a small proportion of the file sharing population have the nous to sort it out.
If they drive off the majority of the file sharers, their job is done. The tech underground will keep swapping files like they always have done, its getting the masses off browse and click bittorrent that's the main objective.
Two of the biggest ball and chains any geek has had to live with even if they never consented to being tarred with the same brush as all the Star X fans.
I hope the franchises die an awful death. Having some of their diehard nut fans meet the same fate would also do wonders for our cred. The only good thing about those shows is that it forms the basis for comic-book-guy's character. Oh yeah, and "Luke be a jedi toniiiiiight"......
Gayest shows ever (yes flame me please, its slashdot and "I'm not new here")
final nitpick: Star wars is not sci fi. Its a adolescent boy fantasy except with blasters and hyperspace instead of sword and sorcery. Ooh I am cruisin for a flamewar
Heck he's not even a graduate and I consider them subhuman.
Jokes aside, the fact that he is asking whether an MBA is a good option and focusing the question towards his earning power is a bad sign for us on the IT engineering side of the fence.
Business/management skills? sure absolutely necessary. But the engineering should come first. All else is life imitating dilbert / I mean art.
How many artists do you know who make a comfortable living doing solely their art?
And how many do you know work mundane low level jobs and play gigs on the weekend or whatever?
How many burnt out artists have you met on the wrong side of 40 who are still stacking shelves and all bitter that they never became rock and roll superstars?
And how many artists do you know who are still not making any decent money despite having released several indie albums? (by decent money I mean having same kind of income stream as a middle class professional).
This capitalist society is rigged against people pursuing the arts. You heard it here first (sarcasm)
And do it on the post-modern narcissists' soapbox, the pulpit for the modern day lazy attention-whore, facebook.
Anybody who does this and then gets sued for it - well that's the elecronic equivalent of natural selection isn't it.
And you can bet your bottom dollar that facebook will remove this, esp. now they're a possible target with newscorp money to be had. They'll comply with anything the media corporations thrown at them as they have absolutely nothing to gain by fighting the good fight, so to speak. And they won't.
Besides this is not an issue of RIAA mafia tactics or innocent till proven guilty or even punishment does not fit crime, no loss in utility like caused by physical theft etc. - people are actively advertising their civil liability, whether you think that liability is fair or not.
And do we really have to rehash all this copyright != theft, fuck the RIAA etc. why don't we argue about the year of the linux desktop or in soviet russia whilst we're at it.
I remember my university computer experience fondly
Hours spent playing diablo, Xwing-Tie and other old school goodness (on a LAN no less.... 8Meg downloads at midnight... this is before the millenium) : I lost track
Hours spent doing real work: maybe 20 a year. OK I exaggerate but you get the picture.
And this was BEFORE or just as mp3s were coming in and hard drives got to the capacity where it was feasible to store more than a handful of albums. Yes downsampling e.g. 160k to 96k to save space was actually a dilemma at this stage.
Though I didn't do computer science or anything related, I would think it would have been a real pain to do any hi tech course without your own setup. But it would have been fully possible, just more hassle (travel, less than optimum setup, all the attendant hassles of shared facilities etc.)
Its not the age thats an issue, its the fact that you'll be entry level AND 35.
If you have 5+ years experience and are level 3 engineering or equivalent i.e. you're a 'real' IT engineer then 35 is no issue. However you'll be gunning for the same jobs as the early 20 somethings.
It may be different for devs though esp. if you are supernaturally talented or get lucky. But from infrastructure IT point of view, you'll be lucky to get straight into level 2 (e.g. you're on the higher level helpdesk type area and you get to actually configure stuff, or you're a 'junior' engineer who isn't allowed to change routes etc. without level 3 permission) even with a degree. I know I would rather hire the 30 year old with 5 years experience than a 35 year old fresh grad.
disclaimer: I'm 29 and entered IT at 24 with no qualifications so maybe I'm biased.
I wonder how many people on slashdot are telling the truth, and how representative it is of the online geek 'community'.
Because there's an awful lot of righteous "I buy all my games/media/sex toys and I never pirate them" folks loudly proclaiming their moral superiority..... which is most unlike most geeks I know (myself included)
I really miss the old school flight sims, esp. WWI - II era - without HUDs, lock on missiles and with proper flight physics of course. Perhaps not teethgrindingly realistic but realistic enough that your options are limited by the physics. If you get bounced from high your only safe option is to get the heck out of dodge, if you're in a faster but less maneuverable plane stick to slash and run, pulling a high yoyo if trying to turn with a plane going much slower than you, etc.
If anyone remembers the Falcon Gold package and air combat maneuvering videos that were with that, those manuevers and the 'textbook' things they taught you were pure gold. You could literally take apart people who were just doing the 'point the nose at in the direction of the enemy' school i.e. how all these ace combat clones play. Of course all of that is complete puff now with these realism free, physics free 'flight' games that seem to revolve around how fast you can launch your unlimited or ridiculously large missile supply onto locked on targets. ANd oh yeah, avoiding missiles = hit chaff and spin the control as fast as you can, you don't even have to look at the incoming angle and try to cut across it .
NOt even 30 and getting misty eyed about the old school, that's slashdot for ya
None of the modern missile lock on frenzy games have anywhere near the depth of the old school sims, just can't get into them.
And yes the 'assist lockon' mode is really silly, the above RC plane comment is spot on.
Mind you this is with my borked corporate standard image running IE6 (thanks activex devs) mcaffee, and alteris so you can imagine how messed up it already is:)
How about when IE crashes it DOESN'T take down file explorer with it? That is my single biggest non -security gripe with IE and the most obvious noticeable flaw in this embed-ie-in-everything approach
Thanks, but what I was getting at was that as a kid with my kid perspective I really loved and enjoyed those games. Nowadays I wouldn't bother, the old JRPG dungeon crawl linear plot same combat system (however tweaked) is too same old, same old. (I'm excluding stuff like Skies of Arcadia which actually has an original and different combat system)
Newsflash: revolutionary new tech allows a network probe.... to classify traffic by matching TCP/IP profile and protocol inspection
How is this different to, er, any sniffer or monitoring tool out there. Or any Cisco router with NBAR turned on. Solarwinds, statseeker, ntop, you name it (network monitoring suite) and they ALL have features that allow probes (or use netflow or both) to gather traffic info including by protocol.
Slashdot's standards are slipping greatly, esp. anything NOT to do with servers, dev and/or coding, apparently all the real network techs have gone on holidays or something
Pride and prejudice is a mills and boon novel wrapped up in ye olde english language, combined with mildly insightful social commentary that was apparently very insightful at the time, but now not so 'edgy'.
God I despise Jane Austen!!!!!!!!!!! (scars from high school and uni english maybe)
Slashdot Mirror
Dude I know what you mean. My Vista 64 gaming PC is very reliable as well, I mean on the occasions ATI decides to release a driver that doesn't bork my crossfire config :)
However you must admit, compared to XP, Vista does following things
- grinds the hard drive an insane amount, even with indexing turned off
- is slower than XP
- does nothing I want that XP can't do except for DirectX10 and aero, again that's an artificial decision by MS, there's no reason why they couldn't have released DirectX for XP.
Don't even get me started on OSX or linux (of which I run both - OSX on laptop, linux on server)
So basically i feel like Vista is being imposed upon me esp. as someone who plays a fair amount (a lot? a fair amount? lol) of games. Basically if it wasn't for games I'd be happy with my macbook for normal usage and linux for server type stuff and tinkering around with netbooks, appliance type devices etc.
Yes yes hear hear.
what I wouldn't give for the MS equivalent of vm.swappiness
In fact vista runs better if you turn off the page file, assuming 4Gb RAM and you're not running huge 3D apps, crunching big databases or the like.
also the system restore grinds the hard drive for MINUTES AFTER MINUTES after any install/remove type activity - resource monitor shows tonns of disk thrashing in the system volume hidden folders. I found out later its system restore doing its thing as it attempts to catalogue and backup all changes etc.
Even turning off indexing, the hard drive thrashing is what drives off most 'normal' users.
Funny how any modern unix system with a decent packaging system doesn't need 'system restore' to attempt to reinvent the wheel, badly, so it can back out of the DLL hell its created itself through bad initial design and backward compatibility being deemed more important.
Its truly hilarious how all singing, all dancing OSX time machine thrashes less disk than Vista's sytem restore feature whilst doing a whole lot more...
When I put an OSX86 sticker over the windows sticker and cover the dell logo with an apple sticker :)
But then again I'm not the type to go drink coffee at coffee houses by myself so what do I know lol.
The guys in the mydellmini forums are insane, they're doing custom covers (not slip ons, the whole damn thing) and everything.
Guys it already exists. Its called a Dell Mini 9 and it hackintoshes perfectly.
Bluetooth, wireless, integrated 3G, all 100% working. Software updates too believe it or not (though I wouldn't do a major upgrade like leopard --> upcoming snow leopard).
You can even install using retail OSX disk now and a custom bootloader, you don't even need to use a specially hacked version, just use the custom bootloader, install, then patch using the magic that the community has put out (and its a next-next-next type of patch, no brainer).
It also runs OSX like a champ (yes, even integrated 3G modem and bluetooth).
I would do ubuntu except I can't get the friggin wvdial config down to work with the integrated 3G card, and network manager spasms out (something to do with a nonstandard AT string from my research) and after wasting a weekend on it I decided to waste a weekend on hackintosh instead of the possibility of finding a fix :)
RTFA and learn what the CSIRO is and what actually happened.
Others below have refuted your ill informed claims in far greater detail than I can ever bother to muster.
American firms acting like they're above everybody else and stealing other people's research with the left hand whilst they shaft everybody else with the right (with the help of their govt who shove 'free' trade agreements down the throats of every other govt that do wonderful things like extend your wonderfully fair DCMA act to our legal domain): geeze that's a useful skill.
No you miss the point.
They want it to work 'as easily' as windows.
FOr some things its a straw man, the linux way is just as easy or even easier, its just they're too used to the windows monoculture and cannot conceive an alternative.
FOr some other things its absolutely spot on. Why does an average user have to understand iptables and smb.conf files just to 'map a shared drive'. (this may have changed with FC10 and up, I stopped using Fedora on desktop since around F8). Why do they have to jump through hoops just to get flash and xvid - and the proprietary argument is another straw man. Hint: USERS DON'T CARE and ubuntu seems to have no issues giving them one package to install that sorts out flash, mp3, xvid and truetype fonts.
The amount of time it took me to get an F8 install fully 'desktop ready' compared to ubuntu 8.10 is abysmal. I can spend 5 minutes post install on ubuntu and wow people. Fedora, takes way longer to get all that 'normal' stuff working, then also I'm forever answering questions about how to do XYZ and they seem to not have those questions if I point them at ubuntu......
Not trying to start a fedora vs ubuntu flamewar, and I know the two distros are for different jobs. I always prefer to run 'server' type apps in Fedora and my nice familiar RH environment. But I am replying to your comments above.
IPREDator and any other VPN or tunnelling solution is moot.
Only a small proportion of the file sharing population have the nous to sort it out.
If they drive off the majority of the file sharers, their job is done. The tech underground will keep swapping files like they always have done, its getting the masses off browse and click bittorrent that's the main objective.
I want to buy your rock.
Star wars.
Star trek.
Two of the biggest ball and chains any geek has had to live with even if they never consented to being tarred with the same brush as all the Star X fans.
I hope the franchises die an awful death. Having some of their diehard nut fans meet the same fate would also do wonders for our cred. The only good thing about those shows is that it forms the basis for comic-book-guy's character. Oh yeah, and "Luke be a jedi toniiiiiight"......
Gayest shows ever (yes flame me please, its slashdot and "I'm not new here")
final nitpick: Star wars is not sci fi. Its a adolescent boy fantasy except with blasters and hyperspace instead of sword and sorcery. Ooh I am cruisin for a flamewar
Except that he's not a tech person yet.
Heck he's not even a graduate and I consider them subhuman.
Jokes aside, the fact that he is asking whether an MBA is a good option and focusing the question towards his earning power is a bad sign for us on the IT engineering side of the fence.
Business/management skills? sure absolutely necessary. But the engineering should come first. All else is life imitating dilbert / I mean art.
Correction: not newscorp money (got confused with guess who) but still the point remains.
95% of artists fall into that category
How many artists do you know who make a comfortable living doing solely their art?
And how many do you know work mundane low level jobs and play gigs on the weekend or whatever?
How many burnt out artists have you met on the wrong side of 40 who are still stacking shelves and all bitter that they never became rock and roll superstars?
And how many artists do you know who are still not making any decent money despite having released several indie albums? (by decent money I mean having same kind of income stream as a middle class professional).
This capitalist society is rigged against people pursuing the arts. You heard it here first (sarcasm)
And do it on the post-modern narcissists' soapbox, the pulpit for the modern day lazy attention-whore, facebook.
Anybody who does this and then gets sued for it - well that's the elecronic equivalent of natural selection isn't it.
And you can bet your bottom dollar that facebook will remove this, esp. now they're a possible target with newscorp money to be had. They'll comply with anything the media corporations thrown at them as they have absolutely nothing to gain by fighting the good fight, so to speak. And they won't.
Besides this is not an issue of RIAA mafia tactics or innocent till proven guilty or even punishment does not fit crime, no loss in utility like caused by physical theft etc. - people are actively advertising their civil liability, whether you think that liability is fair or not.
And do we really have to rehash all this copyright != theft, fuck the RIAA etc. why don't we argue about the year of the linux desktop or in soviet russia whilst we're at it.
No I'm not new here :)
I second your cynicism.
I remember my university computer experience fondly
Hours spent playing diablo, Xwing-Tie and other old school goodness (on a LAN no less.... 8Meg downloads at midnight... this is before the millenium) : I lost track
Hours spent doing real work: maybe 20 a year. OK I exaggerate but you get the picture.
And this was BEFORE or just as mp3s were coming in and hard drives got to the capacity where it was feasible to store more than a handful of albums. Yes downsampling e.g. 160k to 96k to save space was actually a dilemma at this stage.
Though I didn't do computer science or anything related, I would think it would have been a real pain to do any hi tech course without your own setup. But it would have been fully possible, just more hassle (travel, less than optimum setup, all the attendant hassles of shared facilities etc.)
I agree.
Its not the age thats an issue, its the fact that you'll be entry level AND 35.
If you have 5+ years experience and are level 3 engineering or equivalent i.e. you're a 'real' IT engineer then 35 is no issue. However you'll be gunning for the same jobs as the early 20 somethings.
It may be different for devs though esp. if you are supernaturally talented or get lucky. But from infrastructure IT point of view, you'll be lucky to get straight into level 2 (e.g. you're on the higher level helpdesk type area and you get to actually configure stuff, or you're a 'junior' engineer who isn't allowed to change routes etc. without level 3 permission) even with a degree. I know I would rather hire the 30 year old with 5 years experience than a 35 year old fresh grad.
disclaimer: I'm 29 and entered IT at 24 with no qualifications so maybe I'm biased.
I wonder how many people on slashdot are telling the truth, and how representative it is of the online geek 'community'.
Because there's an awful lot of righteous "I buy all my games/media/sex toys and I never pirate them" folks loudly proclaiming their moral superiority..... which is most unlike most geeks I know (myself included)
OSX on commidity hardware = driver hell just like windows
It loses half its advantage over windows as soon as it leaves its walled garden.
Plus the old 'apple is a HW company', high margins, they don't want to compete with low margin high volume race to bottom etc. etc. etc.
Still, easily 50% better even with same hardware issues :)
I really miss the old school flight sims, esp. WWI - II era - without HUDs, lock on missiles and with proper flight physics of course. Perhaps not teethgrindingly realistic but realistic enough that your options are limited by the physics. If you get bounced from high your only safe option is to get the heck out of dodge, if you're in a faster but less maneuverable plane stick to slash and run, pulling a high yoyo if trying to turn with a plane going much slower than you, etc.
If anyone remembers the Falcon Gold package and air combat maneuvering videos that were with that, those manuevers and the 'textbook' things they taught you were pure gold. You could literally take apart people who were just doing the 'point the nose at in the direction of the enemy' school i.e. how all these ace combat clones play. Of course all of that is complete puff now with these realism free, physics free 'flight' games that seem to revolve around how fast you can launch your unlimited or ridiculously large missile supply onto locked on targets. ANd oh yeah, avoiding missiles = hit chaff and spin the control as fast as you can, you don't even have to look at the incoming angle and try to cut across it .
NOt even 30 and getting misty eyed about the old school, that's slashdot for ya
None of the modern missile lock on frenzy games have anywhere near the depth of the old school sims, just can't get into them.
And yes the 'assist lockon' mode is really silly, the above RC plane comment is spot on.
not every time but I have seen this happen.
Mind you this is with my borked corporate standard image running IE6 (thanks activex devs) mcaffee, and alteris so you can imagine how messed up it already is :)
How about when IE crashes it DOESN'T take down file explorer with it? That is my single biggest non -security gripe with IE and the most obvious noticeable flaw in this embed-ie-in-everything approach
Network admin != microsoft/wintel sysadmin. PLEASE SLASHDOT STOP CONFLATING THE TWO
Thanks, but what I was getting at was that as a kid with my kid perspective I really loved and enjoyed those games. Nowadays I wouldn't bother, the old JRPG dungeon crawl linear plot same combat system (however tweaked) is too same old, same old. (I'm excluding stuff like Skies of Arcadia which actually has an original and different combat system)
Newsflash: revolutionary new tech allows a network probe.... to classify traffic by matching TCP/IP profile and protocol inspection
How is this different to, er, any sniffer or monitoring tool out there. Or any Cisco router with NBAR turned on. Solarwinds, statseeker, ntop, you name it (network monitoring suite) and they ALL have features that allow probes (or use netflow or both) to gather traffic info including by protocol.
Slashdot's standards are slipping greatly, esp. anything NOT to do with servers, dev and/or coding, apparently all the real network techs have gone on holidays or something
I'll bite.
Pride and prejudice is a mills and boon novel wrapped up in ye olde english language, combined with mildly insightful social commentary that was apparently very insightful at the time, but now not so 'edgy'.
God I despise Jane Austen!!!!!!!!!!! (scars from high school and uni english maybe)