Lastly, wasn't it brilliant on 3DFX to produce cards that ONLY worked for 3D games (Vodoo 1)
Yeah, it was. Considering they were making those 3D cards years before NVIDIA had anything remotely competitive. Compare the Riva 128 to a Voodoo 2. It's sad.
3dfx made a lot of mistakes, especially at the end. But for a long time they were very, very good.
Multi-billion dollar companies are still smarting from the last time they tried to be forward-thinking. Living day to day making smaller immediate profits restores their confidence in their ability to make money.
They'll come around eventually, hopefully a bit wiser for their experiences.
FWIW I also work for a mega-corporation, and to a great extent I'm frustrated by the same thing you're seeing. I'm trying to be understanding, though, and realizing that the need they feel to make money right now is strikingly similar to my own.
It's worse than that. The buttons are so sensitive that picking up the mouse and setting it back down will cause them to click. Resting your fingers on them normally will hold them down. This is difficult to get used to. Eventually you learn to keep your fingers hovered slightly above the buttons and you compensate for not being able to pick up the mouse by cranking up the sensitivity high enough so that you never need to.
One unfortunate thing I was never able to figure out is how to get the buttons to click rapidly. Since there is virtually no tactile feedback to clicking it's hard to tell if you're actually clicking or just holding the button down without really exaggerating the finger motion involved.
There's a much bigger problem: I had three older Razer Boomslangs (before they went bankrupt, or whatever happened). The first one I actually bought, and it broke the day I got it. Razer, thankfully, had a rather good return policy, and had a new one on the way after about 5 minutes on the phone.
My second Razer lasted through a couple months of off and on usage. The difficulty of rapidly clicking the buttons made pistol shooting in CS a major pain in the ass, so I kept switching it with my IntelliMouse Optical. Finally it just stopped working one day. The mouse would only move vertically and the primary button would not work. Another call to Razer, 5 minutes, and another mouse was on the way.
The final Razer lasted about a week of me forcing myself to use it exclusively. Just as I was getting used to it, it fell off my desk. The mouse wheel became jammed inside the mouse, and even when I freed it so that it would rotate properly it was no longer functional. I didn't bother to replace this one.
There's a lot of upside to the mouse, it's incredibly smooth and accurate. There is really no comparing it to standard consumer mice in that respect. You want headshots, to be a railgun god, or just be incredibly precise in your Photoshop work? You can't beat it. It's good enough that, despite my problems with it, I'm thinking of buying one of their new models just to see if they've fixed their problems.
Unfortunately, if you can't count on them to last more than a week at a time they aren't worth much. I've stepped on, dropped, thrown, and even backed over IntelliMouse Optical mice with my car and had them work perfectly afterwards. I don't expect every mouse to handle that, but one that can't handle falling off a desk on some carpet is just unacceptable. Oh, and once you get used to optical mice, going back to cleaning a ball is just annoying.
My advice: if you decide to buy one, buy two. You'll need the second one while you wait for the first one to be replaced. Also, prepare to forget a bunch of your mousing habits if your current ones aren't compatible with what the mouse likes.
Even if Google qualified, which it probably doesn't due to the methods it uses for its data storage, if I read the article properly the database vendors are responsible for naming the participants.
Since Google's stuff seems to be developed in-house, they don't have a major database vendor to nominate them.
Leaving off a couple zeroes, my friend. Largest database in the survey is 30,000GB. Not to mention, of course, that you probably have to actually request to be included in these tallies. There could very well be much larger databases (maybe government agencies with three letters in their name?) that are unknown to the people running these numbers.
As I said, I could most likely live comfortably for the whole year off of the proceeds from a plow gig that paid $300/hr for a few months.
I'm sure most plow operators have other seasonal jobs. They likely have families, large mortgages, and other financial responsibilities that I don't have to deal with.
None of this was really the point of what I was saying, anyway. The last paragraph of my post was mainly to go ahead and get the "You're wasting company time on Slashdot, don't tell them how to work" argument out of the way.
They're being paid by the hour (and quite well, $42-$300 according to the article) and the government wants to make sure they're actually working while they're getting paid.
While I'm working I have a cell phone and two-way pager strapped to my hip at all times. It's my employer's business where I am when I should be working. I get my privacy back when I quit for the day and take those appliances off.
Work is not time to run the kids to school, run errands, or do anything besides work.
Of course this is hypocrisy on my part. I'm at work right now wasting time on Slashdot. That said, plow operators have seasonal jobs. If any of them wants to give up their $300/hr gig (several times what I currently make per hour), I'll gladly trade with them, work my ass off for a few months, and then screw around for the rest of the year.
Slashdot Mirror
Darl? Is that you?
No, he wouldn't be complaining.
Calling any of the Leprechaun movies bad? Blasphemy!
3dfx made a lot of mistakes, especially at the end. But for a long time they were very, very good.
Congratulations, you're the one millionth person to point out in a Slashdot comment that MySQL is not a full-strength database product.
Everyone knows this. Everyone understands this. Nobody makes claims to the contrary. It's still horribly useful to lots of people. Let's move on.
Exchange does IMAP, if your IT people are sufficiently enlightened to both know this and turn it on.
Of course you don't get all the features of Exchange, but if that's what you want you can't really complain about having to use Outlook anyway.
Channel 91. Channel 92 if you want tentacles with that.
Did I just see an ad for Slashdot personals? I'm sure that'll go well...
Haha.
Multi-billion dollar companies are still smarting from the last time they tried to be forward-thinking. Living day to day making smaller immediate profits restores their confidence in their ability to make money.
They'll come around eventually, hopefully a bit wiser for their experiences.
FWIW I also work for a mega-corporation, and to a great extent I'm frustrated by the same thing you're seeing. I'm trying to be understanding, though, and realizing that the need they feel to make money right now is strikingly similar to my own.
I planned ahead. I saw it at midnight so I'd be around to comment now. Go me.
I often do this when I'm working late in the NOC. Of course, then my cigar sets off the fire suppression system...
To obtain a special dialing wand, mash the keypad with your hand now :(.
It's worse than that. The buttons are so sensitive that picking up the mouse and setting it back down will cause them to click. Resting your fingers on them normally will hold them down. This is difficult to get used to. Eventually you learn to keep your fingers hovered slightly above the buttons and you compensate for not being able to pick up the mouse by cranking up the sensitivity high enough so that you never need to.
One unfortunate thing I was never able to figure out is how to get the buttons to click rapidly. Since there is virtually no tactile feedback to clicking it's hard to tell if you're actually clicking or just holding the button down without really exaggerating the finger motion involved.
There's a much bigger problem: I had three older Razer Boomslangs (before they went bankrupt, or whatever happened). The first one I actually bought, and it broke the day I got it. Razer, thankfully, had a rather good return policy, and had a new one on the way after about 5 minutes on the phone.
My second Razer lasted through a couple months of off and on usage. The difficulty of rapidly clicking the buttons made pistol shooting in CS a major pain in the ass, so I kept switching it with my IntelliMouse Optical. Finally it just stopped working one day. The mouse would only move vertically and the primary button would not work. Another call to Razer, 5 minutes, and another mouse was on the way.
The final Razer lasted about a week of me forcing myself to use it exclusively. Just as I was getting used to it, it fell off my desk. The mouse wheel became jammed inside the mouse, and even when I freed it so that it would rotate properly it was no longer functional. I didn't bother to replace this one.
There's a lot of upside to the mouse, it's incredibly smooth and accurate. There is really no comparing it to standard consumer mice in that respect. You want headshots, to be a railgun god, or just be incredibly precise in your Photoshop work? You can't beat it. It's good enough that, despite my problems with it, I'm thinking of buying one of their new models just to see if they've fixed their problems.
Unfortunately, if you can't count on them to last more than a week at a time they aren't worth much. I've stepped on, dropped, thrown, and even backed over IntelliMouse Optical mice with my car and had them work perfectly afterwards. I don't expect every mouse to handle that, but one that can't handle falling off a desk on some carpet is just unacceptable. Oh, and once you get used to optical mice, going back to cleaning a ball is just annoying.
My advice: if you decide to buy one, buy two. You'll need the second one while you wait for the first one to be replaced. Also, prepare to forget a bunch of your mousing habits if your current ones aren't compatible with what the mouse likes.
These systems are backed up on hopes and dreams, my friend.
Even if Google qualified, which it probably doesn't due to the methods it uses for its data storage, if I read the article properly the database vendors are responsible for naming the participants.
Since Google's stuff seems to be developed in-house, they don't have a major database vendor to nominate them.
Leaving off a couple zeroes, my friend. Largest database in the survey is 30,000GB. Not to mention, of course, that you probably have to actually request to be included in these tallies. There could very well be much larger databases (maybe government agencies with three letters in their name?) that are unknown to the people running these numbers.
No, I just use them to wipe my ass.
As I said, I could most likely live comfortably for the whole year off of the proceeds from a plow gig that paid $300/hr for a few months.
I'm sure most plow operators have other seasonal jobs. They likely have families, large mortgages, and other financial responsibilities that I don't have to deal with.
None of this was really the point of what I was saying, anyway. The last paragraph of my post was mainly to go ahead and get the "You're wasting company time on Slashdot, don't tell them how to work" argument out of the way.
They're being paid by the hour (and quite well, $42-$300 according to the article) and the government wants to make sure they're actually working while they're getting paid.
While I'm working I have a cell phone and two-way pager strapped to my hip at all times. It's my employer's business where I am when I should be working. I get my privacy back when I quit for the day and take those appliances off.
Work is not time to run the kids to school, run errands, or do anything besides work.
Of course this is hypocrisy on my part. I'm at work right now wasting time on Slashdot. That said, plow operators have seasonal jobs. If any of them wants to give up their $300/hr gig (several times what I currently make per hour), I'll gladly trade with them, work my ass off for a few months, and then screw around for the rest of the year.
For this to be true, someone would actually have to own an NGage. Come on, nobody's that dumb.
Plus you can molest it.
First rule of sendmail: Nothing is easy.
I didn't see a copyright notice on that idea, now it's mine. Also, you didn't finish your plankton.
You had right up until you indicated you were being sarcastic.
I believe you meant to say "kool", "k00l", or "kewl".
Heh. IE not loading is a good thing.