You should have been modded up to +5 Informative by now but I think you forgot to put "PS. Fuck the US government" in there so nobody with mod points actually felt your post. =/
What I would really like to see is a system setup where players are allowed to establish groups, buy property and then generate money from that property. The money generation should be tied to NPCs. Some NPCs could work at the property itself, where as others could be sent out on pre-scripted missions. The NPCs who generate money inside the facility should do so at a much slower rate than those who venture outside of the relative safety of the facility. For example, a property might come with a courier. The courier could be dispatched to various locations around the game world and the reward for a successful courier run could be dependent on how far the courier actually went. Other players could be assigned the task of keeping the courier alive. Rival organizations could earn money by intercepting the courier. If the courier died, there should be a lengthy respawn time... perhaps as long as thirty minutes. To add another level of complexity, organizations might be able to kidnap each others NPCs and then use them (after the appropriate period of indoctrination by a player with the required skills/abilities to do so).
By including bodyguard like AI, other NPCs could be assigned to the primary NPC. Depending on the dynamics of the world, giving the courier bodyguards might not be the best thing to do because it would make the courier a more visible target. I've been mainly thinking about these types of AI in a Shadowrun-esque MMO. In such a setting, rival organizations might have to hack into each others networks in order to obtain intel on the couriers... without the intel, the courier would just appear as a standard NPC.
I have to admit to having become a bit of a Ludite with regards to all of the new home entertainment, high def TV, LCD, plasma, buzzword, blah blah blah... offerings that have come out over the last few years. I never understood the fascination with watching sports in high definition, or watching the latest sitcom or TV drama in ultra clarity. But now that I have seen the graphics in that trailer, I understand why somebody would want to buy a high definition television... and a new console system. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. The urge to spend money on stupid shit is growing.
You're mystified by the violence, I'm mystified by the sex. I can understand why people have an aversion to violence. In my own life, I started training kung fu about five years. The more I learn, the less I want to fight. I think some of my own aversion comes with age, and the fact that it takes longer to heal as you grow older. I think it's all to easy to cultivate a blaise attitude in kids where they don't respect someone else's mortality long before they have even begun to grasp how mortal they are themselves.
I agree with what you have to say about the AI. It just seems like a huge coding challenge to get a bunch of AI NPCs to react in any sort of sane way to players who pull out guns and start blasting away at each other.
I still remember playing the first GTA, initially in standard VGA and then with the mystical "new" 3dfx card. It was by far one of the most entertaining games out at the time. I completely hated GTA2, but everything from GTA3 onward just got better and better. The guys at Rockstar created something that gamers have wanted forever... a huge world that you can run around and do pretty much anything in. I'm still convinced that if anyone came out with an MMO like GTA where you could progress to the point of being a crime boss and running portions of the city, they'd have a huge hit on their hands.
If your XP using collegues had a decent network administrator the printers would automatically install themselves based on Group Policy policy settings specific to where they are plugged into the network. I have to believe that the *nix world offers similar functionality.
You're talking about apples and oranges. 1v1 play style differs from team oriented play styles. Give me 5 people who have played FPS games before, 2 days to get on the same page with TeamSpeak, and of course the sub-20 pings will beat the vaunted CAL-invite team on 56k modems. You can have all the uber strat in the world, but if your hardware sucks, you're getting 250+ms of latency to the server and chugging along at 15fps, you're done.
I've been playing online FPS games since Quake and from what I've seen, "skill" usually comes down to who has the faster computer and lowest latency connection to the server. Once you've mastered the basics of circle strafing and have a command of the level to the point where you know all of the hiding places and spawn points, there really isn't much more to learn.
I don't need to buy credibility. The book that I recommended has all of the information that anyone out there needs to make an informed choice about how to eat well. The author even recognizes the role that meat plays in a complete diet. The Atkins diet is a load of crap because the body needs carbohydrates.
So your take on the subject of licensing is coming from the perspective of someone who is licensing the actual development technology itself. As a developer you definitely prefer to use open source, as opposed to a closed environment like Visual Studio and.Net. I completely understand that. I also understand what you say when you mention that the cost of implementing the feature set is a key factor.
I've always perceived the OSS vs Closed Source (Microsoft) debate with regards to licenses from within the desktop / server context. I hadn't considered that most of the current "propaganda" out there might be target at developers first and foremost.
I try to be very informative when I talk to people, but it's tricky business.
I know what you mean. It takes some careful calibration on your own part to communicate with upper management about technical details. It can be tricky to give them the understanding that they need without devolving into discertations about the underlying technologies.
Re:Everybody IT needs these skills, not just bosse
on
IT Manager's Handbook
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I know it's not a new problem, but I've never worked out a good way to handle folks like this.
You give them enough rope to hang themselves with, and then point out to key individuals in the organization that the person will hang themself. Then when it happens, make sure that you point your finger and tell them, "I told you so." The key element to making the whole strategy work is to make sure that you can recover for them, but make sure that the recovery isn't too easy.
Quick antecdote. I used to work in IS for a medical device manufacturer. The lead developer kept all of his work on his local hard drive and refused to put things on the server because his perception was that the server was unreliable. We told him, and told his boss that a good portion of the information that the company relies on was sitting on this guy's 2GB hard drive (it was 1996). He refused to back up and his boss didn't have enough command presence to make it happen.
Sure enough, the drive crashed and the company went into a panic. We told them, "told you so" and then proceeded to take their drive to the data recovery place. $2500 later, they had their data back. Not long after that, upper management decided to enforce a policy stating that all users must store their critical work to the servers so that it could be backed up on a nightly basis.
I completely agree with number two. As I gradually transition into management I realize how much time has to be spent educating the other department heads. It usually becomes really obvious during budget time. Every department has expectations of what the computers should be doing for them. Very few of them want to place line items in their budget to enable what they want.
A *truly* good IT Manager also manages client relationships and expectations to the extent that a decent product can be delivered within a reasonable amount of time and for a reasonable amount of money.
I have been very fortunate in my own career to work for two very good bosses. Both of them were masters of managing client expectations. The first boss recognized that I had the abilities but not the experience to get the job done. He was able to keep our department shielded from upper management as I transitioned from well rounded hobbiest into network administrator for ~50 workstations and 5 servers. Granted I stumbled through a few things, but at $10 an hour as an 18 year old college student, what did they expect? =) My second boss was a pro at speccing out scope of work, and making sure to pad the estimates. Our estimates were almost always on the high side of things, but we came in under budget and ahead of schedule 99% of the time. The other 1% of the time is the reason those schedules were padded in the first place... Things don't always work the way you want them to. It's better to give yourself some extra time that you don't use, than to need extra time that you don't have.
Are you saying you think there should be articles claiming open source software leads to more/better functions in that software and hence it is better? If so I think that is bunk. There is good OSS that has more functionality than competing closed source software. There is closed source software that has better functionality than alternative OSS offerings. OSS tends to be better only in that the license gives users more options. Aside from that it depends upon the given software being evaluated.
From what I've seen, the people and groups who support OSS tend to fall into two groups. The vocal majority (minority??) seem to champion OSS as the answer for everything that is wrong with Microsoft. That group of individuals wants Linux on the desktops, Linux in the data center, and no more Microsoft. The other group seems to understand that OSS can be utilized in specific roles and they aren't out there to replace Microsoft (although I doubt they'd cry if MS went away).
In answer to your question, Yes. I am saying that there should be more articles out there claiming that OSS software leads to more/better functions than closed source software... IF such claims can be made legitimately.
What I'm getting from this conversation is that you think that so much emphasis is placed on the license because the license is one of the primary motivators that sells the software. "OSS tends to be better only in that the license gives users more options." True?
That is open source being sold based on functionality, not license.
Just for discussion sake, what is the functionality of those speciality servers that you guys are building?
Do you disagree with my point that most of the articles out there are too focused on licensing costs/benefits of cheaper licenses and not focused enough on the actual functional benefits that OSS offers over the competition?
Why in the world would I want to bet my company on software that thinks it's probably "good enough"?
You wouldn't and that is the point that I'm trying to make. By making the point I'm trying to encourage whoever writes these reviews and comparisons to branch out on their talking points.
Like 99Bottles... said, he works for a company that makes boxes that go for $40,000 at the entry level. The companies who are buying those boxes aren't buying them because the Linux licenses are cheaper. Yet it seems to me like a good 95% of the pro-OSS/Linux/anti-MS articles that I read out there are all focused too much on licensing cost and not enough on what OSS does better/does that MS doesn't do.
I was talking about functionality and licensing as seperate selling points. It seems to me that for the most part OSS is sold based on licensing. Will it ever be sold on functionality? From what little exposure I've had to it, it seems to me like the OSS mantra should be, "It's cheap and it's good enough." Where as the Microsoft mantra would be, "It's expensive, and it does things you don't even know you want it to do." (like install malware for you... there ya go, I made the joke for you so you don't have to.)
So some guy in Wichita has a website that runs PhP, and his ISP hasn't updated quickly enough, and he's hacked by some schmuck script kiddie who's bored -- all through no fault of his own or even his ISP's.
No fault of his ISP's? If PHP had MS style Automagic Updates then staying up to date wouldn't be a problem. It is completely the fault of the ISP for not staying up to date with the patches. If you are in the business of providing software to users then you are in the business of keeping that software up to date. Developing code that runs on a publicly accessible machine is like swimming in the deep end of the pool, with sharks, while you're bleeding. It isn't for everyone, and in fact I'd go so far to say that most of the people who do it aren't really up to the task. That's why those who do manage to keep secure systems are worth every penny that they earn.
As a sysadmin, I can take every precaution available to me, I can take every vendor-mandated step... Despite all that, all it takes is for some idiot to whip up a "month of bugs" and blammo, I'm hosed. All because some annoying little bastard wants to attention-whore out his new "security site".
So let me get this straight... all it takes is a few moments of you not staying up with the cutting edge of security research and your site might get owned? Whoa there turbo! Stop the presses!! Say it ain't so.
Having read your posts in this thread I think it's time for you to take a vacation bro. Coming on/. and whining isn't going to make your life any better. You seem pretty stressed out and depressed with the current state of things.
The script kiddies already own MySpace. At this point I see the Month of Myspace Bugs as a good reference for EVERYONE ELSE who uses MySpace and who might be holding onto some false notion that the site is actually secure or safe to use. I have "fixed" more Windows boxen than I care to admit to and the one thing that they all have in common is MySpace. MySpace is simply the breeding ground for new exploit code. I have seen computers that have withstood the nastiest browser exploits and malware infection vectors that the pr0n industry has thrown at them have simply crumbled in record time when accessing MySpace. That entire domain is BAD NEWS.
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You should have been modded up to +5 Informative by now but I think you forgot to put "PS. Fuck the US government" in there so nobody with mod points actually felt your post. =/
By including bodyguard like AI, other NPCs could be assigned to the primary NPC. Depending on the dynamics of the world, giving the courier bodyguards might not be the best thing to do because it would make the courier a more visible target. I've been mainly thinking about these types of AI in a Shadowrun-esque MMO. In such a setting, rival organizations might have to hack into each others networks in order to obtain intel on the couriers... without the intel, the courier would just appear as a standard NPC.
I have to admit to having become a bit of a Ludite with regards to all of the new home entertainment, high def TV, LCD, plasma, buzzword, blah blah blah... offerings that have come out over the last few years. I never understood the fascination with watching sports in high definition, or watching the latest sitcom or TV drama in ultra clarity. But now that I have seen the graphics in that trailer, I understand why somebody would want to buy a high definition television... and a new console system. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. The urge to spend money on stupid shit is growing.
You're mystified by the violence, I'm mystified by the sex. I can understand why people have an aversion to violence. In my own life, I started training kung fu about five years. The more I learn, the less I want to fight. I think some of my own aversion comes with age, and the fact that it takes longer to heal as you grow older. I think it's all to easy to cultivate a blaise attitude in kids where they don't respect someone else's mortality long before they have even begun to grasp how mortal they are themselves.
I agree with what you have to say about the AI. It just seems like a huge coding challenge to get a bunch of AI NPCs to react in any sort of sane way to players who pull out guns and start blasting away at each other.
I still remember playing the first GTA, initially in standard VGA and then with the mystical "new" 3dfx card. It was by far one of the most entertaining games out at the time. I completely hated GTA2, but everything from GTA3 onward just got better and better. The guys at Rockstar created something that gamers have wanted forever... a huge world that you can run around and do pretty much anything in. I'm still convinced that if anyone came out with an MMO like GTA where you could progress to the point of being a crime boss and running portions of the city, they'd have a huge hit on their hands.
If your XP using collegues had a decent network administrator the printers would automatically install themselves based on Group Policy policy settings specific to where they are plugged into the network. I have to believe that the *nix world offers similar functionality.
I think the whole thing is pretty k-lame, and it really needs a better, more k-wRad alternative.
You're talking about apples and oranges. 1v1 play style differs from team oriented play styles. Give me 5 people who have played FPS games before, 2 days to get on the same page with TeamSpeak, and of course the sub-20 pings will beat the vaunted CAL-invite team on 56k modems. You can have all the uber strat in the world, but if your hardware sucks, you're getting 250+ms of latency to the server and chugging along at 15fps, you're done.
I've been playing online FPS games since Quake and from what I've seen, "skill" usually comes down to who has the faster computer and lowest latency connection to the server. Once you've mastered the basics of circle strafing and have a command of the level to the point where you know all of the hiding places and spawn points, there really isn't much more to learn.
I don't need to buy credibility. The book that I recommended has all of the information that anyone out there needs to make an informed choice about how to eat well. The author even recognizes the role that meat plays in a complete diet. The Atkins diet is a load of crap because the body needs carbohydrates.
If you're serious about coming up with a good diet, check out "Healing with Whole Foods" by Paul Pitchford. The Atkins diet is a load of crap.
I've always perceived the OSS vs Closed Source (Microsoft) debate with regards to licenses from within the desktop / server context. I hadn't considered that most of the current "propaganda" out there might be target at developers first and foremost.
I know what you mean. It takes some careful calibration on your own part to communicate with upper management about technical details. It can be tricky to give them the understanding that they need without devolving into discertations about the underlying technologies.
You give them enough rope to hang themselves with, and then point out to key individuals in the organization that the person will hang themself. Then when it happens, make sure that you point your finger and tell them, "I told you so." The key element to making the whole strategy work is to make sure that you can recover for them, but make sure that the recovery isn't too easy.
Quick antecdote. I used to work in IS for a medical device manufacturer. The lead developer kept all of his work on his local hard drive and refused to put things on the server because his perception was that the server was unreliable. We told him, and told his boss that a good portion of the information that the company relies on was sitting on this guy's 2GB hard drive (it was 1996). He refused to back up and his boss didn't have enough command presence to make it happen.
Sure enough, the drive crashed and the company went into a panic. We told them, "told you so" and then proceeded to take their drive to the data recovery place. $2500 later, they had their data back. Not long after that, upper management decided to enforce a policy stating that all users must store their critical work to the servers so that it could be backed up on a nightly basis.
I completely agree with number two. As I gradually transition into management I realize how much time has to be spent educating the other department heads. It usually becomes really obvious during budget time. Every department has expectations of what the computers should be doing for them. Very few of them want to place line items in their budget to enable what they want.
I have been very fortunate in my own career to work for two very good bosses. Both of them were masters of managing client expectations. The first boss recognized that I had the abilities but not the experience to get the job done. He was able to keep our department shielded from upper management as I transitioned from well rounded hobbiest into network administrator for ~50 workstations and 5 servers. Granted I stumbled through a few things, but at $10 an hour as an 18 year old college student, what did they expect? =) My second boss was a pro at speccing out scope of work, and making sure to pad the estimates. Our estimates were almost always on the high side of things, but we came in under budget and ahead of schedule 99% of the time. The other 1% of the time is the reason those schedules were padded in the first place... Things don't always work the way you want them to. It's better to give yourself some extra time that you don't use, than to need extra time that you don't have.
From what I've seen, the people and groups who support OSS tend to fall into two groups. The vocal majority (minority??) seem to champion OSS as the answer for everything that is wrong with Microsoft. That group of individuals wants Linux on the desktops, Linux in the data center, and no more Microsoft. The other group seems to understand that OSS can be utilized in specific roles and they aren't out there to replace Microsoft (although I doubt they'd cry if MS went away).
In answer to your question, Yes. I am saying that there should be more articles out there claiming that OSS software leads to more/better functions than closed source software... IF such claims can be made legitimately.
What I'm getting from this conversation is that you think that so much emphasis is placed on the license because the license is one of the primary motivators that sells the software. "OSS tends to be better only in that the license gives users more options." True?
That is open source being sold based on functionality, not license.
Just for discussion sake, what is the functionality of those speciality servers that you guys are building?
Do you disagree with my point that most of the articles out there are too focused on licensing costs/benefits of cheaper licenses and not focused enough on the actual functional benefits that OSS offers over the competition?
You wouldn't and that is the point that I'm trying to make. By making the point I'm trying to encourage whoever writes these reviews and comparisons to branch out on their talking points.
Like 99Bottles... said, he works for a company that makes boxes that go for $40,000 at the entry level. The companies who are buying those boxes aren't buying them because the Linux licenses are cheaper. Yet it seems to me like a good 95% of the pro-OSS/Linux/anti-MS articles that I read out there are all focused too much on licensing cost and not enough on what OSS does better/does that MS doesn't do.
I was talking about functionality and licensing as seperate selling points. It seems to me that for the most part OSS is sold based on licensing. Will it ever be sold on functionality? From what little exposure I've had to it, it seems to me like the OSS mantra should be, "It's cheap and it's good enough." Where as the Microsoft mantra would be, "It's expensive, and it does things you don't even know you want it to do." (like install malware for you... there ya go, I made the joke for you so you don't have to.)
No fault of his ISP's? If PHP had MS style Automagic Updates then staying up to date wouldn't be a problem. It is completely the fault of the ISP for not staying up to date with the patches. If you are in the business of providing software to users then you are in the business of keeping that software up to date. Developing code that runs on a publicly accessible machine is like swimming in the deep end of the pool, with sharks, while you're bleeding. It isn't for everyone, and in fact I'd go so far to say that most of the people who do it aren't really up to the task. That's why those who do manage to keep secure systems are worth every penny that they earn.
So let me get this straight... all it takes is a few moments of you not staying up with the cutting edge of security research and your site might get owned? Whoa there turbo! Stop the presses!! Say it ain't so.
Having read your posts in this thread I think it's time for you to take a vacation bro. Coming on /. and whining isn't going to make your life any better. You seem pretty stressed out and depressed with the current state of things.
The script kiddies already own MySpace. At this point I see the Month of Myspace Bugs as a good reference for EVERYONE ELSE who uses MySpace and who might be holding onto some false notion that the site is actually secure or safe to use. I have "fixed" more Windows boxen than I care to admit to and the one thing that they all have in common is MySpace. MySpace is simply the breeding ground for new exploit code. I have seen computers that have withstood the nastiest browser exploits and malware infection vectors that the pr0n industry has thrown at them have simply crumbled in record time when accessing MySpace. That entire domain is BAD NEWS.
Given the number of MS SQL server errors I saw a year or two ago, it's pretty safe to assume that they are running on an MS backend.