Having just done something very un-slashdot-like (well, it *used* to be what a lot of us did, but not the last few years), i noted that it was hitting in the midst of a famine... which is when a) many, many people would have weakened immune systems, and b) did you unbelievably rich folks, who can eat three meals a day (or more)(or supersized) without thinking about it think that the concept of stewed rat was only in, say, Monty Python?

And if the fleas hit the folks catching them, and then it mutated, or there were both strains.....

                    mark

94% of waiters will be replaced with automation? Ah, they didn't even do that in the old Horn and Hardart Automats. Do you *really* want all your meals out to be buffet style? Or is that all of them are prepacked and they nuke it for you? In that case, why go out?

Or, for that matter, would you trust a completely automated fast food joint? Wait until the first lawsuits over someone getting sick, or dying, becuase some sensor went off.

Reatil salespeople? You mean, like in the supermarkets with self-check? Those folks who come over to deal with when it goes off - they're not people?

And, for that matter, if you raise the minimum wage - and do NOT try to claim that most folks working minimum wage are teenagers living at home; that's an outright and provable lie - some of those folks might be able to go down to one or two jobs, instead of two or three. Or, if you raise it to a living wage, as some cities have done, or are doing, even more can go down to holding down one job.

But so many of you are stupid fools who think that working 80 hour weeks means you're Important, rather than that your manager sees you have no life whatever of your own, and that they own you.

                    mark

--
"There's a sucker born every minute" - PT Barnum

I have long said I preferred elegant to clever code. When I get a phone call on Friday, at 16:15, or 02:00 some night, I want to leave on time, or go back to sleep that night, *NOT* spend hours figuring out how this bit of cleverness is broken, or how someone's "the code's more compact!" is suitable for entry in the Obfuscated C contest.

But to write elegant code, you need to a) know what you're trying to accomplish; b) tell your manager, or whoever, that no, you can't make that kind of major change without their $$$ signoff on a change to the schedule, complete with specing out the change, and its affects on everything else; c) having the time to write, test, and debug the code, and this does *NOT* include drinking a six-pack of Mountain Dew a day, and doing 80+ hour weeks.

Yes, I *have* had jobs like that. And 70+ or 80+ hour weeks result in a *lot* less "productivity" than the old 40-hour week (and try looking up where that number came from... the name Ford may surprise you in that....).

                            mark "as opposed to managers w/ MBA, who think that you can point and click a good system"

The year before the US, under Bush and Cheney and Rummy, invaded and conquered Iraq (for no particulatly good reason), there was a naval exercise imitating the invasion.. Gen. Shinsecki, on the defending forces, blew up a number of ships, including, IIRC, an aircraft carrier, by sending small fishing vessels, much harder-to-hit targets than capital ships, in packed with HE.

My personal bet on this imitation Nimitz is that it's a target, to work out similarly effective attacks.

I know, no fun, nothing to laugh at....

                      mark

Since the OP says that their second choice is sysadmin, they've got a possibility: ask his employer about being kicked upstairs to Tier 2 tech support, or Tier 3.

Or are they moving everything across the border, Timotht?

                  mark

Sorry. RHEL (and thus CentOS, and I presume Scientific Linux) have 10 year support.

                  mark

But you were 24 then, naturally you would hang out with friends doing silly crap more than when you're 39. You probably go to bars less now, as well. Just the way life works.

Split/shared screen isn't really the same thing as Wii U, though. And the article barely mentions the idea of dual screens.

Every console supports split screen right now, because Shooters have it. And fighters have shared screen. It isn't anything the Wii U is leading the way at.

The article was interesting to me, because personally I gravitate towards RPGs and an occasional quirky type game. I'd love to do a shared/split screen game, but they're all shooters & fighters. The only real exceptions I've found are the RPG Fable 2 (which was a bit of a button-masher, but OK), and the puzzle game Ilomilo which is pretty fun. Oh yeah, and those old Guitar Hero games, but that's not really my thing.

Let's see, the head of Mt. Gox unloaded all his bitcoins, and then told his users. Prosecutors are looking into this.

Goshawowie, where did they find this "old", "lost" file, in the head honcho's smartphone?

                    mark

Really? Why? You don't think there's a good supply of programmers who know Linux out there from, oh, all the telecoms*? Or most of the stock trading companies? How 'about Fortune 500 companies that use some other version of Unix, like, say, Lowe's?* Or how about Android programmers? Or.... shall I go on?

You's is a statement based on no facts, or ignorance thereof.

                            mark

* Why, yes, I have worked at two major telecoms, and a short contract at Lowe's, so yes, I do actually know what I'm talking about.

Which is, of course, more vulnerable, and therefore the schools systems are more vulnerable, esp. since they're far short of funds to hire enough qualified help to secure all the schools.

Now, LibreOffice goes head to head - ok, some VM scripting, macros, and other bizaree things that Office does may not work... but are you going to look me in the face and tell me that anyone under college is going to use that crap to write papers and homework? For that matter, who in college (except maybe business majors) will use it?

                      mark "and linux is a *lot* easier to manage than the arcanity of M$, and there's zero annual license fees"

...get back to you on that.

                mark "will join the American Society of Procratinators one of these days, if it's still around...."

I don't know about this. Call of Duty Ghosts is currently $30 for PC, $30 for XBox, $36 for XBone. New releases are all $60, right? Savings don't sound like much.

I don't own an XBOne, I just think gaming PCs are inherently pretty expensive. Your example of $379 for a super cheap gaming PC doesn't include the $100+tax cost of windows, so that's pretty much in line with the $500-$600 I was talking about.

Looking at the survey, it seems 1080p is much more popular than 1600x900. Obviously going higher is better and I'll guess lower resolutions are often done by the people running HD Graphics 4000 and the like.

Several years ago, here in DC, I went to a forum about security and the Internet. On the panel were staffers from then-Sen. Kerry, and from a House committee. After it was over, I went up and spoke to each, individually, and neither had ever *heard* of the concept of an air gap between controls and the 'Net... and we were speaking of nuclear power plants, etc.

Ignorance and "cost savings" make *great* insecurity vectors.

                  mark

Realistically, even a bare-minimum gaming PC (with Windows & video card) is going to be $500-$600, and more like $700-$800 for something that can play the big games out now at 1080p. Of course many gamers here will spend $1000+. In addition, that requires you to spend the time/deal with the bother of building your own gaming PC - sure, for some people it's kind of fun, for other people they don't enjoy it, and time is money. And then what you set up is going to be a big noisy box that may work great in a basement, but less so in a living room or even home office.

Saying it can do work or run emulators or watch movies isn't really relevant. Any old computer can do that, even a $30 Raspberry Pi.