Inspired by ComputerWorld, courtesy of membox

As someone in the industry who would be considered a techie vs a business analyst or other “soft” role I LOVE hearing how unimportant my existence is to any given project. I LOVE hearing how I need to be more flexible and that I need to learn how to make the system fit the user and not vice versa. Of course they’re absolutely right - computers and technology at large must, ultimately, serve the needs of the user. This is what one would call the “No shit, Sherlock” principle. That said, you have to know how to use/fix/change the shit in the first place in order to properly and effectively mold it into something useful.

There is much more emphasis on the business domain and on project management skills than on the technical skills,” says Kate Kaiser, an associate professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee. In September 2005, Kaiser led a Society for Information Management (SIM) study of 104 CIOs to determine their skills needs through 2008. She expects the top 10 skills identified to remain in the top 12 by 2010.

er… yeah. Because CIO’s are well-known to be intelligent, tech-savvy, forward-thinking people and not just the only person in Senior Management who can make a pivot table in Excel.

IT professionals who will survive and perhaps thrive in 2010 will expand their knowledge base and stretch beyond their comfort zones. Those who don’t will find job opportunities in niche areas.

I concur. Assuming you define niche as “any job that requires knowledge of technology or the implementation thereof.”

The ComputerWorld article even lists what will be the hot and cold career paths for budding technolites in their slack-jawed little world of tomorrow. Among their “hot” jobs are Systems and Network Design - both of which are skill-intensive careers assuming your goal is to, you know, be good at your job. I don’t disagree that those particular jobs will be in great(er) demand in the future, but keep in mind the premise of the article. Either they have no clue what those jobs actually entail or they just contradicted themselves. The incongruities don’t end there, mind you, they list programming (twice), QA, Support/Help Desk and a nebulous “operations” career in the cold category. I’m not sure, exactly, how they think organizations are going to operate in this magical future, but it obviously doesn’t rely on people who are experts in servers, workstations, hardware or software.

… Revelation! That must be the point of their little ego stroke masquerading as journalism. There’s some amazing new technology that will become mainstream between now and 2010 that will completely eliminate computers, software and the people who know how to make them work!

If only that was the joke.

These are the same small-minded “big thinkers” that brought the ruin that is dot.bomb on the industry. I’m sure they truly believe that there’s some one size fits all solution to every computing task ever. It’s the same kind of dogmatic bullshit you find with Apple and Linux die hards that extol the cure-all virtues of their particular cult.

Don’t get me wrong - business acumen isn’t a BAD thing to have, nor are business people the red menace threatening the very lives of the skilled professional. I take offense to the slant of the article and I firmly believe the conclusions drawn and the experts considered in its writing to be off their rockers. You know what actually will be the hot employee of the future? People who can tear down and rebuild a standard PC (or mac, as they’re almost interchangeable now), cap a CAT5 line correctly AND explain those processes to a layperson with a complete transfer of knowledge.

That’s less business-skill and more people-skill. Knowing everything is great - being able to teach someone else everything? That’s pretty much the greatest thing ever.

Yeah, so I saw Bloodrayne…

Judging by The Numbers, the readership of this site is the approximate number of people who have done the same.

If there isn’t a “movie” division of the war crimes tribunal there ought to be. This isn’t “so bad it’s good” or anything like that. This was just plain bad. Note the use of “movie” throughout - consider them to be giant air-quotes.

The entire “movie” was a mishmash of scenes only connected by the fact that you saw the same people in similar outfits. I like Kristanna Loken, I really do - but what the flying fuck woman? At what point do you not walk the fuck off set and never return? So disappointing, this movie COULD have been awesome. Hot half-vampire chick that (per the game) fights nazzis? Where the fuck is THAT movie? Blade meets Buffy meets Indiana Jones. It could have been a campy little mid-wintertime romp. Instead it was a giant, smelly turd.

At some point a second, seemingly positive, review was posted at Rotten Tomatoes, upping this thing to a 6% vs 4%. Someone received their cashier’s check I’d wager.

Don’t even get me started on Ben Kingsly. I wouldn’t start making room on the Oscar shelf just yet…
Apparently our man Uwe also directed the Dungeon Siege Movie. Yet another excellent game I’ll never be able to play again because of this stupid fuck.

WHO KEEPS GIVING HIM MONEY? FUCK. STOP IT ALREADY!

PS - Kristanna, thank you for the ridiculous sex scene. You have nice boobies. That is all.

Three years ago I got shot through a wormhole. I’m in a distant part of the universe aboard this living ship of escaped prisoners … my friends. I’ve made enemies … powerful, dangerous. Now all I want is to find a way home to warn Earth. Look upward and share the wonders I’ve seen.

It would take an impossible level of stupidity to cancel a show that garners more critical acclaim than any show in the history of your network. But by golly Bonnie Hammer will be damned if she didn’t make the impossible possible! Good work. You sure showed us.

In a show of support that can only accurately be characterized as complete, rabid fanaticism the fans rebelled against their oppressor and got what we, the cast, the crew and the show itself deserved in the first place - an ending. Who knew that crackers really did matter?

The Peacekeeper Wars was a superior weekend of television and brought into sharp relief that which we, the fans, had seen all along. Farscape was one of the best hours of television of this or any other era. Who’d have thunk it? Muppets act gud!

To put it another way…

I’m just a regular nerd from Wisconsin and I am Farscape.

Today marked the release of Movable Type 3 Developer Edition. Normally such an event would be met with much rejoicing of the unwashed masses. Not so in this case as bloggers far and wide are making with the wails and gnashing of teeth usually reserved for MMO launches.While I don’t have some ultra-huge system happening here I do intend to add a few blogs/authors to the system in the not so distant future. Given my hosting situation I would be required, per the license, to use the (currently) $199.99 version. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with people making money off of their creations but why fucking bother with the pretense of “free” versions if -5 users out of 100 are eligible?

There is nothing wrong with stating that your “personal” license precludes any and all commercial enterprises and then charging reasonable rates to anyone who wishes to use the product as a service offering. I’m not making money off this site. Nor would I be making money if I also happened to host a few blogs for my friends. This smacks of the same kind of stupidity running rampant over in the Ventrillo camp. I can’t really blame them though, who really gives a shit about people using your software for free anyway? MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY!

There are, however, a few layers of silver lining in these dark clouds. First and foremost - I don’t need to upgrade. I want to, that’s for damn sure, but 2.661 will function just fine for as long as I wish to use it. Secondly the trackback entries on very blog that inspired this post have an absolute bounty of suggestions for replacements. So at whichever arbitrary point that MT pisses me off I will look around for a replacement.

Just wish I had known about this new license before I spent 2 weeks importing historical posts into this damnable contraption.

edit (7/11/06): Obviously this site is and has been (for a while) wholly WordPressed. I couldn’t be happier. Well, I could, but that would only be if I could create/edit a theme even remotely close to my liking. Such is life.

edit (10/3/07): I have a theme I actually like now. So suck it!

Leo Laporte is reporting that G4, the new owner of TechTV, gave everyone in San Francisco their walking papers. Between you, me and the fishes this has got to be one of the most inane decisions in media since Fox cancelled Firefly. I’m far from the target demographic for the shows but I have no problems whatsoever letting The Screen Savers play in the background while I work or flit around in whatever todays game du jour is.

Yes, yes, I realize that shows like TSS or TechLive have about as much replay ability as the last 10 minutes of CNN but they are still well done shows. If scheduled properly there’s no reason you can’t get 5 or 6 viable showings per each TSS episode in a 2-week period without sacrificing timeliness. Shows like Call For Help should last 2 or 3 times that before they lose their relevancy.

I direct your attention to this FAQ on the G4 site which pretty much spells out what the future holds. San Fran is kaput, anyone not willing to work in LA (assuming they’re even offered the chance) is boned. The only two TechTV shows listed in their proposed lineup are X-Play, TSS and Fresh Gear. Anyone have the odds on Fresh Gear becoming the on-air propaganda wing for worthless shit like the N-Gage or Phantom? No mention of some of TTV’s more off-beat titles like Big Thinkers or Nerd Nation.

Oh well, I guess some things have to be culled when you’re desperate to give shows like this to desperate and apparently net-retarded viewers what they “want”.

To the cast and crew of the various TechTV shows I’ve fancied over the last couple years - thanks.
I hope you land on your feet.

Ubi/Redstorm announced early today that the long-anticipated (since release) patch for Raven Shield is now available… on FilePlanet.

Let’s just say that the meeting of these two disparate events at the same point in space time fills me with teh rage

The bulk of this post will be the patch and it’s shortcomings, but I’ll use this space to bitch briefly about the patch-distribution schema (or lack thereof)

Here’s the quick-n-dirty for ya Ubi - If you release a game YOU MUST HOST THE PATCHES. Period. Full Stop. Etcetera. If you want to also supply them to FilePlanet as an official mirror go nuts but don’t force people who pay your fucking salary to wait in some grab ass queue because you’re too cheap to buy an extra 3mb of bandwidth.

Continue for the full-on bitch fest.

Read the rest of this entry »

PETA’s Latest Idea

I like animals, I really do. I support the ideal that all animals should be treated well, even those destined for the slaughterhouse and that wasting meat (ie killing for fur) is somewhere deep in the realm of nonsensical idiocy.

That said I think PETA is the biggest set of fucktards in the western (or any other) hemisphere.

FYI - Comparing the Holocaust to eating chicken IS NOT FUCKING ACCEPTABLE! Forget good taste, this sort of advertising is borderline actionable. I hope beyond hope that the Jewish Anti-Defamation League barbecues PETA for this.

Yes, this is America, you can say whatever you like in most cases and get away with it and yes, political speech is what those laws were expressly written to safeguard, But guess what? Sometimes you shouldn’t. All this “ad” has done is help to convince people that PETA is an organization full of zealots with no conscience beyond “fur is, like, murder, ya know?”

Fuck you PETA. Fuck you in your goat ass.

You are fucking clown shoes.

So I was browsing Blues this morning and I came upon this doozy… Not for the faint of heart or people with > 5 brain cells.

ABC News is reporting that “U.S. Army Recruits Teens With Internet Game” that involves both “Simulated Sniping ” and “putting kids in the role of being shooters and snipers.”

Short response: Fuck you Mr. Thompson.
Long response: RAISE YOUR OWN FUCKING CHILD AND STAY THE HELL OUT OF MY COMPUTER. If you don’t want your child to play a game that by and large is one of the most interesting things to hit the FPS genre in years - fine, you do that. But don’t play this bullshit “I’m a father and that means my vote is > you” game.

Yes, America’s Army (AA) features true-to-life gun play and realistic warfare scenarios, including *gasp* BLOOD. Sweet Jesus Almight! Alert CNN…er ABC.

If you actually knew anything about AA you’d realize that at it’s core this “game” is nothing more than a recruitment tool for our ailing armed forces. The game treats you just like a new recruit with all the responsibilities therein. I for one am very happy to see the Army rolling with the times we live in and putting forth actual effort to introduce concepts like honor and responsibility. Oh, you mean Jacky boy forgot to mention that the game actually ENDS if you conduct yourself dishonorably? What a shocker.

You sir, are a douche.