2006-11-23

Every Time You Vote Against Net Neutrality, Your ISP Kills a Night Elf

Perhaps one of the more overlooked problems that could arise out of a bad Net Neutrality decision is the impact to online gaming. In fact, any interactive communications could stand to take a dive (VOIP, streaming video, etc) with the advent of Net Neutrality legislation. RampRate has an interesting look at the possible fallout and where we are headed. From the article:
What will be murdered with no fallback or replacement is the nascent market of interactive entertainment - particularly online gaming. Companies like Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Sony Online Entertainment, and countless others, have built a business on the fundamental assumption of relatively low latency bandwidth being available to large numbers of consumers. Furthermore, a large -- even overwhelming -- portion of the value of these offerings comes from their 'network effects' -- the tendency for the game to become more enjoyable and valuable as larger number of players joins the gaming network.


2006-11-17

Good News

So I went on my first interview Wednesday, and by the end of the day had a verbal offer, which I negotiated up in salary yesterday enough that I'll be accepting it. It's a position with a contracting company, Keane Federal Systems, who are managing the AWIPS (Advanced Weather Processing Information System) for NOAA in Silver Spring. It's a bit of a hike, but I'll be able to take public transportation again like I did when I worked in Bethesda. And, there's no on-call or work outside business hours as it's mostly testbed support. Very similar to what I was doing at AOL, but much more on-hands like at NEGT. I get to play in a server room again, yay.... Forgot how much I missed the loud hum of multiple servers running...

And yes, I'm still in shock at the quick turnaround, I've never found a job that fast. Sheer luck and goodly amounts of blessing involved there.

2006-11-09

Who Knew McDonalds Made Good Broccoli and Cheese Soup?

Well, been a little over a week now of unemployment. Though technically I'm still employed until 11/15, and just on semi-vacation. Haven't gotten a tremendous amount of job seeking done, but got my Monster resume updated, already got one call and a couple of emails. It seems little is posted to Monster anymore, most employers use it as a resume database instead of a job posting one.

So I've gotten quite a bit behind in emails and Slashdot news for the past week. Decided to take a quick break from the job front to catch up and archive some stuff out of my Gmail inbox.

CEO Nabbed for Identity Theft From Own Employees
And you think your boss is a jerk? Check out this VARBusiness story about a tech CEO the feds say was using his employees' personal information to apply for loans and credit cards to the tune of $1 million. Somewhere a whole lot of businesses who bought this guy's managed-services pitch are cringing with the thought of who is taking care of their data now. And 50 employees are gonna have to sweat out their credit reports even as they look for new jobs. Now that's a lousy boss!


Why the World Is Not Ready For Linux
While many users reading Slashdot embrace Linux, ZDNet is running an article on why the rest of the world isn't ready. One note for Linux developers: 'Stop assuming that everyone using Linux (or who wants to use Linux) is a Linux expert.' While a lot of these topics have been brought up as both stories and comments on Slashdot, this article pretty much sums up why Vista could be absolutely terrible, and people would still believe there is no other option.
From the article:
The one area of Linux ownership and use where it becomes apparent that there's an assumption that everyone who uses Linux is an expert is hardware support. Your average user doesn't have the time, the energy or the inclination to deal with uncertainty. Also, they usually only have the one PC to play with. Hardware just has to work. There's a very good reason why Microsoft spends a lot of time on hardware compatibility — it's what people want.


OpenSourcing Yourself, Are You Ready?
Many people love and use open source software. Open source has made an impact in just about every place imaginable; education, hardware, coke, beer, cell phones, pharmaceuticals, search engines and encyclopedias. However, OpenHuman takes it one step further and invites you to open source yourself to experiment with the open human idea. This may sound crazy and rife with privacy concerns but as the author asks, do you still believe in Internet privacy in the age of blogs, MySpace, LinkedIn, Meetup, and Flickr?


Last up are a pair of articles about NVIDIA's newest graphics card. Droool.....

GeForce 8800GTX Benchmarked
The card does not launch for another week, but DailyTech already has benchmarks of the new GeForce 8800GTX on its website. The new card is the flagship GPU to replace GeForce 7900, and according to the benchmarks has no problem embarrassing the Radeon X1950 XTX either. According to the article, 'The GeForce 8800GTX used for testing is equipped with 768MB of GDDR3 video memory on a 384-bit memory bus as previously reported. Core and memory clocks are set at 575 MHz and 900 MHz respectively.'

Nvidia Launches 8800 Series, First of the DirectX 10 Cards
The new top-end GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS from Nvidia launched today, and Loyd Case at ExtremeTech has done two articles: an analysis of the new GPU's architecture, and a benchmark article on PNY's 8800 GTX. The GPU uses a unified scalar-based hardware architecture rather than dedicated pixel pipelines, and the card sets the bar higher yet again for PC graphics.
The world and his dog has been reviewing the NVIDIA 8800 series of graphics cards. There is coverage over at bit-tech, which has some really in-depth gameplay evaluations; TrustedReviews, which has a take on the card for the slightly less technical reader; and TechReport, which is insanely detailed on the architecture. The verdict: superfast, but don't bother if you have less than a 24" display.