Shameless Words from Shameless Geeks

Heh. Here’s one to laugh at. In yet another article about how the gaming segment is getting older, and how 2nd generation gamers are popping up, someone coined the name Nintendads.

The article itself is nothing new. It’s the same stuff we’ve all seen from tech writers who have nothing to report. However, It’s the first time I’ve seen the term.

Of course, I’ve been out of touch for almost a year. Maybe others have seen it?

I was cruising Slashdot this morning and ran into an eye opening article. Apparently, an academic at the British Computing Society believes that computer science is either dead or dying. Being part of the industry, I just had to read on.

Apparently, the death of the computer science biz consists of people not needing to roll their own word processors and databases, and all software being shipped overseas. Software will need to become an interdiscipline that really doesn’t include programming as a necessary skill.

My response: Its About Time!

Aside from the fact that outsourcing to India has turned out to be less of an economic advantage than it was sold as, I think it’s about time that the computer science academics figured out that they have become dinosaurs. The writing has been on the wall since the late nineties, and most of the rest of us figured it all out during the dot-com bust.

As with any other industries of this nature, the initial focus is internal development of it’s own products and services. Once these products and services leave the “boutiques” and become comoditized, the industry needs to shift it’s focus to what good it can do for others.

The days of banks and newspapers having a large staff of computer professionals dedicated to figuring out how to make computers work for them is gone. Now that everyone can effectively use computers (and have been capable for years) all we need are a few people to maintain them. Since maintenance is reduced to “pluck and chuck” diagnosis and repair, IT staffing can be minimal.

The good news (IMHO) is that there is no longer an influx of computer science students who are in the biz because someone told them there was money in it. Those who get into computer science are going to do so because they like the challenge, not because they expect to get rich from it. This is, of course, bad for the academics, but very good for computer science.

The one thing to remember about the academics is that they are just now figuring out that they are in trouble. Most of the rest of us have known for years, and have therefore taken steps to avert disaster. We need to remember that none of this is news. Times are bad in the software biz, but it really isn’t getting worse. Since the academics have only recently figured all of this out, they are going to have to go through their period of extreme panic. The rest of us will just have to wait it out and hope they catch up.

It’s good to hear that our great thinkers have figured out whats wrong with the courses they are teaching. Too bad it’s ten years late.

A few weeks ago, I started working on getting a few game servers up and running on this machine. As of now, I have Call of Duty 2 and Counter Strike: Source functioning. For now, they only have whatever was available “in the box". I’m considering adding mods in the near future. Both are using the IP address 209.160.73.13.

This server is reasonable powerful, but very lightly loaded. Ping times should be short, and gameplay should be smooth. Enjoy.

The best (and possibly the geekiest) use of robotics can be found at BeerLauncher.com. Using your engineering skills to create a fridge that tosses you a beer gets my vote as engineering genius. If I ever had the time to create a real Shameless Geek award, this guy would win it.

Be sure to watch the video. It proves that this is more than just an internet joke.

Sorry I haven’t put much up here in the past few months. I changed jobs over the summer, and ended up in everybody’s critical path. It doesn’t look like the pace will let up until June, so don’t expect to see much here for a while.

I have, however, done quite a bit of infrastructure work. I’ve changed server’s, recovered from a Linux library disaster, and re-installed the CoD2 and CS:Source servers.

I used to complain that I was bored. I don’t anymore.

Oh… One last thing… Hail Xeon!