My wife just got back from the area and asked me to post this:
I was working this past week in Mandeville and Lacombe, about 15 minutes from Slidell, coordinating teams, much like yours.
First - I would ask the people you're working with what their greatest needs are and the type of work you'll be involved in.
Where we were, power was intermittent - suggest you'll need generators.
Equipment:
Power washers and hose
Crowbars - for removing drywall and flooring
Lots of garbage bags and bleach
Tarps - all sizes
Masks and respirators (or surgical masks and Vick's rub - the rub inside the mask will help overcome the smell of rotting ground and sewage)
Rubber boots and extra sturdy rubber gloves, leather gloves
Chainsaws and necessary protective gear that go along with them
Depending on where your team is staying - you'll probably need sleeping bags, air mattress (for church basements) find out if they're providing food - but grocery stores in the area are open.
You must sweep faster than I can. Our Roomba does a better job, and with way less effort than I can sweep.
It did get stuck on a few things at first, but some minor rearrangements on our part (and me finally getting off my butt and tacking down / burying some cabling) did the trick. Now it rarely gets stuck, and if it does, so what? I'll find it when I come home from work, and try again the next day.
I was the technical representative for SCO on the TIS Committee (they weren't evil then) and even then the business types were arguing with Novell about exactly what they'd bought.
Novell made it clear they believed they still had substantial rights (I never paid much attention to the details of exactly what), and SCO disagreed. It just never made it to court then, but the seeds were there.
(Aside: the really funny presence at those meetings was Microsoft. As everybody else was moving from COFF to ELF, MS was moving to COFF, though they tried to pretend it wasn't COFF by calling it PE.)
One thing that may affect copyright claims is that it's not correct about the pages given the dates. I just checked a former employer, and the page that the WayBack Machine said was from Dec. 1998 had a 1999/2000 copyright notice, and announced a product I know was not available in 1998.
So copyright holder could claim the WayBack Machine misrepresents their site.
No, it's more like "I want a way to strap a device to my body that allows me to tell time. But don't tell me to get a grandfather clock. I'm willing, but I need my friends to be able to tell time too, and the wimps complain about the weight."
The problem is there isn't a watch yet, or (to beat the analogy a little harder)
the watches available don't tell time well.
You're still missing his point, which is not that
Mac OS is great, but that it's flawed, and we can
do a lot better than it and it's GUI knock-offs
(including CDE).
It's been a while since I read it, so I may be misrepresenting it a bit, but as I recall it, there are a couple of parts to the point he was trying to get at:
If the same command does different things at different times, that's modal.
Modal is bad (he cites a lot of user studies, both with novice and expert users; novices have trouble picking it up because they don't "get" the modes, and even experts occasionally invoke the command in the wrong mode). I think he doesn't think it can be eliminated entirely.
If there's series of rules that would make a command applicable, you should use them as this helps reduce the modal nature (kind of like make can fill in rules ).
If there's nothing you can do, don't do anything. In particular, don't screw up the object of the command. This may be modal, but doing nothing beats doing harm.
Basically he is saying that we need console type systems that come pre-configured and are controlled by the company that sold you the thing.
No, he's not really saying that at all. Raskin
goes into quite a bit of detail about his vision
in his book,
The Humane Interface, and it doesn't involve most of the things people are attributing to him in this thread. It's not about locking people into one application provider, or even eliminating menus, or not having what I would call an OS (controlling devices, managing resources, etc.) It just doesn't look
like what we often think of as an OS.
There's a summary of the book on the site. Read it, then shoot your mouth off.
I'm not sure I agree with him entirely, but the book is interesting reading and does bear some thought, and it's clear he's no "bozo".
Let's be clear about what censorware
does. It does not by itself block
content. It "only" rates that content as
unacceptable for viewing, [...]
Why that's exactly why I have a slashdot ID...so
that I can use moderation, which is of course a
rating of content, to make an educated guess
for myself of what is undesirable (or
unacceptable).
To my mind, content rating is only censorware
if it is imposed. If it is willingly
undertaken, with knowledge and consent, it is
filtering and that's a good thing.
Your ISP uses RBL and you don't like it?
Change ISPs; there are plenty of others in a
free market.
Sure there are virtual communities. And they're
as stupid, banal, self-serving and self-interested as the real thing. They have the same politics, infighting, and pointless disagreements with other "wrong-headed" communities.
The net doesn't really make us better than we are; a new technology (even a great one like this) won't bring about those kinds of social changes. At best it can help enable them, but for real change, people have to change.
Given that the big thrust of Crusoe seems to be low power and heat, which is not a problem is kiosks, I don't see that there is a compelling reason for the switch.
I've gotten options from 3 previous employers, and you know what? I'm still working for a living.:-)
In one case, the company went public but the share price dropped below the IPO price, which is not really that uncommon (at the time, they told us that happens with 8 out 10 IPOs). It's trading well above now, years later and years after I left. I would have only seen anything from that if I had forked over my own money when I left. On one spike I made enough to pay for a vacation.
In the second case, it was public when I started, but possibly entering a boom, but it didn't work out. The stock price dropped so the options were worthless, and again I left.
In the third case, the company is at least a couple years behind on their plan to IPO, and I got sick of working there before any of my options vested. So again, nada.
A bunch of people have made some excellent points, but the keys for me have been:
you may not hang around long enough for your options to vest
the value of the options may end up being higher than the value of the stock
unless you're in early, you won't have a big enough chunk to make any serious money anyway
My advice is unless you want the startup for other reasons, consider the options as icing; a bonus you may never see. Make sure you can live with your salary.
The problems with configuring X don't end with modelines, they just start there. For instance, once you get that right, you probably have to specify the correct -dpi flag to get X to know the right size for things that actually try to size things (like fonts) since many folks are running 100dpi or better but the default is usually 75dpi. And once you do that, if you try to switch screens with Ctrl-Alt-+/- it'll be wrong again.
And back to fonts again, you invariably have to muck with your font path to get the right ones first for the given resolution. And of course then when you switch screens it will be wrong again.
Yes, most of the info is out there, but it's much harder than it should be. Just the name of the XFree86 Font Deuglification Mini HOWTO should be a tipoff.
Beyond that, I think there are some changes required to fix fundamental problems like the screen -> dpi one. Maybe the modeline should include the dpi for that resolution, or maybe the monitor section should list the physical size of the usable screen so the X server can calculate it.
Slashdot Mirror
Not only is it bad form, it appears it may stress some browsers enough that it blocks legitimate users.
I'm with you on that. I still love the Onion's satire, but I'm
growing to hate their website.
My wife just got back from the area and asked me to post this:
You must sweep faster than I can. Our Roomba does a better job, and with way less effort than I can sweep.
It did get stuck on a few things at first, but some minor rearrangements on our part (and me finally getting off my butt and tacking down / burying some cabling) did the trick. Now it rarely gets stuck, and if it does, so what? I'll find it when I come home from work, and try again the next day.
In a weird sort of way, they did.
I was the technical representative for SCO on the TIS Committee (they weren't evil then) and even then the business types were arguing with Novell about exactly what they'd bought.
Novell made it clear they believed they still had substantial rights (I never paid much attention to the details of exactly what), and SCO disagreed. It just never made it to court then, but the seeds were there.
(Aside: the really funny presence at those meetings was Microsoft. As everybody else was moving from COFF to ELF, MS was moving to COFF, though they tried to pretend it wasn't COFF by calling it PE.)
One thing that may affect copyright claims is that it's not correct about the pages given the dates. I just checked a former employer, and the page that the WayBack Machine said was from Dec. 1998 had a 1999/2000 copyright notice, and announced a product I know was not available in 1998.
So copyright holder could claim the WayBack Machine misrepresents their site.
No, it's more like "I want a way to strap a device to my body that allows me to tell time. But don't tell me to get a grandfather clock. I'm willing, but I need my friends to be able to tell time too, and the wimps complain about the weight."
The problem is there isn't a watch yet, or (to beat the analogy a little harder) the watches available don't tell time well.
No, he said he didn't say it starts a word processor application, because he's against the idea of applications (and for "command sets").
I'm afraid you haven't caught him in any contradictions, you're just still misunderstanding him (which may well be his fault).
You're still missing his point, which is not that Mac OS is great, but that it's flawed, and we can do a lot better than it and it's GUI knock-offs (including CDE).
It's been a while since I read it, so I may be misrepresenting it a bit, but as I recall it, there are a couple of parts to the point he was trying to get at:
No, he's not really saying that at all. Raskin goes into quite a bit of detail about his vision in his book, The Humane Interface , and it doesn't involve most of the things people are attributing to him in this thread. It's not about locking people into one application provider, or even eliminating menus, or not having what I would call an OS (controlling devices, managing resources, etc.) It just doesn't look like what we often think of as an OS. There's a summary of the book on the site. Read it, then shoot your mouth off.
I'm not sure I agree with him entirely, but the book is interesting reading and does bear some thought, and it's clear he's no "bozo".
Why that's exactly why I have a slashdot ID...so that I can use moderation, which is of course a rating of content, to make an educated guess for myself of what is undesirable (or unacceptable).
To my mind, content rating is only censorware if it is imposed. If it is willingly undertaken, with knowledge and consent, it is filtering and that's a good thing.
Your ISP uses RBL and you don't like it? Change ISPs; there are plenty of others in a free market.
Sure there are virtual communities. And they're as stupid, banal, self-serving and self-interested as the real thing. They have the same politics, infighting, and pointless disagreements with other "wrong-headed" communities.
The net doesn't really make us better than we are; a new technology (even a great one like this) won't bring about those kinds of social changes. At best it can help enable them, but for real change, people have to change.
Given that the big thrust of Crusoe seems to be low power and heat, which is not a problem is kiosks, I don't see that there is a compelling reason for the switch.
I've gotten options from 3 previous employers, and you know what? I'm still working for a living. :-)
In one case, the company went public but the share price dropped below the IPO price, which is not really that uncommon (at the time, they told us that happens with 8 out 10 IPOs). It's trading well above now, years later and years after I left. I would have only seen anything from that if I had forked over my own money when I left. On one spike I made enough to pay for a vacation.
In the second case, it was public when I started, but possibly entering a boom, but it didn't work out. The stock price dropped so the options were worthless, and again I left.
In the third case, the company is at least a couple years behind on their plan to IPO, and I got sick of working there before any of my options vested. So again, nada.
A bunch of people have made some excellent points, but the keys for me have been:
My advice is unless you want the startup for other reasons, consider the options as icing; a bonus you may never see. Make sure you can live with your salary.
The problems with configuring X don't end with modelines, they just start there. For instance, once you get that right, you probably have to specify the correct -dpi flag to get X to know the right size for things that actually try to size things (like fonts) since many folks are running 100dpi or better but the default is usually 75dpi. And once you do that, if you try to switch screens with Ctrl-Alt-+/- it'll be wrong again.
And back to fonts again, you invariably have to muck with your font path to get the right ones first for the given resolution. And of course then when you switch screens it will be wrong again.
Yes, most of the info is out there, but it's much harder than it should be. Just the name of the XFree86 Font Deuglification Mini HOWTO should be a tipoff.
Beyond that, I think there are some changes required to fix fundamental problems like the screen -> dpi one. Maybe the modeline should include the dpi for that resolution, or maybe the monitor section should list the physical size of the usable screen so the X server can calculate it.