Have you gotten everything you need from this job, professionally, financially, and personally? Are you satisfied this move is the best choice for you to grow professionally?
If you want this other position, give your current employer proper notice, and work with them to make the transition as smooth as possible. You can even discuss the possibility of being available as a consultant for a while if they need.
On the other hand, you might look over the offer and decide the trade-offs aren't worth it. Sometimes, the increased money is accompanied by increased stress...longer commutes, longer hours, more demands on your personal life (e.g., being on call 24/7). An interesting and rewarding job that pays less might be the better option then.
Chances are, however, you're intrigued by a new challenge, a new beginning, and better pay. Why not take the leap?
Remember, in the end, you are replaceable. It's part of business. People get sick, hit by buses...or better offers. Leave gracefully, don't burn any bridges, and you can continue to stay friends with those co-workers with whom you are close.
Best wishes on your decision. In this economy, it's rare to have such a choice to make!
I'm not sure if calculator / comptometer manufacturers had their competing studies; I've heard that when Bell asked for an explanation, the answer was a shrug...comptometers were about 80 years by then, so I think the origins of their layout are as opaque and full of folk explanations as the QWERTY layout.
Regardless, I've encountered OP's request before...but for phone layouts which matched calculator layouts. I was working in an operations office a few years ago run by a person who was a fan of "Cheaper by the Dozen" who wanted to optimize our phone dialing speed (this was a fun place to work, even if this request sounds odd). We didn't have any success, but it was an interesting thought.
Thank you for your work with Slashdot. This place has helped keep my interest in tech alive with your combination of neat stories and wry, sometimes sarcastic summaries...the place won't be the same without you.
I discovered Slashdot and Google about the same time in 1997, and since then, both site names have now become part of our day-to-day language...we google stuff on the web only to discover the site we want has been slashdotted! If nothing else, that's a pretty awesome accomplishment!
Best wishes for whatever is next...thanks again, and have fun!
I'm posting this using K-Meleon on an old notebook with minimal memory (256 MB...with a bunch of that allocated for the video). K-Meleon is built on the Mozilla Gecko engine.
It's fast, stable, and lightweight. You won't see a lot of CSS3 effects, but otherwise, it's a fine small footprint browser, even for a tab-heavy user like myself. You can use a number of older Firefox extensions with a little work, and it responds to the usual Firefox performance tweaks as well.
I did an advertisement for a business a couple of years ago using an image we found on Flickr. The photography was great, the subject matter was perfect for our theme (relating to a sci-fi collectibles business), and the ad was successful.
Our approach was a little different, however.
First, we contacted the owner of the photo to get permission. Our attitude going in was that we were planning to use this for commercial purposes, so we offered to pay the person a competitive rate for their work (much to their delight). We negotiated payment and put the photographer's name in the ad.
In the end, we ended up with a loyal customer who brought more friends to the business, and a fun, memorable ad.
So, sure. I'm in favor of people sharing their photos. And if you enjoy someone's work enough to want to use it commercially, why not get permission and offer reasonable compensation? There's a chance you'll build a good relationship, and you'll encourage them to do more work.
Honestly, it seems like it would be more costly to rip them off. The initial work might be free, but the potential lost revenue from angry customers and would-be customers would probably more than offset any savings.
Yes, another vote for Burt Rutan, from his ground-breaking work with experimental aircraft designs like the wood Vari-Viggen and the innovative composite use of the futuristic Vari-eze and Long-eze homebuilts, to planes like Voyager (round-the-world nonstop), the Boomerang, and now Spaceship One and Spaceship Two, along with their motherships. This is someone who's still the l'enfant terrible of the aviation world, breaking new ground with every project. Also, a very inspiring and exciting speaker.
He's currently strayed from aviation to focus on climate change, but even that has an object lesson: he's at least looking at research and trying to draw his own conclusions.
Other aircraft designers whom I admired growing up:
Barnes Wallis, UK aircraft designer and inventor (best know for his "Bouncing Bomb", but a wide-ranging intellect)
R.J. Mitchell, lead designer of the Supermarine Spitfire
Jiro Horikoshi, lead designer of the A6M Zero-sen fighter and other aircraft
Rheinhold Platz (designer with Fokker)
Kelly Johnson (Lockheed Skunkworks, P-38, etc.)
Other people I admired or who were influences (focusing on science / tech heroes):
E.O. Wilson (Sociobiology)
Robert Goddard (pioneering rocket designer)
Jane Jacobs (The Death and Life of Great American Cities)
Werner von Braun (OK, this was before everyone talked about the slave labor stuff)
Willy Ley (for me, it was the sense that explained rocketry to a young audience so well...I like good teachers)
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (first compiler, first bug, etc.)
Ada Lovelace / Charles Babbage
Sir Isaac Newton
Nikola Tesla
Thomas Edison
John Wheeler (physicist)
Richard Trevithick (pioneering steam engineer)
Watson and Crick
Jonas Salk
Richard Feynman (phsysicist)
Erdos (mathematician)
John von Neumann
Alan Turing
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (oddly, I've never had an Apple computer, but the mythos of their startup was inspiring growing up)
And, of course, if we're going to talk about Heroes...
Hero of Alexandria (ancient inventor, aka "Heron")
Finally, I would say that your son needs to remember these are, above all, human beings. Find the parts to admire, to emulate, but realize they all have feet of clay.
These people might have accomplished great things, but they're not perfect. Some were great public figures but private jackasses, some had political or religious beliefs that might be offensive to some people, and so on. People get jealous and vindictive, have affairs with wives or husbands, and hold grudges. Nonetheless, they contributed to the betterment of all...understand everyone has some flaws, so don't toss someone aside when you find out they're not perfect.
"Now, I know a lot of people are going to argue with me, but the most important tag in HTML is . Every single graphical trick done to either speed up or sexify your web site is done with tables inside tables inside tables--it's tables all the way down!...When's the last time you laid out a site without a table element on every page?"
Whoa, I haven't done than since IE4 / Netscape 4.7 days. I use tables for tabular data, very rarely for layout. I'm quite positive I'm not alone in this.
While there are a number of Javascript-based datagrid controls available, it would be good to have some sort of standardized control as part of the standard definition.
IIRC, a much more primitive type of "self-healing" technology was instrumental in the WWII Allied victory.
Fuel tanks for aircraft used a sandwich of aluminum and a polymer that hardened on contact with air (similar to the gunk you can get at the Autoparts store to stop a leak in your gas tank).
Fuel leaks from gunfire or flack stopped or slowed dramatically, reducing the risk of fire and the need to bail out prematurely because of fuel loss (remember, some of these missions were extremely long, especially in the Pacific theater).
The Japanese had a different philosophy throughout most of WWII, eschewing self-sealing gas tanks because of the weight and complexity. They started WWII with an extremely well trained cadre of pilots (a typical pre-war class at Etajima would start with 2,000 candidates and end up with less than 50), but lack of armor and self-sealing tanks cost a great many of these pilots' lives early in the conflict.
Even the pilots themselves joked about this, calling the main bomber used throughout the war, the G4M Type 1 Medium bomber ("Betty"), the "Type 1 Lighter".
At any rate, it would seem that a wound that heals, even imperfectly, is preferable to stress fractures and pinholes in a craft that's undergone a few compression / decompression cycles.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you gotten everything you need from this job, professionally, financially, and personally? Are you satisfied this move is the best choice for you to grow professionally?
If you want this other position, give your current employer proper notice, and work with them to make the transition as smooth as possible. You can even discuss the possibility of being available as a consultant for a while if they need.
On the other hand, you might look over the offer and decide the trade-offs aren't worth it. Sometimes, the increased money is accompanied by increased stress...longer commutes, longer hours, more demands on your personal life (e.g., being on call 24/7). An interesting and rewarding job that pays less might be the better option then.
Chances are, however, you're intrigued by a new challenge, a new beginning, and better pay. Why not take the leap?
Remember, in the end, you are replaceable. It's part of business. People get sick, hit by buses...or better offers. Leave gracefully, don't burn any bridges, and you can continue to stay friends with those co-workers with whom you are close.
Best wishes on your decision. In this economy, it's rare to have such a choice to make!
My understanding is that Bell Labs tested a number of layouts before settling on the 1-2-3 matrix we use now as being simplest to master (see R. L. Deininger, Human Factors Engineering Studies of the Design and Use of Pushhutton Telephone Sets, 1960, Bell System Technical Journal [PDF]).
I'm not sure if calculator / comptometer manufacturers had their competing studies; I've heard that when Bell asked for an explanation, the answer was a shrug...comptometers were about 80 years by then, so I think the origins of their layout are as opaque and full of folk explanations as the QWERTY layout.
Regardless, I've encountered OP's request before...but for phone layouts which matched calculator layouts. I was working in an operations office a few years ago run by a person who was a fan of "Cheaper by the Dozen" who wanted to optimize our phone dialing speed (this was a fun place to work, even if this request sounds odd). We didn't have any success, but it was an interesting thought.
Thank you for your work with Slashdot. This place has helped keep my interest in tech alive with your combination of neat stories and wry, sometimes sarcastic summaries...the place won't be the same without you.
I discovered Slashdot and Google about the same time in 1997, and since then, both site names have now become part of our day-to-day language...we google stuff on the web only to discover the site we want has been slashdotted! If nothing else, that's a pretty awesome accomplishment!
Best wishes for whatever is next...thanks again, and have fun!
I'm posting this using K-Meleon on an old notebook with minimal memory (256 MB...with a bunch of that allocated for the video). K-Meleon is built on the Mozilla Gecko engine.
It's fast, stable, and lightweight. You won't see a lot of CSS3 effects, but otherwise, it's a fine small footprint browser, even for a tab-heavy user like myself. You can use a number of older Firefox extensions with a little work, and it responds to the usual Firefox performance tweaks as well.
I did an advertisement for a business a couple of years ago using an image we found on Flickr. The photography was great, the subject matter was perfect for our theme (relating to a sci-fi collectibles business), and the ad was successful.
Our approach was a little different, however.
First, we contacted the owner of the photo to get permission. Our attitude going in was that we were planning to use this for commercial purposes, so we offered to pay the person a competitive rate for their work (much to their delight). We negotiated payment and put the photographer's name in the ad.
In the end, we ended up with a loyal customer who brought more friends to the business, and a fun, memorable ad.
So, sure. I'm in favor of people sharing their photos. And if you enjoy someone's work enough to want to use it commercially, why not get permission and offer reasonable compensation? There's a chance you'll build a good relationship, and you'll encourage them to do more work.
Honestly, it seems like it would be more costly to rip them off. The initial work might be free, but the potential lost revenue from angry customers and would-be customers would probably more than offset any savings.
*facepalm* Oh, great...I got wrapped up in writing this and totally forgot about his stringent requirements. Back to lurking.
Yes, another vote for Burt Rutan, from his ground-breaking work with experimental aircraft designs like the wood Vari-Viggen and the innovative composite use of the futuristic Vari-eze and Long-eze homebuilts, to planes like Voyager (round-the-world nonstop), the Boomerang, and now Spaceship One and Spaceship Two, along with their motherships. This is someone who's still the l'enfant terrible of the aviation world, breaking new ground with every project. Also, a very inspiring and exciting speaker.
He's currently strayed from aviation to focus on climate change, but even that has an object lesson: he's at least looking at research and trying to draw his own conclusions.
Other aircraft designers whom I admired growing up:
Other people I admired or who were influences (focusing on science / tech heroes):
And, of course, if we're going to talk about Heroes...
Finally, I would say that your son needs to remember these are, above all, human beings. Find the parts to admire, to emulate, but realize they all have feet of clay.
These people might have accomplished great things, but they're not perfect. Some were great public figures but private jackasses, some had political or religious beliefs that might be offensive to some people, and so on. People get jealous and vindictive, have affairs with wives or husbands, and hold grudges. Nonetheless, they contributed to the betterment of all...understand everyone has some flaws, so don't toss someone aside when you find out they're not perfect.
"Now, I know a lot of people are going to argue with me, but the most important tag in HTML is . Every single graphical trick done to either speed up or sexify your web site is done with tables inside tables inside tables--it's tables all the way down!...When's the last time you laid out a site without a table element on every page?" Whoa, I haven't done than since IE4 / Netscape 4.7 days. I use tables for tabular data, very rarely for layout. I'm quite positive I'm not alone in this. While there are a number of Javascript-based datagrid controls available, it would be good to have some sort of standardized control as part of the standard definition.
IIRC, a much more primitive type of "self-healing" technology was instrumental in the WWII Allied victory.
Fuel tanks for aircraft used a sandwich of aluminum and a polymer that hardened on contact with air (similar to the gunk you can get at the Autoparts store to stop a leak in your gas tank).
Fuel leaks from gunfire or flack stopped or slowed dramatically, reducing the risk of fire and the need to bail out prematurely because of fuel loss (remember, some of these missions were extremely long, especially in the Pacific theater).
The Japanese had a different philosophy throughout most of WWII, eschewing self-sealing gas tanks because of the weight and complexity. They started WWII with an extremely well trained cadre of pilots (a typical pre-war class at Etajima would start with 2,000 candidates and end up with less than 50), but lack of armor and self-sealing tanks cost a great many of these pilots' lives early in the conflict.
Even the pilots themselves joked about this, calling the main bomber used throughout the war, the G4M Type 1 Medium bomber ("Betty"), the "Type 1 Lighter".
At any rate, it would seem that a wound that heals, even imperfectly, is preferable to stress fractures and pinholes in a craft that's undergone a few compression / decompression cycles.