So says the Linux basher. Ironic, is it not, when your wonderful OS Overlord is the one reducing the functionality of your computer and OS just to charge you more, while you have been busily denigrating those who value/give freedom and control of systems to the end users...
Point being that.docx formatting is, by nature of being proprietary, intended to be difficult (or maybe not even possible) for some other app than that provided by the manufacturer to open.
Think of it this way: Do Linux or BSD suck because they don't natively run.exe-format programs? No. Yet to deride them as OS'es because they don't, would not make any sense.
I don't begrudge you your good living, at all. I am a hearty proponent of and regular user of Linux myself, yet like you, make my money working primarily in MS environments (mostly, fixing them). My post does not take issue with that, or you; instead, it was intended to point out that using a wrench to turn a screw, isn't going to work well.
But that is not the fault of the wrench - it is simply the nature of the screw.
There's no need for users to "understand a new suite of office applications" - simply for them to make "Save as ODF" their new default. Within a year, or at most 2-3 years, I'd doubt you would be running into any other format, even in your 'legacy' documents, because in a business most things written don't have a lifespan even that long. And you would still have the capability to open those much older formats, if the need arose. WRT databases, I agree that they would be a bigger issue.
As far as then having compatibility differences with documents from other companies, that is understandable/not unreasonable to expect. Some sort of educational campaign would come in handy to make this an eventual non-issue; like along the lines of what Firefox did with a full-page ad in the NYT back in '04. I don't know by what metric you could determine how much an effect that ad had in FFox eventually shouldering aside IE, but I am fairly certain that it did help in a major way, if only to shine a very public light for a day on FFox as an alternative to the lack of concern MS evinced with updating their browser. If a campaign of education and information were to come about so that the document compatibility issue became - for a short while at least - a topic of broad discussion, perhaps the cross-x concern would be lessened. I don't see how cross-company, cross-platform, cross-app compatibility could be viewed as a "bad thing" to implement by anyone, especially not when it is as simple as changing a single default setting in your already-existing software. Yes, there will be a transitional period, but there always is, even from.doc to.docx.
Your last point is a good one, and ironically amusing. Thanks for the civil discourse.:)
Of the 3 or 4 different Linux installs I have on various computers, a $29.00 HP 1100 printer purchased this past year gets recognized and the HPLIP driver installed with little input and no problems. As easily as, if not easier than, the process goes with Windows XP, Vista, or 7. So don't diss the cheapies.:) Despite that, the points you were making in your post are more right than wrong. Every Linux-vs-MS thread, you see the MS shills and fanbois run out the same old tired dogs of "no printer support" or "video cards don't work as well" or "no Linux games", etc etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. They think this is true, because they have no personal experience. It is what they believe, however mistakenly, because it is the thing they use to defend their perceptions and rely upon to make themselves feel secure in their choice. No more, no less. Pitiable, though, IMO.
Though MM may in fact use *nix solutions as stated, I find the opening line of that post is disingenuous as worded, so I've edited it here to make it more obvious what is being said:
No open source software that I've seen handles the Microsoft proprietary format docx halfway as well as the Microsoft native applications for the format, Word 2007 and Word 2010.
Bolding mine, to point out the obvious deficiencies of that argument.
User eldorel is right, even if the pro-MS crowd doesn't like to admit it.
most business and employees actually only need a small subset of the features that Microsoft's products have, and most of these features have been replicated or improved upon by free software.
Especially where Office is concerned.
It has been widely touted that Office 07 and 10 both have support for ODF, though from what I've read in articles I understand it to be better implemented in 10. As a true cross-platform, cross-app standard, perhaps a "professional" IT person relied upon by otherwise unknowing end users might suggest that their company begin using *that* as the way in which to author and save their documents. Doing so just might create a result better than "the dog just puked on the screen" when a document happens to be opened by someone using a different brand of the same type of application. That's the whole point of the thing, really, isn't it? So why should we not support that, for the sake of our end users? In order to promote/prop up the MS hegemony? Not a good idea, from where I sit.
Instead of trying to teach new users a particular distro (or 3), teach them:
1) How to download and burn/create a bootable ISO of a Linux distro (maybe use netbootin?).
2) How to boot their machine from the LiveCD/DVD/thumbdrive they've created.
3) And then encourage them to try 2 or 3 distros out to find their own best "fit".
One advantage of this is that some distros will natively support 'X' hardware that another may not.
And one distro I haven't seen yet mentioned, that I like as a lightweight, minimalist solution which a new user shouldn't find daunting: Bodhi.
I was put under a bench warrant (IIRC, that is what it is called) directly from the judge, who then turned to the 2 lawyers standing on either side of us and told them that I would not be participating as a juror in this case nor any other for the time I was in the jurors pool. She further enjoined me from telling or discussing the order she put me under with any of the other potential jurors in the pool, possible 6 month jail term and $250 fine if I did.
My crime? I told her that I believed that as an intelligent and informed Citizen of my country, as a juror it was my Right and Duty to sit not only in judgement of the facts, but also in judgement of the law, if I felt that it was an unjust law or was being applied unfairly.
Up until that moment, I pretty much thought FIJA was a neat concept, but also a bit too "tin hatty". No more.
There are likely not many more than 9,000 of those types of boats in the world, much less in the Middle East. And Iran is not a rich nation. Figures mentioned put Iran as having only 1,000 small attack boats. Say 900 of that number (doubtful, to me) are the high-speed, hi-tech attack craft used by our US Navy for training...
By my own admission the numbers quoted for the boats I wrote about above were very low. Per your post we are now playing with hyperbole, so lets go ahead and put the cost per boat at a much more likely $250,000 for bare hull + engines + mechanical systems for running it. Add in a minimum of 2 trained, specialist crewmembers, ancillary objects like radios and GPS nav systems, the weapons (what's a.50 cal machine gun + ammo cost? A shoulder-fired rocket and spares?) and you are getting closer to $1,000,000 per boat, if not over that amount. Still a lot cheaper than the carrier, but at that rate, with the losses they are likely to sustain, it is going to put a strain on their naval warfare coffers very quickly. Boat and weapons on the bottom of the Straits ain't helping Iran at all, and are a cost that cannot be recouped...
Additionally, I'll say that the Iranian "swarms" would probably number far less than 100 boats per (as that would give them a potential of only 10 'swarm shots'), so 50 is more likely (and probably still on the high side). A carrier + carrier group (destroyers, escorts, fixed- and rotating-wing aircraft) would have no trouble making it so that only a very small number of that 50 attackers would be able to get through to a point where they could actually threaten a carrier to the point of sinking, even with a missile at stand-off range. Barring some extremely good circumstances happening on their part, I don't see this Iranian small-boat navy having much of a chance at sinking one of our carriers.
Keep in mind that Iran is not using these boats because they are the optimal solution for attacking a modern day carrier group; they are doing so because *it is the only way that they can*. Full stop.
It takes a certain minimum size of boat to be able to carry a machine gun in the bow, a crew of 2+, and a larger payload of explosives or missile launcher at any good rate of speed through any sizable seas. Iran is not going to be able to effectively use a 16' SeaRay or Bayliner ski boat that is only $20k, unless as a decoy. The costs of a truly capable fast attack "speedboat" would come in two major chunks: the hull cost, and the engine costs. The 'speedboats' hulls our Navy is training with cost (& I'm somewhat-knowledgeably lowball estimating here) $40k+ on the low end, and each hull has 2-3 outboard motors hanging off the rear end, at a cost of well over $15k each. Those 'speedboats' are ex$pen$ive, $100k+ each, and losing several every raid (along with weapons and personnel) would rack up a huge cost even for a nation state. Most if not all of these boats are produced by companies who would not be very friendly to Iran, and so I doubt they would ramp up production in order to provide Iran with more 'weapons' once the original stock has been decimated.
Please, please take the time to (re)educate yourself regarding the function and purpose of individual jurors. Although many people believe as you do that:
My understanding is that the jury's job is to decide any facts that are in dispute, such as whether someone did something. A judge decides matters of law, such as whether that something is illegal.
...this is most emphatically NOT the truth.
If you'll visit the FIJA website(Fully Informed Jury Association), it is explained in plain and easily understandable language why a jury has the right and duty to sit in judgment of the law as well as the/any disputed facts.
That said, do not tell the judge or lawyers that you have this knowledge. Otherwise you risk getting sidelined from the process, put under a bench warrant which makes you unable to sit on a jury or inform any other jurors of their rights and duties. I know this because it happened to me.
I think our US Navy has been practicing for just this kind of warfare for several years because I've seen the boats they use as "enemies" - they sometimes stay at the marina where I live. The "enemy" boats are likely a step above what Iran would be able to field in large numbers; they are 25-35' LOA rigid inflatable craft powered by twin or triple 200+hp outboards, or glass-hulled fast sportfishers like Fountain or Donzi. The kind of boat where the crew is strapped in with 5-point harnesses because they *need* to be when a boat that size runs in excess of 50kts on open water. I would hope that crews trained against these extremely fast 'aggressors' would find it fairly easy to take out targets using slower, older, less capable craft. HITRON may well have a role in such a conflict scenario as well.
Are you accusing these fine, upstanding, all-taxes-and-royalty-paying media corporations of being greedy and/or acting solely in their own interests? Heh. Next thing you'll come up with is that they've intentionally uploaded corrupted files, stuffed the Obama administration and political process with their lobbyist sock puppets, or something else ridiculous like that...
Ever since I read Iran claimed they didn't shoot it down, I've been wondering if or how much that virus and this "cyber warfare" attack might be connected...
"Blob" is very apt terminology, yet "(Unecessarily) Giant Blob" might be even more accurate. Not sure if these are exact numbers, but they are probably close. From Wikipedia, re: Sumatra PDF:
It has a 4.4 MB setup file, compared to Adobe Reader's 40.5 MB, for Windows 7. Installed size is 8.4 MB, whereas Adobe Reader requires 335 MB of available disk space.
Adobe PDF Reader - now with 10-40x the size of what's *really* needed! ***Bonus*** - Includes Critical 0 Day vulnerability, @ no extra charge!!!
I was able to work with a Russian SEO company for the paltry price of $400 and learned more working with them than I had spending hundreds of hours digging through Google searches for SEO tips.
Some clients come to me having found me through my website - if *your* website developing company website ranks high in their search, is nice looking, easy to understand, etc..., then they already have an idea of your capabilities, and what you can do for them. This works better in rural areas with less competition, and localized searches, of course. Perhaps that should be my disclaimer - I am not in a big city environment, I deal with "small business", so my method may not work as well there, though I think it would still work fairly well - people are people, and small business revolves around them.
The larger percentage of new website clients have come to me through word of mouth from existing customers, some from the website side but even more from the 'tech support' business I do. Being someone's IT guy really puts your foot in the door of not only that business, but into those of the friends of that business. There is a definite lack of personable, available, quality tech people in the independent sector, and to most people not involved directly in some sort of computer technology business, websites and fixing systems/networking/etc... are pretty much all closely related variants of the same field. You and I and I'd expect most/. readers know different, but there it is, in my experience. And if you know your stuff, and are personable enough that your clients know they can ask and trust your answers, your existing clients are your sales force - and a powerful one at that.
Your last sentence was something I used to ask myself about 10+ years back; does my new buddy Joe Shadetree really need a website for his backyard radiator shop? There is no question about it any more, the answer is a resounding "Yes!".:) ***Every*** business needs a website these days - the 'net is the first place most people look to find out about a business, even in rural America. Not every business needs a $10K website, though, and certainly not "Joe's Hometown Radiators" - it would take him forever to recoup that kind of investment. I do well selling "mom-n-pop" businesses with small requirements a 4-5 page, modifiable brochure site in the $700-2K range, using a custom design built on a CMS, running on a LAMP stack via a reseller account. This allows me to keep their cost low enough that after that initial investment of $2-5/day for their website and first year of maintenance/hosting, their ongoing cost for the site is a bit less than $0.50/day (if I don't have to work on their site much). For the ones who want to, however, they can log on to their site and update content, add pages, etc etc..., and all I do is make sure there are regular backups and upgrades. In this price range they are getting me for about 1/2 of what I charge on an hourly basis for the time I will put in on their site, BUT - I get a new, happy client, and a relationship that will likely last years, and put more money in my pocket over time than if I had gone full price to begin with.
Like the OP, I am self-taught, and am of the same mind as CmdrPony, having done it myself. If you need to start working right away...
Start your own shop, but count on the website/SEO/marketing side of things to start slow and develop (no pun intended) over time - likely several years. The market for "website developers" is fairly well saturated, albeit with far too many that are no more than Dreamweaver/FrontPage/MSWord-using ex-construction worker/secretary types who are 95% clueless yet able to put up a $200 site in a few days by advertising on Craigslist. Yes, your site may be far better, but money talks, and many clients don't understand the finer points of what makes a really good, nice-looking, fast rendering, cross platform website, or what SEO is and the kind of time it can eat.
Until you have a solid core of client sites showing your skill and capability and helping you sell at a price point that makes it worthwhile, your working capital and day-to-day income can be supplanted by the other computer skills you have: repair, networking, etc... Be willing to make on-site visits (even to homes - at least until you get too busy), and have a fast response time. Come up with good ways to describe common computer problems and your fixes for them in normal human-speak - people do like to understand a bit about what you are doing, and teaching them a little helps them become better users and clients.
Find a small, cheap location where you can set up half a dozen systems while you work on them, get some biz cards made, and put out your shingle. If you do a good job, word of mouth will start putting feet in your doorway in a matter of months, enough traffic to live off of so you can begin to grow and thrive and start getting website work, likely from many of the same clients whose system you maintain, once they realize that their super-cheap website really is for the dogs. Being their trusted and proven IT guy helps you sell yourself in this area - they understand that you know what you are talking about, and will be more willing to pay you a fair price to help them market themselves better online. Good luck!
We're digging 20,000 feet under ocean beds for oil now.
It begs pointing out that we are drilling that deep not because we *have* to, but because oil/gas much nearer the surface (potentially very large reserves inshore/onshore, *much* nearer the surface, and arguably much easier gotten/transported/contained in an accident) is not being accessed for other reasons than a simple lack of the resource.
I'd be interested to know more about the hardware and/or platform you use on a daily/regular basis to do your work/research. I would assume that with your 'itinerant' lifestyle you have had to make choices and compromises in this area. IIRC, you "temporarily bought";) a laptop to edit Hold Fast, but that isn't something you do on a regular basis - is it? Are there any suggestions/tips/tricks about hardware or methods that you'd care to share for the traveling hacker with the above in mind?
As an aside - Thanks for all the good work and entertaining tales!:) Been using that Capt's license much lately?
One of the reasons for this is that, across the board, there seems to be a notable reluctance for Google to include input from meatspace, whether that is for customer support or many other issues. Example: There is a web development company which poisons results in my state by automatically generating pages with an overly large (even by and according to Google standards for keyword stuffing) amount of specific keywords. Like so: a search for "Web design My_town, My_state" will return this companies' site at #1 because their php script packs those terms in *8-10 times in 3 small, generic paragraphs* of text. They are specifically gaming Google results; this tactic does not work nearly as well for them in a Bing search.
The company is not local to any of those results, with the exception of the 2 towns they are actually located. I have submitted this site to the Google Webmaster report pages several times over the last year, with no response and no effect. Granted, there are brazillions of pages and I would assume many thousands of such reports, and I understand that Google cannot put eyeballs on every incident immediately, but in this case it would seem that something would be done as *the report is coming directly from a long-term, current user of their services, via a channel explicitly provided to report such abuse*. Why otherwise have such a channel? This is just one example of how I have seen Google starting to slide down from their place at #1. Google could easily use some of their ready cash to pay more people to fill in some of these types of 'holes' in their infrastructure in order to provide better results and a better customer experience.
Slashdot Mirror
So says the Linux basher. Ironic, is it not, when your wonderful OS Overlord is the one reducing the functionality of your computer and OS just to charge you more, while you have been busily denigrating those who value/give freedom and control of systems to the end users...
...a book, whether digital or dead-tree, your name will be there along with Baen as my first choice of publishers to support via the wallet.
Hmmm, I dunno for sure, but I'll hazard a guess: a bunch of metro-sexual hippies camped out in a small park on Wall Street?
;)
Ah well, so much for that karma...
WTG Disney, with your "John Carter" movie viral marketing campaign. Impressive effort!
Point being that .docx formatting is, by nature of being proprietary, intended to be difficult (or maybe not even possible) for some other app than that provided by the manufacturer to open.
.exe-format programs? No. Yet to deride them as OS'es because they don't, would not make any sense.
Think of it this way: Do Linux or BSD suck because they don't natively run
I don't begrudge you your good living, at all. I am a hearty proponent of and regular user of Linux myself, yet like you, make my money working primarily in MS environments (mostly, fixing them). My post does not take issue with that, or you; instead, it was intended to point out that using a wrench to turn a screw, isn't going to work well.
But that is not the fault of the wrench - it is simply the nature of the screw.
There's no need for users to "understand a new suite of office applications" - simply for them to make "Save as ODF" their new default. Within a year, or at most 2-3 years, I'd doubt you would be running into any other format, even in your 'legacy' documents, because in a business most things written don't have a lifespan even that long. And you would still have the capability to open those much older formats, if the need arose. WRT databases, I agree that they would be a bigger issue.
.doc to .docx.
:)
As far as then having compatibility differences with documents from other companies, that is understandable/not unreasonable to expect. Some sort of educational campaign would come in handy to make this an eventual non-issue; like along the lines of what Firefox did with a full-page ad in the NYT back in '04. I don't know by what metric you could determine how much an effect that ad had in FFox eventually shouldering aside IE, but I am fairly certain that it did help in a major way, if only to shine a very public light for a day on FFox as an alternative to the lack of concern MS evinced with updating their browser. If a campaign of education and information were to come about so that the document compatibility issue became - for a short while at least - a topic of broad discussion, perhaps the cross-x concern would be lessened. I don't see how cross-company, cross-platform, cross-app compatibility could be viewed as a "bad thing" to implement by anyone, especially not when it is as simple as changing a single default setting in your already-existing software. Yes, there will be a transitional period, but there always is, even from
Your last point is a good one, and ironically amusing. Thanks for the civil discourse.
Though MM may in fact use *nix solutions as stated, I find the opening line of that post is disingenuous as worded, so I've edited it here to make it more obvious what is being said:
No open source software that I've seen handles the Microsoft proprietary format docx halfway as well as the Microsoft native applications for the format, Word 2007 and Word 2010.
Bolding mine, to point out the obvious deficiencies of that argument.
User eldorel is right, even if the pro-MS crowd doesn't like to admit it.
most business and employees actually only need a small subset of the features that Microsoft's products have, and most of these features have been replicated or improved upon by free software.
Especially where Office is concerned.
It has been widely touted that Office 07 and 10 both have support for ODF, though from what I've read in articles I understand it to be better implemented in 10. As a true cross-platform, cross-app standard, perhaps a "professional" IT person relied upon by otherwise unknowing end users might suggest that their company begin using *that* as the way in which to author and save their documents. Doing so just might create a result better than "the dog just puked on the screen" when a document happens to be opened by someone using a different brand of the same type of application. That's the whole point of the thing, really, isn't it? So why should we not support that, for the sake of our end users? In order to promote/prop up the MS hegemony? Not a good idea, from where I sit.
Parent post made me think of this
Instead of trying to teach new users a particular distro (or 3), teach them:
1) How to download and burn/create a bootable ISO of a Linux distro (maybe use netbootin?).
2) How to boot their machine from the LiveCD/DVD/thumbdrive they've created.
3) And then encourage them to try 2 or 3 distros out to find their own best "fit".
One advantage of this is that some distros will natively support 'X' hardware that another may not.
And one distro I haven't seen yet mentioned, that I like as a lightweight, minimalist solution which a new user shouldn't find daunting: Bodhi.
Hmm. Based on your sig, I'd have thought you were "Sudomodymous". Or something like that...
If, as stated @ 0:58 in the video, they have that "serene cityscape" of Honolulu "on the Big Island" - yep, it's broken... :)
I was put under a bench warrant (IIRC, that is what it is called) directly from the judge, who then turned to the 2 lawyers standing on either side of us and told them that I would not be participating as a juror in this case nor any other for the time I was in the jurors pool. She further enjoined me from telling or discussing the order she put me under with any of the other potential jurors in the pool, possible 6 month jail term and $250 fine if I did.
My crime? I told her that I believed that as an intelligent and informed Citizen of my country, as a juror it was my Right and Duty to sit not only in judgement of the facts, but also in judgement of the law, if I felt that it was an unjust law or was being applied unfairly.
Up until that moment, I pretty much thought FIJA was a neat concept, but also a bit too "tin hatty". No more.
People need to know.
There are likely not many more than 9,000 of those types of boats in the world, much less in the Middle East. And Iran is not a rich nation. Figures mentioned put Iran as having only 1,000 small attack boats. Say 900 of that number (doubtful, to me) are the high-speed, hi-tech attack craft used by our US Navy for training...
By my own admission the numbers quoted for the boats I wrote about above were very low. Per your post we are now playing with hyperbole, so lets go ahead and put the cost per boat at a much more likely $250,000 for bare hull + engines + mechanical systems for running it. Add in a minimum of 2 trained, specialist crewmembers, ancillary objects like radios and GPS nav systems, the weapons (what's a .50 cal machine gun + ammo cost? A shoulder-fired rocket and spares?) and you are getting closer to $1,000,000 per boat, if not over that amount. Still a lot cheaper than the carrier, but at that rate, with the losses they are likely to sustain, it is going to put a strain on their naval warfare coffers very quickly. Boat and weapons on the bottom of the Straits ain't helping Iran at all, and are a cost that cannot be recouped...
Additionally, I'll say that the Iranian "swarms" would probably number far less than 100 boats per (as that would give them a potential of only 10 'swarm shots'), so 50 is more likely (and probably still on the high side). A carrier + carrier group (destroyers, escorts, fixed- and rotating-wing aircraft) would have no trouble making it so that only a very small number of that 50 attackers would be able to get through to a point where they could actually threaten a carrier to the point of sinking, even with a missile at stand-off range. Barring some extremely good circumstances happening on their part, I don't see this Iranian small-boat navy having much of a chance at sinking one of our carriers.
Keep in mind that Iran is not using these boats because they are the optimal solution for attacking a modern day carrier group; they are doing so because *it is the only way that they can*. Full stop.
It takes a certain minimum size of boat to be able to carry a machine gun in the bow, a crew of 2+, and a larger payload of explosives or missile launcher at any good rate of speed through any sizable seas. Iran is not going to be able to effectively use a 16' SeaRay or Bayliner ski boat that is only $20k, unless as a decoy. The costs of a truly capable fast attack "speedboat" would come in two major chunks: the hull cost, and the engine costs. The 'speedboats' hulls our Navy is training with cost (& I'm somewhat-knowledgeably lowball estimating here) $40k+ on the low end, and each hull has 2-3 outboard motors hanging off the rear end, at a cost of well over $15k each. Those 'speedboats' are ex$pen$ive, $100k+ each, and losing several every raid (along with weapons and personnel) would rack up a huge cost even for a nation state. Most if not all of these boats are produced by companies who would not be very friendly to Iran, and so I doubt they would ramp up production in order to provide Iran with more 'weapons' once the original stock has been decimated.
Please, please take the time to (re)educate yourself regarding the function and purpose of individual jurors. Although many people believe as you do that:
My understanding is that the jury's job is to decide any facts that are in dispute, such as whether someone did something. A judge decides matters of law, such as whether that something is illegal.
...this is most emphatically NOT the truth.
If you'll visit the FIJA website (Fully Informed Jury Association), it is explained in plain and easily understandable language why a jury has the right and duty to sit in judgment of the law as well as the/any disputed facts.
That said, do not tell the judge or lawyers that you have this knowledge. Otherwise you risk getting sidelined from the process, put under a bench warrant which makes you unable to sit on a jury or inform any other jurors of their rights and duties. I know this because it happened to me.
I think our US Navy has been practicing for just this kind of warfare for several years because I've seen the boats they use as "enemies" - they sometimes stay at the marina where I live. The "enemy" boats are likely a step above what Iran would be able to field in large numbers; they are 25-35' LOA rigid inflatable craft powered by twin or triple 200+hp outboards, or glass-hulled fast sportfishers like Fountain or Donzi. The kind of boat where the crew is strapped in with 5-point harnesses because they *need* to be when a boat that size runs in excess of 50kts on open water. I would hope that crews trained against these extremely fast 'aggressors' would find it fairly easy to take out targets using slower, older, less capable craft. HITRON may well have a role in such a conflict scenario as well.
Are you accusing these fine, upstanding, all-taxes-and-royalty-paying media corporations of being greedy and/or acting solely in their own interests? Heh. Next thing you'll come up with is that they've intentionally uploaded corrupted files, stuffed the Obama administration and political process with their lobbyist sock puppets, or something else ridiculous like that...
For shame, you, you... pirate!
Remember this story from back in October?
Exclusive: Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet
Ever since I read Iran claimed they didn't shoot it down, I've been wondering if or how much that virus and this "cyber warfare" attack might be connected...
It has a 4.4 MB setup file, compared to Adobe Reader's 40.5 MB, for Windows 7. Installed size is 8.4 MB, whereas Adobe Reader requires 335 MB of available disk space.
Adobe PDF Reader - now with 10-40x the size of what's *really* needed! ***Bonus*** - Includes Critical 0 Day vulnerability, @ no extra charge!!!
What more could you ask for?
I was able to work with a Russian SEO company for the paltry price of $400 and learned more working with them than I had spending hundreds of hours digging through Google searches for SEO tips.
Thanks for the idea. {evil-grin}
;)
Some clients come to me having found me through my website - if *your* website developing company website ranks high in their search, is nice looking, easy to understand, etc..., then they already have an idea of your capabilities, and what you can do for them. This works better in rural areas with less competition, and localized searches, of course. Perhaps that should be my disclaimer - I am not in a big city environment, I deal with "small business", so my method may not work as well there, though I think it would still work fairly well - people are people, and small business revolves around them.
The larger percentage of new website clients have come to me through word of mouth from existing customers, some from the website side but even more from the 'tech support' business I do. Being someone's IT guy really puts your foot in the door of not only that business, but into those of the friends of that business. There is a definite lack of personable, available, quality tech people in the independent sector, and to most people not involved directly in some sort of computer technology business, websites and fixing systems/networking/etc... are pretty much all closely related variants of the same field. You and I and I'd expect most /. readers know different, but there it is, in my experience. And if you know your stuff, and are personable enough that your clients know they can ask and trust your answers, your existing clients are your sales force - and a powerful one at that.
Your last sentence was something I used to ask myself about 10+ years back; does my new buddy Joe Shadetree really need a website for his backyard radiator shop? There is no question about it any more, the answer is a resounding "Yes!". :) ***Every*** business needs a website these days - the 'net is the first place most people look to find out about a business, even in rural America. Not every business needs a $10K website, though, and certainly not "Joe's Hometown Radiators" - it would take him forever to recoup that kind of investment. I do well selling "mom-n-pop" businesses with small requirements a 4-5 page, modifiable brochure site in the $700-2K range, using a custom design built on a CMS, running on a LAMP stack via a reseller account. This allows me to keep their cost low enough that after that initial investment of $2-5/day for their website and first year of maintenance/hosting, their ongoing cost for the site is a bit less than $0.50/day (if I don't have to work on their site much). For the ones who want to, however, they can log on to their site and update content, add pages, etc etc..., and all I do is make sure there are regular backups and upgrades. In this price range they are getting me for about 1/2 of what I charge on an hourly basis for the time I will put in on their site, BUT - I get a new, happy client, and a relationship that will likely last years, and put more money in my pocket over time than if I had gone full price to begin with.
Like the OP, I am self-taught, and am of the same mind as CmdrPony, having done it myself. If you need to start working right away...
Start your own shop, but count on the website/SEO/marketing side of things to start slow and develop (no pun intended) over time - likely several years. The market for "website developers" is fairly well saturated, albeit with far too many that are no more than Dreamweaver/FrontPage/MSWord-using ex-construction worker/secretary types who are 95% clueless yet able to put up a $200 site in a few days by advertising on Craigslist. Yes, your site may be far better, but money talks, and many clients don't understand the finer points of what makes a really good, nice-looking, fast rendering, cross platform website, or what SEO is and the kind of time it can eat.
Until you have a solid core of client sites showing your skill and capability and helping you sell at a price point that makes it worthwhile, your working capital and day-to-day income can be supplanted by the other computer skills you have: repair, networking, etc... Be willing to make on-site visits (even to homes - at least until you get too busy), and have a fast response time. Come up with good ways to describe common computer problems and your fixes for them in normal human-speak - people do like to understand a bit about what you are doing, and teaching them a little helps them become better users and clients.
Find a small, cheap location where you can set up half a dozen systems while you work on them, get some biz cards made, and put out your shingle. If you do a good job, word of mouth will start putting feet in your doorway in a matter of months, enough traffic to live off of so you can begin to grow and thrive and start getting website work, likely from many of the same clients whose system you maintain, once they realize that their super-cheap website really is for the dogs. Being their trusted and proven IT guy helps you sell yourself in this area - they understand that you know what you are talking about, and will be more willing to pay you a fair price to help them market themselves better online. Good luck!
We're digging 20,000 feet under ocean beds for oil now.
It begs pointing out that we are drilling that deep not because we *have* to, but because oil/gas much nearer the surface (potentially very large reserves inshore/onshore, *much* nearer the surface, and arguably much easier gotten/transported/contained in an accident) is not being accessed for other reasons than a simple lack of the resource.
Hi Moxie -
I'd be interested to know more about the hardware and/or platform you use on a daily/regular basis to do your work/research. I would assume that with your 'itinerant' lifestyle you have had to make choices and compromises in this area. IIRC, you "temporarily bought" ;) a laptop to edit Hold Fast, but that isn't something you do on a regular basis - is it? Are there any suggestions/tips/tricks about hardware or methods that you'd care to share for the traveling hacker with the above in mind?
As an aside - Thanks for all the good work and entertaining tales! :) Been using that Capt's license much lately?
For me, spending time with people and sleeping is actually productive
Combine the two, and you'll be "spending time sleeping with people". Way fun!
And while it can be productive, there are also several different methods you can use to keep that from happening... ;)
One of the reasons for this is that, across the board, there seems to be a notable reluctance for Google to include input from meatspace, whether that is for customer support or many other issues. Example: There is a web development company which poisons results in my state by automatically generating pages with an overly large (even by and according to Google standards for keyword stuffing) amount of specific keywords. Like so: a search for "Web design My_town, My_state" will return this companies' site at #1 because their php script packs those terms in *8-10 times in 3 small, generic paragraphs* of text. They are specifically gaming Google results; this tactic does not work nearly as well for them in a Bing search.
The company is not local to any of those results, with the exception of the 2 towns they are actually located. I have submitted this site to the Google Webmaster report pages several times over the last year, with no response and no effect. Granted, there are brazillions of pages and I would assume many thousands of such reports, and I understand that Google cannot put eyeballs on every incident immediately, but in this case it would seem that something would be done as *the report is coming directly from a long-term, current user of their services, via a channel explicitly provided to report such abuse*. Why otherwise have such a channel? This is just one example of how I have seen Google starting to slide down from their place at #1. Google could easily use some of their ready cash to pay more people to fill in some of these types of 'holes' in their infrastructure in order to provide better results and a better customer experience.