Think of the advantages: -You probably have some ideas of what kind of devices are needed. -You probably have access to a number of wealthy investors (doctors) that can provide funding and/or expertise and/or insight into market needs. -The barrier is steep: trials and approvals, patents, etc., so though it may be hard to get one to market, it's not like a rival can easily copy your design and charge less for it. -If not mech. engineering, than maybe biomed software or some other usefule software that could be sold to a captive market.
I've read several stories about physicians/engineers who have followed this path, had a personally challenging/rewarding career, and made many millions in the process. If I had the time and money, that's what I would do.
Outside than that, you don't really need a degree to get into Technology. I know someone with a PhD. in psychology that quickly rose to the ranks of Project Manager/Consultant for a medical software company. The fact that she's a "Doctor" - though not medical - holds a certain degree of credence with clients that's not possible with your average programmer, engineer, or middle manager.
While the review I've seen on Amazon point out that it's more of an evangelical book (with a decent explanation of the technologies involved) than a technical roadmap, the table of contents (pdf) looks good. It seems that the book addresses the real world issues of refreshing an existing site (what to update vs. what to leave as-is) and instead of flash-bashing, a somewhat objective analysis of where it belongs on a site. I haven't bought it myself, but we plan on refreshing 18 global sites sometime soon (with a team of 3), and hope to do them in a way that expands our use of standards without having to burn a million hours grepping out <font> tags.
Try this post: "I have been asked to teach a week-long class on Computer Game Design for a small group of computer literate kids, around 9-13 years old. My plan is to have them create a simple game, while exposing them to aspects of story design, artwork, animation, and simple programming. To this end, I'm looking for a 'game construction kit' that is simple enough that they can have a working game by the end of the week with some guidance. Anyone remember the 'Arcade Game Construction Kit' on the Commodore 64? Adventure Game Studio looks good, but it may be too complex. The genre is flexible, but it does need to generate a distributable Win32 binary that they can take home. Are there any Windows packages, public domain or otherwise, that can do this, especially any designed for kids?"
god i need a fscking life...i've tearned into jeeves.
I made a few guesses where I see them. I haven't done a lot of homework on the subject, just seen it here and there and it just struck me as a 1998 idea that hasn't gotten around to dying yet.
Good luck, I just personally think that while there may not be 'similar products for anything less' I question whether there's a market for such a thing. Maybe the media is right, but then again, the media doesn't buy them. If there is, someone will come along and make them cheaper, with fewer features, perhaps.
MINI has launched their own line of accessories, one of them being a jacket with a see-through map panel, and it comes with a couple of custom-shaped maps of major cities. Cool, yes. Usefulness, limited. The problem is, the jacket costs $675. If it's a cool feature and competitors notice it, it will be out at target next year for $99. That's what I see as the problem here. You may have a few cool ideas rolled together, but you can't patent 'pockets.'
This guy has been pushing this idea for years in Chicago, though I think he recently moved operations somewhere to save on 'expenses.'
Granted, this is all my opinion, but it really speaks volumes on the state of tech innovation in Chicago. Guy (lawyer maybe?) wants to be a tech entrepeneur and make buckets of money. Comes up with half decent idea, using connections and VCs desperate inability to turn down deals in 1999, gets funding. I have to say, back in the day when a phone/pda didn't do all this stuff, I was intrigued. For about a second, until I realized that for $300+ I could buy my own vest and wire it however I wanted. Then it reminded me of this vest I saw in 1984, which was/soooo/ cool because it had a walkman-shaped pocket (and a matching headphone-shaped one too) on the outside with a hole for your headphone wires. (The walkman pocket was the size of a paperback dictionary, but that's another story). Anyway, the thing was over a hundred bucks, which was just laughable. Anyway, that's what I thought of when I saw the original eVest.
The problem is, he doesn't want to make a couple of handcrafted products, he wants to sell millions, and have them in Sharper Image, Harrington's, etc. He has succeeded in getting PR in Wired and NT Times, no small feat, if you consider this idea is getting stale, and most geeks I know want to carry/less/ stuff these days.
In order to get anyone to keep noticing it, it had to become the uber-vest. 42 pockets? For $300-400. Are you f&%)ing kidding me? You can get a cheaper/nicer vest for flyfishing or photographers, and load it up all you want.
Like I said, a sad state on the 'lemme in on the tech cash' mentality of innovation in Chicago in the last few years. IMO, of course. Probably I am most annoyed at his inability to just produce a product without trying to make it a billion dollar home run. I'm surprised he's still getting PR on this nonsense.
If you go to a horse race, and you see a horse has million to one odds, it makes sense to put a little money on it. Even if it has 3 legs and a blind jockey named Darl. You put a hundred bucks on it, and if it wins, you can start to afford to play poker with Bill and Larry. You/know/ you're throwing your money down the toilet, but the potential payoff is huge.
Now say that horse is a stock, as more people buy in, it costs a bit more to place the bet, but it's still a bargain at 200,000 to one payoff. IF it wins.
If SCO wins, it will be a bit like that, $3bn from IBM, and really, the sky will be the limit for licensing. It's not gonna happen (even if IBM loses, they could tie it up forever and eventually the 'offending' code could be dealt with), but for people who manage money, it's irrelevant. The investment is still proportional to the payoff.
Believe me, there's a lot to hate him for, but you're just ignant if you try and lay this at his feet.
It's pretty basic global economy theory. Tariffs and protectionist barriers are not highly regarded by economists. You sound like a textile worker in the 60's or an auto worker in the 80's. Free trade is good, despite what you may think.
Consider this, if the global economy improves, then the welfare of all humans improve. If nascent countries have viable economies, then perhaps it wouldn't be so easy to round up a bunch of kids and give them machine guns, bombs, and suicidal ideologies.
America, in general, excels at adapting and innovating, but that's not to the exclusion of anyone else doing so. There are plenty of reasons to keep close watch on our corporate masters, so they don't swindle us out of medical coverage and retirement benefits, but in the long run, protectionist legislation will just turn us into an overburdened economic island.
In an extreme example, it could get to the point where your beloved protections screw you. Want that japanese TV? Sorry, the government has slapped a 100% tax on it to protect US jobs. The problem is, the American TV manufacturer no longer needs to innovate so strongly, so you get a shitty TV that costs 50% more than it has to. The more protectionist barriers we construct, the more we'll need down the road.
The difference is, our 'pretenders' were mostly liberal-arts-educated, self-taught-html types, and in India, they're more likely to be C coding, exposed to methodology, CS-degreed folks. Unlike the dot-com bubble, you can't get a decent programming job there without a CS degree. Some Indians I've met said that they couldn't even get interviews until they at least had a Master's.
I'm not trying to flame anyone, as I have worked with a number of skilled American and Indian programmers and engineers. I'm not talking about American 'software engineers,' just comparing the dot-com overnight 'hey look I learned cold fusion last weekend' kids to your average India-educated programmer.
By and large, the Indians I've worked with had been exposed to a wider range of technologies: working on projects involving lahks of lines of C, teams of programmers working in parallel, regression testing, meticulous project planning, etc. In short, a fairly solid CS background, not unlike American CS degrees. Sure, there were other differences, cultural, communication, etc. and I think often a discrete difference when it came to 'just play it by ear and get the whole thing launched/compiled/shipped and iron out the issues later.' But I think that sums up a lot about how American business drives projects over here, for better or worse.
For the record (not to flame anyone, big generalizations coming), from what I've heard about rigorous CS programs, I've heard the American Master's CS students were the least likely to cheat or borrow code on the whole. Chinese and Indian programmers were known to have a 'pack' mentality, in which the top 1-3 programmers did the hard work, and the rest were content to pass it around via floppy, with varying attempts at even changing function names. I've heard this has been overlooked at some highly regarded schools (Stanford for one), with the logic that 'we would alienate and possibly expel 80% of the students if we rigorously enforced this.' Of course this is hearsay based on what I've heard from people in a few schools, and I'm not suggesting that all Indian or Chinese programmers fake their degrees. (Did I PCify that enough for everyone's tastes?)
Note that I didn't make any such generalizations; the poster didn't mention having trouble sleeping.
All he mentioned is that he has a hard time getting up, and my point was that he was looking for a hardware solution (an alarm clock) to a problem that may just be a symptom of something larger. The pot comment was half joking, but not the part mentioning diet, exercise, medical conditions, or simply getting control of his ability to open his eyes in the morning.
Having trouble sleeping is another matter entirely.
So I was ranting about the quality of 'ask slashdots' but really, some of them are ridiculous these days.
I don't mean go Dr. Phil on you, but really, blaming your laziness on your miscalibrated internal clock is ridiculous.
Eat well. Exercise. Don't frag all night, smoke pot, or keep inconsistent hours, tell yourself 'I will get out of bed at a reasonable hour because I'm in charge of my body, not the other way around.' Above all, just take control of your freaking self.
It's not a goddamn technical problem, it's a mental problem. Maybe a medical one, like low blood pressure, who knows, maybe you should Go Ask Doctor. A psychological one? Maybe you don't want to get out bed because your waking life doesn't stoke your coals. Perhaps you need a dominatrix to beat you awake.
Jeezus christ, people get through med school, look after newborns, are workaholics, and since the dawn of time, have pretty much been able to get their asses out of bed without 6 alarm clocks strategically set and placed throughout the room.
ok, maybe I'm cranky and didn't get enough sleep last night, but wtf is this doing here? Dear slashdot, I can't stop smoking/eating/drinking/sleeping/fragging too much. Anyone out there have a technical answer to my inability to take charge over my own life?
I'd have to say, that's a pretty simplistic view of getting published. I'd add a third:
(c)
1. Move to Manhattan.
2. Get any job you can at a publisher.
3. Have plenty of cash ($50k/year should do it), so you can go to the right bars/parties after work, with the right editors, reviewers, and authors.
4. Be witty, irreverent, clever, but not too full of yourself that you annoy the shit out of everyone. Make friends with all of the people that will one be in a position to edit, recommend, or review your book.
5. Write a book. Give to friend in high place.
6. Publish.
7. Profit! (ok, maybe not your first time)
Any attempt to skimp on the above steps, such as: living in Jersey, not buying rounds of $12 martinis, and crossing the clever/self-worshipping line, will most likely result in failure.
OK, maybe not ALL books are published this way, but you'd be surprised at how many are.
if you can't beat 'em, join 'em
on
Exporting Myself?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I've thought about what I'd consider doing if my job were outsourced...something along the lines of this.
If I were in your situation, I would get some tech experience (of any kind, even the low paying sort), find a partner or three (ah, there's the rub), and form an outsourcing company yourself. That is, land and manage gigs, and get some outsourced help to do some bulletproof coding for you. You will succeed if you stick to the 'commoditized' projects. You'll need lots of design skill, lot of management expertise, QA experience, and a committment to nothing less than excellence. You need to have a reputation for never fucking up, and admitting it if you do. Then , and only then, can you think about landing serious gigs.
Sure, you need more experience, but you could hone some of those skills working on open source projects in the meantime.
I'm sure I'll be flamed for generalizing and simplifying (of course I have a bit), and hear anecdotes of 'my company spent $xMM outsourcing a component to india and it sucked' but frankly, this is what people have been doing for years, just (mostly) inside U.S. borders. I personally have taken a couple of $80k jobs away from big firms by doing just that. I recently managed a job with a developer in New Zealand, and the 'client' in Chicago, London, and Moscow. (I didn't just land it out of the blue though, and that's another post entirely.)
Of course, I'm not talking about stealing the Ebay rebuild project from IBM, but something smaller, more manageable, with a good chance of success. To put it another way, think the Doctor/Pharmacist role. If you have a serious malady, you probably don't want to use a Doctor on the other side of the world, but once you get your prescription (in this case, a bulletproof technical spec), you don't really care where it gets filled, do you?
With that said, the protectionists may now commence flaming...
It's remarkable what they just did to make hotmail unusable:
1. You can no longer open your messages in another window, (to have them load in the background). 2. Once you open a message, you have to read the remaining ones in order. 3. Once you reply, you need to advance through a confirmation screen, then click to get back to the main menu, where you have to start this nonsense all over again.
All because they now force you to use javascript to view a message, in effect taking away certain web features (the ability to spawn multiple windows, load in the background) and turned it into a single-interface client...one that inherently takes SEVERAL SECONDS to get from one screen to another. I realize that some of this is to drive more ad views, but they've done this sort of thing before without doubling or tripling the effort required to read mail.
hm, limiting functionality, slower response times? Sound like par-for-the-course MS improvements to me.
It's finally enough to make me kill that address, which is annoying since I've had it since before the MS 'occupation.'
Why do we have to have commentary in every news post?
Because this is an open forum, a discussion, not a journalistic media outlet where every "story" has to be vetted for signs of opinion.
Don't like the submitter's slant? Then you are perfectly free to rebut it with your own comment. But why would you expect someone to post a story without counterpoint, incidental links, or personal opinion, if every other visitor is afforded these options.
I think it's about time we all got this guy's fingerprints and started making thousands of simultaneous purchases worldwide.
He acquired his 15 seconds of internet fame by duplicating and sharing his frequent shopper's card via his personal web site. I can only imagine the junk mail he receives on account of that profile.
It's a spicer. He makes KHS (and a few other OEM) frames, but it will cost you about $100 for the KHS logo.
He rocks. I bought a blemished $250 aluminum frame from him, and he added cyclocross chainstays, track dropouts, cable guides, and canti posts for free.
One gear -> stronger legs, more distributed workout, less to maintain, fewer parts to fail, just mo' fun
Every once in a while someone spends a crapload of money trying to change the fundamentals of the bicycle, but really, other than the derailleur, not much has changed in over 100 years.
You're right, perhaps I should replace "bike" with "Segway"...oh wait, that's the couch that moves on the sidewalk, but at least you have to stand up.
the talking is the distraction, not the device
on
Cell Phone Headsets?
·
· Score: 1
I'm not advocating that conversation should be illegal while driving, but as other people have pointed out, the act of holding it is secondary to the distraction of having an intense conversation. So, having a discussion about what flavor Grape Nuts you had for breakfast won't likely distract you as much as, say, your new crypto scheme you're designing in transit.
Even worse, wearing a headset will probably make you feel like you have to be talking on the phone.
Honestly, have you ever noticed what happens when you're driving and you get a call? You slow down. And while that may seem to be a perfectly logical thing to do in your mind, it bugs the shit out of most everyone else. Think about it. Traffic is not only composed of cars, but it's mostly the space between cars.
If you leave three car lengths between you and another car, you get a call and suddenly it's four car lengths. Multiply that times just about every car you see, and what do you get?
Don't get me started on the fact that you have to add another car length if you're in an SUV. If you've ever looked around and noticed a guy in a zippy little 4 cylinder, "tailgating" - because he's not 5 car lengths back, driving "aggressively" (at least in the American sense, not European), passing whenever possible, and generally annoyed with cell phone talkers, that's probably me.
But seriously, try listening to a book, the news, learning a language on disc, using public transportation, riding a bike (45 miles a day is totally doable)...hell, I bet even driving a sporty car will show you that driving should be fun, and not your fucking couch with wheels.
I remember a few years ago they spent millions redesigning a track, only to discover the banking, while improving traction and increasing top speed, occasionally caused the drivers to 'grey out' -- that is, the same condition that affects pilots at their G limit. It wouldn't be too hard to calculate that into the game and have it register on screen as an alpha value. Of course, that might not get the track designers jumping around. or it might.
What's next? Pressurized drivers' suits to keep the blood in their heads?
...and I must say, this Apple ads are downright misleading. We happen to have a couple of Itanium and Opteron...um, personal computers, right here. and let me tell ya, they may be a bit pricey, especially for the 8-way, blade...um, laptops, but they are just as fast as these here G5s I keep hearing about.
Slashdot Mirror
Think of the advantages:
-You probably have some ideas of what kind of devices are needed.
-You probably have access to a number of wealthy investors (doctors) that can provide funding and/or expertise and/or insight into market needs.
-The barrier is steep: trials and approvals, patents, etc., so though it may be hard to get one to market, it's not like a rival can easily copy your design and charge less for it.
-If not mech. engineering, than maybe biomed software or some other usefule software that could be sold to a captive market.
I've read several stories about physicians/engineers who have followed this path, had a personally challenging/rewarding career, and made many millions in the process. If I had the time and money, that's what I would do.
Outside than that, you don't really need a degree to get into Technology. I know someone with a PhD. in psychology that quickly rose to the ranks of Project Manager/Consultant for a medical software company. The fact that she's a "Doctor" - though not medical - holds a certain degree of credence with clients that's not possible with your average programmer, engineer, or middle manager.
Designing with Web Standards was recommended here, in a recent discussion on DHTML and javascript.
While the review I've seen on Amazon point out that it's more of an evangelical book (with a decent explanation of the technologies involved) than a technical roadmap, the table of contents (pdf) looks good. It seems that the book addresses the real world issues of refreshing an existing site (what to update vs. what to leave as-is) and instead of flash-bashing, a somewhat objective analysis of where it belongs on a site. I haven't bought it myself, but we plan on refreshing 18 global sites sometime soon (with a team of 3), and hope to do them in a way that expands our use of standards without having to burn a million hours grepping out <font> tags.
Try this post:
"I have been asked to teach a week-long class on Computer Game Design for a small group of computer literate kids, around 9-13 years old. My plan is to have them create a simple game, while exposing them to aspects of story design, artwork, animation, and simple programming. To this end, I'm looking for a 'game construction kit' that is simple enough that they can have a working game by the end of the week with some guidance. Anyone remember the 'Arcade Game Construction Kit' on the Commodore 64? Adventure Game Studio looks good, but it may be too complex. The genre is flexible, but it does need to generate a distributable Win32 binary that they can take home. Are there any Windows packages, public domain or otherwise, that can do this, especially any designed for kids?"
god i need a fscking life...i've tearned into jeeves.
I made a few guesses where I see them. I haven't done a lot of homework on the subject, just seen it here and there and it just struck me as a 1998 idea that hasn't gotten around to dying yet.
Good luck, I just personally think that while there may not be 'similar products for anything less' I question whether there's a market for such a thing. Maybe the media is right, but then again, the media doesn't buy them. If there is, someone will come along and make them cheaper, with fewer features, perhaps.
MINI has launched their own line of accessories, one of them being a jacket with a see-through map panel, and it comes with a couple of custom-shaped maps of major cities. Cool, yes. Usefulness, limited. The problem is, the jacket costs $675. If it's a cool feature and competitors notice it, it will be out at target next year for $99. That's what I see as the problem here. You may have a few cool ideas rolled together, but you can't patent 'pockets.'
Who knows, maybe you can these days...
This guy has been pushing this idea for years in Chicago, though I think he recently moved operations somewhere to save on 'expenses.'
/soooo/ cool because it had a walkman-shaped pocket (and a matching headphone-shaped one too) on the outside with a hole for your headphone wires. (The walkman pocket was the size of a paperback dictionary, but that's another story). Anyway, the thing was over a hundred bucks, which was just laughable. Anyway, that's what I thought of when I saw the original eVest.
/less/ stuff these days.
Granted, this is all my opinion, but it really speaks volumes on the state of tech innovation in Chicago.
Guy (lawyer maybe?) wants to be a tech entrepeneur and make buckets of money. Comes up with half decent idea, using connections and VCs desperate inability to turn down deals in 1999, gets funding. I have to say, back in the day when a phone/pda didn't do all this stuff, I was intrigued. For about a second, until I realized that for $300+ I could buy my own vest and wire it however I wanted. Then it reminded me of this vest I saw in 1984, which was
The problem is, he doesn't want to make a couple of handcrafted products, he wants to sell millions, and have them in Sharper Image, Harrington's, etc. He has succeeded in getting PR in Wired and NT Times, no small feat, if you consider this idea is getting stale, and most geeks I know want to carry
In order to get anyone to keep noticing it, it had to become the uber-vest. 42 pockets? For $300-400. Are you f&%)ing kidding me? You can get a cheaper/nicer vest for flyfishing or photographers, and load it up all you want.
Like I said, a sad state on the 'lemme in on the tech cash' mentality of innovation in Chicago in the last few years. IMO, of course. Probably I am most annoyed at his inability to just produce a product without trying to make it a billion dollar home run. I'm surprised he's still getting PR on this nonsense.
If you go to a horse race, and you see a horse has million to one odds, it makes sense to put a little money on it. Even if it has 3 legs and a blind jockey named Darl. You put a hundred bucks on it, and if it wins, you can start to afford to play poker with Bill and Larry. You /know/ you're throwing your money down the toilet, but the potential payoff is huge.
Now say that horse is a stock, as more people buy in, it costs a bit more to place the bet, but it's still a bargain at 200,000 to one payoff. IF it wins.
If SCO wins, it will be a bit like that, $3bn from IBM, and really, the sky will be the limit for licensing. It's not gonna happen (even if IBM loses, they could tie it up forever and eventually the 'offending' code could be dealt with), but for people who manage money, it's irrelevant. The investment is still proportional to the payoff.
Believe me, there's a lot to hate him for, but you're just ignant if you try and lay this at his feet.
It's pretty basic global economy theory. Tariffs and protectionist barriers are not highly regarded by economists. You sound like a textile worker in the 60's or an auto worker in the 80's. Free trade is good, despite what you may think.
Consider this, if the global economy improves, then the welfare of all humans improve. If nascent countries have viable economies, then perhaps it wouldn't be so easy to round up a bunch of kids and give them machine guns, bombs, and suicidal ideologies.
America, in general, excels at adapting and innovating, but that's not to the exclusion of anyone else doing so. There are plenty of reasons to keep close watch on our corporate masters, so they don't swindle us out of medical coverage and retirement benefits, but in the long run, protectionist legislation will just turn us into an overburdened economic island.
In an extreme example, it could get to the point where your beloved protections screw you. Want that japanese TV? Sorry, the government has slapped a 100% tax on it to protect US jobs. The problem is, the American TV manufacturer no longer needs to innovate so strongly, so you get a shitty TV that costs 50% more than it has to. The more protectionist barriers we construct, the more we'll need down the road.
The difference is, our 'pretenders' were mostly liberal-arts-educated, self-taught-html types, and in India, they're more likely to be C coding, exposed to methodology, CS-degreed folks. Unlike the dot-com bubble, you can't get a decent programming job there without a CS degree. Some Indians I've met said that they couldn't even get interviews until they at least had a Master's.
I'm not trying to flame anyone, as I have worked with a number of skilled American and Indian programmers and engineers. I'm not talking about American 'software engineers,' just comparing the dot-com overnight 'hey look I learned cold fusion last weekend' kids to your average India-educated programmer.
By and large, the Indians I've worked with had been exposed to a wider range of technologies: working on projects involving lahks of lines of C, teams of programmers working in parallel, regression testing, meticulous project planning, etc. In short, a fairly solid CS background, not unlike American CS degrees. Sure, there were other differences, cultural, communication, etc. and I think often a discrete difference when it came to 'just play it by ear and get the whole thing launched/compiled/shipped and iron out the issues later.' But I think that sums up a lot about how American business drives projects over here, for better or worse.
For the record (not to flame anyone, big generalizations coming), from what I've heard about rigorous CS programs, I've heard the American Master's CS students were the least likely to cheat or borrow code on the whole. Chinese and Indian programmers were known to have a 'pack' mentality, in which the top 1-3 programmers did the hard work, and the rest were content to pass it around via floppy, with varying attempts at even changing function names. I've heard this has been overlooked at some highly regarded schools (Stanford for one), with the logic that 'we would alienate and possibly expel 80% of the students if we rigorously enforced this.' Of course this is hearsay based on what I've heard from people in a few schools, and I'm not suggesting that all Indian or Chinese programmers fake their degrees. (Did I PCify that enough for everyone's tastes?)
Note that I didn't make any such generalizations; the poster didn't mention having trouble sleeping.
All he mentioned is that he has a hard time getting up, and my point was that he was looking for a hardware solution (an alarm clock) to a problem that may just be a symptom of something larger. The pot comment was half joking, but not the part mentioning diet, exercise, medical conditions, or simply getting control of his ability to open his eyes in the morning.
Having trouble sleeping is another matter entirely.
So I was ranting about the quality of 'ask slashdots' but really, some of them are ridiculous these days.
I don't mean go Dr. Phil on you, but really, blaming your laziness on your miscalibrated internal clock is ridiculous.
Eat well. Exercise. Don't frag all night, smoke pot, or keep inconsistent hours, tell yourself 'I will get out of bed at a reasonable hour because I'm in charge of my body, not the other way around.' Above all, just take control of your freaking self.
It's not a goddamn technical problem, it's a mental problem. Maybe a medical one, like low blood pressure, who knows, maybe you should Go Ask Doctor. A psychological one? Maybe you don't want to get out bed because your waking life doesn't stoke your coals. Perhaps you need a dominatrix to beat you awake.
Jeezus christ, people get through med school, look after newborns, are workaholics, and since the dawn of time, have pretty much been able to get their asses out of bed without 6 alarm clocks strategically set and placed throughout the room.
ok, maybe I'm cranky and didn't get enough sleep last night, but wtf is this doing here? Dear slashdot, I can't stop smoking/eating/drinking/sleeping/fragging too much. Anyone out there have a technical answer to my inability to take charge over my own life?
I'd have to say, that's a pretty simplistic view of getting published. I'd add a third:
(c)
1. Move to Manhattan.
2. Get any job you can at a publisher.
3. Have plenty of cash ($50k/year should do it), so you can go to the right bars/parties after work, with the right editors, reviewers, and authors.
4. Be witty, irreverent, clever, but not too full of yourself that you annoy the shit out of everyone. Make friends with all of the people that will one be in a position to edit, recommend, or review your book.
5. Write a book. Give to friend in high place.
6. Publish.
7. Profit! (ok, maybe not your first time)
Any attempt to skimp on the above steps, such as: living in Jersey, not buying rounds of $12 martinis, and crossing the clever/self-worshipping line, will most likely result in failure.
OK, maybe not ALL books are published this way, but you'd be surprised at how many are.
I've thought about what I'd consider doing if my job were outsourced...something along the lines of this.
If I were in your situation, I would get some tech experience (of any kind, even the low paying sort), find a partner or three (ah, there's the rub), and form an outsourcing company yourself. That is, land and manage gigs, and get some outsourced help to do some bulletproof coding for you. You will succeed if you stick to the 'commoditized' projects. You'll need lots of design skill, lot of management expertise, QA experience, and a committment to nothing less than excellence. You need to have a reputation for never fucking up, and admitting it if you do. Then , and only then, can you think about landing serious gigs.
Sure, you need more experience, but you could hone some of those skills working on open source projects in the meantime.
I'm sure I'll be flamed for generalizing and simplifying (of course I have a bit), and hear anecdotes of 'my company spent $xMM outsourcing a component to india and it sucked' but frankly, this is what people have been doing for years, just (mostly) inside U.S. borders. I personally have taken a couple of $80k jobs away from big firms by doing just that. I recently managed a job with a developer in New Zealand, and the 'client' in Chicago, London, and Moscow. (I didn't just land it out of the blue though, and that's another post entirely.)
Of course, I'm not talking about stealing the Ebay rebuild project from IBM, but something smaller, more manageable, with a good chance of success. To put it another way, think the Doctor/Pharmacist role. If you have a serious malady, you probably don't want to use a Doctor on the other side of the world, but once you get your prescription (in this case, a bulletproof technical spec), you don't really care where it gets filled, do you?
With that said, the protectionists may now commence flaming...
It's remarkable what they just did to make hotmail unusable:
1. You can no longer open your messages in another window, (to have them load in the background).
2. Once you open a message, you have to read the remaining ones in order.
3. Once you reply, you need to advance through a confirmation screen, then click to get back to the main menu, where you have to start this nonsense all over again.
All because they now force you to use javascript to view a message, in effect taking away certain web features (the ability to spawn multiple windows, load in the background) and turned it into a single-interface client...one that inherently takes SEVERAL SECONDS to get from one screen to another. I realize that some of this is to drive more ad views, but they've done this sort of thing before without doubling or tripling the effort required to read mail.
hm, limiting functionality, slower response times? Sound like par-for-the-course MS improvements to me.
It's finally enough to make me kill that address, which is annoying since I've had it since before the MS 'occupation.'
Why do we have to have commentary in every news post?
Because this is an open forum, a discussion, not a journalistic media outlet where every "story" has to be vetted for signs of opinion.
Don't like the submitter's slant? Then you are perfectly free to rebut it with your own comment. But why would you expect someone to post a story without counterpoint, incidental links, or personal opinion, if every other visitor is afforded these options.
...since they enlarged.
I wonder where they got their University Diplomas?
...at some of the code that will drive this application.
if (section == technology) {
if strFound("linux", "J2EE") {
mod_down()
} elseif strFound(".NET") {
mod_up()
}
}
I think it's about time we all got this guy's fingerprints and started making thousands of simultaneous purchases worldwide.
He acquired his 15 seconds of internet fame by duplicating and sharing his frequent shopper's card via his personal web site. I can only imagine the junk mail he receives on account of that profile.
It's a spicer. He makes KHS (and a few other OEM) frames, but it will cost you about $100 for the KHS logo.
He rocks. I bought a blemished $250 aluminum frame from him, and he added cyclocross chainstays, track dropouts, cable guides, and canti posts for free.
Updated. I've been meaning to do that for a while.
If the deraillieur were the problem, you could just go with an internally geared hub. That problem was solved, oh, 70 years ago?
You could simply ride fifteen pounds of funk.
One gear -> stronger legs, more distributed workout, less to maintain, fewer parts to fail, just mo' fun
Every once in a while someone spends a crapload of money trying to change the fundamentals of the bicycle, but really, other than the derailleur, not much has changed in over 100 years.
You're right, perhaps I should replace "bike" with "Segway"...oh wait, that's the couch that moves on the sidewalk, but at least you have to stand up.
I'm not advocating that conversation should be illegal while driving, but as other people have pointed out, the act of holding it is secondary to the distraction of having an intense conversation. So, having a discussion about what flavor Grape Nuts you had for breakfast won't likely distract you as much as, say, your new crypto scheme you're designing in transit.
Even worse, wearing a headset will probably make you feel like you have to be talking on the phone.
Honestly, have you ever noticed what happens when you're driving and you get a call? You slow down. And while that may seem to be a perfectly logical thing to do in your mind, it bugs the shit out of most everyone else. Think about it. Traffic is not only composed of cars, but it's mostly the space between cars.
If you leave three car lengths between you and another car, you get a call and suddenly it's four car lengths. Multiply that times just about every car you see, and what do you get?
Don't get me started on the fact that you have to add another car length if you're in an SUV. If you've ever looked around and noticed a guy in a zippy little 4 cylinder, "tailgating" - because he's not 5 car lengths back, driving "aggressively" (at least in the American sense, not European), passing whenever possible, and generally annoyed with cell phone talkers, that's probably me.
But seriously, try listening to a book, the news, learning a language on disc, using public transportation, riding a bike (45 miles a day is totally doable)...hell, I bet even driving a sporty car will show you that driving should be fun, and not your fucking couch with wheels.
I remember a few years ago they spent millions redesigning a track, only to discover the banking, while improving traction and increasing top speed, occasionally caused the drivers to 'grey out' -- that is, the same condition that affects pilots at their G limit. It wouldn't be too hard to calculate that into the game and have it register on screen as an alpha value. Of course, that might not get the track designers jumping around. or it might.
What's next? Pressurized drivers' suits to keep the blood in their heads?
...and I must say, this Apple ads are downright misleading. We happen to have a couple of Itanium and Opteron...um, personal computers, right here. and let me tell ya, they may be a bit pricey, especially for the 8-way, blade...um, laptops, but they are just as fast as these here G5s I keep hearing about.